Lew Rockwell Institute

I was recently made aware of an 8-year-old with an addiction to pornography. I will repeat that: an 8-year-old with an addiction to pornography. In fact, I will repeat it again because I worry that we have become so desensitized that this statement will not elicit the shock and horror that it should. Recently, I was told of an 8-year-old, a small child who hasn’t even hit puberty, who is addicted to watching hardcore pornography—you know, the really vile kind that cries out to heaven.

I heard the news and I was sick. I almost cried. In fact, writing about it makes it hard for my eyes to stay dry. That poor child. His poor soul. The trials that he will face as he ages will be remarkable. He is 8, and he is already an addict. He is already spending so much time on a phone—yes, his parents have given him a smartphone at age 8—that he has developed an addiction.

When I was growing up and heard of people having addictions, I would think of the poor souls I might see downtown who had become dependent on drugs. Or, I might think of a character I had seen in a movie or a TV show who couldn’t stop wasting money at the blackjack table or the slots. In any event, addicts, in my mind, were supposed to be adults because people who became addicted to things became addicted to sinful things that children would never be in a position to do.

Nevertheless, we now live in a time wherein children, maybe even younger than 8, are addicted to the most vile images and videos, and the addiction comes through the phone.

Understanding Addiction Related to Media

Now, I don’t know how long it takes to develop an addiction in the clinical sense, but I imagine it doesn’t happen overnight. Ultimately, an addiction is like a compulsive bad habit that is formed over time after repeated participation in an activity that elicits a pleasurable response. Now, pleasure in itself is good, hence the word pleasure, which is derived from “to please.” Being pleased is a good thing because it means something like being satisfied or content. After a good meal, we might be pleased because we are satisfied; or after a hard day’s work, we might be very pleased with the satisfactory work we have done.

However, there are pleasures that, we might say, cheat. What I mean by that is that we get the feeling of satisfaction or the pleasurable feeling but in a way that is unnatural or at least intemperate or imbalanced. Also, given our fallen nature, we often take pleasure in things that are immoral. Any parent knows this because children as young as 18 months old will take great pleasure in smacking a sibling who has annoyed them. It isn’t the smacking per se that is the pleasure but the sense of accomplishing retaliation.

Little children do not have self-control—nor do many adults, for that matter—so they cannot calibrate their response to what is perceived as an injustice, and they retaliate inappropriately. Nevertheless, the impulse to achieve justice is a good thing because justice is good, but the child simply doesn’t seek justice the right way, so he does something he shouldn’t do.

Now, what would facilitate an addiction in a small child to something so wicked as pornography?

Well, in the first place, before he has developed said addiction, he will already have associated the use of a device with the satisfaction of an impulse. And, over time, the satisfaction of that impulse will become compulsive; he will have gone from the spontaneous or infrequent titillation of a desire or longing to a state of dependency, which creates in him a compulsion.

And, what is it about phones and tablets that is so titillating for children—and adults for that matter? Well, our screen devices are objectively pleasing to behold and to use. They have gorgeous coloring in the displays, and they combine a number of senses that are primed for pleasure. They are tactile, visual, and auditory. Also, they are portals to a promise of endless entertainment, which means endless pleasure. This is how they are so different from traditional or older forms of media.

Books, for example, offer a portal into a world of pleasure, whether it be fiction or nonfiction, but they are analog and limited; a book only has what the book has, and it cannot link to other books, or videos, or music. When we read a book, we have to use our imagination and “work hard” to create our own mental picture, or to imagine the sounds being described. The use of a book is tactile in a secondary sense because we hold the book, but not much happens because of how we touch the book. We turn the page to continue reading, but we don’t move things around or cause the words to change into pictures that move.

Radio is another technology that has afforded us great pleasure, but it is limited as well. The limitations on radio, as with books, require a certain style of program to be made that focuses on the auditory sense, and, like with books, the imagination is required to make the magic happen.

Television/film was perhaps the greatest technological leap when it comes to storytelling and the sharing of information, as it engages multiple senses. However, it is the auditory and visual faculties that are engaged, and there is nothing active or tactile about the experience. So, there is still a limitation on the participation of all the senses.

Now, with screen-based activities, it is not all the senses that are engaged, but the senses of touch, sight, and hearing are all fully engaged in a way that is not possible with other types of media entertainment. And, without being crude, the use of screens for pornography consumption is also associated with illicit activities of the body, which invoke a host of other sensations that become intrinsically linked to the pleasures a device may offer.

Ultimately, there is something perhaps too pleasurable, or, we might say, pleasurable in an artificial and imbalanced way, about tactile screen devices. In addition, since no work is required like with books or the radio, the pleasure is easier to access and promises a higher and more engaged reward.

Yes, with films and TV we do not engage the imagination like we do with radio and books, but we also don’t actively participate in the activity with the sense of touch like we do with screen devices that allow us to manipulate the pictures effortlessly, so the experience of passively watching something like TV or films doesn’t offer the full engagement of watching things or playing with things on devices that engage more of our senses. That being said, of the older media technologies, TV can often be the most problematic, even if it is not as bad as the newer ones.

We have to be honest with ourselves; we are fallen, and because of this, we often seek the path of least resistance if there is a promised carrot at the end. Is there any easier path to sensory pleasure than what is offered from a smartphone or tablet? We don’t have to get up, but we can still be involved physically; we don’t have to use our imaginations, but stories with pictures still play out in front of us; we don’t have to do anything difficult, but, with video games on these devices, we can pseudo-accomplish great feats of heroism or daring; we don’t have to interact with another living human being, but the images and activities of those human beings can be used as inspiration for autoerotic pleasure, and there are seemingly no consequences.

To put it bluntly, the immediate access to engaging, sensory pleasure is simply dangerous and wildly tempting when it comes to screen devices.

We haven’t even considered the effects on the brain that take place with repeated dopamine hits, and how, in order to accomplish a continual satisfaction for dopamine compulsion, the participation of individuals seeking pleasure in this way must become more extreme and intense in order to go beyond mere satisfaction of compulsion to the titillation of higher and more sensible pleasure.

Most grown adults cannot handle this temptation, which is why so many adults are addicted to screen pleasures. So, we cannot expect children to ever stand a chance.

Read the Whole Article

The post The Screens Are Killing Your Children appeared first on LewRockwell.

Sometimes I think it’s astonishing how aggressively Israel’s supporters work to stomp out criticism of Israel. Then I remember that these people also support mass murdering children; trying to take away my speech rights is one of their less evil goals. It shouldn’t shock me.

I saw someone talking online about how crazy it is that music groups who speak out against Israel’s atrocities are starting to form alliances with each other in an effort to counteract the campaign to silence them and destroy their careers, saying it shouldn’t be necessary to form an alliance in order to oppose an ongoing genocide. And that’s true, it shouldn’t be necessary. But it also shouldn’t surprise us that people who think bombing hospitals is fine would try to cancel musicians for criticizing Israel.

One mistake westerners keep making is thinking of Israel’s supporters as normal people with normal moral standards just because we happen to know them and interact with them in our communities. They look like us, speak like us, dress like us and act like us, so we assume they must think and feel a lot like us as well.

But they don’t. If you’re still supporting Israel in the year 2025, there’s something seriously wrong with you as a person. You do not have a normal, healthy sense of empathy and morality.

It’s 2025. Israeli soldiers are telling the Israeli press that they’re being ordered to massacre starving civilians trying to obtain food from aid centers. Countless doctors have been telling the world that Israeli snipers are routinely, deliberately shooting children in the head and chest throughout the Gaza Strip. Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and all the leading genocide experts and human rights authorities are saying that a genocide is being perpetrated in Gaza. The New York fucking Times just published an op-ed by a Zionist genocide scholar who’s finally admitting that it’s a genocide.

There’s no way to deny what this is anymore. If you still support Israel in the year 2025, it’s not because you don’t believe Israel is committing horrific atrocities. It’s because you believe those horrific atrocities are good, and you want to see more of them.

Most Israel supporters will deny that this is the case, because they lie. They lie constantly. They have no moral problem with lying. They have no moral problem with burning children alive, so of course they have no problem with lying.

That’s where people go wrong. They assume Israel supporters can’t possibly be lying about their concerns about “antisemitism” in order to promote the information interests of Israel, because nobody could be that evil. But Israel supporters think it’s fine to intentionally starve babies by blockading baby formula from entering Gaza. Of course they are that evil.

People assume Israel’s supporters wouldn’t deliberately stage fake antisemitic incidents or artificially inflate antisemitism figures in their own countries so that their governments will implement authoritarian measures to stomp out criticism of Israel in the name of fighting antisemitism, because they assume nobody could be that depraved. But these people think it’s fine for the IDF to systematically assassinate Palestinian journalists to stop them from telling the truth. Of course they are that depraved.

Of course they’d try to silence our speech. Of course they’d try to send our kids off to war with Iran. Of course they’d work to manipulate our government. Of course they’d pollute the information ecosystem with mountains of lies. They support a live-streamed genocide. They’re bad people.

Supporting Israel and its actions is not some political opinion like your position on property taxes or marijuana legalization. It’s not just some people having a point of view we need to respect and treat as equal to our own view on the matter. They’re working to make it possible to conduct an extermination campaign of unfathomable horror. That’s as political as a gang rape, and just as worthy of respect.

There’s not really anything you can put past Israel’s supporters at this point. They will lie. They will manipulate. They will pretend to believe things they do not believe. They will pretend to feel things they do not feel. And they will do these things to facilitate some of the worst atrocities you can possibly imagine.

This is who Israel’s supporters are. They’re showing you who they are every single day.

______________

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The media, and Donald Trump, have found the great summer diversion of 2025.

The Wall Street Journal reports (archived):

It was Jeffrey Epstein’s 50th birthday, and Ghislaine Maxwell was preparing a special gift to mark the occasion. She turned to Epstein’s family and friends. One of them was Donald Trump.

Maxwell collected letters from Trump and dozens of Epstein’s other associates for a 2003 birthday album, according to documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.
…
The letter bearing Trump’s name, which was reviewed by the Journal, is bawdy—like others in the album. It contains several lines of typewritten text framed by the outline of a naked woman, which appears to be hand-drawn with a heavy marker. A pair of small arcs denotes the woman’s breasts, and the future president’s signature is a squiggly “Donald” below her waist, mimicking pubic hair.

