Lew Rockwell Institute

If Kamala Harris wins the presidential election on Tuesday, Americans will be told that the final vote count is a sacred number that was practically handed down from Mt. Sinai engraved on a stone tablet. Any American who casts doubt on Harris’s victory will be vilified like one of those January 6, 2021 protestors sent to prison for “parading without a permit” in the US Capitol. Actually, anyone who doubted the 2020 election results was being prominently denounced as “traitors” even before the Capitol Clash.

But is there any reason to expect the final vote count in next week’s presidential election to be more honest than any other number that the Biden-Harris administration jiggered in the last four years?

Biden, Harris, and their media allies endlessly assured Americans that the national crime rate had fallen sharply since Biden took office. That statistical scam was produced by the equivalent of disregarding all the votes in California and New York. FBI crime data simply excluded many of the nation’s largest cities until a revision earlier this month revealed that violent crime had risen nationwide.

Deceitful national crime data helped cover-up the disastrous impact of open border policies. The Biden-Harris administration did backflips to avoid disclosing the true size of the surge of illegal immigrants from early 2021 onwards. Kamala Harris did zombie-like face plants in recent interviews when elbowed for honest answers.

In the same way that another surge of unverified mail-in ballots may determine the 2024 election, Biden manipulated the number of illegal aliens by using his presidential parole power to entitle more than a million people from Haiti, Venezuela, Cubans, and other countries to legally enter and stay in America on his own decree. The Biden administration even provided a vast secretive program to fly favored foreign nationals into select airports late at night where their arrival would occur under the radar.

Some states will officially count mail-in ballots that arrive well after Election Day even if the envelopes have no postmark. This is the same “late doesn’t matter” standard that Biden used to vindicate the $42 billion provided by his 2021 infrastructure law to boost broadband access in rural America—which Uncle Joe said was “not unlike what Roosevelt did with electricity.” Unlike the Tennessee Valley Authority, Biden’s broadband program has nothing to show since it delivered faster internet access to almost no one. The same default occurred with the Inflation Reduction Act’s alleged showpiece achievement—42,000 new charging stations around the nation for electric vehicles. But that program produced more presidential applause lines than EV refills. As of March, $7.5 billion in federal spending had only produced seven new charging stations nationwide.

How many votes will Harris lose on Tuesday because Americans remain outraged at the inflation that has slashed the dollar’s value by more than 20 percent since Biden took office? There would be far more popular fury if the feds had not deceived Americans about the full financial damage that Washington inflicted. The official inflation statistic doesn’t count soaring mortgage and housing costs—which is akin to excluding any state south of the Mason-Dixon Line from the national vote tally. Larry Summers, Bill Clinton’s Treasury Secretary, said that if the feds today used the same inflation gauges used in the 1970s, Biden’s peak inflation would have been 18 percent, twice as high as the reported number.

Tens of millions of voters will not be obliged to show any identification before voting in this election: they are presumed trustworthy regardless of zero verification. But this is the same standard that the Biden-Harris administration uses for not disclosing its most controversial policies to American citizens. People will vote next week without knowing the facts behind whistleblower allegations on Vice Presidential nominee Tim Walz’s connections to the Chinese Communist Party, to Secret Service failures to prevent Trump assassination attempts, and the brazen details of the Censorship Industrial Complex.

In Washington, politicians feel entitled to applause for any grandiose promise—regardless of their failure to deliver. Similarly, politicians and election officials promising that the presidential vote count will be accurate and reflect “the will of the people” is far more important than tabulating the actual ballots. Will the unmanned ballot boxes in big cities be stuffed with bogus ballots the same way a politician jams endless balderdash into his campaign speeches? As pundit Stephen Kruiser quipped, “the clothing donation boxes that were all over my old neighborhood in Los Angeles were probably more secure than the ballot drop boxes.”

Of course, if Trump wins, then all the forces of decency must instantly shift to the other side of the barricades. Any electoral victory by Trump will be illegitimate because of politically incorrect comments made by speakers at Trump campaign rallies. As in 2017, if Trump wins, every “true patriot”—or at least every true progressive—will be honor-bound to join The Resistance.

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

The post Will Tuesday’s Vote Counts Be Another Sham Biden-Harris Statistic? appeared first on LewRockwell.

Liberating Liberty: Life, Liberty, Pursuit of Happiness and the Creator of Man is a new book written by Bert Schwitters.

From the Foreword of Liberating liberty …

… The central theme of Liberating Liberty is the notion that the true Telos, the Cause and Ultimate Goal, of the united States of America was defined in the Preamble of the Declaration of Independence as the common defense of their constituents’ unalienable rights to Life, Liberty and their Pursuit of individual Happiness, to enable them to attain and “live” Happiness.

Considering the fact that the authors of the Preamble held and declared that these unalienable rights were endowed to Man by his Creator, the Creator of Man, Who is commonly understood as being the God of Genesis, the Happiness mentioned in the Declaration cannot be understood as anything other than Divine Happiness or “eudaimonia”. And because it is also written in Genesis that God created Man in His image, and that God’s Name and His Whole Beingness may be summed up in the words “I am”, the pursuit of Divine Happiness must of necessity entail Man’s pursuit of attaining “Oneness” with his Creator, with God, in the Divine state of being “I am”.

From the starting point of a short passage in the preamble to the Declaration of Independence Schwitters builds an enormous edifice in defense of Natural Law, weaving together evidence from history, philosophy, political science, theology, . . .. Perhaps most impressive are his linguistic assertions consisting of detailed dissections of words and phrases from six languages: Hebrew, Greek, Latin, French, German, and obviously English. He brings to bear a wide range of sources from Aquinas, Augustine and Plato to Mises and Rothbard to make his case, while not letting past criticism of Hegel, Marx, and Nietzsche. But Liberating Liberty especially relies on the thinking of Eric Voegelin. Resources explaining Voegelin’s relationship to the Austrian School have been presented by the indispensable Charles Burris here. To my mind, Schwitters reminds me of old school and old world scholarship, exhibited, for example, by Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn.

The source of the incredible breadth of scholarship that Schwitters’ brings to his assertions is signaled on the back cover of the book which states that:

Bert Schwitters (1945) may best be qualified as a “renaissance man.” Journalist, director, author, researcher, entrepreneur, marketeer, poet, and, above all, a skilled and prolific writer. Knowledgeable and active in the fields of health & nutrition, regulatory affairs & legislation, legal affairs, business enterprise, publishing, communication and the “humanities” (science, history, culture, art, political and religious philosophy).

The evidence of the truth of this description is obvious throughout the book.

Mr; Schwitters has been a delightful interlocutor with me following my articles on LRC. He sent me a copy of Liberating Liberty directly. I did not find the book on Amazon so I suggest going to his website, Liberating Liberty, to order a very well designed and printed copy.

My succinct description of Liberating Liberty is a tour de force defense of natural law.

The post A Tour De Force Defense of Natural Law appeared first on LewRockwell.

The Israeli Knesset has banned UNRWA, an absolutely critical agency for getting humanitarian aid into Gaza, with the architect of the bill saying this was happening because “UNRWA equals Hamas”.

In addition to everything else this genocide has been, it’s been a colossal insult to our intelligence. UNRWA is Hamas. Hospitals are Hamas. Journalists are Hamas. Civilian infrastructure is Hamas. Ambulances, schools and mosques are Hamas. The women and babies — okay maybe they’re not technically Hamas, but Hamas is definitely hiding behind them and using them as human shields.

We are asked to believe self-evidently idiotic things, and if we don’t, we get called Nazi Jew-haters. We are being asked to turn ourselves into empty-headed morons to advance the information interests of a foreign state that’s allied with our government. Stupidity is being framed as a sign of patriotism. Gullibility is being framed as a sign of rejecting antisemitism. In this morally bankrupt and perverse civilization, the noblest thing you can be is a blithering imbecile.

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Axios and its Israeli intelligence insider Barak Ravid have penned yet another White House press release disguised as a news story about how “concerned” the Biden administration is about Israel’s actions in Gaza.

“The Biden administration is ‘deeply concerned’ that two bills passed by the Israeli Knesset on Monday will exacerbate the already dire humanitarian crisis in Gaza and harm Palestinians in East Jerusalem and the West Bank,” Ravid writes.

Oh shit you guys the Biden administration is deeply concerned that Israel is doing something bad in Gaza! You’re in trouble now, Bibi!

Like I said. Just one nonstop insult to our intelligence.

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CNN has issued an apology after its panelist Ryan Girdusky told fellow panelist Mehdi Hasan “I hope your pager doesn’t go off” after Hasan said he supports Palestinians. Israel supporters have been directing this “hurr hurr you should be murdered with an explosive pager” wisecrack at Israel’s critics for weeks, and apparently Girdusky just forgot where he was in the heat of the moment.

CNN was like, This network is shocked and appalled that our panelist joked about murdering a British Muslim journalist with an explosive beeper. That kind of language is only appropriate when directed at Muslims who live in the middle east.

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Per the rules of the western empire you are a religious extremist if you want to fight against an occupying force who has been abusing you your entire life, but you are not a religious extremist if you want to carpet bomb the middle east to help fulfill a Biblical prophecy.

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MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow is back to pushing her “Russians are interfering in the US election” narrative, so we know what we’ll be hearing again if Kamala loses. No matter who wins we can expect a bunch of outraged shrieking from the other side that the election was unfairly stolen from them.

The US presidential race is very openly a contest between two oligarch-owned Zionist war whores, and yet after the results are announced next week you’re still going to hear half the country going “OMG election interference! The election was stolen from us!”

It already was, you dopes. It was stolen before the race even started. The rest is just narrative.

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I sure hope all the US progressives who obediently stopped talking about Gaza these last couple of months remember to start that thing up again after the election is over.

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I’m just gonna say this ahead of time so it’s out there: you don’t get to campaign on continuing a genocide and then blame other people when you lose. That is not a thing.

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“Trump will be worse on Gaza” is such an obnoxiously dishonest argument. It’s completely unfalsifiable and can’t even be tested after the election since abuses keep getting worse in Gaza anyway, and it’s based on nothing but the claim that very vague statements made by Trump prove he’ll facilitate Israeli atrocities more than the current administration already has been. It’s completely empty narrative fluff with no basis on the facts in evidence.

There are all kinds of legitimate cases to be made that Harris would be a little bit better than Trump on some aspects of domestic policy and the environment, but there is no case whatsoever to be made that he’ll be worse on Gaza than the administration that’s already committing genocide there. He could be worse, he could be a bit better, or he could be exactly the same. There’s no way to know, and there won’t be any way to know in a universe where we can’t observe alternate realities to compare what each presidential candidate would have done if they’d won. It’s an entirely unanswerable question that people are just pretending to know the answer to.

Harris and the Democrats have repeatedly attacked Trump for not starting a war with Iran when he was president. She criticized him for making John Bolton sad when he refused to bomb Iran. How is that less insanely pro-Israel than anything Trump has said?

If you want to argue that Harris will be better on reproductive rights or something then go ahead, but when it comes to Gaza don’t piss on my leg and tell me it’s raining.

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The post Yeah, Yeah, UNRWA Is Hamas. Everyone Israel Hates Is Hamas. appeared first on LewRockwell.

“But how do we know when irrational exuberance has unduly escalated asset values . . .?” — Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan, “The Challenge of Central Banking in a Democratic Society,” December 5, 1996

John Law, the early eighteenth-century Scottish gambler and financier, thought the best way to revive an ailing economy was to remove the “great scarcity of money,” as he wrote in a 1705 monetary tract. A decade after its publication he took his ideas to the Continent and sold them to Philippe d’Orleans, the regent in charge of France’s finances, who needed a scheme more sophisticated than his failed program of coin clipping and confiscation to save the nation from bankruptcy.

In 1716 Philippe set Law up as head of the Banque Générale, the country’s central bank, giving it and him monopoly control of the note issue. Having won the nation’s trust with declarations of allegiance to sound money principles – he had promised his banknotes would be “payable on sight” in unadulterated gold coin – Law proceeded to apply another element of his theory. Because a scarcity of money, he believed, was the root of France’s economic problems, and since banknotes backed purely by precious metals would be in short supply, he began issuing notes “backed” by the nation’s vast landholdings. Exactly how one would redeem banknotes for acreage he neglected to explain.

Very importantly, Law and Philippe also created a trading company called the Compaignie des Indes, a vaporous entity said to have monopoly trading rights in France’s Louisiana territory. Initially, shares in the company could only be purchased with government bonds still on the market, which had fallen to about one-fifth their value. To the public, the trading company and its investment strategy became known as the Mississippi System.

Philippe was very pleased with the results. People from all ranks were buying shares of the Compaignie des Indes.  Share prices began to soar. People were trading and speculating with Law’s paper money, and France’s economy was coming alive. Philippe decided John Law was correct that a shortage of money was an economic evil. He was so pleased with the change in the economy he brought government closer to the action. He renamed Law’s bank the Banque Royale and by late 1719 it had cranked out enough new bills to inflate the money supply by a factor of sixteen, no doubt to avert the evil of a monetary shortage.

Will and Ariel Durant describe the madness Law had ignited:

The narrow, dirty Rue Quincampoix, where the System had its offices, was for two years the Wall Street of Paris. Buyers and sellers of all classes, duchesses and prostitutes, Parisians, provincials, foreigners, gathered there in numbers, and excitement mounted day by day. Some were trampled to death in the crush, or were run down by the carriages of the aristocracy. . . fortunes were made in a day. A banker made 100 million livres, a hotel waiter thirty million. Now for the first time men heard the word millionaire.

In his Memoirs of Louis XIV and His Court and of the Regency Saint-Simon tells us,

Everybody was mad upon Mississippi Stock.  Immense fortunes were made, almost in a breath; Law, besieged in his house by eager applicants, saw people force open his door, enter by the windows from the garden, drop into his cabinet down the chimney!

As historian Charles Mackay noted, “many persons in the humbler walks of life, who had risen poor in the morning, went to bed in affluence.” Law’s coachman made enough money to buy a coach of his own, who then found Law a new driver.  All one had to do was buy, hold, and sell to make a killing.

Law himself became the richest man in the world, owning, among other things, the central bank, the Louisiana Territory, a collection of French chateaux, and original works of masters such as Holbein, Michelangelo, da Vinci, and Rubens.

But Law was not simply a money printer gone nuts:

He anticipated Turgot by abolishing duties on the movement of food and goods within France. He organized the building or repair of roads, bridges, and canals. He brought in skilled artisans from abroad to establish new industries . . . He revived and multiplied the merchant marine by expanding trade with Asia, Africa, and America; French ships engaged in foreign trade numbered sixteen in March, 1719, three hundred in June, 1720 . . . He persuaded French nobles to finance the production of coffee and tobacco in Louisiana, and himself financed the development of the Arkansas River area. In 1718 New Orleans was founded, and took the Regent’s family name.  (Durant, p.41)

He was so popular his carriage required a large military escort to protect him from admirers. As many of those admirers were women, some found ways to meet with Law despite the obstacles.

Trust — but verify

One day in early 1720 a certain aristocrat whom Law had offended, Prince de Conti, took his Banque Royale notes and presented them for redemption. The notes were reported to have filled three wagons. De Conti said something like, “Voila, monsieurs! Here are your notes, which are ‘payable at sight.’ Now, do you see them? Well then, hand over the coins.”

The bank complied – and held its breath. On hearing about the exchange Philippe was so angered he ordered the prince to return two-thirds of the gold. De Conti obeyed grudgingly but in doing so triggered the first stirrings of panic. Soon two other aristocrats, motivated by distrust rather than revenge, began presenting their notes in small quantities so as not to stampede the herd. Seeing a coming crisis, they hid their coins or shipped them to other countries for safekeeping.  Word got out, and Law’s Banque Royale was challenged to prove its notes were as good as gold. They weren’t, of course, and Law’s hot air balloon burst.

