Lew Rockwell Institute

It looks like Donald Trump, with his European lackeys in tow, is telling Egypt to screw off. After painstaking negotiations, Egypt brokered an agreement between Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which is now known as the Cairo Agreement. This is a technical accord reached on September 9, 2025, in Cairo between Iran and the IAEA, which allows the IAEA to inspect Iranian nuclear facilities.

Here are the main provisions of the Cairo Agreement:

• Resumption of Inspections: Iran agreed to resume cooperation with the IAEA, reopening the way for technical verification at its nuclear facilities and increased transparency measures.
• Special Reporting: Iran is required to prepare a report detailing locations and conditions of nuclear material, including highly enriched uranium, especially after incidents affecting those sites.
• Framework for Trust: The agreement lays the groundwork for rebuilding trust between Iran and the IAEA and is intended as a first step toward restarting broader nuclear negotiations.
• Regional Diplomacy: Egypt played a central role as mediator, with its foreign minister leading negotiations that started in June amid heightened regional tensions

My initial reaction was that Iran is crazy to entertain such an agreement in light of evidence that the IAEA used its previous inspections to gather intelligence on Iranian scientists who were murdered by Israel during the 12-Day War. Upon further reflection, I think I understand why Iran is taking this step: Iran is trying to play by the international rules in order to avoid the snapback sanctions under the JCPOA. Despite the Western narrative that the Islamic Republic of Iran is a lawless, terrorist state, Iran is taking the high-road by taking a concrete action to show that it is not enriching uranium to build a nuclear bomb. Unfortunately, the West does not care… It is hellbent on destroying the Islamic Republic. I think Iran is taking this step so that its BRICS partners will be able to ignore the UN sanctions and continue to do business with Iran because of the deceit of the UK, France and Germany, who failed to uphold the JCPOA by lifting sanctions on Iran ten years ago.

Let’s begin by reviewing the original JCPOA:

Overview of the JCPOA and Snapback Sanctions

The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), signed in 2015 between Iran and the P5+1 (United States, United Kingdom, France, Russia, China, and Germany), is an agreement aimed at limiting Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief. It was endorsed by UN Security Council Resolution 2231 (UNSCR 2231), which terminated six prior UN sanctions resolutions (1696 (2006), 1737 (2006), 1747 (2007), 1803 (2008), 1835 (2008), and 1929 (2010) but included a “snapback” mechanism to reimpose them if Iran engages in “significant non-performance” of its commitments. This mechanism, detailed in Article 36-37 of the JCPOA and operational paragraphs 10-19 of UNSCR 2231, is a veto-proof process designed to ensure compliance without requiring new Security Council action, which could be blocked by permanent members.

The snapback is one of the JCPOA’s key enforcement tools and is set to expire on October 18, 2025 (“Termination Day”), after which the UN’s consideration of Iran’s nuclear file ends and the mechanism lapses. Only current JCPOA participants (France, UK, Germany, China, Russia; the US withdrew in 2018 and lost standing) can trigger it. As of August 28, 2025, the E3 (France, UK, Germany) initiated the process, citing Iran’s uranium enrichment and non-compliance, starting a 30-day countdown unless resolved.

How the Snapback Mechanism Works

The process is structured to automatically restore sanctions if not halted by consensus:

1. Notification of Non-Performance: Any JCPOA participant notifies the UN Security Council (via the President) of Iran’s “significant non-performance,” such as exceeding uranium enrichment limits or blocking IAEA inspections. This locks in the complaint for 15 days, during which the Joint Commission (JCPOA parties) can try to resolve it.
2. Referral to the Security Council: If unresolved, the complaint is referred to the Council. Within 10 days, the Council President must circulate a draft resolution to “continue” the sanctions termination (i.e., maintain relief under the JCPOA).
3. 30-Day Voting Period: The Council has 30 days to adopt the continuation resolution. Adoption requires nine affirmative votes with no vetoes from permanent members (P5: US, UK, France, Russia, China). If the resolution fails (e.g., due to a veto by the triggering state or lack of votes), sanctions automatically “snap back” without further action.
4. Irreversibility: Once triggered, the process cannot be easily reversed; even a veto accelerates snapback. The restored sanctions are indefinite until a new Council resolution lifts them.

This design, proposed by Russia during negotiations, bypasses traditional vetoes on new sanctions, making it a powerful deterrent.

Sanctions Reimposed by Snapback

Snapback restores all provisions from the six pre-JCPOA UN resolutions, focusing on Iran’s nuclear, missile, and proliferation activities. These include:

• Nuclear Program Restrictions:
  • Prohibition on uranium enrichment, reprocessing, and heavy-water reactor activities beyond JCPOA limits.
  • Ban on new nuclear facilities and transfers of nuclear-related materials, equipment, or technology to Iran.
  • Requirement for IAEA monitoring; Iran must comply with safeguards.
• Missile and Arms Embargo:
  • Ban on activities involving ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons (includes transfers, testing, and procurement).
  • Restrictions on conventional arms transfers to or from Iran (though some expired in 2020; snapback would reinstate broader prohibitions).
  • Limits on dual-use items for missiles.
• Financial and Economic Sanctions:
  • Asset freezes on designated Iranian individuals, entities, and bodies (e.g., Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), nuclear scientists, and proliferation networks; over 80 entities and 200+ individuals).
  • Prohibition on financial services, banking transactions, and insurance related to prohibited activities.
  • Vigilance requirements for states to prevent Iranian use of their financial systems for nuclear/missile purposes.
• Travel Bans and Designations:
  • Travel restrictions on listed individuals.
  • Re-designation of entities connected to Iran’s nuclear, missile, or support programs.
• Monitoring and Enforcement:
  • Revival of the UN Panel of Experts to investigate violations, report on compliance, and recommend enforcement.
  • States must seize and inspect prohibited cargo and report to the Council.

These UN sanctions apply globally but do not automatically restore US or EU national sanctions (e.g., US secondary sanctions on oil exports remain separate). However, they signal international isolation, deterring business with Iran and potentially amplifying unilateral measures.

According to a report from Al Mayadeen, if the European states activate the snapback mechanism, then Iran will nullify the Cairo Agreement and shut the door on cooperation between the IAEA and Tehran, and bar inspections.” Not surprisingly, French President Emmanuel Macron told a reporter today that snapback sanctions against Iran are a ‘done deal’, and WILL be implemented regardless of the Iran-IAEA agreement that was signed in Cairo. So much for diplomacy. As I intimated at the outset, the West is determined to destroy the current government in Iran.

But Iran is not in this battle alone. The Chief of Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces, Major General Musavi, met in Moscow with Russian Energy Minister Sergey Tsivilyov. Musavi stated that Russia’s positions at the UN and IAEA regarding Israel’s attack on Iran were “firm and positive.” He emphasized that Iran has never started a war, considering diplomacy the priority path, but in response to aggression delivered a “harsh and crushing blow” to the USA and Israel.

Russian Energy Minister Tsivilyov expressed condolences over the deaths of Iranian commanders and scientists, supported the idea of deepening joint commissions, and called to elevate Moscow and Tehran’s economic and defense cooperation to the highest level. If there are new attacks on Iran, Moscow is likely to actively assist Iran in defending itself.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration is working overtime to sabotage any initiatives by the IAEA to reduce the possibility of attacks on nuclear facilities. The IAEA member states will vote on Thursday on a ban against attacking or threatening to attack any nuclear facilities under the agency’s safeguards.

The draft resolution strongly condemned the deliberate and unlawful attacks on nuclear facilities under IAEA safeguards in the Islamic Republic of Iran, stating that these attacks constitute a clear violation of international law, including the UN Charter and the IAEA’s own statute.

It reiterated that all nations must refrain from attacking or threatening to attack the peaceful nuclear facilities of other countries.

It also reaffirmed the necessity of the full and effective realization of the inalienable right of all Member States for the development of research, production, and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes, without discrimination, and further affirmed that any legitimate matters arising in this context shall be settled exclusively through peaceful means, through dialogue and diplomacy, being the only viable course of action, in addition to the decision to consider taking further action, as and when deemed necessary.

The draft resolution will be submitted by Iran along with China, Russia, Belarus, Nicaragua, and Venezuela at the 69th IAEA General Conference in Vienna, Austria. Washington reportedly has warned the majority of member states not to vote in favor of a resolution banning strikes on nuclear facilities. I interpret this as the US wanting to maintain the option to bomb Iranian facilities again.

This article was originally published on Sonar21.

The post Why Is Iran Willing To Make an Agreement With the IAEA? appeared first on LewRockwell.

Over the last decade China developed the longest railway in the world running more than 8,000 miles from the east coast of China to Spain.

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The line crosses China, Russia, Belarus and Poland before splitting up into various European connections.

Over the last year the railway has carried goods between China and Europe at a value of about $25 billion.

The line is now blocked:

Poland’s decision to close its border with Belarus in response to thequadrennial Zapad-2025 military exercises and Russian drone incursion on September 10 has abruptly severed one of the fastest-growing trade arteries between China and the EU.
…
The impact of the closure of the Belarusian border is significant. The land corridor already represents 3.7% of all EU–China trade, up from 2.1% a year earlier. While that share remains small compared to seaborne shipments, its importance lies in speed and reliability.
…
Poland’s government underlined that the decision was driven by security imperatives rather than economics. Warsaw stated that “the logic of trade” was being replaced by “the logic of security,” underscoring the geopolitical risks attached to the Belt and Road corridors.

The Zapad-2025 military exercises is long over but Poland continues to block the railroad.

Its government is taking Europe’s trade with China as hostage to press China to change its policy towards Russia:

Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski has said that during his meeting with his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi in a suburb of Warsaw on Monday 15 September, he will insist that China put pressure on Russia to stop “a hybrid operation” on Poland’s eastern border, which has led to the closure of Beijing’s key trade route to Europe.
…
Tensions escalated in May last year, when a Polish border guard was attacked and killed by a migrant.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk accused Belarus and Russia of weaponising migration.

Last year, Warsaw threatened to block the export route to the European Union to secure China’s help. Polish then-president Andrzej Duda raised the border tensions issue during his visit to Beijing, which “helped for a few months”, Sikorski said.

“But unfortunately, this hybrid operation has intensified again. So, we need to talk again,” he added.

Interestingly the Chinese reporting on the meeting between Wang Ye and Sikorski did not mention the blocking:

At the 4th meeting of Poland-China Intergovernmental Committee on Monday, the two parties exchanged views on the importance of developing effective and economically competitive Eurasian transport corridors and the pivotal role of Poland in this process.  The two sides recognized the benefits of providing mutually beneficial services for volumes of goods transported by railway, maritime and air means and of consolidating the existing and potential routes and logistical chains. Both sides expressed their willingness to ensure the safety and accessibility of the China-Europe Railway Express.

I suspect that, behind the scene, less polite words were used by Wang Yi to express the Chinese view on Poland’s attempt the hinder the freedom of global trade.

The migrants do not ride on Chinese freight trains. Blocking the railroad connection between China and Europe to prevent migrants from coming through Belarus is a very crude form of blackmail that will hit back.

Should the blockade continue Poland will have to bury all hope of any future investment from China.

Western European companies who depend on the railroad connection for their trade will also become more hostile to Poland.

The coming defeat of NATO in Ukraine will contribute to the end of the military alliance.

Poland’s outrageous behavior makes it more likely that the defeat in Ukraine will also help to break up the European Union.

Poland is currently the recipient of the largest EU’s agricultural subsidies. Why should Germany and others continue to pay for those when Poland is impeding their trade?

Reprinted with permission from Moon of Alabama.

The post Poland’s Attempt To Blackmail China Will Hurt Itself Most appeared first on LewRockwell.

In this video production, Michel Chossudovsky and Drago Bosnic focus on a detailed plan to commit genocide against the People of Palestine under the guise of a fake “responsibility to protect” humanitarian mandate. 

In a recent July 2025 statement (see below), in a controversial AI video production, Gila Gamliel, who was Israel’s Minister of Intelligence in 2023-24 (appointed by Netanyahu on January 2, 2023), confirmed the adoption of a so-called “Voluntary Immigration Plan” by the Netanyahu Cabinet on October 13, 2023.

