Lew Rockwell Institute

ANTI-STATE • ANTI-WAR • PRO-MARKET

URL: https://www.lewrockwell.com/

Aggiornato: 3 ore 10 min fa

Marlow Warns Likely Klaus Schwab Successor at WEF Might Be Even More Evil

Dom, 06/04/2025 - 09:55

Thanks, John Frahm.

Breitbart

The post Marlow Warns Likely Klaus Schwab Successor at WEF Might Be Even More Evil appeared first on LewRockwell.

The Revolution of 1525 (500 Years Ago)

Dom, 06/04/2025 - 06:00

Once upon a time, in a land far away, lived a man, a man who believed that he, alone among all men, was anointed by God.

In fact, this man believed he was God. This man took it upon himself to organize and lead a great and holy crusade, a vast and powerful movement of the oppressed and victimized. This movement had a powerful symbol – the rainbow.

This man and his select group of followers would redefine everything in the world in which they lived, from the most basic human relationships such as marriage and property, to the ultimate question of whom would live and whom would die. But this story is not some lost fanciful legend or children’s fable. It is one of the most profound lessons in history.

The ideas of this man and his followers are not confined to a remote dustbin of the past, but are very alive today. They have impacted the world (and continue to impact our world) such as few ideas before or since. Such ideas have consequences. Are we prepared to face them?

Some observers believe the Twelve Articles that emerged from the German Peasants’ War outweigh the character flaws of Müntzer and the principles of Anabaptists. Müntzer may have lit the fuse, but it was a fuse rolled by Martin Luther. They assert Rothbard makes some critical accusations about SOME Anabaptists including Müntzer, BUT Rothbard also notes that most Anabaptists were anarchists of various degrees. In retrospect, The Twelve Articles set forth the foundations of our freedoms later enshrined in the Bill of Rights and other human rights many today still don’t enjoy around the world.

1 – Each community had the right to choose and dismiss its minister instead of having one appointed, and this minister should preach only from the Bible, not from church liturgy.
2 – The church tithe should be used to pay for a community’s minister, and any surplus used for the poor of that community instead of going elsewhere.
3 – Every peasant should be recognized as an autonomous being equal to any lord in the eyes of God.
4- Peasants should be allowed to fish, hunt, and make use of their own land.
5- Peasants should have access to the forests and be allowed to harvest wood for hearth fires or for their trade, such as carpentry.
6 – Daily labor should conform to the demands previously set for peasants prior to the enactment of new laws.
7- Compulsory labor should be abolished as it is unchristian and was never agreed to by the peasantry.
8 -Excessive rent for fields should be abolished as many peasants wind up working only to pay rent.
9 – Laws should be made more equitable so that all are equal before it and no one gets harsher or more lenient treatment for the same crime.
10 – Fields and meadows previously owned by the community, which have been taken by nobles, should be returned.
11 – The ‘heriot’ – inheritance tax – should be abolished as it leads to the poverty and suffering of widows and orphans.
12 – If any of the above demands are not in accordance with scripture, they will be removed only after the scripture is explained clearly and the article is shown to be in error.

(Below is the Peasants’ War Panorama, a monumental panoramic painting about the Peasants’ War entitled Early Bourgeois Revolution in Germany by the Leipzig painter and art professor Werner Tübke . It is housed in the Panorama Museum , a specially constructed building complex on the Schlachtberg near the small Thuringian town of Bad Frankenhausen at the foot of the Kyffhäuser Mountains . The work was created between 1976 and 1987, originally to commemorate the German Peasants’ War and the peasant leader Thomas Müntzer. With an area of 1722 m², it is one of the largest panoramas in the world.)

The post The Revolution of 1525 (500 Years Ago) appeared first on LewRockwell.

Books LRC Readers Bought This Week

Sab, 05/04/2025 - 05:01

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

If you can’t live without your daily dose of LewRockwell.com in 2025, please remember to DONATE TODAY!

The post Books LRC Readers Bought This Week appeared first on LewRockwell.

Who Owns the Gold?

Sab, 05/04/2025 - 05:01

“Economics, in its most elegant form, is the study of cause and effect.”—John Rogers, Voting in Context: A Brief Economic History of American Politics

In 1933, people thought the world was ending and urged government to do whatever it could to relieve the pain of the Depression. In compliance thereof, FDR issued Executive Order 6102 on April 5, 1933 “forbidding the hoarding of gold coin, gold bullion, and gold certificates within the continental United States.”

Note the word, “hoarding”—a word with a negative tinge, suggesting the person hoarding is deliberately restricting supply for personal advantage. (See “The Virtue of Hoarding”). For many it summons the image of an anti-social miser. No one wanted to be branded a miser, especially by a president as beloved as FDR. Hoarders of gold, which was synonymous with owners of gold, were allegedly causing harm, therefore, hoarding had to stop.

What harm did hoarding cause? It was preventing government inflation of the money supply. Inflation would cause prices to rise, which the government thought was a good thing, especially in the current deflationary environment.

FDR commanded Americans to deliver their gold “to a Federal Reserve Bank or a branch or agency thereof or to any member bank of the Federal Reserve System” on or before May 1, 1933. Not exactly a long lead time, but this was an emergency. Civilization’s money since King Croesus of Lydia (modern Turkey) ordered gold coins struck around 550 BC was suddenly no longer doing its job.

Fed Amendments

Since 1917, when the US plunged into the Great War “over there,” government and the Fed were doing everything they could to take gold, and therefore, gold redemption, out of the public’s hands. As Benjamin Anderson reports (p. 87), an amendment to The Federal Reserve Act in 1917 required member banks,

…to carry all of their legal reserves as deposits with the Federal Reserve banks, their own gold and lawful money held in their own vaults no longer counting as legal reserves. This made it possible for the member banks to turn over all their gold to the Federal Reserve banks, receiving in return either deposit credits or Federal Reserve notes . . . (emphasis mine)

The amendment had two purposes: (1) concentrate gold and gold certificates in Federal Reserve Banks; and, (2) encourage non-member banks to join the Federal Reserve System. About the latter, Anderson says the response was “gratifying.”

By keeping gold in Federal Reserve Banks and distant from everyday transactions, Americans were getting a taste of the fiat system headed their way.

A Revised Charter

Both the First and Second Banks of the United States were chartered for 20 years, and when the time came for renewal Congress voted to end them. The Fed originally had a 20-year-limit on its existence as well, but in its case it had a track record:

Since the System began operations, economic growth had been rapid. Interest rates had been stable. Financial crises had been contained. Recessions had been short. Recoveries had been rapid. Gold reserves had risen. The Federal Reserve Note . . . had become one of the world’s leading currencies. Banks in the United States had become increasingly profitable and internationally prominent. The world economy, in contrast, had experienced a decade of doldrums following the First World War.

Not mentioned in this sterling account was the “forgotten” depression of 1921, in which unemployment exceeded that of the Great Depression and “wholesale prices plunged by 36.8 percent, consumer prices by 10.8 percent and farm prices by 41.3 percent.” Unlike the government-Fed remedies of the Great Depression, this one was cured quickly by a laissez-faire approach.

Fed love prevailed, however, and knowing its charter would expire in seven years, Congress on February 25, 1927 passed the McFadden Act, one clause of which modified the Fed’s 20-year limit to allow it to exist until and unless Congress dissolved it. The Fed had been rechartered “into perpetuity.”

With government and the Fed under fire for its failures during the first years of the Depression, this one change may have kept it alive during a Democrat administration that began in 1933, one year before the Fed would have been up for renewal by original statute.

Fiat Money Frees the Printing Press

With the people’s gold stolen and locked up in Fort Knox, what became of the money Americans used?

In a 2002 speech, Fed chairman and former gold advocate Alan Greenspan told his audience,

. . . in the two decades following the abandonment of the gold standard in 1933, the consumer price index in the United States nearly doubled. And, in the four decades after that, prices quintupled. Monetary policy, unleashed from the constraint of domestic gold convertibility, had allowed a persistent over-issuance of money.

Decades earlier, in a famous 1966 article, Greenspan concluded with these words, slamming government for spending wealth it was stealing from future generations:

Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the confiscation of wealth. Gold stands in the way of this insidious process. It stands as a protector of property rights. If one grasps this, one has no difficulty in understanding the statists’ antagonism toward the gold standard.

Today, the fiat Federal Reserve note is worth about three percent of its value in 1913, while gold—if you own some you might want to hang onto it—has maintained its value.

With gold in the news and DOGE prying into government agencies, the bullion depository at Fort Knox—considered the world’s largest gold reserve—was certain to be checked out. The coins surrendered by Americans are now bars—big heavy chunks of gold of little or no use for everyday commerce.

So if Trump and company visit Fort Knox and find that “America’s” gold is still there, will Musk face the cameras and say, “This is your gold” to the public as he did recently in an X post? And if he does, will he or Trump propose returning it to the American people?

Note: The views expressed on Mises.org are not necessarily those of the Mises Institute.

The post Who Owns the Gold? appeared first on LewRockwell.

NATO Is Breaking Apart

Sab, 05/04/2025 - 05:01

On April 2nd, Reuters headlined “US officials object to European push to buy weapons locally”, which means that Trump’s demand for Europe to increase greatly its ‘defense’ spending is, indeed, part of his plan to keep the boom in the U.S. stock markets going. This needs to be understood in the relevant context:

Though none of the mainstream press reported the fact in 2017, Trump started his Presidency in 2017 by making the biggest armaments-sale in history: $400 billion in U.S.-made weapons to Saudi Arabia over the next ten years, which would keep the by-far-most profitable segment of the U.S. stock markets — the ‘defense’ sector — booming, and therefore keep American billionaires (whom those corporations benefit enormously in every possible way) continuing to grow their personal fortunes at a much faster clip than the U.S. economy itself grows (which has been quite sluggish — below the global average for all countries); and, this way, the fortunes of billionaires will continue to thrive even if the U.S. economy doesn’t (as has been the case now for at least the past 25 years).

