Lew Rockwell Institute

Writes Greg Privette:

Hi Lew,

Maybe Rep. Massie has done this already. I am not sure as I don’t follow any social media. If I were him I would just continually make the point to Trump, what is the purpose of all the DOGE efforts if you aren’t going to actually cut the budget?

The post Rep. Thomas Massie appeared first on LewRockwell.

Writes Gail Appel:

Remember what Huxley said about overpopulation in third world countries and transhumanism?

Larry Fink, Bill Gates, Schwab, Kissinger, Gergen, Rockefeller, Soros, Bloomberg have all parroted these exact same talking points.

They are using Brave New World and Huxley’s warnings as a play book. There is no alternative explanation.

The post Transhumanism? appeared first on LewRockwell.

Writes Gail Appel:

Lew, it is literally EXACTLY what Huxley laid out in the 1958 Mike Wallace interview and in greater detail, the 1961 French interview. In that one, he told the journalist he was certain Brave New World had been used as a playbook.

We were right, though I never doubted it.

The post Covid Brave New World appeared first on LewRockwell.

The post Man Of The House – With Special Guest Rep.Thomas Massie! appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks to the friend  who shared this. 

The post Hilarious! appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, Andy Thomas.

James Perloff 

The post Should We Beware the Ides of April? appeared first on LewRockwell.

Kevin Duffy writes:

… But Brandon Smith’s article, “Trade War: Tariffs Are Needed To Defeat Globalism But They Come With a Cost,” brought about a visceral reaction.

Smith claimed that “Austrian economists in their opposition to tariffs operate on the assumption that large corporations are ‘free market’ entities. They also assume that globalism is a product of free markets.”  Not true.  It’s actually an absurd parody of the true Austrian position.  We assume two parties voluntary exchange for mutual gain.  That’s it.

Consider the argument Smith is making: “It’s not a free market, therefore more government intervention is justified.”  Such thinking can only pave the way for endless interventions.

Btw, are Lululemon, Shake Shack, Crocs and Skechers horrible creatures of globalism or simply companies serving consumers and trying to make a buck?  These companies all do business in China, rewarding shareholders and Chinese consumers while creating interdependence between two countries that can’t seem to get along thanks to their governments (actually, thanks almost entirely to the U.S. government).  I call that heroic.  We should be thanking them, not subjecting them to the whims of a self-defeating trade war.

The post Trade War: Tariffs Are Needed To Defeat Globalism But They Come With a Cost appeared first on LewRockwell.

This month marks the fifth anniversary of America’s dissent into Soviet-style totalitarian tyranny under the phony baloney guise of “fighting the COVID pandemic.”  In light of the fact that I never took any of the shots and only ever wore a mask in order to be allowed into the grocery store (until Governor DeSantis dropped that idiotic policy in September of 2020) I am amazed that I am still alive.

The post How is it Possible that I’m Still Alive? appeared first on LewRockwell.

“Once the principle is established that the government can arrest and jail protesters… officials will use it to silence opposition broadly.”—Heather Cox Richardson, historian

You can’t have it both ways.

You can’t live in a constitutional republic if you allow the government to act like a police state.

You can’t claim to value freedom if you allow the government to operate like a dictatorship.

You can’t expect to have your rights respected if you allow the government to treat whomever it pleases with disrespect and an utter disregard for the rule of law.

There’s always a boomerang effect.

Whatever dangerous practices you allow the government to carry out now—whether it’s in the name of national security or protecting America’s borders or making America great again—rest assured, these same practices can and will be used against you when the government decides to set its sights on you.

Arresting political activists engaged in lawful, nonviolent protest activities is merely the shot across the bow.

The chilling of political speech and suppression of dissident voices are usually among the first signs that you’re in the midst of a hostile takeover by forces that are not friendly to freedom.

This is how it begins.

Consider that Mahmoud Khalil, an anti-war protester and recent graduate of Columbia University, was arrested on a Saturday night by ICE agents who appeared ignorant of his status as a legal U.S. resident and his rights thereof. That these very same ICE agents also threatened to arrest Mahmoud’s eight-months-pregnant wife, an American citizen, is also telling.

This does not seem to be a regime that respects the rights of the people.

Indeed, these ICE agents, who were “just following orders” from on high, showed no concern that the orders they had been given were trumped up, politically motivated and unconstitutional.

If this is indeed the first of many arrests to come, what’s next? Or more to the point, who’s next?

We are all at risk.

History shows that when governments claim the power to silence dissent—whether in the name of national security, border protection, or law and order—that power rarely remains limited. What starts as a crackdown on so-called “threats” quickly expands to include anyone who challenges those in power.

President Trump has made it clear that Mahmoud’s arrest is just “the first arrest of many to come.” He has openly stated his intent to target noncitizens who engage in activities he deems contrary to U.S. interests—an alarmingly vague standard that seems to change at his whim, the First Amendment be damned.

If history is any guide, the next targets will not just be immigrants or foreign-born activists. They will be American citizens who dare to speak out.

If you need further proof of Trump’s disregard for constitutional rights, look no further than his recent declaration that boycotting Tesla is illegal—a chilling statement that reveals his fundamental misunderstanding of both free speech and the rule of law.

For the record, there is nothing illegal about exercising one’s First Amendment right of speech, assembly, and protest in a nonviolent way to bring about social change by boycotting private businesses. In fact, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 8-0 in NAACP v. Claiborne Hardware Co. (1982) that nonviolent boycotts are a form of political speech which are entitled to First Amendment protection.

The problem, unfortunately, when you’re dealing with a president who believes that he can do whatever he wants because he is the law is that anyone and anything can become a target.

Mahmoud is the test case.

As journalists Gabe Kaminsky, Madeleine Rowley, and Maya Sulkin point out, Mahmoud’s arrest for being a “threat to the foreign policy and national security interests of the United States” (note: he is not actually accused of breaking any laws) is being used as a blueprint for other arrests to come.

What this means is that anyone who dares to disagree with the government and its foreign policy and express that disagreement could be considered a threat to the country’s “national security interests.”

Yet the right to speak out against government wrongdoing is the quintessential freedom.

Indeed, the First Amendment does more than give us a right to criticize our country: it makes it a civic duty. Certainly, if there is one freedom among the many spelled out in the Bill of Rights that is especially patriotic, it is the right to criticize the government.

Unfortunately, the Deep State doesn’t take kindly to individuals who speak truth to power.

This is nothing new, nor is it unique to any particular presidential administration.

Throughout history, U.S. presidents have used their power to suppress dissent. The Biden administration equated the spread of “misinformation” with terrorism. Trump called the press “the enemy of the people” and suggested protesting should be illegal. Obama expanded anti-protest laws and cracked down on whistleblowers. Bush’s Patriot Act made it a crime to support organizations the government deemed terrorist, even in lawful ways. This pattern stretches back centuries—FDR censored news after Pearl Harbor, Woodrow Wilson outlawed criticism of war efforts, and John Adams criminalized speaking against the government.

Regardless of party, those in power have repeatedly sought to limit free speech. What’s new is the growing willingness to criminalize political dissent under the guise of national security.

Clearly, the government has been undermining our free speech rights for quite a while now, but Trump’s antagonism towards free speech is taking this hostility to new heights.

The government has a history of using crises—real or manufactured—to expand its power.

Once dissent is labeled a threat, it’s only a matter of time before laws meant for so-called extremists are used against ordinary citizens. Criticizing policy, protesting, or even refusing to conform could be enough to put someone on a watchlist.

We’ve seen this before.

The government has a long list of “suspicious” ideologies and behaviors it uses to justify surveillance and suppression. Today’s justification may be immigration; tomorrow, it could be any form of opposition.

This is what we know: the government has the means, the muscle and the motivation to detain individuals who resist its orders and do not comply with its mandates in a vast array of prisons, detention centers, and concentration camps paid for with taxpayer dollars.

It’s just a matter of time.

It no longer matters what the hot-button issue might be (vaccine mandates, immigration, gun rights, abortion, same-sex marriage, healthcare, criticizing the government, protesting election results, etc.) or which party is wielding its power like a hammer.

The groundwork has already been laid.

Under the indefinite detention provision of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the President and the military can detain and imprison American citizens with no access to friends, family or the courts if the government believes them to be a terrorist.

So it should come as no surprise that merely criticizing the government could get you labeled as a terrorist.

After all, it doesn’t take much to be considered a terrorist anymore, especially given that the government likes to use the words “anti-government,” “extremist” and “terrorist” interchangeably.

This is what happens when you not only put the power to determine who is a potential danger in the hands of government agencies, the courts and the police but also give those agencies liberal authority to lock individuals up for perceived wrongs.

It’s a system just begging to be abused by power-hungry bureaucrats desperate to retain their power at all costs.

