Lew Rockwell Institute

International Man: Let’s begin by defining our terms. How would you define a speculator?

Doug Casey: The word “speculator” is generally misused and poorly defined. Let’s put it in context, along with some related terms that it’s usually confused with.

First, what is a speculator? A speculator is someone who capitalizes on distortions in the market. These distortions are mostly caused by the actions of government, so most are political in nature. But distortions can also be caused by natural disasters or aberrations of public psychology.

A speculator is quite different from an investor. An investor is someone who allocates capital to create more capital. Being an investor is analogous to being a farmer who plants a grain of wheat to grow a sheaf of wheat. Investors are oriented to create value. Speculators, however, are less interested in creating new wealth and more interested in arbitraging the difference between perceptions and reality.

Speculators are also confused with traders. A trader is one who tries to second-guess the market. It’s possible, and there are some very successful traders. But they’re very few and far between. That’s because traders have to fight against bid-ask spreads and commissions when they both buy and sell. That’s compounded by the fact that “traders” are constantly trading and getting eaten up by those costs. Even more important, retail traders have to deal with the fact that they’re last in line to get information, way after the big boys and the professionals have taken advantage of it; very few amateur traders understand that. Last, and probably most important, traders are in an eternal battle with their own psychology, constantly being pulled hither and yon by fear and greed. Trying to be a trader is generally a poor idea.

The public—who know almost nothing about speculating, investing, trading, or gambling—also conflate speculators with gamblers. They’re very different. A gambler doesn’t research trends, fundamentals, or anything else. He simply bets on tips, rumors, or uninformed gut feelings, hoping to get lucky. Sometimes random chance does just that. But just as in a casino, the house always wins, and the gamblers always lose in the long run.

We should also examine the saver. The capital employed by investors, speculators, traders, or gamblers only exists because of savers. A saver is someone who produces more than he consumes and sets aside the difference. That creates capital. Without capital, we’d be consigned to a life of grubbing for roots and berries.

Unfortunately, in today’s world, savers have few alternatives to saving with their national currency. All are fiat units which are being systematically destroyed by central banks while held in commercial banks run on fractional reserve principles. Unless he saves in gold (or, arguably, Bitcoin), the poor saver has the odds tilted against him. That’s bad for the saver and potentially catastrophic for society.

But that’s a story for another day…

International Man: Why do you believe learning to speculate is crucial in today’s environment?

Doug Casey: If we lived in a free market world, there would be no politically caused distortions, and speculators would be largely unemployed. But government intrudes everywhere in today’s economy, constantly misallocating capital and creating distortions. On the bright side, however, speculators can prosper by looking out for these distortions.

As government grows bigger and more powerful, supporting the elites and other parasites, investing becomes harder and less profitable. These things make the world’s economy ever more arbitrary, and an investor needs a certain amount of predictability. But the very things that make investing harder and less profitable are, perversely, the things that a speculator thrives on. This is, for instance, why gold has always been a favorite of speculators. Not just in 1933 and 1971, years of major dollar devaluations (unpredictable to the public, although quite predictable to competent economists and speculators), but whenever there’s uncertainty.

Most people dislike speculators because they typically show up when things are grim and chaotic. They’re often blamed for causing the problem as opposed to solving the problem.

For instance, during a famine, a foresighted speculator might buy bread in advance and then show up to sell it for much higher prices. Instead of being praised for making the bread available when it’s needed, he’s cursed for causing higher prices. He’s actually holding prices down by making bread available. This predictable ingratitude on the part of the public might make a speculator rather cynical.

International Man: What are the key aspects of mastering the art of speculation?

What skills and perspectives are essential for a speculator to achieve success?

Doug Casey: It’s important to have a broad range of knowledge to allow you to identify opportunities whenever and wherever they occur.

A speculator should be well-read in history so he’s able to identify history rhyming, if not repeating. He should have a good grip on mass psychology so he can identify when the public is acting like lemmings. A speculator needs an understanding of economics, allowing him to diagnose the way the world really works and pinpoint the stupid things that governments do. He takes these subjects out of the realm of airy academic theory and makes them useful in the most practical way.

On a personal basis, a speculator should be unemotional. He doesn’t get carried away with any particular position. Warren Buffett says the ideal holding time for an investment is “forever”; that’s impossible for a speculation. Speculators should have a certain degree of cynicism to insulate them from what the crowd says and believes. It’s hard to pass off a speculator as a “man of the people”; socialists, stupidly, believe he’s an “enemy of the people.”

International Man: Speculation can involve significant risk. How do you define acceptable risk, and what strategies do you use to minimize the downside?

Doug Casey: Many speculations are illiquid because they’re unknown. The public can’t take advantage of them if they don’t know they even exist. Of course, that’s usually just as well. Illiquid speculations are generally best avoided. They may turn into lobster traps—you can get in but not get out.

At the same time, illiquid markets can yield excellent speculations. The very fact something is illiquid may indicate that nobody’s looking at it.

On the other hand, many good speculations are well-known to the public, but the public hates them. Everybody thinks they’re terrible because they have a “bad track record.” Fair enough; stay far away from people with bad track records. But commodities are different from people. The people running companies can be replaced. Fashions and technologies change.

Good speculations are often either illiquid or hated. And very often, speculations are politically charged. You’re dealing with the presence, or the consequences, of laws and regulations that have actually created the opportunity.

International Man: What do you see as the biggest speculative opportunities right now?

Doug Casey: Gold was the classic speculation, artificially suppressed by the government for many years at $35 an ounce. Smart speculators realized its success was, in effect, guaranteed by the government. The rest is history.

Bitcoin and gold have both gone up “bigly”, as Trump might say. I’m afraid that both now are in roughly an equilibrium area. They aren’t artificially suppressed. Both are well known. That said, I think they’re both going higher for a number of reasons. But they no longer qualify as ideal speculations, as they once did.

I’m not interested in the general stock market. It’s overpriced by historical parameters, like price to book value, price to earnings, and dividend yields. It’s been driven up by huge amounts of money printing and the creation of huge amounts of debt. That’s the real problem.

The financial markets are sitting on a time bomb of debt, and if there are serious defaults, it could all come undone. This is equally true of the real estate market, where most decent houses are $1 million, and many are much, much more. Almost all of them are mortgaged, which is to say purchased on margin.

The bond market may be the worst place for money at this point. It’s a triple threat to your capital. You have the inflation/currency risk, the interest rate risk, and the default risk.

The most unknown, unloved, and illiquid part of the market is low-priced resource stocks, particularly explorers and developers. They’ve been bouncing along the bottom for about five years now. I’m betting that we’re going to see at least one more bull market when all of them go up 10 to 1. That’s where I’m concentrating.

Investors may allocate 100% of their capital in search of a 10% return. That’s OK, most of the time. But now is a time when a speculator can allocate 10% of his capital in search of a 100% or a 1000% return.

Reprinted with permission from International Man,

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At least Trump is willing to give peace a chance with Russia over Ukraine, Peter Kuznick says.

The chances of a peace deal in Ukraine are suddenly a lot higher under President Donald Trump only because he has a realistic sense of a nuclear Third World War happening between the United States and Russia if that conflict is not ended promptly.