Common folk began storming the bank to pull their coins out. Like the aristocrats, they hoarded their money or shipped it somewhere safe to protect it from confiscation. With gold disappearing from the Banque’s vaults, its notes no longer looked so trustworthy, and the money supply plummeted.

In February 1720, in an effort to intimidate people into returning their gold to the Banque, Philippe declared “hoarding” a crime and threatened citizens with penalties if they were found with more than a pittance in coin. After that failed he tried tricking them into believing gold was going back to the Banque by printing over a billion livres worth of additional notes to pump up the money supply.

As the final act of the tragic farce, Law issued picks and shovels to the city’s idlers and paraded them through the streets as heroes on their way to Louisiana to mine huge profits. It served only to underscore the fraud and the people’s former credulousness. Law’s “liquid” Garden of Eden evaporated into bankruptcy. Later that year Law left the country heavily in debt and died nine years later in Venice.

Is John Law regarded as a charlatan today? Not whatsoever. The most influential economists of modern times regard Law with sympathy and respect. One eminent economic historian places Law in the “front ranks of monetary theorists of all time.” Others view him jealously for being the first economist to run an entire country, even if it meant running it into the ground.

Saint-Simon concluded,

[T]he chimera of the Mississippi, with its shares, its special jargon, its science (a continual juggle for drawing money from one person to give it to another), was to almost guarantee that these shares should at last end in smoke (since we had neither mines, nor quarries of the philosopher’s stone), and that the few would be enriched at the expense of the many, as in fact happened.

The allure of easy money drives irrational behavior, then and now.  End the Fed.

The post The Birth of ‘Irrational Exuberance’ appeared first on LewRockwell.

“Imagine some national (and probably global) volcanic eruption, initially flowing along channels of distress that were created during the Unraveling era and further widened by the catalyst. Trying to foresee where the eruption will go once it bursts free of the channels is like trying to predict the exact fault line of an earthquake. All you know in advance is something about the molten ingredients of the climax, which could include the following:

Economic distress, with public debt in default, entitlement trust funds in bankruptcy, mounting poverty and unemployment, trade wars, collapsing financial markets, and hyperinflation (or deflation)

Social distress, with violence fueled by class, race, nativism, or religion and abetted by armed gangs, underground militias, and mercenaries hired by walled communities

Political distress, with institutional collapse, open tax revolts, one-party hegemony, major constitutional change, secessionism, authoritarianism, and altered national borders

Military distress, with war against terrorists or foreign regimes equipped with weapons of mass destruction”

The Fourth Turning – Strauss & Howe

How many times have you heard this is the most important election of our lifetimes in the last few weeks? When Strauss & Howe published The Fourth Turning in 1997, the national debt was $5.4 trillion, and the country was running an annual deficit of $22 billion. We now add $22 billion of debt every 4 days, amounting to $2 trillion per year. They postulated the major catalysts for the next Fourth Turning would be debt, civic decay, and global disorder.

As we enter the 17th year of this Crisis, no one can question their prescience in predicting the facilitators which have propelled this ongoing Crisis thus far. The volcanic debt eruption created by the Federal Reserve and their Wall Street cabal owners in 2008 initiated all the chaos, debt creation, crushing inflation, authoritarian measures, social decay, celebration of delusion, delegitimization of the regime media and their corrupt government co-conspirators, and the rise of Trump. This country, and most of the western world, is experiencing extreme economic, social, political and military distress, as this upcoming election is guaranteed to ignite a civil and global conflagration.

No matter the result of this election, the losing side will not accept the outcome. It has been unequivocally evident for several weeks Trump would win this election in a landslide, on par with Reagan’s destruction of Mondale in 1984, if the Democrat cheat machine of fraudulent mail-in ballots, illegal hordes voting, and ever trusty Dominion vote switching algorithms cannot overcome his overwhelming margin.

Those pulling the levers are willing to do anything to retain power, not excluding assassination of Trump, initiating WW3 or some other manufactured crisis to cancel the election, illegal lawfare schemes to convict Trump of fake crimes or prevent his inauguration in January, or releasing their BLM, Antifa, and Illegal terrorist hordes into the streets to wreak havoc and initiate civil war. The treasonous bastards who stole the 2020 election and have committed crimes against the American people fear the retribution and prison sentences which could be inflicted upon them if Trump wins. They will not go silently into the night.

The Deep State skullduggery implemented through election fraud shenanigans, using their captured Soros judges and district attorneys to commit illegal lawfare, will rile the normies (aka deplorables, aka garbage) if they feel another election has been stolen by these treasonous totalitarians. Normal Americans have reached their breaking point. They have seen their bank accounts defunded by the Biden/Harris inflationary tsunami, unleashed by their covid debacle and ironically named Inflation Reduction Act, and their enablers at the Federal Reserve who printed trillions of new fiat, while keeping interest rates at 0% for years.

Anyone living in the real world knows inflation is at least twice as high as the reported government manipulated figures. They gaslight us about GDP growth, number of jobs added (850,000 overestimation last year), unemployment rate (% in labor market hugely underestimated), and every government statistic, in order to portray a false narrative of an economy doing well and raising all boats. The only boats being raised are the yachts of the .1%.

In reality, economic distress is creating psychological trauma on young and old alike. Seniors on fixed incomes and the poor dependent upon welfare, sink further into poverty, as the cost of food, energy, rent, medicine, and most necessities reach all-time highs. No one earning the average income in this country can afford a home. Credit card debt and auto loan debt have reached unpayable levels, and an avalanche of defaults and re-possessions has commenced. Meanwhile, with stock markets and housing markets at all-time highs, the wealthy have gotten wealthier, so the plight of the bottom 90% is of no concern to their day-to-day luxurious existence.

This bifurcation of economic circumstances is evidenced by the populist rage propelling Trump’s campaign. Normal Americans are tired of being screwed over by the system and fed up with politicians, left wing billionaires (Soros, Gates, Bezos, et al), and regime media talking heads demanding they acquiesce to their totalitarian mandates, while being propagandized to believe their provably false narratives about the “great” economy. Biden is president in name only, as proved by his dementia ridden rants and those pulling the strings casting him aside like a piece of trash when he no longer met their needs.

I don’t think Strauss & Howe envisioned the types of social distress which would be ushered in by the ruling oligarchy in a desperate attempt to divide, destroy, and degrade the social fabric of our society, obliterating the common values which helped build this nation. The organized, funded, and promoted invasion of our country by third world bottom feeders with the intent to take the lower paying jobs of native Americans, overwhelm the country’s social welfare system, funnel illegal voters into swing states, and create civil chaos in formerly homogeneous communities, is designed to contribute to the economic collapse of the country, allowing the Great Reseters to implement their new world order machinations.

The race riots, funded by Soros and encouraged by his bought off district attorneys in every shithole Democrat run sanctuary city in America, conducted by his BLM and ANTIFA hired terrorists, were designed to bring down Trump and demoralize the white middle class families who are the backbone of the country. We were supposed to bow down to these race baiters and pretend a drug addict black criminal thug was a saint, while honoring fictitious made-up ridiculous black holidays like Juneteenth and Kwanzaa. The entire narrative has been to make white people take the knee and accept this woke drivel. The goal has been to destroy the community standards we grew up with and replace them with an anything goes mentality of degeneracy and delusion.

The other socially explosive issues designed to divide and conquer have involved pretending mentally ill men are women and vice versa, while mentally ill women encourage the mutilation of their children as a sacrifice to the woke gods. Allowing mentally ill perverted men into women’s restrooms is pure insanity, but corrupt politicians, bought-off government bureaucrats, and woke judges have mandated this dangerously absurd behavior.

Men dominating women’s sports is perfectly fine to these seekers of societal implosion. Allowing and encouraging young girls to cut off their breasts because their batshit crazy mothers suffer from a woke form of Munchausen syndrome by proxy is a despicable surrender to degeneracy. We are failing our children, resulting in massive levels of depression, drug use, self-mutilation, and suicide among the young.

The most socially distressful act in the history of mankind was our authoritarian government politicians and bureaucrats forcing over 270 million guinea pigs (over 5 billion worldwide), under threat of losing their livelihood and being ostracized from society, to be injected by an experimental gene therapy marketed as a vaccine, that did not prevent people from catching, spreading or dying from the most overhyped flu in history.

The ruling overlords, who planned this fake pandemic (Event 201), successfully created the largest mass formation psychosis among the fearful masses than has ever been achieved through a propaganda of fear campaign. They proved they could force the sheep to willingly lock themselves down and beg to be injected with a toxic concoction designed to kill them suddenly or over time, while reducing fertility and disabling millions, accomplishing a major goal of the Gates depopulation agenda. The pure bloods will never forget or ever forgive those who treated them like trash. The coming civil war will see the dividing lines very much aligned between the jabbed versus the unjabbed.

Political distress has been building in this country since the day Trump descended that Trump Tower escalator in June of 2015, announcing he was running for president. He was able to corral the populist rage of the economically and socially distressed deplorables and achieve the upset of the century against the Deep State chosen one, initiating the Deep State coup against him, which continues to this day. The political system is wrought with fraud, corruption, malfeasance, and a disregard for the proper legal functioning of elections.

The 2020 election was stolen, mainly through fake mail-in ballots supposedly instituted as a one-time covid measure. Now it is a permanent fixture, and systematic fraud is purposely built into the system, as no ID or proof of citizenship is required to vote, illegals are being enabled to vote illegally by the Democrat party, and the judicial system is filled with left-wing activist judges whose sole purpose is to promote criminality and deviancy.

The desperation of the Deep State oligarchs and their hired henchmen within the CIA, FBI, DOJ, and State Department is palpable and exceedingly dangerous, as they are willing to burn down the system to prevent their criminal conspiracy from being revealed. They have tried to imprison and kill Trump already and will continue to do so before his January inauguration. It is probably too late to stop the election from taking place, but nothing they do is too diabolical to exclude at this point. When Trump’s margin of victory exceeds their ability to cheat, they will proceed with plan B and unleash their paid hordes of violent felons in every major city in America, to try and stop Trump from assuming power.

Biden and Harris’ handlers will use every lawfare means at their disposal to prevent the smooth transition of power. The fake January 6 insurrection will seem quaint compared to what these traitors will attempt to pull off. We know they consider us deplorable, garbage, racist Nazis, so that belief allows them to consider us as non-humans and use lethal means to suppress our voices. The Biden-Harris administration updated DOD Directive 5240.01 on Sept. 27 to include provisions authorizing lethal force in certain circumstances when assisting civilian law enforcement. The timing of this change sure seems suspicious, as this volatile election enters the home stretch.

This is where military distress will rear its ugly head. We know the woke military cooperated and conspired with the other Deep State bad actors in the coup against Trump. Milley acted in a treasonous manner behind Trump’s back by communicating with adversaries and planning to override any direct order from the Commander–in-Chief. The military leadership under Biden has proven to be incompetent, committed to diversity & equity, and willing to do the bidding of the forces aligned against Trump.

The possibility of the military participating in violent coup against Trump before he takes office, or shortly thereafter, is not out of the question. When men who know they have committed illegal, treasonous acts feel threatened with exposure and prosecution, they are capable of anything to avoid their fate. Militarily, this is an extremely dangerous period for our nation.

With neocons dominating in Congress, and their regime media partners regurgitating their propaganda talking points about Russia, China, Iran and North Korea, these psychopaths are pushing as hard as possible for WW3. Whether it launches in the Ukraine, Gaza, the Taiwan Straits, or on the border of the two Koreas, their goal is global conflict and obscene profits for the military industrial complex who dole out the bribes. They know Trump is not a war monger and will attempt to broker peace deals in the Ukraine and in the Middle East. Therefore, they are recklessly flailing about trying to initiate a global firestorm before Trump assumes the presidency.

Beware of our “Gulf of Tonkin” false flag incident, which will be used as the basis to go to war with whichever “evil dictator” suits our purposes at that moment. No matter the outcome of this election, there will be blood – whether it be American blood on American soil or American blood on foreign soil, or both simultaneously. Fourth Turnings always accelerate towards a violent denouement, with an unanticipated number of deaths. Over 5% of the male population was killed in the American Civil War Fourth Turning, while 65 million people were killed during the WWII Fourth Turning. With the current level of killing technology, the potential number of casualties in a global conflict would be astronomical and inconceivable to average Americans.

I do not have any misconceptions that the election of Trump can undo the fiscal disaster heading our way. At best, he could delay the timeline for financial catastrophe and possibly keep WW3 from launching during his term.  I even wonder whether the selection of Kackling Kamala and Tampon Tim, the single worst presidential ticket in American history, has been purposely engineered by the Deep State in order to insure the economic and financial implosion happen during Trump’s reign.

Discrediting Trump, as they did by blaming Herbert Hoover for the Great Depression, when it was FDR’s policies that exacerbated the problem, might provide the Democrat Deep State Party with the narrative that Trump’s policies caused the collapse. There is absolute certainty the losers in this election will declare it stolen and refuse to acknowledge the winner. With over 75% of the population expecting post-election violence, there will be violence. Where it leads and what unintended consequences befall the nation are unknown but guaranteed to further split a divided nation.

The core elements of this Fourth Turning Crisis (debt, civic decay, global disorder) were the driving factors at the outset and continue to be the driving factors as we approach the climax of this winter of our discontent in the early 2030s. Between now and then will be the most perilous years of our lifetimes. Panic, chaos, financial disaster, authoritarian measures, civil war, global war, and a myriad of other epic challenges await. They will attempt to abscond with your wealth through their Great Taking plans.

They will attempt to implement their Great Reset though CBDCs, mass surveillance, and totalitarian enforcement of their new world order mandates. They will continue their depopulation efforts through war, vaccines, and starvation of the poor. They will attempt to put a final nail in the coffin of the U.S. Constitution, ushering in their one world government, controlled by billionaire oligarchs, and enforced by their military/police thugs. They are attempting to demoralize the masses, propagandizing them into believing only the government can save them, and forcing them to march into an electronic gulag with no escape routes.

All my ruminations about this Fourth Turning always come down to the potential outcomes laid out by Strauss and Howe twenty-seven years ago, before the turn of the century, and eleven years before the triggering of this Crisis. No matter which channels of distress the volcanic molten lava breaks free from, the next several years will be disconcerting, difficult, destructive, and deathly. There is no escape from the grim reality of what is coming. You cannot be prepped enough to withstand the bitter winter winds which will begin to blow with the outcome of this election.

Nothing will be the same after November 5. Will there ever be another election? Will our country still exist in its current form ten years from now? Strauss and Howe did not predict a specific outcome but provided four realistic possible outcomes. Three out of four are dire, including the end of humanity as a distinct possibility. After reading the recent best-selling book Nuclear War – A Scenario, you realize the world could end in a matter of hours if the weak-minded psychopaths leaders initiate an unstoppable progression of responses.

I know the linear thinking noobs who believe the world always progresses in a straight line will dismiss these warnings as just conspiracy theory doom porn. They have no interest in the cyclical nature of history and will continue to trust the government narrative, enforced by the regime media propaganda mouthpieces, and repeated by the NPCs who make up a major percentage of the population. That’s fine. They can keep their heads in the sand and believe the delusional drivel doled out by those in power, but Fourth Turnings are going to deluge them under a tsunami of reality, pain, death and destruction. That’s just the way it is.

People need to get their heads straight and understand the challenges that lie ahead. I don’t see any easy solutions, and I’m not selling a newsletter with the secret to surviving this Fourth Turning. I’ve been issuing warnings for over a decade, and I’ve seen nothing that has happened or is happening, to make me change my mind. Befriending like-minded people and summoning all the courage and fortitude you can muster is the best advice I can give. The best analogy for the next several years is: get prepared to slog many miles through a raging blizzard in sub-zero temperatures with less than 50% chance of survival. Good luck and Godspeed.

