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Ginny Garner wrote:

Lew,

The entire US election system goes on trial before a jury starting on June 2. The failure of more than 70+ lawsuits to go to trial convinced many that the 2020 presidential election was legitimate. The counterargument is these cases did not examine any actual evidence. Defendants settled or dropped their cases out of fear of having to pay millions to continue their legal battles or allegedly were so advised by their insurance companies. Mike Lindell, who claimed electronic voting machines were rigged to favor Biden over Trump, is the only defendant who did not settle or drop his case. Eric Coomer, a former employee of Dominion Voting Systems, sued Mike Lindell, his company My Pillow and his media platform FrankSpeech for defamation. Here is Lindell explaining the case to Emerald Robinson who will be extensively covering the jury trial. 

See here.

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Thanks, John Smith.  

Mass Live

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Thanks, John Smith:

AlJazeera

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Thanks, Wayne Goodfellow.

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Ginny Garner wrote:

Lew,

Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, explains why MAHA is now a group of clowns who will never address mRNA shots or vaccines in general. Big Pharma and the bureaucrats have won. High Wire host, Informed Consent Action Network founder and RFK Jr. ally and friend Del Bigtree announced he has left MAHA. Why can’t RFK Jr. speak out against the jabs? He wrote a book with exhaustive citations proving they are not safe and effective.

See here.

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Thanks,  John Smith. 

TNR News

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The New Republic

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Thanks, John Frahm.

ABC News

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Gail Appel wrote:

A must watch!

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Tim McGraw wrote:

Some say, Dane Wigington, that the Elliott winter storm that hurt Southwest Airlines was geoengineered by bad actors. Odd that the investment group that took over and ruined the airline is also named Elliott. I don’t think it is a coincidence. The elites like rubbing our noses in their s….

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Brian Dunaway wrote:

Shocking Data Shows Massive Demographic Transformation In Europe | ZeroHedge

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Many were cheering when HHS Secretary Rober Kennedy Jr., NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya, and FDA Director Marty Makary, provided a brief video statement announcing that the CDC will no longer be recommending COVID shots for healthy children and healthy pregnant women. Hmmm….so this means that they are still recommending mRNA bioweapon injections to everybody 18 and older and to sick people of all ages. Those of us not suffering from Stockholm Syndrome or cognitive dissonance, responded with multiple expletives…

This action was about as minimal as could possibly be done. It was an embarrassment. It was a disgrace. It was unacceptable. This is not 2021. This is 2025.

A limited hangout is a tactic used in intelligence, politics, or media to manage information by revealing partial truths while withholding critical or damaging details. It’s like letting out just enough of the story to satisfy curiosity or defuse scrutiny, without exposing the full extent of a scandal or operation. The term comes from espionage, popularized by former CIA officer Victor Marchetti, who described it as a “gimmick” where clandestine professionals admit some truth when their cover is blown, but omit key facts to prevent deeper investigation. The public, intrigued by the partial disclosure, often doesn’t dig further.

A modified limited hangout goes further, mixing truth with misinformation or altered details to obscure the bigger picture.

Was the statement by Kennedy, Bhattacharya, and Makary, a variation of a limited hangout?

President Trump and Secretary Kennedy have been getting intense scrutiny for appointing globalist, transhumanists, and pro mRNA bioweapon appointees. As already stated, the action taken was about as minimal as could possibly be taken.

Was the purpose to look like they are working hard to stop the shots and protect people?

Was the purpose to appear to be fighting and to get loyalists to cheer this as if it were a big victory to diffuse criticism?

Some high profile influencers will defend this action, largely because they either don’t want to admit they were wrong and have been played, or simply because they do not want to lose access. Having access to high profile politicians is a plus.

The loyalist will cheer, but they will stop cheering once they see the rest of us calling BS. I predict this strategy of trying to blunt the energy that is bubbling up will fail. It will fail simply because most people that you know will have a shortened lifespan because of these shots. It will fail because people you know and love will continue to get sick and die due to complications from these shots.

The COVID 19 mRNA nanoparticle injections are associated with neurological disorders, autoimmune disorders, heart attacks, strokes, cancer, metabolic disorders, chronic fatigue, chronic inflammation, and death, to name a few of the issues. The COVID mRNA shots are associated with a 1236% increase in cardiac arrest deaths, 112,000% increase in brain strokes when compared to the flu shots, reduced birth rates, increased infant mortality, increased mortality overall, and a 37% reduction in lifespans. Extrapolated over the course of a lifetime this would be a 29 year reduction in lifespans. This means that children getting these shots will be lucky to live into their 50s. The continued immune system failure or Vaccine Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (VAIDS) will continue to contribute to cancers and the other disorders and diseases.

There is an attempt to normalize all of this. There is an attempt to get you to accept that it is normal for so many people to suffer chronic illnesses and exotic diseases. There is an attempt to normalize turbo cancers. There is an attempt to normalize autoimmune diseases and neurological diseases. There is an attempt to normalize young people having heart problems. There is an attempt to normalize increased infant mortality and decreased birth rates.

Enough is enough! There must be justice.

ALL mRNA injections and products must be halted immediately. They violate 18 USC 175 CH 10 BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS. President Trump must issue an Executive Order immediately stopping all mRNA injections and products. This is his clear duty as President of the United States.

How do I know that the mRNA injections violate 18 USC 175 CH 10 BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS?

I have an affidavit under penalty of perjury from the law professor that wrote the law! At my request, Dr. Francis Boyle provided affidavit for my cases. Dr. Boyle actually publicly stated that COVID injection was a bioweapon as early as the fall of 2020 before it was even available.

We are in the midst of a massive depopulation campaign. Reducing birthrates and shortening lifespans makes that apparent.

I honestly don’t know if Secretary Kennedy’s CDC statement is a limited hangout. Quite frankly, I don’t give a damn. It was weak, feeble, and feckless. Not impressed, not enough. Tired of the excuses and claims that there is some delicate process to be followed not to upset the apple cart.

Think back to when they locked us down and caged us like animals. They didn’t worry about offending anybody. They terrorized you into compliance. It took all of a minute to lock us down, it shouldn’t take more than ten seconds to sign an Executive Order stopping the distribution of mRNA biological weapons in America.

