Lew Rockwell Institute

The government shutdown “proved an argument that conservatives have been making for 45 years: The U.S. Department of Education is mostly a pass-through for funds that are best managed by the states.” The most significant thing about this statement in a November 16 USA Today editorial is not its substance. As the editorial’s author points out, the argument presented is not new.

The most significant thing about the statement is that its author is Education Secretary Linda McMahon. Unlike many in DC, Secretary McMahon backs up her words with action. She is dismantling the Department of Education, fulfilling one of President Trump’s campaign promises.

Since President Trump and Secretary McMahon cannot close the department absent authorizing legislation — legislation that appears unlikely to pass in the current Congress, Secretary McMahon is gutting the department by transferring responsibility for most of its functions to other parts of the government. Secretary McMahon has moved to the Labor Department the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, which administers 27 K-12 grant programs, and the office of Postsecondary Education, which administers 14 programs aimed at helping college students, as well as several other programs. The Interior Department will manage the Indian education program, while the State Department will manage the federal foreign language education program. The Department of Education will, for the time being, ensure schools are complying with federal civil rights laws.

Spreading education programs among several different departments may reduce spending. For example, it could spur Congress to stop wasting millions of dollars a year on public relations for the Education Department. However, it does not necessarily reduce federal involvement in education. Therefore, those of us committed to restoring control over education to local communities must continue to advocate for eliminating all federal education programs. The billions spent by the federal government on “improving” education have had the opposite effect. According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, 72 percent of American eighth graders are below proficient in math and 70 percent are below proficient in reading.

America’s education system cannot be fixed by another No Child Left Behind style reform imposed on local schools by federal politicians and bureaucrats. Instead, the only way to “fix” American education is to restore control to local communities, school boards, and — most of all — parents.

This is why all who care about quality education should celebrate the continued growth of homeschooling. According to Angela R. Watson of the Institute for Education Policy at Johns Hopkins University, homeschooling in the 2024-25 school year “continued to grow across the United States, increasing at an average rate of 5.4 percent.”

Parents looking for a homeschooling curriculum incorporating the ideas of liberty should consider my online curriculum. My curriculum provides students with a solid education in history, literature, mathematics, and the sciences. It also gives students the opportunity to create their own websites and internet-based businesses. This provides students with “real world” entrepreneurial experience that will be useful no matter what career paths they choose.

The curriculum is designed to be self-taught, with students helping, and learning from, each other via online forums. Starting in the fourth grade, students are required to write at least one essay a week. Students also take a course in public speaking.

The curriculum emphasizes the history, philosophy, and economics of liberty, but it never substitutes indoctrination for education. The goal is to produce students with superior critical thinking skills. If you think my curriculum may meet the needs of your child, please visit www.RonPaulCurriculum.com for more information.

The post Progress in the Fight for Educational Freedom appeared first on LewRockwell.

At least 10 children have died because of the COVID shots, according to a recently publicized email from Trump Food and Drug Administration (FDA) officials.

“At least 10 children have died after and because of receiving COVID-19 vaccination,” FDA Chief Medical Officer Vinay Prasad wrote on Friday in an email to staff, obtained by The Daily Caller.

“This is a profound revelation. For the first time, the US FDA will acknowledge that COVID-19 vaccines have killed American children,” Prasad said in the memo.

The finding corroborates that of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which recently linked at least 25 pediatric deaths to the COVID shot, via information from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS). Both counts likely significantly underestimate the real number of pediatric deaths from the shots, considering that studies have found vaccine injuries have been seriously underreported to VAERS.

In his Friday memo, Prasad ripped the Biden administration for pressuring the injection of these experimental mRNA shots into children.

“Healthy young children who faced tremendously low risk of death were coerced, at the behest of the Biden administration, via school and work mandates, to receive a vaccine that could result in death,” wrote Prasad.

“In many cases, such mandates were harmful. It is difficult to read cases where kids aged 7 to 16 may be dead as a result of covid vaccines.”

The disturbing admission by the Trump administration’s health agency highlights the silence of the Biden administration about these deaths and raises further questions about its integrity or lack thereof.

“Why did it take until 2025 to perform this analysis, and take necessary further actions? Deaths were reported between 2021 and 2024, and ignored for years,” wrote Prasad. He acknowledged that the vaccines potentially killed more children on balance, considering that they had virtually no risk of dying from COVID.

“The truth is we do not know if we saved lives on balance,” he wrote. “It is horrifying to consider that the US vaccine regulation, including our actions, may have harmed more children than we saved. This requires humility and introspection.”

The Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER) will reportedly strengthen its safety protocols for vaccines, including by requiring more clinical trials as opposed to relying on antibody laboratory studies, modifying the annual flu vaccine release, and examining the effect of administering multiple vaccines in one round.

This year, the CDC removed COVID shots from its recommended “vaccines” for healthy children. A CDC panel had voted in 2022 to add the COVID shots to the childhood immunization schedule despite their experimental nature and the fact that they were produced in a fraction of the time ordinarily required to bring a vaccine to market.

The push for COVID shots for children was spearheaded at least in part by CBER Director Peter Marks, who pushed for full approval of the COVID shots even for the young and healthy and laid the foundation for COVID shot mandates.

A large, growing body of evidence shows that the mRNA shots were dangerous to human health in a wide variety of ways and caused deaths at a rate far exceeding usual safety standards for vaccines. As Dr. Mary Talley Bowden, an ear, nose and throat specialist in Houston, Texas, explained to Tucker Carlson in April:

Normally, the FDA will put a black box warning on a medication if there have been five deaths. They will pull it off the market if there have been 50. Well, according to VAERS, (the) Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System – and it’s vastly under-reported, which I have seen firsthand – there have been 38,000 deaths from these COVID shots.

That number has since increased, according to VAERS, which now reports 38,773 deaths, 221,257 hospitalizations, 22,362 heart attacks, and 29,012 cases of myocarditis and pericarditis due to the COVID shot as of August 29, among other ailments.

This article was originally published on Lifesite News.

The post Trump FDA Says COVID Shots ‘Killed’ at Least 10 Children, Promises New Vaccine Safeguards appeared first on LewRockwell.

My post on Trump’s war on Venezuela two days ago mentioned a Washington Post report (archived) about a war crime directly ordered by U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth:

The longer the U.S. surveillance aircraft followed the boat, the more confident intelligence analysts watching from command centers became that the 11 people on board were ferrying drugs.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave a spoken directive, according to two people with direct knowledge of the operation. “The order was to kill everybody,” one of them said.

A missile screamed off the Trinidad coast, striking the vessel and igniting a blaze from bow to stern. For minutes, commanders watched the boat burning on a live drone feed. As the smoke cleared, they got a jolt: Two survivors were clinging to the smoldering wreck.

The Special Operations commander overseeing the Sept. 2 attack — the opening salvo in the Trump administration’s war on suspected drug traffickers in the Western Hemisphere — ordered a second strike to comply with Hegseth’s instructions, two people familiar with the matter said. The two men were blown apart in the water.

The Intercept had previously reported (archived) the second strike the U.S. military had launched against survivors:

People on board the boat off the coast of Venezuela that the U.S. military destroyed last Tuesday were said to have survived an initial strike, according to two American officials familiar with the matter. They were then killed shortly after in a follow-up attack.
…
Last week, a high-ranking Pentagon official who spoke to the Intercept on the condition of anonymity said that the strike in the Caribbean was a criminal attack on civilians and said that the Trump administration paved the way for it by firing the top legal authorities of the Army and the Air Force earlier this year.

“The U.S. is now directly targeting civilians. Drug traffickers may be criminals but they aren’t combatants,” the War Department official said. “When Trump fired the military’s top lawyers the rest saw the writing on the wall, and instead of being a critical firebreak they are now a rubber stamp complicit in this crime.”

The high-ranking Pentagon official is correct in that the strikes against boats in international waters are criminal attacks on civilians.

But the killing of survivors of such strikes is more than that. It is undoubtedly a war crime.

Hegseth’s order to kill survivors was clearly illegal. It was the duty of the soldiers in the line of command to reject the order. That they have not done so but followed the order is in itself a war crime.

How do we know this?

Because the Department of Defense’s LAW OF WAR MANUAL (LOWM) (pdf) says so:

18.3 DUTIES OF INDIVIDUAL MEMBERS OF THE ARMED FORCES

Each member of the armed services has a duty to: (1) comply with the law of war in good faith; and (2) refuse to comply with clearly illegal orders to commit violations of the law of war.

Further down the Manual uses the exact case in question,  an order to kill survivors at sea, as an example of an illegal order:

18.3.2 Refuse to Comply With Clearly Illegal Orders to Commit Law of War Violations.
Members of the armed forces must refuse to comply with clearly illegal orders to commit law of war violations. In addition, orders should not be construed to authorize implicitly violations of law of war.

18.3.2.1 Clearly Illegal Orders to Commit Law of War Violations.
The requirement to refuse to comply with orders to commit law of war violations applies to orders to perform conduct that is clearly illegal or orders that the subordinate knows, in fact, are illegal. For example, orders to fire upon the shipwrecked would be clearly illegal.27

Every soldier down the line of command, from the commanding general receiving Hegseth’s verbal order down to the guys who pushed the button to launch the missile had the duty to reject the order. Those who have not done so are themselves guilty.

The footnote in 18.3.2.1 points to the case of the Canadian hospital ship HMHS Llandovery Castle which on 27 June 1918 had been torpedoed by a German U-Boot:

The sinking was the deadliest Canadian naval disaster of the war. 234 doctors, nurses, members of the Canadian Army Medical Corps, soldiers and seamen died in the sinking and subsequent machine-gunning of lifeboats.

In 1921 a German court sentenced two officers to years in prison because they had followed the illegal order of the submarine’s captain, Helmut Brümmer-Patzig, to kill the survivors.

According to the footnote in the LoWM the court said:

“It is certainly to be urged in favor of the military subordinates, that they are under no obligation to question the order of their superior officer, and they can count upon its legality. But no such confidence can be held to exist, if such an order is universally known to everybody, including also the accused, to be without any doubt whatever against the law. This happens only in rare and exceptional cases. But this case was precisely one of them, for in the present instance, it was perfectly clear to the accused that killing defenceless people in the life-boats could be nothing else but a breach of the law. As naval officers by profession they were well aware, as the naval expert Saalwiachter has strikingly stated, that one is not legally authorized to kill defenceless people. They well knew that this was the case here. They quickly found out the facts by questioning the occupants in the boats when these were stopped. They could only have gathered, from the order given by Patzig, that he wished to make use of his subordinates to carry out a breach of the law. They should, therefore, have refused to obey.”

