Lew Rockwell Institute

From the earliest days of America’s history, our forebears offered frequent and fervent prayers of thanksgiving to God. In our giant compilation of America’s great historical documents, called THE FREEDOM DOCUMENTS, we include the very first Thanksgiving Proclamation rendered in this new land. The date was June 20, 1676. On this day, the governing council of Charlestown, Massachusetts, held a meeting to determine how best to express thanks for the blessings of Divine Providence that had seen their community securely established. By unanimous vote they instructed Edward Rawson, the clerk, to proclaim June 29 as a day of thanksgiving, America’s first. America’s first Thanksgiving Proclamation says in part (spelling in the original):

The Council has thought meet to appoint and set apart the 29th day of this instant June, as a day of Solemn Thanksgiving and praise to God for such his Goodness and Favour, many Particulars of which mercy might be Instanced, but we doubt not those who are sensible of God’s Afflictions, have been as diligent to espy him returning to us; and that the Lord may behold us as a People offering Praise and thereby glorifying Him; the Council doth commend it to the Respective Ministers, Elders and people of this Jurisdiction; Solemnly and seriously to keep the same Beseeching that being perswaded by the mercies of God we may all, even this whole people offer up our bodies and souls as a living and acceptable Service unto God by Jesus Christ.

I don’t think it was coincidental or circumstantial that one hundred years from this day (almost to the day) the Continental Congress received Richard Henry Lee’s resolution for a Declaration of Independence from Great Britain. (We have Richard Henry Lee’s Resolution for Independence in THE FREEDOM DOCUMENTS as well.)

All told, we have 212 full-size (8½ x 11) pages containing 57 of the greatest documents of American history compiled under ONE title. We call this magnificent collection THE FREEDOM DOCUMENTS. There isn’t another book like it in existence. This book is absolutely essential to the knowledge of American history.

THE FREEDOM DOCUMENTS are being printed and distributed RIGHT NOW.

The first Thanksgiving Proclamation issued by the revolutionary Continental Congress was on November 1, 1777, and authored by Samuel Adams. It reads in part:

FORASMUCH as it is the indispensible duty of all men to adore the superintending providence of Almighty God; to acknowledge with gratitude their obligation to Him for benefits received . . .

It is therefore recommended . . . to set apart THURSDAY the eighteenth day of December next, for SOLEMN THANKSGIVING AND PRAISE: That at one time and with one voice, the good people may express the grateful feeling of their hearts, and consecrate themselves to the service of their DIVINE BENEFACTOR: and that, together with their sincere acknowledgments and offerings, they may join the penitent confession of their sins, whereby they had forfeited every favor; and their humble and earnest supplications that it may please God through the merits of Jesus Christ, mercifully to forgive and blot them out of remembrance . . . . That it may please him . . . to prosper the means of religion, for the promotion and enlargement of that kingdom which consisteth “IN RIGHTEOUSNESS, PEACE AND JOY IN THE Holy Ghost.” {Quoting Romans 14:17}

Remember, Sam Adams penned this Thanksgiving Proclamation in the midst of the Revolutionary War, when the sufferings from war were at their worst—and when the outcome of the war was very much in doubt.

After our War for Independence had been successfully concluded and our Constitution and Bill of Rights had been adopted, a motion was made in Congress to initiate the proclamation of a National Day of Thanksgiving.

Mr. Elias Boudinot (who was the President of Congress during the American Revolution) said he could not think of letting the congressional session pass over without offering an opportunity to all the citizens of the United States of joining with one voice in returning to Almighty God their sincere thanks for the many blessings He had poured down upon them. Mr. Roger Sherman (a signer of both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution) justified the practice of thanksgiving on any signal event not only as a laudable one in itself but as warranted by a number of precedents in Holy Writ. This example he thought worthy of a Christian imitation on the present occasion, and he would agree with the gentleman who moved the resolution.

The following is taken from the Congressional Record (U.S. Senate), September 26, 1789 (the House version passed on September 25):

Resolved, That a joint committee of both Houses be appointed to wait on the President of the United States, to request that he would recommend to the people of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer, to be observed, by acknowledging, with grateful hearts, the many and signal favors of Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a constitution of government for their safety and happiness.

Ordered, That Messrs. Boudinot, Sherman, and Sylvester be appointed of the said committee on the part of this House.

Resolved, That the Senate do concur in the above recited resolution, and that Messrs. Johnson and Izard be the committee on the part of the Senate.

This resolution was delivered to President George Washington, who readily agreed with its suggestion and put forth the following proclamation by his signature:

Thanksgiving Proclamation

Whereas it is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favor, and Whereas both Houses of Congress have by their joint Committee requested me “to recommend to the People of the United States a day of public thanks-giving and prayer to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many signal favors of Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness.”

Now, therefore, I do recommend and assign Thursday the 26th. day of November next to be devoted by the People of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being, who is the beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be. That we may then all unite in rendering unto Him our sincere and humble thanks, for His kind care and protection of the People of this country previous to their becoming a Nation, for the signal and manifold mercies, and the favorable interpositions of His providence, which we experienced in the course and conclusion of the late war, for the great degree of tranquility, union, and plenty, which we have since enjoyed, for the peaceable and rational manner in which we have been enabled to establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national One now lately instituted, for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed, and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge and in general for all the great and various favors which He hath been pleased to confer upon us.

Given under my hand at the city of New York the third day of October in the year of our Lord 1789. George Washington

America’s Pilgrim and Patriot forebears led our country in offering continual prayers of thanksgiving to God. They genuinely believed that America’s independence, peace and prosperity were due to a divine work of providence from the hand of a merciful, benevolent Creator and Redeemer.

Tragically, the spirit of humility and thanksgiving that birthed this great country has all but vanished. When expressions of thanksgiving are extended, they are not rendered to a gracious Divine Providence but to self-aggrandizing politicians. And for the most part, politicians are not humble servants of the people but proud, arrogant, self-serving charlatans. They respect neither the Natural Laws of God nor the constitutions of the people who elected them. Even worse is the fact that many (if not most) professing Christians seem to prefer their politicians that way.

But only people who are filled with the spirit of humility and gratitude can expect the favor and blessing of Heaven. As one reads America’s history, he or she must be impressed with the spirit of humility and gratitude that commonly resided within the hearts of the great men and women who birthed and built this once-free nation.

Read the great documents contained in THE FREEDOM DOCUMENTS, and one will easily see this spirit of thanksgiving resident in the hearts of America’s patriots—past and present:

From the Mayflower Compact to Patrick Henry’s Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death speech to the personal letters between John and Abigail Adams to the Virginia Bill of Rights to Thomas Paine’s The American Crisis to Ben Franklin’s Call to Prayer to America’s Declaration of Independence to George Washington’s Farewell Address to William Barret Travis’ Letter to The People of Texas at the Alamo to Grover Cleveland’s First Inaugural Address and to Ron Paul’s Farewell Address to Congress, one will read and sense the ubiquitous spirit of respect and reverence for and thanksgiving to Almighty God and the principles of Natural Law.

Once again, THE FREEDOM DOCUMENTS are available RIGHT NOW. Our supply will not last long. Now you can have the great documents of American history at your fingertips in one beautiful volume.

Reprinted with permission from Chuck Baldwin Live.

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Did Lyndon B. Johnson have John F. Kennedy assassinated? Most political figures are killed by their successors. Only one man had the means, motive, and opportunity to kill JFK, and that is LBJ.

For further reading on LBJ check out these book (Affiliate Links)

LBJ: The Mastermind of the JFK Assassination https://amzn.to/3JjbSqR

The Path to Power (The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Volume 1) https://amzn.to/3rFvZtg

Means of Ascent (The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Volume 2) https://amzn.to/3rPGGKd

Master of the Senate (The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Volume 3) https://amzn.to/3svx46m

The Passage of Power (The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Volume IV) https://amzn.to/3JdtPXQ

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Sex Lives of the Presidents: from Washington to Clinton, by Nigel Cawthorne

It didn’t start with “Bubba” Clinton, or even Jack Kennedy. Ever since the Father of our Country was sworn in over 200 years ago, the White House has seen its share of oversexed, adulterous, philandering presidents. From Washington’s countless bed partners to Jefferson’s allegedly illegitimate children, Kennedy’s notorious womanizing to Clinton’s unstoppable libido, find out the surprising and sometimes bizarre sexual peccadillos and practices of all the men in the Oval Office.

