Lew Rockwell Institute

Medicine is built around memorizing foundational axioms from which all other medical decisions and policies are made and any dissenting perspective is relentlessly ridiculed—despite the fact these axioms aren’t always correct. In the case of vaccines, to sustain their market, they have been presented as both “safe and effective,” leading to doctors frequently assuming anyone vaccinated for a disease cannot catch it and that any injuries occurring immediately after vaccination are unrelated coincidence—resulting in a frequent failure by physicians to diagnose either of these.

In turn, throughout my life, I have noticed more people than I can count (including groups of people) come down with the flu after they receive the flu vaccine. Whenever this is brought up in medical circles, the response typically is “correlation is not causation” and being lectured on the fact the injected influenza vaccine does not contain any live viruses so it can’t give you the flu.

More recently, I (and quite a few of my colleagues) noticed that this also happened with the COVID vaccine and more concerningly, we would come across cases where the person we knew not only got COVID but in some cases became severely ill, had to be hospitalized and then died. While this was understandably “denied,” I soon came across research from the adverse event reporting databases which showed that the two most common causes of death seen in association with the COVID-19 vaccines were heart issues (e.g., dying suddenly) and COVID-19, with the heart issues typically being clustering near the time of vaccination, while after a few weeks, the most commonly reported cause of death following a COVID-19 vaccine was…COVID-19.
Note: this is also shown in national trends of COVID-19 cases and deaths, as they tended to spike after vaccination campaigns were conducted.

Since I saw this so frequently, it left me wondering exactly what was happening.
Note: one of the most convincing cases I saw came from a response submitted to a survey (Steve Kirsch had me analyze) where a man reported having a PCR confirmed (a-symptomatic) COVID-19 infection which immediately progressed to a severe infection after vaccination.

Initially, I suspected this was due to a hyper-inflammatory process. This was because many of the complications of COVID-19 are due to the immune system’s response to the virus rather than the virus itself (e.g., in hospitalized patients, as the disease progresses, the viral load often drops, but despite the virus being eliminated, the patients become more ill and the illness becomes more fibrotic in nature).
Note: one of the most interesting models I came across to treat COVID-19 came from Shankara Chetty, a South African doctor who concluded the body was forming an allergic response to the spike protein, which in turn necessitated either eliminating the virus early on (so this would not happen) or treating it as an allergy once the second phase began. Given that this worked for 7,000 people and his model matched what many of us observed, I found this theory quite compelling.

Since vaccines excessively stimulate the immune system, I theorized that the inflammatory response the vaccines create are tipping an already stressed system over the edge into a dangerous hyperinflammatory state.
Note: this is a common component of the Cell Danger Response, a chronic dysfunctional mitochondrial process which underlies many chronic conditions including chronic fatigue, long COVID and vaccine injuries.

This hypothesis in turn was reinforced by an inconvenient discovery with the HPV vaccine. For reference, the HPV vaccine was pushed upon the world under the theory that a chronic HPV infection could transform cervical tissue into cancerous tissue, and that since HPV was thus the cause of cervical cancer, preventing women from getting HPV through a vaccine could hence prevent women from getting cervical cancer.

Unfortunately, there were a lot of holes in that chain of logic. One of these was the discovery that if someone was vaccinated for a strain of HPV they already had, it significantly increased their risk of getting cervical cancer.

Note: an identical effect was also found with GlaxoSmithKline’s competing HPV vaccine Cervarix. In a previous article on the subject of disease provocation, I took a deeper dive on the HPV vaccine provocation data and the other immense dangers of the vaccine.

However, requiring women to be tested for HPV prior to getting the vaccine would have significantly reduced vaccine sales (e.g., those who had already been infected wouldn’t vaccinate and many patients wouldn’t return for a follow-up visit once their negative test results had come in). This I believe explains why a decision was made to ignore this glaring problem and instead simply recommend beginning HPV vaccination at a much younger age (at 9-12) under the hope this would precede their first sexual exposure to the virus—which was unfortunate because the HPV vaccine had a very high rate of severe side effects, and it was not dosed at a lower amount for younger (and hence smaller) children.
Note: similarly, while individuals acutely ill with COVID were encouraged to wait a few days before vaccinating, the current guidelines do not advocate for having PCR test for COVID prior to vaccination (despite the fact so many were given that many Americans were receiving them on a weekly basis).

Like the COVID-19 example, I assumed “negative vaccine efficacy” had to be due to a hyperinflammatory response from vaccination (as the reason HPV created cervical cancer was due to the chronic inflammation it created in the cervical tissue).

Recently, as I began reviewing a remarkable collection of literature on the forgotten dangers of vaccination, I discovered that what I had observed with these vaccines was actually a longstanding problem that had been seen in the past with many other vaccinations, but sadly, again and again, that lesson was forgotten. Because of this data, I now believe this primary issue is not excessive inflammation but rather vaccine-induced immune suppression.

Note: a variety of mechanisms have been proposed to explain the significant immune suppression observed following COVID-19 vaccination (e.g., the COVID vaccine being shown to destroy of the hematopoietic stem cells which create a pivotal part of the immune system or antibody dependent enhancement—something known to observe with various vaccines including influenza and SARS). In this article I will primarily focus on one mechanism.

Original Antigenic Sin

Original Antigenic Sin (OAS) refers to the observation that if someone is vaccinated for a different strain than what is currently circulating (e.g., of the flu) they tend to have a worse immune response than those who were never vaccinated. Furthermore, multiple studies have shown that OAS affects completely different species (e.g., if you receive an influenza vaccine, you are less able to mount a response to “flus” caused by other respiratory viruses) and that OAS can persist for at least a year after vaccination.

Note: in a previous article, I discussed a 2009 article, a 2009 study, a 2010 review, a 2010 study, and a 2013 study (published in peer-reviewed journals such as the Lancet), which collectively found a 40-166% increase in the likelihood of getting infected with a virus which differed from the strain you were vaccinated against (e.g., a pandemic influenza strain which had a greater risk of hospitalization) and up to a 100 fold increase in one’s viral load (which increases transmission). Additionally, in children who received a non-matching influenza vaccine, a 2012 study found they were 267% more likely to be hospitalized for influenza and another 2012 study found that 29.0% developed an infection with a non-influenza upper respiratory virus (compared to 3.4% of the unvaccinated). Finally, a 2023 study inadvertently showed influenza vaccination significantly increased one’s risk of being hospitalized for the flu.

OAS is thought to be a result of off-target immunity leading to partial immune suppression. Specifically, since the immune system has a finite ability to respond to threats, if it becomes hyper-primed to target one antigen (e.g., the vaccine antigen it is continually provoked to target), its focus is diverted away from other antigens it needs to respond to. This in turn makes sense since the immune system (which does not have an infinite number of immune cells) has to prioritize targeting life threatening infections, but unfortunately, since it did not evolve in tandem with the era of vaccination, it is not always prepared to appropriately to respond to the artificial immune stimulation vaccinations create.
Note: typically speaking, vaccine components persist in the body for a prolonged period (as the immune system cannot break down the immunostimulatory aluminum adjuvant they contain). This issue became a much greater problem with the COVID vaccines because the body has difficulty breaking down the synthetic mRNA they contain, which in many cases has led to the (immunostimulating) vaccine spike protein still being produced more than a year after vaccination.

In the case of influenza vaccinations, since the vaccines require months to produce and hence need to be made before the seasonal circulating strain is known, the wrong strain is frequently chosen. This leads to the annual vaccine often being ineffective, and worse still, frequently leading to OAS and exacerbating the existing flu season.
Note: in most “bad” influenza years, I typically hear colleagues argue that it’s a bad season because the wrong vaccine was chosen, but it’s still essential to vaccinate because had lots of people not vaccinated, that year’s flu would have been even worse (an effective marketing slogan which was repurposed throughout COVID). However, my own experience has been that whenever I saw someone in the ICU for an influenza infection during one of those “bad” seasons, their chart always showed they were vaccinated—an observation directly supported by some of the studies I linked to above.

Disease enhancement from a mismatching vaccine is a rarely discussed but well-known problem. For example, a reader and physician who worked in the NIH was assigned to study this issue from 2009-2011 and followed a cohort of vaccinated children and pregnant months over 3 flu seasons also discovered a clear trend of negative vaccine efficacy. When she submitted her analysis, however, she was removed from the NIH and blacklisted from future employment (and as a result, she understandably harbors great disdain for Anthony Fauci).

The solution Fauci and the NIH in turn pushed for was to utilize mRNA technology to produce seasonal influenza vaccines since the production time for them was much shorter (so they could begin being produced once the circulating flu strains were essentially known). Unfortunately, since SARS-CoV-2 mutated much faster than a typical influenza virus, even with this shortened production time, it was still not quick enough to match the circulating variants (even when now boosters were rolled out multiple times each year).

In turn, because of the focus over the last few years on studying everything related to COVID, a study of 51011 people at the Cleveland Clinic gave the most overt proof of OAS I have seen in the scientific literature as more vaccinations were directly correlated to one’s susceptibility to repeating COVID infections:

Note: there are many cases you can read online of individuals who have received multiple COVID boosters continually getting COVID (e.g., Igor Chudov periodically compiles them).

More recently, the Cleveland clinic published another dataset of 53,402 employees showing that the influenza vaccine actually increased ones likelihood of getting the flu.

One of the most tragic examples of OAS immunosuppression was Peter Aaby’s WHO studies which found childhood DTwP vaccination in Guinea-Bissau (a vaccine which is no longer used in the United States due to its toxicity) caused children to be 5 times more likely to die (3.93 for boys and 9.98 for girls)—something, which in most cases, was due to them succumbing from one of the many lethal infectious diseases circulating in Subsaharan Africa. Sadly, while his data was published, it was largely ignored by the global public health apparatus since it would have required abandoning a practice they were deeply invested in.

Read the Whole Article

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Contrary to the assertions of Scofield-duped Christian Zionist evangelicals, God gave NO everlasting unconditional promise of national perpetuity to the Old Covenant nation of Israel. God’s promises of blessings to Old Covenant Israel were conditional to Israel’s obedience to God.

An unconditional everlasting promise was given to the man Abraham. And this promise was fulfilled in the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ. (Galatians 3:16, 28, 29) But to the nation of Old Covenant Israel was no such promise given.

In my third Prophecy Message from Romans 11, I provided much Scripture that delineated the differences between the unconditional everlasting seed promise given to Abraham (fulfilled in Christ) and the conditional land promise given to the Old Covenant nation of Israel—a covenant that Israel broke—and God then cursed Israel and took the land away from them forever.

