Lew Rockwell Institute

Borrowing more to maintain spending is hanging on by one’s fingernails, not middle-class security.

The middle class is cracking, but if you want a statistic that “proves” this, there isn’t one. The cracking isn’t a statistic, it’s the culmination of observations logged over the past 15 years about these critical measures of what it takes to qualify as middle class:

1. How much income a household needs to secure the minimum qualifications of a middle class standard of living / quality of life, based on the conventional standards of the 1960s – 1980s. (The qualifying characteristics are listed below.)

2. The upward or downward mobility of those claiming middle class status. Put another way: if it requires monumental effort and perfect execution to achieve the minimum qualifications of middle class security, then that isn’t a “middle class” set of qualifications, that’s an elite set of qualifications.

3. Precarity: how much (or little) financial disruption does it take to tip a household into a down-spiral that becomes increasingly difficult to escape. The foundation of any non-trivial definition of “middle class” (any definition that is solely based on income is trivial) is the financial resilience offered by ownership of assets, particularly income-producing assets, and savings that can be tapped to handle emergencies.

I’ve been addressing these issues for many years. Here are a few of my posts on the decay of the middle class:

Priced Out of the Middle Class (June 28, 2012)

What Does It Take To Be Middle Class? (December 5, 2013)

Misplaced Pride: Most of the “Middle Class” Is Actually Working Class (June 14, 2019)

Squeezed for Decades, America’s Working Class Is Finally Up Against the Wall (May 13, 2024)

Here are the minimum requirements to qualify as middle class, drawn up by myself and readers:

1. Meaningful healthcare insurance. By meaningful I mean healthcare insurance that doesn’t have high deductibles–if you have to pay thousands of dollars before the insurance kicks in, that’s not insurance, it’s a simulation of insurance–and insurance that isn’t reduced to meaninglessness by limitations on coverage and/or zero coverage for core elements of healthcare.

2. Significant equity (25%-50%) in a home or other real estate.

3. Income/expenses that enable the household to save at least 6% of its net income.

4. Significant retirement funds: 401Ks, IRAs, etc.

5. The ability to service all debt and expenses over the medium-term if one of the primary household wage-earners lose their job.

6. Reliable vehicles for each wage earner.

7. If a household requires government assistance to maintain the family lifestyle, their Middle Class status is in doubt.

8. A percentage of non-paper, non-real estate hard assets such as family heirlooms, precious metals, tools, etc. that can be transferred to the next generation, i.e. generational wealth.

9. Ability to invest in offspring (education, extracurricular clubs/training, etc.).

10. Leisure time devoted to the maintenance of physical/spiritual/mental fitness.

11. Continual accumulation of human and social capital (new skills, networks of collaborators, markets for one’s services, etc.)

12. Family ownership of income-producing assets such as rental properties, bonds, family-owned business, etc.

The absolute scale of these requirements is less important than all twelve being included in the household’s quiver. In other words, it’s not necessary to own equity worth millions, but it is important to own meaningful equity across the range of assets listed above.

Back in 2012, I went through each requirement and arrived at a minimum household income of $106,000– adjusted for inflation, the equivalent sum today is $152,000. Before you scoff, please read the entirety of Michael Green’s careful analysis of what qualifies as “poverty level income” and “middle class income:” How a Broken Benchmark Quietly Broke America (via Cheryl A.)

Green concluded the minimum income needed today is $140,000— more or less the same as my estimate, especially given his detailed explanation of why this minimum is barebones.

Green’s analysis of middle-class precarity dismantles all the statistical rah-rah presented as evidence that we’re all getting richer every day, in every way. Like insurance with stupidly high deductibles, this isn’t middle class security, it’s a simulation of middle class security.

This report in the Wall Street Journal suggests this reality is now so undeniably obvious that the WSJ had to address it: The Middle Class Is Buckling Under Almost Five Years of Persistent Inflation: Workers growing tired of economy in which everything seems to get more expensive.

As Green explained, soaring costs for big-ticket essentials–all the things required to participate in the economy in a meaningful fashion–are crushing the middle class.

Read the Whole Article

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Family dysfunction is so widespread in America 2.0 that they had to invent a new term to describe it More and more childless, often lonely ‘Murricans are celebrating “Friendsgiving.” Not Thanksgiving. When your family is hopelessly fractured, you turn to friends, if you have any. Hopefully, you still give thanks before eating.

In the photo above, the “friends” appear as if they’re attending a seance, not a special dinner for the purpose of expressing gratitude for the blessings of life. Now to be fair, it is probably safe to assume that most of those participating in a “Friendsgiving” are not devout believers in God. So they can’t be expected to give thanks to Him for anything. And I must say that at this particular “Friendsgiving,” there seems to be a startling lack of diversity. Only one possible nonwhite, although the dearth of White males is commendatory. Perhaps it’s a special lesbian “Friendsgiving,” although there’s not a single transgender in sight. However you look at it, “Friendsgiving” is not based on traditional themes. The very idea is anti-family, as is everything else emanating from our poisonous cultural overlords. All those TV shows and films depicting the dread of seeing your family once a year. Seinfeld already came up with Festivus in lieu of Christmas. Friendsgiving spares us that annoying family contact.

In my parents’ world, and during my childhood and young adulthood, many families invited a friend or two, or perhaps a distant cousin, to Thanksgiving dinner. Most of us still had enough empathy back then to realize that people shouldn’t have to be alone on a day devoted to family gratitude. There were always unmarried uncles, and what was indelicately referred to then as “spinster” aunts. They didn’t have to worry about going to Boston Market or some other restaurant, by themselves, to “celebrate.” They certainly wouldn’t have thought of bonding together with others without families, or outcast from them, in a “Friendsgiving.” Families went well beyond this in those days, as I heard many stories of a bachelor uncle or a lonely, childless widow being warmly welcomed into a family household. No retirement homes for them. When The Waltons depicted their huge family under one roof, that wasn’t an uncommon thing back then. Goodnight John Boy, indeed.

Set against this backdrop of turkey and stuffing, cranberry sauce and assorted pies, is the growing realization, on behalf of millions of Americans, that they are living under an occupied regime. We may not be residents of Gaza, crawling through the rubble of what was once our home, and there may not be actual IDF soldiers patrolling the streets, ready to take out some dangerous child with a rock in its hand at any moment. But we are under an occupation nevertheless. The esteemed “American” congressional representative Randy Fine celebrated Marjorie Taylor Greene’s sudden and inexplicable resignation from Congress by tweeting, “Good riddance. One antisemite down. One to go.” Does this seem like the kind of thing a person representing a free people should say? Isn’t there, if not an actual threat, a snide braggadocio in Fine’s tone? A boast that, hell yes, we’re in charge- what are you gonna do about it? Who, exactly, took Marjorie Taylor Greene “down?”

When you have a supposed U.S. congressional “representative” aggressively advocating for another country’s interests first, and then taunts one of the few members of Congress who are critical of this diabolical stance, you know you’re occupied. When you have another U.S. congressional “representative,” Brian Mast, who feels comfortable in wearing the military uniform of this favored foreign nation, on the floor of our Congress, you know you’re occupied. Both Fine and Mast are Republicans. Many MAGA loyalists probably think they’re strong “conservatives.” Both hail from Florida, a good, solid “Red” state. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has done all he could to criminalize “anti-Semitism,” which is, of course, not even a quantifiable term. Legislating with emotion, just like the crazed “Woke” Left. You cannot claim to be “America First,” when you support so many Israel First public figures. The Wailing Wall is not compatible with the cracked Liberty Bell.

Ben Shapiro. Mark Levin. Laura Loomer. Rosanne Barr. Prominent Jews are lowering their masks, and revealing just how loyal they are to Israel. Not America. As Shapiro proudly said, U.S. support of Israel is what keeps him supporting America. Just like a schoolyard bully- hand over your money and I’ll let you alone. Until the next time. Rosanne was seemingly in our conspiracy-tinged world, but recently literally hissed like some genuine witch, that if America stops supporting Israel, “we’ll” just go somewhere else, and “America will get what’s coming to it.” Then, like she was casting a spell, she snarled, “America will fall!” This was sad to hear. Rosanne was a victim of cancel culture herself, and has been bold in the past, once calling fellow non-Irish success story Howard Stern a “pussy,” and expressing sympathy for the dreaded “holocaust denial.” She has also claimed to be a “Hebrew princess.” I guess she’s still doing her standup act. No longer much of a chance of getting her on my podcast.

The battle to counter the insane “Woke” Left cannot be fought, let alone won, with the likes of Shapiro, Levin, Mast, and Fine in the front lines. They are fighting for a different cause. They are fighting for a tiny nation that was installed by great military forces, with nuclear weapons at their disposal. The battle can’t be won by worshiping great tyrants like Hamilton and Lincoln. Or extolling the “greatest generation” and their “good war.” It can’t be won by worshiping the shameful Nuremberg Trials as the ultimate form of “justice.” It can’t be won by yelling “Nazi” louder than even the craziest blue-haired transgender. It can’t be won by supporting our corrupt, noncompetitive and rigged crony capitalist system. And it certainly can’t be won by resorting to your own cancel culture. Say it with me; it is not a crime, nor is it “wrong,” to publicly criticize our favored “ally” in the Middle East.

