Lew Rockwell Institute

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A congressional investigation reveals that White House officials bullied the largest book retailer in the world, Amazon, to suppress a pile of books critical not just of the Covid injection but vaccines in general. The list of childhood vaccines has grown exponentially over the last half century. All this begs the question: Since the government has made it clear that public safety is not its primary concern, why is it so obsessed with the public perception of vaccines?

Also in this episode:

@ 23:52 | Julian Assange cut a deal with the U.S. government, averting extradition;

@ 47:08 | There is at least one principled and brave lawmaker working hard to ensure the corrupt U.S. attorney faces the music;

@ 49:06 | More proof that America is a country that is collectively mentally ill.

RELATED

Read the TNA issue Dr. Peter McCullough says everyone should have a copy of: Depopulation by Design

Read “Anniversary of the Indictment of Julian Assange: Freedom and the First Amendment”

Watch the TNA exclusive interview George Carneal: From Queer to Christ 

This originally appeared on The New American.

The post The Real Agenda Behind Government’s Vaccine Obsession appeared first on LewRockwell.

You can’t separate agendas of sovereignty and self-determination from the massive global power structure which backs those stated agendas for its own interests. You have to be real about this.

You can’t separate the agenda of national sovereignty and self-determination for the Jewish people from the US-centralized empire’s agenda to dominate and destabilize the middle east. You have to be real about the fact that those agendas are inseparably intertwined, and about the fact that Israel being a permanent part of the US power structure isn’t actually independence and self-determination. And you have to respond to this reality accordingly.

You can’t separate the agenda of national sovereignty and self-determination for the Ukrainians from the US-centralized empire’s agenda to weaken Russia and absorb it into the imperial power structure. You have to be real about the fact that these agendas are intertwined, and that the empire actually wants to dominate Ukraine for itself. You can’t just psychologically compartmentalize away from this reality to make your infantile Good Guys vs Bad Guys view of this conflict make sense.

You can’t separate the agenda of national sovereignty and self-determination for Taiwan from the US-centralized empire’s agenda to weaken, balkanize and subjugate China. You have to be real about the fact that the powerful people claiming to want Taiwanese “independence” actually want a vassal state off mainland China’s coast from which Beijing can be undermined and encircled, and that the salami tactics we’re seeing to pull Taiwan into the western power structure are inseparably intertwined with the advocacy for an independent Taiwan.

You can’t separate the agenda of national sovereignty and self-determination for the Kurds from the US-centralized empire’s agenda to balkanize, regime change and absorb Syria. You have to be real about the fact that this imperial agenda is inseparably interwoven with the agenda to create the “Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria” aka Rojava, which is being carved away from Syria at immense cost to Damascus with the direct facilitation of the US war machine. You can’t just pretend this isn’t happening and act like there’s some kind of organic anarchist movement there that is somehow separable from these agendas.

If you desire the sovereignty and self-determination of any group of people, your first and foremost task is to seek the dismantling of the US-centralized empire, because that’s the power structure that is doing the most around the world to undermine this possibility. As long as a population is in any way intertwined with the agendas of a globe-dominating empire that’s doing everything it can to bring everyone under its control, then there is no possibility of that population gaining any real self-determination. If they remain aligned with those agendas, all they can ever hope to be is subjects of the empire.

Anyone who refuses to be real about this fact is acting in service of the empire, either knowingly or unknowingly. They’re either knowingly acting to facilitate the interests of the empire and its managers, or they’re avoiding facing the inconvenient realities of the situation in order to have a simpler, more easy-to-digest worldview.

Part of coming into maturity is forming a fact-based relationship with the realities of our world. To whatever extent you are failing to be real about the facts of our situation here, your worldview is based on lies.

_______________

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The post There Is No Possibility of Sovereignty as Long as the US Empire Exists appeared first on LewRockwell.

Ooh là là, there’s an election about to take place in the land of cheese and everyone’s commenting about it as if North Korea suddenly decided to go democratic. French elections are like the cancan: always the same, with high kicks and hopes for smaller parties ending like the dance, doing splits on the floor and the usual suspects back in power.

Tensions were intensified after the attack and rape of a 12-year-old Jewish girl by boys her age, boys The New York Times and other media failed to identify. What I’m willing to bet my bottom dollar is the three boys aged 12 and 13 are Muslims, born in France and brainwashed since birth. Muslim outrages against French institutions, churches, and synagogues take place as regularly as the Tour de France, yet so politically correct is France no one as yet (that I’m aware of) has named the three perpetrators as Muslims.

And yet something I cannot put my finger on is bothering me. The slaughter in Gaza has Muslims the world over up in arms. The largest Jewish community in Western Europe is in France. The extreme left leads a coalition that has condemned the slaughter in Gaza, while the right, led by Marine Le Pen, is now Israel’s greatest supporter. Switch over to the Big Bagel for a moment, where a pro-Israel group has just sunk $14.5 million in a campaign to dethrone a black congressman whose views on Israeli bombardment of Gaza were deemed immoderate.

“An anti-Semitic left and a nationalist populist right is a brand-new twist in French politics.”

Almost 15 million big ones have flooded the TV channels against an obscure congressman of the Bronx–Long Island constituency who was quite moderate in his criticisms of the Israeli overkill. Filling television screens, stuffing mailboxes, and clogging telephone lines, AIPAC and other pro-Israeli groups are using the same approach elsewhere. The message to politicians everywhere in the United States is as follows: Being pro-Israel is not just a wise policy, it’s also smart politics that will keep you in Congress.

Now I ask you, dear readers. What kind of democracy is it when an extremely rich minority can spend enough moola to actually impose its will on the many? If I go any further it will be called anti-Semitism, or better yet pro-Nazi. The irony is that the congressman the Jews are after, Jamaal Bowman, is not very smart—having been caught red-handed opening a fire door and triggering the alarms in order to stop a vote in the House recently. His great sin was to demand Uncle Sam stop sending 2,000-pound bombs to Israel to drop on Gaza. Bowman does not have much money coming his way, and he is as likely to be reelected as I am to win a Pulitzer for this article, but such are the joys of standing up for what one believes.

Read the Whole Article

The post Confusion in the Land of Cheese appeared first on LewRockwell.

On June 20, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, a former Vatican insider turned whistleblower, revealed that he had been summoned to Rome to respond to “accusations and evidence concerning the crime of schism of which he has been accused.” He is charged with denying the legitimacy of Pope Francis, breaking union with him, and rejecting the Second Vatican Council. The “extrajudicial penal trial” is likely to result in the archbishop’s excommunication and dismissal from the priesthood. Viganò, who has been in hiding for the past several years (reportedly out of fear for his life), apparently did not show up for his trial on June 20. However, he has until June 28 to provide a written defense, or be judged in abscentia.

Archbishop Viganò posted the official decree from the Holy See’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF) on his website Exurge Domine (Latin for “Arise, O Lord,” from Psalm 10:12), along with his defiant 1,500-word response, in which he states, “I regard the accusations against me as an honor.”

“I assume,” he wrote, “that the sentence has already been prepared, given that it is an extrajudicial process.” Refusing to recognize the current pontificate as legitimate, Viganò regularly refers to Pope Francis by his family surname, Bergoglio.

“It is no coincidence,” says Viganò, “that the accusation against me concerns the questioning of the legitimacy of Jorge Mario Bergoglio and the rejection of Vatican II: the Council represents the ideological, theological, moral, and liturgical cancer of which the Bergoglian ‘synodal church’ is the necessary metastasis.”

Agenda 2030 and the “Davos Religion”

Moreover, Viganò accuses Pope Francis and his Vatican hierarchy of gross corruption and subversion of the Catholic Faith, in concert with the globalists of the UN and the World Economic Forum:

It is necessary for the Episcopate, the Clergy and the People of God to seriously ask themselves whether it is consistent with the profession of the Catholic Faith to passively witness the systematic destruction of the Church by its leaders, just as other subversives are destroying civil society. Globalism calls for ethnic substitution: Bergoglio promotes uncontrolled immigration and calls for the integration of cultures and religions. Globalism supports LGBTQ+ ideology: Bergoglio authorizes the blessing of same-sex couples and imposes on the faithful the acceptance of homosexualism, while covering up the scandals of his protégés and promoting them to the highest positions of responsibility. Globalism imposes the green agenda: Bergoglio worships the idol of the Pachamama, writes delirious encyclicals about the environment, supports the Agenda 2030, and attacks those who question the theory of man-made global warming. He goes beyond his role in matters that strictly pertain to science, but always and only in one direction: a direction that is diametrically opposed to what the Church has always taught.

These themes, particularly concerning the machinations of globalist elites, “The Great Reset” of the World Economic Forum, and Agenda 2030 of the UN, have featured prominently in video messages produced by the archbishop over the past several years, as in the video below.

As in his previous public letters, Viganò’s latest salvo also indicts Pope Francis for his violation of Catholic teaching and his subservience to Big Pharma and Communist China with regard to mandating the experimental Covid jab as a “moral duty.” The archbishop writes:

He has mandated the use of experimental gene serums, which caused very serious damage, death and sterility, calling them “an act of love,” in exchange for funding from pharmaceutical companies and philanthropic foundations. His total alignment with the Davos religion is scandalous. Wherever governments at the service of the World Economic Forum have introduced or extended abortion, promoted vice, legitimized homosexual unions or gender transition, encouraged euthanasia, and tolerated the persecution of Catholics, not a word has been spent in defense of the Faith or Morals that are threatened, or in support of the civil battles of so many Catholics who have been abandoned by the Vatican and the Bishops. Not a word for the persecuted Catholics in China, with the complicity of the Holy See, which considers Beijing’s billions more important than the lives and freedom of thousands of Chinese who are faithful to the Roman Church.