The original source of this article is Global Research.

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The post America After Charlie Kirk appeared first on LewRockwell.

If there is ever any indication that I am talking to either a low-IQ person or a well-indoctrinated person, it is when I say the words, “Martin Luther” (10 November 1483 — 18 February 1546) in a serious conversation about world history and I then receive in knee-jerk response to that, the following three words, either “Martin Luther King?” (January 15, 1929 — April 4, 1968) or “Martin Luther King!”

The Realities Of Indoctrination

I can see the programming kick in. But that moment when programming kicks in, is the moment when a thinking person can choose to intervene, which does not happen in these moments. So, not only can I see the programming kicking in, but I can also see another painful to watch layer of disadvantage: the lack of knowledge about basic matters of culture. I witness, at its most basic level, how the individual is unable to counteract the programming because of that absence of knowledge.

Some people know they shouldn’t say, “Martin Luther King?” they just seem to know that it is an entirely different person, but they have nothing else valuable to say, so they just say that. Try this conversation enough, and ask people about it, and this thought process will likely become as clear as day to you too.

It is a sad testament on the condition of our society, because it demonstrates how effective some indoctrination has been. It is understandable why those who want to indoctrinate have come for the schools and for the modes of entertainment, for they are such powerful forces in controlling man’s mind.

Two Different Orders Of Magnitude Separate Martin Luther From Martin Luther King

One of those figures (Luther) is among the most impactful people in global history in the last 1,000 years. The other (Martin Luther King) is only one of the 200 most important people in American history over the last 100 years. Love MLK or hate MLK, the reality is that he has not stood the test of time for it has only been half-a-century since his passing and his ideas have been resolutely disregarded, especially in intellectual circles that claim to operate in his name. Love Martin Luther or hate Martin Luther, his work has stood the test of time and has been impactful to this day.

The two are not the same. Not only are they not the same, but they are entirely different orders of magnitude.

And I do not come to denounce Martin Luther King, nor to praise Martin Luther. I come to point to the realities of time. We have no idea what the people of tomorrow will think of the actions of today, let alone what the people of 500 years from now will think of the actions of today.

As such, it is entirely possible that Martin Luther King may fade into the background, especially since his most widely regarded disciples have such an unfaithful interpretation of his life’s work. He has become a name to throw around for politically expedient wins, and little more. At the same time, it is entirely possible that someone like Charlie Kirk will rise in prominence with the passing of time.

The Once Disregarded And Forgotten Great Gatsby

F. Scott Fitzgerald (September 24, 1896 – December 21, 1940), a century ago this spring, released what is widely regarded as the finest work of American literature over the past hundred years: The Great Gatsby. That is despite the fact that he died believing himself a literary failure, as did many of his age. He was far more prominently overshadowed by literary names that not 1 in 20 readers of this would recognize.

Similarly, William Shakespeare (circa 23 April 1564  – 23 April 1616) is widely regarded the finest writer in the English language, yet for a fairly long period of time, his work had been virtually forgotten. It is hard to predict what will last the test of time. It would not be strange for someone who is a household name today, to be entirely lost to history a few decades from now, or that an entirely obscure person be a household name a few decades from now.

Charlie Kirk Did Something Very Different With His Political Activism

Charlie Kirk (October 14, 1993 – September 10, 2025) fell at a time when America needed a hero. Prior to the time of his death, Kirk was one of the one hundred single most impactful political figures of the century, to date. While Charlie Kirk was a Donald Trump supporter, he understood so well, that America does not need Trump, as much as America needs Jesus. Kirk, 31, ran one of the most influential political organizations in the country and used politics not as the end goal, but as a pathway to bring Americans closer to Jesus.

In doing so, he has been part of a counter-cultural coup to return America and Americans to God. From The Mayflower Compact to the founding of California, we are a land, and a people founded in the name of God.

This places Kirk in an entirely different category from King and a different category than any widely known politico of our day.

Kirk’s impact on the world may grow, or it may wane. His recognition may increase, or he may fade into history. Time will tell, but I think some factors are in his favor on this matter.

The Disciples Of Charlie Kirk

Ben Shapiro has announced his intention to continue the work of Charlie Kirk, “We’re going to pick up that blood stained microphone where Charlie left it.” Such words are likely meant to encourage others.

While Mr. Shapiro is no doubt a very intelligent person. And I recognize that what Charlie Kirk did looked like constant intellectual jousting, again, what it really was, was constantly challenging people to have a deeper relationship with God.

Charlie had the shine of Jesus on him. Mr. Shapiro, unfortunately, does not, yet, at this time have that same shine. He could go out and do the things Charlie Kirk did, but he would not actually be doing the things Charlie Kirk did. Kirk shone like a person who spent a great deal of time in the Bible and in prayer.

Milo Yianopolous, too, has announced an interest in picking up where Charlie Kirk left off, as have others. “You killed the nice guy. So I guess you get me.”  Even Gavin Newsom has stepped in ready to eulogize Charlie Kirk and has expressed an interest to fill Kirk’s shoes.

Glenn Beck, had no such presumption that man would fill his shoes, simply stating, “Rest in peace, Charlie. God will take it from here.” Nick Fuentes echoed that Kirk’s shoes cannot be filled. Candace Owens vowed to destroy the person who seeks to co-opt Kirk’s legacy.

In all likelihood, the change in mass communication, may make it unlikely that any one human will be able to control the reputation of Charlie Kirk.

If Kirk’s reputation can be kept true to the words of Kirk, and my guess is that it can be, for his videos are so prevalent and there is so much room for open public debate about who he is, then he will not become a diluted figure the way Martin Luther King has become. Time will tell.

King Fit His Era, But Kirk Fits The Entire 400-Year History Of America

While Martin Luther King may have been a fitting figure for a period, Kirk is a better long-term fit for America. King was a man who used the Bible to effect political change. Kirk was a man who used politics to bring people to the Bible.

Even his time on college campuses with a mic open to anyone who disagreed about the divisive political issues of our day, even that was often just a cover to be able to talk about Jesus. Everything I saw him do for years pointed back to Jesus.

Charlie Kirk Looks Smug, To A Confused America

Some found him smug and unlikeable. I get that. I understand how the world has gotten unfamiliar seeing a man who knows what he is about. I understand how the world has gotten used to: easily triggered, constantly emotional, incredibly confused, people being the norm in society. It was not always that way in America. It was not always that way anywhere in the West. There was a time when Christian faith was normal. There was a time where every individual knew some basic truths that he could easily state in his life. To one so un-used to encountering a person who understands truth, I could see how it would come across as smug.

Political Expediency Has Made Martin Luther King’s Name Of Little Value, Will The Same Happen To Charlie Kirk?

Martin Luther King has become a name most uttered by the least knowledgeable. Seldom is he faithfully quoted. Seldom have those quoting him taken the time to engage with his work and his many contradictions. He would likely be horrified at what America has become. So much of it has become that way through an ignorant obedience to those who speak his name for the purpose of inducing guilt and shortcutting mental capacity.

While Kirk and King have similarities in their lives, the practice of using King’s name has become the opposite of what Kirk’s life was about.

The political expediency that King’s name gets used to achieve is the same behavior that has destroyed King’s name. If Kirk’s disciples can avoid using his name for political expediency and can instead seek to maintain a faithfulness to his ideals, Kirk is likely to avoid the same fate as King.

King’s Legacy Has Become A Fairly Un-American Legacy, While Kirk Has Stood Up For The Founding Values Of The Country

Kirk raised up an army of free speech warriors, that will usher in a renewed era of American thought. It will not be his work singlehandedly, but his impact will be immeasurable.

King has been used to give rise to special privilege, division, that is outside of the founding intent of America, and aberrant in the context of American culture. This trend may represent a permanent shift in American culture.

What is more likely to happen is that America will return to being a Christian nation. If it does not, the American dream is over and America is not long for this world. King’s work as widely understood today, and the work of Kirk are on polar opposite ends.

Is The American Experiment Over, Or Are It’s Brightest Days Ahead? That Will Determine If King Remains Better Known Or If Kirk Becomes More Known

I have no idea which of those paths will be followed. I have no idea if good or evil wins. There are some one hundred countries on the planet already much like what King’s name is being used to turn America into, while there is only one America. There is likely to be revival in the land. America’s brightest days are likely ahead. The American experiment is not over.

That portends a bright future for the legacy of Charlie Kirk.

That means one day, when Americans look around at the world, it is entirely possible, children will page through books about world history and will ask their parents a question. They will likely know who Martin Luther was. They will likely know who Charlie Kirk was. And they might find themselves asking, “Who was Martin Luther KING?”

And the answer might be, “He was kind of like the Charlie Kirk of his day. People rallied around him and then he was killed by powerful people who felt threatened by what he had to say, but it was blamed on someone else entirely until we got to the bottom of it all.”

Imagine the society that it takes to have that reference point, instead of the society we today live in. But I believe that is exactly where we are headed.

The Likely Outcome

Some people find it controversial to say that Charlie Kirk is the Martin Luther King of this era. It is likely that there will be a time when King has faded into the background and Kirk has risen in prominence — again, only time will tell. But it is entirely possible that the less well known Martin Luther King will be described as “The Charlie Kirk of his day.”

The post Why Martin Luther King Will One Day Be Referred to as ‘The Charlie Kirk of His Era’ appeared first on LewRockwell.

While America is known as a “capitalistic’ society with “free markets,” the reality is far different. A nation that once had a very limited government now has the biggest government in the history of mankind. Money is counterfeited by the trillions and the price-fixing of interest rates is policy. Government “regulators” are staffed by people who go through a “revolving door” from the “regulated” corporation to the government. In fact, that is the greatest danger that America — and the rest of the world faces — there merger of corporation and state; the fusion of power and money. That’s a far better description of modern America; not “capitalism” or “free markets.”

The post President Trump’s Corporate State: (Intel Edition) appeared first on LewRockwell.

Joseph  Morabito wrote:

“Why do they think that just because you have a Tonight Show that you must deal in serious issues? It’s a danger. It’s a real danger. Once you start that, you start to get that self-important feeling that what you say has great import. And you know? Strangely enough, you could use that show as a forum. You could sway people. And I don’t think you should as an entertainer.”

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Readers often ask me why Dr. McCullough and I are not more critical of President Trump’s “give Benjamin Netanyahu whatever he wants” policy.

Before I respond to this question, I’d like to give a bit of background on this issue. For over thirty years, Dr. McCullough and I have been acutely aware the State of Israel’s outsized influence over U.S. foreign policy since the Johnson administration. Moreover, Dr. McCullough’s wife is a Palestinian Christian who is extremely distraught about the plight of the Christian congregation in Gaza and all innocent civilians in Gaza.

We believe that the United States government should heed President Washington’s exhortation —stated in his Farewell Address (a foundational document)—that the U.S. Republic should avoid foreign entanglements and alliances. However, we must also recognize that there has been ZERO support for this policy in America’s monied class for over a century.

Though I (a freelance scribbler) am a man of modest means, I grew up in an affluent Waspy community in Dallas in which there is ZERO support for or even awareness of the foreign policy prescriptions that President Washington articulated.

If they took the time to read the Address, most would likely regard Washington’s ideas as quaint, 18th century notions with little application today. I wrote about this subject a few weeks ago (“Avoid Political Alliance”) and the post got little engagement.

Generally speaking, gentile Americans have little knowledge of or interest in foreign policy, which is why they are easily manipulated into endorsing war whenever their government invokes the specter of a foreign bogeyman.

On the other hand, many Jewish Americans—including those with substantial resources—are keenly interested in foreign policy and the plight of Israel, which they regard as their ancestral homeland. This community in the United States is extremely educated, engaged, and organized. They stick together, support each other, and make generous campaign contributions to candidates who support their objectives.

