Lew Rockwell Institute

It’s worth reminding ourselves that the 9/11 attacks — or, more precisely, the U.S. government’s response to the 9/11 attacks — bears a direct relationship to the drug-war killing spree in which President Trump and the U.S. national-security establishment are engaged in the Caribbean.

And make no mistake about it: These are wrongful killings, pure and simple. Sure, it’s true that there is no reasonable possibility that anyone is going to be indicted or prosecuted for them or that the Supreme Court would ever permit a criminal prosecution or conviction of either the president or his military drug-war goons to stand. But the fact remains: the president and his military forces are extinguishing the lives of people who are simply accused of violating a federal criminal offense: to wit, U.S. drug laws. Under our system of government, U.S. officials, including the president, cannot legally extinguish the life of anyone, including foreign citizens, who is simply accused of violating a U.S. drug law. When they do so anyway, they are engaged in a wrongful killing of a human being.

So, what does 9/11 have to do with these drug-war killings? In an apparent attempt either to shield themselves from a future criminal prosecution for murder or to guarantee no interference by the U.S. Supreme Court with their drug-war killings, President Trump and the Pentagon are encasing their killings in war-on-terrorism rhetoric. They’re saying that the drug-war suspects they are killing are more than just suspected drug dealers. They’re saying that they are also “terrorists” or suspected members of a “terrorist” organization. Thus, they are now referring to the people they are killing not just as drug dealers but rather as “narco-terrorists.”

It a darkly brilliant strategy because they know that as soon as they raise the terms “terrorists” or “war on terrorism,” there is zero chance that the U.S. Supreme Court will interfere with their killing spree, especially since it’s the military, rather than the DEA, that is carrying out the killings. Ever since the U.S. government was converted to a national-security state in the late 1940s — and especially ever since the assassination of President Kennedy, the Supreme Court, along with the Congress and, for that matter, U.S. presidents — have not dared to interfere with the power and majesty of the national-security branch of the federal government, especially given its omnipotent power of assassination. The Court has long held that a judicial concept that it created and called the “political-question doctrine” precludes it from interfering with actions relating to “foreign affairs,” even when such actions clearly violate the U.S. Constitution.

Prior to the 9/11 attacks, most everyone understood that terrorism is a federal criminal offense, just like the violation of U.S. drug laws. That meant that terrorist suspects were indicted and prosecuted in U.S. District Courts, just like drug-war suspects. That’s why the terrorists who attacked the World Trade Center in 1993 were prosecuted and convicted in a federal court.

With the 9/11 attacks, the situation radically changed. U.S. officials claimed that the attacks were actually an “act of war” rather than a criminal offense. Unfortunately, in the fear and panic after those attacks, there were even some libertarian scholars who were supporting this remarkable claim. But in fact, the 9/11 attacks were a criminal offense, just as the 1993 attack on the WTC was a criminal offense. But in the post-9/11 panic and fear, the national-security establishment was permitted to get away with its act-of-war theory.

What was fascinating, however, is that this act-of-war theory did not supplant the criminal-offense concept. It simply supplemented it. At the option of the Pentagon and the CIA, a terrorist suspect could now be treated as either a criminal defendant or an “unlawful enemy combatant” — i.e., a terrorist who did not wear a military uniform. Thus, some terrorist suspects have been prosecuted in federal district courts as criminal defendants who have violated U.S. laws against terrorism. Others have been captured and sent to the Pentagon-CIA prison/torture center in Cuba, where they have been tortured and deprived of effective assistance of counsel, due process of law, speedy trial, trial by jury, and other procedural rights guaranteed to criminal defendants under our system of government.

Through it all, the Supreme Court has not dared to put a stop to this extra-constitutional system, something that Trump and the Pentagon and everyone else in Washington, D.C., are fully aware of. Thus, Trump and the Pentagon know that by ingeniously relabeling drug-war suspects whose lives they summarily snuff out as narco-terrorists, they can continue their illegal killing spree in the Caribbean with the guarantee of no interference by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Reprinted with permission from The Future of Freedom Foundation.

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Trump’s tariff war has somewhat settled down but for China.

Trump has, like his predecessor, limited exports of high-end semiconductor chips to China. He also stopped the export of machines and chemicals used to produce chips to China. These measures are extra-territorial. The Dutch company ASML is prohibited to sell its high-end machines for chip production to China because parts of them contain goods or software made in the U. S. of A.

After Trump imposed additional high tariffs on goods from China the country hit back by limiting exports of rare earth elements. China has a near monopoly on these elements. These are needed to produce modern electric motors, magnets and various sensors and semiconductors the U.S. needs. China has also stopped the import of soy-beans, one of the main products U.S. mid-west farmers depend on.

Trump had to pull back and did so. Tariffs were temporarily lowered and negotiations with China continued. A new trade agreement was supposed to signed later this month when President Trump and President Xi would meet in South Korea.

But U.S. negotiators under Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick tried to play hardball. In late September, during the talks,  they imposed further restrictions on China:

On September 29, 2025, the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) released a long-anticipated interim final rule (IFR) that will result in the most dramatic expansion of U.S. export control regulations in years. The IFR, “Expansion of End-User Controls To Cover Affiliates of Certain Listed Entities,” extends export restrictions to any company owned 50% or more, directly or indirectly, by any of the thousands of entities already designated on several Commerce and Treasury Department lists.

The IFR would also impose a new duty on exporters to investigate the ownership of an end user where there is reason to believe a designated entity holds a minority stake, or is affiliated with, the end user, subject to a strict liability standard for violations.

The new measures would severely restrict any export of high tech goods to China.

The country responded in kind:

Chinese Commerce Ministry (MOFCOM) announced on Thursday that in order to safeguard national security and interests, the ministry will impose export controls on rare earth-related technologies, including rare earth mining, smelting and separation, magnetic material manufacturing, and rare earth secondary resource recycling.
…
Technologies and relevant date related to rare earth mining, smelting and separation, metal smelting, magnetic material manufacturing, and rare earth secondary resource recycling, as well as the assembly, debugging, maintenance, repair, and upgrade of related production lines are prohibited from export without permission, the statement said.

Rare earth elements are used in many U.S. weapons. Each F-35 fighter jet includes some 418 kilogram of rare earth elements, a U.S. destroyer 2,600 kg, a nuclear submarines 4,800 kg. The U.S. has currently no means to produce these themselves.

There was more to the new Chinese regulation than it seemed:

This is actually big, potentially huge, notably because China’s new rare earth export controls include a provision (point 4 here: https://mofcom.gov.cn/zwgk/…) whereby anyone using rare earths to develop advanced semiconductors (defined as 14nm-and-below) will require case-by-case approval.

Which effectively gives China de-facto veto power over the entire advanced semi-conductor supply chain as rare earths are used at critical steps throughout – from ASML (who use rare earths for magnets in their lithography machines: https://asml.com/en/news/storie…) to TSMC.

The export controls are also extra-territorial: foreign entities must obtain Chinese export licenses before re-exporting products manufactured abroad if they contain Chinese rare earth materials comprising 0.1% or more of the product’s value.

So China is effectively mirroring the US semiconductor export controls that were used against them, with its own comprehensive extraterritorial control regime, except with rare earths.

The most advanced semiconductors produced today also use some rare-earth elements. Under China’s new rules each chip sale will need to be licensed by China to ensure that it will not be used for military purposes. If the new rules are handled strictly the U.S. AI-boom will soon go bust.

Rare earth are not the only field where new Chinese export rules are set to apply:

Not only did they announce the unprecedented rare earths restrictions that I posted about earlier (targeted, among others, at the advanced semiconductors sector) but they issued 4 consecutive announcements in total with other export controls on:

– The machines and expertise to process rare earths – not just the rare earths themselves, but all the specialized equipment and technical know-how to turn rare earth into usable materials (obviously making it all the harder to try to move rare earth processing away from China)
– High-performance batteries – specifically those above 300 Wh/kg needed for long-range EVs and advanced drones. And, again, export controls on all the factory equipment to make them too.
– The materials inside batteries – both graphite anodes and cathode materials (the two electrodes that are essential for batteries to function at all). Export controls also cover the specialized equipment to manufacture all of these components.
– Industrial diamonds and cutting tools – the ultra-hard materials that are used ubiquitously in precision manufacturing, for instance to cut silicon wafers for computer chips

This is absolutely unprecedented. With this China effectively gets veto power over three critical supply chains simultaneously: advanced semiconductors (via rare earths and related equipment), battery-powered vehicles and drones, and precision manufacturing across industries (via superhard materials).

It will all officially take effect on November 8, in one month.

China’s move is not really aimed at restricting exports. It just wants to discipline U.S. trade negotiators and push them back in support of free trade:

During the last round of negotiations with senior American officials in Madrid last month, China’s chief trade negotiator, Vice Premier He Lifeng, asked for the full removal of tariffs and export controls, The Wall Street Journal has reported. The latest rare-earth action, the people said, is a tactic aimed at achieving that goal.

The U.S. has yet to get understand that. Its response to China’s latest move as predictable as it is doomed to fail:

Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump – Oct 10, 2025, 20:50 UTC

It has just been learned that China has taken an extraordinarily aggressive position on Trade in sending an extremely hostile letter to the World, stating that they were going to, effective November 1st, 2025, impose large scale Export Controls on virtually every product they make, and some not even made by them. This affects ALL Countries, without exception, and was obviously a plan devised by them years ago. It is absolutely unheard of in International Trade, and a moral disgrace in dealing with other Nations.

Based on the fact that China has taken this unprecedented position, and speaking only for the U.S.A., and not other Nations who were similarly threatened, starting November 1st, 2025 (or sooner, depending on any further actions or changes taken by China), the United States of America will impose a Tariff of 100% on China, over and above any Tariff that they are currently paying. Also on November 1st, we will impose Export Controls on any and all critical software.

It is impossible to believe that China would have taken such an action, but they have, and the rest is History. Thank you for your attention to this matter!

DONALD J. TRUMP
PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

China is well prepared for that move. Its GDP this year will be around 20 trillion. Its total exports per year to the U.S. are around $500 billion, a mere 2.5% of its GDP. China can do without those while the U.S. can not.

What Trump does not get yet is that the U.S. depends more on imports from China than China depends on exporting to the United States. But the markets do understand that.  Trump’s move may well be the black swan event that will lead to their crash.

If Trump doesn’t chicken out of this fight the U.S. economy is doomed.

Reprinted with permission from Moon of Alabama.

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During the annual Defense Development-2025 exhibition in Pyongyang, North Korea showcased yet another hypersonic weapon. The missile, designated as the “Hwasong-11Ma”, is effectively a successor to the now legendary KN-23 tactical ballistic missile (based on the Russian 9M723 hypersonic missile of the 9K720M “Iskander-M” system), along with multiple new weapons systems unveiled for the first time. The missile carries a hypersonic glide vehicle (HGV) with control surfaces, indicating maneuverability at speeds exceeding Mach 5 (1.7 km/s or nearly 6,200 km/h). The North Korean military is using the same TEL (transporter, erector, launcher) vehicle for both the “Hwasong-11Ma” and the KN-23, as well as the same first stage of the missile.

The main difference between the two is the upper stage that now has the aforementioned HGV which separates from the booster and then flies toward its target while maneuvering at hypersonic speeds. The “Hwasong-11Ma” is just one of the latest hypersonic weapons in Pyongyang’s already impressive arsenal that also includes the longer-ranged “Hwasong-16B”. It should be noted that the Russian military is also using the KN-23, primarily as a more affordable alternative to the “Iskander-M”. The North Korean system demonstrated remarkable capabilities and is highly praised by the Russian military for its high maneuverability, enabling pinpoint precision strikes while evading advanced air and missile defense (SAM and ABM) systems.

The Neo-Nazi junta is regularly complaining that its NATO-sourced systems are pretty much helpless when faced with such missiles. The grossly overhyped and exorbitantly overpriced US-made MIM-104 “Patriot” SAM/ABM systems are particularly vulnerable. With the adoption of the new “Hwasong-11Ma”, the task of shooting down such weapons becomes exponentially more challenging. Namely, as previously mentioned, missiles like the 9M723 and the KN-23 already have high maneuverability, making interception based on calculating their ballistic flight path effectively impossible. The US/NATO tried to upgrade the “Patriot’s” kinetic interceptors, but the effort has been pretty much futile, according to the latest battlefield data.

With the new 9M723-S and now the “Hwasong-11Ma”, these already ineffective upgrades have been rendered entirely obsolete. These developments come at a time when the United States, its vassals and satellite states are causing instability virtually everywhere around the world, particularly in the increasingly contested Asia-Pacific region. North Korean President Kim Jong Un warned Seoul not to get entangled in aggressive US moves on the divided peninsula.

“As the US military buildup in the South Korean region intensifies, our strategic interest in the area has also increased. Therefore, we have allocated our special assets to key targets of interest accordingly,” he stated while commenting on the new weapons, adding: “Can the South Korean territory ever be considered a safe place? That is for them to judge.”

