Lew Rockwell Institute

Welcome to another Free-form Friday on America’s Untold Stories with Mark Groubert and Eric Hunley! This week, we dive into the latest D.C. plane crash, Trump’s fiery criticism of Biden and the FAA, and the intense confirmation hearings for RFK Jr., Tulsi Gabbard, and Kash Patel. Plus, what’s really going on with the mysterious drones over New Jersey, and why did a Tesla Roadster get mistaken for an asteroid?

Trump slams FAA for hiring unqualified workers – did policy cost lives?
RFK Jr. and Tulsi grilled in the Senate – what did we learn?
NJ drone mystery deepens – why didn’t the FAA admit authorization?
Trump’s NYC immigration raids begin – who’s being deported?

All this and more on America’s Untold Stories – Free-form Friday! Stay tuned for breaking news, deep analysis, and untold truths.

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Steve Kirsch

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Writes Wayne Goodfellow:

Should be an interesting election running on a Justin Trudeau 2.0 platform. High inflation, food banks, carbon taxes, weak Canadian dollar, unaffordable housing, declining standard of living, growing lines waiting for health care, affirmative action and other assaults on the merit principle, open borders costing Canadians >$50 billion per year, and many more progressive economic and social policies of national suicide. Vote Liberal/NDP and destroy what remains of this once great nation called Canada. And I didn’t even mention the onerous Trump tariffs. 

See here.

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Thanks, John Smith. 

“Operation Wrath of Zion” Aims to Dox and Deport Pro-Palestinian Protestors in New York City.

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Thanks, John Smith.

UN chief demands evacuation of 2,500 Gaza children at ‘imminent risk’ of death | Reuters 

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Writes Tim McGraw:

Start the Video at 2:00. The control tower contacts PAT25 (the Blackhawk helicopter) three times, telling PAT25 to pass aft of the incoming CRJ (Canadian Airliner) and maintain separation.

The Blackhawk helicopter, PAT25, never replies to the tower’s commands. That’s not right. Something is going on here. If it was a training flight, the instructor or the pilot of the helicopter would have replied to the tower and acknowledged the order to fly aft of the CRJ flight.

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Writes Tim McGraw:

I think Da Vinci is right. Reagan Airport (DCA) should be a military airport. Dulles Airport should be upgraded (I can’t believe that Dulles doesn’t have underground trains to the gates) and renamed (the Dulles brothers were murdering thieves). The aircraft accident came from a flawed and dangerous system. If some politicians had died on the CRJ flight, changes would occur.

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Canary In a Covid World

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In response to my article on the creepy crony capitalist imperialist William McKinley a Robert King emailed to inform me that protectionist tariffs are “the single most valuable tool a nation possesses.”

Who is this person known as “the nation” and where can I find him?  Is he kind of like that entertainer who calls himself “the weekend”?  I am a part of the American nation and I don’t believe this.  Can “a nation” make decisions like this regarding “the single most valuable tool?” Or do only individuals make decisions?

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. . . now has more than 141,000 views in just the first three months since the premier, and we’re just getting started on our marketing plan.

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Rainer Zitelmann on “The Ayn Rand Contradiction” in the Wall Street Journal.

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Oklahoma Senator Markwayne Mullin Calls Out Hypocrisy on Science & RFK Jr.’s HHS Nomination | Senate HELP Committee.

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I don’t read the Bible as often as I should. I tried to read both the Old and New Testaments, after my Mother died. I couldn’t get through the Old Testament. It’s scary. The God depicted there is directly involved with his creations, and sets off a series of plagues. He asked Abraham to sacrifice his son to test him.

But I did read the entire New Testament. Jesus Christ is a far different figure from the God of the Old Testament. I can understand why the Christian Identity Movement was started. It’s easy to see them as different Gods. The New Testament is full of hope. The Immaculate Conception. The Sermon on the Mount. Jesus overturning the moneychangers’ tables. The conversion of the very bad Saul into Saint Paul, on the road to Damascus, thus teaching us that no one is beyond redemption. My favorite Biblical quote is from Jesus himself, who declared, “It’s easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.” Now, I’m probably the only Christian who does love that verse. The rest stumble all over themselves to explain that Jesus didn’t actually mean that literally. Born Againers are especially adept at interpreting what Jesus did or didn’t really mean.

Jesus also spent a lot of time criticizing the Pharisees. It seems strange for the King of the Jews to focus on the Jewish leadership as if they were an outside entity; i.e., not like him. I recently read a discussion about the question of the Jewishness of Jesus on a conspiracy forum. Well, where else would you find such a discussion? Certainly not on The Kenneth Copeland Hour, or whatever. The point was made, and I’ve heard it before, that the term “Jew” is a relatively recent one, some 500 years old or so. Now, I have no way of knowing whether this is true or not, much as I cannot definitively establish whether or not some ingenious Black inventor first came up with lemonade at some point in time. The Bible certainly uses the word “Jew” quite a bit, but could that have been inserted in there over the centuries, during the many translations? Most good Protestants rely on the King James version as their Bible. Period. Certainly the language is poetically inspired, but did the good king have it translated literally?

The New Testament starts out with a delineation of Jesus’s genealogy, to demonstrate that through his father Joseph, he was born into the House of David. Except that Joseph wasn’t really his father. God was. So if any lineage was germane to Christ’s humanity, it would have been Mary’s, his human mother. Sorry, I can’t help but be a questioner of things. Growing up Catholic, the priests (at least then) didn’t stress Jesus’s Jewishness quite as strongly. But they mentioned that the Jews were responsible for his death. Many times. This is the primary reason Hollywood’s most devout Catholic, Mel Gibson, caught such flack over his self-financed film Passion of the Christ. I think it’s unfair to hold Jews responsible, 2,000 years after the fact, for the Crucifixion, but it’s certainly fair to hold the Jews of his time accountable, as it seems they’ve been for most of recorded history, especially by the Catholic Church.

But while few question that Jesus was a Jew in the flesh, the “Woke” world is apoplectic that Christians like me still envision him as a blue eyed White man. That was the image of Christ that has been used throughout the ages. The notion of him being a Jew, but not possibly being a pathetic White (I actually heard one radical Black disparagingly proclaim that “Jesus was not no motherfucking White boy” during some heated racial television debate decades ago- maybe on Morton Downey), is part of the narrative. The canon of the secular elite who at heart don’t believe in him. Or at least don’t serve him. They like to call him Rabbi, although it’s a certainty he wasn’t paid what the average Rabbi is- I detailed all that in Survival of the Richest. But he was so brown, so indubitably nonwhite, that you must not question it. Portraying him as White, with those disgusting blue eyes, is White Supremacy 101.

It seems to be very important for those who run this society to depict Jesus as nonwhite. Remember, these are people who largely don’t accept his divinity. And most atheists will admit Jesus existed historically, but was just a Jewish philosopher. Rabbi Jesus. The Antisemitism Awareness Act puts parts of the New Testament in legal jeopardy, inferring that they are “anti-Semitic.” Was it the verse where Matthew talks about the Jews, still at that time, spreading the story that Jesus’s body had been stolen from the tomb? As an incomprehensible being, God should be above racial considerations. This is why so many of us have trouble with the notion that he had a “chosen” people. The way that the Bible talks about the Jews, it seems those who wrote it didn’t think they were “chosen.” I can have strong faith and still wonder. The references to “the apostle Jesus loved,” for instance. At the very least, the wording there is very peculiar. But that doesn’t cast doubt upon the reality of God and Jesus.