Right now, Trump is promising to stop America’s apparently ceaseless creation of, and participation (such as in Ukraine) in, foreign wars, but he isn’t reducing — and is instead actually increasing — America’s ‘defense’ (aggression) expenditures while cutting virtually everything else (the federal expenditures that don’t help billionaires); and, in order to do this beyond the 2027 end-date of his $400 billion weapons-sale to the Sauds, he is trying to get America’s colonies (‘allies’), such as Europe, Japan, South Korea, etc., to increase their armaments-purchases from American firms such as Lockheed Martin — the firms whose sales-volumes are especially important to America’s billionaires, the people who control the U.S. Government. This is why he doesn’t want Europeans to grow their own ‘defense’ industries.

If a European nation will allow foreign (especially American) billionaires to benefit from its sharp increase in armaments-purchases, this won’t hurt ONLY their own domestic billionaires, but it will ALSO be sending those manufacturing jobs to America and thereby boost America’s economy at the expense of the local economy. For Trump to be requesting them to do that is to insult not only that country’s billionaires but also its residents.

This is not the only reason why NATO might soon break apart. For example: Trump is determined to take Greenland for the U.S. Government — to expand the U.S. to include Greenland. However, polls show that around 85% of Greenlanders are opposed to that, and Trump is also saying that if they won’t willingly comply, then he will do it militarily. Greenland is a Danish colony, and Denmark is a part of NATO. If the U.S. invades Greenland, then how will other countries in NATO feel about that? It would present the U.S. blatantly as aggressor against a NATO member-nation — the very nation that had previously been supposedly their chief protector. What would this do to NATO?

The U.S. Congress is, according to the U.S. Constitution, supposed to be the ultimate determinant of whether or not U.S. military forces invade another country; but, so far, there has been prevailing silence from Congress about Trump’s threat against Greenlanders and even Danes — not the outrage that would prevail if America were still governed under its Constitution.

We are entering the twilight zone. Will it turn out to be the end of the U.S. empire — the end of the largest empire in all of world history? It could — especially if Congress remains silent about what has been happening. The longer this silence continues, the deeper into it we are getting.

This is certainly a weird moment in world history. Of course, ultimately, NATO will end, but the question is when and how. NATO had started on 25 July 1945 as a sentiment and resulting decision by Truman, and was then born in 1949, but is probably near its end now, and the public don’t know it because lots of ‘history’ that has been told in The West is false.

This originally appeared on Eric’s Substack.

The post NATO Is Breaking Apart appeared first on LewRockwell.

Why Did the FDA Hide Vaccine Injuries?

Sab, 05/04/2025 - 05:01

A frequent criticism of corporations (which I believe also applies to governmental bureaucracies) is that their organizational structure encourages sociopathic behavior. This is because members of these entities are shielded from legal or personal accountability for their actions, with any wrongdoings being attributed to the corporation as a whole. In contrast, the main form of accountability most members face is the pressure to advance the institution’s mission (e.g., make more money), leading to the proliferation of increasingly unethical methods to achieve that goal.

To illustrate, consider this quote from Peter Rost, a former executive at Pfizer and one of the few pharmaceutical leaders to speak out against the industry:

It is scary how many similarities there are between this industry and the mob. The mob makes obscene amounts of money, as does this industry. The side effects of organized crime are killings and deaths, and the side effects are the same in this industry. The mob bribes politicians and others, and so does the drug industry … The difference is, all these people in the drug industry look upon themselves – well, I’d say 99 percent, anyway – look upon themselves as law-abiding citizens, not as citizens who would ever rob a bank … However, when they get together as a group and manage these corporations, something seems to happen … to otherwise good citizens when they are part of a corporation. It’s almost like when you have war atrocities; people do things they don’t think they’re capable of. When you’re in a group, people can do things they otherwise wouldn’t, because the group can validate what you’re doing as okay.

In looking through what went awry with the COVID-19 response, while Fauci was commonly blamed for all that went amiss, I kept running into another less-known individual who, while hidden within the FDA bureaucracy, I believe was directly responsible for many of the mishaps that happened

This was because Peter Marks was:

•The primary person who covered up the reports of COVID vaccine injuries (and instead repeatedly told the world they were “safe and effective”).

•Kept on pushing the FDA’s chief vaccine scientists (who were very pro-vaccine) to accelerate and condense the approval timelines for the COVID vaccines (as those approvals were needed to legally implement Biden’s vaccine and booster mandates). Eventually, Gruber and Krause reported their were no more corners they could cut to further accelerate the COVID vaccine approvals, at which point they were removed from the COVID vaccine approval process and Marks took it over (at which point the unjustifiable approvals and mandates quickly followed).

As such, I felt Marks should not be in the agency and four weeks ago put together a detailed summary of his gross malfeasance at the FDA throughout COVID-19 in the hopes his abhorrent conduct could become widely known.

Last week, Marks announced his resignation in a spiteful letter that concluded with:

I was willing to work to address the Secretary’s concerns regarding vaccine safety and transparency…However, it has become clear that truth and transparency are not
desired by the Secretary, but rather he wishes subservient confirmation of his misinformation and lies.

This, in turn, prompted Robert Redfield (Trump’s 2018-2021 CDC director) to make a Twitter account to state:

Secretary Kennedy and Commissioner MartyMakary have the responsibility to build their own team at the FDA to move our nation forward. It was extremely disappointing to see Dr Peter Marks’ vindictive comments towards Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. in his resignation letter. I firmly believe RFK will be the most consequential Health Secretary in our nation’s history.

Note: Redfield, to my knowledge, is the only CDC director who went into private practice (he treats long COVID) after leaving the CDC (whereas in contrast most directors accept lucrative or prestigious positions following their tenure).

Following Mark’s resignation (which many news outlets claimed was forced), many news outlets attempted to paint him as saint and a victim of RFK’s “war against science”

This gushing coverage of Marks, in turn, I would argue was due to his background. Specifically:

•Prior to joining the FDA, Marks was an academic hematologist and oncologist with an “average and unimpressive publication history” (none of which related to vaccines, but one of which extensively discussed the global need for fully informed consent and stated “those that have only pretended to move [towards informed consent] will have the greatest difficulty”).

•Prior to joining the FDA, he’d also worked for several years the pharmaceutical industry (although oddly, no information exists online as to which companies he worked for—although one was likely Novartis).

•While at the FDA, he prioritized pushing through extremely expensive gene therapies (22 in total—most of which cost over half a million dollars), including some highly questionable ones (e.g., he overruled three FDA review teams and two top officials to push through a failed muscular dystrophy treatment which subsequently killed a patient).
Note: Robert Malone recently showed that Peter Marks was not qualified to be a senior regulator and had minimal knowledge or background in molecular biology, immunology or vaccinology (and worse still, repeatedly chose to overrule the FDA scientists who did).

•Marks was seen as a global leader in commercializing this field (e.g., he helped direct Germany’s national program to develop gene therapies, his resignation shook the entire sector, and following his resignation, large drops occurred in the stocks of key gene therapy companies).

Fake Empathy

Roughly a century ago, a new industry which combined propaganda, marketing and the emerging science of psychology was created by Freud’s nephew and rapidly took off because of how effectively it shifted public opinion. Since that time Public Relations (PR) has been continuously refined and this invisible industry has gradually gained a monopoly over pubic discourse and gotten a stranglehold on our society.

Since so many backwards policies (e.g., medical ones) originate from PR campaigns, I’ve thus tried to expose the common tactics this industry uses (e.g., having “experts” spam a persuasive soundbite across every media platform), as when you can’t see it, those tactics exert a powerful subconscious pull on the listener, but once you are able to see them, they become immensely transparent and you begin to see through so many of the lies that are fed to us.

Note: I have long found it immensely aggravating how often public figures (e.g., politicians) will successfully repeat PR lines you can tell they clearly do not believe what they are saying as there is no conviction behind their words and frequently they will subsequently say or do things which clearly demonstrate they did not mean what they’d said at the time). Likewise, I have always greatly disliked how when corporations do something evil and get caught, and it will puts out a statement which begins with “we are deeply saddened by …” and then somehow are absolved of their culpability for what happened

In my eyes, one of the most critical points to understand about PR is that the industry has made it much easier (and cheaper) to create a positive perception by paying a PR firm to do that than it is to earn the positive perception through one’s actions. Similarly, public policy has shifted towards policies being determined by whether or not a PR firm can sell them to the public rather than if the electorate supports them.

Note: much of the PR apparatus depends upon having a total monopoly over information (so that nothing can challenge the absurd narratives millions are spent to make be entrenched in our society). One of most profound shifts in our society has been the ability of information to freely diffuse across social media, thereby breaking the monopoly on truth which used to be afforded to those PR campaigns and allow contrary narratives which challenge the absurdity of many of these PR campaigns to rapidly disseminate and dispel those campaigns (e.g., I’ve had numerous times where this Substack successful dispelled a multi-million dollar propaganda campaign and since I am just one of many people doing that, it’s not financially feasible for traditional PR campaigns to continue to control the narrative).

Within medicine, one of the most common complaints patients have is that their doctors “don’t show empathy” towards them—a situation I believe ultimately results from the fact doctors have so little time with all the patients they see that the fundamental human capacity to be present to another’s experience gets overloaded and they instead default to interacting with their patient’s through an abstract script to get through the day.

In turn, while I sometimes come across individuals (e.g., doctors or politicians) who have the capacity to quickly be present to large numbers of people, normally the only viable solution to this problem is to spend more time with each person. Unfortunately, the current insurance payment scheme incentivizes those short visits (which I believe is incredibly shortsighted as many chronic issues can only be solved with longer visits that cost much less than the innumerable short visits that take their place).

As such, the medical industry chose to address this lack of empathy not by giving patients what they wanted (a doctor they felt connected to) but rather by creating the facade of empathy. This for example was accomplished by training medical students to robotically repeat “empathy statements” (e.g., repeating back what the patient said or stating “I’m sorry to hear that”), as in many cases, that indeed works.

Note: due to how profitable medical students are, there has been a proliferation of medical schools which has required gradually dropping the standards for admission (as our declining education standards has led to a lack of qualified college graduates). Because of this, the profession recently relaxed some of core graduation requirements such as their first board exams being switched to pass/fail and the pass/fail in-person basic assessment of clinical skills (where physician “empathy” was evaluated) being permanently cancelled due to COVID social distancing.