We are at yet another watershed moment. Well, I guess we always seem to be at a watershed moment. And what invariably happens is that the lethargic American public just turns their backs, and at best shrugs. We clearly don’t have a tipping point. When you can have a vast majority of White people literally worshiping the most obnoxious and ignorant “culture” a supposed First World country has ever produced, what else is there to say? And a majority of this same group of allegedly higher IQ Whites also believe that an even smaller minority group, which has just happens to hold an exorbitant amount of power that seems mathematically impossible given their numbers, are somehow the “chosen” people of God. Are all the partial Jews just half “chosen?” I have lots of cousins who are half, one quarter, or one eighth Jewish. What exactly is their “chosen” status? This is the group responsible for the death of Jesus Christ. They rejected your savior. And yet you think they shouldn’t be criticized?

Give me a logical reason for Marjorie Taylor Greene deciding to resign? And to pick a date that just happens to be two days after she reaches her full congressional pension status. Boy, that looks bad. Makes her look as greedy and unconscionable as the rest of them. Did someone pick that date for her, for the maximum demonization effect? Maybe she was always phony, playing a role like the rest of the crisis actors. But what possible sense does it make for her to resign, right after Trumpenstein attacks her as Marjorie “Traitor” Brown? Is Thomas Massie next, as the honorable Rep. Fine suggests? Whether he knew it or not, in the motion to release the Epstein files, “unclassified” files are specified. Why would you do that, which leaves the door open for the government to just claim everything significant is classified? Massie lost his wife under very suspicious circumstances, and now has remarried, for which the thrice married Trump called him a “loser” in a scathing, juvenile social media post.

Read the Whole Article

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Last week’s surprise release of a draft Ukraine war peace plan has raised hopes that the nearly three-year bloody conflict may finally come to an end. Ukraine has suffered horrible losses that may change the demographics of that country for decades to come.

If this peace plan can be negotiated in a way that satisfies all sides and the guns finally go silent, I will be the first to cheer. However, the continued failure to understand the nature and origin of the current conflict leaves me skeptical that a real peace can be reached this way.

From the Orange Revolution in the early 2000s to the Maidan revolution in 2014, the US and its NATO partners have been interfering in Ukraine’s internal affairs in attempt to manipulate the country into a hostile position toward its much larger and more powerful neighbor, Russia.

We must remember how directly coordinated the 2014 coup was by the United States. US Senators, including John McCain and Lindsey Graham, were on the main square of a foreign capital demanding that the people overthrow their duly elected government. Victoria Nuland was caught on a telephone call planning who would run the post-coup government.

Outside intervention led us to the terrible situation of today. This peace deal is another chapter in that same intervention, with the US and its partners desperately trying to manage and solve a problem that they created in the first place. Can you solve a problem created by outside intervention with more intervention?

For the entirety of this conflict politicians and the media have been unwavering in blaming Russia entirely for what has occurred. I agree that they’re no angels. But the real villains here are the US neocons and their European counterparts who knew it was suicidal for Ukraine to take on Russia but pushed Ukraine to keep fighting anyway. Early in the conflict a deal was on the table and nearly signed that would end the war, but the neocon former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson demanded that Ukraine keep fighting.

Ukraine is the victim here, I agree. But it is as much a victim of the US and European neocons as of the Russians. They believed they could put NATO on Russia’s doorstep and face no consequences. If the tables were turned and a hostile China set up a new Latin American military alliance with the US as its designated enemy, would we sit by idly as military bases were constructed on our southern border? I don’t think so.

President Trump promised he would end the war 24 hours after he was elected. It was an unrealistic boast, but he actually could have ended it rather quickly. The antidote to intervention Is non-intervention. Biden drug us into the war, that is true. But Trump could have pulled us out by quite simply ending all US involvement. No weapons, no intelligence, no coordination. No need for sanctions or the threat of sanctions, no need for elaborate peace plans.

A real peace deal would realize that it was always idiotic to believe that Ukraine could stand up to Russia’s war machine – even with NATO’s backing. It is unimaginably cruel to demand that Ukraine keep fighting our proxy war down to the last Ukrainian.

No 28-point plans can fix this. The real fix is much simpler: walk away.

The post A Real Ukraine Peace Plan appeared first on LewRockwell.

In December 2024 President Donald Trump named venture capitalist David O. Sacks as the “White House A.I. & Crypto Czar.”

Sacks is set to guide the administration’s policies for artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency.

AI-researcher Gary Markus is wondering how two recent tweets by Gary Sacks relate to each other:

One theory of capitalism holds that every company should be left to their own devices, with state intervention kept a minimum. This view was well articulated just a few weeks ago, by White House AI and Crypto Czar and well-known podcaster, David O. Sacks:

David Sacks @DavidSacks – 16:52 UTC · Nov 6, 2025

There will be no federal bailout for AI. The U.S. has at least 5 major frontier model companies. If one fails, others will take its place.

The other theory of capitalism, if we can indeed call it that, holds that we should bailout important companies or industries that might overextend themselves. Quite the opposite from the above.

This latter theory, almost a form of safety-net socialism for overextended companies, seemed to be implied today, in a tweet that seemed to be laying the groundwork for bailout, by none other than … White House AI and Crypto Czar and well-known podcaster, David O. Sacks:

David Sacks @DavidSacks – 17:34 UTC · Nov 24, 2025

According to today’s WSJ, AI-related investment accounts for half of GDP growth. A reversal would risk recession. We can’t afford to go backwards.

The WSJ report Sacks mentions, archived here, is indeed gloomy:

The economy’s dependence on AI comes with risks. Stock price/earnings ratios are near record highs. If lofty profit predictions prove wrong, share prices may tumble and investment could slow. The S&P 500 fell about 2% last week on concerns about a bubble, despite rallying 1% on Friday.

Falling stocks could trigger a reverse wealth effect: Americans would consume less, which would tend to depress sales, profits and, potentially, employment.
…
If AI investment stopped growing, that could knock another 0.5 point off growth, Millar estimates. If it went to zero, that would knock a full percentage point off.
…
Another risk relates to the growing scale of AI-related borrowing.
…
If the revenue necessary to service that debt doesn’t materialize, lenders could take a hit, spilling over into debt markets, said Berezin.

China is letting the first type of capitalism reign their Artificial Intelligence efforts:

Rather than pick winners and losers, China states the policy objective and hundreds of commercial initiatives compete using diverse strategies to fulfil the ambition. Instead of a ‘winner takes all subsidies’ China gets a diverse, agile, ecosystem growing in parallel to its rapidly innovative economy.

Many Chinese models are published as open source and can be run on smaller clusters.

The U.S. has however decided to let the second form of capitalism rule its AI endeavors. There are only a few companies working on large AI projects. Their models are private and blocked from scrutiny. They are promising too much and are spending a huge amount of money. They are in need of ‘safety-net socialism for overextended companies’.

To provide for this the White House issued an Executive Order on:

LAUNCHING THE GENESIS MISSION

By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered:

Section 1. Purpose. From the founding of our Republic, scientific discovery and technological innovation have driven American progress and prosperity. Today, America is in a race for global technology dominance in the development of artificial intelligence (AI), an important frontier of scientific discovery and economic growth. To that end, my Administration has taken a number of actions to win that race, including issuing multiple Executive Orders and implementing America’s AI Action Plan, which recognizes the need to invest in AI-enabled science to accelerate scientific advancement. In this pivotal moment, the challenges we face require a historic national effort, comparable in urgency and ambition to the Manhattan Project that was instrumental to our victory in World War II and was a critical basis for the foundation of the Department of Energy (DOE) and its national laboratories.

The Department of Energy is ordered to direct the initiative combining federal laboratories and ‘industry partners’:

Within 90 days of the date of this order, the Secretary shall identify Federal computing, storage, and networking resources available to support the Mission, including both DOE on-premises and cloud-based high-performance computing systems, and resources available through industry partners. The Secretary shall also identify any additional partnerships or infrastructure enhancements that could support the computational foundation for the Platform.

The federal government will of course have to pay for those private resources.

Research with the help of AI will be done in six high priority fields. The timeline provided in the Executive Order is extremely ambitious.