Having allowed the government to expand and exceed our reach, we find ourselves on the losing end of a tug-of-war over control of our country and our lives. And for as long as we let them, government officials will continue to trample on our rights, always justifying their actions as being for the good of the people.

Yet the government can only go as far as “we the people” allow. Therein lies the problem.

This is not just about one administration or one set of policies. This is a broader pattern of governmental overreach that has been allowed to unfold, unchecked and unchallenged. And at the heart of this loss of freedom is a fundamental misunderstanding—or even a deliberate abandonment—of what sovereignty really means in America.

Sovereignty is a dusty, antiquated term that harkens back to an age when kings and emperors ruled with absolute power over a populace that had no rights. Americans turned the idea of sovereignty on its head when they declared their independence from Great Britain and rejected the absolute authority of King George III. In doing so, Americans claimed for themselves the right to self-government and established themselves as the ultimate authority and power.

In other words, as the preamble to the Constitution states, in America, “we the people”—sovereign citizens—call the shots.

So, when the government acts, it is supposed to do so at our bidding and on our behalf, because we are the rulers.

That’s not exactly how it turned out, though, is it?

In the 200-plus years since we boldly embarked on this experiment in self-government, we have been steadily losing ground to the government’s brazen power grabs, foisted upon us in the so-called name of national security.

The government has knocked us off our rightful throne. It has usurped our rightful authority. It has staged the ultimate coup. Its agents no longer even pretend that they answer to “we the people.”

This is how far our republic has fallen and how desensitized “we the people” have become to this constant undermining of our freedoms.

If we are to put an end to this steady slide into totalitarianism, that goose-stepping form of tyranny in which the government has all of the power and “we the people” have none, we must begin by refusing to allow the politics of fear to shackle us to a dictatorship.

President Trump wants us to believe that the menace we face (imaginary or not) is so sinister, so overwhelming, so fearsome that the only way to surmount the danger is by empowering the government to take all necessary steps to quash it, even if that means allowing government jackboots to trample all over the Constitution.

Don’t believe it. That argument has been tried before.

The government’s overblown, extended wars on terrorism, drugs, violence and illegal immigration have all been convenient ruses used to terrorize the populace into relinquishing more of their freedoms in exchange for elusive promises of security.

We are walking a dangerous path right now.

Political arrests. Harassment. Suppression of dissident voices. Retaliation. Detention centers for political prisoners.

These are a harbinger of what’s to come if the Trump administration carries through on its threats to crack down on any and all who exercise their First Amendment rights to free speech and protest.

We are being acclimated to bolder power grabs, acts of lawlessness, and a pattern of intimidation, harassment, and human rights violations by government officials. And yet, in the midst of this relentless erosion of our freedoms, the very concept of sovereignty—the foundational idea that the people, not the government, hold ultimate power—has been all but forgotten.

“Sovereignty” used to mean something fundamental in America: the idea that the government serves at the will of the people, that “we the people” are the rightful rulers of this land, and that no one, not even the president, is above the law. But today, that notion is scarcely discussed, as the government continues its unchecked expansion.

We have lost sight of the fact that our power is meant to restrain the government, not the other way around.

Don’t allow yourselves to be distracted, derailed or desensitized.

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 moment these acts of aggression becomes the new normal, authoritarianism won’t be a distant threat; it will be reality.

This originally appeared on The Rutherford Institute.

The post When Dissent Becomes a Crime: The War on Political Speech Begins appeared first on LewRockwell.

International Man: For decades, mainstream financial commentators have dismissed gold as a “barbarous relic.” Federal Reserve officials and policymakers routinely downplay its importance, insisting that fiat currency and central banking make gold obsolete.

Yet, despite this public stance, the US government still holds one of the world’s largest gold reserves.

So, what’s really going on here? If gold is truly irrelevant, why does the government still treat it as a strategic asset?

Doug Casey: Governments hate gold because it’s a discipline on the amount of currency they can create. Gold is money. Governments can’t create it out of thin air. You might say that gold needs the government about as much as a fish needs a bicycle.

Gold is not a strategic asset. It shouldn’t be viewed as something to buy or sell, like land, copper, or a factory. You don’t buy or sell money; that’s almost a contradictory concept. Gold is money itself, although fiat currencies are treated as money in today’s world. Confusing gold with fiat currency is one of the terrible notions created by Keynesian economists. It’s allowed mainstream financial commentators to dismiss gold as a pet rock.

As you said, the Federal Reserve officials and policy makers routinely downplay the importance of gold. They believe that fiat currency and central banking have made gold obsolete. They’re 100% wrong.

Despite their theories and stated beliefs, governments around the world have been buying massive amounts of gold in recent years. They’re dumping dollars. For 25 years after World War II, the major asset of other central banks has been US dollars.

It made sense at the time because the dollars were convenient and guaranteed to be redeemed at $35 for an ounce of gold up to 1971. Now, however, the US government backs its dollars by nothing. Foreign governments can see that the US government is fiscally and monetarily totally out of control. They’ve seen the US arbitrarily confiscate assets, impose sanctions, and levy duties. They’re dumping dollars because it’s increasingly obvious they’re the unsecured liability of a bankrupt and unreliable government. They’re accumulating gold.

The only solution to today’s massive monetary problems is to go back to classical banking practices. What that means is gold and only gold is used as money. US Government debt should not be monetized. And fractional reserve banking has to be abolished.

There used to be a distinction between the two types of bank accounts—demand deposits (i.e., checking accounts) and time deposits (i.e., savings accounts). Banks have typically offered both, but they’re two totally separate and very different businesses.

With demand deposits, you pay the bank to store your gold securely. You have the right to withdraw it at a moment’s notice and write checks against it, making it simple to transfer it on the bank’s books to another person.

Time deposits are a totally different business. With these, you deposit money with the bank for X number of months. It must be for a fixed period of time to allow the bank to lend that money out for X number of months. The banks may pay you 3% and charge the borrower 7%, the 400 basis point difference covering overhead, risk of loss, and profit.

Today, however, there’s no longer any distinction between time and demand deposits. Banks lend demand deposits, which is a fraud. It’s as if you paid the Allied Van Company to store your furniture, and they then rented it to someone else.

Worse, when banks lend money today, it’s redeposited within the system. They lend it out again, it’s redeposited, they lend it out again, ad infinitum. It’s a giant daisy chain, an inverted pyramid of debt. It’s why banking is such a profitable business—until the inevitable happens. If any significant borrower goes bust, or if depositors want more than a minimum of cash, any given bank would be shown to be bankrupt.

That’s why Central Banks like the Fed are critical to maintaining the fraud. They stand ready to create fiat to maintain confidence in the system. And regulate commercial banks to keep them from abusing the system too badly.

Almost every bank in the world engages in fractional reserve practices. That practice puts them all in danger of bankruptcy. Sorry for the overly brief explanation. But the bottom line is that the entire system must be, and will be, reset.

International Man: Given the secrecy surrounding Fort Knox, do you think the US government still possesses the 261 million ounces of gold it claims to have?

Do you think the reluctance to conduct a full, independent audit is due to mismanagement, deception, or something more sinister?

Doug Casey: Chris Weber recently did an essay about that in his March 3 letter. His publication is one of my favorites; I suggest you subscribe.

You’ll see why I say that. In any event, go to weberglobal.net to get that letter, gratis. You should take advantage of a two-month trial for $60 as well.

In fact, there’s never been a formal audit of Ft Knox. I doubt that the US government has anything like 261 million ounces of gold that it says it owns. In fact, most of the gold in Fort Knox is not even in good delivery .999 form; it’s what we call coin melt.

The US government confiscated gold coins from the public in 1933. They were in wide circulation and everyday use. The government then melted them down—they’re 90% gold and 10% copper. There’s never been an actual audit of how much gold, of what purity, there is in Fort Knox. FWIW, the vault itself was inaugurated in 1936.

We don’t know who owns whatever gold there is in Ft Knox, ostensibly 147 million ounces, because any amount of it may have been hypothecated for who knows what reasons. For that matter, the same is true of the gold stored with the New York Fed, another 110 million ounces.

No one knows exactly how much there is, who owns what, or how much may have been loaned out. It impresses me as a dog’s breakfast. For many years, Ron Paul has fought to get an audit, but they’ve disregarded him.

Hopefully, DOGE will be the impetus to dig into it so we can find out exactly how much is there and exactly who owns it.

International Man: US citizens have virtually no financial privacy, facing severe penalties if they fail to disclose every detail of their financial lives to the government.

Why is financial disclosure a one-way street where citizens are forced to comply while the government operates behind closed doors?

Doug Casey: It’s naïve to believe that, just because some people call it “our democracy,” that we’re anything more than the capite censi—the “head count,” as the Romans termed the mob. The people who control the government, the Deep State, are the boss. I recognize that it’s very politically incorrect to say so, but the government is an entity onto itself with its own interests.