The letter concludes: “Happy Birthday — and may every day be another wonderful secret.”

In an interview with the Journal on Tuesday evening, Trump denied writing the letter or drawing the picture. “This is not me. This is a fake thing. It’s a fake Wall Street Journal story,” he said.

“I never wrote a picture in my life. I don’t draw pictures of women,” he said. “It’s not my language. It’s not my words.”

He told the Journal he was preparing to file a lawsuit if it published an article. “I’m gonna sue The Wall Street Journal just like I sued everyone else,” he said.

And suing he will:

Trump said he had personally warned the Journal’s owner, Rupert Murdoch, and its editor in chief, Emma Tucker, that the letter was “fake” before the report was published, calling the story “false, malicious, and defamatory.”

“President Trump has already beaten George Stephanopoulos/ABC, 60 Minutes/CBS, and others, and looks forward to suing and holding accountable the once great Wall Street Journal,” Trump wrote on social media hours after the Journal published its report.

In the immediate wake of the report’s publication, the White House rushed to decry it as false. Vice President JD Vance said on X it was “complete and utter bullshit” — echoing the expletive Trump used this week to describe the Epstein news cycle. Press secretary Karoline Leavitt — whom Trump said had also told Tucker the story was “fake” — called it a “hatchet job article” and claimed the outlet “refused to show us the letter and conceded they don’t even have it in their possession when we asked them to verify the alleged document.”

Trump’s denials are so strong that I believe the letter is his.

Not that it matters.

I doubt that there is a large file about whatever Epstein has done. If there ever was such it has by now been destroyed by the powers and services involved in it.

Ghislaine Maxwell is currently sitting in jail for trafficking teenage girls under the legal age to have sex with Epstein. There is no hard evidence (but their well payed-off assertions) that these girls were pushed to have sex with other people. There is no hard evidence that Epstein was blackmailing those people.

It seem likely though that both has been the case.

However neither has anything to do with a letter Trump wrote (or maybe didn’t write?) in 2003.

It is just entertaining fun to divert the people from all the other bad stuff the U.S., under Trump, is currently – domestically and internationally – actually doing.

Reprinted with permission from Moon of Alabama.

The post A ‘Bawdy’ Diversion appeared first on LewRockwell.

Even after Lexington, Concord, and Bunker’s Hill, and the closing of the port of Boston — even after the creation of a Continental Army and the appointment of Washington as its commander — most colonists in late 1775 still hoped for reconciliation with England.  Then, seemingly out of nowhere, Thomas Paine’s pamphlet hit the streets.  Published anonymously on January 10, 1776 for the bargain price of two shillings, Common Sense set the country ablaze with talk about independence.  It “was read by cobblers in their shops, bakers by their ovens, teachers in their schools, and by officers in the army to their standing ranks.”

Common Sense became the best-selling pamphlet ever written in the English language. Though several publishers profited handsomely from its sale, Paine re-directed his earnings to the American cause, to purchase mittens for soldiers in Quebec.  Three years after its publication, Paine reflected that “the importance of [Common Sense] was such that if it had not appeared, and at the exact time it did, the Congress would not now be sitting where they are [representing independent states].”

Common Sense had many detractors, including John Adams, the leading champion for independence in Congress.  Though Adams liked the part favoring independence, he referred to Paine as a “Star of Disaster” for his Old Testament arguments against monarchy and his recommendation for a unicameral legislature.

The distinguished Harvard lawyer Adams had little in common with Paine, who had scant formal education and led an obscure existence in England before arriving in Philadelphia in late 1774 at age 37.  Though Adams was a prolific writer, his literary style was too bookish for mass consumption.  Paine wrote so that people could understand him.

If Common Sense was needed to radicalize Americans to the cause of independence, what might have happened if Paine had devoted his time to his bridge-building passion, say, instead of writing the pamphlet?

Desperate for popular support, would the independence faction in Congress try to recruit a writer to sell their message to the people?

Perhaps.  And perhaps Paine might have sent his résumé to them.  And what could Congress infer from Paine’s résumé about his potential as a revolutionary pamphleteer?  Nothing.  But they would try.  Here’s what might have happened:

(Fictional) Proceedings of the Second Continental Congress, 1775.

Charles Thomson, Sec.

Sunday October 15, 1775.

After brief debate between Mr. John Dickinson and Mr. John Adams, Congress agreed to hire a pamphleteer who would argue the cause for independence.

Mr. Dickinson wanted a comparable publication presenting the case for reconciliation, but Mr. Adams pointed out that many American newspapers carried commentaries outlining the British side.

Therefore it was Resolved, that a committee be appointed to hire, for compensation of five pounds, an author of known merit to write a pamphlet presenting the case for separation from England.  The pamphlet shall be written with such clarity and force that persons from all stations in life will comprehend its message.

Résumés should be couriered with all possible dispatch to John Adams, Committee for Independence, Continental Congress, State House, Philadelphia.

Mr. Adams said the ideal candidate will possess most, if not all, of the following qualifications:

1. He will belong to a family of distinction, whose surname will be synonymous with leadership and will strike confidence and respect in every soul.

2. His life will have been a trail of triumph in matters of import, well-known to all.

3. He will have been schooled at a leading American or European university.

4. He will possess ample experience in affairs of the state, with a tendency toward dissenting views.

5. He will possess extensive literary credits in history and political philosophy. Latin will be one of several languages as natural to him as English.

6. He will be a man of considerable means, if not independent wealth.

7. He will be American-born, because of the divisive nature of the conflict.

Congress adjourned till to Morrow 9 o’Clock.

Sunday October 22, 1775

Mr. Adams reports on the Committee for Independence.

Mr. Adams:

The committee has received three résumés.

Mr. Thomas Jefferson, delegate from Virginia and author of the recent “Necessity for Taking Up Arms,” offered to write the pamphlet.  To our great misfortune, Mr. Jefferson will soon depart again for Virginia where his many duties will preclude his taking the assignment.

Dr. Benjamin Rush, delegate from Pennsylvania, who has written bravely against the injustice of slavery, has recently withdrawn his résumé.  Due to the impact of his abolitionist remarks on his medical practice, Dr. Rush decided he cannot afford to lose more clients.

I will now discuss the third résumé, not for possible consideration, but in an effort to identify the treasonous parties who encouraged him to submit it.

It begins, gentlemen, with an insolent fiction.  His name is one Thomas Paine, whose true family name is spelled without the ending “e.”  In an obvious attempt to associate himself with one of our distinguished delegates, Mr. Robert Treat Paine, he has shown utter contempt for this body.

He lists his place of birth as Thetford, England.  Perhaps I hold the résumé of a spy.

He managed to stay in school only to the age of 12.  Need I bother adding he knows no Latin whatsoever?

It is apparent this person is neither a banker, merchant, lawyer, planter, nor statesman.  I  would venture he has scarcely heard of these professions.   He worked as a stay-maker, teacher, tax collector, and manager of a tobacco-goods store.  In each endeavor he failed miserably.

You might wonder if he has distinguished himself in the military.  Gentlemen, he lists his religious affiliation as Quaker, a sect that abhors war.  This alone disqualifies him.

I trust you are as indignant as I am.  This Thomas Paine claims to have written a petition on behalf of his fellow excise tax collectors and presented it to Parliament.  He thought the tax men deserved a raise.  The ministers refused to give him a hearing.  I had a colleague read his petition and was told it suffered from “decorous overstatement.”  That was the kindest thing he could say about it.  Fortunately for Mr. Paine the ministers didn’t read it — in England, they hang bad writers, along with all the other rabble.

Now we get to the real strength of his résumé — his political experience.  From 1768 to 1774 he served as a member of the town council of Lewes.  One can only imagine who the other members were.  In the evening they would meet at the White Hart Tavern, argue and toast the memory of Guy Fawkes.  Mr. Paine was frequently awarded the most headstrong debater.

Oh, you remember Guy Fawkes, right?  In 1605 he conspired to blow up King James and both houses of Parliament and was later executed.  Mr. Paine states on his résumé he has never read John Locke, the father of political freedom, but he worships anarchists with bombs.

The man likes to write songs, even fancies himself a singer, and has twice failed at marriage, though his first wife had to die in order to leave him.

Dr. Franklin, I see you smiling.  What could possibly be funny about this?

[The floor recognizes Dr. Benjamin Franklin.]

Dr. Franklin: I asked Mr. Paine to write a history of our conflict with England, based on some materials I loaned him.  He apparently has taken it upon himself to go further, in applying to write this pamphlet.

Mr. Adams: Are you serious?

Dr. Franklin:  I met him in England and gave him a letter of introduction to come here.  I thought there was something special about him — if not genius, at least ingenious.  I see that I am not yet wrong.  Mr. Adams, you look ill.  Are you okay?  Someone get Mr. Adams some water.

[Mr. Adams thumps his hickory cane.]

Mr. Adams: I forbid it!

Dr. Franklin: Then allow me to read you something, to give you a taste of Mr. Paine’s style and thinking.  “Degeneracy is here almost a useless word. Those who are conversant with Europe would be tempted to believe that even the air of the Atlantic disagrees with the constitution of foreign vices; if they survive the voyage, they either expire on their arrival, or linger away in an incurable consumption. There is a happy something in the climate of America, which disarms them of all their power both of infection and attraction.”

There is a happy something in the climate of America.  The man who wrote those words claimed he could quote them or any others he’s written without reliance on the written copy.

I agree with you, Mr. Adams, we should reject Mr. Paine’s résumé.  Reject it and recommend he write the pamphlet on his own.  If we are to preserve that “happy something,” it will come from individual passion, not an act of Congress.

Mr. Adams: God save us.

Congress adjourned till to Morrow 9 o’Clock.

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I don’t get it. The Constitution clearly established a monetary system based on gold coins and silver coins. That was the American monetary system for more than 125 years. There has never been a constitutional amendment to convert that system to a paper-money system. Given such, why do we have a paper-money system?