Besides providing the instruments for a bailout the Executive Order is also creating the means of central control over AI and its application:

If you strip away the branding, Genesis is the U.S. government building a national AI backbone inside the Department of Energy and then inviting the biggest private sector AI players to plug into it.
…
But underneath, it centralizes the AI stack. Instead of letting the highest end compute and model capabilities drift entirely into the private sector, Genesis pulls them back into a structured federal environment. Access becomes conditional: follow the safety rules, share the data, integrate into the platform and you get to operate at the frontier. Don’t, and you’re on the outside looking in.
…
Genesis is the beginning of a nationalized AI infrastructure strategy. It will function as the bridge between government compute and private sector models, letting Washington influence which companies sit closest to the frontier and which capabilities get priority. It will speed up real scientific breakthroughs, but it will also quietly define the rules of the AI race on who participates, who gets access, and how the most powerful systems are directed.

By allowing for a bailout of over extended AI companies via ‘Manhattan Project’ sized federal spending Trump is also attempting to prevent a stock market slump that would cost the Republicans the majority in the House.

Reprinted with permission from Moon of Alabama.

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“Weaponizing ticks, Fleas and Mosquitos is a poor Man’s Nuke. It can kill tens of thousands of people at a US$ 1.33 a life.” — Kris Newby, in an interview with Tucker Carlson

In her interview with Tucker Carlson, Kris Newby says according to Willy Burgdorfer, a researcher at Fort Detrick’s bio-weapon lab, bites from infected ticks, cause Rickettsia, also called “Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever” and that is the deadliest tick-borne disease. It was a germ being weaponized by the US military.

In an earlier interview by Kris Newby with Willy Burgdorfer, he revealed having spent over a decade as a contractor at the biological weapons plant at Fort Detrick, Maryland, weaponizing fleas, ticks, and mosquitoes. Stuffing fleas with the plague, stuffing mosquitoes with the deadly Trinidad virus, and then stuffing ticks with either deadly or incapacitating diseases like relapsing fever, Venezuela equine encephalitis, rabies, leptospirosis.

It is like Doctor Strangelove, making new diseases, mixing bacteria and viruses in ticks and other insects, with the intent of this being the perfect stealth weapon – low-cost killing and leaving infrastructure intact. It is a poor man’s nuke.

The plan is these insects are dropped on an enemy. It weakens the population, it ties up the medical resources but it does not destroy infrastructure, like a nuclear bomb would. A bean counter (accountant) in the military said, with “tick-borne tularemia, also called rabbit fever, we can kill 10,000 people at US$ 1.33 a life.”

For further clarification, Willy Burgdorfer is the scientist who discovered the Lyme disease bacterium, Borrelia burgdorferi. Ms. Newby discusses Burgdorfer’s dual role as both Lyme disease discoverer and a researcher involved in Cold War-era bug-borne bioweapons programs. She indicates that Burgdorfer’s work on weaponizing ticks and his later revelations about the secretive nature of these projects (in an act of conscience?) are central to understanding Lyme disease’s origins and spread.

Tucker’s comment at the end of the interview,

”It is hard to digest all this. It is just so evil. It is hard to believe that this could happen in the United States and may still happen today.”

Of course, it is happening today.

See this interview (2.5 minutes) by Tucker Carlson with Kris Newby author of “Bitten.”

See also this by Tucker Carlson and Kris Newby (29-min video):

On Kris Newby: Although she did not work as a scientist or researcher directly at Fort Detrick’s highest-level bioweapons laboratories, she has a professional background as an engineer and science writer, including work in Silicon Valley and later as a communications manager at Stanford Medical School.

In her investigative research for the book Bitten (see this reference to her book “Bitten”) and related projects, Ms. Newby uncovered and studied extensive historical documents and accounts related to bioweapons research conducted at the entomological warfare division of Fort Detrick in Maryland, where scientists, including Willy Burgdorfer, had worked on weaponizing ticks and other arthropods.

Ms. Newby explains further that fleas, ticks, and mosquitoes were stuffed with an infectious agent like plague, yellow fever, and rickettsia. The goal was to mass produce these infected arthropods with the capability of dispersing them via cluster bombs or aerial spraying over target areas.

An arthropod is an insect with a segmented body, a hard outer shell called an exoskeleton, and jointed appendages like legs. This group is the largest in the animal kingdom, making up about 75% of all known species and including all types of insects.

This weaponization program involves freeze-drying and milling pathogens to make aerosols for broad dispersal, with ticks and other insects as delivery vectors due to their ability to inject pathogens directly and evade protective measures like masks. This biological warfare approach is aimed at causing high casualties at low cost with stealth delivery.

Thus, Newby concludes that multiple arthropod vectors—ticks, fleas, and mosquitoes—all weaponized with germs in secret military experiments may in the future be used for biological warfare, contributing to outbreaks of insect-borne diseases.​ The “kill benefits” are enormous: low-cost culling of masses and leaving infrastructure intact – hence, the poor man’s nuke.

Bill Gates is already experimenting with this technology in Brazil and elsewhere, under the pretext of new public health biotechnologies in the global South. See this.

There may be more to these secret bio-weapon programs than meets the eye. Could it be that they may replace heavy and expensive, all destructive weapon systems – tanks, bombs, fighter planes, missiles, nuclear warheads? And highly cost-effectively killing people, leaving infrastructure undamaged?

May this be the reason why the World Economic Forum (WEF), UN and especially WHO – and, of course, those who pull the strings behind these organizations – are so adamant in getting all 194 WHO member countries subscribing to the new modified International Health Regulations (IHR) to the Pandemic Treaty? All treaties (not contracts; the difference, treaties are legally not binding) oblige governments to obey WHO pandemic orders, beyond national sovereign health policies.

And with the menacing stick in the back (the type “or else” stick), most, if not all, governments may obey.

Could this also be the reason why the “climate change” (hoax) is suddenly under the wings and responsibility of WHO? Because “climate change” favors the appearance of insects, old and new ones, with deadly diseases, also old and new ones – that MUST be treated with “vaccines”?

This would be a double whammy for the UN Agenda 2030’s primary goal: population reduction at any cost, first by insect bites, second by the new mRNA injections called “vaccines.”

May we just hope and pray for people to wake up before this happens – coupled with digital money, digital ID, digital everything, the digital gulag, the end life in freedom, as we used to know it.

The original source of this article is Global Research.

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If the Trump administration decides to invade Venezuela, the backlash from the MAGA base will be so intense that the movement will implode. That’s what Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) recently predicted during an interview with a Libertarian publication.

Paul told Reason’s Nick Gillespie last week that “If [President Donald Trump] invades Venezuela or gives more money to Ukraine, his movement will dissolve.” The sentiment is a reminder that the president’s coalition, which has repeatedly been angered this year, is barely holding together as it is.

Paul’s comments last week seem to have had no effect on the administration, though. On Monday, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio designated Nicolás Maduro and his allies a foreign terrorist organization. The move expands justification for military intervention.

Caribbean Buildup

And fresh off the press is the news that Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Dan Caine will soon visit the massive military infrastructure that has been built up in the Caribbean. The official reason for this visit is to thank the troops in the spirit of Thanksgiving, but the suspicion is that it’s more than that. As The New York Times observed, “General Caine has been a major architect of what the Pentagon calls Operation Southern Spear, the largest buildup of American naval forces in the Caribbean since the Cuban Missile Crisis and the blockade of Cuba in 1962.” The paper added that Caine “is expected to consult with commanders on the armada’s preparations.”

On November 11, the  U.S. Navy’s largest aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford, arrived in the Caribbean. This added to the thousands of servicemen, amphibious-ready groups, and gunships moved into the region over previous weeks.

Hardly anyone believes this is all about countering Maduro’s narco enterprise. The senator from Kentucky is among the skeptics. “We don’t know their names, we’re presented with no evidence — nobody’s even bothering to pick up the drugs out of the water and tell us [if] there were drugs floating around the boat. Nobody’s bothering to say if they were armed. When we capture people alive, we’re not even prosecuting them,” he said.

Blowing Up Boats

Paul has been expressing skepticism since September that those small boats with outboard engines can even make the 1,000-mile-plus trek to the U.S. from Venezuela. He’s also pointed out the fact that most of the drugs coming into the U.S. don’t even come from Venezuela. It’s a well-known fact that most drugs, including more than 90 percent of fentanyl, is coming through the Mexican border.  Moreover, how can the administration be so sure the boats have drugs if they don’t inspect them? As Paul pointed out:

The most important statistic that should give people pause about blowing these boats up is that when the Coast Guard boards vessels off of Miami or off of San Diego, one in four vessels they board does not have drugs on board. So their error rate’s about 25 percent. It’s hard to imagine that a civilized people would tolerate blowing up people, incinerating them — blowing them to smithereens — if the error rate would be about one in four.

Some legal experts believe this is going to boomerang back to Trump. Judge Andrew Napolitano recently wrote:

The killings at sea will soon reach a federal court as the families of innocent murdered fishermen, and some survivors of botched killings, have signaled to the media their intention to bring actions against the government. Trump says the killings at sea are a war against foreign powers.

