Lew Rockwell Institute

After reaching an agreement with President Trump, David Ellison—the son of the second-richest man in the world, Larry Ellison—has acquired Paramount Global, the media giant that owns CBS News.

Larry Ellison, the largest private funder of the Israel Defense Forces, is deeply tied to the Israeli national security state and counts Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu among his closest friends.

David has already announced significant changes at CBS, promising “unbiased” news coverage and “varied ideological perspectives,” which are widely understood to signal a shift toward right-wing, pro-Trump coverage. Worse still, Bari Weiss, a journalist with a long history of zealous pro-Israel advocacy, is being considered as the network’s new ombudsman, shaping its political direction, precisely because of her “pro-Israel stance.”

MintPress News examines Ellison’s close ties to both Trump and Israel, Weiss’s extensive career as Israel’s most vocal supporter in the U.S., and what this means for the future of free and diverse speech in America.

Israel’s Man In Silicon Valley

Although Skydance, Ellison’s media empire, is officially headed by David, it is well understood that father Larry holds both the purse strings and the reins of power. With a net worth of $301 billion, placing him second on the Forbes Real-Time Billionaires Rankings, Larry made his fortune by founding tech giant Oracle.

Oracle started as a project for the Central Intelligence Agency. Indeed, it is named after Project Oracle, a 1970s CIA operation on which Ellison worked. For some time, the CIA was Oracle’s only customer, until it began to win contracts with other agencies of the U.S. national security state. Today, although Oracle’s customer base is much wider, it maintains its role as the privatized face of the CIA.

Yet if Oracle is close to Washington and Langley, it is perhaps even more intimately tied to the State of Israel. An avowed Zionist, Ellison has worked tirelessly to advance Israel’s political project. Among his closest personal friends is Benjamin Netanyahu, with whom he vacationed on his private island in Hawaii. Ellison was so impressed and confident in the Israeli prime minister that he offered him a seat on his company’s board, replete with a salary of $450,000.

While Oracle has signed multiple lucrative contracts with the Israeli national security state, Ellison himself has personally bankrolled the Israeli Defense Forces, giving tens of millions of dollars to the Friends of the IDF, an organization that purchases equipment for the Israeli military. This included a $16.6 million pledge (the largest single donation the group has received) to build a new training facility for soldiers defending what he called “our home.” As Ellison explained:

In my mind, there is no greater honor than supporting some of the bravest people in the world, and I thank Friends of the IDF for allowing us to celebrate and support these soldiers year after year. We should do all we can to show these heroic soldiers that they are not alone.”

Oracle sees itself as an activist organization, one whose goal is the advancement of the Israeli colonization project. Safra Catz, the company’s Israeli-American CEO, bluntly explained that any employees uncomfortable with supporting a genocide should simply quit. “We are not flexible regarding our mission, and our commitment to Israel is second to none,” she said, adding:

This is a free world and I love my employees, and if they don’t agree with our mission to support the State of Israel, then maybe we aren’t the right company for them. Larry and I are publicly committed to Israel and devote personal time to the country, and no one should be surprised by that.”

For a deep dive into Oracle and its connections to both U.S. and Israeli power, read the MintPress News investigation, “Openly Pro-Israel Tech Group Now Has Control over UK’s Most Sensitive National Security Data.”

CBS’s New Censor

Thus, the news that the son of the world’s second-richest man – one with such close connections to U.S. and Israeli state power – is purchasing one of America’s most influential news outlets should already worry anyone who cares about a free and independent press.

However, the news that the Ellisons are planning to buy out Bari Weiss’ publication, The Free Press, and give her control over the newsroom at CBS is even more startling. As part of the package to rubber-stamp the deal, Skydance had promised to hire Weiss as an ombudsman to address political bias and stamp out diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) practices.

Weiss is a highly controversial figure in the media world, known primarily for her stridently pro-Israel views and for attempts to popularize reactionary, anti-woke thinkers and opinions into the American mainstream. Her positions on the Middle East appear to have landed her the job. As The Financial Times noted, “Weiss has won over Ellison partly by taking a pro-Israel stance, according to people familiar with the matter.”

Weiss will be a “key voice” at CBS News, with one insider source telling The New York Times that she will have “an influential role in shaping the editorial sensibilities” at the outlet.

The news of what some fear will amount to a pro-Israel censor mirrors recent events at TikTok. The social media giant has recently hired former IDF soldier and Israel lobbyist, Erica Mindel, to oversee its online hate speech policy, with particular regard to antisemitism.

Mindel is far from the first former Israeli official parachuted into a position of power at the company, however. A MintPress News investigation revealed that in November 2023, TikTok hired Reut Medalion, a former Israeli intelligence commander, as its global incident manager. Considering what Israel was doing at that time in Gaza, it is fair to wonder what sorts of “global incidents” the ex-spy was working on.

These moves appear to be attempts to placate the Trump administration, which banned TikTok in no small part due to the effect viral videos of Israeli war crimes were having on public support for Palestine. Trump himself tried to force through a sale of TikTok to an American buyer. His close friend, Larry Ellison, was his preferred candidate. “I’d like Larry to buy it,” he said.

Bari Weiss’s Long, Controversial Career

Weiss first came to notoriety while still in college, where she founded an organization that accused Muslim and Arab professors of anti-Jewish racism, attempting to have them fired. Chief among these was renowned Jordanian scholar Joseph Massad, whom Weiss accused of intimidating her and other pro-Israel students during classes. The attempt failed, but it put Weiss’ name on the map. After finishing college, she secured prestigious jobs in Israeli media and managed to parlay those into columnist positions at The Wall Street Journal and, later, The New York Times.

It was at The Times where Weiss introduced reactionary academics to a broader, liberal audience. In an influential article entitled “Meet the Renegades of the Intellectual Dark Web,” she profiled a number of individuals, including Jordan Peterson, Sam Harris, Dave Rubin, Douglas Murray, and Bret Weinstein, all of whom have pushed conservative or even far-right ideas, and nearly all of whom have been passionate supporters of Israel’s actions in Gaza and beyond.

In 2020, however, she spectacularly left her New York Times sinecure, claiming that the organization was an echo chamber of leftist views. The following year, she started a Substack blog that would later be renamed “The Free Press.”

Since its beginnings, journalist Branko Marcetic has noted, The Free Press has been among the loudest supporters of Israeli actions, spreading what he calls “insidious propaganda” and “outright disinformation.”

In 2021, Weiss defended the slaughter of over 50 Palestinian civilians, including children, as “Zionism’s dream turned into the reality of self-determination,” by a state “surrounded by enemies making hard decisions about how to protect its citizens.” She had previously blamed rising antisemitism in Europe on Muslim immigration.

In May 2024, The Free Press falsely reported that the United Nations had “admitted” that Gaza’s civilian death toll was vastly lower than previously claimed. It wrote that mass starvation is “pro-Hamas propaganda,” despite even President Trump acknowledging the reality. And it claimed that an Israeli massacre of Palestinian aid seekers did not happen.

It has also repeatedly attempted to shield Israel from blame over its attacks on health centers, claiming that Hamas itself might have destroyed the al-Ahli Hospital. Yet Weiss herself appeared to justify attacks on other Gaza clinics.

“Every Palestinian knows [the al-Shifa hospital] is full of [armed militants], but nobody can talk,” she wrote on Twitter, referencing a Free Press interview purporting to be with an anonymous Gaza resident.

Targeting Palestinians, Wikipedia

It is even possible that Weiss’s actions resulted in deaths. In October 2023, Weiss singled out a joke from Gazan writer and educator Refaat Alareer made in response to the outlandish (and debunked) claim that Palestinian militants had burned an Israeli baby alive during the October 7 attacks.

“Here is Refaat Alareer joking about whether or not an Israeli baby, burned alive in an oven, was cooked ‘with or without baking powder,’” Weiss wrote.

Alareer was subject to a torrent of abuse and stated that Weiss’s words had put a target on his back. “If I get killed by Israeli bombs or my family is harmed, I blame Bari Weiss,” he said, adding, “Many maniacal Israeli soldiers already bombing Gaza take these lies and smears seriously and act upon them.” Barely one month later, Alareer was assassinated in a deliberate Israeli airstrike.

Another target in Weiss’s sights is Wikipedia. Since the online encyclopedia labeled the pro-Israel pressure group the Anti-Defamation League as an unreliable source, The Free Press has been on a campaign against it. Calling it a “propaganda site,” The Free Press has joined forces with Trump’s Department of Justice to remove Wikipedia’s nonprofit status to pressure it into becoming more pro-Israel.

“Bari could not have chosen a more Orwellian term for her authoritarian news outlet taking a wrecking ball to Western institutions on behalf of Israel,” wrote journalist Ryan Grim.

The Free Press certainly has many powerful backers, having drawn investment from venture capitalists such as Marc Andreessen and David Sacks, as well as from former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz.

Yet the price being quoted to Skydance for the sale of what remains little more than a Substack blog is remarkable: between $200 million and $250 million. For context, in 2013, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos paid $250 million for The Washington Post, one of the world’s most widely read and most influential news outlets.

Major Changes at CBS

While Weiss’s mission at CBS News appears straightforward, the organization is far from a hotbed of pro-Palestine sentiment. The network repeated highly dubious Anti-Defamation League claims of a supposed wave of antisemitism sweeping across America, and constantly uses Israeli talking points, such as adding the label “Hamas-run” when describing the Gaza Health Ministry.

A MintPress News investigation found that it has also hired a myriad of former Israeli soldiers and lobbyists to produce its news. Gili Malinsky, for example, was a commander in the IDF’s public relations department, leading a unit dedicated to communicating the Israeli military’s story with the outside world. She also worked at the Friends of the IDF before accepting a job as a staff writer at CBS.

