“With that in mind, returning the Department of Defense to the Department of War, which is how it started, may not be such a bad idea after all – as long as we can be honest about the rest of the terms around our warmaking.”

That sentence is also an invitation to revisit the bracing essay, A Plan of a Peace-Office for the United States, written by Dr. Benjamin Rush, the brilliant Founding Father, Physician and great Christian Humanist.

https://artandtheology.org/2017/06/14/essay-a-plan-of-a-peace-office-for-the-united-states-by-benjamin-rush/

Dr. Rush argues trenchantly for the creation of a Peace Office as a counter to the Department of War. His essay describes the governing philosophy of a Peace Office. He follows that with the recommendation that a sign be placed over the door of the War Office with this comparative inscription:

An office for butchering the human species.
A Widow and Orphan making office.
A broken bone making office.
A wooden leg making office.
An office for the creating of public and private vices.
An office for creating a public debt.
An office for creating speculators, stock jobbers, and bankrupts.
An office for creating famine.
An office for creating pestilential diseases.
An office for creating poverty, and the destruction of liberty and national happiness.

In the lobby of this office let there be painted representations of all the common military instruments of death, also human skulls, broken bones, unburied and putrefying dead bodies, hospitals crowded with sick and wounded soldiers, villages on fire, mothers in besieged towns eating the flesh of their children, ships sinking in the ocean, rivers dyed with blood, and extensive plains without a tree or fence or any object but the ruins of deserted farm houses.

Above this group of woeful figures, let the following words be inserted, in red characters to represent human blood:

NATIONAL GLORY

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The New Housing Market Business Model

Gio, 04/09/2025 - 17:48

Jerome Barber wrote:

Build to rent. You literally will own nothing and be happy.

See here.

The post The New Housing Market Business Model appeared first on LewRockwell.

Sparks Fly At NatCon5: Non-Interventionist Conservatives Storm The Breach!

Gio, 04/09/2025 - 17:35

The post Sparks Fly At NatCon5: Non-Interventionist Conservatives Storm The Breach! appeared first on LewRockwell.

What’s Really Happening to Fire Victims in California?

Gio, 04/09/2025 - 17:32

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FBI Director Kash Patel gave “Bravery” Award in July to Agent who Killed Rancher in Cold Blood

Gio, 04/09/2025 - 17:31

Click here:

Politica

The post FBI Director Kash Patel gave “Bravery” Award in July to Agent who Killed Rancher in Cold Blood appeared first on LewRockwell.

Operation Warp Speed Unleashed a Turbo Cancer Epidemic

Gio, 04/09/2025 - 17:08

Click Here:

Nicolas Hulscher, MPH

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Florida Surgeon General Nukes ALL School Vaxx Mandates, Likens Them to Slavery

Gio, 04/09/2025 - 17:07

Click Here:

Ben Bartee

The post Florida Surgeon General Nukes ALL School Vaxx Mandates, Likens Them to Slavery appeared first on LewRockwell.

Hey, POTUS, Fire The Real Mortgage Fraudsters—The Entire FOMC

Gio, 04/09/2025 - 05:01

Part 1

If the Donald wishes to clear the purportedly hallowed precincts of the Federal Reserve of mortgage fraudsters, the facts of the case tell us he has a much bigger challenge than issuing Fed governor Lisa Cook her walking papers via a White House press release. That’s because her sin of obtaining a 15-year mortgage on an Ann Arbor, Michigan residence at 2.5% on June 18, 2021 and a 30-year mortgage on an Atlanta condo at 3.25% on July 2, 2021, while claiming both as a “primary” residence, wasn’t the half of it.

The real crime is that not only a Fed governor but any resident of America could get a long-term mortgage this cheap in 2021. After all, during 2021 the Y/Y inflation rate per our trusty 16% trimmed mean CPI posted at 3.17%. That means Cook’s Ann Arbor mortgage was written at -0.67% on an inflation-adjusted basis and the Atlanta loan at +0.08%.

Both rates are economically absurd and were available to Lisa Cook or anyone else in America only because the monetary fraudsters on the FOMC had their big fat thumbs on the scales in the bond pits. And we do mean fraud: The Fed’s balance sheet rose by $1.2 trillion or 17% during the 12-month period ending on July 7, 2021, and at a time, as we will amplify below, when the Fed’s balance sheet should have actually grown by essentially zero.

That is to say, the FOMC was buying government debt and GSE paper hand-0ver-fist with fiat credits snatched from thin digital air, thereby starkly falsifying yields and prices in the bond pits. There is not a chance in the hot place that tax-paying, real money savers left to their own devices would accept such niggardly real yields.

For want of doubt on this matter, here is the Fed’s march of shame/fraud during the 35 years after Greenspan embarked upon Keynesian monetary central planning until the Fed’s pivot to inflation-fighting in 2022. During that period the real yield on the 30-year mortgage went from +6.4% to -1.2%, thereby representing a 760 basis point swing in a single, relentless direction over 35 years.

Needless to say, the odds of that happening on an honest free market in money and debt are 0.000%! In fact, this relentless march downhill to these absurdly low bond and mortgage yields pales Lisa Cook’s alleged fraud into insignificance. The pattern in this chart amounts to wanton monetary fraud on an epic scale.

Inflation-Adjusted Yield on 30-Year Mortgages, 1977 to 2022

Again, for want of further doubt on this matter, here is the Fed’s balance sheet over the same 35-year period.

For crying out loud! It expanded by 35X during a period in which the nominal GDP rose by only 5.2Xand real GDP by just 2.4X. That is to say, the Fed pumped fraudulent credit into the financial markets at a 11% per annum rate for 35 years running. So doing it resembled nothing so much as an end-stage alcoholic self-medicating on an endless bender.

Absent this $8.5 trillion flood of central bank credit authorized by Alan Greenspan and his heirs and assigns, of course, there is no chance whatsoever that the march of monetary shame depicted in the graph above would have occurred; and also that Lisa Cook and millions of other Americans would have gotten 30-year mortgages at just 3% in June/July 2021.

35X Rise In Fed Balance Sheet, Q2 1987 to Q1 2022

Needless to say, there is a devastating irony embedded in the near $9 trillion peak of the Fed’s balance sheet displayed above. To wit, in March 2020 the Fed in its capacity as lead bank regulator finally abolished the archaic requirement that banks maintain cash reserves against deposits at the Fed equal to stated fractions of these balances. In the period immediately before their long overdue abolition, the reserve requirements were 3% for large deposit levels (above $17 million) and 10% for very large deposit levels over $128 million.

At the same time, the Congress and the Fed substituted a more sensible balance sheet based regime that consisted of liquidity coverage ratios (LCR) and equity and other capital ratios against adjusted balance sheet assets. What this meant as a practical matter, of course, is that thereafter banks did not really need the Fed in order to remain appropriately liquid or to fund and grow their balance sheets, thereby supplying an adequate credit supply to the main street economy.

Specifically, the Liquidity Coverage ratio could be met by holding US treasury paper, traditional cash reserves at the Fed or other high quality short term paper, while lending growth and asset expansion could be accommodated by raising equity capital through retained earnings or market offerings. That is to say, the new post-Dodd-Frank liquity and capital ratios superseded the traditional central bank function of reserve provision to the banking system in order to mitigate bank runs or smoothly enable growth of bank credit and deposits.

In effect, the regulatory policy action culminating in the March 2020 abolition of required reserves took both the “banking” and the “reserve” functions out of the Fed’s remit, leaving it buck naked as the pure monetary central planning agency that it had gradually become since the time of Alan Greenspan. The only possible residual “banking” function now possessed by the Fed is that of a funding source of last resort for banks that for some reason may be unable to acquire sufficient deposits in the private money markets to fund their balance sheets.

Alas, with a proper “mobilized discount rate” at the Fed’s discount windows that function would be nearly vestigial, as well. Going way back to 1913 and the “real bills” doctrine on which Carter Glass founded the Fed, the discount window would charge the market interest rate plus a stiff penalty spread in order to discourage use except for very rare circumstances. That is to say, there is nothing wrong with the free markets in money that says private funding will not be available at market clearing rates.