The Constitution called the federal government into existence. Unlike European regimes, the federal government was not vested with inherent powers. If the Constitution had done that, there is no doubt that the American people would have rejected it and would have continued operating under the Articles of Confederation, where the federal government’s powers were so weak that it didn’t even have the power to tax.

Instead, the Constitution called into existence a government of limited powers. Its powers were limited to those enumerated in the Constitution itself. If a power wasn’t enumerated, it could not be exercised, at least not legally.

The Constitution handled the states differently. The states retained the traditional police powers that had characterized European regimes. Thus, unless the Constitution expressly restricted the states from exercising some particular power, the states were empowered to legislate in the interests of “health, safety, morals, and welfare” of their citizens.

The Constitution did not vest the federal government with the power to issue paper money. Instead, it vested the federal government with the power to coin money. Article One, Section 8, states: “The Congress shall have power to coin money, regulate the value thereof, and of foreign coin.” At the risk of belaboring the obvious, one does not make coins out of paper. It makes coins out of metals, such as gold and silver.

What about the states? Since they retain the traditional police powers of government, don’t they have the power to issue paper money? Actually not. The reason is that the Constitution expressly forbade the states from issuing “bills of credit,” which was the term used at that time for paper money. Article One, Section 10, expressly states: “No State shall coin money; emit Bills of Credit: make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts.”

Thus, when one considers the power given to the federal government to “coin money” and the restrictions on the states from issuing paper money and from making anything but gold and silver coins “legal tender,” there can be no doubt whatsoever that the Constitution called into existence a monetary system based on the use of gold coins and silver coins and not on money. Thus, it is no surprise that the American people lived under a gold-coin/silver-coin monetary system for more than a century.

So, why is it that America now has a paper-money system? It is undeniable that the Constitution has never been amended to abolish the gold coin/silver coin system and replace it with a paper-money system. Yet, it is also undeniable that despite the fact that the Constitution doesn’t vest the federal government with the power to issue paper money, it has been doing precisely that for almost 100 years. Moreover, it is also undeniable that although the Constitution prohibits the states from making anything but gold coins and silver coins legal tender, the states have been making paper money legal tender for that same length of time.

The answer lies in the presidential regime of President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1930s. Although the Depression had been brought about by the Federal Reserve, which had been established in 1913, Roosevelt blamed the Depression on America’s gold-coin/silver coin system that had been functioning for more than a century. Therefore, Roosevelt decided to convert America’s monetary system to a paper-money system. He ordered every American to deliver his gold coins to the federal government, on pain of a felony conviction for failing to do so. In exchange for their gold, Americans received government-issued paper money.

Amazingly, the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of what was obviously a flagrantly unconstitutional action. The Court’s rationale was that the national emergency of the Great Depression vested the president with extraordinary powers to save the country.

But there was one big problem with the Court’s legal rationale: The Constitution did not provide for an emergency exception. In fact, the Framers expressly excluded an emergency exception from the Constitution because they knew that emergencies have always been the time-honored way that tyrants have assumed dictatorial powers.

But even if we were to accept the Court’s emergency rationale for upholding FDR’s extraordinary action, there is no question but that the “emergency” ended a long time ago. In fact, I think everyone would agree that at least by the year 1950, the “emergency” of the Great Depression had ended.

Therefore, where is the constitutional justification for continuing the paper-money system that FDR foisted onto the American people in the 1930s? Why didn’t Americans get back their gold-coin/silver-coin system that they had established with the Constitution when the temporary “emergency” ended? Indeed, under the express terms of the Constitution, why aren’t Americans entitled to have their gold-coin/silver-coin system back right now? How is a permanent change in the Constitution justified when the “emergency” is only temporary and where there has been no constitutional amendment changing the original gold-coin/silver-coin system?

The answer to all these questions is simple: We all live under a lawless regime, one to which the Supreme Court dutifully defers. And it’s not just the destructive paper-money system under which they plunder and loot us and bring us an endless series of economic booms and busts.  There are also the unconstitutional wars that presidents wage without the congressional declaration of war that the Constitution requires — wars to which the Supreme Court, again, dutifully defers. There is also the military draft, which is not among the powers that the Constitution vests in the federal government. Indeed, where are the powers to establish a welfare state and a national-security state? Where are the powers to engage in state-sponsored assassinations, torture, coups, and wars of aggression? Where are the powers to establish a socialist (i.e., central planning) system of immigration controls and the militarized immigration police state, including mass violent deportations, that comes with it?

The dark reality is the federal government forces us to obey its laws, such as with its evil and immoral war on drugs, while, at the same time, ignores the higher law of the Constitution that we the American people have placed on federal officials. Let us never forget that as Thomas Jefferson pointed out in the Declaration of Independence, when any government becomes destructive of the rights and liberties of the people, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish that government and institute new government that protects, not destroys, our rights, freedom, and well-being.

Reprinted with permission from Future of Freedom Foundation.

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I was asked by Children’s Health Defense and the parents to review the medical records of twins found dead in their bed eight days after multiple vaccinations. Related? Yes, says the hidden science.

Tyson and Dallas Shaw were found dead in their crib at 18 months of age

As my regular readers are aware, last month, Children’s Health Defense asked me to review the hospital records of two young Mennonite girls in Texas who died from what the hospital and our Pharma-controlled media claimed was the measles.

In that post, I provided the evidence from the medical records that, contrary to the fear-mongering Pharma-media hype, their deaths were not from measles but stemmed from a staggering, near criminal cascade of medical incompetence, repeatedly botching the treatment of routine bacterial pneumonias—one of the most basic conditions hospitals face daily.

Instead, those so-called “measles deaths” fueled a colossal media disinformation blitz, falsely branding measles as a deadly scourge to terrorize parents into vaccinating their children. As a physician who has devoted five years of my life and career (at significant personal and professional costs) to combating scientific Disinformation campaigns (ivermectin, Covid vaccines, chlorine dioxide, IV vitamin C, among others), attacking the immense, decades-long Disinformation campaign supporting childhood vaccines is my latest endeavor.

The immense anger that this one triggers in me sets itself apart from the others, mainly because the children are defenseless, have no voice or agency, and innumerable of their lives are either ended like the Shaw twins or destroyed with life-long chronic illnesses, the saddest of which is severe autism (known by the CDC), relegating them to lives of dependence upon their parents for care without the ability to have hobbies, careers, marriages, friends etc.

So, moving from the lie that measles is dangerous or deadly (it is not), let’s now examine the lie that childhood vaccines do not cause SIDS. What you will learn about the lethality of vaccines to infants (those under one year old) will shock you, as it shocked me.

The tragic cases of the Idaho twins rip apart the insidious myth that vaccines are “safe and effective.” Nothing could be further from the truth. It’s utterly maddening that countless parents remain oblivious to the damning evidence, blindly marching their precious infants to pediatricians for so-called “well-baby visits”—a ritual that, for some, is tantamount to delivering them to an executioner. Too extreme? Read the rest of this post, and then you can make an informed judgment as to the soundness of that statement.

Here, I first present my review of the medical records of the Shaw twins in Idaho. I will then follow with a literature review proving that the epidemic of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS), which began in the 1960s, is almost entirely caused by vaccination. I think you will be as troubled, horrified, and angered by what you learn as I was when I started to delve into the data.

REVIEW OF THE MEDICAL RECORDS OF DALLAS AND TYSON SHAW

Below, as I review the records, I have interspersed excerpts of the history of illness provided by the parents during their interview with Polly Tommey of CHD:

MEDICAL HISTORY

Let’s start with the end of the record and then go back to the beginning. Dallas and Tyson Shaw died on the night of the 7th day following their 18th-month well-baby visit, where they received five vaccinations during that visit – DTaP, Influenza, and Hep A.

Back to the beginning: Dallas and Tyson were fraternal twins who were born prematurely at 29 weeks (“moderately pre-term”) after Mom went into labor about a week before. Tyson was in breech position, thus emergency c/section was performed.

The kids went straight to the NICU as per protocol for such pre-term babies. Dallas had a Grade I intraventricular hemorrhage without sequelae, and both had respiratory insufficiency (apneas and desaturations) needing CPAP support and caffeine administration ( a respiratory stimulant) for several weeks (Dallas needed support longer, but both were transitioned to room air eventually).

Also, they had some typical problems of prematurity – anemia, retinopathy (grade 0), hypoglycemia, hyperbilirubinemia, borderline hypertension, all managed well without incident, and were eventually taken off IV fluids and tube feeding. Dallas had a small umbilical hernia without complications, and a heart murmur was also noted. Both got Hepatitis B vaccination at one month old, far sooner than normal gestational age, just before leaving the NICU (you know, in case they decided to hit the streets to shoot drugs and have sex with prostitutes). Too soon? Sorry, not sorry.

So, they left the NICU after just over a month there, then they spent 6 weeks at Nampa Inpatient Neonatology for feeding support. Their discharge date would have corresponded to being one day older than the original gestational due date.

Notably, after getting home with their parents, there were no real problems except concerns about delay with both. Still, only Tyson had documented delay issues, mostly with motor skills and some speech concerns, but overall mild. I want to give credit here to the overall excellent neonatal medical care and a remarkable medical accomplishment, which resulted in returning moderately premature babies to their homes in truly exceptional condition.

Per Mom: “They ate fine. They learned to roll around and crawl just fine. Of course, later than normal four or five-month-olds, but they were OK.”

Fast forward to their 18-month wellness visit – they were generally healthy, typically developed children for their corrected age, with no issues with hearing or vision. They had also received all the ACIP-recommended vaccines up to that point, although at the time of the visit, they were “behind on DTaP for 3 months,” until they both received them on the fateful day of 4/23/25.

Per Mom re: getting the vaccines that day:

“Yes, my mother-in-law was with me, and we both had a concern, specifically about the flu shot, because their father’s side of the family, they all have bad reactions or are allergic to the flu shot, and they always get a nasal infection. And she said that they would be okay. She also mentioned that, prior to receiving the vaccines that day, “they were just normal, perfect, happy little babies.”

After the visit and the vaccines:

“They were okay. I think they took a nap when we got home because they seemed tired. But for the rest of the evening, it was business as usual. We ate dinner, they played with us and their dad, and it was okay that day.”