During the George W. Bush years, I never heard a single monied, self-professing Christian—including major supporters of Bush—express the slightest concern about what was happening to the ancient Christian community in Iraq after Saddam Hussein was removed by the U.S. military. I suspect that few of these guys even knew about this congregation. Few were aware that Hussein and Assad of Syria protected the ancient Christian congregations in their territories. And while I don’t know any fervent Jewish Zionists, I know several monied Christian Zionists.

Because I believe that the growing risk of a direct war with Russia would likely have catastrophic consequences for the American people, I have repeatedly used this newsletter to protest the U.S. government’s insane proxy war against Russia in Ukraine. However, even these posts have been met with more hostility than support.

Until the American monied class starts supporting an “America First” foreign policy, the U.S. government will continue pursuing an “America Last” foreign policy when it comes to the interests and security of ordinary American citizens. American politicians will continue shipping hundreds of billions of cash and weapons to their cronies abroad while the American homeland continues its downward slide into a debt-ridden and divided dystopia.

Charlie Kirk was a sharp critic of the U.S. proxy war in Ukraine, and I am currently evaluating reports that he drew the hostility of Ukrainian nationalist fanatics—i.e., one of the most aggressive and unhinged groups of guys one could ever have the misfortune of meeting.

There is also evidence that Kirk was becoming increasingly concerned about President Trump’s “give Netanyahu whatever he wants” policy and even articulating his concerns. Paradoxically, given the Left’s unhinged, apoplectic hatred of Charlie Kirk, he was probably our best hope for (slowly but surely) cultivating a more balanced foreign policy. With the exception of a few lunatics who seem to think his murder was faked, we all know what happened to him.

This article was originally published on Courageous Discourse.

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The precise causes of the Great Depression remain a subject of debate, although, as economist Richard Timberlake observed in 2005, “Virtually all present-day economists . . . deny that a capitalist free-market economy in any way caused” it.

At the time, however, the free market was blamed, with much of the ire directed at bankers and speculators. Financiers were seen as having wrecked the economy through reckless speculation. President Hoover came to be viewed as a laissez-faire ideologue who did nothing while the economy fell deeper and deeper into depression, and Franklin D. Roosevelt’s interventionist policies under the New Deal were credited with rescuing us from disaster.

Americans came to conclude that the basic problem was the free market and the solution was government oversight and restraint of financiers and financial markets. It’s a view that the public, unaware of the consensus of modern economists, continues to embrace.

But the conventional story ignores the elephant in the room: the Federal Reserve. To place the blame for the Great Depression on a free financial system is like placing the blame for the fall of Rome on credit default swaps: you can’t fault something that didn’t exist. And by the time of the Great Depression, America’s financial system was controlled by the Fed.

It’s hard to overstate the importance of this fact. The Federal Reserve isn’t just any old government agency controlling any old industry. It controls the supply of money, and money plays a role in every economic transaction in the economy. If the government takes over the shoe industry, we might end up with nothing but Uggs and Crocs. But when the government messes with money, it can mess up the entire economy.

The two deadly monetary foes are inflation and deflation. We tend to think of inflation as generally rising prices and deflation as generally falling prices. But not all price inflation or price deflation is malignant — and not all price stability is benign. What matters is the relationship between the supply of money and the demand for money — between people’s desire to hold cash balances and the availability of cash.

Economic problems emerge when the supply of money does not match the demand for money, i.e., when there is what economists call monetary disequilibrium. Inflation, on this approach, refers to a situation where the supply of money is greater than the public’s demand to hold money balances at the current price level. Deflation refers to a situation where the supply of money is less than necessary to meet the public’s demand to hold money balances at the current price level.

In a free banking system, as George Selgin has argued, market forces work to keep inflation and deflation in check, i.e., there is a tendency toward monetary equilibrium. Not so when the government controls the money supply. Like all attempts at central planning, centrally planning an economy’s monetary system has to fail: a central bank has neither the knowledge nor the incentive to match the supply and demand for money. And so what we find when the government meddles in money are periods where the government creates far too much money (leading to price inflation or artificial booms and busts) or far too little money (leading to deflationary contractions).

And it turns out there are strong reasons to think that the Great Depression was mainly the result of the Federal Reserve making both mistakes.

The goal here is not to give a definitive, blow-by-blow account of the Depression. It’s to see in broad strokes the way in which government regulation was the sine qua non of the Depression. The free market didn’t fail: government intervention failed. The Great Depression doesn’t prove that the financial system needs regulation to ensure its stability — instead it reveals just how unstable the financial system can become when the government intervenes.

Creating the Boom

Was the stock market crash of 1929 rooted in stock market speculation fueled by people borrowing money to buy stock “on margin,” as those who blamed the bankers for the Great Depression claimed? Few economists today think so. As economist Gene Smiley observes:

There was already a long history of margin lending on stock exchanges, and margin requirements — the share of the purchase price paid in cash — were no lower in the late twenties than in the early twenties or in previous decades. In fact, in the fall of 1928 margin requirements began to rise, and borrowers were required to pay a larger share of the purchase price of the stocks.

For my money, the most persuasive account of the initial boom/bust that set off the crisis places the blame, not on speculators, but on central bankers.

Prior to the publication of John Maynard Keynes’s General Theory in 1936, the most influential account of the cause of the Great Depression was the Austrian business cycle theory pioneered by Ludwig von Mises and further developed by Friedrich Hayek. The Austrians, in fact, were among the few who predicted the crisis (though not its depth).

What follows is a highly simplified account of the Austrian theory. For a more in depth treatment, see Lawrence H. White’s uniformly excellent book The Clash of Economic Ideas, which summarizes the Austrian theory and its account of the Great Depression. For a detailed theoretical explanation of the Austrian theory of the business cycle see Roger W. Garrison’s Time and Money: The Macroeconomics of Capital Structure.

The Austrian theory, in the briefest terms, says that when a central bank creates too much money and expands the supply of credit in the economy, it can spark an artificial boom that ultimately has to lead to a bust.

It’s a pretty technical story, so let’s start with a simple analogy. Imagine you are planning a dinner party, and you’re an organized person, so you keep an inventory of all the items in your kitchen. But the night before your party, some prankster decides to sneak in and rewrite the list so that it shows you have double the ingredients you actually have.

The next morning you wake up and check your inventory list. With so many ingredients available, you decide to invite a few more friends to the dinner. Meanwhile, your kid unexpectedly comes home from college and decides to make herself a large breakfast — but it’s no big deal. According to your inventory, you have more than enough eggs and butter to finish your recipe.  Of course, your inventory is wrong, and half an hour before your guests arrive, you realize you’re short what you need to finish the meal. The dinner is a bust.

Well, something like that happens when the government artificially expands the supply of credit in the economy. It causes everyone to think they’re richer than they are and, just like someone planning a meal with an inaccurate inventory list, they end up making decisions — about what to produce and how much to consume — that wouldn’t have made sense had they known how many resources were actually available to carry out their plans.

Under the Austrian theory, the key mistake is for the central bank to inject new money into the economic system, typically by creating additional bank reserves.* Bank reserves are a bank’s cash balance. Just as your cash balance consists of the money you have in your wallet and in your checking account, so a bank’s cash balance consists of the cash it has in its vault and in the deposit account it maintains with the central bank.

When a central bank creates additional bank reserves, it encourages the banks to lend out the new money at interest, rather than sit on a pile of cash that isn’t earning a return. To attract borrowers for this additional money, the banks will lower the interest rate they charge on loans, leading entrepreneurs to invest in plans that would not have been profitable at the previous, higher interest rate.

This is a big problem. In a free market, interest rates coordinate the plans of savers and investors. Investment in productive enterprises requires that real resources be set aside rather than consumed immediately. If people decide to spend less today and save more for the future, there are more resources available to fund things like new businesses or construction projects, and that will be reflected in a lower rate of interest.

But when the central bank pushes down interest rates by creating new money, the lower interest rate does not reflect an increase in genuine savings by the public. It is artificially low — the prankster has falsified the inventory list. The result is unsustainable boom. The increased business activity is using up resources while at the same time people start consuming more thanks to cheaper consumer credit and a lower return on savings — there is what economist Lawrence H. White calls “a tug-of-war for resources between longer processes of production (investment for consumption in the relatively distant future) and shorter processes (consumption today and in the near future).”

Eventually prices and interest rates start to rise, and entrepreneurs find that they cannot profitably complete the projects they started. The unsustainable boom leads inevitably to a bust. As Mises writes in his 1936 article “The ‘Austrian’ Theory of the Trade Cycle,” once

a brake is thus put on the boom, it will quickly be seen that the false impression of “profitability” created by the credit expansion has led to unjustified investments. Many enterprises or business endeavors which had been launched thanks to the artificial lowering of the interest rate, and which had been sustained thanks to the equally artificial increase of prices, no longer appear profitable. Some enterprises cut back their scale of operation, others close down or fail. Prices collapse; crisis and depression follow the boom. The crisis and the ensuing period of depression are the culmination of the period of unjustified investment brought about by the extension of credit. The projects which owe their existence to the fact that they once appeared “profitable” in the artificial conditions created on the market by the extension of credit and the increase in prices which resulted from it, have ceased to be “profitable.” The capital invested in these enterprises is lost to the extent that it is locked in. The economy must adapt itself to these losses and to the situation that they bring about.

This, the Austrians argued, was precisely what happened in the lead up to the 1929 crash. (Two economists, Barry Eichengreen and Kris Mitchener, who are not part of the Austrian school and who by their own admission “have vested interests . . . emphasizing other factors in the Depression,” nevertheless found that the empirical record is consistent with the Austrian story.)

The Federal Reserve during the late 1920s held interest rates artificially low, helping spark a boom — notably in the stock market, which saw prices rise by 50 percent in 1928 and 27 percent in the first 10 months of 1929. Starting in August of 1929, the Fed tried to cool what it saw as an overheated stock market by tightening credit. The boom came to an end on October 29.

Magnifying the Bust

When the government sparks an inflationary boom, the boom has to end eventually. One way it can end is that the government can try to keep it going, ever-more rapidly expanding the money supply until price inflation wipes out the value of the currency, as happened in Germany during the 1920s.

The other way is for the central bank to stop expanding credit and allow the boom to turn into a bust. Some businesses go out of business, some people lose their jobs, investments lose their value: the market purges itself of the mistakes that were made during the boom period.

That adjustment process is painful but necessary. But what isn’t necessary is for there to be an economy-wide contraction in spending — a deflationary contraction. A deflationary contraction occurs when the central bank allows the money supply to artificially contract, thus not allowing the demand for money to be met. As people scramble to build up their cash balances, they cut back on their spending, which sends ripple waves through the economy. In economist Steven Horwitz’s words:

As everyone reduces spending, firms see sales fall. This reduction in their income means that they and their employees may have less to spend, which in turn leads them to reduce their expenditures, which leads to another set of sellers seeing lower income, and so on. All these spending reductions leave firms with unsold inventories because they expected more sales than they made. Until firms recognize that this reduction in expenditures is going to be economy-wide and ongoing, they may be reluctant to lower their prices, both because they don’t realize what is going on and because they fear they will not see a reduction in their costs, which would mean losses. In general, it may take time until the downward pressure on prices caused by slackening demand is strong enough to force prices down. During the period in which prices remain too high, we will see the continuation of unsold inventories as well as rising unemployment, since wages also remain too high and declining sales reduce the demand for labor. Thus monetary deflations will produce a period, perhaps of several months or more, in which business declines and unemployment rises. Unemployment may linger longer as firms will try to sell off their accumulated inventories before they rehire labor to produce new goods. If such a deflation is also a period of recovery from an inflation-generated boom, these problems are magnified as the normal adjustments in labor and capital that are required to eliminate the errors of the boom get added on top of the deflation-generated idling of resources.

In short, a deflationary contraction can unleash a much more severe and widespread drop in prices, wages, and output and a much more severe and widespread rise in unemployment than is necessary to correct the mistakes of an artificial boom.

Unfortunately, that’s exactly what happened during the Great Depression. Three factors were particularly important in explaining the extreme deflationary contraction that occurred during the 1930s.

1. Bank failures

In my last post, I discussed how government regulation of banking made banks more fragile. In particular, I noted that government regulations prevented banks from branching, making them far less robust in the face of economic downturns.