Scanning this book is one of my guilty pleasures, discovering the torrid and lascivious high jinks and sexual shenanigans of the occupants of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20500.

Full of salacious anecdotes and ribald tales of the horny Commanders-In-Chief from Washington to Clinton, each one more hilarious a hoot than the previous.

One of my favorites is when Bill Clinton told his close aide, Arkansas state trooper Roger Perry, that Gennifer Flowers “could suck a tennis ball through a garden hose.”

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This  GRTV video production addresses the complexity and diversity of modern warfare. 

Digital control over a World population of more than 8 Billion People is an instrument of modern warfare, in liason with NATO and the Pentagon.

It’s the “smartphonization” of humanity which repeals fundamental human rights Worldwide. 

“Economic Warfare” is carried out in coordination with the conduct of military operations. Its objective is to destabilize national economies, resulting in unemployment,  poverty and despair. 

The original source of this article is Global Research.

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Twenty years ago, there was no greater villain to the left than Dick Cheney. The vice president was called a fascist. He was called a warmonger. He was called Hitler. He was the center and soul of left-wing derision and Democratic identity.

Their ire? The George W. Bush administration’s 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, for starters, considered today to be one of America’s greatest foreign policy mistakes. Even a majority of veterans believe it was not worth fighting. Then there was the torture, the rampant due process violations, and the fact that Cheney’s advocacy for extreme executive power made him an enemy of the Constitution.

Concerning Cheney and national depravity, there’s a lot to work with.

The progressive pundit Rachel Maddow was once all in on this left-wing hate. She built her early career on it.

Last week, Maddow attended Dick Cheney’s funeral.

Cheney never apologized for or even said he regretted Iraq. He was seemingly down to torture until the day he died.

Maddow was not at Cheney’s funeral to show grace to a once wayward man who had since repented. Independent journalist Glenn Greenwald noted of MSNBC’s biggest star, “Maddow’s career as a commentator began during Bush/Cheney, when she’d frequently compare Cheney to the worst monsters in history (I was on her programs when she said it).”

Greenwald added, “For so many liberals, Cheney is now rehabilitated despite regretting nothing: solely for opposing Trump.”

That’s it. Cheney was against Trump. In 2025, even for dead fascists, warmongers and Hitlers, that’s all it takes for the left to sing your praises.

If this sounds simplistically silly, it’s because it is.

Once Donald Trump finally replaced former villains Dick Cheney or George W. Bush as the Great Satan in leftist minds, there was virtually no self-awareness in Democrats’ drift into turning these neocon Republicans they once despised into heroes. Dubya gets the same love.

In their blind hatred for Trump, mainstream Democrats also ended up becoming something closer to 2003-era Republicans in their foreign policy. One X user commented on the service for Cheney, “Anyone that attended Cheney’s funeral is going to be upset with an end to war.”

Greenwald agreed, “Exactly: I bet if you were to survey the people in attendance at Dick Cheney’s funeral—from Rachel Maddow and Kamala Harris to Lindsey Graham and George W. Bush—opposition to ending the war in Ukraine would be close to 100%, if not unanimous.”

He has a point. After “Resistance” posters and Covid-era virtue signaling got stale for the left, pro-Ukrainian yard signs and social media flag icons became as popular with Democrats as they were with Lindsey Graham.

Democrats and neocon Republicans like Graham ended up with the same foreign policy. The former came to it as an emotional reaction to “America First” Trump. The latter just never changed, welcoming their reformed pro-war Democrats with open arms.

To be fair, mainstream Democrat attitudes toward Israel and Gaza have varied. On the United States’ proxy war with Russia in Ukraine, they have not.

Read the Whole Article

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“Reflect on what happens when a terrible winter blizzard strikes. You hear the weather warning but probably fail to act on it. The sky darkens. Then the storm hits with full fury, and the air is a howling whiteness. One by one, your links to the machine age break down. Electricity flickers out, cutting off the TV. Batteries fade, cutting off the radio. Phones go dead. Roads become impossible, and cars get stuck. Food supplies dwindle.

Day to day vestiges of modern civilization – bank machines, mutual funds, mass retailers, computers, satellites, airplanes, governments – all recede into irrelevance. Picture yourself and your loved ones in the midst of a howling blizzard that lasts several years. Think about what you would need, who could help you, and why your fate might matter to anybody other than yourself. That is how to plan for a saecular winter. Don’t think you can escape the Fourth Turning. History warns that a Crisis will reshape the basic social and economic environment that you now take for granted.” – Strauss & Howe – The Fourth Turning

Knowing who to trust and who to distrust at this point in history is the most important quality for anyone who expects to maneuver their lives and those of their loved ones through the final years of this Fourth Turning. I trust people who base their opinions on facts, not some government approved narrative regurgitated by legacy media bubble headed bimbos and “expert” talking heads. Michael Burry, Ed Dowd and Edward Snowden are men whose opinion I value.

They have all put their careers on the line telling the truth, when virtually everyone else was toeing the Deep State/Wall Street/Big Pharma line regarding the surveillance apparatus monitoring everything we say on our phones or type on our computers; the Federal Reserve/Wall Street manufactured housing bubble to replace the Dot.com bubble; the Covid plandemic created as an excuse to manufacture trillions of new debt because our empire of debt began seizing up in September 2019; and the current Everything Bubble (commercial real estate, residential housing, stocks, bonds, bitcoin, AI).

I’ve been a huge fan of Ed Dowd since reading his principled, factual, data driven destruction of the Covid narrative in real-time when the world had lost its mind and had bowed down to the authoritarian dictates of our government overlords. He was right all along about the Covid scheme to enrich Big Pharma, politicians, and legacy media, while seeing how far the ignorant masses could be pushed before they pushed back. Other than Ed and a small minority of other brave truth tellers, the globalist elite scheme worked to perfection, with billions injected with a toxic gene altering concoction, and the power of government enhanced and broadened.

The tweet below from Ed Dowd was from sixteen months ago, four months before the election of Donald Trump. Absolutely no one was speculating about the scenario Ed laid out. And now his “conspiratorial conjecture” is playing out in real time. No one with any brains wanted the dementia ridden basement dummy or the cackling brain dead hyena, and their cult party of death and destruction to continue their reign of terror on our nation.

Trump and his MAGA legions swept into power (or was he ushered into power?) with promises of America First, an economic renaissance, retribution for the criminal politicians in DC who conducted a coup against Trump, the instantaneous end of wars, MAHA, releasing the Epstein client list, and drastic reduction in government spending through Musk’s DOGE initiative. The level of hope and enthusiasm from Trump’s base, and even the moderates who voted against Kamala, was off the charts. NOT ANY MORE.

This needs to be said now and I will be attacked. I have no proof so it’s a literal conspiracy theory but bears watching with eagle eyes.

Conjecture: If I were in the shadows and had an agenda of ushering in a reset to control the end of the current ponzi debt based fiat system…

— Edward Dowd (@DowdEdward) July 23, 2024

The real owners as described by George Carlin and/or the invisible government as described by Edward Bernays, really don’t care which figurehead from the uni-party is installed at the top of this dung heap of debt. The fleecing of the national treasury continues unabated by the ruling class, and the plight of the plebs deteriorates on a daily basis. But they have been convinced by their overlords to continue going deeper into debt, while thinking they can vote their way out of this delusional debt debacle of a floundering empire.

Trump’s closure of the border and continuing modest efforts to deport the tens of millions of illegal invaders is about the only real positive I’ve witnessed in his first year in office. The old “at least he’s not Kamala” mantra is wearing thin and does not explain his exasperatingly stupid decisions and bloviating pronouncements on a daily basis. Those who adhere to the principles of liberty, freedom, transparency, free speech, not policing the world, and fiscal responsibility are extremely disappointed, but not surprised by the results under Trump thus far. His absolute vitriolic hatred for Rand Paul, Thomas Massie, and Marjorie Taylor Greene, who voted with him 90% of the time, tells me all I need to know about Trump’s moral compass and adherence to the Constitution.