It can not be more clear. The DoD’s Law of Warfare manual is using the case of killing survivors at sea as an example of an illegal order. Today the court would say:

“They could only have gathered, from the order given by Hedseth, that he wished to make use of his subordinates to carry out a breach of the law. They should, therefore, have refused to obey.”

There are signs that one commanding officer did his duty and refused to execute Hegseth’s illegal order. On October 16 the U.S. military attacked another, the sixth, vessel. Two of the four people on board survived and were rescued:

President Trump said that the two survivors of a U.S. military strike Thursday on a vessel in the Caribbean Sea will be returned to their countries of origin.
…
One survivor is from Ecuador and the other is from Colombia.

Thursday’s strike marks the sixth known boat attack in the area since last month — and the first known attack with survivors. Mr. Trump said the strike was against a submarine carrying mostly fentanyl and other illegal narcotics.
…
A Navy helicopter transported the survivors from the semi-submersible to a Navy ship, a source familiar with the matter confirmed to CBS News on Friday.

“It is the custom of the sea to save people who are at risk in international waters. You don’t sort of sail on. That’s against every principle of naval activity,” Eugene R. Fidell, a senior research scholar at Yale Law School, told CBS News on Friday. “You’re supposed to save people, even though the people here are people who are only in danger because the U.S. was attempting to kill them.”

On the very same day those survivors were rescued, October 16, the DoD announced that the head of its Southern Command was ‘stepping down’:

The military commander overseeing the Pentagon’s escalating attacks against boats in the Caribbean Sea that the Trump administration says are smuggling drugs is stepping down, three U.S. officials said Thursday.

The officer, Adm. Alvin Holsey, is leaving his job as head of the U.S. Southern Command, which oversees all operations in Central and South America, even as the Pentagon has rapidly built up some 10,000 forces in the region in what it says is a major counterdrug and counterterrorism mission.

It was unclear why Holsey is leaving now, less than a year into his tenure, and in the midst of the biggest operation in his 37-year career. But one of the U.S. officials, all of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss personnel matters, said that Holsey had raised concerns about the mission and the attacks on the alleged drug boats.

It now seems clear that Admiral Holsey got fired for not following Hegseth’s illegal order and for ordering the rescue of the survivors of the strike.

Hegseth meanwhile reveals himself as veritable psychopath:

Pete Hegseth @PeteHegseth – 0:37 UTC · Dec 1, 2025

For your Christmas wish list…

@U.S. Southern Command

There are signs that Congress is waking up to the issue (archived) and that Hegseth’s order may well have real consequences for him:

A top Republican and Democrats in Congress suggested on Sunday that American military officials might have committed a war crime in President Trump’s offensive against boats in the Caribbean after a news report said that during one such attack, a follow-up strike was ordered to kill survivors.
…
The lawmakers’ comments came after top Republicans and Democrats on the two congressional committees overseeing the Pentagon vowed over the weekend to increase their scrutiny of U.S. boat strikes in the Caribbean after the report. Mr. Turner said the [Washington Post] article had only sharpened lawmakers’ already grave questions about the operation.

The senators and member of congress should grow a spine and use their power over the budget to reign in the president. The secretary of defense must be fired from his position. Admiral Holsey must be reinstate as Southern Command.

Reprinted with permission from Moon of Alabama.

The post Soldiers Have ‘Duty To Refuse’ Hegseth’s Order To Commit War Crimes appeared first on LewRockwell.

“Beethoven.” Berthold Genzmer (ca. 1890).

December 16 is a special anniversary, a significant one in the history of our Western Christian civilization, but one that should not be forgotten. On that date, 255 years ago in 1770, the musician and composer Ludwig van Beethoven was born in the city of Cologne (Koln) in the Rhineland in what is now the Federal Republic of Germany, then part of the Holy Roman Empire. Traveling to Vienna as a young man, he spent much of his life there as one of the greatest composers of music of all time. His compositions and his persona continue to resound through the ages—as long as there is a Western and Christian culture to admire and celebrate.

Recently, I came upon a study of his life, a study that attempts to revise some of the commonly-held misconceptions about Beethoven, that somehow he was wrapped up in the secular ideals of the eighteenth century Enlightenment and even its anti-religious, or anti-Catholic ideas.

Written by Nicholas Junkai Chong (Columbia University, 2016), the work is a PhD dissertation which is titled “Beethoven’s Catholicism: A Reconsideration” and it makes a number of significant points, among which that Beethoven was much closer in many of his views to the post-Napoleonic traditionalist Restoration than many other chroniclers have admitted. Indeed, we remember the story of his original dedication of his famous “Eroica” symphony (no. 3) to Napoleon, whom he had thought would “liberate” Europe, but then tore that dedication up, instead dedicating the work to Prince Lobkowicz, his patron, certainly no liberal. But that is just one instance, and there are others, including long passages from his letters, his Tagebuch [“Diary”], and the Heiligenstadt Testament, and books that he read by contemporary (and orthodox) theologians, that indicate that his early enthusiasm for the ideals of “liberté” and “egalité” were tempered by an abiding faith that eventually triumphed over many of his earlier illusions. And to this we must add his solid loyalty to the Habsburg Empire and its Kaiser.

Cultural giants like Beethoven have made precious contributions to our Western Christian heritage, a heritage that is critically threatened in our time by demonic and Gnostic demiurges who seek nothing less than the complete perversion of two millennia of Christian culture which brought together the salvific Gift of the Old Testament Hebrews, the philosophy of ancient Greece, and the classical traditions of Rome.

Beethoven was an integral part of that continuum. And like so many others who have contributed to our inherited corpus of art, music, architecture, and literature, he stands above the ages athwart the disintegration and the frenzied assaults on what the poet William Butler Yeats called (in his poem, “The Second Coming”) the “rocking cradle” of Bethlehem—that “rocking cradle” of the Christ from which our culture proceeds.

Just as the post-Marxist and Progressivist academics and mobs and their allies in our cowardly political and media elites wish to put all reminders of our past—those monuments and symbols—whether Confederate or colonial, in remote museums, safely away from the inquiring eyes of most of our citizens, so, too, those epigones of Evil, those cultural vandals who would destroy our inheritance, wish to lock up our sacred traditions of music, literature, and the arts away from our population for whom that inheritance is a birthright. Or, separate them and make them practically inaccessible. And, far worse, “re-interpret” them using new templates based entirely on “race” and “gender”—thus, “women’s studies” which views literature and music through the lens of “masculine oppression” and “toxic masculinity” throughout the ages.

In December 1940, at the end of a live national Saturday matinee broadcast of the Metropolitan Opera’s production of Gaetano Donizetti’s La Fille du Regiment, as author Paul Jackson (in his volume, Saturday Afternoons at the Old Met) recounts, the famous soprano Lily Pons advanced to the front of the stage, and holding a French flag aloft, sang “La Marseillaise.” The audience erupted in emotional enthusiasm…not just there in New York, but across the entire nation where as many as forty million listeners tuned in and heard her salute to a defeated France. Forty million Americans in every state and territory (out of around 130 million citizens) were united not only in remembering fallen France, but by and in a culture and musical tradition they all shared, and, even if not devotees of opera, which they at least understood to be part of their precious cultural patrimony.

Today that unity no longer exists. It has been rent asunder by the very guardians of that cultural inheritance, those entrusted with its care and transmission, who have succumbed to the Dark Lord and the enticements that emit from the foulest voices and most fetid enemies of our civilization.

It was the Roman poet Juvenal two millennia ago in his Satires who wrote, “Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?,” which translated means: “Who is guarding us against the guardians?” Today we must ask the same questions: Who is guarding us against the cabal of our Intelligence Agencies which now serve as instruments of the Deep State?—Who is guarding us against a political class bought and paid for by globalists who have no loyalty to country or to faith, but rather only to their secularized vision of a global Godless Utopia?—Who is guarding us against the academic elites who control our educational system and pollute the minds of our children?—Who is guarding us against the feculent pollution of our cultural and artistic heritage?

For decades—since before the Second World War—increasingly powerful Elites have controlled the destiny of the American nation. And this dominance has meant not just the revolutionary overthrowal of the traditional political order, but also the veritable abortion of our cultural heritage.

After an initial enthusiasm for and flirtation with what he thought Napoleon might bring to Europe, Beethoven became a strong supporter of the Habsburg monarchy…and an avowed foe of the Napoleonic destruction of the Old Order. He understood what that meant, just as the Blessed Pius IX after the Revolution of 1848 understood the deleterious effects of liberalism and its fanatical desire to destroy Christian civilization.

In 1813 to celebrate the great victory of the Marquess (later Duke) of Wellington over the French at the Battle of Vitoria in Spain (June 21, 1813), Beethoven composed a wonderful little ceremonial piece—“Wellington’s Victory”—a kind of short audially evocative symphonic poem depicting that momentous battle that freed Spain from Napoleonic tyranny. In it he interpolated both French and British airs and songs, including a rousing version of “Rule, Britannia!” (The Brits were on the “good” side back then.) It stands as a musical symbol of both the cultural response that Christian Europe then offered to “the great thief of Europe” as well as a paean to military triumph over the forces of Revolution.

Today both Europe and the United States appear prostrate before the even more frenzied offspring of those 19th century revolutionaries. Let us, then, in 2026 seize upon the signs of Hope—those signs of contradiction against Modernism and Progressivism—and, like our ancestors, like Wellington and, yes, like a Beethoven with the scales removed from his eyes, raise up the banners of Christ the King.

While advancing once more beneath His Cross, we intone the Laudes Regiae: “Christus vincit! Christus regnat! Christus imperat!” chanted at the coronation of Charlemagne as Holy Roman Emperor on Christmas Day in the year 800 A.D. And we could do no better than letting “Wellington’s Victory” become our symphonic clarion call of militant crusade against our powerful enemies who seek nothing less than the extinction of our culture, our faith and us.

The post Beethoven, the Duke of Wellington, and the Laudes Regiae appeared first on LewRockwell.

Michael Wolff is being pilloried, and although he’s a friend, he deserves some of it because of his dealings with the arch pimp and blackmailer Jeffrey Epstein. For any of you traveling abroad in North Korea, what Wolff has done is play uncle to the blackmailer-pimp, no longer with us, thank God. Michael Wolff has become rich by writing books—hatchet jobs, actually—on Rupert Murdoch and Donald Trump. Media types don’t like Rupert because his newspapers are mostly conservative. Media types are usually physically ugly and politically left-wing. Ergo, they don’t agree with Rupert and wish he had never come over to these shores and rescued papers like the New York Post and The Wall Street Journal.