That remained true throughout the 1920s and ’30s, leaving U.S. banks vulnerable in a way that Canadian banks, which could and did branch, were not. Not a single Canadian bank failed during the Depression. In the United States, 9,000 banks failed between 1930 and 1933 (roughly 40 percent of all U.S. banks), destroying the credit these banks supplied and so further contracting the money supply.

A report from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis describes it this way:

Starting in 1930, a series of banking panics rocked the U.S. financial system. As depositors pulled funds out of banks, banks lost reserves and had to contract their loans and deposits, which reduced the nation’s money stock. The monetary contraction, as well as the financial chaos associated with the failure of large numbers of banks, caused the economy to collapse.

Less money and increased borrowing costs reduced spending on goods and services, which caused firms to cut back on production, cut prices and lay off workers. Falling prices and incomes, in turn, led to even more economic distress. Deflation increased the real burden of debt and left many firms and households with too little income to repay their loans. Bankruptcies and defaults increased, which caused thousands of banks to fail.

(The banking panics of 1932, it should be noted, were at least in part the result of fears that incoming president FDR would seize Americans’ gold and take the nation off the gold standard — which he ultimately did. Another contributing factor was the protectionist Smoot-Hawley tariff passed in 1930, which, among many other negative impacts on the economy, devastated the agricultural sector and many of the unit banks dependent on it.)

Thanks to these massive bank failures, the U.S. was being crippled by a severe deflation, and yet the Federal Reserve — which, despite being on a pseudo-gold standard, could have stepped in did nothing.

2. The check tax

Also contributing to the collapse of the money supply was the check tax, part of the Revenue Act of 1932, signed into law by Hoover. The Act raised taxes in an effort to balance the budget, which was bad enough in the midst of a deflationary crisis. But the worst damage was done by the check tax. This measure placed a 2-cent tax (40 cents today) on bank checks, prompting Americans to flee from checks to cash, thereby removing badly needed cash from the banks. The result, economists William Lastrapes and George Selgin argue, was to reduce the money supply by an additional 12 percent.

3. Hoover’s high wage policy

The net result of the bank failures and the check tax was a credit-driven deflation the likes of which the U.S. had never seen. As Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz explain in their landmark Monetary History of the United States:

The contraction from 1929 to 1933 was by far the most severe business-cycle contraction during the near-century of U.S. history we cover, and it may well have been the most severe in the whole of U.S. history. . . . U.S. net national product in constant prices fell by more than one-third. . . . From the cyclical peak in August 1929 to the cyclical trough in March 1933, the stock of money fell by over a third.

Why is a deflationary contraction so devastating? A major reason is because prices don’t adjust uniformly and automatically, which can lead to what scholars call economic dis-coordination. In particular, if wages don’t fall in line with other prices, this effectively raises the cost of labor, leading to — among other damaging consequences — unemployment. And during the Great Depression, although most prices fell sharply, wage rates did not.

One explanation is that wages are what economists call “sticky downward”: people don’t like seeing the number on their paychecks go down, regardless of whether economists are assuring them that their purchasing power won’t change. The idea of sticky prices is somewhat controversial, however — in earlier downturns, after all, wages fell substantially, limiting unemployment.

What is certainly true is that government intervention kept wages from falling — particularly the actions of President Hoover and, later, President Roosevelt.

Hoover believed in what was called the “high wage doctrine,” a popular notion in the early part of the 20th century. The high wage doctrine said that keeping wages high helped cure economic downturns by putting money into the pockets of workers who would spend that money, thereby stimulating the economy.

When the Depression hit and prices began falling, Hoover urged business leaders not to cut wages. And the evidence suggests that they listened (whether at Hoover’s urging or simply because they too accepted the high wage doctrine). According to economists John Taylor and George Selgin:

Average hourly nominal wage rates paid to 25 manufacturing industries were 59.3 cents in October 1929, and 59.5 cents by April 1930. Wage rates had fallen only to 59.1 cents by September 1930, despite substantially reduced output prices and profits. Compare this to the 20 percent decline in nominal wage rates during the 1920-21 depression. During the first year of the Great Depression the average wage rate fell less than four-tenths of one percent.

Hoover would go on to put teeth into his request for high wages, signing into law the Davis-Bacon Act in 1931 and the Norris-LaGuardia Act of 1932, both of which used government power to prop up wages. FDR would later go on to implement policies motivated by the high wage doctrine, including the 1933 National Industrial Recovery Act, the 1935 National Labor Relations Act, and the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act.

The problem is that the high wage doctrine was false — propping up wages only meant that labor became increasingly expensive at the same time that demand for labor was falling. The result was mass unemployment.

The Aftermath

It’s worth repeating: this is far from a full account of the Great Depression. It’s not even a full account of the ways the Federal Reserve contributed to the Great Depression (many scholars fault it for the so-called Roosevelt Recession of 1937-38). What we have seen is that there are strong reasons to doubt the high school textbook story of the Great Depression that indicts free markets and Wall Street.

We’ve also started to see a pattern that recurs throughout history: government controls create problems, but the response is almost never to get rid of the problematic controls. Instead, it’s to pile new controls on top of old ones, which inevitably creates even more problems.

And that’s what happened with the Great Depression.

Did we abolish the Fed? No.

Did we return to the pre-World War I classical gold standard? No.

Did we abolish branch banking restrictions? No.

Instead, we created a vast new army of regulatory bodies and regulatory acts, which would spawn future problems and crises: above all, the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, which separated investment and commercial banking and inaugurated federal deposit insurance. I’ll turn to that in the next post.

* How central banks go about conducting monetary policy has varied throughout history. Richard Timberlake explains the process as it took places during the 1920s and 1930s. George Selgin describes the process in more recent times, both prior to the 2008 financial crisis and since.

This article was originally published on MadgeWaggy.blogspot.com.

The post How Government Caused the Great Depression appeared first on LewRockwell.

International Man: Donald Trump has already deployed National Guard troops to Los Angeles and Washington, DC, and threatened to send them into more cities.

Is this a legitimate use of executive power, or a dangerous escalation?

Doug Casey: Once upon a time, that wouldn’t even have been a question, because the Posse Comitatus Act used to be taken seriously. It basically holds that the US military can’t be used for domestic law enforcement. But the government has violated the tradition of not using the military at home from time to time.

For instance, in 1932, the Bonus Marchers—thousands of World War I veterans—came to Washington, D.C., asking for the bonus that had been promised because of their service. Herbert Hoover called out the army under Douglas MacArthur to disperse them. Then, in 1957, Dwight Eisenhower called out the National Guard in Little Rock to integrate the schools.

My understanding of the law is that the president only has the power to use the National Guard in Washington, D.C., since it is not a state but an entity the president directly controls. So Trump’s calling out the Guard in D.C. is different from his doing so elsewhere.

It’s a question of states’ rights versus those of the federal government, and what happens when those powers overlap. This was a major issue in the War Between the States.

States’ rights is one more issue making the US a tinderbox; the governments of blue states and cities can be relied on to resist Trump for any and every reason. Across the country, red people and blue people are barely able to talk to each other. Some really hate each other. The enthusiasm many Wokesters and leftists showed for the assassination of Charlie Kirk was evidence of that. As was the media’s suppression of Iryna Zarutska’s murder in Charlotte by a black career criminal who was released by an affirmative action female judge. It tells me we are on the cusp of something like a civil war in the US. I’ve been talking about it for 10 years, but now it’s starting to feel real.

International Man: In your view, what does Trump’s decision signal about the balance of power between Washington and local governments?

Doug Casey: Clearly, Donald revels in controlling the apparatus of the State. I think he’s acting in a very autocratic manner for two reasons. One, he believes—probably correctly—that if he doesn’t break the back of Marxism, Wokeism, and domestic anti-Americanism now, that whatever’s left of the idea of America is dead. Two, he knows that if he doesn’t totally defang his enemies now, come 2028, they’re going to bankrupt and likely imprison him.

This is the way things work in Banana Republics. Or countries on the cusp of real crises. The cat’s out of the bag. The US is transforming, for many reasons, and it’s not going back to the good old days anytime soon.

This is not the first time that a president has made himself into a “strong man.”  Lincoln did it from 1861 to 1865. Wilson did it with WW1. When F.D.R. took the reins in 1933, he became a veritable dictator in many ways—setting up numerous permanent authoritarian bureaucracies, confiscating gold, closing thousands of banks, and much more. I think Donald sees himself as a reincarnation of those presidents. Donald’s sticking his nose into everything and his authoritarian attitudes are not unprecedented in US history.

His tariffs are a lot more dangerous than most people think, however. The War Between the States is said to have been about slavery. But that was mostly an issue between intellectuals and moralists. Lincoln himself said many times that his aim was to maintain the Union, not abolish slavery. The big issue wasn’t slavery itself, but limiting its expansion. Tariffs affected the southern states vastly more than the northern states.

Tariffs covered most of the government’s expenses, which meant the South was paying most of the cost of the US government. Tariffs practically forced them to buy inferior, costlier Northern goods, as opposed to those from Europe. In addition, the tariffs reduced the amounts Europeans could afford to buy from the South. What I’m saying is that the South wanted out of the Union for real economic reasons, not ideological ones.

My feeling is that, for similar reasons, we’re going to see movements toward secession. Sanctuary cities are a step in that direction, where local laws supersede national laws. Washington is, of course, opposed to that.

International Man: Some argue the National Guard is protecting “public safety,” while others say it tramples on the liberty of American citizens. How do you weigh security against individual rights in this situation?

Doug Casey: Law enforcement has traditionally been left to local police and sheriffs in the US. It’s not, with a few exceptions, a Constitutional mandate of the federal government. So, using the National Guard to enforce law and order is going over a line.

This really started in earnest after Vietnam and subsequent wars. Loads of spare military equipment were dispensed to police forces. SWAT units, especially, have been up-armored to US military standards.

Police forces prefer hiring ex-military personnel, as well, which is another ominous trend. The military is trained and psychologically oriented to interact differently with the public than police forces. We’re moving into the world of Robocop.

International Man: When leaders in other countries deploy national troops domestically, it’s often seen as a step toward militarization of politics. Do you think the US has now crossed that line?

Doug Casey: The US government is increasingly out of control, with more laws regulating everything at every level. The State has become cancerous. And Trump is accelerating that trend by using it for “good” reasons; the next administration will accelerate the state’s growth for equally “good” reasons, but against different parts of the population. As the federal government becomes more involved in people’s lives, more people will push back against it.

Using the National Guard and perhaps even the US military domestically is very dangerous. They’re State employees. They must follow orders, both because they’ve taken an oath to do so and because they want to collect their salary.

Cops and guardsmen have mortgages, car payments, student loans, credit card debt, and expenses. They can’t afford to lose their jobs. So they’ll pretty much do as they’re told, which is a dangerous and unfortunate situation.

International Man: What is the ultimate sociopolitical trend at play here, where is it heading, and what can people do about it?

Doug Casey: People have forgotten that “America” isn’t a country, so much as an idea. An excellent and unique idea, based on free thought, free speech, and free markets. It took root here 250 years ago.

Unfortunately, the essence of America has been greatly degraded and weakened over the years.

What can you do about it? Trying to change the world at large doesn’t make much sense. Instead, remember that charity begins at home. Make sure your own character, abilities, and finances are in order before you get involved in slaying dragons. That’s why I wrote The Preparation (link) with Matt Smith.

But that’s another story…

Reprinted with permission from International Man.

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In order to have a healthy and meaningful life, people need to have a unifying purpose behind everything they do. Recognizing the importance of this at a young age (as I saw many lacking one struggle greatly), I decided to devote myself to the pursuit of truth, regardless of where it took me. From this, I quickly realized how difficult this was, as on virtually every issue, there is a massive amount of ambiguity, which inevitably leads you reaching false conclusions produced from your existing biases.

