Lew Rockwell Institute

On his latest appearance on “Capital Cosm,” Peter shares his perspective on the mounting pressures facing the U.S. economy, especially as America’s debt situation grows more dire. He unpacks the consequences of persistent trade deficits, the shifting global appetite for U.S. financial assets, and the implications for the U.S. dollar’s reserve status.

Peter opens with a dose of humility, addressing critics who suggest he’s eager to celebrate a long-awaited crisis. Instead, he explains, the stakes are far too serious for celebration:

Well, I don’t want to necessarily describe it as a Super Bowl in that the Super Bowl is a fun thing, a celebration. It’s not really that I want to celebrate the fact that I think we’re going to have an economic crisis. I mean, it’s something that I’ve been predicting for a long time, and it hasn’t even totally happened yet. So it’s even premature to really say I told you so. But I’m not necessarily going to celebrate the fact that I was right. … In a way I want to be wrong.

While the crisis Peter has forecast isn’t in full swing, he argues that the warning signs are undeniable. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell’s recent comments on debt sustainability draw skepticism from Peter, who points out the faulty logic behind official reassurances:

It’s not happening yet, but I think that we’ve set into motion the forces that will ultimately produce a sovereign debt and US dollar crisis. Powell said again yesterday, or he talked, and he said, we’re on an unsustainable path. He said the debt is not unsustainable, just the path, which I think is BS because if the path is unsustainable, then the debt is unsustainable because that’s the path the debt is on and it’s not changing. The path is the path. If anything, we’re picking up the pace.

A critical shift is already unfolding in the global marketplace. The long-standing pattern of foreign nations recycling their U.S. trade surpluses back into American government debt is beginning to unravel, posing a serious challenge to the dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency:

But what I think is significant about what’s happening is that we’ve begun the exodus out of U.S. financial assets, where the U.S. dollar is no longer the primary reserve and our trading partners are not recycling their trade surpluses into U.S. financial assets. Donald Trump has made it clear that a goal of his presidency is lower trade deficits. And the only way that’s going to happen is if Americans import less. And since we don’t have the capacity to produce more, we’re not going to close the hole with exports. It’s going to be with lower consumption and a weaker U.S. economy, and more of our inflation is going to stay within our own borders.

Turning to U.S. trade policy, Peter remains unconvinced that current political strategies will bring meaningful change. He believes that cosmetic victories may be announced, but the underlying structural issues won’t be fixed by symbolic deals or negotiation theatrics:

Well, I think it’s difficult. I think Trump is going to try to dig himself out of this hole by kind of pretending that this is all part of his master plan, and it’s all going exactly the way he planned it in his 4D chess game that nobody else can understand because he is the greatest negotiator in the world. And none of us can really understand the method of his madness because that’s how smart he is. But I think they will announce some deals with various countries that they will tout as being this major win, but they’ll really be insignificant, just cosmetic victories. 

In light of these broad systemic risks, Peter draws attention to gold’s renewed appeal. With mounting uncertainty and a visible move away from the dollar’s hegemony, he cites gold’s recent price action as a signal that the world is seeking genuine safe havens:

Yeah, gold had one dip below 3,000, and then it made a new high. I think the record I saw was above 3,360, and that was last night it made a new record. It’s pulled back a little bit now, but it’s still above 3,300. So we’re 10% above 3,000. Yeah, I think it’s becoming clear to people who didn’t see it before that gold is the new safe haven.

This originally appeared on SchiffGold.com.

The post Gold Shines as the Dollar Falters appeared first on LewRockwell.

Amidst the horrific U.S. abuse of foreigners through the use of tariffs and police-state enforcement of immigration controls, it’s easy to forget that the U.S. government abuses foreigners in other ways, such as sanctions, embargoes, invasions, occupations, wars of aggression, torture, indefinite detention, and state-sponsored assassinations.

Perhaps the longest-lasting, continuous example of this foreigner-abuse syndrome is the U.S. government’s horrific abuse of the Cuban people, which has gone on for more than 60 years. Given that there is no good reason for abusing the Cuban people — and there never has been one — this would be a good place to begin breaking with the longstanding, ongoing U.S. policy of abusing foreigners.

It’s worth pointing out that Cuba has never attacked the United States or even threatened to do so. Ever since the Cuban revolution in 1959, the U.S. government has always been the aggressor against Cuba, not the other way around.

For more than 60 years, the U.S. government has imposed and enforced a cruel and brutal economic embargo against Cuba. The embargo is designed to inflict maximum economic harm on the Cuban people with the intent of impoverishing them and even killing them through starvation.

The aim of this embargo is one that has been standard for many decades within the U.S. Empire: regime change. Ever since the Cuban revolution, U.S. officials have been obsessed with ousting the communist regime that controls Cuba and replacing it with a pro-U.S. dictatorial regime — that is, one that will be a loyal, obedient servant of the U.S. Empire, much like the current dictatorial regime in El Salvador. The idea has always been that to avoid death by starvation, the Cuban people can rise up and violently revolt against their regime.

The embargo strategy is much like the thinking that undergirds terrorism. Terrorists kill innocent people as a way to pressure a regime into changing its political system or behavior. That’s what the U.S. embargo against Cuba does also.

But it’s worth mentioning that the U.S. embargo is not the only way that the U.S. Empire has inflicted abuse on Cubans. During the early 1960s, the Empire also engaged in real acts of terrorism against commercial facilities inside Cuba.

That’s not all. U.S. officials, in partnership with the Mafia, also engaged in secret state-sponsored assassination attempts against Cuba’s first president, Fidel Castro. U.S. officials maintained that such assassination attempts were morally justified because Castro was a communist. However, it is difficult to understand how that would morally justify murdering someone. It’s also worth noting that the U.S. Constitution makes it illegal for U.S. officials to murder anyone, including foreigners.

Needless to say, the U.S. embargo against Cuba has never worked. For one thing, many Cubans hate the U.S. government. Moreover, many of Cubans who hate Cuba’s communist and socialist systems hate the thought of being under the control of the U.S. government even more. For another thing, there is a strict system of gun control in Cuba, which means that the Cuban people lack the means to violently overthrow their government. Thus, all that the U.S. embargo has accomplished for the past six and a half decades is extreme economic suffering among the Cuban people.

Proponents of the embargo do their best to avoid personal responsibility for this intentional infliction of suffering on innocent people by focusing exclusively on the harm caused by Cuba’s socialist system. What they avoid confronting is that the U.S. government’s embargo is the other side of an economic vise that, in combination with Cuba’s socialist system, succeeds in squeezing the lifeblood out of the Cuban people. What these embargo proponents also fail to confront is that while Cuban socialism inflicts harm on the Cuban people, it’s misguided harm. The harm inflicted by the embargo is fully intentional and deliberate.

Finally, it’s worth noting that the embargo against Cuba has contributed to the destruction of fundamental rights of the American people, such as economic liberty, liberty of contract, freedom of travel, and freedom of association. In a genuinely free society, people have the right to travel wherever they want, spend their money anyway they want, sell whatever they want to whomever they want, and associate with whomever they want. Yet, if an American sells things to Cubans, buys things from Cubans, or travels to Cuba and spends money there, he is immediately arrested, prosecuted, and incarcerated by U.S. officials upon returning to his own country. He is also condemned as a “bad person” by U.S. officials for exercising fundamental rights.