Indeed, if at some point in time market clearing rates on deposits should prove to be “too high” because yields on a given banks’ assets were lower, the solution would be insolvency and liquidation of the institution in question. And in a market with more than $105 trillion of debt instruments outstanding, it is easy enough to see that a few periodic bank bankruptcies among badly managed institutions that got in over their ski’s would actually be a good thing—a purging mechanism to keep banking markets disciplined and solvent.

In any event, the Fed’s current $6.5 trillion QT (quantitative tightening) balance sheet is far, far too big for any residual function as a funds supplier of last resort at market rates. Indeed, the Fed’s balance sheet got to such brobdignagian girth purely owing to the dysfunctional pursuit of its Greenspanian monetary central planning model.

Alas, the latter is based on the dubious proposition that main street prosperity is everywhere and always retarded by the free market’s alleged inability to set interest rates and financial asset prices correctly. And that it therefore needs a monetary Sherpa to guide financial asset pricing, and the prosperity that flows from savings and capital investment.

But today’s histrionics tells you all you need to know about that misguided proposition. Main Street needs only a free market in capital and money—not Jay Powell nor Donald Trump—- to price stocks, bonds, loans, money or real estate. And not the 11 additional geniuses on the Open Market Committee, either.

So if the Donald really wants to bring back a golden age of prosperity he needs only continue his brutal attacks on individual members of the monetary politburo until the public finally sees that the entire central banking emperor is naked.

In this context, it can be well and truly said that the Fed put itself out of its historic central banking business in March 2020. What’s left, of course, is its mission creep based monetary central planning operation, which has been a disaster and nonstarter from the get go.

As it happens, the Donald has a way of stumbling into good outcomes–like the impending peace deal in Ukraine and the dismantlement of the unnecessary American Empire that can follow in its wake—even if he doesn’t know exactly why.

So in the case of the other great dysfunctional institution on the banks of the Potomac, let’s hope that the sacking of Lisa Cook is just the opening salvo. What really needs to happen is a mercy-killing of the entire FOMC and 95% of what today constitutes the massive rogue monetary central planning agency domiciled in the Eccles Building. The latter is truly a clear and present danger to American prosperity.

Part 2

If we are lucky the firing of Lisa Cook may turn out to be the straw that finally breaks the camels back. To wit, both Wall Street speculators and Washington spenders have been out in force screeching in behalf of the sacred “independence” of the Fed. But maybe people will begin to wonder how in the world a society based on free market governance of economic life and constitutional and democratic arrangement of political life came to place such massive, unaccountable power in the hands of just 12 bureaucrats (FOMC).

Indeed, we’d say bring on the Fed “independence” debate because in the present day and age there is no compelling reason at all to invest such massive financial power in an institution that is both unaccountable to the electorate and self-evidently in the tank for the gamblers, spenders and war-mongers who thrive on its largesse.

So let’s just start with a contra-factual. Assume that the entire FOMC is fired and not replaced; that the current Fed practice of buying and selling government debt paper and other securities via the FOMC is banned; that US Treasuries are made ineligible collateral for loans from the Fed’s discount windows; and that the Fed is forbidden from paying interest on bank reserves or their money market equivalent such as overnight repos.

Of course, the same crew of howlers for Fed independence–ranging from Wall Streeter’s to Senator Elizabeth Warren to huffy MSM financial journalists at CNBC and The Economist—will say that upon activation of the contra-factual summarized above all economic hell would break-out on Wall Street and main street alike.

Actually, we’d beg to differ by going straight to the core of the argument for an all-powerful state-enabled financial Sherpa. The claim is that this ensures financial stability and enhanced economic growth, while the absence of a powerful central bank would send the hapless free market economy spiraling into a paroxysm of financial crises, recessions and sub-par economic growth.

As it happens, there is not a shred of empirical evidence to support those contentions and plenty of reason to believe that the vaunted macro-economic management functions of the Fed are simply the fruits of Mission Creep over many decades. The latter being capped off by the sharp turn toward out and out monetary central planning when Alan Greenspan took the helm in August 1987.

In that context, let us start with a simple performance test based on key macro-economic outcomes as between the two book-end periods:

the two decades after the so-called Treasury Accord in March 1951 and Nixon’s deep-sixing of the gold standard at Camp David in August 1971.
the 18 years between the Greenspan housing bubble peak in Q4 2007 and Q2 2025.

Needless to say, we have not chosen these intervals randomly. In fact, the first period represents mainly the “light touch” monetary policy era of William McChesney Martin. The latter was actually the Truman Administration’s Treasury Department official who negotiated the deal which freed the Fed from its WW II subservience to the financing needs of Uncle Sam. Crucially, Martin also had matured financially in the household of a Fed governor in the roaring 1920s and as president of the New York Stock Exchange during the crash of the 1930s. That is to say, he had experienced first hand the dangers of Fed fueled financial bubbles and their destructive aftermath, too.

By contrast, the post Q4 2007 period involved full-on monetary central planning from the Eccles Building led by Keynesian academics and Washington apparatchiks. During this interval the Fed’s massive daily presence in the canyons of Wall Street was continuous, heavy-handed and predicated upon the false contention that financial stability and sustained economic growth and full-employment were unobtainable absent massive infusions of Fed credit into the bond and stock trading pits and continuous micro-management of money market rates and the yield curve. And the latter was to be accomplished via deft buying and selling (that is, overwhelmingly “buying”) of treasury debt and other securities as instructed daily by the FOMC.

To be sure, this isn’t a perfect test but if you are not totally bamboozled by the recency bias, it is evident that there was a night and day difference in the modality of central bank operations as between the two periods. For want of doubt, consider William McChesney Martin’s famous aphorism that the job of the Fed “is to take away the punch bowl just as the party is getting started”. Yet as to the 2007-2025 period, find us any even vaguely similar utterances from Bernanke, Yellen and Powell or, for that matter, any member of the FOMC, and we will be literally shocked.

Needless to say, you won’t find one because the whole mentality of the FOMC has changed drastically since the 1950s and 1960s. The Martin Fed actually respected the free market, and sought keep its impact on financial markets and asset prices as absolutely minimal as possible. By contrast, the Fed under Bernanke et. al. since the Great Financial crisis, especially, has mistaken itself for the Little Dutch Boy with his finger in the dike.

That’s right. The FOMC actually thinks its ministrations constitute the difference between national economic prosperity and crisis-ridden economic dysfunction. And that, in turn, its ability to steer the economy toward prosperity rather than collapse is owing to the fact that the 12-person FOMC has far better insight as to the correct interest rates, yield curve and stock index level at any point in time than would a genuine free market in financial instruments that is unenlightened by the wisdom possessed at the FOMC.

Well, we not only think not. We know not!

You can’t get any better contrast on the matters of macro-economic stability and the trend level of economic growth and employment than is depicted in the table below.

As to the growth/full employment metric, the comparison speaks for itself. The two decade CAGR for real growth in the Martin era was 4.24% per annum or more than double the 1.95% per annum gain during the heavy-duty monetary central planning era originally spawned by Greenspan and then executed by Bernanke, Yellen and Powell after Q4 2007.

Indeed, the table compares long-term trends—two decades way back then compared to the two most recent decades—so there is nothing to debate about timing or short-term aberrations. The heavy-handed interventionist Fed of recent times has drastically retarded economic growth, not enhanced it.

At the same time, the modern interventionist Fed, as depicted in the second column, has caused a sharp increase in macro-economic volatility and instability compared to what prevailed during the “light touch” Martin Era when the business cycle was largely operating on its own natural steam and forces. We reach that conclusion by comparing the standard deviation for both nominal and real growth as between the two periods, and, even more crucially, the so-called coefficients of variation.