Because of this, whenever I try to figure out why something “bad” is happening, I take numerous possibilities (often over a dozen) into consideration, and frequently never fully commit to any as I don’t feel a definitive case was made for any of them—an approach which lies in stark contrast to those who come across one explanation and immediately commit to espousing it (as it “makes sense”). Rather, I patiently wait and have faith I will eventually uncover the thread that ties all the disparate pieces together (which when finally revealed, is an immense source of joy).
Note: this is why, while I sometimes claim things are true, I am also quite deliberate in prefacing other statements with “I suspect” or “I believe.”

The hepatitis B vaccine for example, is one of the most controversial vaccines on the immunization schedule, as some of the strongest arguments both in favor and against vaccination exist for its current use. I’ve hence spent decades trying to figure out why we give it to every newborn in America, and have heard numerous compelling explanations to account for this, but never found one that appeared to explain everything.

Fortunately, two weeks ago, a reader finally provided the answer to this question—an answer I was obligated to publicize, as tomorrow on Thursday (9-18-2025), the ACIP (the independent advisory committee which decides which vaccines are “recommended” to America), after decades, will at last be seriously re-evaluating the appropriateness of giving it to all newborns.

A recent Highwire clip, in turn, highlights how controversial this subject is, as individuals on both sides have spoken out aggressively in favor of or in opposition to potentially changing the existing hepatitis B recommendation:

Note: at a contentious hearing today, the now dismissed CDC director (Daskalakis’s boss), when repeatedly pressed by Senator Rand Paul to do so, was unable to provide any rationale for why we give every newborn the hepatitis B vaccine, despite widely decrying any attempt to overturn it—again illustrating the shaky ground this policy rests upon.

Hepatitis B Safety Concerns

Since entering the market, the hepatitis B vaccine has been marred with safety concerns, particularly after it was given to every child in America. What follows is a brief summary of some of those concerns:

• As early as 1976, one researcher cautioned that since autoimmunity is involved in the pathogenesis of hepatitis B infections, it they might also be provoked by molecularly similar hepatitis B vaccines.

• One researcher, Bohn Dunbar (a respected vaccine researcher who was a medical school professor), after her brother and research assistant both developed autoimmune and neurological injuries from the vaccine in 1994, devoted herself to exposing the frequent pattern of autoimmune complications from the vaccine (e.g., “Dr. Dunbar has also been in contact with numerous physicians and research scientists from several countries who have independently described thousands of identical severe reactions occurring in Caucasian recipients of the vaccine”). In turn, due to both her prestige and ability to navigate the academic publishing system, she brought significant attention to this subject (e.g., see this 1999 Washington Post article).

• A 1998 Article in Scientist highlighted growing concerns threatening to derail the hepatitis B vaccine program, such as more and more people claiming it caused serious autoimmune diseases (e.g., rheumatoid arthritis [RA], optic neuritis, and multiple sclerosis [MS]), that one doctor had collected over 600 cases of this happening, and that in July, attorneys representing 15,000 people sued France’s government for exaggerating the vaccine’s benefits and downplaying its risks.

• Shortly after, France suspended hepatitis B vaccinations in schools (to assess if it could cause demyelinating diseases), which the WHO, the ACIP, and France’s medical associations all strongly condemned due to it weakening public confidence in the vaccine.

• In January 1999 (one of the last times major news networks still aired programs critical of pharmaceutical interests—as Clinton has recently legalized pharmaceutical companies buying them out), ABC news hosted an almost entirely forgotten program on the hepatitis B vaccine, which featured a chief CDC and Merck official (who claimed mass vaccination justified preventing a few hepatitis cases and that no injuries attributed to the vaccine were actually caused by it) along with many vaccine injured patients, including both injured adults and parents of severely injured children.

Shortly after, at a May 1999 Congressional hearing discussing the merits of universal hepatitis B vaccination of newborns, in addition to many espousing the need for it, the following objections were raised in testimonials from experts and vaccine-injured parties who testified against the practice:

• Severe Adverse Reactions: Numerous serious side effects were discussed, including infant death, seizures, autism, dysautonomia, MS, RA diabetes, and rare cases of liver cancer in children post-vaccination (along with established mechanisms for the autoimmune responses). VAERS data in turn, indicated over 8,000 reactions, including 43 deaths in children under 2 in 1997. In contrast, there were only 95 annual hepatitis B cases in this demographic (with comparable, or smaller, numbers seen in other datasets)—suggesting injuries vastly outweighed prevented hepatitis cases (particularly since less than 1% of injuries are typically reported to VAERS and infant deaths from hepatitis were virtually non-existent in the pre-vaccination era).
  Note: at each point in time where the safety of the hepatitis B vaccine was questioned, the same pattern of injuries (e.g., characteristic autoimmune disorders and infant deaths) in VAERS was cited, with the total number of them continually increasing as the years went by.
• Inadequate Safety Monitoring and Research: Adverse reaction reports were often ignored or dismissed, with short trial durations (4–5 days), missing delayed reactions like MS or diabetes, which may appear years later. No studies focused on newborns or genetic predispositions, and underreporting was common due to physician denial.
• Lack of Informed Consent and Coercion: Parents received inadequate risk information, with CDC materials omitting serious adverse effects listed in manufacturer inserts. Newborns were vaccinated without parental consent, and some faced coercion, including threats of social services intervention.
• Questionable Mandate: Vaccinating low-risk newborns for an adult-associated disease is inappropriate, particularly since immunity can wane before adolescence and 10–30% of individuals fail to produce antibodies, questioning efficacy.
• Conflicts of Interest: Pharmaceutical influence on health agencies raised doubts about study objectivity.
• Vaccine Injury Compensation Issues: The National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program denied most claims, leaving victims unsupported despite a $1 billion trust fund, with restrictions limiting filings for hepatitis B vaccine injuries.

Note: most of the above has also been said about many other vaccines over the decades. Likewise, in a 1999 testimony before the Ohio legislature, another physician noted that most of the deaths following hepatitis B were classified as SIDS (a condition extensive evidence shows is strongly linked to vaccination) yet SIDS was almost always defined as occurring between 1 month to 1 year of age, and that prior to the hepatitis B vaccine being given to newborns, it rarely if ever affected children under 2 months of age—however in VAERS, many cases labeled as SIDS were reported in infants under one month of age following the vaccination.

One of the Congressional witnesses, in turn, produced an excellent (referenced) summary of the major issues with the hepatitis B vaccine which included two cases he’d observed it causing encephalomyelitis (resulting in a two week coma for one, a four week coma for the other, along with optic neuritis and significant neurological disability for both, and no clear conventional explanation for what had occurred) along with many cases of it causing chronic fatigue syndrome. He then compiled a list of dozens of studies demonstrating that the hepatitis B vaccine was linked to a myriad of autoimmune disorders, as did another author 15 years later (in a 2015 textbook on the subject). Those studies (which are likely only the tip of the iceberg) are as follows:

• Multiple Sclerosis,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9 myelitis,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11 optic neuritis,1,2 Guillain–Barré syndrome,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8 neuropathy,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8 myopathy,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8 Myasthenia Gravis1,2
• Arthritis,1,2,3,4 Lupus,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18 juvenile dermatomyositis,1,2,3 Still’s disease1
• Vasculitis (general,1,2,3 pulmonary and cutaneous,1,2 Churg-Strauss,1,2 Henoch–Schonlein purpura,1 Kawasaki’s disease1), thrombocytopenia,1,2,3,4,5,6 antiphospholipid syndrome1,2
• Lichen planus,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18 bullous pemphigoid,1,2 erythema multiforme,1,2,3 Gianotti–Crosti syndrome,1,2 alopecia,1
• Chronic Fatigue Syndrome,1,2,3,4 Graves’ disease,1,2 glomerulonephritis1

As mentioned above, since the start, it was widely believed that the autoimmune conditions the hepatitis B vaccine caused were due to its antigen having a significant overlap with human myelin (particularly since many of the autoimmune disorders associated with the vaccine were also observed to sometimes occur from a hepatitis B infection).

The molecular mimicry of the vaccine, in turn, was a hotly debated topic that all medical authorities denied was occurring. As it was not possible to assess with the technology of the time, the absence of evidence for it was treated as evidence that it did not.

Note: a definitive 1994 report by the Institute of Medicine noted that while preliminary data existed for many of the injuries attributed to the hepatitis B vaccine, no further research had ever been done, so there was insufficient evidence to prove or disprove a link between these conditions, and concluded its report on the safety of the childhood vaccines by declaring that the lack of adequate data regarding many of the adverse events under study was of significant concern to the committee (but as you might guess, the studies they requested still have not been done).

However, while it was not possible to assess then, a 2005 study showed the hepatitis B vaccine did, indeed, have a significant overlap with myelin and more importantly, that 60% of its recipients also developed immune reactivity to the myelin coasting their nerves (which in the majority of cases persisted for over 6 months). Sadly, by the time this was discovered, the use of the hepatitis B vaccine had been normalized, and public debate on its safety or autoimmunity risk had long since ended.

Likewise:

• A 2005 VAERS study comparing adults who’d received a tetanus-containing vaccine to a hepatitis B vaccine found they were much more likely to develop a variety of autoimmune disorders (5.2X for MS, 18X for RA, 14X for optic neuritis, 9.1X for lupus, 7.2X for alopecia, 2.6X for vasculitis, and 2.3X for thrombocytopenia). A similar 2002 study found a 6.1X increase for chronic arthritis (persisting for at least one year), which affected women 3.5X as much as men, and on average occurred 16 days after vaccination.

• A 2015 study found cases of MS in France rose by 65% in the years following an aggressive national campaign to increase hepatitis B vaccination rates, and that a statistically significant correlation existed between the number of hepatitis B vaccine doses given and the number of MS cases 1-2 years later.

• A 2004 study analyzed primary care records from across England to compare 163 MS patients with 1,604 randomly selected matched controls without MS. It found that MS patients were three times more likely to have received the hepatitis B vaccine within three years of symptom onset, with no similar risk linked to tetanus or influenza vaccines—indicating this was a specific issue with the hepatitis B vaccine.

• A 2009 study in children found that the GSK’s hepatitis B vaccine, which contains five times more yeast protein antigen than other brands, was associated with a 2.77X increased risk of developing MS in vaccine-compliant children. A smaller increase (1.5X) was observed for other CNS inflammatory demyelinating disorders in children who adhered to recommended vaccination schedules.

Additionally, the hepatitis B vaccine has also been repeatedly linked to autism and other developmental disabilities:

• In a June interview with Tucker Carlson, Secretary Kennedy revealed that in 1999, the CDC conducted a study which found that receiving a hepatitis B vaccine in the first 30 days of life caused a 12.35X increase in autism. As this was unacceptable, they conducted numerous attempts to adjust the data to hide the risk, but were unable to make the link go away, gave up, and never published it.

An abstract of a 1999 study (which is likely what RFK was referring to) was subsequently made available to a Florida Congressmen who had worked with vaccine whistleblowers, which showed (via the CDC’s private VSD database) that when infants received the highest doses of mercury containing vaccines (compared to those who had not been vaccinated), there was a 1.8X increase in neurologic development disorders, a 7.6X increase in autism, a 5.0X increase in nonorganic sleep disorders and a 2.1X increase in nonorganic sleep disorders.

• A 2007 study of 1824 children found boys who received the hepatitis B vaccine (prior to 2000 when it still used thimerosal) were 9 times as likely to have a developmental disability.

• A follow-up 2010 study found neonatal hepatitis B vaccination (compared to no hepatitis B vaccination or simply getting it later in life) made children 3 times as likely to develop autism.

In contrast, the licensing studies for the vaccines only monitored for side effects during a short window long before these side effects would emerge (typically 4-5 days), did not use actual placebos (e.g., the original trials used either aluminum or aluminum and albumin1,2,3 while the later ones compared the vaccine to other “safe” vaccines).

The package insert of Merck’s vaccine noted that in the first 5 days, 17% of adults reported injection site reactions (e.g., pain, soreness, bruising, nodule formation), while 15% of adults and 10.4% of children reported systemic adverse reactions (e.g., fatigue/weakness, headache, fevers above 100°F, malaise, nausea, diarrhea, pharyngitis, upper respiratory infection).