“Everything that Bergoglio does constitutes an offense and a provocation to the entire Catholic Church, to her Saints of all times, to the Martyrs who were killed in odium Fidei, and to the Popes of all times until the Second Vatican Council,” Viganò charges. He continues, “This is also and principally an offense against the Divine Head of the Church, Our Lord Jesus Christ, Whose sacred authority Bergoglio claims to exercise for the detriment of the Mystical Body, with an action that is too systematic and coherent to appear to be the fruit of mere incapacity.”

Read the Whole Article

The post Defiant Archbishop Viganò: Another Blow to Pope Francis and the New World Order appeared first on LewRockwell.

Donald Trump recently promised that, if he wins the November election, he will support eliminating taxes on tips as part of his proposal to renew and expand the 2017 tax cuts. This tax law change would be a long overdue boost for millions of Americans.

Tips often comprise a substantial portion of the earnings of waiters and waitresses, as well as of other service-sector employees. However, unlike regular wages, a service-sector employee usually has no guarantee of, or legal right to, a tip. Instead, the amount of a tip usually depends on how well an employee satisfies his customers. Since the amount of taxes one pays increases along with the size of tips, taxing tips punishes workers for doing a superior job!

Many service-sector employees are young people trying to make money to pay for their education, or single parents struggling to provide for their children. Making tips tax free gives these hard-working Americans an immediate pay raise. A person may use this pay raise to devote more resources to his children’s or his own education, to save for a home or retirement, or to start a business.

Eliminating taxes on tips will provide some (limited) relief from the Federal Reserve’s inflation tax. This tax results from the decline in the dollar’s purchasing power caused by the Federal Reserve’s monetization of federal debt. The inflation tax is the worst form of tax because it is hidden. Thus, most people will not blame the Fed for higher prices. The inflation tax is also regressive, as price inflation is more of a burden to those at the lower end of the income scale than to billionaires. The Fed-created price inflation has forced many Americans to work two jobs.

This is not to suggest that reducing taxes on tips will fully compensate working people for the income they lose to the inflation tax. The best way Congress can help relieve the people of the inflation tax is to cut federal spending that leads to the Federal Reserve monetizing debt. Congress should also pass a law forbidding the Fed from monetizing debt by purchasing federal debt instruments.

It is also long past time to stop talking about tax cuts “costing” the government money. Talking about tax cuts in terms of how much money they cost the government, as opposed to how much money they leave in the hands of the people, accepts the premise that the government has a greater moral claim to the money than those who actually earned it. In truth, saying cutting taxes cost the government money makes as much sense as saying stopping a mugger from taking everything in your wallet “cost” the mugger money. Instead of worrying about how much tax cuts cost the government, the politicians should worry about how much welfare and warfare spending cost taxpayers.

The idea that tax cuts should only be supported if they promote “efficiency” should also be rejected. All tax cuts promote efficiency because, as economist and Ludwig von Mises Institute President Thomas DiLorenzo put it, “private individuals always spend their own money more efficiently than government bureaucrats do.” Instead of worrying about whether the government can “afford” tax cuts or whether tax cuts promote economic efficiency, those concerned about the government deficit should focus their efforts on reducing government spending. If the government stopped trying to run our lives and run the world, there would be no need to punish hard-working.

The post Stop Taxing Tips appeared first on LewRockwell.

This article appears as a full-page ad in the Wall Street Journal today, June 24, 2024, and was made possible by one of our generous donors:

Perhaps nothing in financial news receives more attention than an announcement from the Federal Reserve. About eight times per year, the Federal Reserve’s Federal Open Market Committee meets to formally decide and announce its plans for monetary policy. Every announcement has the potential to cause a rally, or a rout, in financial markets.

It makes sense that a mere announcement from the Fed has the power to move markets in a big way. The Fed wields vast power over interest rates, bank regulation, and the money supply. When it comes to policies that affect the everyday lives of nearly every American—and even countless people outside the United States—it is likely that no government institution is more powerful than America’s central bank, the Federal Reserve.

Yet this institution works largely in secret, has never been audited by Congress, and is virtually never challenged by anyone in Washington or in the legacy media. In this era of eroding public trust in Congress, the presidency, the media, and even the military, it’s quite remarkable that the Federal Reserve faces so little scrutiny.

Much of this is because the Fed’s supporters have for decades so successfully spread myths about how the Fed provides stability and prosperity.

A closer look at the reality of the Fed reveals that the Fed does not benefit ordinary people nor does it make the economy more stable. Instead, the Fed was the primary source of the forty-year highs in inflation consisting of sharp spikes in food, housing, healthcare, and transportation prices. In many cases, rising prices outpaced wage growth, meaning that millions of American households—mostly those with lower incomes and fixed incomes—have experienced negative real income growth in recent years. Meanwhile, Fed policy has also driven inflation in real estate and equity prices, which has padded the portfolios of wealthy households, banks, and governments.

The Fed may claim it is expertly managing the economy, but in 2024, it is still doing what it has been doing since it was established in 1913: creating more economic instability with seemingly endless crises such as we saw in 1953, 1957, 1960, 1969, 1973, 1980, 1981, 1990, 2001, 2008, and 2020. The best we can say about the Fed is that it failed to prevent the Great Depression, the 1970s stagflation, and the Great Recession. But the Fed didn’t merely fail to prevent all this. The Fed created these economic disasters.

The Fed claims—always without evidence—that everything “would have been worse” without the Fed. Yet history has shown that economic growth and a rising standard of living hardly depend on the existence of the Fed. Indeed, in the second half of the nineteenth century—when the nation had no central bank at all—America experienced an incredibly dynamic period of rising standards of living. Notably, this period was also characterized by deflation—something the Fed hates—which helped drive down the prices of goods and services, thus increasing real wages.

The Fed today assures us that economic growth depends on inflation, which ultimately destroys the dollar’s purchasing power. The Fed has gone to great lengths to institutionalize inflation, in fact. Although Congress as recently as the 1980s instructed the Fed to seek a goal of 0 percent inflation, the Fed invented a totally arbitrary 2 percent inflation standard in the 1990s. Now, the Fed tells us that the economy needs 2 percent inflation at a minimum to keep the economy “stable.”

Fed economists employ a variety of poorly devised economic theories to justify the Fed’s inflationary agenda. But politics, not economics, is the real driving force here. The incessant call for more monetary inflation and ultra-low interest rates serves to benefit certain influential and powerful interest groups at the expense of the beleaguered middle and working classes.

As the Fed forces down interest rates to fuel more monetary inflation, governments are able to borrow more money at lower interest rates. Fed policy allows elected officials to expand government budgets and spending while minimizing the cost of maintaining huge federal deficits. Without the Fed, the runaway profligacy of the covid years would have never been possible—nor would we have had the surge in price inflation that followed. The government itself is the primary beneficiary here. The organizations that are on the receiving end of Washington’s financial favors—bailed-out banks and government contractors, for example—share in the windfall brought by spending newly created inflationary money.

The same cannot be said of ordinary people further down the economic food chain, who experience rising prices without the easy largesse of the government class and its allies.

Contrary to the many myths propping it up, the Federal Reserve has never been anything more than a tool of wealth redistribution that fuels economic inequality and government profligacy. The Fed’s mission has never been founded on sound economics. The Fed is beyond reform, and the time has come to finally end the Fed.

To receive a free copy of the booklet mentioned in the ad, go here. The full-page ad as it appears in The Wall Street Journal:

Note: The views expressed on Mises.org are not necessarily those of the Mises Institute.

The post Who Needs the Fed? appeared first on LewRockwell.

Quebec’s quest for a future as it’s own country is a story well-known to substantial sections of the North American population. The province’s referendums on independence in 1980 and 1995 were extensively covered at the time they happened, and individuals who lived in Quebec during those times have frequently stated how well they remember the debates surrounding those referendums. For the Elites, the victories of the “No” vote in both elections was taken as a reinforcement of the narrative that secession in the modern world, especially within “civilized western countries” (to use an Elitist term), was simply not feasible. For believers in Quebec independence, there is talk about how the Elite-backed “No” campaigns engaged in fear-mongering tactics and manipulation of details to scare voters away from exploring the benefits of ruling themselves, which they believe played a large role in bringing about defeat for the independence cause.

Now, as Canada’s government deteriorates deeper and deeper into despotism, Quebec’s main independence party, the Parti Québécois, is rising in popularity again and looks poised to take power in the next provincial elections. As part of their program, they are proposing a third referendum on independence and have released a detailed plan on how an independent Quebec would function both domestically and within the larger world. While the provincial elections are not expected to happen until 2026, and as such a referendum would be in 2027 at the earliest, these proposals have stirred up a fair amount of buzz and debate within political and commentary circles. Furthermore, an unspoken general feeling one gets out of the conversations which these proposals have sparked is that an independence referendum is far more likely to succeed this time, for Quebecers have far more grievances against Ottawa today then they did during the last two referendums.

In the backdrop of all of this, a piece released by a little-known British magazine called Actual News Magazine recently brought attention to a startling claim about who has really been behind Quebec’s inability to achieve independent statehood.

Few researchers have looked into it since Jean-François Lisée (In the eagle’s eye. Washington versus Quebec, Boréal, 1990)* on the determination of the United States, on a diplomatic, economic and cultural level, to preserve the unity and territorial integrity of Canada. The successive declarations of Clinton or Obama in favor of a “friendly and united” Canada nevertheless regularly remind us of the importance that Uncle Sam gives to the political stability of the continent, especially if he must in the meantime intervene on points otherwise hot elsewhere in the world.

It is therefore clear the role that American power, and in particular the Ottawa-Washington tandem, has historically been able to play so that Quebec nationalism never leads to the creation of a new sovereign state which would immediately have been perceived as a threat to stability in the region.

Source: The national question goes through Washington

*The book title is mistranslated in the article. The true title is “In the Eye of the Eagle.”

DC is well-known for its penchant for interfering in the internal affairs of other nations. It’s support of the protests against a proposed law in the Eurasian state of Georgia is the most recent publicly-known example. It certainly follows logically that, to protect it’s ability to meddle in affairs overseas, a government must ensure it and it’s neighbors remain territorially stable at home. Is there other evidence to back up this claim however? Looking back, the Parti Québécois itself may have provided such evidence.

