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According to the internet where everything written is God’s Truth, Trump and Putin have cut a deal before their meeting in Alaska.

Putin:  “OK, you can have Ukraine.”

Trump:  “We’ll take it if you take California.”

Putin:    “Deal.”

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As readers here must know, the Archbishop of Detroit, Edward Weisenburger, has fired three longtime professors of philosophy and theology at the archdiocese’s seminary, Sacred Heart. The firing took the professors by surprise. He has given no reason for it, except to say that he disagrees with their theology. I do not know what that means, nor does the archbishop seem to intend to tell us what it means.

Let us come to cases. If I say to William of Ockham, “I disagree with your theology,” and William, justly and as a loyal son of the Church, desires to know exactly where this disagreement lies, I must reply. I might say that to subordinate God’s knowledge to His will must result in a conception of God that is like what Muslims believe about Allah, unfettered from reason and, therefore, not approachable by reason. Punishment for sin would then also be arbitrary and extrinsic, not inherent to the sin itself. Then William might point out some error in my drawing conclusions from his premises, or he might say that he does not actually hold the premises I attribute to him; or he might rethink matters and change his mind.

Likewise, if I say to Cardinal Reinhard Marx, “I disagree with your moral philosophy,” and the cardinal agrees to have a conversation rather than pulling rank, he might say, “Tell me what the problem is.”

I might then say, “Your willingness to normalize and even to celebrate unnatural sexual relations, denying that they are unnatural no matter how they may feel to those who engage in them, leaves the Church with no logical reason to oppose a man’s taking two wives, if such an arrangement pleases them, and with no credible witness against fornication. You cannot tell John and Mary to wait for marriage while Will and Rich cannot possibly have any such intention, since their sodomy consummates nothing, has no biological meaning, and, because it is not natural, must be learned as a habit long before they decide they will continue in it for life. You have also detached sexual morality from nature, drained the masculine and feminine of meaning, reduced sexual being to tools of hedonism, and given the go-ahead for pseudo-monogamous couples to adopt children and thus deliberately to deprive those children of either a mother or a father. All kinds of harm and confusion are already implied by your failure to enter more deeply into a truth available to reason and developed by the Church: that man is for woman and woman is for man.”

I do not know what the cardinal would say in reply, but I hope he would see that a real reply is needed.

Such a reply cannot be, “The doctrines are developing,” no more than William of Ockham could say so legitimately. That is not to answer the objection but to evade it. When a living thing develops, it becomes more powerful than before, not less; its latent faculties come to the fore; its observed relations to other creatures are more numerous, more intricate, more dynamic. If the doctrine in question is that sexual relations are licit only within marriage and marriage is what it is by nature, then a true development of that doctrine might show its powerful relations to doctrines on the nature of the human body, or what it means to be an incarnate creature, or why the account of the creation of mankind in Scripture makes explicit what for the other creatures is left implicit, that “male and female [God] created them,” or even Jesus’ saying that you cannot enter the kingdom of God unless you enter it as a little child.

We know that a thing is decaying or dying when it loses such interrelations, or when its scope of application is narrowed. The fraternal club that once attracted many young men and was at the heart of town life is in decay; we know it when it becomes for us just one odd choice among others, of passing an evening or two every couple of months, without building anything. People ignore it not because they hold it in contempt but because there is no real life in it anymore.

The philosophy department at New Directions University is in decay because the courses have all been subordinated to political aims; they have lost their connections to linguistics, mathematics, art, cosmology, history, literature, and the patient study of man. It is no longer a leader but an appendage. And it is well on its way to becoming an appendix, to be ignored or gotten rid of.

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That this extreme inequality is itself the primary threat to both democracy and social stability is poorly understood.

Scraped of pleasantries, the ultimate purpose of any status quo is to 1) distribute most of the economy’s gains to the top tier and 2) offload the sacrifices this requires to the bottom tiers but in stealthy ways that aren’t noticeable enough to spark political revolt.

The basic stealth mechanisms deployed over the past 50 years to offload the sacrifices on the bottom 90% are:

1) Reduce the share of the national income going to wages so the share going to corporate profits and finance could soar.

2) Place the tax burden for entitlements (Social Security and Medicare) on the wage earners while reducing the taxes levied on unearned income from the ownership of assets / capital.

3) Understate official inflation.

4) Inflate credit-asset bubbles that enriched the owners of assets at rates far above inflation.

The first dollar of every wage is taxed at 15.3% for entitlements (both the employee and employer pay 7.65%), while numerous forms of capital gains are exempt from tax. Capital is lightly taxed, earned income is heavily taxed. Wage earners lose ground, asset owners get richer. That’s the net result of the taxation system.

Inflation is of course the hidden tax, but the status quo has relieved the wealthiest 10% who own most of the assets from the ravages of inflation by inflating asset bubbles which enrich the already rich at rates far above inflation. Those who own few assets absorb the losses of inflation via a slow-drip reduction in the purchasing power of their wages.

Borrowing money has always been the lowest-friction way to keep everyone happy–or at least onboard. The status quo needs enough money to fund both the gains from monopoly, tax havens, fraud and graft collected by the top few and the entitlements that keep everyone else onboard.

Alas, all good things come to an end. Interest rates fell for 40+ years, enabling more debt to be piled up without increasing the cost of servicing the debt enough to be noticeable. Now rates are rising, and despite the many claims that the Fed and other central banks can easily shove rates back to zero, the recent rise in Japanese sovereign bonds undercuts this breezy assumption that debt can be piled up indefinitely.

Japan’s central bank printed money to buy the government’s bonds to keep yields near zero for 30 years, but that apparently permanent solution has been revealed as impermanent.

Demographics–people living longer and the global Baby Boom retiring en masse–is pushing government spending higher as the workforce of wage earners paying most of the taxes stagnates or shrinks. Now that interest rates are in a long-term up-cycle, it’s no longer possible to just borrow another few trillion dollars every year without increasing the cost of servicing all that debt to the point where the debt service starts squeezing out the spending needed to keep everyone happy.

The net result of all this is: now comes the hard part, distributing the sacrifices in ways that are finally noticeable.

The problem facing the status quo is not easily resolvable: the top few percent (corporations and the wealthiest households) who own most of the wealth have aggregated political power with their wealth, so politicians are under tremendous pressure to keep the immense river of profits, tax breaks, giveaways, graft, etc. flowing to corporations and the wealthiest few lest they throw a temper tantrum and fund a competing politico in the next election.

But the predations of the top few have already shifted most of the losses, costs and risks onto the bottom 2/3 of the populace, and so the buffers of cash, assets and credit this class has to absorb more sacrifices has already been worn thin.

The class that’s doing well due to the current Everything Bubble–those in the 80% to 99% bracket–can afford to absorb some of the sacrifices, but should the bubble pop–and sadly, all bubbles pop despite herculean efforts to keep them inflated–the phantom wealth this class expected to be permanent will dissipate into thin air, leaving them less willing to absorb the scale of sacrifices needed to satisfy everyone: the politically influential top few, the technocratic class that keeps the status quo bureaucracies / institutions functioning and the bottom 2/3 who do the scutwork.

This chart below (from WSJ.com) shows that wages are still the dominant generator of income even in high-income households. Only the top 1% derive substantial shares of their income from business ownership and ownership of other assets.

In summary: the most politically influential class–those able to buy political protection from sacrifices–is the only class with the means to absorb financial sacrifices.

Politicians are caught in a bind. They need to cut spending and raise taxes lest the Good Ship Status Quo founder, but the class that is most able to absorb sacrifices also funds their campaigns.

The usual tricks that worked for the past 50 years to offload the sacrifices onto the bottom 90% wage-earner class now carry the risk of arousing political revolt.

The conventional “solution” many expect is to reduce the debt load by increasing inflation. But this only works if the bottom 90% wage-earner class receives wage increases sufficient to keep up with inflation. There is little to no evidence to support the assumption that this is likely, or even possible.

Once the Everything Bubble pops, the financial buffers of the bottom 90% wage-earner classes will thin or disappear entirely. Once this happens, their stake in the status quo changes, and they become dry kindling awaiting a spark to erupt in a political firestorm that burns down the status quo’s current distribution of gains, losses, costs and risks.

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In my recent YouTube documentary titled “The Three Bethesda Casket Entries, Revisited,” I featured the story of a Bethesda nurse (a Navy Ensign, or O-1) who witnessed “a simple casket offloaded from a helicopter by men in trench coats” at or near Bethesda Naval Hospital the night of JFK’s autopsy; she had been informed that the helicopter would be delivering the body of President Kennedy to Bethesda NNMC that night.  (The story of the Bethesda nurse had been written about in 1992 by New England journalist Robert “Woody” Woodland.)  Here is a link to that documentary, for those who may not have seen it yet.

The “Bethesda Nurse” as depicted in “The Three Bethesda Casket Entries”

Thanks to an obituary published in 2023 by the nurse’s family, the name of the former Navy nurse interviewed by Woody Woodland in 1992 was revealed as Patricia Krueger.  Here is the link to the obituary.

As you can see, Patricia Krueger led a varied, interesting, and impressive life.

But Patricia Krueger was not her name in 1963—rather, this was her name by her third marriage.  Patricia Krueger’s maiden name was Patricia Pepe; in 1963 she graduated from Georgetown University with a B.S. in Nursing, and was accepted into a Navy nursing program at the Bethesda National Naval Medical Center.  In September of 1963, Patricia married John DeSando, so on the night of President Kennedy’s autopsy her name would have been Patricia DeSando.

With the help of Dr. Mike Chesser, I was able to locate and contact Patricia’s ex-husband John DeSando, and he sent me this snapshot taken in 1963 or 1964 of Patricia DeSando in her Navy uniform, provided by her eldest daughter, Courtney.

Patricia DeSando in 1963, courtesy of her eldest daughter Courtney

The next day—on July 28, 2025—I had a captivating hour-and-a-half conversation with Patricia’s eldest daughter, Courtney, who was very gracious and willing to share with me what she could remember about her mother’s recounting about the events she witnessed at Bethesda on 11/22/63.  In short, Courtney told me that her mother publicly related her story about “two bodies” at Bethesda to numerous guests (up to as many as “60 or 70” people) at a New Hampshire wedding rehearsal on a Friday night in March of 1992.  In short, Courtney explained that the “two bodies” her mother discussed were JFK’s body entering the Bethesda Naval Hospital morgue at two different times the night of the autopsy, and apparently in a different condition later in the evening than he was in, earlier that evening.  In Courtney’s recollection of what her mother said that night at the wedding rehearsal (for the wedding the next day of Courtney’s sister, Jessica), she said her mother openly stated to the wedding rehearsal attendees that there was “an author” in the audience who was going to write about it; Patricia Krueger’s contact with the author had apparently emboldened her to publicly reveal key aspects of what she witnessed to her audience at the wedding rehearsal.  As Courtney recalled, the few times that her mother had spoken of the events at Bethesda, she had consistently mentioned (1) seeing a casket, and (2) “a long hallway” in which her mother recalled seeing some kind of transfer taking place later on, involving a casket.  Regretfully, the details of what Courtney could recall were not more precise than that, 33 years later.

Those who have watched my documentary “The Three Casket Entries at Bethesda, Revisited” will immediately recall many visuals (both photographs, and 3-D animation) of a very long hallway immediately outside the Bethesda morgue where President Kennedy’s autopsy was conducted the night of November 22, 1963.  It may be significant that Courtney recalled “the long hallway” (as a key aspect of her mom’s recounting of the events she witnessed) BEFORE she saw those images in my documentary; it was an independent recollection of Courtney’s part.

Courtney was under the very strong impression that her mother had seen JFK’s wounds at some point, probably early that evening—what Courtney understood to be JFK’s appearance “before” a second delivery to the morgue.  Courtney is not sure today whether her mother actually saw JFK’s wounds a second time that night, or whether her mother only became aware much later of differences to his wounds by seeing autopsy photographs in books, for example.  But Courtney made clear that her mother was quite disturbed by the changes in JFK’s condition that night.