Inflicting abuse on foreigners does not make a country great. It actually does the opposite. It produces a weak, frightened, contemptible country. A great country treats everyone, including foreigners, with decency and respect. A great way for America to start becoming great again would be by lifting the decades-old cruel, brutal, and unjustifiable U.S. embargo against the Cuban people.

Reprinted with permission from The Future of Freedom Foundation.

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Okay, history buffs, I write this on April 19, 2025, exactly 250 years from that most famous of midnight runs, that of Paul Revere and William Dawes to warn fellow patriots that the British army was on the march. Popular legend has it that Paul warned them by yelling, “The British are coming, the British are coming.” Not true. He yelled, “The regulars are coming,” as back then both sides thought themselves British.

Joseph Warren, a Founding Father, had tipped off Paul Revere and Willy Dawes to the British plans. The ride was immortalized by Henry Longfellow’s poem and has been reenacted in Massachusetts streets ever since. The Brits sent a contingent in secret out at night to capture weapons stored by anarchic locals at Concord. Paul and Willy warned them, and the war was on. Actually there was very little fighting. The local militia in Lexington was not looking for a fight. No one has ever proved who was the first to shoot. Nevertheless it became known in America later on as “the shot heard round the world.” After that shot a little hell broke loose. The Brit regulars fired volleys and charged with fixed bayonets. Eight local defenders died. Then the colonials retaliated. That’s when the Brit regulars fled. Victory has many followers, and more and more colonials joined, eager to fight.

“What kind of nation would this part of the world be had America lost the war?”

The British regulars stood and fought back in Lexington. The so-called Americans at the time surprised the Brits by fighting in formation and with courage and discipline. The British regulars were driven back to Boston, having suffered 300 casualties compared with 100 of the resisting locals. This, then, was the first day of that most incredible birth of a country now dominating the world, the United States of America. The Concord and Lexington battles may have been small beer in comparison with what ensued, but like Thermopylae 1,500 years before, they signaled great things to come. Like the Ancient Greeks, the Americans warned the all-conquering British that they were not about to lie down and be good little British subjects. Pay taxes without representation. Be looked down upon as simple colonials. Like it or not, and they didn’t like it and still don’t, the Brits were taught their first lesson. I lived in London for close to 35, perhaps 40, years, and I know what I’m talking about. The Americans are admired by many but also seen as loud and vulgar and too rich. But let’s put our cards on the table. Basically the Brits are jealous. The Yanks, as they call them, not only beat them on the field, they also prospered in an unimaginable way.

Perhaps I exaggerate. I’ve been torn between the two countries’ history, changing my mind about them time and again. Writing this on the date it all began puts me on the side of the Americans. My favorite general was Benedict Arnold. And still is. Gentleman Johnny Burgoyne, the Brit general who came to fight in Saratoga with 40 trunks of clothes and his mistress along, was another favorite. And did you know that Alexander Hamilton had led the last charge down south before General Cornwallis surrendered? What do any of you think would have happened had the Howe brothers captured Washington before he snuck out of Brooklyn and into Manhattan and eventually New Jersey? What kind of nation would this part of the world be had America lost the war?

And now for some gossip about how the locals found out that the army was on the move against them and scored that first all-important victory. How did Joseph Warren know about the move and warn Paul Revere? Well, as in all mysteries, a woman was involved. Mind you, this could be vicious Brit gossip, because the lady was an American beauty. She was married to Gen. Thomas Gage, who ordered the army to move against the locals. Margaret Kemble Gage was a very rich local lady who married the Brit general when she was 24. After the outbreak of the war she sailed to England, and her hubby followed after a few months. Thus the stage was set for a fable that suited the British establishment as well as the American revolutionaries. She had extracted her husband’s plans to attack and passed them on to a fellow American. The myth pleased everyone. The British were happy that their loss was due to a betrayal. The Yanks were pleased that an American had chosen her country above her husband. The London set was also pleased because Margaret was a looker and the London gals were not.

Last but not least, by the great society arbiter Taki: An 18th-century lady of her standing did not exactly call on gentlemen she hardly knew and extract secrets from them. The Brits did not take the upstarts seriously enough, no matter the bull Hollywood puts up every so often. The Howe brothers, both great gentlemen and feeling that the Yanks were their naughty cousins, did not truly pursue George Washington in Brooklyn. They dined and wined instead. Margaret Gage was a loyal wife who was snubbed for the rest of her life for something she didn’t do.

This originally appeared on Taki’s Magazine.

The post Revolutionary Lore appeared first on LewRockwell.

A few readers thought I went a bit too far in my column two days ago when I expressed concern that if President Trump loses the existential conflict between Mega Americans and the corrupt anti-American Establishment, a return to power of the Democrats will mean oppression for traditional white ethnic Americans.  Not in America, they said.  But, yes, especially in America.

White heterosexual gentiles, especially males, have been second class citizens in the United States ever since Alfred Blumrosen at the EEOC stood the 1964 Civil Rights Act on its head and defied the clear statutory language in the legislation and imposed racial and gender quotas on white gentile heterosexual American men. These quotas have been in effect for 60 years, supplemented during the Biden regime with DEI-imposed quotas.

The American judiciary, despite the 14th Amendment absolutely requiring equality under the law and the clear unambiguous language of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, did nothing to enforce the Constitution and the Law.  The American judiciary, the American corporations, the American universities accepted and enforced the illegal and unconstitutional racial and gender quoters.  Essentially, the quotas are still in place.  The US Supreme Court ruled against them a year or two or so ago, but in a weak way that did not stop the Biden regime from extending them to DEI privileges and refusing to promote in the military based on merit.  Instead, the Biden regime placed racial and sexual constraints on military promotion. Promotions were not available for white heterosexual gentile males.

So what does law mean in the US?  Nothing except the right to gain money by suing and the right of partisan Democrat judges to block the President of the United States from fulfilling his contract with the electorate. For example, currently 12 Democrat states are suing the Trump administration for alleged damages to them from tariffs which so far are nothing but negotiation tools.

There is no law.  American Law Schools were taken over years ago and turned into instruments for overthrowing alleged white, racist America.

The George Soros-implanted Leticia James in New York is the perfect example of an Attorney General trained in law school to use law as a weapon against those in the way of revolutionizing American society. The electorate in New York is so indoctrinated and brainwashed that the people accept as attorney general a person committed to their demise. What was once our greatest state appears now to be our most stupid.

The same happened in journalism schools.  I was an invited  lecturer for some period at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism or at some program of the institution.  I remember watching the transformation of journalist training from finding and reporting the facts to learning to use journalism to support narratives that advanced the agendas of the ruling establishment. It became the only path to employment and success, and the budding “journalists” moved willing into it.  Today they know no other function.  Today the normal function of journalists is to lie in support of the agendas of the American Establishment, which most certainly is not a Mega American establishment.

I don’t think Trump understands the strength of the forces that he has challenged.  If you peruse the left-wing websites, you will acquaint yourself with the retaliation that is being prepared for the “Trump deplorables,” Hillary’s term, once Trump is defeated or out of office.

Without going there, let’s just consider what Democrat members of Congress, elected by Americans, have to say about the retaliation measures they will be able to use once Trump is gone.