Within the Independent Quebec blueprint which the Parti Québécois and it’s leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon released last October, they addressed key concerns on how an independent Quebec would handle certain issues such as the financial budget, monetary policy, trade policy and foreign policy. In the section dealing with foreign policy, a reference was made which has led to speculation that it was an attempt to appease powerbrokers on the North American continent so they would not openly oppose Quebec independence.

(Plamondon) said an independent Quebec will want to be a player in NATO, like other smaller countries such as Norway and the Netherlands. In the past, the PQ has favoured a non-aggression peacekeeping-style army with about 8,000 soldiers;

Source: Independent Quebec would have its own currency and army: PQ

With the Elites in DC being the major movers behind NATO, this concession to attach a newly independent Quebec to the alliance could easily be a subtle gesture to DC rather than Ottawa. It could be interpreted as an acknowledgement of the security concerns DC has over an independent Quebec and an attempt to allay those fears in order to gain DC’s permission to proceed. This further statement from Plamondon would seem to reinforce this theory.

(Plamondon) said an independent Quebec will not try to cut itself off from the North American or Canadian economic context. In fact, he said, an independent Quebec will want the same friendly relations with the rest of Canada that it has as a province.

Source: Independent Quebec would have its own currency and army: PQ

If this is true, and it is the Elite classes of DC which have blocked Quebec from realizing it’s full potential as an independent country, then that adds another local political entity which has a vested interest in the dissolution of Imperial DC. It is well-known that the DC Empire has opposed secession for groups they have disfavored on the geopolitical stage (i.e.: the Serbs of Republika Srspka), but their opinions on such movements within regions directly adjoining their territory has remained largely unknown to the general public until now. What this revelation seems to make clear is that DC is only consistent when it comes to denying the peoples of different parts of the world their right to self-determination. Thus it may be a fair assessment to say that Lincoln’s dastardly war has had repercussions much further beyond the borders of the United States of America then anyone initially dared dream.

Sources:

The national question goes through Washington

https://keepgovlocal.locals.com/post/5584923/secession-speakeasy-72-national-divorce-fissures-expand-in-canada

https://www.bookfinder.com/search/?author=&title=&lang=en&isbn=9780006376361&submitBtn=Search&new_used=*&destination=us&currency=USD&mode=basic&st=sr&ac=qr

This originally appeared on The State of Division.

The post Is DC the Real Barrier to Quebec Independence? appeared first on LewRockwell.

Back in 2019 a prominent public figure—whose name is widely known—came to Palo Alto to have a private dinner with me. Apparently he’d become aware of my controversial writings the previous year on the JFK Assassination and in the wake of the Jeffrey Epstein revelations, he’d concluded I was probably correct that Israel and its Mossad had likely been heavily responsible for the death of our 35th president. As we discussed the issue that evening, I endorsed elements of his reasoning and explained that the Mossad had also played the central role in the 9/11 Attacks, something that greatly surprised him since he’d apparently never looked into those matters.

But although I emphasized that there was very strong evidence implicating the Mossad in the 1963 events in Dallas, a possibility still only whispered about in most JFK Assassination circles, I felt that that the strongest evidence of all implicated President Lyndon B. Johnson, Kennedy’s own immediate successor and the most obvious beneficiary of the crime.

The continuing near-total silence surrounding the probable role of Mossad is hardly surprising given the momentous geopolitical consequences if such a belief in Israeli guilt became widespread among Americans. Recent months have demonstrated the staggering political and media power of the Israel Lobby and there would surely be very severe repercussions for anyone who leveled such incendiary charges against the Jewish State.

By contrast, LBJ has long since passed into history, dying more than fifty years ago in 1973, and nearly all of his committed partisans have also long since departed the scene, often decades ago. For most Americans today, Johnson is probably just a name in the history books, a political figure more like a McKinley or a Coolidge rather than someone who arouses any fierce present-day emotions. So the near-total unwillingness to consider the very strong evidence of his guilt in the death of his predecessor must be due to other factors.

Although America has had many conspiratorial controversies over the last one hundred years, I think that the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy has received more attention than any other.

Perhaps a thousand or more books have been published on that topic, the vast majority of them challenging the official narrative, and many of those works have become bestsellers, sometimes even reaching the #1 spot on the national lists. Oliver Stone is regarded as one of our greatest directors and his star-studded 1991 film JFK devoted more than three hours to presenting the story of that alleged conspiracy, winning an Oscar and drawing huge audiences. Across the last three decades, his gripping drama has surely been seen by many tens of millions in this country and around the world. Years earlier when our House Select Committee on Assassinations issued its 1978 final report, that official document proclaimed that Lee Harvey Oswald had not acted alone, thereby declaring that our 35th president had died at the hands of a conspiracy.

Despite all of this, the establishment media blockade against such theories has remained in place for more than six decades. Tucker Carlson was the most popular host in the history of cable during late 2022 when he declared to his millions of viewers that JFK had indeed died in a conspiracy heavily involving elements of the CIA, a presentation that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. immediately praised as the most courageous newscast in sixty years. But despite Carlson’s stellar ratings, he was purged by FoxNews a few months later, with many suspecting that his JFK segment had been an important contributing factor.

There are numerous historical controversies today that are harshly stigmatized as “conspiratorial” by the media, but I can think of no other example that has been so widely promoted across mainstream channels of information while also receiving an official government endorsement. So although adherence to a JFK Assassination plot is regularly pilloried as the stereotypical example of “conspiratorial” thinking, it is unique in having received such major distribution and authoritative endorsements.

Yet oddly enough, until just a dozen years ago, I never suspected that any such serious historical controversy even existed, having spent my entire life completely ignorant of the issue.

I’d obviously known that JFK had been assassinated and also that some people claimed a conspiracy had been responsible. But I’d always regarded those latter individuals as merely cranks and crackpots lacking any evidence for their strange beliefs, fringe activists similar to those obsessed with UFOs or Scientology or ESP, and I’d never paid the least attention to them.

The reason for such decades of my total unawareness was the mainstream media cocoon in which I existed, one that only provided very limited or distorted facts, while always seeming to snicker at such conspiratorial beliefs and their deluded advocates. I’d always known that the media was dishonest about certain matters, but I had never imagined that such dishonesty extended to those fatal 1963 events in Dallas, which I had always assumed were too important to have long remained hidden.

Others have probably been far less naive over the years, though they cautiously remained silent. A couple of months ago I was having a cup of coffee with a mainstream academic friend of mine who was quite aware of the many “conspiratorial” articles I had published in recent years and he casually remarked that he’d always been extremely skeptical of the official JFK Assassination story. One of his secondary school textbooks had included the famous photo of Oswald being shot by Jack Ruby in a Dallas police station, and even as a high school student he’d concluded that the killing of the supposed presidential assassin soon after his capture and under the very noses of the local police seemed obvious evidence of a plot. By contrast, I’d probably just gullibly nodded my head when I came across such facts in my schoolbooks and then merely turned the page to the next subject.

Shrewd observers have emphasized that people are much more likely to fall for big lies than smaller ones, and this was certainly part of the reason that I’d never questioned the official JFK narrative. The early 1960s marked the High Noon of the American Century, as our national power and prosperity seemed to reach a peak, with no major domestic storm clouds on the horizon. JFK had become the youngest President in our history and with his attractive young wife Jackie, they were almost a movie star couple compared to the dowdy Eisenhowers, while greatly benefitting from the powerful new medium of television and the colorful spreads they received in influential photograph-laden weeklies such as Life Magazine. The violent death of an American President seemed almost unimaginable at that time, with the last such case having been when an anarchist had slain William McKinley in 1901, more than sixty years earlier at the very dawn of the twentieth century. When I later came of age, I’d always vaguely regarded the Kennedys as America’s own royal family, so it seemed unthinkable to me that the entire American media could have long concealed the fact that his death had been the result of a conspiracy.

Once I discovered that the universally-portrayed reality of Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi WMDs had merely been a media hoax, I became much more suspicious of other matters, and the growth of the Internet had made me aware of many conspiratorial claims, whose reality I gradually began to suspect. But the possibility of an actual JFK Assassination plot was not one of these, and that became among the last of the major modern conspiracies that I eventually concluded might be true.

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The post JFK, LBJ, and Our Great National Shame appeared first on LewRockwell.

It is only by understanding and taking the Russian nuclear warnings seriously that we may exclude the risk of nuclear weapons coming into play.

The G7 and the subsequent Swiss ‘Bürgenstock Conference’ can – in retrospect – be understood as preparation for a prolonged Ukraine war. The three centrepiece announcements emerging from the G7 – the 10 year Ukraine security pact; the $50 ‘billion Ukraine loan’; and the seizing of interest on Russian frozen funds – make the point. The war is about to escalate.

These stances were intended as preparation of the western public ahead of events. And in case of any doubts, the blistering belligerency towards Russia emerging from the European election leaders was plain enough: They sought to convey a clear impression of Europe preparing for war.

What then lies ahead? According to White House Spokesman John Kirby: “Washington’s position on Kiev is “absolutely clear”:

“First, they’ve got to win this war”.

“They gotta win the war first. So, number one: We’re doing everything we can to make sure they can do that. Then when the war’s over … Washington will assist in building up Ukraine’s military industrial base”.

If that was not plain, the U.S. intent to prolong and take the war deep into Russia was underlined by National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan: “Authorization for Ukrainian use of American weapons for cross-border attacks extends to anywhere [from which] Russian forces are coming across the border”. He affirmed, too, that Ukraine can use F-16s to attack Russia and use U.S. supplied air defence systems “to take down Russian planes – even if in Russian airspace – if they’re about to fire into Ukrainian airspace”.

Ukrainian pilots have the latitude to judge ‘the intent’ of Russian fighter aircraft? Expect the parameters of this ‘authorisation’ to widen quickly – deeper to air bases from which Russian fighter bombers launch.