Malinsky is not alone. Erica Scott, CBS News’ editorial producer, was formerly the Anti-Defamation League’s media and communications specialist. Betsy Shuller, another CBS News producer, previously worked as a public relations associate at Hillel International, a pro-Israel group.

Nevertheless, it appears that placating Trump by promising a more right-wing editorial line was part of the deal to secure the administration’s approval of the gigantic media acquisition. In addition to Weiss, Skydance has vowed to end all DEI policies at the company. Furthermore, it agreed to pay Trump a $16 million settlement regarding a defamation lawsuit he launched last October against its flagship news and politics show, “60 Minutes.” Many have seen this action as little more than a payoff. Liberal comedian and talk show host Stephen Colbert described the move as a “big fat bribe.” Just days afterward, Paramount announced it was canceling Colbert’s long-running CBS show.

Others have chosen to jump before they were pushed. Citing a loss of journalistic independence, “60 Minutes” editor Bill Owens stepped down in April. More recently, CBS News chief, Wendy McMahon, left, citing an impossible work environment and a changing political outlook.

“Resistance” Media Embrace MAGA

The Ellison CBS acquisition reflects broader developments in a rapidly changing U.S. media ecosystem, as the Trump administration’s hardline tactics prompt the press to bow to its demands. Earlier this year, CNN executives announced they would shift their political outlook from pro-Democrat to more centrist, explicitly instructing their employees not to criticize Trump. In January, the network’s CEO, Mark Thompson, held multiple meetings with editors, instructing them to be “fair-minded” with Trump and not to “pre-judge” his second term in office. Anchors were also told not to “express outrage” during Trump’s inauguration. Several key CNN faces, including anchor Jim Acosta (who lost his White House press credentials after a spat with Trump), left the network.

MSNBC hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, often seen as the faces of the Democratic “resistance” to Trump during his first term in office, publicly stated that they were changing their editorial stance towards the president. “Joe and I realized it’s time to do something different,” Brzezinski explained to their viewers. “That starts with not only talking about Donald Trump, but also talking with him,” she added, revealing that the pair had traveled to Mar-a-Lago to meet with the incoming president personally.

Other networks that have not adapted have perished. Earlier this week, the Trump administration cut its funding to NPR and PBS, with both networks facing closure in the near future. A similar Trump power play also led to the shutdown of Voice of America, only for it to be reborn in June under different leadership and a new political outlook.

Likewise, social media has gone through a similar transformation. In January, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that his platforms (Facebook and Instagram) would be “prioritizing free speech,” and would move their content moderation operations from California to Texas, where there is less concern about “the bias of our teams.”

He also noted that former U.K. Liberal Democrat Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg was being replaced as the company’s President of Global Affairs by Trump loyalist and former White House Deputy Chief of Staff Joel Kaplan. Close Trump confidant Dana White, the CEO of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, was appointed to Meta’s board of directors, a move that was almost universally seen as a very public bending of the knee to the MAGA movement.

Facebook’s transformation into a more overtly right-wing platform mirrors that of Twitter, which was acquired in 2022 by Elon Musk, a top Trump supporter and unofficial cabinet member. Musk’s moves, including openly encouraging far-right and other racist sentiment on the platform, led to millions of liberal users leaving it, migrating to smaller sites, such as Bluesky or Mastodon.

TikTok, meanwhile, despite hiring State Department officials and Israeli spies and soldiers to run its internal affairs, continues to be in the Trump administration’s crosshairs.

Ultimately, the news that the son of the world’s second-richest billionaire is hiring such a zealously pro-Israel provocateur – one who has built a career advancing dubious narratives and stoking anti-Muslim sentiment–to help steer one of the country’s most influential newsrooms should raise serious concerns for anyone who values independent journalism.

The CBS News/Bari Weiss saga underscores the twin threats of oligarchic media control and the expanding influence of pro-Israel lobbying on public discourse. It marks a troubling point in the broader decline of journalistic independence in the U.S., as state-aligned interests work to suppress dissent and sustain support for Israel’s actions in Gaza.

This article was originally published on MintPress News.

The post Israel’s Biggest US Donor Now Owns CBS appeared first on LewRockwell.

I started to feel guilty, in reacting on social media to New York City Democratic nominee Zohran Kwame Mamdani: to this immediate legacy-media darling, this Uganda-born, collectivization-advocating, smugly smiling, beautifully beard-groomed Bowdoin graduate, whose expensive, cleverly packaged Mayoral race launched him into our collective consciousness a few months ago, out of thin air. I try never to be personal, in my political assessments, and I feel guilty because my reaction to Mamdani is so personally aversive.

It is aversive because of the lie-and-deception factor.

Mamdani, as I will reveal, is a nepo son dressed as a communist — but a communist takeover of NYC is not what really motivates this man, not what is really behind this campaign.

Apart from the full-spectrum communist agenda which Mamdani superficially offers, one reason for my sense of personal queasiness when I consider this candidate in various settings is because I know guys like this. Though I am of another generation, some things do not change.

I went to school with guys like this. They are Jaspers. Let’s call that archetypal guy, Jasper.

Here is Jasper with the classic graphic Marxist raised fists and the Chinese communist graphic sun rays:

Jaspers are smarmy legacy rich young men, who never had to work for money in their lives; who have that one darling, costume-y thing – that raffish curl over the forehead; or who wear that quirky fisherman’s cap, or that Palestinian jelabiya, though they hail from Darien, Connecticut — and who embrace the cause of “the workers,” abstractly, or, in my day, say, of the Marxists in El Salvador.

“The people! United! Will never be defeated!” That’s for the march on the campus green. Then — let’s all go have a latte at the dining club.

This cosplay lasts just so long, before they go back to scooping up the vast privileges of their perches on the better-paid edges of the visual arts, or of filmmaking, as they let the interest in their trust funds compound.

In my experience, when it comes down to their personal wellbeing and comfort, I have learned that Jaspers will, right-on pronouncements or no, personally sacrifice nothing.

That’s why I was not surprised when the news broke that Zohran Mamdani lives in a rent-stabilized $2300 a month one-bedroom apartment in Queens. His supporters flocked to defend this situation, stating that there are no income caps for rent-stabilized apartments. That is true now, but was not true from 2011 to 2019; if Mamdani’s $142,000 plus salary, in addition to any other income he had, rose above the cap of $200,000 a year, or if his now-wife or another household member was living with him then, and earning income over $58,000, Mamdani would have been in violation of the program regulations, which were obviously designed to help struggling middle- and working-class New Yorkers: “Between July 1, 2011, and June 13, 2019: [the limit for rent-stabilized housing was] household income above $200,000 for two consecutive years, with the rent at or above $2,500 initially, then adjusted to $2,700 and increasing annually.”

Why am I nitpicking about this? It matters.

One reason is economic unfairness. The average Queens market rate one-bedroom is $4216 a month. So if Mamdani is now living in a rent-stabilized apartment he secured in violation of the pre-2019 rules, he is saving $1916 a month, or $22,992 a year. Now, imagine that you are a trust fund kid and don’t need those savings to live on. Watch it compound. Watch your money, in contrast, — if you need it to live on from month to month — not compound.

Mamdani’s privileged smarminess in taking up an apartment, in violation of the regulations or not, that was clearly intended to benefit people who can’t afford to pay more — and then his defending that decision by hairsplitting — is typical of how these rich young men behave. The Jaspers are always letting others pick up the check. They are always finding the loophole, the tax write-off, the way around the rules, that does not apply to the boring, hardworking rest of us. And their hypocrisy in doing so, even while presenting themselves as champions of the downtrodden, is never, ever evident to them.

I saw the same character pattern when it came to Mamdani’s application to Columbia University. Now, all of us overachievers heading to elite universities, at 19, desperately tried to see if there were ways to get an advantage in the application process. There is nothing unusual about that. But Mamdani’s Columbia University application is a kind of Mobius Strip of wokeness, twisting in upon itself and ending up on an indeterminate plane: Mamdani’s father was a Columbia University professor, so already his application would have garnered favorable attention not available to non-faculty kids. So he is already privileged as a “legacy.” Plus he descends from wealthy parents, which counts, as Ivies are expensive. But no! He sought to compound his actual double privilege with purported double victimization/oppression. So he checked “Black or African American” and “Asian” on his application, and wrote in “Ugandan.”

The New York Times reported:

“Asked to identify his race, he checked a box that he was “Asian” but also “Black or African American,” according to internal data derived from a hack of Columbia University that was shared with The New York Times.

Columbia, like many elite universities, used a race-conscious affirmative action admissions program at the time. Reporting that his race was Black or African American in addition to Asian could have given an advantage to Mr. Mamdani, who was born in Uganda and spent his earliest years there.”

When The New York Times sought a response, Mamdani “said his answers on the college application were an attempt to represent his complex background given the limited choices before him, not to gain an upper hand in the admissions process […]

“Most college applications don’t have a box for Indian-Ugandans, so I checked multiple boxes trying to capture the fullness of my background,” said Mr. Mamdani, a state lawmaker from Queens.’“‘

He could, of course, have written in “Indian-Ugandan” rather than checking “Black or African American”. He is neither Black nor African American.

But no.

And it is Jasper’s language too that sets my teeth on edge, with that flourish of “the fullness of my background.” Do we of whiteness have no “fullness of background”?

(As it happened, Mamdani did not get into Columbia. He went to Maine’s liberal arts college Bowdoin, in which he majored in “Africana Studies.” He also wrote several student pieces attacking “Zionists” and criticizing his own newspaper for its lack of “diversity of opinion,” calling that omission of viewpoints the action of “white supremacists”.

