Lew Rockwell Institute

For decades I have been watching American democracy unravel as it became increasingly dysfunctional. US democracy murdered President John F. Kennedy and followed up by murdering his brother, Robert F. Kennedy.  Then President Nixon was murdered politically by democracy with the CIA/Washington Post orchestration of Watergate.

Democracy attempted to frame, indict, and prosecute President Trump for Russiagate, documents gate, insurrection gate, lying on mortgage loan applications, and twice tried to impeach him on false charges.

Democracy and accountable government lied to us about Vietnam, about the USS Liberty, about 9/11, Afghanistan, Saddam Hussein, Ghaddafi, Assad, Sudan, Somalia, Ukraine, South Ossetia, Iran, Russia, China, and Venezuela.

The accumulated failures of democracy eroded its foundations, thereby permitting the executive branch to encroach on the separation of powers and violate the US Constitution.  The US has been in many wars since the last time Congress declared war in December 1941. The president has simply taken war out of Congress’ hands.  

In the 21st century presidents have gone much further by stealing power from the US Constitution and courts.  President George W. Bush declared his power to ignore habeas corpus and to hold American citizens indefinitely on suspicion alone without due process.  President Obama declared his power to murder US citizens on suspicion alone without due process, and he did.  Nothing was done about these unconstitutional acts that ignored judicial authority.

President Trump on his own initiative has committed acts of war against Russia and Iran without a declaration of war with Venezuela waiting in the wings.

The dysfunction of American democracy has reached the point at which the government has been shut down for a month.  Tomorrow 42 million Americans unable or unwilling to support themselves, thereby comprising a burden placed on the 170 million US labor force, run out of SNAP food benefits.  American democracy has become so dysfunctional that nothing is being done to avoid massive violence likely to result from leaving 42 million Americans without food.  

The government has been shut down by the Democrat Party, apparently intent on preventing Trump from implementing his agenda.  In other words, US democracy has become so dysfunctional that Democrats are blocking the agenda elected by voters, that is, they are blocking democracy itself.

Democracy is so dysfunctional that neither the Democrats, nor Trump himself, understand that they have given Trump the opportunity to remove budgetary matters from Congress’ hands just as presidents have removed war from legislators’ hands.  As US presidents can take the country to war without obtaining Congress’ approval, they can certainly issue food stamps without Congress’ approval.  

Such an action by Trump would certainly swing the largest component of the Democrats’ voting bloc to Trump.  42 million Americans, one fourth the size of the US labor force, abandoned by Democrats would be rescued from hunger by Trump’s assumption of the budgetary power abandoned by democracy. 

The tendency of democracy is to devolve or evolve, depending on your point of view, into dictatorship.  We see that in Western Europe today. There is so much faction that governments consist of coalitions of minority parties, often as opposed to one another as to opposition coalitions.  The inability of national democracies to function has given rise to the European Union in which national governments are absorbed into an European government in which power is appointed and elected representatives are powerless.  It is all happening with consent, but the consent is driven by dysfunctional democracy.

The same happened to Rome.  When faction in the Senate prevented effective rule, Rome first tried appointing dictators for limited terms.  Julius Caesar saw the need for a functional government as his opportunity. He centralized power in himself by absorbing the checks and balances, such as consul and pontifex Maximus into himself, while weakening the Senate by increasing its size to 900 members which increased the inability of the Senate to act in solidarity. In this way he created the autocracy in which his adopted son, Octavius, became Augustus, the first Roman Emperor.

Sooner or later American democracy will have the same fate.  Trump just as well should assume autocratic power before a Democrat does.  White ethnic Americans would have no future under  Democrat DEI rule.  It is too late to save American democracy, but there is still a chance for white ethnic Americans unless a DEI Democrat becomes our first emperor.

The DEI Democrats clearly do not believe in democracy, free speech, and equality under the law, and they most certainly do not believe in a white ethnic America which they describe as aversive racism that needs to be bred out of existence.  Democrats believe that nonwhites, whether legal citizens or illegal immigrant-invaders, deserve legal privileges, originally called “affirmative action” to disguise the fact that illegal and unconstitutional racial quotas have been imposed by the Jew Blumrosen at the EEOC, reducing white Americans, especially white heterosexual males, to second class citizenship  (see The New Color Line). As time passed Blumrosen’s race, gender, and sexual preference quotas became “Diversity, Equity, Inclusion.”  As US corporate boards and executives were replaced with DEI indoctrinated university graduates, Americans were flooded with advertisements pushing miscegenation.  The white family disappeared in corporate advertisements.  Corporations such as Starbucks and the US Department of Defense announced that they were not hiring or promoting white heterosexual males. The message to white women is there is no future in a white husband.  Budweiser Light and Gillette ruined their sales with anti-white male advertisements.  In America where the US Constitution guarantees equality under law it became possible to officially discriminate against white people, and nothing was done about it.  Moreover, about 45% of the American electorate continued to vote for Democrats who had destroyed equality under law and the American merit-based society.  American law schools teach that the Constitution is in the way of DEI, now defined as justice, and must be ignored. Journalism schools teach that facts are white racism and irrelevant.  Reporting is a weapon to further a DEI revolution against ethnic American whites .  The Democrat Party, the whore media, and the American educational system agree with the government of Denmark that white people must stop producing white people and instead help to wipe out racist whites by mating with peoples of color. See this.

Putin still deceives himself about Russian democracy.  But all Russian democracy has done is to render Russia impotent to defend itself against Western hostility. It seems more members of the Russian government are working for their own interests, for Western interests, and for global interests than for Russia’s interest.  In the US it has long been the situation that the legislature works for the interest of the private lobbies that fund political campaigns, not for the voters.  Putin should ask himself who Kirill Dmitriev and Elvira Nabiullina are working for before Russians begin asking who Putin is working for.

The post The Days of Democracy Are Over appeared first on LewRockwell.

I can hear the outbursts: What in the world do Glock pistols and a study Bible have to do with each other? Stay with me.

Both the Glock pistol and Matthew Henry Study Bible were at the very top of their respective fields. They had no peers.

I know. I know. All the “gun guys” out there who don’t like Glocks are now going crazy. Settle down, guys, and let me explain.

The great trifecta of gun inventors comprises Sam Colt, John Moses Browning and Gaston Glock. I am speaking specifically regarding handguns available to the general public for self-defense.

Sam Colt invented the modern revolver; John Browning invented the Model 1911 semi-automatic, single action pistol; and Gaston Glock invented the Glock double action pistol—a lightweight polymer framed, striker fired (no external hammer), extremely durable and reliable pistol with a high-capacity magazine that revolutionized the handgun world forever.

Since Glock’s overwhelming success, most major gun manufacturers have cloned—and some even improved—the Glock pistol. I think it’s probably safe to say that the vast majority of handguns sold in America today are either Glocks or Glock clones.

Almost everyone is familiar with the ageless adage: “God created all men; and Sam Colt made them equal.” If Sam Colt made them equal, Gaston Glock made them ubiquitous.

From the revolver to the 1911 to the Glock pistol, the handgun gave average, ordinary, everyday people the ability to protect themselves against the biggest, meanest, most violent offender.

Professor Gregory Kleck’s exhaustive research has proven that a law-abiding would-be victim-citizen defends him or herself with a firearm against a violent criminal attack over 2 million times a year in America. And the vast majority of those attacks are defeated by a handgun (as opposed to a rifle or shotgun).

Now, when I say that the Glock pistol is at the top of the field, I’m not saying that Glocks are the best pistols—or even handguns—in the field. When it comes to which handgun, which caliber, which bullet, which sights, which action, which frame, which barrel, which trigger, ad infinitum, is best, the answer depends upon who is talking. Those debates are interminable and not germane to this discussion.

Glocks are at the top of the field in that more people—including police officers—are carrying Glock pistols on their hip or in their pocket or in a shoulder holster or on their ankle or in their purse or shoulder bag than any other brand.

Glocks are to citizens what the Matthew Henry Study Bible was to Christians. Both were the common man’s “go-to” resource.

Speaking of the Matthew Henry commentaries, the “Prince of Preachers” Charles Spurgeon said this:

First among the mighty for general usefulness we are bound to mention the man whose name is a household word, Matthew Henry. He is most pious and pithy, sound and sensible, suggestive and sober, terse and trustworthy. You will find him to be glittering with metaphors, rich in analogies, overflowing with illustrations, superabundant in reflections. It is the poor man’s commentary, the old Christian’s companion, suitable to everybody, instructive to all.

Matthew Henry began writing his commentaries in 1707. From the time of their publication, they have been the gold standard of Bible commentaries. In my view, they have no equal. Of course, this is not to impugn several other great post-Reformation scholars who penned diamonds of Biblical expositions, such as Albert Barnes, Adam Clarke, Jamieson, Faucett and Brown, John Gill, et al.

Speaking of Gill (who was Spurgeon’s predecessor), one of the pithiest sayings to come out of 19th-century England—comparable to the popular dictum in 20th– and 21st-century America, “Is the pope Catholic?”—was the maxim, “Is Dr. Gill in his study?”

In 1994, Kenneth Abraham condensed the massive volumes of Matthew Henry commentaries into a study Bible known fittingly as the Matthew Henry Study Bible. This was the finest study Bible ever published. It dwarfs modern (i.e., 20th– and 21st-century) commentaries.

Most modern commentaries are nothing but pathetic clones of the Scofield Reference Bible and promote the devilish doctrines of Christian Zionism. But Christian Zionism (aka Scofield Futurism, Prophetic Dispensationalism, etc.) was unknown in the days of Henry. For that matter, it was unknown to the New Covenant Church for over 1,800 years, specifically until 1909, when the Zionists at Oxford University published Scofield’s heretical book.

Years ago, we became a distributor for the Matthew Henry Study Bible (MHSB) and quickly became one of its largest distributors. Then, shockingly, we received news that the great Matthew Henry Study Bible was being discontinued. The publisher was packing it in. No more MHSBs would be printed.

The English-speaking church lost its finest study Bible—the only comprehensive study Bible (of a practical size) that I know about that does NOT promote Christian Zionism, Scofieldism, Darbyism, Prophetic Dispensationalism, etc. (The Geneva Bible is fantastic, but it’s the size of a dictionary and one needs a magnifying glass to read the text.)

And now, just a few months later, we learn that Glock is discontinuing almost all of their pistols. We are told that they are introducing a redesigned (aka politically correct) model, one that caters to gun-hating states such as California.

Many in the industry are saying that this unexpected and unprecedented change occurred because the State of California will ban Glocks from being sold to the citizens of the communist state beginning in July of next year. Of course, law enforcement personnel can still carry Glocks in California. Yet another example of the “we can, but you can’t” big-government ideologues.

I believe it would have been infinitely better for freedom nationwide if Glock executives had replied to Governor Gavin Newsome’s tyranny: “You’re banning our pistols from the citizens of California? Fine! We’re banning California’s law enforcement personnel from our pistols.”

I personally do not believe it is coincidental that Glock’s capitulation is taking place only two years after Glock’s founder, Gaston Glock, passed away at the age of 94 in 2023.

I’m hearing many pro-Second Amendment podcasters and writers say that Glock, Inc. is being “smart” and is simply “getting ahead” of anti-gun lawsuits coming from stridently anti-Second Amendment states and municipalities around the country.

That might be Glock’s thinking, but if it is, it isn’t giving any consideration to the domino effect that follows from giving in to gun grabbers. Gun manufacturers giving in to the demands of gun grabbers is tantamount to the Palestinians giving in to the demands of the Israelis.

The Israelis won’t be satisfied until all Palestinians are either killed or completely ethnically cleansed from their homeland. And even if they succeeded in that endeavor (which they won’t), they still wouldn’t be satisfied. They would then attempt to slaughter the rest of their Arab neighbors. And gun grabbers won’t be satisfied until all firearms are removed from the citizenry. And if they succeeded in their endeavor (which they won’t), they still wouldn’t be satisfied. They would then attempt to ban bows and arrows. And after that, Bowie knives. People who are drunk with power will never stop themselves. They will only be stopped if someone else stops them.

Making deals with gun grabbers or Israelis is making deals with devils.

People who are illegally modifying Glock pistols to convert them to full auto are already breaking the law. Does anyone really believe that people will not be able to find ways to illegally modify Glock’s new “V” models? Nonsense! Smart people are on both sides of the law.

There isn’t a door made that cannot be broken down. There isn’t an alarm made that can’t be turned off. There isn’t an ignition system made that can’t be started without a key. There isn’t a safe made that can’t be gotten into. And there isn’t a semi-automatic firearm that can’t be illegally converted to full auto.

And that’s the point, isn’t it? For the gun grabbers, Glock’s capitulation gives them grounds to make the argument that ALL semi-automatic firearms (pistols, rifles and shotguns) must be banned, because all of them are susceptible to a smart bad guy figuring out a way to bypass whatever mechanical “fixes” are created.

Deals with devils only benefit devils.