The package of GSK’s vaccine noted after 4 days, 22% of recipients had injection site soreness, 14% had fatigue, and between 1-10% reported dizziness, headaches, and either redness, induration, or swelling at the injection site. Additionally, a variety of more severe conditions were reported in <1% of injections (e.g., anorexia, somnolence, hypotension, a wide range of gastrointestinal conditions, hives, irritability, and weakness). Finally, in adults with diabetes, 3.8% had serious systemic side effects (compared to 1.6% of controls).

Note: non-autoimmune complications have also been attributed to the vaccine (e.g., VAERS revealed a seizure link estimated to affect 1 in 1300 recipients).

In short, despite the fact that most of the research that should have been done never was, it is fair to say the risk profile of this vaccine suggests significant benefit must be seen from it to justify it being given to every newborn infant.

Read the Whole Article

The post Why Is Every Newborn Forced To Get the Dangerous Hepatitis B Vaccine? appeared first on LewRockwell.

It’s amazing how aggressively free speech in the United States is being torn apart in the wake of the Charlie Kirk killing.

Jimmy Kimmel was fired after President Trump’s FCC threatened ABC when the late night comic suggested that Kirk’s killer was a Trumper. I personally dislike Kimmel, but this is about as naked a government assault on free expression as you could possibly imagine.

Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil has been ordered deported to Syria or Algeria after the Trump administration targeted him for political speech critical of Israel.

Trump has brokered a deal allowing TikTok to be purchased by a consortium that includes his billionaire buddies Larry Ellison and Marc Andreesen. US officials have acknowledged that Washington’s push to grab control of TikTok was because of the opposition to the Gaza holocaust that was circulating on the platform.

Oracle co-founder Ellison is a fanatical Zionist oligarch who has expressed support for the idea of a massive surveillance network to control all of society, and his son David just purchased Paramount, which owns CBS News. The younger Ellison has reportedly installed pro-Israel propagandist Bari Weiss to a senior leadership position within the network.

Trump says he has asked Attorney General Pam Bondi to look into bringing “criminal RICO charges” against Code Pink activists who chanted anti-genocide slogans at him while he was dining at a restaurant. Like pro-Palestine demonstrators are mafia kingpins or something.

Bondi said during a podcast that the Trump administration is going to start prosecuting “hate speech” against conservatives, alleging that such speech was responsible for Charlie Kirk’s assassination.

When asked by the press about Bondi’s comments, Trump said “We’ll probably go after people like you, because you treat me so unfairly. It’s hate. You have a lot of hate in your heart. Maybe I’ll come after ABC.” Again, ABC was the network Jimmy Kimmel was fired from.

To be clear: It’s not “ABC pulls Jimmy Kimmel after comments about Charlie Kirk,” it’s “ABC pulls Jimmy Kimmel after threats from Trump FCC chair”

The distinction matters here.

— Theo Baker (@tab_delete) September 17, 2025

Trump henchman Stephen Miller said on a podcast that the White House is going to start targeting leftist “terrorist networks”, claiming on no basis whatsoever that Kirk’s assassination was the fault of a “vast domestic terror movement” which foments the kind of violence which led to Kirk’s death. Trump himself said that “a lot of people that you would traditionally say are on the left … [are] already under investigation,” and that he plans to designate Antifa as a terrorist organization.

Vice President JD Vance has publicly been encouraging Trump supporters to try to get ordinary members of the public fired for saying mean things about Charlie Kirk, saying, “When you see someone celebrating Charlie’s murder, call them out, and hell, call their employer. We don’t believe in political violence, but we do believe in civility.”

Trump’s Truth Social account recently shared a video calling for state censorship of media outlets and online influencers who share “propaganda”, falsely framing this authoritarian notion as a reboot of the Smith-Mundt Act and suggesting that it should be called the “Charlie Kirk Act”.

For chanting at him and inflicting “harm and terror” on his dinner, Trump and his Deputy Attorney General say they can charge activists with RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations) crimes. All week, the administration has floated designating activist groups as… pic.twitter.com/WABtedBCwR

— BreakThrough News (@BTnewsroom) September 18, 2025

When you see me refusing to play along with the campaign to canonize Charlie Kirk or respect the emotional hysteria around his killing, this is the main reason why. His death is already being used to manufacture consent for sweeping acts of tyranny, and it was clear from day one that it would be.

The empire managers are always seeking excuses to suppress free speech, crush the left, and stomp out opposition to Zionism and the US war machine. They’ll use any chance they get to advance these goals, which are all ultimately about expanding power and control.

Many pre-existing agendas are being shoved forward by those in power, as always happens when emotions run hot over a traumatic event. I’ve said it many times before and I’ll surely say it many times again: it’s precisely when we are most tempted to abandon rationality and play along with the emotionality of the moment that we need to be thinking most clearly and critically.

_____________

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Bundeswehr planners now want to increase German military presence in virtually all of Eastern Europe, including Poland. In other words, German tanks will be moving through Poland and Ukraine to fight Russia. Does this sound familiar by any chance? It’s almost as if something like this happened already, but we can’t really put our finger on it. Jokes aside, anyone with a primary education would certainly know and understand that this is a patently bad idea.

The war hysteria in the European Union is reaching new levels virtually on a daily basis. In the aftermath of the supposed “Russian” drone incident, the troubled bloc is increasingly militaristic, with its eyes set on “the evil Kremlin”. Although Polish officials are yet to explain how and why these “Russian” drones ended up in Poland, their statements already suggest that the incident is most likely a false flag. Namely, it would make little sense for Moscow to send unarmed reconnaissance drones. Such a move accomplishes nothing of value for Russia, but (rather conveniently) gives the political West the perfect pretext to get directly involved in the NATO-orchestrated Ukrainian conflict. For the world’s most aggressive racketeering cartel, this is a matter of “protecting the investment”, as it’s crystal clear that the Russian military will eventually defeat the Kiev regime forces.

To prevent this, the political West needs to prepare for war. The issue of motivating the populace remains, so the EU/NATO needs to fabricate a narrative that it’s supposedly “defending”. And for God knows which time, Germany seems to be among those leading the charge. Namely, the Bundeswehr (German military) is looking to increase its land component by at least 100,000 soldiers. Lieutenant-General Alfons Mais, the Inspector of the Army (effectively the highest ranking officer in the land forces, better known as Heer), wants the service branch to grow by nearly three times its current strength, stressing that Berlin “must be ready to fight a war with Moscow by 2029”. At present, the German Army has around 60,000 active-duty troops, with plans to increase that to at least 160,000. According to Reuters, confidential military documents confirm that this plan is already underway.

“It is imperative for the army to become sufficiently ready for war by 2029 and provide the capabilities Germany pledged (to NATO) by 2035,” General Mais wrote on September 2.

However, even this isn’t enough, as the Army Chief argues that the actual number of troops needs to be 260,000 active-duty and at least 200,000 reserve personnel (at present, it’s approximately 60,000 for each).

“According to a first rough estimate, a total of around 460,000 personnel (from Germany) will be necessary, divided into some 260,000 active troops and around 200,000 reservists,” he wrote.

In effect, this would quadruple the current number, bringing the size of the German Army to the levels not seen since the (First) Cold War. What’s more, Berlin also keeps expanding its “expeditionary” troops, particularly in the Baltic states, where 5,000 German soldiers are now stationed (specifically in Lithuania). The last time they were there, things didn’t go exactly as planned. What’s more, this was before Russia had the largest thermonuclear arsenal on the planet, in addition to a plethora of long-range strike systems (including hypersonic weapons that the entire NATO simply lacks due to technological inferiority). Still, this doesn’t seem to be a concern for the Bundeswehr planners as they now want to increase German military presence in virtually all of Eastern Europe, including Poland. In other words, German tanks will be moving through Poland and Ukraine to fight Russia.

Does this sound familiar by any chance? It’s almost as if something like this happened already, but we can’t really put our finger on it. Jokes aside, anyone with a primary education would certainly know and understand that this is a patently bad idea. What’s more, it’s highly questionable whether Berlin will be able to pull this off. Namely, back in 2018, the Bundeswehr’s land component was supposed to number over 200,000 troops, but this target was never reached. Worse yet, a Financial Times report published back in March showed that the German military was faced with record dropouts, with 25% of new recruits leaving after only six months of service. In other words, not only is Berlin faced with a nearly impossible task of increasing the size of its armed forces, but it cannot even retain the current numbers. The situation is so bad that Germany will likely need to reintroduce conscription.

On the other hand, neighboring Poland seems to be taking it up a notch, as it’s now training mothers to fight a war with Russia. Namely, after the aforementioned “Russian” drone incident, Warsaw decided to sponsor military training for 20,000 civilians, including Polish mothers “who want to protect their children”. Needless to say, deploying female civilians with toddlers for war against the deadliest fighting force on the planet is anything but sensible. And yet, here we are. This sort of “logic” is what pushed NATO-occupied Ukraine into a perfectly avoidable bloodbath that wiped out an entire generation of Ukrainian men, exacerbating their country’s already disastrous demographics. The latest data suggests that approximately 1.8 million Ukrainians are now dead and/or “missing” (i.e., almost certainly killed in action, but the Neo-Nazi junta refuses to acknowledge this).

NATO is undoubtedly aware of this, which is why it conducts studies on the potential number of casualties in a war with Russia. Namely, back in September last year, German Lieutenant-General Alexander Sollfrank gave an interview to Reuters, explaining how a conflict with the Kremlin would be completely different from the illegal NATO invasions in Afghanistan and Iraq. At the time, Sollfrank was the head of NATO’s logistics command and certainly understood the peculiarities of waging war with an opponent that can actually shoot back and obliterate critical infrastructure in the rear.

“The challenge will be to swiftly ensure high-quality care for, in the worst case, a great number of wounded,” he said, adding: “For planning reasons, all options to take a great number of wounded to medical installations need to be considered, which includes trains, but potentially also buses.”

Sollfrank also admitted that NATO would be unable to maintain air superiority over the frontlines in a conflict with Russia, which is the cornerstone of the political West’s military strategy. Namely, it boils down to destroying the opponent’s air power, so that NATO could then bomb the country it attacks with impunity. However, such a scenario in a war with Russia would be a complete fantasy. The Kremlin operates some of the best fighter jets in the world, armed to the teeth with the most advanced types of missiles that completely outclass anything in NATO’s arsenal.

In other words, the world’s most aggressive racketeering cartel would be forced to fight in ways it’s simply not used to, resulting in enormous casualties. Namely, Russia’s conventional long-range strike capabilities far eclipse any other nation on the planet (with the notable exception of its ally China which possesses similar systems). The Russian military has demonstrated time and again that it can take out virtually any high-value target far behind the frontline, making it nearly impossible for its enemies to conduct basic operations, such as maintaining supply lines or rotating frontline troops. This is particularly true for weapons such as the 9M723 hypersonic missile of the 9K720M “Iskander-M” system. In recent days, Moscow demonstrated at least two MZKT-7930 TEL (transporter, erector, launcher) trucks in the Kaliningrad oblast (region) that NATO threatened to invade.

Source infobrics.org

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The FBI is currently investigating the possibility that dozens of other individuals may have known about the planned murder of conservative influencer Charlie Kirk through their participation in an online chatroom.

Kirk, the head of campus outreach group Turning Point USA, was fatally shot on September 10 while speaking at an outdoor event at Utah Valley University. Two days later, authorities apprehended and accused 22-year-old Robinson of the shooting and detailed how he was motivated by his view of Kirk as “hateful.” Robinson was in a romantic relationship with his male roommate, who is in the process of “transitioning” to female.

On Monday, FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino told Newsmax host Rob Schmitt that investigators are looking at a chat room on the platform Discord in which Robinson participated and a “potential broader network of people who may have known” what he was planning. He cautioned that the investigation was still in the early stages, and were not yet certain of who knew what when.

“The only question is the timeline that other people knew about the incident. Did they know before? Did they know afterward?” Bongino said. “When you read some of the traffic, it’s unclear if that message was received before or after.”