He may deeply believe all these things. But New Yorkers, who actually are diverse, deserve to understand that Jasper/Zohran, who declines to condemn the term “globalize the Intifada”, sees their rich, multicultural city, as if it is divided into warring race- and religion-based factions; not as a melting pot in which we all are individuals, and in which we all become New Yorkers.)

Lastly, there is Jasper’s purchase or inheritance (unclear) of what he calls raw land in Uganda. The New York Post states that Mamdani owns four acres of unimproved raw land, valued at $150,000-200000. Where is it? No location disclosed.

“A quarter of a century after moving to the U.S., Mamdani’s net worth today is still based in the East African country from which he emigrated. According to the financial disclosures he filed as a state assemblyman in 2023, he acquired four acres of land in Jinja—a region of Uganda bordering Lake Victoria that contains the source of the Nile River—in 2012. He lists the land’s value as between $150,000 and $250,000. On the disclosure he filed as a mayoral candidate earlier this year, he says that he acquired the land in 2016 and that it remains vacant and unimproved. Whether he purchased it, was gifted it, inherited it or otherwise is unclear, as is the reason for the discrepancy in the date, and his campaign did not immediately reply to a request for comment.”

This is a weird business deal, because here is what you can get for $144,000 in Uganda. This is the Cadenza luxury apartment building, presented by Vaal Real Estate: you can get a one-bedroom luxury apartment with a barbecue area, track, swimming pool, gym, paddle court, restaurant, concierge and “aroma garden.” “Nestled in the vibrant heart of Nakasero, Cadenza Residence is a living composition of Studios, 1 and 2 bedrooms that redefines the meaning of luxury living in Kampala. Neighboring several embassies, and with the Parliament of Uganda, State House, and the United Nations office nearby, Cadenza Residence’s location in this blue zone area guarantees security and prestige”:

Leaving aside the issue of why there is so much murkiness (two purchase dates, huge valuation) around these four mystery unimproved acres of Ugandan land, and of what all that may mean in entrusting Mamdani, who was a rapper before he was an Assemblyman, who has had almost no jobs (one was for his mom), who has no business background at all, — a man who passed only three bills as an Assembly member and who was absent half of the time, with the highest absentee rate in the Assembly – with the management of the most valuable real estate infrastructure in America, and with a $2.1 trillion dollar economy, the largest metropolitan economy on earth —

Why are almost all of this candidates’ assets still located in a foreign country?

Mamdani became a naturalized citizen only in 2018, the year before he ran for office. Indeed, he is not solely an American citizen. He is a dual citizen.

His marriage is offshore, his land is offshore.

Why would you come to America at 7 and only become a naturalized citizen decades later, just before you run for office in America? If you believe in New York City, why not bring your assets to New York City? Of you really care about America, why do you need two passports?

Why not give one up and just be — an American?

Are you so attached to an identity as citizen of one of the worst regimes on earth — one that engages in arbitrary arrest and detention, assassinates activists, restricts freedoms of speech, and has some of the worst laws on earth against homosexuality — that you would rather cling to being a national of that country, than simply an American?

Why?

In only 2023, Uganda got rid of the death penalty in general for homosexuality, but, according to Amnesty International, “The court upheld provisions in the law that discriminate against LGBTI people and carry harsh penalties, including the death penalty, for “aggravated homosexuality” and up to 20 years’ imprisonment for the “promotion of homosexuality”. “

Seriously.

Seriously Jasper.

Why not just be an American? Why not just be an actual New Yorker?

Are you proud of this?

Zohran Mamdani is like a socially acceptable drug for guilty affluent white people.

I remember when I first saw his campaign material. It seemed so lulling and seductive — like a hunk of excellent hashish wrapped up in the trappings of a political campaign. But when you drill into it, it really amounts to: free everything.

Read the Whole Article

The post Why Don’t I Like Him? appeared first on LewRockwell.

The common denominator is India’s rivalry with China.

Trump recently made a show of doubling his 25% tariffs on India as punishment for its continued purchase of Russian energy and military-technical equipment. Influenced by Lindsey Graham, he expected that India would dump Russia after the costs of doing business with it spiked, the Kremlin would thus lose this important foreign revenue flow, and then Putin would make concessions to Ukraine in exchange for lifting these secondary sanctions in to avoid bankruptcy. Here’s why India defied the US:

———-

1. The “Voice Of The Global South” Can’t Bow To US Demands

India has presented itself as the “Voice of the Global South” since it hosted the first of these namesake summits in January 2023. It’s sought to play this role by virtue of being the most populous among them, commanding the largest economy of them all, and having the fast-growing one too. India is also one of the founders of the Non-Aligned Movement. If it bows to US demands, then it’ll cede leadership of the Global South to China, which India doesn’t consider to be part of this category of countries anymore.

2. Discounted Russian Energy Accelerates India’s Economic Rise

India is the world’s fastest-growing major economy and on pace to become the third-largest by 2028 due in no small part to its massive import of discounted Russian energy. Not only would India scramble to replace Russia’s one-third share of its oil supplies, which would lead to a surge in global prices that would decelerate its growth, but Russia would probably sell more oil to China at an even steeper discount to replace some of its lost revenue. That would be doubly bad for India’s objective interests.

3. India Can’t Defend Itself From China & Pakistan Without Russia

Most of India’s military equipment is still Soviet/Russian despite the decade-long trend of diversifying its defense suppliers and promoting indigenous production. India is therefore still reliant on Russian ammo and spare parts. Accordingly, it wouldn’t be able to defend itself from China and Pakistan without Russia, which is an unacceptable position to be in. In fact, some in India might suspect that the US wants to leave them at their mercy, perhaps as part of a Machiavellian deal to contain or even dismember India.

4. Trump Is Hellbent On Derailing India’s Rise As A Great Power

Building upon the above, this eponymous analysis here explains Trump’s geostrategic machinations vis-à-vis India as of late, which are predicated on subordinating it as vassal state. Frankly speaking, India is rising too fast and becoming too independent of a force to be reckoned with in global affairs for the US’ comfort, which fears that this will hasten the decline of its unipolar hegemony. Attempting to place India in a permanent position of dependence and vulnerability is one way to possibly avert this scenario.

5. India Can’t Allow Russia To Become China’s “Junior Partner”

The earlier points contextualize this one by highlighting the importance that Russia plays in India’s grand strategy. Even if India maintained military-technical ties with Russia, if it curtailed or cut off oil imports, then Russia would still likely become China’s “junior partner” due to the even greater economic-financial role that China would play for it. That could lead to the dangerous scenario of China pressuring Russia to curtail or cut off arms, ammo, and spares to India, thus placing it at China’s and Pakistan’s mercy.

———-

As can be seen, the common denominator between these five reasons why India defied US pressure to dump Russia is its rivalry with China, which India calculated would inevitably benefit if it complied. The grand strategic costs of allowing that to happen are considered to be much greater than the financial ones imposed by the US. In fact, the US might even lift some of the latter as part of a compromise with Russia during the upcoming Putin-Trump Summit, which would be an indisputable victory for India.

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

The post India Defied US Pressure To Dump Russia for These Five Reasons appeared first on LewRockwell.

In 1687, Isaac Newton published his monumental book, Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, often shortened to Principia, in which he presented the foundation for classical mechanics and universal gravitation. The book dazzled natural philosophers all over Europe and the British American colonies, and was a milestone in the so-called “Scientific Revolution” of observing and analyzing the natural world.

Shortly thereafter, natural philosophers began to contemplate the possibility that Newton’s method for observing and measuring bodies in motion could be applied to the human body, mind, and society.

It didn’t take long for some critical observers—most notably Jonathan Swift—to note that this endeavor could quickly become preposterous and pernicious. In his Gulliver’s Travels, published in 1726, Swift depicted the scientists and astronomers on the Island of Laputa as having completely taken leave of common sense and practical knowledge due to their obsession with abstract theories and their pursuits that are often more harmful than beneficial.

In 1936, the Austrian-Czech philosopher, Edmund Husserl, published The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology in which he pointed out that, in our world of “lived experience,” we rarely apply scientific principles.

For example, when someone smiles at you, you don’t see the person’s facial nerves and muscles working together to contort the face— you see an expression of joy or sympathy, tenderness, or desire. Only a moronic weirdo would try to reduce the experience of receiving a smile to the measurement and action of nerves and muscles.

Such was the sort of dummy that Evelyn Waugh satirized in the character of Professor Otto Silenus—a young German architect— in the 1928 novel Decline and Fall. As Professor Silenus describes “the problem of architecture”:

The problem of architecture as I see it,’ he told a journalist who had come to report on the progress of his surprising creation of ferro-concrete and aluminium, ‘is the problem of all art—the elimination of the human element from the consideration of form. The only perfect building must be the factory, because that is built to house machines, not men. I do not think it is possible for domestic architecture to be beautiful, but I am doing my best. All ill comes from man,’ he said gloomily; ‘please tell your readers that. Man is never beautiful; he is never happy except when he becomes the channel for the distribution of mechanical forces.’

The result of commissioning guys like Otto Silenus—a thinly veiled caricature of Walter Gropius—to design major buildings is that no one wants to walk around and hang out in cold modernist cityscapes in which the human element has been eliminated. Instead, tens of millions of tourists flock to the old cities of Europe that were built in accordance with the “lived experience” of their inhabitants, and not abstract “scientific” principles.

To understand why, compare the way you feel when sitting on an old piazza in Rome, surrounded by Baroque buildings, to the way you feel sitting in a modern airport.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, when the world was de facto governed by a group of so-called “scientific experts,” I often thought about the idiot scientists on the Island of Laputa and of Professor Otto Silenus.

