Lew Rockwell Institute

R. Johnson writes:

Lew,

Owen Jones has been following the developments in Gaza with the same intensity as Caitlyn Johnstone, often providing insights and facts within hours of events on the ground. He posted yesterday that Israel had dropped leaflets on Gazans demanding that they submit to and cooperate with the IDF…or die. The Israelis are not even attempting to hide their genocide. They are broadcasting it to all who have ears to hear and eyes to see.

The post Israel drops genocidal leaflets on Gaza appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, Rick Rozoff.

Rasmussen: Trump’s ratings among America’s youngest voters (18-39): 56%

The post Steve Turley: Polls show 70% of Americans despise the Democrats appeared first on LewRockwell.

The post Bye-Bye TDS Wokesters! appeared first on LewRockwell.

Over the last quarter of a century, the West has become a really weird place in which virtue signaling has almost completely replaced actual virtue in the public forum, and the most brutal sentimentality has largely replaced genuine feeling. For years in the West, we have been strangely bereft of real men in public affairs—the sort of guys who emanate the natural authority that comes from competence and from habitually choosing to be governed by reason instead of emotion.

Because of Trump’s somewhat checkered past and bombastic personal style, he has struck many as an improbable character to take on the mantle of a strong and wise man who will lead mankind out a dark time of childish and destructive folly.

However, as far I as I can see, he appears to be doing just that with respect to the Russian-Ukraine catastrophe. This morning I read reports of Secretary of State Rubio’s meeting with Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov in Saudi Arabia. The following bit jumped out at me:

Russia wants Nato to disavow 2008 promise to Ukraine

Russia wants Nato to disavow its 2008 promise to one day give Ukraine membership of the US-led military alliance, Russia’s foreign ministry said on Tuesday.

Nato membership for Ukraine is unacceptable for Russia but a simple refusal to accept Ukraine into the alliance is also not enough either, a spokesman said.

“It is worth noting that a refusal to accept Kyiv into Nato is not enough,” a spokesman said. “The alliance must disavow the Bucharest promises of 2008.”

At a summit in Bucharest in April 2008, Nato declared that both Ukraine and Georgia would join the US-led defence alliance – but gave them no plan for how to get there.

I was living in Central Europe in 2008 and I carefully followed the Bucharest NATO summit to which Vladimir Putin was invited to give a talk.

I remember perfectly reading the news of how NATO proposed Ukrainian membership at that time, and it struck me as a deliberate provocation of Putin. Moreover, when he stated that he was indeed provoked, and would not tolerate Ukrainian membership, he signaled to the West how precisely he could be baited into invading Ukraine.

I have long suspected that the Machiavellians in Washington wanted Putin to invade to indulge their fantasy of turning Ukraine into an Afghan-style quagmire for Russia. Hilary Clinton even said as much.

The totality of circumstances indicates that the West was butt-hurt when Putin ended the Yeltsin era of allowing western banks and their oligarch cronies in Russia to loot the country’s natural resource assets.

In 1996, when it appeared that the wild party was going to end because of Yeltin’s increasing unpopularity, the Clinton administration helped Yeltin to get reelected. By what means this was achieved remains unclear, though the event was celebrated on the cover of Time magazine.

In 1996, life expectancy for Russian men was 60. Putin came to power in 1999. Starting in 2003, Russian life expectancy started a steady ascent, reaching 68 in 2019.

During this period, we in the West were constantly told that Putin—with his Russian natural resource economy smaller than that of Texas—aspired to restore the glory of the Russian Empire in Eastern and even Central Europe. At the same time, Putin’s friendly relationship with former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder was excoriated in the western press, as was their consummation of the Nord Stream Pipeline for supplying Europe with cheap Russian natural gas. Washington hated it that Germany and Russia were apparently becoming pals, and the Nord Stream Pipeline was regarded as an odious symbol of Russian-German cooperation.

For my part, I never found western media messaging about Putin plausible. Again, it has long seemed to me that the West was simply sour grapes that Putin wanted to make Russia great again. Remember, this is the same media that is sour grapes about Donald Trump’s aspiration to make America great again.

Now we find ourselves in a situation in which President Trump is the only major leader in the West who seems genuinely interested in working out a deal for peace, even if it means recognizing that Russia is a country worthy of respect that has legitimate security concerns.

And yet, why wouldn’t Russia have security concerns? The country suffered unspeakable catastrophe when Napoleon invaded in 1812 and when Hitler invaded in 1941. The German armed forces, combined with supply disruptions to major Russian cities, caused the deaths of millions of Russians, by some estimates over 25 million. Why should Putin trust the French or the Germans now?

Note that Trump is literally the only leader in the West—apart from Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban—who publicly laments the deaths of hundreds of thousands of young Ukrainian and Russian men.

The Biden administration and the leaders of Western Europe were perfectly comfortable with keeping the killing going. The only time I heard Biden officials reference dying Ukrainian men was to lament that the age of conscription wasn’t lowered from 25 to 18 so that the youngsters could serve as cannon fodder as well.

We often hear about Putin being a bad guy, and maybe he is. However, if there is evidence that our western leaders aren’t totally depraved, I’ve still not seen it.

In a recent interview with Tucker Carlson, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban expressed optimism that Trump and Putin would work out a peace deal. When Carlson asked him why he is optimistic, he replied: “Because strong men make peace. Weak men make war.”

I hope that Trump and Putin will soon make peace.

This originally appeared on Courageous Discourse.

The post Trump Is Only Western Statesman Who Wants Peace appeared first on LewRockwell.

Shop today using the below links and LRC gets money to help us with operational costs. Thank you!

1. Chair Yoga for Weight Loss & Toning: Complete Guide to Look and Feel Better in Just 10 Minutes a Day
2. The Case for Christ: A Journalist’s Personal Investigation of the Evidence for Jesus 
3. Carthage Must Be Destroyed: The Rise and Fall of an Ancient Civilization 
4. The Gift of the Gab: How Eloquence Works
5. The Illuminatus! Trilogy: The Eye in the Pyramid, The Golden Apple, Leviathan
6. The Schoolhouse Gate: Public Education, the Supreme Court, and the Battle for the American Mind 
7. Confessions of a Medical Heretic
8. The Law of Liberty in the Spiritual Life 
9. The Diary of a Russian Priest (English and Russian Edition)
10. Laetrile Case Histories; The Richardson Cancer Clinic Experience
11. Speed Reading: Learn to Read a 200+ Page Book in 1 Hour
12. Dementia Myth: Most Patients With Dementia Are Curable
13. The Tapping Solution for Pain Relief: A Step-by-Step Guide to Reducing and Eliminating Chronic Pain
14. Nourishing Broth: An Old-Fashioned Remedy for the Modern World 
15. Fallen Leaves: Last Words on Life, Love, War, and God 
16. Knowing God 
17. The Bastiat Collection
18. Tax-Free Wealth: How to Build Massive Wealth by Permanently Lowering Your Taxes 
19. Unlimited Memory: How to Use Advanced Learning Strategies to Learn Faster, Remember More and be More Productive 
20. Follow the Money: The Shocking Deep State Connections of the Anti-Trump Cabal 

The post Books LRC Readers Are Reading This Week! appeared first on LewRockwell.

Last year, I learned of a Yale study which had discovered the COVID vaccine persisted in the body and caused long term immunological impairments—something I believe relates to the egregious production process that characterized the COVID-19 vaccines.

Since I did not want to interfere with the publication process, I held off from disclosing anything within the study which had not already been leaked by someone else. Today the study was pre-published, so I can now discuss what they found (in a heavily revised version of the previous article). The first half of this article provides the context for that study, while the second half discusses it (e.g., that the vaccine spike protein can persist in the body for at least 709 days and cause at least two years of chronic immunological suppression and autoimmunity that directly correlate to the presence of chronic illnesses).

Note: as this study was conducted by a team of immunologists, they primarily focused on immunologic changes (and as a result many of the other chronic consequences of vaccination were not discussed). Additionally, it should be noted that they originally strongly endorsed the vaccination (both to prevent COVID and to treat long COVID—which is often disastrous) and came from a very pro-vaccine institution. As such, the fact they were willing to change their stance on this should be acknowledged (and indicates a lot of work went into verifying the accuracy of their data).

Upsides and Downsides

A lot of things in life are trade-offs, and as I’ve gotten older, more and more I’ve come to appreciate how many things in our society boil down to the fact that the options for addressing them (at least within the existing paradigm) all have significant downsides, so in many cases no solution exists which is satisfactory to all parties involved.

As such, this dilemma is typically managed by some combination of the following:

•Having a biased focus which emphasizes the benefits of an approach a side supports and downplays its downsides (or conversely disproportionately focuses on the downsides of an opposing position). To this point, I’ve had countless issues I’ve debated both sides of and been able to effectively persuade audiences of each one—which highlights how subjective many of the entrenched beliefs we hold actually are (and, in turn, is why I put so much work here into fairly presenting both sides of each controversial topic I cover).