We have them on the run. It is long past time that people that voted for Trump put maximum pressure on his administration to stop the biowarfare campaign against Americans. One way to put pressure on them is to help get my bill introduced in more states. I have a version of the ‘Sansone mRNA Bioweapons Prohibition Act’ adapted to all 50 states’ laws.

You can’t be America First and look the other way while biological warfare is carried out against Americans.

This article was originally published on Mind Matters and Everything Else.

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The title of today’s column is the same as the title of my homily last Sunday, May 25, 2025. On this day, my wife and I—along with our local Liberty Fellowship family—commemorated the 50th anniversary of my ordination into the ministry. My message was a brief reflection of what I have seen and experienced in the last half-century. This column will be the same.

I began last Sunday’s message with my boyhood, but I’ll begin this column from the time I was 27 years old (four years into the ministry) and had accepted a leadership position in the newly formed Moral Majority.

The Moral Majority

At the personal invitation of Dr. Jerry Falwell, I was the Executive Director of the Florida Moral Majority from 1979 – 1989. During my years with the Moral Majority, I met most of the leaders of the Religious Right. I couldn’t count the number of meetings I attended in Washington, D.C. I had personal audiences with President Ronald Reagan and then Vice President George H.W. Bush—and met Pat Buchanan for the first time. He later came and spoke at our church in Florida to a packed-out auditorium.

I travelled with Jerry on his jet on multiple trips (I didn’t know then that the jet was a gift from the State of Israel). I traveled with him overseas on two separate occasions; he featured me in his National Liberty Journal; I had a guest appearance on his national television program, the Old Time Gospel Hour; I spoke at the school, and Jerry spoke at my church several times.

I say all of that to simply let all of you know my background.

Most of the grassroots pastors in the Moral Majority were good, decent, honest men who truly wanted to do what was right for God and country. I later discovered, however, that some of the national leadership—and I’m not here pointing the finger at Jerry—seemed to have visions of political power and financial reward.

Remember, I was only 27 when I began this journey.

I remember a press conference with the Religious Right’s national leaders in Washington, D.C., in which a reporter asked the men on stage, “What is it that you really want?”

When I heard the question, I thought to myself, “What a perfect question. What a great opportunity to give the nation a truncated but descriptive summary of what we were all about.”

I was shocked when I heard one of the men (not Jerry Falwell) say, “All we want is a seat at the table.”

The answer stunned me. I remember thinking to myself, “What? All of this effort, expense, energy—blood sweat and tears—was so some of us could have a seat at the king’s table?” I later discovered that that was exactly what some of them seemed to want.

I can honestly say that much good came about due to the work of the Moral Majority, especially at many State and local levels—and even at the national level to some degree.

However, the ultimate (and persisting) result of those years was not so good. I’m talking about the political marriage between evangelical Christians and the Republican Party. To this day, that marriage remains intact.

Throughout America, evangelical pastors and Christians will turn their backs on spiritual friendships, courageous, truth-telling pastors (pastor-friends), spiritually minded family members or anyone else in deference to a Republican politician—especially a Republican president. And it doesn’t matter one whit how immoral, unethical or unconstitutional the conduct or public policies which that president promotes might be.

That was the forbidden fruit that grew out of the Moral Majority tree.

The other thing that happened was a theological marriage between evangelical Christians and the Zionist State of Israel. To be sure, the relationship between the two had been in an extended engagement period since 1948, and the two began sleeping together after the Six Day War in 1967. But the organized efforts of the Moral Majority, Christian Coalition, Religious Right, etc., produced an overt, unbreakable bond between evangelicals and the Zionist State of Israel.

At another D.C. press conference I attended, a reporter asked Jerry specifically, “Are you a Zionist?”

That was the first time that I heard the word “Zionist.” I was totally ignorant of what it was. But amazingly (looking back), I remember distinctly thinking that Jerry’s answer would be, “No.” Even though I had never heard the term and knew nothing about it, the instinctive answer within my heart was that this was something bad. No sooner had the thought entered my mind than I heard Jerry reply with an emphatic, “Yes.”

Being as young as I was, I simply assumed that my instincts were wrong. After all, Jerry was my mentor and was much older and more knowledgeable than I, so I dismissed my internal inhibitions. I’m SO thankful that the Holy Spirit would later awaken my soul to the truth of Biblical Israel and Christ’s New Covenant and to the wickedness of Talmudism, Chabadism, Kabbalism and Zionism.

Today, of course, Christian Zionism is a deeply entrenched major doctrine within most evangelical churches. Most evangelicals would as soon deny the deity of Jesus Christ as to deny that Zionist Israel is a resurrected Old Testament Israel, essential to the Second Coming.

But the overall purpose of the Moral Majority was to bring goodness back to America after the eight years of the debauched administrations of Bill Clinton. By the way, much of the turmoil, trouble and travesty in which the U.S. is now embroiled in the Middle East had their roots in Clinton’s two terms in the White House.

But my point is that during the Moral Majority years, evangelical pastors by and large stood for goodness. They professed and propounded good government and good behavior in our elected representatives.

The G.W. Bush years

By the time G.W. Bush was elected, I had been hosting my nationally syndicated radio talk show, Chuck Baldwin Live, for seven years. That radio talk show opened doors of opportunity for me throughout the country, including my friendship with Dr. Ron Paul and his endorsement of my presidential campaign with the Constitution Party in 2008.

It’s funny how history keeps repeating itself. The evangelical friends who praised me for publicly speaking out about the unconstitutional conduct of Bill Clinton called me every dirty name in the book when I spoke out about the unconstitutional conduct of Bush. And they still call me every dirty name in the book when I speak out about the unconstitutional conduct of Trump.

But I digress.

What started as a desire for basic human goodness during the Reagan years morphed into a desire for religious supremacy during the G.W. Bush years.

Evangelicals cheered and applauded as Bush declared war on Muslims and as he ejected the Constitution from the White House and shoved the Department of Homeland Security, the Patriot Act, the Military Commission Act, etc., down the throats of the American people.