Peter Kuznick, an esteemed American professor of history, says that the Biden administration brought the world closer to a nuclear conflagration than at any time since the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. Biden did this by relentlessly arming Ukraine with weapons to strike deeper and deeper into Russia instead of trying to find a peaceful resolution to the conflict. Indeed, there was no diplomatic effort from Washington under Biden. It was ideologically and propaganda-driven for confrontation, as was the Democratic presidential candidate, Kamala Harris.

Kuznick points out that Trump is no John F Kennedy in terms of the latter’s depth of historical and philosophical knowledge. But in comparison with Joe Biden, Trump has shown more humanity and common sense by not insulting Putin and in reaching out for a peaceful end to the slaughter in Ukraine. Biden called Putin a thug and said he would back Ukraine as long as it takes to defeat Russia. The last Democrat administration spent $175 billion of U.S. taxpayers’ money propping up a NeoNazi regime in Kiev that has lost over one million military casualties since the war erupted in February 2022.

By contrast, newly inaugurated President Trump says that he wants to meet Russian leader Vladimir Putin as a priority to find a peaceful way out of the conflict and to avoid a catastrophic escalation between nuclear powers. Putin has welcomed a meeting with the new president and said he appreciates the urgent concern to avoid a nuclear disaster.

Kuznick is author of The Untold History of the United States, which was coauthored with acclaimed film director Oliver Stone. The book was turned into an award-winning television series aired on Showtime, Netflix and other channels. Kuznick deplores the way the U.S. and NATO partners undermined international security by expanding on Russia’s borders despite earlier promises to the Soviet leaders that would not happen.

If peace is to be found in Ukraine, it must be based on a bigger picture of lasting global security that considers all nations’ concerns.

That means the United States must treat Russia’s national security concerns over NATO’s expansion seriously and respectfully. Can the Trump administration deliver? It is packed with hawkish figures like Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

Donald Trump is better placed than the Biden adminstration to cut a deal with Russia for peace in Ukraine and thereby avoid nuclear disaster, says Kuznick.

Trump’s cabinet is filled with billionaires and his mercurial, superficial understanding of the world can be deprecated. Maybe his peaceful aspirations are muddled and not feasible given that Trump is surrounded by hawkish figures.

But at least he is willing to give peace a chance with Russia over Ukraine. That alone makes Trump a welcome change from the vile warmongering of Biden and his would-be successor Kamala Harris.

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

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Starting yesterday, scientists and military men from America’s black sites, both military and aerospace, are coming forward to claim knowledge and provide evidence of alien tech, alien bodies, anti-gravitics, zero-point energy — and medical tech that will change the face of medicine. Four of Trump’s initial executive orders to be tabled Monday, deal with disclosure of the above and more.

The revelations promise to upend every formalized religion, and supercharge the New Age. Dr. Steven Greer, who has dedicated his later career to this issue, investigating, briefing, pushing it forward, promises stunning revelations over the next weeks and months. Again, if true, why has this been hidden? How did the sequestration of vital civilization-changing information happen? What are the results of having done so?

What I got back was a look. Individually it said nothing, but collectively it told me there was a secret out there and that it was so big no one person held all the pieces. I knew too, that whatever it was, the secret had a dark heart, because I could sense the fear that held it in place.

-The Hunt for Zero Point, Inside the Classified World of Antigravity Technology by Nick Cook

Out there in the hinterlands a vast segment, a plurality I believe, of the population is obsessed with the various tropes of the new religion with no name, an amalgam of faiths, astrology, delerium and hope. Which bears an unnerving resemblance to that practiced around the time of the birth of Christ, crossed with a lot of alien ‘knowledge’ and galactic spiritualism, with a smattering of super-soldiers, Ancient Builder Races, and the war in the cosmos. It is difficult to say from whence this knowledge arose but one almost has sympathy with the Emperor Constantine who in 325 AD ‘regularized’ Christianity by burning apostates up and down Italy’s boot, then wildly into the Spanish, French, German territories, hollering the equivalent of SHUT UP for 1500 years.

Pre and post-Christ, religions proliferated, from the Dionysians running naked and screaming up in the hills, the locked-down monkish cult that was the Essenes, the still active pilgrims to Ephesus’ priestesses and prophets, enhanced by psychedelic beer. There were splinter cults upon cults, which Christianity added to in spades. The early Christian churches were run by women in their homes, and often consisted of consuming psychedelics while the handful of participants tried to discern God’s will and attain the spiritual gifts promised by Christ. A lot of talking, moving into praise and ecstatic trance, I suspect. (I am not criticizing or doubting here —the evidence of home churches is drawn from the Vatican’s library and the psychedelic evidence from close botanical analysis of vessels found in home/church excavations.)

Too damn dangerous, thought Rome, and called the Council of Niceae, at which point women were heavily demoted in the faith, and all that ancient knowledge was deemed tosh. Not just nonsense but dangerous nonsense. They were still burning witches in Scotland in the 1700’s and there is nothing more ….um….motivating for everyone to go to church on Sunday for their lesson on working for the man than the smoldering ruins of the local herbalist in the town square.

The Vatican kept records of the burnt, carefully listing every name, believe it or not. The writer who found them supposed the librarian priests were too disheartened to bother concealing the records after wrestling with Church pedophiles.

Plus ca le meme chose. For at least the past 70 years, the National Security State has been issuing a firehose of mis, dis and malformation crafted to make all those contemporary investigators seem like the town idiot. However, there are just too many educated people these days and they seem to have a lot of time on their hands. Generally speaking, people are suspicious, very very suspicious. They know more by several orders of magnitude than that which the National Security State would prefer them to know.

As a result there is so much evidence released in so many different ways, through serious institutes and serious thinkers like those at the Sol Foundation, through the New Agers at the Gaia channel, through serious archeologists making dozens of documentaries about ancient sites not permitted study in academia. There are hundreds if not thousands of UFO and Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) conferences and meet ups a year. There are excavated bodies of Giants (Nephilim), tales of Tartaria, skeletons of supposed Andromedan/Pharaohs with the famed elongated skulls, tunnels and mounds and caves showing prior advanced civilizations, the evidence of which has been excised from academic literature, and not taught.

In the realms of the unbelievable, genetically enhanced super-soldiers report on secret wars in the Universe, structures on Mars, the Moon and the rings of Saturn, which these soldiers claim to have visited. On earth, in the stories of ancient sites, the megalith building was powered by handheld free energy handbag/machines which appear on friezes throughout the ancient world, on every continent. All this knowledge has been held to be rubbish by our gatekeepers.

Which brings us to official government disclosure. Which has been fought over bitterly, and advanced in tiny increments across the government. Apparently the Biden government had, within its Directorate of National Intelligence, a plan. This was how they were going to establish a reality, a quasi-reality, that they have hidden for the past 100 years, via throwing shade, mockery and the above firehose of claptrap propaganda, muddying the integrity of everyone who approached the subject.

But first, what is Zero Point Energy? From Nick Cook’s definitive book, here is a formal definition: It is the Holy Grail, the Temple Mount of energy production.