Understanding that the war is about to transform radically – and extremely dangerously – President Putin (in his speech to the Foreign Ministry Board) detailed just how the world had arrived at this pivotal juncture – one which could extend to nuclear exchanges.

The gravity of the situation itself demanded the making of one ‘last chance’ offer to the West, which Putin emphatically said was “no temporary ceasefire for Kiev to prepare a new offensive; nor was it about freezing the conflict”; but rather, his proposals were about the war’s final completion.

“If, as before, Kiev and western capitals refuse it – then at the end, that’s their business”, Putin said.

Just to be clear, Putin almost certainly never expected the proposals to be received in the West other than by the scorn and derision with which they, in fact, were met. Nor would Putin trust – for a moment – the West not to renege on an agreement, were some arrangement to be reached on these lines.

If so, why then did President Putin make such a proposal last weekend, if the West cannot be trusted and its reaction was so predictable?

Well, maybe we need to search for the nesting inner Matryoshka doll, rather than fix on the outer casing: Putin’s ‘final completion’ likely will not credibly be achieved through some itinerant peace broker. In his Foreign Ministry address, Putin dismisses devices such as ‘ceasefires’ or ‘freezes’. He is seeking something permanent: An arrangement that has ‘solid legs’; one that has durability.

Such a solution – as Putin before has hinted – requires a new world security architecture to come into being; and were that to happen, then a complete solution for Ukraine would flow as an implicit part to a new world order. That is to say, with the microcosm of a Ukraine solution flowing implicitly from the macrocosm agreement between the U.S. and the ‘Heartland’ powers – settling the borders to their respective security interests.

This clearly is impossible now, with the U.S. in its psychological mindset stuck in the Cold War era of the 1970s and 1980s. The end to that war – the seeming U.S. victory – set the foundation to the 1992 Wolfowitz Doctrine which underscored American supremacy at all costs in a post-Soviet world, together with “stamping out rivals, wherever they may emerge”.

“In conjunction with this, the Wolfowitz Doctrine stipulated that the U.S. would … [inaugurate] a U.S.-led system of collective security and the creation of a democratic zone of peace”. Russia, on the other hand, was dealt with differently—the country fell off the radar. It became insignificant as a geopolitical competitor in the eyes of the West, as its gestures of peaceful offerings were rebuffed – and guarantees given to it regarding NATO’s expansion forfeited”.

“Moscow could do nothing to prevent such an endeavour. The successor state of the mighty Soviet Union was not its equal, and thus not considered important enough to be involved in global decision-making. Yet, despite its reduced size and sphere of influence, Russia has persisted in being considered a key player in international affairs”.

Russia today is a preeminent global actor in both the economic and political spheres. Yet for the Ruling Strata in the U.S., equal status between Moscow and Washington is out of the question. The Cold War mentality still infuses the Beltway with the unwarranted confidence that the Ukraine conflict might somehow result in Russian collapse and dismemberment.

Putin in his address, by contrast, looked ahead to the collapse of the Euro-Atlantic security system – and of a new architecture emerging. “The world will never be the same again”, Putin said.

Implicitly, he hints that such a radical shift would be the only way credibly to end the Ukraine war. An agreement emerging from the wider framework of consensus on the division of interests between the Rimland and the Heartland (in Mackinder-esque language) would reflect the security interests of each party – and not be achieved at the expense of others’ security.

And to be clear: If this analysis is correct, Russia may not be in such a hurry to conclude matters in Ukraine. The prospect of such a ‘global’ negotiation between Russia-China and the U.S. is still far off.

The point here is that the collective western psyche has not been transformed sufficiently. Treating Moscow with equal esteem remains out of the question for Washington.

The new American narrative is no negotiations with Moscow now, but maybe it will become possible sometime early in the new year – after the U.S. elections.

Well, Putin might surprise again – by not jumping at the prospect, but rebuffing it; assessing that the Americans still are not ready for negotiations for a ‘complete end’ to the war – especially as this latest narrative runs concurrently with talk of a new Ukraine offensive shaping up for 2025. Of course, much is likely to change over the coming year.

The documents outlining a putative new security order however, were already drafted by Russia in 2021 – and duly ignored in the West. Russia perhaps can afford to wait out military events in Ukraine, in Israel, and in the financial sphere.

They are all, in any event, trending Putin’s way. They are all inter-connected and have the potential for wide metamorphosis.

Put plainly: Putin is waiting on the shaping of the American Zeitgeist. He seemed very confident both at St Petersburg and last week at the Foreign Ministry.

The backdrop to the G7’s Ukraine preoccupation seemed to be more U.S. elections-related, than real: This implies that the priority in Italy was election optics, rather than a desire to start a full-blown hot war. But this may be wrong.

Russian speakers during these recent gatherings – notably Sergei Lavrov – hinted broadly that the order already had come down for war with Russia. Europe seems, however improbably, to be gearing up for war – with much chatter about military conscription.

Will it all blow away with the passing of a hot summer of elections? Maybe.

The coming phase seems likely to entail western escalation, with provocations occurring inside Russia. The latter will react strongly to any crossing of (real) red lines by NATO, or any false flag provocation (now widely expected by Russiam military bloggers).

And herein lies the greatest danger: In the context of escalation, American disdain for Russia poses the greatest danger. The West now says it treats notions of putative nuclear exchange as Putin’s ‘bluff’. The Financial Times tells us that Russia’s nuclear warnings are ‘wearing thin’ in the West.

If this is true, western officials utterly misconceive the reality. It is only by understanding and taking the Russian nuclear warnings seriously that we may exclude the risk of nuclear weapons coming into play, as we move up the escalatory ladder with tit-for-tat measures.

Even though they say they believe them to be bluff, U.S. figures nonetheless hype the risk of a nuclear exchange. If they think it to be a bluff, it appears to be based on the presumption that Russia has few other options.

This would be wrong: There are several escalatory steps that Russia can take up the ladder, before reaching the tactical nuclear weapon stage: Trade and financial counter-attack; symmetrical provision of advanced weaponry to western adversaries (corresponding to U.S. supplies to Ukraine); cutting the electricity branch distribution coming from Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and Romania; strikes on border munition crossings; and taking a leaf from the Houthis who have knocked down several sophisticated and costly U.S. drones, disabling America’s intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) infrastructure.

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

The post Putin’s ‘War’ To Re-Shape the American Zeitgeist appeared first on LewRockwell.

“Leftism might actually be noble if their concern for the marginalized wasn’t simply an incidental externality to their seething hatred of the normal and the good.” —David Pivtorak on “X”

Did you entertain feelings of doom during last week’s brain-withering heat-wave? The sheer anxious waiting and wishing for it to end was a nice analog to the stifling psycho-political miasma oppressing this nation — alternately known as the republic (for which we stand) and “our democracy,” as “Joe Biden” likes to style his regime of lawfare, warfare, and garish state-sponsored depravity. Well, rejoice and ring them bells! The political weather is breaking. The week ahead looks like an all-you-can-eat, steam-table banquet of consequence.

The Supreme Court (SCOTUS) teased last week with an opening round of lesser decisions on bump stocks for rifles, abortion pills for women inconvenienced by motherhood, and a few other interesting cases. The court’s term draws to a close with the end of June. Pending are several cases liable to rattle the windows and shake down the walls.

One is the question as to whether the government can use private company proxies to censor constitutionally protected free speech (Murthy v. Missouri). The case has been simmering for years, with lower court actions that took a dim view of the intel blob’s coercive intrusions into social media. Probably the most galling part of the story is that virtually every act of censorship and de-platforming was committed against those telling the truth about some vital public issue, whether it was the danger and ineffectiveness of the Covid vaccines, or the probity of the 2020 elections, or the existence of Hunter Biden’s laptop and its dastardly contents. That is, the government’s actions were entirely in the service of lying to the American people.

This raises a greater question that redounds from the courts onto the November election: just why is the US government so deeply invested in all that lying? The answer is obvious: it has been engaged in nefarious activities that it seeks to hide and deny. And all of that has served to wreck the country. Even worse, the government has gaslit half of the public into cheerleading and rolling over for all that dishonesty, so as to keep them “safe” from hobgoblins such as “misinformation.” Considering “Joe Biden’s” cratering poll numbers, it looks like the public is tired of this incessant lying and is fixing to vote his regime out of office.

We begin to see evidence that even some hardcore regime hacks are breaking out of that consensus trance, for instance, the Cuomo brothers denouncing the lies around lawfare and Covid. Andrew, once the New York state AG himself, told the shocked studio audience on Bill Maher’s HBO gabfest, beloved by Wokesters, that the Alvin Bragg case never should have been brought to trial. His brother Chris has been telling his podcast followers that Covid policy was a fiasco and the vaccines were harmful, and he apologized for his prior shifty reporting on all that when he had a CNN show.

Also upcoming at SCOTUS: Fischer v the United States, as to whether the DOJ tortured a federal statute on shredding financial records to overcharge J-6 rioters. In 2015 the court limited the scope of that law (part of the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley Act), but Attorney General Merrick Garland used it anyway as an all-purpose dragnet to prosecute hundreds of people who merely paraded through the US Capitol — which provided legal footing for the House J-6 committee to color that event dishonestly as “an insurrection.” A decision against the government should lead to the release of many J-6 prisoners and perhaps lawsuits for malicious prosecution under the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA). It would also toss out the pertinent charges in Special Counsel Jack Smith’s DC case against Donald Trump for supposedly fomenting an “insurrection.”

Another biggie case pending (Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo; Relentless v. Department of Commerce) will determine whether executive agencies of the US Government (e.g., the EPA, CDC, Depts. of Energy, Education, Commerce, etc.) can issue regulations as if they have the force of law — that is, push citizens and businesses around by fiat where the law is ambiguous or nonexistent. A lot has changed since SCOTUS initially sought to define the scope of agency authority in their 1984 decision known as Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council. The federal bureaucracy has become an unaccountable behemoth, issuing sometimes arbitrary and capricious regulations that make it increasingly difficult to accomplish anything in our country. It has also enabled much of the government’s monkey business around Covid. This court appears to lean towards overturning Chevron.

