Lew Rockwell Institute

Americans who don’t spend time in Europe might not fully appreciate what a powder keg the Old World has become.  However bad social relations in the United States now are, they are at least an order of magnitude worse on the other side of the Atlantic.  European self-hatred is dissolving traditional cultural bonds.  Mass immigration is compounding age-old rivalries.  Europe is one spark away from exploding.

Europe is a perennial battlefield.  Many of our ancestors, after all, left the old country to escape religious, economic, and cultural conflicts that had endured for centuries.  Those historic grievances — always simmering in times of peace before boiling over into outright violence — are passed from one generation to the next.  Modern European nations are the product of two thousand years of shifting borders and alliances, and native Europeans trace their family lineages back to regional tribes whose ancient territories do not fit neatly within the politically drawn maps of today.

If you think geographical accents in America make it tricky for a Mississippian or Minnesotan to communicate effectively with an English-speaker from the Bronx, consider that Europe is home to nearly three hundred native tongues.  Switzerland has four national languages — including Romansch, which derives from the spoken Latin of the Roman Empire.  The cornucopia of indigenous languages, dialects, vocabularies, and accents makes it possible for local residents of small towns to recognize “outsiders” immediately.  Even more impressively, they can usually tell — just by listening — which towns a stranger’s grandparents once called home.

Two world wars — both ignited in Europe and responsible for immense European destruction — propelled a mid-twentieth-century political movement calling for the eradication of national borders.  The European intelligentsia who became the founding members of the continent’s fledgling transnational bureaucracy blamed national pride for Europe’s carnage and effectively turned “nationalism” into a dirty word.

Oddly, this was also a time when crumbling empires, such as France and the United Kingdom, were at least tepidly supporting the national independence of former colonies.  Likewise, it was the beginning of a half-century U.S.-led campaign to encourage national revolutions in European countries stuck behind the Soviet Union’s Iron Curtain.  So Western power brokers framed nationalism as a kind of intolerable ethos on par with Mussolini’s fascism and Hitler’s national socialism while encouraging former nations or proto-nations in Central Europe, Africa, and Asia to break away from the respective empires that controlled them.  While Western leaders pushed for the integration of distinct European nations into a single “Union,” they also promoted national independence movements under the rationale that all humans possess a natural right to self-determination.

In the eighty years since the project for European integration began in earnest, those latent contradictions have transformed Europe into a tinderbox with even greater potential energy for self-destruction than existed before WWI and II.  While the bureaucratic ruling class has actively repressed the historic identities of native Europeans, it has flooded the continent with foreigners who are encouraged to retain their own cultural identities.  In this way, a Hungarian or Pole or Dane who celebrates his country’s unique heritage is denounced as a “far-right nationalist,” while a Frenchman who insists that African and Middle Eastern immigrants assimilate to the European way of life is denounced as a “racist” and “bigot.”

This anti-European monstrosity was created deliberately.  Simultaneous suppression of Europeans’ national identities and protections for foreign nationals create a kind of “multiculturalism dynamo” that converts Europeans into something alien.  Stripped of their native religion, culture, and historic customs and forced to praise foreign religions, cultures, and customs taking hold in the West’s civilizational void, Europeans are effectively assimilated within their own lands.  Europeans are taught to despise their own civilization and to bow down before those who seek to replicate a foreign civilization inside Europe.  Europe’s bureaucratic ruling class uses foreigners to beat the Europeanness out of Europeans.

Perhaps because a critical mass of Europeans finally realizes what Europe’s unelected bureaucrats have done, a “Great Awakening” is spreading across the continent.  After decades of submitting to cultural erasure, a patriotic fervor is taking root once again.  As many now see it, if globalism’s war on nationalism means that only nations outside Europe will survive, then European peace is not worth the cost.

Many Americans will dismiss this resurgence of European nationalism as “too little, too late,” but I would strike a more optimistic chord.  Sometimes we must be pushed to the edge of the cliff before we find our footing and forcefully fight back.  When surrender means falling into the sea and survival requires moving in the opposite direction, the right choice is also the only one.