Most of the latest North Korean missile systems are designed to obliterate targets far beyond Korea, particularly American bases across the Asia-Pacific, as well as the mainland US with new ICBMs (intercontinental ballistic missiles). However, the “Hwasong-11Ma’s” range clearly indicates that it’s reserved only for targets within the Korean peninsula. Just like the Kremlin upgraded its “Iskander” systems, Pyongyang is doing the same, although with a somewhat different approach.

Namely, HGVs are the pinnacle of hypersonic technologies, employing a far more complex approach than maneuverable quasi-ballistic missiles or even the scramjet (supersonic combustion ramjet) cruise missiles. Their ability to maintain much flatter trajectories while maneuvering at hypersonic speeds makes them extremely difficult to detect and track. Back in 2019, the Russian Strategic Missile Forces (RVSN) adopted the Yu-71/74 “Avangard” HGV, the world’s most advanced hypersonic weapon. Its speed exceeds Mach 28 (nearly 10 km/s or around 35,000 km/h), effectively bending the laws of physics, while its ability to conduct complex maneuvers under such conditions truly makes it a wonder of Russian ingenuity.

Although the “Hwasong-11Ma’s” capabilities are certainly more modest in comparison (after all, it’s not really a strategic weapon on the scale of the “Avangard”), the fact that such a small country which has been under sanctions for over 70 years can develop and field similar technologies is truly astonishing. This is particularly true when compared to the embarrassing failures of the US Military Industrial Complex (MIC), by far the largest and most profitable on the planet. Despite its virtually endless resources, the Pentagon is now falling behind even in basic ballistic missile technologies, let alone hypersonic weapons. Its main adversaries, Russia, China, North Korea and even Iran, already field multiple generations of hypersonic weapons.

Meanwhile, the US is struggling to even maintain its ancient LGM-30 “Minuteman 3” ICBMs. Whether it’s constant delays, cost overruns and/or technological deficiencies, their replacement, the new LGM-35 “Sentinel”, keeps stumbling on one hurdle after another. And yet, the lunatics at the Pentagon still want to pick a fight with Moscow, Beijing, Pyongyang and Tehran. Many of the extremist warmongers seem to want a simultaneous conflict with all four countries (not to mention the near constant US aggression against numerous smaller and much less powerful states, such as Venezuela). Either way, if Washington DC decides to escalate with North Korea, it’ll need to be ready for all sorts of nasty surprises.

Source Infobrics.org.

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Did we just witness the economic trigger event that will cause the dramatic stock market crash that we were just warned about?  On Friday, U.S. stock prices absolutely plummeted once President Trump announced that China’s new rare earth export restrictions would be countered by “a massive increase” in tariffs on Chinese imports into the United States.  If tariff rates go above 100 percent, many Chinese-made goods that are currently filling our stores will no longer travel across the Pacific at all.  In addition, whatever does come over from China will cost a lot more.  For example, you may have noticed that many things that were priced at $1.25 at Dollar Tree are now priced at $1.50 or $1.75.  Of course this is just the beginning.  Once the new tariff rates on Chinese-made goods go into effect, we will see price shocks like we have never seen before.

The reason why President Trump feels compelled to hit China with “a massive increase” in tariff rates is because China has decided to implement extremely strict restrictions on rare earth exports.

Some of those restrictions have already taken effect, some will take effect on November 8th, but the most comprehensive restrictions will take effect on December 1st.

It is being reported that companies will have to get approval from the Chinese government “to export items containing even small traces of Chinese rare earths”…

The rules require foreign companies to obtain special approval to export items containing even small traces of Chinese rare earths.

The same applies if using Chinese processing, smelting, recycling, or magnet-making technology. Exports for military purposes are expected to be denied.

The Chinese had to know that President Trump would be absolutely livid over this, and that is precisely what has happened.

On Friday, Trump posted an extremely long message about this crisis on his Truth Social account…

Some very strange things are happening in China! They are becoming very hostile, and sending letters to Countries throughout the World, that they want to impose Export Controls on each and every element of production having to do with Rare Earths, and virtually anything else they can think of, even if it’s not manufactured in China. Nobody has ever seen anything like this but, essentially, it would “clog” the Markets, and make life difficult for virtually every Country in the World, especially for China. We have been contacted by other Countries who are extremely angry at this great Trade hostility, which came out of nowhere. Our relationship with China over the past six months has been a very good one, thereby making this move on Trade an even more surprising one. I have always felt that they’ve been lying in wait, and now, as usual, I have been proven right! There is no way that China should be allowed to hold the World “captive,” but that seems to have been their plan for quite some time, starting with the “Magnets” and, other Elements that they have quietly amassed into somewhat of a Monopoly position, a rather sinister and hostile move, to say the least. But the U.S. has Monopoly positions also, much stronger and more far reaching than China’s. I have just not chosen to use them, there was never a reason for me to do so — UNTIL NOW! The letter they sent is many pages long, and details, with great specificity, each and every Element that they want to withhold from other Nations. Things that were routine are no longer routine at all. I have not spoken to President Xi because there was no reason to do so. This was a real surprise, not only to me, but to all the Leaders of the Free World. I was to meet President Xi in two weeks, at APEC, in South Korea, but now there seems to be no reason to do so. The Chinese letters were especially inappropriate in that this was the Day that, after three thousand years of bedlam and fighting, there is PEACE IN THE MIDDLE EAST. I wonder if that timing was coincidental? Dependent on what China says about the hostile “order” that they have just put out, I will be forced, as President of the United States of America, to financially counter their move. For every Element that they have been able to monopolize, we have two. I never thought it would come to this but perhaps, as with all things, the time has come. Ultimately, though potentially painful, it will be a very good thing, in the end, for the U.S.A. One of the Policies that we are calculating at this moment is a massive increase of Tariffs on Chinese products coming into the United States of America. There are many other countermeasures that are, likewise, under serious consideration. Thank you for your attention to this matter!

It is certainly true that the Chinese essentially have a “monopoly position” when it comes to the rare earth industry…

China controls roughly 70 percent of the global supply of rare earth minerals and 90 percent of the processing of it, meaning it has huge it leverage over the high-tech supply chain.

Rare earth metals are in our phones, they are in our televisions, and they are in our electric vehicles.

If you are planning to purchase anything that contains rare earth metals, I would get it now.

A lot of the pundits don’t seem to understand why the Chinese are doing this, but the Chinese would argue that they are simply responding to recent moves by the United States.

For example, the U.S. just slapped sanctions on “about 100 individuals, entities and vessels” in China…

The U.S. imposed sanctions on about 100 individuals, entities and vessels, including a Chinese independent refinery and terminal, that helped Iran’s oil and petrochemicals trade, the administration of President Donald Trump said on Thursday.

The Treasury Department sanctioned the Shandong Jincheng Petrochemical Group, which it said is an independent teapot refinery in Shandong Province that has purchased millions of barrels of Iranian oil since 2023.

In addition, extremely painful port fees will go into effect on Chinese-built cargo ships next week…

• Port fees on Chinese-made freight vessels are set to go into effect next week.
• The fees are a bid by the Trump administration to counter China’s dominant position in freight ship manufacturing and spur a moribund U.S. shipbuilding industry.
• But confusion and fears are running high among ocean carriers now scrutinizing ship financing deals to determine if their vessels may be considered Chinese entities based on terms.

This trade war never should have started.

But it did, and now here we are.

As a result of other restrictions that have recently been implemented by the U.S., thousands upon thousands of packages are now stuck at UPS distribution hubs all over the nation…

Thousands of U.S.-bound packages shipped by UPS are trapped at hubs across the country, unable to clear the maze of new customs requirements imposed by the Trump administration.

As packages flagged for customs issues pile up in UPS warehouses, the company told NBC News it has begun “disposing of” some shipments.

Hopefully you don’t have a package that has been caught in that web.

One expert says that he has “never seen anything like this before”…

Frustrated UPS customers describe waiting for weeks and trying to make sense of scores of conflicting tracking updates from the world’s largest courier.

“I’ve never seen anything like this before,” Matthew Wasserbach, brokerage manager of Express Customs Clearance, said of the UPS backlog. “It’s totally unprecedented.”

Nothing that I have discussed in this article is going to be good for our economy.

Global trade is starting to freeze up, and everyone is going to feel it.

Just look at what is happening to our farmers.  They are experiencing the worst downturn in 50 years, and one of the main reasons for that is because the Chinese are not buying our soybeans…

The ongoing trade dispute with China has created serious headwinds for American farmers, with soybean producers having lost access to the world’s largest market for the commodity.

China halted purchases of American soybeans this spring in retaliation for the Trump administration’s tariffs, as a means of looking to gain leverage in trade talks by shifting its purchases away from U.S. producers to countries such as Brazil and Argentina. China is the world’s leading importer of soybeans, bringing in 61% of the world’s traded soybean supplies over the last five marketing years, according to data from the American Soybean Association (ASA).

The group said the U.S. has historically served as a primary supplier for China, as American soybean farmers exported an average of 28% of their crop to China before the 2018 trade war. That figure dropped to a low of 11% in the 2018-19 crop year, but recovered during the pandemic, reaching 31% in 2020-21 before declining to 22% in 2023-24.

Unless we see some sort of a miracle, the outlook for the months ahead is extremely dire.

I think that today’s events helped a lot of people on Wall Street to realize this, because the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 878 points and the Nasdaq was down 820 points.

Our relations with China just went down the tubes, and those that follow my work regularly understand why that is such an important development.

History has shown that trade wars have a way of becoming shooting wars.

So let us hope that cooler heads prevail, because right now we are on a path that will not lead anywhere good.

Reprinted with permission from The Economic Collapse.

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History

In 1936, the Nazi dictatorship in Germany organized SiPo, or Sicherheitspolizei.

The move merged the Gestapo (Geheime Staatspolizei) and the Kriminalpolizei (Kripo, the criminal police). SiPo targeted political opposition to the Nazis, primarily communists and socialists.

In early 1941, the Wehrmacht chief of staff Franz Halder targeted unarmed socialists and communists. It used the Einsatzgruppen death squads to murder them.

“Entire hordes of communists are now being shot and hanged on an almost daily basis,” Second Lieutenant Peter Geissler of the 714th Infantry Division wrote home in July, 1941. 

“I cannot help feeling that the panic fear of the Western world of the term communism, this fear by which the fascists have so long maintained themselves, is somewhat superstitious and childish and one of the greatest follies of our epoch,” wrote Thomas wrote after the war. 

****

 Is Folly Emerging in America under the Rule of President Donald Trump? 

On October 8, the Trump administration held a briefing on Antifa, the autonomous and decentralized anti-fascist political movement. During this meeting, the MAGA influencer Jonathan Choe linked Antifa to the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). 

“Another group right now that is behind antifa and working with antifa very closely based on the research that we have right now that we’re gonna give to you and your team are the Democratic Socialists of America,” Choe said. He argued that Antifa is part of what he called the “homeless complex.”

Video: White House Roundtable on ANTIFA

Trump considers his political opponents, who are primarily Democrats, to be not only socialists, but also communists, Marxists, fascists, and, most tellingly, “enemies from within.”

Last October, he said the

“crazy lunatics that we have—the fascists, the Marxists, the communists, the people that we have that are actually running the country…

Those people are more dangerous—the enemy from within—than Russia and China and other people.”

More recently, during a military conclave at Marine Corps Base Quantico, in Virginia, Trump insisted the United States is “under invasion from within. No different than a foreign enemy, but more difficult in many ways because they don’t wear uniforms. At least when they’re wearing a uniform you can take them out.”

Attorney General Pam Bondi said the Trump administration will use the same tactic it is using against Venezuelan fishermen, falsely accused of being “narcoterrorists.”

In short, murdering political enemies without arrest and due process. “Just like we did with cartels” Bondi said,

“we’re going to take the same approach, President Trump, with Antifa. Destroy the entire organization from top to bottom. We’re going to take them apart.”

Former US Navy intelligence officer and alt-right activist Jack Posobiec said during the roundtable that Antifa “has been going on for almost 100 years … going back to the Weimar Republic in Germany.” Posobiec appears to be saying that the anti-fascist movement aligned against Hitler and the Nazis was a bad thing.  

The original source of this article is Global Research.

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Writes Bill Madden:

There are too many professionals like test, corporate and airline pilots, architects, structural engineers et al. claiming that important aspects of the 9/11 event could not possibly have happened as theorized by the 9/11 Commission.  The book: “Solving 9-11” by Christopher Bollyn documents a serious connection between the Israelis, the Mossad and 9/11.

If Israel were created to help our rulers conquer the world, 9/11 certainly could be a major factor.

See this.

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Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is already fighting a seven-front war. He is at war with virtually every country in the region. These are all wars of Israeli aggression. Not a single war is just; not a single war is defensive in nature. Now, Israel’s madman has opened an eighth front: war against the United States.

