Lew Rockwell Institute

Many news-media throughout the world have reported on a “Rabbis’ letter,” which by now has over a thousand signers, and which opposes Israel’s starving to death whatever Gazans haven’t already been killed by Israel’s troops using the bullets and bombs supplied 69% from the U.S. and 30% from Germany. I haven’t seen in any of those news-reports a link to the document itself, but I finally found the letter in Polish, and autotranslated it by Google; and here it is, titled “The Jewish People face a grave moral crisis: A Letter from Rabbis Worldwide”.

The “letter” (or whatever it is) says:

We abhor the violence of such nihilistic terrorist organizations as Hezbollah and Hamas. We call on them immediately to release all the hostages, held for so long captive in tunnels in horrendous conditions with no access to medical aid. We unequivocally support the legitimacy of Israel’s battle against these evil forces of destruction. We understand the Israeli army’s prioritization of protecting the lives of its soldiers in this ongoing battle, and we mourn the loss of every soldier’s life.

But we cannot condone the mass killings of civilians, including a great many women, children and elderly, or the use of starvation as a weapon of war. Repeated statements of intention and actions by ministers in the Israeli government, by some officers in the Israeli army, and the behaviour of criminally violent settler groups in the West Bank, often with police and military support, have been major factors in bringing us to this crisis. The killing of huge numbers of Palestinians in Gaza, including those desperately seeking food, has been widely reported across respectable media and cannot reasonably be denied. The severe limitation placed on humanitarian relief in Gaza, and the policy of withholding of food, water, and medical supplies from a needy civilian population contradict essential values of Judaism as we understand it.

They pretend — as does Israel’s Government — that this genocide against what had previously been 2.1 million Gazans, is a response to the 7 October 2023 event, in which, as Wikipedia reports, “In total, 1,195 people were killed:[35][e].” That would be a ratio of nearly two thousand to one. During Hitler’s regime, such high ratios, and such wantonness, in revenge, were viewed as being acceptable, but anyone who nowadays supports it is considered to be downright evil. When the thousand-plus signing rabbis opened by basically doing that (assuming that the Octobeer 7th event is what drives this genocide), they implicitly gave credit to some of the most vicious lies by the Israeli Government and its supporters. At the very outset, they thereby greatly weakened their case against that Government. But, in fact, this genocide of Gazans capstones the 1948 Nakba till today. It is part of that, which Israel has been doing ever since its birth on 14 May 1948 (the Nakba started the following day).

Furthermore, their alleging that “The severe limitation placed on humanitarian relief in Gaza, and the policy of withholding of food, water, and medical supplies from a needy civilian population contradict essential values of Judaism as we understand it” is bizarre, since Judaism is the Torah, which says:

Genesis 15:18-21

“On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abraham and said, ‘To your descendants I give this land, from the river of Egypt [the Nile] to the great river, the Euphrates, including the lands of the Kenites, the Kenizzites, the Kadmonites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaim, the Amoriotes, the Caananites, the Girgashites, and the Jebusites.’”

Deuteronomy 7:1-2

“You must not let any living thing survive among the cities of these people the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance: the Girgashites, the Amorites, the Caananites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. You must put them all to death.”

Deuteronomy 7:16

“Destroy every nation that the Lord your God places in your power, and do not show them any mercy.”

Deuteronomy 20:16-18

“When you capture cities in the land he Lord your God is giving you, kill everyone. Completely destroy all the people: the Hittites, the Amorites, the Caananites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, as the Lord has ordered you to do. Kill them so that they will not make you sin against the Lord by teaching you to do all the disgusting things they do in the worship of their gods.”

Israel’s Government takes such passages as ‘justifying’ what they do to Palestinians. And the vast majority of Israelis agree with that viewpoint. They have the Torah on their side. I wish that the Old Testament’s genocidal hatred of Palestinians weren’t there, just as I wish that the New Testament’s genocidal hatred of Jews (John 8:44, Matthew 23:31-38, Luke 19:27, and from Paul, 1 Thes. 2:14-16) weren’t there, but pretending it’s not there, and even claiming Israel’s actions after 7 October 2023 “contradict essential values of Judaism as we understand it” is simply bizarre coming from teachers of Judaism. You can’t just make up a religion — it goes straight back to its ‘holy’ scripture. If that isn’t what you (rabbis and other clerics) teach, then what are you? And if it IS what you teach, then why DO you? (Because look at the genocides it has caused.)

This article was originally published on Eric’s Substack.

The post The Hypocricy of the ‘Rabbis’ Letter’ Against Exterminating Gazans appeared first on LewRockwell.

While most everyone is talking about the Epstein Thing, fewer are talking about the Palantir Thing or the Genius Thing, which may be one of the reasons for the Epstein Thing. As in, it’s another distraction from the important things.

Certainly it is important to know whether there is a high-level blackmail regime that leverages complicity in sex crimes the way the mafia leverages crimes such as murder. In order to become a made man the applicant must first do a piece of work; i.e., kill someone. That way, the mafia knows he can be trusted  . . . not to squeal on the other mobsters.

Almost everyone knows who Epstein was. How many know what Palantir is? Do you know what the word means? It is taken from Lord of the Rings. It refers to an all-seeing stone used by wizards to know what everyone’s doing. That’s what Trump – or the people controlling Trump – are doing, right now. Palantir is a real-life sorcerer’s stone that is going to be used to see what all of us are doing, so that nothing we do is unknown to the government-corporate thing that long-ago replaced the somewhat-limited government that briefly existed until circa April 1865. That was when the last check on government-corporate power was boot-stomped into the ground at Appomattox. Lincoln was no more free than the country he enslaved, by the way. The man was owned by the railroads and by a kind of precursor to Palantir, the Pinkerton thing. It’s all very depressing but not less true for being so.

Congruent with the greasy slouching toward Bethlehem (or rather, Washington) Palantir thing is the Genius Thing, which is the effort to replace fiat dollars with fiat digits; i.e., electronic money. Both of these things being necessary to each other in the same way that masks were the necessary predicate of the effort to coerce people into getting “vaccinated.” When your money is electronic and your life is, too, the government can control your life by controlling your electronic money. The “coin” you have on the screen of your phone is only as good as the government-corporate thing decides to allow. It will not be like it was when you had real (if fiat) dollars in your actual wallet (here it is interesting to note the use of such terms, associated in the mind of the average person with real/tangible things, with virtual things).

When you have a $100 bill, you can buy things with it that only you and the seller are aware have been bought and sold. But what’s the worry, as regards digital money and digital transactions? Well, what happens when the thing you wish to buy is something the government-corporate thing says you are no longer allowed to buy? Or buy more of? You have used up your allotted meat allowance for the month, citizen. Though you have “coin” enough in your now-digital “wallet” to buy some hamburger, you can’t – because the government-corporate thing has limited your ability to buy more. How about a “high-capacity” magazine – or even the gun, itself? When they have been declared illegal and your only means of buying is digital “coin,” you will no longer be able to buy either off the books, as you can when you have actual coin.

There are those, of course, who do not believe that Trump would ever be the one to push such things and yet that is exactly what he is doing. Just as he pushed REAL ID and didn’t end the endless war in Keeeeeeeeeeeeev, either. If he had run on those things – favor of REAL ID, more aid for Keeeeeeeeeeeeeeev and a surveillance regime enforced via digital money – it is likely Harris would have been the one selected. But that was not the plan and so she wasn’t. She served her purpose as the unpalatable alternative that prompted people to vote for Trump. Trump had to be selected to quiet opposition to what was coming – Palantir, REAL ID and the Genius of government-corporate controlled “coin.” It has worked splendidly.

So has the Epstein Thing.

While most of us are target-fixated on who among the Special People was having fun with Jeff (a thing we’ll never be allowed to know because then we’d know it’s most if not all of them, which is why Trump’s line about the Democrats not exposing him when they were in charge is as silly as wondering why one mobbed-up guy doesn’t expose the other mobbed-up guys) the agenda moves forward. Note that it always moves forward. Maybe a little less, for the moment. But it is never rolled back.

That trend is one we all see yet we all (well, most of us) like to pretend not to see it. Probably because admitting we do see it would bring up the awful truth that we’re going along with it, however much we like to pretend to ourselves we’re not.

This article was originally published on Eric Peters Autos.

The post The Epstein Thing and Other Things appeared first on LewRockwell.

A pro-abortion activist judge recently revised her own ruling and ordered the federal government to continue sending Medicaid payments to Planned Parenthood and other organizations that kill innocent preborn babies.

Massachusetts District Judge Indira Talwani issued a revised injunction on Monday against the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

A week prior, she had issued a partial block on the law, only allowing Planned Parenthood facilities and other entities that did not commit abortions to continue to receive Medicaid dollars. A revised order yesterday now requires HHS to fund all Planned Parenthood vendors.

The injunction stops a budget bill passed by Congress and signed by President Trump at the beginning of July, which generally prohibits federal Medicaid dollars from going to organizations that kill preborn babies in the womb for one year. While it has been described as a defunding of Planned Parenthood, it affects other alleged “healthcare” organizations that commit abortions (yet curiously this latest ruling relies on the assertion the bill illegally targets Planned Parenthood).

Much like her last ruling, Talwani’s decision reads like a Planned Parenthood news release, repeating the debunked claim that only four percent of what the organization does is kill babies.

“Patients are likely to suffer adverse health consequences where care is disrupted or unavailable,” Judge Talwani, an Obama appointee, wrote yesterday. “In particular, restricting Members’ ability to provide healthcare services threatens an increase in unintended pregnancies and attendant complications because of reduced access to effective contraceptives, and an increase in undiagnosed and untreated STIs.”

However, most of Planned Parenthood’s revenue comes from abortions, many forms of contraception act as abortifacients and cause serious harm to women, and the only ethical and truly effective way to prevent an STI is chastity. Planned Parenthood actually increases the risk of sexual diseases due to its heavy promotion and normalization of promiscuity, including to children.

An HHS spokesman told the Associated Press the ruling “undermines state flexibility and disregards longstanding concerns about accountability.”

“States should not be forced to fund organizations that have chosen political advocacy over patient care,” Andrew Nixon said.

‘Judicial impeachments must begin’

The ruling drew criticism from pro-life leaders and commentators who suggested Talwani was undermining the rule of law and the separation of powers.

“This is how the Left usurps the will of the American People time and time again,” Students for Life of America President Kristan Hawkins wrote on X. “Judicial impeachments must begin.”

RedState commentator Bonchie said the decision is “the most baseless, insane ruling I’ve ever seen.”

“Understand that by Judge Talwani’s logic regarding her Planned Parenthood ruling, Democrats could pass a bill giving taxpayer funding to the DNC, and if Republicans retake power and defund it, it’d be a violation of the First Amendment,” the commentator also wrote. “Just insane.”