For some years, Millis replied, there had been a developing understanding that space was not the empty vacuum of traditional theory, but a seething mass of energy, with particles flashing in and out of existence about their “zero-point” baselines. Tests indicated that even in the depths of a vacuum chilled to absolute zero (minus 273.15°C)—the zero point of existence—this energy would not go away. The trouble was, no one knew quite where it was coming from. It was just there, a background radiation source that no one could adequately explain. With millions, perhaps billions, of fluctuations occurring in any given second, it was theoretically possible to draw some—perhaps a lot—of that energy from our everyday surroundings and get it to do useful work. If it could be “mined”—both on Earth and in space—it offered an infinite and potentially limitless energy source.

According to Jason Jordan, who considers himself a thought leader on zero point energy and who has connections within the deep state (who knows?) the office of Avril Haines, the about-to-be-ex Director of National Intelligence, had a schedule of disclosure on the table, about to go into action.

Read the Whole Article

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Simon Shuster is Time’s senior correspondent for Ukraine and Russia.

For writing laudatory pieces about (former) president Zelenski Shuster received extraordinary access to the Ukrainian’s president’s office. A later portrait by Shuster depicted Zelenski as delusional. In his latest piece he asserts that the Biden administration never intended for Ukraine to win:

When Russia invaded Ukraine nearly three years ago, President Joe Biden set three objectives for the U.S. response. Ukraine’s victory was never among them.

Preventing a war between Russia and NATO, not Ukraine winning, was one of Joe Biden’s three aims.

That is why, throughout the war in Ukraine, the U.S., together with Germany, had blocked the accession of Ukraine to NATO.

In September Zelenski’s last attempt with Biden to gain NATO access ended without success:

[Zelenski’s] appeals got a mixed reception. On the question of Ukraine’s NATO membership, Biden would not budge.

That had always and will always be the case.

Despite having been rejected again and again Zelenski used the hope of gaining NATO (and EU) membership for Ukraine to market the war he was waging.

Now, as he is obviously losing it, he is blaming those who never promised NATO membership to him for not receiving it (machine translation):

The West’s promises to one day accept Ukraine into NATO were a “lie.” This was stated by President Vladimir Zelensky at the World Economic Forum in Davos.

Moreover, according to him, the United States and Germany maintained contacts with Russia throughout the war.

“From some states, I think it was initially not a very transparent policy, they did not support us in NATO. And they were just false words that yes, Ukraine will be in NATO. It was not fair to Ukraine and to the Ukrainians. And it was also not fair from our leaders. When some of our leaders said and promised that we would be in NATO. And it wasn’t fair either. And I believe that there was a weak position of Germany and the United States. Because they had a dialogue with the Russians. And I believe that they lost this dialogue. We lost, because they always appeal to the fact that there were once some agreements with the Russians,” Zelensky said.

That false accusation against foreign countries, of promising access to NATO but not giving it, will not be received well.

As Strana remarks (machine translation):

Recall that Zelensky himself has repeatedly stated that Ukraine will be in NATO.

Also, Kiev is now demanding admission to the Alliance as a condition for making peace with Russia. At the same time, Zelensky admits that the United States and Germany are against this .

Alexey Arestovich, a former advisor to Zelenski, responds to his claim (edited machine translation):

– What are you saying? ..)

Who is the main person responsible for the massive spreading of this lie to Ukrainians, for the persecution of those who said that there will be no NATO, that this is a scam, that we are being swindled, and that we signed up to sacrifice our lives for this, do you have the strength to name him?

To which Professor Glenn Diesen adds:

[T]he Western media is also responsible: Anyone arguing against setting up and sacrificing the Ukrainians in a proxy war were smeared as propagandists for Russia. Only relentless vile war propaganda has been permitted in the media.

The U.S. proxy war on Russia, which has sacrificed Ukraine, was based on research on how to ‘extend Russia’ published in 2019 by the Pentagon think-tank RAND Corp. That research was initiated by three questions:

1. What are Russia’s greatest anxieties and vulnerabilities?
2. In what ways can these anxieties and vulnerabilities be exploited and extend Russia?
3. What are the costs and risks associated with each option, and what are the prospects of success?

RAND found that the most favorable way to ‘extend Russia’ was to use Ukraine in a war against it by providing it with lethal weapons:

The United States could increase its military assistance to Ukraine—in terms of both the quantity and quality of weapons.
…
The United States could also become more vocal in its support for NATO membership for Ukraine. […] While NATO’s requirement for unanimity makes it unlikely that Ukraine could gain membership in the foreseeable future, Washington’s pushing this possibility could boost Ukrainian resolve while leading Russia to redouble its efforts to forestall such a development.

At the time the RAND advice was published it had already been followed. Shortly after the 2014 Maidan coup the CIA had launched an intensive cooperation with the military intelligence service of Ukraine.

The partnership saw the CIA help Ukraine to rebuild its Main Directorate of Intelligence, known by its acronym HUR, which has become renowned for its audacious operations. The CIA eventually directed millions of dollars in funding to help train and equip Ukrainian intelligence officers, and to construct facilities, including around a dozen secret forward-operating bases on the border with Russia. The two services also began conducting joint operations together around the world, the highest level of trust for intelligence services, according to the former U.S. officials.

In 2017 the Trump administration started to openly deliver Javelin anti-tank missiles to Ukraine. In 2021, when Biden took over, the U.S. continued to follow the RAND advise. The flow of lethal weapons to Ukraine increased. Verbal support for NATO membership in Ukraine was given through media and anonymous briefings. But it was never stated as an official aim because the U.S. knew that there was no way to achieve it.

RAND listed ‘benefits’ the U.S., not Ukraine, would probably get by doing this. But those benefits were from weakening Russia, not from making real gains for the U.S. itself.

It also listed risks:

Alternatively, Russia might counter-escalate, committing more troops and pushing them deeper into Ukraine. Russia might even preempt U.S. action, escalating before any additional U.S. aid arrives. Such escalation might extend Russia; Eastern Ukraine is already a drain. Taking more of Ukraine might only increase the burden, albeit at the expense of the Ukrainian people. However, such a move might also come at a significant cost to Ukraine and to U.S. prestige and credibility. This could produce disproportionately large Ukrainian casualties, territorial losses, and refugee flows. It might even lead Ukraine into a disadvantageous peace.

The risks described by RAND are now the obvious outcome of the war.

All this was known and available through readily accessible sources.

Why Zelenski, or any other Ukrainian, had ever expected anything different is hard to conceive.

One explanation is that Zelenski is really as deluded as Shuster had described him:

[H]is belief in Ukraine’s ultimate victory over Russia has hardened into a form that worries some of his advisers. It is immovable, verging on the messianic. “He deludes himself,” one of his closest aides tells me in frustration. “We’re out of options. We’re not winning. But try telling him that.”

Dead set against any peace negotiations Zelenski’s demands are getting more shrill by the day.