Also pending this week: whether SCOTUS will stay Steve Bannon’s four-month jail sentence scheduled to begin July 1 while he appeals to the SCOTUS. Bannon was convicted for contempt of Congress when he refused to testify to the J-6 committee, basing his refusal on executive privilege. Note that SCOTUS did not keep White House advisor Peter Navarro out of prison for exactly the same charge. The DOJ must reply to SCOTUS’s request for “input” on the matter by Wednesday June 26th at 4:00 p.m. At issue is whether the government is interfering in the election by shutting up Bannon during the climax months of the campaign.

Today, Judge Aileen Cannon will ask Special Counsel Jack Smith’s lawyers to do some ‘splainin’ about how come he got to be Special Counsel without being nominated by a president or confirmed by the Senate, which is the lawful procedure. It’s therefore possible that Judge Cannon can determine that Mr. Smith is not operating lawfully. That’s not the only thing that can deflate the so-called Mar-a-Lago Documents case, but it could lead to a determination that this was a malicious political prosecution, with consequences for AG Merrick Garland.

By the way, you know what this case is really about, don’t you? I’ll tell you: the FBI went into Mar-a-Lago looking for Mr. Trump’s binder containing evidence of FBI and DOJ misconduct in the RussiaGate caper. Whether they found it or not, we don’t know, nor do we know if there are other copies of the materials. But you might surmise that a lot of officials in those agencies are a little nervous about their criminal liability, especially with the presidential election poll numbers looking how they do. In other words, the Mar-a-Lago raid was a cover-up operation.

And Thursday, of course, comes the debate to end all debates. Makes you cringe a little just to imagine it.

Reprinted with permission from Kunstler.com.

The post Here It Comes appeared first on LewRockwell.

Human society is on track for a collapse in the next two decades if there isn’t a serious shift in global priorities, according to a new reassessment of a 1970s report, Vice reported

It sounds like something out of a Cold War era movie. Boxes of medical supplies stacked high in government warehouses to help citizens in the event of a public health emergency.

However, this huge stockpile is very real. It is called the Strategic National Stockpile, and “Once Federal and local authorities agree that the SNS is needed, medicines will be delivered to any state in the U.S. in time for them to be effective. Each state has plans to receive and distribute SNS medicine and medical supplies to local communities as quickly as possible.”

For security reasons, the location and the number of warehouses that comprise the SNS are classified information – as is much of what is in them. “If everybody knows exactly what we have, then you know exactly what you can do to us that we can’t fix,” Greg Burel, director of the program told National Public Radio in a 2023 interview. “And we just don’t want that to happen.”

The SNS started in 1999 with an approximate $50 million budget. Since then, it has built an inventory in multiple warehouses that is valued at just over $7 billion. “If you envision, say, a Super Walmart and stick two of those side by side and take out all the drop ceiling, that’s about the same kind of space that we would occupy in one of these storage locations,” Burel said.

The SNS extensive inventory includes massive amounts of small pox vaccines, antivirals in case of deadly flu pandemic, medicines to treat radiation burns and sickness, chemical agent antidotes, wound care supplies, antibiotics and IV fluids.

NPR science writer Nell Greenfieldboyce recently visited an SNS. She was told she was the first reporter ever to visit the secret warehouses, and she had to sign a confidentiality agreement not to describe the location or the exterior of the facility.

A locked section of the warehouse stocks painkillers than can be addictive. A giant freezer is filled with medicines that need to be kept frozen. Greenfieldboyce described a humming sound that comes from the rows of ventilators that are charged once a month and sent out for maintenance once a year.

With an annual budget of more than half a billion dollars, the SNS is charged with deciding what to purchase for the stockpile. In order to do so, officials must determine which threats are realistic and which are not.

“That’s where we have a huge, complex bureaucracy trying to sort through that,” Irwin Redlener, director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University, told Greenfieldboyce.

The government recently hired a firm called Gryphon Scientific to analyze how well the stockpile could respond to a range of health disaster scenarios.

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On June 12th, Gallup published its 2024 edition of their “State of the Global Workplace: The Voice of the World’s Employees.”

Headlining “5. What Is the Landscape of the World’s Workplace?” their more than 140-nation-surveys report that, to the question “Did you experience the following feelings A LOT OF THE DAY yesterday? How about stress?”, 41% of respondents said Yes.

Gallup’s figures for “Struggling” and for “Engaged in their work” were each calculated from the respondent’s answers to a group of questions, instead of to one question. “Struggling” was defined by Gallup as respondents who were neither “Thriving” nor “Suffering.”

The 77% who were “Disengaged” consists of 62% who were “Not Engaged” and 15% who were “Actively Disengaged.” The “Actively Disengaged” were “workers who actively oppose their employer’s goals.” The merely “Not Engaged” did not.

An interesting finding about “stress” was that managers report themselves to experience stress much more than their workers report themselves to experience stress. Apparently, managerial jobs are exceptionally stressful. Perhaps that’s because a manager stands between the executives, the company’s officers who represent the owners; versus the workers; so that the manager gets the resentment from the workers if the workers don’t like the policies that the company’s owners require their executives (or “officers”) to require their managers to enforce upon the workers. The resentment goes upward, to the level only immediately above one’s own; and, so, managers experience it the most, and are thus the most stressed. It’s natural because the owners want the most production at the lowest cost to themselves, whereas their employees want the most pay at the lowest cost to themselves. This tension causes that stress.

Much more is shown in Gallup’s full “State of the Global Workplace: 2024 Report”, such as:

In what Gallup calls the “East Asia” region, Mongolia had a very high “Engagement” percentage: 42%. (The global percentage was 23%.) China’s was 19%; South Korea’s 13%, Taiwan’s 12%, Japan’s and Hong Kong’s both were 6%. The percentage “Thriving”  (which globally was 34%) was 41% in Taiwan, 36% in China, 34% in South Korea, 29% both in Japan and in Mongolia, and 17% in Hong Kong. The percentage Stressed was 53% in China, 49% in Hong Kong, 41% in Japan, 40% in South Korea, 34% in Taiwan, and 16% in Mongolia.

In “Post Soviet Eurasia,” Uzbekistan was a stand-out as 41% Engaged and 36% Thriving. Kazakhstan had 25% Engaged and 37% Thriving. Russia had 23% Engaged (the global average) and 32% Thriving. Ukraine had 20% Engaged and 24% Thriving. The percentage Stressed was 23% Ukraine, 21% Russia, 15% Kazakhstan, and 12% both in Uzbekistan and in Kyrgyzstan.

The United States percentage Thriving  was 53%, Engaged 33% (a full 10% higher than the global average), and Stressed 50%. In the Western Hemisphere as a whole, the highest percentages Thriving were Costa Rica 62%, Mexico 59%, and Uruguay 54%; Engaged were El Salvador 41%, Panama 35%, and Costa Rica 34%; Stressed were Bolivia 55%, Dominican Republic 51%, and Costa Rica 51%.

Gallup listed both the U.S. and China among the 57 “Low Labour Rights Countries”; and Russia, Ukraine and Uzbekistan among the 64 “High Labour Rights Countries.” Interestingly, neither Taiwan nor Hong Kong — neither of which is actually a country — was included in either list.

This originally appeared on Eric’s Substack.

The post Gallup Global Survey Finds 77% Disengaged From Their Work, 58% Struggling, and 41% Stressed appeared first on LewRockwell.

President Trump continues to attempt to plug the hole that AIPAC and Israel created in the Zion Dyke.   To no avail.  His latest comment was to tell us we just need to be friends and let go of any misunderstandings…  “Republicans’ Ted Cruz and Tom Cotton just want to wipe Palestinians off the face of the earth.   The progressive Democrats are siding with the AIPAC Republicans and the liberal Democrats are siding with Libertarians.  A Farking MESS!

With two solid AIPAC candidates running for President, the future of America is looking more and more bleak.   Putin stated that a Trump presidency would change – nothing.  AIPAC destroys any candidate that does not support Israel – which is election interference.  But AIPAC has always been – above the law.  They helped drive the January 6th infiltration and arrests of Patriots.  They drive the infiltration of the pro-Palestine protests.  They created a Hunger Game Hollywood.   And they run the CIA.

AIPAC is also quite active in Europe, albeit under its subsidiaries:  The European Jewish Congress.  Friends of Judea and Sumaria.  European Coalition for Israel.  Christian Zionist current.  European Jewish Association.  Transatlantic Institute.  B’nai B’rith Europe.  Europe Israel Public Affairs – which is the equivalent of AIPAC, an umbrella for Zionist control.

Their main platitudes include – hatred of Russia, hatred of China, hatred of Christians and Islam, and War is always preferred.   They are running the western show in Ukraine.   Many of their PR tweeters present claims of self pity – ‘look how little we are in a sea of Muslim countries’.   While wielding death on Muslims.   And death on Ukrainians.  Why do they hate Ukrainians?  Because they literally hate – everyone.  Especially the weak and the poverty stricken.

We are cattle under their eyes which is why we are now enslaved – corralled.

Unfortunately, Trump is onboard the AIPAC train.   The same AIPAC that has been trying to destroy him from the progressive left and rhino right.  The same AIPAC that put MAGA patriots in jail.   Completely confusing the game plan.   Are the slew of democrats converting to MAGA – AIPAC shills set to undermine Trump once again?   The evangelical church is eerily silent.  Rabbis are robustly vocal.

How do we extricate America from this enslavement?

When attempting to enter the website of Europe Israel Public Affairs, I was redirected to Israel National News whose headline is, “IDF Approves  Plans For Invasion of Lebanon”.  Their goal is to turn Lebanon into a greater Gaza ~ According to Defense Minister Gallant.  According to Hezbollah there are warships stationed on Lebanon’s coastline and air force strikes commenced last night.  Ground troops are being assembled.  Just in time for the US to issue a bill requiring registration for the draft ages 18-25.