Democrat US Representative Jamin Ben Raskin represents the 8th congressional district of Maryland. He is a graduate of Harvard and Harvard Law School. He led the impeachment of President Trump during Trump’s first term of office.

US Representative Raskin has issued a threat to everyone who does business with the Trump administration that “when we come back to power we are not going to look kindly.”

In other words, Raskin has clearly threatened repercussions for doing business of any kind with a lawfully elected government of the US.

This threat, of course, applies to the “domestic terrorists” who elected Trump.  Remember, it is Trump who is trying to restore America, and the Democrats who are trying to turn America into a Sodom and Gomorrah Tower of Babel.  But Raskin, the Democrats, the left-wing and most of the white liberals regard President Trump’s effort to resurrect America as the imposition of fascism. In US Rep. Democrat Raskin’s words, “We’re going to restore strong democracy to America and we will remember who stood up for democracy in America and who tried to drive us down towards dictatorship and autocracy.”

Raskin is indicting the traditional Americans who elected Trump by such a large margin that the Democrats could not again steal the presidential election.

It is my opinion that Trump, his government, and his supporters do not understand that they are up against a more powerful destructive ideological force than America ever faced from the Soviet Union.  The entirety of the Democrat Party, media, universities, deep state, are totally opposed to America and want to transform America into a Sodom & Gomorrah Tower of Babel.  

How else can you explain decades of totally open borders?

How else can you explain teaching white kids that they, their parents, their grandparents are racists who exploit black people?

How else can you explain teaching kids that they are born into the wrong body and need sex change operations that their parents cannot prevent?

The United States is a crazy land as is all of the Western World.  The Belief System that comprised Western Civilization has been destroyed by decades of propaganda from well-funded universities.

As I have said before, every institution that constitutes the United States has been hollowed out by decades of anti-American propaganda from American universities and public schools.  Those who defend America have been written out of public discussion and banned from the presstitute media. I used to be a Wall Street Journal editor and columnist, a columnist for Business Week, for the Scripts Howard News Service.  I was often on the major TV networks.  Today I am totally banned.  As a truth-teller, I am an enemy who must be suppressed.

Americans are very slow in realizing that the Democrats are an ideological party, like the Bolsheviks.  Democrats already know the truth and are unbothered by facts.  Facts are what serve the agenda.  The truth is in the agenda.  

The post What Happens to Us if President Trump Loses the Existential War With the Evil American Establishment? appeared first on LewRockwell.

Introduction by Bishop Joseph Strickland

Please read through this article prayerfully. As we look ahead to the next conclave, I urge you to pray fervently for the election of a truly Catholic pope. The Church is in a time of great trial, and we must be vigilant in guarding the faith that has been handed down to us.

While we know that the Holy Ghost assists us in the governance of the Church, He does not override the free will of men. It is possible for cardinals to elect someone who does not truly uphold the Catholic Faith, and if a man who has publicly embraced heresy were to be elected, he could not be a true pope. As St Robert Bellarmine and others have taught, a heretic cannot be the head of the Church because he is not a member of it.

Therefore, we must pray with great urgency — not only that the conclave chooses a worthy successor to St. Peter — but also for clarity and wisdom in recognizing whether the man elected is truly the pope. In these confusing times, we must remain steadfast in the unchanging truths of our faith, knowing that Our Lord will never abandon His Church.

Let us turn to the Blessed Virgin Mary, St. Peter and all the saints, asking for their intercession in this most critical matter.

Bishop Joseph E. Strickland,
Bishop Emeritus

The cardinals will soon enter a new conclave, yet it remains unclear whether the man who will emerge will be a legitimate Successor of St. Peter.

An article recently published by LifeSiteNews reminds us that the papacy is a divine institution and was established by Our Lord Jesus Christ to achieve specific ends according to His divine will.

If we approach the election of a pope as we approach the election of a political leader, or if we view it as a contest between “liberals” and “conservatives,” we will have fundamentally misunderstood the nature of the office.

As another recent article explained:

The power and authority of the Roman Pontiff is immediate in the sense that it is received immediately from Christ and not through the agency of another person or groups of persons. [1]

According to the current law of the Church, it is the cardinals who elect the pope. Yet it is always Our Lord Jesus Christ who confers jurisdiction on the elected candidate:

It is left to the Church to elect, or otherwise designate, the person who then obtains the power of universal jurisdiction by virtue of divine institution, i.e., immediately from Christ, not from those who have elected him. [2]

It is the teaching of the Catholic Church that only a member of the male sex who is in possession of the use of reason and is a member of the Catholic Church can be elected pope. A member of the Catholic Church is one who is (i) baptized, (ii) publicly professes the Catholic faith and (iii) is subject to the lawful hierarchy. The non-baptized, public heretics, public schismatics, and public apostates are not eligible for election.

Our Lord will only confer papal jurisdiction on a man who fulfils the conditions which He has established. He will not confer it on an ineligible candidate, even if the cardinals were to choose such a man.

As the conclave approaches many will want to know more details about the cardinals who are regarded as papabile. In this article LifeSiteNews offers short profiles of eight men who are spoken of as being among the main contenders.

These profiles are not intended to endorse any candidate or to imply that they are members of the Church and eligible for election. They are simply intended to provide LifeSiteNews readers an introduction to who they are and what they stand for.

Longer profiles of some of these men will follow.

1. Cardinal Jean-Marc Aveline – Archbishop of Marseille, France

Cardinal Aveline has been described as the most “Bergoglian” of the French bishops and it has also been reported that he is the man Francis wishes to succeed him. Aveline signed a positive statement of the French Bishops’ Conference (CEF) about Fiducia Supplicans. This letter stated that the “blessings should be given as a sign of ‘unconditional and merciful welcome.’” Furthermore, it stated that “Fiducia Supplicans reminds us that those who are not in a position to commit themselves to the sacrament of marriage are not excluded from God’s love or from his Church.” And specified that “it is in particular through prayers of blessing, given in a spontaneous, ‘non-ritualized’ form (no. 36), without any sign likely to be assimilated with the celebration of marriage, that the Church’s ministers will be able to manifest this broad and unconditional welcome.”

Aveline has supported the process of “synodality”; he was on the drafting committee for the final report of the “Synod for Synodality” and has called for a “Mediterranean Synod”. He holds erroneous views on the subject of other religions and interreligious dialogue. For example, he has said: “Basically, religions are ways for men and women to seek answers to the great, simple questions of life. It’s better to have a religion that helps you, that doesn’t give you answers to questions you don’t ask yourself, but that helps you to truly experience life – that’s the most important thing.”

He has also stated: “The Catholic Church first recognizes the possibility of a positive role for other religions, as socio-cultural realities, in the general economy of salvation. This excludes an exclusivist position, which, on the basis of a narrow ecclesiocentrism, would deny non-Christian religions any salvific or revelatory value, relying on a hardened, and thus distorted, interpretation of the ancient Patristic adage: ‘Outside the Church, no salvation.’”

An in-depth study of Aveline’s theology can be found here.

2. Cardinal Stephen Brislin – Archbishop of Johannesburg, South Africa

Cardinal Brislin has welcomed Amoris Laetitia and taken the approach that Fiducia Supplicans is reconcilable with the teaching of the Church. He has previously praised Cardinal Fernandez, whose congregation produced Fiducia Supplicans, and who is one of the figures at the forefront of Francis’s agenda, as “a person who’s got a very broad vision.”