Most recently, I saw this on display in a viral video where a popular YouTube doctor (who’s taken a lot of pharmaceutical money) “debated 20 anti-vaxxers” and then received many variants of these two responses:

•”I am deeply impressed by the incredible empathy and compassion Dr. Mike gave these people.”

•”I cannot believe how moronic and misinformed those people were; Dr. Mike is a saint for talking to them the way he did.”

Conversely, after I watched it the following points jumped out at me:

1. Many of the people selected to appear challenged vaccination by promoting extreme and hard to defend views, thereby making it possible to make viral clips of their statements to smear all criticism of vaccines (whereas in contrast individuals with extensive familiarity on many of the topics were not invited so that Dr. Mike’s “expertise” could go unchallenged).

2. His responses typically were a mixture of standard vaccine talking points (e.g, all evidence of vaccine injury presented to him did not count because “correlation is not causation”) followed by “empathetic” statements.

3. Because of the smooth hypnotic pace he used, false statements that went unchallenged were peppered in such as:

•He asserted VAERS overreports vaccine injuries when in reality less than 1% of injuries make it into VAERS (as the government never wanted a publicly available injury database and once a law forced its creation, the government has worked for decades to undermine VAERS).

•He “compassionately” claimed the Federal vaccine injury compensation program existed to help individuals injured by vaccines and that they could sue a vaccine manufacturer if they were unsatisfied with the verdict—when in reality it is nearly impossible to have most injuries be acknowledged by that program and even harder to be able to sue a manufacturer outside of it).

•He argued that “vaccine immunity is superior to natural immunity” (which is false as vaccine immunity often creates a very narrow immunity pathogens rapidly evolve a resistance to). Then as people started to point that out, he pivoted to stating “vaccines do not put you at risk of infection like an actual infection so they are superior due to the lower risk entailed in become immune” and was not called out for moving the goalpost from efficacy to safety.
Note: there is also strong evidence vaccine side effects are often much greater than those from a natural infection (best demonstrated by how many more people have permanent complications from the vaccines than a COVID infection.

In short, his actions were a classic example of the (incredibly cruel) gaslighting many patients experience when, after being injured by a pharmaceutical, they are told the injury is entirely in their head. In some cases that’s done in a rude and confrontational way, but in many others, it’s instead done in a deceptive and compassionate manner which still traps you in the same box.

Note: one noteworthy fact about this doctor is that in addition to “combating misinformation” throughout COVID, he also used his large platform to repeatedly advocate for social distancing and mask wearing—but like many other proponents of that doctrine, subsequently got caught flagrantly violating it (in his case at his birthday party where he was maskless and tightly packed amongst women he’d invited—after which he essentially refused to apologize for his hypocrisy).

Mark’s “Empathy”

At React19’s request (an organization which advocates for the vaccine injured), I went through hundreds of pages of meetings and emails React19 had with the FDA. Many of these were with Peter Marks or his staff and occurred at the same time Marks was aggressively pushing FDA scientists to expedite approving the COVID vaccines so they could be mandated (e.g., military mandates began the day after his approval) and telling everyone the vaccine was safe and effective.

Throughout these documents, I noticed a few consistent patterns.

First, Marks would frequently not respond to queries or data demonstrating any issues with the vaccine.

Second, he would always stall and claim the FDA needed more time to conduct an analysis to determine if there was a specific safety issue with the vaccine (even though many of them were exceedingly obvious and could be definitely proven in less than a day).

Third, when directly presented with data he could not run away from (e.g., because he was in a live meeting) he would continually come up with excuses to explain why the data did not count (some of which matched Dr. Mike’s) and hence could not be linked to the COVID vaccines. As you can imagine, this was extremely frustrating for the React19 members (which included physicians), and they spent a lot of time trying to find something that could get through to him.

Fourth, he would repeatedly blame the serious issues the vaccine injured were having on medical system failing patients (but deflect when it was pointed out that those failures were due to a lack of injury acknowledgment or treatment guidelines from the NIH or FDA and that doctors who nonetheless treated injuries being targeted by medical boards).

Fifth, when pressed to define what would constitute acceptable proof of vaccine harm, Marks dodged the question.

Sixth, Marks (especially in meetings), whenever confronted with the horrendous experiences vaccine injured individuals went through used a large number of empathy statements to indicate that he “deeply cared” about the immense suffering those with COVID-19 vaccine injuries were going through.

In short, within ten minutes of the first meeting I watched that he had with React19, it was clear to me that Marks viewed those injured by the vaccines as acceptable collateral damage and that his only goal in dealing with them was to do whatever he could to make them go away so he wouldn’t have to deal with them or have them derail his vaccine campaign.

I believe this was demonstrated by one of their final [4/15/23] emails with him which went:

Hi Dr Marks and team.

We received alarming news that the FDA participated in a multi-day event with a significant focus of dismantling the “anti-vax movement” instead of fully evaluating the safety and efficacy of vaccination. You are quoted as saying you can’t believe the vaccines aren’t seen as anything but safe.

(After the honest conversation Germany’s government is having about Covid vaccine side effects nonetheless)

Is this true??

The lives and livelihoods sacrificed by the Covid vaccine program are the legs of which the Covid vaccine program stands. If you cannot properly support this population, the program will not succeed as you desire.

Of all the takeaways your team could have from the last two years is that this is all the “anti-vax movement’s fault?”

Imagine the GOOD you could have done to help ALL Americans, not just those who suffer from diseases that are politically convenient. After two long years of illness these families are physically, emotionally and financially decimated.

Dr Marks, Dr Richards, Ms McNeil, Dr Nair, Dr Woodcock: I can’t believe I trusted you to do the right thing.

Brianne Dressen

Co-Chair | React19.org

This email was in reference to a major vaccine conference (on April, 4, 2023) where Marks was a keynote speaker (as were other well-known figures like Peter Hotez). To quote a report from an undercover attendee, during a panel where Marks spoke with one of England’s chief regulators (alongside top scientists from Moderna and J&J):

Poland set the tone for the four-day conference in the first 10 minutes. In his mind, the COVID-19 pandemic was halted through the hard work of our regulatory agencies and the remarkable products borne of the mRNA platform.

The only failure came in the form of “inexplicable” vaccine hesitancy, a phenomenon driven by anti-vax pseudoscientists who are profiting from spreading baseless, fear-driven propaganda.

Combatting vaccine hesitancy, he said, is as big a challenge as protecting the world from the next deadly pathogen. Indeed, a significant portion of the events focused on strategies to dismantle the troubling “anti-vaxxer” movement.

Marks supported Poland’s position that the vaccine-hesitant are irrational, “It’s crazy that they don’t get how great vaccines are,” he said. “I am past trying to argue with people who think that vaccines are not safe.”

Note: during the React19 zoom meetings, Marks repeatedly implied otherwise (e.g., he stated “nobody is denying vaccine injuries may occur,” “nobody is denying adverse events can occur…nobody is denying the symptoms of what’s going on here,” “no-one is denying there are vaccine injury here. Nobody is denying that” “no-one is denying there are reports of neuropathy or potential of vaccine injury here. Nobody is denying that. But that vs a safety signal, that’s what we’re asking about”). Likewise, he repeatedly assured React19 they could trust the FDA (e.g., “We don’t have any secrets here.” “There is nothing I care about more than safe vaccines. No-one is trying to stonewall you…We don’t want to spread misinformation.” “Nobody is saying they’re not real it’s just saying that making definitive associations is very challenging.”).

In short, Marks provided a perfect illustration of the fake empathy that has infected medicine (and of course subsequently denied making these conference remarks).

Note: being a keynote speaker at the major conference for a pharmaceutical sector virtually guarantees the industry believes you will push along their products to the best of your ability. Similarly, I previously covered how Califf (Biden’s second FDA chief who was notorious for his pharmaceutical conflicts of interest) was the key note speaker at the annual invite-only conference JP Morgan Chase hosted for pharmaceutical investors (making it arguably the most important conference of the year). At that conference, Chase proclaimed that Ozempic and the new Alzheimer’s drugs would be some of the most lucrative drugs in history, and remarkably, immediately beforehand, Calif back-doored the approval of a highly controversial Alzheimer’s drug, while afterwards, the FDA began aggressively promoting Ozempic’s use in every age group.

Read the Whole Article

The post Why Did the FDA Hide Vaccine Injuries? appeared first on LewRockwell.

Let’s Delete Iran

Sab, 05/04/2025 - 05:01

The US is clearly massing military forces for what many experts believe will be a full-bore attack on Iran. The big question, is this a part of President Trump’s usual negotiating strategy of bluff and bluster or the opening moves in a major war campaign against Iran?

Evidence to date strongly suggests that the US is heading towards a major war against Iran. Under presidents Biden and Trump, Israel has achieved remarkable influence over the US. Trump is surrounded by an ardently pro-Israel coterie of aides, advisors and financial backers. The president has made no secret that he is way to the far right of Israel’s current hard-line government. He has called for ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, he detests Muslims (unless they are ultra rich Gulf Bedouins) and, of course, now has Jewish relatives as part of his family.

Under the unlamented Biden, and now Trump, Israel has assumed control of US Mideast political and military policy. Right now, two US aircraft carriers are steaming to stations within striking range of Iran and Yemen. US B2 Stealth bombers are now posted at the US-British Indian Ocean base of Diego Garcia; further attack squadrons are based in Qatar, Turkey’s Incirlik airbase, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Israel is preparing massive air strikes against Iran after already destroying most of its air defense system.

Yemen has received special attention because it had the temerity to lob some inaccurate missiles at Israel’s principal air base to protest Irael’s killing of over 60,000 Palestinians in Gaza. Yemen also has made a few attacks on mostly European or Asian merchant shipping in the Red Sea. No other Arab nation had the nerve to do so. As a result, Yemen, the region’s poorest nation, is being heavily attacked by the US and Israel.