Prophecy Message Three is entitled God’s Chosen People, and we have that message in both a DVD and PDF format.

Moses, the man through whom God gave Israel its conditional covenant, made it crystal clear to the nation just how conditional God’s covenant was to them.

But it shall come to pass, if thou wilt not hearken unto the voice of the LORD thy God, to observe to do all his commandments and his statutes which I command thee this day; that all these curses shall come upon thee, and overtake thee:

The LORD shall send upon thee cursing, vexation, and rebuke, in all that thou settest thine hand unto for to do, until thou be destroyed, and until thou perish quickly; because of the wickedness of thy doings, whereby thou hast forsaken me.

The LORD shall cause thee to be smitten before thine enemies: and shalt be removed into all the kingdoms of the earth.

Thy sons and thy daughters shall be given unto another people.

And thou shalt become an astonishment, a proverb, and a byword, among all nations whither the LORD shall lead thee.

Thou shalt beget sons and daughters, but thou shalt not enjoy them; for they shall go into captivity.

Moreover all these curses shall come upon thee, and shall pursue thee, and overtake thee, till thou be destroyed; because thou hearkenedst not unto the voice of the LORD thy God, to keep his commandments and his statutes which he commanded thee:

And they shall be upon thee for a sign and for a wonder, and upon thy seed for ever.

Because thou servedst not the LORD thy God with joyfulness, and with gladness of heart, for the abundance of all things;

Therefore shalt thou serve thine enemies which the LORD shall send against thee, in hunger, and in thirst, and in nakedness, and in want of all things: and he shall put a yoke of iron upon thy neck, until he have destroyed thee.

And it shall come to pass, that as the LORD rejoiced over you to do you good, and to multiply you; so the LORD will rejoice over you to destroy you, and to bring you to nought; and ye shall be plucked from off the land whither thou goest to possess it.

(See Deuteronomy 28:15 – 68)

In these and many other passages of Scripture, God promised to remove the children of Israel from the promised land (Canaan) forever, because of their disobedience. In this chapter in Deuteronomy, Moses predicted the destruction of Israel by the Assyrians, the destruction of Judah by the Babylonians and the destruction of the Judahite remnant by the Romans.

In short, Old Covenant Israel violated its covenant with God, and God did what Moses declared He would do: He expelled them from the promised land and destroyed their nation forever. The Israelis in Palestine today are NOT Biblical Israelites; they are NOT the biological descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob; and they are NOT God’s chosen people.

The Israelis are the children of Japheth, not Shem, as are the rest of the Eastern Europeans from which they descended. They have ZERO God-given land covenant in Palestine. They have ZERO promise of national perpetuity from God; there is ZERO promise from God for anyone who attempts to bless, assist, aid or support the Zionist state.

In truth, from its very inception in 1948, the State of Israel has proven itself to be a devilish, murderous, barbaric people—a plague of racism, hatred, ethnic cleansing, war and genocide upon the world. And the more the United States has entangled itself economically, militarily, morally and spiritually with Israel, the more America has invoked the curse of God upon it to the point that today America is little more than a vassal state of the most vile, wicked and bloodthirsty country on the planet.

And after two years of supporting Israel’s maniacal genocide in Gaza, the people of the entire world hold both Israel and the United States in utter contempt. And for good reason. America’s financial and military support for Israel’s crimes against humanity in Palestine are contemptible.

Donald Trump has proven himself to be as much or more of a lackey for Israel as Joe Biden. He is the one man in the world that has the capability to put an end to Israel’s slaughter of innocents in Gaza and the West Bank, but he refuses to do it. As with almost the entire Congress in Washington, D.C., Trump is nothing more than a pimp for Israel. They are all bought and paid for by the Israel lobby. They are the worst kind of prostitutes. They make street walkers look like Sunday School teachers by comparison.

But, ladies and gentlemen, Israel is doing more than murdering hundreds of thousands of innocents; it is expediting its own destruction. Israel has passed the point of no return. Its collapse is certain—and probably imminent.

As it always does, the Western media ignored it, but Yemen’s Houthis delivered a devastating missile attack against Israel, after Israel assassinated Yemen’s civilian prime minister and 12 of his cabinet members.

Here is a YouTube technical analysis from Conflict Skies & Steel of the attack:

Today we are witnessing a historic escalation in the Middle East that is shaking the foundations of regional security. Yemen’s Houthis have launched a daring strike against Israel, targeting the heart of Tel Aviv with a combination of long-range missiles and advanced drones.

This is not just a headline, it is a demonstration of reach, precision and the growing boldness of non-state actors in the modern battlefield. The world is now watching closely as the Houthis challenge one of the most technologically advanced nations in the region, sending a clear and shocking message to Israel and its allies.

Tel Aviv, a city known for its bustling economy and dense population, is now under fire with emergency sirens blaring and streets evacuated in panic. Smoke rises from multiple districts, while Israel’s air defense systems scramble to intercept incoming threats.

The scale of this attack is unlike anything seen in recent years, highlighting a new phase in asymmetric warfare, where precision and surprise trump sheer size and firepower. Citizens report sudden explosions, shaking windows and streets filled with confusion, a stark reminder that modern conflict can reach civilian centers with devastating speed.

The Iron Dome has successfully neutralized a large portion of the attack, but gaps in coverage were exposed, demonstrating that even the most sophisticated defense networks are not infallible.

Streets once crowded with civilians now appear deserted, as emergency sirens and warnings drive people into shelters. This attack is remarkable for its precision, with missiles targeting strategic locations rather than random destruction, showcasing the Houthis’ intelligence and tactical planning.

For Israel, this is a psychological blow as much as a physical one. The population’s sense of security is shaken, and the government must quickly reassess its defensive posture.

Conflict Skies and Steel [YouTube Channel] has been closely analyzing the data, and what stands out is the speed, coordination and audacity of this operation, reflecting a level of sophistication that goes far beyond what many had expected from Houthi capabilities.

The interior of this operation, though brief in visible details, tells a story of meticulous planning and technological evolution. The Houthi appear to have synchronized multiple missile launches with drone operations to overwhelm Israel’s defenses. Open-source satellite imagery suggests that launch sites were strategically positioned and camouflaged deep inside Yemeni territory. Real-time intelligence likely guided the drones to ensure maximum accuracy. The operation reflects a calculated approach, balancing the need for impact with operational security to avoid exposing critical assets.

Even with limited resources compared to a conventional army, the Houthis demonstrated that precision, timing and adaptability are force multipliers capable of challenging the world’s strongest defenses.

Performance of the strike has been extraordinary. Missiles reportedly traveled over 100 to 200 kilometers, demonstrating a significant extension of Houthi range capabilities. The simultaneous use of drones adds an unpredictable element, complicating interception strategies.

The attack successfully stressed Israel’s air defense systems, creating gaps that allowed some missiles to reach their targets. Analysts are evaluating the types of missiles used, with indications of modified scud variants and precision-guided munitions.

Drones provided real-time reconnaissance, potentially allowing operators to adjust trajectories mid-flight. This combination of missiles and UOV highlights the Houthis’ ingenuity, blending traditional long-range attacks with modern drone technology to create a complex battlefield problem.

The unique selling points of this Houthi operation are clear and remarkable.

First, the ability to strike Tel Aviv from Yemen demonstrates a significant leap in operational reach and capability.

Second, the synchronized use of multiple weapons systems, including missiles and drones, showcases an integrated approach rarely seen from non-state actors.

Third, the psychological impact on both Israel and the international community is immense, sending a signal that the Houthis can operate far beyond their traditional theater of conflict.

In conclusion, Yemen’s Houthi strike on Tel Aviv is both shocking and strategically significant. It exposes vulnerabilities in advanced air defense systems, demonstrates the evolution of non-state actors into formidable military threats and emphasizes the psychological and political dimensions of modern warfare.

Civilians are facing unprecedented threats, militaries are forced to reconsider their strategies and analysts are left re-evaluating the assumptions of regional power dynamics.

Israel is hemorrhaging economically, militarily, culturally, politically, psychologically, emotionally and internationally.

The Zionist experiment is over.

Almost every country in the world sees Israel for the satanic monster that it is, and they are enraged. The only major government in the world that remains unconditionally supportive of Israel is the United States—and among the population of the U.S., opposition to Israel is two to one. And Donald Trump’s favorability rating is now worse than was Joe Biden’s—mainly due to his sycophantic support for Israel.

Geopolitical, academic, military and intelligence experts such as Col. Douglas Macgregor, Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, Major Scott Ritter, Professor Jeffrey Sachs, Professor John Mearsheimer, intelligence officers Larry Johnson, Ray McGovern and Phil Giraldi are unanimous in the opinion that Israel’s collapse will come sooner than later.

Netanyahu and his fellow fascists in Israel are possessed with the intention of slaughtering or removing all 2 million Palestinians in Gaza. They really do intend to turn Gaza into Trump’s Riviera of the Middle East. Then, they fully intend to ethnically cleanse the West Bank. Then, they intend to conquer Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Iran. Then, they intend to liquidate the Palestinians and Arabs in Jordan and Eastern Egypt (including Cairo) and seize those land areas, including a large segment of Saudi Arabia.

But their devilish designs for a Greater Israel are falling apart. The little country of Yemen is showing the world that Israel—even with the military support of the United States—is ripe for destruction. After decades of missile attacks from Saudi Arabia and the United States (under both Biden and Trump) the Houthis are still standing toe-to-toe against Israel with much mental acumen and military aptitude.

If Israel is stunned and frightened by Yemen, wait until they attack Iran again and see what happens. Plus, the money-worshipping Arab states in the Persian Gulf that have sat back like scared little pussycats and done NOTHING to help their Arab brethren in Palestine know that history is going to forever shine the light of truth on the Arab monarchies for the moneygrubbing cowards they are, while the Houthis will go down in history as the brave little David who stood courageously against the Zionist Goliath—and won.

Israelis by the thousands are fleeing the country. They know the nation is on its last legs. Netanyahu knows his only hope for staying out of prison (or maybe even staying alive) is to keep Israel at war. He doesn’t care one whit how many innocent people he kills, as long as it keeps him in power. He is a demon-possessed madman. And he is trying his best to drag the United States into all-out war along with him.