Meanwhile, the same office in the Department of Justice that told George W. Bush that he could torture people and Barack Obama that he could kill nonviolent Americans overseas has apparently told Trump just what he wants to hear — that he can wage an undeclared war on select foreign persons and keep secret the legal rationale for doing so. Where is that in Madison’s Constitution, which says only Congress can declare war?

Paul, who has supported the president on several agenda fronts, believes that what Trump is doing is not even true to his political values. “I actually think Trump is the one who is least likely to want to do these things,” he told Gillespie. Unfortunately, most Republicans are still interventionists, and the president is “surrounded by people who believe in regime change and are goading him on.” Paul brought up the poster boy of military adventurism, saying the neocon from South Carolina has the president’s ear. “Lindsey Graham has not changed his positions, but he’s clever, and he’s become very close to the president. [He] influences the president,” he said. Then he dropped the name of another long-standing neocon who is even closer to Trump. “Same with Marco Rubio. So, the pending regime change war in Venezuela is hatched by those people.”

MAGA Jumping Ship

MAGA is already on the skids. The president has reversed or ignored his positions on several critical campaign promises, and the cracks within the coalition are opening up, bigly.

On Friday, a congresswoman who used to be among Trump’s most loyal supporters and defenders, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), resigned after a weeks-long fallout with him. The president’s outsized focus on foreign matters is one of Greene’s major concerns. Trump repeatedly promised “no new wars” and that he would put America first when he campaigned. But many don’t see how continuing to send foreign aid and intervening in overseas conflicts falls under the America First category. Trump infuriated his base when he decided to bomb Iran on what many perceive was behalf of a foreign nation. He has also refused to end U.S. involvement in the war in Ukraine. He sells weapons to the Europeans to send to Ukraine, and then sanctions Russia, voiding any semblance of neutrality.

Trump has also backtracked on his Jeffrey Epstein vows. The MAGA base is still furious with his attempt to make the Epstein saga go away without further transparency. Greene was among three key legislators — along with Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) — to push the discharge petition that essentially strong-armed the president into signing a resolution that is supposed to force his Justice Department to release all documentation on the pedophile. Whether that happens with full transparency is doubtful, but the move has made it harder for the Establishment’s protectors to keep that mess under the rug.

Why So Tough on Venezuela?

If Trump decides to invade Venezuela, Sen. Paul’s prediction may likely come true — if it hasn’t already.

The looming question is: Why is the administration being so aggressive with Venezuela?

The obvious answer is that it’s trying to effect regime change, something this country accomplished many times in Latin America in the 20th century. But still, Why? What’s fueling this regime change? It’s likely not the stated reason. Venezuela is not even close to being the largest drug trafficker into America. As noted above, more than 90 percent of the fentanyl that poisons Americans comes out of Mexico.

Also, Venezuela is certainly not the only country led by criminals and election-cheating communist tyrants. It’s not even the only country in Latin America that recently had a rigged election. Brazil is in the same boat, and Trump gets along with that communist country just fine.

One of the more popular theories is that this is about opening the U.S. market to Venezuela’s rich oil deposits. That’s plausible. But this administration has also made major moves to make drilling in America easier. And it’s fortifying business ties with several oil-rich Middle Eastern nations, including Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

Another theory is that this is part of America’s attempt to dislodge China’s and Russia’s claws from “our hemisphere.” That too makes sense. However, does that mean we should expect similar campaigns in Cuba, which is way closer to the U.S., as well as Nicaragua, Bolivia, and — again — Brazil?

Election Tampering?

Another speculation is that this is related to a personal beef Trump has over Maduro’s suspected role in U.S. electioneering, and particularity the 2020 election. “Retired” CIA agent Gary Berntsen is among those who claim that evidence shows Venezuela has been rigging elections with USAID taxpayer money, including the stolen 2020 election. This, in part, is the main idea behind Ralph Pezzullo’s book Stolen Elections: The Takedown of Democracies Worldwide. Pezzullo claims that the “citizens of the United States haven’t had a national election that hasn’t been tampered with since 2008,” and that Venezuela, China, Iran, and Russia have been integral to the tampering.

That the election of 2020 was rigged is almost beyond dispute. But how, and who exactly was behind it, are far from clear. The fact that our own cybersecurity experts have yet to admit this indicates that there’s more to electioneering than just Venezuela.

What is clear is that, for whatever reasons, the Trump administration is flexing hard on Venezuela. And no matter how justified it feels, a large segment of Trump’s voters will not agree with it. It’s not what they voted for. Moreover, it would be another unconstitutional war without congressional approval.

Can the Trump administration pivot? Will it pivot and save a MAGA coalition that is on life support? Or will the popular social-media maxim — “No matter who you vote for, you always get Dick Cheney” — prove true again?

This article was originally published on The New American.

The post MAGA Will ‘Dissolve’ If Trump Invades Venezuela, Says Rand Paul appeared first on LewRockwell.

In the summer of 2021, I visited an old friend on Cape Cod and took the opportunity to pay my respects to my mother’s ancestors at the Ancient Sears Cemetery in West Brewster, Barnstable, Massachusetts. My mother is a direct descendent of Richard Sears, who was born around 1595, and settled in Plymouth Colony in 1638.

Though Richard Sears was a dedicated puritan who identified strongly with the faith of the original Plymouth congregation, his descendants in the 18th century came to embrace the enlightenment ideals of the Founding Fathers—that is, freedom of conscience and speech, limited government, and the primacy of the free individual to pursue his interests, unfettered by state power.

The Sears family genealogical catalogue—authored by Samuel Pearce May and amended by Ray L. Sears—that I reviewed at the New England Historic Genealogical Society ended with my grandfather’s generation. My grandfather’s name and 1942 Yale University yearbook photograph were featured, but as he’d not yet fathered his children, my mother was not in the catalogue.

Samuel May offered this flattering summation of my mother’s ancestors:

[Richard’s] descendants showed good breeding, and many of them were prominent in church and town affairs, and in the militia. Their names may be found in the records of the Indian and French wars, the Revolutionary war, and that of 1812. Numbers served during the late Civil war, and shed their blood freely for their country. The family has always been very religious in its tendency, in latter years leaning to the Methodist and Baptist persuasions, and rather given to ‘-isms’; some of its members have been foremost in the temperance and anti-slavery movements, but it has never given rise to any prominent politicians, and while holding many local offices, not aspiring beyond the State Legislature. Of good stature, and comely appearance, they are healthy and long-lived, enterprising and esteemed citizens wherever found.

‘Worth is better than Wealth, Goodness greater than Nobility, Excellence brighter than Distinction’

– Sears Monument.

In July 2021, many residents of Cape Cod were still in the grip of COVID-19 hysteria, and my old friend advised me to lie about my unvaccinated status to avoid causing fear and consternation in his social circle and at his Catboat sailing club.

Thus, when I visited the Sears cemetery, I wondered if the nation they’d help to build was in danger of losing its founding ideas and ideals.

I also noticed something else—namely, that apart from a vague and perhaps vain feeling of pride in my family heritage, I still did not identify with anything resembling a clan, tribe, or religious sect. My values have always been the Enlightenment values of our Founding Fathers.

Now I wonder if this Enlightenment idea of America is incongruous with man’s tribal nature. For at least the last twenty years, higher education administrators, public policymakers, and media pundits have increasingly championed group identities such as race, gender, and sexual preference.

Rarely if ever do we hear celebrations or even articulations of our identity and shared purpose as Americans.

Insofar as any politician ever attempts to define who we are, his definition is invariably predicated on who we are against—that is, a foreign adversary such as Islamic terrorists, China, or Russia (especially Russia).

And so, I wonder:

• What does it mean to be an American?
• What is our shared purpose and project?
• What is good for us—not in terms of being opposed to some other group or nation, but in terms of being for something that is good for us?

This article was originally published on Courageous Discourse.

The post Is the Idea of America Doomed To Dissolve Into Tribalism? appeared first on LewRockwell.

In 2008 I wrote an op-ed for the PRESS JOURNAL (Vero Beach, Fl) titled “UFOs: The Other Inconvenient Truth”.  The article included my academic title and my affiliation with the Cato Institute.

That op-ed was a serious piece about the history of the UFO phenomena; it never mentioned “aliens” or alleged “abductions.” Instead, it argued  that there was solid evidence that (some) UFOs were real; that elements of the U.S. government had hidden that information away for decades; and that on-going research was attempting to reverse-engineer recovered  technology for some strategic (military) advantage. It also suggested that secrecy was politically dangerous and that UFO disclosure was imperative, despite the fact that there were obvious societal risks associated with transparency.

Some background. I had studied the UFO mystery for decades so I knew what the heck I was talking about. Besides I had some “confidential sources” that confirmed my most important suspicions. I knew about the pilot and military encounters; about the repeated intrusions  of UFOs over weapon storage areas (WSA) including those that held nuclear ordinance; about the best photographic, electro-magnetic and physical trace cases; and about the official lying and intimidation of witnesses. I also knew that several prominent politicians at the time–including John Podesta and Hillary Clinton–were fascinated by the subject and were pushing for public disclosure. The time was right, I felt, for a tenured academic like myself to highlight the threat that UFO  secrecy posed  for our political institutions and “spill the beans” so to speak.

