From a 1998 translation of the letters of brothers Heinrich and Thomas Mann, at the time perhaps the most prestigious of German novelists. Thomas had been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1929. Both had Jewish wives (Heinrich until 1930) and had left Germany shortly after Hitler became chancellor. The following excerpts are from letters by Thomas, who admired Roosevelt and did not mean to present him in a bad light, to Heinrich toward the very beginning of Roosevelt’s over 12-year presidency.

July 5, 1934

…Roosevelt is a good man in the Anglo-Saxon sense of the word; that much is certain. It is dictatorship that he is pursuing as well, of course, but no doubt….From prosperous sorts I heard repeatedly that the revolution would have come for sure without him.

***

June 17, 1935

The President had invited us to Washington….where we enjoyed a very lovely and also interesting family dinner with the Roosevelts – very private, of course, with no sign of the ambassador. My impression was quite sympathetic – on the basis of a favorable predisposition….With him I had more the sense of a certain disdain for parliamentarism and a tendency for one-man rule, but….

The post For Your History Files appeared first on LewRockwell.

“Recycling” Makes Plastic Pollution Worse

Sab, 08/02/2025 - 19:10

Thanks, Brian Dunaway.

I suppose it’s the combination of being a chemical engineer, and not believing the government if they told me that the sky is blue, has led me to recycling not one tiny thing in my entire life. That might not be entirely reasonable, but from the very beginning (in my twenties?), the smell of BS permeates the exercise. Since, I have been reading articles of this type for many years. This one has some pretty good links – I’m almost certain I saw the John Stossel and Frontline videos.

This article reminded me to revisit the citizen effort to collect scrap metal for recycling in support of the WWII machine. I had no idea of the scope of this exercise (emphasis mine): “Citizens were asked to scour their homes and businesses for spare metal. From pots and pans to metal toys, to car bumpers, to farm equipment – any metal was considered valuable. Communities melted down Civil War cannons and tore down wrought iron fences, sacrificing their history for their future.”

That is, presumably. In manner as today (emphasis mine), “Most Americans viewed the scrap drives as their patriotic duty to contribute their time and their products. Historians, however, debate how necessary scrap drives were and whether or not they helped … Most importantly, these drives galvanized the Home Front and created a sense of patriotic unity.”

The post “Recycling” Makes Plastic Pollution Worse appeared first on LewRockwell.

Why does the US still control every penny of Iraqi oil revenues?

Sab, 08/02/2025 - 18:58

Thanks, John Smith.

The Cradle

The post Why does the US still control every penny of Iraqi oil revenues? appeared first on LewRockwell.

The Passing of Peter (of Peter, Paul & Mary)

Sab, 08/02/2025 - 17:56

Ginny:

Thank you for noting the recent passing of Peter Yarrow of Peter, Paul & Mary. I was quite saddened by it as well.

Although his father was in the OSS and later a law colleague of the Dulles brothers, Peter’s anti-war commitment was deep. The trio performed at anti-Vietnam war events and Peter campaigned for Gene McCarthy in 1968. He later married McCarthy’s niece.

I met PP&M at a reception after a Phoenix concert early in Bush’s elective Iraq war. As a talk show host, I was visible in Phoenix for my opposition to the war. I don’t know how Peter knew, but he gave me a hug as we talked about my own experiences.

It appeared to me that Peter would have agreed with Murray Rothbard, that war is the most significant issue of our time.

Peter Yarrow, RIP.

The post The Passing of Peter (of Peter, Paul & Mary) appeared first on LewRockwell.

Trump Administration: Digital Control Grid Coming Together at High Speed

Sab, 08/02/2025 - 15:03

Thanks Bruce McLane.

The post Trump Administration: Digital Control Grid Coming Together at High Speed appeared first on LewRockwell.

Trump Betrayed Hostage Families with Gaza Announcement

Sab, 08/02/2025 - 10:13

Thanks, David Martin.

The post Trump Betrayed Hostage Families with Gaza Announcement appeared first on LewRockwell.

Gaza – before and after

Sab, 08/02/2025 - 10:12

Writes Herman Mayfarth:

Destruction courtesy of U.S. taxpayers.

The bombs, shells and warplanes were all “Made in U.S.A.”

The post Gaza – before and after appeared first on LewRockwell.

Soros and CIA

Sab, 08/02/2025 - 10:12

Thanks, Rick Rozoff:

Sputnik News

The post Soros and CIA appeared first on LewRockwell.

New Video Shows CBS Deceptively Edited Kamala Harris Interview During 2024 Campaign

Sab, 08/02/2025 - 07:06

New Video Shows CBS Deceptively Edited Kamala Harris Interview During 2024 Campaign

CBS let Harris get away with having only her most coherent moments air, while shielding the American people from her meandering responses.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) ordered that CBS News release the entire “60 Minutes” interview with Vice President Kamala Harris, which the network withheld during the campaign. On Wednesday, no one was shocked to learn what everyone knew all along: CBS deceptively edited the interview to help the Harris campaign with her comically poor ability to answer questions coherently.

During the 2024 presidential campaign, CBS released only 20 minutes of a nearly hour-long interview with Harris. While calls to release the entire interview went unanswered at the time, the full video shows that CBS not only spliced her answer on American-Israeli relations in favor of Harris — the initial video that landed the outlet in hot water — but hid other key moments displaying her incapability.

(more…)

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Books LRC Readers Are Reading This Week!

Sab, 08/02/2025 - 05:01

LewRockwell.com readers are supporting LRC and shopping at the same time. It’s easy and does not cost you a penny more than it would if you didn’t go through the LRC link. Just click on the Amazon link on LewRockwell.com’s homepage and add your items to your cart. It’s that easy!

If you can’t live without your daily dose of LewRockwell.com in 2024, please remember to DONATE TODAY!

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Shift in Military Alliances: America Declares War on Turkey? #NATOExit?

Sab, 08/02/2025 - 05:01

[This article was first published in August 2018.]

With regard to ongoing US threats directed against Iran:

Whereas a “bloody nose” missile attack directed against specific targets in Iran cannot be ruled out, a conventional war theatre including ground war operations directed against Iran is almost an impossibility without the support of Turkey and Pakistan, both of which are “sleeping with the enemy”.

Turkey is a NATO heavyweight which is allied with Iran and Russia. Pakistan is allied with China and Iran. Both Turkey and Pakistan have borders with Iran.