US war plans for Iran call for bombing attacks on over 3,000 targets. This means all military, industrial, telecommunications, power, food storage and transportation hubs, including ports and airfields. Iran’s oil and gas industry would be primary targets. In short, Iran would be bombed back to the Stone Age. Iraq suffered the same treatment in 2003 and has yet to recover. Even Iran’s medical, sewage and water treatment plants would become prime targets. Efforts would be made to encourage Iran’s numerous ethnic minorities – Arabs, Azeris, Kurds – to break way and form independent states. Such was also done to Iraq.

The prime strategic goal of such a conflict would be to cripple Iran, eliminate what little military power it has, impose servile puppet governments on its fragments, leave Israel unchallenged in the Mideast and hand more land over to the Jewish state. Israel just announced it will annex parts of ‘Arabfrei’ Gaza. More Greater Israel will be in the cards.

The US generals who opposed such fever-dreams have been retired. The US media has been brought to heel. Maybe there are plans to move most Arabs to Africa and open Trump hotels along the Gaza seashore. Anything is possible. Today Greenland! Tomorrow Gaza and Canada!

The post Let’s Delete Iran appeared first on LewRockwell.

Trump’s Three Greatest Betrayals So Far

Sab, 05/04/2025 - 05:01

Writing for Natural News, Lance Johnson wrote an accurate and concise summary of President Donald Trump’s greatest betrayals so far. There are three in number.

Betrayal Number One

From Gaza to Yemen: Trump’s expanding middle east slaughter.

Trump’s betrayal is most evident in his military escalation. After cynically criticizing Biden’s bombings, Trump has launched devastating strikes on Yemen, killing civilians under the pretense of protecting Red Sea shipping—a crisis manufactured by Israel’s blockade of Gaza.

Dr. Ron Paul condemned the hypocrisy: “Was Yemen in the process of attacking the United States? No. Did the President seek a declaration of war? No.” Instead, Trump’s bombs rained down on women and children, while his administration threatened Iran—a deliberate provocation toward World War III.

Max Blumenthal summarized Trump’s role succinctly: “Trump owns the Gazan slaughter.” The same man who promised peace now fuels a regional inferno, with Israel’s interests dictating every move.

Yes, indeed.

The Signal chat debacle of Trump’s war cabinet led by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth demonstrated not only how bloodthirsty the Trump administration is but also the sheer sophomoric ineptitude of international affairs exhibited by those individuals.

Hegseth was the warmonger-in-chief leading the pack of pathetic, psychopathic predators, who said on the chat, “Nobody knows who the Houthis are.”

But why let a little thing like ignorance about the people you are planning to murder get in the way? The discussion continued with almost complete unanimity that, whoever they are, they had to be killed. The thrust of the discussion centered around how to “sell” the illegal, unjust and immoral military attack on Yemen to the American people.

Come to find out later on, the reason Hegseth and his megalomaniac minions were making plans to attack Yemen was due to the behest of the Israeli Mossad.

Do you remember when Republicans were all up in arms about the revelation that then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had released sensitive government information via her emails? Conservatives screamed their demand that she be fired. That she wasn’t fired brought on claims of the existence of a “double standard” of the law for the Democrat hierarchy.

Well, now we know that that “double standard” of the law also exists for the Republican hierarchy. So, the real double standard falls on the voters in this country who are only willing to apply the rule of law to the opposing political party. They are completely fine if their party violates the law—or the Constitution itself, for that matter.

Legal scholar Judge Andrew Napolitano opines that Hegseth violated the federal Espionage Act.

In my view, Hegseth’s crime makes Hillary’s look like a parking ticket by comparison, and at the very least he should be fired and perhaps even criminally prosecuted. Others in government are currently serving 20-year prison sentences for far lesser crimes of this nature than Hegseth’s.

Hegseth showed the world—friends and enemies—that Trump’s cabinet picks are a bunch of buffoons. Reading the chat, one would think they were listening to the chattering of high school kids.

Incredible incompetence!

Then, of course, Donald Trump resupplied Israel with bombs and missiles with which to continue its genocide and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people in Gaza and then greenlit Netanyahu’s slaughter of the civilian population in Gaza, which continues unabated to the present hour.

So, the genocide in Gaza is now TRUMP’S GENOCIDE. And the war in Yemen is now TRUMP’S WAR.

Betrayal Number Two

The puppet and the puppeteer: Trump’s subservience to Netanyahu.

Trump’s fealty to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is not just political—it’s pathological. As Colonel Douglas Macgregor bluntly observed, “Netanyahu is practicing American foreign policy through ventriloquy. He’s simply moving Trump’s mouth.”

George Galloway highlighted Trump’s humiliating subservience, recalling footage of the U.S. president pulling out Netanyahu’s chair like a servant. “This is the president of the United States practically waiting at table on a visiting politician,” Galloway remarked, emphasizing the grotesque power imbalance.

Netanyahu does not merely lead Israel—he commands “Jewish international power and capital,” as Macgregor noted. Trump, indebted to this influence for his election, now repays the favor with bombs.

By now, only those who are “willingly ignorant” do not know that our politicians in both parties in Washington, D.C.—including President Trump—are bought and paid for by the Israeli lobby. I’ve read estimates that suggest that the combined contributions to Trump’s political campaign last year by Zionist donors totaled over one-billion dollars. Mossad asset Miriam Adelson alone donated more than one-hundred-million dollars to Trump.

The truth is, the U.S. military is little more than a mercenary army for Israel. This began in earnest during the first presidential administration of G.W. Bush. For one quarter of a century now, the foreign policies of America’s presidential administrations (regardless of party) have been nothing more than puppets for Israel.

As I noted in this column last week, listen to what this very influential Jewish rabbi recently said:

It really doesn’t matter if Donald Trump or Donald Duck wins the US elections. It really doesn’t matter if Kamala Harris or Kermit the Frog wins.

When it comes to international affairs, anything that impinges on the future of this world, Donald Trump, Kamala Harris have no freedom of choice. They become like puppets. And who pulls the strings of those puppets? We do. The Jewish people.

America’s foreign policy is not made by our president and secretary of state; it is made by Benjamin Netanyahu and the Zionists in Israel.

Betrayal Number Three

Trump’s war on free speech: silencing critics of Israel.

Trump’s administration has weaponized federal power to crush dissent against Israel’s brutal occupation of Palestine. Judge Andrew Napolitano and Professor John Mearsheimer recently exposed the chilling reality: “The single greatest threat to freedom of speech in the United States, at this point in time, is Israel and its supporters here in the United States,” Mearsheimer stated.

Despite Trump’s hollow claim—”I have stopped all government censorship and brought back free speech in America”—his regime has intensified crackdowns on pro-Palestinian voices. Protesters face deportation, universities censor criticism of Israel, and any challenge to Zionist narratives is met with state-sanctioned retaliation.

Professor Mearsheimer is 100% correct: “The single greatest threat to freedom of speech in the United States, at this point in time, is Israel and its supporters here in the United States.”

Published on VaccineImpact.com is a report by Brian Shilhavy entitled: RFK Jr.’s “Antisemitism Task Force” Operating as New Secret Police Stalking and Terrorizing Legal U.S. Residents.

Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has continued to attack those who protest against the genocide happening in Gaza by having his “Antisemitism Task Force” stalk and terrorize LEGAL U.S. residents, including permanent residents who are here with Green Cards.

Here is a surveillance video that captured how this new secret police force operating in the U.S. is acting very similar to how the German Gestapo and the Russian KGB used to operate during WW II, where dissidents were abducted and shipped off to Concentration Camps.

Journalist Glenn Greenwald, who is himself an ethnic Jew, is the latest one to criticize Kennedy for running the Antisemitism Task Force.

Greenwald supported Kennedy and the MAHA movement but now can hardly believe that Kennedy is joining the Zionists and restricting free speech.

Many of these students who are being stalked, seized without any warrant, and whisked away to ICE detention centers in Louisiana run by private contractors in deplorable conditions, with no charges filed against them, are NOT here on student visas, but are permanent residents holding Green Cards, meaning that Immigration has already interviewed them and granted them permanent residency in the U.S.

If this new secret police force gets away with this, do you honestly think they are going to just stick to abducting students? Why would they stop with students?

If their goal is to silence any dissent to the Zionist movement, we can be sure they will eventually come after all of us who do not support Zionism.

As I said in my homily last Sunday entitled No King But Jesus!,

Mark this down: The same Judaistic evangelicals that are cheering for the unconstitutional persecution of college students who voice their displeasure of Israel’s genocide in Gaza will cheer for the unconstitutional persecution of you and me who say the Israel of God is NOT the Zionist State born in 1948.

And right here I urge readers to watch this brief video in which Benjamin Netanyahu virtually bragged about Donald Trump being his puppet and doing his bidding in waging war against anyone who opposes the Zionist State of Israel—and urged Trump (and every other government leader) to incarcerate anyone who speaks against Israel.

Please also watch this short 1-minute video of Professor Jeffrey Sachs addressing this specific subject with brutal honesty and forthrightness.

Also in my message last Sunday, I quoted from an article by Jesse Smith in Technocracy.News entitled Trump’s Staff is Stuffed with Peter Thiel’s ‘Counter-Elite’ Technocrats:

Trump is barely two months into his second term and a republican think-tank called the Third Term Project is seeking ways to have him remain in office beyond his current stint, which expires in 2028. They’re working on amending the Constitution to enable this possibility. Their promotional items depict Trump as a Roman Caesar.

I urge readers to take a look at this placard promoting the Third Term Project that appeared at the recent CPAC convention doing exactly as Jesse said: depicting Trump as a Roman Caesar.

Smith went on to write:

Coincidentally, Musk posted that “America is New Rome” last November.

Is Musk envisioning the Trump administration as the equivalent to Augustus Caesar’s “Roman Peace” that was run on slave labor and featured aggressive territorial expansion?

Or is he in favor of the society where Caesars ruled with an iron fist and dissent could result in removal and/or execution? Or is it a blend of the two?

Trump’s forays into limiting free speech for criticizing Israel and labeling Tesla vandals as domestic terrorists provides clues as to where we’re heading.

Yes, it does.