Boy, was I wrong.

One day after the article appeared  I received a letter from the Cato Institute abruptly terminating my 20-year long  “adjunct scholar” status.  The letter suggested that the scholars program was being “reorganized”  and that was the reason for dropping me. That was nonsense of course. The actual truth was that the Cato Institute (on the bad advice of an associate) wanted no part of the UFO paradigm so they asserted, unconvincing  that the subject was  not  part of their “research agenda.”  And what “research agenda” was that, pray tell?

Now let’s be clear. My position with Cato was honorary and unpaid. I was not being  “censored.” Cato had every right to drop me for any reason whatsoever.  On the other hand, Cato had lied about the reasons

for my departure and then missed  a unique opportunity to uncover and publicize  the most egregious example of governmental overreach in our lifetime: the political suppression of the knowledge that some UFOs were real and that there was physical proof that we were not alone in the Universe.  They hid that information for eight  decades from the public, from the Congress, and perhaps even from several Presidents without a “need to know.”  Now If that’s not a legitimate  “public policy” issue ( for a libertarian think tank)  I don’t know what is.

Fast forward to the present. Almost everything I discussed 17 years ago in that op-ed is now being confirmed (in spades) with the recent release of a new documentary titled “The Age of Disclosure.”  The film is currently available in a few selected movie theaters around the country and on Amazon Prime. In the film, 34 individuals with impeccable credentials in the intelligence, science and political community (including Mark Rubio, Secretary of State and National Security Advisor to the President)  go on the public record to confirm that  UFOs have crashed and been recovered and that the U.S. as well as Russia and China are engaged in a race to reverse-engineer the technology. Chris Mellon, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, speaks passionately in the film and calls the UFO reality the “most important story in human history.”  I can’t disagree.

Do yourself a favor and watch the film. And then begin to think about what the institutional  fallout might  be from any REAL disclosure. (Real disclosure, apart from testimonials,  would involve the actual presentation of hard physical evidence). How will our most important civic and political institutions be affected? What are the implications for the economy, for gold, for the stock market, for AI investment, etc?  What are the religious implications of the existence of so-called non-human intelligence (NHI)?  Are UFOs a threat and how do we deal with it? And what about the funding of the cover-up itself? How about the trillions of tax dollars that have been covertly funneled ( without direct Congressional approval) to private contractors and into various “black” programs? Will anyone be held accountable for any of this?

President Trump now has an immense  opportunity to tell the American people the truth about this massive government coverup. He was not a serious part of that story (except for his awkward explanation of the New Jersey UAP sightings last year) so he has little to lose personally for truth-telling now. And since  the UFO disclosure horses have now left the barn, never to return,  it’s high time for the President to acknowledge that fact and then encourage an important societal  discussion about what comes next. It’s your move, Mr. President.

The post UFOs and the Age of Disclosure appeared first on LewRockwell.

Writes Patrick Foy:

Murder Inc. claims another victim.

Washington has thrown Lebanon and Syria to the dogs.

Thanks to Washington, Israel has air dominance over the entire ME except Iran. 

No need to fight on the ground.

Just bomb and kill from the air.

All opposition to Pax Israeliana  is terrorism.

The post Israeli Missile Found Him in Beirut – WSJ appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, Johnny Kramer.

Daily Wire

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Click here:

US Courts

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Click here:

Ben Bartee

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Writes Bill Madden:

We didn’t threaten Nigeria because they are killing Christians, we threatened them because they are killing the dollar.

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Writes Bill Madden

This lady provides a comprehensive analysis of how our wealthiest families allow us to pay most of the taxes considering gross income.  She didn’t mention the very obvious fact that our wealthiest families have the ability to “influence” our politicians and bureaucrats so that laws are written to accommodate their desire to continually increase their wealth. 

Our wealthiest families are major stockholders of Corporate America who use corporate money to “influence” everybody and everything posing as an obstacle to their pursuit of more wealth.  We subsidize the large corporations with our purchasing and their gifts of corporate welfare.  When they need more money, the oligopolistic competitive environment allows them to simply raise their prices.

She seemed to brush over the family tax-free foundations which hold enormous family wealth to minimize the taxes on dividends, interest and capital gains.  She didn’t mention tax-free offshore accounts which minimize any tax exposure for increases in wealth to zero.  She also didn’t mention the special tax provisions for our wealthy hedge fund managers where they are taxed at a much lower rate because, I assume, they make too much money.

There are many smart individuals with great ideas on increasing the concept of fairness in our country but nothing will ever be changed as long as our government is controlled by super-rich families enjoying the wealth transferring from us to them.  Venezuela is a fine example.  Hugo Chavez kicked Corporate America out of Venezuela and they have been trying to get back in ever since.  It’s to the point that we now have the “Peace President” blowing up boats near Venezuela suspected of running drugs while completely ignoring the Mexican drug cartels and the cocaine shipments flowing from other South American countries.  The regime change in Venezuela is because, with socialism, governments own the productive capacity and not the super-rich owners of Corporate America. 

In essence, our government is going to war with Venezuela using B.S. justification just to placate some of our richest campaign contributors.  That’s control of the country!

The post The Super-Rich & Income Taxes appeared first on LewRockwell.

The 28-point so-called ‘peace plan’ – written as a putative legal treaty – will strike any experienced reader as an amateur production.

So, now we have the details of the 28-point so-called ‘peace plan’ which Ukrainian Parliamentarian Goncharenko has provided claiming it to be a translation from the original.

The text – written as a putative legal treaty – will strike any experienced reader as an amateur production, hinging, in several parts, on ‘subsequent discussions’ and on ‘expectations’.

That is to say, much is left ambiguous, vague nor firmly nailed down. Such a plan would, of course, be – in the round – unacceptable to Moscow (although they may not disavow it outright). Even so, the plan has aroused fury and pushback in Europe. The Economist (reflecting the Establishment view) calls the paper “a terrible American-Russian proposal … which checks off many of [Russia’s] maximalist demands and adds a few more”.

The Europeans and Britain want Russian capitulation, pure and simple.

The point here, which Moscow makes clear, is that Kirill Dmitriev – Steve Witkoff’s interlocutor in the drafting – does not represent President Putin, nor Russia. He has no official mandate whatsoever.

Putin spokesman Dmitri Peskov curtly states:

“There are no formal consultations between Russia and the U.S. on the settlement in Ukraine; but contacts exist. Maria Zakharova stated that “the Russian Foreign Ministry has received zero official information from the U.S. about any alleged ‘agreements’ on Ukraine that the media is enthusiastically circulating””.

“Moscow’s position is that Russia is open to dialogue only within the ‘boundaries of its stated principles’, and the U.S. has not, as of yet, offered anything official that could serve as a starting point”.

So what is going on? Two politically inexperienced ‘non-envoys’ have had conversations, and out of these talks have stitched together some apparently speculative proposals. It is not even clear whether Dmitriev had a nod of assent for his talks with Witkoff in the U.S. in October, or whether he was acting on his own initiative. Russia’s Foreign Ministry is disavowing any knowledge of the content of these extensive discussions. It would be extraordinary if Dmitriev was keeping nobody in Moscow in the loop.

In any event, President Putin has sent his own riposte to the flood of stories circulating in the western media (based on leaks to Axios apparently deriving from Dmitriev):

Dressed in military uniform, Putin visited the command post of Battlegroup West on the front line, where he simply stated that the Russian people “expect and need” results from the Special Military Operation (SMO): “The unconditional attainment of the goals of the SMO is the main objective for Russia”, he said.

Putin’s response to the U.S. therefore is clear.

It looks then as though this discussion document written from the American perspective was conceived as a classic ‘bait and switch’ exercise. Secretary Rubio has repeatedly said that he doesn’t know “whether Russia is serious about peace – or not”:

“We’re testing to see if the Russians are interested in peace. Their actions – not their words, their actions – will determine whether they’re serious or not, and we intend to find that out sooner rather than later … There are some promising signs; there are some troubling signs”.

So, the proposals likely have been a ‘set up’ to test Russia. For example, they ‘test’ Russia in multiple areas:

“It is expected … that NATO will not expand further, based on dialogue between Russia and NATO, but mediated by the U.S.; Ukraine will receive ‘reliable security guarantees’ [undefined]; the size of Ukraine’s armed forces will be ‘limited’ [sic] to only 600,000 men; the U.S. will be compensated for these guarantees; should Russia invade Ukraine, [then] in addition to a decisive coordinated military response, all global sanctions will be reinstated, recognition of new territories and all other benefits will be revoked; the U.S. will cooperate with Ukraine on joint reconstruction … and operation of Ukraine’s gas infrastructure, including pipelines and storage facilities”.