In the past Brislin has made orthodox statements on moral questions; he has condemned abortion and euthanasia. Like many other cardinals he seems to have manifested more liberal tendencies under Francis. In 2019 he allowed dissident group “We Are Church” to meet on church property, reversing a ban he had introduced in 2012. He has expressed public support for the Synod on Synodality, calling it “a wonderful opportunity for the Church.” The synodal journey, he said, is “something that we can develop more locally, to become that listening Church, that discerning Church, and really opening ourselves to God’s Holy Spirit.”

3. Cardinal Kurt Koch – Prefect of the Dicastery for Promoting Christian Unity

Cardinal Koch is a man who opposes fundamental doctrines of the Church. His dicastery produced a radical blueprint for the destruction of the Catholic Church and its replacement with a new “Synodal Church.” Ecumenism has been longterm interest for Koch and, if this blueprint were implemented, the “Synodal Church” would become a global church without true authority or unity in doctrine. Koch also holds the heretical position that there is no need for a mission to the Jewish people as they can be saved under the Old Covenant. His dicastery has produced documents that contain heresy, both with regard to the nature of the Church and outreach to the Jews. He defends his rejection of the teaching of the Catholic Church by an appeal to Vatican II.

4. Cardinal Marc Ouellet – Archbishop Emeritus of Quebec

Cardinal Ouellet was once regarded as conservative but has become a strong supporter of the radical agenda of Francis. He supports Amoris Laetitia and has publicly criticized the dubia cardinals.

In 2024 Ouellet published a book entitled Word, Sacrament, Charism: Risks and Opportunities of a Synodal Church. This book sets out his endorsement of the radical programme of “synodality.” At the book launch he lauded the “great synodal movement that is spreading throughout the entire Church.”

Ouellet permitted his titular church in Rome, that of Santa Maria in Traspontina, to be used for the pagan rituals in honor of Pachamama, an Amazonian idol. On October 4 Francis welcomed the idol of Pachamama to the Vatican gardens; during the ceremony some clerics prostrated themselves before the idol. Ouellet said of this act of apostasy, that it “did not bother me.”

Ouellet has been identified as one of the cardinals most responsible for Traditionis Custodes. An order of nuns in his archdiocese, which had used the traditional rite exclusively since 1969, was forced to introduce the novus ordo rite. Ouellet was found guilty by a French court of unjustly expelling a nun from the community after she opposed his subversion of the order. The court described her expulsion as “infamous and vexatious,” and said it was executed without her having committed “the slightest offense.”

Read the Whole Article

The post These 8 Cardinals May Succeed Francis. Here’s What They Believe appeared first on LewRockwell.

An American-brokered peace deal between Ukraine and Russia is becoming more unlikely by the day.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and President Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff bailed on a major meeting Wednesday in London set up to bring about peace in Eastern Europe. This happened after Ukraine had just rejected a U.S. proposal for a deal that recognizes Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea. “Ukraine will not legally recognize the occupation of Crimea,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Tuesday. “There’s nothing to talk about here. This is against our constitution.”

The White House has grown increasingly frustrated as efforts to end the war “on Day 1,” as candidate Trump repeatedly vowed, have advanced into the third month with little promise on the horizon. During an interview with NBC News in March, Trump said he was “pissed off” at Russian President Vladimir Putin and threatened to level secondary tariffs against Russia. The Kremlin refused to ink a U.S.-brokered, 30-day full ceasefire agreement that Ukraine had agreed to. Witkoff’s three visits to Russia have only yielded a 30-day ceasefire on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure and a partial ceasefire in the Black Sea. And now, it seems like the Americans are ready to walk away.

Negotiations at a Crossroads

Echoing earlier comments from Rubio and Trump, Vice President J.D. Vance said on Wednesday that negotiations are coming to a crossroads. Talking to reporters during a visit to Agra, India, Vance said, “We’ve issued a very explicit proposal to both the Russians and the Ukrainians, and it’s time for them to either say yes or for the United States to walk away from this process.” During his time as an Ohio senator, Vance was among the few Republicans opposed to Ukraine aide. He is also on record admitting Ukraine’s fate is of little concern to him. During an interview with Steve Bannon just days before Russia invaded in 2022, Vance told the one-time Trump advisor, “I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine, one way or the other. We did not serve in the Marine Corps to go and fight Vladimir Putin because he didn’t believe in transgender rights.”

Trump told reporters on Friday that if the two sides don’t come to terms “soon,” the United States is “going to take a pass.” Rubio said, the same day, “We’re not going to continue to fly all over the world and do meeting after meeting after meeting if no progress is being made. We’re going to move on to other topics that are equally if not more important in some ways to the United States.”

Russian Demands

Among Russia’s demands for a peace deal are recognition of its “new borders.” In addition to Crimea, Russia already occupies the eastern border regions of Ukraine. There’s no indication Putin has any plans to relinquish territory that cost his army three years and hundreds of thousands of soldiers to capture. And given that the two nations have been embroiled in intense fighting all this time, short of intervention from other nations, there is little chance of Ukraine gaining that territory back. In fact, it seems the longer the war continues, the more advances Russia makes. Ukraine has been wholly dependent on arms and technology from Western nations the entirety of the war. It has also been experiencing a significant manpower problem for quite some time now.

The NATO Issue

U.S. officials have also agreed Ukraine should be kept out of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), aligning with a key Russian demand. Ukraine’s Parliament passed legislation in 2019 to codify the pursuit of NATO membership, a main trigger of Russian aggression. While Western mainstream media has insisted Russia’s invasion was completely unprovoked, Russia has been complaining about NATO’s eastward expansion for decades. It views NATO as a hostile alliance. None other than U.S. diplomat George Kennan, who authored the U.S. policy of containment of the Soviet Union back in 1947, warned that NATO expansion would trigger a violent Russian reaction. In 1997, Kennan said that “expanding NATO would be the most fateful error of American foreign policy in the entire post-Cold War era.”

Kennan wrote in a February 5, 1997, New York Times op-ed that in 1996 Western leaders decided “somehow and somewhere” to expand NATO up to Russia’s borders. He said this would be a terrible foreign policy move:

The view, bluntly stated, is that expanding NATO would be the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-cold-war era.… [Russia] would, of course, have no choice but to accept expansion as a military fait accompli. But they would continue to regard it as a rebuff by the West and would likely look elsewhere for guarantees of a secure and hopeful future for themselves.

Given that Kennan predicted the 2022 invasion, it could also be argued that Russia’s more recent chumminess with China and Iran prove him correct on his latter point.

Proxy War

On March 29, The New York Times admitted the conflict in Eastern Europe has been a proxy war between the U.S. and Russia all along. While it naively assumes America’s role in Ukraine’s military operations was “hidden,” it confirms that the United States supplied the intelligence, strategies, technology, and weaponry — $66.5 billion worth of it. As far as intelligence, military intel and the CIA drew up the plans.

The Times article was approved (and possibly commissioned) by the Pentagon with what the Times dubs “remarkable transparency.” Nevertheless, for whatever reason, it confirms that the United States “was the backbone of Ukrainian military operations,” which it claims have led to the death of 700,000 Russians and 435,000 Ukrainians. Casualty numbers vary depending on who’s reporting them. In February, Zelensky reported a ridiculously unbelievable casualty toll of 46,000. Independent journalists and commentators report roughly one million casualties for the Ukrainians, and a few hundred thousand for the Russians. The Russians, for their part, haven’t since 2022 even tried to broadcast casualty propaganda.