In the Star Wars movie Revenge of the Sith, Supreme Chancellor Palpatine, secretly Darth Sidious, declares the formation of the Galactic Empire.

Padmé Amidala, a senator who represents the ideals of the Republic, watches in dismay as her fellow senators enthusiastically applaud the establishment of the Empire.

Amidala says to a fellow senator: “So this is how liberty dies, with thunderous applause.”

We are witnessing that scene in real life as the Synagogue-church and conservative Republicans—blind to the identity of a real-life Darth Sidious—applaud the dismantlement of our Constitution and the beginning of a Technocratic Government-Corporation wielding absolute authoritarian power.

One would think that Trump’s betrayals would awaken Christian evangelicals and conservative Republicans to the authoritarianism that is rapidly emerging in this country, but, alas, they remain as blind as ever.

Hail Caesar!

Reprinted with permission from Chuck Baldwin Live.

The post Trump’s Three Greatest Betrayals So Far appeared first on LewRockwell.

Closure of the Bondsteel Military Base in Kosovo!

Sab, 05/04/2025 - 05:01

Professor Emeritus of Economics at the University of Ottawa and founder of the Centre for Research on Globalization, Michel Chossudovsky, on the occasion of the 26th anniversary of the beginning of NATO’s aggression against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, reminds that it was NATO’s first official war against a sovereign country—but not the last—as this war agenda was later used in various conflicts, with media propaganda playing a significant role, which is still evident today in the case of Ukraine.

He also believes that now is the opportunity, especially with Donald Trump at the helm of the United States, to raise the issue of closing the American Bondsteel base in the Autonomous Province of Kosovo and Metohija.

“This is essentially a U.S. base. Trump wants to reduce military costs, and this is a large military base, expensive to maintain,” said Chossudovsky, author of numerous books, including The U.S. and NATO Aggression Against Yugoslavia and The Globalization of Poverty, which have been translated into Serbian.

Regarding negotiations on Ukraine, Chossudovsky believes it would have been better if they had taken place in Belgrade, given that Serbia is a militarily neutral country. President Aleksandar Vučić could have played a mediating role since he maintains dialogue with the EU, Washington, and Moscow.

Chossudovsky emphasized to Tanjug that, in the case of the bombing of the FRY, the propaganda machine was well-organized, but that war was—brutal and ruthless—planned many years in advance, “which is confirmed, among other things, by the construction of the American Bondsteel military base on occupied Kosovo,” which, in his view, many see as a strategic pillar of the U.S. presence in this region.

He added that he believes the world is “in an era of insane politics,” but at least not Serbia.

“When you have U.S. President Donald Trump making certain statements about wanting to cut military spending by billions and billions of dollars, while also being reserved about NATO’s role in American military bases—as is the case with Bondsteel—I think it would be appropriate for the Serbian government to politely send a note to Washington, citing Trump’s concerns about military expenses,” said Chossudovsky.

According to him, the note should state that Bondsteel is a burden for Serbia, a burden for so-called Kosovo, and for Washington, and that “we want to cooperate” and “we would like to see that base closed.”

He added that this would be a position aligned with the rhetoric of the U.S. president, who has even stated that he would close military bases in Europe.

“And here you have an opportunity,” said Chossudovsky, noting that the relationship between the U.S. and NATO is complex, but that NATO does not actually decide anything, as all major decisions go through the Pentagon and highly complex command structures.

Serbia, he stressed, must regain control over Kosovo.

Chossudovsky stated that, first and foremost, that the Kosovo territory is not a state but a province of Serbia, which was taken over by General Michael Jackson—who had a criminal record in the United Kingdom—and Hashim Thaçi, a man involved in drug trafficking, who was only sent to The Hague 20 years later.

According to him, by remaining neutral in relations with both Russia and the U.S., Serbia has the potential to play a role in creating peace.

That is why, he says, it would have been better if negotiations between Putin and Trump had taken place in Belgrade rather than in Saudi Arabia.

“This is neutral territory, not in the way Switzerland is. They are very biased. Your president (Aleksandar Vučić) is very perceptive in understanding geopolitics. We watched one of his earlier speeches, where he says that if we do not make certain decisions, it will lead to catastrophe. I think he is a powerful voice and perhaps should also play a role in peace operations, as he has dialogue with the EU, Washington, and Moscow,” Chossudovsky assessed. He reminded that Serbia has always declared itself neutral, which, he adds, it inherited from the SFRY, which was non-aligned, making it “strategically important for those seeking to build empires.”

Recalling March 24, 1999, Chossudovsky states that it was a war against truth, carried out in coordination with the criminal elements of the so-called Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), which collaborated with American and German intelligence services.

“This was NATO’s first war, but not its last, because all the elements of that war were stored in databases for future conquest plans in various countries. The war agenda from 1999 was used in different wars, adapted to different contexts and cultures, but ultimately, it always involved the coordination of military action with economic activities, regime change, and propaganda,” said Chossudovsky, one of the first people to stand by Serbia during NATO’s aggression.

Chossudovsky, who was awarded the Medal for Merit of the Republic of Serbia in 2014, considers the bombing of the FRY to have been an illegal and criminal act in which the media played a crucial role. He also noted that the situation is similar in Ukraine, “because there are no newspapers in the Western world that would write that the Ukrainian government is neo-Nazi.”

Western media, he added, are complicit, covering up crimes. He recalled the 1998 film The Valley, sponsored by NATO, which served as justification for the horrors of war in Kosovo and Metohija.

“There were fake images… They showed that Serbs were killing Albanians, and it was sponsored with KLA support. That documentary film was distributed mainly in Western countries. It was a way to show that Serbs were killing people… and so, the fabricated notion that the KLA was there to ‘save’ everyone from the Serbs gained legitimacy, despite the fact that they themselves were linked to organized crime and Al-Qaeda, with media support,” Chossudovsky said.

That film must be carefully analyzed, assessed Chossudovsky, who at the time wrote for Le Monde Diplomatique but ended his collaboration when the editorial board refused to publish an article presenting evidence that one of the key figures in Kosovo, Hashim Thaçi, had a criminal record.

“They attacked Serbia, or rather, the FRY, under the pretext of a humanitarian intervention, with strong condemnation and demonization of President Slobodan Milošević, as well as the entire Serbian people,” said Chossudovsky, who claimed that he spoke with Milošević in The Hague and “knew they were poisoning him in the Tribunal.”

“People in Serbia need to understand that Milošević died for his people,” said Chossudovsky, who began researching Yugoslavia within the broader economic events of the 1980s.

He recalled that the peak of the economic crisis in Yugoslavia was in January 1990, which led to what was called a civil war, although, as he argues, it was not a civil war.

“There were two key elements—the Western media and how they lied and covered up crimes committed by NATO forces. The second element was the so-called left, the ‘progressive’ parties in the U.S. and Western Europe. They even portrayed KLA members as ‘freedom fighters’ and went so far as to cite Marx and Lenin in that context. They even acknowledged that the KLA was linked to organized crime but justified it as necessary for the revolution,” he said.

He emphasized that Milošević’s legacy is very important because, first and foremost,

“he did not play their game, acted on behalf of the Serbian people and his country, and understood the situation—his actions also saved lives when they came to arrest him.”

“It was clear where the crime originated from, and Milošević analyzed it and understood the role of Al-Qaeda. I reviewed one of his speeches in The Hague, which was very concrete,” he stated, adding that “everyone knows that the CIA financed Al-Qaeda,” which was also linked to the KLA.

According to Chossudovsky, it was crucial for Milošević, but for the West, it was essential to discredit him.

[This article titled Calls on Serbs to React: Time to Demand the Closure of the Bondsteel Military Base in Kosovo! by Prof. Michel Chossudovsky was first published by Serbian Times and Global Research.]

The post Closure of the Bondsteel Military Base in Kosovo! appeared first on LewRockwell.

You Wouldn’t Want to Be Him on That Dreadful Day

Sab, 05/04/2025 - 05:01

Do you see the pattern? Populist party leaders all over Western Civ getting undone by the law courts — Călin Georgescu in Romania, election cancelled; Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, de-railed by President Lula’s stooge judges (with CIA help); Prime Minister Robert Fico of Slovakia shot-up with five bullets in May last year (survived miraculously); the Alternative-for-Deutschland Party de-platformed by the Scholz-Merz ruling junta; then, this week, Marine Le Pen, leading candidate (by far) for President of France, defenestrated on Mickey Mouse charges in the Paris court. And, of course, since 2015, Mr. Trump, hounded relentlessly, but not yet overthrown, due to sheer pluck and testosterone (the official hated hormone of the Left).

International lawfare is about the last remaining tool in the “Globalist” kit-bag for “color revolution,” which means regime change by underhanded means, election interference being the favorite device. The poster child, of course, was the US CIA / DOD State Department regime change operation in Ukraine, 2014, that ousted Russian-leaning elected President Viktor Yanukovych, eventually leading to the installation of coke-head Volodymyr Zelensky, and ultimately to the Ukraine War that has killed over a million people. These days, astroturf (i.e., fake) street revolution (e.g., Maidan in Kiev 2014) is out; lawfare is in.

By Globalist, let’s just say the broad alliance of the EU, the European Central Bank & friends, the WEF-and-cronies in the global corporatocracy, the US Democratic Party, billionaires such as George Soros and Reid Hoffman, and sundry residual mass-formation world-savors of the crypto-communist-green-bullshit persuasion.

The situation in our own country has grown particularly acute with the DC and other regional federal court judges lately arrogating the Article II executive powers of the president. You can see what the furthest strategic end-point is: the Democratic Party wants to induce President Trump to invoke a national emergency against this legal insurrection in order to force him to play the role of “fascist dictator.” Mr. Trump has been very careful to stay as much within-the-guardrails of the law as possible throughout this long campaign to destroy him and his MAGA movement to purge corruption from the government.