In the United Kingdom, a grassroots movement of ordinary Brits has initiated “Operation: Raise the Colors.”  The strategy is simple: British citizens are encouraged to prominently display and wave the Cross of St. George and Union Jack flags.

What could possibly be offensive or dangerous about raising the flags of England and the United Kingdom?  Nothing.  Yet the globalist Establishment is losing its collective mind.  Leftists insist that the flags should be replaced with something more “multicultural” and that only “far-right racists” would stoop so low as to patriotically raise the country’s flags.  Open-borders politicians are calling the flag-waving “extremist,” “hate-filled,” and “white supremacist.”  In other words, the British people have forced Britain’s “elites” to acknowledge that they have no loyalty to and only antipathy for the United Kingdom.

This rather anodyne form of political speech is proving remarkably effective at exposing globalism’s suicidal contagion.  In London, it is perfectly normal to see so-called “gay pride” flags, “Palestinian” flags, Pakistani flags, Iranian flags, and the flags of almost every third-world nation now offloading its citizens onto the shores of the U.K.  If a British citizen were to express outrage over the fact that a panoply of foreign flags is flown brazenly throughout the capital, constables would intimidate the outspoken “offender” into silence by threatening him with prosecution for imaginary “hate speech.”  Revealingly, however, these same petty tyrants throw hissy fits when native Brits dare “raise the colors” of their own nation’s historic flags.

Similar movements are picking up steam.  Ten years ago, it was more common to see such patriotic displays on the streets of Balkan nations or amid independence parades in the Basque region or other areas of Europe seeking national recognition.  Today it is easy to stumble into a sea of Dutch, Danish, German, Italian, Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish, Hungarian, Polish, Czech, or Greek flags when crossing borders.  Eighty years after the European Union began constructing its continental empire, the “colonies” appear eager to reclaim their right to self-determination.

I think it’s fair to say that ordinary Europeans are no longer willing to remain quiet as the bureaucratic ruling class kills what’s left of Europe and hands the carcass to foreign conquerors.  As an American with absolute fidelity to the millennia-long promises of Western civilization, I find these patriotic revivals timely rebuttals to a globalist Establishment that prefers our death.

I cannot tell you how many times I have come across the words of Welsh poet Dylan Thomas translated into one of Europe’s many native languages.  “Do not go gentle into that good night” and “Rage, rage against the dying of the light” show up on message boards like faint heartbeats on an EKG machine.  Many in Europe don’t want to die.  To live, they’ll have to fight.

This article was originally published on American Thinker.

The post Europe Is a Powder Keg appeared first on LewRockwell.

The International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS) has determined that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. This is the world’s largest association of genocide scholars, with around 500 experts on the subject including many Holocaust scholars. The consensus was reached by an overwhelming supermajority of the experts — 86 percent, to be exact.

Everyone needs to understand that “there is no genocide in Gaza” is not a claim that can be taken seriously in the year 2025. Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, UN human rights experts, Israeli human rights groups like B’Tselem, and the overwhelming majority of genocide scholars all agree it’s a genocide. The debate is over. The hasbarists lost.

Israel’s Foreign Ministry is of course claiming that the IAGS assessment is “entirely based on Hamas’s campaign of lies.” That’s right folks, the genocide scholars are Hamas.

They’re just so unbelievably evil. Nobody who’s not a cartoon or CGI supervillain has any business being this evil. If you’re going to be this insanely evil you should be animated and cackling while twisting your curly mustache all the time.

Possibly the single dumbest thing we are asked to believe about Palestine is that every major human rights institution on earth is part of a secret antisemitic blood libel conspiracy. This genocide is one nonstop insult to our intelligence.

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Israel is reportedly planning to cut off the small amount of aid it has been allowing in to northern Gaza. This comes after both UN-backed and US-funded hunger monitor groups determined that Israel is causing a famine in Gaza, which was preceded by weeks of Israel furiously denying that it was starving Gaza, which was preceded by Israeli officials openly announcing that they intended to starve Gaza.

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The western press have been dutifully parroting the US and Israeli government line that Trump’s plan for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza will be “voluntary” in their headlines.

“Gaza postwar plan envisions ‘voluntary’ relocation of entire population,” reads a headline from The Washington Post.