Even though America is unique in world history for having been founded on the principles of personal freedom and a strictly limited State, it’s degraded over time. That’s natural, I suppose; the Second Law of Thermodynamics operates in absolutely every sphere. But today, it’s a fiction, a myth, that citizens no longer democratically control the State. We’ve devolved into an unstable multicultural domestic empire. In fact, you’re a subject, a veritable serf—albeit one with a high standard of living.

At this point, the government is very much like The Wizard of Oz, hiding behind the curtain. The Wizard, you’ll recall, was not the friend of Dorothy and her companions.

International Man: President Trump recently stated, “We’re going to go into Fort Knox to make sure the gold is there.” If it isn’t, he warned, “we’re going to be very upset.”

What do you make of Trump’s comments? Do they signal genuine concern about US gold reserves, or are they just political posturing with no real intention of follow-through?

Doug Casey: If it’s true that something has happened to the gold, it will trigger a genuine earthquake which will echo around the world.

I’m afraid that if DOGE digs into the gold holdings in Fort Knox and the NY Fed, there won’t be anything near 261 million unhypothecated ounces of gold.

If that’s the case, it would create such an upset that I’m not sure they’d dare disclose it. It would overthrow the world’s financial system because it would show that no figures are reliable and that it’s all a sham. This is potentially a very big deal.

International Man: What are the investment implications of renewed scrutiny on US gold reserves—both in general and with the potential for a full audit of Fort Knox?

Doug Casey: As I’ve said many times before, at approximately $3,000, gold is reasonably valued relative to the historical cost of everything else—clothes, food, houses, cars. But because the world’s financial situation is so shaky at this point and gold is, in fact, the only financial asset that’s not simultaneously somebody else’s liability, it seems to me that you should continue buying gold. It’s much better to own gold coins than it is to own dollars, which are just the accounting fiction of an unsound bank.

As Matt Smith has pointed out recently—he explains all this in (LINK)—if gold was reinstituted as money, whether just between governments or in general society, it would probably have to be revalued at 25, 30, or $40,000 an ounce.

At this point, continue buying gold even at $3,000 an ounce. The general public is still totally uninterested in it. That’s going to change when panic breaks upon the economic world in the near future.

Reprinted with permission from International Man.

The post Fort Knox, Government Secrecy, and the True Role of Gold appeared first on LewRockwell.

I get into too many conversations with family and friends regarding the Ukraine war. Too many because they are so tiresome. Often my interlocutors base their opinions solely on facts learned from only CNN, BBC, etc. I ask, do you believe Zelensky that Ukraine has 1/10th the casualties of Russia when Russia has extreme advantages in air power, air defense, artillery, etc.? They tell me Russia can’t be trusted, they broke the Minsk accords. I ask them if they had heard the interviews of Merkle, Holland, and Poroshenko admitting that Ukraine broke the accords to rearm? On and on it goes.

Finally, if I am not frazzled, I come to the ultimate point of the discussion. What exactly is the strategy of Russia’s adversaries? Those brainiacs of the rules based order located in Washington, Brussels, London, Paris, Berlin, not to mention those northern countries that seem to be suffering from winter madness, have an idea. Because Ukraine has lost the war, the final denouement to occur in one day or one month or one year,  the next move in their 4D chess game to keep the conflict going is a particular idea. The idea is to get the US military into a direct conflict with Russia over Ukraine.

This idea is dumb. It is dumber than dumb. In fact, it is the dumbest idea ever conceived. In a display of an incredibly steep inverse relationship between arrogance and intelligence, they will pit the two countries with enough nuclear arms to totally destroy human civilization directly against each other. It takes a certain type of dimwit to argue that Putin would never use his enormous investment in nuclear weapons to protect what he considers vital to Russia, e.g., Crimea. And if not Putin, some oligarch much more prone to violence. He has said this directly. Any fool with even the most basic understanding of risk analysis would not do this. That is, to greatly increase the most dangerous event that could ever occur for an intermediate move to achieve the highly unlikely (and immoral) goal of ruling the world. Why not play hopscotch on an interstate highway at night wearing dark clothes.

You can listen to Pepe Escobar explain it all here.

The post The Dumbest Idea . . . Ever! appeared first on LewRockwell.

Postscript and Clarification: I originally wrote the following post in an ironic tone. Reviewing reader comments, I realize that I should have made this clearer. To clarify: I believe that Byron, Travis, Roosevelt, and Ambrose Bierce were all suffering from 19th century romantic nationalism. As Byron himself ultimately understood, his misadventure in Greece was comically absurd. Travis obviously should have ditched the Alamo and lived to fight another day with Houston. William Randolph Hearst produced the worst kind of jingoistic Yellow Journalism, and Teddy Roosevelt was being a ridiculous showman. The character Peyton Farquhar in “Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” was a fool who hanged for it. The author of the story, Ambrose Bierce, “went to Mexico to die,” just like Fuentes wrote. Obviously, Americans have no real interest in who governs Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhia oblasts. Please read my original post below in light of this clarification.

As a proud native Texan, my heart swelled with pride the first time I read William Barret Travis’s letter that he wrote from the Alamo Mission in San Antonio, addressed to “the People of Texas and All Americans in the World.”

Commandancy of the The Alamo

Bejar, Feby. 24th. 1836

To the People of Texas & All Americans in the World-

Fellow Citizens & compatriots-

I am besieged, by a thousand or more of the Mexicans under Santa Anna – I have sustained a continual Bombardment & cannonade for 24 hours & have not lost a man – The enemy has demanded a surrender at discretion, otherwise, the garrison are to be put to the sword, if the fort is taken – I have answered the demand with a cannon shot, & our flag still waves proudly from the walls – I shall never surrender or retreat. Then, I call on you in the name of Liberty, of patriotism & everything dear to the American character, to come to our aid, with all dispatch – The enemy is receiving reinforcements daily & will no doubt increase to three or four thousand in four or five days. If this call is neglected, I am determined to sustain myself as long as possible & die like a soldier who never forgets what is due to his own honor & that of his country – Victory or Death.

William Barret Travis.

Lt. Col.comdt.

P. S. The Lord is on our side – When the enemy appeared in sight we had not three bushels of corn – We have since found in deserted houses 80 or 90 bushels and got into the walls 20 or 30 head of Beeves.

Travis

At the time Travis sent his letter, the commander-in-chief of the Texas Republican Army, Sam Houston, was negotiating a treaty with Cherokee Indians who inhabited the northeast region of the territory and was unable to respond in time with reinforcements.

When I was a kid visiting the Alamo for the first time, I wondered if, had I been of fighting age at the time, I would have gone to the Alamo to join Travis. He, a young man of 26, knew that his refusal to surrender meant certain death. Would I have been prepared to die for the Alamo to keep it out of the hands of the vainglorious Santa Anna?

On a recent visit to San Antonio, I was surprised by how desolate the downtown area was at night. I drifted over to the Hotel Menger for a drink at the bar where Teddy Roosevelt recruited local cowboys for his valiant expedition to liberate Cuba from the Spanish in 1898. I found the place strangely empty.

The following photo is of Teddy and his Rough Riders at the top of San Juan Hill, which they had just successfully stormed.

Teddy was inspired by the reporting from Cuba of William Randolph Hearst’s New York World. Hearst’s crack reporters told “horrific tales of female prisoners, executions, valiant rebels fighting, and starving women and children.” Hearst then blamed the Spanish for sinking of the battleship Maine in Havana Harbor without presenting any evidence. Indications that the vessel exploded from accidental fire in the coal bunker were ignored.

Going back in time, another great adventure was Lord Byron’s attempt to liberate Greece from Ottoman rule in 1824. Wikipedia provides a pretty good summary:

By the end of March 1824, the so-called “Byron brigade” of 30 philhellene officers and about 200 men had been formed, paid for entirely by Byron. Leadership of the Greek cause in the Roumeli region was divided between two rival leaders: a former Klepht (bandit), Odysseas Androutsos; and a wealthy Phanariot Prince, Alexandros Mavrokordatos. Byron used his prestige to attempt to persuade the two rival leaders to come together to focus on defeating the Ottomans..

At the same time, other leaders of the Greek factions like Petrobey Mavromichalis and Theodoros Kolokotronis wrote letters to Byron telling him to disregard all of the Roumeliot leaders and to come to their respective areas in the Peloponnese. This drove Byron to distraction; he complained that the Greeks were hopelessly disunited and spent more time feuding with each other than trying to win independence.