Despite the initial publicity campaign (propaganda) for DOGE and the huge cuts to spending which Trump spewed on a daily basis, the national debt increases by $6.5 billion PER DAY, just as it did under the pants shitting president before him. Future generations are incurring $3.3 billion PER DAY of interest on the now $39 trillion national debt. Trump’s tariff revenue is like pissing in an ocean of debt, as he acts like he is going to send us $2,000 checks with the money he just made us pay by imposing the tariffs. The big beautiful bill cut nothing. Ignoring future recessions and multiple looming wars, the CBO projects the debt to go up by another $23 trillion in the next ten years. I’ll take the over, if the entire Ponzi scheme doesn’t collapse beforehand.

The president who was going to end all the wars funded Israel’s mass genocide in Gaza and their attacks on Iran, while bombing Iran’s nuclear facilities with U.S. forces. Trump has continued to fund Ukraine’s futile war against Russia, while utilizing U.S. weaponry and personnel to conduct drone attacks within Russia. Trump and his NATO minions are conducting a proxy war against Putin, risking a WW3 and nuclear scenario. And now, under the guise of fighting the drug war, he is blowing up speedboats and planning to overthrow Maduro in Venezuela. I’m sure this is about illegal drugs and not the 300 billion barrels of oil sitting under Venezuela’s footprint.

It seems the government shutdown, which 95% of the country didn’t even notice because the government does absolutely nothing but shake us down for tax dollars to distribute to their cronies and enrich themselves, has allowed Trump and his bureaucrat minions to pretend they can’t calculate and announce the true figures regarding GDP, CPI, and employment. If the numbers were good, they would be shouting them from the roof of the White House. The fact they are refusing to report key economic data tells you all you need to know.

Now no Q3 GDP report?

The wheels must be coming off the “Golden Economy” bus. https://t.co/wb0GnYa15b

— Edward Dowd (@DowdEdward) November 25, 2025

I guess the fact government reported inflation in January 2025 when Trump took over was 3.0% (real figures of 5% to 10%) and it continues to run at 3.0% today doesn’t actually support Trump’s narrative of lower prices. And the average person, who shops for groceries, pays their monthly electric and gas bill, buys clothes, pays rent or a mortgage, and lives in the real world, knows they are being screwed while the ruling class reaps the windfall of inflated stock prices and want even more.

Trump threatening Powell to reduce interest rates isn’t to help you. It’s to help his real constituents on Wall Street, in corporate executive suites, and globalist billionaires who pull his puppet strings. Senior citizens who depend on interest income will be screwed coming and going, as their income will decline and the rise in inflation will make their living expenses rise further. I can’t understand why consumer confidence continues to fall and delinquencies on car loans, credit cards, student loans, and mortgages hit multi-year highs every month.

If Trump ever had any conservative principles, he has completely abandoned them. His totalitarian tendencies show themselves more each day, as he picks winners and losers within the economy, threatening to deport the Intel CEO one day and then investing $9 billion of your tax dollars in that company a week later. He is now all in on the AI scam, throwing billions of your tax dollars at these scam artists at Nvidia, Palantir, Oracle and the rest of the lying Silicon Valley scum, bilking investors and ultimately the tax payers out of their hard earned money. If this entire AI narrative is nothing but hot air and fraudulent promises, and it accounts for half of the country’s GDP growth, we will relive the Too Big To Fail 2008 bailout when it all blows up in the not too distant future.

If AI doesn’t work, it will risk recession, blowing out fiscal deficits into insufficient foreign UST demand.

If AI works, it will undermine the U.S. fiscal position (~half of US Federal receipts come from employment), blowing out deficits into insufficient foreign UST demand. https://t.co/z9koZiptU3

— Luke Gromen (@LukeGromen) November 24, 2025

Catherine Austin Fitts has been warning about the coming digital gulag for years. We now have a state sanctioned bubble in AI, with the billionaire club cheering it on, knowing they will be bailed out again when it all goes to shit, like bubbles always do. The fact Trump is encouraging this and adding fuel to the fire reveals this is all part of the ultimate plan to enslave us under the guise of saving the world once again. First it was the great financial crisis (2008/2009), then it was Covid (2020-2022), and now for the coup de grace with the implosion of the everything bubble and rollout of CBDCs, digital surveillance, social credit scores, and living under the thumb of a global authoritarian aristocracy.

Pulling the plug on massive subsidy invested in the digital gulag and shifting resources to investing in our young people is the pathway forward. https://t.co/l3Se9zw6NN

— The Solari Report | Catherine Austin Fitts (@solari_the) November 24, 2025

The globalists attempting to enact their WEF sanctioned Great Reset agenda see China as the template for enslaving the populations of the Western world. They are already monitoring the vast majority of all your communications, as Edward Snowden revealed over a decade ago. The noose tightens around our necks, as Trump and his acolytes enact measures to further reduce our liberty, freedom and rights. This is all building towards a final showdown. One day within the next few years the powers that be will pull the final block out of this jenga tower of unsustainable debt and it will all come crashing down. They will rush to assure you they can fix this if you just trust them once again and agree to their conditions of survival.

EDWARD SNOWDEN’S CHILLING WARNING IS NOW UNFOLDING IN REAL TIME

What China built… is exactly what Western governments are quietly preparing for.

Snowden is crystal clear:

Every photo, every purchase, every message, every movement — all of it is being fed into algorithms pic.twitter.com/X8RGFsRfY1

— karma (@karma44921039) November 23, 2025

I think I’ve connected the dots, and they paint a dire picture of the future, unless we refuse to comply with their plans. Will you and I have the courage to resist and fight their diabolical enslavement plans? Fourth Turnings always come down to a final battle between good and evil, with clear winners and losers. If they win, we become slaves in their digital gulag for eternity. If, against all odds, the liberty minded, freedom loving citizens of the world can somehow defeat these billionaire psychopaths in suits, along with their armies of feckless bureaucrats and politicians, future generations will have the opportunity to blaze a new path forward. I’m not a guy who hangs my hat on a hope narrative, but I am willing to fight for a better future for my children and their children. I hope you join me in this fight.

Reprinted with permission from The Burning Platform.

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I’m sure there will be some shocking events in 2026, but I could only guess what they will be.  There are too many wildcards in the mix, with one big one taking center stage: States.  Check any problem and if you dig deep enough you’ll find one or more of these indispensable organizations at the root.

The civilized world, such as it was, took a nosedive after the Sarajevo assassinations in 1914 ignited the political tinderbox in Europe. To pay for the massive slaughter that followed, states abandoned gold and turned to inflationary finance and borrowing, in addition to heavy taxation. Very importantly, as Rothbard notes, World War I also served as the excuse for

a “war collectivism,” a totally planned economy run largely by big-business interests through the instrumentality of the central government, which served as the model, the precedent, and the inspiration for state-corporate capitalism for the remainder of the 20th century.

For the big shots running things, the war required issuing outrageous lies, suppressing dissent, and everything else except leading the troops in actual combat.  The nightmare of trench fighting they forced upon American men.  “You die over there while we get richer over here,” Wilson and his gang were in effect saying to the conscripts, while peddling “Liberty” Bonds.   Yet, as humanitarian episodes throughout the war made eminently clear, especially the Christmas Truce of 1914, the soldiers were mostly eager to fraternize not kill one another.  Ironically, they might’ve written war’s last chapter had they refused orders to continue the killing, thereby fulfilling the prophecy of H. G. Wells that it would be “the war that will end war.”

If only more people had adopted Einstein’s view: “I should unconditionally refuse every direct or indirect war service and try to induce my friends to adopt the same attitude, irrespective of the general opinion of the causes of war.”