And I’m not even addressing here the constitutionality or unconstitutionality of banning fully automatic firearms. The point is, authoritarians are never satisfied until they have total and absolute control over the citizenry, and ridding society of its ability to defend itself is always priority Number One.

And speaking of authoritarians, is Donald Trump intentionally manipulating the American people into a state of anarchy and civil unrest? Are all his plans to send military troops into America’s cities to do civilian policing a precursor to a manufactured crisis justifying martial law?

Without arguing the right and wrong of Lyndon Johnson’s “Great [Welfare] Society,” over 40 million Americans are living off government food stamps. If the government shutdown continues, food stamps will be terminated the day after tomorrow (November 1). That means over 40 million people are going to begin running short of food SOON.

Again, I’m not debating the right and wrong of the welfare system. I think most readers know my position on these matters. I’m simply facing reality. When people start going hungry, things get ugly fast.

Is Trump and Company deliberately manipulating people to riot so it can implement martial law? It’s just a question. Time will tell.

The point I’m trying to make is that the collapse of Glock (as we know it) and the Matthew Henry Study Bible within only a few months of each other is not coincidental. Both institutions (if we can call a gun company or a Bible commentary an institution) are the supreme symbols of 1) a great societal tool of protection, and 2) a great spiritual tool of protection.

There is one noticeable difference between the two: One’s collapse was orchestrated by forces outside the ones who benefited from the institution (Glock). The other (MHSB) was willingly and deliberately abandoned by the ones who needed it the most.

For example, last week I received a hostile letter from a “Christian” lady excoriating me for my anti-Zionist position. In making her argument, she accused me of using “perverted Bible commentaries.”

I think that letter is a microcosm of the spiritual condition of today’s evangelicals. They are so “dumbed down” scripturally that they don’t even recognize sacred truth when they see it. Even worse, they brazenly call good evil and evil good. (Isaiah 5:20)

The Matthew Henry Study Bibles are gone. And the real Glocks are slated for extinction on December 1.

Folks, when you find something of value, something really good, something that you trust and rely on, you need to buy as much of it as you can, because the forces of darkness intend to take everything good away from us.

Even the shampoo I’ve depended on for over 40 years has been discontinued. And the socks I’ve happily worn for decades are gone. My gloves? Gone! My favorite shirt? Gone! My wife can’t find dishwashing liquid that stays sudsy for more than thirty minutes. We’re paying twice as much for products that are half as good. Oh! My favorite boots? They’re gone!

I’m getting depressed!

I’m so glad I bought my Glocks when I did.

Now I feel better.

Reprinted with permission from Chuck Baldwin Live.

The post Glock Pistols and the Matthew Henry Study Bible appeared first on LewRockwell.

Whenever you delve into the modern history of internal national conflict you’re bound to come across post-crisis accounts from people who said “We never saw it coming…” or “The violence hit us from nowhere…” Generally speaking, these were the people who weren’t paying attention and they just happened to survive by sheer luck.

I think of this dynamic a lot these days. I see a large contingent of American society (perhaps 25% of the population) which has been radicalized or brainwashed beyond all reason or repair. These people (leftists) operate deep within a protective bubble of propaganda and zealotry; they function within a hive mind that does not deviate from the demands of their gatekeepers. They cannot be reasoned with, nor can they be satiated. They lust for power and the suffering of anyone who opposes them.

One can see an immediate difference between the sides. Conservatives are so independent we in-fight constantly. We might agree on basic values (even in this we sometimes argue), but in terms of policy and action we rarely shake hands.

For the political left, any disagreement with the majority leads to immediate ostracism. The hive mind does not tolerate individual rebellion. Only the gatekeepers can change the mindset or the mission of the mob.

It is strange then that this dichotomy has resulted in conservatives, with their values of liberty and independence, seeking order. Meanwhile leftists, in their Orwellian uniformity of thought, seek chaos and the deconstruction of civilization. You would think the relationship would be reversed, but this is the way it has always been.

Looking back on the events of the Bolshevik Revolution and the long list of Marxist disruptions in Europe following WWI, it should not have been at all surprising to Europeans that domestic conflict would erupt. It should not have been surprising that people would follow their natural inclination to rally around their founding heritage rather than submit to the cultural and moral relativism of the radical left.

Fascism was popular exactly because it offered shelter from the chaos and degeneracy of communism. The war and brutality that followed was seen as a balancing of the scales. Europeans wanted to ensure that the communists would never get a chance to wreak havoc again.

To be clear, both systems of governance are authoritarian and can lead to monstrous outcomes, but communism’s love for economic sabotage, mob actions and political violence are almost always a precursor to a fascist crackdown. The public does not embrace fascism in a vacuum, they must be compelled by an existential threat.

The question is, can communist subversion be defeated without using “authoritarian” measures? Is a constitutional republic equipped to deal with this kind of threat? When someone wages war on your society internally, is there a way to fight them while being civic minded? Probably not.

What we are witnessing in the US and Europe today is, in every way, a Marxist/Communist insurgency. It’s difficult to determine what stage we are at in this war. We have moved well beyond the stage of propaganda and mob influence into the realm of political violence, with multiple assassination attempts and terror attacks against civilian targets.

The gatekeepers for the woke communist movement are obviously Democrat politicians and media influencers. They have been consistently and actively encouraging mass hysteria and violence. They have used media spin to protect activist groups like Antifa, pretending that such organizations don’t exist. Whenever activists cause harm or death, the media and political leaders immediately move to defend that action as if it was justified.

When asked why Democrats are continuing down the path of militancy, their response is that Donald Trump is a “dictator and a fascist.” Yet, these same people can’t seem to come up with a single legitimate example of HOW Trump is acting like a dictator.

Deportations of illegal immigrants? Most countries on Earth have basic immigration laws and enforce them much more harshly than the Trump Administration does. Cuts to federal programs and employees? The President is perfectly within his power of office to reduce waste in the federal government. How about using the National Guard in US cities? Democrat leaders in those cities have aided violent activists, helping to disrupt ICE operations while threatening the lives of agents. If they don’t want the National Guard in their cities they should stop waging war on immigration officials.

From Trump’s remodeling of the White House ballroom to the US troops countering drug smugglers, everything Trump does is blown out of proportion by Democrats into an “end of democracy” scenario. Their useful-idiot followers then take these claims as permission to create even more turmoil.

The government shutdown in particular is becoming a nexus point for this agenda. The Senate needs only five Democrat votes to reopen the government with a clean funding bill, but Democrats refuse to see reason. Meanwhile, they are blaming Republicans for the consequences of the shutdown, specifically seeking public pain as leverage over conservatives.

Trump is already being held accountable for a prolonged shutdown of EBT. The Democrats know their audience well. They know that the free-stuff army is entitled, vicious and easy to manipulate.

Prominent Democrats like AOC and Bernie Sanders are openly endorsing Mamdani. Like it or not, this is the course that their party is taking, which means violent conflict is inevitable.  If Dems are being honest in their rhetoric to “get revenge” on conservatives once they return to power (there’s no reason to think they are joking), then the rules of survival dictate that leftists can never be allowed to return to power.

If Democrat leaders continue on the path of disrupting deportations of illegals and threatening immigration officials, then Americans will increasingly support National Guard intervention. The public may even support the arrest of those same politicians.

If leftists incite mass violence over the loss of SNAP benefits, the gatekeepers will have to be arrested or removed from the country. One can disagree with the constitutionality of the reaction, but the path that led us to this is undeniable. Leftists are provoking these responses; they are making peaceful resolution impossible.

They have gone so far over the top in their behavior, I have to ask: Are they doing this on purpose to trigger a civil war, or an authoritarian response? Do they really believe they will be able to use national instability as a weapon to get what they want?

My long running theory ever since Trump ran for office in 2016 is that he represents a perfect scapegoat for a leftist/globalist induced collapse of the US. In fact, for many years I have posited that if real conservatives and patriots (not Neo-Cons) ever gained legitimate government power, the elites would simply crash the system around our ears and make it look like it was our fault.

This plan seems to be unfolding right now. Progressive gatekeepers are using far-left activists as cannon fodder to induce a crisis, or a domestic war.

Think about the Bolshevik Revolution: The gatekeepers spurred a revolution of the poor and the working class, yet Lenin and Trotsky both came from upper-middle class wealth (like Mamdani). Hell, Karl Marx came from an upper middle-class family and married into his wife’s riches. When his debts and refusal to work a steady job caught up with him, he lived off the money of rich benefactors.

The gatekeepers of the left rarely share the struggles of the downtrodden workers they purport to represent, they only use the working class and the poor as tools to gain power and destroy their ideological enemies.

This is what Democrat leaders are doing with the mentally ill rabble they have accumulated. They are aiming the naive and unhinged horde at the guts of the country and they are hoping to create enough mayhem that Trump, conservatives, nationalists, all of us get blamed for the uncompromising response that follows.

Maybe they are hoping that in the process, conservatives will haphazardly jump on the bandwagon of totalitarianism; that we will look like the villains. I think the progressives are underestimating the average American’s resolve to see order restored. Playing the victim may not help them garner much public empathy this time.

It’s hard to say what the end result will be, but I’m finding it difficult to see an outcome that doesn’t include considerable conflict and, unfortunately, bloodshed. And, to be frank, most of it is likely to befall the leftist side. For the sake of their own self preservation, I hope they realize they’re only being used to further an agenda, and their gatekeepers don’t actually care what happens to them in the end.

Reprinted with permission from Alt-Market.us.

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Thanks, Ellen Finnigan.

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Click here:

NY Post

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Click Here:

Bloomberg

The post Jeffrey Epstein Went to War Over Money Laundering Probe in 2007 Sex Case … and Les Wexner’s here too … appeared first on LewRockwell.

Writes Bill Madden

Aristotle defined money and included the phrase “store of value” as one of its required characteristics.  Over time, many assets possessing value and Aristotle’s other requirements for money have served as money but none suited Aristotle’s definition of money as well as precious metals, especially gold.  J.P. Morgan said that only gold is money.  Everything else, he claimed, was credit.  Now, Ray Dalio states that gold is the safest money.  Our dollar is not money.  It is fiat currency which Voltaire said always returns to its intrinsic value of zero.

Jim Rickards’ recent advisory featuring his current thoughts on gold is attached.  According to Jim, most financial advisors and hedge fund managers don’t mention precious metals as part of a diversified portfolio although they do use it for diversification in their own portfolios.  Please remember that the increasing dollar price of gold is not an indication of gold’s value increasing but it is an indication of the dollar’s value falling.

Historically, governments have converted from money to fiat currency to remove the discipline forced on them by backing the currency with something of value.  Fiat currency may be printed from nothing and it will temporarily hype business activity for those owning the government and the country’s industrial capacity.  Eventually, the fiat currency will fail causing the economy to contract and the country to implode.  Wars are sometimes used as a financial antidote for a collapsing currency and a depressed economy. 

Real money and, in our case, a total return to the Constitution are the only correct remedies for us. 

The post Ray Dalio: “Gold Is the Safest Money” appeared first on LewRockwell.

The Origins of America’s Untold Stories — this is the very first-ever interview with Mark Groubert, recorded before the iconic YouTube series even existed. Also included is the first interview with Mark and constitutional attorney Robert Barnes, these raw conversations lay the foundation for everything that would follow: deep state psy-ops, MKUltra revelations, forgotten American history, and the secrets the media won’t touch.

This unearthed footage gives fans a rare glimpse into Mark’s research process, personality, and passion for truth-telling long before the birth of America’s Untold Stories.

Buckle up for jaw-dropping confessions, suppressed history, and the birth of a movement.  ************************************************ Thank you for watching!

The post The Origins of America’s Untold Stories: Mark Groubert Interview Before It All Began… appeared first on LewRockwell.

Lew,

Emerald Robinson, the investigative journalist who influenced Rep. Thomas Massie to pursue the Epstein files, did an exclusive interview with the libertarian lawmaker. Mike Lindell hired Emerald to work for Lindell TV. Explaining how Jeffrey Epstein was an intelligence operative for both the US and Israel, Massie observed, “Sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference between the two.” She also asked him about the Jewish donors who started a Super PAC in an attempt to defeat him in his campaign primary by funding millions of dollars in opposition ads. See here.

Jimmy Dore admires Massie for his integrity and America First principles and did a segment on the Kentucky congressman’s AIPAC funded opponent. 

The post Rep. Thomas Massie on the Epstein Files and AIPAC Funded Opponent appeared first on LewRockwell.

Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya was hailed by Western governments and media as the savior and rightful leader of Belarus. But leaked emails reveal her increasingly unpopular campaign for power in Minsk nearly collapsed under the weight of corruption scandals and infighting.

When Belarusian opposition figure Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya declared herself “President” of an alternative government in 2020, she was enthusiastically embraced – and showered with funding – by the Western governments which yearned to depose the longtime leader of her country, Alexander Lukashenko, and remove Russia’s closest regional ally from the geopolitical chessboard. The New York Times set the tone by lionizing Tsikhanouskaya as a modern-day Joan of Arc.