“U.S.-run ‘Gaza Riviera’: Post-war redevelopment plan sees ‘voluntary relocation’ of millions,” says CNBC.

“Trump’s Gaza plan involves ‘voluntary’ relocation of Palestinians — and giving them $5,000 each,” says The Independent.

“Gaza post-war plan proposes ‘voluntary’ relocation, ‘tokens’ in exchange for land,” says France 24.

We’re going to be hearing this “voluntary” relocation slogan a lot going forward, and everyone should understand that it’s a lie. There is nothing “voluntary” about leaving an area that is being deliberately made uninhabitable by someone with power over you. It’s exactly the same as forcing people out at gunpoint.

It is propaganda and journalistic malpractice for the western media to be pushing this slogan.

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I saw a tweet from liberal influencer Steven Bonnell AKA Destiny saying “Palestine is just fashion for leftists.”

Bidenists say this all the time, and it reveals so much about their worldview. They cannot fathom the concept of someone opposing a genocide because genocide is bad; it can only be some kind of trendy fashion statement because it happens to be what’s popular right now.

These are people who are not motivated by morality, facts and logic, but solely by selfish and cynical impulses which they then project onto everyone else. They can’t imagine anyone doing something because it’s the right thing to do, so they have to make up some reason why there must be something in it for them in order for their actions to make sense.

But it is good that even through their own narcissistic, egocentric lens they are beginning to understand that supporting an active genocide has widely become viewed as unacceptable, and that abandoning that insane position is the only way to gain acceptance in mainstream society. Those who can’t be brought into line through appeal to compassion and reason can be brought into line through peer pressure and social stigma.

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When you see the way pro-genocide Jews attack vocally anti-genocide Jews, you understand why there aren’t more vocally anti-genocide Jews. This isn’t to excuse anyone from their moral obligation to oppose an active genocide, only to point out one of the control mechanisms.

I’ve watched Zionists constantly try to convince Israeli American academic Shaiel Ben-Ephraim to start drinking again after he switched from defending the genocide to opposing it (he’s open about being a recovering alcoholic). I catch flak from Israel supporters 24/7, but I’ve never had to deal with that level of vitriolic, high-octane hatred. Non-Jews like myself who oppose the Gaza holocaust just don’t have to deal with that degree of venom. And that’s just what’s visible to me online.

Again, this doesn’t excuse the moral obligation that Jews and non-Jews alike have to oppose Israel’s genocidal atrocities. I’m just pointing out one of the many abusive dynamics used to maintain the status quo.

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The post ‘It’s Not a Genocide’ Is Not a Defensible Claim in the Year 2025 appeared first on LewRockwell.

In his 1961 Farewell Address, President Eisenhower warned not only about the “undue influence” of the Military-Industrial Complex. He also warned about a new “scientific-technological elite” that could gain unwarranted influence over public policy, potentially guiding the nation based on specialized knowledge rather than democratic principles.

This “scientific-technological elite” could not only gain access to vast federal funding that is not available to solitary scholars and inventors, it could also assume a position of “official scientific authority” that could insulate it from the critical questioning of the citizenry.

To understand the sort of “official scientific authority” that Eisenhower was concerned about, one need only consider the example of Dr. Anthony Fauci, who infamously declared in a press interview, “Attacks on me, quite frankly, are attacks on science.”

Good scientists, acting with care and conscientiousness, should be a part of any deliberation about public health policy. Unfortunately, so many of our so-called “scientific experts” have been captured by commercial interests that have also captured U.S. federal agencies.

The result is what Eisenhower warned about in 1961—namely, We the People are constantly asked to believe representations of reality propagated by a “scientific-technological elite” that has a documented history of intentionally manipulating or withholding compelling information about vital matters of public health.

People often ask me why I, a true crime author, decided to investigate the U.S. government’s COVID-19 pandemic response. My interest in the story began with my perception that the pandemic response was riddled with fraud and concealment. Years of investigating complex true crime stories primed me to recognize the same conduct committed by our Bio-Pharmaceutical Complex and its captured friends in government.