The latter tells you everything you need to know. Given that the mean growth trend was sharply lower over Q4 2007 to Q2 2025 while the standard deviation was much higher, you got a compounding effect in this bottom line metric. To wit, the coefficient of variation with respect to nominal GDP during the last 18 years was more than double its level during the Martin Era, while the coefficient of variation since 2007 with respect to real GDP was triple that which prevailed during the 1950s and 1960s.

In short, contrary to Ben Bernanke’s humbug about the “Great Moderation” in recent times—allegedly due to the superior performance of the FOMC—-the truth is very simple: Greenspanian monetary central planning has caused a sharp and unmistakable increase in economic volatility and instability.

To be sure, there should be no mystery as to why monetary central planning results in less growth and more instability. It’s actually inherent in the beast because despite all its pretensions to arcane “monetary science” the Fed’s mindset and tools alike are about as primitive as it gets: Namely, the entirety of monetary central planning is based on the proposition that debt can never be cheap enough, and that more and more of the latter is the elixir that fuels enhanced economic growth and rising prosperity.

Actually, however, not at all. Excessive and artificial debt levels due to central bank induced mispricing causes financial bubbles and diversion of capital and economic resources to unproductive speculation and malinvestment. They also generate boom and bust stock market and credit cycles, which raise the volatility and instability of the main street economy.

For want of doubt here is the national leverage ratio since 1951, which is measured as total public and private debt divided by nominal GDP. Self-evidently, during the high growth/low GDP volatility period of the Martin era, the national leverage ratio hugged closely to its historical level at about 150% of GDP. However, after the Fed was cut loose from the gold standard anchor of Breton Woods in August 1971 it was off to the races.

During the entirety of the post-2007 period, the national leverage ratio stood in the range of 350% to 400% of GDP. In turn, those two extra turns of debt now amount to $60 trillion of incremental debt being lugged around by the US economy.

In short, the massively excessive debt of the recent period of Keynesian monetary central planning was a growth retardant, not an elixir; and it also saturated the financial system with excessive credit and liquidity, which fostered boom and bust financial bubbles and subsequent violent collapses and liquidations.

National Leverage Ratio (Debt-to-GDP), 1951 to 2025

Finally, there is another crucial aspect of the Martin era that militates in favor of firing the entire FOMC and abolishing any further buying and selling of debt and other securities in the open market by the Fed. To wit, the overwhelmingly favored policy tool during the Martin era was the Fed’sdiscount rate, which is inherently a tool of old-fashioned central banking, not modern day monetary central planning.

In the first place, the Discount Window is passive. It is not meant to steer the financial markets or macro-manage the main street GDP. Instead, it was conceived by Carter Glass and the Fed founders as a back-up source of required reserves, enabling banks to meet unusual depositor demands for cash without shrinking their credit and deposit books; and to thereby steady the main street economy and enable a more continuous process of investment expansion and economic growth than had prevailed during the latter part of the 19th century.

Yet, heaven forfend, there were no implicit or explicit targets for GDP growth, employment rates, housing starts, CapEx or any of the other “incoming data” indicators tracked to the week and second decimal point by today’s monetary central planners. Thus, during the entirely of the Martin Era there was not a single Fed proclamation about its Federal funds targets, nor any frenzied financial market speculation about 25, 50 or even 100 basis point increases/decreases in interest rates in the run-up to each Fed meeting. Those key movements were left to the wisdom of the money markets.

Accordingly, during the 228 months of William McChesney Martin’s tenure as Fed chairman, the Fed took interest rate action via the passive Discount Rate just 30 times, representing hardly 13% of the monthly meetings. By contrast, 100% of Fed monthly meetings are now effectively “live”, even as the FOMC’s open market desk is busy buying or selling securities virtually every week, day and hour that the financial markets are open for business.

Fed Discount Rate Levels And Changes During The Martin Era, 1951 to 1970

At the end of the day, there is plenty of historical evidence for the proposition that the entire FOMC should be fired, followed by the abolition of the FOMC entirely. As we will amplify further in Part 3, the American economy needs neither an “independent” Fed nor a super-interventionist FOMC to prosper. The US economy would do just fine with free markets in money, debt, stocks and derivatives, and at most a mobilized rate at the Discount window to provide high cost liquidity in extremis.

Part 3

The screeching in behalf of an “independent” Fed versus one purportedly stacked and dominated by the Donald has continued unabated. Lately, it seems that the talking heads on CNBC can’t gum about much else.

Alas, this barrage of self-interested humbug from Wall Street and Washington alike amounts to obsessing about the wrong question. As we have suggested in Parts 1 & 2, the question is not whether Jay Powell and the FOMC should be setting interest rates versus Donald Trump and his minions. To the contrary, the real issue is why anyone in the Eccles Building should be setting interest rates at all.

To wit, what in the hell is wrong with the free market? And by that we mean the tens of thousands, if not millions, of traders and investors with skin in the game who would otherwise set interest rates by bid and ask without any guidance and pegging from what amounts to a monetary politburo—even as the latter is pleased to be known by the utterly false and antiseptic title as the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC).

For crying out loud. There is nothing “open” or “market” about it. The FOMC is an all-powerful price control arm of the state, which derives its massive financial clout from a monopoly on the legal right to counterfeit dollars snatched from thin air.

Yet, why in the world at this late date are they still printing dollars? As we have shown repeatedly, there is no reason whatsoever for the Fed to pursue it original mission of supplying reserves to the commercial banking system. After all, the Fed itself abolished any and all reserve requirements more than five years ago!

Instead, the banking system is now regulated—for better or worse–by a balance sheet based regime including prescribed liquidity ratios based on qualifying assets such as US treasury bills, which exist in ever increasing abundance thanks to the Trumpified spenders and borrowers in Washington; and also equity capital at prescribed ratios to total bank assets, which equity capital, again, can be acquired nearly without limit via retained earnings or new equity issuance. So there would be no barrier to commercial banking expansion so long as balance sheets are managed prudently.

Similarly, money and credit is the lifeblood of modern capitalism, but why in the world is it held that an unaccountable monetary politburo of 12 appointed bureaucrats is required in order to create serviceable money and credit? Indeed, the free market everywhere and always is responsive to demands for every kind of good or service—including that of money for transactions, payments, safekeeping, lending and borrowing.

As to the latter, there is now $4 trillion of crypto currencies outstanding. That’s a hell of a lot of private money—and it’s really no different in the context of the digital age than private bank issued money was during the national banking era prior to Washington’s granting the Fed a monopoly on the printing press. That is to say, the free market had proven back then and is doing so again now that it can create serviceable money without any action or guarantee by the state.

To be sure, the “use case” has been somewhat slow developing for the innumerable cryptos now on offer, but the recent Genius Act passed by the not-so-geniuses in Washington actually turns Treasury bills into everyday money (stable coins), which can be transacted instantly over the blockchain by anyone who can buy, borrow or steal a computer or iPhone. Indeed, so-called “stable coins” are actually the equivalent of national bank notes issued during the National Banking era between 1863 and 1913, which were also backed 100% by US Treasury debt. In short, there is nothing new under the sun about non-state or private money at all.

Stated differently, a century ago private banks created hand-to-hand currency that was backed 100% by Treasury bonds but guaranteed only by the issuing bank. Today, the Genius Act enables private crypto banks to issue essentially the same kind of hand-to-keyboard transactional money, albeit usable even more conveniently on a computer-to-computer basis over the blockchain.

As for the necessity of a state run central bank to enable adequate credit supplies, fuhgeddaboudit! There is currently $104 trillion of debt of every shape, size and domination outstanding in the USA alone. Indeed, the problem is way too much credit owing to the Fed’s repression of interest rates and the resulting sub-economic yields that result. Still, at market rates people and corporations alike would be rewarded for saving, meaning that there would be plenty of honest savings-based funding at market clearing yields for the legitimate credit needs of the economy.