But when peace stands in the way of big profits, the banker/state alliance usually wins.  Quoting Ferdinand Lundberg from America’s Sixty Families, G. Edward Griffin writes in his masterpiece, The Creature from Jekyll Island, that

the total wartime expenditure of the United States government from April 6, 1917, to October 31, 1919, when the last contingent of troops returned from Europe, was $35,413,000,000. Net corporation profits for the period January 1, 1916, to July, 1921, when wartime industrial activity was finally liquidated, were $38,000,000,000, or approximately the amount of the war expenditures. More than two-thirds of these corporation profits were taken by precisely those enterprises which the Pujo Committee had found to be under the control of the “Money Trust.” [ A handful of Wall Street banks, primarily those in the Morgan ambit]

The point of bringing all this up is that states are powerful organizations that sell their services (various forms of coercion) to the highest bidders.  If the price is right laws will be passed, relaxed, or ignored.  If a war is needed to get the public behind some scheme, a Lusitania will sink, a Twin Tower will collapse, with some targeted enemy taking the blame.

Rothbard had it right — states are criminal gangs writ large.

There are times when I picture the state as analogous to the loose cannon that broke free from its fastenings and menaced the lives of the warship crew in Victor Hugo’s novel, Ninety-three.  The crew at least recognized the threat of a ten thousand pound cannon on the loose that “leaps like a panther, has the weight of an elephant, the agility of a mouse,” whose “terrible vitality is fed by the ship, the waves, the wind. . .”  I can’t imagine a crew feeling reverence for such a monster.

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International Man: Trump is pitching a “tariff dividend” that would take revenue from new import tariffs and recycle it into $2,000 checks for Americans—framed not as welfare, but as a patriotic return on America’s trade strength.

What do you make of this?

Doug Casey: Frankly, it’s ridiculous. Whenever Trump talks, it’s clear that he knows nothing about either economics or history. Of course, knowledge isn’t entirely necessary to steer the Ship of State. It’s possible to get by with only luck, bluster, and coercion—but the results tend to be bad. Trump doesn’t have any consistent thinking or philosophy, either; it’s all seat-of-the-pants feelings.

That’s a characteristic of populists. They try to get ahead of popular whims, and they’ll say or do almost anything that they think the mob wants to hear.

So far, the big reason for Trump’s popularity is that he’s a cultural conservative. Let’s count ourselves lucky in that regard. He doesn’t want to overturn the basis of America itself, as many of the Democrats clearly want to do.

When it comes to economics, Trump is very comfortable with arbitrarily printing wild amounts of money. I suspect he rationalizes it by thinking it will forestall deflationary collapse in the short run and inflate away the otherwise unrepayable national debt in the long run.

He’s mostly in favor of mild deregulation, which is good, of course. But most of what he does is flattery-driven. If he likes somebody and they want to suck up to him, he’ll do what it takes to make himself more popular with that person and their constituency.

His tariffs are a tax on Americans who import things. Part of his philosophy with the tariffs is to encourage manufacturing in the US. But since over half of the imports are for further value-added manufacturing in the US, it turns out he’s really hurting domestic manufacturing. And he’s hurting exports too, because when you don’t buy things from people, they’re less likely to buy things from you.

Apart from generating revenue to distribute to the capita censi, his objective is to encourage domestic manufacturing by making imports expensive and forcing people to make things domestically. Very much like Argentina under the Peronists, whose similar hopes of self-sufficiency wound up destroying the Argentine economy. Building up domestic manufacturing can take many years, sometimes decades. But along the way, a closed, protectionist America will produce uncompetitive products. This results in a lower standard of living for Americans.

The only way to bring manufacturing back to the US—the only way—is to free the US economy: get rid of taxes, institute a sound currency so that capital can build, get rid of regulation so that producers aren’t hamstrung, and remove government from all aspects of the economy. But Trump is doing the opposite. So not only is he not going to get the result that he’s looking for, he’s going to create a disaster.

It’s amusing to see him bragging about cultivating foreign investment. For instance, he expects a trillion dollars from the Saudis, which is almost 100% of the Saudi GNP. Trump’s hyperbole on almost everything he talks about is indistinguishable from lying. How can a sensible person take anything he says seriously? When he says something, it’s just off the top of his head.

International Man: Do the so-called tariff dividends amount to a new form of money printing—QE without the Fed?

Doug Casey: You mean the $2000 he says he’ll distribute to various Americans, with money gained from tariffs? As a giveaway, it’s corrupting. But it won’t add to the money supply because putting on tariffs doesn’t create more money. How many will get this $2000 bonus? Who knows. If it goes to 100 million people, that’s $200 billion. Where’s the money going to come from? Not from the tariffs, which will greatly reduce trade and income, and be counterproductive in every way.

Trump loves spending. But how will Trump finance his spending? Taxes aren’t popular, and Trump wants to be popular. Borrowing in the market is out; it would put upward pressure on interest rates. So essentially, more government debt will be sold to the Fed. They’ll buy it with newly created dollars.

International Man: Do you see these tariff checks as a kind of Universal Basic Income for the Right?

Doug Casey: The concept of Universal Basic Income (UBI) is being widely discussed. It’s a disaster on every level possible. Elon Musk and others are saying that it’s inevitable. When robots and AI do everything, they think mass unemployment is unavoidable. They seem to think that the plebs will have to be maintained like pets, to keep them from rioting.

Others think that once UBI frees the plebs from the drudgery of work, they’ll become thinkers, artists, and poets. That’s a pipe dream.

More likely, UBI will create a population of dissipated layabouts, junkies, and neurotic consumers. Healthy humans have to feel productive. Apart from the fact that it’s psychologically destructive, UBI is unnecessary.

That’s because it doesn’t matter how much the AI and robots create, it won’t be “free”; there are costs to everything. Besides, people have infinite desires. A person can work 24/7, catering to the unlimited amount of goods and services people want. The idea should be to totally eliminate welfare, aka UBI, not to put everyone on it.

Of course, ultimately, the elite would like to see AI and robotics reduce the population of the world by, they say, 90%. If only to save Mother Earth from hordes of useless eaters. I’m sure they’re working in that direction.

International Man: Are these tariff dividends a sign of fiscal dominance—where government financing needs begin to dictate monetary policy—and what would the implications be?

Doug Casey: Trump thinks he’s a genius. And as a world-changing genius, he wants to reform the world the way he thinks is best. So, for instance, he’s actively replacing members of the Federal Reserve Board who share his ideas on money; no doubt he’s very favorably inclined toward what’s known as Modern Monetary Theory—the same for the Supreme Court and Congress. Basically, Trump doesn’t believe in anything; he just has feelings and instincts.

The bottom line is that we’re sure to see a lot more government involvement in the economy. Trump tries to make deals with every person and every group possible; he’s opportunistic and very transactional. I think he sees himself as Louis XIV. But I’ll wager that before his term is over, he winds up more like Louis XVI.

International Man: The last time the government handed out checks to the average person was during the Covid mass psychosis, and it triggered the worst inflation in 40 years. What are the implications for gold, the US dollar, and other investments if these tariff dividends continue?

Doug Casey: It’s not just the proposed tariff dividends, it’s his whole economic approach. Trump isn’t a free-market believer; he’s a narcissist, he thinks he’s a genius, and he’ll impose his will whenever he can. This adds a thick layer of uncertainty to a very shaky economy.

I don’t, therefore, think there’s any way around higher gold prices—despite its all-time highs. Since gold is the only financial asset that’s not somebody else’s liability, more and more people will move to gold. But also to commodities in general; relative to their production costs and historical prices, they are very cheap.

Pay attention to the government starting to invest in mining companies—including MP Materials (one of our picks), Lithium Americas, and Trilogy Metals. Not to mention Intel and US Steel. This is in the worst “state capitalist” tradition of picking favorites. Right now, Rare Earths are the flavor of the month. The result will be corruption and massive distortions. Speaking as an economist, I find it stupid and deplorable. But speaking as a speculator, this foolishness is likely to spark interest in mining companies, which makes me happy.

How about real estate? Commercial real estate prices are said to be off about 25% across the country. Even condominium prices are dropping, off 10 to 15%. Houses aren’t selling because so many people locked in low-interest, 3% or 3.5% 30-year mortgages a few years ago. If they sell, they’ll have to refinance at twice those levels, which many can’t afford. With mortgages at 6.5%, a lot fewer people who want to buy can’t buy—the property market’s in trouble across the board.