•Sweeping the downsides under the rug and gaslighting the populace into believing they don’t exist.

•Blitzing the public into supporting a questionable policy before they have time to recognize its downsides, and if that fails, overtly forcing them to go along with it.

Note: I believe one of the reasons why governments frequently do horrible things to their people is because they are put in the position of having to “solve” a problem (but with no truly satisfactory way to do it), so they become habituated to using the three previous strategies to push their chosen policies along and simultaneously develop a collective mentality that those questionable approaches are necessary for the “greater good.”

There are many different manifestations of this dilemma, many of which I believe are essentially reflective of a foundational concept in medicine—sensitivity and specificity.

An ideal diagnostic test would catch every instance of a disease (100% sensitivity) and simultaneously never have a false positive (100% specificity). Unfortunately, in almost all cases, this is impossible to do, and instead a trade-off exists where you can either prioritize sensitivity (which leads to a significant number of false positives) or prioritize specificity (which leads to a significant number of false negatives). During COVID for example, a decision was made to prioritize sensitivity with the PCR tests (by having a high replication cycle thresholds) so no cases of COVID would be missed, but this resulted in such poor specificity that the PCR tests effectively became worthless (except for drumming up fear) since they produced so many false positives.

As such, when tests are designed, attempts are made to ensure there is a good balance between sensitivity and specificity. In some cases this is successful (e.g., there are many lab results we will take at face value), but in many other cases, given the technology involved, it’s not really possible to do so (or it is, but lobbying led to over-diagnosis so a medical product could be sold).

Similarly:

•Many policies in the justice system aims to enact fall into this same situation. For example, an ideal death penalty is robust enough to deter murder (and keep violent criminals away from the public), but simultaneously lenient enough that it doesn’t accidentally execute innocent individuals. Since there is no way to have both perfect sensitivity and specificity on this, different states take radically different approaches to how they enforce the death penalty (lying all along the spectrum between sensitivity and specificity). Likewise, our judicial system was founded under the principle “innocent until proven guilty” whereas many other countries have judicial systems that are the exact opposite.

•In medicine, one of the greatest challenges is finding the appropriate dose, as people differ, so what might be a safe and therapeutic dose for one person could be toxic for another. As such, standardized doses are typically chosen by finding the best overall balance between efficacy (a sufficient dose) and safety (avoiding a toxic dose), but for many drugs, the standardized dose leads to many more sensitive patients becoming severely injured by the drugs (which is then commonly “addressed” by gaslighting those injured patients).
Note: a much more detailed discussion on the art of dosing can be found here.

•Every medical intervention has its risks and benefits, and ideally, the job of a physician should be to accurately weigh those to determine the best treatment for a patient (while simultaneously conveying what they are to the patient). Unfortunately, in many cases, they don’t (which is a large part of why patients are so dissatisfied with the medical system).

Overall, there are three key takeaways from this paradigm I wish to focus on in this article:

1. It is often incredibly difficult to find an acceptable balance between sensitivity and specificity, and many of the conventions our society now follows were the result of years of debate and protest from both sides to find a palatable middle ground between the two.

2. In almost any sphere I frequently find rushed attempts to find an acceptable balance between two conflicting positions to be immensely flawed and prone to creating significant issues in the future.

3. Many of the issues with the vaccine program are encapsulated by this framework.

How Vaccines “Work”

Note: many believe the immune system is one of the least understood parts of physiology, something I would argue is a result of immunological research being focused on making profitable pharmaceuticals (e.g., vaccines) rather than understanding how it works.

In the classical conception of immunity, there are two types, innate immunity and adaptive immunity, with the innate response being relatively nonspecific (so it can work against a wide variety of infectious threats, including those the body has never seen before) and the adaptive one, which is uniquely suited to eliminating the specific invading organism.

The most widely accepted explanation for how the adaptive immune system works is “clonal selection theory” which states that the immune system:
1. Uses a random generation process to create a vast pool of potential antigen matching sequences.
2. Has vast number of different immune cells that each have those sequences attached to them circulate the blood stream.
3. Waits for one of those immune cells to contact an invading pathogen that the sequence it carries matches.
4. Have each of the immune cells be programmed to start rapidly reproducing once they get a sequence match.
5. Through the previous 4 steps, make it possible to produce a large number of immune cells which are specific to an invading organism (because they can bind to their antigens and alert the rest of the immune system to the organism’s presence), and thus effectively neutralize the infection.
6. Once the process is complete, to leave behind memory B cells, which match the invading pathogen and are able to stimulate the immune response in a much more rapid fashion (thereby shortening the time that steps 3 and 4 take).

The theory behind vaccination is that if the specific immune response and memory B cells can be created before the body encounters a dangerous microbe, this can:

•Allow the body to mount a robust immune response before a harmful invading organism has time to multiply within the body and cause significant damage.

•Cause individuals to rapidly clear infections (rather than needing to wait for the adaptive response to kick in), thereby reducing or eliminating the amount of time they can spread the disease into the population.

•Cause individuals to develop an immune response at the site of infection (e.g., the membranes of the nose and throat), thereby preventing the organism from being able to colonize those areas and thus preventing its transmission.

Being able to do this is hence immensely appealing to governments, as it allows a single intervention (the vaccine) which can easily be distributed to everyone in a top-down manner (which is what governments are good at doing) to address a longstanding problem (infectious disease outbreaks) and more importantly, to allow the government to present the appearance of working in earnest to safeguard the public’s health. Because of this appeal, throughout history, governments will get deeply invested in vaccine programs, and then once issues arise with those programs, double-down on the vaccine (e.g., with mandates) rather than reconsider the wisdom of the vaccine program.
Note: in a previous article, I showed how this misguided and tyrannical conduct has existed ever since the first vaccine (smallpox).

Vaccine Production

To “work” vaccines aim to mass produce a dangerous organism’s antigen without the organism itself being present and then administer that antigen into the body. By doing so, the intermediate stage of an infection (where the organism has already reproduced enough inside its host to have a large number of antigens be available to match a circulating immune cell) can be achieved without the individual being in danger of being damaged or overwhelmed by the infection.

Unfortunately, unlike chemicals which can be rapidly synthesized, antigens are complex enough that they can only be produced by biological systems. As such, to produce the antigen, one of the following is typically done.

•Mass produce the infectious organism, then “kill” it so that its antigens can be collected, but the organism itself is not able to cause infections.

•Genetically modify another organism to mass produce a desired antigen, then kill it and extract the antigen (e.g. the HPV vaccine does this with modified yeasts).

•Modify the live pathogen (typically a virus) so that it can still cause the infection and reproduce inside the recipient but simultaneously is “weakened” so that it is less likely to cause illness.

•Genetically modify a “benign” virus to contain the antigen but be unable to replicate in the human body, then mass produce it outside the body, and have the body develop an immune response to the virus and the antigen on it once it is injected.

•Introduce mRNA into cells so human cells can produce large amounts of the desired antigen, which the immune system then sees (e.g., on the surface of the cells) and develops an immune response to.

The basic problem is that none of these approaches are perfect, and each has both its ups and downsides. For example:

•Most can create autoimmunity.

•In those where only a single antigen is used (and the virus spreads from human to human), if the vaccine actually works, it rapidly stop working because the pathogen quickly evolves a new antigen that no longer matches the vaccine.

•It contrast, the multi-antigen ones (which don’t have that issue) are typically live attenuated vaccines, which then can cause those with weakened immune systems to develop infections from the vaccine itself (e.g., this happens with the polio vaccine—which is why the primary cause of polio now is from the vaccines rather than natural infections, but also can happen with others like the shingles and measles vaccine).

Furthermore, some infectious diseases respond fairly well to vaccination, but the majority do not, so at this point, the vaccine industry has already picked all the “low-hanging fruit” and hence faces an existential struggle to develop new proprietary (patentable) vaccines it can bring to market. For example, had it not been for COVID-19 (SARS-CoV-2), a SARS vaccine would have never been brought to market as it was well recognized the SARS virus was poorly suited for vaccination (which what we then saw throughout the pandemic).

Finally. even if a vaccine “works” it still has to be manufactured, and there are numerous cases of the tradeoffs being made resulting in a disaster. For example:

•To make the inactivated polio vaccine, the live polio virus had to be exposed to formaldehyde. However, the challenge with this was that if too much formaldehyde was used, it would damage the antigens on polio to the point they no longer matched those on the poliovirus, whereas if too little was used, some of the polioviruses would remain active and could then give the vaccine recipient polio. The creator of the vaccine (Salk) opted to prioritize efficacy over safety, which the government in turn supported, even when one of their own scientists (Bernice Eddy) warned them against releasing the vaccine (as it caused polio in her lab). That 1955 vaccine then infected at least 220,000 people with live polio virus in Cutter’s vaccine, of whom 70,000 developed muscle weakness, 164 were severely paralyzed, and 10 died.