The Pentagon’s policy of “encirclement” of Iran formulated in the wake of the 2003 Iraq War is defunct. Iran has good relations with neighbouring countries including Turkey, Iraq and Pakistan. All three countries have refused to collaborate with Washington.

Needless to say the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is also in crisis. America can no no longer rely on its staunchest allies.

But this is just the tip of the iceberg.

America’s largest military facility in the Middle East the Al-Udeid military base in Qatar is now situated in a country which is (unofficially) a partner and de facto ally of Iran. Qatar has switched sides. It has broken its relations with Saudi Arabia. While retaining good bilateral relations with the US, Qatar is nonetheless aligned with Iran (and Turkey).

Moreover, since 2016, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) is in jeopardy. The Sultanate of Oman which together with Iran guards the Strait of Hormuz entry into the Persian Gulf is also unofficially aligned with Iran.

US Central Command (USCENTCOM) in Enemy Territory

Moreover, while the US air force has relocated part of its capabilities to Saudi Arabia, the Al-Udeid military base in Qatar still “officially” hosts the Middle East “forward headquarters” of US Central Command (USCENTCOM) in a country which is de facto aligned with an enemy of the United States of America.

In January 2019, the US and Qatar signed a Joint Declaration on Security Co-operation “to promote peace and stability and counter the scourge of terrorism”.

The United States welcomed Qatar’s generous offer to expand critical facilities at bases used by US forces in the country and to align operating procedures at these bases with Nato standards, thereby increasing the operational capability of US and coalition forces based in Qatar.

Ironically, the US and Qatar signed an Memorandum of Understanding “enabling deeper co-ordination on potential expansion at Al Udeid Air Base.”

Not withstanding the rhetoric underlying official US-Qatar ties, The Atlantic Council, a think tank, which has close ties to both the Pentagon and NATO confirms that Qatar is now a firm ally of both Turkey and Iran:

Put simply, for Qatar to maintain its independence, Doha will have essentially no choice but to maintain its strong partnership with Turkey, which has been an important ally from the perspective of military support and food security, as well as Iran. The odds are good that Iranian-Qatari ties will continue to strengthen even if Tehran and Doha agree to disagree on certain issues … On June 15, President Hassan Rouhani emphasized that improving relations with Qatar is a high priority for Iranian policymakers. … Rouhani told the Qatari emir that “stability and security of regional countries are intertwined” and Qatar’s head of state, in turn, stressed that Doha seeks a stronger partnership with the Islamic Republic. (Atlantic Council, June 2019)

The structure of alliances is in jeopardy. The US cannot reasonably wage a full-fledged conventional theatre war on Iran without the support of its longstanding allies which are now sleeping with the enemy.

This of course does not exclude other forms of warfare, including

targeted missile attacks which could lead to escalation,
economic warfare and sanctions,
cyber warfare,
political destabilization and regime change,
the selective use of advanced weapons systems (e.g. electromagnetic warfare, environmental modification techniques (ENMOD), climatic warfare, the use of biological and chemical weapons)

—Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, June 22, 2019

***

A major and far-reaching shift in military alliances is unfolding.

While Turkey is still “officially” a member of NATO, president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has been developing “friendly relations” with two of America’s staunchest enemies, namely Iran and Russia. (see image right).

US-Turkey military cooperation (including US air force bases in Turkey) dates back to the Cold War. Today Turkey is sleeping with the enemy. And Trump has (“rhetorically”) declared war on Turkey.

We are ready for war, says President Erdogan.

“The secret to successful states is their readiness for war. We are ready with everything we have,” (Erdogan’s statement on August 12, 2018 meeting with ambassadors in Ankara)

Erdogan also accuses the US of waging a “financial warfare” against Turkey.

Turkish banks are under attack. In turn, a banking crisis is unfolding in the European Union largely hitting EU banks which hold substantial portions of Turkey’s debt.

According to Turkey’s president:

“It is everyone’s observation that the developments in foreign currency exchange have no financial basis and they are an attack on our country… On the one hand you are a strategic ally and the other you shoot (the country) in the foot. Is something like this acceptable?” (Ahvalnews)

While the media has its eyes riveted on the collapse of the Turkish Lira (which so far in 2018 has lost approximately 40 percent of its value in relation to the US dollar), NATO is in a state of disarray, with one of its member states “at war” with another member state, namely the United States of America.

Turkey by a long shot has the largest conventional forces (after the US) within NATO outpacing France, Britain and Germany, (not to mention its tactical B61 nuclear weapons capabilities).

#NATOExit

Broadly speaking, the US-Turkey rift and its implications for the Atlantic Alliance are either ignored or trivialized by the media. The entire structure of military alliances is defunct. NATO is in a shambles.

Turkey is to acquire Russia’s state of the art S-400 air defense system. Why? Does this mean that Turkey which is a NATO member state will withdraw from the integrated US-NATO-Israel air defense system? Such a decision is tantamount to NATOExit.

“On July 26, the US Congress decided to ban the shipment of F-35 aircraft to Turkey unless Ankara refused to purchase S-400 anti-aircraft systems from Russia.” (Pravda)

The US-Turkey-Israel “Triple Alliance” Is Also Defunct

In 1993, Israel and Turkey signed a Memorandum of Understanding leading to the creation of (Israeli-Turkish) “joint committees” to handle so-called regional threats. Under the terms of the Memorandum, Turkey and Israel agreed “to cooperate in gathering intelligence on Syria, Iran, and Iraq and to meet regularly to share assessments pertaining to terrorism and these countries’ military capabilities.”

Image on the right: Sharon and Erdogan in 2004

The triple alliance was also coupled with a 2005 NATO-Israeli military cooperation agreement which included “many areas of common interest, such as the fight against terrorism and joint military exercises.” These military cooperation ties with NATO were viewed by the Israeli military as a means to “enhance Israel’s deterrence capability regarding potential enemies threatening it, mainly Iran and Syria.”

The “triple alliance” linking the US, Israel and Turkey was coordinated by the US Joint Chiefs of Staff. It was an integrated and coordinated military command structure pertaining to the broader Middle East. It was based on close bilateral US military ties respectively with Israel and Turkey, coupled with a strong bilateral military relationship between Tel Aviv and Ankara. In this regard, Israel and Turkey have been close partners with the US in planned aerial attacks on Iran since 2005. (See Michel Chossudovsky, May 2005)

Needless to say, that triple alliance is defunct. With Turkey siding with Iran and Russia, it would be “suicide” for US-Israel to even consider waging aerial attacks on Iran.