Do I wish Courtney’s memories of what her mom recounted were more precise?   Sure I do.  The important thing here is that Woody Woodland wrote in his 1992 article only about the Bethesda nurse seeing “a simple casket arrive by helicopter, and offloaded by men in trench coats,” and being told it contained JFK’s body.  Courtney’s recollections of her mother’s story strongly suggest that there is much more to the matter than what Woody Woodland reported in 1992—namely, that after JFK’s body arrived by helicopter, her mother may have been inside bldg. 8, in the hallway right outside the morgue, and that her mother may actually have seen JFK’s head wounds herself, shortly following his initial arrival.   Courtney’s strongest impression of her mother’s story is that her mom was very disturbed by the fact that there were major differences between the “before” condition of JFK’s wounds (which her mother implied she had seen) and the “after” condition later that evening.  It is unclear today whether her mother, Patricia DeSando, learned of the changes in the condition of JFK’s wounds by discussing events at the autopsy with those who had been there and witnessed the post mortem examination after 8:00 PM, or whether her mother was aware of discrepancies between what she apparently saw early that night (the “before” condition) by later viewing the autopsy photos published in books.  In any case, her mother was experiencing a strong case of “cognitive dissonance,” which accounted for her agitation at the 1992 wedding rehearsal, and her public revelations that evening before a large audience.

When Patricia Krueger decided to recount her Bethesda experiences to the many attendees at the rehearsal for her own daughter Jessica’s wedding in March of 1992, it created a “disturbance” that evening that many family members found baffling, and hard to understand.  The reaction at the time, by many of her children and by her ex-husband John DeSando, was “why now?” and “why here?”  It created a breach within the family, and exacerbated doubts among some of her children about the veracity of Patricia’s recollections.  But after viewing “The Three Bethesda Casket Entries, Revisited,” Courtney now strongly believes that her mother’s truthfulness has been vindicated.  Her mom, she now understands, was a witness to important historical events, and Courtney is gratified to now understand that like many other witnesses to strange goings-on the night of JFK’s autopsy, her mother was an innocent bystander who saw crucial events unfolding, even if their meaning and context was not immediately clear at the time.  Patricia Krueger was so disturbed by the “cognitive dissonance” created in her mind by what she had witnessed, and by recounting her experiences to a New England journalist that very weekend, that she felt compelled to bring it all out in the open at her daughter’s wedding rehearsal. 

I contacted Woody Woodland the next day, on July 29th, and he did recall Patricia Krueger, and remembered talking to her about the events she witnessed at Bethesda Naval Hospital the night of JFK’s autopsy.  He also recalled that Patrica Krueger served as a driver for the Pat Buchanan presidential campaign in 1992, which is how he met her.  Woody stands by the accuracy of what he wrote in his 1992 article (titled “Bethesda Nurse,” in Network Publications), as recounted by author Vince Palamara on page 154 of his 2015 book, From Parkland to Bethesda.  Courtney spoke at length to Woody Woodland the next day, July 30th, and that conversation jogged both of their memories.  They both jointly recalled that Woody Woodland, who was then (as he still is now, at the age of 79) a minister, presided over her sister Jessica’s wedding the next day, on Saturday, which would explain why he was present at the wedding rehearsal on Friday night, when her mother spoke publicly about the events she witnessed at Bethesda Naval Hospital on 11/22/63.  Woody confirmed to me after talking to Courtney that he did indeed preside over the wedding of Patricia Krueger’s daughter, Jessica, that weekend.  Unfortunately, he does not today have a tape recording of his discussion with Patricia Krueger about what she witnessed at Bethesda, because he did not conduct a formal, sit-down interview with her in his office; he learned about the events she witnessed at Bethesda that weekend in the midst of his ministerial duties, and simply took detailed notes during their discussion.  He published his article that same month, in March of 1992.

My assessment at this writing is that there is much more to the “Bethesda nurse” story than was written about by Woody Woodland in 1992—Patricia DeSando may well have accompanied the shipping casket from the Officer’s Club parking lot where it was delivered by the helicopter (according to Navy corpsman Paul O’Connor) to the morgue itself, and she may even have seen JFK’s head wounds shortly after his body arrived and the shipping casket was opened; she may also have witnessed some kind of transfer of his body later that night, in the “long hallway.”  Yes, I can assure you that not knowing the full details now, in 2025, is indeed frustrating.  The fact that Patricia DeSando was told ahead of time that JFK’s body would be arriving by helicopter, and then witnessed it arrive and saw it offloaded by men in trench coats, SUGGESTS that someone may have been preparing her for some particular role that night.  I can’t forget the broken background chatter recorded on the Air Force One tapes—as revealed in my documentary “The Three Bethesda Casket Entries, Revisited”—specifically, the voice that twice directed “have a nurse” there, and that the nurse should be  “ready for everything,” during the repeated talk about a “black Cadillac.”   It’s a spooky thing to listen to, in view of the above, because we now know for a certainty THAT A NURSE WAS THERE.

Should any of Courtney’s many brothers and sisters recall more details about what their mother recounted about events at Bethesda, I will certainly update this article, if and when that information becomes available.

IN CONCLUSION, I am simply content today to report to you that we now know that the Bethesda nurse who witnessed “a simple casket delivered by helicopter, and offloaded by men in trench coats” was one Patricia DeSando, and that I have been able to provide you with a snapshot taken of her as a Navy Ensign, circa 1963.  The “Bethesda nurse” was a witness to history, and her identity has now been positively verified, as well as what she looked like in uniform in 1963, thanks to the cooperation of her ex-husband John DeSando, and her eldest daughter, Courtney.

This article was originally published on Insidethearrb.livejournal.com.

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Some topics are too easy, so I avoid them.

I like to discuss things that require me to exercise the ol’ melon.

But once in a while I have no choice.

Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, has a new book called Why Fascists Fear Teachers: Public Education and the Future of Democracy.

So the president of a national teachers’ union characterizes her opponents as “fascists.” Terrific.

I think dismantling a national education bureaucracy and turning authority over to localities might be something like the opposite of fascism. I wonder what ol’ Randi has to say about that. Probably nothing.

According to the book description, “Attacks on teachers are part of a larger, darker agenda — to undermine democracy, opportunity, and public education as we know it. After the Trump administration declared its intention to dismantle the Department of Education, that alarm became undeniable.”

When the Department of Education — an institution we got by just fine without for over 80 percent of our history — was proposed in 1979, the American Federation of Teachers itself opposed it, as did Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-NY), who said we would thereby “risk the politicization of education itself.” The New York Times and the Washington Post, those bastions of fascism, ran editorials against it.

You already know what Randi’s book says: fascists hate knowledge and opportunity, so they hate teachers.

If the public were educated, the argument goes, the people would never fall for demagogues (at least not the kind of demagogues Randi dislikes).

They would be informed!

That’s a laugh. American schoolchildren emerge from high school as propagandized zombies, with the official version of every historical event seared into their heads.

Actually, scratch that. The brightest ones emerge with the official narrative in their heads. The rest know nothing at all.

Bryan Caplan, in his provocatively titled The Case Against Education, goes into much detail about how little Americans know about the most basic things, even after thirteen years of daily instruction.

For example:

Here are a few of the questions that American adults were asked not long ago, along with the possible answers (the correct answer will be in bold). Then I’ll share two figures: the percentage who got the correct answer, and the percentage who really knew the answer (in other words, correcting to account for people who got the question right simply by guessing).

(1) Which of the following is not protected by the Bill of Rights?
Freedom of speech
Trial by jury
The right to bear arms
The right to vote

39% got the correct answer; 21% really knew the answer

(2) Which of the following events came before the Declaration of Independence?
Foundation of Jamestown, Virginia
The Civil War
The Emancipation Proclamation
The War of 1812

49%, 26%

(3) The Bill of Rights explicitly prohibits
Prayer in public school
Discrimination based on race, sex, or religion
The ownership of guns by private individuals
Establishing an official religion for the United States
The president from vetoing a line item in a spending bill

26%, 8%

The questions continue, but you get the idea.

The vast majority of American adults are not even entitled to an opinion on major issues in American life.

Note also that Randi thinks we “fascists” oppose “opportunity.” This from a woman whose system does zero to prepare students for the world in 2025.

We hear nonstop complaints about young people that the deck is stacked against them, everything is too expensive, they can’t get a break, etc.

What has Randi done, exactly, to help them navigate that?

Never pay for a book again: TomsFreeBooks.com

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Recently, I wrote an article about the adulterous Coldplay couple caught on the kiss-cam, and I concluded my piece with some thoughts about the very public General Judgement that will occur when Christ returns to judge the living and the dead:

Whatever happens to the couple from now on, the justice and mercy afforded them in their moment (or lifetime) of exposure is similar to—and yet nothing approaching—the mercy and justice we will all face, together, at the General Judgement at the end of time, when every one of our sins will be exposed, with perfect clarity, to all others.…

Now, I expected that lukewarm or poorly catechized Catholics would be learning something new about this final judgement that will take place at the consummation of the world, but I was surprised to find that even some faithful Catholics are unaware of how things will go down.

For example, one woman stated with worry on my Facebook page: “I thought the sacrament of reconciliation actually blots out our sins and they are remembered no more (Please Lord).” Another was stunned: “Hold up…wait…what? Our sins will be seen by all? How? Where is this taught?” And still another confused commenter: “I thought the ones we confessed were not seen? Or did I misunderstand?”

To clear up the confusion, let’s look more closely at Church teaching.

It is true that in the course of the final, public judgement, presided over by Christ the King, every one of our sins—in thought, word, and deed—will be revealed to every other person who has ever been created. Yes, this even includes the sins that have been confessed and forgiven in a sacramental confession. While we can rest assured that each of those absolved sins are completely forgiven and no longer offend God, they will be seen two more times: first, at our particular judgement, which takes place at the moment of our death; and, second, at the General (or Final) Judgement at the end of time, when the old Heaven and Earth pass away, the universe is renewed, and the Kingdom of God is fulfilled. The first judgement by Christ the King is private and individual; the second is public and universal.

If this is shocking news to you, please don’t freak out; keep reading to understand why—if you are among the saved—you will not feel despair, shame, or humiliation when the Lord reveals all to all.

First let’s go to some familiar Scripture verses on this. Jesus tells us plainly and repeatedly that everything secret will ultimately be exposed: “For there is nothing hidden that will not become visible, and nothing secret that will not be known and come to light” (Luke 8:17).

There is nothing concealed that will not be revealed, nor secret that will not be known. Therefore whatever you have said in the darkness will be heard in the light, and what you have whispered behind closed doors will be proclaimed on the housetops. (Luke 12:2-3)

St. Paul echoes this truth when he writes to the faithful of Corinth, instructing them not to make judgements “until the appointed time, until the Lord comes [again], for he will bring to light what is hidden in darkness and will manifest the motives of our hearts” (1 Corinthians 4:5).

And, in St. John’s apocalypse (which translates to “a lifting of the veil”), he sees in the vision “the dead, the great and the lowly, standing before the throne, and scrolls were opened…. All the dead were judged according to their deeds” (Revelation 20:12-13).

The Catechism of the Catholic Church confirms all of the above when addressing the Last Day: “Then will the conduct of each one and the secrets of hearts be brought to light” (678).

In the presence of Christ, who is Truth itself, the truth of each man’s relationship with God will be laid bare. The Last Judgement will reveal even to its furthest consequences the good each person has done or failed to do during his earthly life. (1039)

The Baltimore Catechism teaches the same: “Every deliberate thought, word, deed, and omission of every person’s entire life will be manifested at the general judgement. The Lord Christ will be the judge” (No. 3, Lesson 14, 180).

In addition to Scripture and catechisms, the saints and theologians throughout the centuries have repeated the teaching on the General Judgement, including St. Bonaventure:

At the time of the judgement to come, when God is to weigh the secrets of hearts, fire will precede the arrival of the Judge; angels will be sent with trumpets to gather the elect from the four winds of heaven; all those who lie in their tombs will rise through the power of God’s command, and will stand before his judgement seat. Then the things hidden in darkness will be brought to light, and the counsels of hearts will be made manifest, and the scrolls of men’s consciences will be unrolled, and that scroll itself will be opened which is called the Book of Life. Thus, together and in a single flash, all the secrets of all men will be revealed to all with such clear certainty that, before the evidence of Truth testifying in the Person of Christ and corroborated by the testimony of every separate conscience, not a single path will be left open for denial or defense, for excuse or evasion, but every man will then receive according to his deeds…

Fr. Charles Arminjon, in his book The End of the Present World (the reading of which St. Thérèse called “one of the greatest graces of my life”), described it this way:

[This] judgement is called universal, because it will cover every crime and offense…. In the clarity of the light of God, all the crimes, public and secret, that have been committed in every latitude and in every age, will be seen clearly and in detail. The whole life of each human being will be laid bare. No circumstance will be omitted: no action, word, or desire will remain unknown. (p. 102)

And the Catholic Encyclopedia tells us that the final judgement “will embrace all works, good or bad, forgiven as well as unforgiven sins, every idle word, every secret thought.”