Byron’s friend Edward John Trelawny had aligned himself with Androutsos, who ruled Athens, and was now pressing for Byron to break with Mavrokordatos in favour of backing the rival Androutsos. Androutsos, having won over Trelawny to his cause, was now anxious to persuade Byron to put his wealth behind his claim to be the leader of Greece. Byron wrote with disgust about how one of the Greek captains, former Klepht Georgios Karaiskakis, attacked Missolonghi on 3 April 1824 with some 150 men supported by the Souliotes as he was unhappy with Mavrokordatos’s leadership, which led to a brief bout of inter-Greek fighting before Karaiskakis was chased away by 6 April.

While Greece was ultimately liberated from the Ottomans by the combined forces of Great Britain, Russia, and France, the “Byron brigade” achieved nothing and Byron died of a fever in Missolonghi at the age of thirty-six. The concluding lines of his poem about swimming across the Hellespont captured the spirit of his young and romantic death.

Sad mortals! thus the gods still plague you!

He lost his labour, I my jest;

For he was drown’d, and I’ve the ague.

Another great story is that of the American writer Ambrose Bierce going to Mexico, perhaps to join Pancho Villa’s revolutionary army, in 1913. Especially stylish was the fact that Bierce was 71-years-old.

The adventure inspired Carlos Fuentes to write his novel The Old Gringo with its refrain, “The old gringo came to Mexico to die.” The pointless, romantic death of Peyton Farquhar in “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” seemed to presage Bierce’s death 24 years later.

Read the Whole Article

The post Do Americans Have an Interest in Who Governs Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhia Oblasts? appeared first on LewRockwell.

This article was written by Brandon Smith and originally published at Birch Gold Group

Ever since the days of Herbert Hoover and the official start of the Great Depression the concept of trade tariffs has been readily demonized across most of academia and among the majority of modern economic ideologies. Is is actually one area where globalists and free market economists tend to align (though each group has very different reasons).

Proponents of Adam Smith’s free market philosophy or Ludwig Von Mises and his Austrian school are Just as likely to be opposed to Donald Trump’s tariff plans as any globalist from the halls of Davos.

First and foremost we have to make it clear what tariffs are: Tariffs are taxes on international companies importing goods from other nations. These taxes are designed to force companies to import from countries outside of the tariff list or produce goods domestically. The primary targets of tariffs are actually corporations. The secondary targets are countries on the tariff list.

Austrian economists in their opposition to tariffs operate on the assumption that large corporations are “free market” entities. They also assume that globalism is a product of free markets.

Adam Smith might have witnessed the corruption of mercantalism, but he had no inkling of the monstrosity of modern globalism and how it would ultimately pervert the free market ideal. The same goes for Mises. Their support for global trade was contingent on the idea that government interference is always the root problem, the fly in the ointment.

They did not take into account the blurring of lines between corporations, governments and NGOs – They did not consider the corporate shadow government of Davos and the manipulation of markets in the name of “free trade”. They couldn’t have even fathomed the creation of organizations like the IMF, World Bank, the BIS, etc. at the time they came up with their economic theories.

After the Bretton Woods conference Mises would go on to question the motives of the new “global order” and the trade agreements being put in place. He would also oppose at least some aspects of globalism before his death, leaving Austrians to debate the merits of “good globalism” vs “bad globalism”.

The reality is that today there is no “good globalism”. It doesn’t exist because the entities dictating global trade collude rather than compete. They are not actually interested in free markets, they are interested in global monopoly. And corporations are the key to this monopoly.

Adam Smith criticized the idea “joint stock companies” (corporations), but there are a lot of Austrians and Anarcho-capitalists that defend international companies as if they are an inherent evolution of free market progress. This is simply not so. Global corporations (and central banks) are pure socialist constructs chartered by governments and given special protection. Their immunity to constitutional restrictions serves government interests and government legal chicanery serves corporate interests.

This is the opposite of free markets. I’ll say it again – Under the current conditions, global conglomerates are NOT free market organizations. They destroy free markets by using government partnerships to erase competition.

The covid event and the rise of woke propaganda in the US are perfect examples of the collusion between companies and governments to institute social engineering and erase free economic participation. Anyone not suspicious of these entities after everything that happened is beyond help at this point.

These corporations also act as wealth siphons; sucking up consumer cash in one country only to deposit it in other countries instead of cycling that wealth (after their cut) back into the economy they rely on for sales. In other words, global corporations act as a kind of wealth redistribution machine that takes money and jobs from Americans and spreads them around the world to the detriment of the American public.

As the middlemen of this wealth redistribution scheme, companies generate vast profits while people on both sides of the exchange get very little in return. Mexico might seem like it benefits from the NAFTA trade imbalances, but this is a mistake – The Mexican people and their standard of living enjoy minimal benefits; the companies that use them for labor get the advantage, along with some government officials on the take.

In turn, US GDP and our supposed national wealth continues to rise due to global corporations. But the majority of that wealth increase is not going to Americans, it’s going to the .0001% of elites. The longer globalism carries on the wider the wealth gap becomes. This is an undeniable fact and I think people on the left and the right mostly agree on this issue, but nobody wants to make the hard decisions and do something about it.

Leftists think bigger government and more regulation is the answer. Conservatives think smaller government and less regulation is the answer. Conservatives are closer to the mark, but neither solution confronts the core problem of collusion between governments and conglomerates.

Keep in mind, the US operated on tariffs for hundreds of years.  The “T-word” did not become a bad word until the creation of corporations, the Federal Reserve system and the income tax.

So, I stand with my Austrian School economist friends on most things, but when they cry foul on Trump’s tariffs I have to remind them that the situation is not as simple as “government interference bad”. The current system is long overdue for a course correction and fiscal Libertarianism is not going to provide it.  They think they’re defending free markets, but they’re not.

Another key problem of globalism is forced interdependency. If each nation is producing an ample supply of their own necessary resources, they have resilient domestic job creation, and they decide to trade excess goods with each other then global markets make sense. But, what happens then when each nation is pressured though trade agreements to rely on every other nation for the basic economic needs of their populace?

Then we must reexamine the value of globalism in general.

International economic interdependency is a form of slavery, especially when corporations and NGO middlemen are involved. Only resource redundancy and localism foster true free markets and individual liberty. Tariffs can help to energize local production and trade and make communities more self reliant. That said, there’s going to be a cost.

The comparisons made between Donald Trump and Herbert Hoover are rampant and have been since 2016. I warned during Trump’s first term that accelerating fiscal decline and growing stagflation could be dropped in his lap and blamed on conservative policies. That is to say, anti-globalism would be blamed for the financial destruction caused by globalists. I continue to believe that this agenda is still in play.

Hoover was blamed for exacerbating the Great Depression in 1930 with his Smoot-Hawley tariffs. In truth, the Great Depression spread because of a series of policy decisions by major banks and rate hikes by the Federal Reserve (Former Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke admitted to this openly in 2002). At the time it didn’t matter who caused it – Hoover was president and so he was the scapegoat.

The same situation could happen for Trump if he’s not careful, and all conservatives will be blamed by extension. It’s important to remember that US production has been hollowed out by decades of government interference supporting globalization, along with unchallenged corporate power. Reining in corporations with tariffs is not going to be enough, there must also be incentives to reverse the damage done by decades of government corruption.

I can’t think of any other way to rebuild America’s production base fast enough to counter the price increases that will inevitably come with tariffs. Defeating inflation would require an unprecedented national effort to bring back manufacturing specifically for necessities. Tariffs by themselves are not going to make this happen.

We need mass goods, energy and housing NOW, not several years from now. Otherwise, in the long run tariffs will only make the situation worse.  Libertarians are right to warn of negative effects on American consumers, but the solution is not to let corporations do whatever they please and for globalism to continue unchallenged.  The solution is to break globalism and return to a domestically independent model.

Finally, there’s the issue of the dollar and its world reserve status. After Bretton Woods the great unspoken arrangement was that America would act as the military pillar of the western world (and apparently the consumer cash cow of the world). In exchange, the US would enjoy the advantages of having the world reserve currency.

What advantages? Namely, the dollar could be printed well beyond any other currency for decades without suffering the immediate effects of hyperinflation because most of those dollars would be held overseas. The breakup of NATO and a trade war might trigger the end of this arrangement. Meaning, all those dollars held in foreign banks could come flooding back into the US and cause egregious inflation.

Reserve status has long been the Achilles Heel of the US and it must end eventually. Just take note that globalists have been preparing for this shift since at least 2008 with the SDR basket and CBDCs.  This past week the EU announced they will be distributing retail CBDCs by the end of this year.  They know what’s coming.  A trade war will not only require the Trump Administration to facilitate increased domestic production, but also facilitate a new commodity backed currency system to protect against the fall of the dollar.

In the meantime, individual citizens and communities are going to have to prepare as globalism breaks down. This means local production of goods, retailers seeking out local suppliers, people trading goods and services through barter networks, etc. State leaders should consider introducing commodity backed scrip to offset any potential damage to the dollar. They should also open up more natural resources to improve local industry.