Mom then described them the next day when they woke up:

“That’s the day that they woke up, and when they walked out of their room because they were walking, Tyson walked just about to the beginning of my… Right into the entrance of my living room, and just lay down and wouldn’t get up. Dallas, the best she could, ran to me because I was sitting on the living room floor getting ready to change their diapers. And Dallas ran to me and she lay on me and she felt heavy and she didn’t want to leave me, but she seemed tired. I changed her diaper, and I noticed that the typical toddler pot belly was gone. She was skinny. She looked tired. She was almost falling asleep while I was changing her. And when I had moved her out of the way so I could then change her brother, she just lay on the carpet in the living room and wouldn’t move or get up. And her eyes kept rolling back like she was trying to go back to sleep.”

“.. there was a green diarrhea in her diaper, as well as Tyson’s. Tyson, I had to go and pick him up from where he had lain down at the entrance of my living room and change him. And he was also skinny. He looked a little worse. His eyes were sunken back, with dark circles. They both had a blue tinge to their mouths. And when I would try to pull their lip down to look at it, it was as if their lip was trying to glue itself closed, if that makes sense.

So after I changed their diapers, I watched them for maybe a minute to see if they perked up, maybe. And then I immediately called my mother-in-law because she lives just down the street. And I told her, We need to send these kids to the ER. This is not okay. And she got off the phone with me. I tried to get in touch with him at work to let him know what we were doing. And then I video-called my mom because I felt like I was going crazy a little bit, because they didn’t look right. I thought, ‘This isn’t okay, right?’ I video-called my mom, and she was like, “Yeah, you’re taking those kids to the ER. They look like they are dying.”

The children were immediately taken to the ER on that day, 4/24/25, with documented complaints of “warmth” and “decreased activity.” The ER doc documented that it was “likely a reaction to immunization,” but the chart also included a viral URI in the differential diagnosis. Sent home AFTER GETTING TYLENOL ( a risk factor for death, which I will not explore in this post for the sake of brevity).

Mom:

He said that he’d give them both Tylenol and that he’d give them both Popsicles, and have them sit and eat the Popsicles to see if they’d throw up. And then if they hadn’t, we would go home.

They did not throw up, and we were sent home.

“They were mostly the same, except they just wanted to sleep. They slept with me on the couch. They lay on me and slept on the couch. They didn’t eat. They wouldn’t drink out of their sippy cups. And they still had diarrhea. Tyson threw up a couple more times after the ER visit that day.

Per Father: “I was in disbelief that just so quickly, within a matter of 24 hours, the kids went from perfectly happy, go-lucky active babies to looking like they were dying.”

Then, 7 days after the vaccines, on April 30th, they were still having diarrhea. Mom tried to get them in to see the pediatrician, but there were no walk-in appointments available.

Per Mom: “So I had on, I believe it was Wednesday morning. I tried to call the pediatrics to see if I could get them in. They said they had no time for walk-ins, and so I asked to speak to their pediatrician’s nurse. And she said that… Mainly because, by that point, the only symptom that was left was severe diarrhea. And she said that with the diarrhea, they need to make a few changes to their diet. And as long as they didn’t seem lethargic anymore or dehydrated, none of those symptoms meant they’d be OK. She said no greasy foods, basically just to put them on the BRAT diet.

Mom describes the rest of that day:

“They were great. That was the only day since their shots that they were active. They were eating fine. They were drinking out of their sippy cups, fine. They were talking normally, finally. And they didn’t want to sleep all day.

They went to sleep without incident, and then the Mom describes finding them on Thursday morning, May 1, eight days after the wellness visit and vaccines:

“So I had woken up, and they weren’t the ones that woke me up. They weren’t crying, ready to leave their room, or talking, ready to leave their room. And I had peeped in their room, and I wish I had checked on them more, but I peeped in their room, and I assumed they were maybe sleeping in because they looked asleep the way they were lying in their room, because they were belly sleepers. Of course, they were old enough at the time to roll over. I went and cleaned up the living room and was getting ready to have them awake. I was waiting for them to wake up. When I went in there to wake them up is when I found them the way they were.

She then describes the way she found them – cold and “they It looked as if they had gone in their sleep. They were in their sleeping positions. I think it’s called rigor mortis. Their faces were sleeping faces.” I flipped over Tyson because I tried to shake him awake, and he didn’t. I flipped him over and I saw him and immediately ran to the living room to grab my phone and call 911. And I went back into the room and sat on their bed, and then that’s when I flipped Dallas over and saw her the same way.

The rest of the interview focused on the truly disturbing and traumatic treatment they received from the police, something that ALL parents of SIDS are forced to endure. Endless questioning by detectives trying to find evidence that the mother or father may have had the capacity or desire to murder their infants. Imagine drowning in grief over the sudden deaths of your beloved babies while having to endure aggressive and accusatory questioning by detectives? Welcome to the even darker side of the childhood vaccine program, folks.

Now, before I give my impression as to the pathophysiology underlying their deaths (spoiler alert: it was caused by their recent vaccinations), I thought it would be instructive to review the history of simultaneous “twin deaths” in relation to vaccination.

Deaths Of Twins Post Vaccination

From this review of infant deaths post-vaccination:

As early as 1933, Madsen [32] documented the sudden deaths of two infants soon after receiving their whole-cell pertussis vaccinations. The first child developed cyanosis and convulsions 30 minutes after vaccination and died a few minutes later. The second child developed cyanosis two hours after vaccination and died.

In 1946, Werne and Garrow [33] documented the sudden deaths of identical twin boys 24 h after diphtheria and pertussis vaccination. The babies had symptoms of shock throughout the night before their fatal reactions. Although the simultaneous sudden deaths of twin infants—simultaneous SIDS—is rare, Werne and Garrow were not the only scientists to document this phenomenon and cite vaccines as a possible precipitating influence.

Other cases have been reported in the medical literature, which may suggest an environmental cause rather than a natural one.

For example, Roberts [34] reported on twin boys who “simultaneously succumbed to sudden unexpected deaths” 3 h after DPT vaccination. The author concluded that “coincidences do occur and should be seen in perspective.” Ed: Clearly, that is a statement he had to include to get his report published, or he was brainwashed (dead three hours after the vaccine and it is a “coincidence?”)

Balci et al. [35] reported on identical twin girls, 15 weeks old, who both died suddenly 2 days after receiving oral polio, hepatitis B, and DPT vaccines. They were found by their mother, “both in supine position” (as recommended by the AAP). The twins were healthy before the incident. Their deaths were recorded as SIDS.

According to Bass [36], “the likelihood of twin infants dying suddenly and simultaneously of SIDS, a natural disorder, defies credibility.”Ed: There ya go! Finally, someone makes %$@! sense.

Mitchell et al. [37] published a case report describing 12-week-old identical twins who died “lying on their backs.” Although their deaths were labeled SIDS, 5 days before death they each received multiple vaccines concurrently, including DTaP (diphtheria, tetanus and acellular pertussis), oral polio, hepatitis B, and Haemophilus influenzae type B (Hib).

Huang et al. [38] published a case report describing the sudden deaths of 10-week-old twin male infants. Their mother found them lying on their backs, lifeless. Ten days earlier, they had received their first doses of DPT and oral polio vaccines.

Read the Whole Article

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Three COVID-19 vaccine injury victims are asking to join a Dutch lawsuit against Bill Gates, Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla and 15 other defendants, alleging they misled the public about the safety of the COVID-19 vaccines.

The lawsuit was filed last year by seven COVID-19 vaccine injury victims, one of whom has since died.

According to a filing by the plaintiffs’ attorney, Peter Stassen, the three new victims “were healthy people” who began experiencing health problems after receiving mRNA COVID-19 vaccines.

“The applicants are of the opinion that the serious side effects that occurred after having the Covid-19 (mRNA) injections are the direct result of the content / composition of these Covid-19 (mRNA) injections,” the filing states.

Doctors have repeatedly refused to diagnose a link between vaccination and their injuries, Stassen said.

During a hearing today at the District Court of North Netherlands in Leeuwarden, Stassen also asked the court to approve five expert witnesses who will testify about the risks and dangers of the COVID-19 shots:

• Catherine Austin Fitts, founder and publisher of the Solari Report and former U.S. assistant secretary of Housing and Urban Development.
• Sasha Latypova, a former pharmaceutical research and development executive.
• Joseph Sansone, Ph.D., a psychotherapist who is litigating to prohibit mRNA vaccines in Florida.
• Katherine Watt, a researcher and paralegal.
• Mike Yeadon, Ph.D., a pharmacologist and former vice-president of Pfizer’s allergy and respiratory research unit.

Another proposed witness, Francis Boyle, J.D., Ph.D., who agreed in January to testify on behalf of the plaintiffs, has since died. Boyle was a professor of international law at the University of Illinois and a bioweapons expert who drafted the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989.

According to Dutch newspaper De Andere Krant, eight attorneys attended today’s hearing on behalf of the defendants, who also include the Dutch state, former Dutch prime minister and current NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, and several members of the Dutch government’s pandemic-era Outbreak Management Team.

Gates is a prominent investor in mRNA vaccine technology who invested in BioNTech, a German pharmaceutical company that partnered with Pfizer to develop a COVID-19 vaccine. Gates later sold his BioNTech shares at a significant profit.

The defendants’ lawyers argued that the court should not allow the proposed witnesses to testify. The lawyers questioned the expertise and impartiality of the proposed witnesses and argued that the “general scientific consensus” is that the COVID-19 vaccines are “safe and effective.”

“Scientific consensus? What is that, anyway?” Stassen asked the court, accusing the defense of using “false ad hominem arguments to undermine the expertise of his witnesses.”

Dutch journalist Ido Dijkstra, who attended the hearing, said the defendant’s arguments “ignored the obvious damage the vaccines made” — doing so in the presence of several of the vaccine injury victims who filed the lawsuit and were at the hearing.

Dijkstra said none of the plaintiffs spoke during the hearing.

Last year, attorneys for Gates sought dismissal of the lawsuit, claiming the court lacked jurisdiction.

However, in its Oct. 16, 2024, ruling, the court said it has jurisdiction over Gates, finding “sufficient evidence” that the claims against Gates and the other defendants are “connected” and based on the same “complex of facts.”