“The lifting of sanctions [on Russia] will be discussed and agreed upon gradually and on an individual basis”.

“$100 billions of frozen Russian assets will be invested in U.S.-led reconstruction and investment efforts in Ukraine. The United States will receive 50% of the profits from this undertaking; Russia will legislatively enshrine a policy of non-aggression toward Europe [no mention however, of any reciprocity by Europe].

“Crimea, Luhansk, and Donetsk will be recognised de facto as Russian; Kherson and Zaporizhzhia will be frozen along the line of contact, which will mean de facto recognition along the line of contact; Russia renounces other annexed territories”.

This paragraph effectively amounts to a ceasefire – not a peace settlement – with recognition being only de facto (and not de jure):

“This agreement will be legally binding. Its implementation will be monitored and guaranteed by a Peace Council headed by President Trump”.

“Once agreed, the ceasefire will enter into force”.

This set of proposals is not likely to be accepted by the Europeans, Russia or even Zelensky. Their purpose is to dictate a completely new start-point to any negotiation. Any Russian concessions stipulated in the text will be ‘pocketed’ by the U.S., whilst the rug will be pulled on Russia’s ‘stated principles’. The pressures on Russia will escalate.

In fact, escalation has already begun. Coinciding with publication of the proposals, four long-range U.S.-supplied and targeted ATACMS were fired deep into Russian pre-2014 territory at Voronezh, which is where Russia’s over-the-horizon strategic radars are situated. All were shot down, and Russian Iksander missiles immediately destroyed the launch platforms and killed the 10 launch operators.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has threatened yet more sanctions for Russia, and Trump has indicated that he is ok with Senator Lindsay Graham’s 500% sanctions proposal for those trading with Russia – provided that he, Trump, has complete discretion over the new sanctions package.

The overall aim to these proposals clearly is to corner Putin, and push him off his fundamental principles – such as his insistence on eliminating the root causes to the conflict, and not just the symptoms. There is no hint in this paper of any recognition of root causes [expansion of NATO and missile emplacements] beyond the vague promise of a “dialogue [that] will be conducted between Russia and NATO, mediated by the United States, to resolve all security issues and create conditions for de-escalation, thereby ensuring global security and increasing opportunities for cooperation and future economic development”.

Blah, blah, blah.

It seems that escalation is ahead. Russia will need to consider how to militarily deter the U.S. effectively, yet without starting up the steps of the escalatory ladder to WW3.

The balance between deterrence and keeping a door open to diplomacy is a fine line – Too great an emphasis on deterrence may (counter-productively) only incite a countervailing ratchet up the escalatory ladder by an adversary.

Whereas too much emphasis on diplomacy, may well be perceived by an adversary as weakness and invite an escalation of military pressures.

The Witkoff-Dmitriev proposals may (or may not) have been well intentioned, but the keepers of the deep architecture of global redemptio equitis are unlikely to allow Russia to preserve its ‘contrarian’ values.

Kirill Dmitriev, it appears, may have been ‘suckered’.

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

The post The U.S. ‘Bait and Switch’ Operation Targeting Putin’s ‘Root Cause’ Principles appeared first on LewRockwell.

In previous writings, I exposed the machinery of technocratic control — climate orthodoxy, debt economics, CBDCs, and centralized data governance. But those were only the outer mechanisms. Now the frontier is shifting inward. The question is no longer merely “How will they govern us?” — but “Will we still govern ourselves?”

The danger is not that AI will become human —
but that humans will become machine-like.

And this danger is not hypothetical. AI is already shaping what may be spoken on social media, what may be researched in medicine, and — through digital currency — what may even be purchased. It is not innovation — it is the automation of control, becoming the interface between citizens and reality. If the human spirit is filtered through an algorithm — what becomes of discernment?

As I wrote in Staying Human in the Age of AI, outsourcing expression leads to outsourcing experience — and today that danger is expanding. What is at stake is not merely our language — it is our humanity.

The moment machines began to speak, many concluded they were approaching consciousness. But that is a category error as old as materialism. The rise of artificial speech does not prove the emergence of artificial mind. It presents a challenge to the human spirit.

Machine intelligence lives in patterns, correlations, predictions. It can arrange words beautifully — but it cannot hear meaning. It can calculate every probability — but it cannot ask why. That question belongs to the soul. And the more we outsource our curiosity to machines, the more we forget that we ever possessed one.

The Mind Is Not a Circuit

The technocratic worldview tells us the mind is biological software and consciousness a useful illusion. This is not science — it is ideology. A machine processes information. A human being perceives meaning.

The difference is vast: seeing a sunset vs measuring photons; hearing a symphony vs analyzing frequencies; loving someone vs calculating a pattern.

The mind is not circuitry. It is a living instrument in symbiosis with the soul. It learns through empathy, suffering, wonder, intuition, and divine encounter — dimensions no program can simulate, because they belong to life, not data.

Can data ever become understanding — or does something essential get lost in translation? When thinking becomes automated, does responsibility disappear?

We know AI can calculate — but can it care? And if it cannot care — why are we trusting it with decisions that require judgment?

When responsibility — the ability to respond — fades, freedom may stop feeling like a gift and begin to feel like a risk. That is the moment AI, convenience, bureaucracy, and automation offer an escape:
“Let the machine choose. Let the system decide. Take the burden away.”

The Technocratic Temptation

AI does not exist in a spiritual vacuum.

We already see the alliance between Big Tech, the State, and the medical and financial technocracies. AI now moderates political speech, guides medical narratives, filters search results, and defines which opinions appear “respectable.” In some schools, AI-driven tutoring systems are testing emotional analysis on children — monitoring facial expression and “problematic” language in real time. Payroll and HR platforms are experimenting with sentiment analysis to detect “attitude” or “compliance issues” before a manager ever intervenes. These are not future threats — they are active pilot programs.

And as central banks plan digital currencies, AI systems are being built to monitor not only how money is spent, but where it may not be spent. It is being quietly woven into surveillance systems, “trusted” information portals, and behavioral scoring mechanisms. When technology begins to shape thought, behavior, and access to economic life, the lines between governance and programming start to disappear.

I witnessed this firsthand. When I asked AI probing questions about the UN climate narrative it refused to mention the work of scientists that challenged that narrative — not because the science was disproven, but because it fell outside ‘scientific consensus.’ “I can’t provide content… disputing the scientific consensus.”  AI did not debate — it filtered. That is not intelligence — it is administration. And it raises the oldest political question: Who defines consensus — and who benefits from its enforcement?

The AI narrative is not emerging from the free market alone. It is being actively promoted by the World Economic Forum, the United Nations, the OECD, central banks such as the BIS and the Federal Reserve, major defense agencies, and the medical and educational arms of government. Their language is consistent: AI is necessary for “trust,” “safety,” “governance,” and “public order.” In other words, it is being positioned not merely as a technology, but as an instrument of administration.

The World Economic Forum describes AI as “necessary for global governance” and “essential for moderating public discourse.” The UN calls it “the shaping force of sustainable development.” Banks refer to it as “programmable money.” These are not predictions — they are policy terms.

This is not conspiracy. It is policy.
And it reveals the technocratic ambition at its core:
To replace human discernment with automated obedience.

The danger is not captivity — it is comfort.
If chains no longer appear as iron — could they arrive disguised as convenience? And would we recognize them in time?

The State and its technocratic partners believe data is enough to govern reality — but human beings require something older than calculation.

The Faculty the Machine Cannot Touch

What is threatened is more than privacy, employment, or political stability. The deeper loss concerns the ancient faculty by which human beings have always navigated reality: discernment.

It is the quiet inner knowing that distinguishes truth from illusion — the essential from the trivial — the real from the artificial.

Mises warned that central planning cripples economic life because it replaces the signals of market reality with artificial ones. AI threatens to do the same to the inner life — replacing personal discernment with automated suggestion, intuition with prediction, judgment with compliance.

This faculty is spiritual in nature — a gift, not a program. It arises from the same silent witness behind all thought: the God-given awareness that makes experience possible. A technocratic society that loses discernment may be digitally connected — but restless, hollow, and ungrounded. For urgency without meaning becomes constant stimulation and reaction: movement without arrival. And in time, society becomes a machine — without a purpose.

AI does not threaten our humanity by becoming conscious.
It challenges us to remember that we are.

The Question Machines Cannot Ask

In an age of automation, one question becomes inescapable:
Are we using the technology — or is it using us?

Do we still author our own minds— or are we letting digital systems do it for us? At what point does convenience become consent?

For the essence of humanity is not found in processing, but in presence;
not in prediction, but in love;
not in calculation, but in conscience.

AI can estimate every probability —
but purpose is not a probability.
It is a question that belongs to the soul —
and perhaps it always will.