In short, the banking system no longer needs “reserves” supplied by the Fed, and the economy does not need a central banking monopoly to be adequately supplied with money and credit. Accordingly, we once again get to the true core of Federal Reserve operations, which is not really about reserves, money or credit.

To the contrary, the Fed today is a destructive state agency in the business of monetary central planning, predicted upon a simple but infinitely erroneous proposition: Namely, the claim that free financial markets cannot properly price interest rates for optimum growth and macro-economic stability. Alas, in Part 2 we proved that proposition is utter nonsense with respect to both growth and stability.

Of course, the prospect of free financial markets operating without an authoritarian financial Sherpa and interest rate pegger in the Eccles Building would generate coronaries among the speculators on Wall Street and the spenders in Washington. They would falsely shriek that somehow the financial system needs a liquidity supplier of last resort to prevent the ultra-low probability that a market-clearing interest rate would somehow fail to balance the supply of private savings with the demand for investible and loanable funds.

Fine. An ultimate liquidity backstop at market rates is a contradiction in terms because at some rate there will always be depositors and liquidity providers. But for those academics and socialists—yes, we do repeat ourselves—who think capitalism needs training wheels, then just revive the Discount Window and a mobilized discount rate.

Beyond that, shutdown everything else round and about the Eccles Building. That is, fire the current FOMC , abolish the open market desk and replace the Federal Reserve Board with citizens randomly drawn from the Brooklyn telephone book. The latter would operate not through a central planning oriented open market desk, but via a passive discount window based on free market interest rates plus a penalty spread. It would be a standing facility that would be virtually never used. But a warm financial blanket nonetheless.

Needless to say, a passive discount window would put the Wall Street gamblers out of business because the leveraged carry trades would no longer be profitable, and PE multiples would fall sharply based on market driven DCF calculations, not phony 10-year Treasury yields confected by the FOMC.

Even more decisively, it would also put the Washington spenders out of business, as well. Forced to pay soaring market clearing interest rates on the Uncle Sam’s massive public debt, the spenders would have absolutely no running room to spend another dime on America’s massively overdrawn credit card.

Finally, the question therefore recurs: In a free market financial system with the printing presses of the Fed set at or near idle on a permanent basis, would the stock market capitalization of the US have exploded from 40% of GDP in the era before Greenspan and his heirs and assigns to nearly 20o% at present?

As the man said on late night TV—not on your life!

US Stock Market Capitalization As a % of GDP, 1970 to 2022

Reprinted with permission from David Stockman’s Contra Corner.

The post Hey, POTUS, Fire The Real Mortgage Fraudsters—The Entire FOMC appeared first on LewRockwell.

Israel and the West Set the Stage for Next Round of Warfare on Iran

Gio, 04/09/2025 - 05:01

Peace-loving people throughout the world breathed a sigh of relief when the Israeli-American war on Iran ended in June after 12 days, with President Trump racing to triumphantly declare US strikes had “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program.

While his rhetoric suggested he wanted Israel and the world to view the US bombing as a lasting resolution of accusations that Iran was pursuing nuclear weapons, Israel and its Western collaborators are already setting the stage for new aggression against Iran. Israeli strikes could be just days or weeks away, with Netanyahu hoping that, this time, the United States will be drawn into yet another protracted, bloody regime-change campaign to further the Israeli agenda.

On Thursday, France, Germany and the United Kingdom notified the UN Security Council that they were starting the process to reimpose UN sanctions on Iran via “snapback” provisions of the 2015 nuclear deal.

Under that agreement — the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) — Iran agreed to many additional safeguards to ensure its nuclear program remains peaceful. For example, Iran eliminated its inventory of medium-enriched uranium, cut its low-enriched uranium by 98%, capped future enrichment at 3.67%, and rendered its heavy-water reactor inoperable by filling it with concrete. In exchange, Iran was granted sanctions relief.

Despite Iran’s compliance with the JCPOA, President Trump spontaneously withdrew the United States from the deal in 2018 and reimposed US sanctions that his administration called “the toughest sanctions ever imposed” on Iran. Victimized by a new round of Israel-encouraged US economic warfare, and lacking any other leverage to nudge the United States back into the deal, Iran began enriching uranium well above the levels allowed under the JCPOA.

Parroting Israel, Trump has insisted that Iran must cease all nuclear enrichment, something Tehran has categorically ruled out for years, asserting that it’s Iran’s right, both as a sovereign state and — unlike nuclear-armed Israel — as a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Internal politics play a significant role in the impasse, with important Iranian segments opposed to bending to Western demands on a point of national pride for the scientifically-advanced country.

In something akin to Vito Corleone’s “offer that can’t be refused,” US-Israeli insistence on zero enrichment is — quite deliberately — a demand that won’t be accepted. To the benefit of the warmongers, this demand helps ensure perpetual tension and recurring US-Israeli military brinksmanship, all pursuant to Israel’s long-standing goal of maneuvering the United States into an all-out war on Iran, or at least a major drive to topple the regime via proxies. That’s consistent with Israel’s strategy, which centers on continuously shattering territories and countries throughout the region so none can serve as a potent rival. It’s a strategy that’s taken an unfathomable toll that falls heaviest on the people of the region, but also profoundly harms the United States.

If broader UN sanctions are indeed reimposed on Iran via the JCPOA snapback provisions 30 days from last week’s joint notification, Iran’s rulers will be under pressure to respond. In July, Iran’s deputy foreign minister threatened that Iran may do so by withdrawing from the NPT, which would mean an end to ongoing supervision of the Iranian nuclear program by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

Iran’s relationship with the IAEA is already badly strained. “Iran expelled IAEA inspectors in the wake of the US-Israeli war in response to the watchdog’s role in providing a pretext for the initial Israeli attack and for its failure to condemn the bombing of Iranian nuclear facilities,” explained Antiwar.com’s Dave DeCamp. Iran also says it suspects Israel obtained information from the IAEA that enabled the assassinations of more than a dozen Iranian scientists in June.

Iran allowed a team of inspectors to return last week, but it remains to be seen how much access they’ll be given. Among the largest questions looming over Iran’s bombed nuclear program: Where is the stockpile of 60%-enriched uranium that had been held deep under a mountain at Fordow? That enrichment facility was hammered by US bunker-buster bombs on June 22, but some reports have suggested Iran preemptively moved the uranium to another location before the Trump-ordered strike.

With both Israel and the United States threatening renewed warfare if Iran makes good on its promise to continue enriching uranium, Tehran will be justifiably reluctant to disclose the fate of its 60%-enriched uranium, or to give full access to its nuclear facilities, including those hit by Israel and the United States in June. After all, full transparency would certainly be exploited by military planners in Washington and Tel Aviv.

It’s a no-win situation for Iran. A withdrawal from the NPT will be portrayed by Israel and its Western allies as proof that Iran is building a nuclear bomb. The same narrative will be promoted if Iran continues to allow inspections, but fails to grant every request for access to sites around the country. It’s easy to purposefully trigger refusals — for example, by asking for access to sites that aren’t sincerely suspected of harboring nuclear assets, but are nonetheless sensitive from an Iranian national security standpoint.

Either way, Israel and its collaborators in Western governments can create a pretext for military intervention. Ironically, Israel may be pushing Iran into a corner that prompts Ayatollah Khamenei to withdraw his religious edict forbidding the development of nuclear weapons, turning a long-false accusation into reality.

Short of an all-out war or regime-change campaign, Israel — at the least — wants to impose a new, violent reality on Iran, says Trita Parsi, executive director of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. “What the Israelis wanted to achieve [in June], short of decapitation, was to make sure that they turn Iran into the next Lebanon or Syria, a country that Israel can bomb at will without American involvement and with complete impunity,” said Parsi on a recent appearance on the Scott Horton Show. “It’s part of the larger security strategy of the Israelis, which is security through complete military hegemony and domination. This is why they are very inclined to start a war again, and they want to do so before the political window in Washington closes.”

