Lew Rockwell Institute

Iago, in Shakespeare’s Othello, is one of the most fascinating and peculiar villains in all of literature. Though he is constantly deceiving and manipulating Othello and everyone else, in asides he lets the audience know his true, malevolent intentions. One of his most complex verbal formulations is the following:

Heaven is my judge, not I for love and duty,
But seeming so for my peculiar end.
For when my outward action doth demonstrate
The native act and figure of my heart
In compliment extern, ’tis not long after
But I will wear my heart upon my sleeve
For daws to peck at. I am not what I am.

In other words, the feelings of love and duty he expresses are not true, but a false appearance of these for his “peculiar end.” His “peculiar end” is the destruction of Othello and Desdemona.

And then comes the disturbing image that only an imagination as fertile as Shakespeare’s could imagine.

But I will wear my heart upon my sleeve

For daws to peck at. I am not what I am.

By this he means he will outwardly show his (false) feelings (“wear my heart upon my sleeve”) while at the same time representing his heart as a rotten thing to be eaten by carrion birds (jackdaws, a species of crow).

In recent days, Charlie Kirk’s critics have cited some of his controversial statements in a grotesque gambit to explain and even justify the coldblooded murder of the young man. One of Kirk’s (purported) statements that has been singled out for special derision is the following.

I can’t stand the word empathy, actually. I think empathy is a made up new age term that does a lot of damage.

I suspect that this statement has been taken out of context, but even if if it hasn’t, I believe it’s clear what he meant by it, and that he had a valid point.

In our current culture that champions victimhood, expressions of empathy for favored victims have become a variation of virtue signaling—that is, a means for phony people to promote and morally aggrandize themselves.

Those who offer such expressions of empathy for favored “victims” confer a perverse form of praise and success on the “victims,” thereby encouraging them to remain victims instead of doing the hard work necessary to forge a path forward to well-being and success. In this false and corrupt game, the “empath” gets to feel morally superior and the “victim” gets attention and status for being a victim.

Iago had the self-awareness to know and confess that he was a treacherous “knave” who faked love and loyalty for his “peculiar end.” He doesn’t explicate his motive, but hints that it’s a combination of sexual jealousy, envy, and resentment.

This article was originally published on Courageous Discourse.

The post Wearing Empathy on One’s Sleeve appeared first on LewRockwell.

A young man anxious about his immortal soul approaches his pastor to complain about so many mediocre souls he’s forced to keep company with at Mass. “There must be a parish somewhere,” he asks, “where people are actually saints? Would you please direct me to it?” Suppressing a smile, the kind pastor tells him that, of course, there is such a parish. “Only you must remember,” he advises the young man, “that from the first moment you join such a parish, its perfection will have been diminished by your membership in it.”

Yes, the story is apocryphal, but that’s not the point of it. In fact, as Chesterton would say, “it’s as plain as a potato.” Which is that for certain rarefied souls, the perfect Church would be one so pure that no human being could possibly be a part of it. Only angels need apply.

Not exactly the sort of Church Jean Daniélou had in mind in writing his little book. An arrangement of that sort, he would argue, would never be acceptable to Christ’s Mystical Body, whose thirst for souls remains as wide as creation itself, and no less generous than God’s offer of salvation, which is extended to all, sinners included. Indeed, to disdain a Church along those lines, a Church so promiscuous as to desire the company of the impure, would amount to an act of abdication, of surrendering the entire sacramental mission of the Church herself, wiping out whole redemptive possibilities envisioned by Christ. Who has precisely come, explains Daniélou,

to save all that has been made. Redemption is concerned with all creation, civilization is part of the order of creation…is sick and needs to be healed like all things that pertain to man in his wounded state…Christianity must take up and consecrate all that has to do with man.

Such a strategy, no more sweeping that which can be imagined, will necessarily include especially the least morally prepossessing of people, which is to say, ourselves. Didn’t Christ come primarily for people like us? For whom, as the poet Eliot expresses it,

Our only health is the disease
If we obey the dying nurse [i.e., the Church]
Whose constant care is not to please
But remind of our and Adam’s curse,
And that, to be restored, our sickness must grow worse.
The whole earth is our hospital 
Endowed by the ruined millionaire
Wherein, if we do well, we shall die   
Die of the absolute paternal care
That will not leave us, but prevents us everywhere…

The problem with the first solution, therefore, to which only those as pure as the driven snow feel themselves drawn, is that it would effectively abandon not only the poor, who are especially in need of grace, but civilization as well, of which grace can make use in order to assist the poor in coming home to God. Meanwhile, by their very rejection of a Church covered with the blood and the dust of so many suspect members—a Church “mud-splashed from history,” as Daniélou would say, describing the Church he loves best—they betray a sheer Catharist fixation upon a Church no more at home in this world than they are themselves. Like their medieval forbears—or, to stretch far back into the first centuries of the Christian era, a philosopher like Plotinus, a man so ashamed to be in the body that he refused to give out his address—they really are too, too fastidious for the flesh.

And by the poor, incidentally, Daniélou does not mean material poverty, people with little money and fewer prospects. He means, rather, those who are spiritually disadvantaged, people wanting in the stuff of heroism, their souls steeped in mediocrity and sloth. Alas, their numbers are legion. He tells us,

The Church has been given by God himself the task of leading men to this heavenly city, and has therefore the right to ask of the earthly city that it put no obstacle in the way…a Christian people cannot exist without a milieu to sustain it.

A milieu, Daniélou insists, the maintenance of which will require “creating an order in which personal fulfillment is possible,” especially that highest fulfillment found in prayer. “If it cannot create the conditions in which man can completely fulfill himself,” he says, “it becomes an impediment to that fulfillment.”

Even the most spiritually destitute among us, people whose energies and lives are consumed by material and sensual pursuits, even they have been called to prayer, however tepid or episodic the exercise. And here Daniélou identifies three levels of human life, each of ascending importance, the last of which culminating in prayer. And pursuant to whatever level of fulfillment may be appropriate at the moment, Daniélou will argue the role and relevance of politics in helping ensure its place in the public life. In other words, it is the business of any humane social order to help optimize human fulfillment.

There is, to begin with, mastery of the material world, or technology; this is man in relation to things. A city that does not allow for gainful and honest employment is an inhuman city. This is followed by the whole order of interpersonal relations rooted in justice and love; this is man in relation to other men. If the city took no interest in the social life of its citizens, making it impossible for people to interact, it would be an inhuman city.

And, finally, there is the order of adoration, of man in relation to God. And, once again, were the city not to make any provision at all for its citizens to pray, to talk to God, it would be an inhuman city. At the end of the day, therefore, no decent or sane city can remain hostile or indifferent to those things which aim at the perfection of the human personality, which necessarily includes access to God and the salvation He has promised.

“It is unreal and dangerous,” concludes Daniélou, “to accept separation…to consider that the Church and the civil society ought to move in two separate worlds…it leaves that society to shape itself in an incomplete and inhuman manner.” To countenance such separation, he warns, is really to indulge “that most detestable form of idealism which separates spiritual existence from its material and sociological substratum.” And separates, as well, the poor from salvation.

Read the Whole Article

The post Optimizing Human Fulfillment appeared first on LewRockwell.

A “false flag” is a complex military-intelligence undertaking which consists in triggering events which enable you to blame your enemy for starting the war.

It’s an instrument of deception which in recent history has enabled US-NATO to justify launching numerous “humanitarian wars” or so-called “Just Wars”. (Resposibility to Protect, R2P)

***

This tactic has been used throughout history.

Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand which triggered World War I (1914), Pearl Harbor (1941), Gulf of Tonkin, (Vietnam War, 1964) 9/11, Gaza (2023), and many more.

Today we are at the crossroads of the most serious crisis in World history. False Flags have become increasingly sophisticated and dangerous.

The original source of this article is Global Research.

The post False Flags, Playing With Fire appeared first on LewRockwell.

Ginny Garner wrote:

Now why would that be? See admission at 19:45.

The post Ben Shapiro’s Security Team was in Touch With Charlie Kirk’s Security Team on Day Kirk was Assassinated appeared first on LewRockwell.

Ginny Garner wrote:

Lew,

He told Patrick Bet David, a big supporter of Israel, Netanyahu was ethnically cleansing Palestinians.

Want to see the EXACT SENTENCE Charlie said that ended his life?

No hyperbole intended. pic.twitter.com/JNUjGJXKdk

— Brandon Taylor Moore (@LetsGoBrando45) September 15, 2025

The post Is This What Ended Charlie Kirk’s Life? appeared first on LewRockwell.

Ginny Garner wrote:

Lew,

At the prayer vigil for Charlie Kirk at the Kennedy Center, RFK Jr. credited Kirk with being the primary architect of his unification with Trump during the 2024 presidential election. This proves Kirk was extremely effective at driving political change. That statement is at 2:05 in this video. “More than any other figure in our country, he led the effort to restore free speech.” Kirk was also called one of the greatest political minds and activists in history along with JFK, RFK, and MLK. 

https://t.co/53NPBsbclq

— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) September 14, 2025

The post RFK Jr. Says Charlie Kirk Convinced Him to Endorse Trump appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, Rick Rozoff.

The post Gen Z Women Are Obsessed With Mental Illness, 72% Make It Their Whole Personality appeared first on LewRockwell.

The ‘Golden Age’ is not looking very golden, unless you happen to own actual gold. Government debts and deficits are increasing, Americans are paying 86% of the tariffs (according to Goldman Sachs), and The Fed is expected to crank up the printing presses by lowering interest rates, which will further increase the prices that American consumers pay for goods and services.

The post Trump Predicts “Biggest Boom” In History — We Say “Biggest Bubble” In History appeared first on LewRockwell.

Click here:

Gateway Pundit

The post Three Million March in London Against the Invasion appeared first on LewRockwell.

Click here:

Eric’s Substack

The post Trump Now Pushes Europeans to Intensify War Against Russia appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, Suzan Mazur.

Gulf Cooperation Council’s Peninsula Shield Force?

The post Oscillations—Gulf Cooperation Council’s Peninsula Shield Force: WHERE IS IT??? appeared first on LewRockwell.

The assassination of Charlie Kirk is likely to be a pivot point, though the direction after the pivot is anything but clear. From the perspective of a decade hence, what is to come will seem logical and explicable, even inevitable. But right now, we are in the middle and nothing is clear.

What is not in dispute is that Charlie Kirk was a generational talent as a political communicator, in terms of energy and ability far ahead of anyone else. And he was—from every account of the many who knew him—a profoundly good man, growing in depth all the time, devoted to engaging in democratic politics at the most fundamental level, getting out and debating those who disagreed with him. It is also not a matter of dispute that there is a large number of people on the left—how big and influential we don’t yet have a firm handle on—who are willing to say in public that Kirk deserved to be murdered.

But we don’t know where this takes us. The Charlie Kirk assassination may one day be seen as an early stepping stone along the way to a dramatic break—a civil war whose winner isn’t obvious (besides China), leading to socialist revolution, right-wing authoritarianism for real, or the break-up of the United States.

The preconditions for civil war in the United States exist according to a growing body of knowledgeable opinion, as they do in most countries of the West. The ethnic fracturing due to mass immigration has destabilized the sense of a shared society and identity which all of them possessed 50 years ago, a sense which has helped ensure that extremist ideologies were, eventually, seen as extreme. In the United States in the 1960’s and 70’s, there was more political violence than today, but there was a common consensus about what was normally American and what was not. No one cared very much about whether their sons or daughters would marry Republicans or Democrats. Now most do. In the U.S. today, the most virulent leftism seldom comes from new immigrants or their descendants, but the general loss of societal cohesion which allows it to flourish does flow from multiculturalism and its resulting social instability.

We don’t yet know who killed Kirk, though some initial law enforcement reports indicate that the killer was some kind of sympathizer with transgenderism and “antifascism.” But we do know the milieu of the people celebrating Kirk’s murder, and they are far more entrenched in society and numerous than were supporters of the Weather Underground or the Black Liberation Army 50 years ago.

Many voices on the left have voiced genuine sorrow about the assassination, recognizing that killing someone for speech you disagree with is the most fundamental rejection of all that is best about American democracy. But inevitably these voices posit a kind of moral equivalence between left-wing and right-wing extremism, while ruing both.

Ezra Klein, the very smart New York Times columnist and podcaster, opens his own equivalency argument with the attempted “kidnapping” of Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, which seemed to even a casual follower of the trial little more than FBI entrapment of some very unsuccessful men who lived in various basements. It doesn’t really match in weight with the shooting of congressional Republicans by a former Bernie Sanders volunteer or the two attempts to murder presidential candidate Donald Trump.

It is worth noting too that mass actions are probably more sociologically important than acts by lone gunmen; in this realm, equivalence of right-wing violence with left-wing violence is not remotely serious. For years, masked left wingers have been given virtual free reign to intimidate, shout down, or physically harm conservative campus speakers; there is no parallel whatsoever on the right. Indeed, part of what made Kirk so hated by the left was his unexpected ability to break through the left-wing campus control mechanisms and build a curious and often enthusiastic audience for mainstream conservative views.

Some paths forward are obviously better than others. A bad but hardly implausible scenario is that some individual or groupuscule on the right, taking note of the progressive celebrations of Kirk’s murder on social media, will say to themselves something along the lines “let’s see how much they like it” and act accordingly. One can see that escalating quickly. This would soon wipe out whatever bonds of comity and congeniality between liberals and conservatives remain (much weaker and fewer, in any case, than 15 years ago) and could become a veritable spiral of terrorism, perhaps escalating to conflicts between blue cities and red heartlands, involving infrastructure destruction and the like. Before Kirk’s murder, I would have thought Britain or France likely to descend into civil war before the United States. That now seems less certain.

A more optimistic path would involve sustained and effective governmental effort to break down the political and social networks which sustain left-wing violence. This would probably resemble the efforts to root out communist subversion in the 1940’s and ’50s and the later FBI attempts to infiltrate and undermine radical groups that continued through the 1960’s. The goal would be to make casual affiliation with violent progressivism personally risky and unprofitable—the kind of  choice that could cost you a comfortable career. There would be excesses and injustices in such a program—there always are—but if the alternatives are civil war or the left just winning though continued physical intimidation of conservatives, there is no better option. Presumably, this could be accomplished under political leadership that in style and substance sought to build the widest possible consensus among Americans while isolating the radicals. Eisenhower would be a good role model.

In its timing, the Kirk assassination is curiously twinned with the reporting, suppressed for weeks, of the murder of Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska by a black maniac in Charlotte, North Carolina. The public transit killing was a plain-as-day consequence of progressive law enforcement and judicial reform doctrines, pushed relentlessly by major left-wing foundations. The two murders seem to reinforce one another as evidence of current left-wing ideology in action. Add to them the widespread celebration of the murderer Luigi Mangione, and it seems hard to deny that a cult of violence is metastasizing in the contemporary American left.