However, a wave of public scandals have prompted Tsikhanouskaya’s foreign sponsors to gradually abandon her unpopular crusade to topple the government of Lukashenko. In August, it was revealed she had secretly taken thousands of euros from Minsk’s KGB in August 2020, a payoff for publicly pleading with protesters to stop their action in the streets, before she fled the country. Tsikhanouskaya had kept this agreement a closely guarded secret until it was exposed, and has attempted to evade it ever since.

Leaked documents and emails obtained by The Grayzone reveal that Tsikhanouskaya’s once-vaunted Belarusian “government in exile” nearly collapsed under the weight of corruption, fantastical ambition, gross incompetence, and infighting.

After claiming victory in Belarus’ August 2020 presidential election, the previously unknown Tsikhanouskaya became a darling of the West. After fleeing for Lithuania, where she claimed to be the legitimately elected leader of her country, her crusade for regime change began to lose momentum. Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, her backers in Washington and Brussels turned their focus toward propping up the government in Kiev.

Hoping to reclaim some of the Western spotlight, Tsikhanouskaya formed a so-called United Transitional Cabinet (UTC) in August 2022. It was a government-in-waiting, primed to take power if Lukashenko was toppled, banking on crippling Western sanctions imposed over Minsk’s “military support for Russia” to turn the tide.

In the meantime, Tsikhanouskaya and her motley retinue continued to reap hundreds of millions of dollars in Western contributions. Yet none of their efforts brought her closer to power in Belarus or contributed to any material change on the ground. All they achieved was the promotion of Tsikhanouskaya’s personal brand to Western audiences.

Despite her dimming hopes in Minsk, leaked material reviewed by The Grayzone reveals that Brussels and Washington were convinced Tsikhanouskaya could still seize power, and pumped significant resources into a variety of initiatives to promote her UTC.

For example, the European Endowment for Democracy issued a secret 12-month grant for “increased recognition and legitimacy” of UTC as “the ‘Alternative Government’ by the end of 2024 among Belarusian citizens and the international community.” The EED was proudly “named after and inspired by” the US government’s National Endowment for Democracy, which awarded Tsikhanouskaya with its Democracy Service Medal in 2024.

Leaked records of the EED grant show the Endowment’s clandestine project to bring Tsikhanouskaya to power focused on first establishing a parallel exile government structure. This included producing a “new national passport… with international recognition” which would be administered by UTC, and removing Minsk from its role in supporting Russia’s war with Ukraine and the West. These moves were intended to lay foundations for “a future democratic Belarus” led by UTC.

Tsikhanouskaya’s cabinet was also to construct a “comprehensive strategy for democratic transition” in Belarus, outlining “a clear roadmap for transferring power from the current regime to a democratic government, including specific actions and protocols for various stages of the transition.”

Tsikhanouskaya’s clan planned to extend its influence by establishing a “permanent presence” in Kiev, “demonstrating solidarity with Ukraine in the face of Russian aggression” and firmly planting them in the West’s anti-Moscow camp.

The leaks spell out in extraordinary detail how UTC tore itself apart failing to achieve these far-reaching objectives. While Tsikhanouskaya satisfied her Western sponsors by adopting a stridently pro-EU stance and belligerent tone on Russia, her radical shift set the stage for her public undoing.

In early August 2023, Tsikhanouskaya’s United Transitional Cabinet convened a summit in Warsaw, Poland on the subject of “New Belarus.” It was a prize opportunity for the president-in-waiting and her UTC acolytes to regain visibility and sympathy among Western audiences.

Leaked records of the conference show UTC took advantage of the moment to lay out a bold set of proposals.

There, Tsikhanouskaya’s self-styled shadow administration committed to a “European perspective for Belarus,” including EU membership, and the creation and recognition of a separate “national passport of New Belarus” which would provide visa-free travel across the bloc for dissidents. UTC’s proclamation struck a viscerally anti-Russian tone, calling for the  “withdrawal of Belarus” from any and all “alliances” with Moscow, and the removal of Russian military installations, weapons, and troops from the country.

After securing Lukashenko’s ouster, UTC pledged to back “Belarusian volunteers in Ukraine” fighting Russian forces, support “pro-Ukrainian initiatives and campaigns,” and end what it called Minsk’s “complicity in Russia’s war.” While expedient for European and US political and public consumption, these positions accelerated the erosion of Tsikhanouskaya’s already negligible popularity at home. Western polls consistently show, if push comes to shove, most Belarusians of all ages favor greater integration with Russia, not Brussels.

These longstanding pro-Moscow sympathies may explain why Tsikhanouskaya avoided advocating overtly Russophobic policies during her 2020 presidential run. That year, Tsikhanouskaya’s opposition ‘Coordination Council’ passed a resolution declaring that Minsk would not reorient away from Russia if she took power, and the country’s “constitutional order and foreign policy” would remain unchanged.

In keeping with many European liberals, her foreign policy calculus altered radically following the Ukraine proxy war’s eruption. However, while the August 2023 conference generated some positive headlines for Tsikhanouskaya, openDemocracy offered a withering appraisal of UTC’s abrupt pro-Western shift.

The outlet declared Tsikhanouskaya’s aggressive push for EU membership and suddenly bellicose stance on Russia demonstrated how she and her clique were “out of touch” with opposition elements within Belarus and the wider public, who felt UTC was “increasingly detached from their concerns.” In any event, openDemocracy noted Tsikhanouskaya et al had “little influence” in the country itself by this point, and their exiled supporters were more disillusioned than ever with UTC’s prospects. By embracing the West, the outlet warned Tsikhanouskaya risked becoming “an irrelevance.”

Undeterred by their growing isolation, Tsikhanouskaya and her UTC doubled down. The “New Belarus” passport became a core component of their crusade. Initially, the initiative elicited significant media interest, and European parliamentarians called on EU member states to recognise the documents as legitimate.

However, the passport stunt quickly triggered internal feuds over funding and responsibility for the project, eventually prompting the resignation of a founding member of Tsikhanouskaya’s “government-in-exile.”

Raed the Whole Article

The post Leaks Expose Collapse of EU/US-Backed Belarusian ‘Opposition’ appeared first on LewRockwell.

Unless members of Congress intervene to prevent it, the food stamp program—also known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP)—will be suspended beginning November 1. If the federal partial “shutdown” ends before then, the program will likely send out the usual billions of dollars to the nation’s 41 million recipients on schedule.

Needless to say, lobbyists and activists who favor the food stamp program have been working furiously to make sure that the program is not interrupted.

Much of the narrative around food stamps has focused on the fact that millions of low-income households receive more than eight billion dollars in food stamps per month in the United States. The narrative usually works well given that total spending on food stamps has risen significantly in recent years with total inflation-adjusted spending up by nearly 100 percent since 2008, and up by six percent over the past twelve months.

While the media narrative has focused on low-income recipients, it often ignores the role of corporate and industry lobbyists who work to increase food stamp spending and to ensure the program remains permanent. Farmers, “Big Ag,” grocery retailers, beverage companies, and other industry players are very active in lobbying members of Congress to ensure that food-stamp dollars keep flowing.

This should not surprise us when we consider that food stamps subsidize food and drive up demand for the sorts of products manufactured and sold by a variety of food-related industries.

Consequently, food stamp programs enjoy support from a well-funded alliance of industry lobbyists and “anti-poverty” pressure groups that ceaselessly push for ever larger amounts of tax-dollar funds to be spent on food stamps.

Food Stamps Are Subsidies and Push up Food Prices 

To understand why private industry groups are such big fans of food stamps it’s important to recognize how SNAP spending is a wealth transfer from non-SNAP recipients to both SNAP users and to industry groups.

SNAP funds can be used only on food. So, when taxpayer dollars are converted into SNAP funds, this takes dollars that could have been spend on anything and channels those funds into food-only purchases. Moreover, empirical evidence shows that SNAP recipients do not treat SNAP funds as fungible with money in general, and the funds are thus part of a “separate mental account.” Consequently, SNAP spending constitutes “extra” spending above and beyond what would have been spent on food without the subsidy.1

This leads to rising prices in the food and food-services industry because “nutrition programs expand the size of the food and agricultural sector through demand-side effects and act to raise agricultural prices.”2

Other empirical studies have also confirmed that SNAP spending does indeed raise prices, and therefore constitutes a wealth transfer to SNAP recipients, food producers, and food retailers. Taxpayers and non-SNAP households, of course, are the ones left holding the bag. As Justin H. Leung and Hee Kwon Seo showed in a June 2022 empirical study of food stamps, the program does indeed benefit SNAP recipients the most, but “increased SNAP benefits also benefit producers at the expense of non-SNAP consumers.”

It is clear that by funneling wealth and spending power into a food-only benefits program, demand for food is artificially inflated, and with rising demand comes rising prices. This functions in a way similar to student loans, which have also led to relentless upward pressure in prices in that sector.

Food Stamps as Corporate Welfare

So, it’s easy to see why food-related industry groups would oppose any cuts to the SNAP program. The connection to private industry, however, is nothing new.

The food stamp program is now, and always has been, administered through the Department of Agriculture, and not through the usual home of welfare agencies, the Department of Health and Human Services. This is SNAP is as much a corporate subsidy program as it is a welfare program.

Programs similar to the modern food stamp program were founded during the Great Depression to induce low-income households to purchase “surplus commodities.” The early food stamp programs were justified on the grounds that they helped to stabilize prices by funneling additional dollars to farmers who might otherwise endure sizable decreases in prices for food stuffs that had been “overproduced.”3 As with many programs that were developed during the New Deal, a goal of food stamps was to increase prices.

The program was discontinued after the Second World War, but the idea was reintroduced by the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations. As with earlier iterations of the program, the new food stamp program—which continues today—was sold in part as a means of subsidizing farmers and other agriculture sectors. Moreover, the program was pushed as a component of the so-called war on poverty.

Ever since, the food stamp program has enjoyed support from special interests and pressure groups that advocate for more federal spending on both low-income households and food-related industries. In a 2019 article for The MIT Press Reader, Andrew Fisher writes:

Throughout the 1960s and until recent times, food stamps have enjoyed strong support from the agriculture industry. As retailers and processors displaced farmers in capturing an ever-greater share of the food dollar, their importance as stakeholders for the program grew. In the 2018 Farm Bill, banks, refrigeration equipment manufacturers and even the U.S. Chamber of Commerce join food retailers, beverage companies, and manufacturers as key stakeholders in the SNAP program. These players have evolved into much more important participants in the program than farm groups, as evidenced by the amount of money they spend on lobbying.

Fisher also notes that total lobbying activity by food-related industries exceeded $171 million in 2018:

Source: MIT Press.

Corporate lobbying to protect SNAP spending has been on display in recent years in reaction to efforts to exclude soft drinks and sugary snacks from SNAP programs. For example, in 2018, when the Trump administration tried to limit SNAP spending in this way, a coalition of private sector groups quickly opposed the measure. In an article for the journal Society, the authors describe how a coalition of the American Beverage Association (ABA), the Food Marketing Institute (FMI), and the National Grocers Association (NGA) all launched a lobbying campaign against any restrictions on SNAP spending.

To this end, industry groups have long allied themselves with the Food Research Action Center (FRAC) which lobbies for more SNAP spending as an “anti-poverty” interest group. Industry groups such as the ABA have become substantial funders of FRAC, and this has helped industry lobbyists gain greater access to Democrats while FRAC has used its ties to corporate lobbyists as a means of influencing Republicans. The pro-SNAP approach is thus bipartisan:

When seeking to influence Congress on SNAP, the beverage industry works through Democrats as well as Republicans, particularly those representing minority districts…

The beverage industry first began appearing on FRAC’s list of funders in 2013, and at FRAC’s 2014 annual benefit dinner a number of industry donors were honored, including Coke, Pepsi, and the ABA. FRAC’s 2017 annual benefit dinner in Washington, D.C., with 300 guests, acknowledged contributions from PepsiCo, the Coca-Cola Company, the American Beverage Association, and FMI.4

Not surprisingly, recent FRAC materials opposing any restrictions on SNAP spending tend to emphasize the cost to retailers. For example, an October 1, 2025 policy paper from FRAC states how SNAP restrictions would negatively impact members of the “National Grocers Association (NGA), FMI — The Food Industry Association, and the National Association of Convenience Stores (NACS).”

Although much of the lobbying is couched in terms of helping poor people, the overall argument made by both FRAC and industry lobbyists is that food retailers should not have to go through the inconvenience of distinguishing between SNAP-compliant foods and non-SNAP compliance foods.

FRAC and the food lobbyists don’t mention, of course, that merchants who participate in SNAP already have to do this. Grocery stores already carry a wide variety of products that are not SNAP compliant, including prepared foods, and non-food items such as flower arrangements and auto parts.

Clearly, the real purpose of the FRAC/Food Industry position is simply to maximize the number of goods that are eligible for SNAP and thus to increase spending on goods provided by food producers and retailers.