The Born Againers especially stress the Jewishness of Jesus, as much or more than the atheists do. Our neocon foreign policy is supported by these Zionist Christians, because they believe that to question anything Israel does is to question God. Again, the whole “chosen people” thing. And so, they justify the atrocities in Gaza, all the Palestinians killed by the Israelis- financed by our tax dollars- because it supposedly fulfills Biblical prophecy. They are awaiting Armageddon with bated breath. How do you possibly promote peace in the Middle East when millions of Christians believe that this would be going against God? I may have been a lowly blue collar worker for fifteen years, but it seems to me that God would approve of peace. If you take this prophecy being fulfilled far enough, then you reject the concept of Free Will. Free Will, Predestination- Christians have invented dogma that contradicts itself.

So I’m not a literalist, in terms of believing that every word of the Bible is inviolate. The literacy rate in Europe until the later Middle Ages was very low, probably twenty percent or less. So few parishioners of any church could read the Bible, even if they wanted to. The printing press wasn’t invented until 1440. Before that, books were hand written manuscripts. Obviously, it would have been hard to mass produce them. So, the faithful invested their trust in the priests, to interpret the Word for them. I don’t know if some of the early priests and popes were as bad as the court historians tell us, because it must always be remembered that the court historians lie about everything. And they certainly have a very strong anti-Christian, and especially anti-Catholic bias. But it’s always best to see for yourself. Religious officials, like politicians or business leaders, have too often been lacking in integrity.

Despite this, I can feel the eternal truth in much of the New Testament. Blessed are the meek. Love thy neighbor as thyself. The whole Passion Play. Most profound of all, turning the other cheek and loving thy enemy. Does any other religion teach that? The Golden Rule is the essence of Christianity, and became the foundational moral building block of western civilization. And, of course, the Resurrection. Without that, we wouldn’t be talking about this over 2,000 years later. Jesus is the Light and the Way, and performed miracles no mortal magician could dream of, including fantastically rising from the dead three days after dying on the cross. Resurrection was a big part of Catholic catechism. We await the Resurrection of the dead, after he comes again to judge the living and the dead. This is different from Protestant belief. The Born Againers discarded the Catholic Purgatory and brought us the Rapture.

But regardless of the difference between Catholics and Protestants, the Tribulation, the antichrist, forgotten Catholic concepts like Limbo, the way the Book of Revelation is interpreted, the important thing is that every Christian accepts Jesus Christ as their savior. I certainly do. He is God and I believe in the Holy Trinity, even though like most Catholics I can’t begin to comprehend it. There’s a powerful majesty in making the sign of the cross. I think it’s no accident that Bram Stoker, author of Dracula, used Catholic symbolism like the crucifix, and the holy water from Mass to represent the only weapons against the decidedly ungodly vampire. Maybe I’ve watched too many movies, but in Haiti, where the populace believes that zombies are real, they supposedly chant, “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want,” if they see one. Jesus, and Christianity, represents the Good in this world to every hopeless sinner.

Now, organized religion is hopelessly corrupt. The Vatican has unimaginable wealth, and once boasted a mobster, Bishop Paul Marcinkus, as the head of its bank. This was during the period when they killed Pope John Paul I. Servants of God shouldn’t participate in assassination. The televangelists, like multi millionaires Joel Osteen, or prostitute aficionado Jimmy Swaggart, aren’t the only ones getting rich off of religion. The average protestant pastor gets a home and a decent salary. They are caught committing adultery, or engaging in sinful financial shenanigans, far too often. That whole “tithing” thing, by the way, really isn’t in the Bible. It’s unfortunate that too many Christians follow their flawed pastors and ministers more faithfully than the words of Jesus. You shouldn’t preach to others when you aren’t walking the walk. But them not walking the walk shouldn’t turn us away from God.

The Good has quite a powerful foe in the Evil. That Evil is spearheaded by another incomprehensible being, Satan. Lucifer. The Devil. The Bible demonstrates quite clearly that Satan has dominion on this earth, by its passage revealing that he tempted Jesus by offering him all the kingdoms of the world, if he would fall down and worship him. On the surface, this looks like Satan had power over all those kingdoms. You can’t very well offer something you don’t have. But as always, Christian leaders interpret this differently. The Bible, after all, gives dominion of the earth to Adam, not Satan. Clearly, Satan is engaged in an epic struggle with God for the souls of all of us. Selling your soul to the Devil for earthly rewards has long been a popular theme in literature. It explains the success of too many people better than anything else can.

Read the Whole Article

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Prefatory Questions

• Why did California insurance commissioners levy no assessments on carriers since 1995 to cover firestorm property losses resulting in a financially broke FAIR Plan by the 2025 Palisades Fire? Was this insurance crisis planned and allowed to simmer until the Palisades Fire and Trump’s second presidency?
• Why was an influx of homeless allowed in late 2024 in Palisades High Fire Zones?
• Why did Gov. Newsome block a California National Gud Firefighters Fast Response Team until 10 days after the fires broke out?
• Why did Gov. Newsome call a special session of the legislature purportedly to “Trump proof” the state’s global warming programs from federal DOGE (Dept. of Government Efficiency) cutbacks that would entail California suing the federal government while perplexingly asking Trump for $2.5 billion in FEMA funds in part to fund those lawsuits?
• Why did David Jones, California’s past insurance commissioner for two prior terms, and now pro-global warming director of UC Berkeley’s Center for Law, Energy and the Environment, refuse to impose assessments on insurers, and now in double-dealing fashion say: “insurers can’t increase their way out of the insurance crisis” that he created?

Interviewer Question: “(Is the California property insurance crisis) going to get worse before it gets better?

Answer: (Worse). Especially if you’re anywhere near trees (a forest). Everybody thinks of the wildfire area as the place where they see trees everywhere around mountains. But the concern is not the wildlife areas that don’t have a lot of properties in them. That is not a real concern in the great scheme of things.  It is not that bad. The real risk area is the WUI (‘woo-eee’).  That stands for Wilderness Urban Interface where the forest ends and then there is this collar around it where you’re abutting up against.  It’s the transition zone where the wildfire starts out, where wildfire embers blow into the “Woo-eee.” That’s what Pacific Palisades is – a Woo-eee.  It’s a transition zone to wildfire.  So, a fire starts out in the forested area and the embers blow into the Woo-eee, and you get this house-to-house spread.  So, if your property is in the Woo-eee you can sort of look at the greenspace on a map and imagine being within a mile and a half of a densely forested area; that’s the Woo-eee– those properties are going to have a very difficult time getting coverage”.

— Darren Nix, CEO, Steadily Insurance Company

If you made a bad satirical joke that California’s plan to bail out its underfunded high risk fire insurance plan by starting more fires to enlarge its existing 330,000 pool of high fire risk policy holders to spread the burden, it might be difficult to separate the joke from reality. This is because no one would laugh and upon second thought might believe it is credible.