To preclude a new era in which Iran is routinely bombed by Israel, Parsi thinks Tehran will take a far more aggressive approach to retaliation than it did in June. “The Iranians will not show any of the restraint they showed in the last 12-day war. It’s very clear they were [planning] for a long confrontation, and as a result, they were not consuming everything they had at an early or a fast pace. But for the next war, they’re probably going to go all-in right away to completely dispel any notion in Israel that they can turn Iran into the next Syria.” Such a massive retaliation would seemingly amplify the risk of major US involvement.

Iran’s likely approach to the next round of warfare may be driving a sense of urgency in Israel to strike soon, given both countries are racing to replenish their arsenals. It’s not clear who’s best-positioned for that competition and the next exchange of fire.

Israel rapidly neutralized Iran’s air defenses in June, but, as the war progressed, Iran had increasing success of its own, bypassing Israeli air defenses and achieving some spectacular hypersonic ballistic-missile strikes on targets around the country. On the other hand, Iran’s offensive missile arsenal was depleted by use and degraded by Israeli attacks, and its missile and fuel production facilities were also hit.

IDF air defenses reportedly ran low on ammunition too, and the US arsenal was also weakened. In the most egregious example, to defend Israel from the consequences of its aggression, the US military burned through a quarter of its global inventory of high-end, THAAD missile interceptors, firing 150 of them at a staggering cost of some $2 billion. At the pace Lockheed Martin produces them, it will take more than a year to restore the THAAD inventory.

In addition to the ambiguous, multi-variable dynamics of the arms race, Israel’s eagerness to start the next round of warfare could also be driven by the shelf-life of whatever assets the Mossad still has inside Iran. Such assets played a major role in Israel’s surprise attack — reportedly deploying long-concealed drones, destroying anti-aircraft batteries, and facilitating the assassination of scientists and military commanders. Since the war, Iran has been sweeping the country for remaining Israeli assets, and rounding up suspected spies.

As Parsi indicated, US politics must also figure in Israel’s calculus. Americans’ support of Israel has been cratering as the IDF campaign in Gaza continues to produce images of suffering on an enormous scale, alongside a never-ending stream of credible testimonies about Israeli atrocities against civilians. The collapse in pro-Israel sentiment extends to what has long been the foremost cornerstone of Israeli support — the Republican Party. A spring Pew poll found that 50% of Republicans under 50 now have an unfavorable view of the Zionist state, and Trump’s decision to join Israel’s war on Iran in June sparked an uproar from his America-First base, led by influential figures like Steve Bannon.

Meanwhile, legislators from both sides of the aisle have been enduring disruptions at summer-recess town halls, with angry constituents condemning them for failing to block ongoing US facilitation of Israeli war crimes in Gaza. Add it all up, and Israel would likely want to make its next attempt at entangling Trump in a major war well before he’s highly sensitized to the potential impact on the 2025 midterms. Taking the longer view, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and others must be contemplating the possibility that the long era of unwavering US support of Israel could be at the beginning of its end — incentivizing them to cash in on every American dollar, missile, UN veto and misguided military intervention they can before the party’s over.

In the meantime, Israel and its collaborators throughout the West will continue doing all they can grease the skids for the next war, which includes propaganda campaigns to cultivate fear and loathing of Iran.

Decades into that undertaking, the anti-Iran material is dominated by tired old lines that just don’t hit like they used to, like warnings that Iran is “months away” from having a nuclear weapon — warnings we’ve been subjected to for decades, despite contradictory conclusions of the US intelligence community.

After launching his war on Iran in June, Netanyahu dusted off a propaganda line from the run-up to the 2003 Iraq invasion, claiming Israeli intelligence had just learned that, if Iran obtained nuclear weapons, it would hand them over to non-state proxies to inflict “nuclear terrorism on global scale.” The fact that Netanyahu quickly dropped that far-fetched claim from his wartime oratory speaks volumes.

Speaking of things that sound made up, last week Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said his security agencies determined Iran had directed arson attacks on a Jewish business and a synagogue in Australia in 2024. Western reporters dutifully quoted the claim, without adding their newfangled “without evidence” modifier they selectively apply to statements made by politicians they revile. Iran’s supposed motive? “To undermine social cohesion and sow discord in our community,” said Albanese with a straight face. Embedding a second dubious claim inside the first, Australia says its intelligence community reached its conclusion about Iranian government involvement in the arsons on its own.

After leveling the accusation, Australia expelled Iran’s ambassador — the first time it did so to any country’s ambassador since World War II — and designated Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist group. Aside from serving the broader propaganda campaign, the claim and related moves carried potential political benefits for Albanese — countering Netanyahu’s recent accusation that Albanese had failed to take “decisive action” against an “alarming rise of antisemitism in Australia.” Netanyahu even went so far as to assign the Australian prime minister a Sept 23, Rosh Hashanah deadline to “replace weakness with action, appeasement with resolve.”

You can expect many more accusations to be leveled against Iran in the coming days and weeks. Some may be true, but allow me to pass on a useful reminder from Aussie Caitlin Johnstone. With each new claim, bear in mind Hitchens’ Razor: “What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence.”

This article was originally published on Stark Realities.

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A Police State Presidency: When ‘Rule of Law’ Becomes ‘Rule by Gunpoint’

Gio, 04/09/2025 - 05:01

“The world will soon understand nothing can stop what is coming.”—President Trump

Donald Trump has always been a master of imagery.

From his red MAGA hats to his choreographed rallies, he understands the language of spectacle. Now he has discovered the perfect propaganda machine: AI-generated images.

AI allows the creation of endless variations of Trump-as-warrior, Trump-as-enforcer, Trump-as-savior. These images spread across social media, replicated, remixed, and shared until they become familiar, even normalized.

The latest AI-generated images of Trump, shared on his social media accounts, depict him in the militarized black uniform of a SWAT officer, or in police dress blues.

These memes are carefully crafted signals of how Trump envisions power in America.

These algorithmically perfected images, generated to flood the digital landscape and shape the subconscious of millions, are neither accidental nor new: they are psychological warfare—propaganda that is as old as time.

Propaganda does not persuade through logic. It persuades through familiarity. And Trump’s AI propaganda machine is doing its job: normalizing the sight of a president in a SWAT uniform.

Throughout history, despots have used martial imagery to elevate themselves above the people and justify power by force.

Mussolini wrapped himself in the black shirts of his paramilitaries to rally fascist Italy. Hitler’s carefully staged uniforms and parades signaled total control of the German nation. Stalin and Mao surrounded themselves with martial iconography to convey power over life, death, and law.

The message was always the same: I am not just your leader—I am your protector, your executioner, your law.

Today, Trump joins that lineage—not on a battlefield, but in digital space.

But unlike his predecessors, Trump does not need mass rallies or parades to craft this imagery. Algorithms now do the work of propaganda ministries. And unlike past dictators who required massive propaganda apparatuses, Trump needs only an internet connection and an AI tool to clothe himself in the trappings of authoritarianism.

This may be political theater, but it is also authoritarian propaganda that sends a message that Trump sees himself not as the servant of the people—bound by the Constitution—but as the nation’s chief cop, judge, and executioner.

Under a police state presidency, there are no checks and balances, no due process, no Bill of Rights that should stand in his way. By collapsing the distinction between civil government and militarized force, the president, self-styled as a SWAT chief, suggests that dissent will not be debated—it will be policed.

When Trump dons a SWAT uniform—even digitally—he is telling Americans: this is how I see power. Not as persuasion, not as consent of the governed, but as force delivered at gunpoint.

The SWAT image is the visual embodiment of a police state presidency:

It signals raids on the homeless, as Trump’s July 2025 executive order mandated when it directed federal agencies to clear encampments nationwide.
It signals mass arrests of immigrants and families rounded up in early morning ICE sweeps.
It signals military deployments to American cities, e.g., when Trump sent the National Guard to Los Angeles, a move a federal court recently ruled a violation of the Posse Comitatus Act.
It signals treating dissent as criminality, and opposition as insurgency.