For those who have already died and been individually judged—whether that was days, years, centuries, or millennia before the Second Coming of Christ—the communal display of every thought, word, and deed, and the pronouncement of their sentence (saved or damned) will be identical to that of their previous particular judgement. The only difference is in the final judgement’s public nature. Because man is a social creature, the satisfaction of a social judgement conducted before all is fitting and just.

At that last divine tribunal, every awestruck and trembling soul, with all the choirs of angels and legions of demons on hand, will witness the unveiling and understand the final meaning of all that came before. This consummation of the world will be the Lord’s definitive word and will accomplish three main things.

Read the Whole Article

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This paper was written to give the reader a snap shot of money, real and imagined.

Our Constitution requires that we use real money, which is Gold and Silver. These have the required characteristics for real money: 1…medium of exchange,2…measure of value, and 3…store of value.

Our Fiat Dollars don’t comply with the Constitution  money” is decreed by authority, with no physical backing.) Which is why we have suffered inflation and the decline in relative value of fiat dollars for almost 100 years. It certainly is no store of value Congress just passed the Genius Act that authorized the issue of Fiat. Stablecoins which is another form of the Fiat dollar and redeemable on a one to one basis with the Fiat dollar. It is a plan to extend the life of the Fiat dollar. I think it will have an opposite effect and reduce value of Stablecoins and the Fiat Dollar.

To grow an economy, you must spend less than you produce, and new money can’t exceed production of goods and services. During my lifetime and for thousands of years, the value of gold has been relatively stable. But the price of gold in fiat dollars has increased from $35 to $3,400 an ounce in 90 years.

Our corrupt Congress refuses to use Constitutional real money, gold and silver, because they can’t print it to finance wars for profit and Foreign Aid, nor use it to impoverish the people with various schemes. The primary beneficiaries of corruption are the Parasitic Super-Rich Ruling Class and bureaucrats of the Administrative State functioning as a Criminal Enterprise within government.

Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) is in the planning stages by the unconstitutional Federal Reserve Bank, and, if enacted, is a valid reason for revolution. In simple terms, CBDC would exist in digital form only; there would be no pocket cash, government would know where you spent money, government could control how you spent money, and could cut off your ability to spend money at any time. It would control your every move. Freedom would be a memory and impossible. CBDC represents total tyranny with absolute control of the people. CBDC could only be terminated by revolution. So stop it now.

Crypto Currencies like Bitcoin, Cardano and countless others remind me of The Dutch Tulip Mania in 1657. Prices rose precipitously. The best Tulip Bulbs sold for up to $750,000 at today’s prices. The bottom shortly dropped out, and many people were ruined. Tulips, like  Crypto Currencies, don’t have the required characteristics  of money, and due to its format, are subject to all kinds of unknown problems.

President Trump has established a Strategic Reserve for Bitcoin. This is a dangerous move because it is not money, and the Constitution only recognizes gold and silver as money. As an economist, I can foresee some serious shenanigans on the part of players.

The Federal Reserve Bank is privately-owned and Unconstitutional for good reason. It is a scam on the people of the United States. The money it prints is Fiat. Without the Federal Reserve Bank printing money out of thin air, wars for profit would not be possible and we would not have a $37 Trillion deficit. The Bank causes booms and busts which would not occur as often, if at all, with Constitutional money, gold and silver.

Money is the lifeblood of an Economy, and those who control money control the country, regardless of who is elected. The Federal Reserve Bank is privately-owned  and responsible for ups and downs in the Economy. If gold and silver was used rather than fiat dollars, things would be more stable without inflation.

The post Prosperity Requires Real Money, Not Fiat, CBDC, or Crypto…nor the Federal Reserve Bank! appeared first on LewRockwell.

International Man: Recently, we’ve seen the “Yellow Peril” escalate across media and politics. What’s your take on the sentiment towards China?

Doug Casey: There’s always been a fear of China, perhaps starting with the immigration of laborers to California in the 1860s, then Sax Rohmer’s Fu Manchu novels. It’s logical enough. China has always seemed alien to Americans—their language, their script, their clothing style, and their congregating together in Chinatowns. They were painted as inscrutable and devious. Mao’s Communist ideology and the Korean War, which was really a war between the U.S. and China, certainly didn’t help.

Now China’s newfound prosperity is seen as a threat. China, however, isn’t the problem; it’s the U.S. government’s attitude towards China, combined with visible U.S. decline, while China is advancing rapidly on every front. So, the U.S. Government is trying to suppress China and throw up roadblocks to its progress with sanctions and tariffs, while denying it imports and trying to pen it up militarily. As with Russia, the U.S. is provoking them on many fronts.

However, the current U.S. policy is not only doomed to failure, but is actively counterproductive.

International Man: Is China truly an existential threat to the U.S., economically, militarily, or ideologically, or is it just a manufactured enemy?

Doug Casey: China’s huge, with 1.3 billion people. And over the last 40 years, it has advanced from a poverty-stricken, even primitive, country to a very prosperous one. They’ve risen from nowhere to the top rung economically, scientifically, and militarily.

Why? Because Deng Xiaoping radically altered their economic system in 1980, by dumping communism for capitalism, while maintaining the charade that China was still Communist. Although it’s still called Communist China, the country is totally different from what it was in the days of Mao. It’s no longer communist. It’s simply an authoritarian country—not so different from most others in the world at this point. The Communist Party is nothing but a control mechanism, essentially a scam inuring to the sole benefit of its members.

Communism is an economic system where the State owns and controls everything. China is actually a model of state capitalism, also known as fascism, a marriage of the State and corporate interests. The fact is that (this will come as a shock to many) China is more free-market-oriented than most of the world’s countries. That’s certainly true of Europe these days. In fact, the Europeans are even talking about imitating China’s more regressive policies.

Will China keep growing at the rate they have been? It’s possible, but unlikely. For one thing, their government is retreating from the near laissez-faire policies that made them prosperous. For another, the huge savings of the average Chinese have been malinvested by their banks due to political pressures, with potentially catastrophic consequences. For another, their culture appears to have become less hard-working, softer, and more corrupt.

Are they a military threat? They’re approaching parity now, and at the rate they’re accelerating, they could be way ahead in a decade. But that doesn’t mean they’re necessarily a threat. That’s because the days of invading other nations to steal the gold, the artwork, and enslave the population are long gone. That’s apart from the fact that we don’t know what the nature of the next war will be. In other words, it’s foolish of Trump to bankrupt the U.S. on speculative military spending, while provoking the Chinese.

Do they want to start a nuclear war with the U.S.? No, they have nothing to gain from that. Can they invade the U.S.? No, that’s almost impossible to do. The U.S., not China, is the problem. It can see China rising rapidly while it’s declining, and may decide to strike while it still has the balance of power. The U.S. may use the internecine dispute between Beijing and Taipei, which is none of our business, as an excuse for starting a war.

The U.S. government is increasingly bankrupt. War power is built on economic power, and the U.S. government is not only bankrupt but becoming more so with Trump’s 20% increase in military spending. Meanwhile, it’s falling behind China in science and technology, which, like the military, depends on economic strength. I’m afraid the U.S. is like Wylie Coyote, who thinks he’s on firm ground chasing a Chinese Roadrunner, while he’s walking on air.

China is a non-threat. The problem is the U.S. itself; it’s collapsing from within and blaming China for its own problems.

International Man: During the previous Trump presidency, Democrats painted Russia as an omnipresent threat, almost cartoonishly so. Are Republicans now doing the same with China—and if so, why do both parties need an external boogeyman?

Doug Casey: Yes. After Russia, China is the Devil of the Month. Iran, Mexico, India, and maybe Turkey can join the party as needed. It’s starting to look like the U.S. against the rest of the world. It’s not just Trump, with his unpredictable whims and schizophrenic policy decisions. It’s the lack of any moral core in the U.S., which no longer stands for any principles. The U.S. Government is like a rickety, overly complex Rube Goldberg machine. The Deep Staters who control it want to cannibalize its parts as the thing comes unglued.

This is the nature of the State as an entity. The State, government, doesn’t create anything and never has. Its main activity throughout history has been war and conquest. It’s quite correct to say that war is the health of the State.

The kind of people who are drawn to government aren’t noble altruists. They’re mainly interested in building their personal wealth and power. And since the State is their playpen, they naturally want to make it a bigger playpen.

Both the Republican and the Democratic parties are equally guilty, and there’s no longer much difference between them.

What’s true of both parties is that, barring the senility of a Joe or dissipation on the scale of a Hunter, their leaders all become incredibly rich. The Clintons are worth hundreds of millions of dollars. The Obamas are probably worth $100 million. And their minions get even richer on government spending, as do well-positioned foreigners like Zelensky, who’s gone from being a second-rate actor to being a billionaire. As he has his sycophants.

International Man: What’s really going on behind this aggressive posture toward China? Is it trade, currency, tech dominance, or perhaps something deeper—like fear of a multipolar world?

Doug Casey: You might recall that Japan was the bogeyman before China. In the 80s, it seemed like they were going to take over the world. Now, China is being promoted as a dangerous threat. The fact is that they produce loads of consumer goods cheaper and better than in the U.S. The solution is not to bash China, but to free American entrepreneurs the way Deng freed Chinese entrepreneurs.

I don’t see them as a threat. I’d like to see the whole world be as prosperous as China. Will the Chinese currency, the yuan, replace the U.S. dollar? Unlikely. What’s certain is that the dollar is dying. Again, the problem isn’t the Chinese. The dollar needs to be replaced because it’s being inflated out of existence. The dollar, not soybeans or aircraft, is our major export these days. Of course, everyone wants to dump it. Instead of solving the problem, Trump prefers to threaten anybody who wants to dump dollars.

International Man: You’ve spoken about the collapse of empires and the cycles of history. Where are we now, and what role does the China narrative play in the story of America’s decline?

Doug Casey: The best way to avoid what’s known as “the fate of empires” is simply not to become an empire. That’s the real problem. The U.S. has turned from a country whose population was cohesive because they shared principles and traditions, into a multicultural domestic empire. And it’s an international empire too, with approximately 800 military bases in over 100 countries around the world. The U.S. has changed from a loosely governed middle-class republic into an empire with an ever more powerful executive.

And despite what passes for military power, with its gold-plated weapons and 800 bases, the U.S. really doesn’t have any allies. It only has parasitic client states.

None of this is China’s fault. But since the U.S. has become a danger to the rest of the world, you can expect other countries to take advantage of its problems.

Other countries still fear the U.S., but they no longer respect it.

Reprinted with permission from International Man.

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Of course it’s all about Alaska. Here’s what’s in play. But it’s the shadowplay that’s even more exciting.

Of course it’s all about Alaska. Here’s what’s in play. But it’s the shadowplay that’s even more exciting.

Across the world, for those who grew up in the Cold War Swingin’ Sixties, the temptation is irresistible to cast Donald Trump as Goldfinger  (but who would play Oddjob? Hegseth?)

Goldfinger, after all, is a powerful, ruthless gambler. His 21st century motto would be “Obliterate & Plunder”. In fact, sequentially, an orgy of obliteratin’ and plunderin’ if the occasions present themselves. Everything subjected to the search for the Golden Deal. My way. The only way.

Yet now it’s possible that Goldfinger may have met its appropriate – collective – match.

This is what happened the last time a summit took place in Alaska, in this particular case US-China in a shabby hotel in Anchorage. That shook the geopolitical chessboard to the core. Trump-Putin might – but only under quite specific conditions.

There’s only one realistic, optimal endgame for Alaska: a joint declaration of intent, pointing to a follow-up, as in the next meeting to be held in Russian territory. A sort of starter for the long and winding road towards a real reset of US-Russia relations, including a possible settlement in the proxy war in Ukraine.

Essentially, they may agree to keep talking. Yet what really matters is what may be implied by the promise: Goldfinger refrains from imposing secondary sanctions on Russia’s partners.

That will constitute a tremendous BRICS victory (Iran excluded. Actually, two strategic allies of Russia would be excluded: Iran and the DPRK).