The U.S. is sending Ukraine 7 US Patriot air defense missile systems that were contracted for purchase by other countries, the White House announced Thursday.  Upping the Ukraine war.

US simultaneously is sending 1000 war drones to Taiwan while Taiwan has followed the Israeli mantra:    A new bill was passed in Taiwan, ‘Contempt of Parliament’.  The bill contains a clause which can impose fines and even a prison term of up to one year for officials who disrespect parliament.   While China has declared that Taiwan separatists will receive the death penalty.  All staged for a very unclean War.

Biden is at Camp David – under the guise of preparing for the Trump/Biden debate next week.  It is looking more likely that war hawks are pushing WWIII and Biden has been taken into ‘the basement’.    With AIPAC Trump sidelined.

Did Russia offload some weapons in Cuba before leaving?   Is North Korea on heavy alert to assist?  How will the Middle East react to Israel bombing Lebanon?   The UN has again issued empty threats while Israel’s new war cabinet is completely rogue.   The ‘deterrent strategy’ is Israel’s response to everything.   Of course, after Lebanon, they will want Iran.  And then the entirety of the Middle East will blow up!

The rift between Netanyahu and the White House is seemingly a stage play.  Netanyahu claims Biden is withholding needed weapons, while The Pentagon claims weapons are sent weekly.  Leaving the US open to assault.  Possibly internally.  Illegal immigrants trained at US military bases.

Although Trump appears to continue to receive Zionist money, he has touted his anti-War stance since 2016.  And perhaps that stance is what is fueling WWIII before he can be elected.   It would definitely appear that war is no longer a possibility, but a rapidly moving forward reality.  The Zionists are out of time.  Upping their gamut, given they have lost control of their power vacuum, not point in waiting would seem to be the agenda.

US Strategic Reserves remain on empty.  The Department of Energy claims a contract for 3 million barrels at $77 average is on the table with delivery – November.   Twice the cost of the inventory under Trump’s direction of $30 per barrel.  The reserves comprise 714 million barrels when full – 3 million = .0042 or .4%.

So we have no fuel reserves, we have no weapons because we keep giving them away.   We have two major wars ongoing and a third prepped for Taiwan while the Zionists lead all decision making in Washington.   Who is going to come to our rescue?  Europe?   Canada?   They are both equally sitting ducks having never built adequate militaries and instead relying on US Taxpayers to foot their bills.

The Zionists running these wars, pushing America into a debt hole purposefully to the tune of $41 trillion according to the Treasury Balance Sheet, is about to become an internal riff they can’t afford to lose – and certainly a civil war is not off the table…

Reprinted with permission from HelenaGlass.net.

The post IDF Calls War With Lebanon – Pentagon Sends Ukraine Patriot Systems appeared first on LewRockwell.

I have learned from Gilbert Doctorow that there is discussion in Russia about inviting North Korean troops to enter the conflict in Ukraine in the event NATO troops are sent. The Comprehensive Strategic Partnership recently signed by Russia and North Korea allows for this.

This would further widen the conflict. Would Chinese troops be next?

I do not believe American and European soldiers would fare well against Russians and North Koreans or Chinese. What would the Americans and Europeans be fighting for except the profits of the military/security complex and Washington’s hegemonic power which is also exercised over them? The US and European governments have destroyed their own ethnic-based countries, and the immigrant-invaders who are replacing white ethnicities have no incentive to fight Russians and North Koreans. The West would have to fight the war with nuclear missiles, which is the same as committing suicide.

Why doesn’t Putin take the initiative and use sufficient force to end the conflict before NATO troops arrive? Perhaps Putin could be brought to see his mistake if Russian media repeatedly asked him to explain why he chose to conduct the conflict in a way that enabled ever wider involvement by the West. Putin could also be asked why he did not build and equip a larger Russian army during the eight years that the West built and equipped the Ukrainian army. Was Putin unable to bring the conflict to a quick conclusion because Russia was unprepared for effective action?

It does seem that Putin failed to recognize the threat. He sat on his hands and allowed Washington to overthrow the Ukrainian government and to install a puppet. He next sat on his hands for eight years pushing the Minsk agreement that the West had no intention of supporting. How was it possible for Putin to fail to perceive the coup in Ukraine as the opening move of a growing threat? Was the Russian government–and Putin himself–and the Russian business and intellectual classes so enamored of being part of the West that they could not acknowledge reality?

Whatever the explanation, the result is the likelihood of a major war. No one in the West is speaking of peace, only of Russian surrender and withdrawal. The entire Western emphasis is on further raising tensions. This is insanity. The only solution is for Putin to deliver an immediate knockout blow and end the conflict before it spins further out of control.

The post The Ever Widening War appeared first on LewRockwell.

America’s addiction to nuclear weapons does not lend itself to deterrence-based stability. It only leads to war.

“That’s great, it starts with an earthquake…”

There’s nothing like a classic 1980’s rock song to get one’s blood up and running, and REM’s 1987 classic, It’s the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine), fits the bill just right on this hot and muggy summer day.

The only problem is, the song might as well be prophesy, because from where I sit, taking in the news about the rapidly escalating nuclear arms race between the United States and Russia, it very much looks like the end of the world as we know it.

And I don’t feel fine.

The news isn’t good. Last month, on May 6, the Russian Ministry of Defense announced that it would, on the orders of Russian President Vladimir Putin, conduct exercises involving the use of non-strategic nuclear weapons. According to Russian officials, the exercises were a response to “provocative statements and threats from certain Western officials directed at the Russian Federation.”

The Russians were responding to statements made by French President Emmanuel Macron to The Economist on May 2, where he declared that “I’m not ruling anything out [when it comes to deploying French troops to Ukraine], because we are facing someone [Putin] who is not ruling anything out.” Macron added that “if Russia decided to go further [advancing in Ukraine], we will in any case all have to ask ourselves this question (whether to send of troops).”

While Macron described his remarks as a “strategic wake-up call for my counterparts,” it was clear not everyone was buying into what he was selling. “If a NATO member commits ground troops [to Ukraine],” Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said after Macron’s words became public, “it will be a direct NATO-Russia confrontation, and then it will be World War III.”

The Russians conducted their exercises in two phases, with the first taking place in late May. There, the tactical missile forces of the Southern Military District practiced “the task of obtaining special training ammunition for the Iskander tactical missile system, equipping them with launch vehicles and secretly moving to the designated position area to prepare for missile launches.”

The Iskander-M is the nuclear-capable version of the Iskander family of missiles and can carry a single nuclear warhead with a variable yield of between 5 and 50 kilotons. (By way of comparison, the American atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima had a yield of 15 kilotons.) The single-stage solid rocket missile flies at high hypersonic speeds, and possesses a maneuvering warhead, making it virtually impossible to shoot down. With a range of 500 kilometers, the Iskander-M, when fired from locations in Crimea, would be able to reach French bases located in Romania, which ostensibly would be used to surge forces into Ukraine.

The second phase of the exercises took place on June 10, when the Russian and Belorussian forces practiced the transfer of Russian nuclear weapons to Belorussian control as part of the new Russian nuclear sharing doctrine put in place by Vladimir Putin and his Belorussian counterpart, Alexander Lukashenko, earlier this year. The weapons involved included the Iskander-M missile and gravity bombs that would be delivered by modified Belorussian SU-25 aircraft. The weapons would put all of Poland and the Baltic States under the threat of nuclear attack.

Around the same time that Russia was carrying out its tactical nuclear drills, several NATO nations, including Germany, announced that they had given Ukraine the green light to use weapons it had provided to strike targets inside Russia. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, speaking on the sidelines of a NATO foreign ministers meeting in Prague on May 29, said Ukraine had the right to strike legitimate military targets inside Russia. “Ukraine has the right for self-defense,” Stoltenberg declared, adding that “we have the right to help Ukraine uphold the right for self-defense, and that does not make NATO allies a party to the conflict.”

Putin took time from his visit to Uzbekistan to reply, warning that NATO members in Europe were playing with fire by proposing to let Ukraine use Western weapons to strike deep inside Russia. Putin said Ukrainian strikes on Russia with long-range weapons would need Western satellite, intelligence and military assistance, thus making any Western help in this regard a direct participant in the conflict. “Constant escalation can lead to serious consequences,” Putin said. “If these serious consequences occur in Europe, how will the United States behave, bearing in mind our parity in the field of strategic weapons? It’s hard to say,” Putin said, answering his own question. “Do they want a global conflict?”

On June 5, speaking to an audience of senior editors of international news agencies while attending the Saint Petersburg International Economic Forum, Putin observed that, “For some reason, the West believes that Russia will never use it [nuclear weapons]. We have a nuclear doctrine,” Putin noted. “Look what it says. If someone’s actions threaten our sovereignty and territorial integrity, we consider it possible for us to use all means at our disposal. This should not be taken lightly, superficially.”

But the US and NATO were doing just that. In an interview to the British Telegraph newspaper given at NATO’s headquarters building in Brussels, Belgium, Stoltenberg said that NATO members were consulting about deploying more nuclear weapons, taking them out of storage and placing them on standby in the face of a growing threat from Russia and China. “I won’t go into operational details about how many nuclear warheads should be operational and which should be stored, but we need to consult on these issues,” Stoltenberg said.

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“Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes.”
—Walt Whitman

Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote in his famous essay “Self-Reliance” that a “foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.”

I suspect that the Holy Father would not like the full implications of the remark, but I wonder that he doesn’t realize that some people might see in his many different interventions in the broad stream of social commentary similar disregard for said hobgoblin.

In his 60 Minutes interview with Norah O’Donnell, he seemed to rule out the morality of surrogate motherhood. When O’Donnell said that sometimes this was the only hope a couple might have, the pope said,

I would say that in each case the situation should be clearly considered medically and then morally. I believe in these cases there is a general rule, but you have to go into each case in particular to assess the situation, as long as the moral principle is not skirted. 