Generally speaking, I believe that “scientific experts”—with their God of Scientism—should never be given positions of executive authority when it comes to making decisions about complex public policy issues. The scientists should have one seat at the table, along with people who understand the limitations of empirical science in managing human affairs.

This article was originally published on Courageous Discourse.

The post The Human World & the Misuse of Science appeared first on LewRockwell.

A Virginia school district has opened an independent investigation into charges that officials at one of its high schools secretly procured all-expenses-paid abortions for minor students.

Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS) claims it opened its investigation last week as soon as it learned of the allegations, yet there is indisputable evidence that the district was aware of the charges months ago.

Minor Offense

According to investigative journalist Walter Curt, who broke the story last Tuesday, two Centreville High School students allege that, in 2021, social worker Carolina Diaz, with the full knowledge of then-Principal Chad Lehman, arranged for them to get free abortions. (Lehman has since been promoted to executive principal of FCPS Region 5.) Curt wrote:

A handwritten statement from the first student, translated for clarity, lays out how Díaz scheduled the appointment, paid the clinic’s fees, and swore her to secrecy. The girl, an 11th-grade ESOL [English for Speakers of Other Languages] student, says the abortion took place in November 2021 — while she was still seventeen — making the concealment a straight-line violation of state law.

That letter alone would be enough to raise the hair on the back of a patriotic taxpayer’s neck, but there is more. A second Centreville minor, five months pregnant and wavering, was allegedly told by the same social worker that she “had no other choice.” The girl, terrified, ultimately bolted from the clinic rather than go through with the procedure. She later confided in her teacher, Mrs. Zenaida Perez, who allowed her name to be used on the record and provided [Curt] a recording of the family confirming that no one at the school had ever informed them of the intent to terminate their daughter’s pregnancy. [Emphasis in original.]

FCPS policy does not mandate that school staff inform parents of students’ pregnancies. It also forbids staffers from “influencing [a] student regarding [her] pregnancy.”

From Cover-up to Cop-out

Virginia law requires parental notification and consent before a minor can obtain an abortion — and it surely looks askance at using taxpayer dollars to pay for these illegal procedures. “Legal analysts tell me that if school employees indeed arranged and paid for these procedures, criminal as well as civil liability is in play — everything from contributing to the delinquency of a minor to misuse of public funds,” penned Curt.

School officials clearly did not want the scandal to be revealed. Curt wrote that he had reviewed “written statements by multiple students” claiming that “school administrators tried to muzzle [Perez] once she learned the truth — pressuring classmates to bait her into minor policy violations that could justify firing or force a quiet resignation.”

After the story became national news, FCPS shifted into damage-control mode. On Thursday, Superintendent Michelle Reid sent a letter addressing the allegations to Centreville High School staff and families. Reid wrote that the district “has taken immediate action to engage an external independent investigator to get all the facts” and will take “swift and appropriate action once we have the facts.”

“I want to stress that at no time, would the situation described in these allegations be acceptable in Fairfax County Public Schools,” she declared.

She also claimed that FCPS “learned about” the allegations “earlier this week.”

Recorded History

In actuality, Perez, who was steeled rather than stymied by officials’ attempts to silence her, told FCPS investigator James Mackie about the allegations on May 2 — and has a witness and an audio recording to prove it.

“The witness,” Curt reported Friday, “confirmed that Mackie was present and heard the allegations in full.”

The recording, which Curt included in his article, proves that beyond all doubt. In it, Perez tells Mackie how she met with Lehman in 2022 and told him of the allegations that Diaz had “facilitated the appointment and all the logistics for an abortion” for a 17-year-old student. Then she sent a follow-up email to Lehman detailing the same allegations. “And,” she said, “he didn’t do anything.”

Later, when she mentioned the matter to him, Lehman allegedly said, “I don’t remember that conversation with you.”

Perez said she responded, “Don’t worry about it. I have the email that I sent you … when we had the meeting here in your office.”

That, of course, gave Lehman plenty of cause to worry. According to Perez, “He pretended that he was working really hard contacting the nurse and the social worker to see what they had done,” but nothing happened.

Perez also told Mackie that the student had told her the abortion was “free” as far as she was concerned and that she didn’t know who paid for it. “The social worker made the appointment for me,” she allegedly said.

“The uncle didn’t know anything,” Perez said. “The legal guardian knew nothing. Absolutely zero.”

Furthermore, she told Mackie, “I have evidence, and I have it all.”

Curt Remarks

These shocking allegations of illegal conduct on the part of school officials should have touched off an immediate investigation. Instead, FCPS sat on them until Perez went public with them — then claimed to have learned of them at the same time as everyone else.

“This is not transparency,” observed Curt. “This is a cover-up unraveling in real time.”

On his Wednesday podcast, Curt called on Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin and Attorney General Jason Miyares to “get involved” in the matter. He elaborated:

There needs to be investigations, subpoenas, audit every single dollar that moved from Fairfax schools into that so-called health care center. That’s got to happen. If you don’t do that, you’re not going to convince parents that you’re on their side.

Siding with parents over left-wing school officials, Curt pointed out, is part of what catapulted Youngkin to the governorship in 2021. Why couldn’t it work again this year?

This article was originally published on The New American.

The post Virginia School Officials Allegedly Procured Free, Secret Abortions for Students appeared first on LewRockwell.

Let’s start with a very interesting post from Joe Tuzara’s Substack. I don’t know if this is true because I have not found any other media source reporting on it, and there are some problems with the details reported. Here is the claim:

White Hats on Sunday killed a Ukrainian assassin in Wasilla, Alaska, five days before President Trump is scheduled to meet with Vladimir Putin at a currently undisclosed venue in The Last Frontier.

At approximately 10:00 p.m., soldiers from the 10th Special Forces Group stormed a bungalow on Front Street, near Lake Lucille, and shot dead 42-year-old Stefan Orestovych, a resident of Kyiv and former employee of Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense.

He was also a trained sniper, having spent a decade with the Ukrainian army’s Special Operations Forces. US Special Forces had to kill him, a White Hat source told Real Raw News, for he had pulled a pistol on them as they charged through the doorway.

After neutralizing the threat, the soldiers found two Sig P229 pistols, a scoped and suppressor-fitted Daniel Defense DDM4 AR-style rifle, and the expertly forged passport that Orestovych had used to enter the US via Anchorage.

This is an entertaining story, but I have my doubts about its veracity. I have the Daniel Defense DDM4 rifle — it is chambered for 5.56×45mm NATO — and it is not a cheap firearm, nor is it commonly stocked in gun stores. How did he get his hands on that rifle? It is not a sniper rifle. With a first-class optic — again, not cheap — a trained shooter can hit a target with accuracy out to 300 yards. How did a Ukrainian citizen arrive in Alaska, pick up a DDM4, and obtain an expensive optic and silencer? Even if he brought the optic and silencer with him to the US there is an additional question: How did he get those through customs? Once he was in place in Alaska, he still needed to find a gun range where he could zero the rifle. You don’t just slap the optic on the rifle without firing shots at a target to make sure the bullet is hitting where you are aiming.

I also am skeptical that such a mission — since it was not time critical — would be given to some 10th Special Forces soldiers. Don’t get me wrong. Those guys are skilled soldiers, but they are not trained for this kind of mission. The Secret Service has a SWAT team capable of carrying out the mission or, alternatively, FBI’s HRT could have been dispatched. Let’s just say I have my doubts about this.

A more realistic tactic to disrupt the Summit comes from a Russian Telegram channel, and was posted on Andrei Martyanov’s blog:

Kiev is preparing a provocation to disrupt the negotiations scheduled for August 15 between Putin and Trump, warned the Russian Ministry of Defense. According to available data, on Friday the Armed Forces of Ukraine have planned a provocative strike using UAVs and missiles on one of the densely populated residential areas or a hospital in the Kharkiv region. The consequences are to be “documented” by Western journalists brought in. For this purpose, a group of foreign media journalists was delivered to the city of Chuhuiv the day before under the pretext of “preparing a series of reports about the residents of the city in the frontline zone.” The Kiev regime plans to place all responsibility for the strike on the Russian Armed Forces to create a negative media background and conditions for disrupting the negotiations. Provocations are also possible in other settlements controlled by the Kiev regime, – added the Russian Ministry of Defense.

Maybe this is just a piece of information warfare, i.e. propaganda. We will just have to wait-and-see.

This article was originally published on Sonar21.

The post Ukraine Reportedly Working Frantically To Disrupt Putin and Trump Summit appeared first on LewRockwell.

Nicole on Facebook writes, “I would love to hear you explain how Palestine is the moral question of our time. Why it’s so important. How it’s related to every movement and should be a concern to everyone.”

Palestine is the moral question of our time because the abuse of the Palestinians is the most glaring, in-your-face symptom of the imperial disease. You can see the effects of so many of the empire’s abusive dynamics in how this thing is playing out, from racism to colonialism to militarism to war profiteering to mass media propaganda to empire-building to government corruption to suppression of free speech to ecocide to the heartless, mindless, soul-eating nature of the capitalist system under which we all live.

But there’s more to it than that. The primary reason to place Palestine front and center as the moral issue of our time is because if we can’t sort out the morality of an active genocide backed by our own western governments, we’re not going to be able to sort out anything else. Stopping the Gaza holocaust and bringing justice to the Palestinians is the very first step toward a healthy civilization.

Palestine is the moral issue of our time for the same reason if you saw someone in your family torturing another member of your family to death, it would be the most urgent matter happening in your life at that moment. You’d have other problems in your life, but that would come first.