In 2003, evangelicals were completely clueless that Bush’s wars in the Middle East were in reality Israel’s wars. And when Trump takes us to war with Iran, it will again be Israel’s war.

To demonstrate how controlled these politicians in D.C. are: Donald Trump is sending financial and military aid to the same al-Qaeda/ISIS Muslim terrorists that G.W. Bush sent thousands of U.S. soldiers to their deaths fighting. And isn’t it strange how these ISIS Muslim terrorists never attack Israel?

And how ironic that the Republican Donald Trump is using the Republican G.W. Bush’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to declare war on the First Amendment freedom of speech to anyone who simply criticizes Israel and its genocide in Gaza either audibly or in print.

To make matters worse, the head of DHS, Kristi Noem, is so constitutionally illiterate that she doesn’t even know what Habeas Corpus is. Judge Nap played Noem’s comments before a U.S. Senate Homeland Security Committee hearing recently.

New Hampshire Senator Maggie Hassan asked Noem: “So, Secretary Noem, what is Habeas Corpus?”

Secretary Noem replied, “Habeas Corpus is a constitutional right that the president has to be able to remove people from this country.”

The good senator had to then school the DHS secretary on the true meaning of Habeas Corpus, that it is the constitutional (Article.1. Section.9. Clause.2.) requirement that law enforcement must present the prisoner and evidence of wrongdoing before a judge to justify the prisoner’s continued incarceration.

Watch Kristi Noem make a fool of herself on national television. These are the kinds of imbeciles that Trump has appointed to protect the freedoms of the American people.

And here is a short video of Kristi Noem visiting the “Wailing Wall” in Jerusalem as a prelude to meeting with her boss Benjamin Netanyahu.

In the Muslim world, Shias and Sunnis fight each other for not being Muslim enough. In essence, that is what the Religious Right did during the Bush years: They wanted to make their brand of religion the law of the land at the expense of a constitutional government that protects the rights of ALL men, regardless of religion.

And each president since 2008—including Donald Trump—has continued the same Neocon/Zionist foreign policies of GW Bush.

To be sure, Obama and Biden didn’t share the right-wing religious fervor of Bush. But one needs to understand that Bush’s emphasis on right-wing religion was but a ruse to sell the Neocon/Zionist war agenda abroad and the attacks against the Fourth Amendment at home to evangelical Christians. And it worked!

Today, evangelicals are at least 80% pro-Zionist and pro-police state. Oh, they would take umbrage with the term “police state,” but that’s exactly what’s taking place under Donald  Trump. When he and Attorney General Pam Bondi talk about stamping out antisemitism, they are talking about eviscerating the most fundamental right of a free society: the freedom of speech. And evangelicals either sit in silent indifference or enthusiastically support banishing public criticism of Israel and its grotesque genocide in Gaza.

What they don’t seem to realize is that once you start censoring speech about one subject, the door is open to censor speech about any subject.

The Moral Meltdown

Those same evangelicals who worked so feverishly during the 80s and 90s to bring basic human goodness to America now support the destruction of innocent men women and children—including Christian men, women and children—in Gaza and the Middle East.

They condone Israel’s mass murders; they excuse Israel’s mass starvations; they justify Israel’s genocide; and they facilitate Israel’s ethnic cleansing.

The laws of basic human goodness, the laws of humanity and the laws of fairness and equality have been jettisoned from the conscience of evangelical Christians. All in the name of Israel; in the name of the Bible; in the name of Christianity; in the name of God.

The entire world recognizes the utter depravity of Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Almost everyone in the United States recognizes the utter depravity of Israel’s genocide in Gaza—except a Republican president, congressmen and senators from both parties inside the Beltway and evangelicals.

Those same evangelicals who so strongly supported constitutional government during the days of the Moral Majority are now totally silent or actually endorse government abridgment of our constitutionally protected liberties (particularly the freedom of speech) and support America’s direct involvement in and partnership with Israel’s genocidal mass murders.

Over the past 50 years, I’ve watched evangelical Christians take America from the Moral Majority to a Moral Meltdown.

Reprinted with permission from Chuck Baldwin Live.

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In his book Nation, State and Economy, published in 1919, Ludwig von Mises wrote of how nineteenth-century imperialist powers often preceded their wars of “conquest, subjugation, and extermination” with the dehumanization of their victims through massive propaganda campaigns which then continued during the wars and beyond. He noted that German, British, and American imperialist powers had waged wars against what they called “the lower races” — people who are supposedly “not ready for self government and never will be.” Mises highlighted British imperialism in India and the Congo and American imperialism against “the Asiatic peoples” of the Philippines and elsewhere.

The U.S. government’s twenty-five year war of genocide (1865-1890) against the Plains Indians should be added to this list. General William Tecumseh Sherman was the commanding general of this “war” for the duration. (How ironic that his parents included an Indian name, Tecumseh, when they named him). “The Indians give a fair illustration of the fate of the negroes if they are released from control of the whites,” said Sherman as quoted by biographer Michael Fellman in Citizen Sherman. Sherman, wrote Fellman, called for “a racial cleansing of the land” by killing off as many Indians as possible. “All the Indians will have to be killed or be maintained as a species of paupers,” said Lincoln’s favorite general. Fellman notes that Sherman gave his subordinate, fellow Civil War “hero” General Phil Sheridan, “prior authorization to slaughter as many women and children as well as men” when attacking Indian villages. It would be too time consuming to distinguish between them, said Sherman.

When the Filipinos finally separated from the Spanish empire the U.S. government engulfed them into the American empire by killing at least 200,000 of them (as many as a million according to some historians) during the 1899 Philippine Insurrection. In his biography of Teddy Roosevelt entitled Bully Boy, Jim Powell wrote of how Roosevelt “justified” the mass murder of Filipinos by calling them “Chinese half breeds, savages, barbarians, a wild and ignorant people.” A “lower race,” in other words.

The conquest and subjugation of Hawaii occurred in the early 1890s when the U.S. government sent soldiers to Hawaii who literally held the Hawaiian king at bayonet point and forced him to sign a new constitution that disenfranchised all Asians as “an inferior race” and empowered wealthy American land owners like James Dole, who then founded the Dole Fruit Company. Hawaii was formally annexed in 1898. In a well-received 1895 speech in Boston, the eugenicist President Teddy Roosevelt bloviated that “I feel it was a crime against the white race that we did not annex Hawaii three years ago.”