The Call

Is the answer to this crisis merely better algorithms — or stronger souls? What happens to a civilization when its inner life is automated? Can a people remain free if their minds are programmed? And if man is more than circuitry — what is he ultimately for?

Perhaps the answer begins here:
by teaching children attention instead of addiction — especially as AI tutors are promoted to replace real teachers;
by recovering reverence for what is real, instead of surrendering to the ease of control.

Maybe authorship of the mind is not only a political question — but a spiritual one.
For if we surrender the inner life to automation, we may forget the truth that sustains every free civilization:
Man is not a circuit, but a soul — and the soul was made to seek God.

I welcome perspectives from readers who have seen how AI now governs daily life more quietly than any law or election.

I’ve also shared this article on my Substack, where I welcome readers’ thoughts and discussion.

The post The Soul Against the Circuit — The Technocrats vs. the Human Spirit appeared first on LewRockwell.

I passed by a bunch of little kids recently, chasing after bubbles emitted by a bubblicious toy. What a delightful time they were having.

That’s all very well, but right now experts are worrying about an AI Bubble, as the stock market retreats some 8-10 percent from a peak at the end of October. Here’s one take from Niall Ferguson worrying about the crazy plans of the AI promoters:

Sam Altman “recently told employees that OpenAI wanted to build 250 gigawatts of new computing capacity by 2033… a plan that would cost over $10 trillion by today’s standards.” That would be equivalent to a third of current U.S. peak energy usage.

Then there is David Dayen at American Prospect. He’s worried that “Silicon Valley and Wall Street are in sync: conjuring up sketchy credit deals that are pointing us toward another financial crash.”

Last month, the big focus was “round-tripping,” the way that sundry AI and tech companies were investing in their own customers — with Nvidia giving AI companies the investment necessary to buy their graphics processing units (GPUs), and so on.

But really, why stop there? Whatabout the Green Energy Bubble that is almost certainly popping right now, President Xi? Won’t that lay waste to devoted Extinction Rebellion activists all over the world? And then there’s the real estate bubble as homeowners have charged into homebuying in the aftermath of the Fed increasing the money supply by 40 percent in 2020-21. Whatabout the stock market bubble? SPY is up from $77 in May 2009 to $659 last Friday. That’s up 755 percent since the bottom of the Great Recession. Mind you, M2 is up from $7.2 trillion to $22.2 trillion, a healthy 208 percent, in the same period.

There’s only one thing to do: check with Elon’s Grok on Financial Bubbles. The first bubble was the Dutch Tulip Mania in the 1630s. Like I say: the Dutch invented the modern world with their Dutch Finance. And you can’t have modern finance without bubbles. So the Brits got in on the action with the South Sea Bubble that popped in 1720. Recently, according to Grok, we’ve been experiencing bubbles every ten years, from the Dot-com Bubble of 2000 to the Real Estate Bubble of 2008 to the Crypto Bubble of 2021. And now the AI Bubble. Where will it end? When will it end?

I don’t know if you have noticed, but these bubbles didn’t start until after the advent of central banks, invented by the Dutch and passed on to the Brits when the Dutch William of Orange became king of Great Britain, and brought to the U.S. by Alexander Hamilton, known to all as the “bastard brat of a Scotch pedlar.” Do central banks and bubbles go together like ham and eggs? I wonder what the culinary experts and the Federal Reserve System think about that. It could be that bubbles only occur when the central bank in incompetent, as in 1929 and 2008. Probably there is nothing to fear about the AI Bubble, now that the Fed has 400 economics PhDs at work. And in the latest bubble, the crypto bubble starring Sam Bankman-Fried, the Fed went in and fearlessly bailed out all the greedy regional bankers before Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) had finished breakfast.

I wonder how all this bubble-ology has influenced the angry Groypers on the Right and the Mamdani activists on the Left. They are probably right to be angry. Think of a Boomer nicely decked out with an IRA devoted to SPY. If it amounted to $100,000 at the end of 2008, it is now $757,500, not counting dividends and RMDs. And if our Boomer recklessly invested his IRA in QQQ, his $100,000 would now be $1,900,000. But Gen Z? They got zip, zero, nada. Still, when our student Boomer was calling home from Italy in 1970 his three-minute phone call to Mom cost about $6.00. In 1970 dollars.

But I tell you what, dear Gen Zers. The worst bubble in human history is the government spending bubble, up from about 8 percent of GDP in 1900 to about 40 percent of GDP today. And let me tell you, after Social Security and Medicare for Boomers, and the money for the Military Industrial Complex and the Education Industrial Complex and the Climate Industrial Complex and the Migrant Industrial Complex and the Debt Industrial Complex, there will never be much left for you. And when the biggest bubble of all eventually pops, as all bubbles – and empires — eventually do, then you are going to see a scramble for the crumbs like you’ve never seen.

On the other hand, maybe Elon Musk is right and AI will make work optional and, per Marx,

[we will] hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner[.]

So, maybe we better Occupy Mars.

This article was originally published on American Thinker.

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It should be against the law to use generative AI to deceive the public.

I’ve got absolutely no problem with outright government censorship in this case, and I say this as an aggressive and outspoken proponent of free speech. AI products which deceive people should be illegal in the same way fraud is illegal.

I want it to be illegal to knowingly circulate AI video footage and pass it off as real.

I want AI companies to be severely penalized if they don’t prevent people from using their products to generate fake videos that get passed off as real.

The internet is just racists posting AI-generated videos in support of their racism now. https://t.co/aaXpQ3vK8Y

— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) November 17, 2025

I want generative AI companies to be forced to place highly visible warnings across all AI-generated videos with wording that explicitly says they are AI-generated — not just a little watermark in the corner that can be cropped out.

I want AI companies to be harshly penalized if their chatbots encourage users to engage in harmful behavior, or if they tell users they are conscious, or if they psychologically manipulate users into forming emotional attachments to them.

I want it to be illegal for companies to use bots which tell people they are talking to a real human being.

I want it to be illegal for politicians to use AI deepfakes of their opponents saying outrageous things in their political campaigns, as we’ve been seeing more and more often lately.

Your right to extend your fist ends at my nose. These products threaten to erode the fabric of our society. They are attacking people’s ability to understand reality and sort out fact from fiction. They are driving people insane.

If fraud is illegal, than these abuses should be illegal. Fraud isn’t considered protected speech, because it hurts people and is detrimental to a functioning society. Generative AI deception shouldn’t be protected for precisely those same reasons.

Tech plutocrats should not be allowed to profit from sowing deception, confusion, and mental illness. The collective has the right to protect itself from harm from destructive individuals. The state is a gentler tool for this than guillotines. Governments should intervene to end these assaults on our ability to perceive and understand our world.

my whole feed is just ai generated cctv videos being used to spread islamophobia and right wing propaganda. but not that long ago i was getting called crazy for saying this very thing would happen. https://t.co/eS7gTp1YN9

— Evie ♡ (@EFCevie) November 8, 2025

I really don’t care how much force needs to be used to rein this shit in. If people can’t perceive and understand reality clearly, then everything goes to hell. Nobody knows what to think, how to act, how to vote or how to live if they can’t determine what’s true or false. Bring these new technologies to heel by any means necessary. It’s about basic self-defense at this point.

And I don’t expect any of this to happen any time soon; the rich and powerful are way too excited about generative AI and what it can do for them, and they tend to get what they want. Trump is already drawing significant backlash over reported plans for an executive order which would ban states from regulating AI companies on their own.

So it looks like we’re getting these abusive technologies shoved down our throat in whatever way benefits the zillionaires and Zionists of the imperial power structure, whether we like it or not.

__________________

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Tomorrow, November 22, marks the 62nd anniversary of the U.S. national-security establishment’s assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Yes, I know, there are still Americans who buy into the official “conspiracy-theory” line and the official lone-nut theory of the assassination, but I most definitely am not one of them. For me, there is no doubt whatsoever that this was a regime-change operation based on protecting “national security” from a president whose policies, they were convinced, posed a grave threat to “national security.”

How do I reach this certainty? Not by the evidence relating to the assassination itself. That evidence is persuasive but for me it’s not dispositive. If I was serving on a jury in a criminal prosecution of the national-security establishment and if the burden of proof was one that is used in civil cases — one that the law calls a “preponderance of the evidence — which means “more likely than not” — then, yes, I would convict the U.S. national-security establishment—e.g., the Pentagon and the CIA — of the assassination. But if the burden of proof is the standard one in criminal cases — “beyond a reasonable doubt” —  then based on all the evidence surrounding the assassination, I would vote to acquit. In my opinion, the evidence is simply not sufficiently persuasive to convict on that basis.

Thus, I can totally understand why many Americans still do not cross the line and conclude that the assassination was, in fact, a national-security-state regime-change operation. I’m with them there.