Note: an identical issue had happened on a smaller scale (9000 infections, 12 severe cases, 6 deaths) in 1935 with an earlier version of the inactivated polio vaccine. Likewise, (as I showed here) there have been dozens of incidents where an insufficiently inactivated or attenuated diphtheria, rabies or yellow fever vaccines severely injured hundreds of people (as the attenuated vaccines faced a similar issue with it being easy to over or under attenuate).

•Growing viruses for vaccines requires having a cell culture to grow them in. Monkey kidney cells were chosen because they worked well for doing this, but unfortunately were contaminated with the cancer causing SV40 virus. In 1962, Eddy again warned the government about the vaccine, but they still chose to give it to the public (and retaliated against her for speaking out), which in turn led to a wave of cancer sweeping through America, which until the COVID-19 vaccines was unprecedented:

Note: many other viral vaccines (particularly the live ones) also have had harmful viral contaminants identified within them, but unlike SV40, that contamination has not been acknowledged. Most noteably, a strong case can be made that HIV emerged from virally contaminated vaccines (that had been grown in monkey tissues).

•After a potentially dangerous strain of influenza (due to it having similarities to the 1918 influenza) was identified, a rush began to make an emergency vaccine for it (despite the FDA’s chief influenza expert Morris accurately warning that strain posed no risk to America). Since it took a while to cultivate the virus for a live attenuated vaccine, in order to make the vaccine be produced fast enough to hit the market before the influenza strain disappeared, a decision was made to hybridize it with the PR8 strain, a fast growing influenza strain directly descended from the 1918 influenza. Morris warned against doing this, but was ignored (and fired). That 1976 vaccine subsequently injured a large number of people (including some of our patients) and was a publicity disaster for the US government.

•The anthrax vaccine used during (and after) the Gulf War required growing large amounts of the bacteria, killing them, and then filtering out the most toxic components from the final vaccine preparation. The issue the manufacturer ran into was that because of how dirty the vaccine was, its contaminants clogged the filters the manufacturer used, so “solve” the problem and be able to manufacture the vaccine at scale for the military, the manufacturer opted to use larger filters which did not clog, but also didn’t filter many of the toxic components out of the final products—which resulted in one of the most harmful vaccines in history being unleashed upon our military.

•Due to the challenges in producing it, the DTP vaccine (another killed bacterial vaccine) was notorious for having hot lots that killed their recipients (or left them with brain damage). In fact, one FDA pertussis specialist in 1976 stated:

Pertussis vaccine is one of the more troublesome products to produce and assay. As an example of this, pertussis vaccine has one of the highest failure rates of all products submitted to the Bureau of Biologies for testing and release. Approximately 15-20 percent of all lots which pass the manufacturer’s tests fail to pass the Bureau’s tests.

Eventually, the injuries that vaccine created led to so many lawsuits that the manufactures could not afford to continue producing the vaccine, at which point, the 1986 Vaccine Injury Act was passed. This shielded the manufactures from all future liability from it (hence allowing them to stay in business), and eventually incentivized the production of a safer but more costly pertussis vaccine.

•Frequently when an antigen is produced, it cannot solicit a sufficient immune response (unless a lot of it is used—which frequently makes the vaccine too costly to produce). To solve this problem, cheap (and toxic) adjuvants which enhance the immune response to the antigen are used, thereby allowing an affordable amount of antigen to be required for the final product. When the HPV vaccine was developed, it was discovered that its antigen (along with standard adjuvants) could not mount a sufficient immune response to get FDA approval, so a decision was made to use an experimental (but much stronger adjuvant) which worked—but also gave a large number of recipients autoimmune disorders (at least 2.3%). Nonetheless, that trade-off was also accepted to get it to market.

In short, if you look at all these cases, a consistent pattern should be clear. Whenever there is a choice between getting a dangerous vaccine to market or holding off because there isn’t a way to do it safely, the vaccine industry will always do the risky approach (especially in “emergency” situations) as they know they can unconditionally rely upon the US government to promote the product as “safe and effective” and then legally shield them from the disaster which inevitably follows.

Read the Whole Article

The post Yale Just Proved COVID Vaccine Injury Exists and Spike Production Persists for Years Inside the Body appeared first on LewRockwell.

Comments open on YouTube

The post Bob Amsterdam: How USAID Is Helping Zelensky Destroy Christianity With Fake Churches and Violence appeared first on LewRockwell.

The U.S. Catholic bishops have lawyered up.

And they’re out to claw back “their” money — at last count $65 million in taxpayer cash — which they use to advance the entry of millions of illegal migrants into the U.S. and leave the taxpayers with the bill for their permanent upkeep.

According to Catholic News Agency:

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) is suing the Trump administration over what the bishops say is an unlawful suspension of funding for refugee programs in the United States.

Upon taking office last month, President Donald Trump issued sweeping executive orders that, among other measures, directed a freeze on foreign assistance funds and grants, with the White House seeking to uproot left-wing initiatives in federally funded programs.

The orders have led to a flurry of legal challenges from advocates and nonprofit groups arguing that the funding freeze is unlawful. Other groups such as Catholic Charities have urged the Trump administration to reconsider the freeze, citing the “crucial care” the funding helps provide.

“Crucial care”? Are they talking about the transport flights to ferry in so-called ‘asylum-seekers’ into the country on chartered jets at no cost to them; people who might not have even thought to enter the U.S. without authorization as “asylum seekers” with residence privileges in the U.S. had this taxi service had not been provided them, courtesy of Catholic Charities?

Or the free legal advice, which teaches illegal migrants how to clam up for immigration authorities in order to get away with their illegal entries?

Like this lady:

Dear Catholic family & friends,

Why aren’t tables being flipped over in the Vatican?

Where are the priests, bishops or other Catholic officials #condemning the MASSIVE networks of child/human #trafficking that the Catholic Church is directly affiliated with.

Catholic… pic.twitter.com/C6raqdHrtT

— Joe Dan Gorman (@JoeDanMedia) January 27, 2025

Or the six-figure salaries of Catholic NGO executives at organizations such as Catholic Charities?

That’s “crucial”?

It’s not easy to tell from the lawsuit papers seen so far, but it appears dubious that it’s refugees they are talking about. More likely, it’s so-called asylum-seekers — from people who live in actual democracies such as Guatemala or Colombia or Honduras, who habitually vote for socialists yet don’t like the result, which is poverty, every time it’s tried. Most of these cases are rightly thrown out of court, but not after the phony asylum seekers gets years of employment and benefits in the U.S., and generally refuses to leave even after they lose their cases.

Catholic Charities, of course, likes to explain in its own fundraising material that all the people they aid are “legal” immigrants, meaning, these asylum-applicants, which raises questions as to why they need free lawyers.

The whole specter of a money clawback from the bishops rather contradicts their earlier stance, that they have no stance and nothing to do with immigration policy by U.S. leaders, and all they want to do is deliver humanitarian aid to the needy migrants in front of them as a corporal work of mercy, in Catholic tradition.

This lawsuit shows that actually, preserving open borders policy of the previous administration means a great deal to them, which is why they’ve wheeled the lawyers out to fight for the continued flow of state cash.

Read the Whole Article

The post Battling Bishops Sue the Trump Administration for ‘Their’ Migrant Millions appeared first on LewRockwell.

Back in 1949 the world was still recovering from World War II. The Korean War wouldn’t start for another year, but George Orwell was already focused on the dangers of communism and the totalitarianist government it builds. World War II was started by totalitarian governments; but worse than that was how such governments treat the citizens living under their control.

In his book 1984, the government, encapsulated in the persona of “Big Brother,” knew everything about everyone; where they were, what they were doing and even what they were thinking much of the time. This was used to keep control of people to an extreme that even the now defunct Soviet Union couldn’t reach. Yet with modern technology, the reality of such a government could very well be forming around us and we don’t even see it happening.

As we know, the government is actively spying on every one of us. That’s the essence of Edward Snowden’s message, since he left the employ of the NSA. While that spying is intended to help prevent terrorism, we’ve seen some in government be awfully free in their use of that term. One can quickly find themselves labeled as a terrorist if the political winds blow the wrong way.

On top of the NSA, big tech is in cahoots with government in a number of ways, most especially with providing information to law enforcement officers, as they seek to solve crimes. But that same information which is being used for the good of tracking down and convicting criminals can very well be used against the rest of us. After all, any of us can become an instant felon, simply by Congress passing a law making something that has been legal, suddenly illegal.