This brief historical sketch brings us to how the American and Israeli militaries of today have adopted this nineteenth-century demonization and war of extermination against what they consider to be another “lesser race,” the Palestinians. A May 21, 2025 headline in the French publication Le Monde declares that “In Israel, rhetoric dehumanizing Palestinians and calls for eradicating Gaza have become commonplace.”

The dehumanization of Palestinians by “government ministers, lawmakers, military experts, and public figures,” writes journalist Luc Bronner in Le Monde, has been used “to justify the mass killing of Palestinians civilians, especially women and children, the destruction of entire cities, the concentration of more than two million people in conditions deemed unlivable by international organizations, incitement to forced emigration, and the blockade of food and humanitarian aid to the point of famine.” More than 53,000 Palestinians have been killed, “a majority of them women and children,” and “over 60% of buildings have been destroyed.”

All of this was supported by Yoav Gallant, the former Israeli defense minister, who called all Palestinians “human animals.” Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich gushed that in a few months “Gaza will be totally destroyed.” Israeli Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu has been calling for the dropping of nuclear bombs on Gaza and destroying the remaining food sources there because all the Palestinians “need to starve.”

Nissim Vaturi, the charming president of the Knesset has called for a genocidal war that would “wipe Gaza off the face of the Earth.” Major General Giora Eiland also called Palestinians “human animals” and called for making Gaza “unlivable” while denouncing all the women of Gaza as “mothers, sisters, or wives of Hamas murderers.” A recent article in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz (May 20) wrote that “Starving Gazan babies aren’t a problem as long as there are no photos of them” that others around the world can see.

In short, the twenty-first century Holocaust that is occurring in Gaza has its roots in the ways of war of mid-to-late nineteenth-century American imperialism. It is being “justified” by a modern-day version of Teddy Roosevelt-style eugenicist “lower race” theory, with the implication that the promulgators of this theory must then think of themselves as some kind of master race.

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

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The first ever ASEAN-China-GCC trilateral summit was a de facto celebration of the New Silk Road spirit.

The first ever ASEAN-China-GCC trilateral summit earlier this week in Malaysia – with 17 Global South nations at the table – was a de facto celebration of the New Silk Road spirit.

Malaysian Prime Minister and current ASEAN chair Anwar Ibrahim summed it all up: “From the ancient Silk Road to the vibrant maritime networks of Southeast Asia to modern trade corridors, our peoples have long connected through commerce, culture, and the sharing of ideas.”

That inspires a lot of reflection. Let’s try a first, succint approach matching East and West – and what divides them – guided by an extraordinary study, La Mediterranee Asiatique: XVI-XXI Siecle, by CNRS research director Francois Gipouloux, also a specialist in the Chinese economy.

The European tradition is far from monolithic – and it’s only part of the picture – when it comes to global perceptions about political philosophy and the conception of the State. There are stark differences even when referred to Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau.

The heart of the matter used to be the land/sea opposition. For Carl Schmitt, land/sea relates to friend/enemy – the matrix of politics – providing a key interpretation of world history, yet one among many.

It’s on “continental” Europe – to borrow the Anglo terminology –, mostly in France and Prussia, and not in England, that the Hobbesian concept of the State materialized. Britain became a world power thanks to its navy and trade, eschewing the characteristic institutions of the state such as a written constitution and a legislative codification of law.

Anglo-Saxon international law in fact voided the continental conception of the State and also war. According to Schmitt, it developed its own concepts of “war” and “enemy” out of maritime and trade conflicts which did not make a distinction between combatants and non-combatants (when it comes to its lasting legacy, think “the war on terror”).

My war is Just, because I said so

The opposition then solidified between the right to wage war on land – war is “just” if it happens between sovereign states, via regular armies, and sparing civilians – and waging war on sea, which does not imply a state-to-state relation. What mattered was attacking the trade and the economy of the enemy. And methods of total war were directed against either combatants or non-combatants.

That led to a new Western concept of “Just War” and international law: when the enemy is turned into a criminal, juridical and moral equality between belligerents is shattered. That’s the perverse logic behind psycho-pathological genocidals legitimizing the destruction of Palestine.

These differences in the formulation of law came out of two different conceptions of space: closed, overland – featuring sovereign states, territorially delimitated – and open, over the seas – a unique space, unlimited, free of every state control, where primacy is about securing communication links. The British did not think about space in terms of territory, but of routes of communication, just like the Portuguese and the Dutch before them.

Schmitt identifies in the State an entity linked to land and territory. So, as startling as it seems, it’s Behemoth, the terrestrial animal of the Old Testament, and not the marine monster Leviathan that should have been chosen by Hobbes as a symbol of the State.

In the development of the West, three institutional forms – equally viable – were in competition: Leagues of Cities – like the Hanseatic Legue; City-States – especially in Italy; and the Nation-State, especially in France.

Few across the West may remember that the Hanseatic League and the powerful Italian city-states, for at least two centuries, were viable alternatives to the territorial state. Two top researchers, Douglass North and Robert Paul Thomas, in The Rise of the Western World: A New Economic History, argue that the modern state was imposed on Western Europe because it was the best equipped to fulfill two key tasks: to efficiently guarantee property rights and the physical security of people and goods.

If we go back to Europe in the 14th century, before the Renaissance, there were at least a thousand states, of all sizes. That means no concentration of power – and some sort of creative competition in store. There was a reasonable amount of choice for those who wanted to find better places to exercise their freedom.

We had for instance Germany, with its three main actors constituted as the Emperor, the nobility and cities; Italy, with its main actors as the Papacy, the Emperor and cities. And France with its three main actors as the King, nobility and cities. In each case, different alliances proliferated.

In Germany, the Emperor allied with the nobility against the cities. In Italy, nobility was urbanized, and cities profited from endless squabbles. In France, nobility was very suspicious of the bourgeoisie, and the King allied himself with the cities against nobility. England chose a completely different path. Even before France, the Brits created a centralized state, but under a quite original political set up.