Mass COVID vaccination program ‘an unprecedented crime,’ plaintiffs argue

During the hearing, Stassen called the COVID-19 mass vaccination program “the greatest genocide of humanity ever” and “an unprecedented crime accompanied by coercion, deception, and even murder,” De Andere Krant reported.

Stassen said that if the court refused to allow the proposed expert witnesses to testify, it would mean “this court doesn’t want to know the truth.”

Stassen said:

“If you, as a judge, reject our request to hear these witnesses, which I doubt you will, then the blood already on the defendants’ hands will soon be on yours as well. This case must become a public debate that can only be resolved in court. Politics has already proven that it cannot do that.”

According to Dutch journalist Erica Krikke, who attended the hearing, attorneys for the defense did not speak much and largely refrained from commenting on Stassen’s statements.

Dutch attorney Meike Terhorst, who also attended the hearing, said Stassen “did quite well” in countering the defendants’ arguments. Terhorst noted that the defense attorneys included some of the Netherlands’ most prominent legal figures.

She also said she believes the court will allow the expert witnesses to testify.

“The law provides that the hearing of experts needs to be accepted, unless abuse of this legal right can be proven. In my view, because the argument of abuse was not made and also not proven, the court will have to allow the hearing to take place,” Terhorst said.

Read the Whole Article

The post 3 New Plaintiffs Ask to Join COVID Vaccine Injury Lawsuit Against Bill Gates appeared first on LewRockwell.

Peppered within this week’s headlines was President Trump’s on-again, off-again firing of Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell. The key variable that is never mentioned, however, is that neither Trump, nor Powell have any idea what interest rates should be. Powell’s job shouldn’t exist in the first place. Markets determine prices; not the president, and not something called a “Federal Reserve Chairman.”

Get tickets to the Ron Paul Institute’s August 16th DC Conference!

More info here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/blueprint-for-peace-tickets-1397170888739

 

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Click Here:

John Leake

 

The post “Voices of the Vaccine Injured” appeared first on LewRockwell.

Tim McGraw wrote:

It might be one of the most expensive eminent domain purchases ($500 million) in US history. Airports don’t belong in the middle of cities.

The post Ghost Streets of Los Angeles, Surfridge & LAX appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, Brian Dunaway. 

Wow. Just, wow.

Has there ever been anyone more predictable? But (if “everyone” is correct) it took Israelophilia, rather Israelomania, for him to be sucked into the event horizon.

He’s even willing to relegate his favorite word, “hoax,” to the infamous status of “conspiracy theory.”

In his Manichean cosmology, you are either on his side in ALL things, or you are weak and stupid and evil (all the same thing in his mind). The argument is often made in his defense that he only attacks if first attacked. Not in this stunning spectacle — he attacks his own base, who always gives him the benefit of the doubt — even now, not attacking, rather stunned and alarmed and confused. (Can we call this the first stage of grief: denial?)

Perhaps he’s so defensive not because he is being attacked, but because his client, Israel, is being attacked.

But he should be glad. If he thought about it for one moment, he doesn’t give a rat’s ass about Israel — the only reason he pretends to care about Israel is because he cares about what a large segment of his voters care about. If at long last the truth about Israel is too much even for the American voter to take, just maybe he won’t have to spend so much time kissing their ass and supporting a self-fulfilling prophecy that might be called Armageddon.

Zero Hedge

 

The post Ghislaine ‘Ready’ To Testify As Trump Triples Down, Slams ‘Weakling PAST Supporters Who Believe Epstein Hoax’ appeared first on LewRockwell.

Argentina’s “Libertarian” Revolution.

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We have been pretty critical for some of the more bonehead moves coming from Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem in these early days of the Trump Administration. She has staged some embarrassing cosplay “takedowns” of illegals and she inexplicitly spent her first Memorial Day as a Senior US Official – a day to honor fallen American soldiers – wailing at Israel’s “Wailing Wall” for some reason.

Nevertheless – and some may rightly criticize the slow pace of “progress” – the “easily excited” Homeland Security Secretary announced earlier this month that US travelers are no longer required to remove their shoes in order to board an airplane.

The shoe removal requirement in the first place was based on a dubious story that a foreigner tried to light his shoe on fire on an airplane flight in the heady “you’re with us or you are with the terrorists” days after the 9/11 “attacks.”

So thenceforth every grandmother in a wheelchair was suspected of being a secret al-Qaeda operative poised to light up her orthopedics – or perhaps colostomy bag – in the name of global jihad.

(The history of TSA is a history of total failure to “keep us safe,” but like all government programs the more you fail the more money you get.)

But yesterday we got a bit of cherished good news in that DHS Secretary Noem is considering lifting the equally absurd limits on the volume of liquids that travelers are allowed to carry on flights. To this point, travelers have been limited to 3.4 ounces per container to carry on the plane.

Anything more was obviously al-Qaeda.

How many 4.0 ounce contact lens solution bottles ended up in the trash to “protect” America from al-Qaeda’s planned takeover one can never know.

I happen to know, by the way. Dammit.

What would actual Americans who value our Constitution like to see? The end of TSA altogether. The government has no business even knowing who is boarding a private car or plane or locomotive. Either we are a free people or we are subject to governmental permission to travel within our country as was required by the Soviet “internal passport.”

Lots of Americans love to attack the “Chicoms,” but these same Americans seem to have no problem with the actual policies that such authoritarian governments embrace.

I would cheer for the end of a TSA that put its hands all over my then-13 year old daughter and then in retaliation for my objection to a Miss Trunchbull violation of my little girl seven years ago proceeded to attempt a live gender re-assignment maneuver on me which even the supervising Washington Metro Police Authority found to be outrageous.

Thankfully the heroic Rutherford Institute came to our rescue and unleashed their civil liberties lawyer team on TSA over the sick attack on my family. And TSA apologized!

So yeah, thanks Kristi. We are happy for that little trickle of freedom our government is so graciously returning to us. Now have a look at the Constitution and completely disengage from the business of Central Government regulation of travel.

Reprinted with permission from The Ron Paul Institute.

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International Man: Trump’s so-called “Big Beautiful Bill” involves massive government spending—how do you see that impacting the already unsustainable US national debt, and is there any real distinction between that and the kind of spending we saw under Biden?

Doug Casey: It’s ironic that the “Big Beautiful Bill” has the same initials—BBB—as Biden’s “Build Back Better.”

I haven’t read all 887 pages of the bill. And I suspect very few Congress critters have either; it’s something only a lawyer or a lobbyist might do. But I have read analyses and summaries. It’s clear that it’s just a hodgepodge, a conglomeration of notions and pork. Nothing new, just like almost every other bill that’s come out of Washington, DC, for many decades.

There’s very little to recommend it if you’re concerned about freedom and prosperity. It’s essentially 887 pages of additional things you must do, and must not do, with penalties for non-compliance, and new taxes to fund it all.

Trump’s utter lack of a philosophical core is increasingly evident. I’ve come to the conclusion that, other than his entertainment value, troll-like sense of humor, and not being Kamala Harris, the only consistently good thing about Trump is his anti-woke stance. And he’s not anti-woke based on philosophical principle, but just because of his gut feelings.

The bill doesn’t just raise spending and taxes, it creates chaos, adding complexity through new mandates and cutouts. Typical of narcissists, much of what Trump does will wind up making enemies everywhere, for no good reason. But he doesn’t realize that. He’s what’s known as a bullshit artist. He thinks his glib words actually pull the wool over people’s eyes, when all they do is expose him as a shallow conman.

International Man: What should have the bill done?

Doug Casey: There’s no attempt to implement the findings of the DOGE, which uncovered immense amounts of fraud, waste, and corruption within the US government. DOGE could have changed the course of the US. But it turned out to be nothing but a shameless PR stunt. No wonder Musk quit in disgust.

Instead of adding to the deficits and total debt, which is what this bill does, I would have liked to see an outright default on the national debt. I realize that sounds like an outrageous, even ridiculous suggestion, because it would lead to the wholesale failure of the current financial system. So let’s explore a few particulars of the mad concept.

The Fed should be abolished. Gold should be reinstated as the national currency. About 90% of Federal agencies should be abolished. The “defense” budget should be decreased by 75%, instead of being increased to a trillion dollars per year. All US troops should withdraw from all foreign bases. The government should resign its membership in the UN, NATO, and scores of other clubs and treaties. All aid and subsidies of domestic corporations and foreign governments should cease… There’s a lot more, but that’s a good start.

Regarding the national debt, it effectively transfers wealth from the average taxpayer—who is already being devastated by currency inflation—to the wealthy individuals and institutions who own it. The debt will be defaulted on eventually, probably indirectly, through inflation. I simply believe it should be defaulted on directly. Insofar as a default can ever be honest, that’s the only honest way to do it.

Compare it to a 100-story building on the verge of collapse. It’s better to conduct a controlled demolition, with a warning, than wait for it to fall on everyone unexpectedly.

There are other reasons for a default, however. First, it would free future generations of Americans from being turned into serfs just to pay it off. Second, it would punish the people who have enabled the State by lending it money to fund all the terrible things it does, like fighting wars, enriching its lackeys, and expanding the welfare state.

But none of that is going to happen. I only mention these things for your intellectual amusement. Maybe John Hunt and I will do a novel about the way a default would sort out. But we’re behind schedule on “Terrorist,” the 4th in the current series. So, one thing at a time as we watch the ongoing collapse of Western Civ…

Another bad thing about the big buffoonish bill is that it’s a distraction from the corruption exposed in the Epstein matter. Trump has said he doesn’t want to hear any more about Epstein. I expect he will, however. It should be the biggest scandal since the Dreyfuss affair in France at the turn of the 20th century.

International Man: Trump’s bill includes a $1 trillion allocation for defense spending and provisions that appear to expand the President’s authority.

Does that signal a trend toward militarization and centralized power under the guise of economic or national security?

Doug Casey: Absolutely. I’m surprised that there’s not wholesale outrage at the fact that it increases annual defense spending to a trillion dollars a year, when, in fact, military spending could and should be cut back radically. This is further proof of how supine and degraded the average American has become.

For one thing, it funds the so-called “Golden Dome,” which we analyzed in some detail last week (link).