An excellent case in point is the current push by Democrats to restrict our Second Amendment rights. Should they do that, then millions of law-abiding citizens will suddenly be faced with the option of turning in valuable firearms or hiding them from the government. Will the government hunt down those who haven’t turned in their guns, using the same tools they are currently using to track down criminals? Only time will tell.

So, what can we do to keep the government from having an idea where we are and what we are doing? To start with, we need to understand that the government has multiple means of tracking us, not just one or two. That means we’re going to have to defeat them all, if we expect to protect ourselves from electronic spying.

Here are a few places to start.

Use a Burner Phone

The easiest way for the government to track any of us is through our smartphone. We really don’t have a handle on everything that our phones are doing in the background, while we’re not looking.

Yet there’s nearly constant communication between our phones and the local cell phone tower.

It’s clear that the communications we have through our phones is readily available to the NSA and others.

You can even pay online services to do a little spying on family members, seeing their text messages, who they’ve talked to, what they’ve looked at online and where they’ve been. If you and I can do this, then you can be sure the government can do more.

Shut Off GPS Tracking

One of the most common ways our phones help the government keep track of us is through the phone’s GPS. Google and Apple keep track of our every move through that part of the phone.

If you go to Google Maps and click on your timeline in the menu, it will show you everywhere you’ve been, for the last several years.

This feature alone could put you in danger if you just happen to be in the same place that a crime was committed. While that alone wouldn’t be enough to convict you; it would be enough to make you a suspect.

And that’s just one example of how the GPs could be used against you. What if they want to track you down because it has been reported that you said something against the government; they’d have no trouble tracking you down.

Clean Out Internet Browsing Activity and Cookies

One of the big ways that companies use the internet to keep tabs on us is through our browsing history and the cookies downloaded to our computers by the various websites we visit.

A lot can be learned about who we are and what we do by looking at that. That’s why major corporations invest so much in data mining, looking for people to buy their products.

Haven’t you seen how you can look at something online, then find advertisements for the same sort of product showing up in your Facebook feed and just about any online article you read?

That information is also admissible in court as a means of defining your character. Government prosecutors could build a totally false narrative about you as a terrorist or planning mass murder, backed up by no more than the websites you have visited. Simple curiosity can and will be used against you, perhaps even in a court of law.

Get Rid of Alexa, Siri, and other Voice-recognition Assistants

One of the key elements of Orwell’s imaginary society in 1984 was that the government was tracking what everyone was doing through their television sets.

Yet today, rather than the government having to hide that capability in our TV sets, we buy devices and use them in our homes.

Those devices track everything we do, listening in on our conversations, so that they can “serve us” better.

Employees of those companies have come forth, confessing how employees at big tech companies listen in on people’s private lives.

If they’re doing it, then the government has access to it too. Remember, everything that device does goes over the internet and the NSA is tapped into that thoroughly.

Create Alternative e-Mail Accounts for Memberships

Our online identity is largely tied into our e-mail account.

Pretty much everything you sign up for, from buying dog food to looking at different sites, involves creating an account using that e-mail address. That online presence can lead government agents to look into all areas of your online existence.

The solution is to create multiple ‘personas,’ utilizing them for different things.

In order to do this, you’re going to have to provide false information at some point, as pretty much all e-mail services try to verify that you’re a real person and that you’re who you say you are.

Read the Whole Article

The post How Can You Stop the Government From Tracking You. appeared first on LewRockwell.

There was a time not long ago, when any reasonable Christian would have called me an atheist.

Then, one day, a pastor said something to me that I had never heard before. He said something like this from the pulpit, “If you are having faith issues, do these eight things.”

My ears perked up. I think faith issues pretty well described the problem I was having.

I wanted to understand God. I wanted to have faith. I just couldn’t turn my brain off long enough to stop asking irrelevant questions: What happened at the Council of Nicaea? What was the role of Constantine in the forming of Christianity?  Why is the King James Bible, the Bible authorized by the British Crown, the trusted Bible? What happened to all those books that the Catholics consider part of the Bible, that Luther said were good for Christians to read in his 1534 translation, that were included in the 1611 King James Version, but have since just disappeared?

Well, my forlorn and tired ears were perked up as this wizened preacher spoke about his eight things for people with face issues to do. I could not tell you what the other seven items on the list were. But I could tell you one of them was “spend more time in the Word.”

Well, I opened up the back of my Bible and looked at a checklist I had previously noticed. It described how to read the Bible in a year. You can get that same checklist at 55hours.org —  so named because it only takes about 55 hours to read the Bible front-to-back, or less than 15 minutes a day to read it in a year. I have read through the Bible some 8 or 9 times now since I heard that sermon.

Though I heard many sermons, studied the Bible for years, descended into atheism and worse — through all that, the Bible did not start to come together for me until I was reading through it front-to-back for the third time. I would consider that a minimum investment for attempting to understand the Bible.

In time, I learned that no matter how many disputes I had with the King James Version, in its pages, I could find God.

I started that same day with Galatians, the appointed reading for the day. A handful of weeks into this process, I said to myself something like this, “I really don’t believe any of this crap. I mean, what am I really doing here?”

And then an idea came to mind. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, a poet, mystic, and literary critic, a man whose writing I loved, and arguably not one of my better influences in life had a term, “temporary suspension of disbelief.”

I have long loved movies. It was my practice to sit down for a movie and allow the ne’er-do-wells of Hollywood to “run” through my head for two or three hours at a time unchecked.

While reading the wisest of wise books, I had my defenses on high alert. I was not letting a single word of the thing in my heart. I knew that it was way better than anything I was getting from Hollywood, so I said to myself, “What if, for ten minutes every day while I’m reading this thing, what if I pretended like it was real? What if I temporarily suspended my disbelief? Then what would happen?” I did not know. But I aimed to find out.

And find out I did.

For ten minutes each day I resolved to read this wise book, as if I believed the thing. A few weeks later a new and unfamiliar feeling appeared in me. It was in a place in my chest that I had never remembered feeling anything before.

I observed it. I knew it was faith. I took a step toward believing, I took a leap of faith. I exercised faith. And more faith showed up. Before I knew it, I was looking down at this book and saying, “I think I’m actually believing this stuff.”

And it was not long before I really believed. It was not long before I really believed it to be the Word of God. It was not long before all the ugly cynicism of critical theory started to work its way out of me.

I could see these obstacles that had been with me for many years one-by-one topple — many of them put there by my schooling, both private schooling and government schooling, both Roman Catholic and Protestant — how deeply every school I have ever attended implanted so deeply in me the tools of faithlessness and doubt and paraded them about as “thought.”

It was not too long later that I felt compelled one day to invite two guys to read the Book of Proverbs with me at 6 a.m. the following Sunday morning.

To read the Book of Proverbs every Sunday aloud, verse-by-verse, front-to-back with those gentleman, all 31 chapters has become a regular part of my week. And each week a handful of verses stand out — sometimes verses I have never noticed before, issues in my life that need dealing with, humbleness that needs to take the place of an ugly pride in me, correction that needs accepting.

After having read the Book of Proverbs dozens of times, if I had to come up with a series of messages that is most repeated, it would be this: Wisdom starts with revering the Lord. It is a fool who does otherwise, and he does not even realize what a fool he is. He who does not seek his own correction is a fool. Correction is a gift of love. It is also a great treasure and a gift from a person who risks much by correcting you. A fool will hate you for correcting him. A wise man will love you and will grow wiser. A wise man will seek correction, will even build around him opportunities for much correction.

Over-and-over that is a theme of the Book of Proverbs.

We live in an era that is heavy on data, but light on wisdom. We live in an era that is heavy on algorithmic decision making, but light on wisdom. We live in an era that is heavy on fake news, machine learning, lowest common denominator search engine results, and AI as a combination of all that, offered to us as our messianic promise of salvation, here to rescue us from everything that anyone might want rescuing from — and yet it remains an era that is so light on wisdom.

Nothing light on wisdom and no one light on wisdom has any business guiding us through this mess we have found ourselves in. We live in an era of fools. And it is an era of fools who think themselves wise — a defining feature of fools in every era.

I need men and women around me of gravitas, men and women of wisdom, some men and women who have a foundation opposite the foolishness of our era, men and women who seek wisdom and wish to share it.

My next book is about that. For a limited time, it is available here for free. It is a book for poets, authors, and other truth seekers. In it, I use the definition of poet, a definition that has been ceded to the weakest of the weak and the most foolish of the foolish girlie-men and effete women. Poet is so much more that what our era allows the word to be.

I once heard a definition of the word poet that went something like this: He who goes out to the outskirts of society and brings back to that society the essential truths he has found. I have refined that definition over the years, so I know it looks a bit different than the original, but the essence of it remains the same.

If you disagree, I encourage you to have a closer look at the book and the important reasons that this definition matters. If you agree, it, too, might be of use to you.