Legal commentators had previously raised concerns about Talwani’s judicial decision-making in this case, which includes a quick temporary restraining order and, more recently, the claim that Planned Parenthood’s First Amendment rights were being threatened.

Carrie Severino, president of the Judicial Crisis Network, concluded Talwani’s various legal analyses are weak and fail to present coherent arguments. “Judge Talwani’s ever-lengthening attempts to defend her judgment are a clear example of judicial overreach—complete with legal theories untethered from precedent and constitutional analysis that reads more like wishful thinking than rigorous jurisprudence,” Severino wrote last week for National Review.

“Her handling of the Planned Parenthood funding case is a textbook case of judicial overreach,” Severino, a former clerk for Justice Clarence Thomas, also wrote.

South Texas College of Law Professor Josh Blackman previously questioned the speed at which Judge Talwani issued the temporary restraining order. “Lower court judges are misbehaving,” Blackman, a legal expert, wrote in his commentary.

He said Talwani “rushed” to file her restraining order and did not include a proper analysis required to issue such injunctions.

Blackman also highlighted a previous quote from Talwani in 2023 where she said she could not process filings in a day.

Political commentator Jarret Stepman also criticized the ruling. “It appears that left-wing judges are just going to dispense with the formalities and make grand declarations for the country based on their ideology and nothing else,” the Daily Signal writer stated.

He noted Talwani has a loose grasp of the law – she previously said a 12-year-old student could not wear a “There are only two genders” shirt to school “because it interfered with the rights of other students,” according to Stepman.

Stepman predicted HHS would eventually win the lawsuit.

“Obviously, Talwani’s decision can’t stand and will likely soon be overturned,” he wrote.

“This does, however, demonstrate how left-wing activist judges have completely abandoned the notion that they are upholding the law. Instead, they’ve decided that they are the law.”

This article was originally published on Lifesite News.

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Israel’s top human rights group B’Tselem has finally declared that Israel is committing genocide, as has the Israel-based Physicians for Human Rights. The Israeli organizations join Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, UN human rights experts, and the overwhelming majority of leading authorities on the subject of genocide in their conclusion.

The debate is over. The Israel apologists lost. And we are seeing this reflected in mainstream discourse.

Pop megastar Ariana Grande has started speaking out in support of Gaza, telling her social media followers that “starving people to death is a red line.” This is a new threshold. Opposing Israel’s genocide is now the most mainstream as it has ever been.

MSNBC just ran a piece explicitly titled “Israel is starving Gaza. And the U.S. is complicit.”, featuring a segment with the virulently pro-Israel Morning Joe slamming the mass atrocity. CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, himself a former AIPAC employee, has done a 180 and is now raking Israel over the coals on the air for its deliberately engineered starvation campaign. The New York Times finally overcame its phobia of the g-word with an op-ed titled “I’m a Genocide Scholar. I Know It When I See It.”

We’re now seeing notoriously Zionist swamp monsters in the Democratic Party like Barack Obama, Hakeem Jeffries, Cory Booker and Amy Klobuchar changing their tune and attacking Netanyahu and Trump for their joint genocide project in Gaza, with increasingly forceful pushback from some on the right like Marjorie Taylor Greene as well.

As western pundits, politicians and celebrities suddenly pivot to denouncing Israel’s genocidal atrocities after two years of silence, it’s hard to believe that just a few weeks ago we were being told that saying “death to the IDF” is a hate crime.

People who’ve been staring at this genocide from the beginning have been asking the entire time, what is it going to take? What will it take for our society to stop sleepwalking through inane trivialities and vapid distractions and start opposing the holocaust of our day?

Raining military explosives on a giant concentration camp packed full of children wasn’t enough.

Burning children alive wasn’t enough.

Systematically destroying Gaza’s entire healthcare infrastructure — up to and including entering hospitals they’ve attacked and destroying individual pieces of medical equipment one by one — wasn’t enough.

Killing more journalists than were killed in both World Wars plus the US Civil War, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Yugoslav Wars, the War in Afghanistan, and the ongoing war in Ukraine wasn’t enough.

The systemic rape and torture of prisoners wasn’t enough.

IDF soldiers routinely sharing photos and videos of themselves mockingly dressing in the clothes of dead and displaced Palestinian women and playing with the toys of dead and displaced Palestinian children wasn’t enough.

Israeli officials openly expressing genocidal intent for the people of Gaza wasn’t enough.

The US president and Israeli prime minister openly declaring their goal of the complete ethnic cleansing of a Palestinian territory wasn’t enough.

Field testing new weapons of war on Palestinians like they’re guinea pigs in a laboratory wasn’t enough.

Leaving countless civilians to slowly suffocate or die of dehydration trapped under the rubble of bombed buildings wasn’t enough.

Creating an AI system to ensure that suspected Hamas fighters are bombed when they’re at home with their children and naming it “Where’s Daddy?” wasn’t enough.

Using Palestinians as human shields wasn’t enough.

Burying injured civilians alive with bulldozers wasn’t enough.

The IDF admitting to running a popular Telegram channel called “72 Virgins” which posted extremely gory and sadistic snuff films of people in Gaza being butchered by Israeli forces wasn’t enough.

IDF snipers routinely shooting children in the head and chest throughout the Gaza Strip wasn’t enough.

The IDF flying drones which play the sounds of crying babies at night in order to lure out hiding civilians to murder them wasn’t enough.

IDF troops telling the Israeli press that they’re being ordered to massacre starving civilians seeking food from aid sites wasn’t enough.

Israeli snipers targeting different body parts of starving civilians on designated days — leg day, head day, genitals day, etc — wasn’t enough.

Far right Israeli citizens setting up blockades to stop aid trucks from entering Gaza while they enjoyed parties and barbecues at the blockade sites wasn’t enough.

Using lies and propaganda to dismantle the aid system for bringing essential food and life-supporting supplies into Gaza, to replace it with a US/Israeli op where aid seekers are massacred every single day, wasn’t enough.

Using siege warfare to deliberately starve Gaza for the previous 22 months wasn’t enough.

But now that starvation has hit a critical point and deaths from malnutrition are skyrocketing, now that images of dead skeletal children are filling our screens, now that the damage to organs and brains from starvation will be irreversible in many cases — now it’s enough.

That was the line, apparently. That’s what mainstream western consciousness has decided is too much. Everything up until that line was fine, but now it’s not fine anymore.

And the killing is still going on. The sudden awakening of conscience hasn’t translated into any material actions or changes at all yet. If it had come in October or November 2023 like it should have we might be seeing that opposition translate into actually saving Gaza by now, but the light has only just been switched on. It’s not even guaranteed that those who are speaking up will continue to do so.

Hello I am a North American journalist and op Ed writer. For the last 18 months my dang computer has been auto correcting all of my writing and posts to say that what’s happening in Gaza is complicated but necessary. What I actually meant is that it’s bad. Thank you

— Boeckner (@d_boeckner) July 26, 2025

I’m glad people are waking up to the cruel reality of this nightmare. I’m grateful to each and every influential voice who uses their platform to speak out, even at this late date. I truly am.

But I also think we need to take a very hard, very uncomfortable look at ourselves as a society right now. If all those monstrous abuses were tolerable for us over these last two years, there’s something deeply and profoundly sick about our civilization.

We are not living right. We are not thinking right. We are not feeling right. We are warped and twisted. The information we consume and the norms we’ve been conditioned to accept have corrupted our souls.

We have been made into something bad. Something ugly. Something shameful. Something we need to do everything in our power to change.

We need to rescue ourselves from what we have become. We need to transform, deeply and radically, into something that could never again allow something like this to occur.

The way things are clearly isn’t working. The mainstream worldview is clearly a lie. Everything we’ve been taught to believe about our society, our nation, our government and our world was clearly false.

We need to fight our way through the cognitive dissonance of recognizing that our entire way of looking at things as a collective has failed, and we need to find a new way of being.

Otherwise we’re going to keep being smashed in the face with increasingly horrifying reminders of what we have allowed ourselves to become.

The lessons will repeat until they are learned.

We had better start learning them.

___________________

The best way to make sure you see everything I write is to get on my free mailing list. My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you want to. Click here for links for my social media, books, merch, and audio/video versions of each article. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.

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Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. , on Monday announced on X that he intends to reform the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP).

The program was established as part of the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986. The Act, and subsequent court decisions, acknowledged that vaccines, like all other medicines, can cause injuries and even death.

In his X post, Kennedy noted that vaccines are described in law as “unavoidably unsafe.” Congress established VICP, which obliged HHS to compensate injured children.

Kennedy noted that his uncle, Senator Edward Kennedy, stated, “when … children are the victims of an appropriate and rational national policy, a compassionate government will assist them in their hour of need.”

But the VICP has not lived up to the promise of the 1986 Act.

As Kennedy put it, “The VICP is broken, and I intend to fix it. I will not allow the VICP to continue to ignore its mandate and fail its mission of quickly and fairly compensating vaccine-injured individuals.”

The respondent to a vaccine injury claim is the Department of Health and Human Services. The major pharmaceutical companies such as Pfizer, BioNTech, Moderna and Merck which profit enormously from vaccines do not have to defend their products in the “Vaccine Court.”

Big Pharma does not pay for vaccine injuries – taxpayers do – through a 75-cent surcharge collected per vaccine administered in the U.S.

Kennedy noted that VICP appears to worry more about the balance sheet of the trust fund than the need to fairly compensate the vaccine injured. In his book, The Vaccine Court, author Wayne Rohde details the labyrinth of problems blocking parents of injured children from receiving compensation to get the care they need for their injured child.

Referring to the bureaucracy within the Civil Torts Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, Kennedy writes, “Claimants are therefore facing the monumental power and bottomless pockets of the U.S. government.”

At Vaccine Injury Court, judges do not preside over cases; Special Masters do. As Kennedy points out, “they come from government, legal, or political posts, and typically display an extreme bias that favors the government side. There is no discovery, and the rules of evidence do not apply.”

Kennedy further noted that the Vaccine Court does not “allow children’s attorneys access to the Vaccine Safety Datalink, a taxpayer-funded CDC surveillance system that houses the best data on vaccine injuries.”

This creates an uneven playing field, Kennedy said, one in which petitioner attorneys only get paid if and when Special Masters and DOJ attorneys decide.

The program was intended to resolve cases fairly and quickly, but as Kennedy notes in his X post, cases often drag on for years.

In a book titled Vaccine Injuries, co-written by Louis Conte and MAHA Action president Tony Lyons, we documented the truth about the long grueling process that the vaccine injured and their families go through when they bring cases into the program.

“The VICP routinely dismisses meritorious cases outright or drags them out for years,” Kennedy writes. “Instead of ‘quickly and fairly’ awarding compensation, Special Masters, hired by a Judge to make their jobs easier, dismiss over half of the cases. Most of those that proceed typically take 5+ years to resolve, with many languishing for more than 10 years as parents struggle to care for children suffering with often extreme disabilities.”