Perhaps it won’t be broken at all, perhaps there will be neither a violent counter-reaction, nor political efforts to legally root it out. Perhaps we won’t even see a meaningful reduction in violence-encouraging rhetoric from major Democratic politicians (most of whom have condemned the Kirk murder) and media institutions. We may then have before us not a pivot point but more of the same, a slowly escalating accommodation to violence from the left, the acceptance that it is just normal that conservatives be barred from speaking on campus. That too is possible. And probably the worst result of all.

This article was originally published on The American Conservative.

The post Charlie Kirk’s Assassination Could Change Everything appeared first on LewRockwell.

On August 22, 2025, Iryna Zarutska, a 23-year-old Ukrainian, was murdered on a train in Charlotte, North Carolina, after finishing a shift at a local pizzeria. She had fled her homeland in the hope of a brighter future in a supposedly safer country. A chilling surveillance video captures the moment she was stabbed from behind—three savage thrusts to her neck as she quietly scrolled her phone—before she collapsed in shock and bled out on the train floor. No one stepped forward to help until it was much too late. Within minutes, the attacker, Decarlos Brown Jr., exited the train, walking away with a bloody knife.

Brown, a career criminal with 14 prior arrests, including armed robbery and domestic violence, was a clear danger. He suffered from paranoid delusions about “foreign materials” in his brain and called 911 repeatedly in psychotic distress. Yet, in January, Magistrate Judge Teresa Stokes released him on nothing more than a written promise to appear. He was released without bail, with no confinement, and no treatment. That decision sealed Iryna’s fate.

Her murder was horrific in itself, but the greater scandal is that mainstream America barely noticed. The silence was deafening. By contrast, her workplace, Zeppedies Pizzeria, responded with dignity: keeping her memory alive with a lit candle, a quiet symbol of her warmth and kindness. In a society that has largely abandoned truth, it was ordinary people, not elites, who bore witness to her worth.

And now, as I was working on this piece about Iryna, news broke of Charlie Kirk’s death. I began following the developments in shock, and I could not help but widen this reflection into a global theme—two tragic losses bound together: the slaughter of a young Ukrainian refugee who came seeking peace; and the assassination of a Christian conservative voice and defender of free speech in America, a husband and father now torn from his family.

A video posted on  shows the shooting occurring moments after Kirk had been asked a question from the audience: “Do you know how many transgender Americans have been mass shooters in the past ten years?” to which he replied, “Too many.” The questioner pressed, “Five. Now five is a lot; I’ll give you credit. Do you know how many mass shooters there have been in America over the last ten years?” Kirk responded, “Counting or not counting gang violence?” And then—in a grim twist of fate, he was shot viciously in the neck. The irony is inescapable. Only days earlier, I had written on the disturbing links between transgender ideology, violence, and murder in an article titled “Gender Ideology and Violence: Cultural Confusion and the Spiritual Battle.” Kirk’s death, unfolding in that very context, makes the point in blood.

These are not isolated sorrows but twin revelations of a world increasingly gripped by darkness.

Silence and Selective Empathy

Consider the hypocrisy. When George Floyd died in 2020, the world was engulfed in turmoil; he had a long criminal record, resisted arrest, and succumbed to drug toxicity. Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, and other Democratic leaders knelt in kente stoles for eight minutes and 46 seconds in what looked like a disturbing ritual broadcast live across the nation (the same people, some of whom identify as Catholic, wouldn’t kneel eight seconds for Christ).

Unsurprisingly, in his predictable display of hollow, sycophantic, social-justice-supporting behavior, Justin Trudeau knelt near Parliament in Ottawa, masked during Covid, while ordinary Canadians were fined for walking their dogs or letting their children play basketball. At the very same time, destructive and violent groups like Antifa and BLM were given free rein to riot in the streets, shielded by political approval. The irony and double standard are inescapable.

Now consider Iryna: a refugee who fled bombs for safety, stabbed to death in public while passengers filmed her collapse. No hashtags. No vigils. There was no unending coverage. There was just pure, deafening silence. That is not compassion; it is political idolatry. Even Wikipedia became a battleground, with editors trying to delete her page for “lack of notability,” removing the killer’s name and race, and debating whether to call it a “murder” at all—an attempt to sanitize her death into oblivion.

One impassioned voice, an acquaintance of mine on Facebook, a black Christian commentator who clearly recognizes the dignity of every human life, unlike our political class, put it plainly:

If a Black woman had been stabbed by a white man, and the bystanders had all been white, it would be headline news everywhere. But because it happened the other way, the coverage is quieter. Regardless of race—how could a metro car full of people stand by while a woman bled to death? 

That silence, he argued, “speaks loudly.”

Kirk had already warned of the media’s silence, asking: “Why won’t they say Iryna Zarutska’s name?” Now, in a tragic irony, his own voice is gone. Though details remain sparse, the reality is clear: a Christian leader and defender of free speech has been struck down. Yet while his body has fallen, the truth he proclaimed cannot be buried. President Donald Trump confirmed the worst: “The Great, and even Legendary, Charlie Kirk, is dead…Charlie, we love you!”

Read the Whole Article

The post Witnesses of a Captive West: Iryna Zarutska and Charlie Kirk appeared first on LewRockwell.

Author’s Introduction

While the joint inquiry (under the helm of Bob Graham and Porter Goss) had collected mountains of intelligence material, through careful omission the numerous press and intelligence reports in the public domain (mainstream media, alternative media, etc.), which confirm that key members of the Bush Administration were involved in acts of political camouflage were carefully removed from the joint inquiry’s hearings.

Porter Goss and Bob Graham were in Islamabad in late August 2001.

Senator Bob Graham, Representative Porter Goss and Senator Jon Kyl were received in Islamabad by President Musharraf together with members of Pakistan’s military and Intelligence brass including the head of Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) General Mahmoud Ahmad.

Smoking Gun

Also present at this meeting in the President’s office was Afghanistan Ambassador to Pakistan, Abdul Salam Zaeef, who had conversations with the Congressional delegation including Bob Graham and Porter Goss. At this meeting, the Afghanistan’s Ambassador to Pakistan confirmed that:

“the Taliban [Government] would never allow bin Laden to use Afghanistan to launch attacks on the US or any other country” (AFP).

As we recall, Afghanistan was identified as a “state sponsor of terror.” The 9/11 attacks were categorized as an act of war, an attack on America by an unnamed foreign power.

On September 12, 2001, less than 24 hours after the attacks, at a meeting of the Atlantic Council in Brussels, NATO invoked for the first time in its history “Article 5 of the Washington Treaty – its collective defence clause” declaring the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center (WTC) and the Pentagon “to be an attack against all NATO members.”

What this decision implied is that the US and its NATO allies accused Afghanistan on orders of the Taliban government of supporting Osama Bin Laden and attacking America.

To my knowledge, the conversation of Porter Goss and Bob Graham with the Ambassador of Afghanistan during their visit to Islamabad was not mentioned at the meeting of the Atlantic Council, nor was it recorded by the 9/11 Inquiry Commission.

Also of significance, in the wake of 9/11, the Afghan government on two occasions had communicated through diplomatic channels with Washington indicating that they were open to delivering Osama bin Laden to US Justice, if there were preliminary evidence of his involvement in the 9/11 attacks.

These offers were casually turned down by the Bush Administration.

The following text published by Global Research in 2002 provides details on the breakfast meeting hosted by Sen. Bob Graham and Rep. Porter Goss on the morning of September 11, 2001 as well as their trip to Pakistan in late August.