For decades, Americans have watched the rise of SWAT teams transform America—and domestic policing—into a militarized state: battering rams breaking down doors, no-knock raids in the dead of night, armored vehicles patrolling suburban streets, flashbang grenades tossed into homes.

SWAT was originally conceived for rare, high-risk emergencies like hostage situations. Today, it has become the default face of the American police state.

The numbers tell the story.

In 1980, there were roughly 3,000 SWAT raids per year in the United States. By the 2000s, that number had skyrocketed to 80,000 annually.

What was once a rare tactic reserved for hostage situations or heavily armed standoffs is now routine police work. The result has been predictably tragic. Children injured by flash-bang grenades. Elderly homeowners killed when they mistook armed agents for intruders. Family dogs shot in the chaos of mistaken raids.

SWAT culture has normalized the use of military tactics against civilians. It has conditioned Americans to accept armored vehicles on Main Street, black-clad officers in ski masks battering down doors, and neighborhoods transformed into war zones.

The courts have long warned against this drift into militarized policing. Yet what good are limits when the president himself imagines donning the uniform of those who kick down doors?

A Constitution that is ignored in practice, even if acknowledged on paper, is no safeguard at all.

Trump’s AI propaganda takes this dangerous normalization a step further: it places the president himself at the head of the raid—the enforcer-in-chief—rendering him the law, the enforcer, and the judge. This is the very definition of dictatorship.

The Constitution was written precisely to prevent such concentration of power. It was written to prevent the rise of a lawless ruler who would make himself enforcer as well as lawgiver.

That is why the Bill of Rights exists—to put clear, inviolable limits on government power. The Fourth Amendment protects against unreasonable searches and seizures. The First protects dissenters and protesters. The Fifth guarantees due process before life, liberty, or property can be taken.

But in the American police state that is rapidly unfolding, citizens are not sovereign individuals but potential suspects. Dissent is not free expression but insurgency. And the citizenry are not seen as equal participants in a social contract but as a populace to be subdued.

This is not merely unconstitutional. It is anti-constitutional.

What makes Trump’s propaganda even more dangerous is how well it aligns with America’s existing drift toward militarization.

Police departments nationwide already deploy surplus military equipment: tanks, drones, battlefield weapons.
Federal agencies like Homeland Security and ICE conduct raids that look indistinguishable from military operations.
Surveillance technology powered by Palantir and other private firms tracks the movements of ordinary citizens.
Protests are met with riot gear, tear gas, and mass arrests.
The carceral prison state is rapidly expanding. Congressional funding for Trump’s $170 billion prison expansion threatens to make incarceration the government’s default solution to social problems.
Military forces are being used for domestic policing. The federalization of the National Guard to suppress immigration protests in Los Angeles, already struck down as unlawful, is a warning of how military power is being recast as domestic policing.

It must be said: Trump did not create this police state reality. But his presidency gleefully amplifies it, recasting America as a nation where “law and order” means rule at gunpoint.

This shift matters because it changes how people imagine power. A president who wears a SWAT uniform—even in AI fantasy—is telling the public: I am not one of you. I am over you.

The most insidious part of this propaganda is not its shock value but its normalizing function, part of a deliberate strategy to acclimate Americans to authoritarian rule.

Images once seen as dystopian now appear as campaign memes. The president as militarized enforcer becomes a shareable joke, a collectible, a digital poster for the faithful.

But every meme conditions the public to accept what would once have been unthinkable. Today it is a picture. Tomorrow it is policy.

This is how authoritarianism advances—not always through tanks in the streets, but through the slow, steady normalization of force as governance.

Every authoritarian regime has used uniforms and slogans to rebrand tyranny as order. The Nazis had their SS uniforms, the Soviets their red star, the Chinese Communists their Mao suits. Symbols matter because they carry meaning deeper than words.

Trump’s SWAT imagery is America’s warning sign. It is the uniform of repression, masquerading as protection. It is the costume of a ruler who governs by intimidation, not law.

We ignore this at our peril.

If we fail to see the danger, if we laugh it off as mere fantasy, we will wake up one day to find the fantasy has become reality.

The Constitution does not permit presidents to be SWAT chiefs. It does not allow them to enforce laws by decree, to jail dissenters at will, or to treat citizens as insurgents. It insists that the president is a public servant, bound by law and accountable to the people.

But that system only survives if “we the people” demand it.

“Nothing can stop what is coming,” declares Trump? On the contrary: tyranny can always be stopped—if liberty lies in the hearts of the people.

The choice before us is clear: do we accept the imagery of the president as SWAT chief, or do we reaffirm the vision of the founders that no man is above the law?

The time to decide is now. The Constitution will not defend itself.

Trump’s AI propaganda declares that law is whatever the president enforces. It declares that rights are privileges, granted or withdrawn by armored men. It declares that nothing—not law, not courts, not people—can stop what is coming.

But as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, that is not the American way.

In a constitutional republic, nothing—not presidents, not uniforms, not threats at gunpoint, not tyranny—should ever be unstoppable.

Americans must decide: will we be governed by the Constitution, or will we be policed by the image of a SWAT-clad ruler who tells us resistance is futile?

The Founders knew the answer. So should we.

This article was originally published on The Rutherford Institute.

The post A Police State Presidency: When ‘Rule of Law’ Becomes ‘Rule by Gunpoint’ appeared first on LewRockwell.

Europe Is a Powder Keg

Gio, 04/09/2025 - 05:01

Americans who don’t spend time in Europe might not fully appreciate what a powder keg the Old World has become. However bad social relations in the United States now are, they are at least an order of magnitude worse on the other side of the Atlantic. European self-hatred is dissolving traditional cultural bonds. Mass immigration is compounding age-old rivalries. Europe is one spark away from exploding.

Europe is a perennial battlefield. Many of our ancestors, after all, left the old country to escape religious, economic, and cultural conflicts that had endured for centuries. Those historic grievances — always simmering in times of peace before boiling over into outright violence — are passed from one generation to the next. Modern European nations are the product of two thousand years of shifting borders and alliances, and native Europeans trace their family lineages back to regional tribes whose ancient territories do not fit neatly within the politically drawn maps of today.

If you think geographical accents in America make it tricky for a Mississippian or Minnesotan to communicate effectively with an English-speaker from the Bronx, consider that Europe is home to nearly three hundred native tongues. Switzerland has four national languages — including Romansch, which derives from the spoken Latin of the Roman Empire. The cornucopia of indigenous languages, dialects, vocabularies, and accents makes it possible for local residents of small towns to recognize “outsiders” immediately. Even more impressively, they can usually tell — just by listening — which towns a stranger’s grandparents once called home.

Two world wars — both ignited in Europe and responsible for immense European destruction — propelled a mid-twentieth-century political movement calling for the eradication of national borders. The European intelligentsia who became the founding members of the continent’s fledgling transnational bureaucracy blamed national pride for Europe’s carnage and effectively turned “nationalism” into a dirty word.

Oddly, this was also a time when crumbling empires, such as France and the United Kingdom, were at least tepidly supporting the national independence of former colonies. Likewise, it was the beginning of a half-century U.S.-led campaign to encourage national revolutions in European countries stuck behind the Soviet Union’s Iron Curtain. So Western power brokers framed nationalism as a kind of intolerable ethos on par with Mussolini’s fascism and Hitler’s national socialism while encouraging former nations or proto-nations in Central Europe, Africa, and Asia to break away from the respective empires that controlled them. While Western leaders pushed for the integration of distinct European nations into a single “Union,” they also promoted national independence movements under the rationale that all humans possess a natural right to self-determination.

In the eighty years since the project for European integration began in earnest, those latent contradictions have transformed Europe into a tinderbox with even greater potential energy for self-destruction than existed before WWI and II. While the bureaucratic ruling class has actively repressed the historic identities of native Europeans, it has flooded the continent with foreigners who are encouraged to retain their own cultural identities. In this way, a Hungarian or Pole or Dane who celebrates his country’s unique heritage is denounced as a “far-right nationalist,” while a Frenchman who insists that African and Middle Eastern immigrants assimilate to the European way of life is denounced as a “racist” and “bigot.”