Small retailers—such as corner stores and bodegas—often whine the most about any limits on SNAP spending, stating that merchants cannot absorb the administrative costs of accepting SNAP dollars.

Rarely mentioned, of course, is that participation in SNAP is not mandatory. Small retailers—and indeed, large retailers too—could simply choose to not participate in SNAP programs and avoid all the hassle of excluding soft drinks and sugary snacks from real food. In truth, of course, these retailers want access to the artificially inflated spending levels that come with the food-stamp subsidy. This is why retailers to prominently advertise that they accept food stamps.

The motivations of the beverage industry are even more transparent. We already know that soft drinks are among most popular purchases among SNAP recipients. Without the SNAP subsidy, spending on soft drinks would likely fall substantially, and with it, soft-drink prices.

Taxpayers then pay twice. They pay the taxes to subsidize food producers, and then the taxpayers also pay higher prices at the grocery store. Consequently, the SNAP program is a way for Pepsico and the Coca-Cola company—as well as countless other food-industry players—to legally rip off the American taxpayer.

—

1 Justine Hastings and Jesse M. Shapiro, “How Are SNAP Benefits Spent? Evidence from a Retail Panel,” The American Economic Review 18, No. 12 (December 2018): 3523.

2 Jeffrey J. Reimer and Senal Weerasooriya, “Macroeconomic Impacts of U.S. Farm and Nutrition Programs,” Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics 14, No. 3 (September 2019): 625.

3 Marion Nestle, “The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP): History, Politics, and Public Health Implications,” American Journal of Public Health 109, No. 12 (Dec 2019):1632-1633.

4 Robert Paarlberg, Dariush Mozaffarian, Renata Micha, Carolyn Chelius, “Keeping Soda in SNAP: Understanding the Other Iron Triangle,” Society , No. 4, (June 2018): 7-8

The post How Food Industry Lobbyists Keep the Food-Stamp Gravy Train Going appeared first on LewRockwell.

There’s a great deal more to becoming rich than buying the right investments and hoping for the best. The most important element in your strategy to win the battle for investment survival is your own psychology. You’ve heard that your attitude helps your health and your golf score; it’ll also improve your earning power.

It’s not enough to liquidate your past financial mistakes. It’s more important to liquidate counterproductive attitudes, approaches, and methods of dealing with problems. The results that someone gets in life are an indication of how sound his approach toward life is. A sound philosophy of life gives good results. People with chaotic, unproductive, unhappy lives usually don’t have anyone to blame but themselves. They rarely have a strategy for living and thus have no foundation on which to build a strategy for investing.

There’s plenty of good advice available on the subject. Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations, Ben Franklin’s autobiography, Norman Vincent Peale’s Power of Positive Thinking, Frank Bettger’s How I Raised Myself from Failure to Success in Selling, and Maxwell Maltz’s Psycho-Cybernetics are all helpful.

One of the important things about the Greater Depression is that it will give you a chance to put your philosophy of life to the test. Almost anyone can get by in good times, but the years to come will separate the real winners from losers. Many will taste the thrill of victory or the agony of defeat firsthand; they won’t need the vicarious pleasure of Saturday afternoon TV sports to experience life.

There is, of course, no guarantee that just because you’ve developed a workable strategy that you won’t still be a casualty in the battle for financial survival. There is such a thing as plain bad luck. But, as Damon Runyon said, the bread may not always go to the wise, nor the race to the swift, nor the battle to the strong—but that’s the way to bet.

Tilt the odds in your favor by developing pro-survival attitudes, and the law of large numbers will take care of the rest.

There are, of course, an almost infinite number of valid attitudes. Anything that works for you is as good as anything that works for me. But since the next step in the strategy (consolidation) deals with gathering physical goods, I don’t want to leave any false impressions.

You may be able to salt away ten bags of silver, a thousand Krugerrands, and enough food to open a restaurant chain, but that’s not nearly as important as knowing how to get them all back again if you should lose them for any reason. That’s one thing no one can ever take away from you, and you can never lose: your attitude towards life.

Scrooge McDuck had the right attitude.

One of the most formative stories I’ve ever read was an Uncle Scrooge comic written in 1953 by Carl Barks at Walt Disney Studios.

It finds Scrooge McDuck at play in his binful of money, diving and wallowing in it, doing what he likes best. As he leaves his bin to go out for his daily routine, it turns out that his nephew, Donald Duck, has decided to play a prank on him by putting a fake newspaper on the park bench with the headline “Coins and Banknotes Now Worthless!…Congress Make Fish the New Money of the Land.”

Scrooge sees it and is stunned. All his cash is worthless. He plops against a tree thinking that he hasn’t even one little minnow with which to buy a crust of bread. By the next frame of the comic book, however, the courageous old duck has picked himself up and is ready to get back in the race, saying, “Well, there’s no cause crying over bad luck. I’ll get a job and start life all over again.”

Soon we find him down at the waterfront talking to a fisherman. He offers to paint the man’s boat for a sackful of fish. Scrooge earns his fish and takes them to a clothing store where business is bad. He trades the fish for a raincoat. Back at the waterfront, he trades the raincoat to another fisherman for two sacks of fish.

Since the fish are getting heavy to carry around, Scrooge trades the two bags to a farmer for an old horse, then trades the horse for ten sacks of fish.

By the end of the day, Scrooge has a mountain of fish: three cubic acres’ worth. As much of the new money as he had of the old. He looks at the cold, clammy fish and asks himself…how to count the new money? By the pound or by the inch? How to keep it? And how to spend it before it goes bad?

Sorrowfully he realizes that fish isn’t as nice to play with as his old money. Fish don’t feel good and they smell bad.

All of the sudden, he doesn’t want to be rich anymore. He hires a trucking fleet to take the mountain of fish to Donald, who always wanted to be rich. Donald’s house is buried under dead fish.

Donald’s joke backfired, but Scrooge proved his point: You can start from scratch if you have the right attitude and come out ahead if you play your cards right.

Scrooge didn’t have a fish to his name when he had to start over, a lot less than you’ll have if you liquidate all your unneeded possessions. They’re costing you money, and tying you down. Transform the junk you’ve accumulated into cash, which you can redeploy the way Scrooge McDuck might.

The next step in your plan is to start earning to add to your grubstake—that is, create more money. It was key to Scrooge’s second fortune, and it’s key to yours.

But it’s necessary to have the skills necessary to provide goods and services to others. Scrooge made his fish fortune by his skills at business, but there are thousands of others.

Gaining Skills

One of the most important parts of taking control of your life as a step to prospering in the years to come is to educate yourself and gain skills. That means a lot more than just logging eight years in high school and college. Going to college is one thing, but learning to make money is something else. Most people today appear to believe going to college is necessary for getting ahead. It’s not. It may actually be a hindrance.

A lot of people seem to think that simply going to college will bestow an education. In reality, all most people get is a diploma, which is very different. Eric Hoffer, the San Francisco longshoreman who never completed high school but has written such profound books as The True Believer, is an outstanding example of the difference between going to college and getting an education.

Practical, marketable skills are often better acquired in trade schools, through self-teaching efforts, and through experience working from the bottom up in a field. A lot of teachers who finished first in their class couldn’t run a successful hot dog stand and are hardly in a position to help their students learn survival skills.

It would be a tragic mistake to devote all your resources to accumulating gold, hoarding commodities, devising clever tax schemes, and speculating, to the neglect of much more basic intangibles. The government may negate a lot of your efforts through its inflation, taxes, and regulations. And even if you overcome them, market risk—a bad judgement, an unexpected development, a failed brokerage house—can wipe you out. As can fraud, theft, a fire, or a war.

And in the environment coming up, all of those things and many others like them could be greater dangers than they have been in the past. The only thing that’s permanently secure is what you carry in your head: your attitude, your knowledge, your skills.

Who knows what skills may be required in the years to come? What you’re doing now, be it teaching school, practicing law, laying brick, or selling insurance, may be in low demand. But preparing French cuisine, fixing autos, keeping books, or offering financial counsel may be in high demand. Or perhaps the other way around.

The single wisest thing you can do with your money is not buy gold. It’s to take courses and acquire knowledge in other fields, as unrelated to what you are now doing as possible. Anything related to science, and particularly, technology would seem especially suitable. Computer science, medicine, mechanics, agriculture, and electronics are all going to remain in demand.

In the TV series Star Trek, the supremely knowledgeable Mr. Spock bailed the crew out as often as anyone. It’s hard to imagine him unemployed, for that reason. More knowledge can only increase your understanding of the way the world works now, and if it stops working the way it presently does, you’ll be able to continue. It will then no longer be the end of the world if you lose your present job.

And a lot of people will.

Reprinted with permission from International Man.

The post The Single Wisest Thing You Can Do with Your Money appeared first on LewRockwell.

Do you notice how nobody’s losing their jobs or getting deported for criticizing the genocidal atrocities in Sudan?

How mainstream western politicians are able to call out the RSF and the UAE without having their careers nuked by high-powered lobby groups?

How the western media aren’t churning out op-eds concern trolling about the possibility that anyone who opposes the el-Fasher massacres is actually a closet Nazi?

There is evidence the UAE backed RSF is engaged in mass murder in El-Fashar in Darfur.

Why is the U.S. allowing the UAE – which we fund militarily – help the brutal RSF engage in mass atrocity?

FYI – this isn’t just about Trump – the Biden Admin was letting this happen too. https://t.co/iOTcOkZr60

— Chris Murphy (@ChrisMurphyCT) October 28, 2025

How opposition to mass murder in Darfur isn’t being algorithmically hidden by Silicon Valley plutocrats?

How anyone who posts footage of an RSF war crime online isn’t being swarmed by an army of full-time trolls making excuses justifying the atrocities and accusing those who denounce them of being hateful bigots?

How western governments and institutions aren’t doing everything they can to stomp out all speech that is critical of this particular humanitarian crisis?

That’s the difference, right there. That’s why many westerners have been paying special attention to Gaza.

For the last two years anyone who publicly criticized Israel’s genocidal abuses in the Gaza Strip would be confronted by hasbarists saying “Why are you paying so much attention to Gaza instead of Sudan? You must just HATE JEWS!!”

No, dipshit, I’m paying more attention to Gaza because my government isn’t trying to make it illegal for me to criticize the RSF. Every major western institution isn’t dedicated to facilitating genocide in Sudan and crushing all speech which opposes it. My rulers aren’t backing a genocide in Sudan and commanding me to support it.

The ongoing nightmare in Sudan is largely a product of the abuses of the western empire. The UAE is an imperial client state who the US and its allies recently supported in its years-long genocidal war on Yemen in partnership with Saudi Arabia. There are all kinds of threads you can trace back to western allies and partners in this genocide, as is the case for most of the worst things that happen in our world these days.

But it’s clearly different. Clearly. The evidence for this is in the extent to which western institutions have been protecting the genocide in Gaza versus the genocide in Sudan. Israel’s abuses are much more intimately interwoven into the guts of the imperial machine than those of the RSF, who Washington will take a blowtorch to the instant it becomes geopolitically advantageous.

Israel’s abuses are completely inseparable and indistinct from the abuses of my own government. I’ve been focusing more on Gaza than on Sudan for the same reason I’d be more concerned if I knew my husband was murdering hitch hikers than I would be about reports of a serial killer in Brazil.

It is right and good that the world is turning against the UAE, opposing western backing for that malignant state, and standing in firm opposition to what is happening in Sudan. But the complete lack of institutional resistance we’ve been seeing to this opposition shows that this genocide is much less dear to the foul little heart of the empire than the genocide in Gaza.

Opposing the genocide in Sudan is about saving Sudan. Opposing the genocide in Gaza is about saving ourselves. Saving our free speech. Saving our political systems. Saving our hearts. Saving our minds. Saving our soul.

_________________

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The post Notice Which Genocides You Are and Are Not Allowed To Oppose appeared first on LewRockwell.

Introduction

Since October 7th, and especially during the last year since Trump’s election, the question of Israeli power, Jewish influence, and the American mythos has come into question. Online rhetoric is rife with Israeli and Palestinian talking points; liberal and conservative influencers argue about the morality, or the lack thereof, in Hamas and the IDF; others argue about AIPAC and their influence on American politics. Emotions are high, and emotions cloud judgement. Leaders in the West must look at this situation through a sensible lens; they must use the friend-enemy distinction. Nothing is more important to elites in a nation than preserving its sovereignty, to preserve its right to the exception, The German jurist, Carl Schmitt, noted in his book “The Concept of the Political” that politics is:

“The specific political distinction to which political actions and motives can be reduced is that between friend and enemy”

Both the Palestinians and the Israelis pose an existential threat to the American political system in their own way; this inevitably becomes a threat to the wider globalist system. Therefore the question arises: Who poses a greater threat to Power in the West? It would be irresponsible to believe in the sole omnipotence or altruism of Israeli influence in the current government, just as it would be irresponsible to trust the Palestinians and their motives in the diaspora. These groups are powerful, and subversive, and they both cry to the Western leaders and masses for their pity and support. To completely understand the events as they have unfolded and future events that have yet to unfold, an understanding of the “enemy” is necessary, this requires to put oneself in the shoes of an Israeli ethnonationalist and the Hamas fighter. This means understanding the motives of the Israelis and the resistance of the Palestinians, understanding propaganda in an advanced and primitive society, and finally looking through the West’s perspective, the American and globalist elites who want to maintain a balance of power. Ultimately, the perspective of Power and political realism is the only lens to look through for an accurate reading; the right, the left, morality, or other may be too idealistic and naive in their understanding of power politics and the tools of Power like nationalism.