No, it’s not a war with missiles and bombs; it’s an all-out billion-dollar war using mass media, social media, paid influencers, major corporations and Jewish billionaires against the minds of the American people.

Public opinion of Israel has tanked worldwide. The maniacal, murderous ethnic cleansing and genocide of the Palestinian people has sickened the conscience of the world. In Western Europe, people by the millions are marching in the streets against the Israeli apartheid state. And here in the U.S., Israel’s reputation is falling like a lead balloon. The only pro-Zionists left are mainly the Scofield-duped Prophetic Dispensationalists within evangelicalism.

Yes, Netanyahu is now turning his sights on evangelical Christians.

Israel To Spend Up To $4.1 Million on Propaganda Campaign Targeting American Christians 

The campaign will involve ads that spread a ‘pro-Israel and anti-Palestinian’ message and sending a mobile ‘October 7 experience’ to church parking lots.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry is planning to spend up to $4.1 million for a propaganda campaign that will target American evangelical Christians, a project that’s being sold as the “largest Christian Church Geofencing Campaign in US history.”

The Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported on a federal filing under the Foreign Agents Registration Act that shows the Israeli ministry has hired a newly formed US-based firm, Show Faith by Works LLC, which will target churchgoers with digital ads that are explicitly “pro-Israel and anti-Palestinian.”

The campaign will also involve creating a mobile “October 7 experience” that will visit Christian colleges, churches, and events. The document says the experience will involve a custom-built trailer designed by “Hollywood experts,” virtual reality headsets, set pieces, and full-length TVs for an “interactive experience.”

The filing lists hundreds of churches in California, Texas, Colorado, and Arizona that will be targeted by the information campaign. According to an invoice, Show Faith by Works expects to receive $3.25 million from the Israeli Foreign Ministry over a five-month period and includes a potential additional $835,000 for equipment and expansion of the campaign.

The document, which was filed on September 27, says one of the activities of the campaign will be to “combat low American Evangelical Christian approval of the Nation of Israel.”

One of the goals of the campaign is to use “a combination of personal and professional outreach to the Christian Community, combined with digital targeting and social media outreach to increase positive associations with the Nation of Israel while linking the Palestinian population with extremist factions.”

The propaganda campaign targeting American Christians is part of Israel’s PR blitz in response to its significant loss of support among Americans due to its genocidal war against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. Another recent FARA filing revealed that Israel is paying influencers around $7,000 per pro-Israel post on social media.

(Source)

But the Israeli propaganda effort against America’s evangelical Christians gets even more sinister.

Investigative Journalist and Editor-in-Chief of The Greyzone Max Blumenthal reports:

Well, there’s a new Foreign Agent Registration Act document at the Department of Justice showing that a group of lobbyists who represent the State of Israel are planning a massive campaign targeting Christian churches around Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Phoenix and Denver. And these lobbyists, what they want to do is geofencing around the perimeters of these churches, so that when you walk in there with your phone, your phone begins to be targeted with ads promoting Israel, reminding you of the horrors of October 7th.

You will also be treated to virtual reality interactions where you can watch horrific scenes of October 7th on an Oculus. There will be billboard displays in and around church areas. And what they aim to do is actually digitally rope something like four to five percent of all U.S. Christians, at least initially, into an Israeli propaganda clockwork orange style megaplex, and then track their phones after they leave. It’s a $4.5 million deal right now, which will expand and which builds on another foreign agent deal in which Israel has contracted Brad Parscale, the former campaign manager of Donald Trump, to the tune of $1.5 million a month to contract influencers and to game the algorithms and LLM models of chatGPT and other AI platforms in favor of Israel.

Blumenthal further explains Netanyahu’s propaganda war in the U.S.:

Netanyahu has announced an eighth front to the war. In a meeting with U.S.-paid influencers for Israel, he basically signaled his intention to wage war on the minds of the American public and that America has become the eighth feeder of Netanyahu’s global war.

He openly called for TikTok to be purchased. So, it’s happening right before our eyes. This plan, this eighth front, just took control of an important legacy media property, CBS News, through the merger of Paramount and Skydance, the company of Larry Ellison’s (the Oracle billionaire) son David Ellison. In addition, David Ellison purchased The Free Press newsletter of self-described Zionist fanatic, former New York Times columnist Bari Weiss for $150 million. The investors behind Bari Weiss’s Free Press are some of the major AI tech warlords.

David Sacks, who is one of them, is in charge of AI and crypto policy for the Trump administration. So, if these investors made money off of Paramount’s purchase of The Free Press, then what we have here is a very clear conflict of interest because David Ellison has installed Bari Weiss as editor-in-chief now of CBS News.

So, the editor-in-chief has a major investor, apparently, who has a Trump administration role in basically gearing AI and crypto policy for Trump, in apparent violation of the Emoluments Clause {Article I, Section 9, Clause 8}. And she will produce coverage, presumably that’s favorable to her investor. This is a clear and explicit violation of CBS’s published code of ethics.

But more importantly, just panning out, this is part and parcel of an Israeli takeover of American media as Israel faces global backlash and a complete cratering of its support in the United States for its genocide and seven-front war in the region.

Listen to what Netanyahu himself said regarding his propaganda war on the U.S.:

We’re going to have to use the tools of battle. You know, the weapons change over time. You can’t fight today with swords. That doesn’t work very well. And you can’t fight with cavalry. That doesn’t work very well. And you have these new things, you know, like drones, things like that. I won’t get into that. But we have to fight with the weapons that apply to the battlefields in which we’re engaged. And the most important ones are on social media. And the most important purchase that is going on right now is TikTok. TikTok, number one, number one. And I hope it goes through because it can be consequential. And the other one, what’s the other one that’s most important? X.

Of course, all of this is aided and abetted by President Donald Trump. Trump has been an enthusiastic facilitator of all of Israel’s wars and assassinations. He provides a steady supply of military weapons with which Israel perpetuates and expands its murderous attacks around the region and its genocide in Gaza. Trump facilitates Israel’s propaganda war against the American people with his aggressive tactics against those who exercise the freedom of speech to criticize Israel. He personally paved the way for uber Zionists Larry and David Ellison to purchase TikTok, CBS, Paramount, etc.

And now Trump has turned his attention to the U.S. military, seeking to make it his personal Praetorian Guard.

According to the Trump administration, “we the people” are now the enemy from within.

Over the course of just one week, we’ve been bombarded with headlines about government shutdowns, a presidential directive aimed at blacklisting dissent, threats by Trump to deploy the National Guard into states he considers political opponents, the politicization of the military, tariffs that inflict economic pain on American consumers, and the administration’s unabashed embrace of graft and grift.

In the midst of it all, Pete Hegseth, the newly styled Secretary of War, compelled a sudden gathering of the top military brass for a costly $6 million exercise that amounted to little more than chest-thumping, propaganda and grandstanding.

With Hegseth at the helm of the renamed Department of War, calling for a new “warrior ethos,” the Trump administration is celebrating aggression and blind obedience over peacekeeping, honor and constitutional duty.

The Pentagon has been rechristened not as a fortress against foreign threats but as a machine for waging endless war here at home: Democratic cities will become military staging grounds; rules of engagement will be loosened to maximize “lethality”; and militarized police will be given a license to kill their fellow Americans.

This is not the language of defense. It is the language of aggression and occupation.

A standing army on domestic soil was precisely what the Founders feared. They lived under troops quartered in their towns. They knew what happens when government treats its own citizens as a hostile force.

Two centuries later, their fear has become our reality.

Methodically, a war culture has been transplanted from the battlefield abroad to the homeland.

With armored tanks on our streets, SWAT raids treated as routine, and citizens viewed as combatants rather than neighbors with rights, the results are predictable: abuse, eroded liberties, and the slow death of a constitutional republic.

This is the future we warned was coming: every city a potential conflict zone, every protest a pretext for deployment, every citizen a suspect.

Trump’s reckless call to use “dangerous cities” as military training grounds doesn’t just echo this dystopia—it completes the circle.

Under the banner of “war,” the government is giving itself license to treat the American people as the enemy.

And Trump, buoyed by the power of the presidency and his ability to use taxpayer dollars for his own grandiose plans—building ballrooms, hiring thugs with extravagant bonuses for arrests and roundups, erecting detention centers—is now attempting to bribe the military with over $1 trillion in spending in 2026 if only they will march to a dictator’s drum.

By waging endless wars abroad, bringing the instruments of war home, turning police into soldiers, criminalizing dissent, and making peaceful revolution nearly impossible, the government has engineered an environment where domestic violence becomes inevitable.

Be warned: in the future envisioned by the military, we will not be viewed as Republicans or Democrats. Rather, “we the people” will be enemies of the state.

(Source)

I have defined Benjamin Netanyahu as a maniacal madman. I truly believe he is just that. And from my understanding of Holy Writ, I believe him to be a demon possessed maniacal madman.

But what about Donald Trump? Is he a sociopath? Is he criminally insane? And if he is, who would tell us? I believe these are legitimate questions.

We all know that by the middle of Joe Biden’s presidency, he was a wholly demented man. For two years, America did not have a president. But the American people were subjected to constant reassurances that Biden was totally fit—physically and mentally. It was a lie! Democrats denied any incapacitation in Biden, even though they all knew he had lost his mind.

Now, it’s the Republicans’ turn.

It is obvious to every objective person that DONALD TRUMP IS NOT WELL.

Slurred speech, brain freezes, inability to complete sentences, ubiquitous indiscriminate, nonsensical verbal meanderings, fixation with excessive makeup, obvious schizophrenia and an almost inhuman capacity for narcissism are shouting to us that TRUMP IS NOT WELL.

Trump recognizes NO law. He has publicly expressed disdain for the Constitution. He has no respect for Congress or the judiciary. He truly believes that as president he can do anything he wants. He has zero empathy for human life. The precious innocent women, children and babies of Palestine mean absolutely nothing to him. He brags about murdering people on boats in the waters of Latin America that he has no idea who they are. Lawful due process never enters his mind. He deliberately and diabolically sets traps for civilian negotiators to be murdered by Israel.

TRUMP IS NOT WELL.

As with Democrats when Biden was president, Republicans continue to gaslight us and try to impugn or denigrate anyone who sees the obvious and is willing to say something. They are providing the same kind of cover for a madman as did the Democrats for Joe Biden.

NO DIFFERENCE.

Now, Trump is authorizing long-range missiles for Ukraine. He has sent a formidable fleet of warships and invasion forces off the coast of Venezuela. He is sending world war-type warships, men and material to the Middle East. The only reason for such military buildup is that Trump is collaborating with Netanyahu for a major attack against Iran.

Using Tomahawk missiles against Russia is an invitation for direct military conflict between Russia and the United States. A war in Venezuela invites war with China. An all-out war with Iran invites war with China (nuclear power), Russia (nuclear power), Pakistan (nuclear power), North Korea (nuclear power), Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Turkey.

And at the same time, Trump is militarizing civilian law enforcement within the United States and refers to American cities as “the enemy within.”

I tell you: TRUMP IS NOT WELL.

It’s not just Benjamin Netanyahu, President Donald Trump is also declaring war on the United States, its Constitution, its Bill of Rights, its laws, its independence, its liberties, its safety and security and its very existence.

A free America will not likely survive an additional 3¼ years with Donald Trump in the White House.

Reprinted with permission from Chuck Baldwin Live.

The post Benjamin Netanyahu—And Donald Trump—Declares War on the United States appeared first on LewRockwell.

The US has become, in effect, a military guarantor for Qatar. With Trump’s unprecedented Executive Order of September 29, 2025, Washington now “shall regard any armed attack on the territory, sovereignty, or critical infrastructure” of Qatar as a threat to the US, pledging to respond with “military” measures, “if necessary”.

For the first time, with the exception of NATO’s Turkey, the US has formally committed to the defense of a regional partner in the Middle East (not Israel).

Expert Bilal Y. Saab argues that the move is “accidental” in the sense that it appears to have been rushed, even sloppy — but it is no less consequential for being so. The timing, indeed, suggests this military guarantee is less the culmination of long strategic planning, and more a reactive wager — a bold recalibration of US posture toward Qatar and, by extension, the Gulf.

I have long been writing about Qatar’s geopolitical relevance as a kind of magnified “small state” actor, so to speak — a diplomatic playmaker in a volatile region. In May I argued that Trump’s Gulf tour (Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE) — notably excluding Israel — signaled a deliberate attempt to rebalance the intricate enough US-Israel relationship. Back then, I observed that while Trump’s gestures in the Gulf appeared transactional, they also served to subtly remind even Washington’s closest ally (Israel) that it cannot act unchecked.

The Gulf states, with their financial heft and mediation roles (especially in Gaza and sometimes even Ukraine), arguably offer more immediacy and leverage to Trump’s vision than Israel sometimes does. In that light, Qatar’s elevation to de facto protectorate status may be the logical next step in a broader pivot.