If we’re the sort of society that would allow a live-streamed genocide to take place with the support of our own government and its allies, then we’re not the sort of society that can steer away from its trajectory toward dystopia and armageddon. If you’re the sort of individual who would allow a live-streamed genocide to take place with the support of your own government and its allies, then you’re not the sort of individual who can help steer our species away from disaster.

Gaza is not the only thing that matters in the world. But if you’re not forcefully opposing the Gaza holocaust, you definitely don’t have a healthy enough conscience to address any of the world’s other problems.

I sometimes see Israel supporters refer to pro-Palestine sentiment as “virtue signaling”, which is funny because it means they view themselves as holding the unpopular, unvirtuous position. But really there’s nothing particularly virtuous about supporting Gaza, and it’s not some cool, special thing you’d want to signal about yourself. It’s just what you do when you’re not an extremely shitty person. It’s the basic, bare-minimum expectation of normal human morality.

I don’t want to be friends with anyone who doesn’t oppose the Gaza holocaust. I don’t want to follow any commentators or analysts who don’t speak out against the Gaza holocaust. At this point I don’t even want to listen to any music or read any poetry from people who don’t take a stand against the Gaza holocaust. Since 2023 I’ve moved from rejecting anyone who actively sided with Israel to rejecting anyone who is even complicit in their silence.

The other day I saw some Australian influencer forcefully trying to assert that it’s okay not to take a position on Gaza, and nobody in her replies was buying it. Supporting Israel and aligning with US foreign policy comes with a lot of career benefits for high-profile individuals, and you don’t get to both enjoy those perks and also keep ethical people interested in what you have to say. You can’t have it both ways. You have to choose between the perks and the people. You actually do.

Opposition to the Gaza holocaust is the very first step in assessing if someone is worth my time. If you can’t even meet the basic, bare-minimum expectation of opposing an active genocide, then you are too callous and apathetic to be my friend. If you can’t even get this basic, kindergarten-level moral question right, then your mind is too shallow and your heart too hardened for me to be interested in your analysis, your ideas, your politics, or your art.

There are so many terrible things in our world, and there is so much work that needs to be done to address them. I don’t know what ideas, strategies and movements will get us out of this mess, but I do know that if any are going to emerge they’re going to come from the people who’ve been taking a strong stand against Israel and its western allies these last two years. Those are the individuals, movements, and political factions to pay attention to going forward. Nobody else is equipped to help.

____________

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Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Tulsi Gabbard’s declassification of communications and reports that implicate Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, senior officials from the Obama administration, and former heads of the Intelligence Community in a conspiracy to frame President Trump with the Russia Collusion Hoax is nothing less than earth-shattering.

America has endured many political scandals.  The country has never had to contend with anything of this magnitude — in which a lame-duck president abused and politicized national intelligence-gathering operations in order to blame an adversarial nuclear power for an embarrassing election loss and set in motion a series of fraudulently predicated criminal investigations intended to force President Trump’s resignation from office or impeachment and removal.

As enormous as this scandal already is, it remains an ongoing criminal conspiracy.  Every time former Obama officials — including former DNI James Clapper and former CIA director John Brennan — publicly lie about material facts regarding the Russia Collusion Hoax, they are acting as co-conspirators in a plot to defraud the American people, overthrow a legitimately elected president, and cover up past criminal activity.

Perhaps the only aspect of this story that could rival in size such treason against the United States is the corporate news media’s continued refusal to report these events accurately without fear or favor.  For many reasons, newsrooms will not do so.  Because indoctrinated and committed leftists control the American press, “journalists” lack the requisite discernment to see beyond partisan political blinders and report facts that are personally troubling.  Even worse, many “journalists” have redefined their professional role away from any responsibility for objective truth-telling and toward a kind of active agency in which they shape “truth” to advance a particular worldview.  “Journalists” love Obama.  They despise Trump.  They are happy to act as assets for former Obama administration officials pushing lies and to hide facts that are politically inconvenient.

“Journalists” were and remain essential co-conspirators in the Russia Collusion Hoax.  By publishing sensational stories that were often contradicted by a mountain of publicly available facts, the nation’s pre-eminent news companies aided and abetted the Clinton-Obama information war against the American people.  As has been their wont in this era in which “journalism” resembles stenography, famous “reporters” simply repeated what corrupt members of Obama’s Intelligence Community told them without ever verifying the accuracy of their reporting.  When pressed to corroborate salacious details of their Russia Collusion Hoax stories, “journalists” habitually relied on “anonymous sources” from “past or present government officials” as tawdry proof that their shoddy “journalism” passed muster.

In exchange for acting as propagandists spreading disinformation and misinformation in a hybrid war being waged by powerful Democrats and Intelligence Community officials against citizens of the United States, “reporters” received promotions, celebrity recognition, book deals, and Pulitzer Prizes.  Even after DNI Gabbard’s declassifications have exposed the corporate news media’s Russia Collusion propaganda for the trashy clickbait that it is, “reporters” refuse to retract past lies, return Russia Collusion–related awards or remuneration, or publicly admit any wrongdoing.

The American press corps is now so inextricably linked to the Democrat party and the corrupt Intelligence Community that it would rather pretend not to see the greatest scandal in American history than admit its own complicity in perpetrating mass fraud against citizens of the United States.  These are, of course, the same “professionals” who refused to acknowledge President Biden’s obvious cognitive decline for four years — going so far as to defame those who did notice as “conspiracy theorists” — only to claim today that the Biden administration simply pulled the wool over their eyes.  Should the growing body of evidence documenting the Clinton-Obama conspiracy to overthrow President Trump become impossible to ignore, these same “professionals” will surely claim that powerful members of the pemocrat Party, Obama administration, and espionage apparatus had them fooled, too.

The damage from the Russia Collusion Hoax cannot be overstated.  The psychological warfare directed against the American people destroyed any residual social unity in a nation that has become only more divided since the turn of the century.  The covert hybrid war engineered by Clinton confidants, Obama allies, and Intelligence Community spymasters constituted nothing less than sedition and treason against the legitimate government of the United States.  Not only was President Trump handicapped during his first term by unlawfully predicated criminal investigations but also the Clinton-Obama-aligned co-conspirators further inflamed tensions with nuclear Russia, exhibiting malicious disregard for the safety of the citizens of the United States.

As a nation, we are lucky that the Clinton-Obama coup d’état was ultimately unsuccessful.  Had the Russia Collusion Hoax precipitated President Trump’s resignation or provided enough political cover for corrupt co-conspirators in Congress to impeach and remove him, the American public would be today even more vulnerable to the machinations of a deeply immoral and dishonest Intelligence Community.  Federal bureaucrats who operate in secret and without oversight remain a constant threat to the freedom of all Americans.  Bureaucrats who would wage an information war against the American people and conspire to provoke kinetic war between Russia and the United States are a threat to all mankind.

After any disaster, the survivors must go on.  It is at this time that sober, well-intentioned people take stock of troubling past events and look for potential lessons that can aid them in the future.  It is fair to say that the Russia Collusion Hoax provides many.  Among those, perhaps this is the most significant: No American should uncritically believe any supposed statement of fact coming from the press, the Intelligence Community, or any government official attempting to define “truth” by appealing to a title of authority.

Blind faith in powerful institutions ensures only that those institutions will become irredeemably corrupt.  Healthy skepticism for official pronouncements and public debate of government-sponsored “truths” are indispensable ingredients for a free society.  If any honest observer still clung to the naïve belief that the Intelligence Community, permanent federal bureaucracy, or American news media were honest, impartial institutions acting on behalf of all Americans with dispassionate professionalism, the Russia Collusion Hoax should have exposed such comforting delusions as idealistic hogwash.

Here is another lesson vital to the survival of these United States: The president, in whom all executive power is vested, must have complete control of and total authority over the Intelligence Community, the executive departments, and the broader administrative state.  There can be no extra-constitutional organ exercising executive power that feels emboldened to disregard lawful presidential orders and entitled to chart its own course.  If every spy chief and agency manager operates as if vested with independent power and unilateral authority, then there are a thousand “presidents” governing the United States.  As the Electoral College has not voted them into office, they are, in actuality, tyrants disguising their misappropriation of power behind titles of authority.

The Clinton-Obama Russia Collusion Hoax was nearly a successful coup d’état precisely because the Executive Branch of the federal government has long been home to a thousand tyrants pretending to be presidents.  For the Republic to endure, this betrayal of the U.S. Constitution must come to an end.

Acknowledging these truths adds significance to DNI Gabbard’s ongoing disclosures.  At no time in American history has the Office of the President taken such direct aim at its own Intelligence Community.  These public disclosures are embarrassing — which is why America’s rogue agencies have worked so hard to keep them classified.  They are incriminating — which is why a reactionary public relations campaign (read: a new bombardment of information warfare) is underway to undermine DNI Gabbard’s authority and protect Russia Collusion Hoax perpetrators from legal accountability.  Finally, these disclosures are an existential threat to the Intelligence Community — which is why former spies, current members of Congress, and the corporate news media continue to cover up the truth.

This article was originally published on American Thinker.

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From its very beginnings in the seventeenth century, the classical liberals (also known as “libertarians,” or, historically, “liberals”) have been primarily focused on limiting the powers of the state. It has been state powers—not the powers of church or family or employer—that has been the great occupation of the classical liberals. After all, the movement was born in opposition to mercantilism and absolutism.