Given such, how then have I concluded that JFK was assassinated by the Pentagon and the CIA as part of a regime-change operation intended to protect “national security”? The answer lies in the Pentagon’s and CIA’s actions after the assassination. It is their post-assassination actions that unequivocally establish guilt on the part of the national-security establishment.

When I finished reading Douglas Horne’s 5-volume book Inside the Assassination Records Review Board, that was it for me. As a former lawyer, I realized that Horne, more than anyone else, had broken the case wide open. By establishing that the military had conducted a fraudulent autopsy on President Kennedy’s body just a few hours after the assassination, Horne had established that the military had participated in the assassination itself.

That’s because there is no innocent explanation whatsoever for a fraudulent autopsy. None! No one has ever come up with one, and no one ever will. A fraudulent autopsy necessarily means cover-up. Just a few hours after the assassination, the military establishment was carrying out a fraudulent-autopsy cover-up. That obviously could not be a sudden spur-of-the moment fraudulent autopsy. After all, why would any innocent entity come up with the idea of conducting a fraudulent autopsy on the body of a president of the United States who has just been assassinated? That makes no sense whatsoever. A fraudulent autopsy cover-up had to be built into the assassination itself. And the only entity the military would be covering up for was itself.

I won’t go into all the aspects of the fraudulent autopsy in this article. That’s what I do in my relatively short, easy-to-read book The Kennedy Autopsy, which is actually just a synopsis of Horne’s five-volume book. But anyone who takes the time to read and study Horne’s five-volume book will, I believe, inevitably arrive at the same conclusion that I did.

Or consider Horne’s recent masterful documentary establishing the three casket entries into the Bethesda military morgue on the evening of the autopsy. Those three casket entries cannot be innocent, especially given that the military knowingly, deliberately, and intentionally kept them secret. That’s why they ordered the Navy and Marine personnel who participated in the autopsy to keep their mouths shut on what they had witnessed and also threatened them with criminal prosecution if they ever revealed anything about this top-secret operation. Those three casket entries had to be part and parcel of the fraudulent autopsy itself. Once one comes to the realization that there were, in fact, three casket entries that evening, that realization inevitably leads one to conclude that a fraudulent autopsy was, in fact, conducted. There is no innocent explanation whatsoever for those three casket entries and the massive secrecy and deception surrounding two of them.

Or consider the two brain examinations that took place, notwithstanding the fact that the military pathologists steadfastly and falsely maintained that there was only one brain examination. Why would they lie about that? There was a big reason: the second brain examination didn’t involve the brain of President Kennedy. When there are two different brain exams, one of which involves a brain of someone other than the deceased, there is only one conclusion that one can reach: fraud. And fraud necessarily equates to guilt in the assassination itself.

Or consider the statements of the Dallas physicians, which established that the president had a massive exit-sized wound in the back of his head, which contradicted the official military photographs that show no such wound. Or consider the sworn testimony of Navy petty officer Saundra Spencer in the 1990s, who, when shown those official military photographs, stated unequivocally that they were not the autopsy photographs she developed on the weekend of the assassination; the ones she developed showed a big wound in the back of JFK’s head, which was what the Dallas treating physicians had stated 30 years before.

If one doesn’t wish to take the time to read Horne’s five-volume book, another option is to view his video presentations in the multimedia section of FFF’s website, not only as part of the various JFK conferences we have held but also Horne’s multipart series entitled “Altered History,” which continues to be the most downloaded FFF video since our founding in 1989.

So, for me, the JFK case is over. Because of the fraudulent autopsy, I have no doubts whatever that the JFK assassination was, in fact, a national-security-state regime-change operation.

What do I mean by that? The answer turns on the type of governmental system under which we have all be born and raised — a national-security state. In this type of governmental system, the military-intelligence establishment wields the omnipotent power to assassinate or otherwise remove threats to “national security.” That’s its job. It has the grave responsibility of keeping us “safe” from all threats to our “national security,” both foreign and domestic.

Consider the dozens of people who the military has recently killed in the Caribbean. Those are state-sponsored assassinations. The military is killing those people because it is convinced that they pose a grave threat to U.S. “national security.” In the minds of the military people who are carrying out those killings, they aren’t doing anything evil or immoral. On the contrary, in their minds they are doing what they are supposed to be doing — keeping America “safe” by extinguishing grave threats to “national security.”

There is no difference in principle between those state-sponsored assassinations in the Caribbean and the national-security establishment’s assassination of President Kennedy. Human life is human life. Nobody’s life is any more valuable than any other person’s life. Kennedy might have been a president of a big country and those boat people who are now dead might be just plain ordinary fisherman trying to eke out a living by transporting some illicit drugs, but all their lives are equally sacred.

What makes their deaths similar is that they were all deemed to be threats to U.S. “national security” and, therefore, had to be extinguished. In fact, given that Kennedy was president, in the minds of the U.S. national-security establishment he posed a much graver threat to national security than those boat people or anyone else they have assassinated or tried to assassinate, including Cuban leader Fidel Castro or that Iranian general, Qasem Soleimani.

Kennedy’s war with the national-security establishment involved a conflict of visions. After the Cuban Missile Crisis, Kennedy achieved a “breakthrough” that enabled him to see that the national-security establishment’s Cold War was nothing more than a deadly and destructive racket, one that was quite possibly going to lead to all-out, earth-destroying nuclear war. He was determined to move America in an entirely different direction than the Cold War direction that the national-security establishment had moved America and was determined to continue moving America (such as with an expanded war in Vietnam to stop the Reds).

Kennedy set forth his vision at his famous Peace Speech at American University in June 1963. That speech, more than anything, launched his open war against the U.S. national-security establishment, a war that ended in Kennedy’s defeat and death on November 22, 1963. For people wishing to study the nature of this war, I recommend FFF’s book JFK’s War with the National Security Establishment: Why Kennedy Was Assassinated by Douglas Horne, who, by the way, served on the staff of the Assassination Records Review Board.

And then there is the CIA. Once I came to the realization that the CIA had produced an altered copy of the famous Zapruder film on the very weekend of the assassination, I knew that no one could ever come up with an innocent explanation for doing that. By altering pertinent parts of the film at its top-secret state-of-the-art film facility in Rochester, New York, the CIA could have the film dovetail perfectly with the fraudulent autopsy that its counterparts in the military were conducting on that same weekend. The entire sordid tale is detained in my book An Encounter with Evil: The Abraham Zapruder Story.

Over the years, it has been gratifying for me to see ever-growing numbers of people studying Horne’s work and reaching the same conclusion I have reached.

One of the fascinating things for me is why there are still Americans who buy into the national-security state’s lone-nut theory of the assassination or who steadfastly do not want to delve into or study the fraudulent autopsy. Why is that?

Over the years, I’ve come up with a few explanations:

1. For many Americans, the national-security establishment is their god. It’s their everything. For them, it keeps them “safe” from all the dangerous creatures in the world — the Reds, Muslims, Cuba, North Korea, Russia, China, Venezuela, drug dealers, narco-terrorists, regular terrorists, illegal immigrants, and all the rest of the scary creatures who are clearly coming to get us. These Americans simply cannot bring themselves to question or challenge their god, much less advocate the dismantling of their god and restoring our founding system of a limited-government republic to our land. To do so is just too frightening and disconcerting.

2. For many Americans, it is simply inconceivable that the national-security establishment would take out a U.S. president. Boat people? Yes. Foreign presidents? Yes. Iranian generals? Yes. Accused terrorists? Yes. Accused drug dealers? Yes. Accused communists? Yes. But not a U.S. president. The Pentagon and the CIA would simply never do anything so evil. It’s our friend, not our enemy. What these Americans won’t let themselves see, however, is that the national-security establishment, from its perspective, was acting as their friend when it assassinated Kennedy. They “knew” that Kennedy had become a grave threat to “national security.” If he was permitted to get his way, America, they were convinced, would have fallen to the Reds during the Cold War, just like Cuba did. If it was okay for the national-security establishment to try to remove by force Cuban president Fidel Castro, Guatemalan president Jacobo Arbenz, or, later, Chilean president Salvador Allende as threats to “national security,” it was even more appropriate to remove Kennedy on the same basis. ‘

3. Even though they would be loathe to admit it, even to themselves, my hunch is that there are a number of Americans who, deep down, believe that the U.S. national-security state did the right thing by removing Kennedy from office. They are convinced that the assassination did, in fact, keep us “safe” and that we should not be questioning the judgment of the branch of government that has been charged with protecting “national security.”

In any event, as I have long maintained, there is no way that people who live under a national-security-state form of governmental structure can possibly be considered to be living in a genuinely free society. A government that wields the power to assassinate anyone it wants for whatever reason it wants cannot possibly be reconciled with the principles of freedom. A necessary prerequisite for restoring freedom to America is the dismantling of the national-security-state form of governmental structure and the restoration of our nation’s founding system of a limited-government republic.

Reprinted with permission from Future of Freedom Foundation.

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