Lew Rockwell Institute

Thanks, John Frahm. 

Technocracy News

The post REAL ID: Ron Paul Gets Authoritarianism, Misses Technocracy appeared first on LewRockwell.

David Martin wrote:

James Forrestal, was president of Dillon, Read & Co. Inc. who later became the first Secretary of Defense under Harry Truman. He was assassinated by his enemies.

Fitts, as Burris notes, also worked for Dillon, Read. 

Book Review: The Assassination of James Forrestal by David Martin | Solari Report

Tucker Carlson – Catherine Fitts: Bankers vs. the West, Secret Underground Bases, and the Oncoming Extinction Event

The post Charles Burris on Catherine Austin Fitts Expose of Deep State Machinations appeared first on LewRockwell.

Click Here:

Eugyppius

The post Towards a Theory of Political Stupidity appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, Jesse Trentadue.

Headline USA

The post Judge Orders FBI to Produce 2,000 Pages of OKC Bomb Records Per Month appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, John Smith. 

The Grayzone

The post “The masters of the universe are Jews,” former Senator declares in Israel appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, John Smith. 

Palestine Chronicle

The post ‘Weaponizing’ Food – Over 65,000 Gaza Children Hospitalized for Malnutrition appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, John Smith. 

The New Arab

The post Israeli mayor faces threats after decrying Gaza ‘atrocities’ appeared first on LewRockwell.

The post Bankruptcy: House Republicans MASSIVELY Increase Military Spending Bill appeared first on LewRockwell.

The post “Demoralize the Enemy From Within by Surprise, Terror, Sabotage, Assassination. This is the War of the Future.” Adolf Hitler appeared first on LewRockwell.

Donald Trump’s War on America’s $5.4 trillion of two-way trade with the rest of the planet is surely one of the most senseless acts of state aggression in modern times, if ever. That’s because its predicate—that America’s giant, unsustainable trade deficits are owing to unfair trade—is dead wrong.

And we do mean wrong—as in completely, unequivocally and with no if, ands or buts. Indeed, Trump thinks large trade deficits are prima facie evidence of cheating by our trading partners, yet the evidence debunks that primitive axiom with such alacrity as to literally shutdown the argument.

For instance, the Donald never stops bragging about his negotiating the USMCA in late 2018, which he claims was a vast improvement upon the existing three-way free trade arrangement between the US, Mexico and Canada known as NAFTA. In truth, of course, it was mainly a name change with some sops to the UAW and other American unions, which provided more stringent wage standards in Mexico. But the core feature—zero tariff trade between the three countries—was maintained.

Here’s the thing, however. During 2017—before the Donald’s new and improved USMCA— the US trade deficit with Mexico and Canada was -$65 billion, representing a modest 5.0% of total two-way trade of $1.298 trillion between the US and its two NAFTA partners. Self-evidently, that deficit was not caused by tariff barriers because, by definition, there weren’t any.

2017 NAFTA Trade:

• US Exports To NAFTA: $616 billion.
• US Imports From NAFTA: $681 billion.
• Trade Deficit With NAFTA: -$65 billion.
• Total Two-Way Trade: $1,298 billion.
• NAFTA deficit as % Of Two-Way Trade: 0%.

Fast forward to 2024 and you will see that the US combined deficit with Mexico and Canada has soared to $235 billion, and actually represented 14.6% of two-way trade which totaled $1.6 trillion with the two USMCA partners. So in a structural sense, the US trade deficit with its partners to the north and south significantly deteriorated.

That’s right. The Donald’s new and improved USMCA deal extended the zero-tariff approach of NAFTA and also added some additional features designed to remove so-called NTBs (nontariff barriers) by ensuring that Mexico’s labor and environmental standards didn’t give it any unfair trade advantages. In the case of wages, in fact, the USMCA’s Annex 23-A required Mexico to eliminate company controlled unions and raise wages by $4 to $6/hour by 2024.

Still, what happened on a completely level playing field over that seven year period is that US exports to the USMCA partners rose by 11% but imports soared by 35%, causing the trade deficit to expand by nearly four-fold. So either the Donald scored an own goal or this huge deficit with Mexico and Canada was caused by factors other than trade barriers and cheating partners.

2024 USMCA Trade:

• US Exports: $683 billion.
• US Imports: $919 billion.
• Trade Deficit With USMCA: –$235 billion.
• Total Two-Way Trade: $1,602 billion.
• USMCA Deficit as % of Total Trade: 6%.

What didn’t remain level, of course, was the wage gap—especially as between US and Mexican manufacturing wages. Not surprisingly, the US trade deficit with Mexico alone rose from -$63 billion in 2016 to -$172 billion in 2024.

As shown in the table below, in fact, average hourly US manufacturing wages including payroll taxes, health care, pension funding and other fringes rose from $27.50 per hour in 2016 to $37.32 per hour in 2024. In turn, the wage gap with far lower hourly pay levels in Mexico increased from $23.90 in 2016 t0 $29.91.

So there is now a $30 per hour wage difference on either side of the Rio Grande. Accordingly, the Fed should have been deflating the US economy in recent years, attempting to wring out decades of cumulative inflation that was making US industry increasingly uncompetitive in global markets. The Donald was having none of that, however, given that he spent most of his first term berating the Fed for being too tight, and then demanded that it unleash the inflationary cyclone that hit the economy after he shut it down and then pumped households full of trillions of free stuff in 2020.

As it happened, therefore, the Fed’s dunderheaded pro-inflation policies caused average fully loaded manufacturing wages in the US to rise by nearly +36% during that eight year period, albeit to hardly any advantage at all to US factory workers. When adjusted for the rise in the CPI, average 2024 manufacturing wages of $24.55 per hour in base pay plus $12.77 per hour in payroll taxes and fringe benefits or $37.32 per hour total were only 4% higher than they had been in 2016.

Fully Loaded Manufacturing Hourly Wage Table (2016–2024)

Needless to say, the USMCA story is not an aberration or exception; it’s actually the rule. Take the case of South Korea, which entered into a bilateral free trade agreement with the US in 2012 requiring the phase out of all industrial and agricultural tariffs over the next eight years. By 2020, therefore, tw0-way trade with South Korea was tariff-free with upwards of $200 billion of trade now crossing the borders of both sides without any import duties.

Yet in 2023, the US trade deficit with South Korea was huge, amounting to 27% of the total bilateral volume of imports and exports.

US/South Korea Trade In 2023:

• US Exports to South Korea: $66.6 billion.
• US Imports from South Korea: $116.0 billion.
• US Balance with Korea: -$49.4 billion.
• Trade Deficit as % of Two-Way Volume: 27.1%.

Again, the explanation for the huge US trade deficit is production costs, not tariffs or other trade barriers. During that 12 year interval fully loaded US hourly wages rose by 46%, while those for South Korea rose by nearly the same ratio, ticking higher by 45%. But it terms of dollars and cents on the cost sheet, the wage gap widened from $6.23 per hour when the South Korean free trade deal was signed in 2012 to $7.21 per hour when it became fully effective in 2020 to $9.21 per hour in 2024.

The Donald is always berating his predecessors for allegedly making bad trade deals, claiming that they have stupidly sent money and jobs abroad. Yet here is a solid free trade deal that produced one of the largest US bilateral trade deficits because all the while the Fed was inflating wages and costs in the US economy to increasingly uncompetitive levels.

Again, the Fed pro-inflation stance did precious little for the purchasing power of the workers’ paychecks. The 2024 US wage cost in inflation-adjusted dollars was up by only 3.4% from 2012 levels.

And that’s not the half of it. It turns out that nearly all of the real US labor cost gain during that period was due to payroll taxes and fringe benefit cost. The base hourly wage rate in worker pay envelopes, in fact, was $24.45 per hour in 2012 (2024 $) and $24.55 per hour in 2024. So the average US manufacturing worker gained just one thin dime per hour in real purchasing power over more than a decade!

Table: Fully Loaded Manufacturing Wage Costs (U.S. and South Korea)

To complete the story, the table below shows 2023 results for America’s Big Five Asian trading partners—China, South Korea, Taiwan, India and Vietnam— which account for the preponderant share of the America’s global trade deficit, and which bilateral balances are all heavily tilted in favor of imports.

But here’s the thing. In 2023, the average tariff on US exports to these five countries was 6.2%, while US tariffs on imports from the five averaged 10.6%, including 19.3% on goods purchased from China per the Donald first term tariffs. In dollar term, these five trading partners collected a modest $19 billion in duties from US shippers, while Washington collected $88 billion in tariffs on goods arriving from them at US ports.

In short, when it comes to monetary trade barriers Washington was the culprit, levying far more onerous duties on its partners than they levied on US exports. And yet and yet: The US trade deficit with these five leading Asian exporters was massive. The combined deficit of $522 billion in 2023 amounted to nearly 46% of the $1.143 trillion of two-way trade with these countries.

US Trade With Big Five Asian Exporters in 2023:

• US Exports: $311 billion.
• US Imports: $833 billion.
• Trade Deficit: -$522 billion.
• Total two-way volume: $1.143 trillion.
• Trade deficit % of two-way trade: 7%.

Next, consider the US trade balance with the EU-27 versus that for the UK. As it happens, tariff levels on both sides of the equation are low and essentially close enough to even for government work . In the case of the EU-27, the latter’s weighted average tariff on US exports is 2.7% while the US tariff on imports from the EU-27 is 2.0%. Likewise, the UK tariff on American exports is 3.8% versus the US average tariff of 2.0% on imports from the UK.

Then again, the trade balance outcomes are wholly dissimilar. In 2023, the US had a modest $3.3 billion surplus on combined two-way trade of $138 billion with the UK, whereas it ran a huge $221 billion deficit with the EU-27 on $931 billion of two-way trade. That is to say, when similar tariff policies are correlated with drastically opposite results on the Donald’s winners and losers scoreboard, the validity of the entire deficits-prove-unfair-trade axiom is surely called into question.

Needless to say, even when you include the EU-27 and the USMCA countries and all other significant trading partners from Brazil to Pakistan, Indonesia, Singapore and Saudi Arabia, the story is consistently the same. There are no tariff barriers to US trade that explain the massive deficits which now materialize year after year.