Kennedy points to the unfair treatment of petitioners’ expert witnesses, who often, as he writes, “suffer intimidation and even threats that they will lose professional status or NIH funding if they testify for injured children.”

Continues Kennedy, “The government pays its own medical expert witnesses promptly while simultaneously slow-walking payments for petitioners’ experts—sometimes for years.”

The Vaccine Court, and the VICP, both desperately need an overhaul. They are America’s ultimate secret court, where every decision is carefully word-smithed while vaccine injuries are concealed and the public is kept in the dark.

The VICP has not served children, but it has allowed Big Pharma to shift the cost of vaccine injury to you – the taxpayer.

Read the Whole Article

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You think a “COVID-19 Style” Mugging of your Freedoms can’t happen one more time? 

Think again!

There’s a new plan – backed by $10.8 Billion of newly minted Government Money – for the Next Fake Plandemic, err, excuse me, Mugging!

Dr Sam Bailey presents the latest details:

Recently an exercise called ‘Tranquil Passport’ took place in the United States in order to prepare for a…“true international health crisis”.

It appears that the public are being robbed once again through the diversion of their money into “The Healthcare System Hoax“.

Should we be Surprised?

No!

Should we be Outraged?

Of course!

Most important, we should be PREPARED!

Please watch Dr Sam’s latest 18 min video and please review the excellent resource links she provides, HERE.

And please share with everyone you care about.

Thank you!

The post Wake Up! Your Health Freedom is Being Robbed – AGAIN!!! appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, Chris Sullivan.

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The post The Bizarre ‘Post-Truth’ US/EU Trade Deal appeared first on LewRockwell.

Economist Richard Werner explains to Tucker Carlson.

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Well, it took long enough for the White House and the policy cliques to notice even the existence of the BRICS, the group of non–Western nations named for its first members.

For many years after Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa coalesced to form this loose but formidable association, in the last years of the last century, it was as if Washington were trying to will the group and all it represented out of existence.

And now look. The first thing the United States does as it acknowledges the BRICS, whose members currently number 11 and counting, is to announce that it will punish those nations belonging to it for … for belonging to it.

Earlier this month President Donald Trump — always the one to get this kind of nitwittery done — announced that he would impose blanket tariffs of 10 percent on all BRICS members — a threat he reiterated two weeks later, with the promise of more to come should the group’s members determine to exercise their sovereignty in the cause of common interests.

The Trumpster on this question said July 6:

“When I heard about this group from BRICS, six countries [sic], basically, I hit them very, very hard. And if they ever really form in a meaningful way, it will end very quickly. We can never let anyone play games with us.”

How’s that for the statecraft of a self-confident nation?

This display of juvenile impetulance coincided with the opening of the BRICS group’s 17th summit, hosted July 6–7 in Rio de Janeiro, as Brazil now holds the group’s rotating presidency.

The agenda included the usual sorts of things for these occasions: trade and investment, inclusive global governance, a global security architecture. This year’s summit also condemned the Israeli–American bombing runs against Iran three weeks prior to the session as “a violation of international law.”

Maybe Trump for once read the briefing papers the C.I.A. delivers to the Oval Office each morning and saw this coming, as he moved instantly to hit very, very hard a second time. Here he is on Truth Social, his digital bullhorn, even before BRICS leaders had checked out of their hotels:

“Any country aligning themselves with the Anti-American policies of BRICS, will be charged an ADDITIONAL 10% tariff. There will be no exceptions to this policy.”

So clumsy, so off the mark, so utterly unaware of where the hands are on history’s clock. It is funny how often what the late-phase imperium intends as displays of strength turn out to be displays of uncertainty, weakness and impotence.

Here I must correct, and not for the first time, a misunderstanding among U.S. officials so common I conclude it is willful. There is not a damn thing the BRICS as a group has ever said, done, or stood for that is anti–American.

This group is about the construction of a world order built on a foundation of parity, the common good and international law. It would welcome the participation of all nations in this world-historical project, not least, given their capital and technology, the U.S. and the other Western powers.

It is anti–American only insofar as it opposes hegemonic power and— putting the point another way — insofar as the United States stands foursquare against all three of the above-noted principles.

I am surprised to note the extent of Washington’s insecurity as the BRICS nations move forward, especially given the lukewarm review the Rio summit got afterward from commentators straight across the board.

Lydia Polgreen, a New York Times columnist, termed the statements coming out of the Rio summit “milquetoast.” The group condemned the Iran bombings but did not name names, Polgreen argued.

On the other side of things, Chas Freeman, the distinguished ambassador emeritus, gave an interesting interview with Glenn Diesen 10 days ago under the headline, “The Old World Is Dying and the New World Struggles to be Born.”

Freeman lauded the BRICS for its accomplishments, among these its work creating alternative financial systems, the New Development Bank, launched in 2012, its outstanding achievement. But, in my interpretation of his remarks, Freeman was critical of the group for not acting more in concert — for not making itself a greater presence in geopolitical affairs.

Russia & Iran’s Nuclear Deal

In this connection I was struck by a report The Times of London carried July 13 under the headline, “Why is Putin pushing Tehran towards Trump’s nuclear deal?” “Russia is leaning on Iran,” Tom Parfitt reported, “to accept a deal that denies it the right to enrich uranium for any purpose.”

It is a good question, coming not quite a month after what we are now calling the Twelve–Day War against Iran.

Citing an earlier report in Axios, Parfitt noted, “Experts said that Moscow was probably pushing for a deal because it is wary of Iran disintegrating under renewed assault, which could threaten Russia’s economic interests.”

It was not clear at the time what Iran thought of Moscow’s advice on this point, but it seems plainer now: Iran is now preparing to reopen talks on its nuclear programs this Friday with Britain, France, and Germany, signatories to the accord the U.S. abandoned during Trump’s first term in 2018. This simply must be taken as an exploratory session to see if renewed talks with Washington may be possible.

Given that Iran is a BRICS member, and that Moscow and Tehran signed a wide-ranging strategic partnership last January, the questions raised are obvious. What are the BRICS and what are they not, or not yet? What do they expect of one another and what ought the rest of the world expect of them?

With its current membership, and excluding a dozen or so “partner countries,” BRICS members account for slightly more than 40 percent of the global population and a roughly similar proportion of global output as measured by purchasing power parity, known in the trade as PPP. Three of its members, China, India and Brazil, count among the world’s 10 largest economies.

O.K., but let’s note right off our frame of reference. This is a group whose shared interests are fundamentally economic as against strategic or geopolitical. This has been so from the first. The BRICS got their name indeed, from a Goldman Sachs economist who was specialized in middle-income nations, a.k.a. emerging markets.

Read the Whole Article

The post Washington Takes on the BRICS appeared first on LewRockwell.

Refugees International issued on July 23rd, signed by 115 NGOs and humanitarian organizations, the following notification:

https://www.refugeesinternational.org/advocacy-letters/joint-statement-as-mass-starvation-spreads-across-gaza-our-colleagues-and-those-we-serve-are-wasting-away/

https://archive.ph/IIJXD

“Joint Statement: As Mass Starvation Spreads Across Gaza, Our Colleagues and Those We Serve are Wasting Away”

As the Israeli government’s siege starves the people of Gaza, aid workers are now joining the same food lines, risking being shot just to feed their families. With supplies now totally depleted, humanitarian organisations are witnessing their own colleagues and partners waste away [die, be murdered — but indirect passive terminology was preferred, for some reason, perhaps so as “not to offend” their largest donors] before their eyes.

Exactly two months since the Israeli government-controlled scheme, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, began operating, 100+ organizations are sounding the alarm, urging governments to act: open all land crossings; restore the full flow of food, clean water, medical supplies, shelter items, and fuel through a principled, UN-led mechanism; end the siege, and agree to a ceasefire now.

“Each morning, the same question echoes across Gaza: will I eat today?” said one agency representative.

Massacres at food distribution sites in Gaza are occurring near-daily. As of July 13, the UN confirmed 875 Palestinians were killed while seeking food, 201 on aid routes and the rest at distribution points. Thousands more have been injured. Meanwhile, Israeli forces have forcibly displaced nearly two million exhausted Palestinians with the most recent mass displacement order issued on July 20, confining Palestinians to less than 12 per cent of Gaza. WFP warns that current conditions make operations untenable. The starvation of civilians as a method of warfare is a war crime.

Just outside Gaza, in warehouses – and even within Gaza itself – tons of food, clean water, medical supplies, shelter items and fuel sit untouched with humanitarian organisations blocked from accessing or delivering them. The Government of Israel’s restrictions, delays, and fragmentation under its total siege have created chaos, starvation, and death. An aid worker providing psychosocial support spoke of the devastating impact on children: “Children tell their parents they want to go to heaven, because at least heaven has food.”

Doctors report record rates of acute malnutrition, especially among children and older people. Illnesses like acute watery diarrhoea are spreading, markets are empty, waste is piling up, and adults are collapsing on the streets from hunger and dehydration. Distributions in Gaza average just 28 trucks a day, far from enough for over two million people, many of whom have gone weeks without assistance.

The UN-led humanitarian system has not failed, it has been prevented from functioning.

Humanitarian agencies have the capacity and supplies to respond at scale. But, with access denied, we are blocked from reaching those in need, including our own exhausted and starved teams. On July 10, the EU and Israel announced steps to scale up aid. But these promises of ‘progress’ ring hollow when there is no real change on the ground. Every day without a sustained flow means more people dying of preventable illnesses. Children starve while waiting for promises that never arrive.

Palestinians are trapped in a cycle of hope and heartbreak, waiting for assistance and ceasefires, only to wake up to worsening conditions. It is not just physical torment, but psychological. Survival is dangled like a mirage. The humanitarian system cannot run on false promises. Humanitarians cannot operate on shifting timelines or wait for political commitments that fail to deliver access.

Governments must stop waiting for permission to act. We cannot continue to hope that current arrangements will work. It is time to take decisive action: demand an immediate and permanent ceasefire; lift all bureaucratic and administrative restrictions; open all land crossings; ensure access to everyone in all of Gaza; reject military-controlled distribution models; restore a principled, UN-led humanitarian response and continue to fund principled and impartial humanitarian organisations. States must pursue concrete measures to end the siege, such as halting the transfer of weapons and ammunition.

Piecemeal arrangements and symbolic gestures, like airdrops or flawed aid deals, serve as a smokescreen for inaction. They cannot replace states’ legal and moral obligations to protect Palestinian civilians and ensure meaningful access at scale. States can and must save lives before there are none left to save.