1. This Fourth Turning could mark the end of man. It could be an omnicidal Armageddon, destroying everything, leaving nothing. If mankind ever extinguishes itself, this will probably happen when its dominant civilization triggers a Fourth Turning that ends horribly. For this Fourth Turning to put an end to all this would require an extremely unlikely blend of social disaster, human malevolence, technological perfection and bad luck.
2. The Fourth Turning could mark the end of modernity. The Western saecular rhythm – which began in the mid-fifteenth century with the Renaissance – could come to an abrupt terminus. The seventh modern saeculum would be the last. This too could come from total war, terrible but not final. There could be a complete collapse of science, culture, politics, and society. Such a dire result would probably happen only when a dominant nation (like today’s America) lets a Fourth Turning ekpyrosis engulf the planet. But this outcome is well within the reach of foreseeable technology and malevolence.
3. The Fourth Turning could spare modernity but mark the end of our nation. It could close the book on the political constitution, popular culture, and moral standing that the word America has come to signify. The nation has endured for three saecula; Rome lasted twelve, the Soviet Union only one. Fourth Turnings are critical thresholds for national survival. Each of the last three American Crises produced moments of extreme danger: In the Revolution, the very birth of the republic hung by a thread in more than one battle. In the Civil War, the union barely survived a four-year slaughter that in its own time was regarded as the most lethal war in history. In World War II, the nation destroyed an enemy of democracy that for a time was winning; had the enemy won, America might have itself been destroyed. In all likelihood, the next Crisis will present the nation with a threat and a consequence on a similar scale.
4. Or the Fourth Turning could simply mark the end of the Millennial Saeculum. Mankind, modernity, and America would all persevere. Afterward, there would be a new mood, a new High, and a new saeculum. America would be reborn. But, reborn, it would not be the same.

The post Fourth Turning Election Igniting a Firestorm appeared first on LewRockwell.

Below is my column on Fox.com on the expanding boycott of the Washington Post by Democratic politicians, pundits, and members of the press. The reason? Because owner Jeff Bezos wants to stay politically neutral and leave the matter to the public. In an age of advocacy journalism, the return to neutrality is intolerable. The reaction is itself revealing. In a heated meeting this week at the Post, writers were apoplectic with attacks on Bezos and alarm over the very notion of remaining neutral in an election.  One declared to the group: “One thing that can’t happen in this country is for Trump to get another four years.”  The immediate and reflexive call of the left for boycotts and canceling campaigns is all too familiar to many of us.  The question is whether the targeting of Bezos could backfire in creating a major ally for the restoration of American journalism.

Here is the slightly altered column:

It is not every day that you go from being Obi-Wan Kenobi to Sheev Palpatine in twenty-four hours. However, Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos now has the distinction of having Luke (Mark Hamill) lead a boycott of his “democracy dies in darkness” newspaper as the daily of the darkside.

Figures like former Rep. Liz Cheney announced she was canceling her subscription as a boycott movement led a reported 200,000 to give up their subscriptions. Some like George Conway even seemed to target Bezos’ Amazon. It is a familiar pattern for many of us (on a smaller scale) who used to be associated with the left and faced cancel campaigns for questioning the orthodoxy in the media or academia.

Then something fascinating happened. Bezos stood his ground.

The left has made an art form of flash-mob politics, crushing opposition with the threat of economic or professional ruin. Most cave to the pressure, including business leaders like Meta’s Mark  Zuckerburg. That record came to a screeching halt when the unstoppable force of the left met the immovable object of Elon Musk. The left continues to oppose his government contracts and pressure his advertisers over his refusal to restore the prior censorship system at X, formerly Twitter.

Now, the left may be creating another defiant billionaire.  This week, Bezos penned an op-ed that doubled down on his decision not to endorse a presidential candidate now or in the future. Some of us have argued for newpapers to stop all political endorsements for decades.

The encouraging aspect of Bezos’s column was that he not only recognized the corrosive effect of endorsements on maintaining neutrality as a media organization, but he also recognized that the Post is facing plummeting revenues and readership due to its perceived bias and activism.

I used to write regularly for the Post, and I wrote in my new book about the decline of the newspaper as part of the “advocacy journalism” movement: “Our profession is now the least trusted of all. Something we are doing is clearly not working.”

Bezos previously brought in a publisher to save the Post from itself.

Washington Post publisher and CEO William Lewis promptly delivered a truth bomb in the middle of the newsroom by telling the staff, “Let’s not sugarcoat it…We are losing large amounts of money. Your audience has halved in recent years. People are not reading your stuff. Right? I can’t sugarcoat it anymore.”

The response was that the entire staff seemed to go into vapors, and many called for Lewis to be canned. Bezos stood with Lewis.

Now, resignations and recriminations are coming from reporters and columnists alike. In a public statement, Post columnists blasted the decision and said that while maybe endorsements should be ended, not now because everyone has to oppose Trump to save democracy and journalism. The statement produced some chuckles, given the signatories, including Phillip Bump and Jen Rubin, who have been repeatedly accused of pushing false stories and reckless rhetoric. (Rubin later denounced Bezos for his “Bulls**t explanation” and said that he was merely “bending a knee” to Trump.).

Bezos could do for the media what Musk did for free speech. He could create a bulwark against advocacy journalism in one of the premier newspapers in the world. Students in “J Schools” today are being told to abandon neutrality and objectivity since, as former New York Times writer (and now Howard University journalism professor) Nikole Hannah-Jones has explained, “all journalism is activism.”

After a series of interviews with over 75 media leaders,  Leonard Downie Jr., former Washington Post executive editor, and Andrew Heyward, former CBS News president, reaffirmed this shift. As Emilio Garcia-Ruiz, editor-in-chief at the San Francisco Chronicle, stated: “Objectivity has got to go.”

Few can stand up to this movement other than a Bezos or a Musk. However, the left has long created their own monsters by demanding absolute fealty or unleashing absolute cancel campaigns. Simply because Bezos wants his newspaper to restore neutrality, the left is calling for a boycott of not just the Post but all of his companies. That is precisely what they did with Musk.

A Bezos/Musk alliance would be truly a thing to behold. They could give the push for the restoration of free speech and the free press a real chance to create a beachhead to regain the ground that we have lost in the last two decades.

The left will accept nothing short of total capitulation and Bezos does not appear willing to pay that price. Instead, he could not just save the Post but American journalism from itself.

If so, all I can say is: Welcome to the fight, Mr. Bezos.

Reprinted with permission from JonathanTurley.org.

The post The Media Musk? Why the Cancel Campaign Targeting Jeff Bezos Could Backfire appeared first on LewRockwell.

A United Nations report, published on Monday, lays out in chilling detail the advances made by Israel in Gaza as it seeks to eradicate “the very existence of the Palestinian people in Palestine.” This genocidal project, the report ominously warns, “is now metastasizing to the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.”

The Nakba or “catastrophe,” which in 1948 saw Zionist militias drive 750,000 Palestinians from their homes, carry out more than 70 massacres and seize 78 percent of historic Palestine, has returned on steroids. It is the next and, perhaps, final chapter in “a long-term intentional, systematic, State-organized forced displacement and replacement of the Palestinians.”

Francesca Albanese, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, who issued the report, titled “Genocide as colonial erasure,” makes an urgent appeal to the international community to impose a full arms embargo and sanctions on Israel until the genocide of Palestinians is halted. She calls on Israel to accept a permanent ceasefire. She demands that Israel, as required by international law and U.N. resolutions, withdraw its military and colonists from Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.

At the very least, Israel, unchecked, should be formally recognized as an apartheid state and persistent violator of international law, Albanese states. The U.N. should reactivate the Special Committee Against Apartheid to address the situation in Palestine, and Israel’s membership in the U.N. should be suspended. Short of these interventions, Israel’s goal, Albanese warns, will likely come into fruition.

You can see my interview with Albanese here.

“This ongoing genocide is doubtlessly the consequence of the exceptional status and protracted impunity that has been afforded to Israel.” she writes. “Israel has systematically and flagrantly violated international law, including Security Council resolutions and [International Criminal Court] ICJ orders. This has emboldened the hubris of Israel and its defiance of international law. As the ICC Prosecutor has warned, ‘if we do not demonstrate our willingness to apply the law equally, if it is seen as applied selectively, we will be creating the conditions of its complete collapse. This is the true risk we face at this perilous moment.’”

The U.N. report comes amid an Israeli blockade of northern Gaza where over 400,000 Palestinians are enduring a starvation siege and constant airstrikes in an attempt to depopulate the north. Israeli forces have killed 1,250 Palestinians in the assault, launched on October 5, a medical source told Al Jazeera. Reports from northern Gaza are difficult to obtain as internet and phone services have been cut and the few journalists on the ground continue to be killed. Israel’s ground and aerial assaults are centered on Jabaliya, Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun. Civil defense units say they have been barred by Israeli forces from reaching the sites of recent strikes and their crews have been attacked.

Israel has ordered Palestinians to flee to designated “safe zones,” but once in these “safe zones” they have been attacked and ordered to move to new “safe zones.”

“Displaced people have been systematically chased down and targeted in shelters, including in United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) schools, 70 percent of which Israel has repeatedly attacked.”

In May, Israel’s Rafah invasion caused the displacement of nearly one million Palestinians, driven into southern Gaza because of Israeli evacuation orders, into “uninhabitable wastelands of rubble, sewage and decomposing bodies,” Albanese notes.

By August, 90 percent of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million Palestinians were displaced “under dire conditions,” according to the U.N.

The months of “relentless shunting of weakened humans from one unsafe area to another — fleeing bombs and bullets, with minimal chances of escape, amid loss, fear and grief, and with little access to shelter, clean water, food and healthcare — have inflicted incalculable harm, especially on children,” the report reads. “The movement of displaced Palestinians resembles the death marches of past genocides, and the Nakba. Forced displacement severs connection with the land, undermining food sovereignty and cultural belonging, and triggering further displacement. Communal bonds are broken, the social fabric shredded and reserves of resilience depleted. Systematic forced displacement contributes to ‘the destruction of the spirit, of the will to live, and of life itself.’”

The constant displacement — many Palestinians have been displaced nine or 10 times — from one part of Gaza to another is accompanied by calls from Israeli officials to “renew settlements in Gaza” and encourage the “voluntary transfer of all Gazan citizens” to other countries.

Israel has killed at least 43,163 people in Gaza and wounded 101,510 in Israeli attacks since October 7, 2023. An estimated 1,139 people were killed – some by Israeli forces – in Israel during the incursion by armed Palestinian fighters into Israel and more than 200 were taken captive. In Lebanon, at least 2,787 people have been killed and 12,772 wounded since the Israeli assault on Gaza began, with 77 killed in strikes across the country on Tuesday alone.

The report found evidence that Israel has carried out “more than 93 massacres.”

U.N. investigators concede the numbers of dead in Gaza are probably a vast undercount given that at least 10,000 people, including 4,000 children, are missing, probably buried under the rubble, where “the voices of those trapped and dying are often audible.” Other Palestinians, an “uncertain number,” have been seized by Israel forces and “disappeared.”

Israel has repeatedly attacked aid distribution sites, tent encampments, hospitals, schools and markets “through the indiscriminate use of aerial and sniper fire.” The report notes that “at least 13,000 children, including more than 700 babies, have been killed, many shot in the head and chest” while approximately “22,500 Palestinians have sustained life-changing injuries.”

“The disturbing frequency and callousness of the killing of people known to be civilians are ‘emblematic of the systematic nature’ of a destructive intent,” the report reads. “Six-year-old Hind Rajab, killed with 355 bullets after pleading for help for hours; the fatal mauling by dogs of Muhammed Bhar, who had Down’s Syndrome; the execution of Atta Ibrahim Al-Muqaid, an older deaf man, in his home, later bragged about by his killer and other soldiers on social media; the premature babies deliberately left to die a slow death and decompose in the intensive care unit at Al-Nasr Hospital; the elderly man, Bashir Hajji, killed en route to southern Gaza after appearing in a propaganda photograph of a ‘safe corridor;’ Abu al-Ola, the handcuffed hostage shot by a sniper after being sent into Nasser Hospital with evacuation orders. When the dust settles on Gaza, the true extent of the horror experienced by Palestinians will become known.”

The genocide has turned the landscape into a toxic wasteland.

“Nearly 40 million tons of debris, including unexploded ordnance and human remains, contaminate the ecosystem,” the report goes on. “More than 140 temporary waste sites and 340,000 tons of waste, untreated wastewater and sewage overflow contribute to the spread of diseases such as hepatitis A, respiratory infections, diarrhea and skin diseases. As Israeli leaders promised, Gaza has been made unfit for human life.”

In a further blow, the Israeli parliament on Monday approved a bill to ban UNRWA, a lifeline for Palestinians in Gaza, from operating on Israeli territory and areas under Israel’s control. The ban almost certainly ensures the collapse of aid distribution, already crippled, in Gaza.

As of Oct. 20,  233 UNRWA workers have been killed in Gaza since Oct. 7, 2023, making it the deadliest conflict for U.N. workers.

Israel has expanded its “buffer zone” along the Gaza perimeter to 16 percent of the territory, in the process leveling homes, apartment blocks and farms. It has pushed over 84 percent of the 2.3 million people in Gaza into  “a shrinking, unsafe ‘humanitarian zone’ covering 12.6 percent of a territory now reconfigured in preparation for annexation.” Satellite imagery indicates that the Israeli military has built roads and military bases in over 26 percent of Gaza, “suggesting the aim of a permanent presence.”

The blockade of food is accompanied by the destruction of water treatment plants, sewage systems, reservoirs, aid convoys, healthcare facilities and food distribution points — crowds of desperate people waiting for food “have been massacred” by Israeli soldiers.

Israel has all but obliterated medical facilities and services in Gaza. It has damaged 32 of 36 hospitals, with 20 hospitals and 70 of 119 primary healthcare centers incapacitated. By this August it had attacked healthcare facilities 492 times. Israel besieged Al-Shifa Hospital for the second time in March and April, killing more than 400 people and detaining 300, including doctors, patients, displaced persons and civil servants. It carried out a forced evacuation of all but 100 of 650 patients in Al-Aqsa hospital.

“In August,” the report reads, “entry permits for humanitarian organizations nearly halved. Access to water has been restricted to a quarter of pre-7 October levels. Approximately 93 per cent of the agricultural, forestry and fishing economies has been destroyed; 95 per cent of Palestinians face high levels of acute food insecurity, and deprivation for decades to come.”

“In recent months, 83 percent of food aid was prevented from entering Gaza, and the civilian police in Rafah were repeatedly targeted, impairing distribution,” the report notes. “At least 34 deaths from malnutrition were recorded by 14 September 2024.”

These measures “indicate an intent to destroy its population through starvation.”

Read the Whole Article

The post Genocidal Scorecard appeared first on LewRockwell.

NATO and Western leaders would prefer to fantasize about North Korea than to admit the truth of their “grave escalation” on Russia’s borders and reckless threat to world peace.

“It’s a grave escalation in this war and a threat to global peace,” said European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen this week.

It certainly is an alarming development that American, Canadian and Polish mercenaries were killed in action on Russian soil this week. The members of a recon and sabotage unit were eliminated by Russian forces as they crossed into Russia’s Bryansk region from Ukraine.

But von der Leyen and other Western leaders said nothing about that. They were hyperventilating instead over ropey claims about North Korean troops sent to Russia.

Credible Russian security footage showed the dead men lying beside supplies of heavy weapons, including Semtex explosives and anti-tank grenade launchers, “enough to blow up a small city,” it was reported. One of the casualties bore the tattoo of the U.S. 75th Ranger Regiment, an elite airborne special forces unit. It is unclear if the American soldier was a former member of the U.S. Army who had joined a private mercenary contractor or if he was redeployed from army ranks to fight in Ukraine against Russia.