Below is the aggregated data for the 51 top US trading partners in 2023, which accounts for more than 90% of US global volume. But again, the average US tariff of 3.9% was considerably higher than the 2.1% average tariff levied by these 51 partners on US exports. For want of doubt, in fact, it might be noted that the US collected $112 billion in tariff revenue for these 51 nations compared to just $40 billion of duties levied on US exports to their markets.

Alas, America’s higher tariffs did not deliver a “win” on the Donald’s trade scoreboard. Far from it. The combined trade deficit with the top 51 US trading partners was a staggering $1.145 trillion!

You read that right. America’s $2.862 trillion of imports from these countries was 66% larger than its $1.717 trillion of exports to them. That is to say, the combined deficit was equal to fully 25% of two-way volume with countries that account for the preponderant share of world trade.

US Trade With Top 51 Global Trading Partners In 2023:

• US Exports:$1.717 trillion.
• US Imports: $2.862 trillion.
• Trade Balance: -$1.145 trillion.
• Total Two-Way Volume: $4.579 trillion.
• Deficit % Of Two-Way Volume: 0%.

Accordingly, tariff barriers have absolutely nothing to do with America’s giant trade deficits. And as we have indicated in previous posts, the claim that massive US deficits are actually due to non-monetary trade barriers and related cheating, or what are known as NTBs, is equally bogus. But, again, for want of doubt we went straight to the mother load of the NTB (nontariff barrier) case—-the claim that China’s red capitalists are the world champion NTB trade cheats.

To be clear, we eliminate from this analysis the whining from Wall Street and the Fortune 500 about allegedly onerous Chinese treatment of their direct investments and operations on the territory of the Red Ponzi itself. We are referring to items like forced partnerships with local Chinese companies involving technology sharing arrangements or sharp limitations on repatriation of profits.

Actually, there is a very simple answer to that complaint that does not require a global trade war or imposing hundreds of billions of tariff-taxes on domestic consumers and importers. To wit, don’t invest in China!

All of these supposedly onerous conditions for doing business in China are by no means secret or surprises after the fact. To the contrary, US companies invest in China because the think they can make money or that its serves larger global strategies.

Either way, Washington should not function as their concierge. Or, as the man famously said, capital should go where it is appreciated. And, besides, these issues have virtually nothing to do with the giant trade deficits that the Donald claims to be attempting to eliminate.

Instead, the claim is that one way or another foreign economies are rigged in favor of exports and local producers—to the detriment of US based competitors. The implication is that domestic macroeconomic policies are inherently unfair and are the real reason why expedients like the Donald’s Reciprocal Tariffs are needed to level the playing field.

In this respect, Treasury Secretary Bessent was loudly making this case during the past week. At at recent international forum he claimed effectively that China produces too much and consumes too little. That is to say, its core macroeconomic policies allegedly violate the maxim of Professor J.M Keynes that governments everywhere and always need to be stimulating consumption and spending because otherwise people will save their way into depression and poverty!

To be sure, we thought way back in 1981 that the Reagan Revolution had purged Keynes’ demand side fixation from at least the economic policy lexicon on the GOP side of the aisle. But, no, this latest wet-behind-the-ears Wall Streeter to stumble into the Treasury

Building is not missing a beat in championing the Keynesian gospel that is resident in its permanent bureaucracy.

“China’s current economic model is built on exporting its way out of its economic troubles. It’s an unsustainable model that is not only harming China, but the entire world. China needs to change. The country knows it needs to change.”

In fact, this is just plain malarkey—the same thing Ben Bernanke was peddling two decades ago when he bailed out Wall Street. It only has an air of faint plausibility because the standard national income and product accounts (NIPA) imply that China has a savings rate which dwarfs that of the US, and that somehow this communistic practice of saving too much accounts for the massive US trade deficits with China.

The real cause, of course, is the inflated production costs and wage levels in the US versus the dollar equivalent in China. As we demonstrated last week, since 1992 when Mr. Deng declared it glorious to be rich the US price level has risen by 131%. Not surprisingly, the American market soon became flooded with labor-intensive Chinese shirts, shoes, sheets, toys and furniture at first; and then electronics, iPads, iPhones and computers in an even greater flood as time went on and Chinese manufacturing moved up the value chain.

As we also indicated previously, the nominal wage gap in USD was already large in 1992, but has steadily expanded ever since. In fact, in nominal USD terms the US/China manufacturing wage gap of $16.50 per hour in 1992 has more than doubled to $34.25. The figures below for both countries were supplied by Grok 3 and include both hourly pay plus full-loaded benefits absorbed by employers.

Hourly Wages: US-China=Labor Gap:

• 1992: $16.80-$0.33=$16.50.
• 2007: $29.81-$1.36=$28.45.
• 2024: $43.46-9.35=$34.14

In short, the Fed has inflated its way into a flood of imports from China due to the $34/hour wage gap, not trade barriers or intellectual property theft or Secretary Bessent’s risible claim that 18-year old Chinese girls working their fingers to the bone in a Foxconn iPhone plant save too much!

For avoidance of doubt, we have enlisted Grok 3 in the dis-aggregation of the standard NIPA accounts for both countries. While these NIPA accounts have an inherent Keynesian bias, we have been able to separate the statistical wheat from the chaff in a way that clarifies exactly where China’s great big “savings rate” comes from, and that it has virtually no bearing on the bilateral trade deficit with the US.

The latter is a matter of the vast wage and cost gap shown above. Pure and simple. End of story.

To summarize Grok 3’s prodigious digging and sorting, we can say that 90% of the savings gap shown at the bottom of the table—savings of 6.4% of GDP for the US and 26.9% of GDP for China—is owing to factors that have virtually no bearing on trade. These include the following items in terms of basis points relative to the total 2,050 basis point difference in the aggregate savings rates of the two countries indicated at the bottom of the chart:

• Bigger US fiscal deficits: 200 basis points in favor of China because the commie government doesn’t borrow enough.
• More China central bank money printing: 550 basis points owing to the Keynesian delusion that central bank fiat credit amounts to “savings”.
• China’s current account surplus versus US deficit: 330 basis point owing to the fact that Bessent et. al. implicitly claim the cause and the effect are one and the same.
• Shadow savings in the form of illegal off-shoring of China business profits: 300 basis points owing to Chinese entrepreneurs attempting to stealthily protect their wealth from the long arm of Beijing.
• Apple Inc etc. repatriation of profits: 40 basis points of savings when Apple Inc. brings its sweatshop profits home.
• Phantom economic growth in China thru government fiddling with GDP data: 160 basis points.
• Higher errors and omissions in China NIPA accounts: 270 basis points or the equivalent of 42% of the US savings rate is attributable to the admitted errors and omissions in the China NIPA accounts.
• Subtotal, all of above items: 1,850 basis points.
• % of Total Savings Gap: 90%

In order to further debunk the myth that 18-year olds working 12 hour shifts in Apple’s Foxconn factories save too much, we also dis-aggregated the data on the household sector per se. The latter is always waived around by protectionist who suggest that Chinese workers are both underpaid and then forced to put all of their meager earnings into a saving accounts.

Actually, the household data is heavily distorted by the US Welfare State, which provides a population of 335 million about $4 trillion per year in transfer payments, ranging from social security to foods stamps and subsidized housing. This compares to just $1.7 trillion provided to a population of 1.41 billion by the Chicoms in Beijing. In per capita terms, the comparison is $12,000 in the US versus $1,200 per capita in China.

Communist China’s more impecunious approach to welfare, of course, is a matter of government policy and can hardly be said to be a sinister plot to cheat on trade with the US. But it does tend to distort the household savings statistics because transfer payment recipients in both countries tend to live hand-t0-mouth and do not have the luxury to “save”.

The same distortion results from the inclusion of “imputed rent” in the income and spending statistics. The convention is that homeowners pay rent to themselves—with the payment charged to PCE (personal consumption expenditure) and the rental income allocated to interest income of households. However, since the two figures are a wash, the implicit savings rate is zero on what amounts to $1.8 trillion of US household “income” per year. By contrast, this phantom housing expense and income in the China NIPA statistics is only $200 billion per year.

In any event to get to an apples-to-apples comparison, we took the zero savings income and expense pairs for both transfer payments and imputed housing rent out of the data. That’s because they wash to zero anyway—even though in the case of the US household income statistics these two items total $5.8 trillion of “income”, which by definition can’t be saved because it is 100% off-set by expense.

The bottom line is clear: The true comparison of the household savings rate between the US and China is 7.3% of GDP for the former versus 11.9% for the latter per the first line of the table below. That 460 basis point difference is both minor in the great scheme of a $30 trillion versus $18 trillion economy, but is readily explained by the fact capitalist America has a prodigious Welfare State and Communist China does not.

So households save modestly more in China because they know the government isn’t doing it for them with a massive social insurance Ponzi Scheme like America’s soon to be bankrupt Social Security system. And yet, Secy Bessent says that its China that is cheating?!

In short, the “excess savings” canard is just beltway bullshit. It’s the go-to excuse of protectionists, and the hoary myth invented by Bubbles Ben Bernanke himself to obfuscate the trade disaster that the Fed has brought down upon America’s industrial economy.

And now the Donald and his clueless Treasury Secretary have apparently embraced this nonsense hook, line and sinker. Then again, when the entire case for “big beautiful tariffs” is 100% bogus, it’s not surprising that its advocates have become a fount of pure humbug.

Breakdown of US Versus China Savings Rate In 2023 By Major Component:

Table Notes:

US.:

• Household savings: $2.05T (7.3%), excludes transfers ($3.99T) and imputed housing ($1.8T), aligning with cash-flow focus.
• Residual: $168B (0.6%), includes informal economy ($28B), small due to BEA transparency.

China:

• Household savings: $2.179T (11.9%), excludes transfers ($1.7T) and imputed housing ($0.2T), closer to Rhodium’s ~14% discretionary savings.
• Residual: $615B (3.3%, errors $300B, untracked $315B), reduced by $300B phantom growth bias (1.6%, GDP/investment overstatement).

Reprinted with permission from David Stockton’s Contra Corner.

The post American Capitalism’s Worst Nightmare appeared first on LewRockwell.

Governments regularly claim that they favour tax reform. When this claim has been repeated so many times that virtually no one believes them anymore, they announce a tax reform, to show that they really mean it. They then reshuffle the existing taxes to give the appearance that taxation will actually be lowered.