—Michel Chossudovsky, September 4, 2025

Mysterious September 11, 2001 Breakfast Meeting on Capitol Hill

by Michel Chossudovsky, August 1, 2002

Was it an ‘intelligence failure’ to give red carpet treatment to the [alleged] ‘money man’ behind the 9-11 terrorists, or was it simply ‘routine’?

On the morning of September 11, Pakistan’s Chief Spy General Mahmoud Ahmad, the alleged “money-man” behind the 9-11 hijackers, was at a breakfast meeting on Capitol Hill hosted by Senator Bob Graham and Rep. Porter Goss, the chairmen of the Senate and House Intelligence committees:

“When the news [of the attacks on the World Trade Center] came, the two Florida lawmakers who lead the House and Senate intelligence committees were having breakfast with the head of the Pakistani intelligence service. Rep. Porter Goss, R-Sanibel, Sen. Bob Graham and other members of the House Intelligence Committee were talking about terrorism issues with the Pakistani official when a member of Goss’ staff handed a note to Goss, who handed it to Graham. “We were talking about terrorism, specifically terrorism generated from Afghanistan,” Graham said.

(…)

Mahmoud Ahmad, director general of Pakistan’s intelligence service, was “very empathetic, sympathetic to the people of the United States,” Graham said. (NYT)

***

In late August 2001, barely a couple of weeks before 9/11, Senator Bob Graham, Representative Porter Goss and Senator Jon Kyl were in Islamabad for consultations. Meetings were held with President Musharraf and with Pakistan’s military and intelligence brass including the head of Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) General Mahmoud Ahmad. An AFP report confirms that the US Congressional delegation also met the Afghan ambassador to Pakistan, Abdul Salam Zaeef. At this meeting, which was barely mentioned by the US media,

“Zaeef assured the US delegation [on behalf of the Afghan government] that the Taliban would never allow bin Laden to use Afghanistan to launch attacks on the US or any other country.” (AFP, August 28, 2001)

Note the sequencing of these meetings. Bob Graham and Porter Goss were in Islamabad in late August 2001.

• The meetings with President Musharraf and the Afghan Ambassador were on the 27th of August 2001.
• The mission was still in Islamabad on the 30th of August.
• General Mahmoud Ahmad arrived in Washington on an official visit of consultations barely a few days later (September 4th).
• During his visit to Washington, General Mahmoud met his counterpart CIA director George Tenet and high ranking officials of the Bush administration.[2]
• 9/11 “Follow-up Meeting” on Capitol Hill

On the morning of September 11, the three lawmakers Bob Graham, Porter Goss and Jon Kyl (who were part of the Congressional delegation to Pakistan) were having breakfast on Capitol Hill with General Ahmad, the alleged “money-man” behind the 9-11 hijackers. Also present at this meeting were Pakistan’s ambassador to the U.S. Maleeha Lodhi and several members of the Senate and House Intelligence committees were also present.

This meeting was described by one press report as a “follow-up meeting” to that held in Pakistan in late August. “On 8/30, Senate Intelligence Committee chair Sen. Bob Graham (D-FL) “‘was on a mission to learn more about terrorism.’ (…) On 9/11, Graham was back in DC ‘in a follow-up meeting with’ Pakistan intelligence agency chief Mahmud Ahmed and House Intelligence Committee chair Porter Goss (R-FL)”[3] (The Hotline, 1 October 2002):

“When the news [of the attacks on the World Trade Center] came, the two Florida lawmakers who lead the House and Senate intelligence committees were having breakfast with the head of the Pakistani intelligence service. Rep. Porter Goss, R-Sanibel, Sen. Bob Graham and other members of the House Intelligence Committee were talking about terrorism issues with the Pakistani official when a member of Goss’ staff handed a note to Goss, who handed it to Graham. “We were talking about terrorism, specifically terrorism generated from Afghanistan,” Graham said.

(…)

Mahmood Ahmed, director general of Pakistan’s intelligence service, was “very empathetic, sympathetic to the people of the United States,” Graham said.

Goss could not be reached Tuesday [September 11]. He was whisked away with much of the House leadership to an undisclosed “secure location.” Graham, meanwhile, participated in late-afternoon briefings with top officials from the CIA and FBI.”[4]

While trivializing the importance of the 9/11 breakfast meeting, The Miami Herald (16 September 2001) confirms that General Ahmad also met Secretary of State Colin Powell in the wake of the 9/11 attacks:

“Graham said the Pakistani intelligence official with whom he met, a top general in the government, was forced to stay all week in Washington because of the shutdown of air traffic ‘He was marooned here, and I think that gave Secretary of State Powell and others in the administration a chance to really talk with him’. Graham said.”[5]

Again the political significance of the personal relationship between General Mahmoud (the alleged “money man” behind 9/11) and Secretary of State Colin Powell is casually dismissed. According to The Miami Herald, the high level meeting between the two men was not planned in advance. It took place on the spur of the moment because of the shut down of air traffic, which prevented General Mahmoud from flying back home to Islamabad on a commercial flight, when in all probability the General and his delegation were traveling on a chartered government plane. With the exception of the Florida press (and Salon.com, 14 September, 2001), not a word was mentioned in the US media’s September coverage of 9-11 concerning this mysterious breakfast reunion.

“A Cloak but No Dagger”

Eight months later on the 18th of May 2002, two days after the “BUSH KNEW” headline hit the tabloids, the Washington Post published an article on Porter Goss, entitled: “A Cloak But No Dagger; An Ex-Spy Says He Seeks Solutions, Not Scapegoats for 9/11.”

Focusing on his career as a CIA agent, the article largely served to underscore the integrity and commitment of Porter Goss to waging a “war on terrorism.” Yet in an isolated paragraph, the article acknowledges the mysterious 9/11 breakfast meeting with ISI Chief Mahmoud Ahmad, while also confirming that “Ahmad ran a spy agency notoriously close to Osama bin Laden and the Taliban”:

“Now the main question facing Goss, as he helps steer a joint House-Senate investigation into the Sept. 11 attacks, is why nobody in the far-flung intelligence bureaucracy — 13 agencies spending billions of dollars — paid attention to the enemy among us. Until it was too late.”

Goss says he is looking for solutions, not scapegoats. “A lot of nonsense,” he calls this week’s uproar about a CIA briefing that alerted President Bush, five weeks before Sept. 11, that Osama bin Laden’s associates might be planning airline hijackings.

“None of this is news, but it’s all part of the finger-pointing,” Goss declared yesterday in a rare display of pique. “It’s foolishness.” [This statement comes from the man who was having breakfast with the alleged “money-man” behind 9-11 on the morning of September 11]

(…) Goss has repeatedly refused to blame an “intelligence failure” for the terror attacks. As a 10-year veteran of the CIA’s clandestine operations wing, Goss prefers to praise the agency’s “fine work.”

(…)

On the morning of Sept. 11, Goss and Graham were having breakfast with a Pakistani general named Mahmud Ahmed — the soon-to-be-sacked head of Pakistan’s intelligence service. Ahmed ran a spy agency notoriously close to Osama bin Laden and the Taliban.[6] (Washington Post, 18 May 2002)

“Putting Two and Two together”

While the Washington Post scores in on the “notoriously close” links between General Ahmad and Osama bin Laden, it fails to dwell on the more important question: what were Rep. Porter Goss and Senator Bob Graham and other members of the Senate and House intelligence committees doing together with the alleged 9/11 “money-man” at breakfast on the morning of 9/11? In other words, the Washington Post report does not go one inch further in begging the real question: Was this mysterious breakfast venue a “political lapse”, an intelligence failure or something far more serious? How come the very same individuals (Goss and Graham) who had developed a personal rapport with General Ahmad, had been entrusted under the joint committee inquiry “to reveal the truth on 9-11”?