Either way, the presence of military combatants from the United States and other NATO states on Russian territory is stark evidence that the NATO powers are directly involved in the Ukrainian proxy war against Russia.

Washington and Brussels have maintained the tenuous fiction that they “only” supply weapons to Ukraine but that NATO is not a participant in a conflict with nuclear-powered Russia.

That fiction has always been an insult to common sense. NATO countries have been actively involved in recruiting foreign mercenaries to go fight in Ukraine. Russia estimates that 15,000-18,000 militants have traveled to deploy with the Armed Forces of Ukraine since the conflict erupted in February 2022. Large numbers have been killed or taken prisoner.

Mercenaries have been identified from the U.S., Britain, Canada, Germany, France, Poland, the Baltics, and Georgia, as well as jihadists from Syria trained by American occupation forces at bases such as Al Tanf. It is estimated that foreign fighters from over 100 countries have ended up in Ukraine, aiding the NATO-sponsored Kiev regime.

Some of them are no doubt “soldiers of fortune” making a payday. Others would have to be NATO servicemen because the operation of technical weapons such as HIMARS artillery and so on must involve NATO handling expertise.

The desperate incursion into Russia’s Kursk region that began on August 6 was thought to have included many foreign mercenaries. One American private military contractor identified was the Forward Observation Group.

The Western media have largely ignored or obscured the reports of NATO connections to the ground fighting. Not surprising given the propaganda function of Western “news” media in what is information warfare.

Meanwhile, this week, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte announced concern that North Korean troops were fighting in the Kursk region. This was the first time that NATO had officially made the claim. For weeks there have been speculation and rumours about North Korean troops joining Russian forces.

The U.S. and European media ran headlines implying that the NATO claims were fact.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen stated: “North Korean soldiers are deployed to support Russia’s war of aggression. It’s a grave escalation in this war and a threat to global peace.”

Healthy skepticism is warranted. NATO’s Rutte did not provide any evidence to support his claim. He simply referred to his discussions with South Korean military intelligence officials.

The Ukrainian de facto dictator Vladimir Zelensky (he canceled elections months ago) has for months been pushing claims that thousands of North Korean troops are joining Russia’s ranks in Ukraine.

It seems significant that Zelensky met with South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol last year at the G7 summit in Hiroshima. It was their first meeting. Immediately after that encounter, South Korea pledged more military and financial aid to Ukraine. Zelensky’s wife also made suspicious trips to South Korea to attend “media events”.

President Yoon’s approval rating among the South Korean public has hit rock bottom over a range of grievances, including soaring cost of living. Yoon is a hawk on relations with North Korea. Pyongyang has slammed Seoul for deliberately antagonizing tensions.

Under President Yoon, South Korea has become a major weapons exporter, having sold an estimated $20 billion worth of arms over the last two years. South Korea is warning that it will increase military supplies to Ukraine on the back of claims that North Korean troops are being deployed in Russia.

There seems to be a lot of dramatizing about the purported North Korean contingency. The Kiev regime is amplifying claims as a way to get the United States and NATO more involved in the proxy war. The White House has expressed concerns about the claims of Pyongyang’s alleged participation. For President Yoon, Ukraine represents opportunities to boost his flagging poll numbers and economic gains from increased weapons exports.

The Western media are wishfully claiming that the deployment of North Korean troops is a sign of desperation by Russian President Vladimir Putin over supposed military losses in Ukraine.

That contention does not make sense. Russian forces are rapidly advancing to fully take control of the Donbass region in Ukraine. The NATO-backed side is losing territory at the fastest rate in more than two years of conflict. The idea that Russia needs North Korean military help is implausible, if not absurd.

Moscow signed a mutual defense pact with Pyongyang earlier this year. If North Korean soldiers are deployed to Russia, perhaps for training, that is entirely a legal and sovereign matter between consenting parties.

It is not Russia that is being “desperate”. The deployment of American and other NATO mercenaries to Ukraine is a real sign of desperation that the Kiev regime has run out of cannon fodder and is engaging in cross-border provocations.

Of course, NATO and Western leaders would prefer to fantasize about North Korea than to admit the truth of their “grave escalation” on Russia’s borders and reckless threat to world peace.

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

The post U.S. Mercenaries Killed in Russia, West Goes Hysterical on Dubious North Korea Claim appeared first on LewRockwell.

Zero Hedge, normally a reliable site, reports that the US Department of Defense and the NATO Secretary General claim that 10,000 to 12,000 North Korean soldiers have joined Russian forces in Kursk to help drive out the Ukrainian incursion.  

The Pentagon spokeswoman, Sabrina Singh, says that if these North Koreans do for Russia what French troops and NATO personnel are doing for Ukraine, the US will remove its ban on NATO firing missiles into Russia from Ukraine. 

As Putin has said, this would mean the US/NATO are at war with Russia, which, Putin has implied, means a nuclear response from Russia. Why Putin is OK with drones fired deep into Russia but not missiles is unclear.

What do we make of this report?  It strikes me as nonsensical and contrary to Putin’s abhorrence  of expanding the conflict.  It also strikes me as nonsensical that Russia cannot expel  Ukrainians from Kursk without North Korean reinforcements. 

There are two possible real explanations.  One is that Washington’s military/security complex wants to carry the war further into Russia, confident from Putin’s past non-response that Putin will do nothing about it, and the alleged Korean troops are an excuse.  The neoconservatives believe that Putin is nothing but hot air and that they can destabilize his regime by sending in missiles to kill Russians and destroy infrastructure all over Russia.  That Putin has been unwilling to use the available force that he has to end a conflict with a third world military with zero military technology of its own after three years suggests to the neoconservatives that Putin is so averse to war that he simply will not fight anything other than a limited military operation.  

The other explanation is that Putin is demonstrating to Washington that Russia, also, can bring in foreign resources to the conflict. The French send troops.  NATO sends “mercenaries.”  Washington provides weapons and people to operate them along with intelligence and targeting information.   If this is the explanation, assuming there actually are North Korean troops there, it shows that Putin has a defective understanding of the situation.

President Putin, you are at war.  You, Russia, China, and Iran are in the way of American hegemony.  American foreign policy has not repudiated the neoconservative doctrine that hegemony is the principle goal of US foreign policy. Therefore your support for peace negotiations is nonsensical.  Negotiations make no sense. They show you to be humanitarian but unrealistic.

Russia is in the way of Washington.  There can be no peace until Washington redefines its foreign policy goal, or Russia is broken up into its constituent parts.  While Putin speaks of peace negotiations with Ukraine, Washington is attempting to open a second front against Russia with a color revolution in Georgia.

Whatever peace deal Putin makes would have no more reality than the Minsk Agreement, Washington’s pledge not to move NATO one inch to the east, or any of the broken 20th century agreements.   Washington only respects force, and Russia has not demonstrated force.  Neither has China.  Neither has Iran.  The absence of countervailing power is building toward a major war.

The post The Ever Widening War appeared first on LewRockwell.

You know things are looking bad for Kameleon Harris when even the progressive Los Angeles Times declines to endorse her.

In fact, just last week, both Wayne Allyn Root and Paul Manafort compared this election to that of 1980, when Ronald Reagan trounced Jimmy Carter in a landslide victory. They predict that Trump is about to have a similar landslide. American voters didn’t like inflation under President Carter and they like it no better under Biden and Harris, among other things.

Manafort—who temporarily managed Trump’s 2016 campaign—made his prediction in an engaging interview with Tucker Carlson you can watch here.

Savvy political commentator and longtime radio show host Wayne Allyn Root recently wrote about the dramatic decline of Kamala’s polling numbers, along with her talent for alienating nearly everyone, and another article that brings the good news we’ve been waiting for: Trump’s a shoo-in for the presidency!

Of course, there’s one caveat: remember Biden’s statement in 2020, in a rare lucid moment: “We have put together, I think, the most extensive and inclusive voter fraud organization in the history of American politics.”

Yessir! They did just that. Will they do that again? They’ll try, but according to savvy oddsmakers and bettors, as we’ll see below, they’ll likely fail because Trump’s lead and popularity are just too great.

Besides, since Kalamity has done us the favor of alienating so many voters, where do you think they’re going to go? That’s right: to Donald Trump!

TRUMP’S BIGTOP MAGA TENT

Who would have predicted that RFK Jr., the Kennedy scion with a storied family legacy as a Democrat par excellence, would have cast his lot with Trump, let alone join him on the campaign trail?

Or how about Elon Musk, the darling of progressive Silicon Valley, jumping up and down as he climbs aboard the Trump Train? Not to mention erstwhile Democrat Tulsi Gabbard or the latest crossover progressive, Jimmy Dore.

MAJOR NEWSPAPERS, UNBURDENED BY THE PAST, TURN THE PAGE ON KAMALA

We recently learned that Jeff Bezos’ slimy WaPo took the same cowardly route as the L.A. Times, refusing to endorse either candidate—suddenly taking the moral high ground, doncha know. Even though the Washington Post and the L.A. Times both happily endorsed Biden—and therefore Harris as VP—in 2020.

This just in: USA Today, along with 200 other Gannett-owned newspapers, have joined the Abandon Kamala Brigade—euphemistically calling it a decision not to endorse any presidential candidate, but we know they weren’t about to endorse Trump.

Folks, the tide has turned!

A number of the biggest newspaper purveyors of slanderous lies about Trump see which way the winds are blowing and apparently don’t want to go to bat for the dead-on-arrival Harris campaign. They aren’t brave enough to endorse DJT, which would mean they’d have a lot of ‘splainin’ to do after all the years of demonizing him, but this is still a game-changer! They’ve just given Kameleon Harris a vote of no confidence!

It even shocked some of their top editors, who resigned in protest. How dare their progressive papers stop propagandizing for Obama’s second surrogate, the DEI Dunderhead, Ms. Harris?

Conversely, the true blue New York Times gave Harris a glowing endorsement—glowing with TDS, that is. Why does the “Gray Lady” think we should vote for Kalamity? Because…um…Orange Man BAD!

But after said Orange Man packed Madison Square Garden on Sunday night—with 75,000 more standing outside the venue—it seems the “Trump is Hitler” meme is not playing too well, even in the Big Apple.

Yes, there’s a candidate to fear—but it’s not Donald Trump. It’s the woman the Times calls “the only patriotic choice for president.” In a classic instance of satanic inversion, the Times has brazenly turned reality upside down, hoping to hoodwink the gullible.

Longtime NeverTrumper Tucker Carlson, who’s now, astonishingly, also on the Trump Train, recently described the seismic shift we’re experiencing this way during his dynamic speech at… wait for it… a Trump rally: “Dad’s home! [dramatic pause] And he’s pissed!”

So are the American people, as we survey the damage the catastrophic Biden/Harris regime has inflicted on our nation.

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The post The Tide Has Turned: Kamala Sinking Like a Lead Balloon; Trump Taking off Like a Rocket! appeared first on LewRockwell.

Kama-lama-ding-dong’s got the blues.  This was supposed to be her time.  This was supposed to be her rise.  She was supposed to make her-story.  Instead, Kam-Kam’s on her way to an Election Night drubbing, a week-long bender, and a few months of solitude in celebrity rehab.  She should take Hillary Clinton along, too.  A period of detox and sobriety could do both some good.  And the American people would benefit from their prolonged absence from television news.

America will one day have a female president.  She will be smart, articulate, prudent, and brave.  She will treat her campaign for office as a chance to prove to the American people that she has their best interest at heart.  She will be thoughtfully prepared to answer any and all questions.  Nobody will say it’s “her turn” or pretend she is more talented than she really is.  Nobody will hold her to a lower or higher standard because of her sex.  She will rise to the top because she earns it.  Americans will listen to her speeches, watch how she conducts her personal life, and conclude that she is the right leader for the time.  And when she is elected, no one will mumble, “She won only because she’s a woman.”  She will win on her own merits.

The Democrats have done women no favors by pushing the candidacies of Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris.  Neither has the necessary disposition for holding the highest office in the land.  Both are rash and unwise.  They are selfish and unjust.  They are intemperate and vengeful.  They are self-conscious and uncertain.  They are unkind, impatient, and self-serving.  They exude no faith in God, inspire no hope in others, and display no courage.  They are weak in mind and soul and encourage such weakness in others.  They are unfit to lead.  They are not remarkable women.

That Democrat party elites have forced Hillary and Kamala on the American people shows how little they actually think of women.  Hillary is an inveterate liar and shameless shrew whose chief accomplishment in life has been to obtain enough dirt on Washington insiders to stay out of prison.  She won a seat in the U.S. Senate because New Yorkers pitied her when it became clear that her president husband is a lecherous creep incapable of moderating his own depravities.  Giving Hillary a prestigious government job after Bill’s Oval Office debauchery with an intern barely old enough to drink legally was a Hallmark card kind of way for the American people to say, “Sorry your husband humiliated you while you were first lady.”  Had voters known that Hillary was already scheming for the top job and only pretending to be wounded by Slick Willy’s philandering, they would have been much less likely to overlook her own personal qualities.  And they certainly were not hoping that Hillary’s presidential ambitions would one day return both immoral Clintons back to the White House!

Yet that’s what the elitist Democrat party gave the American people.  You get Hillary!  She will break the glass ceiling and become the most powerful person in the country!  She will do what no woman has ever done before!  Because…well, she put up with Bill’s womanizing…and because Barack gave her the State Department gig as a consolation prize even after she outed him for being born in a foreign nation…and because…well, because it’s her turn, dammit!

Democrats expected Americans to forget that Hillary has always been an unlikable person with a notorious reputation for venality and vindictiveness.  They expected Americans to forget the scandal-plagued years of the Clinton White House, during which stories of Hillary throwing pieces of fine china at Bill Clinton’s head and screaming obscenities at Secret Service agents regularly leaked.  They expected Americans to forget Hillary’s involvement in the cover-up of the 9/11 Benghazi attack that left four Americans dead and which Hillary falsely blamed on a random internet video in order to preserve Obama’s 2012 election viability.  Democrats told Americans to ignore a lifetime of evidence that Hillary Clinton is a vile person and vote for her anyway…because she’s a woman.

Americans would have been better off if Bill and Hillary Clinton had been forced to serve time for selling state secrets to communist China.  Had they ever paid for their various crimes over the years, the Clintons’ hold over official Washington would have disappeared.  Hillary would never have been in a position to seek the presidency.  She and her accomplices would not have been able to commit fraud against the American people with the Russia collusion hoax.  The Democrats would not have spent the last twenty-five years pretending Hillary Clinton should be trusted with the reins of power.  Hillary would be in prison today instead of on television encouraging further acts of violence against President Trump.

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The post Women Deserve Better Than Hillary … or Kamala appeared first on LewRockwell.

By placing search/social media in the bucket of newspapers, radio and TV networks, perhaps we’ve obscured their true nature as “Digital Marketing Mechanisms.”

Language is a funny thing. If we don’t have a word for something, in some way it doesn’t exist. When we find a word in another language that describes this something, we borrow the word, for example schadenfreude from German and tsunami from Japanese.

If we use an existing word to describe something novel, we may mis-categorize it, in effect obscuring its true nature. For example, calling a whale a “fish” makes a certain kind of sense (an animal that lives in the sea), but it doesn’t capture the fact that the whale is a mammal, not a fish.

Which brings us to social media, and the possibility that it isn’t actually “media” at all, and we’ve obscured its true nature by mis-categorizing it as “media.” This distinction isn’t merely academic; it has significant real-world consequences.

Let’s begin with the “media” that existed when the the US Constitution was drafted and ratified. “Media” wasn’t a word in usage at the time, and what we understand today as “media” was understood as “the printed word” in newspapers, flyers, posters, periodicals and books. This is the origin of the Constitution’s focus on “free speech” and the “free press”: Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.