Israeli Nationalism

A nation develops itself on a political formula that is serviceable and believable to its citizens; the extent of this depends on leadership and the political situation. This political formula will naturally lead to both friends of a similar mind and enemies who pose an existential threat to this formula. Truthfully, the Israelis have come to the same conclusion that the mid-century Germans came to in the 1930s: a national mythos of supremacy and defense of their own kind, a formula for the supremacy of the Jewish people, a formula with natural enemies. Since October 7th, it’s believed that the Israelis have killed nearly 67,000 Palestinians in Gaza, much of the Hamas leadership has been killed, the Mossad had blown up thousands of pagers used by Hezbollah in Lebanon, President Al-Assad of Syria was toppled, and for the first time the United States had bombed Iran directly to destroy their nuclear facilities, which the Israelis believed posed a threat to their very existence as a people.

This is very effective propaganda; which Israeli would not look with pride and see how their armies and intelligence service had destroyed so many Iranian proxies, their supremacy as a people proved on the battlefield? An American may be horrified, but these events, the propaganda and the extermination are not meant for the foreigners. To believe that any mass of people, whether Israeli, American, or other, are exempt from the effects of propaganda, is to misunderstand the history of state power. When Hamas attacked the Israeli concert on October 7, they did not care for their reasons, they did not care for any conspiracies that may have unfolded, and they did not care for the anti-war sect in their society; they wanted blood. This is very similar to the American experience because in January of 1940, 88% of Americans believed that America should stay out of the European war; the American aviator Charles Lindbergh and his America First Committee rallied isolationists across the country. This all changed with Pearl Harbor; of course, not even this event was as it seemed. John Denson had spoken about the lies and deceit behind the Pearl Harbor attack. He revealed in his speech “Tricking Us Into War” how Roosevelt’s Secretary of War, Henry Stimson, revealed in a November 25th, 1941, diary entry that the United States government was aware of an imminent attack on Pearl Harbor that may occur as early as next Monday. This information was withheld from the Pearl Harbor commanders, Denson explains further:

“On December 6th, 1941, American codebreakers received the first part of a fourteen part message, the first thirteen parts were taken by Naval commander Lester Schultz directly to FDR. He met with Roosevelt and Harry Hopkins in the White House in which Roosevelt turned to Hoptkins and said “this means war.” Finally, the fourteenth part came during the early morning hours of December 7th, and it’s called “The Delivery Message.” This indicated that an attack would probably occur at 1pm Washington time, which is dawn at Pearl Harbor. The big mystery is, why wasn’t this communicated to Hawaiian commanders? Admiral Stark, who was head of the Navy in Washington D.C. received this translated message at 8am in his office which is 3am at Pearl Harbor. The officers testified that they delivered this message to him and begged him to call Admiral Kimmel in Pearl Harbor and tell him an attack would occur at dawn. Stark had on his desk what was called a scrambler phone, he could pick up the phone and talk immediately with Admiral Kimmel, the message would be scrambled in between but Kimmel would be able to understand it at the other end, so he had direct access within a matter of seconds to Kimmel. The officers testified that Stark picked up the phone, held it in his hand for maybe a minute, and put it back down.”

Efforts to reach Roosevelt also failed, because the president could not be disturbed at the time, so the Japanese successfully launched their surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. This had effectively put an end to the anti-war and isolationist movement in America, and eighty years later, the mythos surrounding the “just war” is mostly unquestionable. Advanced societies do not need to enforce propaganda by brute force or crude messaging; the ability to speak to the mind of the citizen, their fears, desires, and beliefs, and even to persuade them into a way of thinking is the sign of an advanced society. The advent of the internet, independent media, and wide access to literature has only muddied the realm of information; professional propagandists are things of the past when millions of inflamed individuals post rumors and speculation instead. After Hamas attacked the Israeli concert on October 7th, the fact that the Palestinians may have been abused in Gaza or the West Bank mattered nothing to the Israelis, just as the Japanese reasoning for attacking Pearl Harbor mattered little to an American. All the Israelis saw were 1200 people, mainly civilians, killed and another 251 taken hostage; the people demanded the Palestinian pay in blood. The Israelis had voted for security and nationalism previously in any event; now was simply the time the Israeli politicians delivered their campaign promises.

The last election held in Israel before the October 7th attack was on November 1, 2022, with Benjamin Netanyahu and his coalition winning 64 out of 120 parliamentary seats. The Israel Democracy Institute provides the full list of Israel’s government officials, their positions, political parties and stances of each political party. This is extremely important as it can develop the root causes of the war. Prime Minister Netanyhu’s coalition consists of six political parties. Benjamin Netanyahu is a part of the Likud party, which is described as having “traditionally supported the idea of Greater Israel (the belief that Israel’s borders should extend to include Judea & Samaria), even if it has not always defined the state’s borders precisely.”  Another member party named Shas has championed the idea of “returning the crown to its former glory” and aspires to gather Jews throughout the world in Israel. Other parties, such as the National Unity Party, support the idea of Israel as the nation-state of Jewish people, and two religious parties, including United Torah Judaism and Religious Zionism, which represent the ultra-orthodox Jews in Israel. To the Arabs, Christians, and other non-Jewish civilians in Israel, it is clear that the aim of Netanyahu’s government and the majority of the voting public, is an Israeli state made by and for Jews.

The greatest threat the Israelis pose, their greatest flaw and their worst crime on the international stage is not their killing; it’s their nationalism. They pose an existential threat to the balance of power in the world, they threaten the relationship between America and the House of Saud, they have threatened the delicate balance of power between Iran and their proxies and the United States military, and they strengthen the position of the Chinese in the Middle East and on the world stage, and this is the greatest threat of it all. The American Empire today rests on the foundation on the illusion of international law. They had fought a war with the German nationalists for this world, now their hypocrisy is revealed on the world stage, and American elites must make a decision. In the realm of friend-enemy, Jewish influence in America has worked tirelessly since the 12 Day War to maintain support, but they dig themselves deeper in the grave, and they’re taking America with them.

Jewish Influence

To say that the image of Jews in America and worldwide has changed drastically would be an understatement; they’re hated, and they’re being accused of the same things they have been accused of throughout their history. But the opinions of the regular person or an influencer do not matter; just ask the members of the America First Committee or any anti-war protestor from Vietnam or the War on Terror how effective their decade-long efforts were. Only the friend-enemy distinction of the ruling class matters, so this is the main focus. The masses of people, particularly the youth among the right, think they know what the elites in the West want. It’s true on the surface level that foreign influence, particularly from the Jews, is incredible. But as per-usual, they fail to see the bigger picture or even the truly obvious within American politics. American politicians are for sale from NGOs, corporations, and foreign governments. Whether this is Israel, Saudi Arabia, or Taiwan, this has always been the nature of the political class within empires. AIPAC, for example, has been at the forefront of controversy for many decades; the organization “AIPAC Tracker” tracks the funds given to American politicians by this organization regularly. A Democrat representative from Minnesota, for instance, Jared Golden, has received more than $1 million in AIPAC funding.

Other politicians have had all expenses paid trips to Jersualam; visits to the Western Wall is a particularly popular place for photo ops. What the Israelis do is simple interest group politics using the Jewish diaspora in America; this is no different than what the hundreds of other lobbying organizations do. But does the Israel lobby pose a particular threat to American interests and the ruling elite within the country that other lobbying groups may not? The role of Jews and of Israel has been fundamental to the animating spirit of America since the end of World War Two; these were the poor people who were being exterminated and were liberated by the free democratic forces of the West. President Nixon explained this special relationship with Ted Koppel, even though he admitted Israel is of little strategic importance, saying:

“The United States is concerned with more than strategic values, that may be a weakness, but that’s the way we are. There are moral issues involved here, we don’t have an alliance with Israel, as you know they’re not an ally of the United States in the technical sense. But we have a bond to Israel that’s much stronger, a moral commitment because of what happened during the Holocaust, and a moral commitment because it is a democracy, the only democracy in that area. Under the circumstances that is why American presidents and the American people in the future, will support, all out, the survival of Israel if attacked.”

The American, and the wider globalist elite, face a dilemma with the current question of Israel and the influence of Jews in their countries. They have built their Power on the order that was built after World War Two. The Holocaust was essential to this animating spirit, but the recent actions of the Israelis have resulted in crushing criticisms, and the consensus surrounding the aforementioned war is being challenged by the general population. This is the true danger that the Israel lobby poses in America, at least the only one that matters. Every so often, America and Israel have had intersecting interests such as in the second Iraq War, but this was not always the case. President Bush had stopped advancing into Iraq in 1991, opting to leave Saddam Hussein in power because of the pragmatic nature of his administration; it was said that Bush found Israel’s ideological confidence “hard to take.” The Saudis agreed with this decision as they wanted Iraq as a buffer state and did not want a power vacuum on their border. The Israelis, who saw Saddam as a threat to their existence, continued to advocate and lobby for regime change. In 2003, the Saudis had not changed their position, and neither had the Israelis, but in October of 2000, Saddam wanted to dump the “currency of the enemy” and sell oil for the euro instead of the dollar, a direct challenge to the American financial system. In this case, the Israelis and the American elite had an intersecting interest in removing Hussein from power; life is not always a zero-sum game.

But now, twenty-two years later, Israeli interests have completely moved away from practical realpolitik and into the chaotic idealism of its own nationalist political formula. The country is attempting to maintain its public image through powerful Zionists like Larry Ellison by using TikTok to “combat hate and extremism.” After delegates at the United Nations walked out on Netanyahu’s speech, he held an audience with American Jewish and Christian influencers in New York City, who praised him for being a “protector of the Jewish people” and discussed plans to turn the tide of public opinion. This is where the new current of right-wing thought fails in their analysis, falling into emotion and nationalism instead of realpolitik. What ruling elite would allow such subversion from a country that is ruining its own ability to conduct foreign and domestic policy? The events of the past months show that there is a powerful class that is pushing back against the Israelis, but to truly understand this pushback, the Palestinians and their diaspora must also be analyzed.

Palestinian Resistance

Where do the Palestinians stand on the scale of friend-enemy in the chaotic discourse of American politics? To the American right and the Christian and nationalist revivalists, they can see that the Palestinians are on the front lines fighting Israel, America’s supposed puppet master; but they’re Muslim heretics who follow a false prophet and undesirable immigrants who flood Europe and America. To the American left, they’re a poor minority people suppressed by an apartheid state, anguishing under the imperialism of America and their Israeli ally; but they’re not progressive, they kill homosexuals, repress women, and commit acts of violence. Both sides miss key elements of the Palestinian cause, trapped by their own ideological commitment. A priest of the Catholic Church, Father Chris Alar, recently gave a speech trying to give the Church’s position on the conflict; he attempts to explain the Palestinian and Israeli reasons for the conflict through a moral and attempted political understanding. Father Alar criticizes both sides but falls short in his explanation of the motives of the Palestinians and Islam in general; he says:

“A class in Palestine teaching the little kids to kill Jews, to kill them, I have not found any in Israel, teaching little kids to kill Arabs, I looked. The Palestinians were taught to stab classmates dressed as Jews, and the books that I found online, very clearly show hatred in the Palestinian Authority schools for the Jews. I was not able to find too much on Israel raising children to hate and kill, I’m not denying that it’s not out there, but I can’t find it.

He continues to speak about Iran and their proxies and the Jihadist movements that call for the death of infidels. From the establishment in the Western moral regime, these are horrible acts of barbarism; not even the most extreme Christians in the West advocate for violence and often reject violence altogether, preferring rhetoric over physical altercations. The priest’s explanation is fair and unbiased in the West, but it is an explanation of a church that has been contained by the same liberal order that was established after World War Two, a fair Church that is removed from politics so it doesn’t interfere with the affairs of the state. The explanation given to the Israelis and the Jewish diaspora cannot be applied to the Palestinians or their diaspora; the Palestinians are not as politically coherent or as well established in foreign influence. They have chosen as a people, however, the mindset of resistance: resistance against an apartheid state, against the forces of Western liberal politics and the emptiness of individuality, and the colonialism of corporate economics. They take this universal characteristic extremely seriously. Alaistar Crooke, a former British diplomat, explains the Palestinian mindset in his book “Resistance: The Essence of the Islamist Revolution.” He explains:

“Resistance is seen by these prisoners as an opportunity to alter their existence, to choose struggle as a new way of living. Yet, as the prisoners’ descriptions make plain, it is not simply a matter of individuals making a choice of opting for resistance. It is a key theme to revolutionary Iran– life itself, the essence of living beings that is asserting itself in the descriptions by these Palestinian prisoners. They are united, not by a political programme, or an ideology, but by collective will. At a certain point, a man or woman will give preference to the risk of death over the certainty of having to obey. Palestinians feel that their life is one of struggle and resistance.”