In the stock market, all the gains have basically been in high-tech. We’re in a multi-trillion-dollar AI super bubble. The financial world is very unstable. The only places that make sense are commodities, resources, and the companies that produce them. The good news is that though they’ve been moving up, they’re still very cheap. And have a lot of upside from here. I remain very concentrated in the resource markets.

Reprinted with permission from International Man.

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Having a ruling from a panel of three judges is a desperate attempt to create a veneer of judicial authority in support of the actions of Keir Starmer’s outlaw government

The High Court judge who granted a legal challenge to the government’s decision to proscribe Palestine Action – the first time in British history a civil-disobedience organisation has been declared a terrorist group, one now treated as on a par with al-Qaeda – has been removed at the last minute.

The judicial review hearing is due to start tomorrow without Justice Martin Chamberlain. He will be replaced with a panel of three judges.

Justice Chamberlain did not suffer any timetabling conflicts. The Justice Ministry declined to offer any explanation for such a highly irregular change.

The outcome of the case will affect thousands of ordinary British citizens who have opposed the government’s anti-democratic proscription decision. They currently face jail sentences, and terrorism convictions, for holding placards saying: “I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action.”

Some oppose proscription because they believe civil disobedience of the kind used by Palestine Action, which targets arms factories supplying Israel with weapons used to slaughter Palestinian children, is the only effective way to put pressure on the government to stop colluding in the Gaza genocide.

Starmer’s government redefines “terrorism” to include for the first time civil disobedience and protest.

Then it declares it’s scrapping the ancient right to trial by jury (because juries too often acquit protesters).

In a rigged justice system, injustice is assured.

— Jonathan Cook (@Jonathan_K_Cook) November 25, 2025

Others hope to make the proscription unenforceable through mass defiance and thereby salvage one of the most fundamental democratic rights – the right to protest – from government assault.

Notably, this is not the first time Justice Chamberlain, who is noted for his independence, has been removed unexpectedly from a judicial review hearing in an Israel-related case. Earlier this year, he was replaced by two other judges after he granted a legal challenge to the government’s continuing sale of parts for F-35 jets to Israel, despite the fighter plane’s use in the killing of many tens of thousands of civilians and the destruction of more than 80 per cent of all buildings in Gaza.

A panel of three judges will now sit in place of Justice Chamberlain.

Dame Victoria Sharp is a from a family with extensive and close ties to the Conservative party. She is the twin sister of Richard Sharp, who was appointed chair of the BBC Board by Boris Johnson, after Sharp had helped secured the Tory prime minister a £800,000 loan. Sharp was later forced to resign. Victoria Sharp is best known for jailing climate activists involved in peaceful protest and for forcing journalist Carole Cadwalladr to pay Brexit donor Aaron Banks £1 million in legal fees after he sued for libel.

Dame Karen Steyn was one of two judges who replaced Justice Chamberlain in the F-35 hearing. She and Justice Males ruled in Israel’s favour, even while accepting that Israel could use F-35s in Gaza in violation of international law.

Sir Jonathan Swift, meanwhile, has a long history of siding with the British state – for eight years he was the government’s top lawyer. In 2023 Swift rejected the appeal of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange against the British government’s approval of his extradition to the US for exposing US and UK war crimes. The US wanted to lock him up indefinitely in a super-max prison.

Through class affiliation, upbringing, education and selection for temperament, senior judges invariably have a bias towards the interests of the British establishment. But some have a stronger bias than others.

It is not hard to understand why Chamberlain has been removed. His earlier rulings on Palestine Action’s proscription indicated that it might be difficult for him to rule in favour of the government.

It is also clear why he is being replaced by three new judges. Backing the government’s redefinition of terrorism – leading almost certainly to the jailing of former senior military personnel, barristers, doctors, priests, Holocaust survivors, and a former adviser to King Charles, all of whom who have publicly supported Palestine Action – risks looking like precisely what it is: a political decision in favour of lawlessness by the British state.

Having a ruling from a panel of three judges is a desperate attempt to create a veneer of judicial authority in support of the actions of an outlaw government.

It won’t work. This already looks like a self-evident stitch-up to extricate Sir Keir Starmer and his ministers from the mess they have made of British terrorism laws – all so they can continue conspiring in Israel’s genocide.

This article was originally published on JonathanCook.net.

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Don’t let the empire gaslight you into believing you are powerless and helpless. There are always things you can do to fight the bastards, and there are always things you can do to improve your own life.

It’s so easy to fall into the trap of believing there’s nothing we can do. Nothing we can do to fight the machine because it’s too large and entrenched, and nothing we can do to change our own personal circumstances because the deck is stacked so unfairly against ordinary people.

It’s a strong illusion because at a surface glance it appears to be true. Our political systems are locked down by the rich and powerful to ensure that our votes don’t inconvenience them in any way, and any new political movement which challenges establishment power structures will find itself facing sabotage from the outside and from within. Our voices are kept marginalized and our countrymen have been turned into mindless empire automatons by a lifetime of propaganda indoctrination.

And at first glance we appear to be just as powerless in our personal lives as well. Unless you’re lucky enough to have obtained some capital which you can use to extract labor from the working class or to possess some special aptitude that our system happens to value, you can spend your whole life struggling in poverty. The life of a worker is getting harder and harder, and it’s easy to feel like there’s nothing you can do about your own unhappiness and psychological dysfunction because you’re laboring under a system that’s so abusive and unfair.

So while it is true that there are many doors that are closed to a denizen of our dystopia, that doesn’t mean you are powerless to change things. Believing that you are powerless serves no one but the powerful.

We are never truly powerless because we always have the ability to help foment a revolutionary zeitgeist, and because we always have the ability to heal ourselves. As a collective we have the power to inform and educate the public to help them understand that they’ve been deceived their whole lives about our society, and that a better world is both needed and possible. As individuals we have the ability to do inner work to heal our trauma and liberate ourselves from the delusion of ego, which will have radically transformative effects on our quality of life in a whole host of ways.

There is nothing our rulers can do to take these abilities away from us. We will always have the ability to do something to help awaken the people to the need for revolution, and we will always have the ability to heal our inner wounds. Every single day there are concrete actions we can take toward both of these ends.

It serves nobody but the powerful to believe there’s nothing we can do to change things. Too many socialists are content to just sit around smugly knowing better than everyone else and having all the correct opinions about things while expressing distain for everyone who tries to expand awareness or make the world a better place. Get active in your community. Produce dissident media. Make revolutionary art. Have conversations. Change minds. Open some eyes. Wake people up so that one day there will be enough of us to force real change.

It serves nobody but the powerful to believe you are doomed to a life of misery. Too many socialists are content to blame all their internal dysfunction on the abuses of capitalism and just spend their days masturbating their inner wounds in meetings and online without doing the rigorous inner work necessary to come to inner peace. Get curious about your internal processes. Research the many modalities for inner healing that are available online. Listen to the brilliant minds who’ve been sharing groundbreaking new insights about trauma and inner work lately. Investigate the possibility that spiritual enlightenment is a real phenomenon that is entirely achievable in this life. Take responsibility for your own inner wellbeing, and start doing something about it.

We don’t need to sit around paralyzed by power-serving learned helplessness. We don’t need to sit idly by waiting for some deus ex machina resolution to our plight. We don’t need to resign ourselves to a life of suffering and making the same mistakes over and over again because we’re being whipped about by unconscious forces within us that we’ve never taken the time to investigate.

There is always something we can do. We can never do everything, but we can always do something. There’s no good reason not to do that something we can do, every single day of our lives.

________________

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James O’Keefe and his team of undercover journalists have caught a senior government official on camera boasting of his efforts to undermine the efforts of the Trump administration.

In the video, Steven Putansu, a 16-year veteran of the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) and current assistant director, spoke about a covert effort by the GAO to unlawfully access vaccine research data deleted by Health and Human Services, under the direction of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (RFK Jr.)

CAUGHT ON HIDDEN CAMERA: U.S. Government Accountability Office Director Admits GAO Staff “Stole & Backed Up” Vaccine Data Allegedly Deleted by RFK Jr.’s HHS – Possible Violations of Federal Records, Theft, & CFAA Laws.