The media trivialises the breakfast meeting, it presents it as a simple fait divers and fails to “put two and two together.” Neither does it acknowledge the fact, amply documented, that “the money-man” behind the hijackers had been entrusted by the Pakistani government to discuss the precise terms of Pakistan’s “collaboration” in the “war on terrorism” in meetings held behind closed doors at the State department on the 12th and 13th of September.[7](See Michel Chossudovsky, op cit)

Smoking Gun

When the “foreknowledge” issue hit the street on May 16th 2002, “Chairman Porter Goss said an existing congressional inquiry has so far found ‘no smoking gun’ that would warrant another inquiry.”[8] This statement points to an obvious “cover-up.” The smoking gun was right there sitting in the plush surroundings of the Congressional breakfast venue on Capitol Hill on the morning of September 11.

Notes

1. Agence France Presse (AFP), 28 August 2001.

2. Michel Chossudovsky, Political Deception, The Missing Link behind 9/11, Global Outlook, No. 2, 2002, See also . http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO206A.html; See also Michel Chossudovsky, Cover-up or Complicity of the Bush Administration? The Role of Pakistan’s Military Intelligence (ISI) in the September 11 Attacks, November 2001, http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO111A.html

3. The Hotline, 1 October 2002.

4. Stuart News Company Press Journal, Vero Beach, FL, 12 September 2001.

5. Miami Herald, 16 September 2001.

6. Washington Post, 18 May 2002.

7. Michel Chossudovsky, op. cit.

8. White House Bulletin, 17 May 2002.

[This article was first published by Global Research in 2002. You can read it here.]

The post Late August 2001 in Pakistan. Mysterious September 11, 2001 Breakfast Meeting on Capitol Hill appeared first on LewRockwell.

Defenders of the Civil Rights Act are always at great pains to portray themselves as eminently reasonable, when they argue that the nondiscrimination principle reflects the best of intentions to create a fairer world. Civil rights law indeed seems, on the face of it, to stand for nothing more than giving everyone a fair chance to participate in education or employment. What could be wrong with allowing black students to attend schools that were previously restricted to whites only, or preventing employers from firing anyone based entirely on the color of his skin? Are these not supposed to be basic liberal ideals on which we all agree? On that basis, champions of the civil rights cause levelled accusations against Charlie Kirk, described by the New York Times as a “leading voice among a cohort of young conservative activists who emerged during the Trump era,” for being an “extremist,” because he had the temerity to criticize both Martin Luther King Jr and the Civil Rights Act. Mr. Kirk said:

“I have a very, very radical view on this, but I can defend it, and I’ve thought about it,” Kirk said at America Fest. “We made a huge mistake when we passed the Civil Rights Act in the 1960s.”

The implication, in referring to this view as “extreme,” is that it falls outside the range of political views found among reasonable people – that it is so beyond the pale, that the bona fides of anyone expressing such views must be seriously questioned. As the boundaries of acceptable political opinion grow increasingly tight, the view now seems to be widespread that surely everyone admires Martin Luther King Jr and his civil rights movement – everyone except “extremists.”

The first response to those who think criticizing civil rights legislation is “extremist” is to point out that in fact we do not “all agree” on egalitarian ideals, the centrality of identity politics in the project of constructing a “good democracy,” the quasi-religious belief that America is irredeemably racist, or any version of the progressive worldview. It is not “extremist” to disagree with progressives, who have established themselves as the gold standard of opinion and now regard all their ideological opponents as renegades.

Most political debates are attempts to address precisely these types of questions – how society should be ordered, what values should be safeguarded, and the appropriate role of the state. Different political parties express their views on the principles that should govern society, and participants in public debate may favor any of the contested perspectives. To suppose that conservatives and progressives “agree” on the egalitarian worldview, or that they share common views on the role of legislation in social engineering and race-craft, is to foreclose public debate, and ultimately to render political freedom nugatory. What would be the point of having different political parties if they already all agreed on what the government should be doing? Free societies have more than one political party precisely because we do not, in fact, all agree on these issues.

One might perhaps argue that today, in the age of the uniparty, there are some core issues on which both major parties do in fact agree. The civil rights regime is often depicted as one such issue, as many in the Republican Party join their Democratic counterparts in agreeing that diversity, equity, and inclusiveness schemes are a great idea as long as they are implemented “properly” and used to complement rather than undermine merit. Or so they claim. However, to understand the superficial and precarious nature of this apparent consensus on civil rights, we must examine the political context in which the Civil Rights Act arose.

In the 1960s, as today, there was little clarity on what exactly the law was intended to achieve. To the extent that there was any consensus, it was on the idea that Jim Crow laws were abhorrent and should be repealed. Put that way, it indeed seems to be a principle with which most people would agree. But, as Christopher Caldwell shows in his book “Age of Entitlement,” the law was never intended merely to repeal Jim Crow. Hot off the press, it rapidly became established as a blueprint for the progressive vision of the ideal society – in essence, a new Constitution. David Gordon highlights this point in his review, addressing Caldwell’s argument that the Civil Rights Act functions in reality as a de facto constitution; it is “a rival constitution, with which the original one was frequently incompatible—and the incompatibility would worsen as the civil rights regime was built out.” As observed by Helen Andrews in her review, Caldwell argued that the Civil Rights Act not only functions as a rival constitution, but one which has an almost revered status:

One of the most astute observers of contemporary politics, Caldwell argues that the United States now has two constitutions. The first is the one on the books. The second arose in the 1960s and replaced the old liberties with new, incompatible ones based on group identities. “Much of what we have called ‘polarization’ or ‘incivility’ in recent years is something more grave,” he writes. “[I]t is the disagreement over which of the two constitutions shall prevail.” More bracing still, he puts the blame for this crisis on the most sacred totem in American politics: our civil rights legislation.

That polarization and incivility has now resulted in a situation where some people consider it reasonable to respond with violence to anyone adjudged by themselves to have uttered “hateful words.” As observed in the New York Times tribute to Charlie Kirk, this type of violence in political dispute is a world of horrors for everyone, regardless of their political opinions:

… there is no world in which political violence escalates but is contained to just your foes. Even if that were possible, it would still be a world of horrors, a society that had collapsed into the most irreversible form of unfreedom … it is supposed to be an argument, not a war; it is supposed to be won with words, not ended with bullets.

The post Charlie Kirk and the Sacred Totem of Civil Rights appeared first on LewRockwell.

Russia was blamed in a damning outcry, yet the circumstances incriminate NATO’s Ukrainian client.

This week saw two false-flag provocations back-to-back, orchestrated by the NATO-sponsored Kiev regime. Tellingly, before any considered response was given by Russia or independent observers, European politicians were shutting down open discussion, warning about expected Russian lies and disinformation.

In other words, no critical examination of the incidents is permitted. These were “barbaric” and “reckless attacks” by Russia… take our [NATO] word for it, and if you don’t, then you are a Russian stooge.

Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski hammed it up in a video statement, denouncing Russian aggression, and dogmatically telling everyone to trust only NATO government information. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk was competing in hysteria, claiming Europe was closer to all-out conflict than at any time since World War II. This points to how the European information space has become totally dominated by war propaganda in a way that George Orwell or Josef Goebbels would marvel at.

So, what happened this week?