And given Trump’s slavish devotion to the Jewish billionaires that have been his financial benefactors throughout his entire life, he is proving to be in no mood to put America first, all of his campaign rhetoric notwithstanding. After all, Trump started seven businesses, and all seven went bankrupt. And all seven times the Zionist billionaires bailed him out. It is a fantasy to think that Trump would put the interests of the United States above those of Israel. Trump is Zionist-owned lock, stock and barrel.

But the question might be: Who will die first, Donald Trump or Israel? Because both are on life support.

Reprinted with permission from Chuck Baldwin Live.

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Publix’s latest back-to-back price rises have raised 12 ounces of Community coffee to $13.60 from $11, 12 ounces of Greenfield uncured bacon to $9.19 from $7.99.  Seattle’s Best coffee held its price by reducing its offering from 12 ounces to 10.  Just to fix a sandwich lunch at home today costs as much as to eat a gourmet evening meal at Claridges in London in 1963.  

Today the nightly price of a room at Claridges is $2,258.  On November 19 the price drops to $1,874.  Today traditional afternoon tea at Claridges is priced from 95 British pounds ($128 dollars) and up per person.  In 1963 the price of a full course evening meal at Claridges for two couples (4 people), with chocolate mousse and vintage port totaled 20 British pounds which was $56.  So, in 1963 four persons could enjoy a full course meal at one of the finest restaurants in the world for half the price one person pays for an afternoon tea today. 

I can’t imagine the price of the 1963 dinner meal for four that I participated in today.  Looking at the restaurants bar prices, one fluffy margarita royal cost 2 British pounds more than our gourmet dinner for four.

The cheapest dinner menu today for four is 360 British pounds.  Compared to the 20 pounds of my day, it is devoid of exotic offerings.  No chocolate mousse.  No vintage port. Today even Claridges offers a Signature Burger at 32 British pounds. A hamburger on Claridges’s dinner menu was an impossibility in 1963-64.

 If you go to the a la cart menu, you can get a selection of oysters, tuna curdo, scallop ceviche, Cornish crab and a whole lobster for 185 British pounds, which is $250. If we add a starter of a half dozen raw oysters on the half shell at 32 British pounds and an iceberg lettuce and avocado salad at 22 pounds, and some miso glazed carrots at 8 pounds, we have a dinner for one priced at 247 British pounds or $336. For four people the bill today would be $1,344 compared to $56 in 1963, and the present day dinner doesn’t reach the level on the one I had in 1963, which came to 5 British pounds per person.  There is no vintage port and no chocolate mousse.

I turned to Claridges’ current wine menu. There is no vintage port on the menu.  There is no Veuve Clicquot champagne on the menu and no Dom Perignon. A bottle of Krug, Grande Cure is 450 pounds or $605.  Apparently, not even oil sheiks and narcotics barons can afford vintage port.

I have used restaurant prices as an example of inflation, about which more I will write in a moment. It is not the British who sustain these prices.  It is Arab oil barons and Afghan drug cartels, and perhaps CIA  and MI6 agents on expense accounts hoping to infiltrate these organizations.  The example shows not only a decline the quality of an evening meal that even Claridges can offer, but its inaccessibility to any but the rich. In 1963-64 when I enjoyed Claridges I was a graduate student on scholarship with wife at Oxford University.  Imagine that today.

I used to write more about economics and inflation.  But I found that economics was not a popular subject with my audience.  As best as I could figure, the reason is that most thought economics was too difficult to understand.  Moreover, they thought they knew enough.  For Republicans the problem was the government spent too much and burdened the economy with too much debt.  For Democrats the problem was that the rich had too much money, saved too much of it, and left the economy with insufficient consumer demand to maintain full employment. For one party the solution was to cut government; for the other party the solution was to increase it.

My economic lesson for today is that having lived for decades with economists’ explanations of inflation, there is one that they have overlooked.  Inflation is caused by Wall Street, the Federal Reserve, and the media declaring its presence.  Once inflation is declared, everyone has cover to raise his prices.  This is our present cause of inflation.  It is a way of boosting profits.  Inflation is declared, using for example, Trump’s might be tariffs,  and Community Coffee jumps from $11 to $13.60, bacon from $8 to $10.  Organic eggs never came down from the virus that resulted in the slaughter, for some reason, only of egg laying chickens.  Organic eggs are approaching one dollar per egg.  I can remember when a dozen eggs cost 69 cents.

In past writings I have pointed out that the Bureau of Labor Statistics measures inflation in a manner than minimizes it.  The same for unemployment.  The numbers have little, if any, reliability. Yet markets are moved by the announcement of fake numbers.  

This is endemic.  What controls stock prices more than speculation about the Fed’s next move on interest rates?  If the Fed is expected to lower interest rates, up goes stock prices.  If the Fed is expected to raise interest rates, down go stock prices.  Equity prices are determined by the amount of money chasing them, not by the soundness of the company’s position and earnings record.

How is it that despite what we constantly hear about the growth in knowledge and education, increasingly unreality is taking the place of reality?  

Recently I read a scary article that children who spend their time in video games have difficulty in transitioning from virtual reality into real reality, which is perhaps a development that our masters intend.

The post Inflation Is Caused by the Announcement of Its Arrival appeared first on LewRockwell.

I don’t even know where to start with Lex Fridman’s 10 hour interview with Scott Horton. All I can really say is that if you’re a foreign policy geek and you have followed or been aware of U.S. military interventions since the end of the cold war, you honestly have to listen to this. Scott rambles off the top of his head the whole time. It’s absolutely incredible! I can honestly say that he is the most underrated policy wonk in probably the history of our country.

From Neocons to Afghanistan, to Israel, Syria, Iraq, Iran and everything in between, Scott just runs wild with it all.

I frequently talk about the Wolfowitz Doctrine — the Neocon “new world order” US-is-the-king-of-the-world policy since the end of the cold war. What I didn’t know is that the Neocons were also helping to implement Israel’s own Yinon Plan. Just from the standpoint of the Neocon to Israel connection, Scott’s take on why we always do Israel’s bidding even though it isn’t in our country’s interests to do so comes full circle.

He has every footnote, every article, and every source to back it all up. He’s literally a walking encyclopedia and we’re all not worthy.

I get it. This isn’t a 5 minute easily consumable 3×5 card. It’s not for everyone. But damn, this is THE rabbit hole! This is the “red pill.” It is time well spent.

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Real Raw News

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John Leake

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The real Soviet story is brutal. This documentary, based on released KGB files, is uncompromising. Though it starts by telling the story of the murder of millions of Ukrainians in the “Holodomor” in 1933, the 2008 documentary film goes far beyond merely exposing Soviet atrocities.

The film shows the close connections – philosophical, political and organizational – between the Nazi and Soviet systems. Russians, who have spent decades whitewashing their own history and making Soviet communism palatable, protested the film.

The Soviet Story offers an alternative history of an Allied power which helped the Nazis to fight Jews and which slaughtered its own people on an industrial scale. The Soviet Story’ also discusses the impact of the Soviet legacy on modern day Europe and helps us understand Vladimir Putin’s attack on Ukraine.

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Throughout all of human history, central planning has a perfect 100% failure rate. Yet, there is never a shortage of central planners. Even America, which began with a very limited government, has morphed into a web of planners, and agencies, and red tape, and unelected bureaucrats galore. Prices are manipulated to such an extreme degree that rational decision-making and investment become near impossible. Forget consumers. The goal is to get in charge of the state, and force your will onto everyone else. Eventually, this all falls to pieces; and everyone is forced to re-learn what freedom and limited government means again … That is, until the next batch of central planners arrive on the scene.

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Writes Bill Madden:

The video below, like most communications these days, is entirely too long.  But, you might want to watch about 10 minutes of the video as I feel the warning is legitimate and totally opposite of the feel good B.S. being fed to us every day by the mainstream media.  More people are not concerned because most people are ignorant and apathetic

Also, I don’t feel comfortable having a political leader like Donald Trump who was elected because he wasn’t Kamala.  If overly large egos equated to effective governance, we’d be in good shape but overly large egos are a detriment to effectiveness in any endeavor.

Trump is upset with Putin because he won’t stop the war in Ukraine that we started and funded with over $200 billion of taxpayer money.  Putin doesn’t work for Trump.  Trump is upset with Fed Chairman Powell because he won’t lower interest rates when real inflation: www.shadowstats.com is soaring.  Try reducing spending Mr. President and interest rates will eventually come down.  You might begin with the military aid going to Israel and Ukraine.

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The History Channel’s Mendacious Propaganda Concerning the World Wars, by Charles Burris

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Some 1,000 CDC bureaucrats have reportedly signed a letter demanding that RFK, Jr. resign.  What a great gift to RFK, Jr. — and the nation.  Now he knows exactly who to fire immediately.

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You may have heard about the recent arrest of comedian Graham Linehan at Heathrow airport for three tweets he wrote while in the United States.

Linehan created or co-created the sitcoms Father Ted, Black Books, and The IT Crowd (that last one is a favorite of my wife’s).

Linehan describes the scene:

The moment I stepped off the plane at Heathrow, five armed police officers were waiting. Not one, not two—five. They escorted me to a private area and told me I was under arrest for three tweets….

When I first saw the cops, I actually laughed. I couldn’t help myself. “Don’t tell me! You’ve been sent by trans activists.”

Linehan reports that the officers themselves were generally kind, and in general seemed sympathetic. Commentators have been saying that crazy, open-ended UK laws have put officers in crazy situations, in which they are expected to arrest people like Linehan. I myself would say: at that point, if you haven’t started questioning your career choice, there’s something wrong upstairs.

Linehan continues:

The civility of individual officers doesn’t alter the fundamental reality of what happened. I was arrested at an airport like a terrorist, locked in a cell like a criminal, taken to hospital because the stress nearly killed me, and banned from speaking online — all because I made jokes that upset some psychotic crossdressers.

To me, this proves one thing beyond doubt: the UK has become a country that is hostile to freedom of speech, hostile to women, and far too accommodating to the demands of violent, entitled, abusive men who have turned the police into their personal goon squad.

(If you’d like to see the Tweets that got him arrested, you’ll find them here.)

There are in fact people defending the arrest of a man for tweets.

Green Party leader Zack Polanski, for example, described the posts as “totally unacceptable” and the arrest as “proportionate.”

(Whenever you’re tempted to say, “At least these lefties aren’t Hillary Clintonites who would start a war over a cup of coffee,” remember this incident: these are not our friends.)