When it becomes apparent that the reform is a sham, they often pull a rabbit out of a hat in the form of a “temporary” tax, that’s pre-legislated to end sometime in the future.

Sounds promising.

So, let’s have a look at one such temporary tax and see how things worked out.

The US government introduced the War Revenue Act of 1898—a tax on telephone use—under the claim that it was necessary to pay for the Spanish American War.

In what way does telephone use pertain to a government invading another country? Well, actually, one has nothing to do with the other. But, let’s leave that discussion for another day and see how this temporary tax played out.

The Act was repealed in 1902 but was reinstated, this time as the Emergency Internal Revenue Tax Act of 1914. The justification then given was that another war was on the way and increased taxation to pay for it couldn’t begin too soon. Telephone users needed to cough up.

It was decided by both parties to increase the tax on telephones and the War Revenue Act of 1917 was created. It hadn’t passed the debate stage until the war was over, but they decided that they’d implement it anyway, as the work had already been done. In the bargain, they introduced not only increased rates, but graduated rates.

This act was also repealed, in 1924, but was reinstated with the Revenue Act of 1932. Since that date, it has been reauthorised 29 times.

In 1941, an increase was put in place to pay for (you guessed it) another war—World War II. This was increased again in 1943, but people complained and the new law contained a provision that the increased rates would end six months after “the date of termination of hostilities in the present war.” However, the Excise Tax Act of 1947 was passed to assure that the tax would continue indefinitely.

Over the subsequent years, periodic changes were made. Although the rates went up and down like a bride’s nightie, most, not surprisingly, were upward.

As further (undeclared) wars came and went, taxation on telephone calls repeatedly needed to be increased and, regardless of the party in power, increases continued.

At long last, on 14 September, 2000, the House of Representatives took up legislation which included the repeal of the telephone excise tax. This measure passed both houses, but the fix was in. President Clinton vetoed the repeal. (The legislative branch and the executive branch have to take turns playing the bad cop, but the outcome is the same: increased taxation.)

Then, in 2006, a case was made (in the words of the Treasury Secretary), to amend the Internal Revenue Code “of an outdated, antiquated tax that has survived a century beyond its original purpose, and by now should have been ancient history.”

Finally, American citizens could wash their hands of a one-hundred-year theft of their earnings that, even at the start, was based upon a ludicrous concept.

Unfortunately… it didn’t happen.

The repeal was never enacted and Americans continue to pay for the Spanish American War today.

So, what’s the takeaway here?

Well, first off, this little history serves as a reminder that there’s nothing so permanent as a temporary government measure.

Second, although not a month goes by without one politician or another, from one party or the other, rising up in righteous indignation that a new tax or an expanded tax is absolutely necessary to continue the welfare of the American people, there is, in truth, no sincerity in their claim. They simply want more money.

Third, no amount of money is ever enough. Even if Washington, D.C., is the only part of the US that is enjoying prosperity, even if no congressman leaves office without more zeroes behind his net worth than when he went in, virtually every legislator will vote for increases in taxation.

And, fourth, there’s no such thing as tax reform. From time to time, legislators will need to trot out the idea of tax reform, and be seen to be arguing over the details, but will ultimately always do the same: the deck will be reshuffled, but somehow, taxes will rise once again.

But the overall lesson to be learned is that Government is, and has always been, a shell game. Its purpose is not to serve the electorate; it is to separate them from the fruits of their labours.

Full stop.

As former US Chief Justice John Marshall stated,

The power to tax involves the power to destroy.

More recently, Ron Holland offered the following:

Since the beginning of recorded history, the business of government has been wealth confiscation.

However, both these individuals were conservatives, and it would only be fair to ask for commentary from the liberal side. One such liberal political leader is none other than Vladimir Lenin, who stated,

The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation.

Of course, the reader may wish to consider relocating to a jurisdiction where the taxation is far lower, but if he chooses to remain in the US, EU, Canada, or other jurisdiction where the tax level is already oppressive, his plans should include temporary taxes that are unlikely to end in his lifetime.

Reprinted with permission from International Man.

The post The Endlessness of a Temporary Tax appeared first on LewRockwell.

“This is one of the most important days in American history. It’s our declaration of economic independence. Jobs and factories will come roaring back into our country, and you see it happening already. We will supercharge our domestic industrial base.”

President Donald Trump announces unilateral tariffs on 180 countries despite warnings of inflation, recession and supply chain disruptions, April 2, 2025

This is probably the worst economic policy I’ve ever seen…. There is no way that this policy will bring manufacturing back to the United States and “make America wealthy again”… if anything, it’ll make us much poorer. Many are saying that this tariff policy is the “end of globalization”. I don’t think so….. This is the end of America’s participation in globalization….

Molson Hart@Molson_Hart, Founder and CEO of Viahart, a consumer products company

The purpose of President Trump’s tariff policy is not what he says it is. If the goal of the tariffs was to reindustrialize the country and create more jobs in manufacturing, the announcement would have been accompanied by an industrial policy that would outline a coordinated government effort to rebuild America’s critical industries. It would have provided details on tax incentives, infrastructure investment, workforce training, government subsidies and R&D funding; all aimed at achieving Trump’s stated objectives. By now—late April—Trump would have made numerous public appearances with important banking and business leaders who would have expressed their support for this ambitious project of rebuilding the country into a manufacturing powerhouse. Trump also would have presented an overview of the many public-private agreements that had been made with wealthy capitalists who supported the idea and wanted to participate in its implementation.

But none of these things have happened, because there is no industrial policy; just as there is no expectation that the imposition of onerous duties on foreign imports will magically “bring jobs back to America”. It’s all a pipedream aimed at hoodwinking the public. So, what is the tariffs business really all about? Here’s how the WSWS answers that question:

The real purpose of Trump’s tariffs (in the words of socialist Tom Hall) is “to prepare supply chains for world war, especially against China.” (The administration) “is promoting a policy which recalls the darkest period of the 20th century under the Nazis, where trade war preceded the outbreak of World War II in September 1939.” World Socialist Web Site

We find this analysis compelling, but not particularly believable. True, Trump has failed to back his tariff edicts with any solid proposals for rebuilding America’s anemic industrial base. But that doesn’t mean he’s gearing up for a war with China. That seems like a bit of a stretch. Even so, it’s worth putting the question to Grok to see if the historical analogy is accurate.

Question—Did Hitler use the trade war to strengthen supply lines to Germany before the war?

Grok—Yes, Hitler exploited the global trade war and economic turmoil of the 1930s to strengthen Germany’s supply lines and prepare for war. The Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act and subsequent retaliatory tariffs by other nations disrupted global trade, creating opportunities for Germany to pursue autarky (economic self-sufficiency) and secure strategic resources through bilateral agreements. Here’s how:

Hitler’s regime aimed to reduce reliance on imports by boosting domestic production, particularly in agriculture and synthetic materials (e.g., fuel, rubber). The Nazi “Four-Year Plan” (1936) prioritized rearmament and self-sufficiency to insulate Germany from trade disruptions.

Bilateral Trade Agreements: With global trade hampered, Germany negotiated barter deals with smaller nations, especially in Eastern Europe and the Balkans….

Exploiting Weakened Economies: The trade war weakened economies globally, making countries more willing to trade with Germany on favorable terms….

Control of Neighboring Economies: Germany’s economic influence over Austria and Czechoslovakia before their annexation (1938-1939) ensured access to their resources and industries, further strengthening supply lines….

While the trade war wasn’t the sole factor, it created a fragmented global economy that Hitler manipulated to bolster Germany’s war machine. By 1939, these efforts gave Germany a robust, though not complete, supply network for the early stages of World War II. (Grok)

So, a case could be made that Trump is thinking along the same lines as Hitler, trying to make the US more self-sufficient in the event of a military confrontation with China. That might explain why he is patching up relations with Putin (so he can shift his attention to China). It might also explain his sudden interest in Greenland which would provide the US with easy access to precious metals, rare earth, and oil and gas reserves in case war breaks out in the Asia-Pacific. The de facto seizure of the Panama Canal could fit within this same paradigm as it relates to the control of critical sea lanes and maritime passageways. These are all actions you would expect the government to take if they were planning a long-term conflict with a peer competitor located halfway around the world.

But we’re still not convinced that this is the opening volley in a war with China. We think it’s the Shock-and-Awe phase of an aggressive containment strategy that seeks to isolate and encircle China without actually veering into a shooting war. Even so, it should be fairly obvious by now that the Liberation Day extravaganza was merely a way to conceal Trump’s real motive, which was to formally launch a trade war on China. That’s what’s really going on behind the scattershot tariffs that have been haphazardly aimed at friend and foe alike. The real bullseye is on China, the greatest emergent threat the US has ever faced.

The embargo on Chinese goods suggests that Washington is finally making its definitive pivot to Asia. Ukraine is being handed over to the NATO allies while the US shifts its attention to the Far East. The administration is already committed to strengthening its military presence in the region, building support for an anti-China coalition, inciting incidents in the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea and now, imposing a complete embargo on China without any prior notice and without the slightest provocation. The new tariffs fit seamlessly with Washington’s broader strategy of containing the one rival that is most likely to become the undisputed regional hegemon.

But whatever Trump’s intentions may have been, there is no doubt that the plan was poorly thought-out and is not having the impact he had hoped for. For example, Trump thought his gigantic tariffs would send Chinese Premier Xi Jinping racing for the phone to see what concessions he could make to placate strongman Trump. But so far, that hasn’t happened, and it doesn’t look like it will. Instead, China’s Foreign Minister has repeatedly stated that “all unilateral tariffs must be removed” before China will even talk to Trump. In short, China has left Trump with no choice but to capitulate now or watch as the US economy goes into cardiac arrest. Check out this shortlist of recession predictions by some of the bigger names in finance:

Goldman Sachs: Prediction: Raised U.S. recession odds to 45% for 2025… If reciprocal tariffs proceed, they expect a recession, albeit mild, similar to 2001’s dot-com bust….

JPMorgan Chase: Prediction: Sees a 60% chance of a global recession by year-end 2025 CEO Jamie Dimon predicts tariffs will slow growth and boost inflation...