Nonetheless, compound negligent government policies and decisions over decades have resulted in homes in Wilderness-Urban Interface WUI zones (defined above) becoming rows of tinderboxes when wildfire ignites.  The tendency of such ember-driven fires to hop from house to house in a precise pattern evokes suspicions that some microwave beam is surgically striking fires. But there is no need for such high tech as wildfires are pulled like magnets to fuel sources such as stick built homes with shingle roofs, and “firenados” rush in to fill low air pressure areas. The one thing in common with the Palisades, Eaton Canyon and Lahaina fires is high density substandard wood framed structures that are not hardened against combustibility with almost no defensible space between structures and the raging fire. Albeit even concrete homes can be destroyed by 1,000-degree F heat generated in a fire vortex. But firefighters can stand near the vortex without being harmed.

To compound the riskiness of insuring a home in a WUI, a fire protection engineer inspected burned out structures at the Palisades and found them all to be stick-built houses that were non-code compliant with respect to vegetation abutting structures and combustible wood decks and fences.  Vented attics that airborne fire embers can penetrate are also a contributory factor to loss by a convection fire. Most burned out homes should not have been able to buy fire insurance due to their massive non-compliance with building and fire codes. Conversely, structures that withstood the fire had concrete construction and had clear cut buffer areas around the house and no combustibles. Will insurance companies deny coverage to those homes which fail a post-fire audit of code compliance?

California’s public/private FAIR (Fair Access to Insurance Requirements) Plan had a total $449 billion net fire insurance liability exposure as of September 30, 2024.  This does not even include the $35 to $45 billions of estimated property losses incurred by the infamous Pacific Palisades and the Eaton Canyon Fires that ignited on January 7, 2025.

The FAIR Plan and Newsome’s Re-Build Plan

What is the FAIR Plan? Thirty-five other states also have a FAIR Plan. It is not a taxpayer funded state agency. It is a mandated organization regulated by statute, with involuntary participants, of around 100 private property casualty insurers.  It is regulated by an elected state insurance commissioner.  Some of the major carriers have left California due to the high risk of insuring Wilderness-Urban Interface zone homes and its FAIR Plan being only 2 percent funded. FAIR writes policies for risks the private insurers will not write. So, if where you live is in an Urban Wilderness Urban Interface zone you cannot get private insurance, and the only option is California’s FAIR Plan. The FAIR Plan, however, also has the government power of assessment. So, all 100 +/- property insurers in California are subject to an involuntary assessment to fund FAIR’s $449 billions of wildfire liability exposure. Insurers must, in turn, commensurately raise insurance premiums for all property policy owners to cover that exposure.

If exposure is spread only over California’s 330,000 Fair Plan policy holders this reflects a staggering $136,061 lump sum hypothetical higher added premium per policy holder.  But if spread over California’s estimated 8,909,419 single-and-multifamily housing owners this would reflect about $5,040/year per residential property owner if financed by a tax-exempt municipal bond.  FAIR policy holders represent only 3.7 percent of all state property owners.  Moreover, according to the Lending Tree, some 806,600 homes in California are uninsured for fire loss, with 1 in 10 homes in the Los Angeles area uninsured.  Presumably, FAIR would have no power to assess uninsured property owners. Adjusting for the uninsured, this would reflect $5,541 per year.

Gov. Newsome’s catastrophic fire loss Re-Build Policy calls for rolling FAIR’s liabilities into a tax-exempt municipal bond issued by the California Infrastructure and Economic Development Bank, which typically funds fire stations, public schools, roads, parks and water and sewer systems in new master-planned residential developments with tax exempt municipal bonds. High risk municipal bonds in California reflect about a 4.5% to 5% interest rate compared to 10% or higher for a high-risk corporate bond.  Taking the $5,541/year of added insurance premium spread over 8,048,619 policy holders, this would equate to $462 per month added insurance burden.  Conversely, if this risk exposure can only be spread over FAIR’s existing policy holders, this would reflect an additional roughly estimated insurance payment of $898 per month or $10,775 per year, which would be unacceptable to the public. So, the only politically acceptable and economic option is to socialize the $449 billion in uncovered fire risk exposure over all policy holders in the state.

The Origin of Palisades Firestorms Goes Back to its Land Subdivision

Which brings us to the origin of the Pacific Palisades. The Palisades land was purchased by the Methodist-Episcopal Church in the 1920’s. It was divided up into highly dense small lots with no requirement for paying for public works or infrastructure, fire suppression infrastructure, or environmental impacts as would be today. There was no residential lot subdivision law as there is today. The first Palisades lot buyers were church members who had an exclusive chance to snap up lots as ocean view homes anywhere else would be unaffordable.  Custom homes were built out piecemeal by custom home buyers. The Pacific Palisades has never been annexed into the city but apparently contracts with LA for public services.

The small lots precluded enough lot size for a water tank for fire suppression. The municipal water lines were not designed for holding water pressure for fire hydrants if everyone tried to wet their roofs at the same time. According to an anonymous civil engineer I contacted, residential land subdivisions are not so designed even today as costs would be prohibitive.

Some homeowners have already filed lawsuits against the city over the empty Santa Ynez reservoir issue, but it is a regulating reservoir not a storage reservoir. It was shut down to meet water quality standards since birds deposited waste in the uncovered reservoir.  Potable water is supplied to Los Angeles from Castaic Lake which delivers water to the Jensen Filtration Plant in Sylmar and, in turn, sells treated water to the LA Department of Water and Power for conveyance throughout its water system, including the Palisades. Castaic Lake is 98% full as of January 2025.

Fire risks and reliability of water pressure in a firestorm are issues typically dealt with by real estate disclosure laws where buyer due diligence and seller disclosure is required. The Pacific Palisades lots and homes are legal but non-conforming improvements that do not meet current building and land division codes but are grandfathered under the law. Moreover, no property in a WUI can be sold without the seller giving the buyer the wildfire disclosure report.

Newsome’s Re-Build Plan is a Wealth Transfer to the Rich

Put differently, Newsome’s Re-Build Plan would entail 96 percent of all state property policy holders picking up the extra tab for about 4 percent of policy holders who have suffered fire losses in Wilderness Urban Interface areas.  Looking at a map of where the FAIR Plan policy holders are located indicates Southern California fire insurance liabilities are clustered in forest tourist areas (Big Bear City, Big Bear Lake, Lake Arrowhead) and mountain luxury home areas (Palisades, Crestline). Northern California FAIR Plan policy holders are in hilly urban forest areas (Berkeley, Orinda) and mountain forested areas (Grass Valley, Nevada City, Truckee).

But several major insurers have already left writing new policies in California as the state did not keep fire loss assessments fully funded.  This may have initially been due to political pressure put on government by wealthy homeowners who learn as an investor class to socialize losses but capture private gain wherever possible (see Donald Hagman’s book Windfalls for Wipeouts: Land Value Capture and Compensation, 1974).  Palisades residents whose homes were destroyed reaped real estate unearned value windfalls for decades by escaping land planning and building code requirements, only to be now wiped out for the very same reason.  And it appears the Palisades landowners will be bailed out again by Gov Newsome’s Re-Building Plan at the expense of everyone else. Was the collectivist Karl Marx, however, at least right on one thing: his contention that history is controlled by hidden material interests of elites working against the people?