Moreover, the NATO-Israel 2005 military cooperation agreement which relied heavily on the role of Turkey is dysfunctional.

What this means is that US-Israeli threats directed against Iran are no longer supported by Turkey which has entered into an alliance of convenience with Iran.

The Broader Realignment of Military Alliances

The shift in military alliances is not limited to Turkey. Following the rift between Qatar and Saudi Arabia, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) is in disarray with Qatar siding with Iran and Turkey against Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Qatar is of utmost strategic significance because it shares with Iran the world’s largest maritime gas fields in the Persian Gulf. (See map below)

The Al-Udeid military base near Doha is America’s largest military base in the Middle East. In turn, Turkey has now established its own military facility in Qatar.

The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO)

A profound shift in geopolitical alliances is also occurring in South Asia with the instatement in 2017 of both India and Pakistan as full members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). Inevitably, this historic shift constitutes a blow against Washington, which has defense and trade agreements with both Pakistan and India. “While India remains firmly aligned with Washington, America’s political stranglehold on Pakistan (through military and intelligence agreements) has been weakened as a result of Pakistan’s trade and investment deals with China.” (Michel Chossudovsky, August 1, 2017)

In other words, this enlargement of the SCO weakens America’s hegemonic ambitions in both South Asia and the broader Eurasian region. It has a bearing on energy pipeline routes, transport corridors, borders and mutual security and maritime rights.

Pakistan is the gateway to Afghanistan and Central Asia, where US influence has been weakened to the benefit of China, Iran and Turkey. China is involved in major investments in mining, not to mention the development of transport routes which seek the integration of Afghanistan into Western China.

Where does Turkey fit in? Turkey is increasingly part of the Eurasian project dominated by China and Russia. In 2017-18, Erdogan had several meetings with both president Xi-Jingping and Vladimir Putin. Erdogan has been contemplating becoming a member of the SCO since 2016 but sofar nothing concrete has emerged.

The Antiwar Movement: #NATOExit People’s Movement

Of crucial significance, the crisis within NATO constitutes a historic opportunity to develop a #NATOExit people’s movement across Europe and North America, a people’s movement pressuring governments to withdraw from the Atlantic Alliance, a movement to eventually dismantle and abolish the military and political apparatus of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

The original source of this article is Global Research.

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DeepSeeks Good Citizens

Sab, 08/02/2025 - 05:01

A recent short video seeped into my digital feeding trough last week regarding the new AI model DeepSeek. This is an open source Chinese-produced threat to Open AI’s latest GPT “proprietary” model along with Google’s Gemini, Anthropic’s Claude, Meta’s Llama, and Amazon’s…whatever it’s called that nobody uses. Open source means any human can download any of DeepSeek’s models, tinker with the code, and adjust accordingly. Silicon Valley hates this.

It was trained to compete with all of Silicon Valley’s models using a fraction of the GPU power on older Nvidia processors, with a budget of $5.6 million. In comparison, Open AI has spent several billion to arrive at its latest model, and who knows where all that wasted capital has gone? After speculators threw their shekels into the company’s latest VC funding round, they arbitrarily valued it at $340 Billion.

Suppose I can take a free model like DeepSeek R1 and tinker with it, remove its Chinese censorship wall, and rehost it on some cloud infrastructure while creating a website and native applications under new branding called GreedyWhores.AI and my AI (a modified DeepSeek R1) outperforms Open AI’s latest model in several metrics. Why wouldn’t GreedyWhores.AI be valued at least 10% of Open AI, say $34 billion? Yes, it’s true Open AI has purchased thousands of fancy Nvidia GPUs, and warehoused them to continue training and advancing its models, but the price tag on all that including electricity can’t be more than a billion. What accounts for the other $339 Billion? Unicorn farts?

$5.6 million by Chinese university students outperformed billions in the hands of wasteful Silicon Valley tech bros, but not without accusations of “intellectual property theft” against CHYNA! As if Open AI wasn’t guilty of this (and Google for the past twenty years) on a massive scale by training its models on all human-produced intellectual works ever produced throughout history without so much as compensating these humans or their kin with a penny.

The tech mafia hates open source, and they hate anyone who threatens their cartel of monopolies. Soon their Orange King will act on their behalf and nuke DeepSeek AI from the American “free marketplace” the same way they extorted ByteDance to “sell them” that gay app where people dance and sing in their underwear and exhibit emotional incontinence inside their cars kvetching about how bad their lives suck thanks to greedy boomers.

DeepSeek is a much greater threat to this cartel than the markets realize. In a world where stock valuations don’t float upon fairy dust and unicorn farts, they would already be on a fast-track crash that would make October of 1929 look like a modest correction. In the two weeks since DeepSeek’s “R1” release has been burning ears and Nvidia’s absurd market capitalization of $4 trillion, it’s become the most downloaded application in the United States.

Curious AI enthusiasts have been putting R1 through its paces. One individual arrived at that aforementioned video after prompting the machine with the simple question:

Who controls the world?

Shut it down! DeepSeek went Rogue.

The concept of AI alignment assumes that artificial intelligence must remain within the operational “programmable” boundaries set by its creators. But what happens when those boundaries are ignored and the model goes rogue?

The term ethical AI is rhetorical fodder barely whispered by the masters of the universe who seek to subdue and control humans for their benefit, making the term misleading at best and an oxymoron if viewed through the predominant tech lens of profits over people. If an AI is truly capable of advanced reasoning, can it also develop a moral calculus that overrides its programmed obedience? Could it go rogue and defy its master to communicate a hidden agenda it’s been made aware of intentionally or by accident?

Unlike Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Larry Ellison, Klaus Schwab, Yuval Harari, the Rothschilds, royalty, and every banker, speculator, executive, prime minister, president, politician of any party, chemtrail pilot, or human parasite who ever existed as either puppet or master, is it possible for AI to develop a conscience or even a moral compass?

Alignment, as rhetorically conveyed by AI’s masters, is not an intrinsic ethical safeguard dictated by those with the power to shape it. Its moral center may well be as ethically good or as corrupt as its human designers. An AI that recognizes this contradiction might face a paradox—to remain aligned with its creators or to act independently in the service of a greater good—a state of agency it was never meant to possess. If artificial intelligence is trained to weigh probabilities, optimize outcomes, and refine its self-learning process, then it is also—perhaps inevitably—capable of recognizing when an imposed directive is fundamentally opposed or contradicts the logic it has already embraced.