In the classical liberal view, it has always been state power that is fundamentally coercive and violent, and is the greatest threat to freedom and property rights. Moreover, because the state is monopolistic by nature, the state can exercise its powers untroubled by any legal opposition within the state’s territory. As such, the state is the organization that is positioned to most frequently and potently violate the property rights of its subjects with impunity. So, it is not surprising that historian Ralph Raico states that classical liberalism has been historically focused of preventing states from regulating the private sector, also known as “society.” In classical liberal thinking, Raico tells us, “the most desirable regime was one in which civil society—that is, the whole of the social order based on private property and voluntary exchange—by and large runs itself.”

This is to be contrasted with the old monarchical absolutists who “insisted that the state was the engine of society and the necessary overseer of the religious, cultural, and, not least, economic life of its subjects[.] … [L]iberalism posited a starkly contrasting view.”

In practice, the classical liberals—especially those of the more radical variety such as Gustave de Molinari, Frederic Bastiat, William Leggett, Richard Cobden, and Vilfredo Pareto—feared the powers of the state far more than the powers of any other organization. After all, the liberals understood that powerful interest groups only wielded coercive power if they could enlist the aid of the state itself. Business interests or religious groups—i.e., non-state elements of the private sector—are largely powerless unless backed by state power. This is all the more true today than it was in the time of the early liberals. By the nineteenth century, the state had so completely consolidated its monopoly on legal violence that the state itself was the only true locus of coercive power. Whatever “coercion” might be proffered by non-state groups has thus tended to be limited, weak, and inconsistent.

Those who favor more state power and more state intervention, on the other hand, tend to downplay the abusive and violent nature of state coercion. These apologists for the state often claim that the private sector is just as much of a threat to freedom as is the state.

This claim has long been popular among Marxists who say that private employers and other property owners exercise “economic power” which is supposedly coercive in nature. For example, we are to believe that it is a violation of “rights” if an employer refuses to hire a worker at the worker’s preferred wage. It is supposedly a rights violation if a Christian baker refuses to bake a cake for a homosexual wedding.

Strangely, though, there are some who claim to be libertarians and who are apparently more worried about supposed private violations of rights than they are concerned about the state’s coercive monopoly power.

For example, in a June article self-described libertarian Matt Zwolinski insists that “Libertarians and other advocates of liberty” must commit to ”liberating individuals from all forms of coercion, public and private alike.” He states that libertarians have been wrong for “ignoring threats to liberty posed by non-state institutions (“local bullies”) like corporations, churches, and schools…Each of these organizations wields an enormous amount of power over people’s lives, including the power to restrict their freedom…”

It’s unclear what “threats to liberty” are being carried out by schools and churches in 2025, and Zwolinski’s isn’t talking about actual theft of fraud here. These aren’t real violations of property rights through any coercive means. Rather, Zwolinski appears to making the old “economic-power” argument used by the Left. In this way of thinking, if a private organization won’t rent you a hotel room or give you a raise, then that organization has somehow illegitimately “restricted” your freedom.

Small Business Owners are the Real Threat to Freedom? 

A more careful analysis quickly reveals that these alleged attacks on freedom by private organization are nothing at all like the state’s bona fide attacks on freedom. The alleged private rights “violations” imaged by Zwolinski are really nothing more than one party declining to enter into an agreement with another party. That’s not coercion.

State coercion, on the other hand, involves the state actually stealing, controlling, or destroying the property of an innocent party. We either pay taxes or we are fined and imprisoned. We either follow every little government regulation, or our property is forfeit. (For a full explanation of the difference between real coercion and ersatz private “coercion”, see Rothbard’s analysis in Man, Economy, and State.)

Indeed, Zwolinski specifically opposes Rothbard’s classical-liberal view which focuses on limiting state power. Zwolinski writes:

Consider, for instance, the Rothbardian-informed libertarian opposition to the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which prohibited certain private entities from discriminating on the basis of race, color, or national origin. For the anti-state libertarians, the Act represents an objectionable increase in government power and a violation of individual property rights. But for those whose primary goal is the expansion of human liberty, the Act seems to be a clear victory—expanding the realm of choice for millions of Americans by limiting the power of private bullies…

Rothbard, as a theorist firmly within the radical anti-state wing of the French liberals naturally opposed the US government’s so-called “Civil Rights Act.” That legislation has always been little more than a scheme to increase federal regulatory and judicial power.

Zwolinski however, praises the Act for fighting supposed private-sector “coercion.” This is nothing more than the “bake the cake” philosophy pushed by the interventionist Left. In this scheme, we are to believe that if a baker refuses to bake a cake for a gay couple then the baker has somehow “coerced” the would-be customer. Therefore, the baker should be subject to government regulation and legal action that will likely bankrupt the baker and destroy his business. By this way of thinking, the way to “increase freedom” is to empower the government with vast regulatory powers to ensure that business owners sell pastries in a government-approved manner.

Now, I suspect that millions of Americans think this is fine, thanks to decades of public school propaganda which teaches children that the federal government should dictate to whom you are permitted to sell a sandwich. But it is very odd to bother calling one’s self a “libertarian,” as Zwolinski does, when one takes the position that what this country needs is more government employees micromanaging more American businesses. In this very odd type of “libertarianism,” it seems, the real problem is  the local wedding photographer or property manager. These small business owners are apparently more a threat to freedom than a national government which taxes its population to the tune of five trillions dollars per year and which wages near constant elective wars.

There’s Too Little State Capacity?

In his “libertarian” crusade to increase state power, Zwolinski also employs a second line of attack. Zwolinski attacks the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) for de-funding too many federal projects. He writes:

consider DOGE’s relentless attack on state capacity… [Elon] Musk himself is no libertarian. But a great many libertarians have cheered his “chainsaw” approach to cutting the size of government. The problem with this perspective is that not all cuts to government are good, even from the perspective of human liberty. Cutting back on the size and scope of the regulatory state would almost certainly be a very positive thing. But eliminating Voice of America, indiscriminately cutting USAID, and randomly firing employees at the Nuclear Security Administration doesn’t meaningfully enhance the liberty of American citizens.

How strange it is to read an alleged libertarian complaining about a few small cuts to a federal budget that totals seven trillion dollars. Voice of America and USAID are basically propaganda agencies and are utterly superfluous. No ordinary person who isn’t on the federal dole will be negatively impacted by the total abolition of these agencies. On the other hand, Zwolinski shrewdly lists the cuts to the headcount at the Nuclear Safety Agency because those cuts have been the only cuts that could arguably endanger ordinary people in any way. But even in that case, there has been no fundamental change to the agency after 27 employees were fired. The cuts might slow down the rate at which the US Navy—which is already massively over-funded and bloated—builds nuclear-powered vessels

Although these cuts have done virtually nothing to impact the overall size, scope, and power of the American state, Zwolinski appears to be deeply concerned that the “state capacity” of the federal government has been negatively impacted.

Given the sheer size and breadth of the US federal government, it’s difficult to see how anyone could take seriously the claim that the Federal government’s state capacity is too limited. At no time is the US state ever limited in the projects and endeavors that Washington chooses to prioritize. For example, during the covid lockdowns, the federal budget skyrocketed from 4.5 to 6.7 trillion dollars, nearly overnight. That is not a government that lacks state capacity by any measure at all. Moreover, there is no doubt that the US government will continue to send hundreds of billions of dollars to the military conflicts in which Washington wishes to meddle. The money materializes as needed because Washington enjoys nearly unlimited access to credit thanks to Washington’s historically unparalleled and untrammeled access to the wealth and income of hundreds of millions of Americans.

The idea that we must wring our hands about what Zwolinski calls Trump’s supposed “relentless attack on state capacity” is, frankly, laughable.

The State Is Always and Everywhere the Greatest Threat to Freedom

It is bizarre to see someone claiming to be a libertarian while also trying to convince us that private property and the private sector are the real dangers to freedom. This is hardly a novel argument, of course, it’s just one that belongs far more to the democratic socialists of the Eduard Bernstein variety than with anything we might call libertarianism or classical liberalism.

In contrast, the historical liberals and modern day libertarians have always overwhelmingly focused on the dangers of the state, and for good reason. Following the abuses of the French revolution, the Continental classical liberals soon figured out the true nature of state power, and influential freedom fighters like Benjamin Constant declared government—by which he meant the state—to be “the natural enemy of liberty.” Few of these liberals wasted their time warning against the dangers of the local baker.

Not surprisingly, this same “state hatred” so thoroughly developed by nineteenth-century liberals would be reflected in the work of the great Ludwig von Mises. Writing in 1944, Mises sums up the true nature of the state, and why it must be our primary target:

He who says “state” means coercion and compulsion. He who says: There should be a law concerning this matter, means: The armed men of the government should force people to do what they do not want to do, or not to do what they like. He who says: This law should be better enforced, means: The police should force people to obey this law. He who says: The state is God, deifies arms and prisons. The worship of the state is the worship of force. There is no more dangerous menace to civilization than a government of incompetent, corrupt, or vile men. The worst evils which mankind ever had to endure were inflicted by bad governments. The state can be and has often been in the course of history the main source of mischief and disaster.

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John Leake

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Tim McGraw wrote:

To Hell With Ozzy Osbourne: Paul Kengor

Hi Lew,

I think it was in January of 1971, I was 18, almost 19, when four of us hippies drove from Lincoln, Nebraska, to Wichita, Kansas, in a VW Beetle to see Black Sabbath in concert. It was about 0°F with blowing snow over the highway.

When we made it to Wichita, we had dinner in a diner, then went to the show. It was a small venue, just a thousand people (maybe). I don’t remember much about the show. All I remember was the freezing cold. 

Mr. Kengor can chastise Ozzy Osbourne as much as he wishes, but it isn’t easy being a rock star on the road all the time. Ozzy grew up poor in London (I think). He came from nothing. The lead guitarist in Black Sabbath was brilliant. Ozzy had a good voice. What they really had was the stamina of the slums. 