Asia and the Mandala State

Asia is a completely different story. Here we cannot use the terminology of “state” to designate the political constructions of Southeast Asia before decolonization. In Southeast Asia, the borders were arbitrary between the tribe, so-called “primitive” political formations (from a Western perspective) and the State.

Springing up from political concepts prevailing in India, Islam and the West, states showed up in the Insulindia (maritime Southeast Asia) archipelago, for instance, as courtly bureaucracies, based on a network of complex alliances. Whatever the degree of institutionalization, the distinction between The King, The Vassal and The Bandit was tenuous at best.

Vietnamese researcher Nguyen The-Anh has remarked how “political fragmentation is generally the preliminary conclusion of the first Europeans who made contact with Southeast Asia. Marco Polo saw in the north of Sumatra ‘eight kingdoms and eight crowned Kings…each kingdom possesses its own language.”

China, on the other hand, featured a unitary state imposing – via a quite efficient administration – social order over a vast territory. There was no competition against the centralized state issuing from a landed aristocracy; no urban bourgeoisie; and no military contesting the imperial order, as in Europe. That’s the major difference between China and the West.

Thomas Aquinas decreed that if the power of the king belongs to a multitude, it’s not unjust that the king is deposed or sees his power restrained by this very own multitude if he turns into a tyrant and abuses royal power.

This distinction is completely alien to the Chinese tradition. What happened over the past century or so in China is that the peculiar configuration – and competition – between local actors and central power led to what could be defined as an unstructured empire, whose force comes from its shape-shifting borders and the diffused character of transnational networks.

In a global economy, this gives China an exceptional projection capacity. When borders become fuzzy, and the link between the state and individuals is fuzzy, the unstructured character of this Empire allows the Asian periphery of China to develop in an arc from Japan and the DPRK to Singapore and Indonesia. This is exactly the subtext of some of the key discussions in Kuala Lumpur at the ASEAN-China-GCC summit. Jeffrey Sachs totally got the picture beforehand.

Now, the opposition between a system of international relations deemed “backwards” and irrational in Asia and modern and rational – because based on realpolitik – in the West is over. Cultural factors now shape reality in Asia as well as in the West about the conception of the state and international relations.

China is finally self-assured enough to start disengaging from the current, Western-dominated system of international relations – because it has the means to do so.

The Chinese concept of harmony in international relations used to be linked to the proclamation of a natural order of which China would be the guarantor. But now we are a long way away from the 18th century, when the international environment of the China of 18 provinces was constituted by Korea, Manchuria, Mongolia, Chinese Turkestan, Tibet, Burma, Annam, the Ryuku archipelago and Japan. The Qin dynasty was keen to reassert its suzerainty on the political and cultural domains, assuring the protection of China by managing a belt of favorably disposed states.

Today a self-assured China sees a new system of international relations directly linked to a Belt and Road network of geoeconomic opportunities for all. That underlies the relationship between China and ASEAN, GCC, CELAC, Central Asia and the whole of Africa.

Welcome to the archipelagic world

The world has surpassed the “overland” or “maritime” dilemma, beyond Mackinder and Mahan. The world is now best defined, as Gipouloux coined it, as archipelagic (italics mine), linking urban nebulas of different sizes and vocations.

Globalization accelerated the transformation of a terrestrial world into an archipelagic world. New technologies, economic and financial pressure, disinformation on a mass scale – China is navigating all these rocks in shallow straits in the quest to solidify itself as a global power.

All that implies the progressive, thalassocratic advance of China: a flexible and tolerant Empire (“community of shared destiny for mankind”), a rich confederation with a capacity for global influence supported by polymorphic communities – the “bamboo internet” of the Chinese diaspora.

This is what was on display in Kuala Lumpur – and will continue to evolve via an array of multilateral organizations. Mandala at work, Chinese-style.

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

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To regulate itself, the body often relies upon sensors that detect something amiss and then emit a signal that is amplified by the body so that a process can be set in motion to fix the issue that set the sensor off. One of the key signals the body relies upon are hormones, as small amounts of these molecules being released are often sufficient to change the internal state of the body drastically.

The hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis is the body’s central stress response system. It has three main components: the hypothalamus and pituitary gland in the brain, and the adrenal glands on top of the kidneys. When you experience stress, the hypothalamus releases corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH), which signals the pituitary gland to secrete adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH). ACTH then travels through the bloodstream to the adrenal glands, prompting them to release the corticosteroid cortisol (the body’s primary stress hormone). Finally, once cortisol levels are high enough, they signal the brain to reduce CRH and ACTH production, creating a negative feedback loop that prevents over-activation of the stress response.

Cortisol, in turn, has a few key functions in the body:

Immune Modulation: Cortisol first enhances the immune system’s immediate response to threats (protecting the body during stress), then limits excessive immune activity to prevent autoimmunity. It does this partly by inhibiting pro-inflammatory cytokines (e.g., IL-1, IL-6) and reducing T-cell activity. Over time, this shifts to immune suppression, making synthetic corticosteroids, a popular treatment for inflammation and autoimmunity.

Note: at lower doses, this transition from immune stimulation to immune suppression takes much longer, whereas at high doses it’s faster (hence why high steroid doses are given for dangerous autoimmune flares).

Blood Sugar: When blood sugar is low, cortisol raises it by stimulating gluconeogenesis in the liver, mobilizing amino acids (from muscle) and fatty acids (from fat) for glucose production, and reducing insulin sensitivity in tissues like muscle and fat. Excessive cortisol can lead to diabetes, abdominal fat accumulation (obesity), weight gain, insulin resistance, and cardiovascular issues.

Connective Tissues: Cortisol promotes protein catabolism (breakdown) in muscles, providing substrates for glucose synthesis and inhibiting collagen synthesis. Excessive cortisol causes muscle wasting, bone loss (e.g., osteoporosis or osteonecrosis), poor wound healing (which is also a result of immune suppression), skin thinning, easy bruising, and purple striae.