In the Times article, the Pentagon brags about how it continuously tracked and targeted “one of Russia’s most-feared battle groups, the 58th Combined Arms Army.” Perhaps this was an attempt by higher-ups in the U.S. military complex to so embarrass Russia’s leadership in front of the whole world that they would have no choice but to wage war against the Untied States.

According to the Pentagon, the war was going well until the Ukrainians insisted on making their own decisions:

The Ukrainians sometimes saw the Americans as overbearing and controlling — the prototypical patronizing Americans. The Americans sometimes couldn’t understand why the Ukrainians didn’t simply accept good advice.… As the Ukrainians won greater autonomy in the partnership, they increasingly kept their intentions secret. They were perennially angered that the Americans couldn’t, or wouldn’t, give them all of the weapons and other equipment they wanted. The Americans, in turn, were angered by what they saw as the Ukrainians’ unreasonable demands.

Strikingly, the Pentagon was aware the entire time that U.S. involvement risked nuclear escalation, yet it kept on. Trump, for his part, has cited the possibility of nuclear breakout as a key reason for the United States to pull back and attempt to broker peace.

Read the Whole Article

The post Americans Abandon Russia-Ukraine Peace Talks in London appeared first on LewRockwell.

It’s been three months since Vice President Vance cast the tie-breaking vote to confirm Pete Hegseth as Defense secretary.  The Deep State worked hard to scuttle Hegseth’s nomination in December and January with a steady drip of news stories calling his character into question, but President Trump and his trusted veep stood by their man and applied enough pressure on wayward Republican senators to secure his confirmation.  Suddenly, corporate propagandists posing as reporters are back with fresh stories meant to undermine Secretary Hegseth and get him fired from the Pentagon’s top post.

It’s almost as if the Deep State tabled its sabotage campaign for a neat ninety days.  Do you think there’s a section in some clandestine handbook on the dark arts of information warfare that recommends a three-month cooling-off period before ramping up operations against a given target?  Our domestic spooks have gotten so tiresomely predictable!

Make no mistake: The silly attempts to create a public “narrative” that Secretary Hegseth threatens national security are part of the same Intelligence Community operation that targeted him last winter.  It’s quite revealing how desperate the Deep State is to keep “outsiders” away from the levers of power, isn’t it?

If the CIA and its Establishment co-conspirators don’t “own” you, they don’t want you around sticking your nose in their business.  And it is big business!  They’ve got elections to rig (foreign and domestic!), governments to topple (for the right price), and trillions of dollars in war funding to spend!  They can’t let the president of the United States and his secretary of Defense get in their way!  Don’t Trump and Hegseth understand that they’re just here for cute photo ops while the permanently installed shadow government runs the global show?  Heck, Defense secretary Lloyd Austin disappeared for days at a time, and nobody even noticed!  The same information warfare specialists who continue to call Hegseth a “drunk” never said anything about Austin performing his duties while under sedation!

C’est la vie.  MAGA Americans are well versed in the Deep State’s double-standards.  If you burn down cities and loot stores in the name of “social justice,” the mockingbird media chirp about civil rights and the “summer of love.”  If you show up in D.C. to protest election fraud, the same mockingbird media call you an “insurrectionist” and deny that you have any civil rights at all!  Because Hegseth’s not part of the Deep State team, he gets the Orange Man Bad treatment from the press.  Since the Gestapo-FBI effectively acts as a pimp for Politico and The New York Times, the presstitutes who work those rags’ street corners get slapped around when they don’t do the Intelligence Community’s bidding.  In the corporate news world, that’s just life!

So after a ninety-day hiatus in the information war against Secretary Hegseth, the I.C.’s “journalistic” brothel is back to its old tricks.  Despite vigorous denials from the White House, NPR is pumping out the following headline on car displays: “White House looking to replace Pete Hegseth at Defense.”  Talk about modern “journalism” in a nutshell!  Everybody at the White House says this story is bunk.  President Trump says it’s horse pucky.  Undaunted by overwhelming testimonial evidence to the contrary, NPR insists that some anonymous government official has assured its bordello of scribes that Trump is planning to fire Hegseth, even though the president is publicly saying the exact opposite!  Could this unnamed “official” perhaps be related to the tubby Tweedle-Vindmans, a diminutive Ukrainian president, or some cash-strapped Nigerian prince?  Holy moly, President Trump can’t defund fake-news NPR soon enough!

Last winter, when the Deep State’s “Operation: Sink Hegseth” was in full force, corporate news presstitutes nearly succeeded in giving RINO squishes enough cover to vote against his nomination.  Celebrity “journalists” — whose profession remains a notorious breeding ground for alcoholism and sexual harassment — did their best to slander Pete Hegseth as a drunken womanizer and “Me Too” villain.  Like monkeys flinging poo at the public, the nation’s trashiest gossip rags created a scene almost ugly enough to distract from Senate Republicans’ premeditated betrayal.

Read the Whole Article

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“We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force.” — Ayn Rand

130 executive orders in under 100 days.

Sweeping powers claimed in the name of “security” and “efficiency.”

One president acting as lawmaker, enforcer, and judge.

No debate. No oversight. No limits.

This is how the Constitution dies—not with a coup, but with a pen.

The Unitary Executive Theory is no longer a theory—it’s the architecture of a dictatorship in motion.

Where past presidents have used executive orders, decrees, memorandums, proclamations, national security directives and legislative signing statements to circumvent Congress or sidestep the rule of law, President Trump is using executive orders to advance his “unitary executive theory” of governance, which is a thinly disguised excuse for a government by fiat.

In other words, these executive orders are the mechanism by which we finally arrive at a full-blown dictatorship.

America’s founders established a system of checks and balances to prevent the concentration of power in any single branch. To this end, the Constitution establishes three separate but equal branches of government: the legislative branch, which makes the law; the executive branch, which enforces the law; and the judicial branch, which interprets the law.

And yet, despite this carefully balanced structure, we now find ourselves in a place the founders warned against.

Despite Trump’s attempts to rule by fiat, the president has no unilateral authority to operate outside the Constitution’s system of checks and balances—no matter how urgent the crisis or how well-meaning the intentions.

This is what government by fiat looks like.

Where Congress was once the nation’s lawmaking body, its role is now being eclipsed by a deluge of executive directives—each one issued without public debate, legislative compromise, or judicial review.

These executive orders aren’t mere administrative housekeeping. They represent a radical shift in how power is exercised in America, bypassing democratic institutions in favor of unilateral command. From trade and immigration to surveillance, speech regulation, and policing, the president is claiming broad powers that traditionally reside with the legislative and judicial branches.

Some orders invoke national security to disrupt global markets. Others attempt to override congressional control over tariffs, fast-track weapons exports, or alter long-standing public protections through regulatory rollbacks. A few go even further—flirting with ideological loyalty tests for citizenship, chilling dissent through financial coercion, and expanding surveillance in ways that undermine due process and privacy.

Yet here’s where these actions run into constitutional peril: they redefine executive authority in ways that bypass the checks and balances enshrined in the Constitution. They centralize decision-making in the White House, sideline the legislative process, and reduce the judiciary to an afterthought—if not an outright obstacle.