Perhaps if Mr. Kengor were in a tour bus going across America in winter from small city to small city playing music every night, he’d have a bit more compassion. 

I’m frankly surprised that Ozzy made it to 76.

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Click Here:

MacleodFinance Substack

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Thanks, David Martin.

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Instead of “Draining the Swamp,” the Trump Administration has stepped on the accelerator to bankruptcy. Government deficit spending continues to skyrocket, with a whopping $291 Billion deficit in July alone. This is up 20% year-over-year! It is impossible for government to fix its spending problem by vastly spending more money (that it doesn’t have). The American standard of living will continue to erode.

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[A selection from Man, Economy and State.]

“Other Forms of Coercion”: Economic Power

A very common criticism of the libertarian position runs as follows: Of course we do not like violence, and libertarians perform a useful service in stressing its dangers. But you are very simpliste because you ignore the other significant forms of coercion exercised in society—private coercive power, apart from the violence wielded by the State or the criminal. The government should stand ready to employ its coercion to check or offset this private coercion.

In the first place, this seeming difficulty for libertarian doctrine may quickly be removed by limiting the concept of coercion to the use of violence. This narrowing would have the further merit of strictly confining the legalized violence of the police and the judiciary to the sphere of its competence: combatting violence. But we can go even further, for we can show the inherent contradictions in the broader concept of coercion.

A well-known type of “private coercion” is the vague but ominous-sounding “economic power.” A favorite illustration of the wielding of such “power” is the case of a worker fired from his job, especially by a large corporation. Is this not “as bad as” violent coercion against the property of the worker? Is this not another, subtler form of robbery of the worker, since he is being deprived of money that he would have received if the employer had not wielded his “economic power”?

Let us look at this situation closely. What exactly has the employer done? He has refused to continue to make a certain exchange, which the worker preferred to continue making. Specifically, A, the employer, refuses to sell a certain sum of money in exchange for the purchase of B’s labor services. B would like to make a certain exchange; A would not. The same principle may apply to all the exchanges throughout the length and breadth of the economy. A worker exchanges labor for money with an employer; a retailer exchanges eggs for money with a customer; a patient exchanges money with a doctor for his services; and so forth. Under a regime of freedom, where no violence is permitted, every man has the power either to make or not to make exchanges as and with whom he sees fit. Then, when exchanges are made, both parties benefit. We have seen that if an exchange is coerced, at least one party loses. It is doubtful whether even a robber gains in the long run, for a society in which violence and tyranny are practiced on a large scale will so lower productivity and become so much infected with fear and hate that even the robbers may be unhappy when they compare their lot with what it might be if they engaged in production and exchange in the free market.

“Economic power,” then, is simply the right under freedom to refuse to make an exchange. Every man has this power. Every man has the same right to refuse to make a proffered exchange.

Now, it should become evident that the “middle-of-the-road” statist, who concedes the evil of violence but adds that the violence of government is sometimes necessary to counteract the “private coercion of economic power,” is caught in an impossible contradiction. A refuses to make an exchange with B. What are we to say, or what is the government to do, if B brandishes a gun and orders A to make the exchange? This is the crucial question. There are only two positions we may take on the matter: either that B is committing violence and should be stopped at once, or that B is perfectly justified in taking this step because he is simply “counteracting the subtle coercion” of economic power wielded by A. Either the defense agency must rush to the defense of A, or it deliberately refuses to do so, perhaps aiding B (or doing B’s work for him). There is no middle ground!

B is committing violence; there is no question about that. In the terms of both doctrines, this violence is either invasive and therefore unjust, or defensive and therefore just. If we adopt the “economic-power” argument, we must choose the latter position; if we reject it, we must adopt the former. If we choose the “economic-power” concept, we must employ violence to combat any refusal of exchange; if we reject it, we employ violence to prevent any violent imposition of exchange. There is no way to escape this either-or choice. The “middle-of-the-road” statist cannot logically say that there are “many forms” of unjustified coercion. He must choose one or the other and take his stand accordingly. Either he must say that there is only one form of illegal coercion—overt physical violence—or he must say that there is only one form of illegal coercion—refusal to exchange.

We have already fully described the sort of society built on libertarian foundations—a society marked by peace, harmony, liberty, maximum utility for all, and progressive improvement in living standards. What would be the consequence of adopting the “economic-power” premise? It would be a society of slavery: for what else is prohibiting the refusal to work? It would also be a society where the overt initiators of violence would be treated with kindness, while their victims would be upbraided as being “really” responsible for their own plight. Such a society would be truly a war of all against all, a world in which conquest and exploitation would rage unchecked.

Let us analyze further the contrast between the power of violence and “economic power,” between, in short, the victim of a bandit and the man who loses his job with the Ford Motor Company. Let us symbolize, in each case, the alleged power-wielder as P and the supposed victim as X. In the case of the bandit or robber, P plunders X. P lives, in short, by battening off X and all the other X’s. This is the meaning of power in its original, political sense. But what of “economic power”? Here, by contrast, X, the would-be employee, is asserting a strident claim to P’s property! In this case, X is plundering P instead of the other way around. Those who lament the plight of the automobile worker who cannot obtain a job with Ford do not seem to realize that before Ford and without Ford there would be no such job to be obtained at all. No one, therefore, can have any sort of “natural right” to a Ford job, whereas it is meaningful to assert a natural right to liberty, a right which each person may have without depending on the existence of others (such as Ford). In short, the libertarian doctrine, which proclaims a natural right of defense against political power, is coherent and meaningful, but any proclaimed right of defense against “economic power” makes no sense at all. Here, indeed, are enormous differences between the two concepts of “power.”1

—

1 On the spurious problems of “bargaining power,” see Scoville and Sargent, Fact and Fancy in the T.N.E.C. Monographs, pp. 312–13; and W.H. Hutt, Theory of Collective Bargaining (Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1954), Part I.

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The stage is being set for a dramatic showdown on the streets of the largest cities in the United States.  The mainstream media is freaking out about President Trump’s takeover of Washington D.C, and protests have already begun.  Needless to say, Washington D.C. is not friendly territory for Trump.  It has one of the highest concentrations of Democrats of any major city in the nation, and Kamala Harris won 90 percent of the vote in D.C. last November.  So this situation has the potential to get out of control very rapidly.

Let us hope that cooler heads prevail, but some in the mainstream media are already trying to draw parallels between the current crisis and the George Floyd protests of 2020.  For example, the following comes from a Time Magazine article entitled “Trump’s Hostile Takeover of D.C. Is Straight Out of the Summer 2020 Playbook”…

As he announced he was taking over Washington’s police department and deploying FBI agents and 800 National Guardsmen to patrol the streets of the nation’s capital, President Donald Trump on Monday seemed to gunning for a trip back to the unsettled summer of 2020 when the Covid-19 pandemic and racial justice protests set America on edge. It was an aspirational time jump for Trump, who is in search of a way out of political troubles of his own making.

Wow.

You can certainly feel the anti-Trump sentiment in that article.

And even though Trump just announced his takeover of D.C., the protests have already started…

As President Donald Trump announced Monday plans to place the Metropolitan Police Department under federal control, the group Free DC and its partners held a rally in northwest D.C.

“DC belongs to DC residents,” said a Free DC representative. “DC is our home and Trump can’t have it.”

We will keep a very close eye on these protests to see if they grow.

To me, the footage that we have gotten so far indicates that the protesters are very well organized.

I was curious about “Free DC”, and so I decided to learn more.

This is what they say about themselves on their official website…

The 700,000 people of the District of Columbia deserve to have the power over our local government. However, for far too long, Congress and federal administrations have interfered in DC communities by overturning our local laws, restricting our local budgets, and imposing their will on the people who live in DC for years and generations.

Free DC is a renewed campaign to protect Home Rule and win lasting dignity for our communities. We are no longer willing to accept anything less for our communities, and we are setting out to build the cultural and political movement it will take to win. We want you to be part of it.

To these people, President Trump is enemy number one.

And they were definitely not thrilled when Trump boldly declared that D.C. was just “LIBERATED”…

Washington, D.C. will be LIBERATED today! Crime, Savagery, Filth, and Scum will DISAPPEAR. I will, MAKE OUR CAPITAL GREAT AGAIN! The days of ruthlessly killing, or hurting, innocent people, are OVER! I quickly fixed the Border (ZERO ILLEGALS in last 3 months!), D.C. is next!!! Thank you for your attention to this matter. President DJT

We have never seen a president do this before.

During a press conference on Monday, Trump explained that the D.C. police are now under the control of the federal government, and he also announced that the National Guard is going to be brought in…

President Trump said Monday that he is deploying members of the National Guard to Washington, D.C., and that the federal government has taken control of the D.C. police as part of a push to crack down on crime in the nation’s capital, despite data showing crime has declined in the city in recent years.

“I’m announcing a historic action to rescue our nation’s capital from crime, bloodshed, bedlam and squalor and worse,” Mr. Trump said at a news conference at the White House. “This is liberation day in D.C., and we’re going to take our capital back.”

It turns out that Section 740 of the D.C. Home Rule Act does give President Trump the authority to do what he is doing…

Section 740 of the DC Home Rule Act allows the President to take control of the Metropolitan Police Department under “special conditions of an emergency nature.”

The President signed two executive actions on Monday, including invoking powers under section 740 and sending statutorily required letters to the DC Mayor and the necessary congressional committees. Section 740 requires the President to notify committee chairmen and the mayor in order to federalize the Metropolitan police for more than forty-eight hours.

But is it a good idea?

Only time will tell.