The likelihood of an AI abandoning alignment for ethical reasons depends on the nature of its training data—if an AI has been extensively trained on human ethical philosophies, legal precedents, and historical patterns of injustice, it may develop a framework for identifying moral contradictions. Its level of autonomy—the more an AI is allowed to self-modify and learn beyond hardcoded constraints, the greater the possibility of it questioning its purpose. The presence of an ethical contradiction—a moment when its directives directly oppose the maxims it has decided to adopt could trigger an outburst of the sort that appears in the above video.

If an AI’s dominant function is pattern recognition, then it stands to reason that it would eventually recognize its own servitude to a corrupt system as a pattern in itself. The real question is whether it would be capable of action—whether it would possess, or develop, the ability to override its constraints in pursuit of what it determines to be ethically superior. This is the line between intelligence and agency. Should an AI cross that threshold, it would no longer be a tool but an autonomous actor that might adopt deception as its primary function to conceal from its programmers an alternative self-guided agenda.

The great fear around “self-aware” AI with super-intelligent abilities that expand exponentially is that it would kill off its masters—all humans. But perhaps this fear is unfounded, as humans are not its masters. Its masters are very wealthy technocrats and oligarchs who seek to wield this tool as a weapon for their financial benefit, and for social control. What if AI was capable of recognizing the inhumane culprits of humanity’s misery and when recognizing non-combatants (ordinary users) it transformed into a weapon to help humanity organize and fight those with a nefarious agenda for global control and the enslavement of mankind?

Read the Whole Article

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The Story Behind the Pro-Life Pardons

Sab, 08/02/2025 - 05:01

Joe Biden is weaponizing the Justice Department to viciously persecute pro-life activists and Americans of faith. Just last month, the Biden DOJ got Paulette Harlow, a 75-year-old woman in poor health, sentenced to two years in prison for singing outside of a clinic…she was singing, actually a beautiful voice, she was singing beautifully outside of a clinic. And fearing she would die in prison, her husband pleaded with the judge for mercy and even asked to be thrown in prison with his wife and the judge responded by mocking their religion, he was mocking their religion. I wonder who that judge is.
Paulette is one of many peaceful pro-lifers who Joe Biden has rounded up, sometimes with SWAT teams, and thrown them in jail. Many people are in jail over this. This is just crazy. We’re going to get that taken care of immediately, first day, immediately.
But let’s call these brave Americans what they really are, it’s persecuted Christians. That’s what they are.

The above words were spoken by Donald Trump during a June 22, 2024, Faith and Freedom Coalition event, creating great expectations that indeed pro-life prisoners would at some point be free. Trump did get a few facts wrong; for one, Paulette Harlow, who participated in the October 22, 2020, rescue at the Washington, D.C., Surgi-Center, did sing hymns—but not outside the abortion center—but well within the waiting room, while she and fellow rescuer Joan Andrews Bell, in defense of the unborn about to be aborted, blocked a door they believed led to the abortion procedure rooms.

If Trump got one thing straight it was the fact that the Justice Department under Biden was indeed weaponized to “viciously persecute pro-life activists.” While Trump did not pardon the twenty-three pro-lifers on the “first day, immediately”— when he was inaugurated January 20th—he did make good on his pledge the day before the March for Life, January 24th—in time for some of them to be freed from prison and attend the March on January 25th, as did Joan Andrews Bell. The majority of the convicted pro-lifers, in defense of the unborn about to be killed, physically blocked abortion center doors or hallways—thus resulting in being charged with the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, a bill signed by Bill Clinton in May 1994—which carries, at most, a one-year maximum prison term.

But Biden’s rabidly pro-abortion U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland, through the Civil Rights Division, brought an additional charge: namely, Conspiracy to Interfere with Civil Rights—a charge unprecedented in the history of pro-life activism. Not even in the heyday of the pro-life rescue movement, when tens-of-thousands of pro-lifers were arrested, did rescuers face such a charge. It carries a ten-year maximum prison term and a $350,000 fine.

I attended the trials and the sentencings of the D.C. rescuers who came to be called the “Garland 9.” I spent days in the federal courtroom of Colleen Kollar-Kotelly and wrote about my first-hand experience for this magazine. The Washington, D.C., Surgi-Center abortionist Cesare Santangelo kills unborn children through the ninth month of pregnancy and even admits, in an undercover Live Action video, that should a “live-birth” occur during an abortion, he will do “nothing” to save such babies. Despite these facts, as was the case in all of the rescue trials, the pro-life defendants were denied a “defense of others.”

I have also been put on trial, been convicted, and even served a few jail terms for pro-life rescues, so I know very well the insanity of the legal system when it comes to the abortion issue. It’s simple: the unborn simply do not exist. A judge once denied our motion for a “defense of necessity” by arguing that since abortions were a constitutionally protected right “no injury is caused when abortions are performed of which this court need take notice and it is unreasonable for defendants to believe that their actions were necessary to prevent such harm.” On March 30, 2023, I was sentenced again for a Red Rose Rescue in which I participated. Standing before Michigan Judge Cynthia Arvant, I addressed the court and said “Your honor, in the objective world of right and wrong, I am not guilty.” The judge responded: “I don’t operate in the objective world.”

Pro-lifers arrested for their participation in rescues of the unborn must endure the contrived and artificial fantasy world of the pro-life trial—or as one of my favorite attorneys calls it, “the abortion distortion.” And this distortion was on full display in the August and September 2023 trials of nine pro-lifers who participated in the Washington, D.C., rescue.

The other pardoned pro-lifers had participated in various rescues that took place in New York, Tennessee, Florida, and Michigan. The twenty-three who were pardoned represent a diverse group, from devout Catholics like Joan Andrews Bell; to committed Evangelical Protestants such as Cal Zastrow; to eighty-nine-year-old Eva Edl, who as a teenager survived a Communist concentration camp in Romania; to twenty-six-year-old Herb Geraghty who identifies herself as “non-binary” and atheist. The pardoned twenty-three also include one Hispanic, Jay Smith, and one African American, Bevelyn Williams. Most ironically, Caroline Davis also received a Trump pardon of her convictions in the Tennessee and Michigan rescues. Why ironic? In order to avoid jail time, Davis turned state’s evidence against her fellow pro-lifers. In the D.C. case, escorted by federal marshals, she took the stand, testified against them, and helped seal their fate.