TD Securities: Prediction: Raised U.S. recession odds to 50% due to “blunter than expected” tariffs.

Moody’s Analytics: Prediction: Chief Economist Mark Zandi raised recession odds to 40% calling tariffs “fodder for an economic downturn”....

Deutsche Bank: Prediction: Sees a “meaningful increase in recession risk,”… Tariffs raise core PCE inflation by 1–1.5 points and reduce growth via higher costs and reduced competitiveness. Uncertainty and retaliation amplify downturn risks.

Morningstar, Prediction: Calls tariffs a “self-inflicted economic catastrophe,” predicting a recession with reduced GDP growth for 2025–2026…Reasoning: Tariffs raise effective rates to 20–25%, the highest since the 1930s Smoot-Hawley Act, increasing inflation and reducing consumer demand. Supply chain disruptions and retaliation worsen outcomes.

So, while no one can predict a recession with 100 percent accuracy, there’s a mounting consensus that tariffs are going to impact spending, inflation and growth. The anticipated outcomes are simply ‘baked in the cake.’

So, what should Trump do?

Well, the data’s clear that he has made a serious blunder that requires immediate action. He needs to acknowledge his mistake and make a course correction before the supply chain disruptions deteriorate and the hole he’s dug for himself gets even bigger. He needs to remove the tariffs, comply with WTO rules and regulations, and replace the members of his economics advisory team who concocted this madcap idea. We have to assume that it wasn’t Trump who thought tariffs could be used to counter China’s so-called “unfair practices” that “hollowed out U.S. manufacturing.” No, it was likely Robert Lighthizer (who is a key architect of Trump’s first-term trade war) and Peter Navarro, a former Trump trade advisor who co-authored Death by China (2011) and who influenced Trump’s tariff policy during his first term. These are the brainiacs responsible for the current debacle. Trump is merely the unwitting accomplice implementing the destructive views of loony ideologues. We are reminded of a quote by John Maynard Keynes, in his seminal work The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1936), who made the following observation about the influence of deceased economists:

The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed, the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist.

While neither Lighthizer or Navarro are yet “defunct”, it’s clear that Trump is in the grip of their misguided ideas.

Here’s a short sketch of both men:

Robert Lighthizer—who is a key architect of Trump’s first-term trade war and likely influenced the current tariff strategy—is a trusted Trump advisor whose protectionist views jibe with the majority of the other Trump appointees. “Lighthizer views China as an economic adversary exploiting globalization to undermine U.S. manufacturing. He advocates high tariffs, export controls, and decoupling to protect American industries and reduce trade deficits ($295 billion with China in 2024). His approach prioritizes economic nationalism over military or ideological confrontation… Lighthizer’s ideas directly inform Trump’s 2025 tariff hikes(125%–245% on China) justified as countering China’s “lack of respect”…

Lighthizer’s protectionism mirrors Smoot-Hawley’s intent to shield U.S. industries but ignores how such measures can deepen global economic strife… Robert Lighthizer remains an informal advisor in 2025, shaping Trump’s tariff strategy through his protégés like Jamieson Greer. (Grok)

Then, there’s Peter Navarro, who views China as a predatory economic power, stealing U.S. jobs through unfair trade practices. He advocates aggressive tariffs, export bans, and reshoring manufacturing to counter China’s $640 billion trade advantage…. Navarro’s ideas reinforce Trump’s 2025 tariff hikes and decoupling goals… Navarro’s tariff-heavy approach echoes Smoot-Hawley’s protectionism, which backfired by deepening the Great Depression…. Navarro’s policies under Trump may disrupt global markets without a robust U.S. industrial policy. (Grok)

Finally, we have Stephen Miran, Chairman, Council of Economic Advisers (CEA):

Miran is a chief architect of Trump’s tariff strategy, proposing a “Mar-a-Lago Accord” to restructure global trade, using tariffs to force countries to “pay tribute” for U.S. military and financial dominance (Geopolitical Economy Report, April 10, 2025). In an April 7, 2025, speech, he called China “our biggest adversary” and argued tariffs could win a trade war by leveraging U.S. consumer market power. He defended tariffs as historically successful, stating, “American economic history has seen periods of high tariff rates coincide with extraordinary economic success”

(Note—Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Kevin Hassett, Director, National Economic Council (NEC) appear to be only minor players in the tariff’s fiasco.)

These are the men whose ideas are driving the current tariffs policy. The unfolding economic crisis can be traced back to them and their deluded views.

Reprinted with permission from The Unz Review.

The post Waiting on Xi appeared first on LewRockwell.

Former Israeli ambassador to the United States Mike Herzog acknowledged on Israeli media on Sunday that the Biden administration never at any time pressured Israel for a ceasefire in Gaza.

“God did the State of Israel a favor that Biden was the president during this period, because it could have been much worse,” Herzog said. “We fought [in Gaza] for over a year and the administration never came to us and said, ‘ceasefire now.’ It never did.”

So everyone who said the Biden administration was working for a ceasefire lied. They lied that whole entire time. They committed genocide and lied about it, and then they said you were crazy and irresponsible if you didn’t support them.

People’s rage should shake heaven and earth.

❖

The US has committed another huge massacre of civilians in Yemen, this time bombing a detention center full of African migrants in Saada. Some 68 people have reportedly been killed, making this Trump’s worst massacre in Yemen since his terrorist attack on a Hodeida fuel port killed 80 people earlier this month.

Trump’s massacres of civilians in Saada and Hodeida are much more evil than anything he has done in the United States domestically, but they’ve received almost no attention from the media or from Democrats because in the eyes of the empire Yemenis don’t count as human beings and killing them is normal.

❖

The word “antisemite” has become so meaningless that whenever someone uses it you have to ask them “What kind? The Hitler-was-right kind or the stop-bombing-hospitals kind?”

❖

It’s absolutely bat shit insane that it’s increasingly illegal to voice any praise for groups like Hamas and Hezbollah in the UK and Australia just because the government deems them “terrorists”. What happens when the government is wrong and one of those groups is right?

This has always been the plan. It’s so freakish how the US and Israel keep acting like this is some fresh new idea they only just came up with. This entire thing has been about moving Palestinians out of Gaza, from the very beginning. https://t.co/m152KYq7cc

— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) April 29, 2025

❖

They’re seriously going to ethnically cleanse Gaza after a monstrous extermination campaign and then look us all dead in the eyes and tell us we need to hate China.

❖

It’s wild how the US and Israel just came right out and said “Yeah we’re working on permanently ethnically cleansing all Palestinians from the Gaza Strip,” and then the entire western political/media class went right back to pretending to believe this is about fighting Hamas.

❖

Calling the Gaza genocide a “war” is like seeing a man beating a toddler to death and calling it a “fight”.

So much evil hides behind calling this thing a war. If you accept that it’s a war then you have to take seriously arguments like “It’s a war, civilians die in war,” or “Hamas shouldn’t have started a war they can’t win.” If it’s a war then it has two sides who share comparable levels of responsibility for any bad things that happen during that time. If it’s a war then it’s taken as a given that Israel’s primary target is Hamas, and not the civilian population of Gaza in its entirety.

But it’s not a war, it’s a naked ethnic cleansing operation being carried out by a highly sophisticated military with the backing of the most powerful empire that has ever existed. It’s a globe-spanning power structure openly purging a Palestinian territory of Palestinian life using a full siege and the systematic destruction of all healthcare and civilian infrastructure, being resisted by a few thousand guys with homemade rockets and dwindling supplies. That’s not a “war”. It’s not even a “conflict”. It’s a slaughter. It’s a holocaust.

If the Gaza holocaust is a “war”, then shooting fish in a barrel is “hunting”. Beating up a quadriplegic is a “street brawl”. A SWAT team shooting an unarmed civilian is a “gun fight”. No conflicts are perfectly equal, but past a certain level of one-sidedness the language of conflict becomes absurd. The daily massacres we are seeing in Gaza are far beyond that point.

They are raining military explosives on top of a giant concentration camp packed full of children while deliberately starving the entire civilian population to death. They have complete control over the enclave, and they are using that control to eradicate the presence of Palestinians in Gaza. That is not war. That is genocide.

________________

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 mailing list, 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.

The post Biden Never Pushed for a Ceasefire in Gaza appeared first on LewRockwell.

Putin’s 3 day ceasefire, which begins in 8 days, is unrelated to the Ukrainian negotiations. The ceasefire is in memory of the 80th Anniversary of Russia’s defeat of Germany in World War II, a defeat in which the US, Britain, and France played a minor role as the casualty lists indicate. Russia bore the brunt of WW II. Had it not been for Russia, the Third Reich would still be ruling Germany.  Some think it actually is as Germany actively persecutes truth-tellers and critics of Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians. Indeed, in Germany you cannot even criticize the Covid “vaccine” without becoming a political prisoner like Reiner Fuellmich.

The whore Western media and the dumb Western “Russian experts” have failed to note that when Foreign Minister Lavrov declares Russia’s readiness for peace talks, he defines the purpose of the peace talks to be to “eliminate the root causes of the conflict.”

The root cause of the conflict is not Russia’s intervention. The root cause of the conflict is, as the New York Times article admits, Washington’s effort to initiate a conflict that would, or could, destabilize Russia.  

It was Washington, not Moscow, that overthrew the democratically elected Ukrainian government that was in a peaceful and mutually beneficial relationship with Russia while Putin sat on his hands.

It was Washington that armed and trained an Ukrainian army to retake the two breakaway Donbas republics, while using the Minsk Agreement to deceive Moscow that a solution, which did not require Russian intervention, had been achieved.  Both the President of France and the Chancellor of Germany have stated publicly that the Minsk Agreement was used to deceive Putin and leave Russia unprepared for the planned American led Ukrainian invasion of Donbas.

It was Putin and Lavrov who pleaded with US Secretary of State Blinken, NATO, and the EU during December 2021-February 2022 for a mutual security agreement.  The Russians were given the cold shoulder and were forced to intervene  in order to prevent the massacre of the Russian peoples, who had unanimously voted to rejoin Russia from which they had been torn by former Soviet rulers and by the US dismembering the Soviet Union.