In the same spirit, the world-renowned security expert and investigator, Gavin de Becker, has written a book titled Forbidden Facts: Childhood Vaccines & Brain Damage. For decades, de Becker has studied how to detect the threats that humans pose to other humans, and how to prevent these threats from being carried out to inflict harm and death. This has taken him deep into the realms of criminal psychology and all the different methods of subterfuge.

For those who are unfamiliar with Mr. de Becker, his author bio presents a succinct snapshot of his distinguished career.

Gavin de Becker is a three-time presidential appointee whose pioneering work has changed the way our government evaluates threats to our nation’s highest officials. His firm advises many of the world’s most prominent media figures, corporations, and law enforcement agencies on predicting violence, and it also serves regular citizens who are victims of domestic abuse and stalking. De Becker has advised the prosecution on major cases, including the O.J. Simpson murder trial. He has testified before many legislative bodies and has successfully proposed new laws to help manage violence.

Mr. de Becker has written a new book titled Forbidden Facts: Childhood Vaccines & Brain Damage, in which he presents evidence that many cases of what is diagnosed as “Profound Autism” are likely the result of brain damage caused by vaccines.

The most compelling evidence is the credible witness testimony of their parents such as the following (presented in Chapter Four).

A. is profoundly autistic. She is non-verbal, has major behavioral issues, is self-injurious… she cannot be left alone ever. A. was a beautiful baby, who was developing normally, but who had obvious reactions to her first two DPT vaccines. One left her leg swollen and red, and she developed a high fever and screamed after the other. But the doctors did not hesitate to give A. her third DPT shot when she was 5 months old, and she went over the edge. She had the shot at 4:00 p.m., and by 6:00 p.m. she had a fever of 105 to 106 degrees… After that day, she was gone.

The prevailing dogma (endorsed by U.S. government agencies) is that one cannot conclude causation in an individual case (such as that of “A.”) unless strict criteria for determining causation in individual cases are met. When it comes to doing this, immense rigor and diligence is demanded.

However, when it comes to offering an alternative explanation for the child’s regression (apart from the battery of shots the child just received), the response is conspicuously vague and lacking rigor. We are told that the child’s symptoms—often appearing just a few hours after receiving the shots—could be caused by a lot of other things.

Here it is useful to consider how we evaluate evidence that a suspect has committed a crime. When a prime suspect is identified, it is legitimate for defense counsel to identify an alternative suspect for the crime. However, the jury won’t find the defender persuasive if he says, “I have no idea who committed the crime; I just know it wasn’t my client.”

A defense attorney who makes this claim would be ridiculed and soon have no clients. However, in the realm of public health, we often hear mainstream media pundits such as CNN’s chief medical correspondent Sanjay Gupta say, “We don’t know what causes autism, but we do know it’s not caused by vaccines.”

Mr. de Becker takes pains to demonstrate that the U.S. government has a long history of intentionally manipulating or withholding information about the adverse health effects associated with exposure to certain substances. These include Agent Orange and Anthrax Vaccines for U.S. service personnel, to name just two. This history of government deceit lies at the heart of his thesis—namely, that when it comes to investigating what is causing the autism epidemic, we cannot trust the assurances of U.S. government agencies.

This lamentable state of affairs seems to be changing under the stewardship of HHS Secretary Kennedy, though he is contending with a very large den of snakes, and it remains to be seen just how much he can send the serpents packing.

De Becker’s clear and punchy prose is a pleasure to read and it starkly contrasts with the gobbledygook of government experts who use impenetrably opaque and meaningless language (several preposterous examples quoted in the book) to obfuscate the reality of this disaster. Links to the author’s original source material are immediately accessible by QR codes printed at the foot of almost every page.

I believe the publication of Forbidden Facts: Childhood Vaccines & Brain Damage should be viewed as a major event in U.S. history. For decades, many members of America’s political, media, and cultural elite have relied on Mr. de Becker’s judgement and analysis to keep them safe. These same elites should—along with the rest of us—read his book and consider the evidence he presents that many children are being terribly damaged by childhood vaccines.

Please click on the link below to preorder your copy of Forbidden Facts: Childhood Vaccines & Brain Damage, which will be published on September 9.