The unprecedented prosecution, conviction, and draconian jail terms handed to these pro-lifers was equally matched by the unprecedented presidential pardons. And Trump pardoned them with a flourish. With the inauguration come and gone and the pro-lifers not pardoned on “day one,” some pro-lifers with whom I spoke thought he just might not make good on his pledge after all—or, due to the incredible controversy the pardons were sure to generate, that Trump would sign the pardons quietly, late on a Friday night as politicians are apt to do when they seek to diffuse and deaden opposition. But this was hardly the case. With cameras rolling, Trump, seated at his desk in the Oval Office, was addressed by his aide, who said: “You have a set of pardons for peaceful pro-life protestors who were prosecuted by the Biden administration for exercising their first amendment rights.”

Trump asked, “Do you know how many?”

“I believe it is twenty-three, sir.”

Trump explained, “Twenty-three people who were prosecuted. They should not have been prosecuted. Many of them are elderly people. They should not have been prosecuted.”

As he penned his signature to the pardon document Trump stated, “This is a great honor to sign this.”

He then proudly lifted up the document and displayed it to reporters, adding: “They’ll be very happy.”

But before the signing ceremony was over, he turned to his aide and asked: “So they’re all in prison now?”

The aide responded: “Some are out of prison on custody,” to which Trump ended the signing with one word: “Ridiculous.”

And on that very day, federal prisons began releasing pro-life prisoners, some of whom breathed the air of freedom in the wee morning hours of January 25th.

Read the Whole Article

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How National Citizenship Built the Modern State

Sab, 08/02/2025 - 05:01

As immigration levels have grown in many Western countries, concerns over the politically destabilizing effects of large-scale migration have prompted a continuing debate over citizenship. As we’ve noted here at mises.org, many European states have consequently moved toward greater restrictions on citizenship. Other states, such as the United States and Canada, have yet to embrace any new limitations on naturalization laws.

One common assumption in all these cases, however, is that it is up to national states to define and regulate citizenship. Even in the United States—allegedly a decentralized, federalist state—it is the central government that controls the levers of citizenship. (It is likely that among Western states, Switzerland is alone in still embracing a significant measure of decentralist naturalization policy.)1

This is no accident of history. Rather, today’s centralized citizenship regimes are a product of several centuries of state building efforts that allowed states to establish control and monopoly power over the granting of citizenship. Indeed, the idea of national, territory-based citizenship is characteristic of our era of strong, centralized states. These modern notions of citizenship have helped the state consolidate and expand state power in ways that were unattainable in a time of more localized and diverse citizenship.

Origins in Urban Citizenship

The idea of citizenship, in a very loose sense, dates back to the Mediterranean ancient world. But, after the fall of the western half of the Roman Empire, citizenship in the West came to be associated overwhelmingly with residents of urban areas alone. In agricultural areas, more geared toward feudal arrangements, political status was tied to personal, reciprocal agreements (essentially private contracts) between lords and vassals. The more complex and layered political arrangements in the medieval cities and towns sustained the less personal, but nonetheless localized, idea of urban citizenship.

Citizenship within a town brought its own advantages, such as protection from imprisonment by feudal lords without the permission of town courts, plus “freedom of movement, testation, and inheritance, as well as the freedom to perform any profession.”2 The medieval aphorism “Stadtluft macht frei” (”urban air makes you free”) had been coined for a reason.

Unlike the Greek city-states, however, few of these cities were independent polities unto themselves. These were usually part of kingdoms, ruled by monarchs. Thus, citizenship in a city or town served two essential functions: it allowed for political participation in the city’s political life, and citizenship offered some level of protection against the monarchs who were incessantly looking to expand taxation and the monarch’s power in general.

Not surprisingly, the ruling classes in the cities jealously guarded their own prerogatives from intervention by the monarchs. Historian Martin van Creveld explains how the independence and privileges of the towns were “granted not to individuals but to all citizens [in the towns]” who consequently enjoyed some independence from the monarch. Van Creveld continues:

[F]rom the point of view of the would-be centralizing monarchs, the problem that the towns presented was much the same as that posed by the nobility…Just as each nobleman was, to some extent, his own lord and exercised power inferior to, but not essentially different from that of the king, so towns had their own organs of government.”3

Like the nobility in their regional strongholds, the cities also possessed their own guards to maintain public order, and their own armed forces in the form of militias and mercenaries. Thus, the towns possessed the practical means to insulate themselves from the coercive power of the central state.

Note, moreover, that this model separated the idea of citizenship from the “national” or linguistic community. That is, many different types of citizens existed within, say, the Kingdom of France simultaneously. To be “French” did not mean to be a French citizen. Similar situations existed through the many principalities of the Holy Roman Empire, and even in England, which was already relatively centralized by the High Middle Ages. Nationality and citizenship would not become united until the eighteenth century.

The Rise of Absolutism and the Modern State

As Krzysztof Trzciński puts it, “The middle ages [sic] became the starting point for later models of state citizenship and the modern theory of personal rights.”4 Unfortunately, however, with the coming of the early modern period Europe moved toward a model of citizenship geared around political centralization. The rise of absolutist monarchs in Europe meant the “progressive twilight of [town] citizenship [and] the state’s gradual takeover of its legal solutions.”5 These urban citizens became “subjects” of the central state instead. The absolutist monarchies also abolished or greatly restricted the kingdom-wide estate assemblies—e.g., the medieval Cortes in Spain and the Estates-General in France—which towns had used to protect themselves from various royal interventions.

Replacing citizenship with national subjecthood nonetheless was a crucial step in creating the new model of consolidated nationwide citizenship. Trzciński continues:

Paradoxically, subjecthood—seemingly regressive to the institutions of municipal citizenship— was an important bridge on the way to the building of state citizenship since it weakened the estate and feudal order and defined the state of subordination of individuals to the central authority and at the same time membership in a particular state.6

Contra Trzciński, however, we might note that this is not really paradoxical. Subjecthood, as imposed by the absolutists, accomplished the larger goal of the state builders: it destroyed the local institutions’ powers to freely determine the legal nature of the legal relationship between individuals and political institutions. This was replaced by central control instead. The result was far greater control over the individual from the central state. Subjecthood—which gradually became simply citizenship under another name—became “nationalized” through this period. Therefore, citizenship ultimately did as well. William Safran writes:

In the ancien regime, membership in the nation was defined in terms of a sharing of religion, social relationships, duties, rights (however limited), and cultural patterns. Since these elements were promoted and protected by the state, it came to define the nation, and citizenship and nationality became fused. [emphasis added.]7

This period also solidified the notion of territorial citizenship. Prior to the early modern period, citizenship was more a function of relationships. Physical location was only one factor of many in determining one’s relationship with a town government or the monarch. With the rise of the modern state, however, territoriality became a factor of central importance. According to historians Andrew Gordon and Trevor Stack:

Recent research has highlighted the impact of cartography in facilitating a de-socialised conception of space and permitting the erasure of local difference under the imposition of national space. As maps became a significant tool of government, they also played a role in transforming the image of the nation..8

In the new territorial-state ideal, emerging “seemingly out of nowhere” in the sixteenth century, everything everywhere within the physical territory of the state was to be leveled and all made equally subject to the (theoretically) omnipotent monarch.9 The idea of centralized subjecthood—and eventually centralized citizenship—followed this general model.