This mindset is also their greatest flaw; they believe with such great faith that their life is resistance, but this sucks the energy out of their social and economic type around the world. This is why the children in Palestine are taught to kill Jews so blatantly; they’re primitive in their propaganda because they do not have the political wit to uphold a higher, more advanced civilizational structure like the democracies in the West, truly they’re more akin to the feudal societies of the Middle Ages. The way in which punishment is carried out in Palestinian lands is evidence for this, while the West had transitioned away from public torture and executions, moving their focus from the punishment on the body to control over an individual’s mind and soul through a therapeutic regime. The Palestinians, and Arabs in general, continue to focus their punishments in the traditional way. After the October ceasefire, a video surfaced of Hamas publicly executing eight men by firing squad. While it could be claimed that since they have lived under such brutal repression, they’ve never had the chance as a people to truly attempt to govern and learn how to properly engage in regular Western-style politics. This may be true, but it is unlikely that the Palestinians will simply drop their pride and become parliamentarian liberals. There is also a trait among current Arab leaders of absolute incompetency in managing a democratic society with too many institutions. For this reason, Iraq and Syria lasted far longer politically under Hussein and Assad than under a democratic regime.

The Palestinian threat is not one of military might, terrorism, or political influence; it is who they are as a people. The western institutions and people, such as the Catholic Church and other organizations, do not understand the Palestinian cause because they have all been contained by the bourgeois humanism that has been seared into the minds of western people. The Catholic Church openly embraced the modern reforms of Vatican II; the new traditionalist youth may insult the clergy’s decision, but they refuse to resist because their liberal minds reject political violence, and yet traditionalist rhetoric is full of crusading and warlike jargon. This isn’t to say the Palestinians do not pose a threat in America and elsewhere; the Israelis may pose a threat to the balance of power in the world, but the Palestinians, the diaspora especially, pose a threat to the domestic institutions and the native peoples’ hegemony in their host country.

Palestinian Subversion

In June of 2025 at the Glastonbury concert in the UK, the Jamaican singer, Bob Vylan, caused an uproar when he led a chant saying, “Death to the IDF.” This was the main concern of Keir Starmer and the BBC. But Vylan also did something else; he sang a song that goes like this: “Heard you want your country back, shut the fuck up. Heard you want your country back, uh uh you can’t have that.” Minority and liberal groups throughout the West have picked up the Palestinian cause as their own, brothers defending each other against oppressive colonists and racists. The ruling elite of a host country to Palestinians may find a short-term friend in the Palestinians, especially if the regime is hostile to Israel, but even so, they should ask themselves this question: “What if they win?” The Palestinians have made it clear for decades that they do not want to integrate into any country; they want their own home. In 1975, a member of the Syrian Social Affairs Ministry, Soraya El-Hayani, was asked if the Palestinians wanted to integrate into Syrian society; her answer:

“Oh no, never. They do not want to live here, or in Lebanon or in Jordan. They want to stay as a whole, as a Palestinian. They call themselves “those who go back.”

If the Palestinians win the war, if America truly disciplines Israel through force or some other means, would the Palestinians be grateful? The answer to this question lies within the lessons of the failed Soviet reformists like Gorbachev in the 1980s; his perestroika and democratization had weakened the Soviet elite to actual collapse. The Russians, the Baltics, the satellite states, and others within the Union were not grateful for the new liberal Politburo; they hated them even more as the reforms continued. This hate, and the weakness of the Soviet elite, can be seen in the 1 May celebration parade of the international proletarian solidarity in 1990. The event unfolded as follows:

“Popov had advised Gorbachev to allow “an alternative” demonstration of political clubs, parties and associations, which on the day mushroomed thanks to liberalization. Liberal Democrats, Christian Democrats, anarchist-syndicalists, and other “independent political parties and clubs” came to the celebration under different colors. Some brought red flags with the hammer and sickle ripped out. About a hundred of the demonstrators stopped in front of the Mausoleum and began to chant: “Socialism? No, Thanks!”; “Communists: You Are Bankrupt!”; “Down With The Fascist Red Empire!”; “Freedom to Lithuania!”; “Down with the Politburo!”; “Down with Gorbachev!”; “Resign! Resign! Resign!” Most of the crowd were ethnic Russians. The nationwide television broadcast was halted, but cameras captured the stony-faced Kryuchkov and Yazov, who stared above the crowd with blank eyes. In August 1968, when eight dissidents had come out on Red Square protesting the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, they were beaten and arrested by the KGB. This time, the ranks of the KGB stood motionless, without instruction how to behave.”

The liberals will not be grateful, the minority groups will not be grateful, and the Palestinians, a group that will never give up its mind of resistance, will find solidarity in fighting for the other “oppressed minorities” in the colonial countries of the West or Arab puppet states like Egypt and Jordan. When the Soviet Union allowed travelers into the Western countries, the standard of living within these countries had shocked them; they returned disillusioned and unhappy. The standard of living that they were used to suddenly became truly unbearable. Once people get a taste of freedom or a higher standard, they will no longer tolerate what they once accepted. The minority and liberal groups will become emboldened; deportations, policing, welfare, and voting will all be influenced by outsiders who hate the ruling class and the animating spirit and want to mold it to themselves. This is why the elite rule in the manner they do. If the churches were to truly follow in absolute the doctrine of poverty, they would collapse without organized structure, so with democracies, they will never truly follow the “will of the people” because that would mean the collapse of the current system. The recent Gaza ceasefire is one such power play made not by the Israelis nor the Palestinians, but by the Western elite who aren’t yet ready to merely stand stony-faced like Kryuchkov and Yazov.

Discipling the Disruptor of Balance

In the following two decades after the second Iraq War, America had created a delicate balance of power, a MAD doctrine narrowed to the Middle East. American bases litter the region in Jordan, Iraq, Kuwait, Syria, and elsewhere; their force packages stand mission-ready to deploy quickly in the CENTCOM area. This was counterbalanced by Iran and their proxy forces in the region: Hezbollah, Hamas, the Assad regime, and the PMF in Iraq. This situation had created balance; neither the Iranians nor the Americans wanted a full blown war between each other. This is why Iran gave prior warning to the Americans that it would launch missiles at its base in Qatar, and American media was quite open when tracking the B2 bombers en route to Iran, giving the Iranians time to evacuate their facility. While there are many Zionist aspects within the American and European governments, these events prove that the international globalist system has its limits, specifically with Netanyahu and his coalition. It’s noteworthy that even the American intelligence services do not agree with Israeli claims of an Iranian nuclear program. The Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabard, had stated on March 25th, 2025:

 “The IC continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon, and that supreme leader Khomieni has not authorized the nuclear weapons program that he suspended in 2003.”

There are further claims that the CIA and the Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency, have a very bad relationship. John Kiriakou, a former CIA officer and whistleblower, had claimed in interviews that the CIA has a deep-seated hatred for Israel and has a deep mistrust of the Israeli intelligence agencies, going as far as even banning the Mossad from Langley. Accusations of harassment have also been claimed by CIA agents who were working openly in Israel, their apartments broken into and even a pet dog’s tail cut off.  Other than Kirakou’s claim, it is not a widely public rivalry, and so these claims can only be taken by his word, but the CIA does have an interest in maintaining power and stability for the ruling class, something Israel has threatened both directly by attempting to draw America into war with Iran and by undermining negotiations. It’s for this reason the consensus of dialogue in the West is incorrect; they, the public, seem to believe that the Western nations are in complete servitude to Jewish interests, but they’re missing a key component in realpolitik. A bitter component that young right-wing ideologues will one day have to swallow: leaders of nations, especially influential ones, cannot be nationalist. In the realm of great power politics, nations will pursue their own interests, but this does not mean these players are exempt from playing the game of international relations. Ian Smith, the last president of Rhodesia, learned this the hard way after the whole world turned against his country; he said:

“Look what detente has meant for the people in South Vietnam, where did that exercise go wrong? They were gullible enough to put their trust in the promises of those with whom they were negotiating, and what is their redress now? What can the greatest military power on this Earth do to recover the situation which has developed because they dropped their guard? Without covering themselves against the possibility, indeed probability in this world of double standards, that the other side would not honor their part of the agreement. What use is it in this present world of complaining that the other party did not abide by the rules of the game? You will be told that if you were gullible enough to let the other party take you for a ride, that’s your hard luck. Let us be honest with ourselves, in this world we live in today, there are no rules to the game, as we know from recent history from other parts of the world, even your own best friends walk out on you.”

South Africa suffered a similar fate to Rhodesia even though the whites in the country were extremely well organized in parties like the AWB with Terre’Blanche. The apartheid government was sanctioned by the international community, and Nelson Mandela became president. The Americans and the British were conspiring to go to war against Nazi Germany years before the invasion of Poland; the nationalism of Britain had created independence movements throughout their colonies, such as Gandhi in India and the Mau Mau in Kenya. When Trump was first reelected in 2024, European leaders began to distance themselves because of the nationalism of the new American president. In Germany, the newly elected Chancellor, Friedrich Merz, had pledged to gain independence from America,  saying:

“The Trump administration looks to overturn about 80 years of policy and raises the prospect of abandoning security guarantees for Europe. My absolute priority will be to strengthen Europe as quickly as possible so that, step by step, we can really achieve independence from the USA.”

Now Trump has reversed his stance and continued to send weapons to Ukraine; he did this because his nationalist rhetoric threatened the very foundation of the American Empire in Europe. For playing the game, Trump was granted an extremely lucrative and one-sided trade deal from the EU’s Ursula von der Leyen. Trump’s deportations, however, despite being mostly theatrical because of his inability to fight the judicial system effectively, have garnered criticism from leaders like Pope Leo. In the modern Western mind, any form of nationalism is repulsive; the Pope is repulsed by Trump’s deportations because of his rhetoric; punishment is supposed to be private, not posted as YouTube edits. Netanyahu may be many things, but unlike the populist leaders in the West, he is actively engaging in nationalist policy on behalf of the Jews. This means exterminating their enemies, and this has brought chaos to the world stage. Netanyahu’s position is best summarized by what Adolf Hitler said on the eve of war to a select group of German officers:

“The first half century of my life is now over. Much has been accomplished, much still has to be done to safeguard the future of our Reich. The next years will be crucial, until 1942 or 1943, we shall still have the lead in the arms race with the western power. But with each passing year this lead narrows, so if anything is to be won, it must be fought for now.”

This is the position of Netanyahu and Israel; they do not want America’s balance of power, October 7th was the chance to safeguard the future of their state. The two years since October 7th were crucial for the Israelis;  if they wanted to destroy the Palestinians, the Iranian proxies, and the regime in Iran, it must be done now. This makes Netanyahu not only an enemy to the Muslims but to America and to the globalist community, and so Tony Blair was sent to discipline him and the nationalist coalition to bring them back in line with the international globalist community. The first stage to this was the planned recognition of Palestine as a state by France’s Macron and England’s Starmer; both were met with backlash from both the Israelis and even pro-Palestian movements in their country for some reason. In the eyes of the globalists, Israel isn’t the problem, abusing Palestinians is not the problem, it’s the lie, the way in which Netanyahu and his government used their political tools and turned themselves into a pariah state for the sake of idealistic nationalism. This peace agreement is another form of discipline for Netanyahu; this ceasefire, however, will fail without the leadership and support of Tony Blair. While considered Donald Trump’s plan, only Blair has the technical and political know-how to create a twenty-point peace plan that the globalists and Hamas can agree upon. In recent days, Israel has tested the waters of the peace plan, continually coming up with reasons to attack Gaza. No doubt that Netanyau, who is already on trial in Israel for bribery and corruption, realizes their plan. Once they get rid of Netanyahu, not by arrest and trial for war crimes because that would condemn the West and Israel in general, Israel can be liberalized further in the hopes of grinding down Judaism among the population and therefore the Jewish nationalism in the country.

At the same time, the Palestinians will be forced to obey; this is the essence of the peace plan. The “deradicalized terror free zone” will see the defanging of Palestinian resistance, the withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza, and the takeover by a peace board led by Tony Blair, which will ensure the cooperation of Netanyahu and the rehabilitation of Israeli politics. Hamas was right to accept this deal; it had saved them from certain extermination, but they too will face the discipline and punishment of the West. It’s no conspiracy that during Tony Blair’s tenure as prime minister he had pushed for digital IDs; now Keir Starmer, a very close associate, is introducing digital IDs in England. It’s not a matter of debate; it will be argued as it is applied, and what better people to test this on than the rebellious and primitive Palestinians? The failure of the Palestinians also means that this will protect host countries from the subversion of the Palestinian diaspora; they will be too focused on their homeland to worry about the situation of minorities in Western nations.