Circulation: Cortisol raises blood pressure by increasing sodium and water retention, sensitizing blood vessels to epinephrine and norepinephrine. This causes vasoconstriction and an increased heart rate while also damaging the blood vessel lining. This elevates the risk for cardiovascular disease1,2,3 (e.g., a one-standard deviation increase in morning plasma cortisol is linked to an 18% higher risk of future cardiovascular events).

Cognition: Cortisol modulates arousal, attention, and memory consolidation. Chronic excess corticosteroids (from either endogenous cortisol or synthetic steroids) impair hippocampal function, causing memory deficits, increased pain sensitivity, attention issues, cravings for high-calorie foods, substance abuse, and, rarely, psychosis.

HPA Axis Dysfunction: Since the HPA axis is regulated by cortisol levels, once natural or synthetic corticosteroids are chronically elevated, the HPA axis becomes desensitized, leading to excessive cortisol secretion or loss of the ability to secrete cortisol when needed. This in turn creates many issues such as those associated with chronically excessive cortisol or varying degrees of fatigue (e.g., due to the adrenal glands not secreting cortisol when needed).
Note: excessive cortisol can also cause other effects such as blood electrolyte imbalances, alkalosis, cataracts, and glaucoma.

Because of this, many argue excessive cortisol secretion and HPA axis dysfunction (e.g., due to chronic stress, poor diet, poor sleep, alcoholism, too many stimulants like caffeine, social isolation, a lack of exercise, or irregular daily rhythms) is a root cause of disease (e.g., the metabolic syndrome afflicting our country). As such, they advocate for lifestyle practices that counteract these HPA axis-disrupting factors, and in many cases significant health benefits follow the adoption of those practices.

Corticosteroids

The hormone cortisol belongs to a class of steroids known as corticosteroids due to its release by the cortex of the adrenal glands. While many related corticosteroids (henceforth referred to as “steroids”) exist within the body, the body’s primary ones are cortisol (a glucocorticoid) and aldosterone, a mineralocorticoid that regulates blood pressure, volume, and electrolyte balance.

In 1946, the first synthetic steroid (cortisone) was synthesized. Two years later, enough had been produced to test on it a human, where it was discovered to improve rheumatoid arthritis symptoms (which won the 1950 Nobel Prize) and was immediately hailed as a ‘wonder drug.’ Before long, it was discovered that other inflammatory syndromes also responded to cortisone, and a rush of other steroids hit the market:

Following its success in rheumatoid arthritis, steroids (e.g., prednisone, hydrocortisone) were rapidly adopted for a wide range of inflammatory and autoimmune disorders, including systemic lupus erythematosus, inflammatory bowel disease, and multiple sclerosis, due to their ability to suppress immune-mediated tissue damage.

In the early 1950s, steroids were hailed as a revolutionary treatment for those conditions (and hence widely prescribed), with new steroids (e.g., prednisone) being rapidly introduced to the market, but in the late 1950s, serious side effects began to accumulate from long-term steroid use. By the early 1960s, steroid treatment was ‘‘shunned altogether by the rheumatology community” (to the point shortly after that NSAIDs like ibuprofen were named non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs to distinguish them from the disastrous steroids) after which point steroids were prescribed with more caution and at lower doses until it was reborn in the 1980s under a low dose regimen.

Currently, steroids remain widely used, and their use has gradually increased. For example, in 2009, 6.4% of American adults had used oral steroids at least once in the last year, whereas in 2018, 7.7% did, while a 2017 study found 21.4% of adults (age 18-64) had used at least one oral steroid prescription in the last three years.

Note: after harms were discovered with steroids, a pivot was made that they are safe if “low doses” are given. However, over the decades, what constituted a safe “low dose” has greatly declined (i.e., doses now considered toxic previously were routinely prescribed), and that drop will likely continue to (e.g., in 2016, Europe’s Rheumatology group concluded in was unsafe to give more than 5mg a day of long-term steroids—a figure significantly lower than the current amounts used in America).

Steroid Side Effects

As you would expect, the side effects from taking steroids mirror those seen with excessive cortisol, although in many cases are much more severe.

Furthermore, they are quite common (e.g., one study found 90% of users report adverse effects, and 55% report at least one that is very bothersome). Consider this summary of what users across the internet have reported:

Likewise, much of that has been established within the scientific literature:

Bone Loss: Corticosteroids double one’s risk of a fracture (and even more so for a vertebra), with 12% of users reporting fractures. At typical doses, steroids cause a 5-15% loss of bone each year, and in long-term users, 37% experience vertebral fractures (additionally, high dose steroid use increases the risk of vertebral fractures fivefold). Steroid bone loss in fact, is such a common problem that treating it is one of the few official indications the FDA provides for bisphosphonates (which while widely prescribed for bone loss have many severe side effects—including making your bones more likely to break). Lastly, higher doses increase the likelihood of avascular necrosis (with 6.7% of users taking higher steroid doses developing it).

Weight Gain: approximately 70% of individuals taking oral corticosteroids long-term (over 60 days) report weight gain. One study found a 5.73–12.79 lb increase per year, and another found a 4-8% increase in body weight after two years of steroid use. Additionally, this fat typically stores in areas like the face, neck, and belly.

Adrenal Insufficiency: corticosteroids reduce the adrenal gland’s ability to produce cortisol (which can sometimes be life threatening). This is a huge problem that increases with the duration of therapy and systemic routes of administration (e.g., affecting 48.7% of oral users).

Diabetes: a systematic review found individuals taking systemic corticosteroids were 2.6 times more likely to develop hyperglycemia (with 1.8% of those receiving steroids in a hospital then developing diabetes). Likewise, patients who’d taken systemic corticosteroids at least once were 1.85 times more likely to develop diabetes. Finally, a meta-analysis found that, in patients without pre-existing diabetes, a month or more of steroids caused hyperglycemia in 32% and diabetes mellitus in 19% of them.

Cardiovascular: high doses of steroids have been observed to increase heart attacks by 226%, heart failure by 272%, and strokes by 73%.

Eyes: Steroids have been found to increase the risk of cataracts by 245-311% (with 15% of users reporting this side effect) and the risk of ocular hypertension or open angle glaucoma by 41%.

Gastrointestinal: Steroids are linked to many gastrointestinal events (e.g., nausea and vomiting) and have been found to increase the risk of gastrointestinal bleeding or perforation by 40%.