Signatories:

American Friends Service Committee (AFSC)

A.M. Qattan Foundation

A New Policy

ACT Alliance

Action Against Hunger (ACF)

Action for Humanity

ActionAid International

American Baptist Churches Palestine Justice Network

Amnesty International

Asamblea de Cooperación por la Paz

Associazione Cooperazione e Solidarietà (ACS)

Bystanders No More

Campain

CARE

Caritas Germany

Caritas Internationalis

Caritas Jerusalem

Catholic Agency for Overseas Development (CAFOD)

Center for Mind-Body Medicine (CMBM)

CESVI Fondazione

Children Not Numbers

Christian Aid

Churches for Middle East Peace (CMEP)

CIDSE- International Family of Catholic Social Justice Organisations

Cooperazione Internazionale Sud Sud (CISS)

Council for Arab‐British Understanding (CAABU)

DanChurchAid (DCA)

Danish Refugee Council (DRC)

Development and Peace – Caritas Canada

Doctors against Genocide

Episcopal Peace Fellowship

EuroMed Rights

Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL)

Forum Ziviler Friedensdienst e.V.

Gender Action for Peace and Security

Glia

Global Legal Action Network (GLAN)

Global Witness

Health Workers 4 Palestine

HelpAge International

Human Concern International

Humanity & Inclusion (HI)

Humanity First UK

Indiana Center for Middle East Peace

Insecurity Insight

International Media Support

International NGO Safety Organisation

Islamic Relief

Jahalin Solidarity

Japan International Volunteer Center (JVC)

Justice for All

Kenya Association of Muslim Medical Professionals (KAMMP)

Kvinna till Kvinna Foundation

MedGlobal

Medico International

Medico International Switzerland (medico international schweiz)

Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP)

Mennonite Central Committee (MCC)

Medicine for the People – Belgium (MPLP/GVHV)

Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF)

Médecins du Monde France

Médecins du Monde Spain

Médecins du Monde Switzerland

Mercy Corps

Middle East Children’s Alliance (MECA)

Movement for Peace (MPDL)

Muslim Aid

National Justice and Peace Network in England and Wales

Nonviolence International

Norwegian Aid Committee (NORWAC)

Norwegian Church Aid (NCA)

Norwegian People’s Aid (NPA)

Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC)

Oxfam International

Pax Christi England and Wales

Pax Christi International

Pax Christi Merseyside

Pax Christi USA

Pal Law Commission

Palestinian American Medical Association

Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund (PCRF)

Palestinian Medical Relief Society (PMRS)

Peace Direct

Peace Winds

Pediatricians for Palestine

People in Need

Plan International

Première Urgence Internationale (PUI)

Progettomondo

Project HOPE

Quaker Palestine Israel Network

Rebuilding Alliance

Refugees International

Saferworld

Sabeel‐Kairos UK

Save the Children (SCI)

Scottish Catholic International Aid Fund

Solidarités International

Støtteforeningen Det Danske Hus i Palæstina

Swiss Church Aid (HEKS/EPER)

Terre des Hommes Italia

Terre des Hommes Lausanne

Terre des Hommes Nederland

The Borgen Project

The Center for Mind-Body Medicine (CMBM)

The Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect (GCR2P)

The International Development and Relief Foundation

The Institute for the Understanding of Anti‐Palestinian Racism

Un Ponte Per (UPP)

United Against Inhumanity (UAI)

War Child Alliance

War Child UK

War on Want

Weltfriedensdienst e.V.

Welthungerhilfe (WHH)

This article was originally published on Eric’s Substack.

The post Public Letter on Starvation of Gaza appeared first on LewRockwell.

In a stunning expression of the Globalist-Fascist takeover of the Netherlands, the Netherlands police have arrested Arno van Kessel, the lead attorney suing Bill Gates, Albert Bourla, Mark Rutte et al. for COVID-19 vaccine injuries.

The civil process was scheduled to begin on July 9; Mr. van Kessel was arrested in a Gestapo-reminiscent early morning raid by paramilitary police on June 11, where he was reportedly blindfolded, bound, and taken into detention, where he remains almost two months later.

Readers will note my tardiness in reporting this stunning story. The reason is because both the European and the American press have completely ignored both the civil trial against Gates, Bourla, Rutte et al. and van Kessel’s arrest.

I knew nothing about van Kessel’s arrest until last night, when my co-author, Dr. Peter McCullough, forwarded to me a report by INFOWARS journalist, Adan Salazar. Once again, the so-called “conspiracy theorist” Alex Jones has proven to be one of the first guys to report the shocking reality of what is going on.

Salazar’s report prompted me to do a Google Netherlands search with the key words Arno van Kessel gearresteerd — that is, “Arno van Kessel arrested”—and I got one search result for a June 27 report in an independent online journal called Der Andere Krant (The Other Newspaper). The following is an English translation.

Arno van Kessel will be held in custody for an additional ninety days because the Public Prosecution Service continues to designate him as a “suspect in an investigation into a criminal network,” yet without presenting any evidence. This means the Leeuwarden lawyer will definitely not be present at the public hearing on July 9th in the Leeuwarden District Court, where the first substantive hearing in the internationally high-profile case against, among others, the State of the Netherlands, Mark Rutte, and Bill Gates is scheduled. His partner, Peter Stassen, is on his own, but says he will “appear fully equipped.”

In early June, this newspaper reported that there was finally some progress in the internationally high-profile lawsuit by Leeuwarden lawyer Arno van Kessel https://deanderekrant.nl/nieuw-hoofdstuk-in-rechtszaak-tegen-bill-gates-en-mark-rutte/and his Eindhoven colleague Peter Stassen. In 2023, the legal duo announced they would file legal proceedings against Bill Gates, Mark Rutte, and the Dutch State, among others. On behalf of their clients, they want to force the judge to issue a clear ruling on the question: was the COVID-19 mRNA injection a vaccine for the benefit of the population’s health, or a bioweapon? Van Kessel said: “It’s one or the other, and there’s no in between.”

The Northern Netherlands District Court, Leeuwarden location, announced in early June 2025 – finally – that the first substantive hearing of the case is scheduled for July 9th. On Wednesday morning, June 11th, there was a completely unexpected turn of events. Arno van Kessel was dragged from his bed early in the morning by a special intervention team with a considerable display of force. The lawyer, his daughter, and his wife were even briefly held at gunpoint.

A day later, the police published a report on the website politie.nl linking Van Kessel to “a criminal network.” According to a press release issued by the Public Prosecution Service, eight people were arrested that morning for “adhering to anti-institutional ideology and possibly intending to use violence.” One of them was quickly released, while the other seven were held in restricted custody for two weeks, meaning the suspects were not allowed any contact with the outside world. Van Kessel – as was announced last week – was being held in a cell in Vught.

In recent weeks, several stories have appeared in the mainstream media about a network of so-called sovereigns. These “anti-institutionalists” may have been planning something related to the NATO summit. Weapons and explosives may have been found, but any hard evidence or substantiation remains lacking to this day. The suggestion that Van Kessel is also part of a dangerous criminal group has been raised. The charges have since been partially withdrawn. The AD newspaper reported last week that the Public Prosecution Service has been unable to substantiate a plan to disrupt the NATO summit. “We have investigated whether there is an imminent threat. This has not been proven.”

On Thursday, June 26, the Public Prosecution Service released more news after a long silence. One suspect has been released, but “six suspects in the investigation into a criminal network, in which a large proportion of the arrested suspects espouse anti-institutional ideology and may have the intention to use violence, will remain in custody for an additional 90 days,” the Public Prosecution Service announced. Van Kessel is one of those suspects who will remain in custody for another 90 days. The Public Prosecution Service states that it needs more time for the investigation and that “given the state of the investigation, it is not possible to respond substantively to questions about the progress, suspicions, and findings,” according to the Public Prosecution Service.

It’s remarkable that the mainstream media continues to use the “sovereign” frame. This is despite the fact that it was already clear in the first days after the arrest that Van Kessel is not a sovereign. As a lawyer, he is following the institutional path with his case. Van Kessel is also not known for being violent. He openly and unashamedly proclaims his faith in Jesus Christ everywhere, which implies that he opposes violence. The media writes nothing about this. They also ignore the story of Van Kessel’s partner (see box).

Peter Stassen – who is temporarily acting as head of Van Kessel’s law firm – told De Andere Krant that he, too, has not had any contact with his partner since June 11th. According to Stassen, restraining a suspect is one of the most severe measures the Public Prosecution Service has at its disposal, “so they have to produce very strong evidence.” So far, he has seen nothing. The Public Prosecution Service told this newspaper that “the Public Prosecution Service realizes that this is a very serious instrument and should not be used lightly,” but declined to comment further on the case.

The Eindhoven lawyer has since received word from the chairman of the Dutch Bar Association, the body responsible for overseeing the legal profession, that suspension proceedings have been initiated against Van Kessel. One way or another, it is therefore certain that Van Kessel will not be present on July 9th. Stassen did, however, make it very clear that despite his inadequate preparation, he “will be fully equipped.”

Stassen will also give a lecture in Groningen on July 1st about the latest developments. “It will go ahead as planned. I will explain a great deal in it, including addressing the State’s defense, in which they very clearly make personal attacks on the experts we want to speak,” says Stassen. More information about this can be found at Rechtoprecht.online.

Many suspect that attorney Van Kessel has gotten too close to the truth in the coronavirus case. This has led to the case being associated with the prosecution of German lawyer Reiner Fuellmich. We will discuss the case in more detail in the next edition of De Andere Krant.

The case strikes me as another example of how Globalist gangsters no longer even try to conceal that they have gone Full Fascist. Arresting a plaintiffs attorney in a late night raid of his home and detaining him for months on vague accusations of “espousing an anti-institutional ideology” is so crassly totalitarian as to be almost beyond belief.

Not surprisingly, the hopelessly fallen New York Times hasn’t reported van Kessel’s arrest. Once widely regarded as the thoroughbred of U.S. news reporting, the Times now resembles an old, swayback donkey covered with manure. The English language is insufficient for me to express the depth of my contempt for that useless rag, unworthy of being used as ersatz toilette paper in a subway station public restroom.

The German press is no better. A Google Germany search for niederländischer Anwalt Arno van Kessel verhaftet (“Netherlands attorney Arno van Kessel arrested”) yielded not a single report from a single major German newspaper. How is this possible?

I thought I’d grown accustomed to being presented with evidence that a cabal of globalists and their puppets—such as former Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, who is now Secretary General of NATO—run the world, but it occurs to me this morning that this story beats them all. Please forward this critically important report to your friends.

Author’s Note: If you found this report interesting and informative, please consider being a paid subscriber to the Focal Points. For just $5 per month, you can support us in our efforts to investigate and report the reality of what is going on in our world. During these languid days of summer we have lost many of our paid subscribers who have—understandably—grown fatigued with many of the themes we’ve been reporting since we started our newsletter in October 2022. I hope the above story will serve as a reminder of the importance of supporting independent, investigative reporters like us.