The hinge on the conflict now is the US Supreme Court (SCOTUS), which is led by Chief Justice John Roberts. A whole lot of troubling info about CJ Roberts has blown up in recent days, much of it not exactly new, but buried and ignored by the likes of The New York Times, and its kindred blob mouthpieces. You’ve read in this blog recently how CJ Roberts’s chief factotum at SCOTUS, Sheldon Snook, is married to Mary McCord, involved officially in every lawfare prank against Mr. Trump since RussiaGate, when she was U.S. Assistant Attorney-General for National Security — and who then went on as counsel for Jerrold Nadler’s House Committee Trump Impeachment No. 1, and the J-6 House Committee, both actions of stupendous bad faith.

Norm Eisen said his good friend Supreme Court Justice John Roberts was not corrupt and that John went to the Czech Republic for a week so that they could spend time working on American rule of law issues together.

John should resign or recuse himself from all of the lawsuit… pic.twitter.com/hemdNeT5Hg

— The Researcher (@listen_2learn) March 31, 2025

Turns out that CJ Roberts has been “besties” with Lawfare field marshal Norm Eisen, and for quite a long time, as far back as 2005. Eisen was special counsel on Impeachment No. 1, and chief strategist behind the janky cases staged last year against Mr. Trump by New York AG Letitia James, Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg, and Fulton County (GA) DA Fani Willis. You can bet that Eisen was at least an unofficial strategic advisor in the Special Counsel Jack Smith prosecutions, too, along with Mary McCord and Andrew Weissmann of Mueller Commission infamy — Eisen, McCord, and Weissmann, the three Nosferatus of Lawfare. Eisen is coordinating most of the current lawsuit action against Mr. Trump in the federal courts.

Several alt-news outlets are reporting that CJ Roberts made two trips to visit Norm Eisen in Prague between 2011 and 2014 when Eisen was Barack Obama’s ambassador to the Czech Republic. The longest visit, a week, entailed a global conference on “American and European rule-of-law issues.” Hmmmm. . . what could that possibly mean? Revolver News, Mike Benz on “X”, and a character styled as “The Researcher” on “X” have all reported on the Roberts-Eisen close friendship.

Chief Justice John Roberts spent a week living at Norm Eisen’s 150-room palace in the Czech Republic where they “worked on American and European Rule of Law issues together.” Eisen was Ambassador 2011-2014. Roberts became Chief Justice in 2005. This was while Roberts ran SCOTUS. pic.twitter.com/u7YZazt7Re

— Mike Benz (@MikeBenzCyber) April 3, 2025

Also turns out that CJ Roberts is a club member at an elite, invite-only club for legal poohbahs called the Edward Bennett Williams Inn of Court, which is indirectly associated with an international Inns of Court network centered in London. (“Rule-of-law,” anyone?) Other members of the EBW Inn of Court in DC. include Judges James (“Jeb”) Boasberg, Beryl Howell, Amit Mehta, all of the DC District — all involved in current lawfare suits — and SCOTUS Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. Do you suppose they have discussed any of these matters at their meet-ups, especially after the pass-around of legal beverages? Perhaps even strategized about them?

Doesn’t that make you a little queasy about CJ Roberts’s role presiding over cases coming any day before SCOTUS that have been designed and propelled by his good pal, Norm Eisen? Should CJ Roberts consider recusing himself from any of these pending cases on the SCOTUS docket?

Oh, yes, one other interesting sidelight: John Roberts has been found listed on the Jeffrey Epstein flight logs of the “Lolita Express” bound for Little St. James Island in the US Virgin Islands, Epstein’s supposed party shack for the celebrity elite. The allegation that the “John Roberts” listed in the flight log is the same as the Chief Justice is officially unsubstantiated. But here it is FWIW.

Of course, no flight log would be required for a jaunt to Epstein’s New York City townhouse, in case CJ Roberts ever ventured up there from our nation’s capital, an easy car trip. It is established fact that Epstein was busy recording the various doings in the many bedrooms of these establishments, arguably not merely for his private entertainment. Is CJ Roberts perhaps under blackmail for any such activity recorded? Lord only knows, just now.

But it’s possible that FBI Director Kash Patel and his Deputy Director Dan Bongino know the answer to this abiding mystery, since weeks ago they assigned a thousand agents in the New York City FBI office to sort out the thousands of pages and other articles of evidence that the office had been suppressing for years until US AG Pam Bondi fired the top agent there, James Dennehy, for withholding it so long. It’s been awfully quiet over at the FBI and DOJ home office in DC since then. Of course, if any referrals are being considered, or any grand jury bound cases being prepared, you wouldn’t want that to leak out, would you?

Reprinted with permission from Kunstler.com.

The post You Wouldn’t Want to Be Him on That Dreadful Day appeared first on LewRockwell.

Neocons Attempt To Stall U.S.-Russia Talks

Sab, 05/04/2025 - 05:01

Negotiations between the U.S. and Russia about the war in Ukraine seem to be losing steam.

Russia has long insisted on a solution of the conflict which removes the root causes of it. It can not allow for Ukraine to become a NATO battering ram at its doorstep. It can not allow a fascist government in Ukraine.

Any solution to the conflict must resolve (at least) those two issues.

The Trump administration wants the Ukraine problem out of its way. It wants to implement a ceasefire to be able to turn away and ignore the festering problem.

Russia won’t have that (archived):

On Tuesday, Moscow reinforced its hard-line, maximalist demands when Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov complained that Russia’s demand “to solve the problems related to the root causes of the conflict” was being ignored by the U.S., and “we cannot accept all of this as it is.”

As the U.S. overstates its progress in talks, Moscow seems concerned that Trump’s negotiators do not understand how serious it is about these demands, according to [Thomas Graham, senior director for Russia at the National Security Council under the George W. Bush administration and now a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations].

“The question is whether the administration has the patience to continue those negotiations and whether they can conduct the negotiations in ways that can extract concessions from the Russian side,” he said.

“Extract concessions”? By what?

The U.S. has no leverage over Russia. It is the Russian army that is winning on the battlefield in Ukraine. It has ample reserves in soldiers. It is by far outproducing NATO in weapons and munitions. It is stable in political, social and economic terms.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio is threatening Russia with more sanctions (machine translation):

“Now we are not interested in negotiations for the sake of the negotiations themselves – we will not continue this indefinitely. We have a certain amount of time during which we want to understand whether they are ready or not, and this time is already coming to an end. Congress has already started working on a bill for additional sanctions, and pressure from the Capitol will continue to grow, ” the US Secretary of State said.

According to him, it was important “just to start a dialogue, because we haven’t talked for a long time, but now we need to make progress.”

The above-mentioned draft law provides for the introduction of new sanctions against Moscow, as well as duties in the amount of 500% on imports for countries that purchase Russian oil, gas, uranium and other products.

In “weeks, not months,” we will know if Russia is ready to end the war, Rubio said.

Russia is already under a total of 28,000 individual sanctions. If the U.S. is threatening other countries with sanctions for buying Russian oil they will find ways around it. It is, like the U.S. ‘tariffs’, just another way of wreaking the global U.S. position.

There are signs that Rubio and his fellow neo-cons in the Trump administration have decided to stall further talks:

Trump’s inner circle opposes a phone call to Putin until the Russian leader commits to a full ceasefire in Ukraine, two unnamed administration officials said.

Despite Trump saying he plans to speak to Putin days earlier, no call between the two leaders has been scheduled, the unnamed officials said.

It is possible Trump will abruptly decide he wants to speak to Putin, but he has been advised against calling the Russian leader until Moscow communicates they agree to a full ceasefire in Ukraine, the two officials said.

Not talk to Putin and wait for what? Godoh?

There is fortunately a second line of communication between Trump envoy Steve Witkoff and the head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund Kirill Dmitriev. Russia is offering the U.S. very big investment opportunities. This is Putin’s carrot while the steady progress of the Russian army in Ukraine is his stick.

Dmitriev, during his visit in Washington, stated that talks were going well but that there are certain powers who want to derail them:

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s investment envoy Kirill Dmitriev, who is visiting Washington this week, said on Thursday that unidentified forces were trying to sow tension between Russia and the United States.

“Today, numerous forces interested in maintaining tension stand in the way of restoring constructive cooperation… These forces are deliberately distorting Russia’s position, trying to disrupt any steps towards dialogue, sparing neither money nor resources for this,” Dmitriev said on Telegram.

“Opponents of the rapprochement are afraid that Russia and the United States will find common ground, begin to understand each other better and build cooperation both in international affairs and in the economy,” he said.

It is obvious that the moves against further negotiations are coming from neo-conservatives, like Rubio, within the Trump administration.

Will Trump be able to disarm them?

Reprinted with permission from Moon of Alabama.

The post Neocons Attempt To Stall U.S.-Russia Talks appeared first on LewRockwell.

How Do You Explain This?

Sab, 05/04/2025 - 05:01

I received the following response to the establishment-busting three-part series, “How Do You Explain This?” It adds a positive personal touch and fits so well I’m calling it “Part IV.” Wish I’d written it. Thanks, Monongahela Wry – – –

—

It [Part III] started me on some ruminations. If your goal is to be thought provoking you succeeded with me at least. So here ya go.

David Farragut was ‘prizemaster’of a captured ship during The War of 1812. He was 11. (Yes, as in eleven years old) at the time. He started his life as a sailor at 9 and eventually became a storied Admiral. The Farragut class of destroyers bears his name. Seems that young David spent very little time in a classroom.

I gave a talk to a boys’ Sunday School class years ago – told em Farragut’s story. Figured I’d mix it up a little. David vs Goliath is great but they’ve heard that one before. Told ’em that being young does not mean that you can’t accomplish great things. Don’t be afraid to step out into bigger shoes. I hope it left an impression on a young mind or two.

As for me, all I wanted at 11 was to be left alone. I actually verbalized that out loud and remember the desire very very clearly.

I too spent summers anywhere but in the house. In the house I was micromanaged and suffocated. Outside was freedom. Autonomy. Self determination was found only in the woods. The only other person my age I’ve met who tells a similar story is Nancy, but there are childhood similarities and we both ended up being slightly ‘ungovernable’ as adults. (Credit to Nancy for voicing the concept of being ungovernable. Her word, I adopted it.)

Carlin once said that government wants people just smart enough to push the right button at the right time. They don’t want people who are actually educated. It seems that a formal education, started young, beats ungovernable free young minds into an easily governable submission. It almost seems like abuse if you really think on it.