Next to immediate NATO membership he now demands a peacekeeping force that does not exist:

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who is seeking a meeting with US President Donald Trump, says that at least 200,000 European peacekeepers will be needed to prevent a new Russian attack after any ceasefire deal.
…
“From all the Europeans? Two hundred thousand, it’s a minimum. It’s a minimum, otherwise it’s nothing,” Zelensky said when asked about the idea of a peacekeeping contingent on an interview panel after delivering his speech.

That number is around the size of the entire French armed forces, estimated at just over 200,000 by France’s defence ministry in 2020.

He also wants U.S. forces to be part of it.

There is no chance of getting either.

Zelenski is done with and he knows it. It is unlikely that he, in three month or so, will still be in place.

Reprinted with permission from Moon of Alabama.

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Only the U.S. can rebrand a genocide into a great real estate opportunity in a “phenomenal location”.

Let’s start with the key take away: Manifest Destiny reaching the stars. Literally.

Trump 2.0 – the greatest show on earth – did start with a (big) bang: “We will pursue our Manifest Destiny into the stars.” And that means planting the American flag on Mars. The real thing. Not a Netflix flick. No wonder platinum sidekick Elon Musk, SpaceX CEO, achieved instant rapture.

Welcome to Interplanetary Exceptionalism. Literally. As in the land of the free, home of the brave, in this new golden era, will be “far more exceptional than ever before”. Imperial decline is over. Embrace the new, brutally benign Empire. Or else.

In practical terms, it all started, predictably, with a flurry of executive orders – like a psychedelic vortex.

Time to send troops to the southern border (El Paso is already blocked) to stop the illegal immigrant “invasion”; declare drug cartels as terrorist organizations; and rename the Gulf of Mexico “Gulf of America”.

Add to it declaring a state of emergency to boost energy production: “We’re going to be using our emergency powers to allow countries and entrepreneurs and people with a lot of money build big plans, AI plans. We need double the energy that we already have.”

That’s code for the Empire necessarily exercising total control on AI and massive, energy-consuming AI data centers.

In between, Trump 2.0 will suspend every “foreign aid” scheme for 90 days to assess their “consistency with U.S. national interests and foreign policy goals” (Translation: Kiev, run for cover.)

Trump 2.0 will recognize only two genders – male and female; get “wokeness the hell out of our military immediately and make it like it used to be”; and “take back” the Panama Canal (“American Canal”, anyone?)

And never forget the intimation of a Big Trade War: possible 25% tariffs slapped on Canada and Mexico starting February 1st, to force negotiations. And further on down the road, the target will be the EU: Brussels is already on deep freak out mode.

Tik Tok, who’s there?

On the domestic front, one of the most intriguing gambits is the Tik Tok dossier: “U.S. Tik Tok deal may be worth a trillion dollars”, the President said. Buying 50% of Tik Tok might be a joint venture. With essential input by Trump’s son Barron, Tik Tok de facto helped Trump and Republicans to gain no less than 36% of the youth vote.

The possible Tik Tok deal essentially forces China to split 50% of ownership with American shareholders – so it may continue to sell ads in the U.S. This is all about financial gains linked to advertising.

The equity structure of Tik Tok is quite intriguing. 20% is held by the founder, Zhang Yiming. Other 20% is held by Tik Tok’s employees around the world. The remaining 60% is held by three American funds. So the U.S. in fact has long held more than 50% of the shares.

The difference now is that Trump/the U.S. government want to force founder Zhang Yiming to sell his shares.

Now imagine a parallel world where Brussels would force 50% of YouTube or X to be bought by a European oligarch so it would be allowed to do business in Europe (this in fact might even actually happen one day).

Now let’s hit the foreign policy cauldron.

Ukraine. Trump was evasive: a potential timeline for solving the proxy war in Ukraine could be discussed during an upcoming phone call with Putin (“soon”). When it comes to keeping the sanctions on Russia, Trump defined them as “tariffs”.

NATO. Gotta pay. A lot more: “NATO has to pay 5 percent. We are in the Ukraine war by $200 billion more than NATO. It’s ridiculous because it affects them a lot more. We have an ocean in between. And we’ve spent $200 billion more on Ukraine than NATO has spent. And they’ve got to equalize.”

NATO head, the Dutch Rutti-Frutti, seems to have got the message even before the inauguration; he’s already spinning the 5% for all European citizens like a mad dog. What if health care and social services need to be cut: it’s for the greater (imperial) good.

EU. The brutally benign message to the EU – which Trump did not even mention – is that these chihuahuas belong to the U.S. sphere of influence. Trump imperially ignored them.

With one spectacular exception. Asked about a possible 100 percent tariff “on those countries like Spain”, Trump’s answer was a pearl: “As a BRICS nation, yes.”

Someone forgot to tell Madrid they are now on BRICS. Yet the key point remains: Trump threatens to impose 100% tariffs on all BRICS nations going the de-dollarization way. Incidentally, 95% of payments between Russia and China are now in rubles and yuan.

Missile Defense. Trump: “I will direct our military to begin construction of the great Iron Dome missile defense shield, which will all be made in the U.S.A.” Well, the Pentagon should ask the Houthis for some input.

Venezuela. An intriguing twist: Trump envoy Ric Grenell is setting up direct talks with Caracas. Venezuela Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello is encouraging “rebooted” relations. And the Attorney General is willing to restart cooperation on smothering criminal gangs – extradition included.

None of that means that regime change will be discarded. All that oil and all those minerals, the brutally benign Empire badly needs them.

Cuba. Back to the list of “state sponsors of terrorism”. Havana originally made it during Trump 1.0, in 2021. And now with Marco Rubio in the State Dept., prospects are bleak. Havana will always resist.

Gaza. Trump was asked how confident he is about the Gaza ceasefire: “I’m not confident. That’s not our war, it’s their war.”

But the best was saved for last: “Gaza is like a massive demolition site. That place is, it’s really got to be rebuilt in a different way […] Gaza’s interesting. It’s a phenomenal location. On the sea, best weather […] It’s like some beautiful things could be done with it.”

Never underestimate This Year’s Model: the Golden, Exceptional, brutally benign Empire. No other entity can rebrand a genocide into a great real estate opportunity in a “phenomenal location”.

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

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Trump keeps doing the right things. The Reagan administration certainly could have used this ability to keep a Democrat civil service from sandbagging its policies.

The civil service, indeed, the entire cabinet level Justice Department and the FBI were completely politicized by the Biden Democrats.

US Rep. Gerry Connolly, Democrat from Virginia, is up in arms against Trump’s executive order.  But Connolly had no objections when the Democrats completely politicized the US Department of Justice (sic) and the FBI and turned them into weapons against Trump Republicans.  .  

When I was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, in one of the departments that reported to me was a senior executive civil service manager who came to work drunk daily. The department’s personnel said it was demoralizing.  I spoke with the source of trouble and found that he wasn’t interested in a paid leave to get himself back into performance mode. I decided that I would have to fire him and found that to fire him I had for one year to assign him tasks, evaluate his performance of the tasks, go before a board and convince the board that he failed to perform the assigned tasks.  In other words, I would be completely distracted and used up in the effort it required for a presidential appointee to fire one non-performing and uncooperative senior civil servant.  To get rid of one non-performing civil servant would have drained my time and energy from the task that President Reagan assigned me.