Putin’s Ukraine conflict has gone on longer than it took Stalin’s Red Army to drive the highly disciplined Wehrmacht out of thousands of miles of Russia and Eastern Europe and to enter the streets of Berlin. I am not alone in being unable to understand why Putin proceeded with a conflict that was ever-widening, drawing in the US, NATO, the EU and ever more Western weapon systems that “would never to supplied to Ukraine,” culminating in Western supplied long range missiles that now strike deep into Russia.

A possible explanation is that Putin highly values, as does much of his constituency, peace with the West and inclusion in the West. The Russian heart is not really in BRICS.  Therefore, Putin has been using the intervention in Ukraine in the hopes  that a Great Power Agreement, a New Yalta, can come out of it.

What Putin’s hopes overlook is the hegemonic doctrine of American Foreign Policy.  This doctrine as stated by Undersecretary of Defense Wolfowitz in 1991 has never been repudiated by any American  president, including Trump.  The doctrine declares that the principle goal of US foreign policy is hegemony over the world. As this remains Washington’s policy, peace with Russia, China, and Iran,  can only be achieved by their surrender or their defeat.

Is Putin prepared to surrender?  Is China prepared to surrender?  Is Iran prepared to surrender?  Unless they are, war, not peace, is our future.

It is only after we hear Trump’s and Congress’ repudiation of American hegemony can we have any hope of peace.  

We await this repudiation of American hegemony. See this.

The post The ‘Peace Negotiations’ Are Just Another Deception Creating a Narrative for More War appeared first on LewRockwell.

In what can only be called one of the most ridiculous federal criminal prosecutions in U.S. history, the U.S. Department of Justice and, specifically, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Middle District of Florida, ended up with a massive amount of egg on its face. The case involved the criminal prosecution of Black rights activists affiliated with the African People’s Socialist Party and the Uhuru Movement, including the 82-year-old chairman of the Party, Omali Yeshitela, and some White allies, including a 78-year-old woman named Penny Hess.

The feds accused the defendants of serving as Russian agents. Needless to say, the prosecution reflected the deep anti-Russia paranoia that has come to characterize the federal government, especially the Justice Department. This federal mindset is simply an outgrowth of the old Cold War mentality in which federal officials were convinced that the Russians were coming to get us — along with the Cubans, North Koreans, Chinese, North Vietnamese, and other Reds. The “modern” anti-Russia mindset is that the Russians are influencing millions of presumably feeble-minded public-schooled American voters who will easily fall for Russian propaganda if not protected by their federal overlords.

What was the real crime that the defendants had committed? They have long criticized the militarism and foreign interventionism of the U.S. Empire, just as Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Mohammad Ali, and other Blacks have done for decades. The criticism is bad enough from the standpoint of “patriotism,” but the fact that such criticism comes from Blacks obviously makes it significantly worse. The fact that the criticisms matched criticisms of the Russian government sealed the fate of the accused. In the minds of federal officials, it had to be — it just had to be — that the defendants were serving as unregistered agents of the Russian government. As such, they had to be punished severely and, it was hoped, be put away in a federal penitentiary for many years, which would not only silence them but also send a message to other Black activists to shut up and become loyal supporters of the U.S. Empire.

The technical charges against the defendants that ended up going to the jury were (1) failing to register with the U.S. government as Russian agents; and (2) conspiracy to fail to register as Russian agents.

In his opening statement at trial, a federal prosecutor told the jury that the defendants had opposed U.S. genocide of Blacks here in the United States as well as U.S. policy in Ukraine by siding with Russia rather than Ukraine. The prosecutor stated that “the defendants acted at the direction of the Russian government to sow division right here in the U.S.” Imagine — such horrific offenses!

The prosecutors were hoping to send the defendants away for 15 years, which, of course, would have been a life sentence for Yeshitela and Hess. The prosecutors were also aiming to hit the defendants with a massive fine in the hopes of bankrupting them.

Alas, things did not work out well for the feds in this criminal prosecution — and rightly so. They ended up having to wipe lots of egg from their faces. The jury returned with a not guilty verdict on the failure to register charge and a guilty verdict on the conspiracy charge, which is obviously a nonsensical verdict.

But let’s first note the ludicrous nature of both of these charges in what is purportedly a free country. In a free country, a person has the right to work for any foreign government he wants. Oh, yes, I know that Russia is considered to be an “official enemy” or “rival” or “opponent” or “competitor” of the U.S. Empire. But that’s just an imperialist construct. The fact is that in a genuinely free society, people have the right to work for whomever they want.

People also have the right to oppose any policy of their government, including opposing the massive death toll and the mass incarceration of Blacks in the U.S. war on drugs and also opposing the U.S. Empire’s foreign policy of invasions, occupations, wars of aggression, state-sponsored assassinations, torture, indefinite detention, renditions to foreign regimes, coups, and provoking wars between other countries.

In fact, in the United States, it is perfectly legal to work for the Russian government or any other government. So, what’s the problem? The problem is that the U.S. government has enacted a law that requires people who work for foreign governments to register their names with the feds. So, one is free to work for the Russian government, but if one does so, he has to put his name on an official list of the U.S. government.

That is ludicrous. Why should anyone have to register with the federal government for any reason, including working for a foreign government? Where in the Constitution does it give the federal government the power to enact such a law? How can such a registration requirement be reconciled with the principles of a free society? It can’t be. In a genuinely free society, people have the right not only to work for foreign governments but also the freedom not to register their names with the federal government. It’s probably worth mentioning that Russia also has the same type of registration requirement.

In any event, much to the Justice Department’s chagrin, the jury acquitted the defendants of failing to register as Russian agents. That could only mean one thing — that the jury concluded that they weren’t working as agents for the Russian government.

Yet, the jury then convicted them of conspiring to fail to register as federal agents, which makes the case even more ludicrous. The jury verdict essentially said that while the defendants had not served as agents of the Russian government, they had entered into an agreement to not register as agents of the Russian government. The verdict only goes to show the nonsensical nature of the law of conspiracy.

In any event, the feds were still hoping that the judge would sentence the defendants to serve several years in a federal prison on the conspiracy conviction. It didn’t happen. Pointing out that the case revolved largely around the defendants’ exercise of free speech, the judge gave the defendants probation and 300 hours of community service.

While the mild sentence was clearly a rebuke of the federal prosecutors, what the judge should have done instead is throw out the conviction entirely. To their credit, the defendants are appealing their conviction notwithstanding the judge’s light sentence. Hopefully, the Court of Appeals will throw more egg on the faces of the federal prosecutors and throw out this ludicrous Russia-paranoia-based criminal conviction.

Reprinted with permission from The Future of Freedom Foundation.

The post The Uhuru Prosecution Brings Egg on the Face of the Justice Department appeared first on LewRockwell.

The general public is completely unaware of the real stakes in the negotiations between Washington and Tehran. This article presents a situation in which lies have been piling up over three decades, making any progress particularly difficult. Contrary to popular belief, the nuclear issue in Iran is not whether Tehran will acquire an atomic bomb, but whether it will be able to help Palestine without resorting to weapons.

A month and a half ago, I announced that even before concluding peace in Ukraine, President Donald Trump would open negotiations with Iran [1]. As usual, commentators steeped in Joe Biden’s ideology showered me with sarcasm, while my colleagues, specialists in international affairs, noted my observations [2].

The difference between the two lay in their understanding of the negotiations in Ukraine. For the former, it was Donald Trump’s revenge against Volodymyr Zelensky, or a genuflection before Vladimir Putin. For the latter, it was, on the contrary, a desire for peace with Russia in order to devote US resources to its economic recovery.

It follows that the two sides approach the Iranian issue differently. For the former, it is a matter of continuing the chaos that began during the first term with the withdrawal from the nuclear agreement (JCPOA). Conversely, for the latter, it is a desire for peace with Iran, given that it is the only regional power that supports the resistance to Israel.

In early March 2024, President Donald Trump sent a letter to the leader of the Revolution, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The existence of this document was mentioned by the author himself during his speech to Congress on March 4, and then debated in the press. According to Sky News Arabia, which read this document, Donald Trump called for negotiations, while specifying: “If you reject the outstretched hand and choose the path of escalation and support for terrorist organizations, I warn you of a swift and determined response […] I am writing this letter with the aim of opening new horizons for our relations, away from the years of conflict, misunderstandings and unnecessary confrontations that we have witnessed in recent decades […] The time has come to leave hostility behind and open a new page of cooperation and mutual respect.” A historic opportunity presents itself to us today […] We will not stand idly by in the face of your regime’s threats against our people or our allies […] If you are willing to negotiate, so are we. But if you continue to ignore the world’s demands, history will testify that you missed a great opportunity.”

Simultaneously, the United States and the United Kingdom launched several attacks against Ansar Allah in Yemen. Unlike previous attacks, these did not target hidden military targets, but rather political targets scattered among the civilian population. They therefore killed leaders of the movement and many other collateral victims, which constitutes war crimes.

It should be recalled that Ansar Allah, pejoratively referred to by Westerners as the “Houthi family gang” or “the Houthis,” attacks Israeli ships in the Red Sea in order to force Tel Aviv to agree to allow humanitarian aid to pass through to Gaza.

Washington and London, believing that this was hampering international trade, and having failed to obtain approval from the Security Council, resumed the war. They initially targeted military objectives and quickly realized that these, buried deep within the country, could not be significantly affected.

Donald Trump’s letter only arrived in Tehran on March 12, and the Iranian response was slow in coming. It is important to understand that while Tehran was flattered by Washington’s secret handwritten approach, it could not accept several aspects of its behavior.

• First, the United States, faithful to Trump’s Art of the Deal technique, threatened Iran while trying to placate it. International relations are not governed by the same rules as business. Giving in to threats is a sign of weakness that the Iranians could not accept in these negotiations. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei commented on March 28: “The enmity of the United States and Israel has always existed. They threaten to attack us, which we believe is not very likely, but if they commit a misdeed, they will certainly receive a strong blow in return.” If the enemies think they can instigate sedition in the country, the Iranian nation itself will respond to them.” President Donald Trump further emphasized this on March 30, telling NBC News: “If they don’t reach an agreement, there will be bombing. It will be bombing like they’ve never seen before.”

According to the United Nations Charter (Article 2, paragraph 4), “members of the Organization shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.”
The negotiations were therefore compromised before they even began.