Steven Putansu, a 16-year veteran of the U.S. Government… pic.twitter.com/OaGR6ME248

— James O’Keefe (@JamesOKeefeIII) November 25, 2025

The GAO’s purpose “is to oversee and have oversight over government spending, very similar to what DOGE was recently supposed to be doing,” explained O’Keefe at the outset of his presentation.

And yet the video clearly shows that there are forces within the GAO and other government agencies acting on their own behalf in order to preserve themselves apart from the will of the American people.

Putansu called RFK Jr. “the vaccine-denying head of HHS who’s going to ruin healthcare in this country even more than it already is.”

He asserted that he and others within the government are trying to stymie RFK Jr.’s directives and indicated that “there’s resistance everywhere” to the Trump administration.

“The Trump administration has gone through and they’ve destroyed statistical agencies and data sources and they’ve deleted important data,” said Putansu. “And we have stolen and backed those things up so that someday they can come back to government.”

In the video, O’Keefe consults with Will Chamberlain, senior counsel at the Article III Project and the Internet Accountability Project, about the possible violation of federal statutes by Putansu and his colleagues at the GAO.

“This strikes me as very seriously and very clearly a violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, which prohibits intentionally accessing a computer without authorization, or exceeding authorized access to obtain information from a U.S. government department or agency,” said Chamberlain. “That’s precisely what he did.”

“[Putansu] doesn’t have the right to purloin that information from HHS,” said Chamberlain.

“That could also easily be a theft of government property, which would be a violation of 18 U.S.C. 641. And also the unauthorized removal of public records under 18 U.S.C. 2071,” he added.

This article was originally published on Lifesite News.

The post James O’Keefe Catches Gov’t Official Admitting Deep State Is Undermining RFK Jr. appeared first on LewRockwell.

This year there have been more news articles than ever about “how to survive Thanksgiving”.  If you have not noticed this, I will provide some examples for you in this article.  Personally, the idea that Thanksgiving is an ordeal that must be endured is deeply offensive to me.  If eating a feast while surrounded by people that love you is too much of a burden, please stay home.  Thanksgiving is a day when we our not supposed to be focused on ourselves.  Instead, it is a day when we are supposed to give thanks.  In fact, according to the original Thanksgiving declaration that George Washington issued in 1789, there is someone in particular that we are supposed to give thanks to on this day.  But in our “me-centered” society, that has been completely forgotten.

I love Thanksgiving.  When I was a child, we would stop for one day to eat some turkey and give thanks for our blessings.  But today the Thanksgiving holiday has become an entire season.  The weekend before Thanksgiving is a travel weekend, many take the entire week off, and the weekend after Thanksgiving is the time when people travel home.

I kind of like that.  The more time that we can take to spend with the people that love us the better.

But many media outlets seem to think that spending time with family and friends is a problem.  For example, here is one article about Thanksgiving that discusses “the stresses that a family get-together can create”…

Thanksgiving is an interesting holiday. Some celebrate it as an American tradition. Others look at it as simply an excuse to get together with family to watch some football. And still others just enjoy getting an extra day off from work or try to ignore it altogether. But however you regard it, there are often two areas in which many of us can use help: preparing the traditional Thanksgiving meal and dealing with the stresses that a family get-together can create — especially these days, when conversations around the dinner table may be even more fraught than usual.

Yes, human relationships are complicated.

But that doesn’t mean that we should just isolate ourselves.

A big part of life is learning how to love imperfect people.

Because if you can’t love imperfect people, you aren’t going to love anyone, because nobody is perfect.

Many of the articles about “how to survive Thanksgiving” are focused on how to deal with family members.  The following comes from an article entitled “How to Survive Thanksgiving with a Crazy Family”…

Every Thanksgiving, millions of Americans prepare for what just might be the most family time they’ve had in a while. For some this is great. It is a reunion full of hugs and catching up. For most, it’s a politically charged, possibly drunken, exchange of fighting words, news stories, and my favorite, family drama. While my family is, admittedly, crazy, we normally shy away from such emotionally charged topics. But there is always an instigator in each family who enjoys sparring with family, watching the flames come up from the ground and engulf their family until it’s time to eat so much they enter a comatose state, lie on the couch, and forget the pain they’ve inflicted.

Many of these articles suggest that we should just avoid talking about anything important during Thanksgiving.

Really?

What are we supposed to do?

Talk about the weather for three hours?

Political talk at Thanksgiving is something that mainstream news outlets seem to particularly dislike.  I found an ABC News article entitled “How to survive political talk at Thanksgiving dinner” to be particularly amusing…

It’s Thanksgiving, you’re enjoying your favorite foods at the dinner table, when a family member brings up who they voted for in the 2024 presidential election.

Arguments ensue.

The food doesn’t taste as good.

And now everyone’s a politician.

People have political opinions.

And that is okay.

If we can’t learn how to peacefully interact with those that we disagree with, we are going to be in big trouble.

If we had a society that actually valued the marketplace of ideas, we would relish the opportunity to chat with those that hold opposing views.

But instead we are trained to cringe at the thought of having to do that.  Here is an excerpt from a Vogue article entitled “How to Survive Politics-Talk at Thanksgiving (Without Losing Your Mind)”…

Thanksgiving is almost upon us, and given that we’re fresh off one of the most contentious and politically charged seasons of our time, it’s probably not realistic to expect a holiday to be totally free of drama.

If you’re one of the lucky few whose family is united around political issues, treasure those peaceful conversations at the Thanksgiving table; for the rest of us, it can be challenging to know how best to talk to loved ones (or, to be real, tolerated-out-of-necessity ones) about anything substantive. Besides, for many of us, these issues aren’t “just politics;” they directly affect the way we live our lives and the safety and happiness of our families and friends.

If you disagree with me, that is okay.

And if I disagree with you, that is okay too.

Today, many people are actually completely cutting themselves off from their families due to political differences.

That is so wrong, but it is happening on a widespread basis.

Recently, Oprah Winfrey committed an entire podcast to people that have chosen to go “no contact” with their relatives…

When is it OK to go “no contact” with a family member? And what even is “no contact,” really?

Oprah Winfrey explored these questions on “The Oprah Podcast,” in an episode released Tuesday, Nov. 25, ahead of Thanksgiving. In the episode, audience members opened up about cutting off all contact with close relatives − even their parents.

“I know this is a tender, hot-button topic,” Winfrey said in the episode. “My hope is that we can open up the heart space and really listen. I’m not on anybody’s side. I just want to hear what everyone has to say.”

A USA Today article about that podcast explained precisely what it means to go “no contact” with someone…

“No contact” is pretty much exactly what it sounds like: You cut off all communication with someone. This means no meet-ups, no phone calls, no texting and no interaction on social media. If you happen to run into each other, you either avoid them or keep the interactions short and emotionally neutral.

I know so many children that no longer have contact with their parents, and I know so many parents that no longer have contact with their children.

It is a nationwide epidemic, and it is a great tragedy.

But this is what our society has become.

We have been trained to hate anyone that disagrees with us, and that even includes our own family members.

One of these days so many people are going to look back and wish that they could have done things differently.

If you find yourself wishing that you had done things differently, this Thanksgiving is a great opportunity to change direction.

In 1789, President George Washington issued the very first Thanksgiving proclamation.

He designated the 26th day of November to be a day when Americans were to humble themselves and give thanks to God for the blessings that He had bestowed upon our young nation…

By the President of the United States of America, a Proclamation.

Whereas it is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and humbly to implore his protection and favor– and whereas both Houses of Congress have by their joint Committee requested me to recommend to the People of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many signal favors of Almighty God especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness.

Now therefore I do recommend and assign Thursday the 26th day of November next to be devoted by the People of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being, who is the beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be– That we may then all unite in rendering unto him our sincere and humble thanks–for his kind care and protection of the People of this Country previous to their becoming a Nation–for the signal and manifold mercies, and the favorable interpositions of his Providence which we experienced in the course and conclusion of the late war–for the great degree of tranquility, union, and plenty, which we have since enjoyed–for the peaceable and rational manner, in which we have been enabled to establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national One now lately instituted–for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed; and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge; and in general for all the great and various favors which he hath been pleased to confer upon us.

and also that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations and beseech him to pardon our national and other transgressions– to enable us all, whether in public or private stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually–to render our national government a blessing to all the people, by constantly being a Government of wise, just, and constitutional laws, discreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed–to protect and guide all Sovereigns and Nations (especially such as have shewn kindness unto us) and to bless them with good government, peace, and concord–To promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the encrease of science among them and us–and generally to grant unto all Mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as he alone knows to be best.