Poland is claiming that Russia deliberately targeted its sovereign territory with 19 drones. European NATO allies are subsequently scrambling to deploy warplanes and air defenses to “protect Poland”. September is the month that Nazi Germany attacked Poland 86 years ago, kicking off World War II. That bit of timing perhaps lends a nostalgic flourish to the present events, as Tusk seemed to be implying with his melodramatic words.

The day before the much-hyped “drone invasion,” on September 9, the Kiev regime claimed Russia dropped one of its heavy FAB-500 aerial bombs on a village, killing 24 people who were collecting their pensions.

In both incidents, however, the evidence points to false-flag provocations for those who care to calmly examine the facts.

The alleged massacre in the village of Yarovaya in Ukrainian-held Donetsk oblast was not caused by a Russian FAB-500 bomb. The Kiev regime’s videos purporting to show the aftermath indicated a shallow impact crater and limited damage to nearby buildings. The explosion could not have been caused by a 250-kg Russian aerial bomb; otherwise, the entire area would have been devastated around a huge crater. The Russian MoD also said its forces were not operating in the vicinity on that date.

The rapid posting of the videos by the Kiev regime and the evidently scripted claims alleging a Russian massacre, together with the unquestioning amplification of those unverified claims by the Western media, strongly point to an orchestrated narrative.

The grave implication is that the NATO-backed regime detonated an explosive, deliberately killing civilians as a way to incriminate Russia.

Such heinous conduct by this regime has numerous precedents. There have been many incidents over the past three years when the Ukrainian forces shelled their own territory, endangering civilian lives for propaganda scores against Russia, as a way to drum up more military and financial support from the Western sponsors. Two examples: the atrocity carried out in the village of Hroza on October 5, 2023, when 52 people were killed. It coincided with Kiev’s puppet leader, Vladimir Zelensky, pitching an appeal at an EU summit in Granada, Spain, for more aid.

The month before, on September 6, 2023, in the town of Konstantinovka in Ukrainian territory, an air strike killed 17 people. That coincided with former Secretary of State Antony Blinken visiting Kiev to announce $1 billion in additional U.S. aid.

In both incidents, Russia was blamed in a damning outcry, yet the circumstances incriminate NATO’s Ukrainian client. The atrocity this week involving the murder of the pensioners falls into the same despicable category.

The Kiev regime is a false-flag merchant of death. The notorious executions carried out in Bucha in March-April 2022 were another classic, vile stunt. We covered that in detail in a previous editorial, whereby Ukrainian civilians were murdered in cold blood by Kiev agents to disgrace Russia. To an extent, the stunt worked because Western media and politicians continue to accuse Russia of responsibility in complete disregard of the evidence. The Bucha false flag is relevant because it came at a crucial time when Russia had proposed a peace deal to end the conflict in Ukraine at an early stage. After the “massacre,” the NATO proxy war surged, and a peaceful settlement was scuppered.

This brings us to the present open season for false flags. One way to discern a provocation is to observe the reactions and how the incident is used to serve motives and demands.

First of all, the concerted and theatrical reactions of the Kiev regime and its European NATO backers were primed and ready to go, as if scripted.

In the alleged targeting of Poland, the drones were of Russian design. They were unarmed, surveillance, or decoy-type Gerbera models. Russia claims that the 700-kilometer range means they couldn’t have been launched from Russian-held territory. They could have been launched by Ukraine after it replicated the drones, an easy enough task. But here is the key. Some 19 unarmed drones were quickly intercepted in Polish airspace by multiple high-powered NATO weapons: Polish F-16 fighter jets, Dutch F-35s, Italian AWACS surveillance aircraft, NATO tanker re-fueling aircraft, and German Patriot missile systems. That speaks of a prepared full-scale mobilization to maximize the allegations of Russian violation. The image of a sledgehammer to crack a nut comes to mind.

Moscow has offered to hold discussions with Warsaw to figure out how ostensibly Russian-made drones entered Polish airspace, but the offer has been rebuffed. Poland has refused any reasonable discussion to establish the facts. Instead, it has invoked NATO’s Article IV for emergency security consultations with other members. The over-reaction smacks of drama to seemingly validate flaky claims of deliberate targeting.

The French, German, and British leaders have all clambered on board the wagon of condemning Russia for reckless violation without a shred of evidence. Note how they are all careful not to accuse Russia of “attack” but rather “violation”. That suggests they want a calibrated escalation but not all-out war, cowards that they are.

France’s Emmanuel Macron announced he was sending three Rafale fighter jets “to protect Polish airspace”. The Germans and the British are likewise charging to declare their support to defend Poland. It’s a charade of chivalry by a gang of clowns.

This is sheer theatrics of absurdity. Accusing Russia of planning to conquer Europe has been the worn-out propaganda narrative for the past nearly four years since NATO’s proxy war erupted in Ukraine. Russia has repeatedly said it has no intention of starting World War III, and that its sole purpose in Ukraine is to stop historic NATO aggression encroaching on its borders.

The euro elites are facing mounting political crises in their own states, largely incurred by the vast, wasteful spending on the failed proxy war in Ukraine. France, for one, is exploding with social tensions as nationwide street protests showed this week amid the sacking of a fourth prime minister in two years. Germany and Britain are not far behind in the meltdown stakes.

No doubt, the Euro elites and their Kiev puppet regime are desperate to divert public attention from the corruption and criminal machinations in Ukraine. U.S. President Donald Trump’s diplomatic effort to end the war, for all its shortcomings, is an unwelcome development for the European leaders because it exposes their pathetic position. Polish Foreign Minister Sikorski, while condemning Russia for “deliberately targeting” Poland, made a sneaky point by saying that Moscow was also “making a mockery of Trump’s peace efforts”. Sikorski and the European NATO cabal are trying to incite Trump to ramp up military aid to Ukraine and impose more sanctions on Russia as a way to sabotage any diplomacy. Desperation begets desperate measures, even if innocent civilians are murdered and world peace is put at risk.

The views of individual contributors do not necessarily represent those of the Strategic Culture Foundation.

The post Open Season for False-Flag Provocations as NATO and Kiev Regime Get Desperate appeared first on LewRockwell.

In February 2025 the U.S. started talks with Russia over ending the war in Ukraine. The Europeans were against such talks. They were still dreaming of winning the lost war – of keeping control over Ukraine by providing it with security guarantees.

The Trump administration gave them a lecture in form of a catalog of questions. As I summarized the issue at that time:

The U.S. has recognized that there aren’t enough troops, money or will to achieve a better negotiation position for what’s left of Ukraine. The European ‘elite’ still fails to get that.
…
There are still dreams of ‘security guarantees’ which would be given to Ukraine after it files for peace or surrenders.

No such guarantees would make any sense. When peace is achieved there will be only one manner that can prevent a new outbreak of war: good behavior towards Russians and Russia by what will be left of Ukraine.
…
The U.S. negotiation team handed the Europeans a list of questions that will hopefully help them to come to grips with that ..
…
Here are the questions with answers by me in Italic:

1) What do you view as a Europe-backed security guarantee or assurance that would serve as a sufficient deterrent to Russia while also ensuring this conflict ends with an enduring peace settlement?

There is no Europe-backed guarantee possible that would be a ‘sufficient deterrent’.

2) Which European and/or third countries do you believe could or would participate in such an arrangement?

Each could provide a few dozen soldiers (plus rotations). None has the size of forces and/or stamina to really commit to the mission.

Are there any countries you believe would be indispensable?

The U.S. – if it would give nuclear guarantees to prevent the eventual annihilation of any ‘security guarantee’ force.

Would your country be willing to deploy its troops to Ukraine as part of a peace settlement?

No!