Another Twitterite, a “Richard Angwin” with over 200,000 followers, unbosomed this gem: “Linehan’s arrest for hate-mongering tweets is a fitting cap to his obsessive transphobia, proving that even ‘free speech’ warriors can’t escape accountability for their toxic rants.”

So he boasts about wanting to live in a country in which a monopoly enforcement institution will decide what constitutes “hate” (he’s sure “hate” will be defined so as to target his enemies), and then arrest people for statements that he dislikes. (We can dismiss the idea that anyone was “threatened” by these three silly tweets.)

(Here’s another thing that grinds the old man’s gears, by the way. Disagreeing with the left can’t just be a difference of opinion: it has to be a clinical diagnosis with “phobia” in the name. This is how it’s been since at least the Soviets. Hence the absurd neologism “transphobia.”)

On Twitter I likewise came across a British lawyer, Stephanie Hayden, who insisted there was nothing amiss in what had happened to Linehan.

I looked more closely and discovered that this very same woman had posted just days before that she’d run into Iraq war supporter John Kerry at the airport and had excitedly gotten a selfie with him.

Linehan harmed no one. Kerry shares responsibility for pointless and catastrophic misery and loss of life. Iraqis, however, do not matter to progressives, who squeal with delight to get selfies with murderers.

In the UK the arrest has even mainstream outlets discussing the absurdity of the free-speech situation over there and calling for change.

Well, that’s about the least one can say about it.

Never pay for a book again: TomsFreeBooks.com

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Israel, with US complicity, is committing genocide in Gaza through the mass starvation of the population as well as direct mass murders and the physical destruction of Gaza’s infrastructure. Israel does the dirty work.  The US Government funds it and provides diplomatic cover through its UN veto.  Palantir, through “Lavendar,” provides the AI for efficient mass murder. Microsoft, through Azure cloud services, and Google and Amazon  through the “Nimbus” initiative, supply core tech infrastructure for the Israeli army.

This marks 21st-century war crimes as an Israel-US public-private partnership.  Israel’s mass starvation of the people of Gaza has been confirmed by the United Nations, Amnesty International, Red Cross, Save the Children and many others. The Norwegian Refugee Council, along with 100 organizations, have been calling for an end to Israel’s weaponization of food relief.  This is the first time that mass starvation has been officially confirmed in the Middle East.

The scale of the starvation is staggering. Israel is systematically depriving food to more than 2 million people. Over half a million Palestinians face catastrophic hunger and at least 132,000 children aged under five are at risk of death from acute malnutrition. The scale of the horror is thoroughly documented by Haaretz in a recent article entitled “Starvation is Everywhere.” Those who are able to somehow access food distribution sites are routinely fired on by the Israeli army.

As a former US ambassador to Israel has recently explained, the intention to starve the population has been present from the start.  Israel’s Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu recently declared, “there is no nation that feeds its enemies.”  Minister Bezalel Smotrich recently stated, “whoever doesn’t evacuate, don’t let them. No water, no electricity; they can die of hunger or surrender. This is what we want.”

Yet despite these glaring declarations of genocide, US representatives at the UN repeatedly deny the facts and cover for Israel’s war crimes. The US alone vetoed Palestine’s admission to the UN in 2024.  The US now denies visas to Palestinian leaders to come to the UN in September, yet another violation of international law.

The US has used its power and especially its veto in the UN Security Council to abet Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians and to block even the most basic humanitarian responses.  The world is aghast but seems paralyzed before the the Israel-US murder machine.  Yet the world can act, even in the face of US intransigence.  The US will stand naked and alone in its criminal complicity with Israel.

Let’s be clear.  The overwhelming voice of humanity is on the side of the people of Palestine.  Last December, 172 countries, with more than 90 percent of the world population, voted to support Palestine’s right to self-determination.  Israel and the US were essentially isolated in their opposition.  Similar overwhelming majorities are repeatedly expressed on behalf of Palestine and against the actions of Israel.
Israel’s thuggish government now counts solely on US support, but even that may not be there for long.  Despite Trump’s intransigence and US government attempts to stifle pro-Palestinian voices, 58% of Americans want the UN to recognize the State of Palestine, compared to only 33% who do not. Moreover, 60% of Americans oppose Israel’s actions in Gaza.

Here are practical steps that the world can take.

First, Türkiye has set the correct course by ending all economic, trade, shipping, and air links with Israel. Israel is currently a rogue state, and Türkiye is right to treat it as such until Israeli-created mass starvation ends, and a State of Palestine is admitted to the UN as the 194th member, with the borders of June 4, 1967.  Other states should immediately follow Türkiye’s lead.

Second, all UN member states that have not yet done so should recognize the State of Palestine.  So far, 147 countries recognize Palestine.  Dozens more should do so at the UN Summit on Palestine on September 22, even over the vociferous objections of the US.

Third, the Arab signatories to the Abraham Accords, Bahrain, Morocco, Sudan, and the UAE, should suspend their diplomatic relations with Israel until the Gaza siege ends and the State of Palestine is admitted to the UN.

Fourth, the UN General Assembly, by a vote of two-thirds present and voting, should suspend Israel from the UN General Assembly until it lifts its murderous siege on Gaza, based on the precedent of suspending South Africa during its Apartheid regime.  The US has no veto in the UN General Assembly.

Fifth, UN member states should stop the export of all technology services that support the war, until the siege of Gaza ends and Palestine’s membership in the UN is adopted by the UN Security Council.  Consumer companies such as Amazon and Microsoft that persist in aiding the Israel Defence Forces in the context of a genocide should face the wrath of consumers worldwide.

Seventh, the UN General Assembly should dispatch a UN Protection Force to Gaza and the West Bank. Typically, it would be the UN Security Council that mandates a protection force, but in this case, the US will block the Security Council with its veto.  There is another way.

Under the “Uniting for Peace” mechanism, when the Security Council is deadlocked, the authority to act passes to the General Assembly. After a Security Council session and the almost inevitable US veto, the issue would be brought before the UNGA in a resumed 10th emergency special session on the Israel-Palestine conflict.  There, the General Assembly can, by a two-thirds majority not subject to US veto, authorize a protection force in response to an urgent request from the State of Palestine.  There is a precedent: in 1956, the General Assembly authorized the UN Emergency Force (UNEF) to enter Egypt and protect it from the ongoing invasion by Israel, France, and the United Kingdom.

At the invitation of Palestine, the protection force would enter Gaza to secure emergency humanitarian aid for the starving population. If Israel were to attack the UN protection force, the force would be authorized to defend itself and the Gazans. Whether Israel and the US would dare to fight a UNGA-mandated force protecting the starving Gazans remains to be seen.

Israel has crossed the clear line into the darkest crimes — starving civilians to death and shooting them as they line up, emaciated, for food. There is no further line to cross, nor time to lose. The family of nations is being tested and summoned to action as it has not been in decades.

This article was originally published on Other News.

The post How To Stop Israel From Starving Gaza appeared first on LewRockwell.

Since we didn’t need relationships in a transactional system, we no longer have any.

To connect multiple threads into a coherent understanding, let’s start with a real-life story. We’re handy but some breakdowns require outside assistance. The fridge failed (GE brand, less than two years old) and it turned out to be difficult to find a repair tech. One had retired, others were swamped, one didn’t return multiple calls, another had left the trade for another trade, and GE’s own service only covers repairs under warranty (i.e. one year).

One of my wife’s cousins had spoken highly of an experienced repair guy, and in leaving the gent a message my wife mentioned her cousin as the source of the recommendation. He had no business listing online; everything was word of mouth.

The gent eventually returned her call, asked for the model/make information, and agreed to swing by to diagnose the problem.

During their conversation the gent mentioned his 40+ years in the appliance / repair business, and that he only does work for people he knows. He no longer responds to strangers recommended by people he knows, as he’s had bad experiences with newcomers and will have nothing to do with them. He only returned our call because we were family members of someone he knows.

His list of previous customers numbers in the hundreds, and these trustworthy, respectful people keep him as busy as he wants.

My shorthand for his bad experiences with strangers: they’re entitled, demanding, discourteous, and find excuses not to pay him. His response is to shun those customers he doesn’t already know, or in our case, family members of people he does know. (He knew two of my wife’s cousins.)

Now let’s connect a few more threads. Ours is an advocacy system. You want something, you have to advocate for it, often persistently, as “the squeaky wheel gets the grease.” Customer service had degraded to the point where the system seeks to reduce costs by grinding down customers so they give up.

Advocacy merges easily into threats. After a trip in Asia, I knew I was on a US-flagged airline when a passenger who’d been accidentally jostled by another passenger snapped, “I’ll sue you!” (This is one of those “only in America” things: “I’ll sue you!”)

The appliance tech mentioned that when a stranger outright refused to pay him and he said he would remove the part he’d just installed, the customer threatened to “call the police.”

Threats are tactics, of course, to bulldoze your opponent, but they can also be the emotional response of those who grasp their powerlessness in the system.

Americans confuse rights, entitlements and advocacy. Our rights are rather limited, and are defined by an enormous body of legal rulings. Our entitlements–for example, to receive medical care under the Medicare or Medicaid programs–are often taken as rights, but they’re not the same: we may be entitled to care but that isn’t a guarantee we’ll receive the care, as that depends on the local availability of enterprises who accept Medicare / Medicaid patients.

Providers can bail out of these programs, and those mandated to provide coverage (emergency rooms for example) can close down.

Entitlement leads to demands presented as advocacy which morphs into “it’s my right.” Well, actually, it’s rarely our “right,” beyond advocating our position via free speech, filing complaints with regulatory authorities or legal proceedings.

Now let’s connect the final set of threads: the difference between transactions and relationships, systems that are based on transactions and systems that are based on relationships–not just immediate family and friends, but extended family ties and reciprocal-help relationships that are the core of community–a much used and abused term for what is largely a hollow slogan.

Ours is a transactional system: everything you need or want is for sale via a financial transaction. nobody needs a relationship to buy whatever they want; they just need money or credit. We approach a complete stranger who is employed by Corporate America or the government, and complete a financial transaction.

In a transactional system, we don’t do anything for anyone unless we’re paid. OK, help a stranger with a flat tire maybe, but develop reciprocal-aid ties with neighbors and others? We don’t have time for those kinds of “investments” that “don’t pay off.”

Consider the difference between an appliance repair conducted as a transaction and one based on relationships. If the appliance is under warranty, the issuer of the warranty is obligated to arrange a repair by the contractual stipulations of the warranty. (“Some conditions apply,” of course, meaning there may be exclusions, limits of liability, etc. Sorry about that, you should have read the fine print.)