Finally, there is the rabble in the West, the youthful left and right-wing youth that has grown exponentially in the past half-year. The system of Power in the West will ignore their complaints and suggestions, and truthfully, they would be right to do so. Both factions of the plebiscite have so far been incapable of making it past YouTube videos with slop video titles; they’re incapable of creating and solidifying effective leadership, with their main figureheads eventually being tarnished through a scandal or being accused of being a federal agent. The leftists and their politicians lack the revolutionary will and expertise to even understand the system they live in; their politicians, like Zohan Mamdani, will be deadlocked and contained by the established bureaucracy. Meanwhile, the right is obsessed with the idea of marriage, family, and nationalism; all of these are beliefs that play into the hands of the system, ensuring the continuation of the country and the containing of political movements through parenthood and domestication. This is simply the way the world works; the sovereign leaders in nations decide who is a friend and who is an enemy, and they will deal with it in their own way. Ideological enemies can work together closely in common goals; the Saudis and Americans are extremely close despite being polar opposites. The liberalism of America and the extreme Wahhabism of the Saudis have been put aside for the sake of money and power. If elites do not play the game, they will face the consequences; if they refuse to confront issues or worse, follow the will of the general public, they will face the same embarrassment that Gorbachev had on the May Day parade. The rising current of nationalists in America do not yet understand this. The people do not understand that if America deports millions back to the Middle East without a plan, or openly calls Islam a false religion, or collapses the dollar system through socialist or libertarian means, the Saudis will be quick to turn to the up-and- coming Chinese. The American people may be ready to give up the empire, but the ruling class is not.

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Remember the old cliché of a pessimist seeing a glass half empty rather than half full? I’m a pessimist by nature, always imagining the downside of something, except when it comes to women. (In their case the downside reveals itself after a while, but the start is always brilliant.) I suppose my pessimism derives from childhood, when dreams never became reality due to a strict nanny and even stricter parents. Or so a shrink might say, although I’ve never been to one, and many of those who have been and whom I have met rarely made any sense.

This preamble on pessimism has to do with the Middle East—Gaza, to be precise. Although it deeply saddens me to write it, it seems to me that I have more chance to run off with Lily James than for peace to hold over that tortured piece of real estate. In fact, it is far more realistic for a lasting peace in Ukraine than a permanent end to the hostilities in Gaza. There are two main obstacles to peace: Hamas and Netanyahu. It is as simple as that.

“Hamas is as likely to voluntarily disarm as Bibi is to become Catholic.”

Conducting summary executions the day after resuming control of Gaza proves that Hamas has learned nothing from this unspeakable tragedy. Sixty-eight thousand dead from Israeli arms, half of them innocent women and children, and all Hamas can think of is to add on to this morbid number. Persuading Hamas to disarm is a key to The Donald’s twenty-point peace plan, but Hamas is as likely to voluntarily disarm as Bibi is to become Catholic.

And let us not forget Netanyahu and his fellow gangsters like Smotrich and Katz. They are the very ones who helped finance Hamas before Oct. 23 in order to keep the Palestinian Authority weak and the West Bank divided. Hamas saved Netanyahu two years ago, and he’s not about to get rid of them, because they come in handy where domestic Israeli politics are concerned.

The horror deal between two very evil parties began in 1996. Following the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin by an Israeli extremist, Hamas and Netanyahu worked hand in hand in defeating the Oslo agreements, and then Bibi facilitated Qatar’s hundreds of millions of dollars in paper bills to Hamas, a fact that weakened the Palestinian Authority to no end. Netanyahu and Hamas still need each other, and I am afraid they will do their utmost to subvert any peace agreement. Gaza, needless to say, cannot be reconstructed overnight. There were 654 Israeli strikes on Gaza’s medical facilities alone. The area has been ground into rubble, making peace over such devastation almost impossible. Netanyahu knew what he was doing by waging total war. He was making peace untenable. Netanyahu’s plan now is to keep the Palestinian Authority from leading a united front with Gaza.

Israel’s creeping takeover of the West Bank has been decades in the making. Seven hundred and forty thousand so-called settlers are now entrenched on Palestinian lands. Last time I was there, during the Yom Kippur War, there were 10,000. Israel has been very smart in its land grab. It has made a two-state solution impossible by an impracticable contiguous Palestinian territory. Land grab aside, a Palestinian state cannot be created unilaterally without the agreement of Israel, and as long as Netanyahu rules, there will be no state of Palestine.

Gaza, of course, is the great tragedy, with displaced families having been bombed in their tents, their shoeless orphan children lying dead next to their parents’ graves. And it gets worse, as far as the prospects of peace are concerned. Close to 11,000 Palestinians are still locked up in Israeli prisons, a third of them without charges or a trial. At least 77 detainees have died in custody over the past two years. Since 1967, when Israel took over the West Bank through force of arms, more than one million Palestinians have been arrested. International condemnation that brought about change in South Africa has not been heard where Palestine is concerned. What I’d like to know is where the international outrage, let alone the diplomatic censure, has been. Is there one rule for rogue countries and another one for Israel?

Israel’s extremist security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, has been accused of having deprived prisoners of food and inflicting physical torture. I am not in a position to know whether these charges are true or not, but I do know that they have not been investigated by human rights groups. The other thing I know is that the Trump people are busy sucking up to the Israelis and totally ignoring the plight of the Palestinians. The latter, I need to remind the world, are also people.

This article was originally published on Taki’s Magazine.

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Japan’s place in the US’ Chinese Containment Coalition just rose as a result of the unexpected Sino-Indo rapprochement, prior to which the US wanted India to play a complementary role, so Japan is now at the forefront of this effort.

Putin’s senior aide Nikolai Patrushev gave an interview to Arguments and Facts about Japan on the 80th anniversary of its unilateral surrender in World War II in early September that’s important to raise wider awareness of after the appointment of its new ultra-nationalist prime minister. He began by reminding everyone that “Tokyo zealously cultivated an open racism that surpassed German Nazism in its absurdity and inhumanity. And the sovereignty of other countries was considered an empty phrase there.”

Patrushev then touched upon Imperial Japan’s failed geopolitical plot to turn the Sea of Japan into an inland sea and even seize Kamchatka so as “to gain undivided possession of the Sea of Okhotsk” too. He assessed that Japan’s current campaign for “’justice’ on the issue of the so-called ‘northern territories’” is just a disguise for a similar plot to obtain control over new marine (seafood and mineral) resources. Patrushev accordingly warned that it’s planning to make new claims to Russian maritime territory.

The emerging trend of misportraying Imperial Japan as the “victim” of Soviet aggression in 1945, despite the Allies having agreed in advance that the USSR would open up the Manchurian Front three months after the Nazis’ defeat, is meant to lend false legitimacy to these claims. This threat shouldn’t be downplayed, Patrushev warned, since Japan’s “Self-Defense Forces” de facto function as national armed forces, are NATO-backed, and are “systematically building a powerful and ultra-modern submarine fleet”.

In his words, “Japan is one of the most powerful naval powers in the world today. Its fleet is capable of solving almost any task even in remote areas of the World Ocean. The Japanese Navy closely cooperates with the NATO fleet, and at any moment they can be integrated into Western coalition formats.” Even more concerning are Japan’s nuclear breakthrough capabilities: “it is capable of creating its own nuclear arsenal and means of delivery in a few years” if the decision is made, according to Patrushev.

Nevertheless, these threats shouldn’t be exaggerated either since Russia is “building up defensive potential in the Far East and strengthening our naval power in the Pacific Ocean”, thus meaning that it’s more than capable of defending itself from Japan. Rather, “The threat lies not so much in the destroyers and missiles, but in the fact that the national consciousness of the Japanese is shifting from pacifism to rabid revanchism”, which he attributed to a long-running “aggressive propaganda” campaign.

The purpose is to precondition the population to accept the risks associated with Japan more actively advancing US interests in the region via the “Squad” (those two, Australia, and the Philippines), which is envisaged as the core of AUKUS+, the US’ desired NATO-like regional analogue. Japan’s place in the US’ Chinese Containment Coalition just rose as a result of the unexpected Sino-Indo rapprochement, prior to which the US wanted India to play a complementary role, so Japan is now at the forefront of this effort.

The trend is that New Cold War’s focus is shifting from US-led NATO’s containment of Russia in Europe to US-led AUKUS+’s containment of China in Asia, all while the TRIPP Corridor injects Western influence into the Eurasian Heartland to stir trouble for both. India’s Pakistani rival is also poised to play a supportive role on the Central Asian front if tensions with the Taliban abate. Altogether, Poland, Japan, Turkiye, and possibly Pakistan are now the US’ top containment allies, which isn’t lost on Russia, India, and China.

This article was originally published on Andrew Korybko’s Newsletter.

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A Truth Social tweet by U.S. President Donald Trump on nuclear weapons has led to some confusion and, as I assume, misinterpretations.

Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump – Oct 30, 2025, 1:04 utc

The United States has more Nuclear Weapons than any other country. This was accomplished, including a complete update and renovation of existing weapons, during my First Term in office. Because of the tremendous destructive power, I HATED to do it, but had no choice! Russia is second, and China is a distant third, but will be even within 5 years. Because of other countries testing programs, I have instructed the Department of War to start testing our Nuclear Weapons on an equal basis. That process will begin immediately. Thank you for your attention to this matter! PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP

The Washington Post interprets it as a test of nuclear warheads:

Trump directs Pentagon to test nuclear weapons for first time since 1992 (archived) – Washington Post
The president said he wanted testing to occur “on an equal basis” with Russia and China. The Kremlin condemned the move, and there was no indication of when tests might take place.

President Donald Trump on Thursday morning said he directed the Pentagon to begin testing nuclear weapons “on an equal basis” with Russia and China, an apparent attempt to flex the United States’ military might ahead of a high-stakes trade meeting here with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping.

Trump’s announcement on Truth Social signaled a reversal of decades of United States nuclear policy that could have far-reaching consequences for relations with U.S. adversaries, though his post included very few details about what the tests would entail. The last nuclear weapon test in the United States was held in 1992, before President George H.W. Bush implemented a moratorium on such exercises at the conclusion of the Cold War.

Trump wrote that the process would begin immediately and was in response to other countries’ testing programs.

The president posted about resuming nuclear weapons testing as his helicopter, Marine One, was in the air on his way to meet Xi at Gimhae Air Base.

The Trump tweet is wrong in that it asserts that the U.S. has more nuclear weapons than any other country. All public sources say that Russia with about 4300 nuclear warheads has slightly more than the United States with about 3,600. China has about 5-600 nuclear warheads and is building up its nuclear weapon arsenal to about 1,000 warheads by 2035.

However Trumps next sentence is not about testing nuclear warheads. It is about testing of carrier systems that can deploy nuclear warheads.

Trump says: “Because of other countries testing programs, …”

It is important to distinguish between testing a carrier designed to deliver a nuclear war head and testing the nuclear war head itself. A nuclear carrier can be a bomber, a land based (intercontinental) missile or a submarine based missile or torpedo.

Russia has recently announced a successful test of the Burevestnik cruise missile. This is a nuclear carrier driven by a nuclear-powered jet engine:

The Russian president talked about the new unlimited-range nuclear-powered Burevestnik cruise missile. The weapon was successfully tested last week, when the projectile reportedly traveled more than 14,000 km.

Putin revealed details about the missile’s nuclear-powered turbojet engine, stating that its power unit “is comparable in output with the reactor of a nuclear-propelled submarine, but it’s 1,000 times smaller.”

“The key thing is that while a conventional nuclear reactor starts up in hours, days, or even weeks, this nuclear reactor starts up in minutes or seconds. That’s a giant achievement,” the president said.

Burevestnik is, like the U.S. Tomahawk, a turbo fan driven cruise missile designed to fly at low altitude at a speed of less than Mach 1. While the Tomahawk uses a liquid propellant as a source of heat to drive its engine the Burevestnik uses a miniaturized nuclear reactor of an unknown kind. This gives it unmatched endurance. Both missile can carry conventional or nuclear war heads.

Russia has also tested its long announced Poseidon torpedo:

Russia successfully tested a nuclear-powered underwater Poseidon drone on Tuesday, Putin revealed. The development of the massive torpedo-shaped nuclear-capable drone was first announced in 2018, but had been shrouded in mystery ever since.

“For the first time, we succeeded not only in launching it from a carrier submarine using a booster engine but also in starting its nuclear power unit, which propelled the drone for a certain amount of time,” Putin stated.

The device is unrivaled by any other weapon “anywhere in the world when it comes to speed and depth,” the president stressed, adding that an analogous weapon is unlikely to be fielded by any other nation soon. The power of Poseidon greatly surpasses the characteristics of Russia’s upcoming Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), Putin stated, apparently referring to the yield of its nuclear payload.

The Poseidon torpedo is likely using a nuclear reactor which is in principle similar to the one on the Burevestnik cruise missile. Its most important advantage is again its high endurance. Poseidon is designed to carry a large nuclear warhead. Should that explode near to some harbor it would likely cause a large tsunami.