To be sure, Qatar is no newcomer to regional behind-the-scenes diplomacy. Already in 2021 I chronicled how the Qatari authorities in Doha, even during the Gulf blockade (2017–2021), maintained back-channels to Iran and Turkey, and later brokered reconciliations between the Gulf states themselves. Qatar’s ability to straddle Riyadh and Tehran, Ankara and Washington, is part of its diplomatic capital. In short, Qatar’ mediation portfolio has earned it outsized influence.

So, what explains Trump’s unprecedented guarantee? Several interlocking dynamics are at play, and the move cannot be reduced to theatrical one-upmanship.

First, the immediate trigger was clearly Israel’s September 9 missile strike on Doha, targeting Hamas operatives during ceasefire talks. The attack killed a Qatari security officer and jolted the diplomatic equilibrium. Netanyahu eventually apologized — urged so by Trump — with a phone call to Qatari Prime Minister bin Abdulrahman. But that was not enough. In short order, Trump signed the executive order, anchoring the apology in power. The guarantee both shores up Qatar’s mediation role (which the White House explicitly supports in the text) and deters Israel from repeat strikes against the Arab country.

Second, this move is emblematic of Trump’s Gulf tilt and his recalibration of Washington’s regional assumptions, especially regarding a reordering of the US–Israel axis. By empowering Qatar so overtly, Trump signals that Gulf states can secure more direct reciprocity from Washington than Israel might expect — a blunt message, but one consistent with his transactional foreign-policy mindset. The calculus goes: if Qatar mediates Gaza, Russia and Ukraine, even Iran channels, then binding it militarily ensures sustained alignment. This is underreported in most commentaries, but thus far the Qatari guarantee works as both shield and leash, so to speak.

Third, it is also a bet on deterrence as diplomacy. By elevating Qatar’s status through formalized defense guarantees, the US seeks to generate risk for any state considering strikes on Doha. That said, Saab’s critique deserves attention: a presidential Executive Order is easily reversible; it lacks congressional buy-in; and it arguably does not really commit the US in practice. Under scrutiny, the credibility of such a guarantee is thus questionable. If Israel bombs again, will the US confront it? If Iran or its proxies attack Doha, will Trump risk American lives? The absence of mutual obligations in the text is a striking omission too.

Fourth, this may be a signal to other Gulf powers eyeing guarantees. Saudi Arabia, in particular, has long sought a US mutual defense pact, especially in connection with normalization with Israel. Yet somehow Qatar got the prize first. Can Washington afford formal commitments to multiple Gulf states? That would be a recipe for strategic overstretch. Be as it may, Qatar becomes the test case in a way — the barometer for whether the US is ready to anchor regional security rather than outsource it.

At bottom, this Trump guarantee does reflect a broader shift: the Gulf has arguably become the center of gravity in Middle East geopolitics, and not just Israel. The United States now seeks to anchor itself more deeply in regional intermediation networks — and it would appear that little old Qatar, ever graceful amid turbulence, is its chosen vehicle.

Yet history reminds us: power is not just declared in paper, but enforced in presence. For this guarantee to be really more than a rhetorical flourish, Washington would need to translate words into posture: joint exercises, missile defenses, etc.

In the end, one should neither dismiss the surprise guarantee as impulsive theatre, nor accept it at face value as a solid treaty. Rather (as is the case with so many other things pertaining to Trump) one can see it as a bold gamble.

In this scenario, this moment  could mark the beginning of a truly new US-Gulf bargain: Qatar as military partner, mediator, and semi-shield — with Washington more tightly bound than ever in the Gulf chessboard. One should also expect further complications arising from an America-Israeli relationship that today is more complex than ever.

Source infobrics.org.

The post Qatar, Not Israel, Now at Center of Trump’s Middle East Strategy? appeared first on LewRockwell.

International Man: Historically, financial markets have often ended in euphoric blow-offs or painful crashes. Do you think today’s environment resembles past periods like the late 1920s, the 1970s, or the dot-com bubble?

Doug Casey: There’s an old saying in the market: “Money makes the mare run.”

The markets have tended to move much more radically since the Federal Reserve, the creator of money, was itself created. For generations, we’ve had a whole class of market savants, known as Fed watchers, who try to second-guess what Fed bureaucrats are going to do with interest rates, bank reserves, and money creation, because they realize that those things translate into market action.

Because of the Fed’s increasing importance, you can expect more radical moves than ever in the markets. Compare it to an elevator going up and down with a lunatic at the controls—which impresses me as a good analogy.

International Man: Some argue we could see a final, euphoric rally—a “melt-up”—before any collapse. What would need to happen for that to play out?

Doug Casey: A melt-up is not unlikely. Trump is actively trying to control the Fed by replacing its governors with sycophants who see things the way he does. In other words, print lots of money and manipulate for low rates. Trump wants the Fed to do what he tells them, despite the Fed’s theoretical independence. Of course, Fed independence has always been a fiction. But if he succeeds in dropping the pretense, we can count on a genuinely wild and crazy monetary policy.

The odds of a melt-up are high based on that, despite some extremely shaky and unsound fundamentals. Frankly, the government almost has no choice but to keep printing and suppressing interest rates. If they don’t, the economy is likely to have a catastrophic, deflationary collapse. They want to avoid that at any cost.

International Man: If there is a melt-up, do you see it being concentrated in specific sectors like tech, AI, or commodities, or across the broader market?

Doug Casey: By every parameter, the market is more overvalued now than ever before in history. How you play it depends a lot on your view of history, your own psychology, and your own skill set. But right now, mining stocks and energy stocks are super cheap.

Mining stocks are particularly interesting. They’ve been in a quiet bull market this year, starting from extremely low levels. Many of the smaller, obscure stocks have tripled and quadrupled, completely under the radar. Who knows, or cares, what companies with market caps of, literally, a few million dollars do? Even if they go up a thousand times from here, they still only be “small caps,” too tiny for major institutions to buy. Some of the big miners have gone up 50% or even doubled. Despite that, they’re still close to the cheapest levels they’ve ever been in history.

I’ve always been friendly toward small mining stocks for reasons I’ve explained in the past. But especially now, since they’re at the beginning of a gigantic bull market. The market hates energy stocks as well right now, and they’re the other place to be. Many have dividends—depending on whether we’re talking oil, gas, coal, or uranium—of up to 10% or 15%.

The way I see it, the stock bubble is headed there. Should you stay in tech, which has been in a humongous, unparalleled bull market for what seems like forever? There’s another old market dictum: “High tech, big wreck.” It’s especially true when the whole world is concentrating on it. These stocks are, to use a patented Trumpism, “at levels you can’t believe, that nobody’s ever seen before.”

International Man: On the other hand, what do you see as the biggest triggers for a market melt-down? Debt, geopolitical risk, currency crisis?

Doug Casey: You just named the Trifecta of the next financial panic.

Debt is created directly and indirectly through the Federal Reserve, most importantly with the reserve requirements of the commercial banking system. A sound banking system would operate on 100% reserves. A dollar someone deposits for 3% might be lent for 6% for a one-year term. End of story. In today’s world, where money can be created by the banks, a dollar can be lent, redeposited, and used as a reserve to create more money ad infinitum. It’s a daisy chain based on nothing. That’s on top of the distinction between time deposits and demand deposits being totally lost.

Unlike the 1929 collapse, there’s now a huge amount of mortgage, automobile, credit card, and student loan debt. None of these things were problems back in the late 1920s. Mortgages were typically for five years. There were no student loans. Cars were bought with cash. Credit cards didn’t exist.

And on top of that, add government debt, which was trivial back then. Debt is the major risk for a deflationary credit collapse. If anybody can’t pay, neither can the next guy. Down go the dominoes…

Number two: geopolitical risk. The big current catalyst is tariffs. Bear in mind that the amount of trade in the world today—in both relative and absolute terms—is vastly greater than it was pre-1929. The Smoot-Hawley tariffs made imports too expensive for Americans. Since the Europeans couldn’t sell to us, they couldn’t afford to buy from us. The result was corporate bankruptcies and massive unemployment. That compounded the deflationary debt collapse. It’s much more serious now than it was pre-1929.

We should, rather obviously, include war as a geopolitical risk. The Ukraine war isn’t over by any means. In fact, it’s clear that Europe, idiotically, is gearing up for a major war against Russia. The Israel-Iran war isn’t over, nor is the Israel-Palestine war. That wouldn’t matter, except that the US treats Israel as the 51st state. And maybe we’ll see some problems with Qatar, whose security the US has just guaranteed—oddly, just when nuclear-armed Pakistan is guaranteeing the security of Saudi Arabia. We have lots of overlapping treaty obligations, similar to what we saw before World War I. The same thing could happen again.

In addition, Trump is looking to launch an unprovoked attack and perhaps an invasion of Venezuela. The geopolitical risk today looks extraordinarily high, as the US looks for new tar babies to punch around the world.

Number three: the currency. The whole world sees the dollar as a hot potato; it’s an unsafe, depreciating asset. As the rest of the world uses the dollar less and less, for all the reasons we’ve covered in the past, it will lose value rapidly. Remember, the dollar, not soybeans or Boeings, is by far our largest export, and greatest liability. At some point, trillions of offshore dollars will come home to buy title to American assets, and that will create a giant political problem. It’ll be bad for everything—except the price of gold.

International Man: For the everyday investor who doesn’t have access to complex strategies, what should they be doing right now to prepare?

Doug Casey: This question merits a book for an answer. But what stands out to me right now is that everybody and his dog is in the stock market. And unbelievably, over a third of the stocks traded today are ETFs. Of every description, even ETFs on just one stock, using debt or options to internally leverage the moves in that stock. While they can be convenient, ETFs amount to a scam for Wall Street to siphon an additional 1% or so of fees per year out of the markets. Their existence is further proof of how overfinancialized the US economy is.

Reprinted with permission from International Man.

The post Coming Melt-Up or Meltdown—and How To Protect Yourself appeared first on LewRockwell.

The BLS has come out with another huge rug-pull on its nonfarm payroll count. And also, predictably, this has triggered loud blathering from both Wall Street and the White House on behalf of exactly the wrong conclusion.

To wit, we don’t need any more Fed rate cuts! And we don’t need a new eruption of money-printing, either, because the real cost of debt is already dirt cheap.

For instance, here is the inflation-adjusted Fed funds rate over the last four decades:

Since the turn of the century, the geniuses on the FOMC have pegged the real Fed Funds Rate at negative levels nearly 80% of the time. And even as of July 2025—three years after allegedly pivoting to inflation-fighting—the real Fed funds rate is only positive by 110 basis points. That’s far below real rates of 250 to 500 basis points, which prevailed before Greenspan went all in on money-printing in response to the dot-com bust.

Still, based on the blatant noise in the BLS’s “useless” jobs numbers, as they were described by even JD Vance, the rate cut chorus implies that the current skinny 110 basis points of positive return to savers and depositors is way too much.

Supposedly, the dire economic weakness implied by the BLS error confession means that the real cost of overnight money for gambling and other short-term purposes should be shoved back below the zero bound yet again in order to keep the economy from tumbling into the recessionary drink.

To be sure, another recessionary spell may well be underway. But for crying out loud—it’s not due to high interest rates. To the contrary, it is the easy-money fostered mountain of public and private debt—now totaling $103 trillion—that has ground economic expansion to a halt.

And we do mean a near halt. Industrial production, for instance, has been essentially flatlining since Q2 2023.

The truth is, the Fed’s elephantine balance sheet and interest rate-pegging regime are also still fueling dangerous financial bubbles and rampant speculation.

The Fed’s interest rate repression has so distorted the debt markets, in fact, that it has enabled the Wall Street nincompoop running the US Treasury to buy back tens of billions of long-term US Treasury bonds, of all things, and finance these purchases by issuing T-bills into the phony FOMC-controlled short-term money market.

What unfathomable insanity. There is no other way to put it.

So, yes, the good folks at the BLS have disappeared another 911,000 jobs for the year ending in March 2025. But so what?

After all, there is nothing new about the agency’s gross incompetence, given that this latest rug pull comes on top of the 818,000 jobs the BLS disappeared for the year ending March 2024 and the 306,000 jobs for the year ending March 2023 that also got a “just kidding” markdown. That’s 2.035 million jobs gone up in revisionary smoke during the last 36 months in the context of 12 material downward benchmark revisions in the last 20 years (versus only four material upward revisions).

Obviously, a lot more people should be fired than the hapless BLS commissioner who got canned by Trump a while back.

To wit, what’s not fit for purpose here isn’t merely the numbers crunchers at the BLS, but the 12-person monetary politburo at the FOMC, which has been foolish enough to make the monthly nonfarm payroll survey the be-all-and-end-all of the “incoming data” by which they supposedly macro-manage the entire $30 trillion US economy.

Reprinted with permission from David Stockman’s Contra Corner.

The post A Nation Managed by Misreads: Payroll Revisions, Rate Suppression, and the Debt Crisis appeared first on LewRockwell.