In addition, it designates about $170 billion to ICE and border enforcement. While sending illegal migrants back where they came from is a good thing, as with all government agencies and actions, the extra agents that are hired will never be fired. The 100,000 new detention beds contemplated by the act will remain long after Trump is gone. They will just be repurposed by the Democrats. The government will continue growing like a cancerous self-licking ice cream cone.

The bottom line is that the bill directs a lot more power and dollars toward the State, and in no way cuts back the State. Americans may not like the migrants, but I suspect they’re going to like thousands of new ICE agents checking to see if their “papers are in order” even less.

International Man: When comparing Trump’s spending to Biden’s “Build Back Better” agenda, do you see any meaningful differences in their impact on the economy, or is it simply two sides of the same inflationary coin?

Doug Casey: The main difference between them is who gets the pork and the rhetoric that surrounds it. For instance, there’s a section in the bill reinforcing farm subsidies, which—depending on various conditions—slop from $30 to $60 billion per year to farmers, as if they were hogs. Nothing new, these egregious subsidies have been around for many decades. They’re welfare payments. In addition to corrupting farmers, they necessitate the Department of Agriculture (DOA), which employs 100,000 bureaucrats.

Anything the DOA does that’s useful would be done by entrepreneurs. This bill just further cements industrial agriculture in place and makes the survival of family farms even more difficult.

You might also consider the $1,000 “Trump accounts” for kids. Trump loves anything with his name attached to it. But it’s a bad idea. It gives the public the idea that Trump is giving them something for nothing, and gets them in the habit of receiving stolen goods. Needless to say, a new agency will have to be set up to monitor the accounts. Maybe the amount should be raised to $10,000 or $100,000. Then Trump could claim he was creating a whole generation of multimillionaires.

International Man: Do you believe the spending surge under Trump, including this bill, will help normalize trillion-dollar deficits, and what does that mean for the US dollar going forward?

Doug Casey: Forget about trillion-dollar deficits. That’s far in the rear-view window. We’re looking at three, four, and five trillion-dollar deficits. That’s after the multi-trillion-dollar tax increase through tariffs.

Also, the BBB has almost no reference to deregulation. It’s just another tax, spend, and borrow bill. The additional chaos it causes might immanentize the financial eschaton that we’re facing. I’m not talking about ten years or even five years from now. I think it’ll happen within Trump’s term.

And the Republicans, worthless as they are, will be blamed. I couldn’t care less about them, but because they’re somehow associated with free market values, those values will also be blamed. In 2028, therefore, the chances are excellent that the lefties will be elected. Even assuming that Trump serves out the remainder of his term, which I think is in doubt. Things could get seriously out of control.

I’m afraid that Trump is acting much like Roosevelt did in 1932. Few people know that when Roosevelt ran for office, he ran on what amounted to a radical free market platform. His proposed policies were almost libertarian in nature, as a reaction to the horrible statist and dirigiste policies of the benighted Herbert Hoover, who’s always falsely painted as a free market guy. After Roosevelt was in office, he instituted something close to socialism in the US.

I think Trump—who’s always been an egomaniac—is turning into a megalomaniac. The man never, ever, admits he’s wrong. That’s very dangerous. It’s scary.

For a while, because Kamala was defeated, it looked like Morning in America. But unfortunately, morning only lasts six hours.

Reprinted with permission from International Man.

The post Trump’s ‘Big Beautiful Bill’: Defense Dollars, Debt, and the Real Cost of Spending Sprees appeared first on LewRockwell.

Gates is financially backing the development of sun-dimming technology that is aimed at reflecting sunlight out of Earth’s atmosphere, triggering a global cooling effect.

Before a total tally on the body count from last week’s deadly flood in Texas has been completed, many Americans are raging against the machine, claiming a government conspiracy to manipulate weather patterns.

Just days after America faced the Independence Day flood, prominent political voices were quick to proclaim that the weather event was the result of scientific tampering. In other words, over 100 Americans were “murdered” as opposed to killed during the storm.

MAGA congressional candidate Kandiss Taylor is facing backlash after spreading ‘conspiracy theories’ about the deadly flash floods along the Guadalupe River in Texas. Taylor, who is running to represent Georgia in the House of Representatives, posted on X: “Fake weather. Fake hurricanes. Fake flooding. Fake. Fake. Fake.”

“This isn’t just ‘climate change.’ It’s cloud seeding, geoengineering, & manipulation,“ she added. “If fake weather causes real tragedy, that’s murder. Pray. Prepare. Question the narrative.”

Meanwhile, U.S. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, who once blamed the 2018 California wildfires on “Jewish Space Lasers,” says she plans to introduce a bill that would make weather modification a felony in U.S. “I am introducing a bill that prohibits the injection, release, or dispersion of chemicals or substances into the atmosphere for the express purpose of altering weather, temperature, climate, or sunlight intensity,” she posted on X. “It will be a felony offence.”

Greene said she had been researching weather modification “for months” and that her bill bans individuals from practicing geoengineering or cloud seeding, and imposes a $100,000 fine and five-year prison sentence.

The Critical Thinking Dispatch echoed Greene’s grim, conspiratorial views when it wrote, “The deadly Independence Day floods weren’t natural – they were engineered. During this catastrophic event, the Guadalupe River rose nearly 30 feet in under an hour. At the same time, some locations endured approximately four months’ worth of rain in just four hours. How could this happen? The answer lies in a sinister truth: weather warfare has been deployed against American citizens.”

Much of the current controversy on geoengineering technologies focuses on the political lightning rod known as ‘climate change,’ where Democrats are much more susceptible to the belief that human activities are responsible for burning down the planet than are the Republicans. Thus, whenever a major weather catastrophe occurs, like the one in Texas, Democrats will scream in one voice that human beings must trade in their carbon monoxide spewing vehicles for electric cars, while Republicans scoff at such apocalyptic conclusions.

Although the field of geoengineering may seem like a very modern development, it has actually been going on for almost 150 years. For example, the first patent describing a method of producing rainfall was issued to Louis Gettmann back in 1891. In 1920, Paul Weiss patented a process and device for creating intense artificial clouds and fogs, and in 1924 Charles Miller created a mist dispersing compound. More than 200 patents were issued for weather modification and geoengineering technologies between 1890 and 2014. Since 2014, information on issued patents in this category has not been disclosed.

Thus far, the application of these and many other geoengineering technologies have been reserved for rather benign things, such as ensuring clear weather during national celebrations. For example, in China, before the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in 2008, it rained on the outskirts of Beijing, and during the ceremony itself, but there were no clouds over the capital. In addition, fog dissipation is carried out in aviation to improve the safety of aircraft landing, in agriculture to increase precipitation and increase yields.

According to an academic study entitled “Impact of Weather Change technologies on global Security,” Olena Shevchenko and Kira Horiecheva revealed that “the only confirmed military use of climate change technology to date is Operation Popeye by the U.S. military during the Vietnam War. As a result, a threefold increase in precipitation and the duration of the rainy season were recorded.

The authors concluded that “this operation showed the danger of using technologies for influencing the weather.”

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association says it does not modify the weather, nor does it fund, participate in or oversee cloud seeding or any other weather modification activities. NOAA’s objective is to “better understand and predict Earth’s systems, from the bottom of the seafloor to the surface of the sun.” NOAA is required by law to track weather modification activities by others, including cloud seeding, but has no authority to regulate those activities.

But given the extreme skepticism that the American people hold for their government institutions, such denials will only serve to reinforce the ‘conspiracy theories’.

At the same time, there is already a large body of evidence that government institutions, in cooperation with academia and the world of business are actively developing and experimenting with geoengineering technologies. In fact, just google Microsoft founder Bill Gates’ name into the search field and it becomes clear that somebody is twisting the truth.

Gates is financially backing the development of sun-dimming technology that is aimed at reflecting sunlight out of Earth’s atmosphere, triggering a global cooling effect. The Stratospheric Controlled Perturbation Experiment, launched by Harvard University scientists, aims to examine this solution by spraying non-toxic calcium carbonate (CaCO3) dust into the atmosphere — a sun-reflecting aerosol that may offset the effects of global warming.

Incredibly, none of the scientists involved in this experiment can say with any certainty what the results will be, a bit like when nuclear bombs were first tested. But some have voiced their worries with the tinkering of Earth’s atmosphere.

“There is no merit in this test except to enable the next step. You can’t test the trigger of a bomb and say ‘This can’t possibly do any harm’,” said Nicklas Hällström, director of the Swedish green think-tank WhatNext?

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

The post ‘That’s Murder!’ Has Weather Warfare Been Unleashed on Americans? appeared first on LewRockwell.

Do you feel financial stress on a regular basis? If so, you are certainly not alone. As you will see below, a new survey has discovered that more than two-thirds of the entire country is feeling “anxiety and depression” due to financial stress. The cost of living is totally out of control, and it is absolutely crushing the middle class. Earlier today, we learned that the official rate of inflation has gone up again. Apparently it was the largest increase in five months, but I don’t put much stock in the official government numbers because I know how much they have been manipulated. In fact, the formula for calculating the official rate of inflation has been altered dozens of times since Jimmy Carter was in the White House, and every time they change the formula the goal is to make inflation look lower than it actually is. To me, what really matters are the prices that we are hit with on a day to day basis, and those prices have been skyrocketing.

I am old enough to remember when summer vacations were actually affordable.  Gasoline was under a dollar a gallon, and you could stay at cheap motels for less than 20 dollars a night as you drove across the nation.

But these days even a vacation that lasts for just a few days can put you deep into debt…

After stepping off the plane in Nashville, having paid far more than expected for your flight, the rental car desk awaits.

Four days with a Toyota Camry costs $670. A Starbucks coffee on the way to the hotel is another $7.

Your budget hotel somehow costs $500 for the weekend, breakfast not included. Eating out for dinner means the day’s spending is comfortably into four figures.

Who can afford that?

Summer vacations have become a thing of the past for much of the population, and that is extremely unfortunate.

Of course the cost of just about everything else has been rapidly rising as well.

Let me give you some examples.

For the past five years, U.S. home prices have been rising at a pace of almost 10 percent a year…

Over the past five years, U.S. home values have increased by roughly 8–9% per year on average, while over the past ten years, they’ve risen about 6–7% per year on average. In other words, national home prices saw an exceptionally rapid climb in recent years, far above historical norms.