But this much I know is true: If you are a truth-seeker and a truth-teller, if you go out into the world into the most uncomfortable of places, and bring back hard-won truth, this era needs more of you. And it needs your voice amplified.

The media as we know it has crumbled. At this late date, it remains largely un-replaced. Even more writers are needed. Even more commentators are needed. Even more truth-seekers and truth-tellers are needed.

The vast parts of the world that has been impacted since the ides of March 2020 say so much about how little influence truth-tellers have in the world around us. More of your truth-telling is needed. And in more organized fashion. The marketplace is not saturated by truth-tellers. It is saturated by lies. No great awakening can happen in that environment. No great uprising can happen. No great reform can happen.

There are people in the world only you can reach. And you are not yet reaching them. I need you to take that next step and to become more diligent, more organized, more complete in your truth-telling and truth-sharing.

No matter how many mega-million follower, big name influencers there are, it is one-on-one, and in intimate environments that you touch your circle of influence with the most pressing of needs.

If 2020 happened again, the truth is, it would have almost the same outcome. And it does not have to be that way. We have grown as a civilization since the ides of March. We have advanced as a human race since the ides of March 2020.

But the environment for information remains saturated with lies and many refuse to stand up and win for their values. Many refuse to stand up and insist that their values are valuable enough to fight and win for those values. In many situations, that involves the most basic willingness to use the most rudimentary technology, to do it regularly, and to reach a group of people: small at first, but perhaps much larger before long, and to share the most wise thing that you can with them at a given moment.

This is a big deal.

And if you refuse to do that, you are almost certainly preparing a situation for your circle of influence to be visited by another ides of March 2020 and to fail this time much larger than they did before. I watched dear friends die because of the health protocols. I watched at least two relatives die because of the health protocols. I watched families and lives destroyed because of the health protocols.

For lack of wisdom, I saw people perish. The wisdom exists. The truth-teller ready to identify the wisdom and apply it in actionable ways for those around them are not rising up into positions of leadership.

Dear poet, you are needed. Dear author, you are needed. Dear entrepreneur, you are needed.  Dear truth-teller, you are needed. The moment has come for the remnant to rise up and lead. And few care enough about those around them to do so. Many think it is the job of another.

And because they refuse to answer the call, many more will perish.

But it does not have to be that way.

The post An Atheist Reads the Book of Proverbs. appeared first on LewRockwell.

As promised, President Donald Trump signed an executive order for a domestic policy review of in vitro fertilization (IVF) access with an aim to reduce the cost of the procedure. Although this is a policy review with no immediate action, it is still an endorsement of IVF as pro-life, pro-family, and pro-society, and it comes from a president who has been called the most pro-life president in the history of the United States.

The public is mixed on the ethics of IVF. A Pew Poll from 2024 reported about a third of Americans say that the statement “human life begins at conception, so an embryo is a person with rights” describes their views extremely or very well. Yet of this group, 59 percent see IVF access as good. That amounts to about 20 percent of Americans who see the embryo as a person but 1) either do not understand that most embryonic children are suspended alive in cryogenic storage tanks, or 2) they think cryopreservation is acceptable for a human child. Both cannot be true. The other ~82 percent of Americans who do not think life begins at conception, not surprisingly, see IVF as a good thing.

There is an urgent need for education on what IVF entails, and it seems Catholics will need to step up and provide the last defense against artificial procreation. We have the arguments for this fight.

Doctrinal Development Regarding IVF

The Catholic Church is already the first defense against the false promises of IVF and in favor of human dignity. The argument, however, is a difficult one to make in modern culture that already accepts abortion. One can find many arguments based on the millions of embryonic children whose lives are suspended in a cryogenic storage tank awaiting their fate, for this is a terrible consequence of IFV; but it is just that, a consequence of something else that went wrong in the first place.

The argument against IVF hinges on the deeper ontological truths about the human person, the sanctity of marriage, and the gift of a child.

Donum Vitae (1987) is the main document of the Church that directly addresses IVF, but as early as 1897 the Sacred Congregation of the Universal Inquisition (later renamed the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith) rejected artificial fertilization and insemination on the basis of the separation of the unitive and procreative aspects of marital sex. Donum Vitae states, “The teaching of the Magisterium on this point has already been stated” (II.B §6, note 51), referencing a list of documents tracing the doctrinal development. The response of the Holy Office in 1897 from Pope Leo XIII to the question, An adhiberi posit artificialis mulieris fecundatio? (“Can artificial insemination of a woman be used?” was an emphatic, Non licere (“Not allowed.”).1

Pope Pius XII repeated the teaching in 1951 and 1956 to the medical community, encouraging doctors to consider technological advances in terms of morality and the common good. The pope said, unequivocally, that a child conceived by IFV outside of marriage using donor sperm or eggs not belonging to the spouses is “illegitimate.” Immediately after this statement, Pope Pius XII said, “Artificial fertilization in marriage, but produced by the active element of a third party, is equally immoral, and as such must be condemned without appeal.”

This distinction introduced the debate over “assistance” versus “replacement” in Donum Vitae: “A medical intervention respects the dignity of persons when it seeks to assist the conjugal act either in order to facilitate its performance or in order to enable it to achieve its objective once it has been normally performed” (II.B, §7). So, for well over a century, IVF was recognized as a procedure that is immoral because it replaces the conjugal act in marriage.

It is worth noting that the earliest considerations by the Vatican referred to artificial insemination, which is different from modern IVF. In the insemination procedure, sperm are injected into the female’s uterine cavity (or cervix), whereas IVF involves introducing the sperm to the female egg in a petri dish. The first consideration in the Church only related to replacing the conjugal act with a medical procedure and not the consequential (and also immoral) act of freezing or destroying embryonic children. If the Church’s wisdom regarding the dignity of the human person had been heeded, there would not be millions of embryonic children in freezers today.

The Rights of Children

Donum Vitae, of course, goes further. This instruction also addresses the rights of children because these rights are connected to the inseparability of love-making and life-giving. To understand the teaching, one must consider IVF from the perspective that the needs of a child are greater than the wants of a parent. This should not be hard since it is a perspective familiar to society in determining any aspect of a born child’s life. In court cases regarding parental rights or custody, the best interest of the child comes first.

The difference is that society does not view an embryonic child on the same moral level as a born child. It is a hard case to make since a culture that accepts abortion already doesn’t see the fetal child as having the same rights or dignity as a born child. There have been all kinds of strange debates about the beginning of an unwanted human child’s life even though any developmental biology textbook will name fertilization as the beginning of life for any other species. Even wanted children are considered living humans from the moment of conception. The scrutiny only applies to unwanted human children.

At the societal level, children’s rights are violated. With abortion, these unwanted fetal children can be killed. With IVF, there is a gray area. To cut costs, many embryonic children are produced so the parent can get the one they want. The leftover siblings are stored indefinitely in freezers until a decision is made about what to do with them. If they are unwanted, they are either destroyed or donated to scientific research aimed at curing diseases for the wanted people of society. If the embryos are ever wanted, then they are implanted in a woman’s uterus.

At the familial and individual level, the embryonic child’s rights are violated because all children have a right to be conceived in love by a married mother and father. Again, this will sound antiquated to the modern ear, but it is not a complicated concept. If humans have inherent dignity, then the bringing into existence of a new human life must be honored.

The Church says that the dignity of the child is paramount, so special that his or her life must begin in united, physical, spiritual, and emotional love. Then the child should be raised in that love, which goes radically against the idea that children should be shelved in freezers until they are wanted, or killed because they are unwanted. This origin in love is the beginning we all deserve, and even when this ideal is not achieved, as it rarely is, wholeness, love, unity, and strong families are the goals we aim for in our individual lives, in our families, and in our societies.

Read the Whole Article

The post Catholics: First and Final Defense Against IVF appeared first on LewRockwell.

From The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution the West (Clarity Press, 2013)

“The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and immigration advocates, such as the American Immigration Lawyers Association, immediately went to work to defeat or to water down the amendment. Senator Grassley’s attempt to prevent American corporations from replacing American workers with foreigners on H-1B work visas in the midst of the most serious economic crisis since the Great Depression was met with outrage from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a business lobby determined to protect the multi-million dollar bonuses paid to American CEOs for reducing labor costs by replacing their American employees with foreign employees.”

“On January 23, 2009, Senator Grassley wrote to Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer:

“I am concerned that Microsoft will be retaining foreign guest workers rather than similarly qualified American employees when it implements its layoff plan.  As you know, I want to make sure employers recruit qualified American workers first before hiring foreign guest workers.  For example, I cosponsored legislation to overhaul the H-1B and L-1 visa programs to give priority to American workers and to crack down on unscrupulous employers who deprive qualified Americans of high-skilled jobs.  Fraud and abuse is rampant in these programs, and we need more transparency to protect the integrity of our immigration system.