Such unearned windfalls should be no surprise given 1930’s Los Angeles was the Hollywood movie backdrop of the historical corruption of capturing water from Owens Lake in the Sierra-Nevada Mountains, the loss of lives due to failure of St. Francis Dam designed by untrained William Mulholland, and land speculating by elites based on inside knowledge of Owens Lake water being distributed in residential subdivisions in formerly dry San Fernando Valley. This story was made famous by the movie “Chinatown”.  But there is a catch to any such prospect of a double dipping windfall.

Real estate broker Josh Altman asserts 70% of the Palisades homes will not be re-built due to insufficient insurance, unaffordability of rebuilding given $1,000 per square foot construction costs but set caps for re-building payouts by insurers, elites gaming the system by not carrying fire insurance, and the inability to find a contractor when 16,000 homes all need to be built concurrently. And any unbuilt lots will eventually have to be sold at a literal “fire sale” price (say 50% discount of fully developed value) to induce a buyer to take all the development risks with full knowledge that any new home may likely be vulnerable to another firestorm every ten years or sooner.  Small lots in the Palisades sell for between $500,000 to $1 million.  However, if a competitive market arises for the lots, the eventual sale price may climb higher than 50% of fully developed lot value. There may be no way for a property owner to recoup all market loss unless their home is re-built to current code requirements in concert with their neighbors.

Destructive Convection Fires are Facilitated by Elites, Not Solely Acts of Nature

In conclusion, an understanding of how such bewildering wildfires have plausibly been “facilitated” by powerful elites and not set by arsonists or from microwave beams from a satellite, nor pure acts of nature or merely homeowner negligence, needs to be explained.

Unstoppable high pressure wind vortexes can fan firestorms and “firenados” indirectly facilitated by powerful elites without any need for conspiracy theories about arson or combustion by directed energy weapons from satellites (which is technically infeasible).  The stage can be set for such a seemingly spontaneous occurrences especially in older, non-code-conforming stick-built housing tracts adjacent to forests called WUI zones (see above). Such events occur where airborne embers from a homeless encampments relocated into the area by politicians, ignites a brush fire, such as the Pacific Palisades. Once ignited, such facilitated fires rapidly hop from home to home at 1000-degrees F overpowering the capability of homeowners wetting rooftops to save their homes. And once everyone uses a garden hose to wet the roof, water line pressure drops making it good for nothing (unless they deploy a gasoline powered swimming pool pump, are capable of using it, and can climb up on a sloping roof in a wind storm).

The fires can then be touted as proof of global warming by intellectual elites whose material interests are dependent on the environmentalist political economy and against the people. The trick by is to make what is created by elites seem as an act of god or nature or industrial climate change. The invisible facilitation of spectacles is devilishly described by Niccolo Machiavelli in his book The Prince, which explains how violence is carried out against the people who intuitively realize may be created by elites for social control but can’t put their finger on how it is magically pulled off (see Yves Winter, Machiavelli and the Orders of Violence, 2018.

Similarly, elites have known for centuries how to cook up epidemics.  This same facilitation process was historically deployed to genocide American Indians who were forcefully displaced from their habitats near water resources of rivers and lakes, relocated to arid desert areas, and had their main source of protein food from bison wiped out.  American Indians were stressed by use of force which resulted in what has been euphemistically called epidemics, although measles, smallpox, malaria and bubonic plague are caused by malnutrition and social stress from genocidal subjugation or from assignment into a caste, not from “germs”. The same facilitation process was used for the bugaboo COVID (see chapters 8 “Is Establishment Medicine an Injurious Scam?” in Denis Rancourt, Hierarchy and Free Expression, 2013).  The Mises Institute has written about wildfires in relation to government failures and the need for market forces to weigh risk.

(Disclosure: I worked 20 years for California’s largest wholesale urban water district and have separately and independently valued many billion-dollar new land subdivisions for issuance of tax-exempt bond financing for new homeowners to pay their Community Facility District assessments for fire stations, schools, water and sewer systems, etc.).

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One of the major challenges that I (like many) have faced in life is that I love helping other people, but I don’t have the time to do everything I want to be doing, so I’ve gradually had to become very strategic about how I allocate my time. Within the context of this Substack, I’ve had to come to terms with the fact that I no longer can individually help each person who reaches out to me and as such, I’ve tried to do the following:

•Determine what the maximum article output is that I can realistically sustain both the quality of and production pace over a longterm period (which has worked out to about two per week) as I’ve lost count of how many remarkable activists I knew who burned out long before their time by overexerting themselves.

•Gradually put projects into motion that I think will provided the greatest benefit to both the readers of this newsletter and society.

•Try to address most of the questions I expect people to ask in the articles I write and then have a monthly open thread where I can efficiently answer all the pressing questions that still remain over the course of a month.

This has basically worked, but like many other people in the movement (e.g., Pierre Kory) I nonetheless continually feel awful about the fact I’m not doing more with the platform I have and am always asking if I need to sacrifice more of my personal or professional commitments to advance what I’m doing here.

For instance, from the start, I put a lot of work to create the foundation for a healthy community to engage with (e.g., respectful and insightful dialog, no trolling, heartfelt story telling so people could see they were not alone, and the ability to access the collective knowledge of highly informed individuals who’ve been studying these same topics for decades). I did this because I’d always wanted something like that online, so I felt it would benefit the community to have it, that in time it could provide a lot of what I wanted to share with each person here (but don’t have time to), and it could give access to a unique pool of knowledge many (myself including) could learn a lot from.

To illustrate, while I understand the necessity of marketing, I have a deep aversion to it, and one of the things I’ve found so challenging in the health field is knowing whether something I see supportive evidence and testimonials for actually works, as on one hand, many do, but I’ve also seen countless examples where it didn’t, and then realized most of the “evidence” I saw for it had been artificially created (e.g., a lot of internet marketing revolves fabricating testimonials for supplements that do very little and people who are invested in therapies innevitably tend to overrate their efficacy).

Because of this (e.g., I have many longtime paying readers who’ve consistently provided quality commentary and hence are highly unlikely to be paid marketing accounts), I’ve felt the knowledge base of this community needs to be tapped (e.g., “what did you find worked for this condition” or “did you find this specific product worked”), so I’ve gradually tested the waters with putting out surveys and solicitations for comments that I believe could be helpful to the community.

For example, for a variety of reasons, Pierre Kory and I decided we needed to break open the COVID vaccine shedding issues, and hence collectively put hundreds of hours into doing so. One of the many reasons I did this was because I suspected many individuals were suffering inexplicable health issues that were due to shedding, and to evaluate that hypothesis, I put this survey in the recent article on the topic:

Note: these percentages have held relatively steadily as more answers came in, but if you could answer the poll as well that would be greatly appreciated!

Likewise, after the previous article on the dangers of antidepressants, I learned that almost all of the readers here were strongly interested in an article on benzodiazapines and anxiety, so I’ve been extensively working on one that will come out later this week.

Note: if you have any feelings on including polls in these articles, please let me know!