I solved the problem by giving the position away to an administrative department in the Treasury that was glad to grow by one more person.

When a president is elected, it means that the voters have chosen his policies. To have the policies blocked and derailed by unelected bureaucrats is an absurdity. The bureaucracy is supposed to serve the president, not oppose him. They have to be equally supportive of Democrats and Republicans, not the ally of one against the other.

Democrat Rep. Gerry Connolly is a good example of what I mean by the institutionalized establishment and the many ways the establishment has to make a president serve them and not the American people.  Connolly has already on the first day of Trump’s second term introduced the “Saving the Civil Service Act,” which is intended to stop Trump from requiring government employees to corporate with the will of the people.

MAGA Americans need to comprehend that Trump’s re-election is only the beginning of the fight. Trump and his administration are essentially isolated. The Democrats are opposed to the traditional America of MAGA Americans. Democrats want the US and Western Civilization to be held accountable for all of the alleged crimes, some real, some invented, associated with US and Western dominance.  They want all sexual preference legitimized, including that of “minor directed persons” formerly known as pedophiles. They want heterosexual males punished for being interested in women. They want to brainwash white kids that they and their parents and grandparents are racists and to convince them that they have been born into the wrong body.  The Democrat Party is the operative division of the Cultural Marxists who teach that the way to overthrow a society is “to march through the institutions,” corrupting them and turning them against the country. 

From the standpoint of Democrats and the Woke left, the ideal America is a Sodom and Gomorrah Tower of Babel.  That is the agenda of the US Democrat Party.  

It is also the agenda of the ruling American elite, because it destroys society and leaves them in control.

Trump, and I think he realizes it, is in a fight for the life of America. The Establishment controls all of society’s institutions. Trump knows it and is attacking them head on.  The outcome of the fight depends on the awareness, intelligence, and commitment of the majority of the American people.  

Both the people and Trump can fail.  If they do, America is lost.

The post Trump Signs Executive Order to Fire Top Career Federal Managers More Quickly appeared first on LewRockwell.

The future of humanity is being decided as we speak. And it is not being decided on a battlefield in Eastern Europe, or the Middle East or the Taiwan Strait, but in the data centers and research facilities where technology experts create “the physical and virtual infrastructure to power the next generation of Artificial Intelligence.” This is a full-blown, scorched-earth free-for-all that has already racked up a number of casualties though you wouldn’t know it from reading the headlines which typically ignore recent ‘cataclysmic’ developments. But when President Trump announced the launching of a $500 billion AI infrastructure project (Stargate) on Tuesday just hours after China had released its DeepSeek R1—which “outperforms its rivals in advanced coding, math, and general knowledge capabilities”—it became painfully obvious that the battle for the future ‘is on’ in a big way. And this is not a battle that either side can afford to lose. Here’s how technology expert Adam Button summed it up:

Imagine we’re back in 2017 and the iPhone X was just released. It was selling $999 and Apple was crushing sales and building a wide moat around its ecosystem.

Now imagine, just days later, another company introduced a phone and platform that was equal in every way if not better and the price was just $30.

That’s what unfolded in the AI space today. China’s DeepSeek released an opensource model that works on par with OpenAI’s latest models but costs a tiny fraction to operate. Moreover, you can even download it and run it free (or the cost of your electricity) for yourself.

The product is a huge leap in terms of scaling and efficiency and may upend expectations of how much power and compute will be needed to manage the AI revolution. It also comes just hours before Trump is expected to unveil a $100 billion investment in US datacenters. The model shows there are different ways to train foundational AI models that offer up the same results with much less cost. It also opens up far more applications for AI that would have been too expensive to run previously, which should broaden the applications in the real economy. China’s DeepSeek may have just upended the economics of AI, forex live

Imagine the panic that is spreading across western tech capitals right now. AI was supposed to be the fast-track to absolute societal control and oligarchic rule into the next millennia, but now those pesky Chinese have overturned the applecart leaving western elites with a problem they might not be able to fix. (See—Unchecked AI will lead us to a police state, edri ) They expected that their microchip sanctions would sabotage China’s AI efforts for at least a decade-or-so but, instead, China has come roaring back with a system that has left the tech giants gasping for air.

Of course, China’s eye-popping strides in technological development are nothing new as editor Ron Unz pointed out in a recent article where he noted that “between 2003 and 2007, the US led in 60 of the 64 technologies.” Whereas, as of 2022, “China led in 52 of the 64 technologies.” That’s not a competition; that’s a beat-down in a parking lot. Here’s Unz:

China now leads the world in many of the most important future technologies. The success of its commercial companies in telecommunications (Huawei, Zongxin), EV (BYD, Geely, Great Wall, etc.), battery (CATL, BYD) and Photovoltaics (Tongwei Solar, JA, Aiko, etc.) are directly built on such R&D prowess.

Similarly, the Chinese military’s modernization is built on the massive technological development of the country’s scientific community and its industrial base…. With its lead in science and technology research, China is positioned to outcompete the US in both economic and military arenas in the coming years…. American Pravda: China vs. America, Ron Unz, Unz Review

None of this should come as a surprise, although the timing of DeepSeek’s release (preempting Trump’s Stargate announcement) shows that the Chinese don’t mind throwing a wrench in Washington’s global strategy if it serves their regional interests, which it undoubtedly does. Here’s a bit more background from an article by Benj Edwards at Ars Technica:

On Monday, Chinese AI lab DeepSeek released its new R1 model family under an open MIT license, with its largest version containing 671 billion parameters. The company claims the model performs at levels comparable to OpenAI’s o1 simulated reasoning (SR) model on several math and coding benchmarks….

The releases immediately caught the attention of the AI community because most existing open-weights models—have lagged behind proprietary models like OpenAI’s o1 in so-called reasoning benchmarks. …

The R1 model works differently from typical large language models ….They attempt to simulate a human-like chain of thought as the model works through a solution to the query. This class of what one might call “simulated reasoning” models, or SR models for short, emerged when OpenAI debuted its o1 model family in September 2024. …

DeepSeek reports that R1 outperformed OpenAI’s o1 on several benchmarks and tests, including AIME (a mathematical reasoning test), MATH-500 (a collection of word problems), and SWE-bench Verified (a programming assessment tool)….

TechCrunch reports that three Chinese labs—DeepSeek, Alibaba, and Moonshot AI’s Kimi—have now released models they say match OpenAI’s o1’s capabilities, with DeepSeek first previewing R1 in November. Cutting-edge Chinese “reasoning” model rivals OpenAI o1—and it’s free to download, ars technica

This is a very big deal. The United States intends to dominate the world in this critical technology and yet the upstart Chinese have not only produced a system that is every bit as good as America’s best, but have made it more affordable, more accessible and more transparent. What’s not to like?