Psychiatric: between 1.3%-18.4% of steroid users develop psychiatric reactions (with the rates increasing with the dose), and around 5.7% experience severe reactions. Additionally, 61% of steroid users reported sleep disturbances, and steroids can also sometimes cause psychosis.1,2

Infections: Steroids also increase the risk of infections. For example, users of inhaled steroids were found to be 20% more likely to develop tuberculosis, and this increased at higher doses in patients with asthma or COPD. Similarly, patients on steroids were 20% more likely to develop sepsis (possibly due to the initial symptoms of the infection being masked by the steroids).

Skin: prolonged topical use of steroids also frequently causes skin issues (e.g., up to 5% experience skin atrophy after a year of use).

Lastly, certain steroids are much more potent than others, and the more potent ones that persist in the body (e.g., dexamethasone) are more likely to create systemic effects like HPA axis dysfunction.

Uses of Steroids

The toxicity of steroids greatly increases with prolonged doses and routes of administration that have systemic absorption (e.g., oral). Because of this, many now believe they should be reserved for life-threatening emergencies (with the side effects that frequently follow being an acceptable trade off) and for a prolonged period, only be used in a manner with minimal systemic absorption (e.g., topically).

Note: I recently interviewed a variety of specialists for their perspectives on using steroids in their fields of medicine. Collectively, they felt that while steroids can be helpful, they are frequently prescribed in an inappropriate manner that causes more harm than good (discussed here).

Inhaled Steroids

Inhaled steroids are routinely used to treat asthma and COPD. Since the systemic absorption of inhaled steroids is much less than from oral steroids, systemic side effects are rarer (but can still occur with prolonged use at higher doses).

While inhaled steroids (along with the other medications commonly prescribed for these respiratory conditions) can help and are often the only option available to patients, I believe in most cases natural therapies that directly treat the conditions are preferable. For example, COPD is seen as a progressive and incurable illness which can only be delayed or partially mitigated with the existing therapies. In contrast, when nebulized glutathione is used to replenish the protective lining of the lungs, it halts the progression of the disease, and unlike steroids does so without side effects. Likewise, many natural therapies exist for asthma.

Topical Steroids

Topical steroids are routinely used for skin issues and sometimes in other areas as well, such as for certain eye conditions, like preventing graft rejection after a necessary corneal transplant. In these instances, systemic side effects are rare, and most local issues result from prolonged use (e.g., skin changes or skin thinning—particularly on the face).

Note: I have long suspected topical steroids in part work by reducing fluid circulation to the skin (via the insterstitium), thereby preventing inflammatory toxins from arriving there and creating skin reactions (whereas agents like DMSO treat skin conditions by augmenting the skin’s microcirculation so stagnant toxins cannot irritate a set area). As such, due to the potential issues with suppressing skin symptoms, I typically treat skin issues with natural therapies like DMSO or by eliminating the underlying cause of the skin issue.

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While Jake Tapper leads the Mea Culpa Chorus singing Kumbaya in a minor key, absolutely nobody is fooled that the grotesque psychotic deformities of US politics can be reduced to a few White House factotums lying to the news media about “Joe Biden’s” cognitive abilities. For one thing, the news media was not lied to. The news media (including Jake) lied to the nation, consistently, flagrantly, mendaciously, for years, and most of all they lied about the gigantic racketeering operation that government had become in the age of Anything Goes and Nothing Matters.

Cases-in-point, as reported by Alex Krainer, the $93-billion barfed out of the Department of Energy between the November election and January 20 to scores of hastily-formed NGO gangs with no business model or record of competency. . . and the staggering $375 billion spread around similarly out of the EPA from a slush fund run by John Podesta (as Senior Adviser to the President for International Climate Policy and Clean Energy Innovation).

That was pure grift, you understand, and it was how the Democratic Party kept its activist troops of the so-called “marginalized” paid and happy. As it happened, the “marginalized” who dwell on the edge of society — and also just beyond the set of agreements that define reality — are out-numbered by the rest of us, who voted against the tyranny of the margin and their hallucinations. And so now, the country goes through a convulsion attempting to readjust to reality — for instance, the unhappy fact that all that money was unreal, mere bookkeeping entries by dishonest accountants.

One reality we struggle with is the doleful fact that there is no work-around for the nation’s monumental debt. Since it can’t possibly be paid off, there are two stark paths for it: default and ruinous deflation (that is, money vanishes and the nation goes broke); or a futile attempt to inflate it away with more fake money creation (you’ll have money, but it’s increasingly worthless, so you’re effectively broke). Either way, you’re broke. In the meantime, the remorseless interest that has to be paid on $36.2-trillion squeezes out everything else we’re supposed to care for as relates to the common good.

Every broke-ass family or individual person knows how debilitating money-worries can be. And since unpayable debt is the common denominator across all of Western Civ, this perhaps explains the gross, suicidal mental disorder displayed lately by leadership all across Europe, North America and Anglo-Oceania. Europe, especially, exhibits behavior that is completely cuckoo — inciting war with Russia, inviting in murderous hostiles from foreign lands, and sadistically policing their own citizens.

The exception is Mr. Trump, a businessman-outsider to government trying to pull off an escape from the deadly debt quandary. It’s probably impossible, but he is trying nonetheless. It has three main features: 1) to readjust trade relations that, in theory, would restore industrial production across the land — a bootstrapping operation to kick off “growth.” 2) to engineer a severe re-set of the money system that would effectively amount to defaulting on debt but somehow without the feature of disappearing money. At best, this would induce some kind of fall in living standards, but mostly among the small sector of financial buccaneers who thrive on swindles and the Boomers living on investment accounts (figment wealth), who are now dying off anyway — which is to say, Great Depression Lite. And 3) the least understood feature of Trumpism: to decouple the USA from the resource scarcity in the rest of the world, and the consequent strife it’s inducing, and withdraw into a sort of Fortress North America that can somehow carry-on self-sufficiently while everybody else collapses.