The two concepts are intimately bound. Free speech includes public gatherings and oratory as well as all printed words, but the printed word attracts most of the legal wrangling around the meaning and limits of “free speech,” a topic I explored in A Contrarian Clarification of “Free Speech”.

The point of my post was that the constitutional definition focused on the government’s restriction of free speech, not the private suppression or censorship of “free speech.” As I explained, a private enterprise such as a newspaper is not obligated to provide a platform for everyone who wishes to exercise their “right to free speech.” The newspaper can print whatever “letters to the editor” or “commentary” its owners / managers choose.

Now we have many other forms of media: radio, films, television and now the Internet, with its vast array of “printed” word, audio and video content.

In what we might call traditional media, the owners / managers publish / post content generated by their staff or other professional content creators: journalists, talk-show hosts, filmmakers, etc.

Social media is something different: all its content is created by its users. Yes, social media platforms have news feeds from traditional media, but this is a sideline to their core model, which is in effect a global message board that is open to any registered user. Unlike a Web1.0 message board / forum, whose audience was limited to the membership of the board / forum, social media platforms offer each user who posts content a potentially global audience.

The potential to build an audience of hundreds, thousands or even millions is addictively attractive, and so social media platforms (and their cousin, search) have billions of users.

This is novel. Is it “media” or is it something else? As I noted in my previous post, “free speech” is muddied when it comes to search and social media, as the government is limited by the Constitution in its capacity to restrict what’s posted on social media, but there are few (if any) Constitutional restrictions on what private enterprises can restrict on their media outlets / platforms / search results.

Next, let’s consider the revenues and data collection of traditional media and social media. Traditional media was limited to display ads in print, and the equivalent broadcast ads on radio and TV. These forms of media did not have the capacity/tools to collect reams of data on every user, and then use this data to sell adverts that target specific audiences–for example, surfers who have traveled to Southeast Asia to surf.

The resort on the beach in Indonesia will have far better results from adverts targeting surfers who have already demonstrated a willingness and ability to travel to Southeast Asia to surf compared to a broadcast advert that may theoretically reach a million people, of whom only a tiny percentage will be a target audience for the resort. The resort’s marketing will pay a hefty premium for this data-rich targeted advert capability.

Read the Whole Article

The post Is Social Media Actually ‘Media,’ Or Is It Something Else? appeared first on LewRockwell.

Democracy is vastly overrated.

The national elections this November 5 (Guy Fawkes Day, FWIW) have every chance of turning into a chaotic catastrophe. I’m not, therefore, going to discuss either candidate. Let’s instead talk about principles. That’s something few people discuss these days.

“Democracy” is not like the consensus of a few friends agreeing to see the same movie. Most often, it boils down to a kinder and gentler variety of mob rule, dressed in a coat and tie. The essence of positive values like personal liberty, prosperity, opportunity, fraternity, and equality have little to do with democracy. Those things exist because of free minds, free markets, and limited government.

Democracy, by contrast, focuses people’s thoughts on politics, not production, on the collective, not on their own lives. That’s not good.

Although democracy is just one way to structure a state, the concept has reached cult status, unassailable as political dogma. It is, as economist Joseph Schumpeter observed, “a surrogate faith for intellectuals deprived of religion.” Most of the founders of America were much more concerned with liberty than democracy. Tocqueville saw democracy and liberty as almost polar opposites.

Democracy can work when all concerned know one another, share the same values and goals, and abhor any form of coercion. It is the natural way of accomplishing things among small groups. But it doesn’t work well with a conglomeration of 350 million people, many of whom are voting in order to get something for nothing. Or at the expense of their neighbor.

Once the belief in democracy becomes a political ideology, it’s necessarily transformed into majority rule. And, at that point, the majority (or even a plurality, a minority, or an individual) can enforce their will on everyone else by claiming to represent the will of the people.

The only form of democracy that suits a free society is economic democracy in the laissez-faire form, where each person votes with his money for what he wants in the marketplace. Only then can every individual obtain what he wants without compromising the interests of any other person. That’s the polar opposite of the “economic democracy” of socialist pundits who have twisted the term to mean the political allocation of wealth.

But many terms in politics wind up with inverted meanings. “Liberal” is certainly one of them.

The Spectrum of Politics

The terms liberal (left) and conservative (right) define the conventional political spectrum; the terms are floating abstractions whose meanings change with every politician.

In the 19th century, a liberal was someone who believed in free speech, social mobility, limited government, and strict property rights. The term has since been appropriated by those who, although sometimes still believing in limited free speech, always support strong government and weak property rights and see everyone as a member of a class or group.

Conservatives tend to believe in strong government and nation­alism. Bismarck and Metternich were archetypical conservatives. Today’s conservatives are some­times seen as defenders of economic liberty and free markets, although that is mostly true only when those concepts coincide with the interests of big business and economic nationalism.

Bracketing political beliefs on an illogical scale, running only from left to right, results in constrained thinking. It is as if science were still attempting to define the elements with air, earth, water, and fire.

Politics is the theory and practice of government. It concerns itself with how force should be applied in controlling people and restricting their freedom. It should be analyzed on that basis. Since freedom is indivisible, it makes little sense to compartmentalize it; but there are two basic types of freedom: social and economic.

Until quite recently, liberals tended to allow social freedom but restrict economic freedom, while conservatives tended to restrict social freedom and allow economic freedom. An authoritarian (they now sometimes class them­selves as “middle-of-the-roaders”) is one who believes both types of freedom should be restricted.

But what do you call someone who believes in both types of freedom? Unfortunately, something without a name may get overlooked, or if the name is only known to a few, it may be ignored as unimportant. That may explain why so few people know they are libertarians.

A useful chart of the political spectrum would look like this:

A libertarian believes that individuals have a right to do anything that doesn’t impinge on the common-law rights of others, namely force or fraud. Libertarians are the human equivalent of the Gamma rat, which bears a little explanation.

Some years ago, scientists experimenting with rats categorized the vast major­ity of their subjects as Beta rats. These are basically followers who get the Alpha rats’ leftovers. The Alpha rats establish territories, claim the choicest mates, and generally lord it over the Betas. This pretty well corresponded with the way the researchers thought the world worked.

But they were surprised to find a third type of rat as well: the Gamma. This creature staked out a territory and chose the pick of the litter for a mate, like the Alpha, but didn’t attempt to dominate the Betas. A go-along-get-along rat. A libertarian rat, if you will.

My guess, mixed with a dollop of hope, is that as society becomes more repressive, more Gamma people will tune in to the problem and drop out as a solution. No, they won’t turn into middle-aged hippies practicing basket weaving and bead stringing in remote communes. Rather, they will structure their lives so that the government—which is to say, taxes, regulations, and inflation—is a non-factor. Suppose they gave a war and nobody came? Suppose they gave an election, and nobody voted, gave a tax, and nobody paid or imposed a regulation, and nobody obeyed it?

Libertarian beliefs have a strong following among Americans, but the Liber­tarian Party has never gained much prominence, possibly because the type of people who might support it have better things to do with their time than vote. And if they believe in voting, they tend to feel they are “wasting” their vote on someone who can’t win. But voting is itself another part of the problem.

None of the Above

At least 95% of incumbents in Congress typically retain office. That is a higher proportion than in the Su­preme Soviet of the defunct USSR and a lower turnover rate than in Britain’s hereditary House of Lords, where people lose their seats only by dying.

The political system in the United States has, like all systems which grow old and large, become moribund and corrupt.

The conventional wisdom holds that a decline in voter turnout is a sign of apathy. But it may also be a sign of a renaissance in personal responsibility. It could be people saying, “I won’t be fooled again, and I won’t lend power to them.”

Politics has always been a way of redistributing wealth from those who produce to those who are politically favored. As H.L. Mencken observed, every election amounts to no more than an advance auction on stolen goods, a process relatively few would support if they saw its true nature.

Protesters in the 1960s had plenty of flaws, but they were quite correct when they said, “If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.” If politics is the problem, what is the solution? I have an answer that may appeal to you.

The first step in solving the problem is to stop actively encouraging it.

Many Americans have intuitively recognized that government is the problem and have stopped voting. That tends to delegitimize the State, which deprives it of power.

There are at least five reasons many people do not vote:

1. Voting in a political election is unethical. The political process is one of institutionalized coercion and force. If you disapprove of those things, then you shouldn’t participate in them, even indirectly.
2. Voting compromises your privacy. It gets your name in another government computer database.
3. Voting, as well as registering, entails hanging around government offices and dealing with petty bureaucrats. Most people can find something more enjoyable or productive to do with their time.
4. Voting encourages politicians. A vote against one candidate—a major, and quite understandable, reason why many people vote—is always interpreted as a vote for his opponent. And even though you may be voting for the lesser of two evils, the lesser of two evils is still evil. It amounts to giving the candidate a tacit mandate to impose his will on society.
5. Your vote doesn’t count. Politicians like to say it counts because it is to their advantage to get everyone into a busybody mode. But, statistically, one vote in scores of millions makes no more difference than a single grain of sand on a beach. That’s entirely apart from the fact that officials manifestly do what they want, not what you want, once they are in office.

Some of these thoughts may impress you as vaguely “unpatriotic”; that is certainly not my intention. But, unfortunately, America isn’t the place it once was, either. The United States has evolved from the land of the free and the home of the brave to something more closely resembling the land of entitlements and the home of whining lawsuit filers.

The founding ideas of America, which were highly libertarian, have been thoroughly distorted. What passes for tradition today is something against which the Founding Fathers would have led a second revolution.

This sorry, scary state of affairs is one reason some people emphasize the importance of joining the process, “working within the system,” and “making your voice heard” to ensure that “the bad guys” don’t get in. They seem to think that increasing the number of voters will improve the quality of their choices.

This argument compels many sincere people, who otherwise wouldn’t dream of coercing their neighbors, to take part in the political process. But it only feeds power to people in politics and government, validating their existence and making them more powerful in the process.

Of course, everybody involved gets something out of it, psychologically if not monetarily. Politics gives people a sense of belonging to something bigger than themselves and so has special appeal for those who cannot find satisfaction within themselves.

We cluck in amazement at the enthusiasm shown at Hitler’s giant rallies but figure what goes on here today is different. Well, it’s never quite the same. But the mindless sloganeering, the cult of the personality, and the certainty of the masses that “their“ candidate will kiss their personal lives and make them better are identical.

And even if the favored candidate doesn’t help them, then at least he’ll keep others from getting too much. Politics is the institutionalization of envy, a vice which proclaims, “You’ve got something I want, and if I can’t get one, I’ll take yours. And if I can’t have yours, I’ll destroy it so you can’t have it either.“ Participating in politics is an act of ethical bankruptcy.

The key to getting “rubes“ (i.e., voters) to vote and “marks“ (i.e., contribu­tors) to give is to talk in generalities while sounding specific and looking sincere and thoughtful, yet decisive. Vapid, venal party hacks can be shaped, like Silly Putty, into salable candidates. People like to kid themselves that they are voting for either “the man“ or “the ideas.“ But few “ideas“ are more than slogans artfully packaged to push the right buttons. Voting for “the man” doesn’t help much either since these guys are more diligently programmed, posed, and rehearsed than any actor.

This is probably more true today than it’s ever been since elections are now won on television, and television is not a forum for expressing complex ideas and philosophies. It lends itself to slogans and glib people who look and talk like game show hosts. People with really “new ideas” wouldn’t dream of introducing them to politics because they know ideas can’t be explained in 60 seconds.

I’m not intimating, incidentally, that people disinvolve themselves from their communities, social groups, or other voluntary organizations; it’s just the opposite since those relationships are the lifeblood of society. But the political process—government itself—is not synonymous with society or even complementary to it. In fact, government is a dead hand on society.

Consider these things before you decide to vote.

The post Top Five Reasons Not To Vote appeared first on LewRockwell.

Over the last month, I have been diligently working to alert the public to the decades of evidence demonstrating the remarkable therapeutic potential of DMSO. In turn, quite a few of my colleagues have shared patients are now asking them about DMSO, and a few are shifting their practice to focus on it (e.g., Pierre Kory has done so and is already having numerous amazing results).

Likewise, I’ve now received hundreds (often unbelievable) reports of it it being life changing for people (which can be read here), and it now seems there is a temporary supply shortage of DMSO because so many people (and their friends) have been buying the brands I recommended.

For those who have not read the series, thus far I have made the case that:

•DMSO treats many circulatory and neurological disorders (e.g., Reynaud’s and varicose veins) and profoundly transforms the outcomes of some of the most challenging conditions in medicine (e.g., strokes and spinal cord injuries)—to the point millions would have been spared from a life of disability or paralysis had it been adopted (discussed here).

•DMSO is a miraculous therapy for chronic pain, wounds (e.g., burns or surgical incisions), injuries (e.g., sports injuries) and all types of chronic pain (discussed here).

•DMSO is highly effective for treating a variety of challenging autoimmune disorders (discussed here).

•DMSO is highly effective for treating a variety of connective tissue issues such as scars and adhesions, collagen contractures, scleroderma, FOP (discussed here).

•DMSO is able to treat a variety of protein misfolding diseases (e.g., amyloidosis) including genetic disorders (e.g., Down Syndrome) which are classically considered to untreatable (discussed here).

•DMSO is incredibly safe, having only a limited number of known and manageable side effects alongside no risk of toxicity or death (provided it is used appropriately).

•There are thousands of studies that demonstrate both the safety and efficacy of DMSO (making it one of the most researched medical substances in history).

In contrast, most of the previously mentioned diseases have lackluster conventional options available for treating them, many of which are highly toxic, kill tens of thousands of Americans each year and simultaneously cause far more non-fatal injuries. Worse still, many of them simply are “untreatable” and have no option for what can be done with them.

In short, if what I’ve said so far is true, the fact that DMSO has been kept from us is so egregious, it’s understandably hard to believe. It’s specifically for this reason, that despite the fact I knew it could help a lot of people I really wanted to help by broaching this subject sooner, I had to wait until I had built a decent degree of credibility here before I spent hundreds of hours to begin trying to put the case for DMSO together, then once I did so, do so in a very specific order. Nonetheless, I still do not think anyone would have believed me or had the courage to try DMSO had they not just witnessed almost every medical authority in the world collude to suppress safe and widely used drugs (e.g., ivermectin and hydroxycholoroquine) so that dangerous and ineffective (but incredibly lucrative) pharmaceutical products could monopolize the COVID-19 market.

In turn, while I still desperately want to cover DMSO’s utility for a variety of other challenging conditions (e.g., vision loss, tinnitus, cancer, chronic infections, shingles, and a wide range of skin disorders), I feel I first must touch upon another question—why did the FDA keep it from us, and how were they able to do it to something so much of the public and the scientific community demanded they legalize?

In my eyes, this story is critically important to understand because it:

•Helps us to understand the origins of the mentality within the FDA that to this day continues to ruin people’s lives by burying promising therapeutics that compete with the medical industrial complex. Despite my best efforts over the last two years (e.g., with ultraviolet blood irradiation, AIDS treatments, or GHB for insomnia), I’ve still only scratched the surface of this (e.g., what’s been done with cancer is really depressing).

•Provides a window into the remarkable dedication of a group of Americans which illustrates what our scientific apparatus could be capable of doing for us if it was not shackled by politics.

•Provides some context to why this recent statement from RFK Jr. is so, so, important:

Note: a significant portion of the first half of this article is an abridged version of the history detailed within DMSO the Persecuted Drug (internet archive link here)

The Discovery of DMSO

The simple compound dimethyl sulfoxide can be found throughout nature, and is present in many fruits and vegetables. It was first synthesized by Russian chemist Alexander Zaytsev in 1866. It was essentially forgotten until the 1940s, when industrial chemists, looking for more solvents were curious if this waste product from producing paper could be used instead of being thrown away.