Given under my hand at the City of New York the third day of October in the year of our Lord 1789.

The vast majority of the population has totally forgotten what Thanksgiving is supposed to be all about.

But it is not too late to reverse course.

I would encourage everyone to humble themselves and give thanks at some point over the next few days.

You will be amazed at how your perspective changes once you have done that.

Reprinted with permission from The Economic Collapse.

The post ‘How To Survive Thanksgiving’??? appeared first on LewRockwell.

There’s been a lot of hubbub about a working peace deal to end the war in Ukraine. The plan is reportedly gaining traction. Recent statements by officials suggest Ukraine has agreed to the “core terms” of the plan, which many say favors the Russians. But those core terms include territorial concessions and post-war military limitations that some of the most powerful voices in the Ukrainian military and politics have indicated are non-negotiable.

U.S. Army Secretary Dan Driscoll held discussions with Ukrainian officials in Geneva over the weekend. And on Monday, he held talks with a Russian delegation in Abu Dhabi, according to reports. By Tuesday, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt issued a statement saying “tremendous progress towards a peace deal” had been made.

Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council Secretary Rustem Umerov published a statement hours earlier saying American and Ukrainian delegations have “reached a common understanding on the core terms of the agreement.” However, he added, “We now count on the support of our European partners in our further steps.”

We appreciate the productive and constructive meetings held in Geneva between the Ukrainian and U.S. delegations, as well as President Trump’s steadfast efforts to end the war.

Our delegations reached a common understanding on the core terms of the agreement discussed in…

— Rustem Umerov (@rustem_umerov) November 25, 2025

Europe’s Plan

The Council of the European Union said in a statement on Saturday, a few days after news of the plan had been leaked, that the proposal was “a basis which will require additional work.” It also suggested the Europeans were not OK with at least one of the core tenets of the plan. “We are clear on the principle that borders must not be changed by force,” according to the statement.

Throughout the entire war, the Europeans have consistently discouraged peace and pushed the Ukrainians to keep fighting. When President Donald Trump cut off the blank checks and stopped the free weapons from flowing, the Europeans stepped in to buy American weapons for the Ukrainians (the United States, however, is still providing intelligence to the Ukrainians). But they’ve stopped short of sending official boots on the ground. They’ll let Ukraine’s pregnant women fight before they step in.

Russian Skepticism

Russian state media organ RT published a report Tuesday implying that optimism toward an agreement is unwarranted. “After a tense weekend of talks in Geneva, that plan has been cut down and rebranded as an ‘updated and refined peace framework,’ but the core reality hasn’t changed: Washington, key EU capitals, Kiev and Moscow are all reading from different scripts,” the Russians said. Moreover, core Russian demands have apparently been removed from the working draft. According to the Russians, “The key issues — territorial concessions, Ukraine’s NATO status and some of the military restrictions — have reportedly been taken out of the main text and parked in separate ‘follow-up‘ documents for talks at presidential level.”

The Europeans are reportedly scrambling to rewrite the plan more to their liking, which will likely turn off the Russians, who have no intention of walking away from territory they have spent three years and piles of bodies to capture.

American Realism

Of all the outside parties at the table, it looks as if the Americans are the only ones who have a sober understanding of the situation. Unlike Ukraine and the Europeans, the United States understands why the terms favor the winning side. This is the way it works with peace treaties. Trump’s Special Envoy Steve Witkoff knows this. According to a Wall Street Journal report on how the plan came about, “Witkoff, through conversations with U.S. and foreign officials and reading intelligence assessments, concluded that Ukraine was in the weaker position militarily.” More from the Journal:

Despite absorbing Russia’s all-out invasion in February 2022 and forcing it to fight at great cost for small territorial gains, Ukraine is still at a disadvantage, the officials said. It would need to concede more than Moscow in a peace deal to have any hope of getting the Kremlin to halt the war.

In addition to restricting the size of Ukraine’s post-war army and barring any chances of NATO membership, the plan requires that all other countries but Ukraine recognize Crimea as Russian territory, that Ukraine give up the entire Donbas region, 14 percent of which is still controlled by Ukraine, as well as most of the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions. The deal also includes the lifting of sanctions off Russia and the creation of U.S.-Russia business ties. Read our previous report for more on the plan here.

Russia has few incentives to capitulate. Aside from incurring more sanctions, which are certainly not helping its economy, it holds the rest of the cards. Its army continues to advance against a Ukrainian military operating at a fraction of full capacity. Moreover, Ukraine’s political leadership is imploding, thanks to recent revelations of a massive war-profiteering kickback scandal involving people close to Zelensky. Ukraine is falling apart on every important front.

Interventionist Blowback

It’s also important to remember that the United States almost certainly played a role in triggering this war. This isn’t Russian propaganda. Several informed figures have provided evidence, some of which we’ve relayed in previous reports. Former Texas congressman Ron Paul summarized America’s role in this fiasco on Tuesday. Paul pointed out:

From the Orange Revolution in the early 2000s to the Maidan revolution in 2014, the US and its NATO partners have been interfering in Ukraine’s internal affairs in attempt to manipulate the country into a hostile position toward its much larger and more powerful neighbor, Russia.

We must remember how directly coordinated the 2014 coup was by the United States. US Senators, including John McCain and Lindsey Graham, were on the main square of a foreign capital demanding that the people overthrow their duly elected government. Victoria Nuland was caught on a telephone call planning who would run the post-coup government. For the entirety of this conflict politicians and the media have been unwavering in blaming Russia entirely for what has occurred. I agree that they’re no angels.

Paul added another sobering tidbit:

But the real villains here are the US neocons and their European counterparts who knew it was suicidal for Ukraine to take on Russia but pushed Ukraine to keep fighting anyway. Early in the conflict a deal was on the table and nearly signed that would end the war, but the neocon former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson demanded that Ukraine keep fighting.

Witkoff and his team were right to keep the Europeans out of the negotiations for as long as they could. If only Zelensky would do the same.

Just End It

Whatever side Americans take in this war, if they take any at all, it is in the best interest of all Americans that this war ends, and that it ends soon. The longer it continues, the chances of escalation remain. If the Europeans get embroiled, it will only be a matter of time before they convince our foolish leaders to send American soldiers into Ukraine. The United States is a NATO member, meaning the pressure to support the Europeans will be insurmountable.

Meanwhile, as for how our leaders can truly bring an end to the fighting, we refer back to the wisdom of Ron Paul:

President Trump promised he would end the war 24 hours after he was elected. It was an unrealistic boast, but he actually could have ended it rather quickly. The antidote to intervention is non-intervention. Biden drug us into the war, that is true. But Trump could have pulled us out by quite simply ending all US involvement. No weapons, no intelligence, no coordination. No need for sanctions or the threat of sanctions, no need for elaborate peace plans. It is unimaginably cruel to demand that Ukraine keep fighting our proxy war down to the last Ukrainian. No 28-point plans can fix this. The real fix is much simpler: walk away.

This article was originally published on The New American.

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A  reserve money is used by the world’s people to buy from and sell to one another.

If a reserve money is produced by a nation’s politicians, this is both good and bad.  It helps the nation’s people buy more products from other nations’ people.  But it also helps the nation’s politicians borrow and spend more.

When the nation’s politicians borrow and spend more, that forces the nation’s people to invest less and produce less.  At the same time, that also forces the nation’s people to pay interest and pay back principal.  (Although constitutionally they are required to push back against repaying any debts incurred to finance Progressive politicians’ rebellion, by repudiating those debts.)