Our Decline in Health

I try to pair each open thread with a shorter topic so the article has value to both those who need an open thread to ask questions and those who do not need that. In this article, I want to touch on a broad topic—what’s happened to our health and how do we get it back?

Over the last century, there has been a tremendous advancement in medical science and many previously insurmountable conditions are now easily managed by the conventional medicine. At the same time, almost every mentor of mine has shared with me that they observed from the start of their careers to the end of it:

•The rates of chronic illnesses in the population increased.

•Many diseases appeared that had previously been almost unheard of.

•Many holistic treatments that patients had previously had dramatic responses to, they now only marginally responded to.

Note: part of my life’s work has been tracking down the lost and forgotten medical cures and then seeing which did and did not work. I believe the final point plays a big part in explaining why it’s so hard to determine which ones were legitimate, as while some are still phenomenal, I believe many of the others that don’t get results now weren’t hoaxes but rather simply are no longer appropriate for the current age we live in.

In turn, quite a few of my mentors asked the same question I did to their mentors, and shared that my “grand-mentors” likewise observed this same decline throughout the course of their careers. From this, I’ve been able to trace a continuous observation of that progressive decline being directly reported since the late 1800s (and about 50 years earlier if I am make some inferences I believe are reasonable, and earlier still if I include what many of the doctors of that era reported about the early mercury preparations).

This discovery thus raises an obvious question: what has caused that decline in humanity’s health? I’ve put a lot of thought into this and believe that while the widespread use of a few of the early drugs (e.g., mercury) was incredibly problematic, by far the biggest shift occurred after the widespread adoption of the disastrous smallpox vaccine (roughly 150 years ago).

Since that time, numerous additional insults have been added into our environment and each one has created a significant (and sustained) spike in chronic illness that the current generation has become acclimated into accepting as the “new normal” until it is no longer questioned, while the doctors who bore witness to the catastrophic explosion in chronic illness become forgotten, and the cycle repeats.

For example, a good case can be made that the vaccines manufacturers being given complete legal immunity in 1986 for their products (which incentivized a glut of not necessarily safe vaccines flooding the market) was directly responsible for the unprecedented spike in chronic illness which began shortly after.1,2

Likewise, many physicians in practice have observed their patients became much sicker once the COVID vaccines came out, and a big part of why I write here is so that this decline in health does not again become normalized and forgotten.

In turn, RFK Jr.’s consistent message has been that the epidemic of chronic disease facing our children is the greatest threat our country faces, and that for our country to remain viable something must be done about it. This is an extremely important message because once (non-corrupt) politicians on either side of the aisle hear it, they inevitably discover they are in complete agreement with what RFK Jr. actually stands for (rather that the slanders the mass media has tried to paint onto him).

Note: since there are so many potential contributors, I have put a lot of thought into exactly what is causing this epidemic of chronic illnesses (e.g., while I believe vaccines are the most probably culprit, as I show here, a surprisingly good case can also be made it’s due to excessive prenatal ultrasounds). In turn, I’ve identified numerous factors which seem to be the most probable culprits (listed here)—all of which are reflective of a sad truth—for all the benefits modern technology has brought us, much of it is also immensely damaging to human vitality.

Shifting Winds

I view most processes in our reality as a result of competing forces reaching a point of balance, and one where periodically, one force will become too excessive, at which point things distort and eventually a stronger counter force will appear to bring things back into equilibrium.

Within this paradigm, two unusual political shifts have recently happened.

First, societies typically follow a cyclical process where the pendulum swings in both directions, and we’ve recently been in a downward decline which has paralleled the inevitable proliferation of corruption seen in those periods.

This creeping corruption has extended into healthcare, and as the decades have gone by, we’ve had more and more toxic pharmaceuticals pushed onto the market while the regulators have more and more fought to protect big business rather than the public (e.g., previously I covered the FDA’s truly egregious conduct with the SSRI antidepressants and the HPV vaccine because they were two of the base case precedents for the FDA’s horrifying and otherwise inconceivable handling of the COVID vaccines).

Note: as I showed here (and RFK showed in his book), I believe the corruption of America’s scientific apparatus (e.g., the H.H.S.) was largely due to Anthony Fauci.

In turn, I gradually became acclimated to the tragic reality greater and greater health catastrophes would innevitably happen, and in that light, I viewed COVID as a blessing in disguise. This is because what happened was so much more extreme than what the public had been acclimated to, it was able to shake America (and the world) out of its stupor and provoke a strong counterforce in the opposite direction that would wind back much of this creeping corruption (whereas had it happened ten years later, so much more would have been normalized that the pushback we saw against the COVID policies likely would not have materialized).

Second, we live in an era characterized by rapidly accelerating change. As such, every few years, the world significantly changes, things that were long viewed as unthinkable suddenly become possible, and most importantly, the pace of these changes keeps on increasing.

Note: since it’s so hard to know what to believe, I place a heavier weight on things which correctly predict the future. I was first introduced to this concept of accelerating change decades ago by a spiritual teacher (who viewed it as a cosmic process known in hinduism as the Kali Yuga), and then subsequently by many other teachers who shared that perspective. In my eyes, the greatest accelerant to this process has been the internet as it’s made the longstanding system of societal control (monopolizing the airwaves and using them to all blast the same propagandist narrative throughout the society) no longer be viable since the independent media can rapidly debunk and outcompete those lies, and as such, the mass media has entered a downward spiral where it has to make exceedingly audacious lies to maintain its authority (which in turn further erodes its credibility).

As the days go by, I see more and more examples of this shift and things I never expected to see happen occur all around me. For example, after a hearing went viral on Twitter, I listened to it and noticed something surprising in the comments.

A similar ratio was also seen on subsequent posts Sanders made about his hearing.

I found this quite striking as just eight years ago, I would have expected most of the comments to have been in support of Bernie Sanders and his “experts” (e.g., Paul Offit) and I cannot overstate how profound of a shift this is.

Note: my initial skepticism of Bernie Sanders came from the fact over the years I would hear reports from desperate mothers of vaccine injured children who said that whenever they broached the subject with Bernie (as Bernie had branded himself as listening to and advocating for the forgotten members of society), Bernie would dismiss them and refuse to listen.

Read the Whole Article

The post Making Each of Us Healthy Again appeared first on LewRockwell.

In his inaugural address President Trump called President William McKinley (1897-1901) “great” and proudly announced that he had changed the name of Mount Denali in Alaska back to Mount McKinley. The reason the president picked McKinley of all past presidents to heap praise upon is that McKinley was a lifelong political tool of big business, primarily Northern state manufacturers who championed protectionist tariff taxes so rabidly that he was called “the apostle of protectionism” and “the Napoleon of protectionism.”

President Trump’s election is said to be a “populist” victory against the deep state establishment, but there is nothing more anti-populist than protectionist tariff taxes. Protectionist tariff taxes are nothing more than a price-fixing conspiracy orchestrated by the state that enriches a relatively small group of politically connected corporations (and their unions) by plundering their consumers with higher prices. After all, if it is possible to use tariffs to force foreigners to pay a county’s taxes, every government on earth would be doing it. Yet President Trump apparently believes that he has discovered some kind of holy grail of economics that proves you can get something for nothing after all.