As big pictures go, this is a pretty wild one, stupendously ambitious, risky, and perhaps improbable. But what do Mr. Trump’s domestic opponents have to offer? To go back to their asset-stripping operation with its insane sideshow of race-and-sexual hoaxes and hustles? Let’s face it, the Democratic Party has utterly shot its wad. If it tries to start another civil war, it will have its ass handed to it. Despite all the desperate, rear-guard lawfare underway now, the party is already withdrawing into the political thickets to hide while it considers some drastic reorganization of its purpose and personnel. It may skulk there for many years, just as it did between James Buchanan (1857) and Grover Cleveland (1885).

And despite his daunting agenda, Mr. Trump at least presents a sense of confident determination to get the country righted in some fashion, to recover a sense of purpose and enterprise after years of feckless, dissipative drift into the hallucinatory madness of the Left. You must give him a chance. There is no one else right now with no other way.

Reprinted with permission from Kunstler.com.

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Douglas Horne, the author of the watershed five-volume book on the JFK assassination, Inside the Assassination Records Review Board, has a new blog post about his recent testimony before Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna’s Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets. Horne served on the staff of the Assassination Records Review Board in the 1990s. Posted today at JFK Facts is an article by Chad Nagle about Horne’s recent testimony.

In his blog post, Horne, who served on the staff of the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB) in the 1990s, addresses the failure of the mainstream media to cover that particular congressional hearing, which also included testimony from (1) federal judge John Tunheim, who served as chairman of the ARRB; (2) Dan Hardway, who served a counsel for the House Select Committee on Assassinations, which reinvestigated the JFK assassination in the 1970s; and (3) Abraham Bolden, a Secret Service agent assigned to JFK. Complimenting Forbes News, which posted the video of Horne’s testimony on YouTube, Horne also points out the decades-long aversion of the mainstream media to conduct independent investigations of the JFK assassination.

The big question is: Why? Why was the mainstream press so eager to accept the official findings of the Warren Commission, no matter how ludicrous they were (e.g., the infamous “magic-bullet theory”), rather than assign fierce and competent investigative reporters to ferret out the truth behind the assassination?

My answer: Fear.

After all, why have big, powerful law firms capitulated to President Trump’s demands? Why have enormous universities done the same? In my opinion, the reason is fear. They know that with the overwhelming power of the presidency, Trump has the ability to do very bad things to them. Just ask the people running Harvard, which has decided to fight rather than capitulate.

The mainstream press back in 1963 knew that Lyndon Johnson, who automatically became president on the death of JFK, was a vicious man, one who would not hesitate to use the overwhelming power of the presidency and the federal government to smash anyone he wanted, including any national news media outlet.

In his multi-volume biography of Johnson, author Robert Caro describes how Johnson pressured the officials in two different newspapers in Texas to shut down investigations into Johnson’s corruption. Johnson mentioned the possibility of IRS action against one paper and adverse regulatory action against the other. Both newspapers promptly shut down their investigations.

There was also undoubtedly the fear arising not just from Johnson but also from the entire national-security establishment, specifically the military and the CIA. When a person or company is dealing with a governmental entity that wields the power of committing state-sponsored assassinations and the expertise to engage in cover-up, one must obviously proceed with caution when deciding whether to take on that entity.

Consider the people who Johnson appointed to the Warren Commission — a former director of the CIA, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, members of Congress, and a former member of the World Bank. What are the chances that any of those prominent mainstream people would ever target and accuse the military establishment and the CIA of the assassination? None! There was never any chance of that happening at all.

Moreover, to prove guilt would have required a fierce, no-holds-barred investigation of the military and the CIA, both of which would not hesitate to falsely deny and lie about their actions. What are the chances that those particular mainstream members of the Warren Commission would engage in such a fierce investigation of the military-intelligence establishment — and at the height of the Cold War? None! No chance at all.

Wouldn’t you think that some mainstream media outlet would recognize that and make a point about it? Nope. It was all considered to be “normal.”

In the 1970s, the House Select Committee on Assassinations reopened the investigation of the assassination. It brought in a fierce and honest prosecutor from Philadelphia named Richard Sprague. He made it clear that he was going to target and investigate the CIA. Within a very short period of time, he was run out town on a rail and replaced by an attorney named Robert Blakey, who showed the proper deference to the CIA.

How could any self-respecting newspaper not see that something was wrong with this official picture, even with Johnson out of the presidency in 1968? Fear. It just wasn’t worth it to them to take on the most powerful branch of the federal government — the national-security branch — the branch that wields the power of state-sponsored assassination and cover-up — and to which the other three branches dutifully defer.

After the HSCA proceedings, a group of enlisted men, who had been released from vows of official military silence, began coming forward and telling a remarkable and shocking story about one aspect of the autopsy that the military conducted on Kennedy’s body on the very night of the assassination. They were stating that they carried the president’s body into the Bethesda military morgue almost an hour-and-a-half before the official entry time of 8 p.m. They said that the body was in a cheap shipping casket rather than the expensive casket into which the body had been placed in Dallas. Later, in the 1990s, the ARRB discovered the existence of a written report by Marine Sgt. Roger Boyajian stating that the earlier casket delivery had taken place at 6:35 p.m.

Why would the mainstream press fail to investigate that? If what these men were saying was true, wouldn’t that be something so dark, auspicious, and suspicious that the mainstream press would deem it worth investigating? Why wouldn’t they be curious about why the president’s body was sneaked into the morgue early? What was done to the body in that hour-and-a-half? Why would military officials have covered that up and lied about it? Why would high military officials have required those enlisted men to sign secrecy oaths about what they had witnessed and also threatened them with court martial or criminal prosecution if they ever talked?

Even if mainstream editors and reporters  believed that those enlisted men were lying, wouldn’t that be a story in and of itself? After all, why would they lie about that? Indeed, if they were lying, wouldn’t high military officials accuse them publicly of being liars? Why instead adopt a policy of silence in the face of what these men were claiming? Wouldn’t you think all this would be something worth investigating?

Fear. Fear paralyzes people. It causes them to become submissive, compliant, and obedient. It causes them to fall into line, accept whatever they are told, and not ask questions. In my opinion, that’s what happened — and continues to happen — to the mainstream press in the Kennedy assassination.

Reprinted with permission from Future of Freedom Foundation.

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