3) If third country military forces were to be deployed to Ukraine as part of a peace arrangement, what would you consider to be the necessary size of such a European-led force?

…

The purpose and point of the six questions the U.S. gave to the Europeans was to induce some realist thinking:

Applying such one will come to the conclusion that nothing but a long term peace agreement, which does not necessitate ‘guarantees’, makes any sense.

But they still did not get it.

It took the Europeans seven month of highly publicized discussion to finally acknowledge that there was no way for them to provide Ukraine with ‘security guarantees’. The only realistic variant they could think of was to threaten Russia with a nuclear war which they can’t but did wanted the U.S. to do. The U.S. wont do that. Neither Trump nor any other U.S. president will agree to risk New York over Kiev.

But the Europeans still do not want to make peace. Their new idea was to push the U.S. to put more sanctions on Russia:

The European Union is sending a delegation to Washington to ready new joint sanctions against Russia, European Council President António Costa said Friday.

“We are working with the United States and other like-minded partners to increase our pressure through further direct and secondary sanctions,” Costa said at a press conference in the western Ukrainian city of Uzhhorod, following a meeting with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Costa added “a European team is traveling to Washington, D.C. to work with our American friends” but did not reveal who would take part in the delegation.

The Trump administration is now copying the February idea of the catalog of question about security guarantees.

Trump is telling the Europeans “you jump first”:

Donald J. Trump – @realDonaldTrump – Sep 12, 2025, 23:15 UTC

A LETTER SENT BY PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP TO ALL NATO NATIONS AND, THE WORLD: “I am ready to do major Sanctions on Russia when all NATO Nations have agreed, and started, to do the same thing, and when all NATO Nations STOP BUYING OIL FROM RUSSIA. As you know, NATO’S commitment to WIN has been far less than 100%, and the purchase of Russian Oil, by some, has been shocking! It greatly weakens your negotiating position, and bargaining power, over Russia. Anyway, I am ready to “go” when you are. Just say when? I believe that this, plus NATO, as a group, placing 50% to 100% TARIFFS ON CHINA, to be fully withdrawn after the WAR with Russia and Ukraine is ended, will also be of great help in ENDING this deadly, but RIDICULOUS, WAR. China has a strong control, and even grip, over Russia, and these powerful Tariffs will break that grip. This is not TRUMP’S WAR (it would never have started if I was President!), it is Biden’s and Zelenskyy’s WAR. I am only here to help stop it, and save thousands of Russian and Ukrainian lives (7,118 lives lost last week, alone. CRAZY!). If NATO does as I say, the WAR will end quickly, and all of those lives will be saved! If not, you are just wasting my time, and the time, energy, and money of the United States. Thank you for your attention to this matter! DONALD J. TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.”

Like with the catalog of questions about security guarantees Trump is trying to induce some realist thinking into the boneheaded European ‘elite’.

Nearly every country in Europe is still consuming Russian oil. It is either bought directly from Russia or through Turkey or India. Europe can not put high tariffs on China or India. The responses from those countries would be devastating for Europe’s economies.

There is no way to sanction Russia, directly or indirectly, into ending the war.

Trump knows this. It is why he is calling the Europeans bluff.

We can only hope that they will learn from it …

Reprinted with permission from Moon of Alabama.

The post Trump Calls European’s Sanction Bluff appeared first on LewRockwell.

Charlie Kirk was not killed by a kook in the audience .  It was an organized assassination.  The rifleman was on a roof, which indicates planning and forethought. The rifleman was an expert.  One shot did the job.  The rifleman disappeared, which indicates planning. Kirk’s murder has the mark of a professional planned assassination.

Why was Charlie Kirk assassinated?  Because he was a leader beyond the control of the ruling establishment?  The ruling establishment has never tolerated leaders who are not their pawns.  Think Martin Luther King.  He was a rising leader of black Americans, and some white Americans were beginning to see some merit in the man. Like all humans, King had his faults, but he spoke reconciliation not only between black and white Americans  but also between the US and the world. The establishment eliminated the leadership threat.  Think of the eight-year effort to politically assassinate Donald Trump:  Russiagate, documents gate, insurrection gate, four criminal indictments, civil suits to confiscate his assets, constant media hostility.  

Kirk is credited with leading American youth back to God and family values, away from drugs, video game violence, and pornography.  He thus threatened important commercial profits.  If Andrew Anglin is correct, Kirk’s downside is that he was a shill for Israel. See this.

Kirk was a possible future president who could have sufficient public support to dismantle the  American Ruling Class.  This could be the reason Charlie Kirk was assassinated.

Trump’s supporters should make some effort to comprehend the enormous challenge Trump faces.  If they keep showing their unhappiness with him, the Ruling Establishment will decide the time is right for a third assassination attempt. 

The post The Assassination of Charlie Kirk appeared first on LewRockwell.

With the murder of 31-year-old noted conservative advocate Charlie Kirk, it’s worth asking an important question: Is America great again yet?

My answer: Far from it. In my book, Kirk’s killing demonstrates that America is still a very sick, dysfunctional nation. Not only are there periodic killings like this one, there are also mass killings. Just recently, there was the killing of those children at a Catholic school in Minneapolis. There was also the recent killing of 23-year-old Iryna Zarutska, a refugee from Ukraine who was killed by man who seemingly had no apparent motive to kill her.

And let’s not forget that we still live in a massive drug-addled society, one in which millions of Americans are ingesting drugs because, U.S. officials say, they are being “attacked” by international drug dealers who, I guess, are somehow forcing them to ingest the drugs against their will. The fact that President Trump and his militarized drug warriors are still fiercely waging the decades-old, ongoing, never-ending, perpetual war on drugs — and are now knowingly, intentionally, and deliberately killing people who they suspect of violating U.S. drugs laws, with the aim of preventing millions of Americans from ingesting drugs — is, it seems to me, proof positive that America is not yet great again.

Let’s also not forget the soaring suicide rate among young people. When people who are just starting out in life are checking out early, that, to me, is a surefire sign that not only is America not great again yet but, in fact, is still a very sick society. Add to that suicide phenomenon the soaring suicide rate among veterans, including those who have supposedly protected our “freedoms” by killing millions of people in foreign countries.

And therein, I contend, lies a big problem — the fact the U.S. government — our government — is one of the biggest killing machines in history. But the fact that the millions of people it has killed are foreigners makes the killings, in the eyes of U.S. officials and many Americans, no big deal. After all, don’t forget: Those millions of dead people are not Americans. They are just foreigners.

Here is my contention, one that I have regularly made over the years, especially in the context of one of America’s periodic mass killings:

In every society, there are what I call “off-kilter” people. In normal times and in a healthy society, those off-kilter people don’t harm anyone. We all can tell that they are off-kilter but people feel sympathy for them, not fear.

For all of our lives, the mindset has been that so long as the U.S. killing machine is killing people “over there” (i.e., in foreign lands), Americans need not concern themselves, especially if a large number of U.S. troops aren’t being killed in the process. The notion has been that the mass killings in foreign lands would have no effect on American life at home. Americans could go on with their work, vacations, and hobbies and just block out of their minds, their consciousnesses, and their consciences what the Pentagon and the CIA were doing to people “over there” with their invasions, coups, assassinations, provocations, foreign aid, undeclared wars, and wars of aggression.

I contend that that was never going to happen. I hold that, like it or not, the mass killing “over there” at the hands of the U.S. national-security state was inevitably going to seep into society here at home. It is those mass killings, I contend, that have triggered something in the off-kilter people that causes them either to retaliate in a perverted way here at home for what the U.S. government has done (and continues to do) to people “over there,” or to engage in some sort of warped copycat killing here at home, or both.