A Trump staffer or speech writer must have run across the book William McKinley: Apostle of Protectionism by Quentin R. Skrabec. The book explains how the admitted economic ignoramus William McKinley became the political heir to the corrupt Hamiltonian “American System” of corporate welfare, protectionist tariff tax plunder, and central banking. (His predecessors in that regard were Hamilton himself, replaced by Henry Clay, who was in turn replaced by Lincoln).

Skrabec’s book is full of over-the-top praise for McKinley, at one point comparing him to the Apostle Paul who would “spread the gospel of American protectionism.” Like McKinley, Skrabec is from Pennsylvania and Ohio iron and steel industry country, which perhaps explains his bromance with the 25th president.

Skrabec explains that McKinley never formally studied economics, by his own admission, but “learned his economics as an army supply officer” in Lincoln’s army. He also supposedly stayed up many nights “studying statistics” in order to make his case for protectionist tariffs. “McKinley was self-educated for the most part,” he writes. With that kind of “education” McKinley later in life became a congressional advocate of “national industrial planning,” several decades before the Soviets made it popular. This is a good example of the kind of societal disasters that can be created by economic ignorance on the part of people who have gained political power.

At times Skrabec’s book is monotonously foolish, blaming all good economic news on protectionism and all bad economic news on too much competition. For example, without even mentioning the existence of the Second Bank of the United States, a precursor of the Fed, he blames the Panic of 1819, the subject of Murray Rothbard’s doctoral dissertation, on too much foreign competition in early manufacturing. He does the same in his treatment of the Panic of 1837.

When McKinley entered Congress in 1877 he “completely rejected the fashionable theories of Adam Smith,” writes Skrabec. Of course, it was the mercantilist superstitions of Pennsylvania steel industry publicist and propagandist Henry Carey, who McKinley often cited, that were truly “fashionable” and flaky. Comparing Carey to Adam Smith is like comparing the brain of Einstein to that of a one-year old child. McKinley once boasted that “I would rather have my political economy founded upon the everyday experience of a . . . farmer and factory hand than the learning of the professor.”

McKinley must have been the life of every party in Washington, D.C., for he “loved to speak to anybody that would listen about the role of protectionism.” Today’s D.C. party scene must be just like this whenever President Trump is in attendance.

McKinley is said to have been the congressional protégé of one “Pig Iron Kelly,” an equally uneducated iron industry politician who was an ardent protectionist because – surprise! – he was a pig iron manufacturer who wanted to eliminate all foreign competition so that he could better plunder his customers – and make American manufacturers of products made with pig iron less competitive in international markets, by the way.

The efforts of McKinley and other congressional protectionists, mostly from the Republican party, culminated in the McKinley Tariff of 1890 which was so disastrous politically that the Democrats took over both houses of Congress and the White House. McKinley himself was voted out of office and the Democrats gained a three-to-one advantage in the House. Yet Skrabec boasts that the McKinley tariff bill was “extremely well researched and used science and statistics to apply the tariff rates.” Talk of “scientific tariff rates” appears all throughout the book, but there is no definition of it. It apparently means that the highest rates were placed on products whose producers had the most political clout and resources with which to bribe members of Congress to vote to protect them from competition. It was certainly not based on economic science.

The McKinley Tariff caused skyrocketing prices in the most heavily taxed products, many of which were inputs into the production of other “final goods,” as economists call them. The cost of these goods spiked, making those American manufacturers less competitive in international markets — and in domestic markets as well where there were substitute goods. For example, according to Frank Taussig’s The Tariff History of the United States, the tariff tax on carpet wool was increased by 50 percent. Carpets of course then became more expense. Hemp and flax tariffs were increased by as much as 100 percent, which of course increased the cost of anything made with hemp.

A tool of the Rockefeller political machine (Rockefeller ran Standard Oil from his Cleveland, Ohio office), McKinley’s political career was salvaged when the machine got him elected governor of Ohio and then president in 1896. Skrabec correctly observed that the Republican party by that time stood for imperialism, emboldened by its conquest of the South and its campaign of genocide against the Plains Indians from 1865-1890. “The idea of expansion and imperialism had deep roots in the Republican party,” writes Skrabec. Among the “fathers” of this movement, he writes, was John Hay, Lincoln’s personal secretary who later became secretary of state under McKinley.

During the McKinley administration Hawaii was annexed literally at bayonet point as the king of Hawaii was forced to sign “the bayonet constitution” and disenfranchised native Hawaiians. A Judge Sanford Dole was the American emissary sent to commit this scandalous act, after which his family founded the Dole Fruit Company.

After the Filipinos finally got rid of the Spanish empire McKinley sent troops to the Philippines to quell the Philippine Insurrection, which was fought in opposition to the replacement of the Spanish empire with the American empire. Historians say as many as a million Filipino civilians were killed along with 200,000 “insurrectionists.”

Then there was the Spanish-American war which was described by the great late nineteenth century Yale University libertarian scholar William Graham Sumner as “the conquest of the United States by Spain,” meaning that the U.S. government had finally abandoned once and for all the notion of being a mere union of states and had become an empire, the objective of all American imperialists beginning with Lincoln.

President Trump’s talk of annexing Canada, Greenland, and part of Panama is disturbing to say the least, and politically stupid in light of the fact that more than 40 percent of Canadians identify as socialists. It is totally in keeping, however, of the traditions of the Republican party, which describes itself as “the party of great moral ideas.”

The post William McKinley: Prostitute of Protectionism appeared first on LewRockwell.

We live in a society that is literally addicted to consuming media content.  Unfortunately, control of that content is dominated by just a handful of ultra-powerful corporations.  Back in 1983, the media industry was controlled by a group of about 50 large companies.  Today, the media industry is controlled by just 6 gigantic corporations.  They own  television networks, streaming services, cable channels, movie studios,  newspapers, magazines, publishing houses, music labels and even many of our favorite websites.  Sadly, most of us don’t ever stop to think about who is feeding us the endless hours of news, sports and entertainment that we constantly ingest.  But we should.  The truth is that each of us is tremendously influenced by the messages that are constantly being poured into our heads.  We are addicted to the “programming”, and we just keep coming back for more.  Most of us spend multiple hours each day consuming media content, and many of us actually begin to feel physically uncomfortable if we go too long without watching or listening to something.

The six corporations that collectively control the media industry are Disney, Time Warner, National Amusements, News Corporation, Comcast and Sony.  Collectively, the “big six” absolutely dominate news and entertainment in the United States.  If the “big six” were a country, they would have the 26th largest GDP in the world.  But even those areas of the media that the “big six” do not completely control are becoming increasingly concentrated.  For example, iHeartMedia now owns over 1,200 radio stations in the United States, and companies such as Google, Microsoft, Amazon and Facebook are increasingly dominating the Internet.

When you control what Americans watch, hear and read, you acquire a great deal of influence over what they think.

The content that they produce for us is called “programming” for a reason.

The power to shape our culture is the power to alter the future of our society.  We have witnessed seismic cultural shifts in recent decades, and the media industry has been the driving force behind many of those shifts.