If the moral principle is that surrogacy is not moral, then why this insistence on “the situation”? The ghost of Joseph Fletcher seemed to flash by briefly. Didn’t it sound as though he was giving Ms. O’Donnell reason to believe there might be exceptions? He then concluded congratulating the interviewer for her compassion for people contemplating surrogacy. That was, he seemed to be saying, a credit to her sympathy to others’ suffering. It is very charming to compliment opponents to teach about the altruism behind their equivocation, but isn’t it a little confusing.

The pastoral strategy behind personal warmth is very obvious. However, it can lead to a kind of collective cognitive dissonance on the part of those who listen to the message. Isn’t it disingenuous to understand Fiducia Supplicans as no more than a separate blessing of individuals? A priest friend of mine whom I asked about it said he blesses everyone at the end of Mass, “come one and come all,” and that should be enough.

Another instance is when the pope used a derogatory word about homosexuals in a meeting with Italian bishops. He was seen to be draconian about “faggots” and “faggotry” in seminaries and in priestly ministry. His press office then said that he intended no offense to anyone in the expressions in the remarks he was “reported” to have said. This implied almost that he had not said those expressions.

Then he replies to a man rejected from the seminary because of his sexual orientation in very warm words and encourages him to “follow his vocation.” No one asks, did you say what was reported, did your language reflect your version of Italian or what vocation is the young man to continue pursuing? Only President Biden would be given such a pass by mainstream media for similar inconsistency in America.

Soon after that tornado in the news cycle, the pope spoke to some priests and again used the “faggotry” word. His remarks almost sounded like he is trying to appeal to macho sentiment, because he then admitted (not for the first time) that said evil was present in the bureaucracy of the Vatican. Throwing some of his staff under the wheels of his popemobile is nothing new, and some conservative voices in the U.S. rejoiced in the language of the successor of St. Peter. But, as usual, it was too soon.

Read the Whole Article

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9. The Worm in the Apple: How the Teacher Unions Are Destroying American Education 
10. Who REALLY Killed Martin Luther King Jr.?: The Case Against Lyndon B. Johnson and J. Edgar Hoover
11. Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from Its Cultural Captivity
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14. Scale: The Universal Laws of Life, Growth, and Death in Organisms, Cities, and Companies
15. The Total State: How Liberal Democracies Become Tyrannies
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Someone should tell the European ruling elites to take a long jump off a short pier. Their endless whining about the Ruuskies and Putin is just plain pathetic because—

• It’s not justified—Russia bears no hallmarks of an expansionist imperial power.
• The Russia-Ukraine conflict is none of western Europe’s business—since its essentially a territorial and civil war within the borders of historic Russia.
• If EU officialdom is really concerned about the purported Russian threat why do they spend just a pittance of their GDP on defense?

Yet, here we have Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, former German defense minister and full-throated war-hawk, talking absolute nonsense:

“Russian President Vladimir Putin wants to see empires and autocracies back in Europe, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen told the European Economic Congress in Katowice.

Speaking alongside Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, von der Leyen insisted that she stands for a European Union that is ready to do whatever it takes to protect Europe, and especially Ukraine.

“Putin’s war is about redrawing the map of Europe, but it is also a war on our Union and on the entire global rules-based system,” she said.”

Well, that’s rubbish if there ever was such. The only time the borders of Ukraine have been redrawn at the barrel of a gun is when Lenin, Stalin and Khrushchev did it between 1922 and 1954. That’s right, this bureaucratic half-wit wants to embroil the world in WWIII in order to enforce borders drawn by a trio if history’s most blood-thirsty tyrants.

As explained below, there never was a country even remotely resembling modern Ukraine until the Soviet communists decreed its existence. Before that, the pieces and parts of the country’s history go back to the 1650s when one of the more powerful and brutal rulers of the Cossack Hetmanate that occupied a small part of today’s central Ukraine abandoned his tribe’s historic fealty to the Polish kings and switched his loyalty to the Russians. After that, the “borderlands”( i.e.”Ukraine” in Russian) were all about vassalage in the Russian Empire and the Soviet one which followed.

During that 375 year span the borders shifted all over the lot and back, as the Mongol, Turkish and Polish-Lithuanian empires receded and the Russian and communist ones expanded. So what’s so sacrosanct about the very last version of the map—one that hosted both the murderous regime of Stalin and Hitler’s Wehrmacht, too?

Indeed, Europe is rife with borders redrawn again and again. While von der Leyen was in Poland preaching for border wars in Ukraine, in fact, it might well be asked, which sacrosanct Polish borders did she have in mind?

For 700 years “Poland” has cavorted around the rivers, plains and forests of central Europe like a traveling minstrel show. This includes its disappearance entirely at the hands of the Prussians, Russians, Hapsburgs and other long-gone lesser powers during the later years of the 18th century and the entirety of the 19th century. Only in 1919 was it resurrected—in part upon German lands at Versailles because Woodrow Wilson realized that there were votes to be had among the fair part of the Polish nation which had migrated to Chicago and the industrial Midwest.

Then Hitler and Stalin redrew Poland’s borders again under the infamous Molotov-Ribbentrop pact of 1938, cancelling Wilson handwork and returning the German Danzig Corridor to its previous owner. And then, seven years later, a different set of victors re-carved it again at Yalta, setting borders for “Poland” that satisfied Stalin’s aim to recover eastern lands the Soviets lost in the post-1918 civil war.

That is to say, the picture below reminds not only how the latest borders of “Poland” were drawn, but how over the last several centuries of history most of Europe’s present borders came to be. They were not drawn by God’s deputies on earth or even the statesman of the day—but by the victors of the most recent wars.

The Border Men of 1945

Moreover, even a glance at today’s map reminds that the border-drawing work of victorious generals and politicians, and occasionally statesman, has always been subject to revision without necessarily making a war about it. In recent times that’s been true even for the handiwork of the better kind of draftsmen who drew maps at Versailles as opposed to the bloody chambers of the Soviet Empire.

Thus, the statesman at Versailles decreed the existence of Czechoslovakia in 1919 as a potpourri of nations including a lot of Slovaks, Czechs, Hungarians, Romani people, Silesians, Ruthenians, Ukrainians, Poles, Jews and most especially millions of Germans. So it was subsequently dismembered by Hitler to bring the Sudetenland Germans home; then re-assembled by the Yalta winners; and finally divided between Slovakia and the Czech Republic on peaceable terms in 1993.

Or take the case of the meandering borders of the six autonomous republics of the vanished state of Yugoslavia and particularly its anchor in Serbia. Wikipedia explains the border-making process there as well as can be done:

“(Serbia) achieved de facto independence in 1867 and gained full recognition by the Great Powers in the Berlin Congress of 1878. As a victor in the Balkan Wars of 1912–1913, Serbia regained Vardar Macedonia, Kosovo and Metohija and Raška (Old Serbia). In late 1918, with the defeat of the Austro-Hungarian empire, Serbia was expanded to include regions of the former Serbian Vojvodina. Serbia was united with other Austro-Hungarian provinces into a pan-Slavic State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs; the Kingdom of Serbia joined the union on 1 December 1918 and the country was named the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes.

Serbia achieved its current borders at the end of World War II, when it became a federal unit within the Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia (proclaimed in November 1945). After the dissolution of Yugoslavia in a series of wars in the 1990s, Serbia once again became an independent state on 5 June 2006, following the breakup of a short-lived union with Montenegro.”

Albeit mention should also be made of the former Serbian province of Kosovo. Washington and its NATO retainers decreed its independence after 75 days of persuasion with the Serbs. The messages were apparently written on the bombs dropped from a range of NATO aircraft that included about everything which could fly:

“A large element of the operation was the air forces of NATO, relying heavily on the US Air Force and Navy using the F-16, F-15, F-117, F-14, F/A-18, EA-6B, B-52, KC-135, KC-10, AWACS, and JSTARS from bases throughout Europe and from aircraft carriers in the region.

The French Navy and Air Force operated the Super Etendard and the Mirage 2000. The Italian Air Force operated with 34 Tornado, 12 F-104, 12 AMX, 2 B-707, the Italian Navy operated with Harrier II. The UK’s Royal Air Force operated the Harrier GR7 and Tornado ground attack jets as well as an array of support aircraft. Belgian, Danish, Dutch, Norwegian, Portuguese and Turkish Air Forces operated F-16s. The Spanish Air Force deployed EF-18s and KC-130s. The Canadian Air Force deployed a total of 18 CF-18s, enabling them to be responsible for 10% of all bombs dropped in the operation.

The fighters were armed with both guided and unguided “dumb” munitions, including the Paveway series of laser-guided bombs.The bombing campaign marked the first time the German Air Force actively attacking targets since World War II.[142]

The US B-2 Spirit stealth bomber saw its first successful combat role in Operation Allied Force, striking from its home base in the contiguous United States.”

At length, the Serbian borders were redrawn!

In the process, its president was captured as a war criminal. When he died prior to his trial in a NATO prison from “natural causes” he undoubtedly did not view this particular border drawing incident as an exercise in the rule of law.

In any event, notwithstanding the historic fluidity of borders, there is no case whatsoever that Russia’s invasion was unprovoked and unrelated to NATO’s own provocations in the region. The details are arrayed below, but the larger issue needs be addressed first. Namely, is there any reason to believe that Russia is an expansionist power looking to gobble up neighbors which were not integral parts of its own historic evolution, as is the case with Ukraine?

The answer is no, and its based on what should be called the double-digit rule. The true expansionary hegemons of modern history have spent huge parts of their GDP on defense because that’s what it takes to support the military infrastructure and logistics required for invasion and occupation of foreign lands.

For instance, here are the figures for military spending by Nazi Germany from 1935–1944 expressed as a percent of GDP. This is what an aggressive hegemon looks like in the ramp-up to war and the actual conduct of military campaigns of invasion and occupation.