“Last year, Microsoft was here on Capitol Hill advocating for more H-1B visas.  The purpose of the H-1B visa program is to assist companies in their employment needs where there is not a sufficient American workforce to meet their technology expertise requirements.  However, H-1B and other work visa programs were never intended to replace qualified American workers.  Certainly, these work visa programs were never intended to allow a company to retain foreign guest workers rather than similarly qualified American workers, when that company cuts jobs during an economic downturn.

“It is imperative that in implementing its layoff plan, Microsoft ensures that American workers have priority in keeping their jobs over foreign workers on visa programs.

“My point is that during a layoff, companies should not be retaining H-1B or other work visa program employees over qualified American workers. Our immigration policy is not intended to harm the American workforce. I encourage Microsoft to ensure that Americans are given priority in job retention. Microsoft has a moral obligation to protect these American workers by putting them first during these difficult economic times.”

In the Senate John McCain was the spokesman for the corporate interests who put their performance bonuses ahead of the economic welfare of the American work force.  McCain declared Senator Grassley’s effort to protect American workers to be “protectionism” and harmful to America. McCain said that protecting American jobs would cause a second Great Depression.  The only depression it would cause would be in the performance bonuses of corporate executives. The protection of American incomes would actually boost aggregate demand and GDP.

US Chamber of Commerce Thomas Donohue said it was “economic patriotism” to put foreigners first. President Obama appointed corporate apologists for moving American jobs offshore to his National Economic Council.  The American work force has a long history of being put last.

Microsoft and the rest of the unpatriotic American corporate world ignored Senator Grassley and put their bonuses ahead of the welfare of the American work force.  Americans with mortgage payments, car payments, kids in school, were pushed into unemployment so that corporate executives and boards could claim performance bonuses–the largest component of their pay–for laying off Americans and replacing then with lower cost foreigners on work visas, thus lowering labor costs and raising profits. They did the same thing by offshoring their manufacturing.  These unAmerican practice continues today.  Indeed, the work visas have  been endorsed by Elon Musk and President Trump.

I can remember when conservatives and libertarians saw the conflict as government vs. business and lined up with business against a government associated in their minds with dystopian novels of tyranny. They did not understand that government was something that the corporations used to advance their interests.  

The notion has been successfully lobbied into the minds of the members of the House and Senate  that the United States is incapable of producing enough trained people to staff US industry. I think that this is a disinformation success that even exceeds the Israel Lobby’s success.

The United States has about 6,000 universities and colleges, of which about 4,000 are degree-granting institutions.  Does anyone really believe that the United States cannot produce an educated work force?

Does anyone really believe that Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Columbia, Cornell, University of Pennsylvania, Stanford, University of California, MIT, Georgia Tech, Cal Tech and the other giants of education cannot produce the engineers and scientists that the American economy needs?

The notion that the United States, still acknowledged worldwide as the premier nation despite its decline, is incapable of producing a work force sufficient for its economy and must rely on India, China, and other countries is absurd.  Yet this absurd notion was instilled in the members of the US Congress, in the presstitute media, in Elon Musk and President Trump.

What are we going to do about this?

In 2013 I published a book, The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism  and Economic Dissolution of the West. The book was published in translation in a number of foreign countries in addition to the US.

In the US nothing has been done about this problem.  Indeed, Musk and Trump see as a virtue what is undermining the US economy. 

For years the booming stock market and growth in billionaires has rested on profits from corporations cutting labor costs, which means laying off American workers.  Americans are replaced by foreigners on H-1b and L-1 work visas and by having their jobs outsourced to Asia and Mexico. They are replaced by robotics and AI. So where does the consumer income come from to drive the economy?  It comes from rising indebtedness.  Many Americans live on their credit card, paying the minimum due, thus building their debt.  

We are left with the picture that the American economy is based on consumer debt, and not on any real economic foundation.

Stock prices are based on Federal Reserve money creation and on artificial profits from replacing US labor with cheaper foreign labor.  Is the American economy a house of cards surviving on the dollar’s role as reserve currency?

A reader whose career was stolen from him by foreign labor asks if Americans get reparations for the discrimination they have suffered by being excluded from the US job market. See this.

The post Jobs Offshoring and Work Visas Are Means of Enriching Corporate Executives With ‘Performance Bonuses’ appeared first on LewRockwell.

You’ve got to wonder how the Party of Chaos thought they would get away with the Stacey Abrams grift-of-grifts. In case you forgot, Stacey Abrams ran for governor of Georgia twice, lost, and claimed she was “real governor” for years after. In the meantime, she parlayed her celebrity persona to a $3.17-million net worth by 2022, doing nothing but running for office. She claimed it derived from giving speeches, publishing romance novels, and “wise investments.”

That was then, and this is now. Stacey popped up again this week in what looks like a textbook case of political scamming, uncovered by The DOGE team of forensic financial investigators. As “Joe Biden” racked up Democratic presidential primary wins in 2024, the shadowy claque behind him allocated $27-billion to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from the huge Inflation Reduction Act, ostensibly for “climate change action.” The money was stashed at Citibank, where it became a hidden slush-fund to keep payoffs flowing to party favorites no matter who won the 2024 election. An EPA “special advisor on climate action,” one Brent Efron, told a Project Veritas investigative reporter that “President Biden” was “throwing gold bars off the Titanic”.

The key to understanding how the Democratic Party works is how it uses federal grants to redistribute taxpayer money into jobs programs for its rank-and-file. As seen in the recent USAID scandal, the action revolves around the creation of countless NGOs (non-governmental orgs). They are easily created, poorly supervised, and assembled into large networks of self-serving, inter-dependent organisms whose main mission is paying staffers — and secondarily pretending to do good works, as suggested by a given group’s name is. These staffers make up the matrix of Democratic Party activists, well-paid foot-soldiers in do-nothing jobs who can be called upon to cheer-lead for the party, organize street protests and, most critically, harvest ballots when the time comes.

Stacey Abrams became a kind of field marshal for setting up NGOs around her campaigns for office and then later turned them into money laundromats for the trillions of dollars fire-hosed out of the US Treasury during the Covid-19-darkened “Biden” years. Here are some of Stacy’s NGOs:

· The New Georgia Project and its affiliated NGP Action Fund — set up for her 2018 run for governor. It was eventually fined $300,000 for failing to disclose millions in contributions, failing to register properly, and sixteen violations of campaign laws. Its main purpose was providing jobs for an army of activists. One question that might have been asked: how many of Stacey Abrams’ books were purchased by The New Georgia Project, juicing her royalties?

· The Southern Economic Advancement Project, founded in 2019 to “promote equity” in twelve southern states, paid Stacey a $700,000 annual salary.

· The Fair Fight Action group raised nearly $62 million in dark pool donations by 2022, with 96-percent from 252 large, unidentified donors.

· The Fair Count Project was created to lobby for counting illegal aliens in the 2020 US Census, in order to pad state congressional districts.

· The Third Sector Development group, created as an “incubator” for other groups (including the New Georgia Project).

· The Fair Fight 2020 group, created to “train voter protection teams” in twenty “battleground states.” That is, ballot harvesting.

Out of the $27-billion from “Joe Biden’s” Inflation Reduction Act sent to EPA in 2024, $2-billion from the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund (GGRF) ended up in the Stacey-associated Rewiring America org and its offshoot the Power Forward Communities org. Stacey was listed as “senior counsel” to Rewiring America, which also happened to “partner” with her prior NGOs Fair Count and Southern Economic Advancement Project.

What you might surmise from all this is that “Joe Biden’s” green energy agenda was used as a green smokescreen for a giant patronage racketeering operation. The billions allocated would go ostensibly to innumerable corporations set up to carry-out “green” good deeds, most of which would never actually happen, but would, along the way, pad thousands upon thousands of bank accounts for favored contractors.

Stacey’s Power Forward Communities NGO was incorporated in the state of Delaware where loose corporate governance requires such orgs to pay out only five percent of the org’s funds to its stated mission recipients each year. The rest of the $2-billion not allocated to staff salaries can be socked away in safe investments garnering, say, $50-million-a-year in returns, which can be rolled back into the org and used for spinning out new NGOs with more paid staff positions. . .grift upon grift. . . .

That is what patronage is, and that, by the way, is how it became such an urgent national issue over a hundred years ago when it was openly known as the “spoils system” in electoral politics — to the victor go the spoils— which was resolved by the 1883 Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act. Alas, in our time patronage (that is, corruption) has reinvented itself as the blob, the runaway system that almost sank the country.

Do you see how all this works now? The ever-expanding matrix of NGOs creates an army of useful idiots working hand-in-hand with an ever-expanding rogue bureaucracy that has become effectively a fourth branch of government accountable to nobody. This is how your tax dollars disappear down a rat-hole and why the US government is insolvent.