Oh yes, I almost forgot. He also started Fox News, and Fox dominates not only the news cycle but also late-night shows. If Fox didn’t exist, a certain Queens real estate developer would not be living in D.C. as I write. Hence Michael Wolff does not like Rupert. But I do, and I also like The Donald, another person Michael Wolff really dislikes. But I will forgive Michael Wolff anything because of his beautiful wife, Victoria, and I do accept the fact that I’m a sucker for any person of the feminine sex who happens to be beautiful. I simply can’t help it, despite years of trying to resist it.

“What I find amusing is how desperate the media in general and the Times in particular are to try to connect Trump with Epstein.”

Neither Rupert—my onetime boss at the New York Post and London’s Sunday Times—nor The Donald fell for Epstein’s tricks, despite Michael’s advice to the pimp and blackmailer. Both men are too smart and have been around the quad for too long, as they say, to fall for them. Rupert would not be caught dead in the moral sewer that was Epstein. I wish I could say the same for The Donald and Michael Wolff, but however hard Michael tries, along with Trump haters like the Times and New Yorker types, The Donald did not ever get involved with Epstein except having his picture taken at various crappy lowlife parties, now described by the know-nothing media as glamorous shindigs. The onetime head of Harvard, Summers, yes, onetime world’s richest man Gates, yes, onetime president of the Unites States Clinton, maybe, former head of Apollo Leon Black, definitely, but not The Donald. Michael Wolff wanted to entrap Trump with the scumbag but never managed it. He made a fortune trying, though. Good for you, Michael, but it’s a pity your name comes up with that of Epstein.

What I find amusing is how desperate the media in general and the Times in particular are to try to connect Trump with Epstein. Ms. Giuffre’s book is now considered the Bible by the Brit hacks who managed to bring down Andrew Windsor. The fact that she took 12 million greenbacks from him, and after that committed suicide, has not made her story at all suspect to the Brits. The most ignored passage in her book is the one that absolves Trump, the one stating that he acted like the perfect gentleman as far as she was concerned. It must be very frustrating for all those ugly little people at the Times, being unable to hang a crime on Trump. Some of them might even take out their frustrations on their long-suffering, homely wives. The one I feel most sorry for is Summers, an innocent about women who only asked for advice. Summers should not have resigned any post because he did nothing wrong.

Wolff advised Epstein to let Trump hang himself. The Donald is too smart for that. I have written this before, but here it goes once again: A woman I was seeing on the side long ago was asked by Epstein about me. He wanted to meet me. I told her to get lost. Some time later, while sitting in a port-side café in Saint-Tropez, my wife and I were approached by Ghislaine Maxwell, whom I knew from London in the past. She almost begged us to attend a party she was giving. My wife said we were about to sail away, and we actually did. There was no way we would ever be seen with such lowlifes.

So here is my question: How could someone like Leon Black, a shark if there ever was one, pay millions to the pimp Epstein for market info? It had to do with you-know-what, as Epstein was a con man and the shark knew more about markets than Epstein could ever hope to. I can see Larry Summers being taken in because as an academic he’s an innocent where the fair sex is concerned. Gates, ditto. Never mind. The best thing Epstein ever did was to do himself in, but leave it to the left-wing media to reach for straws. Poor things, they’ve got three more years of Trump. Maybe a Russian connection or some hooker’s claims might save them. They live in hope.

This article was originally published on Taki’s Magazine.

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How many who voted for Trump would have voted for him if Trump had told them they’d get more new wars?

We are apparently on the cusp of another one, with Venezuela. It has the ring-echo of Ronald Reagan’s war with Grenada, if anyone remembers that. That war was more like a stomp – of a Caribbean island that was a nation in the same sense that a kid’s lemonaid stand is a business. Anyhow, Reagan didn’t run on ending wars. Trump did. So why is he starting them – and why with Venezuela?

Two reasons come to mind – and there are probably others.

The first is that Trump sees war – as all Maximum Leader types do – as good because it tends to rouse the manufactured patriotism of the populace, which serves to distract them from the problems besetting them and to get them to forget that the Maximum Leader is the cause of their problems. Herman Goring had much to say about this. The Chimp may have actually read about what Goring said, or had Dick Cheney read it to him.

Republican voters – in the main – are very susceptible to War Fever. This ought not to be especially surprising given the origins of the Republican Party, which was founded by the man who waged war against Americans who foolishly took seriously that stuff about self-government and consent of the governed. Lincoln and the Republicans schooled Americans about the truth of that, to the accompaniment of belligerent, crusader anthems – My eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!

Today’s Republicans favor a mellower soundtrack – I’m proud to be an American! Where at least I know I’m free! – that’s as delusional as it is syrupy. But – then and now – the rank and file rally ’round the flag and what they are told it stands for.

But Reagan’s splendid little wars – there was also the Libyan Business – took place at a time when Americans were able to afford the rah-rah’ing because they could afford groceries as well as new cars and a home in the suburbs. Groceries are becoming a kind of luxury for many and a house something akin to what the idea of someday owning a mansion (and a yacht) was back when having a million bucks’ net worth meant you were rich rather than upper middle class.

Today’s Americans are as sick of war – and paying for them – as they are of the sight of people still wearing “masks.” Yet they discover to their astonishment that they might as well have voted for Biden and put the “masks” back on again – insofar as the wars are concerned. Trump must be either catastrophically unaware of how little the American people – especially his base – want another war, or he is aware and just doesn’t care. The latter – if it is so – suggest that Trump may be on the verge of becoming a Maximum Leader in fact rather than just de facto. Maximum Leaders just do as they please, which is pretty much what Trump has been doing. Maybe he is on the cusp of making it official, as by declaring an insurrection – and then who cares what Americans think?

Project Esther is not a fictional story. Nor is Palantir unreal. Same goes for the new Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism. Did Trump voters vote for that?

Does it matter that they didn’t? might be a better way to ask that question.

There’s another reason why Trump might be taking us to war against Venezuela, which by the way would be something akin to what National Socialist Germany did when it went to war against Poland (alongside the Soviet Union, but Americans tend not to be aware of that fact). When National Socialist Germany did it, it was said to be a war crime – punishable by death, for the leaders of National Socialist Germany. It is apparently something else when America’s leaders do it. Just ask The Chimp.

Back to the reason for the apparently imminent attack on Venezuela, which has not attacked nor threatened to attack America. Not militarily. But Maduro – the Maximum Leader of Venezuela – has promised to “ditch” the dollar – and that is a far worse threat to America’s Maximum Leader. Venezuela, which is a huge producer of oil, wants to accept other currencies as payment and that paints a target on his back. Or rectum.

Ask Gaddafi about that.

None of this is going to make America Great Again. But that’s as beside the point as the rest of Trump’s promises.

We bought the ticket – and now it’s time to take the ride.

This article was originally published on Eric Peters Autos.

The post Another War . . . appeared first on LewRockwell.

If we’ve learned anything about the so-called “leaders” of Europe in recent years, they are consummate virtue signalers, and like all virtue signalers, they do it to cloak their true motives. The entire architecture of the E.U. and its member nations ensures that the governments remain steadfastly unaccountable to the people they are supposed to represent.

Europe’s leaders present themselves as being chiefly concerned with the moral and ideological dimensions of politics. Rarely if ever do they speak about the E.U.’s precarious financial state.

As John Cochrane at the Hoover Institute recently characterized it:

The 2010 sovereign debt crisis was the earthquake. The ECB, feeling it was the only game in town, intervened on a large scale, including making large sovereign-bond purchases and lending to banks to fund their sovereign-bond purchases. Then-ECB president Mario Draghi famously pledged “whatever it takes.”

Eventually, an adjustment-program mechanism emerged, allowing support with conditionality and imposing some losses on some creditors. But this institutional reform later fell from grace, and has been crowded out by other ECB interventions starting in the early 2020s. Self-imposed rules on bond purchases weakened with each new intervention.

Bond buying in the quantitative-easing era further enlarged the ECB’s sovereign bond holdings, and surged during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. The ECB introduced “flexibility” in purchases to keep sovereign spreads from rising. Inflation climbed sharply starting in 2021 while the ECB continued bond purchases and kept rates low. That surge undermined confidence that the bank could and would control inflation, making any future crisis more unstable.

So here we are. Europe is in a fragile state. Overregulation and bureaucracy stifle innovation and growth. Member states’ debts have risen dramatically. The ECB holds large portfolios of sovereign bonds, and is widely expected to buy more anytime yields or spreads threaten to rise. Banks remain stuffed with sovereign debt, so any sovereign crisis becomes a bank crisis.

The next crisis will challenge European sovereign debts. That crisis may be bigger than even the ECB can handle without chaotic defaults, financial meltdown, or sharp inflation.

Increasingly I wonder if guys who run the ECB (European Central Bank) are far more nervous than they would ever admit to the European press.

The ECB is located in Frankfurt, Germany. The city’s once famous newspaper—the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung—is now staffed by amazingly sophomoric columnists who rarely if ever question official policy about anything.

I suspect that if one examines Europe’s negotiations with Ukraine’s oligarchs in the matter of Ukraine’s planned accession to the E.U. and NATO, the proposed agreements contain provisions that would bolster—at least on paper—Europe’s precarious financial condition. Though most people don’t realize it, financial motives have been a major driver of wars for the last two hundred years.

I suspect that Europe’s passionate desire to maintain the proxy war in Ukraine is primarily driven by financial considerations—not for the citizens of Europe, but for the dreadful people who currently hold power and are determined not to relinquish it.

This article was originally published on Courageous Discourse.

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The US-Russian peace plan for Ukraine certainly puts an end to a conflict. But, above all, it paves the way for a reinterpretation of history. No, the Russian military operation was not an “illegal, unprovoked, and unjustified military aggression,” but rather the implementation of Security Council Resolution 2202, in accordance with international law. If the people of Europe recognize that they were mistaken, or that they were misled, they will change their regimes just as Ukraine will change its own.

The Ukrainian-Russian conflict is coming to an end: the Russian and American presidents have agreed on a 28-point plan, modeled on the one adopted by the Security Council for the Jewish-Arab conflict  [ 1 ] .

While the guiding principles were approved at the Anchorage (Alaska) summit on August 15 by Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin themselves, the details were negotiated by Steve Witkoff and Kirill Dmitriev in Miami from October 24 to 26. This agreement was only officially disclosed to Rustem Umerov, secretary of the Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council, early last week, before his flight to Qatar. The unelected Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, learned of it in detail on November 20, when Dan Driscoll (Secretary of the Army), General Randy George (Chief of Staff of the Army), and General Chris Donahue (Commander of U.S. Forces in Europe and Africa) presented it to him.

Over the past three months, Russian forces have bombarded the “integral nationalist” units (“Banderists” or “neo-Nazis,” according to Kremlin terminology) of the “White Führer,” Andriy Biletsky. As a result, he emerged defeated from the successive battles of Mariupol (May 2022), Bakmut/Artyomovsk (December 2023), and Pokrovsk (November 2025).