Many individuals I’ve spoken to believe Peter Marks is the government official most directly responsible for the entire COVID catastrophe, and those I know who directly interacted with him despise him. For that reason, six months ago, I published a detailed exposé of his conduct throughout the pandemic, both to highlight the systemic issues within our healthcare bureaucracy that must be fixed and to disincentivize other health officials from following in his footsteps. Since that time:

• Despite immense industry pushback, he was replaced with MAHA appointee Vinay Prasad

• Marks has made statements on the national media which display either a profound degree of ignorance of vaccines or a cult-like devotion to them, such as telling CBS the MMR vaccine absolutely does not cause encephalitis—despite this specific injury being one of the only vaccine injuries the Federal Government acknowledged as real and eligible for compensation when it created the the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986.
Note: the primary reason DMSO (a safe and affordable substance with remarkable therapeutic applications against a wide range of “incurable” ailments) never entered mainstream medical practice was because the FDA, feeling DMSO’s broad therapeutic potential threatened their control of American medicine, waged a multi-decade war against it despite widespread opposition from the public, Congressmen, scientists and physicians across the country. One journalist who interviewed the successive FDA commissioners throughout this saga was struck by how “lacking [they were] in solid information about the most spectacular and controversial drug of our time” and how often they simply quoted nonsensical misinformation the FDA had previously put out about the drug without a basic understanding of it—something I would argue also applies to Peter Marks.

• Yesterday, it was announced that Peter Marks had started working with Eli Lilly, where he will oversee molecule discovery and infectious diseases at Lilly. While his salary has not been publicly announced, the AI systems I queried said given the existing precedent, he would likely get 2-6 million this year (a big upgrade from his roughly $200,000.00 FDA salary)—and possibly much more (e.g. 10-15 million).

This understandably enraged the vaccine injured parties who directly interacted with Marks over the last four years, so I felt it was important to revisit exactly what Marks did and discuss the broader revolving door in regulatory medicine.

Note: last year, the FDA approved Eli Lilly’s anti-amyloid monoclonal antibody for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease (granting the application Fast Track, Priority Review, and Breakthrough Therapy designations). I showed in last weekend’s article, that these costly drugs do close to nothing (they may slightly slow the progression of Alzheimer’s disease) while simultaneously creating a variety of severe symptoms including giving over a quarter of recipients brain bleeds and brain swelling—yet remarkably, safer and much more effective Alzhemier’s therapies have languished in obscurity.

Sociopathic Structuring

A frequent criticism of corporations (which I believe also applies to governmental bureaucracies) is that their organizational structure encourages sociopathic behavior. This is because members of these entities are shielded from legal or personal accountability for their actions, with any wrongdoings being attributed to the corporation as a whole. In contrast, the main form of accountability most members face is the pressure to advance the institution’s mission (e.g., make more money), leading to the proliferation of increasingly unethical methods to achieve that goal.

To illustrate, consider this quote from Peter Rost, a former executive at Pfizer and one of the few pharmaceutical leaders to speak out against the industry:

It is scary how many similarities there are between this industry and the mob. The mob makes obscene amounts of money, as does this industry. The side effects of organized crime are killings and deaths, and the side effects are the same in this industry. The mob bribes politicians and others, and so does the drug industry … The difference is, all these people in the drug industry look upon themselves – well, I’d say 99 percent, anyway – look upon themselves as law-abiding citizens, not as citizens who would ever rob a bank … However, when they get together as a group and manage these corporations, something seems to happen … to otherwise good citizens when they are part of a corporation. It’s almost like when you have war atrocities; people do things they don’t think they’re capable of. When you’re in a group, people can do things they otherwise wouldn’t, because the group can validate what you’re doing as okay.

In looking through what went awry with the COVID-19 response, while Fauci was commonly blamed for all that went amiss, I kept running into another less-known individual who, while hidden within the FDA bureaucracy, I believe was directly responsible for many of the mishaps that happened

This was because Peter Marks was:

•The primary person who covered up the reports of COVID vaccine injuries (and instead repeatedly told the world they were “safe and effective”).

•Kept on pushing the FDA’s chief vaccine scientists (who were very pro-vaccine) to accelerate and condense the approval timelines for the COVID vaccines (as those approvals were needed to legally implement Biden’s vaccine and booster mandates). Eventually, Gruber and Krause reported their were no more corners they could cut to further accelerate the COVID vaccine approvals, at which point they were removed from the COVID vaccine approval process and Marks took it over (at which point the unjustifiable approvals and mandates quickly followed).

As such, I felt Marks should not be in the agency and put together a detailed summary of his gross malfeasance at the FDA throughout COVID-19 in the hopes his abhorrent conduct could become widely known. Shortly after, Marks announced his resignation in a spiteful letter that concluded with:

I was willing to work to address the Secretary’s concerns regarding vaccine safety and transparency…However, it has become clear that truth and transparency are not
desired by the Secretary, but rather he wishes subservient confirmation of his misinformation and lies.

This, in turn, prompted Robert Redfield (Trump’s 2018-2021 CDC director) to make a Twitter account to state:

Secretary Kennedy and Commissioner MartyMakary have the responsibility to build their own team at the FDA to move our nation forward. It was extremely disappointing to see Dr Peter Marks’ vindictive comments towards Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. in his resignation letter. I firmly believe RFK will be the most consequential Health Secretary in our nation’s history.

Note: Redfield, to my knowledge, is the only CDC director who went into private practice (he treats long COVID) after leaving the CDC (whereas in contrast most directors accept lucrative or prestigious positions following their tenure).

Following Mark’s resignation (which many news outlets claimed was forced), many news outlets attempted to paint him as saint and a victim of RFK’s “war against science”

This gushing coverage of Marks, in turn, I would argue was due to his background. Specifically:

• Prior to joining the FDA, Marks was an academic hematologist and oncologist with an “average and unimpressive publication history” (none of which related to vaccines, but one of which extensively discussed the global need for fully informed consent and stated “those that have only pretended to move [towards informed consent] will have the greatest difficulty”).

• Prior to joining the FDA, he’d also worked for several years the pharmaceutical industry (although oddly, no information exists online as to which companies he worked for—although one was likely Novartis).

• While at the FDA, he prioritized pushing through extremely expensive gene therapies (22 in total—most of which cost over half a million dollars), including some highly questionable ones (e.g., he overruled three FDA review teams and two top officials to push through a failed muscular dystrophy treatment which subsequently killed a patient).
Note: Robert Malone recently showed that Peter Marks was not qualified to be a senior regulator and had minimal knowledge or background in molecular biology, immunology or vaccinology (and worse still, repeatedly chose to overrule the FDA scientists who did).

• Marks was seen as a global leader in commercializing this field (e.g., he helped direct Germany’s national program to develop gene therapies, his resignation shook the entire sector, and following his resignation, large drops occurred in the stocks of key gene therapy companies).

Fake Empathy

Roughly a century ago, a new industry which combined propaganda, marketing and the emerging science of psychology was created by Freud’s nephew and rapidly took off because of how effectively it shifted public opinion. Since that time Public Relations (PR) has been continuously refined and this invisible industry has gradually gained a monopoly over pubic discourse and gotten a stranglehold on our society.

Since so many backwards policies (e.g., medical ones) originate from PR campaigns, I’ve thus tried to expose the common tactics this industry uses (e.g., having “experts” spam a persuasive soundbite across every media platform), as when you can’t see it, those tactics exert a powerful subconscious pull on the listener, but once you are able to see them, they become immensely transparent and you begin to see through so many of the lies that are fed to us.

Note: I have long found it immensely aggravating how often public figures (e.g., politicians) will successfully repeat PR lines you can tell they clearly do not believe what they are saying as there is no conviction behind their words and frequently they will subsequently say or do things which clearly demonstrate they did not mean what they’d said at the time). Likewise, I have always greatly disliked how when corporations do something evil and get caught, and it will puts out a statement which begins with “we are deeply saddened by …” and then somehow are absolved of their culpability for what happened

In my eyes, one of the most critical points to understand about PR is that the industry has made it much easier (and cheaper) to create a positive perception by paying a PR firm to do that than it is to earn the positive perception through one’s actions. Similarly, public policy has shifted towards policies being determined by whether or not a PR firm can sell them to the public rather than if the electorate supports them.

Note: much of the PR apparatus depends upon having a total monopoly over information (so that nothing can challenge the absurd narratives millions are spent to make be entrenched in our society). One of most profound shifts in our society has been the ability of information to freely diffuse across social media, thereby breaking the monopoly on truth which used to be afforded to those PR campaigns and allow contrary narratives which challenge the absurdity of many of these PR campaigns to rapidly disseminate and dispel those campaigns (e.g., I’ve had numerous times where this Substack successful dispelled a multi-million dollar propaganda campaign and since I am just one of many people doing that, it’s not financially feasible for traditional PR campaigns to continue to control the narrative).

Within medicine, one of the most common complaints patients have is that their doctors “don’t show empathy” towards them—a situation I believe ultimately results from the fact doctors have so little time with all the patients they see that the fundamental human capacity to be present to another’s experience gets overloaded and they instead default to interacting with their patient’s through an abstract script to get through the day.

In turn, while I sometimes come across individuals (e.g., doctors or politicians) who have the capacity to quickly be present to large numbers of people, normally the only viable solution to this problem is to spend more time with each person. Unfortunately, the current insurance payment scheme incentivizes those short visits (which I believe is incredibly shortsighted as many chronic issues can only be solved with longer visits that cost much less than the innumerable short visits that take their place).

As such, the medical industry chose to address this lack of empathy not by giving patients what they wanted (a doctor they felt connected to) but rather by creating the facade of empathy. This for example was accomplished by training medical students to robotically repeat “empathy statements” (e.g., repeating back what the patient said or stating “I’m sorry to hear that”), as in many cases, that indeed works.

Note: due to how profitable medical students are, there has been a proliferation of medical schools which has required gradually dropping the standards for admission (as our declining education standards has led to a lack of qualified college graduates). Because of this, the profession recently relaxed some of core graduation requirements such as their first board exams being switched to pass/fail and the pass/fail in-person basic assessment of clinical skills (where physician “empathy” was evaluated) being permanently cancelled due to COVID social distancing.

Most recently, I saw this on display in a viral video where a popular YouTube doctor (who’s taken a lot of pharmaceutical money) “debated 20 anti-vaxxers” and then received many variants of these two responses:

• “I am deeply impressed by the incredible empathy and compassion Dr. Mike gave these people.”

• “I cannot believe how moronic and misinformed those people were; Dr. Mike is a saint for talking to them the way he did.”

Conversely, after I watched it the following points jumped out at me:

1. Many of the people selected to appear challenged vaccination by promoting extreme and hard to defend views, thereby making it possible to make viral clips of their statements to smear all criticism of vaccines (whereas in contrast individuals with extensive familiarity on many of the topics were not invited so that Dr. Mike’s “expertise” could go unchallenged).

2. His responses typically were a mixture of standard vaccine talking points (e.g, all evidence of vaccine injury presented to him did not count because “correlation is not causation”) followed by “empathetic” statements.

3. Because of the smooth hypnotic pace he used, false statements that went unchallenged were peppered in such as:

• He asserted VAERS overreports vaccine injuries when in reality less than 1% of injuries make it into VAERS (as the government never wanted a publicly available injury database and once a law forced its creation, the government has worked for decades to undermine VAERS).

• He “compassionately” claimed the Federal vaccine injury compensation program existed to help individuals injured by vaccines and that they could sue a vaccine manufacturer if they were unsatisfied with the verdict—when in reality it is nearly impossible to have most injuries be acknowledged by that program and even harder to be able to sue a manufacturer outside of it).

• He argued that “vaccine immunity is superior to natural immunity” (which is false as vaccine immunity often creates a very narrow immunity pathogens rapidly evolve a resistance to). Then as people started to point that out, he pivoted to stating “vaccines do not put you at risk of infection like an actual infection so they are superior due to the lower risk entailed in become immune” and was not called out for moving the goalpost from efficacy to safety.
Note: there is also strong evidence vaccine side effects are often much greater than those from a natural infection (best demonstrated by how many more people have permanent complications from the vaccines than a COVID infection.

In short, his actions were a classic example of the (incredibly cruel) gaslighting many patients experience when, after being injured by a pharmaceutical, they are told the injury is entirely in their head. In some cases that’s done in a rude and confrontational way, but in many others, it’s instead done in a deceptive and compassionate manner which still traps you in the same box.

Note: one noteworthy fact about this doctor is that in addition to “combating misinformation” throughout COVID, he also used his large platform to repeatedly advocate for social distancing and mask wearing—but like many other proponents of that doctrine, subsequently got caught flagrantly violating it (in his case at his birthday party where he was maskless and tightly packed amongst women he’d invited—after which he essentially refused to apologize for his hypocrisy).

Read the Whole Article

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Israel continued to hammer Gaza with military explosives on Thursday despite the announcement of the first stages of a ceasefire agreement with Hamas.

Israel always does this. When normal people get a ceasefire agreement they think “Good, this means we can finally stop fighting and killing.” Whenever Israelis get a ceasefire agreement they go, “This means we have to hurry up and kill as many people as possible before it takes effect.”