The customer and the repair tech are strangers. The transaction is arranged by strangers in a corporate office. This transaction is lauded in the abstract as proof of the “trustworthiness” of the system.

A transactional system works marvelously until it breaks down. For example, the hospital closes due to financial losses, and so the ER is closed, too. We can demand our right to medical care but it’s no longer available in our area. Or the warranty repair service is no longer available in our area, sorry.

The fragility of these transactional systems is hidden until they break down. And when they degrade and break down, then we’re left with systems based on relationships–systems which have largely vanished in a highly mobile, rootless culture that’s distilled everything down to “trustworthy” transactions.

If everyone is constantly moving, there is no way anyone can know members of your extended family because they’re scattered thousands of miles apart.

In a transaction-based culture, relationships have little value, so they’re depreciated. Why bother maintaining or forming relationships when you can get everything you want or need by staring at a screen?

Until all those hyper-optimized transactional systems start breaking down. Then the value of relationships is suddenly revalued–but few have any reciprocal-aid relationships with practical value. Networking is a superficial, shallow simulacrum of actual relationships, and that’s all we have left.

Read the Whole Article

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The co-sponsors of a bill that would force the government to release all available Jeffrey Epstein documents held an hour-long press conference Wednesday that included statements from Epstein’s victims. One said that she and others were considering releasing their own list.

“[We] Epstein survivors have been discussing creating our own list,” Lisa Phillips said. “We know the names. Many of us were abused by them. Now, together as survivors, we will confidentially compile the names we all know, who are regularly in the Epstein world. It will be done by survivors, and for survivors. No one else is involved. Stay tuned for more details.”

Lisa Phillips: “Us Epstein survivors have been discussing creating our own list… We will confidentially compile the names we all know who were regularly in the Epstein world.”pic.twitter.com/gtAUGk6slc

— Thomas Sowell Quotes (@ThomasSowell) September 3, 2025

Phillips spoke near the end of the conference. She was one of eight victims (nine if you count deceased victim Virginia Giuffre’s family) to make statements in support of the Epstein Files Transparency Act (EFTA), which would force the House of Representatives to vote on the complete release of everything the government has related to Jeffrey Epstein (with the exception of victim-related redactions).

The Discharge Petition

Since Republican leadership has been unwilling to bring the bill up for a vote, EFTA co-sponsors Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) and Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) are circulating a discharge petition to circumvent the House speaker. If they get 218 signatures, they can force a vote. Right now, they are just two shy. The petition has signatures from 212 Democrats, but only four Republicans. In addition to Massie, the other Republicans are Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, Nancy Mace of South Carolina, and Lauren Boebert of Colorado.

Massie argued that despite various Epstein files being released by the government, “that does absolutely nothing.” He said the public receives some information, but it’s information curated by the government. On Tuesday, the House Oversight Committee released more than 33,000 pages of documents related to the Epstein investigation. Massie pointed out that everything the DOJ has released so far is either heavily redacted or information that’s already been made available to the public, which, he says, accounts for 70 percent. The White House is calling Massie’s attempt to have all the Epstein information released a “hostile act,” an indication that it opposes full transparency.

One of the victims’ lawyers, Bradley Edwards, elaborated on why it’s so important that EFTA go through. He said all the documents and evidence they’ve worked so hard to gather “hide behind protective orders, confidentiality agreements, and bank secrecy laws,” adding:

That is why this discharge petition is so important. While we have seen the documents, you haven’t. And when you see the documents, you’re going to be appalled.

The discharge petition, Edwards added, means that “nothing is off-limits” — from CIA documents, to FBI documents, to financial records. “Everybody knows that … corruption flourishes in secrecy.” He also said that he had filed lawsuits against JPMorgan and Deutsche Bank proving that they “knowingly provided the financial infrastructure for a sex trafficking operation.”

A Nonpartisan Issue

Both the politicians and the victims — or survivors, as they prefer to be called — stressed that this was a nonpartisan issue. Greene said this was something that “Republicans and Democrats should never fight about,” but that it instead “should bring us all together.”

“The only motive for opposing this bill would be to conceal wrongdoing,” one of the victims observed.

Massie, who is being targeted by President Donald Trump in the 2026 primary, took issue with the president calling the Epstein saga a hoax. “This is not a hoax,” he said. “This is real. There are real survivors. There are real victims to this criminal enterprise. And the perpetrators are being protected because they’re rich and powerful and political donors to the Establishment here in Washington, D.C.”

Everyone at the press conference agreed that Epstein was a monster who played a role in the assault of hundreds, if not thousands, of underage girls, and that the only reason there is not more known about him is because he was rich and well connected. Khanna put it this way:

Americans are asking a very simple question: How is it possible that in the richest, most powerful country in the world there are corrupt special-interest forces, both foreign [and] domestic, that are preventing the release — that have a stranglehold on our government and are preventing the release of the full Epstein files. There is something that is rotten in Washington…. Today we stand with survivors, we stand against Big Money, we stand to protect America’s children. That is really what this is about.

Greene said that she had recently heard that Epstein had ties to other countries, including Saudi Arabia, Russia, and Israel.

Victim Testimonies

The victims’ testimonies were similar. They were approached when they were between 14 and 16 years old. Someone they knew asked if they wanted to make $200 to massage “an old rich guy.” However, they soon found out that they were obligated to give more than a massage. Plus, they were asked to recruit other girls as they had been recruited. Another similarity is that none of those who went to the authorities had success — until attorneys like Edwards took on their case.

Perhaps alleged victim Courtney Wild summed it up best as to what this is about:

We need transparency. It’s time for us to see beyond the curtain — Why was Jeffrey Epstein so protected? Who is still being protected? And who protected them all? — so the world can understand how Jeffrey was able to abuse so many of us for so long.

This article was originally published on The New American.

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Cardinal Robert McElroy of Washington, D.C., is seeking to laicize Father Michael Briese, a whistleblower archdiocesan priest, for refusing to take down blog posts detailing allegations that two priests who remain in good standing with the archdiocese, Father Adam Park and Father Carter Griffin, had sexually abused seminarians as well as allegations of a cover-up of the allegations by both McElroy and his predecessor, Cardinal Wilton Gregory.

In an August 12 letter, McElroy informed Briese that he was requesting his laicization with the Dicastery for the Clergy in response to his supposed “defamatory” claims on his personal Substack against himself, Gregory, the two accused priests, and the archdiocesan curia; however, he notably did not refute any of the charges.

In an exclusive interview with LifeSiteNews, Briese rebutted McElroy’s charge that his claims were defamatory, detailed McElroy’s and Gregory’s alleged years-long cover-up of abuse, the prelate’s efforts to have him silenced, their alleged homosexuality, and more.

McElroy’s letter informing Briese of his impending laicization

In his letter to Briese, McElroy emphasized his hope that, during a July 30 meeting, Briese would agree to take down his “defamatory” articles in exchange for continuing a limited priestly ministry for the poor. However, because the priest refused this offer and continued to push McElroy on his, Cardinal Gregory’s, and the archdiocese’s alleged cover-up of sexual abuse, the cardinal said the laicization process will continue.

“I was particularly hoping that such an avenue might emerge because it would allow you to pursue some initiatives in your own priesthood that would serve the poor, that have been so much at the heart of your service in the Church,” McElroy wrote. “But even as we discussed such an approach, you threatened on two separate occasions in our conversation to bring down the Church and me personally, as well as Cardinal Gregory.”

“For these reasons, I must continue the process that has begun to dismiss you from the clerical state,” he added. “It is inconsistent with your identity as a priest to continue the pattern of character assassination that has wounded so many without justification, and as the pastor of this local church, I cannot stand (by) while you do so.”

Briese stressed to LifeSiteNews that McElroy did not once refute any of the allegations of abuse by the priests or the cover-up by him, Gregory, and the archdiocese.

“(McElroy) hangs himself here because he’s trying to throw everything on me as disobedience. But he never says that I falsely accused (my) archbishop, he doesn’t say it’s a lie,” the priest said. “He’s just not holding himself accountable.”

“I’ve been obedient for seven years. I have followed the orders by Gregory (and McElroy), but I’m not going to pretend that the homosexual promiscuity in our priesthood today is acceptable,” he added.

Alleged DC clerical abuse

In 2021, Father Adam Park, the former vice rector for seminary life at the Pontifical North American College (NAC) in Rome, was accused in a lawsuit by a former seminarian of harassing and preying upon him. Park then quietly stepped down from his position at the NAC but remained in good standing within the archdiocese.

As Briese noted in his August 22 letter to McElroy and on his Substack, a former NAC seminarian came forward and not only corroborated the first seminarian’s story but also alleged that Park had pushed other seminarians to “pleasure him,” once had a “sexual encounter” with a male flight attendant, and has lived as an active homosexual throughout his priesthood.

According to rumors, Park is currently back in Rome pursuing a doctorate in sacred theology, but LifeSiteNews was unable to corroborate this information.

Another former seminarian from the Saint John Paul II Seminary came forward, accusing Father Carter Griffin, then the seminary’s vice rector, among other clergy, of sexually harassing him. Griffin has since been promoted to rector of the seminary.

Griffin had defended himself by stating that “people in my position don’t do things like that,” per a 2019 letter from the seminarian and his family to then-Archbishop Christophe Pierre, detailing the accusations against the priest.

Briese’s letter in response to McElroy

Ten days after McElroy sent his letter, Briese responded with a letter of his own, noting that the cardinal had failed to answer any of his allegations, and underscored that he wasn’t trying to defame anyone but rather was informing the faithful of the serious allegations against two archdiocesan clergy after they failed to act.

“Before I wrote about the sexual allegations … against Father Park, I attempted – on several occasions without success – to discuss them with Cardinal Wilton Gregory,” the priest wrote.  “His refusal to meet with me led me to believe that he was covering up the abuse allegations made against Father Park, as well as abuse allegations (from) the family of former Baltimore seminarian … made against Father Carter Griffin.”

This is what happens when real men have had enough of covering for corrupt criminals who are destroying the Catholic faith pic.twitter.com/LEG0ISKEDe

— Mark Lambert (@sitsio) August 30, 2025

“Because of the plethora of evidence and sworn testimony against Father Park, I would be in violation of the Safe Environment Polices of the Washington Archdiocese and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops if I obeyed you and Cardinal Gregory by covering up and retracting what I reported about Father Park,” he added.