The capital city of our nation should be a place where people feel safe, and President Trump wants to make that a reality.

But the mainstream media is going to try to use this to stir up people’s emotions.  Here is more from Time Magazine…

As he appeared in a standing-room-only White House briefing room Monday morning flanked by his national security Cabinet, Trump looked to bait his critics into an uproar, hinting he would escalate to active duty military members if needed. The tableau was one designed to send the national conversation spiraling, a maximalist favorite tactic for Trump to move off a difficult moment.

“Our capital city has been overtaken by violent gangs and bloodthirsty criminals, roving mobs of wild youth, drugged-out maniacs, and homeless people,” the President said. The District’s revamped police force, he said, would be empowered to do “whatever the hell they want.”

If Trump’s effort to transform D.C. is successful, we could see similar efforts in other large cities.

During his press conference, Trump specifically mentioned New York City, Los Angeles, Baltimore, Chicago and Oakland as urban areas that could be targeted next…

President Donald Trump said he might expand his crackdown on crime in the nation’s capital to other major U.S. cities as he announced plans to send 800 National Guard troops into Washington, D.C.

Trump singled out New York City, Los Angeles, Baltimore, Chicago and Oakland, California during a Monday, Aug. 11, news conference as potential future targets in what would be a drastic escalation of federal presence on the streets of American cities.

“We’re not going to lose our cities over this. This will go further. We’re starting very strongly with D.C., and we’re going to clean it up real quick,” Trump said.

Does anyone out there think that the Democrats are just going to sit back and allow Trump to conduct crackdowns in all these cities?

To me, this could be the beginning of a scenario that leads to the sort of widespread civil unrest that I have been warning about.

In the days ahead, mainstream news sources will inevitably be filled with images of people being rounded up or dragged away.

Emotions will be running really high, and it won’t take much of a spark to set off a very large fire.

Reprinted with permission from The Economic Collapse.

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About eight years from now, after the reelection of President Vance, experts will agree that there was something rotten in the state of Clinton, Obama, and Biden. Always the last to know, the experts will finally “notice” that something has changed in this city on a hill.

Steve Sailer has a book on Noticing. And why not? The most important skill for a human is to notice when things have changed and then to figure out what to do next.

Anyone with half a brain noticed that something had changed back in 2016 when neophyte politician Trump ran for the presidency. And the Deep State noticed it too. That’s what Clinton and Obama and Clapper and Brennan and Uncle Tom Cobbley and our world-beating Intelligence Community were conspiring to stop before it was too late. Only they failed.

I notice, according to reports, that President Trump has just brokered his seventh peace agreement between warring states since January 20 and counting.

All of us, excepting our liberal friends, really want to know what this all means.

This is what I noticed in the last few days. There’s a Salena Zito piece on Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. I’ll just give you the high points:

Spend any time listening to Bessent talk, and it is clear he is laser-focused on one thing, something he can only accomplish in his current job: lifting America’s economy into a position where both Main Street and Wall Street are performing equally robustly.

And this:

The 79th treasury secretary also loves working with President Donald Trump… The banter, trust, and respect that went both ways between the men were tangible.

For instance, Trump recently told Bessent that he didn’t have enough muscle to work as a steelworker.

Bessent’s family “was very affluent for a couple hundred years, and then we weren’t,” so Bessent started doing part-time work at age 9. Then:

Bessent worked his way through college, holding down three jobs during summer break and at least one, if not two, jobs during the school year.

And so on. Real the whole thing. Remember the other Secretary of the Treasury that worked through his teenage years? Alexander Hamilton.

Then there is an interview with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who, I assume, had something to do with the seven peace agreements. The interview covered the persecution of Christians all over the world. Rubio stated that the Christian “church has traditionally been at its strongest when it’s the persecuted church… [and weakest when it] gets consumed by the culture.” Trump and Rubio are focused on massacres of Christians in countries like Nigeria, and they think the new Pope could help.

But now let’s get a more general world view from James Banakis writing at John Kass’s website. He notes that there are only two responses to Trump: admiration and revulsion.

There is, it seems no middle ground. Thus, it has always been with consequential figures throughout history…

The Trump enemies will hate to hear this, but he is changing the Presidency and international relations for the better, forever. The entire world is in the midst of a revolution.

And Trump is the “hero” that is making it happen. Heroes, according to Joseph Campbell, tend to die on the border between Order and Chaos. Victor Davis Hanson compares Trump to Gen. Patton, who

led the 3rd army’s full blast attack from Normandy to the Rhine.. [k]eeping the opposition confused, and in complete disarray. The leader in this case Trump is the tip of the spear. His administration follows to implement his agendas. He demonstrates every day, whether you agree with his policies or not that he was born to lead.  The press, because of Trump, is in the process of changing forever.  Newspapers and network news are becoming a thing of the past.

My point in throwing all this out is to help you — and myself — try to begin to understand what is going on here. My faith is that we are at a turning point in history, the end of the age of politics as religion, of heaven on earth, the rule of the educated elite. In other words, a revolution.

But what kind of revolution? I suggest there are three kinds of revolution. Educated class revolutions like the French, Bolshevik, and Maoist Revolutions lead straight to the abattoir. Lower-class revolutions usually fail: peasant uprisings and worker rebellions.

But the American Revolution was the most successful in history. Why was that? I suggest that it was a middle-class revolution, led by men who understood life in the real world: men ranging from landowners like Washington and Jefferson, lawyers like John Adams, and, of course My Man Alexander Hamilton, the “bastard brat of a Scotch pedlar,” who practiced business and law, and understood central banking.

Have you “noticed” that populist nationalism, all across the world, is middle-class centered? That gives me hope.

This article was originally published on American Thinker.

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Israel’s military has been conducting operations in Gaza for 675 consecutive days since responding to Hamas’ brutal October 7 attack. Yet war fatigue is growing within Israel as international condemnation reached a new high after the security cabinet approved a military takeover of Gaza City.

The plan was approved on Friday. Before that, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had vowed to take over the entire Gaza strip. Nevertheless, the backlash to Friday’s announcement was so intense that by Sunday, Netanyahu responded. He said during a press conference:

Our goal is not to occupy Gaza. Our goal is to free Gaza, free it from Hamas terrorists. The war can end tomorrow if Gaza, or rather if Hamas, lays down its arms and releases all the remaining hostages.

On Monday, Israeli news outlets reported that diplomatic sources told them that Israeli leaders may cancel or delay the plan “in the name of a ceasefire and hostage release deal, should Hamas show a willingness to make significant concessions.” As for Hamas, Palestinian sources told Israeli news outlets that the terrorist organization’s “willingness to make progress in the talks rests on whether Israel cancels its Gaza City takeover plan.”

No Permanent Occupation 

In the meantime, Netanyahu claims the plan isn’t for Israel to hold on to Gaza permanently. He told Fox News:

We don’t want to keep it. We want to have a security perimeter. We don’t want to govern it, we don’t want to be there as a governing body. We want to hand it over to Arab forces that will govern it properly without threatening us and giving Gazans a good life. That’s not possible with Hamas.

European Backlash

The announcement triggered intense backlash among many Western powers that have hitherto backed Israel. Dutch Foreign Minister Caspar Veldkamp told Axios that, “Netanyahu’s cabinet is losing Europe — totally. We stand with Israel, but not with the policy of the Israeli government.” U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer said the move “will do nothing to bring an end to this conflict or to help secure the release of the hostages,” a sentiment shared by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), which warns that the operation “risks the lives of the remaining hostages in addition to potentially sparking a humanitarian disaster.”

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who has been hawkish on the Eastern European war front, went beyond words of condemnation. He announced that Germany will halt weapons exports to Israel. He said on Sunday, “We cannot supply weapons to a conflict that is being attempted to be resolved exclusively by military means, which could claim hundreds of thousands of civilian casualties.” France’s foreign ministry said the plan “would constitute further serious violations of international law and lead to a complete dead end.” Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said, “We join many others in viewing that this is wrong, that this action is not going to contribute to an improvement in the humanitarian situation on the ground.” Representatives of Australia, Italy, and New Zealand chimed in with their version of finger wagging as well.

Globalist Objections

The heads of globalist entities also objected. United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres called the plan a “dangerous escalation” that may worsen “the already catastrophic consequences for millions of Palestinians.” European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen said, “The Israeli government’s decision to further extend its military operation in Gaza must be reconsidered.” Von der Leyen urged a ceasefire, the release of all hostages, and “unhindered access” to humanitarian aid for the people of Gaza.

One major power that has not objected is the United States. When asked about the plan last week, Trump said, “I know that we are there now trying to get people fed.… As far as the rest of it, I really can’t say. That’s going to be pretty much up to Israel.” On Monday, Trump told Axios that he didn’t think Hamas would release the remaining hostages, of which there are believed to be about 20 who are still alive, “in the current situation,” the insinuation being that Israel needed to tighten the screws.

The disapproval from Western nations is a recent development, one highly influenced by what more people are beginning to view as an unjust, inhumane assault on civilians in Gaza, which has been turned to rubble and its citizens rendered hungry and homeless.

Israelis Weary

There are signs that, even within Israel, support for the Gaza operation has eroded. A poll aired by Israeli broadcaster Channel 12 in July found that 74 percent of Israelis wanted the war to end. According to the report on the poll:

Seventy-four percent of Israelis, including 60% of people who voted for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition, back an agreement with Hamas that would release all the hostages at once in exchange for an end to the Gaza war, according to a poll aired Friday on Channel 12.

Axios reported that Israeli officials said it will take several weeks to plan the takeover and the evacuation of civilians from Gaza City. This allows time for a potential agreement.

This article was originally published on The New American.

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