There’s a lot to do, and not much time to do it.

Reprinted with permission from Alt-Market.us.

The post Trade War: Tariffs Are Needed To Defeat Globalism But They Come With a Cost appeared first on LewRockwell.

In the past few days, violence and mass killings of Christians and Alawites in Syria have seen an unprecedented upsurge, with thousands of deaths in all regions under the control of the extremist Islamic movement Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (Organization for the Liberation of the Levant), affiliated with the terrorist group al-Qaeda.

The reasons for this persecution of the two minorities by the Syrian government are to be found first and foremost in the regime change desired by the previous American administration, in agreement with NATO and the European Union.

The ouster of President Bashar al-Assad and the installation of Abu Mohammed al-Jolani (whose party was until yesterday considered by the American State Department to be a terrorist organization) have inevitably led to the genocide of the Alawites and Syrian Christians.

This genocide is taking place today right before our eyes, even as the parliaments of the “democratic” nations and the “Catholic” hierarchy subservient to the interests of globalism remain silent.

Our Christian brothers are being barbarically killed in cities and villages. Elderly people, women, and children are being crucified and massacred purely because of their Christian faith: a faith that decades of compromises and concessions have almost completely erased in Western countries and especially among their leaders.

And while the warmongering madness of international high finance is trying to persuade European nations to finance rearmament against the Russian Federation and to be ready to sacrifice our children in a reckless and specious war, on the Syrian front (but also in Gaza, where other Christians are being ethnically cleansed) the hierarchs of globalism are culpably silent, and indeed they are aligning themselves with a criminal terrorist on whom a $10 million bounty was hanging.

It is from the globalist deep state in the United States that this new hotbed of violence and extermination has been hatched: it is therefore from the United States that an action aimed at putting an end to the genocide of Christians and other minorities in Syria must start. At their side must stand all those who recognize Our Lord Jesus Christ as the only savior, both individuals as well as societies and nations.

We cannot remain silent or inert in the face of the martyrdom of our Christian brothers. Those scenes of inhuman violence and cruelty that we see happening in remote lands could tomorrow be replicated in our own Western nations, which the betrayal of corrupt rulers has caused to be invaded by hordes of fanatical Mohammedans of military age, in order to impose on Europe ethnic substitution and the definitive cancellation of Christian civilization.

I urge Catholics, during these days of Holy Lent, to pray, fast, and do penance to implore from Heaven protection for the faithful who are being persecuted and martyred in Syria, Gaza, and many other parts of the world.

May their example of heroic steadfastness in the profession of the true faith animate, before it is too late, an awakening of the consciences of Christians and a return to God, on whom the peace, harmony, and prosperity of peoples depends. Deus vult!

This originally appeared on Lifesite News.

The post US-NATO Regime Change Has Sparked a Christian Genocide in Syria appeared first on LewRockwell.

The Trump administration has decided to resume the provision of weapons and intelligence to Ukraine. It is thus aiming at escalating the conflict.

The outcome of yesterday’s talk between a Ukrainian and a U.S. delegation Saudi Arabia was not completely in favor of the European/Ukrainian idea of a 30 day ceasefire restricted to air and sea attacks. But it opened the desired pathway to prolonging the war.

The U.S. asked the Ukrainians to accept a 30 day long ceasefire offer. This would of course only be implemented if the Russian side agrees to it. Meanwhile the U.S. resumes all war support for Ukraine. The outcome demonstrates weakness on the U.S. side:

According to the latest from Riyadh, Ukraine says it is ready for a 30 day cease fire. If this is what Washington “extracted” from the Ukrainians, it is operationally meaningless. With Russia on the brink of winning in Kursk and elsewhere, the Russians won’t accept any such deal. If it is a ruse to allow the US to resume arms shipments to Ukraine, knowing Russia will reject it, the so-called peace initiative is a dead letter.

‘The ball is now in Russia’s court’ was the media slogan launched by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and obediently repeated by various European underlings.

But why would or should Russia agree to this when the idea seems to be to trap Russia:

This marks a significant shift in the US approach to ending the conflict. Previously, Washington sought to pressure Ukraine into accepting a US- and Russia-brokered deal largely on Moscow’s terms. Now, America is attempting to strong-arm Russia into accepting a ceasefire as the first step toward a broader peace plan — warning that if Moscow refuses, “we’ll unfortunately know what the impediment is to peace here”, as Rubio put it.

Whether Russia will agree remains uncertain. Moscow has repeatedly stated that it does not view a ceasefire as viable without a broader framework for negotiations. But the parties are far from agreeing on this broader framework. Russia’s demands are clear: above all, legal recognition by Ukraine and the West of Russia’s annexed territories as part of the Russian Federation.

The u-turn by the Trump administration, from pressure on Ukraine to new bellicosity to Russia, leaves a question:

So what does the Trump Administration think it is doing by retying the Ukraine millstone to its neck? This isn’t Trump’s war. The Oval Office row provided him with the perfect excuse to cut Zelensky loose, even put new elections as the condition for providing much help, and provide only bare bones support (not that the US could do more than that on the weapons front) so as to blunt criticism that the US was abandoning Ukraine, as opposed to getting them to sober up about their true condition.

Yves Smith, quoted above, sees four potential reasons:

• the U.S. really believes that Russia is in a bad shape economically,
• the U.S. really believes that Russia would and wants to profit from a ceasefire,
• the neocons (i.e. Marco Rubio and the Europeans) have played Trump,

or (most likely):

Finally, Trump may, even more than before, be in “All tactics and no strategy is the noise before the defeat” mode. It is becoming more and more apparent that his top priority is dominating any interaction, no matter whether that advances any long term aim. Trump and his allies derived pleasure from beating up on Zelensky during and after the White House row. Even though Zelensky asked for it (at a minimum by not donning a suit), what did the US gain? Zelensky ran around Europe, getting support that bolstered him at home. The US, despite holding the cards, got bupkis in Riyadh aside from some optics.

Since 2014 the Ukrainian side has multiple times agreed to this or that ceasefire after its forces received a strong beating. It also immediately broke each of its promises. The defeat of its incursion into the Kursk region of Russia will have motivated it to accept the U.S. position. But what force could make it stick to a ceasefire if Russia would agree to one?

The current situation on the battle field is very much in Russia’s favor. Any pause in fighting would allow the U.S. and its allies to accumulate more arms and ammunition for Ukraine. Russian forces are well supplied and not in need of a break in the fighting. Should the Russian leadership agree to a pause it would open itself to considerable critique from Russian nationalists and hardliners.

Russia, at the same time, wants to keep its friends in China and the Global South on its side. Pressure from them is the only reason I can think of that might push Russia into accepting a temporary ceasefire deal. But there has been no public noise in this direction from China or other BRICS and Global South countries so far.

Russia has yet to receive the official result of the U.S.-Ukrainian talks. It will not react to media noise before having read those.

—
Recently three U.S. bloggers, Judge Napolitano, Larry Johnson and Mario Nawfal, had an interview with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov (video, transcript). It is as always refreshing to follow Lavrov’s reality based reasoning about the conflict over Ukraine.

Reprinted with permission from Moon of Alabama.

The post Trump Opts For More War With Russia appeared first on LewRockwell.

Why They’re Suddenly Preppers

It takes a wise man to learn from his mistakes, but an even wiser man to learn from others. 

The super-rich, major corporations, and fund managers are circling their wagons right now and are in full-blown protect their “assets” mode.  If you follow the flow of money, you also have a good indicator of how the future will play out for the common person.  You won’t know the actual conclusions because anything could happen, but you will know the possible outcomes.  These massive wealth holders have gotten to where they are by understanding and overcoming the threats they’ve faced.  They are unique positions to look a bit over the horizon, and they’re driving us all, sometimes kicking and screaming, to where they want us to go.  They are also particularly averse to loss.  Their goal for themselves and their investors is to maximize profits at any cost while reducing costs.  Survive and maximize, you might say, just like a prepper.

In this blog, we will examine what the ultra-rich are currently doing, how this could impact your future, and what you should be doing now to prepare if anything.

What are they doing?

The wealthy are buying land, energy, and water.  According to at least one article this week, the ultra-rich are also looking to build bunkers and purchase private land and mercenary security forces to get them through the next unknown disaster.  They are looking to preserve assets simultaneously as they are staring at a prolonged global recession and currency slowing and decreasing in value.  Traditionally, this has driven investors into bonds or precious metals, and some of that is still going on; however, with whole economies teetering on the brink of a more significant decline, bonds aren’t yielding much return.