• Moreover, massacring the leaders of Ansar Allah was a gratuitous war crime: General Qassem Soleimani, by reorganizing the “Axis of Resistance,” had given Iran’s former proxies their complete freedom. Tehran currently has no influence, other than ideological, over Ansar Allah. Ambassador Amir Saeid Iravani therefore raised these points at the United Nations [3].
• Finally, and most importantly, Donald Trump, by accumulating contradictory signals, did not allow the Iranians to assess his relations with Israel. Does he support the project of a binational state in Palestine (the one promoted by the United Nations)? Or of a Jewish state in Palestine (“Zionism”)? Or that of a “Greater Israel” (“Revisionist Zionism”)? No one knows for sure.

Ultimately, Iran sent a secret response to the secret letter from the United States, and negotiations were able to begin, but only indirectly. That is, the two delegations did not speak directly to each other, but only through a mediator. In this way, Tehran responded to the invitation, but expressed its disapproval of the manner in which it was convened.

Intervening directly, France and the United Kingdom convened a closed-door meeting of the Security Council. Paris and London wished to address several outstanding issues. As nothing has been leaked, it is unclear whether President Emmanuel Macron and Prime Minister Keir Starmer wanted to clarify what had caused all other attempts at negotiations to fail or, on the contrary, to obscure what could have been further obscured.

The following day, March 13, Mohammad Hassan-Nejad Pirkouhi, Director General for International Peace and Security at the Iranian Foreign Ministry, summoned the ambassadors of the United States, France, and the United Kingdom. He criticized them for an “irresponsible and provocative” meeting of the Security Council, which abused UN mechanisms. He emphasized that while Iran no longer respects its commitment not to enrich uranium above 3.67%, it is still respecting its JCPoA commitments to IAEA inspectors and fulfilling its obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

It should be recalled that, generally speaking, Iran, following the United States, withdrew from the JCPoA and the secret bilateral agreements of the time, yet it still observes its JCPoA commitments [4]. In contrast, France and the United Kingdom, while claiming to respect the JCPoA, have taken no measures to address the consequences of the US withdrawal, in violation of the spirit of the text. The United Kingdom immediately responded by stating that it was prepared to reinstate UN sanctions by October 18 (the deadline for this procedure) if Iran did not curb its uranium enrichment. The UN sanctions were, in fact, suspended, not repealed.

Three rounds of indirect negotiations have already taken place. The US delegation was led by Steve Witkoff, President Donald Trump’s special envoy for the Middle East, and the Iranian delegation by Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi. The first and third meetings were held in Muscat and Oman, while the second was held at the Sultanate’s embassy in Rome, in the presence of the Director of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Rafel Grossi of Argentina. Sayyid Badr bin Hamad bin Hamood al-Busaidi, Omani Foreign Minister, acted as mediator at each opportunity, moving back and forth between the delegations.

Numerous statements were made by the US side, accumulating imprecisions and contradictions, both regarding previous rounds of negotiations and especially regarding Washington’s red lines. Each side therefore believes it understands what it wants. In Iran, too, the public debate is particularly obscure. However, we note that one current, drawing lessons from the Libyan and Korean affairs, maintains that if Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini were still alive, he would likely rescind his fatwa condemning weapons of mass destruction and, on the contrary, authorize the atomic bomb. Not because he would now find it moral from a Muslim perspective, but because it would protect Iran from the threats it faces. Indeed, Muammar Gaddafi’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, which was on the verge of acquiring such a bomb, voluntarily dismantled its facilities and received congratulations from Washington before being crushed by it. Meanwhile, Kim Jong-un’s Democratic People’s Republic of Korea still manages to resist the Pentagon because it possesses the bomb and boasts about it.

On April 22, in a lengthy interview with Time Magazine, President Donald Trump clarified his thinking. In it, he declared that he had withdrawn the United States from the JCPoA and ordered the assassination of General Qassem Soleimani in order to deprive Iran of its ability to fuel resistance against Israel; a precondition for regional peace. He had never explained this, and this helps us understand his intention during these negotiations. [5]

Meanwhile, Benjamin Netanyahu’s “revisionist Zionists” (not to be confused with simply “Zionists”), continuing three decades of lies, have increased pressure to sabotage the ongoing contacts [6]. In Washington, their chief leader, Elliott Abrams, published a memo [7] outlining what he calls “the seven deadly sins” of previous US administrations toward Iran. This document helps us understand the position of the warmongers.

According to this note, the JCPoA negotiated by the Obama administration would not have succeeded in curbing Iran’s nuclear ambitions and, by returning some blocked funds, would have given it the means to fight Israel. However, during the 5+1 talks in Lausanne and Geneva, all the actors (except the United States represented by Secretary of State John Kerry) had reached the conclusion that there had been no military nuclear program in Iran since 1988 and the fatwa of Imam Ruhollah Khomeini. This point, always contested by Israel, was just confirmed on March 24 by the Director of US Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, during her Senate hearing and in her annual report on threats against her country [8]. It is absolutely clear to Germany, China, France, the United Kingdom and Russia (and probably to many others) that the Israeli accusation is based on nothing; that it’s pure deception.

• 1) Based on this oft-repeated lie, the “revisionist Zionists” rely on the fact that Iran, in response to the United States’ withdrawal from the JCPoA and the secret agreements it signed with John Kerry, has continued its uranium enrichment to 60%, and demand that Tehran be banned from all uranium enrichment.
This demand must be clearly understood: it would prohibit Iran from any civilian program, including, for example, radiation treatments that are practiced by Western countries in all their hospitals.

This claim amounts to a desire to return Iran to underdevelopment. It corresponds to the way in which certain European states have banned their colonies from modern activities in order to maintain their domination.

2) The “revisionist Zionists” continue by demanding that the negotiations not be limited to the nuclear program, but also include the issue of missiles. For years, France and the United Kingdom have falsely claimed that Tehran’s development of ballistic and hypersonic missiles violates UN sanctions. To do so, they deliberately confuse the research and production of ballistic missiles with the nuclear warheads they could carry if Iran possessed them.

Russia and China have repeatedly intervened to remind the Security Council “that none of the existing international instruments and mechanisms, including the Missile Technology Control Regime or the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, explicitly or implicitly prohibits Iran from developing missile and space programs.” » [9]

During the Iranian bombing of Israel on October 1, 2024, it turned out that all Iranian missiles and drones missed their targets or were shot down in flight, with the exception of all hypersonic missiles, which all hit their targets. This issue, unrelated to nuclear matters, is therefore essential for Israel.

• 3) The “revisionist Zionists” also demand that monitoring be carried out on Western terms, not Iranian terms. However, for the time being, Iran is subject, with its own consent, to the strictest IAEA verification procedures ever enacted. Tehran complies scrupulously, and it is difficult to see why new ones should be imposed on it, unless one wants to create a problem where none exists.

• 4) The “revisionist Zionists” continue by asserting that the threat of US force must not be abandoned prematurely. Yet this is the only civilized way to proceed, as set out in the United Nations Charter (Article 2, paragraph 4) cited above.

Knowing that Israel lacks the means to attack Iran alone and that Tel Aviv continues to pressure Washington to draw it into a war against Tehran, it is easy to understand what this fourth point conceals.

• 5) Then, the revisionist Zionists oppose the easing of UN sanctions and unilateral coercive measures by the United States, the United Kingdom, and the European Union on the grounds that this would encourage Iran to finance terrorism. We are not talking here about the assassinations Tehran orders abroad, but about its support for Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, and the Resistance in Iraq, knowing that it no longer provides financial and military support to Ansar Allah. However, the conflicts in Palestine, Syria, and Iraq are all instances of popular resistance to Israeli military actions. They are legitimate under international law (which does not mean that all actions carried out in their name are legitimate).

This demand, therefore, aims exclusively to allow Israel to violate UN resolutions even longer, not to prevent their violation by Iran.

• 6 and 7) The “revisionist Zionists” conclude by demanding that Iran’s other “malign behaviors” not be ignored and that anti-terrorism sanctions not be eased to gain a nuclear advantage. However, Iran, like other states, does not engage in “malign behaviors” toward the United States. What we’re talking about here is Iranian support for the resistance to Zionism, which revisionist Zionists understandably fear will resume significant financial support.

This lengthy discussion has presented the substance of the negotiations between Washington and Tehran. It should be noted that Donald Trump’s team is riddled with figures convinced by the rhetoric of the revisionist Zionists. Many congressmen, both Democrats and Republicans, do not approach the Middle East through their own experience, but through the prism of their main donor, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Merav Ceren, who has just been appointed head of the Israel-Iran portfolio at the White House National Security Council, is a dual national, an officer in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) [10]. However, the head of the US delegation to Oman, Steve Witkoff, is a real estate developer working in several countries, not only in the United States, but also in Muslim states. He has already demonstrated his independence of mind by negotiating on the Ukrainian issue and listening to the arguments of both sides. There is no reason, and certainly not his Jewish faith, to suspect him of bias. Thus, he reacted positively when the Iranians reiterated their proposal to make the Middle East a nuclear-weapon-free zone like Latin America [11] ; a proposal… that includes Israel.

The fourth round of negotiations will be held on May 3. Both sides now realize that peace will depend on Donald Trump’s ability to break with the revisionist Zionists and make concrete progress on the fate of the Palestinians.

—

[1] “After Ukraine, Iran?”, by Thierry Meyssan, Translation Roger Lagassé, Voltaire Network, 20 March 2025.

[2] « La paix de Trump en Ukraine face à la “paix mondiale” de Poutine (avec la Chine), de Gaza à l’Iran », par Alfredo Jalife-Rahme , Traduction Maria Poumier, La Jornada (Mexique), Réseau Voltaire, 21 mars 2025.

[3] “Iran denounces US threats to peace”, by Amir Saeid Iravani , Voltaire Network, 31 March 2025.

[4] “Iran denies non-compliance with JCPoA and Resolution 2231”, by Amir Saeid Iravani , Voltaire Network, 9 December 2024.

[5] «Full Transcript of Donald Trump’s ‘100 Days’ Interview With Time», Eric Cortellessa and Sam Jacobs, Time Magazine, April 25, 2025.

[6] “Who’s afraid of Iran’s civilian nuclear programme?”, by Thierry Meyssan, Voltaire Network, 27 July 2010.