I can understand why so many young people are so frustrated right now.

The average price of a home in the United States has now risen above half a million dollars.

But they keep telling us that inflation is low.

Give me a break.

Health insurance has also been getting a lot more expensive…

Average monthly premiums for families with employer-provided health coverage in California’s private sector nearly doubled over the last 15 years, from just over $1,000 in 2008 to almost $2,000 in 2023, a KFF Health News analysis of federal data shows. That’s more than twice the rate of inflation. Also, employees have had to absorb a growing share of the cost.

The spike is not confined to California. Average premiums for families with employer-provided health coverage grew as fast nationwide as they did in California from 2008 through 2023, federal data shows. Premiums continued to grow rapidly in 2024, according to KFF.

Who can afford a monthly health insurance premium of $2,000?

In the old days, they would call that “highway robbery”.

And don’t even get me started on the price of food.

There was a time when some Americans would actually purchase dog food to eat in an attempt to cut costs, but now even the price of dog food has soared into the stratosphere…

The average unit price of dog food was $5.78 in 2021, but last month the figure was $8.42.

Rising food prices are the number one reason why the number of Americans facing food insecurity has nearly doubled over the past four years.

Anyone that actually believes that things are “fine” is simply not living in reality.

Things are so bad that approximately one-fourth of the U.S. population is now using “buy now, pay later” loans to pay for everyday living expenses…

A growing number of consumers are taking out “buy now, pay later,” or BNPL, loans to cover everyday living expenses, data shows, a sign of the precarious financial state facing many U.S. households.

A quarter of Americans now use BNPL loans to pay for groceries, up 14% from last year, according to a recent survey from LendingTree. The personal finance firm also found that more people are using such financing to pay for clothing, technology and housewares.

Of course once those companies get you hooked, they will hammer you with high interest rates.

But many Americans are just desperate to find a way to survive from month to month.

According to one recent survey, almost 70 percent of the population is feeling “anxiety and depression” because of their finances…

Americans are feeling increasingly uneasy about their financial future.

Nearly 7 in 10 (69%) say financial uncertainty has led them to feelings of anxiety and depression, according to a recent survey from Northwest Mutual — an 8-percentage-point increase from 2023.

Other surveys have come up with similar results.

For example, here is one that found that “65% of middle-income Americans believe their income has not kept pace with rising expenses”…

Middle‑income Americans are still adjusting to a higher cost of living and ongoing financial pressures, according to the latest Primerica® U.S. Middle‑Income Financial Security Monitor (FSM). The survey finds that 65% of middle-income Americans believe their income has not kept pace with rising expenses — a sentiment that has remained remarkably consistent for more than four years, highlighting the challenges families feel as prices outpace paychecks.

“Middle‑income families are making tough decisions every day to cover the essentials and save for the future, and it continues to shape how they perceive the overall economy, with many feeling less confident and more cautious about what lies ahead,” said Glenn J. Williams, CEO of Primerica. “That makes it even more important for families to seek sound financial advice. A financial professional can help families find the money in their budgets, reprioritize expenses and build a realistic path to save for the future. Even starting with a small amount can make a significant difference over time.”

And that same survey discovered that 80 percent of middle-income Americans rate the economy poorly…

Middle‑income Americans continue to rate the economy poorly. More than three-quarters (80%) rate it negatively — a figure that has remained consistent over the past year. Amid ongoing economic uncertainty, a strong majority (83%) say they want to take steps to protect themselves financially for the long term — yet only 36% are actually doing so.

A lot of people get upset with me when I write like this, but it is the truth.

We really are experiencing the kind of long-term economic decline that I have long warned about.

If you are feeling constant stress because of the state of your own personal finances, I want you to understand that there are tens of millions of other Americans that are in the exact same boat.

Decades of very foolish decisions have brought us to this point, and the American people should be very upset at those that are responsible for bringing this crisis upon us.

Reprinted with permission from The Economic Collapse.

The post The Cost of Living Is Out of Control appeared first on LewRockwell.

If we borrow all of tomorrow’s prosperity to spend today, there won’t be any future prosperity, there will only be penury.

The developed nations share many of the same sources of stagnation:

1. Demographically, their cohort of retirees drawing government benefits is expanding with no end in sight while their workforces are shrinking;

2. Their models of funding government programs institutionalized 50, 60 or 70 years ago no longer provides enough income to cover government spending;

3. As their populations age, demand/consumption is stagnating as older people spend less on everything other than healthcare, and the cohort of younger people getting married and starting families is in steep decline;

4. Attempts to stimulate consumer spending via central bank/state stimulus are now increasing inflation, crimping both household and state spending as debt service costs rise;

5. Institutionalized processes that worked in the “boost phase” of economic growth are now hindrances as following established processes are the focus rather than adapting to get results;

6. The expedient “solution” to soaring demands for government spending (healthcare and retirement programs are now a third or more of state expenditures) is to fund spending with borrowed money–selling government bonds which then increases the nation’s sovereign debt and the interest that must be paid on that swelling debt;

7. The low-hanging fruit in the economy have all been plucked, and while there are high hopes for an energy transition and AI, there are no guarantees these will boost productivity enough to generate the growth needed to “grow our way out of debt;”

8. The proposed solutions are all forms of financial engineering–lowering interest rates, introducing stablecoins, etc., all intended to lower the cost of borrowing from the future to stimulate “growth” today in the hopes of “growing our way out of stagnation and debt.”

Richard Bonugli and I discuss these core issues in our podcast The Challenges of the G7 world (33 minutes), issues which boil down to one basic question: is pulling the levers of financial engineering enough to “grow our way out of stagnation and debt,” or are more fundamental reforms required?

The key to “growing our way out of stagnation and debt” is to boost productivity. In the podcast, I refer to Total Factor Productivity, which is an attempt to “capture the ‘secret sauce’ of how an economy or business produces more output with the same or fewer inputs.”

This ‘secret sauce’ includes efficiency, technological innovation and the cultural-social foundations which are often overlooked in conventional economics–for example, “free markets” only function in high-trust societies.

If we’re squandering money borrowed from the future on superfluous consumption, is this enough to “grow our way out of stagnation and debt,” or is this expansion of debt to fund unproductive consumption actually increasing the stagnation and debt?

As a generality, the developing world has more favorable demographics and a more positive growth profile as there is still a relative abundance of low-hanging fruit in terms of infrastructure and ways to increase productivity that can be developed with prudent investments of capital and labor.

Read the Whole Article

The post Can the Developed World Grow Its Way Out of Stagnation? appeared first on LewRockwell.

As Peter Schweizer noted in a short report for the Hoover Institution on Christmas Day 2000, twenty-five years ago the United States was “spending less on defense as a percentage of GNP than anytime since the Great Depression.”  That all changed nine months later when the so-called “peace dividend” from the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War was reinvested in a “Global War on Terrorism.”

Eight trillion dollars later, and what do Americans have to show for their sacrifices in blood and treasure?  The Taliban is in control of Afghanistan, al-Qaeda is in control of Syria, an apologist for Islamic jihad is about to become mayor of New York City, and a pro-Hamas contingent of lawmakers wields too much power in Congress.

In an article that resembles an obituary for U.S. foreign policy during the twenty-first century, writer Daniel McAdams dryly observes in the headline, “‘Global War on Terror’ Is Over.  Terror Won.”  That’s quite the gut punch for everyone who lived through 9/11 and its aftermath.  Yet it’s hardly inaccurate.

A quarter-century after Islamic terrorists murdered three thousand Americans, politicians are more concerned about “Islamophobia” in the United States than providing adequate care for veterans who confronted Islamic barbarity head-on.  The hurt feelings of those who risked nothing to defend the homeland matter more than the damaged bodies and minds of those who risked everything.

The significance of 9/11 has been so watered-down that Congresswoman Ilhan Omar remembers it only as a day when “some people did something.”  For the victims we lost, their families, members of the military who fought and died on the global battlefield, and the families of those servicemembers who never saw their loved ones again, that “something” was — by far — the most consequential event in their lives.  Now it’s just an opportunity for foreigners who become members of Congress to guilt-trip white people for their imaginary “privilege.”

After 9/11, everybody insisted that we left our guard down and somehow brought the tragedy upon ourselves.  If we had only continued spending on defense at the same high levels that we had been spending since WWII, then we could have prevented the worst attack on American soil since the Japanese Empire bombed Pearl Harbor in 1941.  That was the supposed lesson.  It didn’t matter that we were still spending more than every other country in the world; as soon as we cut back on Cold War military spending, we suffered another surprise attack.  We were vulnerable, everyone agreed, unless we rededicated tax dollars toward huge military budgets.

Everybody in the defense sector got big buckets of money after that.  Weapons manufacturers, research and development firms, intelligence think tanks, and foreign policy consultants made out like bandits.  The FBI got new domestic surveillance powers.  The Department of Homeland Security and Transportation Security Administration came into existence.  The CIA positioned itself once again as the unofficial quarterback of the U.S. government.  Unelected bureaucrats, in other words, became much more powerful than they were before 9/11, and the defense industry started cashing much bigger checks.  All the institutions that experienced a diminishment of clout and prestige after the Cold War found their clout and prestige supercharged in the post-9/11 world.  That’s a pretty sobering reminder that some people always benefit from tragedy.

How did the American people make out?  Not so well.  In return for a foreign attack on U.S. soil, American citizens lost any claims to their privacy.  The Patriot Act (apparently already written and ready to be signed into law as soon as a sufficient emergency could justify its passage in Congress) birthed the modern national security surveillance State.  Americans lost control over their bank records, phone calls, text messages, and emails.  It became common to hear politicians justify this loss of personal privacy as a trifling matter for Americans with nothing to hide.  On 9/11, foreign terrorists murdered U.S. citizens; after 9/11, the U.S. government murdered the Fourth Amendment.

Americans also saw the accelerated migration of foreign nationals into their local communities.  Both George W. Bush and Barack Obama seemed to agree that American citizens were responsible not only for prosecuting a “Global War on Terrorism” but also for resettling “refugees” from newly occupied territories into the United States.  The end result has been a confusing and disruptive injection of multiculturalism this century.  Had Americans known that defending their way of life would involve importing millions of foreign nationals with a different way of life, many never would have supported post-9/11 wars in parts of Asia and Africa and across the Middle East.