Investments in precious metals occurred in the run-up to the current economic crisis and through the COVID lockdowns, so they are still riding all-time historical highs.  Now, the money is flowing to the most stable assets–resources in the form of land, water, and energy.  During the 2020 market crash, the wealthy came out ahead the following year, doubling their asset ownership. The rich buy assets when when everyone else is selling, and this year is no exception.

These are the three things you are always going to need to survive.  We have previously done a blog on the rich buying up farming land and water resources, and we will link to those two blogs at the end of this one because they are still valid.  To see how the future will likely play out, you must look at where these ultra-rich are pumping their money.  That’s what will get protected and promulgated.  In addition to those big two of land and water resources, the rich are investing in alternative energy because they know that the fossil-based system is an increasingly unreliable and inconsistent profit generator.  Companies like Tesla, Lucid, and Rivian, makers of electric vehicles, are doing well.  With countries reeling from inflation and rising energy costs, government policies also reflect a move toward renewable energies with the added benefit of severing their dependencies on foreign energy sources, a problem Europe is currently facing.

Policy often mirrors the desires and investments of the wealthier citizens, so expect incentives and tax breaks favoring renewables.  As we pointed out in earlier videos, oil and natural gas are currently being used as a weapon of war, with OPEC+ and Russia scaling back output to keep the price of a barrel of oil high.  Meanwhile, Russia sells to China, which then sells to the world to circumnavigate sanctions and keep the money flowing.  There’s too much potential for sanctions, seizures, and policy for intelligent, wealthy investors to sink too much capital into this industry.

As an alternative to gold and to combat inflation, the ultra-rich are also taking advantage of the low prices of crypto and possibly suffering through their losses in that market by doubling down on significant cryptocurrencies.  It’s in these moments when others are fleeing markets that the wealthy come in and scoop up assets at discounted prices.  Wealth is built in bear markets.

It’s not so much the “what” they are investing in here as it is the “why” they are investing this way.  Again, whole economies are teetering on the precipice of a more significant decline.  At least some economies will probably collapse in the coming years.  If you watched our recent video on China’s economic collapse avoidance we released a few weeks ago, you’ll see what a house of cards the world economy really is right now.  Already there are a few countries with CBDCs – Central Bank Digital Currency, and even more, governments are exploring moving their currency to a digital coin.  Speculators suspect it’s only a matter of time before a robust and secure enough platform is implemented or adopted that can carry fiat currencies into the digital realm.

We detail these trends of the rich not to try to encourage you to go out and do the same.  If you are like me, you could invest maybe the hundreds but not the millions required to truly profit off the same investment strategies.  If you were to muster the $1,700 spare cash to buy an ounce of gold, for instance, and it doubles to $3,400, that’s great.  The only problem is the cost of everything you need to survive also doubled in price while you were waiting on that return.  The question now becomes whether you’ll invest in speculative assets or the here and now…items that you’ll require in the next few years that will increase in price.

The reason we note all these trends is because, in all of them, there is an overabundance of caution and a strong desire to hide and squirrel away money and survival resources.  There isn’t confidence in the systems of government or commerce.  It is as if the ultra-wealthy aren’t looking at investing in the future as much as they are interested in protecting what they have built and escaping in the future.  The ironic part is that so many of the ultra-wealthy became so rich by selling the dream of the future in the first place.  Many of the products they brought to market to better our lives are fueling our very demise.  Given recent articles and revelations about the ultra-rich building bunkers, establishing remote ranches, seeking citizenship in New Zealand, residency in Alaska, and other resource-rich, low-population areas, it is clear the ultra-wealthy aren’t very confident that we are going to get through this swiftly approaching economic and societal downturn.

How will this impact you?

So, if we factor in their pessimism with the knowledge that they are also the ones with the long-term vision who are also pulling the strings, for the most part, we have to ask then how this will impact us.  First, there’s land.  Whether that’s land purchased for large-scale farming and ranching, for the resources they contain, or for future building, raw land retains value through any economic cycle.  Even if the commercial and residential real estate markets both implode, raw land remains a stable investment.  In fact, as suburban residential housing fails, rural land increases in value because it is more sought after.  While the percentage of corporate farms remains low, they aren’t as incentivized to grow as the family farm is.  It’s easier to write off the loss on taxes than to struggle with the land and extreme weather.  The same is true with factory farming operations.  When the cost of grain and water is too high and cuts too deeply into shareholder profits, the inclination is to reduce the output supply while demand remains high.  Profits continue, but the available food supply is reduced.

The real impact of land is when it comes to the resources they contain.  As water continues to be a vital resource, especially in the western states, the value of the land containing pockets of it goes up.  None of that water makes it into the available supply until profits are high enough.  Commercial operations can also impact output.  In California and Pembrokeshire, Wales, Nestle operations are extracting, bottling, transporting, and selling millions upon millions of gallons and liters of water, even as those locations reel and suffer through horrible droughts.  You might even have some of these bottles of water in your emergency supplies.  Largescale farming and winery operations in several areas throughout the US have dropped the aquifer levels and forced locals to continue digging deeper wells.

A modern-day corporatocracy has come to life that challenges your ability to prep and be free from its system.  When it comes to ruling and passing laws in your favor or answering to the ultra-wealthy, let’s just say money talks.

Read the Whole Article

The post What the Super-Rich Know That We Don’t appeared first on LewRockwell.

Trump and Zelensky have agreed on a cease fire, a pause in the conflict.  How does this benefit Russia?

It doesn’t.  The Ukrainian military is collapsing on all fronts. 86% of the Ukrainian incursion into Kursk has been retaken, and the remaining Ukrainian forces are surrounded.  What remains of the Ukrainian military is retreating from the few kilometers of Russian territory still occupied in the Donetsk and Zaporozhye regions that have been reincorporated into Russia.  A cease fire is the last thing Russia needs when Russia is on the verge of total victory.

Russia should be imposing surrender terms on Zelensky, Trump, and Europe.  Russia has won the conflict.  Why agree to a negotiation?  The victor dictates the surrender terms. If Russia’s surrender terms are not accepted, Russia should proceed with the conquest of the entirety of Ukraine and reincorporate Ukraine into Russia where it historically belongs.  It was Washington  taking advantage of the Soviet collapse that cut out Ukraine from its historic multi-century home as part of Russia.

Are Putin and Lavrov too besotted with good will toward the West, which has been trying to destroy Russia, to understand the basics?  Does Putin understand that Trump should first have come to him, worked out the terms of surrender between them, and imposed them on Zelensky, who in fact is not a legitimate head of government as his term in office has expired?  Putin is correct.  There needs to be a Ukrainian election that installs a legal government  to whom to dictate the terms of surrender. What is the worth of a document signed by an illegal occupant of office?

If Putin agrees with the Trump-Zelenzky cease fire, will it obligate Putin to agree to a settlement that is less than victory?  A cease fire would halt the Russian advance, provide Ukraine with time to rebuild with the weapons now again supplied by Trump. Will negotiations be a repeat of Putin’s Minsk mistake which cost Russia so dearly?  If Putin denies Russia a victory, could he be removed from office?

Peace must be conclusive.  Cease fires never are.  If memory serves, the Korean War in the 1950s is still governed by a cease fire, and antagonisms still exist between North and South Korea with Washington still adding to the confrontation. 

From what I know of Russia’s Westernized intellectual class that influences Putin and Lavrov, they are Westernized to the point of treason.  Putin needs a Russian government occupied and advised by Russian nationalists.  Otherwise Russia will remain a target despite its unrivaled weapons systems.

In my column on March 11, I asked, “What should Trump do about Ukraine?”  I answered: 

“To end the conflict Trump doesn’t need to be holding meetings and talking about meetings with Putin, Zelensky, EU or anyone.  It is extremely simple for Trump to end the conflict as far as the US is concerned. All he has to do is to make the hold he has put on delivery of weapons permanent and withdraw all US operatives in the proxy conflict with Russia.  Without the US supplying weapons, intelligence, targeting information and money to keep the conflict alive, the conflict will quickly end. This is what Trump needs to tell Putin:  “I know Washington is responsible for this conflict.  I am withdrawing Washington’s participation. The conflict would not have happened if the Democrats had not stolen the 2020 election.  I am cancelling the sanctions.  I will be accused by the Democrats and the presstitutes of selling out Ukraine to you. Your job is to be merciful to Ukraine.  As the US is responsible for the conflict, the US will help you to rebuild a demilitarized Ukraine in which economic advancement takes precedent over war. You must not fail my good intentions, or the Cold War will resume.”

As I asked later in my column, can Trump’s ego permit him to allow the settlement on Putin’s terms?  For three years Putin has been slowly fighting a conflict that a capable war leader would have ended in three weeks. Putin’s failure as a war leader is clear. Putin, being sufficiently Westernized, never realized that his never-ending war would result in negotiations in which he was the last participant included.  As Trump and the illegitimate Zelensky have arrived at a cease fire, the pressure is on Putin to join in, or Russia will be reviled for blocking a settlement with intentions of proceeding from the conquest of Ukraine to the conquest of Europe.  If Putin joins in the cease fire, he risks Russia’s victory being watered down  by the terms of a negotiated settlement.