Each of these directives, taken individually, might seem technocratic or temporary. But taken together, they reveal the architecture of a parallel legal order—one in which the president acts as lawmaker, enforcer, and judge. That is not how a constitutional republic operates. That is how a dictatorship begins.

Each of these orders marks another breach in the constitutional levee, eroding the rule of law and centralizing unchecked authority in the executive.

This is not merely policy by another name—it is the construction of a parallel legal order, where the president acts as lawmaker, enforcer, and judge—the very state of tyranny our founders sought to prevent.

This legal theory—the so-called Unitary Executive—is not new. But under this administration, it has metastasized into something far more dangerous: a doctrine of presidential infallibility.

What began as a constitutional interpretation that the president controls the executive branch has morphed into an ideological justification for unchecked power.

Under this theory, all executive agencies, decisions, and even enforcement priorities bend entirely to the will of the president—obliterating the idea of an independent bureaucracy or impartial governance.

The result? An imperial presidency cloaked in legalism.

Historically, every creeping dictatorship has followed this pattern: first, undermine the legislative process; then, centralize enforcement powers; finally, subjugate the judiciary or render it irrelevant. America is following that roadmap, one executive order at a time.

Even Supreme Court justices and legal scholars who once defended broad executive authority are beginning to voice concern.

Yet the real danger of the Unitary Executive Theory is not simply that it concentrates power in the hands of the president—it’s that it does so by ignoring the rest of the Constitution.

Respect for the Constitution means obeying it even when it’s inconvenient to do so.

We’re watching the collapse of constitutional constraints not through tanks in the streets, but through policy memos drafted in the West Wing.

No matter how well-meaning the politicians make these encroachments on our rights appear, in the right (or wrong) hands, benevolent plans can easily be put to malevolent purposes. Even the most principled policies can be twisted to serve illegitimate ends once power and profit enter the equation.

The war on terror, the war on drugs, the war on illegal immigration, asset forfeiture schemes, road safety schemes, school safety schemes, eminent domain: all of these programs started out as legitimate responses to pressing concerns and have since become weapons of compliance and control in the police state’s hands.

We are approaching critical mass.

The groundwork has been laid for a new kind of government where it doesn’t matter if you’re innocent or guilty, whether you’re a threat to the nation, or even if you’re a citizen.

What will matter is what the government—or whoever happens to be calling the shots at the time—thinks. And if the powers-that-be think you’re a threat to the nation and should be locked up, then you’ll be locked up with no access to the protections our Constitution provides.

In effect, you will disappear.

Our freedoms are already being made to disappear.

This is how tyranny arrives: not with a constitutional amendment, but with a series of executive orders; not with a military coup, but with a legal memo; not with martial law, but with bureaucratic obedience and public indifference.

A government that rules by fiat, outside of constitutional checks and balances, is not a republic. It is a dictatorship in everything but name.

If freedom is to survive this constitutional crisis, We the People must reclaim our role as the ultimate check on government power.

That means holding every branch of government accountable to the rule of law. It means demanding that Congress do its job—not merely as a rubber stamp or partisan enabler, but as a coequal branch with the courage to rein in executive abuses.

It means insisting that the courts serve justice, not politics.

And it means refusing to normalize rule by decree, no matter who sits in the Oval Office.

There is no freedom without limits on power.

There is no Constitution if it can be ignored by those who swear to uphold it.

The presidency was never meant to be a throne. The Constitution was never meant to be optional. And the people were never meant to be silent.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, the time to speak out is now.

As our revolutionary forefathers learned the hard way, once freedom is lost, it is rarely regained without a fight.

This originally appeared on The Rutherford Institute.

The post How a President Becomes a Dictator: By Executive Order appeared first on LewRockwell.

NBC just reported that high level talks in London to end the war in Ukraine foundered when Zelensky proclaimed he would never agree to a deal in which the U.S. officially recognized the Crimea as Russian territory.

Zelenskyy has consistently rejected the suggestion that his country give up its claim to the Crimean Peninsula.

“There’s nothing to talk about here,” he said at a media conference Tuesday. “This is against our constitution.”

A brief review of history reveals there is little historical basis for Zelensky’s claim. Demanding that Russia give up Crimea—home of its Sevastopol Naval Base since 1783—resembles the demand that the U.S. return the Hawaiian Islands (including its Pearl Harbor Naval Station) to an independent Hawaiian state.

After American agents deposed the Hawaiian monarch in 1893, the U.S. government annexed Hawaii in 1898—at the same time it snatched Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines from Spain.

In 1954, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet transferred administration of Crimea to the Ukrainian Oblast of the Soviet Union. This was, at the time, the equivalent of the United States government ceding territory that was part of Texas (annexed in 1845) to the U.S. territory of Colorado (annexed from Mexico when the U.S. won the Mexican-American War in 1848).

The following is a brief timeline of Crimean history.

1441-1783: Territory of the Crimean Khanate, a Crimean Tatar state that ran a slave trade, abducting Europeans and selling them in Ottoman slave markets.

1783-1917: Territory of Imperial Russia. The peninsula was annexed by Russia under Catharine the Great and became home to Russia’s Black Sea Fleet at the Sevastopol Naval Base.

1853-56: Crimean War: Russia lost the war against Britain, France, and the Ottoman Empire. Russia retained control of the peninsula but was forced to end operations of its Black Sea Fleet. The peninsula continued to be inhabited by a Russian majority, with some Tatars, Ukrainians, and a small number of Germans and Jews.

1877-78: Russo-Turkish War. Russia won the war and reconstituted its Black Sea Fleet.

1905: Russian Revolution. Crew of Battleship Potemkin mutinied against the Russian Imperial officers. The revolution was suppressed.

1914-1917: World War I: Ottoman and German naval vessels skirmished with Russian vessels that were part of the Black Sea Fleet.

1917-1922: Russian Civil War.

1922-1991: Territory of Soviet Union.

1991-2014: Territory of Ukraine, which leased the Sevastopol Naval Base to Russia.

2014-2025: Unrecognized territory of Russia.

Note that the United States never had a dog in any of the above fights until 1917, when it entered World War I on the side of the Russians. The U.S. again entered war on the side of the Soviet Union in 1941. Hostilities between the U.S. and Russia over Crimea only really began when the U.S. DoD and CIA began meddling in Ukraine during the 2005-2014 period.

The American people have never had any interest in which of Europe’s ever-quarreling powers controls the Crimean peninsula.

Zelensky may well choose to fight “until the last cartridge” over Crimea. However, it seems to me that President Trump should now tell him he can do so without U.S. military assistance.

This originally appeared on Courageous Discourse.

The post Crimea’s Bloody History appeared first on LewRockwell.

Yesterday the White House released an executive order called “Restoring Equality of Opportunity and Meritocracy,” taking aim at the inane and destructive “disparate impact” policy.

According to this policy, if any employment requirement has a “disparate impact” on the races, the employer can be hauled into court and forced to defend the requirement — easier said than done.

That includes requiring that applicants pass a test (even an excruciatingly simple test), or hold a high school diploma, or not have dishonorable military discharges. If the net result of such requirements is a disproportionate percentage of white people qualifying, the Justice Department can leap into action.

Rather than have their lives and businesses destroyed, employers generally just do what the regime wants and engage in race-based hiring.