But it does appear that the killing and abuse will at least diminish for a time, which is an objectively good thing no matter how you slice it.

The first stages of the agreement reportedly entail a partial withdrawal of IDF troops, Israel’s starvation blockade officially ending, humanitarian aid being allowed into the enclave, and both Israel and Hamas releasing captives and stopping the fighting.

Drop Site News reports that according to Hamas sources, subsequent ceasefire phases will entail “No surrender, no disarming, no mass exile, but most of all a permanent end to the war.”

SCOOP: this is the agreement document between Israel and Hamas under the title “Comprehensive End to the Gaza War” – including the signature of the mediators. More details of my story – at @kann_news pic.twitter.com/1qGPGFck7q

— Gili Cohen (@gilicohen10) October 9, 2025

It remains to be seen if there will be any movement toward a lasting ceasefire beyond the first stage. When an agreement was reached late last year it never made it beyond the first phase and then the Trumpanyahu administration declared a siege and resumed the killing.

The far right members of the Netanyahu regime certainly seem like they don’t expect the ceasefire to hold.

Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said in a statement that Israel has a “tremendous responsibility to ensure that this is not, God forbid, a deal of ‘hostages in exchange for stopping the war,’ as Hamas thinks and boasts,” and that “immediately after the hostages return home, the State of Israel will continue to strive with all its might for the true eradication of Hamas and the genuine disarmament of Gaza.”

Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir issued similar remarks, saying that he and his Jewish Power party will use their leverage to dismantle the Netanyahu government if it “allows the continued existence of Hamas rule in Gaza.”

Netanyahu himself has been studiously avoiding any talk of commitment to a lasting ceasefire, mostly limiting his public statements to the significance of freeing Israeli hostages.

Notice how it doesn’t say words like “ceasefire,” “withdrawal,” or “end of war.” pic.twitter.com/HqSWje4313

— Assal Rad (@AssalRad) October 9, 2025

So there’s not a whole lot to feel optimistic about here. If the killing does stop on a lasting basis, it will be a pleasant surprise.

If it does, we can only surmise that the US and Israel calculated that the worldwide PR crisis created by the genocide was getting too severe to sustain, which would be a win for all of us. Trump has gone on record to say that “Bibi took it very far and Israel lost a lot of support in the world. Now I am gonna get all that support back.”

Either that, or they calculated that they’re going to need all their firepower for a planned war with Iran. Which would of course be terrible for everyone.

We shall see. For now at least it will be nice for everyone to have a breather. If things really do calm down I’m going to do something I’ve never done in my entire writing career and try to take a full weekend off work to decompress. Focusing on a live-streamed genocide for two years takes a toll on the mind and body.

Here’s hoping for a better future.

_____________

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The post The Ceasefire appeared first on LewRockwell.

The Kremlin is urging American foreign-policy makers not to give Ukraine long-range Tomahawk missiles it can use to strike deep within the Motherland, pointing out this would directly implicate the U.S. Stateside noninterventionists worry their country may be catapulted into another hot war.

Giving Kiev missiles with a range of up to 1,500 miles will lead “to a new serious stage of escalation of the Ukrainian crisis,” said Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova on Wednesday. Moreover, it “will not just send the confrontation into a downward spiral, but also cause irreparable damage to Russian-US relations,” since the missiles’ use is “simply impossible without the direct involvement of the US military.” She added that this would be a shame, especially since the two sides “have just begun to display certain elements indicating the resumption of a bilateral dialogue.”

According to reports from early this month, somebody with President Donald Trump’s ear convinced him that providing Ukraine with weapons and intelligence to strike inside Russia is a good idea. Trump personally signed off on the decision, per The Wall Street Journal. The rationale is that hitting Russia where it truly hurts, its energy infrastructure, will cripple its ability to fund the war. Energy, particularly gas and oil, is Russia’s primary revenue generator. India and China are its main clients. While Europe has significantly decreased its dependence on Russian energy, some analysis indicate that India and China have more than made up for those losses over the last few years. At the same time, the Ukrainians’ swarm of drone attacks on Russian oil refineries appear to be somewhat effective. The Russians are now importing gasoline from their neighbor and ally Belarus, The Moscow Times admits.

Trump the Peacemaker?

Trump is once again frustrated with the Kremlin. Despite holding several talks with and rolling out the red carpet in Alaska for Russian head of state Vladimir Putin, the war rages as intensely as it ever has. The two sides are lobbing drones and missiles at each other nonstop.

Trump insists his goal is to foster peace. His series of talks with the leaders of both nations, his hitherto refusal to level more sanctions against Russia, despite persistent pressure from American and European warhawks to do so, and his record of peace-brokering in other conflicts (news is breaking that his involvement has helped secure the release of the remaining Israeli hostages) suggest the president genuinely seeks peace. But this latest decision, along with his refusal to completely halt all American aid to Ukraine, casts some doubt.

Before Trump met Putin in Alaska, Ukraine had warmed up to the idea of giving up territory, or “land swapping,” as Trump called it, particularly the area which is already occupied by Russia and is overwhelmingly ethnically Russian. But there has been no indication that they’re willing to give up on seeking membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). This, the Russians have consistently contended, is the primary “root cause” of the war. As we have pointed out in several previous reports, this Russian grievance is legitimate.

Noninterventionists like Ron Paul and retired General Michael Flynn have criticized continued U.S. involvement in this war. Another group of people who would likely have opposed how the Trump administration is dealing with this situation are America’s wise early leaders.

The Founders on Foreign Folly

In our June 23, 2025 print issue, we republished an older article titled “Minding Our Own Business” in which we reminded readers of what three early American presidents thought about U.S. meddling abroad.

George Washington saw Europe as a region full of drama that does us no good to be ensnared in:

Europe has a set of primary interests, which to us have none, or a very remote relation. Hence, she must be engaged in frequent controversies, the causes of which are essentially foreign to our concerns…. Why quit our own to stand upon foreign ground? Why, by interweaving our destiny with that of any part of Europe, entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils of European ambition, rivalship, interest, humor, or caprice? It is our true policy to steer clear of any permanent alliance with any portion of the foreign world.

Then there’s the famous maxim from John Quincy Adams about the  problem with going half a world away to hunt down dragons:

America goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own…. She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication in all wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standards of freedom.

And for those who remain unconvinced, here is what the author of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson, had to say about getting involved in foreign entanglements:

Our first and fundamental maxim should be, never to entangle ourselves in the broils of Europe; our second, never to suffer Europe to intermeddle with cis-Atlantic affairs. America, North and South, has a set of interests distinct from those of Europe…. She should therefore have a system of her own, separate and apart from that of Europe.

In that same TNA article, we cited the prophetic words of essayist William Graham Sumner. Writing in regard to the Spanish-American War, Sumner predicted that a dangerous precedent had been set:

[E]xpansion and imperialism are at war with the best traditions, principles, and interests of the American people, and they will plunge us into a network of difficult problems and political perils…. The people … who now want us to break out, warn us against the terrors of “isolation.” Our ancestors all came here to isolate themselves from the social burdens and inherited errors of the old world…. What we are doing is that we are abandoning this blessed isolation to run after a share in the trouble.

This article was originally published on The New American.

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The reason war archives are withheld from publication for years after the war is over is that time is needed for court historians to instill in the minds of the population that the official narrative is correct and that any deviation from the official narrative is a conspiracy theory. The claim that the withholding of the actual facts is a national security matter is a complete lie. The war is over. The enemy is defeated. No “national security” is any longer involved.  But the facts have to be suppressed until a false explanation can prevail.

That Americans have swallowed false narratives time and again raises the question whether the American population is intelligent.

Recently I had a conversation with a normal Republican.  The media, which is hostile to Republicans, has nevertheless successfully set in stone that Putin and Russia are evil enemies seeking our destruction. When I explained the actual facts, he said that we had different opinions. In other words, facts are not facts. They are just opinions. So the official explanation has the same weight as the facts.

The media indoctrinated Americans that Putin invaded Ukraine as the opening gun of reestablishing the Soviet Empire. This has been the Western propaganda, and it has succeeded in preventing any focus on what the real issue is.

As I have stressed, when the real issue cannot be acknowledged, the opportunity for more misinformation is created, and war results from the inability to see clearly enough to make good decisions.

When facts are overwhelmed by propaganda,  it guarantees the failure of civilization.

The post War Is Our Future appeared first on LewRockwell.

The President of the Unites States Donald Trump had demanded to be given the Noble Peace Price. But following that demand would have been disastrous for the already blemished prestige of the Noble. The government of Norway, which strongly influences the decisions of the Nobel Peace Price committee, was in a pickle:

With hours to go until the announcement of this year’s Nobel peace prize, Norwegian politicians were steeling themselves for potential repercussions to US-Norway relations if it is not awarded to Donald Trump.
…
Mr Trump has long been outspoken about his belief that he should be awarded the peace prize, an honour previously bestowed on one of his presidential predecessors, Barack Obama, in 2009 for his “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples”.

In July, Mr Trump reportedly called Jens Stoltenberg, Norway’s finance minister and the former Nato secretary general, to ask about the Nobel prize.
…
The newspaper columnist and analyst Harald Stanghelle speculated that retribution from Mr Trump – if it were to come – could take the form of tariffs, demands for higher Nato contributions or even declaring Norway an enemy.

After some talks behind the scenes it was decided to give the price to a different person than Trump but with the very obvious intent to also satisfy Trump by furthering a major foreign policy aim of his:

The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded Friday to Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado who lives in hiding after attempting to run against President Nicolás Maduro.

Machado, 58, was recognized for keeping “the flame of democracy burning amidst a growing darkness” and “ever-expanding authoritarianism in Venezuela.”
…
She leads the Vente Venezuela opposition party, but was blocked from running as the nation’s president and expelled from office in 2014. She now lives in hiding and faces “serious threats against her life,” the Norwegian Nobel Committee said.

The Trump administration has long aimed at ousting Nicolas Maduro, the socialist leader of Venezuela. It has positioned its military assets around the country and is planing from regime change under false pretense:

Shortly after taking office, Trump declared Tren de Aragua to be a foreign terrorist organization that had “flooded the United States with deadly drugs, violent criminals, and vicious gangs.” In July, the president ordered the Pentagon to target certain Latin American drug cartels. By August, there were eight naval vessels—including destroyers, a cruiser, and a littoral-combat ship—operating in the Caribbean Sea. By September, the first of four boats had been struck, and 21 alleged drug traffickers have now been killed. Last week, the administration sent a confidential notice to Congress signaling its intent to carry out more strikes. The campaign could extend inside Venezuelan territorial waters or include drone strikes inside its land borders, defense officials told us.
…
But it is far from clear that the ties between Maduro’s government and Tren de Aragua are as extensive as the Trump administration has suggested, or that they exist at all. Ronna Risquez, author of the book El Tren De Aragua, told us there was “no evidence” that Maduro leads gang or drug-smuggling operations; an internal memo from the U.S. National Intelligence Council arrived at a similar conclusion. It’s also not clear that Venezuelan drug operations, centralized or otherwise, are significant enough to merit the country being singled out as a threat to American lives. Venezuela is not a major cocaine or fentanyl producer. And even though most of the world’s cocaine grows in neighboring Colombia, Venezuela is also not a major transit hub.

Trump’s ‘anti-narco terrorist’ campaign is clearly aimed at regime change. This despite extensive offers by the Venezuelan government to allow the U.S. to profit from Venezuelan riches (archived):

Venezuelan officials, hoping to end their country’s clash with the United States, offered the Trump administration a dominant stake in Venezuela’s oil and other mineral wealth in discussions that lasted for months, according to multiple people close to the talks.

The far-reaching offer remained on the table as the Trump administration called the government of President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela a “narco-terror cartel,” amassed warships in the Caribbean and began blowing up boats that American officials say were carrying drugs from Venezuela.

Under a deal discussed between a senior U.S. official and Mr. Maduro’s top aides, the Venezuelan strongman offered to open up all existing and future oil and gold projects to American companies, give preferential contracts to American businesses, reverse the flow of Venezuelan oil exports from China to the United States, and slash his country’s energy and mining contracts with Chinese, Iranian and Russian firms.

That offer wasn’t enough for a greedy Trump:

The Trump administration ended up rebuffing Mr. Maduro’s economic concessions and cut off diplomacy with Venezuela last week. The move effectively killed the deal, at least for now, the people close to the discussion said.

The Trump administration did away with generous offer because it is confident that its plans for regime change will achieve a total domination over Venezuela.

The new Noble Peace Price laureate, María Corina Machado, plays a big role those plans.