We have Big Pharma, Big Ag, Big Gov, but also Big Education. People think of Big Ed just as universities with endowments and historical campuses. It’s worse – it’s confiscatory real estate taxes used to dumb down and stifle young minds in your own neighborhood starting at age 6.

Seriously – how much education do you need to teach 8th grade math and science? How many years of university do you really need to teach 2nd graders to read? It’s a self perpetuating conveyor belt. It’s Big Ed and it’s big money.

A computer at every desk in elementary school? Why? Because the tech creates a revenue stream at taxpayer expense, that’s why. A chalkboard and textbook don’t need tech support, software updates or replacement on a regular basis. There’s no money to be made by bilking the taxpayer there. Bill Gates lobbied somebody somewhere and money was made. That’s why. And don’t you dare question it because it’s all ‘for the children’ you uncaring neanderthal.

I think that school also fosters the tendency to find comfort in conformity. Conformity equals compliance. Compliance makes you governable and control-Karens get off on governing the compliant. We ‘ungovernable’ give them fits. Controlling us is like trying to stuff a cat into a pillowcase.

So we now have a few consecutive generations of governable, submissive, compliant meatbots. The cats are declawed and loaded up with college programming, psych meds and weed. They crave ‘experts’ because they’re convinced that they’re incapable. Post covid I call em sleeve rollers. [folks who roll up their sleevs for an untested vaccine without a second thought -lrw]

As an illustration I had a woman tell me that I had to call a chimney sweep to clean my chimney. Her: “you can’t just do that yourself!!” Me: “ma’am, it’s a brush on the end of a stick. Not complicated. Do you or do you not have one that I can buy?”

Another result is that corporate America is populated by legions of compliant sleeve roller drones who can’t wait to turn 62, just wishing their best years away.

They too were indoctrinated starting with an over scheduled over supervised childhood. No woods for them – too scary out there. “Stay Safe” starts in your house, then cloistered in your school and then finally in the corporate sweatshop. Whatever you do don’t rock the boat. Do what you’re told till retirement. They’re not even aware that they’re being manipulated and the few who think about it are too afraid to follow up on it. Most don’t know of any other way because there’s been no ‘expert’ to tell them that there is one.

Some day I’ll tell you about taking a gaggle of 10 year old girls canoeing on the Yough. They were my daughter’s friends and had been indoctrinated to believe that they were incapable and should be afraid. I did my best to allow them to be autonomous free rangers for a day so as to undermine the idea that they were helpless little girls. It worked and it happened remarkably quickly. Unfortunately autonomy was a revolutionary idea… so it probably was impactful! One can hope that at least a couple of ’em became free and ungovernable.

Thinking of indoctrinated rule followers, but in the corporate world, the story goes that on 9/11 employees in the towers were instructed to stay at their desks. They died. Compliance Kills. It always kills the mind but sometimes the body as well.

So. A few years ago the fire alarm sounded at Nancy’s high rise building downtown. A prerecorded message played over and over telling everyone to ‘remain in place stay at your work station’ – as the emergency lights flashed and the fire buzzer blared. Nancy said oh hell no and led a mini insurrection down the stairways to the street. My ungovernable girl. But she also grew up outside, avoiding her house as much as possible. She is able to think for herself and make her own decisions and I have to believe it’s because she proved herself to herself at a young age.

So I wonder (back to the old question) are the ungovernable ungovernable due to nature or nurture (or the lack thereof)? She and I both, as adults, derive a certain perverse pleasure in being contrary. We both also have ridiculously compliant siblings that grew up in the same house. We both left home as early as possible. We both left material success behind as adults then regained it on our own. Neither of us pines for someone to live with. Matter of fact it gives us both the willies to even think about it.

We actually have these discussions and have yet to reach a conclusion. But the conversation is excellent!

Anyway, these are the thoughts that your piece spurred.

As a postscript, those canoe trips became an annual event until one year she [my daughter] did not ask to go. I asked later why and she sheepishly told me that one of her friends had gotten her drivers license – so the gaggle of girls did the trip by themselves. I was a little bit sad – but a whole lot happy. I guess that psycological seed germinated after all.

Atta girls.

–Monongahela Wry

How Do You Explain This?, By L. Reichard White

How Do You Explain This? Part II

How Do You Explain This? Part III

HERE for updates, additions, comments, and corrections.

AND, “Like,” “Tweet,” and otherwise, pass this along!

The post How Do You Explain This? appeared first on LewRockwell.

The Great Globalists Invasion

Sab, 05/04/2025 - 05:01

Half the developed world is walking blithely towards authoritarianism. Seeking change, citizens are voting against their best interests and allowing iconic democratic institutions to corrode.

There is still room for redemption, but hope is not a strategy. To prevent the rise of fascism, people need to use the very rights that are at risk. The right to free speech, the right to assembly. The right to vote. In theory, the right to bear arms is also meant to prevent the rise of tyranny. Unfortunately, a significant portion of society is too busy watching Netflix or worshiping false gods to prevent democracy’s demise.

As we saw in France over the past few months, we can use these rights to our benefit. Whether or not we choose to do so is to be determined. Sadly, once the threshold into authoritarianism is crossed redemption is no-longer a winning strategy.

It’s too early to know what the future holds, but in the following article I attempt to show what daily life in a dictatorship is like and how best to survive.

“Every day in the Gestapo, I saw how people had been broken by terror. I experienced myself how one was crunched by this machine. That is what was so monstrous about it. One was no longer human.” – Victor Klemperer from his diaries “I Will Bear Witness: A Diary of the Nazi Years”

Life Under Authoritarian Rule

Authoritarian governments rule by fear. Broad top-down and grassroots surveillance is key to keeping the population on edge.

North Korea’s surveillance state is among the most extreme in the world. The regime employs a vast network of informants, and even private conversations are not safe from scrutiny. Citizens are required to attend weekly self-criticism sessions, where they must confess any perceived disloyalty. This constant surveillance ensures that any opposition – along with the dissenter’s entire family – is quickly identified and neutralized. The fear of imprisonment, torture, or execution is ever-present, as even minor infractions can lead to severe punishment.

In Nazi Germany, the secret police created a culture of fear by encouraging citizens to report any suspicious activities, even those of their friends and family. This tactic effectively turned people against each other and ensured a high level of compliance with the regime’s policies. As one German citizen recounted, “We lived in fear of being denounced by our neighbors, friends, even our own children.”

“We had all grown used to living in a state of permanent fear, and that was why we were always so short of time. Fear is the most time-consuming activity there is.” – Nadezhda Mandelstam from “Hope Against Hope”

A key ingredient to creating fear is actual or perceived alienation. For authoritarian regimes, the alienation pre-planted using social means (with the threat of physical isolation). Alienation is manufactured by a combination of relentless censorship and propaganda, leaving dissenters to believe they are alone. For this reason, media control is essential to maintaining a dictatorship.

The Soviet Union, for example, tightly controlled the flow of information through state-run media outlets. Independent journalism was virtually nonexistent, and the government disseminated propaganda to shape public perception. Independent journalists and writers who dared to challenge the official narrative faced imprisonment or worse. The Soviet regime’s propaganda glorified the state and its leaders while demonizing perceived enemies. A Soviet citizen described the omnipresence of propaganda: “Everywhere we looked, we saw the state’s version of reality. There was no escape from it.”

Similarly, China’s Great Firewall restricts access to information from outside the country, ensuring that the population is exposed only to state-approved narratives. Social media platforms are closely monitored, and any content deemed subversive is swiftly removed. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) employs sophisticated algorithms to censor dissent and promote its propaganda, creating a controlled information environment. This pervasive censorship stifles dissent and prevents the spread of alternative viewpoints.

Propaganda is a powerful tool for shaping public perception and maintaining control. Nazi Germany’s Joseph Goebbels famously stated:

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”

The Nazi regime’s propaganda machine glorified Hitler and the Aryan race while demonizing Jews and other minorities. This relentless propaganda created a climate of hatred and fear, justifying the regime’s atrocities.

In modern China, the CCP uses propaganda to promote its vision of a harmonious society. State media outlets emphasize the party’s achievements and downplay its failures. Patriotic education campaigns instill loyalty to the party from a young age, ensuring a steady stream of compliant citizens. A Chinese citizen explained, “We are constantly bombarded with messages about the greatness of the party. It’s hard to see the truth through the propaganda.”

While censorship and propaganda softens and aligns most of the population, authoritarian regimes still must deal with dissenters. Disappearances, torture, detention, forced labor and summary executions are used to create examples out of those who overtly oppose the government.

“In China, we live in a virtual prison. The surveillance is everywhere, and it is the fear of what might happen that keeps us in check.” – Ma Jian from “China Dream”

In modern Russia political opponents and journalists critical of the government have faced harassment, imprisonment, and even assassination. The murder of journalist Anna Politkovskaya and the poisoning of opposition leader Alexei Navalny are stark reminders of the lengths to which the regime will go to maintain control. A Russian activist noted, “Speaking out against the government is a dangerous game. Many have paid the ultimate price for their courage.”

Strategies for Survival

Authoritarian regimes thrive on compliance. While it’s easy for keyboard warriors to suggest revolt against dictators, most people just want a peaceful life with their families. Once authoritarianism takes hold, citizens will do what it takes for their family to survive and avoid harassment. Survival is realty, not cowardice.

The most straightforward way to avoid persecution is to comply with the regime’s demands. In Nazi Germany, many citizens outwardly conformed to the Nazi ideology to avoid suspicion. Attending state-sponsored rallies, displaying Nazi symbols, and participating in mandatory activities were common ways to demonstrate loyalty. This public conformity often masked private dissent, as individuals sought to protect themselves and their families.

In contemporary China, compliance with the CCP’s directives is essential for avoiding trouble. The Social Credit System, which rewards or punishes citizens based on their behavior, incentivizes conformity. A high social credit score can lead to better job opportunities and access to services, while a low score can result in restrictions and penalties. Many Chinese citizens navigate this system by carefully curating their online presence and avoiding activities that could draw negative attention.