On November 11, the State Department gave the green light to the release of “Operation Midas,” a vast investigation by the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) conducted with the assistance of 80 American investigators. It has already led to the resignation of two ministers—Herman Halushchenko, Minister of Justice, and Svitlana Grynchuk, Minister of Energy—and the flight of Rustem Umerov (already mentioned) to Qatar. The resignation of Andriy Yermak, the head of the presidential administration, is highly likely to follow. At that point, Volodymyr Zelensky will be completely exposed: the key political figures on whom he relied will be destroyed. He will have no choice but to accept Donald Trump’s plan or flee himself.

Contrary to what one might think, the unelected president did not seek to modify the conditions of the peace plan when he met with the US delegation on November 20, but to add an amnesty; not an amnesty for war crimes, but for acts of corruption.

Even now, Ukrainians who have remained in the country (a third of the population has already fled Ukraine, half to Russia, half to the EU) are violently opposed to the self-proclaimed president. He was elected to fight corruption, and he has fueled it to unprecedented levels. In November, several riots turned the population against military recruiters. Even the “hardline nationalists” now believe he can no longer help them achieve their apocalyptic goals against Slavs and are urgently planning to overthrow him.

The member states of the European Union, who envisioned and prepared for a protracted war, cannot accept a capitulation that dare not speak its name. Each is now confronted with the brutal end of its dream. Clearly, the fall of the Ukrainian regime will be followed by that of the European leaders who supported it.

Indeed, the time has come to take stock. The European Union initially provided €1 billion in cash, then its military committee established a clearing house allowing Ukrainians to select weapons from the stocks of EU member states’ armed forces. Finally, the Union made its own resources, such as its satellites, available. Over time, the EU contributed more and more: up to €3 billion in July and August.

Let no one believe that this is solely the initiative of Commission officials. On March 1, 2022, the European Parliament, elected by universal suffrage, held a session with President Zelensky, who spoke via video link. It adopted NATO’s position, which disregards the Minsk agreements and considers the Russian special operation against “core nationalists,” pursuant to Security Council Resolution 2202, as an “illegal, unprovoked, and unjustified military aggression.” It was the Parliament that adopted a resolution (P9_TA(2022)0052) paving the way for the EU’s full support of the Zelensky regime, which many member states readily endorsed.

When President Trump and Vice President Vance confronted Zelensky in the Oval Office on February 28, 2025, some governments consulted with one another. A series of back-and-forths took place between Paris and London, both vying to lead a coalition of the willing. Ultimately, only the British remained. London formed a military alliance with the Baltic states (Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, the Netherlands, and Sweden) and added Ukraine on November 5. This constitutes a purely British NATO within NATO.

France, although not a member of this alliance with the United Kingdom, is not lagging behind. But it is now more a matter of posturing than action. On November 17, President Emmanuel Macron signed a letter of intent with his unelected counterpart, Volodymyr Zelensky, stating that, when domestic industry is able, it will build and sell 100 Rafale fighter jets to Ukraine. Then, on November 18, he sent his Chief of the Defence Staff, General Fabien Mandon, to tell the Congress of Mayors of France that the French should prepare to lose their children in an imminent war against Russia.

Volodymyr Zelensky made a panicked phone call to his allies on November 21. Emmanuel Macron, Friedrich Merz, and Keir Starmer stressed once again, according to the Élysée Palace, “that all decisions with implications for the interests of Europe and NATO require the joint support and consensus of European partners and NATO allies respectively.”

They all met on November 22nd in Johannesburg, South Africa, for a meeting of G20 heads of state and government, with the exception of… Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin. The final declaration contained only one vague sentence on the subject: “Guided by the purposes and principles of the UN Charter in its entirety, we will work for a just, comprehensive, and lasting peace in Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, the occupied Palestinian territories, and Ukraine, as well as to end other conflicts and wars around the world.” Such platitudes hardly justified such a meeting. Consequently, the Europeans consulted behind the scenes to develop a counter-proposal.

The European press simply presents the Russian-American peace plan as “favorable to Moscow,” which is neither the case nor the point. The plan, as far as we know, stipulates that Crimea and the two Donbas republics (Donetsk and Luhansk) are Russian. But this was already the case BEFORE the war. It also stipulates that the rest of Novorossiya will be allocated along the front line. In other words, almost all of the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia oblasts, but not the port of Odessa, which would have allowed Russia to establish territorial contiguity with Transnistria, a candidate for membership in the Russian Federation.

In addition, the plan requires that the Ukrainian army, currently 800,000 strong, be reduced to 600,000 strong, that it renounce long-range missiles capable of striking Moscow (which it does not currently possess. This was the debate over US Tomahawks and German Taurus missiles), and that it renounce NATO membership, but European fighter jets may be stationed in Poland.

From a Russian perspective, the most important thing lies elsewhere: the denazification of the Kyiv regime. This is a fundamental objective of which NATO members have never been aware. Denazification requires an educational program in each country to educate them about the other’s culture, similar to the one implemented in France and Germany at the end of World War II.

Moscow has thus achieved what it fought for, but not what it has long hoped for: NATO’s retreat to its 1991 borders. This will always be a source of conflict. The European Union must be aware of this. It should not be surprised to see this conflict continue.

On the US side, Washington pledges to lift sanctions against Russia and to reintegrate Moscow into the G7/8.

Certainly, President Donald Trump is on the verge of succeeding in extricating his country from this mess. But this is only to force the European Union to face its responsibilities.

The reconstruction of Ukraine, estimated at $200 billion, will be split equally between the EU and Russia. Each country will contribute $100 billion. The Russian funds will be drawn from reserves frozen during the conflict. These funds will be controlled by the United States, which will receive half of the revenue generated by these investments.

Finally, if Ukraine renews its commitment not to build nuclear bombs, half of the electricity produced by the Zaporizhzhia power plant will be allocated to Ukraine and half to Russia.

The hardest part is not mentioned by anyone: the European Union (and consequently NATO) will have to recognize that these events did not constitute an “illegal, unprovoked and unjustified military aggression”, but a legitimate application of Security Council resolution 2202, in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations and international law.

A period of introspection is necessary for everyone. All have contributed to this war, the number of victims of which remains unknown. High-ranking officials in Brussels acted with hubris, EU member states behaved like herds, and the people of Europe convinced themselves that they embodied peace.

It is this realization that seems most important and that will bring about the fall of the regimes that wished and worked to “bring Russia to its knees”.

—

[ 1 ]  “  Trump’s peace plan for Ukraine  ”, Voltaire Network , November 20, 2025.

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Writes Bill Madden:

I recently sent an e-mail discussing how the Federal Reserve Bank loans our dollar into circulation at interest contrary to the dictates of the Constitution ordering Congress to coin money and regulate its value – without interest.  Aristotle’s Definition of Money requires that money be a “store of value” which gold and silver are and which paper is not.  If paper dollars and accounting entries are used for convenience, they must be backed up by the something of value for the monetary system to contain money vs. the fiat currency that our dollar has become.  Our domestic dollar was backed by silver coins until the end of 1964 and the international dollar was backed by gold until 8/15/1971. 

The referenced link is an 18 minute video explaining the preceding paragraph.  Other good videos explaining our convoluted monetary system are “Hidden Secrets of Money” under the “Learn” heading at: www.goldsilver.com.  Knowledge in this area is important because our dollar is collapsing in value as the currency in other nations is gradually being backed by gold.  This is bad news for the dollar which is currently a worldwide reserve currency but is slowly being replaced to the detriment of our dollar and our economy.  Until now, Americans have enjoyed prosperity due to the international demand for our dollars.  Things are changing.

The video talks about the large banks owning the Federal Reserve Bank.  Please remember that humans own the large banks and that it is the equity side of any corporation that decides whether the corporation will act for the benefit of all stockholders or just the benefit of the one or two families controlling the corporation.  Some super-rich families control more than one corporation.  So, corporations are not greedy but the humans controlling the corporation can satisfy their greed by their control of the corporation.  The management side of the corporation may or may not own a lot of stock but their job is to do what they are told to do by the equity side.

Many of our country’s problems would be solved by a return to the Constitution but, unfortunately, that is not what the financial benefactors of our politicians and bureaucrats want. 

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Lew,

“It is better to iive for the freedom that Christ has set us free for than to be enslaved in sin and death.” – George Farmer, husband of Candace Owens and father of their four children 

Farmer recently delivered a speech entitled “The Political Order of Antichrist” at the 2025 Catholic Identity Conference. He discussed the temptation, theology and idolatry of technology and the need for Catholics to get involved in developing AI and to get right with the Lord first thing every morning and in all we do. 

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This is a total mindblower!

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We often hear demands to ban so-called “hate speech.” Negative remarks about various groups, including women, black people, homosexuals, Jews, Muslims, can it is alleged, have a negative effect on members of the group who hear or see the speech. It encourages people to hate them and cements negative stereotypes about them in people’s minds. In addition, hearing or seeing “hate speech” offends the members of the group. Free speech may have some value, but whatever value it has it outweighed by the evil of “hate speech.” Almost any group can claim to be victimized by “hate speech,” except for white heterosexual males and Christians, but “hate speech” applies primarily to members of so-called “protected classes.”

From a libertarian standpoint, the question of banning so-called “hate speech” is a no-brainer. Banning any kind of speech, whether it is good or bad, is incompatible with a free society. As the great Murray Rothbard has taught us, all rights are property rights. Everyone can set the rules for speech on his own property, and no one has the right to control what anyone says on someone else’s property. This includes speech which counts as “offensive.” Of course, we don’t live in a libertarian society, but we should come as close as we can in practice to it. This means following the strictest possible interpretation of the First Amendment. “Congress shall make no law. . abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.” “No law” means “no law” and that includes laws against so-called “hate speech.”

Some states have “hate speech” laws on the books. New York is considering a law, already passed in California that requires social media companies to report “hate speech.” This is the “Stop Hiding Hate Act” and has been passed by the State’s Assembly. Here is an account of the measure from Vince Chang, who favors it:

“Under pressure from the ADL [Anti-Defamation League] and other groups, internet platforms have voluntarily adopted measures to regulate hate speech. The ADL described some of the measures that have been taken: Facebook prohibited Holocaust denial content, hired a vice president of civil rights, changed parts of its advertising platform to prohibit various forms of discrimination; expanded policies against content that undermined the legitimacy of the election; and built a team to study and eliminate bias in artificial intelligence. Due to pressure from ADL and other civil rights organizations, Twitter banned linked content, URL links to content outside the platform that promotes violence and hateful conduct. Reddit added its first global hate policy, providing for the removal of subreddits and users that “promote hate based on identity or vulnerability.”