Effectively, the U.S. government responded to the worst attack since WWII by going to war for two decades, tearing up parts of the Constitution, and undermining Americans’ shared culture.  Those politicians and bureaucrats in D.C. who have seen their powers expand this century believe the enormous costs in lives and dollars are justified.  Those industries that profit from endless war have had much to celebrate.  For many Americans, however, the butcher’s bill from this century’s military conflicts has not been pretty.

Right now the drumbeat of war is growing louder.  U.S. and European interests see Ukraine as an expendable chess piece in a larger NATO-led war against Russia.  As the death toll in Europe rises, Western war-hawks continue to demand that every last Ukrainian man be press-ganged into service.  I have made no secret of my contempt for those who insist that Ukrainians die in this war when they are not permitted to vote for elected representatives or even to dissent publicly from the government currently hanging onto power through martial law.  There is nothing “democratic” about this Ukrainian dictatorship.

I dislike the Council on Foreign Relations types who lick their chops over the possibility of defeating Russia and dismantling its enormous territory into more digestible parts.  I dislike the BlackRock vultures that can’t wait to gobble up the region’s natural resources while making trillions of dollars from government-subsidized rebuilding projects across the war-torn terrain.  I dislike the bloodthirsty loudmouths, such as Lindsey Graham, who speak of war as if it’s a playground game.  I dislike the Machiavellian politicians (particularly in Europe) who see the War in Ukraine as a convenient distraction from the exorbitant energy costs of “climate change” communism presently destroying Western economies.  I dislike those who would risk miscalculations between nuclear powers over former Soviet lands whose peoples largely identify as Russian.  I dislike those who prefer that Russian and Ukrainian Christians kill each other rather than seek peace.

Before we ratchet up the slaughter in Europe and expand the Russia-NATO proxy war in Ukraine into something even more devastating than it already is, consider how much we’ve sacrificed this century.  The “peace dividend” following the Cold War didn’t even last a decade.  When the United States committed itself to a post-9/11 “Global War on Terrorism” for the next twenty years, we watched our Bill of Rights and culture slip away.  Whether one thinks the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were worth their costs, those costs will look minuscule next to the butcher’s bill that will come due in a full-out war between Russia and U.S.-NATO.  Those European and American parents who believe that their children will never be drafted into service should remember that Ukrainian parents once believed the same thing.

There is an abyss before us.  If we fall into it, we will lose ourselves.  The madness will be bloody and awful, and we will be lucky to see it through.  War takes everything.  It robs everyone.  I pray that we can avoid it.

This article was originally published on American Thinker.

The post War Takes Everything appeared first on LewRockwell.

It’s so funny how Trump has stopped even pretending to be a populist. As soon as he was re-elected he was just “Yeah okay so Israel comes first and forget everything I said about free speech and the Ukraine war is continuing and there will be no Epstein investigation, fuck you.”

It has long been obvious to anyone with half a brain that Donald Trump is just another Republican swamp monster playing on public discontent with the status quo to win votes and support, but it is genuinely surprising how completely he has stopped pretending to care about fighting the deep state and sticking up for ordinary Americans as soon as he got back into office. He’s just dropped the populist schtick entirely and is giving the finger to anyone who complains.

The president has been aggressively and repeatedly demanding that his entire base shut up about Jeffrey Epstein and move on after years of MAGAworld fixation on the story, bizarrely going as far as claiming that interest and attention on the Epstein files was a concoction of the Democrats. He is doing this even as his Department of Justice releases a video which it claims disproves conspiracy theories that the sexual predator was murdered in his prison cell — but the video is edited and missing minutes of footage.

NEW: Metadata from the “raw” Epstein prison video shows approximately 2 minutes and 53 seconds were removed from one of two stitched-together clips. The cut starts right at the “missing minute.”https://t.co/akGXqznId6

— WIRED (@WIRED) July 15, 2025

This happens as the Financial Times reports that Trump is now encouraging Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky to ramp up deep strikes into Russian territory and asking whether it would be possible to hit Moscow. This would be the same President Trump who falsely promised on the campaign trail that he would end the Ukraine war in “no longer than one day.”

After pledging to restore and protect free speech in the United States, Trump has been aggressively stomping out speech that is critical of the state of Israel and its genocidal atrocities, scoring yet another win for government censorship on Tuesday with Columbia University’s announcement that it is adopting the IHRA definition of “antisemitism” which conflates criticism of Israel with hate speech against Jews, in accordance with the wishes of the Trump administration.

After promising to “restore peace, stability, and harmony all throughout the world,” Trump has bombed Iran, poured weapons into Israel and Ukraine, backed Israel’s genocide in Gaza and its numerous acts of war against its neighbors, slaughtered hundreds of civilians with a savage bombing campaign in Yemen, and conducted dozens of airstrikes in renewed operations in Somalia, all while leading the nation into the era of official trillion-dollar Pentagon budgets.

In 2023 Trump proclaimed that “if you put me back in the White House… I will totally obliterate the deep state.” In 2025 he’s advancing pretty much every longstanding deep state agenda in the book.

Trump: “I will totally obliterate the deep state.”

Crowd goes wild. Many Americans now understand the enemy isn’t Russia or China. The enemy is the US deep state oligarchy that weaponizes intelligence services, bribes politicians and controls the media.pic.twitter.com/t8UluiBi2t

— Kim Dotcom (@KimDotcom) March 5, 2023

Every single part of Trump’s platform where he could have claimed to be standing up for the little guy against the powerful has been completely flushed down the toilet in the first six months of his second term, leaving only a standard George W Bush Republican in its place. If you wanted tax cuts for the rich and cruel treatment for immigrants then Trump is still your man, but if you were hoping he’d benefit ordinary Americans or do anything to drain the swamp in Washington he’s just peeing on you and writing a wall of text on Truth Social explaining why the pee is actually rain.

Which again should come as no surprise to anyone who’s been paying attention. No real change will ever come from either of America’s two power-serving major parties.

But what’s so funny is people are probably just going to fall for it again. Trump’s base is very upset about the Epstein thing and many of them might actually abandon Trump himself, but you know next election cycle someone like Tucker Carlson or JD Vance will run on his platform and these suckers will swallow it hook, line and sinker. I actually said this on Twitter the other day and got multiple people telling me that actually Tucker Carlson getting elected would be a major blow to the deep state, so you know they’re already primed for it. They can’t wait to fall in line behind the next phony Republican populism scam.

Whatever. People will be fed whatever slop they keep asking for. The lesson will keep on repeating until it is learned.

__________________

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I write this from Athens, the birthplace of the only democracy that worked to perfection because it was the selective type. Actually I am fifteen kilometers north of the city, in a wooded area where the well-heeled spend their summers to escape the city’s heat. It is the place where I was born. And every time I set foot here, Fotis, Kostas, and Stavros come to mind. Kostas and Stavros were my father’s chauffeurs, while Fotis was the night watchman of our Athens house. All three were slaughtered during the Communist uprising against the state in December of 1944. The reason for their death was that they worked for a rich capitalist, my old man. Fortunately only Stavros was married, and his wife and daughter remained employed by us for the duration.

Which brings me to the point I wish to make this week: Long before those two non-gentlemen—Marx and Lenin—seduced the public with their lies, the tradition of noblesse oblige reigned supreme. Those with privileges cared about those without. This went on since feudal times, when the lords of the manor took responsibility for those who did not enjoy their advantages. After the bloody Russian revolution, with butchers like Lenin and Stalin at the helm, the principle of relieving poverty by the state became a commitment to removing all wealth inequality, except for those in power, that is.

“Like physical traits such as beauty and strength, we can never be all alike.”

My first memories of my father coming home after the war and immediately having to fight the Communist uprising are still very fresh. Old Dad had shut down his factories while Greece was occupied by the Axis powers, but the Commies nevertheless went after them and burned them down because they were capitalist tools. Just as the three young men who were murdered for working for a capitalist were. But the Reds did not get us, because my father fought back, shooting down the raiders with a submachine gun he had brought back from the wars with him. (The three young men were caught outside our house while taking a break.)

Eighty years on, things are much better, as democratic governments have assumed responsibility to protect all citizens from dire poverty. The system means well, but the outcome, especially of late, is counterproductive. The problem is that of the welfare state. It wants total equality—except for those who make the rules, very similar to the Commies back in the bad old days—an impossibility, a mirage, like doing away with physical ugliness, disease, or even death.

This mirage is what has bankrupted France and soon Britain, and has undermined the capitalist creation of wealth. And it persists despite proof of failure, with slogans such as “A fair society means abolishing all inequalities of wealth.” This bull, needless to say, does not pass muster in America. Over here one gets out of life what one puts into it, although some of our African-American cousins insist their ancestors worked for nothing, hence they should reap the rewards 200 years later.

In Europe nowadays, being on welfare is preferred over working for a minimum wage, the unemployed numbers swelling every year as thousands of African immigrants arrive by sea at the old continent. The corrupt and dysfunctional European Union has paved the way to Europe’s demise with laws such as the above mentioned, but dissenting voices against this most corrupt of bureaucracies are few and far between.

Here’s an example of what I’m talking about: A British female by the name of Whitney Ainscough makes more than 500,000 pounds per year through social media posts advising people on how to exploit welfare rules. She relates buzzwords and correct answers to her paying readers on how to be awarded more benefits; 25- to 34-year-olds are the largest group of claimants.

So, abolishing all inequalities of wealth is not only a mirage, it is the biggest con I know of. It makes Madoff’s Ponzi scheme a mere bagatelle. The blood-soaked Commies sold this to the unaware, and the socialists persist in conning the public with it. But like physical traits such as beauty and strength, we can never be all alike. The Commies who murdered the three young men who worked for a living have no excuse for living, at least as far as I’m concerned. And the joke as always was on them. My father lived happily to a ripe old age, and so have I. Capitalism does not go down that easy.

This article was originally published on Taki’s Magazine.

The post The Reality of Inequality appeared first on LewRockwell.