This anti-European monstrosity was created deliberately. Simultaneous suppression of Europeans’ national identities and protections for foreign nationals create a kind of “multiculturalism dynamo” that converts Europeans into something alien. Stripped of their native religion, culture, and historic customs and forced to praise foreign religions, cultures, and customs taking hold in the West’s civilizational void, Europeans are effectively assimilated within their own lands. Europeans are taught to despise their own civilization and to bow down before those who seek to replicate a foreign civilization inside Europe. Europe’s bureaucratic ruling class uses foreigners to beat the Europeanness out of Europeans.

Perhaps because a critical mass of Europeans finally realizes what Europe’s unelected bureaucrats have done, a “Great Awakening” is spreading across the continent. After decades of submitting to cultural erasure, a patriotic fervor is taking root once again. As many now see it, if globalism’s war on nationalism means that only nations outside Europe will survive, then European peace is not worth the cost.

Many Americans will dismiss this resurgence of European nationalism as “too little, too late,” but I would strike a more optimistic chord. Sometimes we must be pushed to the edge of the cliff before we find our footing and forcefully fight back. When surrender means falling into the sea and survival requires moving in the opposite direction, the right choice is also the only one.

In the United Kingdom, a grassroots movement of ordinary Brits has initiated “Operation: Raise the Colors.” The strategy is simple: British citizens are encouraged to prominently display and wave the Cross of St. George and Union Jack flags.

What could possibly be offensive or dangerous about raising the flags of England and the United Kingdom? Nothing. Yet the globalist Establishment is losing its collective mind. Leftists insist that the flags should be replaced with something more “multicultural” and that only “far-right racists” would stoop so low as to patriotically raise the country’s flags. Open-borders politicians are calling the flag-waving “extremist,” “hate-filled,” and “white supremacist.” In other words, the British people have forced Britain’s “elites” to acknowledge that they have no loyalty to and only antipathy for the United Kingdom.

This rather anodyne form of political speech is proving remarkably effective at exposing globalism’s suicidal contagion. In London, it is perfectly normal to see so-called “gay pride” flags, “Palestinian” flags, Pakistani flags, Iranian flags, and the flags of almost every third-world nation now offloading its citizens onto the shores of the U.K. If a British citizen were to express outrage over the fact that a panoply of foreign flags is flown brazenly throughout the capital, constables would intimidate the outspoken “offender” into silence by threatening him with prosecution for imaginary “hate speech.” Revealingly, however, these same petty tyrants throw hissy fits when native Brits dare “raise the colors” of their own nation’s historic flags.

Similar movements are picking up steam. Ten years ago, it was more common to see such patriotic displays on the streets of Balkan nations or amid independence parades in the Basque region or other areas of Europe seeking national recognition. Today it is easy to stumble into a sea of Dutch, Danish, German, Italian, Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish, Hungarian, Polish, Czech, or Greek flags when crossing borders. Eighty years after the European Union began constructing its continental empire, the “colonies” appear eager to reclaim their right to self-determination.

I think it’s fair to say that ordinary Europeans are no longer willing to remain quiet as the bureaucratic ruling class kills what’s left of Europe and hands the carcass to foreign conquerors. As an American with absolute fidelity to the millennia-long promises of Western civilization, I find these patriotic revivals timely rebuttals to a globalist Establishment that prefers our death.

I cannot tell you how many times I have come across the words of Welsh poet Dylan Thomas translated into one of Europe’s many native languages. “Do not go gentle into that good night” and “Rage, rage against the dying of the light” show up on message boards like faint heartbeats on an EKG machine. Many in Europe don’t want to die. To live, they’ll have to fight.

This article was originally published on American Thinker.

The post Europe Is a Powder Keg appeared first on LewRockwell.

‘It’s Not a Genocide’ Is Not a Defensible Claim in the Year 2025

Gio, 04/09/2025 - 05:01

The International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS) has determined that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. This is the world’s largest association of genocide scholars, with around 500 experts on the subject including many Holocaust scholars. The consensus was reached by an overwhelming supermajority of the experts — 86 percent, to be exact.

Everyone needs to understand that “there is no genocide in Gaza” is not a claim that can be taken seriously in the year 2025. Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, UN human rights experts, Israeli human rights groups like B’Tselem, and the overwhelming majority of genocide scholars all agree it’s a genocide. The debate is over. The hasbarists lost.

Israel’s Foreign Ministry is of course claiming that the IAGS assessment is “entirely based on Hamas’s campaign of lies.” That’s right folks, the genocide scholars are Hamas.

They’re just so unbelievably evil. Nobody who’s not a cartoon or CGI supervillain has any business being this evil. If you’re going to be this insanely evil you should be animated and cackling while twisting your curly mustache all the time.

Possibly the single dumbest thing we are asked to believe about Palestine is that every major human rights institution on earth is part of a secret antisemitic blood libel conspiracy. This genocide is one nonstop insult to our intelligence.

❖

Israel is reportedly planning to cut off the small amount of aid it has been allowing in to northern Gaza. This comes after both UN-backed and US-funded hunger monitor groups determined that Israel is causing a famine in Gaza, which was preceded by weeks of Israel furiously denying that it was starving Gaza, which was preceded by Israeli officials openly announcing that they intended to starve Gaza.

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The western press have been dutifully parroting the US and Israeli government line that Trump’s plan for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza will be “voluntary” in their headlines.

“Gaza postwar plan envisions ‘voluntary’ relocation of entire population,” reads a headline from The Washington Post.

“U.S.-run ‘Gaza Riviera’: Post-war redevelopment plan sees ‘voluntary relocation’ of millions,” says CNBC.

“Trump’s Gaza plan involves ‘voluntary’ relocation of Palestinians — and giving them $5,000 each,” says The Independent.

“Gaza post-war plan proposes ‘voluntary’ relocation, ‘tokens’ in exchange for land,” says France 24.

We’re going to be hearing this “voluntary” relocation slogan a lot going forward, and everyone should understand that it’s a lie. There is nothing “voluntary” about leaving an area that is being deliberately made uninhabitable by someone with power over you. It’s exactly the same as forcing people out at gunpoint.

It is propaganda and journalistic malpractice for the western media to be pushing this slogan.

❖

I saw a tweet from liberal influencer Steven Bonnell AKA Destiny saying “Palestine is just fashion for leftists.”

Bidenists say this all the time, and it reveals so much about their worldview. They cannot fathom the concept of someone opposing a genocide because genocide is bad; it can only be some kind of trendy fashion statement because it happens to be what’s popular right now.

These are people who are not motivated by morality, facts and logic, but solely by selfish and cynical impulses which they then project onto everyone else. They can’t imagine anyone doing something because it’s the right thing to do, so they have to make up some reason why there must be something in it for them in order for their actions to make sense.

But it is good that even through their own narcissistic, egocentric lens they are beginning to understand that supporting an active genocide has widely become viewed as unacceptable, and that abandoning that insane position is the only way to gain acceptance in mainstream society. Those who can’t be brought into line through appeal to compassion and reason can be brought into line through peer pressure and social stigma.

❖

When you see the way pro-genocide Jews attack vocally anti-genocide Jews, you understand why there aren’t more vocally anti-genocide Jews. This isn’t to excuse anyone from their moral obligation to oppose an active genocide, only to point out one of the control mechanisms.

I’ve watched Zionists constantly try to convince Israeli American academic Shaiel Ben-Ephraim to start drinking again after he switched from defending the genocide to opposing it (he’s open about being a recovering alcoholic). I catch flak from Israel supporters 24/7, but I’ve never had to deal with that level of vitriolic, high-octane hatred. Non-Jews like myself who oppose the Gaza holocaust just don’t have to deal with that degree of venom. And that’s just what’s visible to me online.