BRICS are actively building a coalition to stare down Goldfinger. The key players are Bear, Dragon, Toucan and Elephant – all four original founders of BRIC. Nightingale should be added later, as it is linked via geopolitical/geoeconomic strategic partnerships with Bear, Dragon and Elephant.

When it comes to the Alaska nitty gritty, the top Bear needs to consider all the ramifications of what is an imperative for the Russian General Staff and the vast intel apparatus in Moscow: unless Goldfinger minions stop weaponizing and providing precious intel to Ukraine is all its forms, the mythic “ceasefire” that Goldfinger and the pack of toothless chihuahuas in Europe desperately want will be just an intermission to allow Ukraine to rearm to the hilt.

That’s a tough call for the top Bear: he has to placate his domestic, radical critics who blast him for sitting down with the enemy, and at the same time he must deliver the goods to his under-siege BRICS allies.

BRICS counteract Goldfinger’s Plunder tactics

Bear, Dragon, Toucan and Elephant are involved in breathless telephone diplomacy to articulate their collective response to Goldfinger’s Tariff/Plunder drive.

Examples. Modi on Brazil: “A strong, people-centric partnership between Global South nations benefits everyone.”

Lula on India: “Brazil and India are, so far, the two most affected countries. We reaffirmed the importance of defending multilateralism and the need to address the challenges of the current situation.”

Xi to Lula: China backs Brazil to defend its national sovereignty; BRICS is “a key platform for building consensus in the Global South.”

Goldfinger’s Tariff Plunder works in several ways.

On India: because New Delhi refuses to open its vast agricultural market to tariff-free Made in USA imports (45% of India’s population directly depends on agriculture); and because India buys Russian oil at much-needed discount prices.

On Brazil: because the ultimate target is regime change and free reign to plunder Brazil’s natural wealth.

So far, Goldfinger’s Plunder antics have been stellar when it comes to engineering their own blowback: from allienating even allies – see abject European submission – to de facto burying multilateral trade, not to mention international law.

Example: just a few hours before the tariff “pause” on Made in China products was about to expire, Goldfinger signed an executive order extending the deadline for another 90 days. Translation: TACO, all over again. If the tariff “pause” went through, the economy of the $37 trillion-indebted “indispensable nation” would be in even more dire straits.

Then there’s Goldfinger’s possible Arctic gameplay, already examined here. There’s virtually no evidence Russia would allow the US to participate in the development of the Arctic-wide Northern Sea Route (NSR), or Arctic Silk Road in Chinese terminology.

The role of Russia’s Atomflot – 11 nuclear icebreakers, 9 of them in action, 2 being built, including Project 10510 Rossiya, a behemoth capable of navigating anywhere in the Arctic anytime – in parallel with Russia’s astonishing arsenal of new weapons systems, these are absolutely key variables on any serious discussion on any possible US-Russia partnership post-Alaska.

Goldfinger’s obsession to cage Nightingale

Now let’s look at Nightingale – an immensely complex case. Goldfinger has totally embarked on a multi-track maximum pressure/tension remix against Iran: forcing Hezbollah to disarm; forcing the collapse of Lebanon into factional war; legitimizing the “al-Qaeda R Us” dismemberment of Syria; forcing snapback UN-backed sanctions on Tehran.

Then came the Goldfinger-hailed “historic peace summit” with Azerbaijan’s Aliyev and Armenia’s Pashinyan.

Well, what Baku and Yerevan really signed under Goldfinger’s watchful eye is not a peace deal: it’s a mere memorandum of understanding (MOU).

Their Joint Declaration is extremely vague – and non-binding. What is promised is a “let’s keep talking” set up: “We acknowledged the need to continue further actions to achieve the signing and ultimate ratification of the [Peace] Agreement.”

It remains to be seen what happens with the much-ballyhooed 99-year American grip on the Zangezur corridor – trimphally named Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity (TRIPP) – complete with grabbing 40% of its revenues (Armenia would get only 30%) and placing 1,000 American mercenaries to patrol Armenian territory, right south of Nightingale’s borders.

The big story is of course Goldfinger eager to snatch at least one connectivity corridor in southern Eurasia – in the strategic south Caucasus, using a gangster-minded MI6 asset (Aliyev) and a national traitor (meek Pashinyan), which will be discarded and/or sweetened in due time. Crucially, NATO membership was offered to both Armenia and Azerbaijan.

The Deep State’s game plan is total control: what really matters is the opening to establish a NATO corridor all the way to the Caspian.

There’s no way Nightingale will let that happen, not to mention Bear and Dragon: it would mean a direct NATO threat not only to the International North South Transportation Corridor (INSTC), which unites three BRICS (Russia, Iran, India) and crosses the Caspian, but also the Chinese Silk Roads, whose corridors traverse Iran with possible branch outs to the Caucasus.

Nightingale has already made it quite clear it will not allow any kind of change of status for the Zangezur corridor. And it has the necessary missile arsenal to back it up. IRGC Deputy Commander Yadollah Javani: Iran “will not allow an American corridor on its border.”

Wherever it comes from, Goldinger or the Deep State, the pressure by the Empire of Chaos is relentless. There will be no respite in the Hybrid – and otherwise – Wars on BRICS, especially on the new Primakov triangle (“RIC” as in Russia, Iran, China).

Alaska in principle should be about a reset of all US-Russia security matters – geopolitical, commercial, military, with Ukraine being just a subset. That will be a major stretch. It’s hard to imagine Putin being able to impress on Trump, on the same table, the finer points of NATO/US ceaseless plots to undermine, harass and destabilize Russia.

The most probable outcome is that the proxy war – and the SMO – will keep rollin’ on, but with the Deep State making extra bundles of euros by selling tons of weapons for NATO to dispatch to Kiev. But even without the promise of a new, serious, US-Russia security architecture, BRICS may still stand a chance to snatch a victory out of Goldfinger’s latest photo op.

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

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“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.”—H.L. Mencken

Let’s not mince words: every American should be alarmed by President Trump’s “Liberation Day” tactics, theatrics and threats.

What is unfolding in the nation’s capital is a hostile takeover of our constitutional republic.

This is no longer about partisan politics, wag-the-dog distractions from the Epstein debacle, or even genuine national security concerns.

This is martial law disguised as law-and-order—the oldest trick in the authoritarian playbook.

We have been traveling this slippery slope toward a police state for some time, but under Trump 2.0, the descent towards outright tyranny is accelerating.

Building on the expanded emergency powers he has claimed to wage war on immigration, wokeness and the economy, Trump is taking aim at yet another so-called “crisis”—this time, by waging war on crime in the nation’s capital, despite the fact that crime is at a 30-year low.

Under the guise of “restoring order” and “cleaning up” the streets, Trump has called in the National Guard, dispatched the FBI, and federalized the local police in order to take control of Washington, D.C.

This is how the Emergency State operates in the open.

A real but manageable problem—crime, homelessness, public disorder—is inflated into an existential threat.

Fear is manufactured, then exploited to seize more power. (In many cases, the “facts” fueling these crackdowns come directly from the president’s own disinformation machine—manufacturing the perception of danger to justify the expansion of control.)

Whether the trigger is terrorism, civil unrest, economic instability, or public health, the aim remains the same: expand the reach of federal authority, justify more militarized policing, and condition the public to accept the suspension of rights in the name of national security.

Once these powers are taken, they are never willingly relinquished.

Each time, Trump pushes the envelope a little, relying on military optics meant to intimidate.

For instance, on April 28, 2025, Trump signed an Executive Order authorizing mass round-ups of “violent criminals” and “gang members,” empowering federal agencies and military support for domestic law enforcement.

In June, Trump deployed the National Guard to California to quell protests over mass immigration arrests, treating political dissent as a security threat. A bench trial is currently underway to determine if Trump’s actions violated the Posse Comitatus Act, which prohibits the military from being used as a domestic police force.

By midsummer, a mental health detention directive allowed involuntary commitments of the homeless under “public health” grounds.

By August, Trump was deploying FBI agents and the National Guard into the nation’s capital in order to clear homeless encampments because the president says the city is “dirty” and “dangerous.”

At each stage, the scope of who could be targeted by these executive orders and emergency power operations grows wider.

These are not isolated decisions; they are part of a coordinated playbook for bringing local jurisdictions under direct federal control, one crisis at a time.

This is mission creep in action—by breaking the police state’s hostile takeover of the country and our Constitution into a series off incremental moves, the administration sidesteps the broad public backlash that a single, sweeping declaration of martial law would provoke.

Once the federal government claims the authority to override local control, put boots on the ground, and target a designated “dangerous class,” that authority inevitably broadens to sweep in new targets. What begins by targeting violent criminals quickly expands to hardworking immigrants, then the homeless.

Tomorrow those targeted could be protesters, journalists, or anyone deemed undesirable.

These executive orders constitute a war on the American people without a formal declaration of war. Once the definitions of “criminal,” “threat,” and “danger” are used interchangeably to advance political needs, there is no limit to who can be targeted next.

What begins with a narrow claim of emergency power is quickly normalized and made permanent.

We have seen this pattern before.

After 9/11, the Patriot Act’s surveillance powers—initially aimed at foreign terrorists—expanded to include mass monitoring of American citizens. The Transportation Security Administration began as an airport screening agency and now conducts random searches at train stations and sporting events. Predictive policing was sold as a way to stop violent crime, but it is now used to flag political activists and monitor protests.

In each case, a temporary, targeted security measure grew into a permanent tool of control.

The difference today is that the slope has become steeper and the slide faster. What once took years to creep into everyday life now happens in a matter of months.

Four months is all it took for the police state to pivot from “rounding up violent criminals” to patrolling the streets of the capital and forcibly removing the unhoused.

Today, the slope runs from undocumented immigrant sweeps to homeless sweeps.

Tomorrow, it could run from “restoring order” to suppressing lawful dissent in the same span of time.

This is the logical outcome of a formula that has been refined over decades: identify or invent a threat, stoke public fear, expand executive power to “solve” it, normalize the new level of control, then repeat with a broader definition of “threat.”

Each time the public accepts an expansion of authority in the name of security, the next expansion comes faster and goes further.

The dictatorial hunger for power, as Harvard’s Laurence Tribe has observed, is insatiable.

Every crisis becomes a test: of our willingness to let the government sidestep the Constitution, of our tolerance for militarized “solutions” to social problems, of whether the public will resist or comply, of whether those in authority can get away with moving the line yet again.

For decades—from Pearl Harbor to the Red Scare, from 9/11 to the pandemic lockdowns—we have failed that test. Each time, the line moves a little further, the slope gets a little slicker, and the public grows more accustomed to life under occupation.

The players change—Bush, Obama, Trump, Biden, and now Trump again—but the game remains the same: permanent crisis management, permanent power grabs, permanent erosion of liberty.

This is how constitutional limits die—not in one dramatic coup, but in a series of incremental “emergencies” that accustom us to living under permanent federal occupation.

By that measure, the takeover of Washington, D.C., is a chilling case study.

The issue is not whether Trump can seize control of DC. Under section 740 of the District of Columbia Home Rule Act, the president may do so for 48 hours without congressional approval and up to 30 days with notice to Congress.

It’s worth noting that this provision has never been invoked before, and certainly not for the purpose of cleaning up squalor. The law was envisioned for truly extraordinary crises—natural disasters, large-scale riots—not as a political tool for executive housecleaning.

So the question we must ask as the symbolic heart of the republic is transformed into a constitution-free zone is: Why? Why now—when crime is at its lowest level in three decades? And where do we go from here?

The federal takeover of Washington, D.C., is not the end of that slippery slope. It is merely the latest drop, and nothing in our present political climate suggests it will be the last.

The police state will always need another manufactured crisis.

Terrorist attacks, mass shootings, “unforeseen economic collapse, loss of functioning political and legal order, purposeful domestic resistance or insurgency, pervasive public health emergencies, and catastrophic natural and human disasters”: the government has been anticipating and preparing for such crises for years now.

As David C. Unger writes for the New York Times: “Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness have given way to permanent crisis management: to policing the planet and fighting preventative wars of ideological containment, usually on terrain chosen by, and favorable to, our enemies. Limited government and constitutional accountability have been shouldered aside by the kind of imperial presidency our constitutional system was explicitly designed to prevent.”

Given the rate at which the government keeps devising new ways to establish itself as the “solution” to all of our worldly problems at taxpayer expense, each subsequent crisis ushers in ever larger expansions of government power and fewer individual liberties.