Russia has been in many ways an easy target for the West. Soviet Communism having bred distrust of Russian government, has left Russian intellectuals easy pickings for Western propaganda. Many Russian intellectuals represent the West, not Russia.  This Russian vulnerability  has been skillfully exploited by the West.

The question remains:  How serious are  Putin’s mistakes in his dealings with Washington?   By permitting a conflict to continue until the initiative for its end passed into Washington’s hands, Putin has lost the initiative.  If Putin doesn’t agree to a cease fire, he risks offending Trump’s ego. Does Trump than become coercive because he is on the line with his promise to end the conflict? Does Putin submit to Trump’s coercion?

The outlook for this conflict being resolved is not as good as it seemed.

The post Is Putin Being Boxed In by Trump and Zelensky appeared first on LewRockwell.

In his recent appearance with Todd on the Sachs Realty Podcast, Peter Schiff paints a sobering picture of America’s current economic landscape, challenging mainstream narratives promoted by Wall Street and the Federal Reserve. Throughout the discussion, he covers alarming trends from unsustainable debt levels and hidden recessions to mounting inflation and misguided trade policies, warning listeners of consequences that policymakers will have to face sooner or later.

Starting with the political landscape, Peter argues that the underlying economic distress voters experience was a critical factor in Donald Trump’s political rise. While official narratives tout economic successes, Peter sees through the smoke and mirrors:

I think the economy is in a lot of trouble. I think that’s why Trump was elected. The voters are living in this economy, and despite what they’re being told by the media and Wall Street that we have a great economy, they know that’s not the case. They’re struggling to get by. Many people are working two or three jobs, whereas they used to be able to pay the bills with one. They can see prices rising rapidly for everything they need to buy as their debts are rising. People have their savings depleted. They’ve got record amounts of debt. The interest rates on that debt are much higher now than they’ve been in many, many years or decades. I think we’re a real mess.

As for Trump’s economic policies, Peter finds some positive initiatives but strongly criticizes the administration’s expansionary fiscal policy and heavy reliance on budget deficits. He emphasizes the urgent need for fiscal responsibility—in actions, not just words:

Well, he’s done some things that I think are pretty good. But where I think he’s really failed is he has been encouraging the Republican Congress to pass this big, beautiful bill, which also includes a four trillion dollar increase in the debt ceiling and includes an increase in government spending so that the deficits that Trump inherited from Biden will be larger if the bill that he now supports is enacted. So I would much rather see the president telling Congress, ‘I don’t support that bill and if you pass it, I will veto it,’ because I don’t want to increase the debt ceiling.

Peter also challenges Trump’s handling of trade, particularly his reliance on tariffs. Tariffs, he argues, act as hidden taxes ultimately paid by ordinary Americans, driving up prices and reducing purchasing power:

I don’t like all the tariff threats personally. I mean, tariffs are taxes. They’re taxes on the American people. The American people need to pay more taxes unless we’re going to cut spending because the government is spending a lot more than it’s collecting in taxes. So level with the public and say, ‘Look, we got to raise taxes because we’re spending too much money, and the way I’m going to raise taxes is tariffs, and it’s going to mean that everything you buy is going to be more expensive because of these tariffs.’ And that’s the reality. I don’t like trying to fool the public into believing they’re getting something for nothing.

Moreover, Peter explains Trump’s misunderstanding of the trade deficit. Rather than foreign countries taking advantage of America, he clarifies that trade deficits can signal a domestic economy consuming beyond its means:

Trump mischaracterizes the current nature of the relationship. Trump believes that these trade deficits are the world taking advantage of America and that they’re somehow screwing us over, that they’re getting something for nothing. The opposite is true. We’re getting something for nothing because we get to consume more than we produce, we get to borrow more than we save, so our standard of living is higher today as a result of these trade deficits.

Peter asserts that America needs to confront its economic imbalances and unsustainable debt head-on rather than waiting for a crisis to force its hand. The looming threat is stagflation—rising inflation coupled with a recession—and Peter believes policymakers are vastly underprepared:

And the crisis is going to come because the numbers are exploding exponentially with our debt and our trade deficits and our budget deficits, and the interest on the debt is spiraling out of control. Inflation is already reaccelerating. It’s risen now four or five months in a row. If you annualize the last month now, CPI is up to about 6%. Consumers are catching on. Consumer expectations now of inflation are the highest they’ve been since 1982 at 6%. So the Fed is completely wrong when it says that inflation is resolved.

This originally appeared on SchiffGold.com.

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Okay, quiz fans, if you think Europe is in trouble, think again. There is always Hollywood, the place where megalomaniacal, pompous, boastful, self-entitled, bald, untalented jerks are taken seriously. The embarrassing but saccharine cesspool that is the Oscars has just voted Anora—a sanitized, voyeuristic movie about a hooker—as Best Picture. I have not seen it and do not plan to. I have nothing against the oldest profession, but now that I am of a certain age, I find it the most humiliating and enslaving line of work ever invented by man or woman.

The ladies now go by the euphemistic name of sex workers. We used to call them hookers, named after the brave Union General Hooker during the Civil War, who always traveled with at least ten of them in his camp. Critics raved about the movie’s “authenticity” and its “fresh perspective.” What bullshit. There is nothing authentic about being a prostitute, and there are no fresh perspectives about going to bed with some disgusting, fat slob in exchange for the root of all evil.

Pretty Woman was fun to watch some thirty years ago, although not to be believed. It was a fairy tale, a glossy cover-up of the dirtiest profession outside murder. The trouble with making a movie that turns a whore into Cinderella is that it makes us forget the exploitation that involves prostitution. And then there’s the prurience. The film is made because the greedy ones know that men will salivate and pay for it. Voyeurism is a male disease, and the Hollywood scum know how to exploit it. No wonder Mother Earth had a quake hit Los Angeles just as the vulgar beings who vote were coming up with an—I am told—unwatchable one. The movie’s star is Mikey Madison, and I’m sure she’s enjoying her moment in the limelight. But if anyone thinks that it helps the real victims, I’ve got a bridge that connects Brooklyn to Manhattan that I can sell you at a very low price.

“There are no fresh perspectives about going to bed with some disgusting, fat slob in exchange for the root of all evil.”

Mind you, I’m no angel where the oldest profession is concerned. My only excuse is that it was during my youth. And it took place mostly in Paris, where the famous Madame Claude had probably the best whorehouse ever. Claude Grudet took a liking to me when my friend Porfirio Rubirosa first introduced me to her. She later told me that her girls—among the prettiest and best behaved in the City of Light—had ranked me among their favorites because I was always kind and very polite. The irony of the Claude girls was that whenever anyone from the tight and closed French society married someone unknown or an outsider, no sooner had the rice stopped flying than the rumors began: “She is definitely a Madame Claude girl, I would recognize her anywhere,” and that sort of thing. That’s where I came in. On three occasions, and concerning three rather grand French families, I was asked point-blank about the lady in question, and on all three times I had to answer in the negative. Not that I would ever have given the lady away, but all three times I answered truthfully that none of them was ever a Claude girl. Not many believed me.

Oh well, now that we have Hollywood making prostitution legit and a nice thing for one’s daughter to do, no use for me to say anything that might detract from the oldest profession. The movie apparently contains 471 “f–k”s, living proof that the writer oozes talent. According to Tinseltown, prostitution is ranked far above patriotism, at least in the most boring movie I’ve seen in a long time, one that won the leading man an Oscar this year. The Brutalist goes on and on, with the rich Van Buren family being the bad guys, while the Hungarian Jewish refugees are all saints. What struck me was its anti-American message. Rich white people in Pennsylvania are secret rapists and manipulators of poor Jewish émigrés. It is not enough that we have every lefty writer and poet chronicling the mythical and brutal enslavement of American blacks today, we now also have untalented Hollywood types preaching to us via the movies how rotten the U.S. really is.

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Constitutionalists universally have had disdain for the United Nations (U.N.), as it has been the bane of American sovereignty from the beginning of its existence. I am on record as saying, and I still believe, that the U.N. was created primarily for the purpose of being the birth canal for the Zionist State of Israel. Over time, however, perpetual ethnic cleansing and genocide by the Zionist state against its Palestinian neighbors caused the U.N. to become increasingly critical of Israel’s behavior. Now, with Donald Trump as president, conservatives are cheering the prospect that he might take the U.S. out of the U.N.