Briese also sent a copy of the letter to Pope Leo XIV through Cardinal Christophe Pierre, allowing the Vatican to decide whether the allegations were unfounded and if the attempted laicization was justified. While the priest stressed to LifeSiteNews that he is not optimistic the Vatican will ultimately side with him, the priest felt it was important that they have a record of his accusations.

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Having lived in Australia for the past three years, I sense that this country is the least advanced down the road towards the multicultural dystopia confronting much of Europe. That is not to say there is room for complacency: Australia has its own canaries in the coal mine, echoing trends observable across the Western world. Yet relative prosperity, firm immigration policies, a distinct welfare regime (mandatory health insurance, means tested pensions), a robust federal system, and above all a unique electoral framework of three-year cycles and compulsory voting all help, willy-nilly, to keep politicians on a short leash and broadly tethered to the popular will.

The greatest safeguard against social fracture and disintegration in Australia, however, is not institutional design but rather watching Britain implode in real time. Many Australians, still bound by ties of kinship and tradition to the old country, see in the United Kingdom both a cautionary tale and an anti-role model: a once-settled, relatively harmonious state busily teaching the world how to dismantle itself through the enthusiastic embrace of liberal dogma.

As an observer no longer resident in Britain, I am reluctant to pontificate on the fate of my homeland. Yet it is a sight to behold: an establishment seemingly bent on self-destruction, clinging to an incontinent immigration system and an almost devotional attachment to international and human rights laws that disadvantage its own citizens. The Epping hotel protests — complete with the Home Office’s recourse to legal appeals — illustrate the point. No doubt the legal complexities are real, as David McGrogan rightly pointed out in these pages, but such manoeuvres only pour petrol on an already combustible national mood.

One is left to wonder whether Britain’s Labour Party, now so hopelessly enthralled by socially progressive ideology, will ever rediscover the ability to represent anything resembling national sentiment — or whether it will, like the Conservatives, simply perfect the art of political self-evisceration.

On Civil Strife and Academic Exile

It should surprise no one that talk of civil strife and even civil war has been in the air for months. Into this debate I enter only on the edges, sitting in the cheap seats, offering a few side notes alongside far more insightful voices.

My former colleague at King’s College London, David Betz, has recently emerged as the primus inter pares in the debate about the possibility of civil war in Britain. Back in early 2019, we co-authored an essay examining the grim prospects for British democracy and the road to internal conflict that already loomed on the horizon.

That essay, The British Road to Dirty War, explored the hollowing out of British democratic institutions — a long-running process that had by then left politics little more than a façade. The Brexit psychodrama exposed the extent of the rot. The political class, determined to thwart the referendum result, behaved with a deranged mixture of denial and contempt for the electorate. We saw in this not merely a passing convulsion but the symptom of a chronic condition — one destined, sooner or later, to end badly, Brexit or no Brexit.

For me, the article was merely the latest offence in a long career of thought criminality — though until then I had usually managed to get away with it, courtesy of the last tattered vestiges of pluralism in British universities. This time was different. The arraignment came swiftly. Confronted with unwelcome facts, several so-called colleagues — fluent in sanctimony, illiterate in reality — filed their denunciations, East German–style. Readers may recall that I recounted the episode in the Daily Sceptic under the title ‘What I Learned from My College Stasi File‘.

This was, in the end, the proximate cause of my ousting as head of the Department of War Studies and my departure for Australia. Yet distance brings a certain clarity. It exposed, with brutal simplicity, not just the barren and increasingly authoritarian nature of British higher education, but the slow unravelling of a once-settled nation — methodically dismantling the very foundations on which its stability once rested.

Enter the Civil Wars Debate

Viewing Britain from afar is sobering: the decline of a nation under the stewardship of its self-anointed managerial and political elite — a class long sustained by illusions of mastery, even as the evidence mounts to the contrary. Into this breach, David Betz took up the ‘civil wars’ thesis and carried it forward. He did the heavy lifting: assembling the scholarly scaffolding, laying out the nuts and bolts of the argument, and presenting it with a careful authority that is both brave and necessary. His work is rightly receiving the attention it deserves, recognition for both intellectual rigour and the courage to say what the political classes would prefer unsaid.

The prospect of civil conflict is no longer whispered in private but debated openly. This is a healthy development. Britain and Europe are grappling with the results of elite overreach — economic stagnation, political paralysis, social fragmentation — and the question is no longer whether such conditions exist, but what their long-term trajectory will be. Far better, then, that the discussion takes place in public than festers underground, smothered by nervous institutions. Thanks to outlets such as the excellent Military Strategy Magazine and the unruly but indispensable independent podcasters, the necessary debate has been given air and light.

More recently, James Alexander has added his voice in the Daily Sceptic, drawing a distinction between the writings of David Betz and those of David A. Hughes. He discerns a contrast between what he sees as Betz’s view — that the country is stumbling toward civil war through elite incompetence and mismanagement — and Hughes’s contention that the road to conflict is intentional, a deliberate course imposed upon society.

I confess I have not yet encountered Hughes’s work, but Alexander suggests he is among the vanishingly small number of truly dissenting academics. If so, that alone marks him out as worth reading: in the present climate, dissent is the rarest form of intellectual courage.

On Dichotomies and Deliberate Designs

Alexander’s treatment is thoughtful and nuanced, and he is right to insist that both vantage points deserve consideration, particularly Hughes’s radical reframing of political reality. Yet his depiction of the dichotomy is flawed. To suggest that Betz’s survival within academia implies he is not fundamentally challenging its ideology is, frankly, a misreading. Survival in that system is not comfort or acceptance; it is endurance at the margins. David and I both narrowly survived our purging after publishing ‘The British Road to Dirty War’. In my case, ‘survival’ amounted to a kind of neo-transportation — admittedly more gilded than the original, but no less real for that.

Nor is it accurate to claim that Betz merely observes elites ignoring the breakdown of civilisation while Hughes contends they actively intend it. That is too neat, too binary. Having written extensively with David Betz, I can say our position has never been that elites are simply incompetent — though many, of course, demonstrably are. Rather, their actions form a discernible pattern, and patterns imply purpose. Whether or not the chaos we now endure is consciously engineered at every turn is almost beside the point: the consequences are here, and we must all live with them.

The record of intentionality, in fact, is undeniable. Under Tony Blair, the Labour government pursued a policy of demographic transformation. As Andrew Neather — then a speechwriter and adviser to Blair — acknowledged in the Evening Standard in 2009, that immigration policy was shaped in part by the desire “to rub the Right’s nose in diversity“. That was no accident, no bureaucratic mishap. It was an explicit goal, and its consequences are now written across Britain’s social fabric. Likewise, the current Labour leadership under Sir Keir Starmer operates from a post-nationalist outlook, one that treats the very idea of nationhood as negotiable, even alien, to the political class.

David and I set out this argument in 2020 in a short article, ‘Empires of “Progress”‘, where we identified a clear elite strategy of re-importing techniques of imperial governance into the domestic realm. The aim was to rule by division: to fracture society into communities, reward loyal in-groups and discriminate against the majority through a two-tier system of justice, policing and social policy. In other words, to adapt the colonial logic of ‘divide and rule’ for use at home. This was not incompetence. It was contrivance.

Meet the New Imperialists

Who are these new imperialists? They appear under fresh guises — ‘diversity coordinators’, anti-racism activists, curriculum decolonisers, climate campaigners — but their mission is unchanged: to manage society by division. Their worldview is relentlessly categorical: race, religion, identity. Favoured minorities and immigrant groups, often not oppressed in any meaningful sense, are elevated into protected castes, while the majority is relegated to second-class status. This is not progress; it is imperial management in modern dress. Like their predecessors, they are buoyed by moral certainty and a conviction of their right to rule.

Meet the new imperialists: same as the old imperialists.

Western societies have not, therefore, polarised by chance. A movement — most visible on the progressive Left — embraces a radical perspectivism that seeks to manufacture conflict and destabilise once-stable societies. This is no startling discovery. Peter Collier and David Horowitz documented it decades ago: the student radicals of the 1960s sought revolution, not reform. They demanded constitutional rights even as they denounced the constitutional order, exploiting democracy’s tolerance to undermine it. When they tired of being outsiders, they burrowed into the institutions — universities, bureaucracies — and entrenched themselves. It was, as Collier and Horowitz observed, a deeply cynical strategy: use democracy’s freedoms to dissolve democracy itself.

Today, with the maturation of the boomer generation, those same radicals — or their intellectual heirs — occupy positions of power. They are the imperial managers of our age. To call this the product of bumbling incompetence is naïve. It was strategy, not accident.

Where it may yet unravel is in the arrogance of the new imperium. They imagine themselves clever enough — and the public credulous enough — that such policies can be pursued without provoking resistance. But arrogance is no substitute for foresight. Once matters tip into open conflict, escalation takes on its own momentum. Anger is already stirring — and anger, once roused, is the fuse of history.

Read the Whole Article

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RootsAction is an activist site founded by two progressives to defend the public interest from “an increasingly extremist Republican Party.”  RootsAction believes that both parties are compromised by corporate money and power, is against the wars, and was endorsed by Barbara Ehrenreich, Cornel West, Daniel Ellsberg, and Naomi Klein, all principled persons whether or not you agree with them.  

Some of the organization’s positions are reasonable–put limits on Super PACs to limit the amount of bought government;  consider the risks of nuclear power plants–others are half-baked by ignoring the adverse consequences. 

Therefore, I was surprised to receive from RootsAction an email addressed specifically to me, not a mass mailing, calling for Robert F. Kennedy’s removal as Health Secretary.  Their case against Kennedy is that the limits he has put on the Covid vax, now proven to have caused more deaths and health injuries than Covid, and on other vaccines associated with the  plethora of new childhood illnesses that did not previously exist, together with regulations to improve food safety, “is causing future deaths and suffering on a large scale.”  As there is no evidence for this charge, the question arose in my mind whether RootsAction was being paid by Big Pharma as a part of Big Pharma’s policy of putting its profits ahead of Americans’ health and safety. Just as President John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy Jr’s uncle, was considered a risk to the power and profit of the US military/security complex, Robert F. Kennedy Jr is considered a risk to the power and profit of Big Pharma.

This suspicion increased when I saw that RootsAction was predicting future deaths from constraints Kennedy placed on the corrupt revolving door between Big Pharma and the CED, NIH, and FDA and cessation of federal funding for Big Pharma-serving propaganda.  