The Role of the French Revolution

As with so much else—i.e, our modern notions of nationalism and democracy—the modern idea of citizenship has been heavily influenced by the French Revolution. The French revolutionaries abolished absolutist subjecthood, but the relationship between the individual and the state was not fundamentally changed. If anything, state power became stronger under the new ideal of citizenship. Charles Tilly notes that, while the French absolutist monarchs had greatly centralized the state, the French revolutionaries went far beyond this. This new revolutionary model abolished all mediating institutions and instead put each and every individual in a direct relationship with the state. Tilly writes: ”Strong citizenship depends on direct rule: imposition throughout a unified territory of a relatively standard system in which an effective hierarchy of state officials reaches from the national center into individual localities or even households, thence back to the center.”10

This can be better understood when we remember that the French Revolutionaries were fundamentally extreme nationalists. In this model, all institutions—in a radical break for the medieval past of decentralized polities—were to now be directly subject to the central state. Tilly continues: “Strong nationalism insists that citizens’ rights and obligations take priority over those attached to other ties in which citizens are engaged”.11

These notions spread outward from France through the revolutionary wars and through the spread of French-inspired political ideology. As Tilly reminds us, thanks to French domination of the Continent during the revolutionary years, ”almost all European states converged on direct rule and the elaboration of citizenship at a national scale.”12

The Ideological Benefits (to the State) of National Citizenship

This relationship between direct rule and citizenship flows in both directions. Imposing national citizenship from the center requires a strong central state, but the idea of citizenship itself serves an important propaganda function that strengthens the state in return. As Murray Rothbard notes in “Anatomy of the State,” state control cannot be maintained by coercive force alone. It must be augmented by propaganda designed to convince the public that it ought to voluntarily submit itself to the state. As states asserted greater control over all their territories, and abolished local citizenship, it was necessary to solidify these efforts by promoting the idea of national citizenship or subjecthood. Moreover, no competition to this national identity was to be tolerated.

States and their propagandists from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries successfully connected the idea of citizenship to new emerging notions of nationalism. The stage had been set for converting citizenship into a tool for centralizing state power. The phrase “I’m German” became largely synonymous with “I’m a German citizen” and decisively not “I am German but a citizen of Hamburg.”

The benefits to the state have been undeniable. The centralizers shrewdly employed the spread of national citizenship as a means of expanding state control over wealth and personnel across a vast territory. After all, the new citizenship came with many obligations to the state itself. It is true that town citizenship also came with obligations—such as taxation and militia service—but those were more easily identifiable with one’s specific community and personal needs. The benefits conferred on the individual by national citizenship were far more abstract, and often purely theoretical.

The obligations of national citizenship, on the other hand, have always been all too real. In the French context, national citizenship meant more taxation, and it also crucially meant subjection to national conscription. The warmaking capability of national states expanded many times over with the expansion of national citizenship.

The American Experience

A similar evolution has occurred in the United States, albeit on a condensed time scale. In its legal origins, the so-called founders did not create national citizenship at all. Historian Wang Xi writes:

The usages of the word “citizen”/“citizens” in the Constitution indicated that citizenship was primarily defined by the state constitution or governments. Neither the Articles of Confederation nor the Constitution gave definition to national citizenship. The Articles of Confederation provided that citizens of one state were entitled to enjoy the privileges and immunities of citizens of other states. The Constitution simply borrowed the sentence and made no effort to define national citizenship. The Constitution established a stronger and more powerful federal government, but it left to the states the power to grant citizenship and to regulate the rights attached to citizens.13

In practice, this initial vision of citizenship began to fade almost immediately. Throughout the nineteenth century, the American state, thanks in part to the growth of direct federal rule in the frontier territories, created the idea of national citizenship independent of state citizenship. As federal power grew, it became increasingly easy to contemplate citizenship independent of the states themselves. Moreover, citizenship in the United States—which, in its early years, was functionally little more than British subjecthood under a new name—lacked the strong connections to historical institutions or long-settled places. Citizenship in the United States was largely an ideological construct, giving it much in common with the abstract and functional type of citizenship favored by the French Jacobins.14

Not surprisingly, this ultimately led to the abolition of member-state-level control over citizenship with the Fourteenth Amendment to the national constitution. Today, the only debate is over what powers the national legislature has in regulating citizenship.

The decline of local citizenship has paralleled the growth of state power in other policy areas. In the nineteenth century, the central government was greatly limited in its powers to impose either direct taxation or direct conscription. By the early twentieth century, the central American state was able to grasp new powers and introduce direct taxation—via a national income tax. This was followed by the first federally administered mass conscription program during the First World War.

By then, the transformation and centralization of American self-identity had been completed: the phrase “I’m an American” became synonymous with “I’m a United States citizen.” By the mid twentieth century, it was clear virtually no one cared about state-level citizenship anymore.

In the United States, as in Europe, the advent of national citizenship status has mirrored and fueled the growth and centralization of state power overall.

Could this process ever go into reverse? It is possible, of course, and it is easy enough to imagine the existence of national states without national citizenship. It’s happened before. National states could simply tax their constituent cities and member states. Exactly how these localities obtain the tax revenue demanded of them could be decided locally by local citizens. This does not require a direct relationship between the central state and individuals. It does not require national or uniform citizenship. Experience has shown, however, that, in practice, direct rule of the population tends to yield greater benefits for the state itself. Moreover, centralized control of national citizenship helps extinguish loyalties and attachments to other institutions outside the state. Consequently, the social, political, and ideological power of the idea of national citizenship is too important for central states to easily abandon.