WEF Vows Millions of ‘Useless’ Human Workers Will Be Replaced with AI by 2030 – Slay News https://t.co/JDEPE0EIQ8

— Wtfisup (@Wtfisup49061475) January 19, 2025

(Note—OpenAI is an American artificial intelligence (AI) research laboratory. It is made up of the non-profit OpenAI Incorporated and its for-profit subsidiary corporation OpenAI Limited Partnership. OpenAI has emerged to be one of the primary leaders of the generative AI era. OpenAI is a privately held company that has open sourced some of its technology, but it has not open sourced most of its technology…. In contrast, DeepSeek AI R1 is open source which means its code is publicly accessible—anyone can see, modify, and distribute the code as they see fit. Open source software is developed in a decentralized and collaborative way, relying on peer review and community production.)

Here’s more from political analyst Arnaud Bertrand in a post on X:

Most people probably don’t realize how bad the news (about) China’s Deepseek is for OpenAI. They’ve come up with a model that matches and even exceeds OpenAI’s latest model o1 on various benchmarks, and they’re charging just 3% of the price. It’s essentially as if someone had released a mobile on par with the iPhone but was selling it for $30 instead of $1000. It’s this dramatic.

What’s more, they’re releasing it open-source so you even have the option – which OpenAI doesn’t offer – of not using their API at all and running the model for “free” yourself.

If you’re an OpenAI customer today you’re obviously going to start asking yourself some questions, like “wait, why exactly should I be paying 30X more?”. This is pretty transformational stuff, it fundamentally challenges the economics of the market….

So basically, it looks like the game has changed. All thanks to a Chinese company that just demonstrated how U.S. tech restrictions can backfire spectacularly – by forcing them to build more efficient solutions that they’re now sharing with the world at 3% of OpenAI’s prices. As the saying goes, sometimes pressure creates diamonds. @RnaudBertrand

Get the picture? Everything the US has done to stymie China’s development—including economic sanctions, chips embargoes, military provocations, political meddling, even arresting a Huawei executive (truly pathetic)—has blown up in their faces. China’s well-educated, highly motivated, technologically adept workforce have produced a model of AI that equals or exceeds the best the West has to offer at a fraction of the cost and with open sourcing that allows users to
modify, and distribute the code as they see fit.

So, which version of AI sounds like a genuine benefit to humankind and which sounds like another scheme for transforming the world into a dystopian police-state controlled by aspiring tyrants and psychopathic control freaks? Here’s more from Bertrand on ‘why China is making AI available so cheap:

….it speaks to a different philosophy/vision on AI: ironically named “OpenAI” is basically about trying to establish a monopoly by establishing a moat with massive amounts of GPU and money. Deepseek is clearly betting on a future where AI becomes a commodity, widely available and affordable to everyone. By pricing so aggressively and releasing their code open-source, they’re not just competing with OpenAI but basically declaring that AI should be like electricity or internet connectivity – a basic utility that powers innovation rather than a premium service controlled by a few players. And in that world, it’s a heck of a lot better to be the first mover who helped make it happen than the legacy player who tried to stop it. @RnaudBertrand

(Creepy Larry Ellison predicts “citizens will be on their best behavior” with an AI police-state surveillance system.)

Oracle’s Larry Ellison says “citizens will be on their best behavior” with an AI surveillance system pic.twitter.com/AzqWJWuswf

— Chief Nerd (@TheChiefNerd) January 22, 2025

So, it’s basically like everything else in this sick, twisted world where a handful of money-grubbing miscreants muscle their way into a new technology so they can fatten their own bank accounts while planting their bootheel firmly on the neck of humanity. It seems to me that China’s approach is vastly superior in that it’s clearly aimed at providing the benefits of AI to the greatest number of people at the lowest possible cost. Here are a few random comments on China’s DeepSeek AI that I picked off X that show how excited people are about this groundbreaking version:

The ramifications of this are huge. Every day China does something incredible, totally unlike the stagnation of the EU, talking all day while accomplishing nothing, or the latest evil plan oozing out of DC. This is just brilliant. & inspiring. & it WILL earn them more goodwill @CaptainCrusty66

It’s the china recipe book for success for every industry where western oligopolies have dominated. @bbooker450

AI will become a part of everyday infrastructure like electricity and tap water. DeepSeek is a signficant step towards that, thanks to its cost reduction and open source nature @MrBig2024

We are living in a timeline where a non-US company is keeping the original mission of OpenAI alive – truly open, frontier research that empowers all…. @DrJimFan

This is cool…this isn’t just another open source LLM release. this is o1-level reasoning capabilities that you can run locally, that you can modify and that you can study…
that’s a very different world than the one we were in yesterday. Al, comments line

Price comparison of OpenAI o1 and DeepSeek AI R1: R1 is significantly cheaper across all categories (96–98% savings). Now you know why big organizations don’t want open-source to continue, If humanity is ever going to benefit from AI, it will be from open-source . @ai_for_success

China is overturning mainstream development theory in astonishing ways. China’s GDP per capita is only $12,000. That’s 70% less than the average in high-income countries. And yet they have the largest high-speed rail network in the world. They’ve developed their own commercial aircraft. They are the world leaders in renewable energy technology and electric vehicles. They have advanced medical technology, smartphone technology, microchip production, aerospace engineering… China has a higher life expectancy than the USA, with 80% less income. We were told that this kind of development required very high levels of GDP/cap. But over the past 10 years China has demonstrated that it can be achieved with much more modest levels of output. How do they do it? By using public finance and industrial policy to steer investment and production toward social objectives and national development needs. This allows them to convert aggregate production into development outcomes much more efficiently than other countries, where productive capacity is often wasted on activities that may be highly profitable to capital, or beneficial to the rich, but may not actually advance development. Of course, China still has development gaps that need to be addressed. And we know from some other countries that higher social indicators can be achieved with China’s level of GDP/cap, by focusing more on social policy. But the achievements are undeniable, and development economists are taking stock. @jasonhickel

JULIAN ASSANGE says ‘Artificial intelligence is being used for mass assassinations in Gaza’ …“The majority of targets in Gaza are bombed as a result of artificial intelligence targeting.” ..It has been revealed that Google provided the Israeli military with AI tools in the early weeks of the genocide.

NEW: JULIAN ASSANGE says ‘Artificial intelligence is being used for mass assassinations in Gaza’

“The majority of targets in Gaza are bombed as a result of artificial intelligence targeting.”

It has been revealed that Google provided the Israeli military with AI tools in… pic.twitter.com/hJYFdKdT8C

— Megatron (@Megatron_ron) January 22, 2025

Unfortunately, the intensity of the competition between the US and China, ignores the inherent risks of Artificial Intelligence and its looming threat to human survival. In a recent analytical piece by the Rand Corporation titled AI and Geopolitics: How Might AI Affect the Rise and Fall of Nations?, the authors provide a disturbing window into a future in which “AI-enabled machines—of equivalent or greater intelligence and, potentially, highly disruptive capabilities” could pose a threat to our own existence. Keep in mind, the line between our historic reality and science fiction has already been crossed just as the probability that our own creation, AI, is likely “to become an actor, not just a factor” in the existential challenges faced by our species. Here’s a short blurb from this truly unsettling article:

Although technology has often influenced geopolitics, the prospect of AI means that the technology itself could become a geopolitical actor. AI could have motives and objectives that differ considerably from those of governments and private companies. Humans’ inability to comprehend how AI “thinks” and our limited understanding of the second- and third-order effects of our commands or requests of AI are also very troubling. Humans have enough trouble interacting with one another. It remains to be seen how we will manage our relationships with one or more AIs….