The difference now is that the Democratic Party no longer has its hands on the levers of power. Different managers are in place at the critical agencies, most particularly Pam Bondi at DOJ, Kash Patel at the FBI, Russell Vought at OMB, Lee Zeldin at EPA, and Elon Musk in the DOGE. In the past, nothing was done about these shenanigans. This time is different. The Democratic Party will lose its principal means for staying alive. That’s why senators like Chuck Schumer, Chris Coons, and Adam Schiff are out mewling and hollering in the streets. Meanwhile, the blob is getting methodically disassembled, one bureaucratic office at a time. Before much longer we are going to be a different country, and most probably a better one.

Reprinted with permission from JamesHowardKunstler.com.

The post Funny Money appeared first on LewRockwell.

They must be sweating bullets in the Washington Swamp. Kash Patel was just confirmed by a 51-49 Senate vote as FBI director, and that means there is going to be a caravan of DOGE trucks hauling out the dead bodies right soon.

Especially after the FBI went all-in on the Deep State campaign to defenestrate Donald Trump in 2016 and after, the level of lawlessness and blatant attacks on constitutional processes emanating from the J. Edgar Hoover Building literally knew no bounds. Soon we will have black and white documentation that the FBI not only knew all along that the Russian election interference story was a complete hoax, but that top officials of the FBI were actually even more deeply complicit in its manufacture and dissemination than has already been revealed.

But lawlessness at the nation’s purported leading law enforcement agency was nothing new. The Federal Bureau of Investigation is a rogue institution of the Washington Swamp steeped in a lifetime of ignominy and disdain for constitutional liberty and democracy.

Its forerunner was created during the horrific Red Scare Raids of Attorney General Mitchell in 1918-1919 when thousands of citizens were rounded up without warrants—merely for the crime of holding socialist or other leftwing opinions or for being sympathetic to Germany.

It then flourished during the the “G-man” period, prosecuting the idiotic regime of Prohibition in the 1920s. Yet the overdue repeal of the latter in 1933 simply paved the way to an even more malefic run during the J. Edgar Hoover era of communist witch-hunting and vicious prosecution of civil rights and peace leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. Indeed, Hoover’s malicious campaign to expose Dr. King’s personal life was so odious as to make the fact the FBI headquarters is still called the “J.Edgar Hoover Building” a national disgrace–and one that far outranks obscure courthouses in the south named after some defunct confederate generals.

As it happened, Hoover kicked the bucket in May 1972 while in his 48th year in office, but he had accumulated such as an extensive file of dirt on any and all Washington politicians and national leaders he considered unfit that his personal secretary, Helen Gandy, immediately set upon shredding his files—lest Nixon’s men discovered them first.

In fact, Hoover’s FBI had files on tens of thousands of Americans for no good reason other than their holding opinions or political beliefs that the FBI director disdained. Your editor even got in on that act as young man uninterested in being sent to the jungles of Southeast Asia to slaughter “gooks” who had given the people of our rural county in southwest Michigan no offense that we could ascertain. Yet since we went to SDS anti-war marches and signed “We won’t Go” petitions we earned a “red file” at the FBI—something we still consider a badge of honor.

Unfortunately, Hoover’s passing did not lead to the cleansing of the institution that was long overdue. Instead, during the misbegotten War on Terror it became a fount of false fear-mongering, stings and entrapment ploys. Here are just three of the more notable FBI entrapment operations during this period—all of which were obviously designed to create public fear, arouse the legislators and cause budgets and manpower levels at the FBI to relentlessly expand.

1. The Newburgh Four Case (2009): In this case, four men were convicted of plotting to bomb synagogues and shoot down military planes. The FBI used an informant to encourage and facilitate the plot, providing fake bombs and weapons. Actually, there was not a shred of evidence that the defendants were predisposed to commit such acts on their own, but instead were systematically lured into the FBI’s entrapment.
2. The Fort Dix Plot (2007): Here, six men were arrested for planning an attack on Fort Dix, a U.S. Army base in New Jersey. The FBI used an informant who infiltrated the group, encouraged them to carry out the plot and provided the planted evidence that led to their conviction.
3. The Michigan Militia Case (2020): This scam involved a cooked-up plot to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer. The FBI used multiple informants and undercover agents to encourage and facilitate the plot. In this case, the plot ended in acquittals and a mistrial because the FBI’s facilitation was so clumsy and obvious.

Even then, the bad guys at the FBI were not done. So what eventually led to the condign justice of Kash Patel’s confirmation, was the blatant weaponization of the FBI by Deep State nomenklatura determined to destroy the duly elected President of the United States in 2016 and after. In that endeavor, however, they truly crossed a line. The Donald’s justifiable revenge for the outrageous FBI raid on his own home after he left office will be thorough and unstinting, and he could have no more capable and powerful instrument of vindication than his newly confirmed FBI director.

In short, Patel’s confirmation marks the end of 100 years of assault on the rule of law, not its promotion. And, as we have argued in “How To Cut $2 Trillion” ( https://amzn.to/40rgiq40 ), that sordid history is reason enough to abolish the FBI completely.

The fact is, there never was need for the FBI in the first place—outside of political opportunism and the furtherance of crusades which are not within the proper purview of the Federal government. Yet in this sphere of government aggrandizement, so-called Republican “conservatives” share much of the blame owing to their misguided view that “law and order” is a proper Federal pursuit.

Then again, however, we do have 90,000 units of state and local government for a reason. Namely, in order to decentralize, disperse and mute the exercise of government power. So surely the enforcement of the criminal laws is precisely one of those functions best kept as far away from the nation’s capital as possible, as the checkered history of the FBI proves in spades.

In any event, as a practical matter crime prosecution and enforcement is already overwhelmingly conducted by state and local police forces and courts. For instance, there are currently about 7.5 million arrests in the US each year, but only about 10,000 of these are executed by the FBI. That’s just 0.14%.

Likewise, there are currently 1,214,000 police and law enforcement personnel on the payrolls of state and local governments in the USA. That compares to just 15,000 FBI officers (out of 37,300 staff) involved in domestic criminal law enforcement. This includes all agents and support personnel who work on a wide range of matters such as cybercrime, drug trafficking, violent crime, and white-collar offenses, but, again, it amounts to only 1.2% of the state and local police force level.

At the end of the day, just $2.5 billion of the FBI’s $11.4 billion budget is involved in what it generously classifies as “counter-terrorism”. We’d say cut that figure by 60% and spin these personnel and activities off to a $1 billion per year counter-terrorism unit in DOJ. Any real threat of terrorism in the US, as opposed to self-serving FBI concocted stings like the above-mentioned plot to kidnap the governor of Michigan, can be readily handled on a $1 billion annual budget.

After that, Kash Patel’s real mandate should be to gather up and reveal all of the crimes and abuses of the FBI’s scarlet history; set up a museum to dishonor the joint somewhere in

Flyover America, perhaps Alabama as he has suggested; and then shutdown everything else to the tune of a 34,000-headcount reduction and direct compensation cost savings of $5.4 billion per year—along with another $5 billion of savings from FBI overhead, contractors, occupancy, travel and other costs.

The fact is, outside of a residual counter-terrorism function America does not need the FBI to keep the nation’s communities, streets and homes safe. Local law enforcement can handle that function with alacrity.

After all, there is no correlation whatsoever between crime rates in America and the relentless rise of the FBI’s budget. For want of doubt, consider the 64-year arc of the US homicide rate depicted in the graph below.

As it has happened, the murder rate of 4.7 per 100,000 is the same today as it was in 1960—after a long cycle of rising and then falling rates in the interim, largely driven by demographics. That is to say, young men between 16 and 40 years of age commit most of the violent crime—so it was essentially the passing of the Baby Boom through the population that caused the crime rate to rise and fall as shown below.

Nevertheless, the FBI exploited public fears of crime to a fare-the-well to justify budgets that kept on expanding especially during Republican administrations keen to exploit the

law and order issue. For instance the constant dollar FBI budget (2024 $) rose by 54% during the Reagan administration and 42% during the eight years of Bush the Younger— both gains far outpaced the rise during administrations before or after.

Obviously, the relentless 7X rise in FBI spending per capita between 1960 and 2024 had no correlation whatsoever with the demographics-driven chart above. So, at last, the chance to finally uproot this rogue agency from the Washington Swamp may have finally arrived.

Constant Dollar FBI Budget Per Capita:

• 1960: $5.00.
• 1980: $9.00.
• 1988: $13.85.
• 2000: $20.65.
• 2008: $29.25.
• 2024:$35.00

Reprinted with permission from David Stockman’s Contra Corner.

The post Time To Kash-Out the Rogue FBI appeared first on LewRockwell.