Who is that lady you might ask. In July 2024 the NY Times published a friendly portrait of her (archived):

Ms. Machado, a conservative former member of the national assembly once rejected by her own colleagues, has not only corralled Venezuela’s fractious opposition behind her, but has also captivated a broad swath of the electorate with a promise for sweeping government change.
…
If the opposition wins, Mr. González, 74, will be president. But from Washington to Caracas, everyone understands that Ms. Machado is the driving force behind the movement.
…
She became a political activist in 2002, helping to found a voter rights group, Súmate, that eventually led a failed effort to recall Mr. Chávez. She was a darling of Washington — the U.S. government provided financial aid to Súmate — and became one of Mr. Chávez’s most detested adversaries.

But it wasn’t just the government that loathed her. Among colleagues in the opposition, she was often viewed as too conservative, too confrontational and too “sifrina” — Venezuelan for “snobbishly high class” — to become the movement’s leader.

She has said that the politician she most admires is Margaret Thatcher, the conservative icon known for her stubbornness and fealty to the free market. And Ms. Machado has long supported privatizing PDVSA, the state oil company, a move other opposition leaders say would put Venezuela’s most valuable resource in the hands of a few.

Machado, while on the U.S. payroll, was involved in a 2002 military coup attempt in Caracas:

Questions still surround Ms. Machado’s actions in 2002, when dissident military officers and opposition figures led a short-lived coup meant to oust Mr. Chávez. Ms. Machado was at the presidential palace during the installation of a new president, Pedro Carmona.

In the 2005 interview with The Times, Ms. Machado insisted that she and her mother were in the palace that day only to visit Mr. Carmona’s wife, a family friend — not to support the coup.

More recently, in a 2019 interview with the BBC, Ms. Machado called on “Western democracies” to understand that Mr. Maduro would only leave power “in the face of a credible, imminent and severe threat of the use of force.”

Machado even asked the Zionist war criminal Benjamin Netanyahoo for military support in a coup (edited machine translation) :

María Corina Machado asked the prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, a military intervention in Venezuela, through a document posted on its social network X in 2018.
…
Machado described the military intervention of “power and influence” against the Venezuelan government.

“Today sending a letter to Mauricio Macri, President of Argentina, and to Netanyahu, Prime Minister of Israel, to ask them to apply their strength and influence to advance the dismantling of the criminal regime in Venezuela, intimately linked to drug trafficking and terrorism,” she wrote.

In addition, the document points out that Machado was “convinced that the international community, according to the doctrine of the responsibility to protect, is called to give Venezuelans the support needed to generate the change,” a change of government.

Machado is still in cahoots with  (and likely still payed by) the U.S. to further regime change in Venezuela (archived):

[U.S. Secretary of State] Rubio met with five opposition figures in May who secretly fled to the United States in what he called a “precise operation.” He has praised the opposition leader, María Corina Machado, whom he called by her nickname, the “Venezuelan Iron Lady,” in a tribute this year.
…
Pedro Urruchurtu, an adviser to Ms. Machado, said in an interview that the opposition had developed a plan for the first 100 hours after Mr. Maduro’s ouster that would involve a transfer of power to Edmundo González, who ran for president against Mr. Maduro last year.
…
“What we’re talking about is an operation to dismantle a criminal structure, and that includes a series of actions and tools,” Mr. Urruchurtu said, adding: “It has to be done with the use of force, because otherwise it wouldn’t be possible to defeat a regime like the one we’re facing.”

The opposition’s plans include persuading other governments to take diplomatic, financial, intelligence and law enforcement actions, he said.

To recap – the Noble Peace Price committee is giving the price to an opposition politician in South America who is on the payroll of the U.S. government and has been involved in previous military coups attempts in her country. Her advisor is arguing for the use force to overthrow the government. Ms. Machado’s plan is to the sell out whatever Venezuelans have to the foreign empire that pays her.

The Noble Committee and Norway may, for now, have saved themselves from Trump’s wrath but the decision to award the price to Ms. Machado is another huge blemish to its record.

Reprinted with permission from Moon of Alabama.

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In 1918, the Austrian political scientist Joseph Schumpeter delivered a now-famous lecture titled “The Crisis of the Tax State.” The question he addressed was whether or not the First World War would bring about a destructive fiscal crisis for European states. Would the burdens of post-war debt and taxation threaten to destroy these states? Many at the time believed that it would be difficult or impossible to fiscally recover from the enormous debts and tax liabilities incurred by states during the war.

Schumpeter, however, concluded that the states of Europe would easily survive whatever fiscal strains might be caused by the war. After all, he noted, the states of Europe were well developed “tax states” by the early twentieth century. In the short and medium term, at least, the ruling regimes of Europe could essentially raise revenue at will, and the state organizations themselves thus faced no existential crisis. If the states of Europe did fail, he noted, it would be for some reason other than fiscal collapse, such as conquest or revolution. Nonetheless, “the hour will come,” he noted, that the drive to endlessly increase state revenues would eventually consume and destroy the private sector. But, in 1918, he predicted (correctly) that the day of reckoning was not yet at hand.

Now more than 100 years later, it’s clear that Schumpeter was right. No states collapsed due to an inability to raise taxes. As fiscal demands increased on states, it was not the states who suffered. The taxpayers, on the other hand, fared less well.

Unfortunately, Schumpeter’s conclusions apply to the modern-day United States as well. Like the states of Europe, the United States is now a full-blown “tax state” in that lawmakers of the central government can raise taxes with minimal political or institutional effort without meaningful legal resistance from any other domestic institution. Consequently, as the burdens of debt and upward-spiraling welfare costs continue to put pressure on the Treasury, the answer will be to simply raise taxes—and the taxpayers will absorb it.

Moreover, the history of modern democratic regimes confirms that interest group politics will ensure that spending continues unabated. In other words, given the lack of meaningful obstacles to accelerated taxation, there is no institutional or legal way out of this. The only way that the power of the tax state will be meaningfully challenged is through the dismemberment of the state through secession, or through outright dissolution of the existing state and the founding of an entirely new successor state.

The US Is a Tax State 

But first: what is a tax state exactly?

Schumpeter emphasizes that the reason tax states so easily endure fiscal pressures is the fact that tax states can so efficiently, with minimal friction, extract revenues from the domestic population. This is made possible by these characteristics of tax states, which are also characteristics of modern states in general:

1. Centralization: taxes are directly imposed by the central government. The central government does not rely on regional or local governments to collect taxes or enforce tax laws. (This does not preclude regional or local governments from imposing their own taxes.)
2. Unilateral power: The central government can raise taxes unilaterally. The central government’s legislature or executive has the prerogative to raise taxes on its own authority without the permission of any other sovereign within the state’s territory. Put another way, no regional or local government has the ability to veto a tax increase or legally prevent its implementation.
3. The central government freely decides how revenues are spent. Once tax revenues are collected, the central government spends the revenues in whatever manner is preferred by the central state’s legislative power.
4. Taxes are not fees or a payment for a service. Strictly speaking, a fee is a payment that is designed to fund a specific service, and only those who “benefit” from the service pay the fee. Tax “benefits,” on the other hand, are not tied to any particular service. Tax states are not legally held to any sort of reciprocal duty to spend tax revenues in a manner that benefits those who pay the tax.

The United States government fulfills all these requirements of tax states. In the United States, the Congress can raise direct taxes on the population at any time by simply increasing the income tax.  Recent experience has also shown that the US president can unilaterally raise import taxes to any level he prefers. This doesn’t even require a vote of any kind. And, should these taxes prove insufficient to meet the needs and preferences of the central government, the central government can borrow legally unlimited amounts of money.

Moreover, when more debt is needed, the central bank will often purchase some portion of the central government’s bonds to subsidize and push down interest rates on government debt. This process is made possible through monetary inflation, allowing the central government to extract revenue via monetization of debt and an “inflation tax.”

Throughout this process, no state or local government can legally prevent these tax increases, and no institution outside the central government has any say over how the dollars are spent. Nostalgic sentimentalists may try to console themselves with feel-good stories about the United States being a decentralized, federalist state under some alleged “rule of law.” But, when it comes to taxation, the United States is clearly a de facto unitary state.

The Rising Tax Burden 

This is good news for the American state itself. As federal spending continues upward unabated, the federal government will continue to have untrammeled access to more revenue. Where a tax increase in Congress cannot be had, the central government can simply turn to monetary inflation or to new tariffs, implemented via a “stroke of the pen” at the central bank or in the Oval Office.

For the taxpayer, however, it’s all bad news. Fiscal pressures on the central government will continue to mount, but there will be no discussion of austerity, spending cuts, or anything else that would actually lessen the spending obligations of the central government.

The exigencies of democratic coalition politics will ensure cuts will not happen. To cut spending on any major program would mean political suicide for many members of Congress and endanger critical fundraising needs for candidates and party organizations. Thus, there will be no substantial cuts, least of all to the largest federal programs that put the most pressure on federal revenues: Social Security, Medicare, military, and interest on the debt. There certainly will be no cuts to spending on interest on the debt—now topping a trillion dollars per year. To do that would be to prompt a sovereign debt crisis.

Instead, the central government will just keep going back to the well of taxation over and over, either through more ordinary taxes, or through an ever growing inflation tax. We’re already seeing this at work in how the central bank has already effectively abandoned its so-called two-percent target for price inflation. The official price-inflation rate sits at 2.9 percent, and the central bank is easing monetary policy. (If price inflation does go down at this point, it will be thanks to declining economic conditions, not to restrained monetary policy.)

What the Future Holds—and the Battle of Ideas

In the short term, economic booms and busts will come and go, but over the medium and long term, the true tax burden on taxpayers will continue to grow and grow. So long as most of the American population considers the US government to be a legitimate state, there will be no impediment to the state continuing to extract ever larger amounts of revenue from the domestic population.

Over time, this will lead to more and more impoverishment for the productive population, but what alternative will the taxpayer have? It is clear that democratic elections will not reverse the trend. If elections were any threat to this trend, we would have seen some evidence of it by now. Even with rising price inflation, rising import taxes, and historic deficits, taxpayers have shown little interest in cutting federal spending. Even among those voters who claim to be for fiscal austerity, most draw the line at any cuts that endanger their favorite federal programs. For example, “hands off my Medicare” is a favored refrain for those who pretend to care about cutting government spending.

There is no legal or institutional mechanism that will bring this to an end. Even as interest on the national debt soars, and as the requirements of federal social benefits continue to rise, the “answer” will simply be more debt and more taxes. If interest rates get “too high” the central bank will intervene with monetary inflation. This will lead to higher inflation, but this will allow the state to meet its political “obligations” with cheaper dollars.

Most of the taxpayers—few of whom understand why federal debts and federal spending increase price inflation—will be fine with this, and they’ll blame price inflation on greed or global oil prices. In short, the end game will likely look like something we witnessed in Latin America during the 1980s: ever increasing government spending coupled with runaway inflation. The state, however, will remain intact through it all.

The only way out will be through the dismemberment of the state through secession, or through the dissolution of the state—hopefully in a peaceful manner similar to that of the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Unfortunately, no true opposition is likely to materialize until the middle classes and working classes have endured years of downward mobility. It will be only then that a critical mass of the population abandons its faith in the regime—a misplaced faith formed by decades of state propaganda and public “education.”

For those who actually value freedom, prosperity, and reining in the state, the best thing we can do right now is this: work to speed up the process of state disintegration by exposing the evils of the spending-inflation scam to a portion of the public large enough to force true reforms. As we say at the Mises Institute, “we learn economics to know how we are being ripped off.” Countless millions of taxpayers are being ripped off. But they still don’t understand how or why.

On top of this work, it is critical to ceaselessly work to undermine the public’s view of the American state’s legitimacy. No state that steals, inflates, and impoverishes on such a massive scale could possibly be considered moral or legitimate, or beneficial. As the collapse of the enormous and militarily powerful Soviet state showed us, the key to winning against the state is to increasingly expose how the state mercilessly exploits the taxpayers.

Ultimately, this is a battle of ideas.  As Ludwig von Mises knew, we can only win against state power if we first win in the battle of ideas.

The post The Crisis of the American Tax State appeared first on LewRockwell.

Underneath the patina of newsworthy slogans is a moral and intellectual sewer the size of the Serengeti. I am of course referring to The New York Times, and the hailing of a cold-blooded murderer as an American hero. The latest such outrage is about Joanne Chesimard, a black 78-year-old woman who died in Havana, Cuba, last week. The Times used her “revolutionary” name—Assata Shakur—as if she were some kind of black Joan of Arc. She was nothing of the sort, just a cold-blooded murderer of a state trooper in 1973.

I will not go on about this ghastly individual whom the left has turned into a kind of Robin Hood. Robbing banks, getting willingly laid rather a lot by black gangsters, and having absolutely no remorse for killing a married father and state trooper in cold blood might make her a heroine for the Sulzberger gang, but not for little ole me. She was scum, and she will rot in hell, God willing.

My point is that like her ideology, her assumed name was a contradiction in terms. How dumb must one be to take on the name of the oppressor? I’ll tell you, they have to be both dumb and blind. That includes a few rappers and many politicians of the left, and a jerk like her obituary writer for the Times called Haberman. (Known for the minute size of his willy.)