Note: this chronology has been compared to how fluoride (an industrial waste product from aluminum and phosphate production) entered the water supply. The critical difference was that disposing of fluoride (due to its toxic and corrosive nature) was a major expense and liability for these industries (e.g., it regularly severely injured workers). As such, the desire to get it into the water supply was done to absolve the industries from their liability (e.g., “How could it have injured a worker if it’s safe enough to put in the drinking water”). Initially, due to its evident toxicity, the government opposed this. Still, due to fluoride being necessary to produce original atomic bombs and destructive leaks of it creating immense damage to the surrounding areas, for national security purposes, the government relented (all of which is detailed here). In contrast, DMSO was simply looked at as a potential source of revenue that was being erroneously thrown away.

In the 1950s, Crown Zellerbach, a large American paper manufacturing company, began producing DMSO and soon became the world’s largest producer. Curious if uses existed for DMSO besides being a highly effective solvent, Zellerbach assigned Chemist Robert J. Herschler to research it and other tree derived chemicals. Through a lab accident, he discovered that DMSO mixed with a dye would bring the dye into the skin, and before long verified it could be used to bring antibiotics and antifungals into plants.

Eager to share this discovery in 1961, he connected Stanley Jacob MD, a renowned surgeon with dozens of publications (in hours, he could produce first-rate papers that took others months to write) and professional memberships who taught at Oregon Health Sciences University (located across the river for Herschler). Jacob (whose brief biography can be read here), was searching for ways to preserve organs and had recently learned of DMSO’s ability to function as an anti-freeze agent. After Herschler shared DMSO’s unusual property, Jacob decided to test it by mixing it with iodine, noticed he could taste it, and realized that not only did DMSO bring things into the skin but also spread them throughout the body.

As this delivery method revolutionized pharmacology, Jacob immediately shifted his focus to it, and the next day topically applied it to his lab staff (the 1960s were a different time), many of whom then developed its characteristic odor. As DMSO dried the skin and wet skin often causes burns to become infected, he decided to test it on rats that were burned and saw a potential therapeutic effect, which then inspired Herschler to try it after a subsequent significant chemical burn. Since it gave immediate relief, Herschler then tried it on a sprained ankle in a lab assistant (where it also gave immediate relief) and then for an arthritic thumb (where it also gave immediate relief).

This early data convinced Jacob to put all his focus into DMSO (which was possible since his intellectual capacity allowed him to rapidly produce the high quality lectures required for his actual job). In turn, after many sleepless nights, and many tests on himself, Jacob became certain DMSO would revolutionize medicine. In turn, he began carrying DMSO on him to give to anyone in need (the 1960s were a different time), and quickly had numerous miraculous cures (e.g., headaches, sports injuries, cold sores, sinusitis, crippling rheumatoid arthritis), Simultaneously he also realized making a standardized dose was almost impossible because people’s response to it was so variable and the timing often was critical (e.g., it only prevented adhesions in rats if given before surgery but not after).

Once Jacob had exhausted his personal funds on DMSO (e.g., he often treated people for free) another remarkable serendipity happened—rather than shoot his research down (as physicians at the medical school had predictably already begun complaining about Jacob doing something unorthodox), his dean decided to approve funding for Jacob’s research (which almost any other dean then and particularly now would have rejected).

Note: it’s hard to describe how extraordinary this confluence of events was. Had a single piece come together like it did, we likely would have never heard of DMSO.

The Thalidomide Era

As Herschler now puts it, “If there is such a thing as a Murphy’s law of new drug development, DMSO proves it. Everything that could go wrong did go wrong.”

Discovered in 1952, thalidomide began being marketed in 1957 (initially over the counter) by a German company (Chemie Grünenthal) as a miracle cure for morning sickness, insomnia, colds, and headaches, and before long 14 pharmaceutical companies were selling it in 46 countries under at least 37 trade names. Reports soon emerged of infants born with defects, in 1959 it was observed to cause peripheral neuritis, and at the end of 1961, it was taken off the German market in November and then globally in December after an Australian Obstetrician was able to get a letter published in the Lancet about it causing birth defects (after having unsuccessfully tried to sound the alarm since June of 1961).
Note: during its brief availability in Germany, thalidomide was estimated to have caused over 10,000 birth defects and the deaths of approximately 2,000 children.

Thalidomide’s adoption in America was slower since the initial company Grünenthal approached (GSK’s predecessor) found it lacked any efficacy in their preliminary trials and hence didn’t want to market it. By the time a second company began testing it across America at the end of 1960, concerns existed about thalidomide. This led the FDA reviewer assigned to thalidomide, Frances Oldham Kelsey, to repeatedly stall its approval (despite it already being approved in Canada). As a result, roughly American 20,000 women received it during the extended clinical trials (with many injuries being observed throughout that period by the FDA). Still, it was kept away from the general population (excluding doctors who gave it to their personal circle because the manufacturer had not told them it was still experimental).

Kelsey’s actions resulted in only 17 American birth defects occurring (from the preliminary testing done across America) and earned her a presidential medal from Kennedy on August 7, 1962. More importantly, it got Congress to unanimously pass the 1962 Kefauver–Harris Amendment to address the concerns about the FDA’s inability to block dangerous drugs (Kelsey had instead stalled thalidomide’s approval) by requiring drug manufacturers to prove their drugs were “safe and effective” and accurately disclose each drug’s side effects.

While well intentioned and necessary (e.g., it gave the Secretary of Health and Human Services clear authority to deny the approval of any drug which had not adequately proven its safety), the act also allowed approval to be denied (or for it to be pulled from the market) if:

There is a lack of substantial evidence that the drug will have the effect it purports or is represented to have under the conditions of use prescribed, recommended, or suggested in the proposed labeling thereof.

The term ‘substantial evidence’ means evidence consisting of adequate and well-controlled investigations, including clinical investigations, by experts qualified by scientific training and experience to evaluate the effectiveness of the drug involved, on the basis of which it could fairly and responsibly be concluded by such experts that the drug will have the effect it purports or is represented to have under the conditions of use prescribed, recommended, or suggested in the labeling or proposed labeling thereof.”

All of this led to a few major problems.

First, Kelsey’s actions dramatically increased the prestige of the FDA, both emboldening the agency and simultaneously leading to many other jealous officials wishing to get the recognition she did for stopping the next thalidomide (which DMSO conveniently fit the profile of). Because of this, the pace of new drugs entering the market dramatically slowed, and ever since then, a consistent complaint of Congress has been the FDA blocking medical therapies the public needs.

Secondly, it galvanized the FDA into rapidly establishing its authority and creating numerous divisions to “police” questionable drugs without the organization being structured to effectively or appropriately administer that authority (which led to perpetual mismanagement, chaos, and frequent abuse of that power).

Third, the FDA chose to define “well-controlled” as a double-blind trial (to the point they clung to this specific argument in 1980 when Congress and the Senate grilled them over their decision to stonewall DMSO).

This was a huge issue because:

•I believe it was what enshrined the scientific supremacy of randomized controlled trials (RCTs).

•RCTs are extremely expensive. As such, most can only be done by the pharmaceutical industry, which due to their cost, consistently frames them (presented in favorable ways, ignoring or adjusting harmful data) to protect the company’s investment (which leads to RCTs frequently being highly inaccurate). This in turn, rapidly increased the cost of drug approval, effectively turning drug approval into a pay-to-play type situation (e.g., currently, the cost to bring a new drug to market is estimated to be between 0.98–4.54 billion dollars, which makes it impossible for any unpatentable product ever to get FDA approval).

•RCT fundamentalism is highly misguided as smaller observational unblinded trials will typically yield the same results as large (non-corrupt) RCTs (proven by this 2014 Cochrane Review), especially if the effect of a drug is significant (rather than a tiny one that can only be detected in a large controlled study and hence is likely inconsequential).

•It was impossible to test DMSO in a blinded fashion because it immediately produced a significant benefit everyone (including the patient) could see; it irritated the skin (to some extent this could be worked around), and it had a characteristic odor. Furthermore, since it was absorbed systemically, it could not be tested on only one side of the body (which would then be compared to the other side, that got a placebo). Additionally, the dose of DMSO patients required greatly varied (and hence made it difficult to standardize trials).

Note: somewhat analogously, I’ve had numerous frustrated patients ask me to find them a seed-oil free infant formula. I eventually discovered that the Infant Formula Act of 1980 (which was virtually unanimously passed by Congress in response to more than 100 infants becoming seriously ill from nutritionally inadequate soybean oil-based formulas), due to outdated science from the 1970s (specifically these 1976 AAP recommendations which did not exist in the AAP’s 1967 recommendations), required infant formulas to have at least 2.7% of its calories (300mg per 100 Kcal) comes from linoleic acid (the problematic ingredient in seed oils). Beyond this making it illegal to sell infant formula without them, I and many others believe this is a root cause of the childhood obesity epidemic in America as seed oils impair mitochondrial metabolism and cause you to gain weight (e.g., this systematic review shows infant formulas cause excessive and rapid weight gain).

In short, while it was necessary to give the FDA the power to block dangerous drugs, giving in the ability to block “ineffective” drugs was a huge issue as “ineffective” is immensely subjective and often becomes a completely unreachable standard.

The ABC-TV program “Good Morning America”, on February 5, 1981, where David Hartman interviewed Robert Herschler, helps put all of this into context:.

Herschler: … the toxicity of DMSO is very low. It’s not true that it is dangerous. Compared to aspirin, DMSO is a much safer drug. People are killed taking aspirin; no one has ever been killed taking DMSO.

Hartman: If this is the case and you are so sold on it, why has the FDA not approved its use?”

Hershler: In 1964, the FDA complained bitterly about DMSO because it was both a commercial solvent and a drug. They could not control it. Beyond that, we had a meeting with Francis Kelsey of the FDA where she raised her hands and said, ‘We simply cannot cope with a product like DMSO. We envision hundreds of applications [NDA’s] coming in, and we simply don’t have a budget or staff.’

From then on they took a hard line against DMSO . . . There are many controlled studies that prove it is both effective and safe. And the FDA knows it! The FDA has at least 100,000 clinical [patient reports], and if they statistically evaluate them, and they have, and if they try to prove it is not safe and effective, they simply cannot do it. They have been using this gambit of ‘double-blind’—being able to use the ‘double-blind’ as the reason for rejecting it.

Note: I believe one of the strongest proofs that the thalidomide disaster was nothing more than a tool for the FDA was how quickly they abandoned the fundamental foundational principle it had enshrined and which the FDA’s authority originated from (do not give pregnant women experimental medications) during COVID-19—which has sadly created entirely predictable fertility impairments that precisely mirrored what had been done with the HPV vaccines.

Read the Whole Article

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Democracy is a system of government under which the people are automatically liable for whatever the government does to them. Many of the most deadly errors of contemporary political thinking stem from the notion that in a democracy the government is the people, so there is scant reason to worry about protecting citizens from the government.

Throughout western history, tyrants and would-be tyrants have sought to browbeat the citizens into obedience by telling them that they are only obeying themselves — regardless of how much the citizens disagree with the government’s edicts. Thomas Hobbes explained in 1652:

Because every subject is by this institution the author of all the actions, and judgments of the sovereign instituted; it follows, that whatsoever he doth, it can be no injury to any of his subjects; nor ought he to be by any of them accused of injustice. But by this Institution of a commonwealth, every particular man is author of all the sovereign doth; and consequently he that complaineth of injury from his sovereign, complained of that whereof he himself is author.

Hobbes sought civil peace by imposing an almost unlimited duty of submission via the sham that people are responsible for whatever government does to them: thus, government can never do the people wrong: thus, people never have a right to resist the government. Unfortunately, Hobbes’s canard has become standard equipment in the rhetorical armory of many rulers of democratic states.

A long history of abuses

In 1798, President John Adams pushed through Congress the Alien and Sedition Acts, which empowered Adams to suppress free speech and imprison without trial any critic of the federal government. When the citizens of Westmoreland County, Virginia, petitioned Adams in 1798 complaining of the acts, President Adams responded by denouncing the citizens: “The declaration that Our People are hostile to a government made by themselves, for themselves, and conducted by themselves, is an insult.” Adams’s response to the people of Westmoreland County — few of whom had voted for Adams — was the classic trick of a would-be democratic tyrant. Virginia had been unwilling to ratify the Constitution until a Bill of Rights had been added to safeguard free speech, among other rights.

Yet even though Adams openly suppressed free speech, he still claimed a right to not only the citizen’s abject obedience but also a right to be above criticism for suppressing their freedom. Kentucky and Virginia enacted resolutions declaring the sedition act null and void; the Kentucky resolution observed that the doctrine “that the general government is the exclusive judge of the extent of the powers delegated to it [is] nothing short of despotism; since the discretion of those who administer the government, and not the Constitution, would be the measure of their powers.”

President Theodore Roosevelt, speaking in Asheville, North Carolina, on September 9, 1902, proclaimed: “The government is us; we are the government, you and I.” Yet, at the time, Roosevelt was using the American military to brutally crush a rebellion in the Philippines, which had been conquered by the United States and declared an American territory a few years before. Roosevelt explained that the “constitution does not follow the flag” — the American army therefore had no duty to respect the rights of the Filipino people.

President Woodrow Wilson declared in 1919: “In the last analysis, my fellow countrymen, as we in America would be the first to claim, a people are responsible for the acts of their government.” Wilson had campaigned for reelection three years earlier bragging that he had kept the country out of World War I; then, shortly after he started his second term, he submitted to Congress a declaration of war against Germany. Were the people responsible for President Wilson’s 1916 peace promises or his 1917 declaration of war? How can they be responsible for both? Wilson campaigned for the presidency in 1912 as a progressive. Shortly after he took office, mass firings of black federal employees occurred. The chief federal revenue collector in Georgia announced: “There are no Government positions for Negroes in the South. A Negro’s place is in the cornfield.” How were voters who opposed Jim Crow laws responsible for Wilson’s unexpected racist purge? And how could people have been responsible for Wilson’s pervasive suppression of civil liberties — as well as his pious promises to respect the Constitution? As Harvard professor Irving Babbitt observed in 1924, “Wilson, in the pursuit of his scheme for world service, was led to make light of the constitutional checks on his authority and to reach out almost automatically for unlimited power.”

President Franklin Roosevelt declared in 1938, “Let us never forget that government is ourselves and not an alien power over us. The ultimate rulers of our democracy are not a President and senators and congressmen and government officials, but the voters of this country.” When Roosevelt first ran for the presidency in 1932, he promised to balance the federal budget — and then later touted his endless deficit spending as a panacea for all the nation’s economic woes. When Roosevelt ran for reelection in 1936, he never mentioned his plan (revealed in early 1937) to pack the nation’s highest court with new appointees to rubber-stamp his decrees. Yet, because he won in 1936, he effectively implied that the citizens were somehow bound to accept all of his power grabs as if they themselves had willed them. Likewise, were citizens responsible for FDR’s 1940 reelection campaign boasts about keeping America out of World War Two — or were they to blame of his secret machinations to drag the United States into that war the following year?

President Lyndon Johnson declared on October 28, 1964: “Government is not an enemy of the people. Government is the people themselves.” Yet it wasn’t “the people” of Arkansas or Oklahoma who had lied about the Gulf of Tonkin incident to create a pretext to commence bombing a foreign nation. It wasn’t “the people” of Montana or Vermont who deceived the nation about the Vietnam War strategy and pointlessly sent tens of thousands of Americans to their death. It wasn’t “the people” of Georgia or Kentucky who launched covert FBI COINTELPRO operations to incite street warfare between violent groups, to get people fired, to portray innocent people as government informants, to destroy activists’ marriages, and to cripple or destroy left-wing, black, and anti-war organizations.