Again, this doesn’t excuse the moral obligation that Jews and non-Jews alike have to oppose Israel’s genocidal atrocities. I’m just pointing out one of the many abusive dynamics used to maintain the status quo.

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‘Forbidden Facts: Childhood Vaccines & Brain Damage’

Gio, 04/09/2025 - 05:01

In his 1961 Farewell Address, President Eisenhower warned not only about the “undue influence” of the Military-Industrial Complex. He also warned about a new “scientific-technological elite” that could gain unwarranted influence over public policy, potentially guiding the nation based on specialized knowledge rather than democratic principles.

This “scientific-technological elite” could not only gain access to vast federal funding that is not available to solitary scholars and inventors, it could also assume a position of “official scientific authority” that could insulate it from the critical questioning of the citizenry.

To understand the sort of “official scientific authority” that Eisenhower was concerned about, one need only consider the example of Dr. Anthony Fauci, who infamously declared in a press interview, “Attacks on me, quite frankly, are attacks on science.”

Good scientists, acting with care and conscientiousness, should be a part of any deliberation about public health policy. Unfortunately, so many of our so-called “scientific experts” have been captured by commercial interests that have also captured U.S. federal agencies.

The result is what Eisenhower warned about in 1961—namely, We the People are constantly asked to believe representations of reality propagated by a “scientific-technological elite” that has a documented history of intentionally manipulating or withholding compelling information about vital matters of public health.

People often ask me why I, a true crime author, decided to investigate the U.S. government’s COVID-19 pandemic response. My interest in the story began with my perception that the pandemic response was riddled with fraud and concealment. Years of investigating complex true crime stories primed me to recognize the same conduct committed by our Bio-Pharmaceutical Complex and its captured friends in government.

In the same spirit, the world-renowned security expert and investigator, Gavin de Becker, has written a book titled Forbidden Facts: Childhood Vaccines & Brain Damage. For decades, de Becker has studied how to detect the threats that humans pose to other humans, and how to prevent these threats from being carried out to inflict harm and death. This has taken him deep into the realms of criminal psychology and all the different methods of subterfuge.

For those who are unfamiliar with Mr. de Becker, his author bio presents a succinct snapshot of his distinguished career.

Gavin de Becker is a three-time presidential appointee whose pioneering work has changed the way our government evaluates threats to our nation’s highest officials. His firm advises many of the world’s most prominent media figures, corporations, and law enforcement agencies on predicting violence, and it also serves regular citizens who are victims of domestic abuse and stalking. De Becker has advised the prosecution on major cases, including the O.J. Simpson murder trial. He has testified before many legislative bodies and has successfully proposed new laws to help manage violence.

Mr. de Becker has written a new book titled Forbidden Facts: Childhood Vaccines & Brain Damage, in which he presents evidence that many cases of what is diagnosed as “Profound Autism” are likely the result of brain damage caused by vaccines.

The most compelling evidence is the credible witness testimony of their parents such as the following (presented in Chapter Four).

A. is profoundly autistic. She is non-verbal, has major behavioral issues, is self-injurious… she cannot be left alone ever. A. was a beautiful baby, who was developing normally, but who had obvious reactions to her first two DPT vaccines. One left her leg swollen and red, and she developed a high fever and screamed after the other. But the doctors did not hesitate to give A. her third DPT shot when she was 5 months old, and she went over the edge. She had the shot at 4:00 p.m., and by 6:00 p.m. she had a fever of 105 to 106 degrees… After that day, she was gone.

The prevailing dogma (endorsed by U.S. government agencies) is that one cannot conclude causation in an individual case (such as that of “A.”) unless strict criteria for determining causation in individual cases are met. When it comes to doing this, immense rigor and diligence is demanded.

However, when it comes to offering an alternative explanation for the child’s regression (apart from the battery of shots the child just received), the response is conspicuously vague and lacking rigor. We are told that the child’s symptoms—often appearing just a few hours after receiving the shots—could be caused by a lot of other things.

Here it is useful to consider how we evaluate evidence that a suspect has committed a crime. When a prime suspect is identified, it is legitimate for defense counsel to identify an alternative suspect for the crime. However, the jury won’t find the defender persuasive if he says, “I have no idea who committed the crime; I just know it wasn’t my client.”

A defense attorney who makes this claim would be ridiculed and soon have no clients. However, in the realm of public health, we often hear mainstream media pundits such as CNN’s chief medical correspondent Sanjay Gupta say, “We don’t know what causes autism, but we do know it’s not caused by vaccines.”

Mr. de Becker takes pains to demonstrate that the U.S. government has a long history of intentionally manipulating or withholding information about the adverse health effects associated with exposure to certain substances. These include Agent Orange and Anthrax Vaccines for U.S. service personnel, to name just two. This history of government deceit lies at the heart of his thesis—namely, that when it comes to investigating what is causing the autism epidemic, we cannot trust the assurances of U.S. government agencies.

This lamentable state of affairs seems to be changing under the stewardship of HHS Secretary Kennedy, though he is contending with a very large den of snakes, and it remains to be seen just how much he can send the serpents packing.

De Becker’s clear and punchy prose is a pleasure to read and it starkly contrasts with the gobbledygook of government experts who use impenetrably opaque and meaningless language (several preposterous examples quoted in the book) to obfuscate the reality of this disaster. Links to the author’s original source material are immediately accessible by QR codes printed at the foot of almost every page.

I believe the publication of Forbidden Facts: Childhood Vaccines & Brain Damage should be viewed as a major event in U.S. history. For decades, many members of America’s political, media, and cultural elite have relied on Mr. de Becker’s judgement and analysis to keep them safe. These same elites should—along with the rest of us—read his book and consider the evidence he presents that many children are being terribly damaged by childhood vaccines.

Please click on the link below to preorder your copy of Forbidden Facts: Childhood Vaccines & Brain Damage, which will be published on September 9.

This article was originally published on Courageous Discourse.

The post ‘Forbidden Facts: Childhood Vaccines & Brain Damage’ appeared first on LewRockwell.

Exactly How Does One Survive Absurdity

Gio, 04/09/2025 - 05:01

We live in absurd times. We are surrounded by violence, both real and virtual–the Israeli slaughter of Palestinians, the deaths in Ukraine, the violent movies and video games, the violence on the streets in America’s blue cities–but the presstitutes attach warnings to news reports of much smaller incidences of violence. We are supposed to be horrified by the beating that one individual receives but not by the genocide of the Palestinian people. American universities have banned protests in support of the Palestinian people, and in England you can be arrested.

We are supposed to be horrified by the “sexual abuse” of a male propositioning a female, but not by men’s access to women’s spaces and women’s sports, or by the plethora of young women’s porn sites or by their competitions to see who can have sex with the most men in a 24 hour time period.

As for Epstein, readers inform me that the Jews who operate the porn industry, are preparing the legality of adult sex with children. The Democrat school boards in the US are helping the advancement of pedophilia by teaching pre-puberty kids how to copulate and have oral sex. Pedophilia is today euphemized in the term “minor-directed persons.” Apparently, AI is an enabler of the legitimization of pedophilia, along with the grooming of young children by Democrat school boards. AI creates images of sex between adults and females with children’s faces and bodies that present young females as lascivious persons. As the images are not real people, they apparently escape the restrictions on child porn.

The American media has never been an honest, truthful one. But the large number of independent organizations meant that at least on occasion the truth found its way out. No more. Thanks to President Clinton, six mega-corporations owned or controlled by Jews control 90% of the American media. You hear what Israel wants you to hear.

You, dear superpower indispensable American are nothing but an Israeli puppet, indoctrinated and brainwashed to serve Jewish interests, or so say those who are not totally insouciant.

The plethora of virtual violence has numbed us to the real thing. American generals speak of winning nuclear war with only 30,000,000 American casualties, and the Zionist neoconservatives together with Netanyahu push for war with Iran, a war that would likely involve Russia and China.

Unless you are extremely dense, you can see where this is going to lead.

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