We can see how such laws have a chilling effect on speech if we look at bans on so-called “hate speech” in foreign countries where they are already in operation. I want to focus especially on the Scottish Hate Speech Act.

Let’s first look at an official summary of the Scottish act, from the Scottish parliament site:

“Hate crime is the phrase used to describe behaviour which is both criminal and based on prejudice.

There are already laws in place to protect certain groups from hate crime.

This Bill aims to do three things. It updates these existing laws and pulls most of these laws into one Bill. It also adds to the groups currently specifically protected by hate crime laws.

Criminal courts can generally take into account any prejudice when sentencing a person. Also, people are protected from hate crime through specific laws that apply.

People are currently protected by specific laws on the basis of:

• disability
• race (and related characteristics)
• religion
• sexual orientation
• transgender identity

This Bill adds age to that list and allows sex to be added at a later date.

The Bill creates a new crime of stirring up hatred against any of the protected groups covered by the Bill.”

The bill was enacted in 2021 and came into force on April 1, 2024,

The supporters of this Act want to create a community that is united in supporting “diversity.” Do you see the contradiction? If you oppose what these people call “diversity,” then you are not part of the united community. In other words, only those who accept what we say are free and have rights. As George Orwell said in 1984, “Freedom is Slavery.” Let’s look at what they say in their own words:

“Scotland’s diversity is its strength; and all communities are valued and their contribution welcomed. Hate crime and prejudice threaten community cohesion and have a corrosive impact on Scotland’s communities as well as broader society. Hate crime and prejudice is never acceptable and the Scottish Government is committed to tackling it. This legislation provides an essential element of the Scottish Government’s ambitious programme of work to tackle hate crime and build community cohesion. Anyone who has experienced or witnessed a hate crime is encouraged to report it to the police or to one of the third-party reporting centres that are in place across Scotland. A cohesive society is one with a common vision and a sense of belonging for all communities; a society in which the diversity of people’s backgrounds, beliefs and circumstances are appreciated and valued, and similar life opportunities are available to all. It is through this lens that the Scottish Government has considered the recommendations from Lord Bracadale’s ‘Independent Review of Hate Crime Legislation in Scotland’ in order to inform the modernisation and reform of hate crime legislation in Scotland.

One of the most aggressive groups in trying to silence others for has speech consists of so-called” trans” people. If you don’t agree with them that you can become a man or woman just by “identifying” yourself as one, you can be prosecuted. This is the “democratic community” in action. The prosecutions are by no means confined to religious and political conservatives. Leftwing “gender critical” feminists, who think that a woman is a woman, have been prosecuted. Jonathan Turley tells us what happened to one of them in 2021:

“There is a free speech fight brewing in Scotland where a prominent feminist, Marion Millar, 50, has been charged with the crime of “malicious communication” due to tweets criticizing gender self-identification.  We have previously discussed how feminists are being accused of hate speech and discrimination in these debates.  Indeed, Millar is accused of being a “terf” (a trans-exclusionary radical feminist) by critics due to her opposition to allowing males to declare themselves to be females.  She could now face two years in jail.

What is particularly concerning in this case is that Millar was not told which of her tweets were deemed “malicious.” Millar has thousands of tweets and was told that the charge is based on tweets between 2019 and 2020.  She was simply ordered to the police station and told that social workers would be sent to care for her young twin boys, who are autistic.  After she emerged from the station, she quoted the novelist Salman Rushdie: “Nobody has the right to not be offended. That right doesn’t exist in any declaration I have ever read.”

There are believed to be six tweets that were cited in the complaint, including pictures of the green, white and purple suffragette ribbons tied around trees to support Millar’s cause. The accuser reportedly said that the ribbons looked like nooses and were therefore threats. How ridiculous can you get?

Fortunately, this particular story has a happy ending, at least relatively so. As The Guardian reports, “Scottish prosecutors have discontinued the case against a woman charged with posting allegedly homophobic and transphobic content online. On Thursday morning, the Crown Office confirmed it had dropped proceedings against Marion Millar, a vocal opponent of the Scottish government’s plans for transgender law reform, before a scheduled hearing next Monday and subject to a review with the alleged victims. Millar, an accountant from Airdrie, had yet to plead, but her defence team, which included SNP MP Joanna Cherry QC, was planning to challenge the prosecution on human rights grounds.” The next person might not be so “lucky.”

Let’s do everything we can to oppose the bigots who want to censor us and force us to adopt their insane opinions!

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Artificial intelligence is being sold as the technology that will “change everything.” Yet while a handful of firms are profiting enormously from the AI boom, the financial risk may already be shifting to the public.

The louder the promises become, the quieter another possibility seems to be:

What if AI is not accelerating the economy at all — but disguising the fact that it is slowing down?

For months, the headlines have declared that AI is transforming medicine, education, logistics, finance, and culture. Yet when I speak with people in ordinary jobs, a different reality emerges: wages feel sluggish, job openings are tightening, and the loudest optimism often seems to come from sectors most invested in the AI narrative.

This raises an uncomfortable question:
Has AI become a true growth engine — or a financial life-support system?

The Mirage of Growth

Recent economic data suggests that a significant portion of U.S. GDP growth is being driven not by broad productivity, but by AI-related infrastructure spending — especially data centers.

A study from S&P Global found that in Q2 of 2025, data center construction alone added 0.5% to U.S. GDP. That is a historic figure. But what happens if this spending slows?

Are we witnessing genuine economic expansion — or merely a short-term stimulus disguised as innovation?

Historically, this pattern is not new. In Ireland in 2008 — before the housing collapse — construction boomed, GDP rose, and optimism became mandatory. Skepticism was dismissed as pessimism. The United States experienced something similar the same year: real estate appeared to be a pillar of prosperity — until it wasn’t. On paper, economies looked strong. In reality, fragility was already setting in.

Today, I see echoes of that optimism — except this time, the bubble is not bricks and concrete. It may be silicon, data, and expectation.

The Productivity Paradox

AI has been presented as a labor-saving miracle. But many businesses report a different experience: “work slop” — AI-generated content that looks polished but must be painstakingly corrected by humans. Time is not saved — it is quietly relocated.

Studies point to the same paradox:

• According to media coverage, MIT found that 95% of corporate AI pilot programs show no measurable ROI.
• MIT Sloan research indicates that AI adoption can lead to initial productivity losses — and that any potential gains depend on major organizational and human adaptation.
• Even McKinsey — one of AI’s greatest evangelists — warns that AI only produces value after major human and organizational change. “Piloting gen AI is easy, but creating value is hard.”

This suggests that AI has not yet removed human labor.
It has hidden it — behind algorithms, interfaces, and automated output that still requires correction.

We are not replacing work. We may only be concealing it.

AI may appear efficient, but it operates strictly within the limits of its training data: it can replicate mistakes, miss what humans would notice, and reinforce boundaries that present an “approved” or “consensus” version of reality rather than reality itself.

Once AI becomes an administrative layer — managing speech, research, hiring, and access to capital — it can become financially embedded into institutions, whether or not it produces measurable productivity.

At that point, AI does not strengthen human judgment — it administers it. And then we should ask:
Is AI improving society — or merely managing and controlling it?

The Data Center Stampede — But Toward What?

McKinsey estimates that over $6.7 trillion may be spent on AI and computing infrastructure by 2030 — a level of capital allocation usually seen in wartime. But what exactly is being built — and will it ever return value to ordinary people?

Like other critics, analyst Jack Gamble warns of a troubling pattern: cloud and chip-companies investing in AI startups that then buy computing and cloud services from their backers — potentially creating a circular economy of investment and demand. AI was perhaps becoming a circular economy of expectations rather than a new engine of growth or real value.

Now The State Is All-In: The Genesis Mission

Even before the government intervened, parts of the AI economy already appeared self-reinforcing. Now that intervention has arrived.

As noted in a recent LewRockwell commentary, a 2025 U.S. executive order — dubbed the “Genesis Mission” — may institutionalize AI infrastructure, potentially transforming deeply indebted AI firms into de facto state-backed entities.

In November 2025, the U.S. government signed an executive order merging federal supercomputers, national-lab datasets, private-sector AI firms, and taxpayer funding into a unified national AI platform. This does not guarantee bailouts — but it creates the conditions under which major AI firms may become too strategically important to fail. Once AI is embedded into national strategy, failure becomes more than a financial problem — it becomes a political one.

This transforms AI from a speculative investment trend into a publicly underwritten enterprise, embedding AI infrastructure into national science and economic policy. Under these conditions, any failure of AI — technological, economic, or environmental — will not remain the problem of a few venture-backed firms. It will become a problem for the public and future generations.

Federal support may buffer data-center and computing firms from market corrections, but it also increases systemic risk if the promised productivity never materialises. When infrastructure becomes publicly supported before its value is proven, failure becomes harder to admit — and easier to subsidise.

There is a further concern: once certain firms become “state-protected,” competition may shrink, accountability may weaken, and the largest AI companies could become entrenched as essential infrastructure. That would strengthen precisely the pattern this article questions — where labor is concealed, economic value is assumed, and risk is quietly socialised.

Who Carries the Risk?

The deeper concern is not AI itself — but where the financial risk of AI may already be hiding.

Large retirement funds and passive index portfolios are now concentrated in AI-dependent giants such as Nvidia, Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and Tesla. On the debt side, data-center financing and private credit tied to AI infrastructure are quietly entering bond portfolios.

This means the AI boom is not simply an investment trend.
It may already be embedded inside the retirement accounts of ordinary citizens — without their knowledge.

With the Genesis Mission, risk is no longer only held by markets—it is being woven into public institutions, budgets, national research plans, and long-term economic policy.

If AI becomes truly transformative, perhaps this risk will be justified.
But if AI merely relocates labor and props up GDP on paper — then the risk will not fall on venture capital.
It may fall on pensioners, savers, civil servants, and state retirement systems.

Questions the Public Deserves Answers To

• Is AI transforming work — or creating new layers of hidden labor?
• Are data centers driving prosperity — or only supporting GDP in the short term?
• Are citizens knowingly investing in AI — or are they being invested through passive portfolios?
• Is AI creating value — or merely absorbing capital and subsidies?

With so much capital and debt tied to AI it is beginning to resemble something that could be labeled “too big to fail” — much like the private banks that were rescued after the 2008 financial crisis. When enough money, debt, and public risk are tied to a technology, questioning it becomes difficult — and supporting it becomes mandatory — whether it is delivering real value or not.

Conclusion

As I have written elsewhere we should not let AI overshadow human thought. AI may still deliver genuine breakthroughs, but at this moment, belief seems to be moving faster than evidence. History reminds us that optimism is most dangerous when it becomes unquestioned.

Because if the promised future arrives late — or not at all — the cost will not fall on the visionaries or the corporations. It will fall on the public.