President Bill Clinton declared on October 7, 1996, “The Government is just the people, acting together — just the people acting together.” But was it “the people” who authorized the FBI to send in tanks with toxic gas to demolish the Branch Davidians’ home in 1993? Was it “the people” who invited wealthy businessmen to give $50,000 to the Democratic National Committee to come to White House coffee klatches? Was it “the people” who approved a plan to rent out the Lincoln bedroom for $100,000 a night? Was it “the people” who ordered FBI agents to illegally deliver over 900 confidential files on Republicans to the White House? Was it “the people” who ordered 71 days of bombing of Serbia because its government failed to kowtow to U.S. government demands?

On March 11, 2021, President Joe Biden proclaimed, “We need to remember the government isn’t some foreign force in a distant capital. No, it’s us, all of us, we the people.” So everyone is personally to blame for Biden’s deficit spending and the Federal Reserve deluge of new money that destroyed 20 percent of the value of the dollar? Is every American to blame for the Disinformation Governance Board and other censorship schemes concocted to suppress any criticism of the Biden regime? Is each citizen to blame for Biden’s illegal mandate dictating that more than 80 million American adults working for private companies must get injected with the COVID vaccine — despite the federal coverup of the vaccine’s harmful side effects? (The Supreme Court smacked down that Biden decree.) Were all Americans to blame for Biden’s FBI targeting conservative Catholics who preferred to hear the Latin-language version of the mass, claiming they were potentially violent extremists? Were all citizens to blame for federal agencies’ illegally surveilling hundreds of thousands of Americans in recent years — according to the government’s own confession?

“We” are not “the government”

The notion that the people is the government is political infantilism — an agreement to pretend that the citizens’ wishes animate each restriction or exaction inflicted upon him. This doctrine essentially makes masochism the driving force of political life — assuming that if government is beating the citizens, they must want to be beaten, and thus they have no right to complain.

Despots seek to make people think that they are ruling themselves when the government seeks to engineer obedience to its dictates. But is a mother governing herself when she is arrested for the crime of possessing a pistol in her own home in some District of Columbia neighborhood where police have long since ceased providing minimum safety? Is the citizen governing himself when he is arrested for converting a garage into a playroom in for his children without a permit from the local zoning authority? The fact that a majority — or, more likely, a majority of the minority who bothered to vote — may have sanctioned such laws and government powers has nothing to do with the self-government by each citizen of his own life.

If the people are the government, then should some specific private citizen be held personably blameworthy for each incomprehensible paragraph of a Federal Register notice, for each abusive IRS tax audit, and for each property seizure from an innocent owner by a zealous Justice Department attorney seeking “good numbers” for his district? The notion that “you are the government” is simply a way to shift the guilt for every crime by the government onto every victim of government. This makes as little sense as holding each “widow and orphan” owner of a single share of a company’s stock fully liable for crimes secretly committed by the corporate management — and assuming that the actual corporate directors were blameless since they were merely following the unspoken will of the individual shareholders.

If the citizen is the government, why is there a stark distinction in federal law between the class of private citizen and government employee — with far harsher penalties for any person who shoves, threatens, or kills a federal employee than a private citizen? Why is it perfectly acceptable and routine procedure for government employees to lie to citizens but a federal crime for citizens to lie to the government?

The notion that “the people are the government” is one of the biggest slanders that the average citizen will endure in his lifetime. To presume that any specific private citizen must be held responsible for all the cabals and conspiracies engaged in by all the bureaucrats and politicians is absurd. This is the political version of the doctrine of original sin; it assumes that a person is born politically damned with the weight of all of the past and future sins of his government upon his head.

A democratic government will still be a government — which is more important than it being a democracy. Freedom consists of more than a mere choice of political masters. Once it becomes stark that “the people” cannot control Big Government, then the democratic sheen of Leviathan is gone and all that is left is … Leviathan. The most important issue is not whether the government rules in the name of the majority but how the government rules — whether its power is limited or unlimited. The more power government acquires, the more likely democracy will self-destruct.

This article was originally published in the October 2024 issue of Future of Freedom.

The post The Most Dangerous Democratic Delusion appeared first on LewRockwell.

Israel teeters at the edge: it will not be able to impose itself over the plurality of resistance that it faces.

Centuries ago a boy was born. His parents understood that he had a remarkable fate before him which reflected the Will of the Great Shaman. His hair was light, his eyes were light green, and his skin was pale. It seemed obvious that he enjoyed divine favour. But then, one day, the boy’s father – a figure of standing – was killed. The family thus became unprotected, and nomads smashed the remains of his home. They made him a slave. They put wooden stocks over his legs so that he could not walk. He lived like a dog, and grew up like a dog, chained outside, eating rotten food, freezing on winter nights, wishing for death.

Death however spared him. When finally he did escape, his psyche was tortured. The voices inside his head; the screams of his father; the scorching fire; his mother being tortured and killed; All whispered, just destroy everything that is in your way, and these memories will be purged.

But they weren’t. His army killed millions. Nonetheless, he founded a nation of more than one million vassals. He expurgated all concepts of tribal loyalty and old identities for obedience to his State.

He did all this with a tiny army; no more than 100,000. His name comes down to us today as Genghis Khan.

What has this to do with today’s war in the Middle East? Well, firstly we have moved – in this American-facilitated Israeli war – to ‘war without limits’. The rules of war have been evicted; human rights have been discarded; international law has been shed; and the UN Charter is no more. And, as it expands, anything goes – children in Gaza decapitated by bombs, Gaza’s hospitals bombed, and the continuous displacement and massacre of civilians.

The roots to this shift are complex. In part, they spring from the western postmodern zeitgeist. But also they reflect the same dilemma that faced a tormented, twisted Genghis Khan: How would he control the world without a big army; in fact, with only a tiny one.

“Everything that’s happened today was planned out just 50 years ago – back in 1974 and 1973”. I want to describe how the whole strategy that led to the United States today, not wanting peace, but wanting Israel to take over the whole Near East took shape gradually”, Professor Hudson has explained (here and here).

Hudson relates:

“I met many [neocons] at the Hudson Institute, where [I] had worked for five years in the mid ‘70s; some of them, or their fathers, were Trotskyists. They picked up Trotsky’s idea of permanent revolution. That is, an unfolding revolution – whereas Trotsky said what began in Soviet Russia was going to spread around the world: The neocons adapted this and said, No, the permanent Revolution is the American Empire. It’s going to expand, and expand, and nothing can stop us – to the entire world”.

In their ambition, they were another Genghis Khan: the U.S., lacking the military means, would seize the Middle East using Israel as its proxy on the one hand, and Saudi-facilitated Sunni fundamentalism on the other. The Hudson Institute, under Herman Khan, persuaded the dominant political figure Scoop Jackson that Zionism could be America’s battering ram in the Middle East. That was in the early 1970s. By 1996, Scoop Jackson’s former Senate aides had crafted –specifically for Netanyahu – its Clean Break Strategy.

Explicitly, it was the blueprint for ‘a new Middle East’. It argued that the Israel proxy would be served best by regime change in surrounding countries. In March 2003, Patrick J. Buchanan, referring to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, wrote, “Their [Clean Break] plan urged Israel to [pursue regime change through] ‘the principle of preemption’”.

Professor Michael Hudson points out the design’s fatal flaw: The Vietnam War had shown that any attempted conscription by western democracies was not viable. Lyndon Johnson in 1968 had to withdraw from running for election precisely because everywhere he’d go, there would be nonstop stop-the-war demonstrations.

So what then was left to the United States and Israel? Well, what is available – if your objective is to found Greater Israel – is ‘war without limits’ [i.e positively seeking huge collateral deaths] – a war without limits such as that which Genghis Khan practised: the total annihilation of other peoples and the suppression of their separate identities. A single power – the Hobbesian ‘Leviathan’ – achieved through disarming everyone. The ultimate aim being to suppress any plurality of wills.

The flaw is that the Israelis, as the U.S. proxy force, have limited forces, both by numbers (it is a small army, dependent on reservists), and by being constrained by its ranks being drawn from a westernised, postmodern culture.

“Postmodern thinking has swept God, Nature, and Reason away. The individual replaces everything. Facts are only what he wants them to be … There are only fictions left—but these fictions are also all of reality. Western society thus begins to look very much like an insane asylum. Of course, this is only a collective paranoia: one bomb falls somewhere in our country, and very real realities, which mock our discourses, are destroyed and this philosophy collapses”, warns Dr Henri Hude.

This statement, directed more broadly at the West, however summarizes Israel exactly. The latter tries to substitute the Talmud as the epistemological basis of its society, yet young Israel is largely the same TikTok generation of individualists as in the West, whose ‘facts’ come only from what the government tells them to be. And as the bombs fall on Tel Aviv, the country sinks into collective paranoia and events mock the state panglossian discourses.

At bottom, postmodernism places the highest priority on Life and individual freedom. The capacity to adapt to the brutalities of this style of limitless war therefore hangs very much on culture. To successfully adapt to the horror of death and destruction, one must accept the very idea of sacrifice and suffering – the spilling of blood to feed the earth towards new growth.

Israel does not have a culture of sacrifice, but its adversaries do. If culture is unable to offer a meaning to the notion of sacrifice and loss, it does not put man in a position to face the tragedy of his condition.

The war without limits ideology – purely theoretically – could be a thinkable solution: Ron Dermer, a former Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. and confidant of Netanyahu, was asked a few months earlier what he saw as the solution to the Palestinian conflict. He replied that both the West Bank and Gaza must be totally dis-armed – “yes”. Yet more important than disarmament, Dermer said, was the absolute necessity that all Palestinians be “de-radicalised”. (This has now been extended to the whole region that must be ‘de-radicalised’).

When asked to expand, Dermer pointed approvingly to the outcome of WW2: The Germans were defeated, but more plainly the Japanese were fully ‘de-radicalised’ at the end of the war.

‘De-radicalisation’ therefore means installing a Leviathan-esque “despotism that reduces the majority to total powerlessness, including spiritual, intellectual and moral powerlessness. The total Leviathan is a unique, absolute and unlimited power, spiritual and temporal, over other humans”, as Dr Henri Hude has observed.

Thus, as postmodern culture sinks into the inhuman and favours the Leviathan – with the total annihilation of other peoples and the suppression of their separate identities – the question arises, could ‘war without limits’ work? Could such terror impose on the Middle East an unconditional surrender “that would allow it to change profoundly, militarily, politically and culturally, and to transform as a satellite within Pax Americana?”

Hude goes on to note, “The conditions demanded of Japan by the USA were exorbitant, and it was to be expected that Japan would put up a tremendous resistance. The atrocious use of the bomb broke this resistance”.

The clear response that Dr Hude gives in his book Philosophie de la Guerre is that war without limits cannot be the solution, because it cannot deliver long-lasting ‘deterrence’ or de-radicalisation. “On the contrary, it is the most certain cause of war. Ceasing to be rational, despising opponents who are more rational than it is, arousing opponents who are even less rational than it is. The Leviathan will fall; and even before its fall, no security is assured”.

The latter gives two insights as to how Hude’s analysis might apply to today’s wars: One is that whenever postmodern culture capsizes into ‘necessary’ violence (which it hyper-culpabilises, since it prioritises life, rather than suffering), it can only justify the violence through evoking a more than absolute evil – the demonized enemy.

Secondly, Hude identifies such extreme ‘will to power’ – without limits – as necessarily containing the psyche of self-destruction within it too. For the Leviathan to function, it must remain rational and powerful. Ceasing to be rational, despising opponents who are more rational, and angering opponents who are less rational than itis itself, the Leviathan then must fall.

One respected military observer – Maj. Gen. (Res.) Itzhak Brik, a former senior IDF commander and a former long-serving IDF ombudsman – has warned again of Israel’s looming fall:

Netanyahu, Gallant and Halevi are gambling with Israel’s very existence… they never think for a moment about the day after. They are disconnected from reality and exercise no judgment … When the catastrophe strikes, it will already be too late … These three megalomaniacs imagine that they are capable of destroying both Hamas and Hizbullah and ending the ayatollahs’ regime in Iran … They want to accomplish everything through military pressure, but in the end, they won’t accomplish anything. They have put Israel on the brink of two impossible situations [–] the outbreak of a full-fledged war in the Middle East, [and secondly] continuing the war of attrition. In either situation, Israel won’t be able to survive for long. Only a diplomatic agreement has the power to extricate us from the quagmire into which these three men have dragged us.

Israel teeters at the edge: It doesn’t have the necessary forces; it doesn’t have a culture of tolerating persistent suffering; and it will not be able to impose itself over the plurality of resistance that it faces. Reason already is cast aside, its opponents are ridiculed: a ‘heroic’ preference for self-destruction has taken hold. ‘Masada’ is being spoken of.

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

The post A ‘Heroic’ Preference for Self-Destruction Is Taking Hold in Israel appeared first on LewRockwell.

The Russian presidency of BRICS 2024 could not have chosen a more multicultural and multi-nodal site to host a summit laden with enormous expectations by the Global Majority. The southwestern Russian city of Kazan, on the banks of the Volga and Kazanka rivers, is the capital of the semi-autonomous Republic of Tatarstan, renowned for its vibrant mix of Tatar and Russian cultures.

Even though the BRICS summit took place in the Kazan Expo – a sort of multi-level station connected to the airport and the aero-express link to the city – it was the Kazan Kremlin, a centuries-old fortified citadel and World Heritage Site, that imposed itself as the global image of BRICS 2024.

That spelled out, graphically, a continuity from the 10th century onwards through Bulgar culture, the Golden Horde, and the 15th–16th-century Khanate all the way to modern Tatarstan.

The Kazan Kremlin is the last Tatar fortress in Russia with remnants of its original town planning. The global Muslim Ummah did not fail to observe that this is the northwestern limit of the spread of Islam in Russia. The minarets of the Kul Sharif mosque in the Kremlin, in fact, acquired an iconic dimension – symbolizing a collective, trans-cultural, civilization-state effort to build a more equitable and just world.

It has been an extraordinary experience to follow throughout the year how Russian diplomacy managed to successfully bring together delegations from 36 nations – 22 of them represented by heads of state – plus six international organizations, including the United Nations, for the summit in Kazan.

These delegations came from nations representing nearly half of the global GDP. The implication is that a tsunami of thousands of sanctions imposed since 2022, plus relentless yelling about Russia’s “isolation,” simply disappeared in the vortex of irrelevance. That contributed to the immense irritation displayed by the collective west over this remarkable gathering. Key subtext: there was not a single official presence of the Five Eyes set-up in Kazan.

The various devils, of course, remain in the various details: how BRICS – and the BRICS Outreach mechanism, housing 13 new partners – will move from the extremely polite and quite detailed Kazan Declaration – with more than 130 operational paragraphs – and several other white papers to implement a Global Majority-oriented platform ranging from collective security to widespread connectivity, non-weaponized trade settlements, and geopolitical primacy. It will be a long, winding, and thorny road.

Onward drive, from Asia to the Muslim world

The BRICS Outreach session was one of the astonishing highlights of Kazan: a big round table re-enacting the post-colonial Bandung 1955 landmark on steroids, with Russian President Vladimir Putin opening the proceedings and then handing the floor to representatives of the other 35 nations, Palestine included.

The first round of BRICS expansion last year focused heavily on West Asia and Northeast Africa (Iran, UAE, Egypt, and Ethiopia, with Saudi Arabia still deciding its final status). Now, the new “partner” category – 13 members – includes, among others, four Southeast Asian powerhouses, including Malaysia and Indonesia, the top two powers in the Heartland, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, and NATO member Turkiye.

Muslim-majority nations are all over the place as part of the BRICS drive; in parallel, Asia as a whole is fast becoming prime BRICS territory.

In-depth debate on how to develop a new global financial and payment system practically from scratch – a key plank of de-westernization – has been relentless across the BRICS matrix since February. By early October, the Russian Finance Ministry announced the launch of BRICS Bridge – inspired by Project mBridge: a digital payment platform for cross-border trade in national currencies.