Such anticipation was given a symbolic boost when Trump announced that he would not resume funding for the U.N. Human Rights Council based in Geneva. I say symbolic, because his predecessor, Joe Biden, had already discontinued U.S. funding for that U.N. agency. But anti-U.N. conservatives take this as a sign that Trump will remove the U.S from the U.N. altogether.

Of course, Trump’s motive for making this decision (his announcement coinciding with Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to the White House) is that this is the agency that provides humanitarian aid for Palestinian refugees. And as a secret Jewish Chabadist, Trump hates all things Palestinian including the Palestinian people.

Trump is such an arrogant Zionist (the arrogance of Zionists stems from their deep-seated belief that they are superior to everyone else) that he is now targeting Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) for removal from office, vowing to support a Republican primary challenger in the next election. It is no coincidence that Massie is the GOP congressman in Washington, D.C., who is the most critical of Zionist Israel (and supportive of the Palestinian people) and who refuses to accept bribes from the Israeli lobby or kowtow to their demands.

Whether Trump will actually separate the U.S. from the U.N. is yet to be seen. But if he does make such a move, it won’t be for the same reasons that members of the John Birch Society have been talking about for so long. If he makes such a move, it will be for his desire to fulfill his campaign pledge to “make Israel great again.”

On February 12, 2025, the Jewish Sanhedrin in Jerusalem sent a congratulatory letter to President Trump. I quote in part:

We extend our heartfelt gratitude for bringing faith to the forefront of American and global culture through the establishment of the Faith Office in the White House. Your recognition of the importance of religion in public life is a step toward restoring moral values and spiritual leadership in the world.

When Hashem gave the Children of Israel the Torah, He provided an ethical standard for the entire world. This standard is known as the Seven Commandments of Noah, which form the basis of universal morality. When a person accepts the Seven Noahide Laws, they receive divine blessings.

You will not find the “Seven Noahide Laws” anywhere in the Books of Moses or anywhere else in the Old Testament, for that matter. The “Seven Noahide Laws” are the invention of the Jewish Talmud. When the Sanhedrin speaks of the “Torah,” they are speaking of the Talmud, NOT the Old Testament Pentateuch.

In 2017, the Nascent Sanhedrin minted a special coin featuring your image on one side and Cyrus the Great on the other. This symbolized your historic role, likened to that of Cyrus, who was chosen by Hashem to fulfill a divine mission.

You have been elected, as Cyrus was in his time, to fulfill a heavenly mission: To unite all believers in God and foster ethical cooperation across all spheres of human activity. A Call to Establish an International Divine Court – IDC.

We invite you to meet with the Sanhedrin Court Rabbis in Jerusalem to discuss the establishment of an International Divine Court (IDC) for all nations. This court would be based on the seven universal commandments given to Noah and reaffirmed at Mount Sinai—a foundation for global peace and divine justice.

The Sanhedrin’s “International Divine Court” necessitates the Sanhedrin’s plan to institute the “Organization of 70 Nations” to replace the United Nations.

On March 8 of this year, my friend Steven Bennun at Israeli News Live hosted a podcast entitled The Seven Noahide Laws – Just the Facts. I quote segments of this extremely enlightening broadcast:

I don’t know of any time in the bedrock of society that we ever have any evidence where they were known as the Seven Noahide Laws. But that is where the Revolution was done at, and of course, they’re doing it through education. Now they just do it through education the way they’re doing it here. And we thought they were going to try to institute this as a law of the United States, but they’re going to make it an international law. This is why, by the way, the ICC court found Netanyahu guilty of violating war crimes for the murder and genocide of the Palestinian people, and rightfully so.

But then what did Trump do? Put sanctions on the ICC. Just like Nikki Haley went against the United Nations years ago, right? So, all these things are being done, set up, to be able to set your new global system, this new world order.

So, they’re setting the world up for this. And they’re going to get rid of the United Nations and the ICC, and they’re going to replace it with the Sanhedrin.

Also, too, in the website mizrachi.org, Not Just Seven Noahide Mitzvot, an interview with Rabbi Oury Cherki. But it says here, “In Parashat Noach, Hashem commands Noach and his children to fulfill certain commandments known as the seven Noahide mitzvot, Rav Oury Cherki, however, explains that these seven mitzvot are just the beginning. The larger goal, he says, is to glorify the name of Hashem in the world and transmit Judaism’s universal message to all nations.”

Listen [to the rabbi]:

Rabbi Yisroel Goldstein, former director of the Chabad of Poway: And the rabbi pleaded if only the United Nations will go back to the basics and empower their nation to adopt the Seven Noahide laws, then this world would be a very different world, and perhaps we wouldn’t have lost 150 million lives that we have lost in the last 200 years. So, I ask every nation that’s here, everyone that’s listening: Consider taking the Seven Noahide laws back to the basics and apply it to real daily life, and we will see a world difference.

So, as I mentioned to you, Nikki Haley is to be the honorary president of the organization of the 70 Nations, that was what they were pushing for.

And so, Nikki Haley definitely doesn’t like the United Nations. They’re going to replace this [the U.N.] eventually. That’s going to happen.

Rabbi Mizrachi, here he is right here on the Seven Noahide Laws. Let’s listen to a little bit of what he says, what he says about the Noahide Laws.

Rabbi Mizrachi: You have 6 billion idol worshippers who make God angry every second of their life: Indian, Chinese, Japanese, Tibet, Nepal, Thailand, so many. India alone is 500 million; China is 2 billion, so many; 2 billion Christians which are idol worshippers. Between Chinese, India, Hindus, Buddhist and Christian, at least 6, 6 and a half billion people are idol worshippers that, according to the Torah, do not have the right to live. Idol worshiper, goy. It’s [the] death penalty.

There you go. You have it right there.

Steve and Jana Bennun have a great podcast and put out much-needed information regarding all things Jewish/Israeli.

A few years ago, I delivered a message entitled The Talmud, Chabadism And Noahide Laws. (This is my second most requested and most viewed of all of my messages, by the way.) I now quote from this address:

Every president since Jimmy Carter in 1978, including Donald Trump, has signed this public law instating Noahide Laws and Chabadism in the United States.

Jewish Noahide Law calls for the death of anyone practicing idolatry (anyone who worships the Lord Jesus Christ is an idolater according to Noahide Law), blasphemy (this was the charge the Sanhedrin used against Christ), sexual immorality (according to Talmudic law) and stealing (from Jews—but it is perfectly permissible for Jews to steal from the Goyim); it also obligates non-Jews to set up courts to carry out these Talmudic executions.

Rabbi Schneerson, whose birth is commemorated, stated that, according to Jewish law, non-Jews have no other purpose than to serve Jews who are the reason for creation.

Trump’s daughter Ivanka is a Chabad-Lubavitch cultist (as is her husband Jared Kushner), she prays at Rabbi Schneerson’s grave and has been blessed by Rabbis who demand non-Jews (Goy) follow the Noahide Laws and refer to them as “animals.”

As a closet Chabadist, Donald Trump follows the laws of Maimonides by constantly not paying back loans and investments. He declared bankruptcy 7 times and each time was bailed out by fellow Chabadists.

I concluded with a summary:

Noahide Laws are Jewish Laws that apply to all non-Jews of the world, which forbid forms of worship not approved by Judaism, blasphemy of the Jewish gods, sexual relations which are not approved by the Judaic religion and require that non-Jews must set up courts to enforce these laws.

American Public Law 102-14 states that these laws are the foundation of American civilization (NOT TRUE), that it is our responsibility to transmit them to the next generation, and every president since Jimmy Carter has signed an international scroll along with other heads of state pledging to use education to put the world under the Noahide Laws.

Jewish legal groups who advocate for the Noahide Laws are promoting capital punishment that complies with the Talmudic form of execution, namely decapitation, be established.

There are non-Jews (including Christian Zionists) who are willingly complying with this agenda, and they are working with the Sanhedrin in Israel to promote the Noahide Laws.

Pastors, Christians and churches that support Zionism, Chabadism, Talmudism, etc., are blaspheming God by supporting an antichrist agenda that attempts to:

*Deny the deity, Messiahship and Saviorhood of Jesus Christ.

*Deny His completed work on the Cross for our sins.

*Deny the New Covenant, the Body of Christ, the Church.

*Deny the New Testament doctrines of grace.

And to establish:

*A global Talmudic order.

*The enforcement of Talmudic law by capital punishment.

*A global religion of works salvation based upon Talmudic law.

*A global political union based upon the doctrines of Zionism.

This is the down and dirty reality of what Trump’s pro-Israel agenda is all about. And this is what Christian Zionists in America are supporting.

Therefore, should President Trump decide to separate from the United Nations, you can be assured that the Jewish Organization of 70 Nations will take its place. And if you thought the U.N. was bad, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet!

Reprinted with permission from Chuck Baldwin Live.

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