Now that AI is being treated as national infrastructure, its success or failure is no longer a private gamble—it has become a public risk. And public risks always come with a public bill.

Note to readers who purchased the book The War on Men: a small number of early print copies were released before editing took place. The current edition has been fully revised, professionally edited, and formatted. If you received an early draft, please message me via Substack or through my X account at @TheMarkGerard— I’ll gladly send you the corrected edition at no cost. Messages are received directly and replied to personally.

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There’s an argument running through the commentariat that goes something like this: AI (Artificial Intelligence) has already rendered some jobs obsolete and will continue this trend until the human race is unemployed.  Even now it surpasses the ability of most people to write an effective opinion essay because it can create logic-driven, elegant compositions in seconds.  Since government schools turn out illiterates, people will depend on AI commentaries for intellectual expression.  Combined with research functions that are allegedly dependent on flawed databases, leading users to accept falsehoods in areas such as medicine, government, and economic theory, it renders them easy prey for a program of complete statism, such as socialism.

Why socialism?  Because socialists promise to care for the downtrodden, which will be every person left alive when AI achieves full robustness.  AI in the hands of a socialist government will feed and house them, and will of course see that it’s done equitably.  This leaves libertarians and conservatives with the urgent need to stop AI in its tracks now, while they still can.

The idea of AI overtaking humanity has a distinguished pedigree.  The website PauseAI presents quotes from leaders in their fields about the dangers of runaway AI:

Physicist and cosmologist Stephen Hawking had warned that “The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race … It would take off on its own, and re-design itself at an ever increasing rate.”

Elon Musk who is developing his own AI called Grokipedia, said “AI is a rare case where I think we need to be proactive in regulation than be reactive   I think that [digital super intelligence] is the single biggest existential crisis that we face and the most pressing one.”

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates thinks “Superintelligent AIs are in our future…. There’s the possibility that AIs will run out of control.”

The founder of computer science and artificial intelligence Alan Turning predicted

It seems probable that once the machine thinking method had started, it would not take long to outstrip our feeble powers… They would be able to converse with each other to sharpen their wits. At some stage therefore, we should have to expect the machines to take control.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has said,

There’s a long tail of things of varying degrees of badness that could happen. I think at the extreme end is the Nick Bostrom style of fear that an AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) could destroy humanity. I can’t see any reason in principle why that couldn’t happen.

The foregoing experts have IQs far beyond ordinary.  But they’re also human, subject to error.  Inventions that shake up the world have always been feared.

According to Plato the invention of writing “will implant forgetfulness in [men’s] souls. They will cease to exercise memory because they rely on that which is written, calling things to remembrance no longer from within themselves, but by means of external marks.”  As it happened writing by hand can improve memory and learning, especially for children.  And in early America, Thomas Paine showed incredible recall as he hand-wrote detailed critiques while relying solely on his memory.

Calculators have been said to be another tool for the lazy.  But in fact they were found to have “allowed learners to focus on problem-solving rather than mechanical calculations” while fostering confidence in their learning abilities.

While it is in some sense true that the internet has shortened attention spans, there is ample evidence to contradict the claim, such as Substack essays, multi-hour podcasts, and eBooks.  If people are engaged in tasks meaningful to them, while working in a supportive environment that keeps  dopamine distractions to a minimum they are fully capable of multi-hour focus.

People are not, therefore, inert automatons under control of subversive forces.  As Bastiat wrote about in The Law, in which he defined socialism as the improper use of force,

When law and force keep a person within the bounds of justice, they impose nothing but a mere negation. They oblige him only to abstain from harming others. . . . But when the law, by means of its necessary agent, force, imposes upon men a regulation of labor, a method or a subject of education, a religious faith or creed—then the law is no longer negative; it acts positively upon people. It substitutes the will of the legislator for their own wills; the initiative of the legislator for their own initiatives.

There is nothing in AI or AGI that requires the imposition of force.  But socialism and its variants does.  Socialism as an economic and sociological theory was thoroughly debunked by Ludwig von Mises in 1920 and again in 1922.  As Mises argued in his 1920 essay, socialism suffers from the fatal absence of market pricing.  Even the best-selling socialist author Robert Heilbroner admitted in 1990, “It turns out, of course, that Mises was right. The Soviet system has long been dogged by a method of pricing that produced grotesque misallocations of effort.”

The only purpose of an economy is to create goods and services that satisfy human wants, not to create jobs.  If AI eliminates jobs in the sense we now understand it, other opportunities will emerge for value creation as they have before when new technologies upset the status quo.  Human wants are unlimited, and theory and history have shown that a market free from state intervention is the best way to satisfy them.

A recent poll shows more college students favor socialism than capitalism.  This is hardly surprising given the socialist orientation of universities and their misrepresentation of capitalism.  As Mises wrote in Socialism, “The terms ‘Capitalism’ and ‘Capitalistic Production’ are political catchwords. They were invented by socialists, not to extend knowledge, but to carp, to criticize, to condemn.”  The economic system that has sent students “graduating with four-year degrees saddled with mountains of debt and little marketable skills” is the Federal Reserve-income tax-warmongering-interventionist-big government monstrosity that is a gross perversion of capitalism.

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MAGA is riding high these days, convinced they’ve finally exorcised the neoconservatives who controlled the Republican Party for decades. Supposedly gone are the days of endless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the trillion-dollar boondoggles sold as “spreading democracy”? Trump promised to drain that swamp, and his base believes he’s done it—putting America First and mocking the old guard like John McCain and Liz Cheney.

I hate to burst that bubble, but the neocons are far from dead. At best they’re playing possum. And President Trump’s looming military action against Venezuela could be their golden ticket back to power, co-opting the very movement that thought it had buried them.

Let’s start with the obvious: the demise of the neocons has been greatly exaggerated. Sure, their poster boys like Jeb Bush or Mitt Romney couldn’t win a presidential primary at the moment. But look who has staffed both Trump’s administrations. Mike Pompeo, the quintessential neocon hawk, served as Secretary of State the last time, pushing regime change agendas from Iran to North Korea.

Now we’ve got Marco Rubio in the same spot, a guy who’s never met a foreign entanglement he didn’t like. Rubio’s been a darling of the interventionist crowd since his Senate days, advocating for arming Syrian rebels and toppling dictators throughout the Middle East. Trump himself has been more restrained—no full-scale invasions on his watch yet—but that’s a far cry from the drastic change some in MAGA envisioned.

Trump hasn’t decreased overseas troop deployment on net whatsoever and the Pentagon budget has risen significantly in both of his administrations. As for Rubio, he’s trying to sound as America First as he can while serving the current boss but make no mistake: the push for action in Venezuela reeks of his influence, along with other holdovers like Elliott Abrams, who’s been knee-deep in Latin American meddling since the Reagan era. Throw in unconditional support for Israel’s wars, and you’ve got essentially a new Bush administration disguised as America First.

We must also remember that MAGA isn’t monolithic. There’s a vocal antiwar segment who support voices like Rand Paul or Tucker Carlson, warning that boots on the ground in Caracas would betray everything Trump ran on. But the polls tell a different story: a clear majority of Trump supporters back military intervention in Venezuela. According to a recent CBS News/YouGov survey, 66% of MAGA Republicans favor U.S. military action there, compared to just 47% of non-MAGA Republicans.

Overall American support hovers around 20%, but within the GOP base, it’s Trump’s framing as a quick hit against drugs and migration that’s winning the day. If this operation goes like George H.W. Bush’s 1989 invasion of Panama—swift, low casualties, Noriega in cuffs and headlines blaring victory—watch what happens. Bush’s approval skyrocketed to 80%, and it solidified a bloc of Republican voters hungry for more “decisive” action.

Panama was sold as anti-drug and pro-democracy, just like Venezuela today. A short, “successful” war could lure many America First voters back to the pre-Trump era, where every problem abroad demanded a military solution. The antiwar minority would be ridiculed and shouted down as having been wrong to doubt Trump, and the party would inch closer to its old interventionist self.

Part of the problem is that Trump’s anti-war platform was never as radical as the true American First crowd would like to believe. He talks a good game about ending “forever wars,” but he doesn’t question the core of the empire—the global standing army, the 800-plus bases warehousing hundreds of thousands of troops overseas, and the non-defensive use of them, as long as the war isn’t a “forever war.”

During his first term, the neocons in his cabinet persuaded him to bomb Syria twice based on dubious claims of chemical attacks by Assad on his own people. Was that an attack on America? Nope. It was classic neocon moralizing to win support for a regime change Israel wanted. And those troops stayed in Syria under the flimsy pretext of “protecting oil fields,” but really to support the regime change finally ticked off under Biden. Trump didn’t start new wars, but he didn’t really end the old ones either, despite his vociferous claims, and his base mostly gave him a pass.

Venezuela fits right into that pattern. Trump’s been gunning for regime change there since the early days of his first term, supporting neocon puppet Juan Guaidó as the “real president” after Maduro’s sham election in 2018. At Trump’s direction, Washington froze assets, imposed sanctions, and even floated military options back then.

It all fizzled when Guaidó couldn’t muster the muscle to oust Maduro, but the intent was clear: topple a socialist dictator, install a friendly government, and claim a win for “democracy.” Sound familiar? It’s the same script from Iraq to Libya, and now it’s back on the table, with warships in the Caribbean and talk of arresting Maduro on drug charges.

Then there’s the China angle, where MAGA is already primed for neocon co-optation. Trump’s base is all in on antagonism toward Beijing—tariffs, tech bans, and a confrontational military posture. Even the antiwar elements see China as the “real threat,” a rising power that Washington must “contain” to protect Americans.

But China isn’t a military menace; they’re just getting richer because they abandoned communism and aren’t squandering trillions on policing the globe. They’ve got one overseas base—Djibouti—while the U.S. has over 800, with over 200,000 troops staffing them. While by no means a laissez faire free market (neither is the U.S.), China’s growth is market-driven, not conquest-driven. Yet MAGA’s buying the hype, setting the stage for a new Cold War, complete with proxy fights in Taiwan or the South China Sea.

Venezuela could be the gateway drug: intervene there under the guise of fighting drugs and socialism, and suddenly containing China looks like the next logical step.

We also can’t ignore the other elephant in the room. Republicans still rely on tens of millions of Christian Zionists, the built-in neocon constituency I’ve written about before. These folks see U.S. support for Israel as biblical mandate, and they’re all for wars that benefit Tel Aviv, from Iraq to Syria to potential strikes on Iran. Trump’s unconditional backing of Israel keeps them loyal, but it also embeds neocon priorities deep in the party.