How is it possible that RootsAction has learned nothing from the proliferation of scientific peer-reviewed studies documenting the disastrous effects of the Covid Vax, lockdowns, and masks?  As the whore media continues to hide these established results from the public in exchange for Big Pharma advertising revenues, it is possible that RootsAction simply doesn’t know the facts.

The CDC directors and bureaucrats who were fired were fired for putting Big Pharma’s profits ahead of the public’s health.  Many of them came from Big Pharma and many returned to Big Pharma.

The Covid Pandemic was an orchestration.  Just as RootsAction disapproves, I assume, of the current orchestrations to promote wars, such as Iran’s alleged “nuclear weapons” and Venezuelan President Maduro’s alleged “narcotics cartel,” like Saddam Hussein’s “weapons of mass destruction” and Assad’s “use of chemical weapons,” RootsAction should disapprove of Big Pharma’s orchestration to remove Robert Kennedy.

For many years my columns have emphasized the decline in the ability of truth to get a hearing.  There are many reasons for this:  The rise of ideological agendas for which truth is an obstacle, the concentration of the print and TV media in six mega-companies thereby making it possible to establish official narratives regardless of their truthfulness, and an insouciant and largely ignorant population without the interest and ability to examine the official narratives.  Indeed, today in the US education consists of indoctrinating students with official narratives and cancelling those who challenge the narratives.  The simple fact is that truth is disappearing, because it does not serve the agendas of the ruling elites.

This explains why it is so difficult for Robert Kennedy, Donald Trump with his mandate, and anyone else to set things right.  The power resides in the enemies of truth.  

Consequently, important issues, often crucial ones, are settled by canceling the narrative challenger, smearing him, arresting him on false charges, passing a law to protect the narrative, or simply by ignoring the challenge which is the whore media’s response to the Covid scandal. 

Impossible you say?  Think about the recent Russiagate hoax.  The entirety of the Biden regime, Democrat Party, TV, print, and NPR media, liberal-left intellectuals and professors, RINO Republicans like Republican Senate Leader Mitch McConnell, the Entire UK and EU press and public figures supported the Russiagate hoax.  Yet, as we now know for certain, never was a greater lie perpetuated on the world.  The only question remaining is whether those responsible will be held accountable or whether the ruling elite are just too powerful to ever be held accountable. See this.

The post The Power Resides in the Enemies of Truth appeared first on LewRockwell.

Here we go again. Going against the grain is right up my alley, especially when every single person who has ever heard of the word “tennis” disagrees. It happened last week at the US Open, and it had everyone agreeing that Taylor Townsend, a black female American tennis player, had been the victim of a racist attack by a Latvian white female player by the name of Ostapenko. Gee whiz, if everyone in the media and among the players says so, it must be right, n’est-ce pas, as they say in the land of cheese. Well, I say no, they’re all wrong and Ostapenko was right in calling Townsend uneducated and lacking class.

For any of you who follow the sport, the two women shook hands after the black American had won—rather easily, I’d say, after a close first set. That is when the Latvian player told the American she lacked class. The reason was because Townsend failed to signal having won a point on a net cord. It is not in the rules, and Townsend had no obligation to say anything, except for one thing: In all my years of playing in tournaments, or watching the game, I’ve never, ever seen someone win a point on a net cord without the gesture acknowledging it. Jelena Ostapenko is now a racist to end all racists, according to the media that genuflected in front of Townsend’s martyrdom. You’d think some Ku Klux Klanner had jumped onto the court and struck the black player with a burning cross. The worst was one Larry Brooks, of the New York Post, writing that the Latvian was “like an unhinged passenger dragged off a flight after causing a ruckus.” He went piling on, stating that the Latvian was talking in code, meaning many other terrible things.

“Polite society calls it virtue signaling. I call it cowardice.”

Brooks is a fool, bending over backward to show he doesn’t have a racist bone in his body, but what he does have is an opportunistic streak that will invent anything in order to show what an anti-racist he is. Polite society calls it virtue signaling. I call it cowardice. Naomi Osaka, who plays for Japan but is also black and has won the US Open twice, called it the worst thing that you can say to a black tennis player in a white sport. Is that so? So when black football players in American pro football, which is 80 percent black, call white players names—which they do in good humor all the time—that is okay. Basketball is 95 percent black, and I’ve heard some pretty good jibes about whites playing the game. But nobody seems to mind when blacks call us honkies and worse.

The jerk Brooks went further, bringing up Arthur Ashe and Althea Gibson and Serena Williams. Ashe and Gibson were wonderful in every respect. They had manners on and off the court, and I knew them both, although Althea was a friend whereas Ashe was an acquaintance. But Serena Williams was a thug, ill-mannered on court, a bully, someone who threatened and intimidated referees and players alike, a foulmouthed cheater who plays nice now that her playing days are over.

The Noo Yawk Open has now degenerated to the point that a Norwegian player complained that it was hard to play while breathing in marijuana smoke. Just think about this. If you light a normal cigarette you most likely will be escorted out of the stadium, but smoking pot, getting drunk, and being noisy are acceptable. The dress code reflects the degeneration of a once-wonderful sport played by ladies and gentlemen. Soon someone will play in a G-string and will have the headlines to him- or herself. In the meantime, watch out for Ostapenko. I predict her few words to a black American will haunt her to her grave. Unlike Christianity, woke does not forgive or forget. Townsend is now a victim—as all black people are in America and the U.K.—and I predict she will go on to greater things, having survived the death-defying trauma of being told she had no class nor manners.

This article was originally published on Taki’s Magazine.

The post Court of Public Opinion appeared first on LewRockwell.

At the recent Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in Tianjin, leaders representing over half of humanity signaled the rise of a multipolar world order. As China, Russia, India, and Central Asia push new financial and trade systems, the West risks being left on the sidelines.

When the leaders of China, Russia, India, and several Central Asian states gathered in Tianjin last week for the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) Summit, the world should have paid far closer attention. Collectively, the countries represented at the table account for more than half of humanity, command immense reserves of natural resources, and increasingly drive a larger share of global GDP. This is not a peripheral coalition but a core pillar of the international system in the making.

Yet much of the Western press treated the gathering as little more than a diplomatic sideshow, overshadowed by domestic political debates or the latest updates from NATO. That was a mistake. What unfolded in Tianjin was not just another regional summit. It was the clearest indication yet that the unipolar world of U.S. primacy, which dominated the decades after the Cold War, is giving way to a new and contested multipolar order.

The symbolism was unmistakable. Beijing positioned the SCO as a platform for “equal partnership,” implicitly contrasting it with Western alliances built around hierarchy and U.S. leadership. Moscow emphasized strategic coordination in the face of sanctions and military pressure from the West. India, while carefully balancing its ties with Washington, underscored its role as a civilizational power charting an independent path. The Central Asian republics, long seen as geopolitical battlegrounds between outside powers, asserted their relevance as connectors of trade, energy, and security across Eurasia.

Beyond symbolism, the summit carried substance. Agreements on energy cooperation, cross-border infrastructure, digital technology, and security coordination point toward an increasingly institutionalized bloc. Taken together, they signal that the SCO is evolving from a loose forum into a framework capable of shaping the rules of the 21st-century world.

For policymakers in Washington and European capitals, the lesson is sobering. Ignoring the SCO or dismissing it as a talking shop risks overlooking the consolidation of an alternative power center that is steadily building legitimacy outside of Western institutions. For the rest of the world, particularly in the Global South, Tianjin served as a reminder that power is no longer concentrated in a single pole, but dispersed across multiple capitals with diverging visions of order.

The summit was therefore more than a diplomatic calendar entry. It was a milestone in the slow but unmistakable rebalancing of global power and a process that will define international politics for decades to come.

A New Architecture Emerges

Chinese President Xi Jinping used the summit to press his vision of a world that renders Cold War mentalities a matter of the past. His remarks were not mere diplomatic pleasantries; they were a direct critique of the U.S.-led alliance system and its reliance on deterrence, sanctions, and bloc politics. Backed vocally by Vladimir Putin, Xi pledged to accelerate the creation of a multipolar order in which Western dominance would be checked by new centers of power across Eurasia and beyond [1].

What distinguished Tianjin from previous summits was that these calls were tied to concrete initiatives. Beijing unveiled a 10-year development strategy for the SCO, underwritten with billions of dollars in loans and grants earmarked for infrastructure, energy corridors, and digital connectivity projects [2]. This framework goes well beyond aspirational communiqués: it signals a deliberate attempt to institutionalize the SCO as both an economic and geopolitical force.

One of the boldest proposals on the table was the creation of a dedicated SCO development bank that poses an explicit challenge to the Bretton Woods institutions, particularly the IMF and World Bank. Such a body, if realized, would allow SCO members to finance projects without the conditionalities often imposed by Western lenders. It would also complement other Chinese-led initiatives such as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and the Belt and Road Initiative, weaving them into a broader Eurasian financial ecosystem.

The implications are far-reaching. For decades, the global financial order has revolved around institutions headquartered in Washington and Brussels, shaping development trajectories in the Global South. By offering alternative sources of capital, Beijing and its partners are signaling that the monopoly of Western financial governance is coming to an end. The SCO’s proposed bank would not only fund railways, pipelines, and fiber-optic networks across Eurasia but also serve as a symbolic assertion of financial sovereignty.

The message from Tianjin was unambiguous: the institutions of the West will no longer go unchallenged. A parallel architecture emerging reflects the priorities of Beijing, Moscow, New Delhi, and the capitals of Central Asia. It is not yet clear how cohesive or durable this architecture will prove, but its mere existence underscores that the world has moved beyond unipolarity. The battle is no longer over whether the West will be challenged, but over how rapidly alternative institutions can be consolidated, and how effectively they can deliver.

Central Asia at the Core

The Shanghai Cooperation Organization is increasingly positioning Central Asia as the backbone of the emerging multipolar world. Far from being a peripheral region, the Central Asian republics are becoming the crossroads of Eurasian connectivity and influence. Trade corridors linking Shanghai to St. Petersburg are facilitating the movement of goods, capital, and people across thousands of kilometers. Energy pipelines crisscross Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and beyond, ensuring that the region’s vast natural resources flow to both Chinese and Russian markets while integrating it into a broader strategic network. Meanwhile, digital “Silk Roads” are introducing Chinese standards for 5G, artificial intelligence, and telecommunications infrastructure, further embedding Beijing’s technological footprint across the continent [3].