[7] «Avoiding the seven deadly sins of a bad iranian nuclear deal», March 24, 2025.

[8] «Annual Threat Assessment of the US Intelligence Community», Office of the Director of National Intelligence | March 2025.

[9] For instance : “Russia denounces Western accusations against Iran”, by Vasily Nebenzya , Voltaire Network, 8 June 2022.

[10] «Trump’s NSC Director for Israel and Iran Previously Worked for Israeli Ministry of Defense», Ryan Grim & Saagar Enjeti, Drop Site, April 21, 2025.

[11] “Negotiations between Iran and the United States are progressing in Oman; a nuclear Tlatelolco Treaty for the Middle East?”, by Alfredo Jalife-Rahme , La Jornada (Mexico) , Voltaire Network, 22 April 2025.

The post The Stakes of Donald Trump’s Negotiations With the Islamic Republic of Iran appeared first on LewRockwell.

The details of the ceasefire negotiations between the U.S., Europe and Ukraine continue to make headlines despite being largely irrelevant for an end of the conflict in Ukraine.

In an interview with Brazilian paper O Globo (in Portuguese) Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov again repeated the Russian demands for peace in Ukraine.

It requires:

• an end of Ukraine’s ban on negotiations with Russia,
• for Ukraine to go back to the status of a neutral and non-aligned country in accordance with the Declaration of State Sovereignty of Ukraine in the 1990’s,
• an end of the policies of legally and physically destroy everything Russian: the language, media, culture, traditions, and Russian orthodoxy
• the international recognition of Russia’s ownership of Crimea, the DPR, LPR and the Kherson and Zaporizhia regions.

There must also be measures to legal fix those positions, to make them permanent and to have enforcement mechanisms.

Also required is, says Lavrov, (edited machine translation):

.. a schedule for the task of de-and desnazifiction in Ukraine, and the lifting of the sanctions, actions, lawsuits and arrest warrants, and the transfer of assets to Russia which are ‘frozen’ in the West. Also, we will look for reliable warranties for the security of the Russian Federation, and against the threats created by the hostile activity of Nato, the European Union and its individual member states on the country’s borders in the west.

There is then no change in the Russian position since its President Vladimir Putin explained it at length on June 14 2024.

Meanwhile the U.S. is very publicly negotiating with Ukraine and Europe about some ceasefire conditions along the lines the pro-Ukrainian (and neo-conservative?) General Kellogg has long promoted (also here):

Kellogg’s implicit assumptions were that Russia is highly vulnerable to a sanctions threat (its economy perceived as being fragile); that it had suffered unsustainably high casualties; and that the war was at a stalemate.

Thus, Kellogg persuaded Trump that Russia would readily agree to the ceasefire terms proposed – albeit terms that were constructed around patently flawed underlying assumptions about Russia and its presumed weaknesses.
…
All of Kellogg’s underlying assumptions lacked any basis in reality. Yet Trump seemingly took them on trust. And despite Steve Witkoff’s subsequent three lengthy personal meetings with President Putin, in which Putin repeatedly stated that he would not accept any ceasefire until a political framework had been first agreed, the Kellogg contingent continued to blandly assume that Russia would be forced to accept Kellogg’s détente because of the claimed serious ‘setbacks’ Russia had suffered in Ukraine.

Given this history, unsurprisingly, the ceasefire framework terms outlined by Rubio this week in Paris reflected those more suited to a party at the point of capitulation, rather than that of a state anticipating achieving its objectives – by military means.

In essence, the Kellogg Plan looked to bring a U.S. ‘win’ on terms aligned to a desire to keep open the option for continuing attritional war on Russia.

In his O Globo interview Lavrov again made it known that Russia can not and will not commit to a temporary freeze of the conflict without having a clear path towards the larger peace agreement.

In sight of this it is funny how Russia has managed to hand the tar-baby of blocking a ceasefire to the (former) Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelenski.

Despite U.S. pressure for a fast deal Russia does not expect any quick resolution of the conflict. It just announced a new unilateral ceasefire from May 8 to May 10, i.e. around the 80th anniversary of its victory in World War II on May 9.

It is another public sign that Russia is willing to adhere to a ceasefire agreement IF the conditions are right.

Trump still tries to behave like a neutral mediator in a conflict between Kiev and Moscow. He wants to impose a peace deal that projects his personal ‘greatness’.

But the U.S. has been and continues to be the main party of the war with Russia while Ukraine is the mere proxy force that does the bleeding. Trump can not impose a fast solution to end the war because he still can not accept that he is a main party in it.

Russia is winning the war. A solution can only be found when the U.S. is ready to (silently) acceptance its defeat.

Trump can still end the war and declare it a “win”. But only if he agrees to the conditions that Russia laid out.

Reprinted with permission from Moon of Alabama.

The post Russia Rejects Trump’s Freeze of the War in Ukraine appeared first on LewRockwell.

Why is it that not a single “COVID” criminal has been indicted by Trump’s Justice Department or – in the case of pardoned criminals such as Dr. Fauci – compelled to testify before Congress and thus be placed in the position of having to tell the truth about what they did or lie about it again and thus be subject to criminal charges on that account?

Why hasn’t there been a single arrest of anyone on the infamous Epstein List?

There was an arrest made recently – of a judge who appears to have been one of Trump’s political enemies. What about enemies of the public such as Fauci and Brix and Albert Bourla and the dozens of state officials who morphed into Gesundheitsfuhrers during the “emergency”?

Well, that might just explain it.

Who declared – and never ended – the “emergency,” even long after it became clear there wasn’t one? Remember: It was the “emergency” that green-lit the Warp Speeding of the mRNA drugs into production without the usual requirements that lots of testing for safety and efficacy be done prior to allowing them on the market. And – in this unique case – there was no market because the drugs were aggressively pushed on people who were told that if they did not take them, they faced the loss of their jobs and very possibly the loss of their status as free Americans. No more working out at the gym or eating out or even entering a store to shop unless you could prove you had been “vaccinated.” ‘That didn’t actually happen, but it came damn close to happening. Many people expected it was going to happen and that was enough to coerce them into getting “vaccinated.”

Does anyone remember?

More finely, has everyone forgotten who declared the “emergency” that set the predicate for everything that followed? More finely still, has everyone forgotten the fact that Trump left the “emergency” in place long enough to assure the selection of his successor, via unprecedented mail-in balloting and election months rather than Election Day? That even after the selection – when he was still legally the president and had the power to end the “emergency,” he failed to do so?

Perhaps that is why not one lower-tier “COVID” criminal has been held accountable for what was done under guise of the “emergency.” Indicting these lower-tier criminals or even calling the pardoned ones, such Fauci, before Congress to be compelled to indict themselves might raise difficult questions. Ones that Trump’s supporters might find awkward and probably for just that reason get very upset when raised. Of a piece with the way ardent “maskers” got very upset when anyone raised questions about “masking.” This reaction being symptomatic when trying to reason with people who believe.

Have we been played – again? Are we who believed Trump – if re-selected – would pursue justice by indicting “COVID” criminals and the creeps on Epstein’s list – similar to the people who believed in “masks”? The overlap is uncomfortable to consider.

But belief wanes as time passes and not one “COVID” criminal has been held accountable and not one of the creeps on Epstein’s list, either. We are told that the federal government is now more “efficient” on account of “waste” and “fraud” having been rooted out by DOGE. There was a temporary high, like the one that attends snorting a line of coke. It felt good to see USAID closed and those scenes of federal “workers” bitching about their lost jobs and perks – all of it paid for by the taxes we’re forced to pay.

But have our taxes been lowered? Does it really matter, at the end of the day, whether the money taken out of our pockets is spent more “efficiently”? Is that supposed to make us happier about being forced to pay?

Has a single thing been done to make government less omnipresent? Less tyrannical? In fact the opposite is being done – as for egregious example the aggressive pushing of what is styled the REAL ID, which is to say a federally mandated internal passport that Americans are being told they must get if they wish to travel by airplane from state to state within the United States. How long before it will be required in order to be allowed to travel by car or otherwise from state to state?

Did you hear that the attorney general has announced your home can be Hut! Hut! Hutted! by government goons without a warrant if said goons claim they say they suspect “illegals” may be within?

These are all impolitic things to bring up in certain quarters because they threaten certain beliefs.

Perhaps, in the end, it is better to think – even when doing so raises questions that challenge our comfortable beliefs.

This originally appeared on Eric Peters Autos.

The post Not One Indictment appeared first on LewRockwell.

On April 20, 2025, Easter Sunday, the Board of Trustees of the World Economic Forum (WEF) called for an extraordinary meeting behind closed doors.

The Board of Trustees includes among others BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, former US Vice President Al Gore, Jordan’s Queen Rania Al Abdullah and European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde as members. BlackRock is the WEF’s most important sponsor. Thus, BlackRock’s voice must weigh accordingly.

What they debated was a new Wall Street Journal (WSJ) article, apparently based on an anonymous whistleblower letter, this time accusing Klaus Schwab and his wife Hilde Schwab of misusing the WEF Foundation’s money and property for personal purposes.

Mentioned were personal massages, luxury air-travel at the WEF’s expense, for personal trips and the use of a CHF 30-million restored historic mansion, paid for with WEF money, to be used for WEF special events, but is mostly used for Klaus Schwab and his family’s personal purposes.

Mr. Schwab apparently also used junior staff to withdraw thousands of dollars from ATM machines for his personal use. Verbally quoting the WSJ: The Schwabs, “mixed their personal affairs with the Forum’s resources.”

The WSJ article also repeated accusations of discrimination, sexual harassment and nepotism within the organization, points already mentioned in a WSJ’s article about a year ago. See this.

The Board opened an immediate investigation into these allegations. Schwab said he would take legal action against the WSJ and decided – or was told – to resign immediately from the Board’s chairmanship. He stepped back last year as President and CEO of the WEF, but assumed the Chair for the Board of Trustees with a timeline through 2027. This timeline was cut short by the whistleblower and the WSJ article.

Screenshot from WSJ

Other WEF executives, especially the Schwab’s children, also exited following a board probe into workplace culture, a topic that has plagued the WEF for years, but came to the fore the first time a year ago.