Once the government acquires authoritarian powers—to spy, surveil, militarize police, seize funds, wage endless wars, censor speech, detain without due process, etc.—it does not willingly relinquish them.

The lesson for the ages is this: once any government is allowed to overreach and expand its powers, it’s almost impossible to put the genie back in the bottle.

History bears this out: as government expands, liberty contracts.

If the president can federalize the policing of the capital, override local control, and treat entire populations as security threats without meaningful resistance from Congress, the courts, or the public, then there is nothing to stop that same template from being applied to any city in America in the name of “security.”

What is happening in Washington today will be the model for what happens nationwide tomorrow.

Case in point: at Trump’s direction, the Pentagon—the military branch of the government—is looking to establish a “Domestic Civil Disturbance Quick Reaction Force,” made up of National Guard troops kept on standby at all times, which could be rapidly deployed to American cities “facing protests or other unrest.”

Indeed, Trump has already hinted that he plans to target Baltimore, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York and Oakland next.

This is straight out of the playbook used in that Pentagon training video created by the Army for U.S. Special Operations Command.

According to “Megacities: Urban Future, the Emerging Complexity,” the U.S. military plans to use armed forces to solve future domestic political and social problems. What they’re really talking about is martial law, packaged as a well-meaning and overriding concern for the nation’s security.

The training video is only five minutes long, but it says a lot about the government’s mindset, the way its views the citizenry, and the so-called “problems” that the government must be prepared to address in the near future through the use of martial law.

Even more troubling, however, is what this military video doesn’t say about the Constitution, about the rights of the citizenry, and about the dangers of locking down the nation and using the military to address political and social problems.

For years, the government has been warning against the dangers of domestic terrorism, erecting surveillance systems to monitor its own citizens, creating classification systems to label any viewpoints that challenge the status quo as extremist, and training law enforcement agencies to equate anyone possessing anti-government views as a domestic terrorist.

What the government failed to explain was that the domestic terrorists would be of the government’s own making, and that “we the people” would become enemy #1.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, “we the people” are already enemies of the state.

If we do not stop this dangerous trajectory now, the question will not be whether martial law comes to your city—it will be when, under what pretext, and whether we will have the courage and the wherewithal to resist.

This article was originally published on The Rutherford Institute.

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Lots of misinformation is being spread about President Donald Trump’s decision to federalize law enforcement in Washington, D.C.  Much of it is the usual Trump Derangement Syndrome: “fascist” tendencies toward “authoritarianism” at the expense of “black and brown” people because of DJT’s “racism” and desire to bury the Epstein scandal.  There’s no “emergency” justifying the takeover.  The “solution” is to do what Democrats failed to do for decades: Make DC the 51st state so it need not undergo such “humiliation.”

Where to start?

My point of departure is political.  Washington is the “federal city.”  The Constitution is explicit.  Congress has exclusive jurisdiction over “the district constituting the seat of government.”

Washington was a political compromise — neutral territory between North and South, chosen as an uninhabited swamp between Maryland and Virginia (and conveniently upriver from George Washington’s Mount Vernon).  It was supposed to be apolitical.  Democrats want to make it hyper-political.

The reaction to the Trump federalization of D.C. law enforcement is to claim that “this proves we should have made D.C. a state!”  Well, no it doesn’t.  All it proves is your naked political ambitions to guarantee the left two senators and a bunch of congressmen.

There’s a lot of jabber about “home rule.”  There are two largely unmentioned facts about “home rule.”  First, it is an historical anomaly.  Nobody talked about D.C. “home rule” until 1974.  For nearly 185 years of the Republic, D.C. functioned under its constitutional identity as the “federal district.”  And don’t tell me that the string of illustrious nobodies leading D.C. for the past 50 years — including such a distinguished figure as Mayor Marion Barry, convicted for possession and use of crack cocaine — proves the merits of “home rule.”  It arguably demonstrates the opposite.

Second, whatever “home rule” D.C. has is whatever Congress gives it.  Its government has the powers Congress delegates — no more, no less.  It exists at the sufferance of Congress — i.e., the collective decision of the people of the United States (as the Constitution intended).  So all these claims about “denying home rule” are so much political smoke.

Congressional Democrats have been trying to hike Washington’s political clout for decades.  Back in the days of “home rule,” the Democrat Congress even thought of giving D.C. congressional seats as if it were a state.  Such a constitutional amendment was even proposed in 1978.  It passed the Senate with the bare minimum of votes and died in ratification, having been approved by only 16 (mostly blue) of the required 38 states.

Democrats learned their lesson: A constitutional amendment to give D.C. congressional seats would never be ratified, because small (especially small red) states were not going to lose seats to the District.  They understood the difference between a state and a district.  That’s when liberals switched to their “statehood” tactic — it avoids needing approval from those pesky states!

I’d argue that Congress cannot constitutionally make D.C. a “state.”  What would be the “State of Columbia” is land given by Maryland to create “the district constituting the seat of government of the United States.”  That bequest was for a specific purpose.  If Congress does not want to administer all that land, it cannot invent a new state.  The proper response would be to return the land to Maryland.  There’s precedent for that: Congress in the 19th century gave back the land Virginia had ceded for the capital, which is today’s Arlington.

That does not amplify Democrat political power in Congress, while it introduces a new squabble into very blue Maryland’s Democrat politics: the boys of Baltimore and Annapolis would now have to share power with the Washington crowd.

I make these points because, despite all the rhetoric about “home rule,” the truth is that Americans think of Washington first and foremost as our capital.  It is the nation’s capital, not the next oppressed victim stifled by the norms of the U.S. Constitution.  And as long as Americans as a whole regard Washington in a qualitatively different way from other places — as “our capital” — that aligns with the constitutional vision of a congressionally governed district and not the next blue political machine.

That leads me to my second point: crime.  Liberal apologists have fomented all types of excuses to claim that the president had no authority to federalize D.C. law enforcement, that it was discriminatory and diversionary, etc., etc.  Crime is supposedly on the way down.  Let’s talk.

In 2023, there were 274 murders in Washington, D.C.  That means one human being killed every 31 hours.  Every day and a half.

Senate Democrat whip Dick Durbin of Illinois claimed there’s no “emergency” justifying Trump’s action.  Does one dead human being every 31 hours not constitute an “emergency”?  In whose cosseted world?

Perhaps a murder every day and a half is “normal” or “statistically to be expected” in some people’s minds — but I suspect few of those holding that opinion have ever stood in front of the business end of a knife or gun.

A murder every day and a half is an emergency.  Maybe it’s not an emergency in Chicago or New York, but Washington is at root “the district constituting the seat of government of the United States,” and most Americans would think a murder every day and a half is an “emergency.”

Because Washington stands in a unique relationship with congressional and executive power, it is also appropriate that the national capital be a showcase of law and order, not the morass of “restorative justice” and the latest liberal pipe dreams of “criminal justice reform” that exacerbate crime.  Therein lies the real liberal objection: If Donald Trump can make an example out of Washington, it calls into question the “policing reform” and “criminal justice” agendas of crime-ridden major cities, potentially auguring political realignments there that liberals do not want to see.

Yes, the talking heads attacking Trump cited other cities as being more crime-ridden.  You do have a better chance getting murdered in Detroit than D.C.  But national tourism to Detroit hardly mirrors D.C., and most Americans don’t want to die in either.  So let’s stop the “lies, damn lies, and statistics” and address the reality of what’s behind this opposition: pursuing political ambition and defending failed policies.

This article was originally published on Crisis Magazine.

The post What’s Really Behind Opposition to Trump’s Move in DC? appeared first on LewRockwell.

Yesterday President Trump in his public statements validated my conclusion that Trump does not know what the Russian position is and that he is going to the meeting to find out what the “parameters” are and that he sees the meeting as a “feel-out meeting” to see whether the conflict in Ukraine can be ended.  

In other words, no solution is expected from the meeting for which no preparatory work has been done.  So what are the high-blown expectations for the meeting based on?  Why build up such expectations when there is no proposal on the table?  Where is the “acceptable” offer that Yury Ushakov found in the non-proposal that convinced Putin to go to Alaska?

Is the answer that the purpose of the meeting is to put Putin on the spot by creating expectations of success that cannot be achieved?  French President Macron said that Trump told him that he intends to “obtain a ceasefire in Ukraine during the meeting with Putin.” When Putin doesn’t agree to halt Russia’s successful offensive, is the plan to blame Putin for wrecking the chance for peace? Will this help weaken BRICS by Putin being blamed for secondary tariffs imposed on India, China, Brazil, South Africa?   (From Bloomberg today: Raising the stakes. Donald Trump warned he would impose “very severe consequences” if Vladimir Putin didn’t agree to a ceasefire agreement, following a call with European leaders ahead of his meeting with the Russian president. But Tass reported that the two will hold a joint press conference after the talks. Meanwhile, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told Europe it’s “put up or shut up time” when it comes to sanctions on nations that buy Russian energy.)

That is what it looks like.  The Ukrainian front is collapsing.  A ceasefire would halt the Russian advance and give the Ukrainian force time to stabilize and reinforce its positions.  This is important to the West, because once Russia completes the task of driving the Ukrainian forces out of all of the territory that has been reincorporated into the Russian Federation, there is no land in Ukrainian hands for Trump to swap with Putin.

As I have reported a number of times, a land-swap is not one of the conditions on Putin’s list. What Putin means by “the root cause of the conflict” is Russia’s sense of insecurity with NATO and US nuclear missiles on Russia’s border.  

When the Soviet Union put nuclear missiles in Cuba as an offset to the nuclear missiles Washington had put in Turkey on the Soviet Union’s border, Washington was intensely upset.  Today the US has missiles on Russia’s border and the opportunity to have missile bases on Russia’s borders ranging from Finland to the South Caucus, which is a large multiplication of the one Soviet missile base in Cuba.

So if one base in Cuba made the US uncomfortable, imagine how uncomfortable Russia is with the prospect of nuclear missiles along the border for thousands of kilometers. 

American and European politicians and policymakers have not acknowledged that the root cause of the conflict is NATO on Russia’s border.  The prospect of Ukraine joining NATO and being added to the territory hosting US missile bases was the straw that broke the camel’s back.  

Trump’s land swap and ceasefire do not address Russia’s security problem.  The root cause of the conflict is Russia’s sense of insecurity. That can only be solved by getting NATO off of Russia’s borders.

This is the purpose of the mutual security agreement that Putin has been trying to negotiate for a number of years only to be given the cold shoulder as by the Biden regime during December 2021-February 2022.  

Ask yourselves if you think Trump is in a sufficiently powerful position to override both the neoconservative doctrine of US hegemony and the interest of the American military/security complex.  

As long as the Wolfowitz Doctrine holds, and it has not been repudiated by President Trump, the Secretary of State, or Congress, the US is committed to “preventing the rise of any country that can serve as a constraint on American unilateralism.”  As this is the stated commitment, how can NATO be removed from Russia’s border?

President Eisenhower warned Americans in 1961 that the rise of the Cold War with the Soviet Union prevented the demobilization of the American war machine that normally followed the end of war.  Instead, a powerful military/industrial complex has risen with roots in nearly every state, which gives it enormous power in Congress and among state governors. 

That was 64 years ago.  Since that time the power of the military/security complex has multiplied.  Is this institutionalized power willing to take the hit to its budget and power from a mutual security agreement with its principal enemy?

The questions I am asking are the determining questions.  Nothing else that is said matters.  Yet, these essential questions are not a part of the discussion in Washington, in Europe, or in the Kremlin.  It is as if none of the participants in a growing conflict that could be terminable for life on Earth have any idea of the consequences of their decisions.

Why suddenly did Trump who a couple of days before yesterday said he didn’t want to meet with Putin demand a meeting within the week when Trump doesn’t even know what the “parameters” are?  How can a serious meeting be held when a principal participant doesn’t even know what the opponent’s position is?

Why did Putin agree to such a meeting with zero preparatory work that exposes him to tremendous pressure to capitulate?  This represents the total failure of Putin’s advisors.  It indicates to the West that Russia is a weak defender of its interest. Perhaps more pressure will be all it takes to bring Russia in line with US hegemony.

If Trump goes into the meeting with this attitude, Putin’s choice will be to capitulate or to bring down more demonization on him and Russia for blocking peace.