There is history worth remembering as Trump is lauded in certain circles on the so-called “right” and “left” as a peacemaker with Russia over the US/NATO proxy war against Russia via Ukraine: President Richard Nixon, who ran as the peace candidate in 1968 with a “secret plan” for peace in Vietnam that was actually a plan for more war, visited China in February 1972 in a move to exploit the Soviet-China split, and yet the US war against Vietnam went on until April 30, 1975 when the U.S. was driven out of Vietnam.

I think extreme caution is advised when it comes to Trump’s plans to end the U.S. proxy war against Russia, which, following the Nixon-Kissinger script, seems to be aimed at splitting the Russian-Chinese partnership now threatening U.S. world domination.

Trump, like his predecessor Joseph Biden who presided over the proxy war against Russia and the genocide of Palestinians by Israel, is no man of peace. He is fully in support of the extinction of the Palestinians and behind Israel’s war aims in the Middle-East. So when it comes to his recent overtures to Russia and a resolution to the U.S./NATO proxy war against Russia, one needs to reflect on history and Trump’s inclination to make “a deal.”  The man, after all, was a reality-television star and has long reveled in radical reversals of previous statements and intentions. For example, in his first term, he often talked of withdrawing from NATO but never did; NATO, in fact, expanded under his watch. He talked about ending the U.S./NATO support for Ukraine’s bombing of Russian-speaking areas of eastern Ukraine, only to withdraw from the Minsk Accords and send military equipment to Ukraine to bomb those areas.

Those who are praising him now say he is a changed man after time “in the wilderness” these last four years (one is reminded of Nixon’s wandering wilderness days from 1960-1968). Would a changed man have Elon Musk as his right-hand man or have as Vice President JD Vance whose career has been backed by Palantir Technology’s Peter Thiel?

Investigator journalist Whitney Webb has reported extensively on Thiel and Vance’s ties and the interconnections between them and other supporters of the surveillance state tied to the Democrats, such as former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, among others. If you assume the surface war between Trump and the Democrats is the real deal, Webb’s work will have you wondering. They have their differences, of course, but a reading of history would suggest both fully back the surveillance panopticon that has stolen American’s freedom and privacy in the name of what else – freedom and privacy.

Now Trump-Musk-Vance are touting their dedication to free speech and their opposition to censorship, which are clearly admirable goals. But one needs to remember Marshall McLuhan’s adage that the medium is the message, and that the medium touted by Trump – front and center – is represented by the omnipresence of Elon Musk, whose face symbolizes the smirking machine and the use of digital technology to accumulate and exert power. In a digital age, technological technique is King Propaganda, and technique transforms everything it touches into a machine.

As in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass, the brothers Tweedledee Democrat and Tweedledum Republican fight over their rattle as the audience focuses on their battle while their joint racket goes unattended.

‘I know what you’re thinking about,’ Tweedledum; ‘but it isn’t so, no how.’

‘Contrariwise,’ continued Tweedledee, ‘if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn’t, it ain’t. That’s logic.’

‘I was thinking, Alice said very politely, ‘which is the best way out of this wood: it’s getting so dark. Would you tell me please?’

It is dark. Of course, the way out is to stop reacting and do what the press is obligated to do: be skeptical, question authority, and don’t be cheerleaders for anyone in power, whether they be Biden or Trump or someone else.

The opposite of such skepticism has been happening, and many in the alternative press, who [including me] have correctly accused Biden and the Democrats of war crimes, lies, censorship, Russiagate propaganda, etc., are now awash with grandiose praise for Trump, many calling him a revolutionary in a good sense. This is absurd.

Such hyperbole is quite naïve, as has been the calling of Vice-President JD Vance’s Munich Security Conference speech historic and Ciceronian. It was a good speech [text here] in many ways, but . . . .

He rightly ripped the Europeans for their censorship of dissidents and their repression of alternative voices, although his examples were weak and narrowly focused.

His statement, while surely partisan, was true that “I will admit that sometimes the loudest voices for censorship have come not from within Europe, but from within my own country, where the prior administration threatened and bullied social media companies to censor so-called misinformation.”

His defense of democratic mandates was strong when he said:

You cannot win a democratic mandate by censoring your opponents or putting them in jail, whether that’s the leader of the opposition, a humble Christian praying in her own home, or a journalist trying to report the news. Nor can you win one by disregarding your basic electorate on questions like who gets to be a part of our shared society.

When he criticized European leaders for allowing mass migration into their countries, his hypocrisy stood out. As any fair person should recognize, immigration policies have long been an issue in need of reform. But the mass creation of people fleeing their countries for safe havens in Europe are the direct result of US/NATO war policies in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Serbia, Syria, etc., policies supported by Republicans and Democrats alike and seconded by their lapdogs in Europe.

The same is true for immigration here in the U.S.A. where immigration policy has long been in need of reform that neither party would undertake, but the main contingent of immigrants entering this country comes here to escape horrendous conditions in their home countries due in great part to U.S. foreign policies in support of repressive regimes and economic policies favoring the rich amid U.S. efforts to control Latin America. Without those immigrants, the U.S. economy would collapse.

But Vance’s speech is a minor part of my argument here.

The real issue is Trump and the question of whether or not he is for real in his efforts for peace in Ukraine. I am very skeptical and think it is justified.

I am convinced that the US/NATO war against Russia will not be ending unless NATO is dissolved, which Trump is not proposing. He only wishes to strengthen NATO with European money, not that of the U.S. NATO’s only raison d’être is to destroy Russia as an independent country and create regime change there through multiple means. This has always been so. This is why NATO has existed for so long and has expanded. Open warfare in Ukraine is just one means among many they have used over the years. You can end the overt war and continue the covert.

If NATO is not dissolved, the undermining of Russia will continue under Trump, who seems to recognize that the proxy war is lost on the battlefield, a fact obvious for years despite U.S. government and mainstream media propaganda to the contrary – propaganda so blatantly false that it raises questions about people’s gullibility. How many foreign leaders does such media need to call the new Hitlers before people wise up?

Trump’s theatrical antics will persist, however, and Trump and Putin will probably eventually meet and some deal may be struck on Russia’s terms, but if Russia doesn’t want to be tricked again, it should beware the possibility of a Trump Trojan horse.

Apropos today, in 1964 and then in 1965, the great French sociologist Jacques Ellul published his classic studies. First came The Technological Society to be quickly followed by Propaganda, linked books in which he brilliantly shed an early light on what we now find everywhere – a digital world where propaganda is vital for the state’s functioning and where words like democracy, truth, and fact yield to the technologue’s magic wand.

Another French social thinker, Paul Virilio, spoke of the information bomb, the glut of information produced by digital media and the Internet. One key aspect of this marriage is speed, Virilio’s specialty being dromology, the study of speed. It is worth noting how fast Trump has acted in his first month in office. This is no doubt aided and abetted by his right-hand man Elon Musk, Mr. X., Mr. Space Shot, Mr. Digital World himself, who is prominently displayed by Trump’s side at every photo op. Unlike the Biden warmongers who presented themselves in a more circumspect manner while propagandizing the American public, Trump makes it very clear that digital technology is his key to rule. And flooding the information superhighway with a rapid-fire series of orders and pronouncements is presented as government efficiency at its finest. But things happen so fast one can’t keep pace with them.

Elon Musk and Peter Thiel are two technological billionaires who should be considered crucial to Trump’s plans. As Ellul’s work makes clear, such men are key to effective propaganda. How can anyone consider such men benign supporters of democracy and justice?

I think the talk of a Trump revolution in favor of peace and democracy is hyperbolically irresponsible. It is unworthy of good journalism that requires prudence and patience when the powerful pitch their deals. The propaganda from the Biden administration and their mainstream media accomplices should have taught everyone that. But the appeal of a savior is very powerful.

You know, ‘if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn’t, it ain’t. That’s logic.’

Reprinted with the author’s permission.

The post Hold the Applause for Trump, the ‘Peacemaker’ appeared first on LewRockwell.

Writes Joseph T Salerno:

Now they are trying to panic the entire population into getting a measles vaccine booster.

Measles cases are rising in the U.S. Do adults need a vaccine booster?
With a measles outbreak growing in West Texas, and cases popping up across the country, experts say vaccination is your best protection. And it’s not just for kids. Some adults may need a booster.

Read in NPR.

The post NPR: Measles cases are rising in the U.S. Do adults need a vaccine booster? appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks,  Saleh Abdullah. 

Daily Wire

The post Almost Fired For Working With DOGE, Social Security Fraud Expert Now Leads The Agency appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, Mike Sanders.

CBS News

The post Over 150 false killer whales stranded on Australia beach cannot be saved, experts say appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, Rick Rozoff.

Rachel Maddow Brings Back Russiagate INSANITY.

The post Glenn Greenwald: Dems hellbent on igniting conflict between world’s two main nuclear powers appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, Saleh Abdullah. 

Sound Money

The post Auditing America’s Gold Is Not Just Important, It’s Critical appeared first on LewRockwell.