Even if all sides concede that no discriminatory intent existed, the employer can still be punished.

According to the Order, disparate impact

holds that a near insurmountable presumption of unlawful discrimination exists where there are any differences in outcomes in certain circumstances among different races, sexes, or similar groups, even if there is no facially discriminatory policy or practice or discriminatory intent involved, and even if everyone has an equal opportunity to succeed. Disparate-impact liability all but requires individuals and businesses to consider race and engage in racial balancing to avoid potentially crippling legal liability.

And then further:

On a practical level, disparate-impact liability has hindered businesses from making hiring and other employment decisions based on merit and skill, their needs, or the needs of their customers because of the specter that such a process might lead to disparate outcomes, and thus disparate-impact lawsuits. This has made it difficult, and in some cases impossible, for employers to use bona fide job-oriented evaluations when recruiting, which prevents job seekers from being paired with jobs to which their skills are most suited — in other words, it deprives them of opportunities for success. Because of disparate-impact liability, employers cannot act in the best interests of the job applicant, the employer, and the American public.

An accompanying Fact Sheet summarizes the practical effects of the order:

• It directs all agencies to deprioritize enforcement of statutes and regulations that include disparate-impact liability.
• The Order instructs the Attorney General to repeal or amend all Title VI (racial nondiscrimination) regulations that contemplate disparate-impact liability.
• It directs the administration to assess all pending investigations, lawsuits, and consent judgements that rely on a theory of disparate-impact liability, and take appropriate action.

This should have been done a long time ago. I have no further comment beyond that.

Never pay for a book again: TomsFreeBooks.com

The post Evil Doctrine Smashed by EO appeared first on LewRockwell.

“Peace is the most powerful weapon for mankind.”—Mahatma Gandhi

Peace is an economic driver for every country, for the world and even more so in a globalized world, where countries and regions are connected. Conflicts and wars interrupt not only supply chains, harming also economies that have nothing directly to do with the conflict, but they destroy countries physically and economically.

From 2020 until recently, Covid was a bio-war. Applied measures and dictates wiped out entire economies and left countries, especially the poorer ones, at the bottom, with unheard-of numbers of bankruptcies and resulting astronomical numbers of unemployment and extreme poverty, leading to many other diseases than Covid – and for many to death.

A WHO study puts the economic loss at 1% of world GDP (US$ 110 trillion in 2024), i.e., about US$ 1.1 trillion. Another study, assessing the value of lives lost which is only partially addressing the economy, puts the figure at US$ 4.4 trillion – see this.

In reality, the economic losses due to Covid and imposed subsidiary measures from 2020 up to the end 2024 may easily be estimated in tens if not hundreds of trillions of dollars.

Assets were wiped out and their real values transferred from the bottom to the top which worldwide statistics prove without a shadow of a doubt: Poverty for the lower half of the population increased drastically, while the riches of the multi-multi billionaires duplicated manifold in the same period.

To be sure, the economic impact of Covid and the ensuing coerced vaccination campaign is not finished yet. Covid clearly was a war, a new kind of bio-war (soon to come molecular wars), killing and disabling silently, without shots, bombs, and explosions.

Economic health and prosperity are questions of peace. And peace is often a matter of diplomacy. Over the last 30 years or so, diplomacy has gradually vanished and today is practically non-existent, especially in the West. Foreign Ministries, Ambassadors and other diplomats should have the capacity of talking with conflicting partners, of shaking hands with them, of listening and using their professional skills to mediate. This, ideally before a war breaks out, and at the latest, when a conflict has started to bring it to a halt.

This capacity is gone. Just look at the European Union. To bring the Ukraine war to an end, instead of going to Russia or inviting the Kremlin to Brussels for peace talks, Ms. Von der Leyen, the unelected EU President, as well as the EU’s authority for external relations, are on belligerent footing, promising 800 billion euros to a trillion war-budget to confront Russia by 2030, if not earlier. Germany does the same.

This is sheer economic suicide.

The German and European economies in general are on a free-fall and these resources could be used to for productive and infrastructure investments, instead of destruction.

Diplomacy is also missing in the US. Big-mouthing about “we are the best and greatest… like never before seen in history”(Trump), does not help diplomacy a bit. President Trump promised peace on day one of his presidency. Even if it was meant symbolically only, it is meaningless. Under Trump, Washington has sent and committed tens of billions-worth of weaponry to Israel, to continue the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, in the West Bank and for taking over Lebanon, Syria and who knows how far they will go to attack Iran.

In the Ukraine-Russian conflict, so-called US diplomats are shuttling from Moscow to Kiev, to the Middle East (Saudi Arabia, soon Qatar), while Washington keeps promising – and supplying the Zelenskyy regime with billions-worth of weaponry. A clear encouragement to break ceasefires, something Kiev has been doing numerous times from the very beginning of these recent ceasefires, including the one initiated for Easter by President Putin.

So, the killing will not die.

Where is diplomacy?

In the olden days, Switzerland was known and famous for her diplomatic services, for mediating between conflicting countries. Switzerland’s neutrality was engrained in the Swiss DNA. Neutrality is the “raison d’être” for Switzerland.

A neutral Switzerland for Good Services; that is diplomacy at its best, what Swiss tradition has carved out for the Swiss Confederates for almost 400 years.

Swiss neutrality dates to 1515 when Switzerland was defeated at the Battle of Marignano and to the Treaty of Westphalia of 1648, which drew a line under the Thirty Years’ War. Swiss neutrality was, however, only formally recognized by the international community in 1815, at the Congress of Vienna.

As a neutral state, Switzerland does not take part in external armed conflicts, provides no armed assistance, and is not a member of any military alliances. In 1907, Switzerland formalized this position with the signing of the Hague Convention governing the rights and obligations of neutral states in the event of war. Therefore: No to NATO.

But neutrality was never enshrined in the Swiss Constitution. The Swiss Federal Constitution, Article 2 states that Switzerland “shall pursue a policy of peace and non-intervention.” This comes close to neutrality, but not quite.

This may be the legal grounds, why in the last 20 years or so Swiss neutrality has been “softened” – mostly for economic reasons, financial greed and for politically “doing the right thing,” being in tune with the EU, and those who give the EU orders, Washington. For example, one of the big “not-to-dos” for a neutral country, is taking over the US and EU sanctions against Russia, or any country for that matter.

This has unfortunately happened over the past years. Every time the two regional blocks, Washington and Brussels, issued new sanctions against Russia, Switzerland went along.

When Switzerland offered her good services to mediate the Russia-Ukraine conflict, Russia’s Foreign Minister Lavrov said in no uncertain words – NO, Switzerland is no longer neutral, no longer credible as a neutral mediator. So, peace talks were held in Saudi Arabia instead of Geneva. Now the traditional Swiss role of neutrality to mediate conflicts, are taken over by Riyadh, Istanbul, Doha – and who else is next?

The Swiss weapon industry is not significant compared with the rest of the world, but significant enough for the greed of its shareholders to benefit from the lucrativeness of wars. Therefore, Switzerland is moving ever closer to NATO – the worldwide war machine.

This must be reversed and it may. A people’s referendum for Swiss neutrality is pending and may be voted on in early 2026. If accepted by the people, Swiss neutrality will be enshrined in the Swiss Constitution.