It does look like Kirill Demitriev and Steve Witcoff, both globalists, have succeeded in setting up Putin and Russia.

What is on test in Alaska is Putin’s mettle.

The post Can Putin Pass the Test? appeared first on LewRockwell.

The Greek geographer and historian Strabo told the famous story of Cleopatra committing suicide by holding an “asp”—i.e., Egyptian cobra—to her breast.

The “Death of Cleopatra” has been the subject of dozens of paintings, including the one by Guido Cagnacci that hangs in the Met.

Cobra venom is composed of a fascinating cocktail of toxic proteins, including the following:

• Three-finger toxins (3FTx):This is a dominant family of proteins in cobra venom, especially in elapids. They are neurotoxins that bind to nicotinic acetylcholine receptors at neuromuscular junctions, disrupting nerve signals and causing paralysis.
• Phospholipase A2 (PLA2):These enzymes contribute to various effects, including neurotoxicity, myotoxicity, and inflammation. They can also disrupt cell membranes and cause tissue damage.
• Snake venom metalloproteinases (SVMP):SVMPs can cause hemorrhaging by damaging blood vessels and disrupting blood clotting.
• Cytotoxins:These proteins are responsible for cell damage and death, leading to tissue necrosis.
• Other proteins:Cobra venom also contains enzymes like L-amino acid oxidase, serine proteases, and C-type lectins, as well as other bioactive peptides and molecules according to a study published by the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

If you are wondering how on earth all of these toxic proteins came about in snake venom, you’re not alone. It’s one of many millions of things in nature that we humans don’t really understand.

Cobra venom acts quickly on living cells and its deleterious effects are spectacular. However, as we are discovering, other proteins may act slowly and insidiously, gradually diminishing the health of the organism in a way that may be perceived as something akin to accelerated aging.

Scarcely a day goes by that I don’t receive the news of someone in my extended social network of friends in their forties and fifties being struck with a disease that we would normally expect to hit us in our seventies or eighties. In the last month I have received texts or calls about the following cases.

1). An old American ex-pat friend in Paris (53) developed excruciating chest pain and was diagnosed with myocarditis.

2). An old friend in London (43) detected a strange and rapidly growing mass in her rectus abdominis (“six pack” abdominal muscle). The NHS doctors with whom she has consulted suspect a sarcoma but can’t seem to find time to schedule a biopsy.

3). An old friend in New York (48) was recently diagnosed with breast cancer.

All of the above received the COVID-19 vaccine.

This morning I read a new manuscript by N. Nathaniel Mead, Peter A. McCullough, Paul Marik, Nic Hulscher, et al titled Compound Adverse Effects of COVID-19 mRNA Vaccination and Coronavirus Infection: A Convergence of Extensive Spike Protein Harms to the Human Body

It’s an astonishing fact only a small handful of senior academic doctors—Peter McCullough and Paul Marik being perhaps the most notable—are seriously investigating what has been done to the entire human race since 2020.

In recent years I have spoken with some of the wealthiest people in the country about what we are doing at the McCullough Foundation, and I often get the impression that they can’t quite bring themselves to believe the story that I tell them.

A few of them have themselves experienced rapidly accelerating cancer, Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s since around the year 2021. When it comes to contemplating etiology, their doctors never say a word about those experimental gene therapy shots they received in 2021.

The most amazing thing of all is that our public health authorities still don’t want to talk about detecting and analyzing the foreign, toxic protein that has contaminated all of us, either through COVID-19 infection, vaccination with mRNA COVID-19 vaccines, or a combination of both.

Strangely enough, a long established standard method for protein detection—a test called ELISA (Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay)—can be used to detect the presence of SARS-CoV-2 spike protein in a given sample.

And yet, no one in the NIH is even talking about using this and other tests being developed to conduct large population studies on the presence of spike protein and its correlation with a host of syndromes and clinical diseases.

As a true crime author, I have seen this story again and again. The easiest way to conceal a crime is to avoid investigating it. As long as you don’t find any evidence, you will not be obliged to conceal what you have discovered—at least not actively.

Don’t lie about it; just avoid looking into it. When suspicions arise—even grave suspicions—the strategy is simply to refuse to investigate and hope that people grow weary of worrying about the problem.

The trouble for the concealers is that extremely damaging lies don’t go away. Like a suspected cancer that isn’t rapidly treated, such lies grow and become ever more malignant and metastatic.

We at the McCullough Foundation are weary with this catastrophe, but we’re not going to stop looking into.

Dr. McCullough frequently uses a test in his clinical practice to detect antibodies to the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein. He frequently detects very high spike protein antibody levels in patients, even in those who never received a vaccine and who have not had acute symptoms of COVID-19 for over a year. A high level of spike protein antibodies in the blood frequently correlates with the symptoms of so-called LONG COVID, which is often presents in individuals who have had multiple shots AND suffered multiple cases of COVID-19 illness.

One way or the other, all of us have been exposed to the toxic spike protein that Ralph Baric, Shi Zhengli, et al. developed in their laboratories. The only question is how long will it take our bodies to clear it.

Dr. McCullough pointed out that the spike protein is, like the pathogens that cause syphilis and Lyme Disease, able to resist being cleared from the body. Even if it does not cause obvious clinical diseases such as myocarditis, strokes, and blood clots, it is probably still affecting all of us to some degree in terms of diminished vitality.

We often think of poisons as substances that immediately result in spectacular distress and death—things like snake venom, ricin, botulinum, and cyanide. While the spike protein induced by the COVID-19 vaccines may indeed rapidly kill some people, for most of us, it is a “subtle thief of vitality” (to paraphrase Milton’s characterization of time as “a subtle thief of youth”).

Milton’s metaphor is useful because it appears that the spike protein is a poison that accelerates senescence, or aging.

For most of us, the symptoms range from ringing ears and sleep disturbances to a general diminishment of vitality. We are more inclined to feel fatigue and lethargy. We suffer brain fog, indecisiveness, and a depression of spirits. We don’t move as quickly, and we seem to experience aches and pains associated with inflammation.

In other words, the whole world has been poisoned.

Currently the greatest obstacle to finding a solution to this gigantic problem is that our entire medical establishment—with the exception of prominent dissidents like Paul Marik and Peter McCullough—advocated the shots and recommended them to their patients.

The situation reminds me of the essay “On Stupidity” by the German dissident, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who penned it in 1943 while incarcerated in the Tegel prison on suspicion of being involved in anti-Nazi activities. As he noted:

But it is also quite clear here that it is not an act of instruction, but only an act of liberation that can overcome stupidity. In doing so, one will have to accept the fact that, in most cases, real inner liberation is only possible after outer liberation has taken place.

In other words, it’s unlikely we’ll get any support from the official medical establishment until the current crop of institutional leaders is all gone. Only after they have retired will we be liberated from their stranglehold on inquiry and discourse about this catastrophe.

At this risk of sounding arrogant, I believe that our team at the McCullough Foundation—working together with other creative dissident researchers all over the world—could find a solution if we had even a millionth of the taxpayer resources given to the Vaccine Cartel.

This article was originally published on Courageous Discourse.

The post The Whole World Has Been Poisoned appeared first on LewRockwell.

Writes Tim McGraw:

This song is 13 years old, but it’s more true now than back then.

The post “We Can’t Make It Here”: James McMurtry appeared first on LewRockwell.

Click here:

Eric Zuesse

The post Why Orban’s “The Ukrainians have lost the war. Russia has won this war.” is True appeared first on LewRockwell.

Washington D.C. is spending America into oblivion — and you’re paying the price. In this episode of Ask Ron Paul, Dr. Paul takes your questions on the ever-growing national debt, the federal government’s crackdowns on liberty, the destructive effects of tariffs, and the hidden inflation tax eroding your savings.

From runaway spending to political overreach, Ron Paul breaks down what’s really driving these crises—and what a truly free society would do instead.

The post AskRonPaul: National Debt, D.C. Crackdowns, Tariffs & Inflation appeared first on LewRockwell.

From ancient Sumer to the present, all governments have been composed of elites. All states originate in conquest and exploitation, and as elite oligarchies, exercise a monopoly of crime over their subjects through war and taxation, indoctrination and propaganda, and the conscription of resources and persons.

The subject matter of “Establishment Studies” or “Power Elite Analysis” is understanding this struggle for power in its diverse open and covert forms between the rulers and the ruled, between the elite and the non-elite, between “the ins” and “the outs.”

The primary object of every ruling elite is to maintain its own power and privilege. The rule of the elite is based on force or fraud. This force may be hidden or threatened, and the fraud sustained by a political formula, usually expressed as a generally accepted state religion, ideology, or series of myths. But it is the physical force of the gun that lay behind it all. And it is at your mind that every government gun is ultimately aimed.

Respected observers such as Robert Barnes, Murray N. Rothbard, Ferdinand Lundberg, John McConaughy, Phillip H. Burch, Jr., Thomas R. Dye, Matthew Josephson, Kevin Phillips, Thomas Ferguson, and Carroll Quigley have detailed and cataloged the specific elite criminal elements behind previous presidential administrations.

After 50 years of intense study I believe the biggest critical issue confronting the American people is the elite’s New World Order of a corporatist Social Credit economy (based upon the Chinese model) with centralized political control in a totalitarian technocratic entity, with all pervasive mass surveillance by facial recognition databases and coercive regimentation. These invasive actions are running parallel with the transition to a cashless society with all financial transactions monitored through digitalized biometric identification using such technologies as fingerprints, hand geometry and retina scanning — ultimately a microchip electronic device implanted subcutaneously (subdermally). This is the global governance of the Great Reset.

An understanding of Power Elite Analysis is the “litmus test” separating real libertarians and populists from alternative lifestyle dilettantes dabbling in free market theory.

Sometimes labeled “Power Elite Analysis” or “Establishment Studies,” this examination of causal relationships regarding the nature and scope of political power, who has it and how it is exercised, is crucial to understanding the nexus of the State as organized crime.

Note the similarity between this analysis and what researcher Peter Dale Scott calls “Deep Politics,” the critical examination of the sub-rosa reality behind surface events, an attempt to unmask the true face of power, exposing the elite social, economic, and financial groups and individuals who benefit from the exercise of State coercion.

Contemporary events and the persons involved in them are not isolated random or static occurrences. There is a crucial backstory or history to them, the actual story behind the spurious or propagandist accounts put forth by the establishment “fake news” regime media or court academia.

Understanding the dynamics and interplay of power relationships is often not easy for it requires diligence and tenacious research in order to seek authoritative and definitive answers to what is going on in these events.

Fortunately, there are dedicated scholarly researchers who trace the often arcane and internecine networks and interlocking relationships of these actors – their backgrounds, conspiratorial action, mentors and criminal associates, who flesh out these events.

Let us examine the important question of American intervention in war over the past century.

As I pointed out above, history is not static but a dynamic course of study. Events, particularly surrounding savage wars and their origins, are not frozen in time but are constantly being reinterpreted, analyzed, and reassessed by new knowledge and archival revelations.

The question for someone in the present is not whether the US should have intervened in these conflicts but what have we learned from this previous century of war, destruction, and the needless death of millions?

What we now know concerning the horrific wars of the previous century, as well as 21st century conflicts such as Ukraine, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Libya, and Syria, provides us with a historical template to guide us in making future principled decisions concerning intervention or non-intervention.

Briefly, working backwards, how has the exposed linkage of the insidious relationship behind the creation, recruiting, funding and enabling of the Taliban by Pakistani ISI intelligence (which in turn was funded and enabled by the US government), impact upon the willfully ignorant inhabitants of the United States of Amnesia’s cognitive dissonance narcosis of unreality, that both sides of the disastrous 20 year Afghanistan narco-state proxy war was waged and financed by the US — and yet once again they have been played as naïve suckers and rubes?

What have revelations concerning non-existent Weapons of Mass Destruction, deliberately falsified intelligence from the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans, and an elaborately coordinated media disinformation campaign done for the case for US intervention in Iraq in 2003? For falsified (and/or still classified) information concerning the September 11th attacks leading to intervention against Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and Afghanistan?

What has declassified revelations from the archives of the former Soviet Union and the Venona files in the United States done to totally reshape the narrative story of espionage and the Cold War?

What has archival revelations concerning the Pentagon Papers and the deliberately contrived Gulf of Tonkin Incident done to spurious justification for the massive intervention in the Vietnam conflict?