For decades, Central Asia was largely treated as a geopolitical periphery, a buffer zone caught between the lingering influence of Russia and the rising ambitions of China. Moscow maintained traditional security ties and economic leverage, while

Beijing cultivated trade and investment links primarily through infrastructure projects. Western powers, by contrast, engaged only sporadically, mostly through development aid or counterterrorism initiatives. The region’s strategic importance was recognized, but its potential as a hub of independent, multipolar influence remained unrealized.

That era is now coming to an end. With the SCO providing both institutional frameworks and concrete projects, Central Asia is transitioning from a passive periphery to an active strategic heartland of the new order. Its cities, railways, pipelines, and digital networks are not just local assets but the connective tissue of a Eurasian system designed to operate largely independently of Western-dominated institutions. By anchoring trade, energy, and technology in Central Asia, Beijing, Moscow, and their partners are effectively recasting the region as a central node in the global architecture of power.

The implications are profound. Central Asia is no longer a “backyard” for external powers; it is a linchpin of geopolitical strategy, economic integration, and technological standard-setting. As the SCO continues to consolidate its influence, the region’s rising prominence underscores that multipolarity is not merely a distant aspiration; it is being physically and institutionally constructed, rail line by rail line, pipeline by pipeline, and gigabyte by gigabyte.

The Electro-Yuan Gambit

Perhaps the boldest and most consequential development in Tianjin was Chinese President Xi Jinping’s call to expand the use of the yuan in energy settlements.

Analysts quickly dubbed the concept the “electro-yuan,” a system designed to link China’s digital currency with cross-border trade in oil, gas, and electricity. Unlike conventional trade settlements, which rely on correspondent banking in U.S. dollars, the electro-yuan would enable real-time, blockchain-enabled transactions directly between SCO member states, bypassing traditional financial intermediaries.

This is about far more than convenience or modernization. If widely adopted, the electro-yuan could significantly weaken the petrodollar system, which has underpinned U.S. financial dominance since the 1970s. The dollar’s centrality in global energy markets has long allowed Washington to exert extraordinary influence over international finance and foreign policy. By creating a credible alternative settlement system, Beijing and its SCO partners would undermine this leverage, diminishing the reach of dollar-based sanctions and reducing the United States’ ability to enforce geopolitical objectives through financial pressure.

The implications extend beyond energy. A robust electro-yuan network could accelerate the internationalization of China’s digital currency, the e-CNY, and provide a model for other nations seeking to hedge against the dollar. Coupled with SCO-led development projects and cross-border trade corridors, it represents a deliberate attempt to construct the “plumbing” of a parallel financial system that operates on terms favorable to Eurasian partners rather than Western institutions.

The ripple effects for global markets could be profound. If SCO countries begin pricing energy, commodities, and infrastructure projects in yuan rather than dollars, it could reduce demand for U.S. currency reserves, influence exchange rates, and reshape global investment flows. Commodity markets may see shifts in pricing benchmarks, particularly in oil and natural gas, as the electro-yuan provides a viable alternative to the dollar-based contracts that dominate today. For investors and multinational corporations, reliance on the dollar as the default currency for trade and finance may gradually diminish, introducing new risks and opportunities in hedging, capital allocation, and currency management.

For policymakers in Washington and Brussels, the message is stark: the rules of global finance may be shifting beneath their feet. A system that decouples trade and investment from the dollar would not only reduce the United States’ economic influence but also recalibrate global alliances, making financial sovereignty a tangible tool of statecraft for countries like China, Russia, and their SCO partners.

In short, the electro-yuan is more than a financial experiment but a strategic gambit, signaling that the SCO is not content merely to challenge Western hegemony rhetorically. It is building the infrastructure that could one day rival, and perhaps circumvent, the very foundations of U.S.-led global economic power, with consequences that extend to every corner of the global market.

India’s Pragmatic Hedge

The presence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the Tianjin summit lent the gathering even greater weight and global significance. Historically cautious about Chinese-led initiatives, India has often approached regional multilateral frameworks with skepticism, wary of being overshadowed by Beijing or Moscow. Modi’s participation signaled a subtle but meaningful shift in India’s strategic calculus that acknowledged engagement, rather than isolation which is essential in a rapidly evolving multipolar world.

At Tianjin, New Delhi agreed to concrete measures aimed at rebalancing trade with China, loosening visa restrictions, and enhancing connectivity initiatives within the SCO framework [4]. These steps demonstrate a willingness to separate economic pragmatism from ongoing territorial and border disputes, particularly in regions such as Ladakh and Arunachal Pradesh. By compartmentalizing these issues, India is signaling that it can cooperate on economic and regional integration while maintaining its security concerns.

For India, engagement in the SCO is not a matter of siding with Beijing or Moscow. Instead, it reflects a strategic hedging approach: mitigating the risks posed by tariff threats from Washington, strengthening resilience against supply chain disruptions, and ensuring that it cannot be sidelined from emerging Eurasian trade and infrastructure networks. By participating actively, India secures a voice in shaping regional rules and norms rather than remaining a passive observer to a process that will define the geopolitical landscape for decades.

This approach aligns with India’s broader foreign policy of “strategic autonomy” wherein flexibility is maintained to navigate between competing power centers while advancing national interests. At the same time, India continues to cultivate robust partnerships through the Quad (with the U.S., Japan, and Australia) and its growing bilateral ties with Washington. In practice, this means India is simultaneously engaging with China-led institutions like the SCO while strengthening security and technological cooperation with the U.S.-led Indo-Pacific bloc. This dual-track strategy allows New Delhi to hedge against uncertainty on multiple fronts: it ensures access to Eurasian markets and energy corridors without sacrificing strategic alignment with Western partners.

The Tianjin summit thus reflects a uniquely complex Indian strategy: neither confrontation nor unconditional alignment, but calculated engagement, ensuring that India remains both relevant and resilient as global power structures shift. By balancing its SCO participation with Quad commitments, India positions itself as a pivotal actor capable of bridging competing spheres of influence, maximizing strategic flexibility in an era defined by multipolar competition.

The West on the Sidelines

The Tianjin summit was a warning shot: the world is moving on, with or without the West. While Washington and Brussels continue to wield significant economic, military, and diplomatic power, their ability to unilaterally dictate global terms is steadily eroding. For decades, Western institutions such as the IMF, World Bank, NATO, and dollar-based financial systems served as the primary levers of influence, shaping trade, development, and security outcomes across the globe.

Today, however, alternative frameworks like the SCO are demonstrating that other nations can pursue prosperity and security without relying solely on Western guidance.

Across Eurasia, countries are increasingly prioritizing strategic autonomy over rigid alignment. They seek options that provide economic resilience, infrastructure development, and energy security without the political strings often attached to Western loans or alliances. From pipelines in Central Asia to digital connectivity projects extending China’s 5G standards, the SCO is offering practical alternatives that simultaneously advance regional integration and multipolar governance.

The message is clear: the rules and institutions of the West are no longer the only game in town. Nations that fail to recognize this realignment risk being left behind not just economically, but politically and strategically. Participation in emerging trade corridors, digital networks, and financial mechanisms will increasingly define influence in Eurasia and beyond. Those who ignore these shifts may find their voice diminished in global decision-making and their access to vital markets and resources constrained.

Moreover, the SCO’s rise signals a broader psychological shift. For decades, Western primacy framed global debates and set expectations of power projection.

Tianjin revealed a growing willingness among Eurasian states to assert their own terms, challenge Western norms, and pursue partnerships that align with their strategic interests rather than defaulting to U.S. or European approval. The West can no longer assume that its preferences will automatically shape outcomes; influence must now be earned, negotiated, and, in some cases, competed for.

In short, the Tianjin summit underscores a central truth of the emerging era: multipolarity is not a distant possibility as it is taking shape here and now. To remain relevant, Western policymakers must move beyond complacency and recognize that a world with the SCO at its center demands engagement on terms that are increasingly pluralistic, flexible, and contested. Ignoring this reality is not just shortsighted but a strategic liability.

A Multipolar Future

What unfolded in Tianjin was not the birth of a new Cold War but the emergence of something far more complex and consequential: a multipolar future in which the West is no longer the sole arbiter of global norms, trade, and security. This is not merely a shift in power; it is a transformation of the architecture of international relations. Multiple centers of influence such as Beijing, Moscow, New Delhi, and the capitals of Central Asia are actively shaping the rules, institutions, and economic flows that will define the 21st century. The West, powerful as it remains, is increasingly one participant among many rather than the default decision-maker.

The unipolar era of American dominance, which followed the Cold War, had its run, dictating the terms of finance, trade, and security for decades. The Tianjin summit, however, signaled that the next chapter will be written differently. The SCO is not simply a forum for dialogue; it is a deliberate effort to institutionalize an alternative framework for regional and global governance, encompassing trade, energy, technology, and finance. From the expansion of the yuan in energy settlements to infrastructure corridors across Central Asia, the SCO is constructing the material and institutional foundations of a multipolar order that can operate independently of Western-led institutions.

This new reality poses a strategic test for the West. Can Washington and Brussels adapt to a world in which their primacy is no longer assumed, and influence must be negotiated rather than imposed? Or will they risk being relegated to the sidelines, observing as new power centers define the economic rules, geopolitical alignments, and technological standards that will shape global affairs for decades to come?

Crucially, multipolarity is not zero-sum since it does not necessarily mean confrontation, but it does demand recognition that influence, leverage, and legitimacy are now dispersed. States and institutions that cling to a unipolar mindset may find themselves increasingly marginalized, while those capable of engaging with multiple power centers, hedging risks, and participating in alternative frameworks will thrive.

Tianjin was therefore more than a summit; it was a glimpse of the emerging world order in motion. The SCO, with its blend of economic initiatives, security coordination, and financial innovation, illustrates that the 21st century will be defined by complexity, interdependence, and competition among multiple poles of power. The central question now is whether the West will acknowledge and adapt to this new reality or allow others to shape the future on their own terms.

Notes

1. Xi Jinping criticises ‘bullying behaviour’ and Putin blames west for Ukraine war at Shanghai summit | China | The Guardian
2. SCO has a 10-year plan for a multipolar world, China’s Wang Yi says | South China Morning Post
3. Central Asia electro-yuan can be Xi’s summit win | Reuters
4. SCO summit signals strategic shift amid US tariff uncertainty – The Economic Times

The original source of this article is Global Research.

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