BREAKING: Dan Bongino confirms authorities know Charlie’s assassination wasn’t the act of one man — others were involved, and knew beforehand. pic.twitter.com/iAC4zjgxt6

— John-Henry Westen (@JhWesten) September 16, 2025

The next day, FBI Director Kash Patel testified before Congress on a wide range of topics, during which the state of the investigation came up.

“I see the public reports that the Discord thread had as many as 20 additional users,” Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) said, to which Patel said it was a “lot more than that,” and “we’re running them all down.”

Patel would not go so far as to say definitively that more individuals than Robinson were involved in the assassination, but said it remains a possibility. “There are a number of individuals that are currently being investigated and interrogated — and a number yet to be investigated and interrogated related to that chatroom,” he said.

Discord has issued a statement insisting there is “no evidence that the suspect planned this incident or promoted violence” on the platform. Robinson announced to his chat room that he had done it roughly two hours after the shooting.

“Hey guys, I have bad news for you all,” Robinson told the 30-some members of the chat. “It was me at [Utah Valley University] yesterday. i’m sorry for all of this […] Im surrendering through a sheriff friend in a few moments. thanks for all the good times and laughs, you’ve all been so amazing, thank you all for everything.”

Turning Point USA will be holding a public memorial for Kirk on Sunday, September 21, which will feature remarks by President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance, and other members of the Trump administration, as well as his widow Erika Kirk, populist podcaster Tucker Carlson, and others.

This article was originally published on Lifesite News.

The post FBI Says ‘a Lot More’ Than 20 People ‘May Have Known’ Charlie Kirk Was Going To Be Shot appeared first on LewRockwell.

Why Hasn’t Biden prosecutor Jack Smith Been Arrested and Indicted?  The Answer is that Republicans Are Wimps.  They are scared to actually fight.

The Democrats Tried to Indict and to Destroy the Entire Republican Party.

Will the Wimp Republicans do anything about it?  

Scope of FBI probe into Trump revealed:

The Biden-era investigation into alleged 2020 election interference turned out to have been far wider than originally thought…

At least 92 Republican-linked people and organizations were the focus of a Biden-era FBI investigation into alleged attempts by Trump to overturn the 2020 election, newly unclassified files show.

The trove of documents was unveiled by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) during a panel hearing on Tuesday.

The probe, dubbed “Arctic Frost,” kicked off in April 2022 and was jointly conducted by the FBI and other agencies, becoming the foundation for former Biden special counsel Jack Smith to bring criminal charges against now-President Donald Trump.

The investigation focused on an alleged “multifaceted conspiracy to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election so that former President Trump could remain in office,” the documents show.

The records reveal that “Arctic Frost” was much broader than just an electoral matter” and that the probe promptly “expanded to Republican organizations,” including the late Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA group. Kirk was killed on September 10, 2025, while speaking to an audience at Utah Valley University. One thousand of the students were accessories to Kirk’s murder, because they protested his appearance on campus, thereby creating a climate of hate that resulted in Kirk’s murder.  We should despise those students even though they are the typical products of American education today. American education produces anti-Americans.

Senator Grassley reports that some of the Republicans “the FBI sought to place under political investigation included the Republican National Committee, Republican Attorneys General Association, and Trump political groups.”  In other words, it was an effort to destroy the Republican Party.

“Arctic Frost wasn’t just a case to politically investigate Trump,” the senator reported. “It was a vehicle by which partisan FBI agents and Department of Justice prosecutors could achieve their partisan ends and improperly investigate the entire Republican political apparatus.”  Grassley should have added that the corrupt “investigation” had the full support of the American whore media.

Shortly after the release of the documents, Trump took to Truth Social to slam Smith and the Biden administration over their corrupt investigation.

“They tried to force Charlie [Kirk], and many other people and movements, out of business. They Weaponized the Justice Department against Sleepy Joe Biden’s Political Opponents, including ME!” Trump wrote.

Smith resigned from his role ahead of Trump’s inauguration but defended his politically motivated probe and his decision to bring the false charges. Trump has repeatedly claimed that the ultimate purpose of the investigation was to derail his 2024 presidential bid. Actually, the purpose was to imprison Trump and to destroy the Republican Party.  But this is too scary for even Trump to acknowledge. 

Aleksandr Dugan, one of Russia’s top intellects, concludes that “Charlie Kirk’s murder is the beginning of a liberal, globalist attack against all ordinary people.”

Dugin is correct. Every Western European government has turned against its ethnic base because it is white and, thereby, racist. The members of the Western governments were taught that they are racists by their elite universities.  Western governments no longer protect their own ethnic citizens.  The governments protect the immigrant-invaders.  In Britain and Sweden, and I believe the entirety of Western Europe, immigrant-invaders by virtue of their dark skin have the de facto right to rape white women, even children.  The scandal of the mass gang-rapes of ethnic British women and children that the British government, regardless of party, has been covering up for 30 years has finally resulted in the mass protests by ethnic British. The protests are ongoing as I write.  

The British Prime Minister, Starmer, and the Muslim female Home Minister both made it clear that the UK government represents the invaders, not the ethnic British citizens.  The British Prime Minister declared that the “racist protesters” could not use the British flag to symbolize their protest, because the British flag represents multiculturalism, diversity, and a Tower of Babel, not ethnic British.  Starmer declared that the protest from what was once the British nation was a racist rebellion against “diversity”and sicced the British police on the ethnic British citizens. Today if you are a citizen of Great Britain, you are subject to oppression by your own government in addition to the crimes and gang-rapes of your women by the immigrant-invaders.  The ethnic British have failed to resist an invasion, and they have been conquered.

Little information about the protests comes from the whore Western media other than the whore media’s assurances that the protesters are racists and far-right. The American and Western European media’s position on the invasion of their countries by the Third World millions is identical to the position of the French and European media and governments in Jean Raspail’s book, The Camp of the Saints:  The immigrant-invaders deserve our country and we must let them have it to make up for our sins against non-white peoples. Colonialism, slavery, all that sort of thing. In Raspail’s book there is no will to resist the immigrant-invaders destruction of European civilization and population. 

The growing protests in Britain against being ruled by a government that represents immigrant-invaders is pointless, because it is non-violent. The British police unleashed by the Muslim Home Minister on the protesters– ethnic Britishers–the British government’s protection of gang-rapists, the British government’s imprisonment of ethnic British for protesting in defense of the English, indicates the direction of the fate of every Western country.  They are doomed, because they are white and comprise a tiny minority of the world population that has been taught to hate them for their oppression of non-whites. The irony is that the hatred was taught to the non-whites by the whites themselves at Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, Yale, Stanford, and so on.

Harvard, Yale, Oxford, Cambridge are accessories to the murder of Western Civilization.

Karl Marx, a reviled person by those who never bothered to read him, concluded that violence is the only effective force in history.  Formerly I opposed this view, but historically it seems to be essentially correct.  

If the besieged white ethnicities care to save themselves–and by now they might be too brainwashed and indoctrinated into their guilt to have the will to resist–they will have to resort to a lot of violence.  The longer they wait, the less their chances.  I expect that in the future the white race will exist only in a few zoos as examples of racist exploiters who were overthrown.

There is a chance that Charlie Kirk’s murder and the opposition of ethnic British to the British government that denies them and their women and children the protection of law, will wake up the insouciant white ethnicities that are marked for extermination.  But there are only a few signs of white people waking up.  Below are two:

Here is Scott Adams working his way into the possibility that only violence can save white ethnicities.

White people either fight for their lives or they don’t.  The question is whether whites are already conquered by their educational indoctrination.

The other example is a social media post that I cannot find at this moment.  It asked the point of Trump sending the National Guard to blue cities defying the US government.  Instead, send the US Air Force.  In other words, obliterate the anti-American blue cities just as Israel has done to Palestine.  The social media posts suggest that some white people are beginning to wake up and recognize reality.  The enemies of traditional Americans are internal. The attacks on family, white people, sexual morality, Christianity, free speech, the Constitution, equal protection of law, and truth all come from the Democrat liberal-left, not from Russia, China, and Iran.  By focusing on alleged external enemies, the Trump regime keeps the focus off of the real threat.

If Netanyahu had Kirk assassinated in order to avoid losing his brainwashed American conservative supporters who were being awakened by Kirk to Israel’s criminality, the Israel Lobby will  use the American media  to control the narrative, and Kirk’s assassination will be blamed on the NRA for defending the Second Amendment.  By controlling the narrative, Kirk’s assassination can be eliminated as a rallying cry.

Currently, Trump, on whom the aware Americans place hope, is in England assuring the solidity of the US/UK alliance as the UK government turns England over to immigrant-invaders.

Can Americans really expect any different outcome?

In Jean Raspail’s 1973 prediction of the fate of guilt-ridden white people, not even the tough Soviet communists survive.  They, also, succumb to the white disease of self-doubt, and white people cease to exist.

I have been watching Raspail’s prediction come true step by step for 52 years.  The Camp of the Saints is now upon us.

The post The Twilight of the White Ethnicities appeared first on LewRockwell.

Here we are, back in the good old US of A, and nothing has changed, or so it seems at first. The war against Christianity continues; the destruction of the family is encouraged by subversives such as The New York Times, The New Yorker, and the main networks; and the ripping-apart of national identity is ongoing, as is the violence and the tyrannical wokeism in our universities.

The reasons for these disasters are obvious: More than 90 percent of the media—legacy, network, social, and state—is left-wing. Ninety percent of the professoriate is left-wing and activist, which explains why American campuses believe they are above the rules and laws. The horrible irony is that everything the vast majority of Americans and their elected representatives do not want becomes the new culture of America.

“Charlie Kirk believed in civilized debate, but the left does not.”

And then there’s Trump. His answer to the above is messy and a drag-out ding-dong collision with the media, the latter going nuts because he’s doing what the majority of Americans want done. The absurdity, of course, being that by dragging the country back to the middle where it once was and where the Founders believed it should remain, the usual suspects are outraged. There are those who believe that what the majority of Americans wish to happen will happen, but I’m not so sure. I’m a pessimist by nature who believes the bad guys always win because they cheat. There are, of course, good signs. And then there are leftist-inspired murders of the good guys like Charlie Kirk, a saint in my and many others’ book.

What comes to mind following the horror of Charlie Kirk’s murder is the aftermath of the death of a career criminal who died from an overdose while legally pinned down by a policeman. George Floyd’s drug death had the Times, the networks, The New Yorker, and the usual suspects up in arms, cheering on the bloodthirsty mobs to burn the place down, which they did. Cops and innocents lost their lives and livelihoods during the riots, egged on by the left and celebrated by the media. I write this on the day after the foul murder of Charlie Kirk and am ready to bet my bottom dollar that nothing like that will take place. Why? That, for me, is the big question: Why aren’t we out there burning down the offices of MSNBC, beating up the owners of those subverting grub sheets, the Sulzbergers and Newhouses? One thing is certain: If the Sulzbergers and Newhouses were held responsible by a mob, their subversive sheets would certainly change their tune, and that’s a guarantee from Taki.

There is also something very wrong when a Christian, civilized, and gentle person like Charlie is gunned down, while a genocidal maniac like Netanyahu is given a standing ovation in Congress. Charlie’s foul murder is the latest manifestation of the hateful rhetoric aimed at The Donald and his MAGA movement. And it will continue unless something’s done about it. The left openly claims that assassination culture is on, with 48 percent of liberals saying that it is somewhat justified to murder Elon Musk. Fifty-five percent say the same about Trump. Can we say the same about Sulzberger and Newhouse?

Cackling Kamala encouraged the Antifa-BLM riots back in 2020, and I’m wondering if she would still be cackling if someone burned her place down this coming weekend. But we don’t do this sort of thing, do we? Charlie Kirk believed in civilized debate, but the left does not. Any speech they don’t agree with is “hate speech.” And people who use “hate speech” have to be cut down. And, always according to the left, people who exercise their right to free speech are “literally killing people.”