What has fifty years of revelations concerning the November 22, 1963 coup d’état and brutal murder of President John F. Kennedy by Lyndon Johnson and the highest echelons of the National Security State done to totally reassess the dynamic behind the change in US policy toward Vietnam within days of JFK’s assassination? How have the powerful behind-the-scenes revelations concerning the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 and the Bay of Pigs invasion of 1961 aided in seeing a more complete picture regarding Kennedy’s murder and the subsequent change of policy toward Vietnam?

How have incisive revelations concerning the birth of the National Security State in 1947 impacted the story of the Cold War? How have revelations concerning the use of former Nazi intelligence officers in the Reinhard Gehlen organization grafted upon US military intelligence and the CIA, been shown to have provided unreliable and provocative disinformation which fueled early Cold War tensions?

How have decisive revelations concerning the Japanese attack upon Pearl Harbor reshaped the narrative of US intervention into WWII?

How have revelations concerning the Hitler/Stalin Non-Aggression Pact and the joint German and Soviet invasion of Poland in September 1939 affected our historical portrait of the larger story of how the Second World War began?

How have revelations concerning American and British financial, corporate, and political elites substantially aiding and building the Nazi war machine in the years prior to WWII as a bulwark against the Soviets change our view of the deep historical background?

How have revelations of the decades of joint military training and cooperation by intelligence services between Germany (during the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich) and the Soviet Union impact upon the lead up to WWII?

How did the Treaty of Versailles and agreements such as Sykes-Picot affect the interwar course of events leading to the Second World War?

How did the internecine network of secret treaties, ententes cordiale, and clandestine military alliances drawn up prior to the First World War lead to this conflagration?

These are the type of interrogatives or pointed questions we must each ask and seek the answers to in order to understand the world at large.

Who Rules America: Power Elite Analysis, the Deep State, and American History — Article by Charles A. Burris
https://www.lewrockwell.com/lrc-blog/rules-america-power-elite-analysis-deep-state-american-history/

Hidden History: Where Organized Crime and Government Meet — Article by Charles A. Burris
https://archive.lewrockwell.com/burris/burris10.html

Our Establishment Church: Its Rules and Credo — Article by Charles A. Birris
https://archive.lewrockwell.com/burris/burris17.1.html

Wall Street, Banks, and American Foreign Policy — Book by Murray N. Rothbard
https://www.lewrockwell.com/assets/2015/08/Wall-Street-Banks-and-American-Foreign-Policy_2.pdf

A History of Money and Banking in the United States: The Colonial Era to World War II, Book by Murray N. Rothbard
https://cdn.mises.org/History%20of%20Money%20and%20Banking%20in%20the%20United%20States%20The%20Colonial%20Era%20to%20World%20War%20II_2.pdf

Robert Barnes on the Deep Background of the Deep State Up to the JFK Assassination and Beyond — Presentation
https://www.lewrockwell.com/lrc-blog/robert-barnes-on-the-deep-background-of-the-deep-state-up-to-the-jfk-assassination-and-beyond/

Elites in American History: The Federalist Years to the Civil War — Book by Phillip H. Burch
https://www.amazon.com/Elites-American-History-Federalist-Years/dp/0841905940

Elites in American History: From the Civil War to the New Deal — Book by Phillip H. Burch
https://www.amazon.com/Elites-American-History-Civil-Deal/dp/0841907056/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&dib_tag=se&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.UugC11WA-WURtal3cJMcVw.J6ONt9xEVQtmOV8EeVsZBf_h_R1Rcm0PqIM2cnc5iFQ&qid=1755172976&sr=8-1

Elites in American History: From the New Deal to the Carter Administration — Book by Phillip H. Burch
https://www.amazon.com/Elites-American-History-Carter-Administration/dp/0841905657

The Progressive Era — Book by Murray N. Rothbard
https://cdn.mises.org/The%20Progressive%20Era_0.pdf

The Anglo-American Establishment: From Rhodes to Cliveden — Book by Carrol Quigley
http://www.carrollquigley.net/pdf/The_Anglo-American_Establishment.pdf

Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time — Book by Carrol Quigley
http://www.carrollquigley.net/pdf/Tragedy_and_Hope.pdf

The Rise of the House of Rothschild — Book by Count Egon Caesar Corti
the rise of the house of rothschild – count egon caesar corti.pdf

The Reign of the House of Rothschild — Book by Count Egon Caesar Corti
https://dn790003.ca.archive.org/0/items/in.ernet.dli.2015.89704/2015.89704.The-Reign-Of-The-House-Of-Rothschild-1830-1871.pdf

The House of the Rothschilds, Volume I — Book by Niall Ferguson
https://ia903409.us.archive.org/33/items/the-house-of-rothschild-ferguson-niall/The%20House%20of%20Rothschild%20-%20Ferguson%2C%20Niall.pdf

The House of Rothschild; The Worlds Banker 1849-1998, Volume II — Book by Niall Ferguson
https://ia903409.us.archive.org/33/items/the-house-of-rothschild-ferguson-niall/The%20House%20of%20Rothschild%20-%20Ferguson%2C%20Niall.pdf

The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World — Book by Niall Ferguson
https://ia600104.us.archive.org/12/items/the-ascent-of-money-a-financial-history/THE_ASCENT_OF_MONEY_A_FINANCIAL_HISTORY.pdf

America’s Secret Establishment: An Introduction to the Order of Skull & Bones — Book by Antony C. Sutton.
https://dn721909.ca.archive.org/0/items/americas-secret-establishment-an-introduction-to-skull-and-bones-antony-sutton-1-merged_202402/Americas%20Secret%20Establishment%20An%20Introduction%20to%20Skull%20and%20Bones%20Antony%20Sutton%20%281%29-merged.pdf

How Big Oil Conquered the World — Documentary.

Joe Rogan Experience #2237 – Mike Benz – YouTube

The post The Necessity of Power Elite Analysis in Understanding our World appeared first on LewRockwell.

Who can be an icon of Christ? The question haunts me. Documents of the Second Vatican Council teach that all good people who are part of the Church…all these good people relying on the exquisite promise of Christ’s resurrection are the Body of Christ. It would stand to reason, then that ‘all good people’ means precisely that. ‘All good people’ means all good men and…women. 

Yet the Catholic Church has excised half its members from the fold. Cut free are all women. How? Women cannot be ordained to Church ministry, even though the clearest and most complete church histories include ordained women. What is the argument against ordaining women? The reduction of the complex reasoning is that women do not image Christ. Women cannot symbolize Christ. Women are not icons of Christ…It’s a scandal. It’s more than a scandal; it’s a disfigurement on the entire body of Christ by those who would deny both history and theology…that it is probably formally heretical.

The above indictment is from Women: Icons of Christ, authored by Phyllis Zagano. This well-respected scholar is arguably the leading advocate for the ordination of women to the diaconate, an issue to which she has devoted her theological career. She was a member of the 2016 Commission for the Study of the Diaconate of Women established by Pope Francis, which was reconvened in 2020. However, the final reports of both commissions have not been made public; and regarding the outcome of the 2016 commission, Francis commented during a 2019 in-flight press conference that “all had different positions, sometimes sharply different, they worked together and they agreed up to a point. Each one had his/her own vision, which was not in accord with that of the others, and the commission stopped there.” One can reasonably assume, due to its lack of publication, that the 2020 commission also failed to reach a consensus.

There are many in the Church who consider the ordination of women as deacons to be an unsettled question and are hopeful that perhaps newly-elected Pope Leo XIV will admit women to the diaconate. The fact is, during the early centuries of the Church women served as deaconesses—with the earliest reference found in St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans when he acknowledges the service of Phoebe “who is a deaconess of the Church of Cenchreae” (Romans 16:1). The question is what exactly was the function and ecclesial status of deaconesses in the early centuries of the Church. Under the pontificate of John Paul II, the International Theological Commission (ITC) produced an exhaustive study of the permanent diaconate, titled: From the Diakonia of Christ to the Diakonia of the Apostles—published in 2002.

The study provides a detailed examination of the history of the diaconate focused on New Testament evidence, the Apostolic Fathers, and early Church documents that include actual rites of ordination. According to this Commission, the three grades of the clergy—bishop, priest, and deacon—were already recognized by Pope Clement of Rome by the end of the first century. St. Ignatius of Antioch, who was martyred no later than 117, also acknowledged the three grades of the ecclesiastical hierarchy in his “Letter to the Trallians” (3, 1): “Let everyone revere the deacons as Jesus Christ, the bishop as the image of the Father, and the presbyters as the senate of God and the assembly of the Apostles. For without them one cannot speak of the Church.”

The three grades of the hierarchy, the “unicity of orders,” was also recognized by St. Cyprian, the third-century bishop of Carthage, when in Letter 15 he had to admonish deacons not to take the place of priests, as deacons “came in third in the order of the hierarchy.”1 This shows that the “unicity of orders”—in other words, the three grades of deacon, priest, and bishop—was not a late development and hardly a “modern accretion” as Zagano claims.2

It will not be possible in the space of this article to provide a full summary of early Church history on women deacons. If anyone wishes to delve more closely into the history of deaconesses in the Church, I recommend the monumental work of Aimé Georges Martimort, Deaconesses: An Historical Study. But what follows will at least give readers an understanding of the nature of the role of deaconesses in the Church’s early centuries. Outside of the New Testament, the Apostolic Tradition of St. Hippolytus, written no later than 220, contains instruction on the “installation” of widows—as widows were recognized as entering a kind of order within the assembly.

The Apostolic Tradition states that widows were “installed” and “not ordained” and there was no “laying on of hands because she does not offer the sacrifice [προθύματα] and she does not have a liturgical [ λειτουργία] function. Ordination [χειροτονία] is for clerics destined for liturgical service.”3 While this passage concerns the installation of widows, it serves as an indication that women set aside for ministry were not ordained because they were not clerics at the service of the altar. The Apostolic Tradition also verifies that male deacons were ordained by the imposition of hands by the bishop, meaning that the “unicity of orders” was also recognized in this third century document.

The institution of deaconesses was more prevalent in the Eastern Church than in the West. The Eastern Church document the Didascalia Apostolorum, dating from the first half of the third century, gives evidence of female deacons. The ultimate issue regarding the possibility of ordaining women to the diaconate, as Zagano rightly notes, has to do with whether women can sacramentally image Christ. To this point, it is interesting to note that the Didascalia teaches that while the bishop “is to be honored by you as God himself” it is the deacon “who stands in the place of Christ.” And as for deaconesses “they are to be honored by you as the Holy Spirit”—most probably because in Semitic languages spirit is a feminine noun.”4 In any case, according to this document, deaconesses did not represent Jesus.

The Didascalia provides detailed information on the exact duties of deaconesses, and it appears that they were needed to fulfill practical pastoral needs. Women ministered to other women as it was unseemly for men to do so. Deaconesses assisted in the baptismal ceremony of women who were indeed naked during the rite. Deaconesses anointed their bodies, as well as their heads. The deaconess would hold up a screen or drape to hide the body of the woman about to be baptized while the bishop, executing the baptismal rite, extended his hand over the drape to avoid seeing the woman.

It is important to note that deaconesses could not perform the actual sacrament of baptism. According to the Didascalia, this could only be done by a bishop, priest, or male deacon.5 After the baptism, deaconesses continued to instruct the women, nurturing them in the Faith. Indeed, for the sake of modesty and to avoid scandal, only women could instruct other women, and this ministry was conducted by female deacons.

An Eastern Church fifth-century document called The Testament of Our Lord Jesus Christ reveals the duties of widows as well as deaconesses. Indeed, widows actually performed many of the tasks associated with deaconesses—assisting in the baptism of women and instructing women. Oddly, in this document, the ministry of widows took precedence over that of deaconesses “occupying a very humble place in the scheme of things.”6

Were women actually ordained as deacons? The rite of installation of widows according to the Apostolic Tradition of St. Hippolytus states: “The ordination…of widows is to be carried out in the following manner….” However, he is very clear that this “ordination” did not employ “laying on of hands.” And The Testament, following Hippolytus, indicates that the laying on of hands was restricted to the three sacerdotal orders.7

According to another fifth-century document—The Ordo and Canons Concerning Ordination in the Holy Church—the bishop laid his hand on the woman about to become a deaconess—but for the purposes of praying for her. The document states that this prayer “in no way resembles the prayer used in the ordination of a deacon. The deaconess should not approach the altar; her task lies principally in assisting with the anointing at baptisms.”8 There are occasions when the Greek terms “installation” and “ordination” were used interchangeably when it came to the ceremonies for widows and deaconesses.