Postscript: The arrest of Arno van Kessel is yet another stunning example of how vaccines have been a remunerative religion that was first erected in the 18th century. Belief in vaccines is a matter of strict orthodoxy. As we show in our new book, Vaccines: Mythology, Ideology, and Reality, those who question their safety and efficacy have long been treated like those branded as heretics during the religious wars of Europe between approximately 1517 and 1648.

When it comes to imposing vaccines on the public, those in power have consistently acted as though the ends justify the means, no matter how ruthless and even criminal the means may be. What is happening to Mr. van Kessel is merely the latest persecution in what may be characterized as a vaccine religious war that has been going on for three hundred years. Please click on the image below to check out the Amazon page for the book, whose official publication date is this Tuesday, July 29.

This article was originally published on Courageous Discourse.

The post Lawyer Suing Gates & Bourla for Covid VAX Injuries Arrested and Imprisoned in Netherlands appeared first on LewRockwell.

People are drowning in the shallow waters of self-esteem. For decades, the high priests of pop psychology and the wardens of politics have peddled a dangerous gospel: that feeling good about oneself is the highest good.

This therapeutic tyranny, whispered from leather couches, insists that self-worth is a prize to be given, not an honor to be earned.

Has the public been sold a bill of goods? Our elites swap the cheap sugar of affirmation for the red meat of character. This isn’t a mere misstep but poison that is corrupting the national soul.

The architects of this grand deception deliberately confuse two distinct concepts: self-esteem and self-image. Self-esteem is a fleeting emotional vapor. Self-image is a clear-eyed reckoning of what you are and what you can become.

The pioneers who carved a nation from wilderness weren’t burdened by chasing warm fuzzies. They stood firm on an honest self-image, aware of both strengths and faults.

Achievement springs not from narcissism but from relentless self-critique. The humble man, conscious of his flaws, builds empires. The peacock, strutting on inflated pride, accomplishes nothing.

This obsession with internal validation spawns a rotten public counterpart: the cult of nice. In the parlors of power and Ivy League lounges, a new commandment reigns: Thou Shalt Be Nice. But—as this writer’s First Law decrees— “Nice is not a virtue.”

Nice is cowardice masquerading as courtesy, silencing plain truths for fear of offense.

This pathology can be seen in some of the forward-facing “celebrities” within the Church hierarchy. In the case of wolves in sheep’s clothing like James Martin, S.J., pastoral agreeableness trumps doctrinal truth and, in doing so, it sacrifices centuries of wisdom on the altar of accommodation.

Another favorite pastime of Martin’s is to weaponize the term “inclusion” to silence dissent, while hurling the bizarre tag of “othering” at faithful Americans, casting them as outsiders in their own land.

Forgotten Americans, however, are aware of the difference. They demand truth over therapy and justice over tolerance. This isn’t a debate over manners but a battle for civilization’s moral foundations.

The classical virtues are not “nice.” They are demanding. Saint John the Baptist did not offer Herod a lifestyle dialogue when he delivered the righteous rebuke that cost him his head.

Charity lives in truth’s strong embrace, not relativism’s flimsy hug. While it isn’t kind to let a man wander in darkness, it is an act of love to show him the harsh light of reality. Our culture’s revival must begin by shattering the mirror of self-esteem and embracing the stark reflection of an accurate self-image.

This is our fight—and it’s not merely against bureaucrats or globalists this time around. The battle is against a weakness within.

The choice? It’s between the fleeting comfort of “nice” and the enduring strength of virtue.

The truth, as a wise man once said, is like a lion. We need not defend it. It needs only to be unleashed.

This article was originally published on The O’Leary Review.

The post The Tyranny of Nice: How We Traded Virtue for Vibes appeared first on LewRockwell.

President Trump has recently suggested that, unless Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell cuts interest rates, the president might revert to his The Apprentice days and tell Powell, “you’re fired.”

President Trump backtracked on firing Powell after the president’s comments caused stock markets to fall. However, it is almost certain that President Trump will not reappoint Powell when Powell’s term ends in May.

Media reports indicate the leading candidates to replace Powell include Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, former Federal Reserve Board Governor Kevin Warsh, and National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett.

A more interesting question than who will replace Powell is why would anyone want to, since the next Fed chairman will likely face another Fed-caused meltdown.

The national debt is over 37 trillion dollars and rising. Yet few in Congress are serious about cutting federal spending. This puts pressure on the Fed to keep interest rates low to limit the cost of ongoing debt interest payments. So, the Fed continues monetizing the debt, pumping more money into the economy, weakening the dollar’s purchasing power, and eroding the American people’s standard of living. The Federal Reserve’s low interest rate policy also distorts the market, leading to the bubble-boom-and-bust business cycle that has plagued the American economy since the last link between the dollar and gold was severed in 1971.

The Fed’s job is also made more difficult by a reduced demand for Treasury securities among investors, causing the Fed to increase its purchases. This pumps more money into the economy, further eroding the dollar’s value.

Concerns about the national debt’s effect on monetary policy are a key factor behind the recent increase in gold prices and the interest in cryptocurrencies. The danger posed by the national debt is one reason why foreign countries are increasing their gold holdings and considering challenging the US dollar’s world reserve currency status.

Whoever succeeds Jerome Powell as Fed chairman will face a no-win choice. He could try to keep interest rates low to ensure the federal government’s interest payments remain manageable, at the cost of making it more likely the US economy will face another Federal Reserve caused meltdown. Instead, he could try increasing rates to limit price increases thus raising the cost of managing government (and private sector) debt to unsustainable levels, throwing the economy into a severe downturn.

Congress members and President Trump are attacking Chairman Powell for spending over two billion dollars on Federal Reserve headquarters renovations. This is a waste of taxpayer money, but it pales in comparison to the harm suffered by the American people because of the Federal Reserve’s inflationary policies.

Treasury Secretary Bessent has suggested expanding the investigation beyond the costs of renovating the Fed headquarters to examination of “the entire Federal Reserve institution” to determine if the Fed has “succeeded in its mission.” This suggests Secretary Bessent would support passing the Audit the Fed legislation, which is a step toward returning to a constitutional and sound monetary policy. However, anyone who understands Austrian economics knows a fiat money system managed by a secretive central bank can never succeed in creating lasting prosperity and will eventually crash the economy.

No person or persons can know the “correct” interest rates, and the Federal Reserve’s attempts to control interest rates are destructive like other central planning. The proper answer to who should be Fed chairman is…nobody.

The post Nobody for Fed Chairman appeared first on LewRockwell.

The Firestorm Over Trump’s Refusal to Release the Epstein Files

Several months ago, the Trump Administration fulfilled one of its campaign pledges and declassified a large batch of JFK Assassination files, finally making them publicly available after sixty-odd years.

Few of these unredacted documents seemed to contain anything new or interesting, with the most dramatic memo being the report that longtime CIA Counter-Intelligence Chief James Jesus Angleton had a very close relationship with the Israeli Mossad, and was believed by some to have assisted Israel in developing its nuclear weapons program. That item quickly went viral on Twitter and was heavily emphasized by those bloggers discussing the document-dump.

While these facts were certainly interesting, I hardly regarded them as shocking discoveries. For example, renowned investigative journalist Seymour Hersh had revealed Angleton’s extremely close relationship with Israeli intelligence in his 1991 bestseller The Samson Option, while Michael Collins Piper’s seminal 1994 book Final Judgment had fingered Angleton as a likely Israeli asset who had greatly abetted that country’s nuclear weapons development effort. Indeed, shortly after Angleton’s death more than 37 years ago, an article in the Washington Post revealed that he had “reportedly aided Israel in obtaining nuclear data.” So if certain facts had already been widely known or suspected for more than 37 years, their apparent confirmation in a declassified government document could hardly be regarded as revolutionary.

But the huge wave of renewed public interest in the JFK Assassination prompted Mike Whitney to interview me about that subject. This provided me an opportunity to summarize my previous half-dozen years of investigation in a lengthy piece that soon received quite a lot of readership and attention.

• How Israel Killed the Kennedys
  Ron Unz and Mike Whitney • The Unz Review • March 24, 2025 • 11,500 Words

Then earlier this month, Trump reversed himself on his pledge to declassify and release all the government files related to a different high-profile criminal case, and this surprising U-turn provoked an even larger storm of public controversy.

Back in 2019, a mysterious wealthy financier named Jeffrey Epstein had been arrested on charges of molesting minors and sex-trafficking them to many dozens of America’s richest and most powerful individuals, amid widespread suspicions that he had been running a sexual blackmail ring on behalf of a foreign intelligence agency. According to media reports, an enormous trove of sexually-incriminating photographs and videos had been found in the safe of his huge New York City mansion.

Six years ago this Tuesday, soon after Epstein’s arrest, I’d published a long article on the case, placing it in the broader context of the crucial role that blackmail seemed to play in secretly controlling many of America’s top political leaders.

• American Pravda: John McCain, Jeffrey Epstein, and Pizzagate
  Ron Unz • The Unz Review • July 29, 2019 • 6,400 Words

In that piece, I’d explained that I’d never paid any attention to the wild Epstein stories circulating on the Internet, dismissing them as just too bizarre to possibly be true.

For many years, reports about Epstein and his illegal sex-ring had regularly circulated on the fringes of the Internet, with agitated commenters citing the case as proof of the dark and malevolent forces that secretly controlled our corrupted political system. But I almost entirely ignored these discussions, and I’m not sure that I ever once clicked on a single link.

Probably one reason I paid so little attention to the topic was the exceptionally lurid nature of the claims being made. Epstein was supposedly an enormously wealthy Wall Street financier of rather mysterious personal background and source of funds, who owned a private island and an immense New York City mansion, both regularly stocked with harems of underage girls provided for sexual purposes. He allegedly hobnobbed on a regular basis with Bill Clinton, Prince Andrew, Harvard’s Alan Dershowitz, and numerous other figures in the international elite, as well as a gaggle of ordinary billionaires, frequently transporting those individuals on his personal jet known as “the Lolita Express” for the role it played in facilitating illegal secret orgies with young girls. When right-wing bloggers on obscure websites claimed that former President Clinton and the British Royals were being sexually serviced by the underage girls of a James Bond super-villain brought to life, I just naturally assumed those accusations were the wildest sort of Internet exaggeration.

Moreover, these angry writers did occasionally let slip that the fiendish target of their wrath had already been charged in a Florida courtroom, eventually pleading guilty to a single sexual offense and receiving a thirteen month jail sentence, mitigated by very generous work-release provisions. This hardly seemed like the sort of judicial punishment that would lend credence to the fantastical accusations against him. If Epstein had already been investigated by law enforcement authorities and given the sentence one might expect for writing a bad check, I found it quite unlikely that he was actually the Goldfinger or Dr. No that deluded Internet activists made him out to be.