Trump also said: “I have instructed the Department of War to start testing our Nuclear Weapons on an equal basis. …”

All nuclear warheads the U.S. has are under the control of the Department of Energy. It is the sole agency that can do test explosions of nuclear warheads. The nuclear delivery vehicles which are used to deploy the war heads are under the control of the Department of Defense (or ‘Department of War’ as Trump calls it).

Trump said “Because of other countries testing programs” and “start testing … on an equal basis” both in reference of nuclear delivery vehicle tests of other countries.

Trump thereby likely meant to order the DoD to test its nuclear delivery vehicles, just like Russia has recently done. He did not order the DoE to test nuclear war heads.

The testing of nuclear delivery vehicles, like intercontinental missiles, is a routine that has been done every years since those exist.

It is nothing to panic about.

Trumps language is however as usual imprecise. May be he really has ordered to test a nuclear war head? Russia is not sure about this:

Russia will respond “accordingly” if the US violates a moratorium on testing nuclear weapons, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said.
…
Responding to Trump’s claims of other countries carrying out nuclear tests, Peskov said “we are so far not aware of this.”

“If it is about Burevestnik, then it is not a nuclear test,” he insisted. “All nations are developing their defense systems, but this is not a nuclear test.”
…
Washington test-fired an unarmed, nuclear-capable Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile in February and launched four Trident II missiles from a submarine in September.

Russia last tested a nuclear weapon during the Soviet period in 1990. The US halted its testing in 1992 under a Congress-mandated moratorium.

To test a nuclear war head Trump would have to ask Congress to lift the moratorium on testing. He would also have to order the Department of Energy to prepare a test site. That process alone is estimated to take three years.

There is thus absolutely no reason for headline panics.

This article was originally published on Moon of Alabama.

The post A Nuclear Delivery Vehicle Is Not a Nuclear War Head appeared first on LewRockwell.

It was 1981, and a series of brightly colored TV-show posters hung on the chalkboard—Howdy Doody, Superman, a ventriloquist dummy, and a few others. The third-grade teacher polled the class on the previous night’s homework assignment to find out from their parents which of the given options had been their favorite to watch as a child.

I was sitting in that class, and when she got to me, I was unable to answer. “My parents grew up in Cuba so, none of these.”

It fell silent and every eye in the room focused on me. One of the mean kids called out, “She’s Cuuuuuuban,” in the same tone you’d say someone had terrible body odor.

In South Florida in the wake of the Mariel Boatlift, there was strong anti-Cuban sentiment. My teacher, in all charity and goodwill, admonished that student and explained that immigrants had come to the United States seeking a better life.

That afternoon, when I relayed this story to my mother, she became indignant. Her family had not come seeking a better life, she said. Then she nailed it: “We came seeking freedom.”

That distinction always stuck with me, well before I knew why.

In the late 1950s, my teenage parents left Cuba with their families before Castro locked the island down. Years later, they met in college in Florida, married, and had me. So immigration (now called “migration,” as though people are animals—a topic for another day) is a hot topic for me. But what right do I have to think a nation can justly limit who enters when I would not be here were it not for U.S. immigration policy?

Well, what is the purpose of immigration policy? It is now most often framed in terms of the U.S.’s obligation to provide direct assistance to prospective immigrants (offer them a “better life”?) rather than about opening up to them the blessings of liberty: the freedom to build a life and enjoy the fruits of one’s labor.

Some believe the blessings of liberty—a phrase which comes from the Preamble to our Constitution—are represented by the Statue of Liberty, which is often invoked as a national symbol that means the United States welcomes all immigrants. Bishop Robert Barron, when discussing a specifically American approach to immigration last year, invoked the Statue of Liberty and, in particular, the “huddled masses” mentioned in the poem at its base—but he did not complete the line in which that famous phrase appears.

“The New Colossus,” written in 1883 by Emma Lazarus and enshrined at the base of Lady Liberty, describes the poor, huddled masses as yearning not for assistance, or even for a “better life,” but yearning to breathe free.

Who was Emma Lazarus? Few know that this New York–born poet came from a wealthy, well-educated, Sephardic Jewish family whose American roots dated to colonial times—and even included a U.S. Supreme Court Justice. Beyond her writing, she volunteered as an English teacher to Jewish immigrants and helped found the Hebrew Technical Institute to provide them with job training.

Lazarus gives Lady Liberty the name “Mother of Exiles” and describes her taking in the “homeless,” that term meaning not what we would today call the “unhoused” but, instead, men without a country.

Now, surely there is room for both, but should exiles “yearning to breathe free” be evaluated differently as possible new American citizens from those seeking “a better life”? Or, are we wrong to even ask this question?

Pope Leo XIV wrote in Dilexi Te that the Church knows that “in every rejected migrant, it is Christ himself who knocks at the door of the community.”

I suppose in response I want to ask, in all charity, really? Or is this hyperbole for effect? Every single one? If this is the case, why are any limits on immigration ever permitted by Catholic teaching? Why have nations at all then?

Individuals are not statistics, but statistics are the aggregate of individual actions. When a prospective immigrant is a criminal, and/or when statistics show dramatic increases in crime by the nationality he is a member of, should that factor in at all? What about when he has evidenced no aspiration, affinity, or even openness to the values that define the host nation, yet he wants to enter and remain (unlike the Holy Family who, it is so often pointed out to us, sojourned in Egypt during a period of danger but returned to their homeland when the danger passed)? Does a civil government have any responsibility whatsoever to its citizens to preserve their way of life?

When the Church in any Christian culture sets forth as part of her salvific mission the worthy endeavor of accompanying immigrants, to what extent must that accompaniment include evangelization, even the bare minimum of proclaiming that the Gospel is true, that Christ died for us, and that we need Him to go to Heaven?

“Evangelize” was not listed among those action words listed by Pope Francis, quoted by Leo in Dilexi Te, that “our response to the challenges posed by contemporary migration can be summed up in four verbs: welcome, protect, promote, and integrate.”

And finally, I suppose it goes without saying, or should, that Christ wants us to be Christian. If He is knocking at the door of a community, He is probably going to tell us to repent and believe in the Gospel. Is it wrong for the Church, in a historically Christian country, to seek to preserve that nation’s Christian character by urging the civil government to limit the number of non-Christians it admits, especially if she is not making it an express priority to evangelize them?

I would say it is not wrong.

For freedom Christ has set us free. Properly understood, freedom orients us to Heaven. Even in the narrower political sense of the word, self-government and individual liberty orient us—even force us—to make good use of our talents in service to others, for the sake of ourselves and our families.

Give us your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, indeed!

This article was originally published on Crisis Magazine.

The post Yearning To Breathe Free appeared first on LewRockwell.

A soul! a soul! a soul-cake!
Please good Missus, a soul-cake!
An apple, a pear, a plum or a cherry,
Any good thing to make us all merry,
One for Peter, two for Paul,
Three for the One (Him) who made us all.
—Traditional Souling Song

With the approach of Halloween, another “Holiday” battle begins.  Unlike the annual fracas every December which pits believers in Christ’s birth and cultural traditionalists on the one side against those who believe that the celebration of Jesus’ birth should be submerged in a generic “Holiday Season,” this one sends Christians against Christians.  On the one side are those who believe that anything to do with the dark or spooky – to include Halloween itself – must be linked directly to the Satanic.  On the other are those who believe that there is nothing wrong with a bit of a fright – and more importantly the carving of pumpkins, the wearing of costumes, and the collection of candy in one of the few remaining communal observances left in modern North America.  The cause of the latter is not helped by the ever-increasing appropriation of Halloween by Wiccans and outright Satanists, as well as the fact that it has outdone Easter as the number two holiday in retail terms.  Against this onslaught, most Christian defenders of Halloween have only wholesome memories or parties and trick-or-treating to offer in defence of their position.

Of course, the entire societal scene has grown much darker – indeed, much more Satanic since this writer was a child in the 1960s.  Infanticide is embraced by both political parties, and – if their behaviour during COVID is to be believed – most of the Catholic Church hierarchy believe their Sacramental ministrations to be optional extras, ultimately unnecessary for Salvation.  Their attitudes are echoed by the laity in the universalism that Pope Benedict XVI decried in 2016.  In such an atmosphere, one might be forgiven for thinking that almost anything or anyone, from presidents to prelates, may well be agents of the prince of darkness – as indeed we ourselves are so often whenever we sin.

But we do need to get a grip, and remember the reality underlying all else: the Church’s teachings are true, and her rites efficacious, regardless of follies in Church and State.  We need to remember that a great deal of what we take as information regarding the preternatural comes from Protestant sources, who often regard Catholicism (and Orthodoxy) as little better than paganism. The meaning of symbols can change over time, and if we are not aware, we can make egregious mistakes.  Many regard the pentagram as a symbol of witchcraft and evil.  Not knowing their history, they do not realise that the Satanists invert it, as they do the Crucifix, to blaspheme it.  In this they are not trying to offend the Wiccans and Neopagans, who use it in an upright manner, but its older Christian meaning.  As readers of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight will remember, to our Catholic fathers it symbolised both the Five Wounds of Christ and the Five Joys of Our Lady (two more were added later to this number).  Tourists visiting California’s Missions may be horrified by seeing the Eye in the Triangle on various of St. Junipero Serra’s chasubles.  Lest they assume that the Golden State was a Masonic plot from the beginning, it were well for them to remember that the offending image was a perfectly decent symbol of the Trinity in Medieval times.  Spain in the 18th century had not yet gotten the news that it was to be reserved to the use of an Order whose basic belief – Conduct over Creed – would one day completely obscure St. Junipero’s message of Salvation through Christ and His Church.  Indeed, in this area, most of us are probably as Masonic as those who have undergone their strange rites of initiation.

This kind of straining after gnats subsequent to a full dinner of whole camel is very common to-day, and can give us quite the feeling of virtue.  Into this situation falls poor hapless Halloween and its central – if latter-day – rite of Trick or Treat.  So we must use our imaginations, and return to a time when Europe was Catholic and primarily agrarian.  Even in the towns with their merchants and artisans, markets and fairs, and their cities (who added cathedrals to the other four items of urban life in that time), as in the countryside with its forests, fields, and manors, there was no secular popular entertainment; no movies, radio, television, nor computers.  Life was very much governed by the dogmas and practises of the Church – and of the latter, not least the Liturgical Calendar.

From the rites of the Church re-emerged the theatre, in the form of miracle, morality, mystery, and mummers’ plays, which brought the teachings of the Church to life in full view of the faithful.  These in turn filtered down to everyday life.  Depending on specific locales, eves of major feasts – Candlemas, Ss. Philip and James, the Nativity of St. John the Baptist, St. Peter in Chains, All Saints, and the Circumcision in particular, though there were others – lent themselves to bonfires, ghost stories, and the like.  Folklore spoke of various sorts of enchantment, of fairies, ghosts, and witches – of preternatural evil repelled by supernatural means – the Church’s Sacramentals in particular.  There were often also performers – usually local youths or children – going from house to house, singing seasonal songs or performing simple plays that illustrated the nature of the season.

The triduum of All Hallows tide – the Eve of All Saints, the feast itself, and the following day’s observance of All Souls – lent itself to all sorts of these observances, given that all of us have many deceased loved ones – family and friends.  As with other such vigils, folklore played a big role; in many places, the dead were believed to return for meals with their families – ideas that survive in Catholic places from Brittany to Mexico.

There was in a great number of places – and especially in the British Isles – “Guising” or “Souling.”  Dressed in costumes, believed in some places (though far from everywhere) to hide one’s identity from any of the hostile unseen forces, people went from house to house, soliciting goodies in return for prayers for the living and dead of the house visited.  In places where this was called “Souling,” “Soul Cakes” were the expected reward, along with some variety of the song quoted at the beginning of this article.

After the Protestant revolt, a lot of these customs were continued, although severed from their original intent due to the new official theology, which frowned on prayers for the dead (a liability which would be overwhelmed by the tide of aspirations after the bloodbath of World War I, but that is another story).  A great many of these then crossed the Atlantic during the colonial settlement of the Atlantic States, and with subsequent immigration.  Among them was Halloween.

Of course, it was somewhat different from what it had been.  Although its Irish proponents still prayed for the dead, most of its Scots importers did not.  Halloween parties were spooky, and often included light-hearted fortune-telling, generally aimed at figuring out one’s future spouse.  The bonfires survived; and the tradition of playing pranks and tricks grew up.  As the 19th century went on the tricks escalated into widespread vandalism.  (This era is depicted in the Halloween scenes of the classic film, Meet Me in St. Louis.)  “Trick or Treat,” developed as a kind of extortion – and it was no empty threat.

After World War I, cities across the United States made a determined effort to end the mayhem.  From these efforts emerged the sanitised trick-or-treating with which we are familiar, as parents were encouraged to get younger children into the act and accompany them while doing so.  Advertising swiftly arose to encourage the trend – not least by makers of both candy and holiday decorations.

Read the Whole Article

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