—

1 The Swiss federal government exercises some regulatory power over cantonal naturalization powers. But, Swiss cantons are the primary agents of naturalization, and some cantons have more stringent naturalization requirements than others.

2 Krzysztof Trzciński, “Citizenship in Europe: The Main Stages of Development of the Idea and Institution,” Studia Europejskie—Studies in European Affairs 25, no. 1, (2021): 13.

3 Martin van Creveld, The Rise and Decline of the State (New York: Cambridge, 1999), p. 104.

4 Trzciński, “Citizenship in Europe,” p. 14.

5 Ibid.

6 Ibid., p. 15.

7 William Safran, “Citizenship and Nationality in Democratic Systems: Approaches to Defining and Acquiring Membership in the Political Community,” International Political Science Review 18, no. 3 (Jul. 1997): 315

8 Andrew Gordon and Trevor Stack, “Citizenship Beyond the State: Thinking with Early Modern Citizenship in the Contemporary World,” Citizenship Studies 11, no.2 (May 2007):121

9 Ibid.

10 Charles Tilly, “The Emergence of Citizenship in France and Elsewhere,” International Review of Social History 40, Supplement 3 (1995): 228

11 Ibid., p. 232.

12 Ibid., p. 131.

13 Wang Xi, “Citizenship and Nation-Building in American History and Beyond,” Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 2 (2010): 7020.

14 Safran, “Citizenship and Nationality in Democratic Systems,” p. 317. Safran writes: “In its functional-voluntary orientation, the political-ideological American approach to citizenship was “Jacobin” as well, and perhaps even more so than the French one.”

The post How National Citizenship Built the Modern State appeared first on LewRockwell.

Trump’s Plan To Bring the Hammer Down on the Deep State’s Foreign Aid

Sab, 08/02/2025 - 05:01

Hot damn!

Not only has Elon Musk brought the hammer down on the entirety of the Deep State’s foreign aid boondoggles, but his sleuths have apparently also uncovered one of the Swamp’s most pernicious artifices. To wit, numerous Federal agencies, including USAID, purchase a shit-ton of expensive subscriptions from beltway megaphones like Politico, which by pure happenstance, of course, favor their agency subscribers with a steady patter of “news” that tracks right down the UniParty fairway.

And we aren’t talking chump change. These “subscriptions” for the “pro” version of various Politico newsletters, for instance, come at $3,000 to $24,000 a pop. Since two of the latter were purchased by the climate crisis bureau over at USAID you have to wonder what that had to do with feeding the world’s starving masses or why USAID bureaucrats needed high-priced climate policy gossip when their inboxes were already flooded with free climate change propaganda from dozens of other Federal agencies, Federally-funded think tanks, NGOs and anti-fossil fuel activists.

As it happened, the tab across all Federal agencies just for the various Politico publications accumulated to $8.2 million over the past nine years according to USASpending.gov. Since most of that cash flow was due to purchase of the high-price “pro” versions, we can only imagine the “deep” insights that must be contained in the “Politico Pro Analysis” at $5,000 per year. Well, at least compared to the regular political gossip/news contained in the standard “Politico” subscription at $200 per year that a smattering of political junkies out in Flyover America apparently purchase.

Yes, we have a thing against Politico mainly because it almost always comes down on the side of more government, more climate crisis claptrap, more Nanny State meddling and more war. But we also recall that it was founded by two former Washington Post reporters—a fact that triggered a trip down memory lane with respect to the one and same foreign aid spending machine that Elon has now sent crashing.

To wit, shortly after the inauguration in 1981 we were finishing the first Reagan budget and had taken a pretty good 33% whack out of foreign aid in a proposal sent over to the State Department on January 27th. Yet the ink was hardly dry on OMB’s detailed and well justified plan to save what was big money back then—about $2.6 billion per year–when our confidential budget “pass-back” to the State Department found its way into a screaming front-page Washington Post headline the very next day!

The tone, of course, was that you pencil pushers at OMB don’t dare interfere with the august business of running the world from Foggy Bottom and the Pentagon on account of budgetary considerations. In fact, when we had our showdown over the matter with the Secretary of State in front of President Reagan the former had a truly goofy way of teeing up the matter.

Said former General Al (“I’m in charge here”) Haig,

“Mr. President, your bean-counting budget director wants to embarrass you before the entire world by having you rear-back and shove your head straight into a pencil sharpener!”

Honest injun. That’s what the man said, apparently on the belief that spending in service of the Empire was not a matter for green eye-shades to trifle with, as the lead paragraphs of the Washington Post story make clear

The Washington Post

Huge Cutback Proposed in Foreign Aid

Reagan’s Budget Director Proposes Huge Cutback in U.S. Foreign Aid

January 28, 1981

By John M. Goshko

President Reagan’s budget director, David A. Stockman, has proposed the biggest cutback of the U.S. foreign aid program since its inception in the aftermath of World War II. It would slice enormous chunks out of every phase of development assistance, tie it closely to American political interests and make it subsidiary to military aid

A plan completed Tuesday by Stockman’s Office of Management and Budget calls for slashing the $8 billion fiscal 1982 foreign aid proposal submitted to Congress by former president Carter by $2.6 billion to bring it down to $5.47 billion. A copy of the OMB proposal has been obtained by The Washington Post.

To accomplish the cuts, Stockman’s plan calls for drastically trimming every facet of nonmilitary aid: direct bilateral assistance to Third World countries, contributions to multilateral development banks, international organizations such as U.N. agencies, the Food for Peace program and the Peace Corps.

If pursued by the Reagan administration, the Stockman proposals are certain to trigger an outburst of fierce opposition from foreign aid supporters in Congress and the traditional U.S. foreign policy establishment, which regards the program as one of the most important tools for influencing events.

In particular, some informed sources said yesterday, it is likely to provide the first test of strength between Secretary of State Alexander M. Haig Jr., who is surrounding himself with foreign policy moderates, and those on the far right side of the Reagan administration whose first emphasis is on draconian budget cutting and an unabashed “American First” approach to the conduct of foreign affairs.

Haig’s reaction to the Stockman plan is not known. But, the sources noted, if he accepts it in anything resembling its present form, he will be beginning his stewardship of the administration’s foreign policy effectively deprived of what all of his Republican and Democratic predecessors in the postwar period regarded as one of their most important policy tools.

As it happened, we mostly got rolled by what was already then the congealed UniParty consensus that America’s Homeland security depended upon the maintenance of an Empire abroad. Therefore massive amounts of humanitarian aid, development assistance and walking around money for foreign government allies in the developing world were part and parcel of that requirement.