This is what the lefty media and academy preach and teach nowadays. While the right tends to believe that the left is simply wrong, the left also thinks the right is wrong but is also evil. Reading a theater listing in the Times about a TV play on Mussolini, there’s an added remark that the Italian began a career that resembles that of Trump. Although the violence in this country mostly comes from the left, the media does not acknowledge it. Needless to say, the media is unwilling to take an ounce of responsibility for it.

And it gets worse: Everything one reads or hears about Trump and any conservative is accompanied by references to Hitler. Ironically, Stalin is never mentioned, but always the Führer. So people begin to believe it. It’s like an ad on TV that constantly repeats itself. After a while you automatically reach for it in a store. The president of the Oxford Union, a debating society replete with idiots, had this to say after the murder: “Kirk got shot. Let’s fucking go party.” His name is George Abaraonye, most likely born under a bluer sky than the Brit one. If someone shot that son of a bitch they’d get fifty years. It’s almost worth it.

The lies that the Democrats and the media told about George Floyd’s death in 2020 have gotten many people killed. Including that poor white girl from Ukraine, by a black scumbag on the train. The CEO of a health company by a rich left-wing crap-spouter, ditto. It’s time we of the right hit back.

This article was originally published on Taki’s Magazine.

The post Fire With Fire appeared first on LewRockwell.

Hardly anyone in the mainstream press addresses the mystery of how Trump went from what was supposedly a secret agent of the Russians to an ardent opponent of Russia in the Ukraine-Russia war. My hunch is that the commentators in the mainstream press are so excited that Trump has turned pro-Ukraine that they don’t care that they were, not so long ago, accusing him of being a secret agent of Russia.

After all, who can forget the daily refrain during Trump’s first term in office. “Robert Mueller is going to save us!” We had to be subjected to that refrain from both Democrats and the mainstream press for more than a year. The notion was that Trump was, as president of the United States, secretly serving the interests of Russia. Democrats and most of the mainstream press were convinced that Robert Mueller, a lawyer who had been appointed as special counsel to investigate the matter, was going to save us all by concluding that Trump was, in fact, serving as a secret agent of Russia, which would then result in Trump’s removal from office though impeachment.

As we all know, Robert Mueller ended up not saving us because there was nothing to save us from. The entire matter was one great big ridiculous conspiracy theory on the part of the mainstream press and Democrats. After a year of extensive investigation by a huge and very expensive staff of lawyers, Robert Mueller ended up concluding that the allegation was bogus.

Nonetheless, most everyone thought that Trump was going to do everything he could to establish friendly and peaceful relations with Russia. Such a policy, of course, wouldn’t make him a secret agent of Russia, any more than President Kennedy’s efforts in that direction made him a secret agent of Russia.

Yet in his first term in office, Trump ended up taking a fairly adversarial stand toward Russia. It was reasonable to conclude, however, that one reason he did that was an effort to bend over backwards to show that the secret-agent accusations were entirely bogus.

This time around as president, however, there was nothing that Trump had to prove. During his 2024 campaign, he made it clear that he intended to bring an end to the Ukraine-Russia war as soon as he took office. Of course, the easiest and fastest way to have done that was to immediately cut off all U.S. foreign aid to Ukraine. For a while, it appeared that that was precisely what Trump was going to do. When Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky visited Trump and Vice President Vance in the White House, both of them berated, insulted, humiliated, and dressed down Zelensky in public. Zelensky ended up leaving that meeting with his tail between his legs. Trump even stated that it was Ukraine that had started the war. The message seemed clear — U.S. aid to Ukraine was going to terminate, which would, of course, have been the logical course of action given Trump’s conviction that it was Ukraine that started the war.

However, sometime afterward, Trump did an about-face and began berating Russia and Russian president Vladimir Putin for not doing enough to end the war. He began threatening Putin with more economic sanctions. He made it clear that the U.S. government would continue supporting Ukraine, especially with weaponry. He has also taken an increasingly aggressive position toward Russia and Putin.

The mainstream press treats all this as perfectly normal. I myself find it extremely mysterious. How does a guy who is accused of being a Russian agent go all the way to becoming a Russian adversary? For me, that’s quite a switch.

The following is my opinion as to what has happened to bring about this very radical turnaround. As longtime readers of my blog know, I have long maintained that it is the national-security branch of the federal government — i.e., the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA — that is in charge of the federal government, especially in foreign affairs, and that the other three branches simply operate in support of the national-security branch.

It was the national-security branch that used NATO to successfully provoke Russia into attacking Ukraine. It did that by having NATO, an old relic from the Cold War racket, to move eastward toward Russia’s borders knowing full well that Russia would object and ultimately invade Ukraine, after which they could condemn Russia for its “aggression.” The objective was to use a war with Russia to “degrade” Russia, give Russia its own “Afghanistan,” and bring about regime change within Russia. The U.S would supply the weaponry and cash to Ukraine to accomplish this. It would only be Ukrainian soldiers, not American soldiers, who would be dying and so the American people wouldn’t care about what the national-security branch had done to bring about the war.

What the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA failed to confront was the distinct possibility that Russia would end up winning the war, which would necessarily mean a defeat of the United States. After the deadly 20-year U.S. fiasco war in Afghanistan and the installation of a pro-Iranian regime in the U.S. war of aggression against Iraq, the last thing the national-security branch wants is the humiliation of another military defeat, especially at the hands of Russia — its adversary in its old Cold War racket.

So, it’s my opinion that the national-security establishment has put the squeeze on Trump and made him see how important it is to “national security” that Russia not be permitted to win this war. It is my opinion that Trump has caved in to such pressure, just like Congress and the federal courts have long deferred to the national-security branch. That, to me, is a logical explanation for Trump’s about-face on Russia and also why he no longer heavily emphasizes the need to “drain the swamp” and bring an end to the “deep state.”

Reprinted with permission from The Future of Freedom Foundation.

The post The Mystery of Trump, Ukraine, and Russia appeared first on LewRockwell.

On Wednesday, the Federal Reserve’s Federal Open Market Committee cut the target policy rate by 0.25 percent, bringing the target down to 4.25 percent. This cut is the first since the Fed implemented a cutting cycle last year that reduced the target rate from 5.5 percent to 4.5 percent. That series of cuts began with a 50 basis-point cut in September of last year, ending with a 25 basis-point cut in December.

This month’s meeting is among the most-watched meetings of recent years with the FOMC now being expected to “do something” in response to a clear slowdown in job growth in recent employment data. Since January, the Fed has faced immense public pressure from the White House, from Wall Street, and from many financial-sector pundits demanding that the Fed cut the target interest rate and adopt an even more dovish stance. A frequent criticism of the Fed through this period—made by those who believe more monetary inflation can somehow strengthen an economy—is that the Fed is “too late” in implementing additional rate cuts to stimulate the economy.

The pressure to cut rates gained additional strength in the wake of new jobs reports, released earlier this month, showing that job growth had substantially weakened during June, July, and August of this year. Moreover, the release of revised benchmark employment data for much of 2024 and early 2025 showed that job growth had not been nearly as strong as previously reported.

Those pushing for more easy money used this jobs data as an opportunity to demand more rate cuts from the Fed. So, not surprisingly, Fed Chair Jerome Powell and the FOMC this week voted to lower the target rate, and the Fed will accelerate its open market operations, using newly created money, to intervene in the marketplace to further reduce short-term interest rates.

In this, we also see what really concerns the Fed. The Fed’s concern is not reducing prices and improving the cost of living for ordinary people. What really concerns the Fed is ensuring rising asset prices for Wall Street while pushing cheap credit to finance federal deficits.

Does the Fed Care about Price Inflation? 

Generally, the mainstream narrative around Fed policy works like this: when inflation is “too high”—as defined by the Fed itself—then the Fed will allow interest rates to rise. This will slow monetary inflation and prices will stabilize. On the other hand, when employment is not sufficiently robust—again, as defined by the Fed itself—then the Fed will lower the target interest rate. That will lead to more monetary inflation which will “stimulate” job growth. This narrative, however, depends on the idea that when employment growth is weak, price inflation will also be weak, and vice versa.

If a weakening employment situation were the only thing going on right now, then it would be very easy for the Fed to claim right now—using the popularly accepted narrative—that it is necessary for the Fed to cut the target rate to stimulate employment. But, the Fed face a complicating factor right now in that price inflation has been rising in recent months, and shows no signs of returning to the Fed’s arbitrary two-percent inflation target.

Specifically, core CPI in August rose 3.1 percent, well in excess of the two-percent target. Moreover, the Fed’s preferred inflation measure, personal consumption expenditures, rose by 2.9 percent in July. Powell recent stated that their estimate for PCE growth in August is also 2.9 percent. In other words, price inflation isn’t going away, and by lowering the target rate, the Fed is pushing more monetary inflation which will put further upward pressure on prices.

Moreove,r the FOMC’s members now don’t expect the Fed to hit its target price-inflation rate until 2027. At least, that’s what the members are saying according to the Fed’s summary of economic projections (SEP). The SEP, however, can always be counted on the portray the economy as stable and generally improving. It’s the best scenario that Fed voting members think they can get away with predicting. So, if the SEP is telling us that price inflation will not fall to 2 percent until 2027, we can expect that there is plenty of monetary inflation in the works.

The scenario projected by the SEP is this: that the Fed will wisely manage the economy back to a state of growing employment and moderating price inflation, as the Fed threads the needle of discovering just the right target interest rate to optimize economic conditions. That’s what they want the public to believe.

If price inflation does come in coming months and years, the more likely scenario is this: the economy will weaken, just as is now suggested by recessionary trends in the index of leading economic indicators, in new home construction, in stagnating job growth, and in delinquency rates. Prices will fall as demand collapses in the face of rising unemployment, falling real wages, and overindebtedness.

The downside of a recession, of course, is temporary unemployment. But the upside—in the absence of central-bank meddling—is that the many inflationary bubbles that have grown as a result of monetary inflation finally pop and prices fall. Zombie companies that only existed thanks to cheap credit go bankrupt and more efficient owners take over and build a more productive economy out of the rubble of the old Fed-created inflationary economy. This is all to the good in terms of the cost of living because the bubble economy has become unaffordable for ordinary people who are forced to deal with incessantly rising prices and unaffordable homes.

That’s what would happen if the Fed actually cared about reducing price inflation. Unfortunately, the Fed isn’t going to let that happen. Rather than allow prices to fall substantially, and allow for a new, less wasteful, less frothy and bubbly economy to arise, the Fed will instead continue to force down interest rates and push more monetary inflation as the economy slows. This will prevent a reset in prices, and it will help ensure that the same, wasteful bubble enterprises continue to dominate the economy.

The Fed will say, as it is already now saying, that it must “balance” its efforts to combat inflation against the need to stimulate employment.

In other words, as the economy slows, American policymakers have the opportunity to allow home prices to fall and to make homes available to millions of Americans who have been priced out thanks to decades of easy-money-fueled asset price growth. Americans policymakers have an opportunity to allow a flowering of new competition and new efficiency in the economy as the old incumbent firms that now subsist on debt and speculative manias actually make way for new entrepreneurs and new dynamic economy.

But, as we saw this week, the Fed will do everything it can to stop that from happening. Even as price inflation continues to grow, the Fed is telling us it has to print more money to ensure that “number go up” in terms of asset prices and GDP.

Sure, the Fed will frame all this as a service to ordinary people, and as a prudent means of ensuring a vibrant job market. In truth, the central bank is serving its most important clients: Wall Street and the US regime. On the one hand, the Fed is intervening to make sure that asset prices—i.e., stocks—continue to rise for the benefit of existing wealthy asset owns. On the other hand, the Fed is lowering interest rates to ensure the Treasury can borrow at low interest rates as the federal debt continues to climb to $40 trillion. 

In contrast to all this central planning from the central bank, what the Fed should be doing right now is nothing. The Fed could simply refrain from taking any action toward meddling in the private economy at all. The Fed could end its open market operations which employ monetary inflation to manipulate interest rates. The Fed could allow markets to function, and could allow the economy to heal. Unfortunately, the Fed was created to do anything but allow the private economy to function. It has always been an instrument of central planning, and we should not expect anything different from it now.

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