These gigantic media conglomerates are much larger than most people realize.  Below, I have listed just a sampling of some of the media properties that are owned and controlled by the “big six”…

Disney

ABC Television Network
Disney+
Pixar
Disney Publishing Worldwide
ESPN
A&E
Lifetime
The History Channel
Marvel
Lucasfilm
Buena Vista Home Entertainment
Buena Vista Records
Buena Vista Games
Disney Records
Hollywood Records
Miramax Films

Online movie streaming services

Touchstone Pictures
Walt Disney Pictures
Vice

Time Warner

CNN
HBO
Time Inc.
Time Warner Cable
Turner Broadcasting System, Inc.
Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.
Castle Rock Entertainment
CW Network (partial ownership)
TMZ
New Line Cinema
Time Warner Cable
Cinemax
Cartoon Network
DC Entertainment
TBS
TNT
America Online
Sports Illustrated
Fortune
Marie Claire
People Magazine

National Amusements

CBS Television Network
Paramount+
Paramount Pictures
Paramount Home Entertainment
Showtime
Black Entertainment Television (BET)
CBS Films
CBS Games
Comedy Central
Country Music Television (CMT)
Gamespot
Logo
MTV
Nickelodeon
Nick at Nite
Nick Jr.
Spike TV
The Movie Channel
TV Land
VH1
The Smithsonian Channel
Pocket Books
Simon & Schuster

News Corporation

Fox Television Network
Fox News
Fox Sports
Fox Business
Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
The New York Post
Barron’s
Fox Searchlight Pictures
Beliefnet
FX
The Speed Channel
Times of London
20th Century Fox Home Entertainment
20th Century Fox International
20th Century Fox Studios
20th Century Fox  Television
The Wall Street Journal
Fox Broadcasting Company
Fox Interactive Media
HarperCollins Publishers
Harlequin
The National Geographic Channel
Tubi
Zondervan

Comcast

NBC Television Network
Peacock
MSNBC
CNBC
NBC News
Bravo
NBC Sports
Comcast Sportsnet
The Golf Channel
Fandango
FanDuel
Oxygen
Syfy
Telemundo
USA Network
The Weather Channel
Focus Features
NBC Universal Television Distribution
NBC Universal Television Studio
Universal Parks & Resorts
Universal Pictures

Sony

Sony Pictures
Sony Pictures Animation
Sony Entertainment Televsion
Sony Music
Sony Interactive Entertainment (Playstation)
TriStar
Triumph Films
Affirm Films
Animax
Crackle
CSC Media Group
Columbia Pictures
Destination Films

Big tech companies such as Amazon, Apple and Netflix have started to produce their own content in recent years, but their content is nearly indistinguishable from that produced by the “big six”.

The primary goal of these behemoths is to make money.

So they aren’t going to do anything that will threaten their relationships with their biggest advertisers.  This is one of the reasons why large pharmaceutical companies spend billions of dollars on advertising.  They realize that executives at these companies will be desperate to keep the gravy train rolling, and so negative coverage of pharmaceutical companies will be almost non-existent.

Fortunately, an increasing number of people are starting to wake up and are realizing that the media industry should not be trusted.

In fact, a Gallup survey that was conducted in October 2024 found that only 31 percent of Americans have a “great deal” or a “fair amount” of confidence in the mainstream media to report the news “fully, accurately and fairly”.

The good news is that as the mainstream media loses credibility, the alternative media is growing.

Americans are starting to look elsewhere for the truth, and that has allowed independent journalists such as myself to flourish.

Of course the establishment has responded by aggressively censoring the alternative media, but now that we have a new administration in Washington that is anti-censorship, hopefully we will see some significant changes.

Every day, we are in a battle for hearts and minds.  Most of the population is still plugged into “the matrix” and still consumes endless hours of “programming” that is produced by the “big six”.  Meanwhile, those of us in the alternative media are desperately trying to get people to wake up and think for themselves.

Sadly, even most people that think that they are “awake” are still being very heavily influenced by movies,  television shows and news programs.

The “programming” that they are constantly offering to us is so seductive, and very few are able to break the addiction entirely.

Reprinted with permission from The Economic Collapse.

The post Who Owns the Media? appeared first on LewRockwell.

A few days ago the Trump administration put a 90 day stop on foreign aid:

Friday’s memo shocked the humanitarian groups and communities conducting development aid across the globe. While the scope of the directive appears far-reaching, uncertainties linger over how it will be carried out.

The memo on Saturday offered only partial clarity.

The pause on foreign aid spending means “a complete halt,” it said. The only exceptions are for emergency humanitarian food assistance and for government officials returning to their duty stations. Waivers allowing delivery of emergency food during the review period will require “detailed information and justification.”
…
USAID began sending a notice to contractors ordering them to “immediately issue stop-work orders” and to “amend, or suspend existing awards.”

USAID and other U.S. government entities provide money for a wide range of causes. Some are arguably humanitarian and should continue:

Trump order set to halt supply of HIV, malaria drugs to poor countries as part of aid freeze, sources say – NY Post, Jan 28 2025

Others though are not so.

In many cases foreign aid is used to transplant U.S. ideological causes into foreign societies and/or to manipulate them into favoring U.S. interests. This is often hidden under the misleading concept of a ‘civil society’ as the ‘third sector’ distinct from governments and businesses. The U.S., through USAID and other like entities, are paying foreign ‘non-government’ organizations (NGOs), as well as foreign media, to pressure foreign governments into following policies in U.S. interests.

Enslaved by Nonprofits: How NGOs Colonize Developing Countries – Mint Press News, Dec 12 2023

In a number of countries the halt of such ‘aid’ showed immediate effects (machine translation):

Several major Ukrainian media outlets have asked their readers for financial support due to the suspension of American grant programs by the new President, Donald Trump.

In particular, this is directly reported by Hromadske and Bihus.Info.

“Some of the projects that we implement thanks to grants are temporarily stopped. That is why we especially need the support of each and every one of you,” writes Hromadske.
…
Ukrayinska Pravda and Detektor Media also asked for donations, but did not directly name the reason for this suspension of USAID projects.

The U.S. practically owns the whole Ukrainian media scene (machine translation):

Approximately 90% of Ukrainian media outlets have become dependent on American grants since the outbreak of a full-scale war.

This was stated by Oksana Romanyuk, head of the Institute of Mass Information, which is also a recipient of foreign grants, to Public Radio.
…
Political analyst Kostya Bondarenko responded to this statement with irony in his Telegram channel, doubting the lack of engagement of the press.

“Almost 90% of Ukrainian media survived thanks to grants,” says Oksana Romanyuk, director of the Institute of Mass Information. I translate it into a normal language: 90% of Ukrainian media was controlled by the West through grants. Independence of the media and freedom of speech, you say?” – wrote Bondarenko.

The dozens of ‘independent’ U.S. financed pro-war media outlets in Ukraine are just some of a total of 112 official USAID projects in Ukraine (machine translation):

There are 112 projects in Ukraine The United States Agency for International Development (USAID), their funding reaches a total of $ 7 billion.