We are entering an era of both enlightenment and chaos…

The borderless nature of AI makes it hard to control or regulate. As computing power expands, models are optimized, and open-source frameworks mature, the ability to create highly impactful AI applications will become increasingly diffuse. In such a world, well-intentioned researchers and engineers will use this power to do wonderful things, ill-intentioned individuals will use it to do terrible things, and AIs could do both wonderful and terrible things. The net result is neither an unblemished era of enlightenment nor an unmitigated disaster, but a mix of both. Humanity will learn to muddle through and live with this game-changing technology, just as we have with so many other transformative technologies in the past….

The potential dangers posed by AI are many. At the extreme, they include the threat of human extinction, which could come about by an AI-enabled catastrophe, such as a well-designed virus that spreads easily, evades detection, and destroys our civilization. Less dire, but considerably worrisome, is the threat to democratic governance if AIs gain power over people….

AI cannot be contained through regulation, so the best policy will aim to minimize the harm that AI might do. This will probably be most critical in biosecurity,[3] but harm reduction also includes countering cybersecurity threats, strengthening democratic resilience, and developing emergency response options for a wide variety of threats from state and sub- and non-state actors…..

In light of the likely very widespread proliferation of advanced AI capabilities to private- and public-sector actors and well-resourced individuals, governments should work closely with leading private-sector entities to develop advanced forecasting tools, wargames, and strategic plans for dealing with what experts anticipate will be a wide variety of unexpected AI-enabled catastrophic events. AI and Geopolitics: How Might AI Affect the Rise and Fall of Nations?, RAND

In other words, humanity should encourage their business and political leaders to exercise sound judgement and prepare for unexpected disasters that could terminate the species.

Read the Whole Article

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The re-inauguration of Donald Trump as president of the United States—and his dismissal of Justin Trudeau as Canadian Prime Minister the week before; the apparent slow but certain push in Austria, Germany, and France by parties which the European establishment dubs “Far Right” (and darkly hints are Neo-Nazi, although their own views on the Man and the State are far closer to National Socialism than are those of their “upstart” opponents); and Britain’s vile Sir Keir Starmer’s floundering attempts to label opponents of child rape as racists all point to what appears a given direction: the breaking of the Left.

Far be it from me to rain on anyone’s parade; if you are ecstatic over these developments and smell some kind of success for the forces of good, may all your hopes come true. I myself am very glad that Kamala Harris is not president, that Justin Trudeau resigned, that change seems to be coming on the Continent, and that Sir Keir is increasingly being seen by his countrymen for what he and his minions are. But I would be lying if I told you I believe we are “nigh the Kingdom Comin’ and the Year of Jubilo.”

This new year of 2025 will mark, in December, the centennial of Pope Pius XI’s extraordinary encyclical Quas Primas. Written at a time when the great “isms” of the 19th and 20th centuries were well-nigh triumphant over the remnants of old Christendom and those who had fought for her, it was a proud battle cry. In the face of a world dominated by varying ideologies who shared, amid their antipathies, mutual hatred of God and His Church, Pius dared to declare that

…the empire of our Redeemer embraces all men. To use the words of Our immortal predecessor, Pope Leo XIII: “His empire includes not only Catholic nations, not only baptized persons who, though of right belonging to the Church, have been led astray by error, or have been cut off from her by schism, but also all those who are outside the Christian faith; so that truly the whole of mankind is subject to the power of Jesus Christ.” Nor is there any difference in this matter between the individual and the family or the State; for all men, whether collectively or individually, are under the dominion of Christ. In him is the salvation of the individual, in him is the salvation of society. “Neither is there salvation in any other, for there is no other name under heaven given to men whereby we must be saved.” He is the author of happiness and true prosperity for every man and for every nation. “For a nation is happy when its citizens are happy. What else is a nation but a number of men living in concord?” If, therefore, the rulers of nations wish to preserve their authority, to promote and increase the prosperity of their countries, they will not neglect the public duty of reverence and obedience to the rule of Christ. What We said at the beginning of Our Pontificate concerning the decline of public authority, and the lack of respect for the same, is equally true at the present day. “With God and Jesus Christ,” we said, “excluded from political life, with authority derived not from God but from man, the very basis of that authority has been taken away, because the chief reason of the distinction between ruler and subject has been eliminated. The result is that human society is tottering to its fall, because it has no longer a secure and solid foundation.”  

As part of the celebration of the centennial, Arouca Press has republished Fr. Joseph Husslein, S.J.’s The Reign of Christ, a 1927 book explaining the teaching in great detail—to which this writer contributed a foreword.

Then, as now, the real division in political as in cultural and religious life was not between the Right and the Left, nor dictatorship and democracy, nor any other apparent-but-false dichotomy the modern world offers. Rather, it is between those who accept that Christ is King over all nations and all men and those who do not; in strictly religious terms, between those who hold that He has given us unchanging Truth and those who deny this. It is a division that actually cuts through every nation and, indeed, through the Church herself.

Of course, since Christ united His Davidic Kingship with the Communio of the Church at the Last Supper on the first Maundy Thursday, His Kingdom has received unrelenting hatred and opposition. This is true, of course, even within the hearts of those who strive to be His subjects—hence the unending need for Confession! But starting with the conversion of Armenia’s king and people in A.D. 303 and culminating with Emperor Theodosius the Great’s making Baptism entry into citizenship of the Roman Empire as well as the Church in 380, the Kingdom of Christ took on a physical if imperfect shape. For the Empire and the Kingdoms that first grew up on her soil and then were added to as various Christian lands outside the old Imperial borders were founded, the Church was the form and the State, the matter of the res publica Christiana, the Christian body, Christendom.

With the Protestant revolt, the Wars of the Three Kingdoms in the British Isles, and the French and succeeding revolutions, this structure was successively shattered. Under the banner of the Sacred Heart in many places, and the white rose and/or cockade in others, some fought for the Kingship of Christ; others wrote for it—some did both. But by 1925, although these forces were not quite spent, they were nearly so.  World War II and the resulting American-Soviet dyarchy pretty much swept them away.

One irony of this is that much of the Resistance to the Nazis, having struggled for the Kingship of Christ before Hitler’s rise to power, were animated by such “outmoded” ideas. This led those who lived in the Soviet half of Europe to further horrible adventure. In the American sector, they were simply doomed to obscurity—their brave fight against the National Socialists being praised and the ideas inspiring that fight denigrated.

So here we are, a century after Pius wrote that encyclical, in the wake of Mr. Trump’s inauguration. Now, to be sure, there are a lot of devout and informed Catholics around him—and many more who deeply support him and for whom he was the only conceivable choice in the recent election. This, too, is not something I wish to dispute. That the newly restored president deeply loves the United States is, no doubt, true. But he presides over a country whose majority believe in infanticide and accept gay marriage, as do he and his wife. Roe v. Wade gave the American people a huge fig leaf, which allowed many Catholics and conservatives to convince themselves that most of us remained “good.” In a series of ballot measures after it was quashed, we showed God and our neighbor just what we were made of.