It is indicative of her ignorance that this Chesimard woman took the name Assata Shakur, an African or Arab appellation, in order to distance herself from her American roots. Many blacks in America tend to do that, especially sports stars, which only confirms my belief that God gives athletic ability with one hand and takes away brain cells with the other. It is as if Jews adopted German names after the war, and Palestinians took on Jewish names of late.

“How dumb must one be to take on the name of the oppressor?”

Let’s start at the beginning: Slavery was a universal institution that existed from the dawn of time, and across the globe, societies employed slave labor even as troops. Five thousand years ago Egypt, Greece, Carthage, and Rome practiced slavery. Farther south, Africans were busy enslaving other Africans and selling them to the Arabs and Romans. It is a fact that the Koran and the Prophet Muhammad legitimized slavery, but somehow this is not mentioned nowadays. Algerian and Tunisian raiders enslaved more than a million white Europeans between the 16th and 18th centuries.

The Muslim slave trade endured for fifteen centuries and transported 17 million slaves, mostly Africans. The European total of transported slaves was 11 million shipped across the Atlantic. Exploiting the West’s orgy of self-flagellation, the African Union has just joined the Caribbean Community (Caricom) in demanding reparations from Britain and from Uncle Sam. The Caribbean group wants 18 trillion greenbacks, the Africans a bit more.

Racism, exploitation, and oppression are words that types from down South use as often as Americans use the f-word. The trouble is, I read and know history, and their claims are as bogus as some Hollywood female breasts. As I stated before, Africans have been enslaving other Africans for centuries. They sold them to the Romans and to Arabs in 1563, a few years before any whites arrived on the Dark Continent. The Kingdom of Kongo (yes, spelled with a “K”) exported 4,000 to 8,000 slaves annually.

Three hundred years later, Oman Arabs ran slave plantations off the east coast of Africa. In Northern Nigeria, one of the largest slave societies equaled the number enslaved in the United States (4,000,000). African rulers virulently opposed British antislavery efforts. Unsold slaves were threatened with death. Yet American blacks today continue to adopt Muslim and African names, a bit like Jews adopting Adolf as their favorite first name, or Palestinians naming their newly born Bibi.

Joanne Chesimard adopting the name she did only showed her historical ignorance. As does the N.Y. Times again and again in its futile attempts to undermine American society.

This article was originally published on Taki’s Magazine.

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You can call this bragging and don’t have to believe it. I got my start sorting the sublime from the repulsive at the tender age of seven. Hanging out at a slightly older boy’s house, let’s call him Mike, is when and where my standards erupted. It was the day that bloodthirsty intolerance for ugly expressions first got stoked.

The Herman’s Hermits song “Mrs. Brown You’ve got a Lovely Daughter” came on the radio. Our host felt that the Hermit’s needed accompaniment. He also seemed to believe his guests would be keen on it. My first impulse was to bolt. But the adult capacity to grin while enraged strangely came over me. The delectable snacks the mother of that house was known to lay out stopped a hasty exit from happening. It is absolutely degrading what a preteen will go through for a first-class pastry.

It’d be too cruel describing Mike’s stab at matching Scouse, Mancunian or whatever you call Peter Noone’s dialect crooning that sappy goo. Hearing “Daw-tuh” from the kid only once would bring violent emotions out of a baby-cuddly golden retriever. Dramatizing his noises busting moves extinguished any lingering traces of pity in an instant. There was a Tonka toy dump truck on the floor nearby; it looked perfect for the purpose of justifiable homicide. My brain already had a bit of a legal turn. One snag stood in the way of permanently silencing Michael. Without hearing from him themselves, could a jury be convinced of how justifiable, humane and necessary his elimination actually was? It was chicken, but I kept on grinning instead.

As years have passed, both my rationality and self-restraint have seriously eroded from those innocent days. Distance from the objects of my disgust is all that has kept me this side of the penitentiary. Society pays the price when the sensate among us cower in the face of artistic atrocity. The depravity has gone so far that aesthetic crimes against humanity are funded by governments in the name of enlightenment.

During the postwar renaissance somewhere between half and a full day’s pay – in a menial job – could place a teenybopper within fifty feet of a performing musical genius. Now, they fork out 6, 7 or 8 days pay for sounds resembling the kind Mike inflicted. And the people calling themselves critics keep cheering them on.

In 1975 a kid working an 8-hour shift at McDonald’s earned $16.80. For no more labor he could see Pink Floyd, Fleetwood Mac, Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones or Jethro Tull with money left for hot dogs and soda. Today, people with college degrees put in a full week, or more, for acts that may merit less than Tonka toy treatment but should certainly not go unpunished. When perv-formers go to jail for statutory, extortion or shooting each other, it is not necessarily their worst crimes being penalized.

As this is written the top five Spotified artists are Bruno Mars, Lady Gag-Gag, The Weaknd, Kendrick Lamar and Billie Eilish. Bruno will playing in Vegas. You can see him, from the next county, for $329. The Lady is on at Madison Square Garden at rates ranging from $456 to $5500. With those price ranges you can envision how far out of range the peasantry will reside – a good ear might not mind.  In 1975 you could almost touch the amps for ten bucks. Presently, with extra fees and taxes accounted for, it takes more than two days for even Californians toiling the trenches to be skied. Make that more than four in most other states. The conciliation is that amp static is only somewhat distinguishable from the “music.” In a decade, will anybody be streaming command performers from the reeking 20s of the early 21st century? People still crank up Patsy Cline six decades later.

If only the purge of pulchritude was restricted to the audio-sphere. It is easier today for a physically handicapped person to traverse a Japanese TV game show obstacle course successfully, than it is for an unconnected peon to get his script before a Hollywood producer or director. What do all these hoops and hurdles do for the cause of decent drama getting screened?

After falling asleep in the first one, going to John Wick: Chapter 4 was an act of time-to-kill desperation goaded by reviews like this from Collider:

It’s official – John Wick: Chapter 4 has taken the Keanu Reeves action franchise to new heights. At the time of writing, the film has become the top-rated film of the entire franchise as far as Rotten Tomatoes critics scores go – it’s also become the first in the series to crack the 90% barrier, currently sitting at 93% after a love-bombing from film critics.

Numerous other reviewers called it “unpredictable.” How many times do you have to head butt a sports arena wall without a helmet, like Gus Ferotte did in Jack Kent Coke stadium in 1997 with one, to find a guy doing cartwheels while making impossible pistol shots not moronic? We also hear of “plot twists.” Like what? Being found inexplicably while on the lam at every turn? Or surviving getting shot more times than both Bonnie and Clyde? Meanwhile, Wick’s foes run the gamut of occupations from desert sheiks to sushi slicers. How many chapters before a knitting grandma goes at him with her needles?

Elsewhere Denzel Washington intersperses actual acting, like in Roman J. Israel, Esq., with playing an unarmed codger crushing half-a-dozen athletic 25-year-olds training ordnance on him in multiple Equalizer inflictions. Screenwriters must spend all afternoon assembly lining these schlock-fests. For every time Robert McCall looks at his watch, watchers in theaters with functioning gray matter have look at theirs 3 more.

Of course, not all action flickery follows the same unpredictable routine. We are inundated with others where it’s family hit men trying to retire. Alas, those who live by the sword. Fortunately, they never lose their edges. It comes in handy as beleaguered heroes unpredictably vanquish forces the size of army divisions in finales. Imagine the frustration of script readers spiking treatments that so unoriginally fail to include this mandatory parting shot.

You might find the latest from Tom Cruise hard, if not an impossible mission, to sit through too. The first hour of the latest one features Ethan Hunt fawned over as the savior of mankind by everyone from the president on down. It’s like the slobbering of an Operating Thetan in the presence of L. Ron himself. Who needs supernatural superheroes when we’ve got Ethan Hunt? If he hasn’t matched every super-human deed of immortals yet, wait a few more sequels.

But what about serious drama? That’ll get us closer to brutal reality. The latest blockbuster in ’thinking man’s film,’ The Brutalist, has done a double layout with a full twist over the orca. It’s more of a ‘what were they thinking’ film.

Only a nincompoop asks why a world renowned architect leaves New York City to sweep floors in a Podunk furniture store. What fascist forces keep the land of the free from knowing who this junkie genius is? Pliant viewers are expected to walk in already aggrieved for wounded prodigies who might have to slug it out like those hideous common Americans. The film’s model, Marcel Breuer, never endured anything close. The filmmakers rely on the general dearth of erudition evident in themselves – and expected from audiences — doing this 180.

Deep in Penn’s Woods Lazlo Toth, the protagonist, works for Cousin Attila who has been Christianized by a shrill shiksa wife. She’s a catty Catholic whose Hitlerian Hebrew-phobia is soon revealed. What kind of woman, other than a nascent Nazi, has a problem when a guy misses the toilet by three feet? Put her name up there next to Irma Grese.

In the meantime, our hero is cheated out of his fee for remodeling a library by Harrison Lee Van Buren.  The gauche tycoon is later peer pressured by the smart set into liking the new space. He tracks down the man he stiffed for what turns out to be new, improved exploitation. After rescuing Laz from penury Van Buren introduces the architectural genius to society. What else could be next but a commission to design a multi-million dollar contract?

Then, true to form, the gentile town council pulls a fast one on a Holocaust survivor. The community center they’ve commissioned him to draw up must also fill the role of defining local faith. Lazlo brilliantly positions a skylight to shine a crucifix on the altar at noon. That’s a plot untwist necessary for anyone slow enough to have missed the message of exclusion viewers were hosed down with for the first 60 minutes.

The uncircumcised, who were often circumcised in the era, weren’t done with him yet. If Harrison junior can’t have Lazlo’s taciturnly traumatized niece … wasn’t there other prey in the family? When Sr. takes Toth to Tuscany pursuing marble comes the TMI moment from hell. The master builder succumbs to local revelry. Once all liquored up and staggering into the tunneled quarry is when old Harry makes his move. Like Simon Legree with Cassy, Van Buren will have his way with the servants. The next morning the sodomizee looks none the worse for wear and tear. He says “yes boss” quicker than Paul Newman blackjacked by Strother Martin. It comes as a surprise when Toth’s wife turns out to know hubby was raped. The audience didn’t even know Lazlo did. Going by the narrative depicted, did he really mind?

Aint’ that the West writ large? First they Holocaust him, then strong-arm his genius for callous Christianity and finally let him have it like a bitch-boy in the prison shower. Don’t commit the hate crime of thinking that doesn’t summarize US welcome of Holocaust survivors to a T. The only safe question is why Hollywood hasn’t confronted America with their collective guilt before now.

It is during the picnic where Harry Jr. can’t get his grimy paws on Toth niece Zsofia, when the brutal “truth” comes out. Putting Lazlo and family up and back in business, including him in Van Buren outings while providing opportunity no one else does … is really begrudgingly ”tolerating” the despised immigrant. Why, they’ve turned the Statue of Liberty upside down! Persecuted wunderkind’s only respite is a spike of euphoric horse in the arm.

It’s time to incorporate didactic messages from the enlightened. If you can’t find a way to be gay, black, trans, Jewish, Muslim, handicapped and female simultaneously … when’s the next Nuremberg Tribunal? It’ll be womanned by Joy Reid, Randi Weingarten and Al Sharpton. Calling out The Brutalist for being as inanely silly as it is, is quite verboten. We are expected to stand in awe …cuz finally we see what we really are.

Saying that there isn’t the vaguest resemblance in this tall tale to anyone’s experience ever misses the point. The audio-visual branch of the victim industry’s role eradicating hate entails manufacture of an ersatz reality coining more villains to hate. The notion that Lazlo Toth would be an object of homoerotic allure to a Daddy Warbucks like Harrison Van Buren is a shock to the senses. Whatever your taste or persuasion, that genuine plot twist would have kept Lot’s wife from looking back.

We’ve reached the point where you have to get really high to get high art. The pretentiousness of professional critics has weaseled its way into commerce. It can be costly telling clients that what they’ve been told about The Brutalist – and better believe to qualify as culturally hip — makes no sense. When prospects say otherwise it’s necessary to grin like I did at seven. Nobody wants to miss out on the treats.

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President Trump is ushering a “Golden Age” alright, just not the one MAGA voters were expecting. Instead of getting government off our backs, and no more wars, Americans have been saddled with warmongering on a daily basis, and a turbocharge of government spending, debts and inflation! Those people who want to protect themselves Trump’s reckless government policies are piling into gold and sending the price to new all-time highs.

The post $4,000 Gold — Not The “Golden Age” MAGA Voters Were Expecting appeared first on LewRockwell.

Tim McGraw wrote:

Hi Lew,

Mr. Kramer makes the mistake of equating money with happiness. And chemotherapy being less vomit-prone? Jeez, if you have cancer, you are in for a tough time anytime.

Happiness is subjective. I was happier in the 1950s to 1990s, even though I was poor. Now, I have money, but liberty is dying. Society is dying. Human interaction is dying. This world from 2001 on sucks! 

Money isn’t happiness.

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