This article was originally published on Courageous Discourse.

The post ‘Forbidden Facts: Childhood Vaccines & Brain Damage’ appeared first on LewRockwell.

We live in absurd times.  We are surrounded by violence, both real and virtual–the Israeli slaughter of Palestinians, the deaths in Ukraine, the violent movies and video games, the violence on the streets in America’s blue cities–but the presstitutes attach warnings to news reports of much smaller incidences of violence. We are supposed to be horrified by the beating that one individual receives but not by the genocide of the Palestinian people.  American universities have banned protests in support of the Palestinian people, and in England you can be arrested.

We are supposed to be horrified by the “sexual abuse” of a male propositioning a female, but not by men’s access to women’s spaces and women’s sports, or by the plethora of young women’s porn sites or by their competitions to see who can have sex with the most men in a 24 hour time period.

As for Epstein, readers inform me that the Jews who operate the porn industry, are preparing the legality of adult sex with children. The Democrat school boards in the US are helping the advancement of pedophilia by teaching pre-puberty kids how to copulate and have oral sex.  Pedophilia is today euphemized  in the term “minor-directed persons.” Apparently, AI is an enabler of the legitimization of pedophilia, along with the grooming of young children by Democrat school boards. AI creates images of sex between adults and females with children’s faces and bodies that present young females as lascivious persons.  As the images are not real people, they apparently escape the restrictions on child porn.

The American media has never been an honest, truthful one.  But the large number of independent organizations meant that at least on occasion the truth found its way out.  No more.  Thanks to President Clinton, six mega-corporations owned or controlled by Jews control 90% of the American media.  You hear what Israel wants you to hear.

You, dear superpower indispensable American are nothing but an Israeli puppet, indoctrinated and brainwashed to serve Jewish interests, or so say those who are not totally insouciant.

The plethora of virtual violence has numbed us to the real thing.  American generals speak of winning nuclear war with only  30,000,000 American casualties, and the Zionist neoconservatives together with Netanyahu push for war with Iran, a war that would likely involve Russia and China.

Unless you are extremely dense, you can see where this is going to lead.

The post Exactly How Does One Survive Absurdity appeared first on LewRockwell.

One area I’ve yet to cover in my numerous “early spread” articles is the question of whether Covid is/was really a “novel” virus.

Today, I’d like to expound on the reasons I believe a novel coronavirus – almost certainly produced in a lab – was “spreading” in the world and was, almost certainly, making people sick months before the experts say was possible.

In today’s article, I briefly address the theory – now increasingly common among growing numbers of “Covid Contrarians” – that viruses don’t exist … or, if they do, viruses are not “contagious” and do not cause other people to become sick.

In my opinion, the theory that viruses either don’t exist – or, if they do, they aren’t “contagious – is certainly a fair question for intellectual and scientific inquiry.

For my part, I believe viruses (that can and do produce symptomatic illnesses) have been infecting humans since man first inhabited the earth.

However, I also believe 99.9 percent of humans survive even if they are infected with a respiratory virus. That is, unlike many chroniclers of Covid, I don’t subscribe to the view that posits a novel virus would have to be unusually “deadly.”

These views shared, I do think “mad scientists” manipulating viruses in a lab probably could create a virus that was more “contagious” than naturally-occurring viruses. Per my belief, this is exactly what happened in 2019.

Part 1 of this 2-part in-depth treatment summarizes the evidence that far more Americans were becoming sick in the six-plus months before “official Covid.” To me, this evidence jibes with the theory that “mad scientists” could have indeed created a more-contagious virus.

Today’s dispatch presents compelling statistics showing that far more flu tests were given in the 2019-2020 flu season than any other flu season in history.

I also expound (again) on the significance of the (ignored) fact that an unprecedented number of U.S. schools closed “due to illness” in the months before official Covid, which is not a “trivial” piece of information and probably not just a “coincidence.”

Towards the bottom of this story, I point out that Anthony Fauci and his colleagues went to great lengths to promote the “natural origins” theory. Given that almost everything significant Fauci says is a lie, this, in my opinion, could be construed as further evidence of a lab-made, novel virus.