The people and the government people each do their part

The people of the USA make the dollar desirable as a reserve money because they create a wide array of products that people everywhere want.  These products include assets, skilled labor, materials and energy products, intermediate products, and final products.  Some of these products can’t be found anywhere else at a comparable quality and price.  A few of these products can’t be found anywhere else at all.

USA government people make the dollar desirable as a reserve money if they make people’s life, liberty, and property secure.

But USA government people are doing worse at this, and that is making the dollar less desirable as a reserve currency, due to a couple of key actions.  First, they have long granted bankers license to steal interest they haven’t earned by collecting deposits, by instead simply creating dollars and loaning them out.  Lately, they are pushing bankers to lower interest rates even more than in the past by creating even more dollars.  Both actions dilute the value of the existing dollars that the world’s people have been using to buy from and sell to one another.

Predictably, USA politicians keep spending more, and they keep making us pay for it by borrowing more, and this is making the dollar worth less over time.  USA politicians have kept this up throughout the Progressives’ century-plus since 1894.

The long-term historical purchasing power of the dollar is approximated in the figure.

Figure: The dollar’s purchasing power, 1800–2024.  Semilog plot using CPI data, scaled so purchasing power was 100% in 1894.

The figure’s vertical axis has a log scale.  On such a semilog graph, a sloped straight line indicates that there has been a constant rate of exponential growth or decay.

At first, the USA government people held to a fractional-reserve gold standard.  In general, people’s productivity increased exponentially, and as a result, the dollar’s purchasing power also increased exponentially.

But since the government people allowed bankers to lend out more money than people had saved, this practice’s intrinsic instability periodically caused sensible runs on banks that have been called panics, across which the dollar’s purchasing power decreased exponentially.  Also, government people periodically caused wars, across which the dollar’s purchasing power also decreased exponentially, at even faster rates.

Later, across the Progressives’ century-plus, politicians started decreasing the dollar’s purchasing power at exponential rates.

Even the one period of seeming respite — the Roaring Twenties followed by the Great Depression — brought its own deprivations.  These included WWII, which was brought on by the new Fed’s 1920s boom and 1930s bust.

Progressive politicians’ debasement of the dollar’s purchasing power proceeded at faster exponential rates across sustained periods around WWI, WWII, the 1970s Great Inflation, and government people’s COVID responses.

This latest time is different.  USA gross public debt as a percentage of GDP is now a historically high 139% and is still growing without limits.

If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.

Eventually, creditors will stop buying depreciating bonds at affordable interest rates, or the people will stop keeping up with interest payments.

In the more inflationary 2000s, people’s usual capital-preserving shift away from underperforming stocks and depreciating moneys and toward hard assets has begun already and is increasing.

Since 2010, gold has been increasingly bought by various nations’ central bankers.  Since January 2025, gold has been increasingly bought by various other institutions and individuals.  If current central bank holdings would simply stay the same but the price of gold would rise from $4,000 per ounce to just $5,600 per ounce, the world’s largest reserve asset would no longer be dollars.  It would be gold.

The USA people already produce much of what the world wants.

Also, with only few exceptions, all in smaller nations, USA government people beat other nations’ even worse government people, making property more secure here than elsewhere.

But that’s not as good as things could be.  The USA people will be freed to create far more value once our governments become less able to borrow on the backs of all of us.

So it’s great news for the USA people that the choices of myriad people in other governments, other groups of people, and individuals are converging to transition the world’s reserve money from the dollar to gold.

The way things work in practice in the real world, things could hardly be better for freedom and for everybody’s future.

This article was originally published on American Thinker and was reprinted with the author’s permission.

The post Gold Beats the Dollar Because Politicians Trash the Dollar appeared first on LewRockwell.

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Writes Bill Madden:

Rising prices are the result of inflation which is caused by increasing the money supply in excess of the goods and services available in the marketplace.  Surplus budgets cause the economy to contract while deficit budgets stimulate economic expansion.  Since we are controlled by very wealthy families owning most of Corporate America’s stock, we have enjoyed mostly deficit budgets since the end of WW II and, as a consequence, the wealthy families have enjoyed healthy quarterly profit distributions.

When we have an economic contraction, many assets like homes, automobiles, etc. are lost to the lenders via bankruptcy on loans created from nothing like our $38 trillion national debt.  It has been alleged that the Great Depression was engineered by the wealthy owners of our country by flooding the economy with easy money during the “roaring twenties” and then tightening the money supply too much too soon resulting in the economy tightening too much.  Whether engineered or not, many people lost many assets on loans created from thin air.

Our Constitution is clear as to whom should control our money (our fiat currency, actually).  Whenever an institution like the Fed owned by people with an interest in free asset accumulation is provided an opportunity to manage anything where mismanagement is far more profitable than good management, the institution will most likely engage in mismanagement.  No matter the true cause of our many problems, the people always pay like in 2008 when we bailed out the gigantic gambling losses incurred by the banking industry.

Please visit: www.shadowstats.com and, under Alternate Data, learn the actual rate of inflation.

See here.

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Writes Ginny Garner:

Lew,

Speculation about why Rep. Margaret Taylor Greene (R-Ga) has announced her resignation from Congress extends from her concerns about the death threats she has received to her  plans to run for governor of Georgia. MTG gave a clue when she responded to Mike Cernovich’s order to her on X: “You need to serve out your full term.” MTG responded: “Do I have to stay until I’m assassinated like our friend Charlie Kirk?”

Oh I haven’t suffered enough for you while you post all day behind a screen?

Do I have to stay until I’m assassinated like our friend Charlie Kirk.

Will that be good enough for you then?

Shit posting on the internet all day isn’t fighting.

Get off YOUR ass and run for… https://t.co/jhbqxHi3Vt

— Marjorie Taylor Greene (@mtgreenee) November 26, 2025

The post Why MTG is Resigning From Congress appeared first on LewRockwell.

Stephen Mack  wrote:

Karen & Lew,

Reposted by Karen:

Hegseth files CRIMINAL probe for ‘$48 BILLION PILFERED by ZELENSKY’ — CIA insider cites whistleblower pic.twitter.com/qyvGHmkLFk

— RT (@RT_com) November 22, 2025

It didn’t start with Zelensky. The per-capita GDP of Ukraine was only 1/3 that of Russia and Poland BEFORE the Maidan Coup.  In fact, it was only ½ the per-capita GDP of Belarus.  So in other words, the notional Breadbasket of Europe could not even approximate the economic outputs of neighboring European states.  That was a huge corruption tax put in place by the Ukrainian Crony-Elites even before the installation of the Zelensky regime.

Russia most probably did, but actually did not have to game the plebiscites for the decoupling of Crimea and the Donbas regions.  On top of the harassment the ethnic Russians in Ukraine were experiencing from the Ukro-Nazi cadres, the country itself was / is an economic basket case.  The residents in those Eastern regions had that reason alone to seek autonomy.

As I have noted before, Trump’s empty gas-bag promise of ending the conflict in Ukraine in 24 hours is made worse by the fact that during the Trump 1.0 administration, Trump and the Europeans completely ignored the Minsk 2 Accord to end the hostilities that Ukraine had signed in 2015.  The perverse irony is that any deal that Ukraine agrees to now will probably be worse for Ukraine than that codified in Minsk 2.

Once again:

If we remain one people under an efficient government. the period is not far off when we may defy material injury from external annoyance; when we may take such an attitude as will cause the neutrality we may at any time resolve upon to be scrupulously respected; when belligerent nations, under the impossibility of making acquisitions upon us, will not lightly hazard the giving us provocation; when we may choose peace or war, as our interest, guided by justice, shall counsel.

Why forego the advantages of so peculiar a situation? Why quit our own to stand upon foreign ground? Why, by interweaving our destiny with that of any part of Europe, entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils of European ambition, rivalship, interest, humor or caprice?  President Washington, Farewell Address

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David Martin wrote:

Stew Peters and I are definitely on the same page.  Here’s a reminder of the email I sent around yesterday:

Listening to the talking heads on “conservative” WMAL in DC this morning on the Marjorie Taylor Greene resignation statement and her beef with Trump. To hear their interpretation, it was all about the Epstein matter. 

The big “I” word was never raised, but it could hardly be clearer that that’s what it’s all about, that and the “J” word.

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