Such data was provided by MP Maryan Zablotsky on his Facebook page.
…
In particular, over three years, $ 297 million was allocated for the following activities::

• • support in creating a talk show called “Ebout”on YouTube;
  • support of the TVORCHI music group in creating the song “At Once” and conducting concerts;
  • Zminy organization (also known as Don’t Take Fake, or DTF) hosts an electronic musicians’ camp;
  • creation of a mural and a series of cultural events by CUKR;
  • producer Tatiana Postavna and singer Vladimir Dantes created a reality show about the restoration of cultural spaces in frontline settlements;
  • release of the first series of the project “College Check”;
  • release of the second season of the project “Ukrainian Palaces. Golden Day”.

“And there are dozens of such projects – Maybe someone needs it. But I don’t quite understand why American taxpayers should do this. And why don’t we ask for funds for something obviously more necessary?” Zablotsky asked himself.

USAID projects in Ukraine (and elsewhere) include the promotion of Neo-Nazi ideology:

Ivan Katchanovski @I_Katchanovski – 4:47 UTC · Jan 29, 2025

Neo-Nazi linked activist tweets that podcasts with leader of neo-Nazi C14 in Ukraine would also stop because of Trump’s suspension of USAID funding.
(pic)

Some are claiming that foreign funds do not influence the content that is produced:

It’s understandable to be wary of foreign money funding Ukrainian journalism, but there’s no hidden agenda behind it. It’s not about controlling the media or pushing specific narratives — that is more common for domestic actors. Organizations providing foreign grants don’t tell the media what to write or order journalists to support or attack particular policies or figures. That’s what local oligarchs do.

The Washington Post recently demonstrated how oligarchic ownership of media is in fact influencing their content through control of its editors. Dependency on foreign aid creates similar ways.

As Alexey Arestoivich, a former advisor to the former president of Ukraine, explains (machine translation):

“Almost 90% of Ukrainian media survived thanks to grants,” says Oksana Romanyuk, director of the Institute of Mass Information.

Actually, this is called “intellectual occupation”.
…
Domestic humanities and media were intercepted and put under control back in the 90s, and this is the secret of why, instead of a large, multicultural symphony of Ukraine, “humanitarians” began to build a UPA dugout here the size of the largest European country.

This is one of the main reasons for the start of the war.

Because when the Biden administration needed to buy Ukraine to contain Russia, it didn’t have to try very hard, everything had already been bought long ago.

Ukraine is certainly not the only country that is relevant here:

Balázs Orbán @BalazsOrban_HU – 9:58 UTC · Jan 29, 2025

One of the largest Hungarian opposition media outlets is upset by Trump’s executive order halting U.S. foreign aid for 90 days, as Hungary’s “independent” press stands to lose millions of forints in funding. Makes you wonder how independent one can be when relying on another government’s funding …

The Ukraine government sees the loss of U.S. funds to Ukrainian media as a chance to cheaply obtain control over these (machine translation):

The Office of the President intends to take over the management of grant organizations in Ukraine, whose American funding was frozen by US President Donald Trump.

This follows from yesterday ‘s address by Vladimir Zelensky .

According to him, the government will start financing those projects and non-governmental organizations that it considers critical. This process will be supervised by Deputy Head of the Presidential Office Alexey Kuleba.

The halt of U.S. finances to foreign NGO operations demonstrates the deep influences these create. It demonstrates the importance of having laws that prohibit foreign (and state) sponsorship of local media  and ‘civil society’ entities.

Reprinted with permission from Moon of Alabama.

The post Halt Of USAID Exposes Malign Foreign Influence appeared first on LewRockwell.

Shortly after yesterday’s FOMC announcement, Peter went live to unpack its aftermath. He criticizes the Federal Reserve’s decision to hold rates steady, offers insight into Jerome Powell’s press conference remarks, and skewers the notion that the Fed remains “apolitical.” Peter also addresses President Trump’s evolving commentary on oil prices and interest rate cuts as 2025’s economic challenges continue to mount.

Starting with rumors surrounding a potential Trump-driven interest rate cut, Peter clarifies what the president actually said regarding oil prices:

Because to be honest, what Trump said was that he expects the price of oil to drop sharply. And as a result of that big drop in oil prices, he would demand that the Fed cut rates immediately. So, that hasn’t happened yet. I mean, oil prices have come down from the high they hit a week or two ago. But they’re still what, $72, $73 a barrel? That’s not the type of price drop that Trump spoke about, which would result in demanding that Powell cut interest rates.

In the Fed press conference, when pressed on policy stances and tariffs, Jerome Powell claimed the Fed wanted to stay neutral. Peter, however, challenges that logic:

Another question he was asked was to comment on the tariffs and the policy that is being considered and what impact that might have on their mandate on inflation. And he says, well, we’re not going to talk about it. We’re not going to comment on that. … That’s not any of our business, which of course is nonsense. … Being apolitical, and I’ve said this many times on this podcast, it doesn’t mean not having an opinion. It means being above the fray. It means being free to express your opinion without fear of political consequences.

He reiterates that the Fed’s role includes pushing back against policies that may harm the economy, regardless of public opinion:

The point about having an independent Fed is that these guys don’t have to care what the voters want because they don’t need their votes. They’re supposed to be able to do the right thing even if the voters don’t know what that is. Even if the voters want to do the wrong thing, they’re supposed to be the adults in the room to say, ‘No, no, no, what you want is wrong, and here’s why.’

He underscores that, despite the dominant narrative, monetary policy is still far from genuinely tight:

Monetary policy has remained loose. Interest rates are still too low. You can tell by the record amounts of debt and borrowing that have not been deterred at all by the increase in rates because it’s been too little. Rates have not moved up enough to be restrictive. That’s why you still have all this borrowing, because it’s still cheap to borrow. In fact, the money supply growth continues. 

During the Q&A, Powell reaffirmed that waiting for 2% inflation is not required before cutting rates again:

He is not waiting for 2% before cutting rates, that he will cut rates before 2% as long as it looks like inflation is headed back down there. So in other words, they could cut it two and a half or wherever. They’re not going to wait for 2%, which is in contrast to what the Fed did when inflation was below 2%. … He had that attitude when we were below 2%, but he’s not equally as vigilant when it’s above 2%.

Powell’s noncommittal response to a question on Bitcoin betrays the Fed’s strong concern with propping up asset prices, even if it requires inflation:

He was asked about asset bubbles in general, and he acknowledged that stock prices remain elevated, but he didn’t mention that he was in any way concerned about bubbles or falling asset prices or in any way tailoring his monetary policy to asset price, which I think is just not true. Of course, the Fed is very much concerned about asset prices. The last thing they want is asset prices to crash. The reason that they pumped up the money supply so much specifically was to get asset prices to go up.

Peter wraps by addressing some of President Trump’s other comments, including sustained talk about reforming or abolishing income taxes. Trump’s proposals are not radical enough:

He talked again about eliminating the income tax, which of course is music to my ears. I would love to see the income tax eliminated and not just the normal income tax, right, that we all consider an income tax. But the Social Security tax, that’s an income tax too. You’re paying a tax on your wages, right? That’s your income, right? … So if we’re going to eliminate income taxes, let’s eliminate all the income taxes, including the Social Security income tax, which is a highly regressive tax.

This originally appeared on SchiffGold.com.

The post The Fed Is Ignoring Key Data appeared first on LewRockwell.