But once Epstein’s arrest and the resulting media coverage confirmed the reality of those astonishing stories, a huge blizzard of political agitation erupted. This became far greater when Epstein was suddenly found dead in his maximum security prison cell, having allegedly committed suicide while the guards tasked with checking his safety had happened to fall asleep and the video cameras monitoring his cell had strangely malfunctioned. Many very powerful people surely breathed a huge sign of relief at Epstein’s sudden demise, so all but the most credulous became extremely suspicious at this strange turn of events.

During the half-dozen years since then, the Epstein case and its many conspiratorial elements had become a huge issue in political activist circles, especially those on the far right. Perhaps partly as a consequence, bizarre theories involving networks of elite pedophiles later became the heart of the wildly popular QAnon movement.

Most of the groups and individuals holding those views regarded Donald Trump as their great hero and paladin, the leader who would defeat those diabolical villains and bring them to justice if he somehow managed to regain the White House, and his promise to release all the Epstein files energized many of his supporters. Leading right-wing influencers in the Trump camp such as Dan Bongino had made the Epstein files one of their signature issues, so Bongino’s appointment as Deputy Director of the FBI seemed proof that Trump would soon honor that pledge.

But then three weeks ago, the Trump Administration reversed its position and declared that no additional Epstein files would be released, even suggesting that much of the material didn’t actually exist. This naturally produced howls of outrage by Trump’s erstwhile supporters. Elon Musk ridiculed Trump in an insulting meme that was viewed more than 63 million times:

With no further Epstein files released, no new facts existed. So I fully stood by the analysis I’d originally presented in my 2019 article. But now that this enormous outpouring of public controversy has returned the issue to the center of national attention, I’ve decided to expand and extend what I had previously written.

Former FoxNews host Tucker Carlson is probably the biggest figure in today’s fragmented media landscape and a crucial supporter of Donald Trump. But he and many others like him have strongly denounced the administration’s reversal on the release of the Epstein files.

The largest youthful pro-Trump organization is called Turning Point USA, and Carlson happened to give a speech to the huge audience at their annual convention a few days after Trump’s decision. He dramatically declared that that not a single person he knew in DC doubted that Epstein had been running a blackmail operation on behalf of the Israeli Mossad, and despite that controversial statement his speech drew widespread cheers. This suggests that his remarks—and the positive reaction they attracted—may themselves mark “a turning point” in what had been decades of uniformly pro-Israel sentiments among American conservatives. So ideas once marginalized or considered entirely forbidden may now apparently be freely discussed, sometimes even attracting widespread support, and this may be the most important lasting legacy of the current political firestorm over the Epstein files.

Video Link

Indeed, given Carlson’s words only the most willfully blind could fail to connect such Mossad operations with the unwavering levels of support that Israel has long enjoyed from our members of Congress. Over the last couple of years, nearly the entire rest of the world has come to regard Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as one of modern history’s worst war-criminals, now under indictment by the International Court of Justice for his horrific ongoing massacre of Gaza’s helpless civilians. But when he has visited Congress, the trained barking seals of that political body have provided him endless standing ovations. Obviously the money and media deployed by the Israel Lobby explain most of this behavior, but the powerful role of blackmail has almost certainly supplemented those factors.

The notion that many of our own elected officials are being ruthlessly blackmailed by a foreign power must surely outrage most patriotic Americans, and the increasing circulation of these ideas may eventually have important consequences. Just a few days after Carlson’s remarkable speech, Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, one of the fiercest MAGA partisans in Congress, surprisingly joined with Democrats Reps. Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar, two of her most leftwing colleagues, in voting to cut U.S. funding for Israel. This resolution only attracted a handful of supporters, but small cracks in a dam sometimes presage much larger breaks.

Epstein’s operation has widely been described as a Mossad “honeytrap,” the term for intelligence projects that use women to ensnare prominent, unsuspecting men in sexual blackmail, but there seemed to be some puzzling aspects to this picture.

Given the enormous scale of Epstein’s operation and the decades that it had remained in place, it’s difficult to believe that so many wealthy, well-connected individuals could have naively fallen into his clutches. Surely the stories of all his underage girls and the rumors of his hidden cameras would have gotten around. And billionaires strongly interested in such illicit pleasures could easily have arranged these for themselves rather than risking Epstein’s blackmail demands.

The answer to this puzzle is an obvious one, though I’ve only seen it explained by Internet provocateur Andrew Anglin, whose key explanatory phrase was “voluntary blackmail.”

He pointed out that the dark, secret forces such as Mossad that control much of American politics would only lend their support to those persons whom they considered fully under their control, and powerful blackmail evidence was the surest means of establishing such control. In effect, those individuals who wanted to advance their careers or gain powerful hidden allies would knowingly use Epstein’s services to create a blackmail tape of their illegal sexual activity with underage girls, thereby marking themselves as “safe” recipients of support. He stated all of this in his usual crude, insulting style:

So, it’s definitely not a “conspiracy theory.” Let’s make sure we don’t get lost here. The government has a lot of information on what certainly and definitely appears to be a “Mossad blackmail ring,” which involved people, presumably voluntarily, allowing themselves to be recorded having sex with underage girls.

That’s another point to be clear on: you would have to be retarded to do it just because you were horny. Prince Andrew appears to have actually done that, but he also appears to clearly suffer from mental retardation. Normal people who we would be talking about here would knowingly have illicit sex on video for the Mossad to keep so that powerful Jews would know they were loyal and give them promotions…

However, whenever you’re talking about a “blackmail ring,” you’re talking pretty much exclusively about voluntary blackmail. Any kind of systematic blackmail is necessarily voluntary, as you are not going to set up a system of seducing people and tricking them into having sex on video. It has been a thing since forever that criminal gangs require someone to do some crime, such as murder, and then keep some evidence on them. It’s just common sense that if you have evidence of someone committing a serious crime, or something that would otherwise destroy their life, you’re going to trust them, because no such person is going to betray you.

Anglin may have regarded the point he was making as a totally obvious one, and perhaps that’s correct. But I hadn’t really considered it myself, nor had I seen anyone else make it in such explicit fashion.

Over the centuries, many secret societies have similarly inducted their members with extreme initiation rituals, and the traditional mafia supposedly required its candidates to commit a murder in order to become “a made man.” As Anglin later explained, the popular 1973 crime film Serpico was based upon real life events, and the corrupt NYC officers it portrayed required all of their colleagues to join them in taking bribes and payoffs, fearing that those who refused might eventually decide to report their illegal activities.

Ironically enough, a sentence I’d published a decade ago had made exactly that point, and I’d quoted it again in my 2019 Epstein article. But I’d never followed through on the idea nor considered its full implications:

I have sometimes joked with my friends that perhaps the best career move for an ambitious young politician would be to secretly commit some monstrous crime and then make sure that the hard evidence of his guilt ended up in the hands of certain powerful people, thereby assuring his rapid political rise.

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The post Ana Kasparian: Epstein Cover-Up, Israel Strikes Gaza Church, & the Great American Political Shift appeared first on LewRockwell.

We’re back at the part of the news cycle where Israel tells the world it’s going to allow a bit more aid into Gaza in order to mollify its allies and reduce the public outcry as images of starving children draw objections from the west.

This is just Israel giving the Kier Starmers and Anthony Albaneses of the western world just enough of an excuse to go silent about the starvation of Gaza again. They will then continue starving Gaza. This psychopathic python-like suffocation tactic is how Israel has gotten Gaza to the point it’s at now.

And of course it’s worth noting that Israel’s announcement that it will allow more food into Gaza so people don’t starve completely debunks all its claims these last few days that people in Gaza are starving because of Hamas and the UN. They’re starving because Israel is starving them.

❖

Israeli officials have told The New York Times that there has never been any evidence of Hamas stealing aid from UN trucks in any significant way, a claim Israel and its apologists have been falsely asserting for two years. They lie about everything. They never stop lying.

We’ve been asked to believe a lot of intensely stupid narratives throughout this genocide, but “it’s actually HAMAS who’s starving Gaza” has got to be the dumbest one yet. The fact that Israel and its supporters tried to blame the UN and Hamas for Israel’s extensively documented starvation campaign makes it clear that these freaks intend to keep lying about this thing until the last dying gasp of the last Palestinian.

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Gideon Levy has a new article out titled “Denying Gaza’s Starvation Is No Less Vile Than Denying the Holocaust”. Personally I’d take it much further and say it’s vastly worse than denying the Holocaust, because it’s helping to kill people right this very moment.

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I’m sorry if this is antisemitic but I think it’s wrong to deliberately starve thousands of children to death.

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If you found out someone was trapping small children in a confined space and then intentionally starving them to death, what words would you use to describe that person?

Think about how fucked up you’d need to be inside to starve a baby, or to support someone who is doing so. Think how many millennia of evolutionary conditioning you’d have to override as a human, as a primate, as a mammal, to stifle the screaming you feel inside when you see a skeletal infant. You’d have to make yourself less of a human inside to support the inhumanity.

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The worst thing Donald Trump has ever done is commit genocide in Gaza. Everything else pales in comparison. He could end the Gaza holocaust with a phone call just like Biden could have, and he hasn’t. For that reason alone he deserves to die in a cage.

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Children’s Youtube star Ms Rachel has announced that she won’t be working with anyone who doesn’t publicly oppose Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

The thing I love about Ms Rachel is that nobody was pushing her to speak out about Gaza. Not one person was out here saying “Ms Rachel’s silence on Rafah is deafening!” She could’ve gotten away with being silent on Gaza forever and suffered no professional consequences, but she spoke out anyway because she’s a genuinely good person.

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Today I got my first comment telling me I was wrong to oppose Israel in October 2023 but now I’m right because things have changed. I expect to receive many more such comments going forward as people navigate the difficult cognitive dissonance terrain of realizing they’ve been wrong this entire time.

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Israel apologists love using circular reasoning to dismiss outlets and organizations which criticize Israel. If you’ve ever argued with them online you know what I’m talking about.

It’s basically this —

Normal person: Here’s evidence of Israel doing bad things. 

Israel apologist: You can’t cite THAT outlet! That outlet is Hamas propaganda! 

Normal person: What? What makes them Hamas propaganda? 

Israel apologist: They’re always saying Israel does bad things!

Or this —

Normal person: Israel is committing genocide.

Israel apologist: Nuh-uh, that’s blood libel.

Normal person: Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and UN human rights experts all say it’s genocide.

Israel apologist: Those groups are antisemitic!

Normal person: What? Why do you say that?

Israel apologist: They’re always spreading antisemitic lies about Israel!

Normal person: Such as?

Israel apologist: Such as saying Israel is committing genocide!

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Everyone spreading lies today to help Israel carry out the final stages of its final solution knows exactly what they’re doing. We see you, you sick fucks. We’ll remember you forever.

__________________

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The post They Intend To Keep Lying About Gaza Until They’ve Emptied It Out appeared first on LewRockwell.