With immediate effect the Board decided on an interim replacement for Klaus Schwab, a former longtime President and CEO of Nestlé, Peter Brabeck-Letmathe. He was CEO and chairman of the Nestlé Group from 1997 to 2008. Brabeck was deputy chair of the WEF’s Board of Trustees.

Brabeck is not less controversial than Schwab. He was and still is a staunch defender of the idea that water is not a public good. Mr. Brabeck is perhaps best known for declaring that water is not a human right, but a market commodity. When he led Nestlé, the food giant was one of the global leaders in the privatization of water. Brabeck is also an aggressive promoter of GMOs (genetically modified organisms).

GMO food may have significant negative health effects and especially, it does not allow farmers to collect seeds from one harvest to the next. This has severe implications for farmers, especially in so-called developing countries, or the Global South.

India is a case in point, where GMO seeds were sold without telling the farmers that the plants’ seeds could not reproduce, i.e., could not be used for next year’s harvest. When the farmers realized, they could not afford buying every year GMO seeds, thousands committed suicide, as they were unable to maintain and feed their families.

Nestlé under Mr. Brabeck was also at the forefront of a scandal about powdered milk that should replace breastfeeding.

Nestlé especially targeted Africa, where the product was introduced against healthy common breastfeeding habits. As we also know in the west, breastfeeding provides babies and children with a basic, strong immune system, which powdered milk for infants does not.

In addition, rising prices of Nestlé’s powdered milk made that women could no longer afford it, and since they did not start with breastfeeding, they did not produce breast milk. With the combination of unnatural powdered milk, lack of breastmilk and the natural immune system, many babies got sick and often died.

See this for more details (watch below):

Mr. Brabeck is known for his anti-human and anti-Human Rights stance on many issues growing to ever-more importance in the current geo-political and economic environment we are living.

Mr. Brabeck certainly does not make the WEF a better place. Perhaps to the contrary. For sure, a number of investigations – WEF internals and externals – and lawsuits are already ongoing or pending.

For the full WSJ article, see this.

Screenshot from WSJ

At the outset all of this might look like the globalists agenda is gradually dismantling. Maybe it is, maybe it is not.

Just imagine for a moment a different scenario. During last Easter weekend, several “coincidences” happened basically simultaneously:

• The WEF long-time Chair and founder (1971), Klaus Schwab, resigns and the WEF embarks on a major restructuring, the result of which is not known yet;
• Pope Francis gives his last benediction in his Easter message to hundreds of thousands of his followers in St. Peter’s Square in Vatican City, in Rome, and then he dies the following morning; and
• Hollywood announces the end of its Woke agenda, see this.

Who knows what else happened on that crucial Easter weekend 2025. There are no coincidences. Easter is the celebration of resurrection. The Deep State, or whatever else you may call this evil entity which is currently pretending to run the world, is full of symbolism and rituals.

Coud it be that globalism is sensing an ever-stronger pushback by the people, so they feign a collapse, when in reality, they take the lull in people’s attention to regroup, to reappear later with new much stronger strategies to take over the world?

It is like a ceasefire which is used by the weaker to re-arm and re-strategize their aggression. This is not just a hint to the Ukraine ceasefire, but a tactic followed worldwide.

We must be aware that a Cult movement with the monetary power they have behind and over hundred years of preparation, will not just go away. They will fight to the last world-citizen, if they are not defeated before. As Bill Gates once said – not verbatim, but by meaning – in one of his more lucid moments, “even if I disappear, the system is so strong and well prepared, it will continue the same without me.”

We, the People of the world, must make sure that the movement for deglobalization continues back to human rights and basic human values, as well as away from digitization, from the digital Gulag, will continue until we are free and sovereign people again.

And yes, it is possible, if we are aware and conscious.

The original source of this article is Global Research.

The post Regime Change at the World Economic Forum (WEF): For Better or for Worse? appeared first on LewRockwell.

Why would Russia take such an enormous burden off the political West’s back? It was NATO that started all this and pushed us all to the brink of a world-ending thermonuclear confrontation just so it could inflict a strategic defeat on Moscow. Well, now that the tables have turned, there are zero reasons for the Kremlin to pay for damages of the political West’s aggression.

Ever since the special military operation (SMO) started, trying to guess how far Russia would go seems to be everyone’s favorite pastime. Some people think it should secure only areas that are predominantly Russian-speaking, which includes the four oblasts (regions) already under Russian control, namely DNR, LNR, Zaporozhye and Kherson, as well as Kharkov, Nikolayev and Dnepropetrovsk. Along with Crimea, these areas constitute over 40% of former Ukraine’s territory. However, it should be understood that the rest is not as homogeneous as one would think. Namely, Russian is also widely spoken in Chernigov, Sumy, Poltava, Cherkassy, Kiev, Kirovograd and Zhitomir oblasts, as well as in most urban areas throughout the country.

However, due to the disastrous policy of korenizatsiya (Russian: коренизация, roughly translated as “nativization”) during Soviet times, the clear-cut Russian identity of the vast majority of people in the country (with the obvious exception of western regions) was gradually replaced by a loose Ukrainian one. Thus, what we got is a somewhat convoluted definition of so-called “Russian-speaking people”. In reality, these are ethnic Russians who have partially lost their identity or even identify as “Ukrainians”. Their reintegration into the wider ethnic Russian identity would be a gradual process that could take years (if not decades). However, this begs the question – where do you draw the line? What’s more, there’s also the question of strategic security.

Namely, if Russia were to retake only areas where Russian is spoken by the vast majority of inhabitants (80% or more), this would still leave oblasts such as Sumy and Chernigov in the hands of the Kiev regime. No Russian general worth his salt would ever accept such a deal, as it would allow NATO to use them to deploy missiles that could reach Moscow in minutes. In addition, leaving the rest of former Ukraine to the Neo-Nazi junta would mean they’d still be a threat to Russia’s security, regardless of their status within or outside of the EU/NATO. Thus, it’s clear that the process of demilitarization and denazification needs to be implemented in the entire former Ukraine. However, does that mean the Kremlin should retake this ancient Russian land in its entirety?

This is the most complex question of the NATO-orchestrated Ukrainian conflict. On April 24, during a meeting with Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre, US President Donald Trump was asked about concessions Moscow is offering during peace talks. He said that it’s “stopping taking the whole country”, calling it a “pretty big concession”. In practice, this means that the new American administration is aware that Russia has the capacity to retake all of Ukraine and that the fact that it’s not doing this means it wants a peaceful resolution. President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov effectively confirmed this by saying that peace could be accomplished if the Kiev regime forces fully withdraw from the aforementioned four oblasts that joined Russia back in 2022.

The mainstream propaganda machine is already reporting that this was the “first formal indication Putin has given since the war’s early months three years ago that Russia could step back from its maximalist demands”. However, these supposed “maximalist demands” were never enshrined in any official policy or document of the Kremlin. The four oblasts formally joined Russia on September 30, 2022, after most of their inhabitants voted to do so in a referendum. This constitutes approximately 20% of former Ukraine’s territory, which is nowhere near the aforementioned “maximalist demands”. What’s more, the Trump administration is now trying to prevent even this by throwing the “Crimea recognition” carrot.

However, this is not even a question as far as Russia is concerned, as the status of Crimea was resolved over a decade ago. Trump has acknowledged that NATO expansionism caused the conflict, so he’s now offering neutrality for Ukraine, as well as a formal recognition of Crimea as part of Russia. The Kiev regime is adamant that this is “unacceptable”, but such a deal is certainly nothing spectacular for Moscow either. Namely, what guarantees does the Kremlin have that such a deal would be honored? The political West has made countless promises in the last several decades, including the “not one inch to the east” back in 1990. However, this was a blatant lie from which all other conflicts in post-Cold War Europe stem, including Yugoslavia.

Reports in US media suggest that Washington DC will supposedly demand from Russia “to acknowledge Ukraine’s right to maintain its military and defense sector as part of any future peace deal”, with Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff reportedly “expected to present the demand to Putin in the next upcoming round of negotiations”. However, this goes against Moscow’s goals of demilitarization and denazification. Namely, the former Ukrainian military was effectively hijacked by CIA-backed Neo-Nazi organizations and then used to conduct what can only be described as a genocidal war against the people of Donbass and other Russian-speaking regions in NATO-occupied Ukraine. Thus, demilitarization and denazification are inextricably tied.

In practice, this means that the Kremlin cannot tolerate the existence of any form of Ukrainian Armed Forces that aren’t thoroughly vetted and purged of Nazi elements. Even then, these troops would need to give up on all long-range strike capabilities or major assault formations that could be used against Russia. The same goes for the rest of the state apparatus, particularly intelligence services, as these openly espouse terrorist tactics (the latest example being the murder of Russian Major General Yaroslav Moskalik). Without this, the Kremlin won’t even consider any “peace proposal” simply because there can be no peace as long as Nazis are in power. In practice, this means Russia will need to take part in the formation of a new Ukrainian government.

In turn, this suggests that Moscow won’t retake all of Ukraine, as claimed by the mainstream propaganda machine. It’s simply not in its interest to do so. Namely, the NATO-orchestrated Ukrainian conflict destroyed much of the country’s economy while its already catastrophic demographic situation has been exacerbated to a breaking point. With upwards of 15,000,000 refugees (mostly in “evil” Russia, mind you) and internally displaced, the country’s economic viability is virtually gone. Most of those who are left are the elderly, while there are also millions of disabled veterans (many of them forcibly conscripted by the Neo-Nazi junta). Not to mention the fact that well over a million Ukrainian men have died in this NATO-orchestrated conflict.

In other words, why would Russia take this enormous burden off the political West’s back? It was NATO that started all this and pushed us all to the brink of a world-ending thermonuclear confrontation just so it could inflict a strategic defeat on Moscow. Well, now that the tables have turned, there are zero reasons for the Kremlin to pay for damages of the political West’s aggression. Thus, whatever rump state remains of former Ukraine, it will need to be turned into a denazified DMZ (demilitarized zone) that will serve as a buffer between Russia and NATO. What’s more, even then, a lasting peace will be possible only if the world’s most vile racketeering cartel restructures the European security architecture in line with Moscow’s national interests.

This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

The post Would Russia Retake All of Ukraine? appeared first on LewRockwell.