To be sure, infanticide is only one—if a deeply indicative one—of a host of things which define us as a people. As in most Western countries, decades of academic, media, and governmental indoctrination have not only created our current mental hellscape, they have made it appear to be the only one there is. Ours is a story of unmitigated progress, from Luther tacking up his 95 Theses on the door of the Wittenberg Castle Church in 1517 to the Supreme Court imposing gay marriage upon the United States with Obergefell v. Hodges in 2015. Neither the oceans of blood and acres of horror on the one side nor the ever-increasing blasphemy on the other are considered—after all, one must indeed break a few eggs to make an omelet, no?

So it is that we have arrived at the best of all possible worlds, a real alternative to which cannot be imagined by the vast majority—and why should it be? As for the economic and cultural things which made us uneasy under president Biden, from mismanagement to gender fluidity, the new regie will stop them. Hurrah!

Read the Whole Article

The post The Truth That Dare Not Speak Its Name appeared first on LewRockwell.

DECLASSIFICATION OF RECORDS CONCERNING THE ASSASSINATIONS OF PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY, SENATOR ROBERT F. KENNEDY, AND THE REVEREND DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.

EXECUTIVE ORDER
January 23, 2025

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

Section 1. Policy and Purpose. More than 50 years after the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Senator Robert F. Kennedy, and the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the Federal Government has not released to the public all of its records related to those events. Their families and the American people deserve transparency and truth. It is in the national interest to finally release all records related to these assassinations without delay.

The President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992 required all records related to the assassination of President Kennedy to be publicly disclosed in full by October 26, 2017, unless the President certifies that: (i) continued postponement is made necessary by an identifiable harm to the military defense, intelligence operations, law enforcement, or conduct of foreign relations; and (ii) the identifiable harm is of such gravity that it outweighs the public interest in disclosure. President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992, section 5(g)(2)(D), Public Law 102-526, 106 Stat. 3443, 3448–49, codified at 44 U.S.C. 2107 note.

I previously accepted proposed redactions from executive departments and agencies (agencies) in 2017 and 2018, but ordered the continued re-evaluation of those remaining redactions. See Temporary Certification for Certain Records Related to the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, 82 Fed. Reg. 50,307–08 (Oct. 31, 2017); Certification for Certain Records Related to the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, 83 Fed. Reg. 19, 157–58 (Apr. 26, 2018). In the Presidential Memorandum of April 26, 2018, I also ordered agencies to re-review each of those redactions over the next 3 years and disclose information that no longer warrants continued withholding under the standard set forth in section 5(g)(2)(D) of the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992.

President Biden issued subsequent certifications with respect to these records in 2021, 2022, and 2023, which gave agencies additional time to review the records and withhold information from public disclosure. See Temporary Certification Regarding Disclosure of Information in Certain Records Related to the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, 86 Fed. Reg. 59,599 (Oct. 22, 2021); Certifications Regarding Disclosure of Information in Certain Records Related to the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, 87 Fed. Reg. 77,967 (Dec. 15, 2022); Certification Regarding Disclosure of Information in Certain Records Related to the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, 88 Fed. Reg. 43,247 (June 30, 2023).

I have now determined that the continued redaction and withholding of information from records pertaining to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy is not consistent with the public interest and the release of these records is long overdue. And although no Act of Congress directs the release of information pertaining to the assassinations of Senator Robert F. Kennedy and the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., I have determined that the release of all records in the Federal Government’s possession pertaining to each of those assassinations is also in the public interest.

Sec. 2. Declassification and Disclosure. (a) Within 15 days of the date of this order, the Director of National Intelligence and the Attorney General shall, in coordination with the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs and the Counsel to the President, present a plan to the President for the full and complete release of records relating to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

(b) Within 45 days of the date of this order, the Director of National Intelligence and the Attorney General shall, in coordination with the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs and the Counsel to the President, review records related to the assassinations of Senator Robert F. Kennedy and the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and present a plan to the President for the full and complete release of these records.

Sec. 3. General Provisions. (a) Nothing in this order shall be construed to impair or otherwise affect:

(i) the authority granted by law to an executive department or agency, or the head thereof; or

(ii) the functions of the Director of the Office of Management and Budget relating to budgetary, administrative, or legislative proposals.

(b) This order shall be implemented consistent with applicable law and subject to the availability of appropriations.

(c) This order is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies, or entities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person.

THE WHITE HOUSE,

January 23, 2025.

https://www.fox4news.com/news/trump-signs-order-declassifying-files-jfk-rfk-mlk-jr-assassinations

The post Trump Signs Executive Order Declassifying Files on JFK, RFK, and MLK Jr. Assassinations appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, Tim McGraw:

Modern Warfare in Ukraine: Patrick Lancaster: Video

Once the Russians established air superiority, they could use drones as 24/7 visual aids to target Ukrainian positions. The Russians would then blow up the Ukrainians with rockets and artillery using feedback from the overhead drone for targeting corrections.

After the Ukrainians retreat from the barrage, Russian soldiers advance.

The post Modern Warfare in Ukraine: Patrick Lancster appeared first on LewRockwell.

Writes Rick Rozoff:

Turning back the tide of so-called identity politics.

But who knows how many tens of millions of Americans may never be able to recover from the mass delusion/hysteria/psychosis/cultic bigotry.

The post What I’ve prayed for over 35 years appeared first on LewRockwell.

Writes Patrick Foy:

Will Trump succeed in containing China – or fuel its rise?

“As for China, Washington’s boogyman of choice, nothing is going to stop it. 

By that I mean, its economic success. That success, Washington takes for granted as a threat.”

The post Contain China, or fuel its rise? appeared first on LewRockwell.

Writes Rick Rozoff:

Compassion? Like her fellow female pastor in Iowa who sent Adolfo Martinez to prison for sixteen years, separating him from his wife and children, for burning a rainbow flag?

Please compile a mental list of all Christian clergymen you know who will not – predictably – say anything about this, if in fact they don’t applaud and attempt to replicate the travesty.

Melanie King:

The post “Blasphemous abomination of a pastor” appeared first on LewRockwell.

Writes Gail Appel:

Do it!

The post Tom Fitton: Court Martial Milley! appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, Rick Rozoff. 

The post Douglas Murray on barmy, banal Bishop Budde appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, Rick Rozoff.

The post Bishop Budde: Better take care of my slaves appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, John Smith. 

The New Arab

The post Challenging 7 Oct. ‘Hamas massacre’ in Israel punishable by jail appeared first on LewRockwell.

Writes Mark Oshinskie:

(100) LIVING WITHOUT REGRET – Dispatches from a Scamdemic

The post Scamdemic Accountability appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks David Martin.

RT News

The post Israel Torturing, Killing Palestinian Doctors appeared first on LewRockwell.

Writes Dale L.:

Trump Says First  Illegals Who Volunteer For Microchip In Neck Will Be The First Ones Allowed To Return.

See here.

The post Microchip Tracking Of Illegals Could Trigger Mass Exodus appeared first on LewRockwell.