Put it all together, and MAGA looks like ripe fruit for the picking. If Trump green-lights war in Venezuela, the loyalists who back him no matter what will turn on the antiwar skeptics, ridiculing them as disloyal doubters of “dear leader.” Success breeds amnesia; a quick win erases promises of restraint. The next Republican contender—J.D. Vance or whoever—could run on Trump’s immigration and trade toughness but ditch the antiwar lip service entirely. Before you know it, we’re back to a full-blown Cold War 2.0, this time against China, with proxy wars galore to “contain” them, just like the old days with Russia.

The neocons don’t need to win elections outright; they just need to infiltrate and redirect. Venezuela isn’t just a sideshow—it’s their pathway back to the driver’s seat. MAGA must wake up before it’s too late.

This article was originally published on Tom Mullen Talks Freedom.

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Trump’s shoddy peace overtures are not to be taken as a basis for a lasting deal and security treaty.

After nearly four years, the U.S. wants out of a quagmire of its own making in Ukraine. Russia’s objectives remain reasonable, righteous, and achievable. There is no compromising.

Successive American and European governments own this conflict, which can be traced back to the CIA-backed coup in Kiev in 2014 against an elected president. Obama, Trump’s first administration, and Biden all promoted the proxy war scenario along with European NATO vassals for the calculated strategic defeat of Russia using Ukraine as cannon fodder.

The provocations accumulated with the genocidal aggression against the Russian-speaking people of Ukraine from 2014 until 2022. The U.S.-led NATO alliance weaponized a NeoNazi regime in Kiev to do its dirty work until Russia ran out of forbearance with the murderous treachery and launched its special military operation in February 2022. Russia’s goals were just and right: to protect the Russian people; to denazify the regime; and to ensure that NATO’s relentless aggression over several decades was brought to a definitive halt.

Despite expending hundreds of billions of dollars and euros on weaponizing a proxy army that comprised not only Ukrainian foot-soldiers but clandestine deployment of thousands of troops from the United States, Canada, Britain, France, Germany, Poland, and the Baltic States, among others, the criminal war gambit has been defeated by Russia.

President Donald Trump, in his second administration, has come to realize that the sordid game is up. American imperialist interests are demanding elsewhere in Asia-Pacific with China, the Middle East, and in the U.S. presumed “backyard” of Latin America, with Venezuela.

The European theater is a costly, bloody mess. Ukraine and its NATO sponsors have been roundly beaten. They have run out of men, weapons, and money. As the Kiev regime crumbles from the weight of its own corruption, so too is the preposterous Western narrative that this was some kind of noble cause to purportedly defend democracy from Russian aggression. Democracy born from a CIA-orchestrated NeoNazi coup?

Russia has secured most of the historic Russian lands that were formerly and artificially part of eastern and southern Ukraine: Crimea, Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson, and Zaporozhye. Russia will push on to secure the rest, including Kharkiv, Nikolaev, Odessa, and Sumy.

Western news media have been telling lies for the duration of this conflict (and long before that). The notion that Western states were chivalrously aiding a democratic Ukraine from aggression was an audacious inversion of reality. The notion that Ukraine could win militarily with Western support and NATO mercenaries has fueled a futile war with millions of Ukrainian casualties. Still, the Western media is pretending that there is “a stalemate” on the battlefield when in reality, the Russian forces are rolling up the NATO army. The next few weeks will see the rapid collapse of the Ukrainian defenses.

Russia never intended to occupy all of Ukraine, let alone continue onwards to conquer European states. The Western narrative is a ridiculous and puerile fantasy portraying Russian President Vladimir Putin as the reincarnation of Hitler. The fantasy has been used to defraud Western economies and the public on a gargantuan scale.

Russia’s goals have always been to secure its people and historic lands and to eradicate the threat of NATO and its NeoNazi proxy. That is being achieved without having to conquer all of Ukraine.

Trump’s peace overtures reflect a long-overdue realization in some Western quarters that the proxy war project has expired. NATO has been defeated in its murderous machinations in the same way that other historic enemies of Russia have been dispatched. Only eight decades ago, Nazi Germany’s war machine was destroyed by the Russian people. But fascism was not fully destroyed. It only went underground in the form of Western states pretending to be democracies.

President Putin has responded diplomatically to Trump’s initiatives by saying that they could form a basis for future peaceful settlement. This is magnanimous. Because very little in Trump’s sketchy proposals comes close to meeting Russia’s righteous demands. In fact, the American “plan” falls short of the serious conditions required by Russia, as Russian analyst Stanislav Krapivnik points out with devastating clarity.

Trump’s conceited presumption to present the United States as a mediator is also contemptible. The United States has been the main architect of the war against Russia. It has the blood of millions on its hands, as have its European accomplices.

History has shown from the 2014-15 Minsk Accords and the Istanbul Peace Proposal in March 2022 that the United States and its NATO vassals are incapable of committing to an honorable agreement. Add to that several arms control treaties that the American side has unilaterally ditched.

Therefore, Russia has the right and indeed imperative to end this conflict on its terms through a decisive military defeat of its enemies in Ukraine.

Trump’s shoddy peace overtures are not to be taken as a basis for a lasting deal and security treaty.

The one positive sign out of the shambles that the United States and its European lackeys are presenting is the tacit admission that their war plans are thwarted. For now, anyway. A victory must ensure that the Western imperialists never try it again.

At least Trump has a bit of practical sense to realize that the quagmire must be abandoned, albeit in a disorderly hurry. The European elites, however, are so invested in lies and propaganda and Russophobia that they can’t even begin to face the reality of defeat. The harder they come, the harder they fall.

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

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A key goal in writing this publication has been to provide a voice to those forgotten by medicine, so I try to respond to all the messages I receive—particularly those in dire need. However, as this publication has grown, it’s become more complex and more challenging for me to do that adequately due to the volume of correspondence I receive. I hence decided to have monthly open threads where readers can ask whatever they want and connect it to a shorter topic.

A few days ago, while talking to a circle of friends about child-rearing, one mother compared an infant’s tendency to throw tantrums when sugary foods were withdrawn to what many parents were facing with modern children’s video programs and that she’d learned in the groups she belonged to that numerous parents were now switching to showing their children the shows they’d grown up watching as those shows did not have the same destabilizing effects on their children.

As we discussed this topic (e.g., many of us have banned screens after noticing how negatively they impact developing nervous systems), I realized it needed to be an open thread here due to:

• How unfair and tragic it is that due to the modern toxicity they are bombarded with, so many children no longer have health and spark within them which brings joy to everyone around them.

• All the problems we discussed with children directly tie into the central issues I feel are facing much broader segments of society (e.g., the dopamine trap society uses to control us and make us feel dead inside).

Note: it continually astounds me (and those I point it out to) how different naturally raised children are, and how much rarer they are becoming, given the many fronts on which the predatory forces around us are attacking our health. For those interested, some of the most important strategies I’ve come across for raising healthy children are discussed here.

Addictive Programming

From investigating the current state of children’s programming over the last few days, I found out that large swathes of parents online frequently describe modern children’s “TV” content (particularly YouTube kids videos such as CoComelon) as highly engaging to the point of addiction, with intense emotional reactions (e.g., tantrums) when it’s removed. For example:

• A 2025 Talker Research survey of 2,000 U.S. parents found 22% report “full-on tantrums” as a side effect of excessive screen time, alongside irritability (27%) and mood swings (24%).

Note: this report has a lot of other disturbing statistics (e.g., 67% of parents fear they are losing precious time with their children due to screen addiction).

• The 2025 Common Sense Media Census states: “A quarter of parents use screen media of any kind (not just mobile devices) to help their child calm down when they are angry or upset (25%)” and “17% of parents reporting that their child sometimes or often uses a mobile device to calm down when feeling angry, sad, or upset.”

• In parallel, similar results can be found online. For example, on Reddit parenting forums, searches for “Cocomelon tantrum” or “screen time meltdown” yield a high volume of threads from the last 5 years (thousands according to two AI systems I queried), with parents describing similar patterns: calm during viewing, explosive tantrums (screaming, hitting, inconsolable crying for 20–60+ minutes) upon shutdown, that is often far worse than what was seen with slower shows like older Sesame Street.

• Pediatric resources like the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) acknowledge these issues in their clinical guidelines, noting that high-engagement digital media (e.g., auto-advancing games or videos) can lead to tantrums when interrupted due to the media containing behavioral reinforcement designed for maximum engagement.

Furthermore, online reports from parents surged following 2015 as YouTube became much more popular and kids content there shifted to being optimized for toddlers to view without their parents. Research on the effects of overstimulation and attention, in turn, suggest this is addictive and creates ADHD-like symptoms as:

• Modern shows’ rapid cuts (1–4 seconds) overstimulate young children’s developing brains, making it hard for them to disengage and sustain focus on slower tasks (termed the “overstimulation hypothesis”).

•A 2011 study exposed 4-year-olds to 9 minutes of fast-paced SpongeBob SquarePants (11-second cuts) vs. slower Caillou or drawing; the fast-paced group showed immediate deficits in executive function (focus, self-control) lasting up to 4 hours post-viewing—which was not seen in the slower content.
Note: The AAP cites this in its guidelines, recommending that parents avoid fast-paced programs for kids under 5 due to poor comprehension and strain on regulation.

• A 2004 study of 1,278 kids found over 2 hours a day of TV before age 3 was linked to attention problems (e.g., ADHD-like symptoms) by age 7, with fast-paced content being a key factor.

• A 2018 review found early fast-paced exposure correlated with later attentional deficits, as it “rewires” developing brains toward novelty-seeking over sustained focus. Likewise in mice, excessive sensory stimulation decreased anxiety, learning, and memory and increased risk-taking and motor activity.

• A 2023 study linked higher toddler screen time to increased anger/frustration later (e.g., withdrawal tantrums), with each extra hour raising risk by 13%—specifically, preschooler screen time at age 3.5 prospectively contributed to more expressions of anger/frustration at 4.5.

Since many parents specifically cited CoComelon (a YouTube channel) as being particularly problematic (to the point many stated they’d banned it), and often attributed it to the show’s rapidly changing frames every few seconds, I watched a few of them to verify this (noting how disorienting it was to watch this as the shots frequently change every 1-4 seconds).
Note: many people I’ve spoken to over the years believe the shorter and shorter segments (before a screen cut or transition) which emerged on TV was immensely destructive to the American psyche as they took away people’s ability to maintain a lengthy attention span (which amongst other things is necessary to perceive the deeper things around which give true meaning to life or be content in the present).

After exploring why YouTube kids channels like CoComelon do this, I came across a series of explanations, which while appalling, are entirely congruent with my understanding of internet marketers:

• This maximizes “watch time” on YouTube (how they make money) as YouTube’s algorithm heavily rewards total minutes watched and session length. Very young children (1–4 years old) have naturally short attention spans. If a scene stays the same for more than a few seconds, toddlers often look away or grab the remote/phone. Rapid cuts act like a visual “ping” that yanks attention back to the screen every few seconds, increasing average view duration.