According to the Apostolic Constitutions, a text dependent on the Didascalia, dated between 375 and 380, deaconesses were forbidden to teach even other women, nor could they conduct baptisms, as could male deacons.9

The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches:

Holy Orders is the sacrament through which the mission entrusted by Christ to his apostles continues to be exercised in the Church until the end of time: thus it is the sacrament of apostolic ministry. It includes three degrees: episcopate, presbyterate, and diaconate. (1536)

Article 1538 states: “Today the word ‘ordination’ is reserved for the sacramental act which integrates a man (vir) into the order of bishops, presbyters, or deacons.” Article 1577 is especially significant. Here we see, quoting Canon 1014 directly, that

“Only a baptized man (vir) validly receives sacred ordination.” The Lord Jesus chose men (viri) to form the college of the twelve apostles, and the apostles did the same when they chose collaborators to succeed them in their ministry. The college of bishops, with whom the priests are united in the priesthood, makes the college of the twelve an ever-present and ever-active reality until Christ’s return. The Church recognizes herself to be bound by this choice made by the Lord himself. For this reason, the ordination of women is not possible.

It can safely be said that at this point in the development of the Church’s doctrine regarding the role and ministry of deacons, women are excluded from participating in Holy Orders. What must be realized is that the reservation of Holy Orders to males is ontologically ordered, meaning that there is an objective relation between what it means to be male and the reception of an “indelible spiritual character” that causes those receiving ordination to sacramentally image Christ.

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The forced expulsions of students at Harvard, Columbia, and other universities who had organized student demonstrations against Israel’s ongoing genocide to eliminate Gazans, and the U.S. Government’s penalizing of (such as withdrawal of research contracts with) those universities for having allowed those demonstrations to take place, are well known examples of the totalitarian thought-control by the U.S. regime. But less well known is the U.S. regime’s enforcement of this censorship upon its vassal regimes, such as Germany, which consequently impose similar mass thought-control, though under their own legal systems.

In the German case, it is essential background to know that the German Government’s renewed obsession to conquer Russia is largely a restoration of Hitler’s regime but not yet at the active stage of the largest military battle in all of history, which was his Operation Barbarossa invasion of Russia during World War Two (WW2). Germany’s top objective at that time was to exterminate Jews and other ‘inferior races’, and its second objective was to enslave all citizens of the Soviet Union (especially Russians) after stealing their land and repopulating it by “Aryans” (purebred non-Jews) as the expansion of Germany’s “Lebensraum” or living-space, so that the German ‘master-race’ (German-Government certified “Aryans”) can then proceed to conquer all other lands, in their “Thousand-Year Reich” of enslaving all other peoples. It is essential to know that this was what the German version of racist-fascist-imperialist-supremacism, or the ideology of the Nazi Party, nazism, was aiming to do — because Germany has now declared itself yet again to be at war against Russia (though not yet in the hot war phase). But, of course, that version of nazism ended because Germany lost WW2; so, the present version of Germany’s (now subordinate to America’s) nazism is considerably modernized, and has no anti-Semitism (hatred of Jews), at all. Now, the number one enemy is openly declared to be Russians.

On 25 July 1945, the U.S. President, Harry Truman, had accepted the advices both of his personal hero General Dwight Eisenhower and of the UK’s Winston Churchill, that if the U.S. Government would not take over the world, then the Soviet Union would; and, so, that decision by Truman started the Cold War. His decision on that day, which he communicated to the Soviet leader Josef Stalin, was that though the countries the U.S. and UK had conquered from Hitler will be no business or concern of the Soviet Union, the countries that the Soviet Union had conquered from Hitler will be very much a concern of the U.S. and UK Governments and will not be recognized by them as legitimate unless and until the U.S. and UK Governments will have an effective veto-power over those Governments’ policies. Of course, Stalin rejected that demand; and, so, from that moment forward, the Cold War has existed. It even continued to exist after 1991 when the Soviet Union ended but America’s anti-Russian military alliance, NATO didn’t. However, all of this is among the U.S. empire’s basic truths that it does not allow to be published — that America started the Cold War and refused to end it.

Another basic fact that the U.S. empire does not allow to be published is that America’s President Barack Obama started the war in Ukraine in a coup that grabbed its neutralist Government and replaced it by an intensely anti-Russian government that immediately went to war against Ukraine’s Russian-speaking population, which constituted around 30% of Ukrainians, basically in Ukraine’s southeast, which was the area that revolted against the Obama-imposed new and rabidly anti-Russian government.

So, the war in Ukraine started as a civil war that resulted from the U.S. coup in Ukraine. (Here is the smoking gun evidence, the recording of Obama’s agent, Victoria Nuland, actually choosing whom to be appointed as the new — and rabidly anti-Russian — leader of Ukraine.) All of that is likewise prohibited to be published in Germany. Instead, as a judge in the case of the German subject Heinrich Bücker said in his ruling against Bücker, Russia was the aggressor in the war in Ukraine — had staarted that war. Bücker was prosecuted for “publicly approving a crime of aggression” (referring to Russia’s response on 24 February 2022 to Obama’s 2014 coup in Ukraine). Buecker was charged with approving in his speech what the judge called “Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in violation of international law, the illegality of which you knew.” (It WASN’T “illegal.” Article 51 of the U.N.’s Charter says that “Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence.” That was the provision which America’s President JFK had been relying upon in his actions during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, and which Putin likewise does in the Ukraine matter.)

On 31 January 2023, WSWS headlined “Peace activist sentenced for criticizing German war policy in Ukraine”, and reported:

The Berlin-Tiergarten District Court sentenced peace activist Heinrich Bücker in January for speaking out in public against Germany’s war policy in Ukraine. The verdict is a massive attack on the basic democratic rights of freedom of speech and assembly. …

Bücker is a member of the Association of the Persecuted of the Nazi Regime–League of Anti-Fascists (VVN-BdA) and the Left Party. …

On June 22, 2022, he gave a speech at the Soviet Memorial in Berlin’s Treptow Park on the 81st anniversary of Nazi Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union, in which he condemned the cooperation of German politicians with former Nazi collaborators in Ukraine and expressed understanding for the views of the Russian president.

As a result, the judge at the local court, Tobias Pollmann, sentenced Bücker to a fine of €2,000, or 40 days imprisonment. His criminal offence under Section 140 of the Criminal Code had consisted of “publicly approving a crime of aggression (Section 13 of the International Criminal Code) in a manner likely to disturb the public peace at a meeting.”

The verdict was issued as a summary penalty order, which does not provide for an oral hearing of the defendant and examination of witnesses. The defendant can appeal within two weeks of the issuance of the penalty order, which Bücker reportedly did. If he had not done so, the penalty order is considered a final judgment, and appeals against it are then no longer possible. …

In the quoted paragraph, Bücker opposes cooperation with far-right forces in Ukraine:

“It is incomprehensible to me that German politicians are again supporting the same Russophobic ideologies on the basis of which the German [Nazi] Reich found willing helpers in 1941, with whom they closely cooperated and jointly carried out murder. All decent Germans should reject any cooperation with these forces in Ukraine against the background of German history, the history of millions of murdered Jews and millions and millions of murdered Soviet citizens in World War II. We must also vehemently reject the war rhetoric emanating from these forces in Ukraine. Never again must we as Germans be involved in any form of war against Russia. We must unite and oppose this madness together.” …

He opposed a renewed war by Germany against Russia and the support of a regime that hardly concealed its place in the tradition of Hitler’s Ukrainian allies at the time. …

The district court reasoned in convoluted and barely comprehensible language thus:

“Your speech has the potential—as you at any rate accept—to shake confidence in the rule of law and to inflame the psychological climate in the population, in view of the considerable consequences that the war will also have for Germany, the threats on the part of the Russian leadership specifically against Germany as a NATO member in the event of support for Ukraine, and not least in view of the presence of hundreds of thousands of people from Ukraine who have found refuge in Germany.”

Translated into understandable language, this means that anyone who criticizes German war policy shakes the confidence in the state and agitates the population. That is why they must be punished. …

It is meant to intimidate and silence any opposition and protest against German militarism. …

This was shortly followed by a ban on all Palestinian demonstrations on Nakba Day. A few months later, the Bundestag (federal parliament) tightened up the incitement of the people paragraph; now, anyone who questions alleged war crimes committed by a country that has just been demonized faces punishment. …

On 17 March 2023, The Gray Zone’s Max Blumenthal interviewed Bücker, and summarized and linked to the interview by saying:

——

14:23

Right now, in terms of the German

14:25

government, the German government loves

14:27

nazis. Now, yeah, they thought they

14:29

conquered the ghosts of their past, but

14:30

check out my [8 March 2023] interview with the veteran

14:32

anti-war activist Heinrich Buecker up at

14:35

the youtube channel. Heinrich gave a speech last year in

14:41

which he denounced the German government

14:43

for giving military aid to a government

14:45

that renamed the road to Babi Yar, where

14:48

tens of thousands of Jews were

14:49

slaughtered in the Holocaust by bullets,

14:51

after the man responsible, Stepan

14:54

Bandera. Yeah they literally renamed the

14:57

road to Babi Yar then, “Bandera

15:00

Boulevard.” And for him [Buecker] complaining, about it,

15:02

a lawyer issued a complaint and he [Buecker]

15:06

now faces a 2,000 Euro fine or 40 days

15:10

in prison at the hands of the German

15:12

State that’s arming these characters [Ukrainian nazis] and

15:14

giving them Leopard thanks.

15:17

I mean, this is one of the most

15:19

outrageous historical episodes, and to to

15:22

quote Sarah Wagenknecht, uh, we don’t want

15:26

to see

15:28

German weapons being used to kill

15:32

the grandchildren of the Russians who

15:35

were slaughtered by Germans in World War

15:37

II. Do you have historical Amnesia? Yes!

15:40

Yes, it’s not going to make up for it,

15:42

Germany, if you just give Israel some uh

15:46

fast boats so they can enforce the siege [starving to death]

15:48

of the ghettoized population of Gaza.

15:50

That doesn’t make up for the Holocaust.

15:52

It would make up for the Holocaust if

15:54

you stopped arming nazis and actually

15:56

condemned them.

15:57

——

On 2 May 2023, John Helmer headlined “BERLIN JUDGE RELEASES HEINRICH BUECKER BUT RULES RUSSIA IS WAGING AN “ILLEGAL WAR”, RESTRICTS THE GERMAN CONSTITUTION’S FREEDOM OF SPEECH TO PRIVATE, NOT PUBLIC AUDIENCES”, and reported that Germany decided not to punish what he did, because the size of his audience was too small to be significant. In other words: the prosecution had been only to warn others NOT to have a significant-sized audience. The judge ignored Germany’s constitution or “Basc Law” (drafted by the U.S. Government) whose Article 5 says “There shall be no censorship.” (Of course, the U.S. Government rampantly does likewise with regard to its First Amendment.) But this was how they now are censoring anyone who violates the Government’s line: by telling everyone that if it’s done effectively, the person definitely WILL be punished.

However, the case against Buecker was continued. Then, on 23 July 2024, Helmer headlined “THE BERLIN WALL FALLS AGAIN, THIS TIME ON THE STATE PROSECUTION OF HEINRICH BUECHER”. He quoted Buecker: “The court case against me was finally discontinued in July 2024. The acquittal is therefore final. This means that I will no longer be prosecuted for my speech on 22 June 2022 on the occasion of the anniversary of the so-called Operation Barbarossa in June 1941. The public prosecutor’s office has now withdrawn the appeal against the acquittal, which was already issued in February 2024. As the operator of the COOP Anti-War Café, I was initially sentenced to pay a fine of 2,000 euros, alternatively 40 days in prison. The charge was ‘rewarding and approving crimes’ under Section 140 of the Criminal Code. We had appealed against the penalty order. The first public main hearing took place at the end of April 2023 at the Tiergarten District Court and ended with an acquittal. The public prosecutor’s office appealed against this. This meant that the case went to the next court level. The new trial took place on February 26, 2024 at the Berlin Regional Court and the court decided on acquittal. The public prosecutor’s office had initially appealed the verdict again, but has now withdrawn it after several months.”

This article was originally published on Eric’s Substack.

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