Travel back in time to the year 2021 and you might find yourself in the middle of a bizarre debate over the virtues of “cancel culture”. At the time the political left was aggressively trying to secure long term power within the US through a multi-pronged psychological offensive – A war on the minds of the masses designed to force Americans into submission.

A big part of their strategy relied on the fundamentals of Cultural Marxism: The combination of Marxist mob tactics, artificial consensus and the exploitation of minority grievances as a vehicle for controlling speech. This was the rise of the “woke movement” to the halls of government.

The root of their power was not martial. In fact, the political left is weak and largely astroturf with minimal ability to project power in a physical way. If conservatives wanted to destroy them tomorrow the task would be relatively easy. We don’t because many of us still have hope that our problems can be solved through peaceful discourse.

What the leftists did have at their disposal was a massive institutional apparatus of government agencies, corporations, Big Tech and NGOs. The full might of the establishment cabal was on their side, which meant they had the means to enforce “cancel culture” and silence their ideological opponents.

I don’t think there has ever been a psychological war on a population that was more pervasive and tyrannical. Not since Mao’s Cultural Revolution in China has a citizenry been under such a siege by their own government. The fact that we survived this event, defeated the onslaught and actually grew a grassroots anti-woke movement without the use of social media forums is truly mind blowing.

Very few people today realize the level of victory that was achieved. We thwarted perhaps the largest 4th Generation “mind war” ever devised and we did it without any institutional access. We won by simple truth and word of mouth.

Another tool that the leftists and globalists used was the mobilization of illegal migrants, gays and minorities as a shield against criticism or counter-protest. If conservatives and moderates fought back with superior debate or our own protest groups, we were immediately accused of racism, xenophobia and homophobia. Merely presenting an opposing view to the progressive machine was considered an act of evil.

Large contingents within all of these groups were happy to go along with the agenda for numerous reasons. First and foremost, DEI allowed them to easily game the system. They could snatch up grants, subsidies, welfare, and leapfrog over more talented and more intelligent competitors in education and business simply because of their “marginalized status”.

Secondly, the system under progressives was two-tier; leftists activists, illegals and minorities were given preferential protection while breaking the law and causing chaos. Conservatives were labeled terrorists for any act of defiance. We were banned from the largest web platforms. Some of us were targeted by the online mob and lost our jobs. Others were “de-banked” and threatened with ostracism from the economy. Still others were imprisoned.

This imbalance of the law bred a culture of entitlement, especially within the LGBT cult and the black community. Illegal aliens were given carte blanche to enter the country and feed like parasites. Not only that, but they were treated like heroes coming to save the US from “population decline” and “labor shortages”.

They all participated in the game willfully and joyfully. They were ALL part of the problem. But, of course, none of them ever thought the party would end or that they might end up facing consequences for their behavior. They joined in the feeding frenzy without considering the inevitable clap-back.

The primary argument that leftists would often use to defend the application of cancel culture was that there was “no such thing as cancel culture”, only the righteous utilization of “consequence culture”. This was, of course, a misdirection. The word “consequence” suggests that a person deserves punishment for wrongdoing and that the leftists canceling him (or her) have the right to do so.

Cancel culture was never about justice or karma, it was about suppression of anyone who disagreed with the political left. A corrupt group of psychopathic people with no support from the majority is in no position to dole out consequences. They can dole out harassment and intimidation, but not justice.

In recent months, however, I think these people are finally beginning to understand what “consequence culture” really is and clearly they don’t like it.  I touched on this issue when it comes to Hollywood and liberal entertainment media in my article ‘Conservative Creators: Don’t Let The Liberal Entertainment Crisis Go To Waste’, but I wanted to expand on the idea of payback for the political left and what it will mean going forward.

For example, I have to admit I can’t help but laugh over the Stephen Colbert controversy and leftists crying about violations of “free speech”. Keep in mind that a multitude of journalists and celebrities were fired, banned from public platforms and silenced for not going along with the establishment narratives on covid, open borders, the 2020 election outcome, January 6th, etc.

Leftists celebrated when FOX was pressured to fire their biggest name, Tucker Carlson, over his skepticism of the 2020 election and the “insurrection” claims surrounding J6. Carlson was mostly correct in his positions, but that didn’t matter.  The progressive view?  “It’s a private company, they can fire whoever they want…”

Now they are raging over Stephen Colbert getting the boot and losing his time slot (it’s a sign that most leftist late night hosts are facing the chopping block). Never mind that the guy’s show was bleeding around $40 million per year and his audience in the coveted 18-34 age range was shrinking into oblivion. Never mind that Colbert was acting as a shameless shill for Big Pharma. Liberals demand that his show remain in place. They demand that he never face any consequences for selling out and acting as a propagandist instead of a comedian.

Too bad. He’s toast, and there’s nothing you can do about it. Welcome to REAL consequence culture.

Within the black community there is another form of accountability taking place. The BLM movement basked in their privileged status, rampaging through cities and doing as they pleased under the protective hand of Democratic governments. In the process they destroyed whatever social capital they had left and ended decades of “white guilt” in the span of a few years.

Now, white conservatives and moderates just don’t care anymore. We don’t care about being called racist. We’re not interested in the supposed trespasses of previous generations. We’re NEVER going to pay reparations (you’re never going to see a dime), and we’re not going to tolerate ghetto behavior in shared public spaces any longer.

The term “black fatigue” has gone viral in the past month for a reason: White people are done with passively accepting bad behavior from a certain subset of blacks (many black Americans are also tired of ghetto culture and want it to end). The magical accusation of “racism” holds no power over us anymore.

Interestingly, we’re seeing this change culminating across the board, even in the corporate world. We see cruise lines banning typical ghetto habits on their ships. We see retailers abandoning predominantly black neighborhoods because of unfettered crime. We see DEI being dumped in hiring and blacks (and women) say they are being overtly affected. Well, this is what happens when you spend the last several years acting increasingly more unhinged, entitled and violent.

You were protected by a liberal narrative of historical shame, but that’s dying out. Which means people are going to start expecting you to display manners and self control. Otherwise, there will (finally) be consequences.

Illegal migrants might be the most entitled group of all. I can’t fathom a bunch of Americans entering another country illegally and then demanding access to their jobs market and welfare programs while also carrying around Americans flags in protest and asserting that they have no intention of assimilating. They would be shot in the streets in most places and no one would tolerate them.

The same standards are being enacted in the US after years of open borders. The illegals are outraged…and no one cares. There is some moderate empathy for agricultural workers, but they represent a tiny minority among the tens-of-millions of alien migrants that have invaded the US. And honestly, I really don’t care if they sweep up the farm workers, either.

America needs an immigration reset, at least for the next decade so that we can figure out what the hell happened and repair the damage done to our job markets, housing markets and wages. The media publishes sob stories regularly about illegal immigrants living within the US for 20 years or more that are suddenly facing deportation. Meaning, we’re supposed to care more about illegals that broke the law for 20 years compared to illegals that broke the law for 20 days?

No, consequences must be handed down and no one gets a pass. Not anymore.

I was also greatly amused by the recent interview with a slobbering, raving and classless Hunter Biden. Let’s not forget that Joe Biden was probably mentally vacant for a much of his presidency and ostensibly Jill Biden and Hunter were running things with their advisors behind the scenes. Is it any wonder that America was falling apart? We had a degenerate crackhead and his psychopath mommy at the helm.

The moron STILL acts as if he could officially be president one day. But if it is proven that Joe Biden was mentally incompetent during his term and most of his pardon signatures were forged by aids without his cognitive understanding, then ole’ Hunter is in for some legal consequences of his own. In the meantime, the fact that the family has fallen from grace and Hunter is a national laughing stock is enough.

When I witness the wide-eyed astonishment of these people as they finally face punishment, I think of the legacy of the western world. I think of the generations of good men that worked tirelessly to institute a sense of order, principle and the conventions necessary for our society to succeed. I am reminded, time and time again, how difficult is it to create a thing vs. how easy it is to destroy a thing.  I’m reminded that our forefathers never would have put up with this shit.

In the end, civilization cannot survive and thrive unless consequences are exacted upon people who deserve them. I believe we are entering a new epoch when any person or any group, no matter their purported circumstances, will face automatic retribution for seeking to tear down the west. This is the way things used to be, and deconstructionists had best prepare themselves for the returning swing of the pendulum.

Reprinted with permission from Alt-Market.us.

The post Lefties, Illegals, and Minorities Are Finally Experiencing ‘Consequence Culture’ appeared first on LewRockwell.

I find it absolutely fascinating how died-in-the-wool statists simply cannot bring themselves to accept that their beloved national-security establishment orchestrated and carried out the assassination of President Kennedy.

The statist mindset can be summed up with what I call the “Inconceivable Doctrine.” Statists believe that it is just inconceivable that the national-security state would assassinate a U.S. president, even if protecting “national security” required it. Therefore, no matter how much circumstantial evidence — with the fraudulent autopsy that the military conducted on JFK’s body being the best example — establishes guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, the statists continue to hew to the national-security state’s official lone-nut theory of the JFK assassination.

For example, consider the recent revelations regarding former CIA operative George Joannides. It has now been revealed that ever since the assassination, the CIA has been knowingly, deliberately, and intentionally lying about Joannides’s relationship with an organization called the DRE, which the CIA was secretly funding and which Joannides was secretly supervising.

Why would the CIA lie about that? Why would the CIA spend more than 10 years litigating in federal court on the taxpayer dime to keep that lie covered up? Why would preserving that lie be so important to the CIA?

The statists don’t ask those questions. They don’t want to know. Reflecting the Inconceivable Doctrine, their standard response is simply to exclaim “Conspiracy theory!” and then tell everyone that it’s time to “move on.”

Or consider that during the time the House Select Committee on Assassinations was reinvestigating the Kennedy assassination, the CIA appointed Joannides as a purported “liaison” to the committee. In fact, as things turned out, his real role was to serve as an obstructor, one whose job was to prevent committee investigators from accessing relevant CIA records.

To the statist, that’s just CIA “business as usual.” Nothing to see here, folks. More conspiracy theories. Time to move on. In other words, no demands that the CIA explain why it did this. To the statist, it simply is inconceivable that the CIA’s and Joannides’s conduct was intended to cover up the national-security state’s assassination of JFK. Their statist mindset simply will not permit them to entertain that possibility.

Consider the fact that the CIA intentionally, knowingly, and deliberately kept Joannides’s role with the DRE secret from the Assassination Records Review Board in the 1990s. Why would it do that? Statists say that it’s just because lying is an essential part of what the CIA is. Their minds simply will not entertain the thought that the lie might be part of a cover-up.

Consider the remarkable documentary that Douglas Horne, a former staff member of the Assassination Records Review Board and the author of the watershed book on the JFK assassination, Inside the Assassination Records Review Board, just posted on the Internet. It  establishes that there were three separate casket entries into the Bethesda military morgue on the very evening of the assassination. What would the statists say about that? One possibility is nothing because they know that there is no conceivable innocent explanation for sneaking the president’s body into the military morgue prior to the official start of the autopsy. But even if they did say something about that documentary, it would simply be something along these lines: “Folks, this is just another standard conspiracy theory. We need to move on.”