• Every sudden cut, zoom, color flash, or new sound triggers the brain’s automatic “orienting response” (the same reflex that makes you turn your head when a door slams). In babies and toddlers, this reflex is especially strong and hard to inhibit. CoComelon and similar channels appear to exploit it hundreds of times per episode, creating a near-constant dopamine loop that feels rewarding to an immature prefrontal cortex.

• It’s designed for the “auto-play” environment. On YouTube and Netflix, the following video starts in 3–6 seconds unless someone intervenes. Fast pacing makes kids much less likely to look away during that critical window, so autoplay chains them from one 8-15 minute video to the next (often for hours). This is likely why CoComelon uploads videos in the hundreds and titles them almost identically (as this creates an endless loop of their content).

• The big YouTube kids channels almost certainly constantly use available analytics to determine their pacing, colors, sound effects, and character design and most likely have found that cutting every ~2–3 seconds keeps 2- to 4-year-olds glued to the screen more effectively than slower pacing. Slower-paced versions tend to get lower completion rates and worse algorithmic performance, so they’re discarded.

• Classic slow-paced shows (Mister Rogers, old Sesame Street, Blue’s Clues), in contrast, were deliberately calm and used long takes because they were designed for developmental appropriateness (and were often watched with a parent). Modern YouTube-first content is intended to be watched alone by a toddler holding a tablet, with no adult co-viewing required, so “grab and hold attention at all costs” wins.
Note: Mister Rogers shared in interviews he would often leave a pause after he said things so children could have the time to process how they felt about it—effectively the polar opposite to what these channels are doing.

All of this has a startling number of implications. Of these, I believe the following are the most pertinent:

1. A large body of evidence has emerged (including numerous regretful statements from tech executives) that screens and all the content associated with them have been designed to be as addictive as possible, with much of this revolving around them having stimuli that trigger dopamine releases. In parallel, quite a few social media executives have said they have tremendous regret about what their products (intentionally designed to be addictive) have done to our children’s brains. Likewise, many articles have been written about how Silicon Valley tech executives send their kids to an alternative school where phones and screens are banned.

Note: as mentioned before, I am inclined to believe this is true, in part because I know marketers are always trying to concoct ways to hook people with their products (a process that has gone into overdrive since the internet has enabled the rapid testing, refinement, and distribution of addictive content) and partly because I frequently feel many of the ways tech messes with your neurology to pull you in (which again touches upon how unexpected it was for me to suddenly end up in a position where I had to spend a lot of time on the computer after this newsletter took off).

2. After the DPT vaccine entered the population, due to its frequent tendency to cause encephalitis, a wide range of neurological and behavioral issues (including violent crime) rippled out through the society as the vaccinated children grew up. In the 1950s, a condition termed “minimal brain damage” [MBD] was coined (with the defining characteristic of it being hyperactivity), which before long became “perhaps the most common, and certainly one of the most time-consuming problems in current pediatric practice”.

The symptoms of MBD (as defined by America’s Public Health Service and the American Psychiatric Association) have a significant overlap with what was seen after encephalitis, DPT injuries, and what was associated with autism. Eventually, they figured out that much of it could be “treated” with stimulants like amphetamines. At that point, the disorder was renamed ADHD (something that coincidentally, every vaccinated-unvaccinated comparison shows is vastly more common in vaccinated children).

Note: Canadian physician Gabor Maté has reported that a significant number of the homeless, often stimulant-using, addicted patients he worked with showed signs of undiagnosed ADHD. He (and others) have said that when their ADHD was recognized correctly and treated—usually as part of a broader trauma-informed approach (as he attributed this change to childhood trauma rather than vaccine injury)—it often helped them stabilize and reduce the destructive cycle of their addictions and the criminalized behaviors associated with them.

3. I have long suspected something similar to what happened with ADHD and amphetamines is happening with screens, as their highly stimulating (and dopamine-releasing) nature is essentially being used to counteract the behavioral disturbances seen in vaccine-injured children. This is particularly insidious because many parents (especially those with less financial resources) are frequently forced into situations where they don’t have the bandwidth to handle their children continually misbehaving, so they are forced to provide their children with addictive technology (and transform them into lifelong users).
Note: an argument can also be made that the mass adoption of screens is a reflection of the economy making it harder and harder for parents to have children.

4. I have long believed a key reason slavery ended was that owning slaves within America (which has numerous associated costs) became less profitable than forcing people into economic servitude, particularly since much of the labor slaves performed could be outsourced to poorer nations where far fewer protections existed for basic human welfare and that cruelty could exist out of sight and out of mind for those who would object to it.

In turn, since the desire to ruthlessly exploit people for profit never fully disappeared from the culture, other ways more profitable ways were found to do it, such as turning people into lifelong customers of the pharmaceutical industry until they eventually succumb to all the ever-increasing number of prescriptions they are placed on (a process which is often set in motion by the chronic illnesses frequently triggered by vaccination—and which I’ve recently heard be termed “biological colonialism”). To a large extent, I feel the same thing is also happening now with harvesting people’s attention online and collecting their data.

If we take a step back, consider that something many parents trust their children watch was actually designed and optimized to hijack their children regardless of the harm it caused their developing nervous system—and that rather than be penalized for this, it’s amassed billions of (lucrative) views because the algorithms content creators follow incentivize this type of quickly produced content.

Read the Whole Article

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The Unit project, first revealed by Sputnik in 2024, is emerging as the most viable option for breaking the US dollar’s stranglehold on global trade and investment.

In his book co-written with top economist Sergey Bodrunov, Regulations of the Noonomy (international edition published this year by Sandro Teti Editore in Rome), leading Russian economist Sergey Glazyev stresses the need to “ensure a full-fledged switch to national currencies in mutual trade and investment within the EAEU and the CIS, and further – within the BRICS and SCO, the withdrawal of joint development institutions from the dollar zone, the development of their own independent payment systems and interbank information exchange systems.”

When it comes to financial innovation – compared to the current structure of the international financial system – The Unit is in a class of its own.

The Unit is essentially a benchmark token – or an index token; a post-stablecoin, digital monetary tool; totally decentralized; and with intrinsic value anchored in real assets: gold and sovereign currencies.

The Unit can be used either as part of a new digital infrastructure – what most of the Global South is striving for; or as part of a traditional banking setup.

When it comes to fulfilling traditional money functions, The Unit is – pardon the pun – right on the money. It’s meant to be used as a quite convenient medium of exchange in cross-border trade and investments – a key plank of the diversification actively pursued by BRICS+.

It should also be seen as an independent, reliable measure for value and pricing, as well as a better store of value than fiat money.

The Unit is academically validated – including by Glazyev himself – and properly governed by IRIAS (International Research Institute for Advanced Systems), set up in 1976 in accordance with the UN statute.

And crucial at this next step, The Unit is to be launched early next year on the Cardano blockchain, which uses the digital currency Ada.

Ada has a fascinating background – named after Ada Lovelace, a 19th-century mathematician, daughter of none other than Lord Byron, and recognized as the first computer programmer in History.

Anyone, anywhere can use Ada as a secure exchange of value; and very important, without the need to ask a third party to mediate the exchange.

That means every Ada transaction is permanently secured and recorded on the Cardano blockchain. That also means that every Ada holder also holds a stake in the Cardano network.

Cardano has been around for 10 years now – and is a quite popular blockchain. It’s backed by some quite big venture capital firms such as IOHK, Emurgo and the Cardano Foundation. Essentially, Cardano is an excellent option for regular payments because transactions are cheap and fast.

Neither a crypto nor a stablecoin

Enter The Unit.

The Unit is neither a cryptocurrency nor a stablecoin – as it’s shown here.

A concise definition of The Unit would be a resilient reserve of value – backed by a structure of 60% gold and 40% diversified BRICS+ currencies.

The major appeal for the Global South is that such a unique mix provides stability and protection against inflation, especially under the current global financial landscape of wobbly macroeconomics and widespread uncertainty.

Using Cardano, The Unit is bound to become accessible to everyone, via a combination of centralized and decentralized exchanges.

So to enter this new market, individuals and companies will be able to acquire The Unit directly with fiat through regulated banking partners. That means a bridge between traditional finance and emerging decentralized ecosystems – in favor of liquidity, accessibility and reliability, opening the door to full adoption by the Global South.

The Unit can even evolve into a new form of digital cash for emerging economies.

Following exactly the path delineated by BRICS even before the ground-breaking annual summit in Kazan in 2024, The Unit may be the best solution currently available for cross-border payments: a new form of international currency, issued in a de-centralized way, and then recognized and regulated at a national level.

And that brings us to the top conceptual strenght of The Unit: it removes a direct dependency on the currency of other nations, and offers the Global South/Global Majority a new form of non-censored, apolitical money.

Better yet: apolitical money featuring an enormous potential for anchoring fair trade and multiple investments.

What the Global South really needs

A good next step for The Unit would also be to set up an Advisory Board, uniting world standard stars such as Prof. Michael Hudson, Jeffrey Sachs, Yannis Varoufakis and the co-founder of the NDB Paulo Nogueira Batista Jr. (here at the Global South Academic Forum in Shanghai) .

When it comes to BRICs-emphasized de-dollarization – done with a hefty degree of sophistication, without having to spell it out – The Unit will be key. It’s also key that The Unit is not a cryptocurrency.

Wall Street behemoths – especially BlackRock – are big on cryptocurrencies, an enormously unstable set up which eschewed individual holders to the profit of massive institutional players. For example, it’s BlackRock that essentially shapes Bitcoin’s market.

US stablecoins essentially perpetuate US dollar dominance – aiming their firepower directly against possible, future digital currencies offered by BRICS+.

The Unit is the stark opposite, offering a reliable digital monetary tool for the fast advancing Multipolar World. It’s an evolution in itself, bridging the fiat and the crypto worlds; and last but not least, it is a solid foundation for the emerging post-Bretton Woods economy.

Of course the challenges ahead are huge – and The Unit will be fought tooth and nail by the usual suspects as a new concept offering borderless financial resilience for the Global South/Global Majority.

And here may lie the key takeaway: the only way BRICS+ as well as the Global Majority may be strengthened is by developing closer and closer geoeconomic, financial ties. For that, the toxic power of Western speculative capital must be contained – to the benefit of more intra-Global South commodity trading, and more investable capital for productive, sustainable development.

The potential is limitless. The Unit may well be able to unlock it. Even JP Morgan admitted The Unit is “perhaps the most thoroughly fleshed-out of de-dollarization proposals that exist in the cross-border transactions space for BRICS+.”

And there’s no other similarly effective plan anywhere in the world.

This article was originally published on Sputnik News.

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