Western hegemons are already scared. The Swiss-based Bank of International Settlements (BIS) is now mulling to shut down mBridge – backed, among others, by commercial banks from BRICS members China and UAE, BRICS partner Thailand, quasi-BRICS member Saudi Arabia, and the Hong Kong Monetary Authority.

The excuse is “geopolitical risks” – a euphemism for mBridge making it harder to enforce unilateral, illegal US and EU sanctions. That ties up, for instance, with global banking giant HSBC officially joining China’s interbank cross-border payment system (CHIPS), which is similar to the Russian SPFS. From CHIPS/SPFS to BRICS Bridge is just a short step.

The key issue – a serious worry for the Global Majority – is how to settle trade surpluses and deficits. When it comes to initiatives such as BRICS Bridge and BRICS Pay – the test run of the BRICS Pay card took place a week before Kazan – that’s not a technical issue.

What matters is not so much how to send a currency but what to do with that currency at the other end. It’s an eminently political affair, but there are ways around it, as the predominant, western-controlled SWIFT system is very primitive.

The BRICS working groups also paid close attention to facilitating investment; these are open systems, good for BRICS members and partners. Once companies from whatever latitude start joining, critical mass for growth/investment will be just a shot away.

All of the above embodies the spirit of BRICS starting to function in 2024 – driven by the Russian presidency – as a global laboratory, testing every possible model, old and new, to be applied in a multi-nodal way. Diplomatically, the Kazan Declaration stated that new approaches should be presented to the UN and the G20; yet, realistically, there’s no evidence the collective western bloc will receive them with open arms.

The de-dollarization nitty-gritty

Apart from establishing the 13 new partners – constituting a large, transcontinental, de facto BRICS zone – Kazan advanced two key platforms: BRICS Clear and the BRICS (Re)Insurance Company.

BRICS Clear is a multilateral settlement/clearing system for both BRICS trade and trade between BRICS and their partners (as it stands, applying to 22 nations). The key aim, once again, is to bypass SWIFT.

BRICS Clear will use national currencies for international trade. Everything will be transacted via a stablecoin – a unit of account – managed by the NDB, the Shanghai-based BRICS bank.

As top French economist Jacques Sapir has pointed out, “trade requires insurance services (for both the contract itself and transportation); these insurance services involve reinsurance activities. With the BRICS (Re)Insurance Company, BRICS is building its independence from western insurance companies.”

BRICS Clear and BRICS (Re)Insurance, in the short to middle term, will have enormous consequences for global trade and the use of US dollars and euros. Trade flows, intra-BRICS and between BRICS partners – already at least 40 percent of the global total – may rise exponentially. In parallel, western-controlled insurance and reinsurance companies will lose business.

That’s de-dollarization in practice – arguably the BRICS Holy Grail. Of course, India and Brazil never refer to de-dollarization in the manner of Russia, China, and Iran, but they do support BRICS Clear.

Sapir predicts that up to 2030, the BRICS Clear effect may result in the dollar share in Central Bank’s reserves falling “from 58 percent to around 35-40 percent.” Significantly, that would imply “massive sales of Treasury bonds, causing a collapse of the public bond market and significant difficulties for the US Treasury in refinancing United States debt.” The Hegemon will not take that lightly, to say the least.

Lab experiments counter-acting arrogance

These BRICS geoeconomic breakthroughs – call it lab experiments – mirror diplomatic coups such as India and China, mediated by Russia, announcing on the eve of Kazan their drive to settle bilateral troubles in the Himalayas to advance the unifying, pan-cooperation BRICS agenda.

Solving geopolitical issues among member-nations is a key BRICS priority. The China–India example should translate to Iran–Saudi Arabia when it comes to their involvement in Yemen and Egypt–Ethiopia when it comes to the controversial building of a major dam in the Nile. BRICS sherpas openly admit that BRICS needs an internal institutional mechanism to solve serious problems among member-states – and, eventually, partners.

And that brings us to the ultimate incandescent tragedy: Israel’s military offensives in Gaza, Palestine, Lebanon, Yemen, Syria, and Iran.

BRICS sherpas revealed that two scenarios were being actively discussed in the closed sessions, as well as the bilateral meetings. The first foresees an Iran–Israel Hot War, with Lebanon turned into a major battleground, leading to a “chain reaction” involving several Arab actors.

The second scenario foresees a pan-West Asia crisis, involving not only neighboring nations but what would coalesce into coalitions – one pro-Arab, the other pro-Israeli. One wonders where dodgy actors such as Egypt and Jordan would fit in. It’s unclear how BRICS, as a multilateral organization, would react to both scenarios.

Dreadful realpolitik did not stop in its tracks to watch the BRICS high-speed train leave the Kazan station. Israel staged its puny strike on Iran immediately afterward, and the collective west pronounced the elections in Georgia null and void because they did not like the result – even though the OSCE issued a rational report about it.

The collective west’s incomprehension of what transpired in three historic days in Kazan only highlighted their astonishing arrogance, stupidity, and brutality. That’s precisely the reason why the BRICS matrix is working so hard to come up with the lineaments of a new, fair international order, and despite an array of challenges, will continue to flourish.

The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of The Cradle.

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Corporate fines and penalties awarded to the US government have surpassed $1 trillion since 2000.  Despite the malfeasance, no one ever went to jail.    No one was ‘sanctioned’.  How much of the penalties were imposed as a Cartel fee, and how much were for egregious acts that should have resulted in prison?   Where does the collected money go? 

The US Treasury’s sub-agency General Fund is the depository for all penalties and fines awarded.  Their last audit was in 2022 wherein the Auditors claimed they could not render an opinion because the management of funds was wholly and completely corrupted.  For fiscal year 2022, the General Fund reported $23.2 trillion in inflows and $22.8 trillion in outflows.  The Net Equity of the General Fund was ($32,080,601,000.000).    The purpose of an audit is to determine if the reports issued by the Fund fairly represent the truth and can be verified via evidential tracing.  The US Treasury Failed – and an additional 6 recommendations for compliance were issued.

The annual revenue from penalties is now over $60 billion annually.  Although that number cannot be wholly verified given the Treasury has sloppy record keeping.   In essence, the Treasury finances the government by issuing Debt.  It does not balance the budget – instead it indebts the budget every single year.   And according to their website – that is their purpose – issuing debt.

The Treasury utilizes a Treasury Borrowing Advisory Committee (TBAC), whose chair is Deirdre Dunn, Head of Global Rates – Citigroup Global Markets Inc.  The Vice Chair is Mohit Mittal, Chief Investment Officer – PIMCO.  Other members include officers from:  Deutsche Bank, Morgan Stanley, BlackRock, NY Mellon, NY Common Retirement Fund, Fidelity, PNC Financial, Vanguard, Goldman, Bridgewater and Rokos Capital out of London.  LONDON.

Deirdre Dunn’s bio includes a bachelor’s degree in ta-da…chemical engineering.  She spent 10 years at Lehman – where she traded in residential and commercial mortgages.  Lehman was trading US Treasuries and subprime mortgages that led to its filing for bankruptcy in 2008 – while Dunn was an active trader in those assets.  This is who is RUNNING the US Treasury today.  NOT the 78 year old Jewish school teacher, Janet Yellen.  The Lehman crisis ultimately led to a US recession.

According to the Treasury, penalty and fee revenues are classified as “nonexchange revenues in the Statement of Operations and Changes in Net Assets”.  However, the 2022 unauditable financial statements for 2022 report no such revenue – at all.   Skimmed off the TOP!  Within this debacle of off-road accounting as advised by a chemical engineer, Social Security is accounted for as a Source of Revenue – as opposed to a Debt owed back to the payers.  Which is why it is broke – there is literally No FUND At All.   In essence – Social Security withheld is Taxpayer Charity to the government.

In contrast, Federal pensions are recorded as a Liability.

The Government Ponzi Scam.  Where do the funds come from to PAY Social Security benefits?   New Debt.  In 2023, SS benefit payments amounted to $1.4 trillion.  As of 2019, the federal government borrowed $2.9 trillion from the SS Fund at an interest rate of 2.85%…  The Social Security Trust Fund is now a BANK.   The Trust Fund isn’t an actual cash fund given the deposits are recorded as revenue – it is an actuarial.  An algorithm.  Monopoly money.

When our esteemed Congressional members warn Americans that Social Security’s coffers will be empty – they already are – yet these faithful politicians working For The People never consider their pensions at risk.   According to Moody’s, the unfunded state and local liability of pension debt is now over $2.5 trillion. The number fell from a high of $6 trillion pre-pandemic.

The unfunded Pensions of the Federal Government are estimated to be upwards of $5 trillion – although the true number is unknown due to faulty accounting and reporting issues. CATO Institute:  Total unfunded obligations of the US Government $73.2 trillion. This number includes SS, Medicare, Defense, Medicaid and other.  The Medicare portion is more than double the SS portion of this projection.

If pharma actually cured people instead of subjecting people to a life of pills and misery, the Medicare portion would be very much alleviated.   However, that would extend the actuarials of life expectancy and increase the SS unfunded liability.  Therefore, death by pandemic is the ‘solution’.  Death by war is another solution.

To make matters worse:  the money coming in is invested in Treasuries earning the lowest rate of return.  This is why Social Security cannot be pegged to real inflation, the funny number equation of 2% is used as the source of increases because reality would reveal the extent of the Ponzi Scheme.

Fixing this completely corrupt system of Taxation and Do Nothing would be a daunting task for the collage of Congressional Lawyers mooching off taxpayers and will never be accomplished.  The vast majority of lawyers have zero proficiency in finance or economics.    Not to mention a Chemical Engineer running our entire monetary system The US Treasury!

Reprinted with permission from HelenaGlass.net.

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Some of our leaders seem to care more about other countries, e.g., Ukraine and Israel, than they do about our own.

Once again, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has come to Washington, begging for even more money, this time some $8 billion dollars.

The U.S. Congress has already approved $175 billion for Ukraine in the last 2½ years. Added to over $52 billion from the European Union and $43 billion from the World Bank (17.5% of which comes from U.S. taxpayers), Ukraine has had more money to fight this war than Russia has.

The Kiel Institute said in mid-January Ukraine had at that point received from all sources what it described as a “staggering” $278 billion.

Ukraine’s total GDP in 2022 was only $160.5 billion. That whole country could have been rebuilt in a beautiful way with all the money it has spent on this war.

Now, much of Ukraine has been shelled and bombed to smithereens all because many leaders from Britain and the U.S. urged Ukraine not to go through with a peace agreement in the spring of 2022.

That agreement would have saved thousands of lives on both sides and hundreds of billions of dollars.

Four big U.S. defense contractors threw a lavish party at the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington in December 2022 in celebration of all the money they would be receiving as long as all the members of Congress (to whom they contribute) could keep this war going.

One publication headlined its story as “This DC party invite shows all the money to be made off the Ukraine War.” As General Smedley Butler said many years ago: “War is a racket.”

Our encouragement of this war broke what Secretary of State James Baker called an “ironclad” promise to Russia in 2012 that we would not seek to expand NATO further east, meaning through Ukraine to the Russian border.

On September 25, the U.S. announced another $375 million aid package for Ukraine from defense discretionary funds as President Biden pledged “unwavering support.” Vice President Harris, trying to appear tough, attacked Trump on Ukraine, saying his position amounts to “surrender.”

As for Israel, the 58 standing ovations Netanyahu received in Congress in July showed that the country will continue to receive many billions no matter what it does.

According to the Council on Foreign Relations, Israel has received at least $310 billion in economic and military assistance from U.S. taxpayers since its founding in 1948, making it the largest recipient – by far – of our foreign aid.

In addition, Egypt, Jordan, and some other countries in the Middle East have received many billions from the U.S., really as bribes so they would not team up with Iran in a coalition against Israel.

One major example of our aid is the U.S.-funded “Iron Dome” which has been almost totally effective against the rockets being shot at Israel from Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon and other places.

This Dome is why, fortunately, very few Israelis have been killed by these weapons of war, while, unfortunately, many thousands of Palestinians, and now Lebanese, have been and are being killed by Israel’s bombs.

Most of the victims of these Israeli and U.S.-financed bombs have been women and children. If so many thousands of little children were being killed by these bombing raids in any other country, there would have been such a rush by members of Congress to condemn it that it would have been hard to get out of the way of the stampede.

However, all members of Congress know they can criticize any other country –  even our own – but not Israel. Sadly, re-election comes before country to most members of Congress, so they know they have to jump at Israel’s beck and call.

Despite all the billions we have sent Israel over the years and despite always voting with them against the rest of the world in the U.N., Netanyahu has totally ignored our pleas for a ceasefire. He controls our foreign policy in the Middle East.

Our president, secretary of state and other leaders have been made to look very weak, even ridiculous, when we demand a ceasefire and yet at the same time keep sending Israel many billions more in military weapons and equipment.

Possibly the most ridiculous thing of all is that with a national debt of over $35 trillion, we are spending money we do not have to support wars by both Ukraine and Israel that are very harmful to our own national interests.

Our one-sided attachment to and for Israel has caused much resentment for the U.S. around the world and especially in the Middle East. There will never be peace there unless the U.S. becomes a neutral mediator and Israel is forced to make peace with its neighbors.

And our wasteful spending in Ukraine is doing much more harm than good. These wars are not about any serious threat to us. They have simply been and still are all about the money.

Reprinted with author’s permission from the Knoxville Focus.

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Do they not understand how boring this nonsense is?

How Russia, China and Iran Are Interfering in the Presidential Election (archived) – New York Times
Eight years after Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election, foreign influence with American voters has grown more sophisticated. That could have outsize consequences in the 2024 race.

Written by three ‘journalists’ and published at the top of the NYT‘s homepage the intro reads:

When Russia interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, spreading divisive and inflammatory posts online to stoke outrage, its posts were brash and riddled with spelling errors and strange syntax. They were designed to get attention by any means necessary.

“Hillary is a Satan,” one Russian-made Facebook post read.

Posts like that ‘one Russian-made Facebook post’ (seen by how many?) ‘interfered’ in the 2016 election and were the reason for Hillery’s loss?

Now, eight years later, foreign interference in American elections has become far more sophisticated, and far more difficult to track.

Disinformation from abroad — particularly from Russia, China and Iran — has matured into a consistent and pernicious threat, as the countries test, iterate and deploy increasingly nuanced tactics, according to U.S. intelligence and defense officials, tech companies and academic researchers. The ability to sway even a small pocket of Americans could have outsize consequences for the presidential election, which polls generally consider a neck-and-neck race.

U.S. presidential election campaigns spend billions of dollars on fine tuned advertisements aimed at carefully targeted micro-audiences. It isn’t even plausible that social media posts by this or that foreign actor could have comparable effects.

Russia, according to American intelligence assessments, aims to bolster the candidacy of former President Donald J. Trump, while Iran favors his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris. China appears to have no preferred outcome.

Should we not be especially afraid of the ‘sophisticated’ and ‘difficult to track’ foreign interference by China because it has no preferred outcome?

Here is the NYT‘s example for it:

This year, a deepfake video of a Republican congressman from Virginia circulated on TikTok, accompanied by a Chinese caption falsely claiming that the politician was soliciting votes for a critic of Beijing who sought (and later won) the Taiwanese presidency.

How could a fake video of a Republican congressman with Chinese caption that was used to discredit a Taiwanese politician influence a U.S. election in which China has ‘no preferred outcome’? What is the logic therein?

I have no idea. Nor has the New York Times. It just claims that it does.

Whoever works in western media which carries nonsense like the above should contemplate how much they are contributing to this:

For the third consecutive year, more U.S. adults have no trust at all in the media (36%) than trust it a great deal or fair amount. Another 33% of Americans express “not very much” confidence.

Reprinted with permission from Moon of Alabama.

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