Not surprisingly, the same kind of claim on resources occurred when the United States took it upon itself to counter the aggression of Germany and Japan on a global basis. By 1944 defense spending was equal to 40% of America’s GDP, and would have totaled more than $2 trillion in present day dollars of purchasing power.

Military Spending As A Percent Of GDP In Nazi Germany

• 1935: 8%.
• 1936: 13%.
• 1937: 13%.
• 1938: 17%.
• 1939: 23%.
• 1940: 38%.
• 1941: 47%.
• 1942: 55%.
• 1943: 61%.
• 1944: 75%

By contrast, during the final year before the Ukraine proxy war broke out in 2022, the Russian military budget was $65 billion, which amounted to just 3.5% of its GDP. Moreover, the prior years showed no build-up of the kind that has always accompanied historic aggressors. For the period 1992 to 2022, for instance, the average military spending by Russia was 3.8% of GDP– with a minimum of 2.7% in 1998 and a maximum of 5.4% in 2016.

Read the Whole Article

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Ludwig von Mises tries in Human Action to reconcile two arguments about charity that pull in opposite directions. The first of these is that some people cannot survive without receiving help: unless they are guaranteed such help by law, they are dependent on charitable donations from the better-off.

Within the frame of capitalism the notion of poverty refers only to those people who are unable to take care of themselves. Even if we disregard the case of children, we must realize that there will always be such unemployables. Capitalism, in improving the masses’ standard of living, hygienic conditions, and methods of prophylactics and therapeutics, does not remove bodily incapacity. It is true that today many people who in the past would have been doomed to life-long disability are restored to full vigor. But on the other hand many whom innate defects, sickness, or accidents would have extinguished sooner in earlier days survive as permanently incapacitated people. Moreover, the prolongation of the average length of life tends toward an increase in the number of the aged who are no longer able to earn a living.

The problem of the incapacitated is a specific problem of human civilization and of society. Disabled animals must perish quickly. They either die of starvation or fall prey to the foes of their species. Savage man had no pity on those who were substandard. With regard to them many tribes practiced those barbaric methods of ruthless extirpation to which the Nazis resorted in our time. The very existence of a comparatively great number of invalids is, however paradoxical, a characteristic mark of civilization and material well-being.

Provision for those invalids who lack means of sustenance and are not taken care of by their next of kin has long been considered a work of charity. The funds needed have sometimes been provided by governments, more often by voluntary contributions. The Catholic orders and congregations and some Protestant institutions have accomplished marvels in collecting such contributions and in using them properly. Today there are also many nondenominational establishments vying with them in noble rivalry.

Should we abandon charity in favor of governmental provision to the unfortunates? This would be a mistake, Mises suggests:

The metaphysical arguments advanced in favor of such a right to sustenance are based on the doctrine of natural right. Before God of nature all men are equal and endowed with an inalienable right to live. However, the reference to inborn equality is certainly out of place in dealing with the effects of inborn inequality. It is a sad fact that physical disability prevents many people from playing an active role in social cooperation. It is the operation of the laws of nature that makes these people outcasts. They are stepchildren of God or nature. We may fully endorse the religious and ethical precepts that declare it to be man’s duty to assist his unlucky brethren whom nature has doomed. But the recognition of this duty does not answer the question concerning what methods should be resorted to for its performance. It does not enjoin the choice of methods which would endanger society and curtail the productivity of human effort. Neither the able-bodied nor the incapacitated would derive any benefit from a drop in the quantity of goods available.

Mises’s criticisms of the right to welfare are based on his own utilitarian approach to morality and differ from Murray Rothbard’s natural law theory, which also denies a right to welfare because such a “right” would aggress against the property rights of others. In practice, though, their recommendations are the same.

If we do not make support for the poor a right, this leads us to the second of the two arguments about charity that pull us in opposite directions. From the points of view of the donor and the recipient, charity is degrading:

The second defect charged to the charity system is that it is charity and compassion only. The indigent has no legal claim to the kindness shown to him. He depends on the mercy of benevolent people, on the feelings of tenderness which his distress arouses. What he receives is a voluntary gift for which he must be grateful. To be an almsman is shameful and humiliating. It is an unbearable condition for a self-respecting man.

These complaints are justified. Such shortcomings do indeed inhere in all kinds of charity. It is a system that corrupts both givers and receivers. It makes the former self-righteous and the latter submissive and cringing.

If we take account of the defects of charity, we can see the desirability of emphasizing the so-called impersonality of the free market. To the extent possible, those who receive aid should get it in the form of products and services that the donor finds useful.

The point that Mises makes here helps us to understand better a famous remark by Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations:

In almost every other race of animals each individual, when it is grown up to maturity, is entirely independent, and in its natural state has occasion for the assistance of no other living creature. But man has almost constant occasion for the help of his brethren, and it is in vain for him to expect it from their benevolence only. He will be more likely to prevail if he can interest their self-love in his favour, and show them that it is for their own advantage to do for him what he requires of them. Whoever offers to another a bargain of any kind, proposes to do this. Give me that which I want, and you shall have this which you want, is the meaning of every such offer; and it is in this manner that we obtain from one another the far greater part of those good offices which we stand in need of. It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages.

Critics of the free market often cite this passage. Isn’t Adam Smith, the main theorist of capitalism, admitting that the market rests on greed? People in a capitalist system look at their fellow human beings in a narrowly selfish way.

If we rely on Mises’s insight about voluntary exchanges in which all parties expect to benefit, we can see that Smith is not criticizing the market but praising it. As the leftist philosopher Martha Nussbaum notes:

The famous passage . . . is usually read out of context. . . . He is not claiming that all human behavior is motivated by self-interest, something [The Theory of Moral Sentiments] spends seven hundred pages denying and something [The Wealth of Nations] has just denied. Smith is saying, instead, that there is something particularly dignified and human about these forms of exchange and deal-making, something that makes them expressive of our humanity. “Nobody but a beggar,” he continues, “chuses [sic] to depend upon the benevolence of his fellow-citizens.”

Only the free market enables us to escape the paradoxes of charity.

The post What Price Charity? appeared first on LewRockwell.

Reports from The Telegraph and authors James Rothwell and Roland Oliphant tell the harrowing tale of Russian Vladimir Putin personally probing NATO’s defenses. According to “security chiefs” somewhere in London, Sweden, or the Baltic States, “Vladimir Putin is testing NATO borders for weak spots.” Heaven forbids (the liberal order) Russian leaders from gathering intelligence on aggressive states. The following is the story’s comic book (or RAND report) version.

Allegations and Dramatic Imagery

The Telegraph report is supported by former Ukrainian MP Aliona Hlivco, who is looking into her crystal ball. The Managing Director of the Henry Jackson Society, Aliona Hlivco, has reportedly seen Putin stabbing a fixed bayonet from a Kalashnikov across foggy borders into Baltic territory. President Putin’s vicious thrusts into NATO territory are further evidenced by girlish screams from the other end of Putin’s weapon. Meanwhile, the latest assessments suggest the NATO borders up North are safe. This is proven by the constant and relentless whining of former MPs and Washington think tank geniuses.

As ridiculous as this all sounds, what else could the “logical” answer to the Baltic hysteria? Some analysts even think the EU, London, and Washington leaders are so worried that they’ve taken up defensive positions along these borders. Observers said the Russian president’s latest “test pokings” have sent hundreds of Estonian, Latvian, and Lithuanian politicians to infirmaries with stab wounds to their posteriors.

For those among you wondering how geopolitical analysis has been transformed into sarcasm and cynicism, I assure you we have only seen the beginning. And this writer did not start it, and neither did Vladimir Putin. The Telegraph, BBC, the WAPO, the mighty New York Times, every major Western media outlet, think tank, political fundraiser, and corporate strategy meeting hinges on Vladimir Putin and the Russians as barbarians hell-bent on world conquest. All NEO readers have known this for years now. Only the lunacy continues to escalate.

Escalating Tensions and Western Actions

The West-East relationship is spiralling ever downward. Key European nations are rattling sabres, suggesting troops be sent to Ukraine. The go-ahead for Ukraine to fire U.S., British, French, and German weapons into Russia is imminent. From a logical perspective, as an American, I marvel at how patient Putin and the Russians have been. I try to imagine foreign-made and supplied missiles being fired at El Paso, Texas, from Mexico. War would have already been declared, I guess. And now German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and French President Emmanuel Macron noted that French weapons sent to Ukraine, including long-range missiles, are now permitted to target bases inside Russia.

Russian Response and The Path to War

Tass quoted Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov saying that NATO countries, especially the US and several European countries, had “entered a new round of escalating tension, and they are doing this deliberately.” Peskov also said the NATO allies are doing everything possible to keep Ukraine in this unwinnable conflict. In addition, the rotten leadership of Denmark has authorised the use of donated F-16s to attack targets inside Russia. Of particular import here is the potential nuclear capability of the F-16. (F–16s can carry the B-61 tactical nuclear bomb)

And Putin is accused of probing NATO! The ideal Russian leader would concern himself (or herself) with downing caviar and Beluga vodka in Sochi and forgetting about defending their nation. The “ideal” Russian leader in the minds of the Western elites would be someone like Sleepy Joe Biden, a dangling puppet who shakes hands with invisible people and falls off his bicycle.

Concerning Putin and his AK-47 with a stabbing weapon attached, this RAND report seems to say Russians poking around in the Baltics may be one “path” to war. Read it if you find the time. RAND seems to classify Vladimir Putin’s recent “probings” as non-kenatic (indirect military action). Anyway, the geniuses in Washington seem to be provoking an escalation of the Ukraine conflict. We must all wait to see if the “poked” NATO front line gets smarter or dumber. Biden and Washington experts will admonish them to take the dumb route, no doubt.

Stay tuned in case Putin probes NATO neighbors with more significant instruments.

The views of the authors do not necessarily coincide with the opinion of the editorial board.

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