Surviving and prospering in an authoritarian regime often requires a nuanced understanding of the system and the ability to navigate its complexities. In Pinochet’s Chile, some individuals managed to maintain their livelihoods by aligning themselves with the regime’s economic policies. Entrepreneurs who supported the neoliberal reforms benefited from the regime’s support, even as they privately opposed its brutality.

In modern Russia, oligarchs and business leaders who maintain close ties to the Kremlin enjoy significant privileges. These individuals navigate the political landscape by aligning their interests with those of the state, ensuring their continued prosperity. However, this relationship is precarious, as falling out of favor with the regime can lead to swift and severe repercussions.

“In North Korea, we did not have the luxury of thinking for ourselves. The regime did all our thinking for us, and if we resisted, we were punished.” – Yeonmi Park from “In Order to Live: A North Korean Girl’s Journey to Freedom”

Read the Whole Article

The post The Great Globalists Invasion appeared first on LewRockwell.

Britain—Like France and Spain—Is Poorer than Mississippi

Sab, 05/04/2025 - 05:01

Over the past year, pundits and columnists have been forced to keep asking why Europe’s economy is stagnating and falling behind the US economy. Many of those asking the question are Europeans. One European headline reads “Why Europe is falling behind the USA,” and Le Monde tells us that compared to the United States, “The gap with European living standards has never been wider.”

The gap between US and European living standards has been noticeable for some time, and some European countries aren’t even keeping up with the poorest states in the United States. That is, when we look at measures of income, states like West Virginia and Mississippi compare favorably against European countries like France, Italy, and the United Kingdom.

This has led to what some observers of international macroeconomics call the “Mississippi Question.” The question goes something like this: “is my country poorer than the poorest state in the United States?” The poorest state is presumably Mississippi, and if your country is worse off than Mississippi, that’s evidence that your country has nothing to brag about in terms of its standard of living.

Whether deserved or not, the Mississippi economy has been deemed by some as a benchmark for what not to be, and the comparison has become more popular over the past decade. About ten years ago, British journalist Fraser Nelson suggested that when we compare foreign GDP per capita between European countries and US states, we find that the United Kingdom is poorer than Mississippi. This idea has never set well with British policymakers, of course, and the matter has been debated for years with pundits and researchers suggesting different measures that help give us insight into whether or not Country X is indeed poorer than Mississippi. The Financial Times in 2023 asked the question, and concluded that the UK is still richer than Mississippi, but barely.

Indeed, where the UK and other European countries place in this ranking depends on what measure is used. For example, one comparison using GDP per capita, published by Euronews last month, does indeed show Mississippi ranking well ahead of the UK, France, and the EU overall.

On the other hand, comparisons like these have led to debates over whether or not GDP per capita is an adequate measure that really reflects the actual income that residents of a country or state have to play with.

It’s a good question, but most everywhere we look, the more “nuanced” measures also show that much of Europe—including the comparatively rich countries of northern Europe—often rank behind the poorest American states. Even taking into account welfare benefits and income, American states like Mississippi, Louisiana, and West Virginia are registering higher incomes than much of Europe.

Median Disposable Income

Many critics of these international comparisons point to the allegedly generous welfare state and social spending of Europe as evidence that we can’t simply compare per capita GDP among these countries. The assumption is that if we count welfare benefits as income, then Europeans will clearly come in as much better off than the Americans. After all, America spending almost nothing on social benefits, right?

This rationale is wrong pn both counts. Governments in the United States spend lavishly on social benefits programs, which is why we find that the US spends more of its GDP on welfare programs than does the UK, Australia, the Netherlands and several other European-style welfare states. That is, the US is generally like any other welfare state of the “wealthy West.”

So, it’s not shocking when we discover that social spending in Europe doesn’t exactly boost European income levels above American levels. For a specific measure on this, we can consult the OECD’s “annual median equivalized disposable income.” (2021 is the most recent year for complete data.) The OECD page provides a full definition, but it takes into account income received from social benefits: “Disposable income is market income (income from work and capital) after accounting for public cash transfers received and direct taxes and social security contributions paid.”

So, so once we take into account social benefits and taxes, where does the US rank overall? It’s near the very top, coming in at $46,625 behind only Luxembourg at $49,748.

Source: Figure 4.1, OECD Social Indicators.

By this measure, many of Europe’s largest countries are well behind the United States. Germany’s disposable income is 76 percent the size of the US’s, and France comes in at 65 percent of the US total. Britain fares even more poorly: disposable income in the United Kingdom is only 57 percent the size of that in the United States.

Unfortunately, the OECD does not provide a direct comparison between disposable income at the national level and the same measure at the US state level. We can estimate this, however, by looking at US state income compared to the US average.

To do this, we first use the Census Bureau’s measure of median household income for 2021. We find that income in Mississippi ($48,716) was 70 percent of the US overall ($69,717). That makes Mississippi the lowest income state with West Virginia, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Alabama rounding out the bottom five. At the other end of the spectrum is Maryland ($90,203) which comes in at 129 percent of the nationwide measure. The graph shows how far above or below each state is for median income, when compared to the national average:

(We get similar outcomes if we consult other similar measures such as disposable personal income or personal consumption expenditures.)

It’s certainly plausible that income in Mississippi would measure at around 70 percent of the national average, and that states like Maryland—and Massachusetts and New Jersey and New Hampshire—have significantly higher incomes than the national average. This matches up with what we commonly see across a variety of measures on consumption, poverty, and spending, in these states.

Now, we go back to the OECD measure of annual median equivalized disposable income. By that measure, US income is $46,625. If income in Mississippi is 70 percent of the US-wide income according to Census data, then we can estimate that Mississippi’s income level, adjusted for the OECD numbers, is $32,580. The graph below shows that this income level puts Mississippi between Sweden and New Zealand:

In this graph, I’ve included the top five and bottom five US states when it comes to income. In all cases pf the “bottom five” the poorest American states come in above the United Kingdom, Spain, France, Italy, and the OECD overall. Alabama, the fifth poorest state in the US comes in above the Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, and Sweden.

If anything, I’m low-balling the comparative income for poor US states here, because I have not adjusted for the relatively low cost of living in those states. That is, when it comes to the US states, we have not adjusted for purchasing power like we have for the national-level comparisons (using PPP).

So, is Britain poorer than Mississippi? The answer appears to be yes, and it’s yes for many other European countries as well.

Why is this? Well, as we showed above, it’s not because the United States lacks a welfare state. The US has a very large welfare state. On the other hand, the US does often have a lower tax burden than most European countries. Moreover, Americans benefit from the very large free-trade zone that is the United States which very lightly regulates the movement of goods and services from state to state. In contrast, European states still impose many regulations on cross-border trade. For example, the IMF has noted that “Europe’s internal barriers are equivalent to a 45% tariff on manufactured goods and a 110% levy on services.” Overall economic regulation is certainly heavy in Europe as well.

Note: The views expressed on Mises.org are not necessarily those of the Mises Institute.

The post Britain—Like France and Spain—Is Poorer than Mississippi appeared first on LewRockwell.

17-year-old Palestinian child prisoner starved to death by Israeli prison guards

Ven, 04/04/2025 - 21:26

Thanks, John Smith.

dci-palestine.org

The post 17-year-old Palestinian child prisoner starved to death by Israeli prison guards appeared first on LewRockwell.

McMaken Talks Gold Reserves on the ‘World Affairs in Context’ Podcast

Ven, 04/04/2025 - 20:56

I recently joined Lena Petrova on the World Affairs in Context podcast to talk about the alleged gold at Fort Knox, how the federal government stole all that gold, and whether or not governments need a gold a Bitcoin reserve. We also speculate a bit about what would happen if the official numbers about the US gold reserve turn out to be wrong. But, we may never know because DOGE and the Trump administration have already stopped talking about auditing the gold reserve:

The post McMaken Talks Gold Reserves on the ‘World Affairs in Context’ Podcast appeared first on LewRockwell.

America’s Untold Stories – JFK Hearing Chaos: Oliver or Roger Stone?!

Ven, 04/04/2025 - 20:49

Oliver Stone and Others Testify on President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records

The key remaining major issue that merits full investigation and intensive revelation is the supposed “fact” discussed in this “hearing” is that the alleged JFK assassin Lee Harvey Oswald went to Mexico City, met with Russian and Cuban authorities, and sought to obtain the proper authorized documents to go to Cuba, and later the Soviet Union.

Oswald did NOT go to Mexico City. FBI director J. Edgar Hoover told the new president, Lyndon Johnson, that the telephone recordings, and photos taken outside the Cuban and Russian embassies claiming to be Oswald were forgeries.

This information points to the crucial role of the top CIA official in Mexico City, David Atlee Phillips, the CIA’s chief of operations for the Western Hemisphere, in preparing this central element implicating Oswald as the assassin. Sylvia Tirado de Duran of the Cuban Consulate, was later arrested and tortured by Mexican authorities at the direction of the CIA, in order to make her purported statements concerning Oswald align with this concocted narrative. This has probably been one of the key factors why the government has withheld these particular files to the last.

Oswald was framed and was exactly what he said he was — a patsy.

This “Mexico City Legend” lies at the epicenter of the establishment spurious rendition of the Kennedy murder and coup d’état.

There is an ever-growing scholarly consensus among presidential historians, distinguished political analysts, and JFK assassination researchers that on November 22, 1963, an insidious coup d’état by Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson and the highest echelons of the National Security State was accomplished with the brutal murder of President John F. Kennedy.

What happened on that fateful Friday in Dallas sixty-one years ago led to perhaps the single most important series of events affecting the subsequent history of our nation. It lies at the inner most depth, the dark clotted heart, of what observers now describe as the deep state.

The official full 889-page report by the President’s Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy, known unofficially as the Warren Commission, about the assassination of President John Kennedy on November 22, 1963, established the cover-up of this coup.

Their landmark final report was presented to President Lyndon Johnson on September 24, 1964, and made public on September 27.

The post America’s Untold Stories – JFK Hearing Chaos: Oliver or Roger Stone?! appeared first on LewRockwell.