The resolution of conflicts is essential for a well running economy, worldwide, as well as regionally and all the way down to the sovereign local-national levels. Peace economics, be it in Switzerland or other countries that do not just profess neutrality but also practice it, like Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia, not least China, and to some extent India, and certainly others, are benefitting from their political position. Their economic performance over the last few years with a GDP growth from between 5% and 7% is testimony for neutrality and peace leading to economic prosperity.

The BRICS are not quite there yet, but one of their stated objectives is being neutral in world affairs. With ever-more BRICS associates a growing network of peace-loving and peace-promoting nations is emerging.

The future lies in neutrality by which, We, the People, will win peace.

The original source of this article is Global Research.

The post Economic Prosperity – Neutrality and Peace appeared first on LewRockwell.

As the cardinals gather in conclave, one of the questions on our minds is how the global Church can grow in unity. Francis’ pontificate aggravated deep differences between tradition and progress, between the developed world and the global south, and between continuity and innovation.

In addition to the turmoil in the Church, the complexities of the 21st century have thrown us into a whirlwind of unprecedented technological change, bringing about upheavals in our understanding of the human person and conflicts in politics, economics, education, and health care. In the midst of the maelstrom and the shifting sands, where does one find the rock on which to build?

Can the Catholic Church still offer that rock? I believe a pope from Africa can lead the way, and here’s why:

Youthful Zeal

First, the Church in Africa is young and strong. There are over 230 million African Catholics—representing nearly one-fifth of the global Catholic population; and this powerhouse of faith is young. Africa has a median age of just 19.7 years. Unlike Europe and North America, where aging congregations and declining church attendance signal a crisis of faith, African churches are filled with young, enthusiastic worshippers.

In Nigeria, Kenya, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Catholic churches are bursting with energy. They have vibrant liturgies, packed seminaries, and a growing number of vocations to the priesthood and religious life. Nigeria alone has over 30 million Catholics and produces thousands of priests annually.

This youthful vigor is spiritual as well as numerical. African Catholics bring an infectious enthusiasm to their faith, characterized by lively worship, deep devotion to the sacraments, and a strong sense of community. An African pope, emerging from this dynamic context, would embody this energy, offering a vision of hope and renewal to a global Church grappling with secularism and apathy.

Perseverance in Persecution

Across the continent, particularly in northern Nigeria, Somalia, and parts of the Sahel, Catholics face relentless persecution from Muslim extremists. Groups like Boko Haram and Al-Shabaab have targeted Christian communities, burning churches, kidnapping priests, and massacring worshippers. In 2023 alone, thousands of Christians were killed in Nigeria, and countless others were displaced. Yet, in the face of such violence, African Catholics have shown extraordinary courage, refusing to renounce their faith even under threat of death.

African Catholics today are modern-day martyrs, their faith strengthened by sacrifice and suffering. An African pope, shaped by this context, would bring a prophetic voice to the global stage, reminding the Church of the cost of discipleship and the power of unwavering faith. Such leadership would galvanize Catholics worldwide to stand firm in their beliefs, even in the face of cultural or ideological pressures.

A Radical Christianity

In my book Beheading Hydra: A Radical Plan for Christians in an Atheistic Age, I outline three historical responses to attacks on the Christian Faith: repression, accommodation, and radical Christianity. Repression of the enemies of the Faith only makes martyrs of them and drives them underground to reemerge in a later age much stronger. Accommodation—seeking to find common ground and dialogue with the enemies of the Church—weakens the Church and waters down her witness.

Radical Christianity is simply a return to the roots—not a return to some fantasy neverland of tradition or some sort of obnoxious, self-righteous extremism, but a simple return to the foundation of the Faith. Radical Christianity does not argue with, repress, or accommodate the enemies of the Faith. It simply lives out the power of the Resurrection in the dynamism of the Holy Spirit. Our Western Church, so cluttered with indifferentism, materialism, and ennui, needs a red-blooded return to radical religion—a faith lived out with the simplicity, power and depth we sense in the pages of the New Testament itself.

Uncluttered Christianity

Not only is the African Church huge, young, and strong, but there is a deeper philosophical reason why an African pope is the medicine we need. The European Church (and I include the Catholic Church of North and South America because we are children of Europe) has been shaped by five hundred years of theological, philosophical, and cultural turmoil.

The ideas of the Protestant Revolution, the Enlightenment, the Scientific Revolution, Liberalism, Modernism, and Postmodernism have infected our mindset, contaminated our theology, and corrupted our culture. African Catholics (for the most part) approach Christianity with a freshness untainted by these struggles. Many African converts come directly from traditional tribal religions, bringing a worldview that resonates deeply with the incarnational and supernatural nature of Catholicism.

This is not to say that the African cardinals are uneducated, backwoods rubes. They are as educationally accomplished as their Western counterparts (Cardinal Sarah, for example, is a world-class biblical scholar), but they have come to that education unburdened by the intellectual biases and presuppositions that shadow their Western colleagues.

As a result, African Catholicism is marked by a purity and simplicity that recalls the early Church—before it was layered with complex theological disputes, infected with modern philosophical doubt, and corrupted by the assumptions of cultural and political ideologies.

African Catholics embrace the supernatural with a natural ease that contrasts with the skepticism of the secular West. Miracles, divine providence, and the reality of spiritual warfare are not abstract concepts but lived experiences. This radical faith—radical in the sense of returning to the roots of Christianity—offers a powerful antidote to the spiritual malaise afflicting parts of the global Church. An African pope, steeped in this worldview, could lead the Church back to its foundational truths, emphasizing the joy of the Gospel and the transformative power of Christ.

Read the Whole Article

The post Why We Need a Pope From Africa appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, John Smith. 

Common Dreams

The post Israeli Strikes Destroy Machinery Used for Recovering Bodies Buried Under the Rubble in Gaza appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, John Smith. 

Common Dreams

The post Trump Is No Peace President. Call Him the Proliferation President appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, John Frahm.

See here.

The post Klaus Schwab, architect of WEF’s dystopian ‘Great Reset,’ abruptly resigns following allegations of financial and ethical misconduct appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, Gail Appel:

The Daily Caller

The post One Court Case Could Totally Upend Google’s Search Engine Empire appeared first on LewRockwell.

Writes Gail Appel:

 Here’s where the plot thickens. The Ukrainian POS government blamed on Russia. It wasn’t Russia, it was Ukraine. Aside from being rife with Nazis, this was another stunt created by the government to tar Russia. Thing is, Russia never celebrated the Holocaust. They may not have been good to the Jews, but there were a whole lot of Jews who were loyal to the Soviets. And Russia to this day has a large Jewish population. Particularly very religious Jews, and they practice freely and are culturally Russian. They’re happy in Russia under Putin. And Putin doesn’t have Burka clad Islamist Jihadists protesting in the streets screaming Death To Russia, Death To The Jews, Death To Christians Allahu Akbar! They’re banned. And so is Soros.

F*ck Ukraine! They’re the ones killing ethnic Russians in Mariupol and Donetsk. They blew up the pipelines.

See here.

The post Neo-Nazis desecrate Holocaust memorial, give Nazi salutes in Ukraine appeared first on LewRockwell.

Click Here:

J. Lee’s Stack, The Good Help Network

The post And Just Like That Beautiful is the New Ugly appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, Robert Mish. 

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Thanks,  Bruce McLane.

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