Most everyone is expressing tremendous shock and grief over the killing of Charlie Kirk — and, of course, rightly so. But consider, on the other hand, the U.S. government’s killing of those 11 Venezuelan citizens in that boat in international waters a few days ago. Where is the grief over those deaths? It is virtually non-existent. Indeed, many right-wingers are exultant over those deaths and want the U.S. military to do it much more of the same. They exclaim, “Death to more suspected Venezuelan drug dealers!” It’s considered to be no big deal. After all, it’s not like they are Americans. They’re just foreigners.

But it is a big deal. Every one of those dead Venezuelans was innocent — that is, if one accepts the traditional American jurisprudential principle of innocent until proven guilty in a court of law with competent and relevant evidence. Those dead people were never convicted of anything. Under the law, they are as innocent as you and I. I don’t care if the president or vice-president of the United States or any other federal official are accusing them of pushing drugs. Their accusations constitute nothing. After all, let’s not forget that there are plenty of people who the feds accuse of crimes who are later found not guilty by a jury.

Moreover, even if those 11 dead people were carrying drugs, that doesn’t mean they deserved to be killed. It’s just a drug offense, one that wouldn’t even have entailed the death penalty if they had been tried and convicted in a court of law. Indeed, contrary to what U.S. officials claim, international drug dealers don’t “attack” Americans by forcing them to snort cocaine or inject heroin. Instead, they sell their drugs to drug-addled Americans who are eager to buy the drugs as part of living in a very sick and dysfunctional society.

The biggest factor in all this is that those dead Venezuelans are not Americans. They are foreigners. That means they just don’t count. Why should we feel sorry for them? They are no different from the millions of Iraqis, Afghans, Iranians, Vietnamese, Koreans, Chileans, Cubans, and other “gooks” who the U.S. killing machine has killed, either directly or indirectly, over the decades. Why should we feel bad about their widows and children? Those dead people weren’t entitled to be arrested, prosecuted, and tried in a court of law, no matter what the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution states. After all, they weren’t Americans. They deserved to be killed, just like the other millions of foreigners that the Pentagon and the CIA have killed during our lifetimes. Indeed, notice what U.S. officials declared immediately after those extra-judicial killings near Venezuela — they wanted to assure the American people that no American soldiers had lost their lives while killing those Venezuelans. That’s all that matters. Americans need not concern themselves. They can just return to their ordinary lives and leave the killing to their national-security-state killing machine. Except that the off-kilter people somehow fail to get the memo.

We don’t know who killed Charlie Kirk and so we obviously don’t know what the motive was. But I’m willing to bet that there is a good chance that whoever it was, he was one of those off-kilter people in American life. I suppose it is just a coincidence but it is ironic that many Americans are celebrating the deaths of those eleven innocent Venezuelans while, at the same time, mourning the death of American Charlie Kirk. Like I say, America is clearly not great again yet. It remains a very sick society.

Reprinted with permission from The Future of Freedom Foundation.

The post Is America Great Again Yet? appeared first on LewRockwell.

For several years I’ve been turning over in my mind an idea that initially struck me as far-fetched, but now strikes me as a distinct possibility. Could it be that people suffering from some degree of mental illness are now heavily influencing or even directing cultural, political, and economic affairs? To put it more bluntly, are we now being constantly buffeted and even, in some jurisdictions, governed by lunatics?

I’d already been pondering this for some time when I stumbled across an essay that Carl Jung wrote in 1957 titled The Plight of the Individual in Modern Society. His opening reflections strike me as an apt description of the irrational and destabilizing phenomena we’ve witnessed in recent times. I have highlighted in bold the sentences that strike me as the most relevant to our situation today.

Everywhere in the West there are subversive minorities, who—sheltered by our humanitarianism and our sense of justice—hold the incendiary torches ready, with nothing to stop the spread of their ideas except the critical reason of a single, fairly intelligent, mentally stable stratum of the population. One should not, however, overestimate the thickness of this stratum. . . .

Taking plebiscites as a criterion, one could, at an optimistic estimate, put its upper limit at about 40% of the electorate. A rather more pessimistic view would not be unjustified either, since the gift of reason and critical reflection is not one of man’s outstanding peculiarities. And even where it exists, it proves to be wavering and inconstant, the more so, as a rule, the bigger the political groups are. The mass crushes out the insight and reflection that are still possible with the individual, and this necessarily leads to doctrinaire and authoritarian tyranny if ever the constitutional state should succumb to a fit of weakness.

Rational argument can be conducted with some prospect of success only so long as the emotionality of a given situation does not exceed a certain critical degree. If the affective temperature rises above this level, the possibility of reason having any effect ceases, and its place is taken by slogans and chimerical wish fantasies. That is to say, a sort of collective possession results, which rapidly develops into a psychic epidemic.

In this state, all those elements whose existence is merely tolerated as asocial under the rule of reason, come to the top. Such individuals are by no means rare curiosities to be met only in prisons and lunatic asylums. For every manifest case of insanity, there are, in my estimation, at least 10 latent cases who seldom get to the point of breaking out openly, but whose views and behavior, for all their appearance of normality, are influenced by unconsciously morbid and perverse factors.

There are, of course, no medical statistics on the frequency of latent psychosis, for understandable reasons. But even if their number should amount to less than 10 times that of manifest psychoses and of manifest criminality, the relatively small percentage of the population they represent is more than compensated for by the peculiar dangerousness of these people.

Their mental state is that of a collectively excited group ruled by affective judgments and wish fantasies. In a state of collective possession, they are the adapted ones and consequently they feel quite at home in it. They know from their own experience the language of these conditions, and they know how to handle them. Their chimerical ideas, spawned by fanatical resentment, appeal to the collective irrationality and find fruitful soil there, for they express all those motives and resentments which lurk in more normal people under the cloak of reason and insight. They are, therefore, despite their small number in comparison with the population as a whole, dangerous sources of infection, precisely because the so-called normal person possesses only a limited degree of self knowledge.

The expressions of jubilation at the coldblooded murder of Charlie Kirk while he was speaking at a college campus reveal that we are now facing a psychic epidemic in the United States along these lines.

Social media is full of posts by totally deranged people making exclamations of joy and excitement while recounting—in pornographic detail—the spectacle of a young man shot in the neck by a high-powered rifle.

There was a time not so long ago when expressing homicidal blood lust was considered the exclusive domain of psychopathic killers. Now one may peruse thousands of posts by people doing precisely this, and their posts are liked by hundreds of thousands of people in aggregate.

Given that Dr. McCullough and I have been relentlessly censored on social media for talking about early treatment of COVID-19 and vaccine safety concerns, we find the current state of affairs especially indicative that the lunatics are now running the asylum.

Especially discouraging is Jung’s observation:

Rational argument can be conducted with some prospect of success only so long as the emotionality of a given situation does not exceed a certain critical degree. If the affective temperature rises above this level, the possibility of reason having any effect ceases, and its place is taken by slogans and chimerical wish fantasies.

To me, one of the many astonishing things about Charlie Kirk is that he made a bold, valiant, and persistent effort to try to speak with young, overheated lunatics on college campuses. I would rather take my chances at bull riding or venomous snake handing than try to reason with deranged college students.

It saddens me to write this, as I spent many of my happiest years in college, graduate school, and as a research fellow at an academic institute in Vienna. However, the events of recent years have taught us the futility of trying to reason with lunatics.

Reprinted with permission from Courageous Discourse.

The post Futility of Trying to Reason With Lunatics appeared first on LewRockwell.