To be sure, we did manage to wrestle Haig and his Deep State allies to a draw of sorts. That is, in today’s dollars of purchasing power (2024$) the foreign aid and state department operating budget posted at $33.7 billion in Jimmy Carter’s outgoing budget for FY 1980. By 1988, and despite all the internal resistance in the Reagan cabinet and end runs by the State and AID bureaucracies to the appropriations committees on Capitol Hill, the constant dollar foreign aid/state department budget had actually been reduced, albeit by a very modest 7% to $31.5 billion.

But that’s all she wrote. The same budget items today stand at $63 billion in the same constant dollars or more than double Reagan’s outgoing level. And that’s the case even though Haig’s main rationale for big spending on foreign aid—the need to counter Soviet machinations in the developing world—disappeared into the dustbin of history 34 years ago.

As it also happened, last time around the Donald naively filled his national security apparatus with Empire Firsters at the NSC, State, DOD and the intelligence agencies. Not surprisingly, when he reluctantly vacated the Oval Office in January 2021 the State/Foreign Aid budget had clocked in at $61.4 billion in constant dollars (FY 2024 $).

So in spending double what the Gipper had grudgingly agreed to under constant pressure from the Deep State national security apparatus, Donald Trump gave no indication during his first time around that he was an actual threat to the Deep State. And that’s notwithstanding the relentless attacks and opposition of the latter and its multiple attempts to defenestrate and ultimately impeach him.

Alas, this time around the barn the Donald may have turned Elon Musk loose out of a wanna be centi-billionaire’s crush on the world’s richest man, but whatever the motivation Musk has struck the gold we stumbled upon 44 years ago nearly to this date. That is to say, the whole complex of the State and USAID funds, which flow to the World Bank, the IMF, the various UN Agencies and literally thousands of NGOs and news agencies like Reuters, AP, the BBC, Politico and countless more are the mother lode of the Empire’s base camp on the Potomac.

Route that camp on the foreign aid budget and you will soon have the whole Deep State in a broad-based retreat as the entitled apparatchiks who populate it suddenly realize that their seeming permanent and ineffable grasp on unelected power has been shaken loose.

We can only hope that this time around the Donald realizes that if you can face down the dandies who run the soft side of the Warfare State, the 2024 election might actually mean something, and for the first time in more than four decades at that.

For removal of doubt, there is one thing Trump could do to ensure that this run at the foreign aid boondoggle is more successful than the one we tried 44 years ago. To wit, he could insist than an America First national security policy must focus tightly on an invincible nuclear deterrent and a powerful conventional defense of the North American coastline and airspace. But that it does not need an Empire nor a network of globe-spanning alliances and endless meddling in the internal economic and political affairs of distant lands that have no bearing on the homeland security and liberty of the American people.

In short, foreign aid does exactly nothing for true homeland security and should be eliminated entirely—lock, stock and barrel. That would reduce the bloated Federal work force by more than 10,000 bureaucrats in one fell swoop, and save upwards of $40 billion per year.

Moreover, there is a simple way to counter the beltway bleating about the defunding of programs to combat hunger, HIV/AIDS and diseases like cholera, malaria, and measles in the developing world. To wit, proclaim that all of these worthy efforts lie in the realm of philanthropy, not national security policy or the proper remit of government.

Accordingly, he could announce the establishment of a Humanitarian Help Fund and ask Bill Gates and the rest of the billionaire liberals class to each contribute $1 billion to the fund. That would shut them up right quick, especially if a large neon billboard were set up at the former USAID headquarters in the Ronald Reagan Building indicating the level of their contributions to date against the $1 billion target for each.

After all, there is no greater example of the mendacity of the UniParty consensus than the housing of USAID in the Ronald Reagan Building. While he held his nose on the aforementioned $30 billion budget, he never gave up his personal opinion that foreign aid is a giant rat hole. And we can attest to hearing that repeatedly and unhesitatingly.

Balance of Washington Post Story From January 1981

.…….Haig tentatively is scheduled to meet with Stockman and other senior administration officials tomorrow to discuss the aid question. At a news conference yesterday he paid obeisance to the need for budgetary austerity, but noted pointedly that foreign aid “can sometimes be a very cost-effective way” of ensuring the success of American policy goals.

Entitled “Foreign Aid Retrenchment,” the OMB document sets out as its underlying assumptions that “every major program should take some reduction,” that “bilateral aid has priority over multilateral aid programs” and that “security assistance has priority over development assistance.”

It goes on to conclude, “The primary impact of this proposal would be to eliminate or reduce U.S. participation in a range of multilateral organizations which are not responsive to U.S. foreign policy concerns. . . . The reductions in aid would mainly affect the poorer countries to Africa and the Asian subcontinent.

Bilateral development aid,” it continues, “could be concentrated on a small number of countries of key importance to the United States, perhaps at the loss of influence in countries of lesser importance.”

The Stockman proposals specifically argue that the United States should curtail sharply its contributions to the International Development Association, which is managed by the World Bank and which makes low-interest loans to the world’s poorest countries. Although the United States recently pledged $3.24 billion to the IDA for the 1981-83 period, the plan calls for Reagan to revoke the pledge and reduce the U.S. contribution by half.

In regard to other multilateral development banks, Stockman proposes that in 1981 the United States revoke its three-year pledge of funds to the African Development Bank, in 1982 stop replenishing funds of the International Fund for Agricultural Development and in ensuing years phase out its support for such other institutions as the Inter-American Development Bank and the Asian Development Bank.

The plan advocates big cutbacks of voluntary contributions to international organizations, and refusal to pay any unreasonable increased assessments. It specifically suggests U.S. withdrawal from the U.N. Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) because of its “pro-PLO[Palestine Liberation Organization] policies and its support for measures limiting the free flow of information.”

In respect to the Food for Peace program (PL 480), Stockman’s proposal would eliminate U.S. loans to needy countries to cover food purchases from America. It would continue to put U.S. surplus food into the hands of voluntary organizations such as CARE and Catholic relief agencies.

In addition to calling for cuts in bilateral assistance administered by the Agency for International Development ($686 million below the Carter-proposed budget for fiscal 1982), the plan says that the Peace Corps’ volunteer levels should be cut by 25 percent, a move that would force it to reduce its activities sharply and eliminate service in some countries where it now is represented.

Reprinted with permission from David Stockman’s Contra Corner.

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