What these people cannot bring themselves to see is that the national-security state is a very nasty governmental structure, one that engages in some very malignant actions, many of which do, in fact, involve conspiracies — all in the name of protecting “national security.” Let’s consider some examples and also how statists would likely respond to each one:

1. MKULTRA. Statists would undoubtedly say that there is no way that the CIA would ever engage in secret damaging and possibly fatal drug experiments on people and certainly not on American citizens. Conspiracy theory!

2. The intentional destruction of MKULTRA records so that the American people could not see the extent of the damage and possible deaths unleashed by MKULTRA. Conspiracy theory!

3. The CIA’s hiring of Nazis after World War II. Conspiracy theory!

4. State-sponsored assassinations of political leaders, such as Chilean Gen. Rene Schneider, Congo leader Patrice Lamumba, Iranian Gen. Qasem Soleimani, and Martin Luther King. Conspiracy theory!

5. Repeated state-sponsored assassination attempts against Cuban president Fidel Castro, in partnership with the Mafia. Conspiracy theory!

6. A state-sponsored invasion of Cuba, a country that has never attacked the United States. Conspiracy theory!

7. State-sponsored acts of terrorism inside Cuba. Conspiracy theory!

8. A CIA coup that destroyed Iran’s democratic system. Conspiracy theory!

9.  A CIA coup in Guatemala, along with a secret official assassination list. Conspiracy theory!

9. A CIA-Pentagon-inspired coup that installed a brutal rightwing military dictator in Chile and left Chile’s democratically elected president dead. Conspiracy theory!

10. The national-security concoction of WMDs to garner support for the invasion of Iraq. Conspiracy theory!

11. The brutal torture of both foreigners and Americans as part of the “war on terrorism.” Conspiracy theory!

12. The intentional destruction of videotapes showing the torture of prisoners. Conspiracy theory!

13. The Iran-Contra affair. Conspiracy theory!

14. COINTELPRO. Conspiracy theory!

15. Operation Northwoods. Conspiracy theory!

16. Operation Condor. Conspiracy theory!

Yes, everyone knows that our beloved national-security establishment would never do anything bad in its efforts to protect “national security.” It’s all just “conspiracy theory.”

Reprinted with permission from Future of Freedom Foundation.

The post Statists and Conspiracy Theories appeared first on LewRockwell.

Israelis do not see the images of skeletal corpses of Palestinian children who they have starved to death as a curse. They do not see the slain families they gun down at food hubs — designed not to deliver aid but lure starving Palestinians into a massive concentration camp in the south of Gaza in preparation for deportation — as a war crime. Israelis do not look at the savage bombing and shelling that kill or wound dozens of Palestinian civilians, where an average of 28 children die daily, as anything extraordinary. They do not see the wasteland of Gaza, pulverized by bombs and methodically being torn down by bulldozers and excavators, leaving virtually the entire population of Gaza homeless, as barbaric. They do not see the destruction of water purification plants, decimation of hospitals and clinics, where doctors and medical staff are often unable to work because they are weak from malnutrition, as savage. They do not blink at the assassinations of doctors as well as journalists, 232 of whom have been murdered for trying to document the horror.

Israelis have blinded themselves morally and intellectually. They view the genocide through the lens of a bankrupt media and political class that tells them only what they want to hear and shows them only what they want to see. They are intoxicated by the power of their industrial weapons and license to kill with impunity. They are drunk on self-adulation and the fantasy that they are the vanguard of civilization. They believe that the extermination of a people, including children, condemned as human contaminants, makes the world, especially their world, a happier and safer place.

They are the heirs of Pol Pot, the killers that carried out the genocides in East Timor, Rwanda and Bosnia and, yes, the Nazis. Israel, like all genocidal states — no population since World War II has been dispossessed and starved with such speed and ruthlessness – has a final solution that would have earned the stamp of approval from Adolf Eichmann.

Starvation was always the plan, the preordained final chapter of the genocide. Israel methodically set out from the beginning of the genocide to destroy sources of food, bombing bakeries and blocking food shipments into Gaza, something it has accelerated since March, when it severed nearly all food supplies. It targeted the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) — on which most Palestinians depended on for food — for destruction, accusing its employees, without providing evidence, of being involved in the attacks of Oct. 7. This accusation was used to give funders such as the United States, which provided $422 million to the agency in 2023, the excuse to halt financial support. Israel then banned UNRWA.

Over 1,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli soldiers and U.S. mercenaries in the chaotic scramble to get one of the few food packages distributed during the brief blocks of time, usually an hour, at the four aid sites set up by the Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, according to the U.N. Human Rights Office.

Once Gaza was turned into a moonscape after 21 months of saturation bombing, once Palestinians were forced to live in tents, under crude tarps or in the open air, once clean water, food and medical aid became nearly impossible to find, once civil society was obliterated, Israel began its grim campaign to starve the Palestinians out of Gaza.

One in three people in Gaza are going multiple days without eating, according to the U.N.

Starvation is not a pretty sight. I covered the famine in Sudan in 1988 that took an estimated 250,000 lives. There are streaks in my lungs — scars from standing amid hundreds of Sudanese who were dying of tuberculosis. I was strong and healthy and fought off the contagion. They were weak and emaciated and did not.

I watched hundreds of skeletal figures, ghosts of human beings, trudge at a glacial pace across the barren Sudanese landscape. Hyenas, accustomed to eating human flesh, routinely picked off small children. I stood over clusters of bleached human bones on the outskirts of villages where dozens of people, too weak to walk, had laid down in a group and never got up. Many were the remains of entire families.

The starved lack enough calories to sustain themselves. They eat anything to survive — animal feed, grass, leaves, insects, rodents, even dirt. They suffer from constant diarrhea. They have trouble breathing because of respiratory infections. They rip up tiny bits of food, often spoiled, and ration it in a vain attempt to hold off the gnawing hunger pains.

Starvation reduces the iron needed to produce hemoglobin, a protein in red blood cells that carries oxygen from the lungs to the body, and myoglobin, a protein that provides oxygen to muscles, coupled with a lack of vitamin B1, which affects heart and brain function. Anemia sets in. The body, in essence, feeds on itself. Tissue and muscle waste away. It is impossible to regulate body temperature. Kidneys shut down. Immune systems crash. Vital organs atrophy. Blood circulation slows. The volume of blood decreases. Infectious diseases such as typhoid, tuberculosis and cholera become an epidemic, killing people by the thousands.

It is impossible to concentrate. Emaciated victims succumb to mental and emotional withdrawal and apathy. They do not want to be touched or moved. The heart muscle is weakened. Victims, even at rest, are in a state of virtual heart failure. Wounds do not heal. Vision is impaired with cataracts, even among the young. Finally, wracked by convulsions and hallucinations, the heart stops. This process can last up to 40 days for an adult. Children, the elderly and the sick expire at faster rates.This is the future Israel has preordained for the two million people in Gaza.

But it is not the future Israelis see. They see paradise. They see an ethno-nationalist Jewish state where Palestinians, whose land they stole and occupied and whose people they have subjugated and forced into an apartheid existence, do not exist. They see cafes and hotels rising up where thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of bodies lie buried under the rubble. They see tourists frolicking on the Gaza beachfront, a vision enhanced by an Artificial Intelligence-generated video uploaded to social media by Israeli Minister of Innovation, Science and Technology, Gila Gamliel. It is what a Gaza devoid of Palestinians would look like, echoing the absurdist AI video posted by Donald Trump.

In the new video, carefree Israelis eat at seaside restaurants. Anchored in the sparkling Mediterranean are luxury yachts. Gleaming hotels and office high rises, including a Trump Tower, dot the beachfront. Attractive residential neighborhoods stand where now there are broken, jagged mounds of concrete. The video shows Benjamin Netanyahu and his wife, Sara, as well as Trump and Melania, strolling along the seaside.

Gamliel, like other Israeli leaders and Trump, cynically uses the term “voluntary emigration” to describe the ethnic cleansing of Gaza. This omits the stark choice Israel actually offers the Palestinians — leave or die.

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has called for a “security annexation” of the northern Gaza Strip and vowed that Gaza will become an “inseparable part of the State of Israel.” He made the remarks at a Knesset conference called “The Gaza Riviera — from vision to reality,” which presented proposals for the building of Jewish colonies in Gaza. Smotrich said Israel would “relocate Gazans to other countries,” and that Trump endorsed the plan.

Israeli Minister of Heritage Amichai Eliyahu, who once proposed dropping a nuclear bomb on Gaza, declared that “All Gaza will be Jewish.” The Israeli government “is racing ahead for Gaza to be wiped out,” Eliyahu said. He described Palestinians as Nazis. “Thank God, we are wiping out this evil. We are pushing this population that has been educated on ‘Mein Kampf.’”

Genocidal killers embrace fantasies of eradicating a native population and expanding their ethnonationalist state. The Nazis carried out their genocidal assault, which included mass starvation, on Slavs, Eastern European Jews and other indigenous people, dismissed as Untermenschen, or subhumans. Colonists were then to be shipped to Central and Eastern Europe to Germanize the occupied territory.

These killers do not reckon with the darkness they unleash. The upscale beachfront properties dreamt of by Israel will never appear, just as the modern, exclusively Serb capital, with its golden domed cathedral, imposing presidency building, 15-story clock tower, state-of-the-art medical center and national theater with a 72-foot revolving stage was never built on the ruins of Bosnia.

Rather, there will be ugly apartment blocks, populated by the usual miscreants, proto-fascists, racists and mediocrities who live in the Jewish colonies in the West Bank. These ultranationalists, who have formed rogue militias to seize Palestinian land and joined the Israeli army in murdering over 1,000 Palestinians in the West Bank since Oct. 7, will define Israel. They are the Israeli version of the 3-million-strong Pancasila Youth — Indonesia’s equivalent of the Brown Shirts or the Hitler Youth — that in 1965 helped carry out the genocidal mayhem that left half a million to one million dead.

These rogue militias, equipped with automatic weapons provided by the Israeli government, lynched Saifullah Musallet, a 20-year-old Palestinian-American, who was attempting to protect his family’s land two weeks ago. He is the fifth U.S. citizen killed in the West Bank since Oct. 7.

Once these Israeli goons and thugs are done with the Palestinians, they will turn on each other.

The genocide in Gaza signals the abolition, for Israelis as well as Palestinians, of the rule of law. It marks the obliteration of even the pretense of an ethical code. Israelis are the barbarians they condemn. If there is any warped justice in this genocide it is that Israelis, once they finish with the Palestinians, will be forced to live together in moral squalor.

This article was originally published on The Chris Hedges Report.

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