I also highlight the indispensable and criminal role the PCR test played in convincing people a terrible pandemic was occurring (long after tens of millions of people had experienced Covid symptoms).

As this is another of my “deep-dive” pieces, this article is lengthy. I’ve added sub-headlines and boldfaced text I think is particularly significant for readers who prefer to skim longer articles.

Now on to the reasons I think a contagious novel virus was circulating in the world at least by the fall of 2019 if not even earlier …

Far more people than normal got sick in the fall and winter of 2019-2020

Based on my extensive research, I know far more people than usual become “sick” in the weeks and months before “official Covid” began. In my opinion, this is an undeniable statement of fact.

Weekly Influenza Like Illness (ILI) Surveillance Reports produced by the CDC and state health agencies in at least 49 U.S. states support the view that the “flu season” of 2019-2020 was “severe,” flu activity was “widespread” (and at the highest levels in at least 49 states at different points in the flu season) … began earlier than normal and lasted longer than any other recent flu season. (ILI percentages above the “expected baseline” persisted for approximately 25 consecutive weeks, an “all-time record.”)

Even Anthony Fauci was quoted in early January 2020 as saying this flu season was going to be bad.

“The initial indicators indicate this is not going to be a good season – this is going to be a bad season,” Fauci told a CNN journalist.

I include this quote to highlight a very important point – namely, every public health expert must have been well aware of the copious evidence of potential “early spread.”

Later in this document, I present summaries of evidence of the huge increase in the number of flu tests given and the massive increase in school closings – two more data points that must have been known to all half-way competent public health officials.

In my opinion, the fact this obvious evidence of possible early spread was dismissed, ignored or concealed from the pubic constitutes legitimate grounds to charge certain public health officials with professional malfeasance if not various crimes dealing with fraud and conspiracies.

Headline: ‘The U.S. winter flu season is off to its earliest start in more than 15 years.’

Key excerpts:

“Louisiana was the first state to really get hit hard, with doctors there saying they began seeing large numbers of flu-like illnesses in October.

“Children’s Hospital New Orleans has already seen more flu cases this fall than it saw all of last winter, said Dr. Toni Gross, the hospital’s chief of emergency medicine. Last month was the busiest ever at the hospital’s emergency department. Officials had to set up a triage system and add extra shifts, Gross said.

The same article also noted that “the most intense patient traffic” had been occurring in Louisiana’s six Deep South neighbors spanning from Texas east to Georgia (home of the CDC!)

According to the same article, by the end of November 2019, “flu was widespread in 16 states.”

To me, “early spread” is yet another indicator of a potentially “novel” spreading virus. (

The all-important PCR test …

It’s always struck me as bizarre (as well as “sneaky” or duplicitous) that, with Covid, the key metric for identifying a rapidly-spreading novel coronavirus was based entirely on results produced by a new, instantly-produced and approved PCR test.

While unknown even today, it’s very possible the majority of “Covid cases” were either asymptomatic (citizens who experienced no symptoms) or people who experienced symptoms so mild they did not affect their ability to perform normal daily tasks.

As myself and other skeptics have noted, officials intentionally changed the definition of a “medical case” – a massive departure from how flu or ILI cases had always been identified or “diagnosed.”

Regarding my “Early Spread” hypothesis, I remain gobsmacked that “symptoms identical to Covid” was, apparently, never a metric of interest to public health officials – a metric, one (incorrectly) assumes, might have been of great interest to officials seeking to gauge possible early prevalence of a novel virus.

Instead, the only metric or “case identifier” that mattered to officials was whether someone tested positive on a PCR test.

The CDC and other public health agencies do use symptoms (instead of a highly-dubious PCR test) to determine national and state ILI percentages, figures public health agencies report every week in updated “flu surveillance” reports.

Expressed simply, “more sick patients visiting doctor’s offices” = “a worse flu season.”

Prior to official Covid, the number of Americans who became sick with ILI symptoms was the key metric used to determine the severity of a respiratory virus in a given “flu season.” After Covid (which officials state is a respiratory virus), this traditional criteria was deemed to be insignificant or moot. All that mattered was a positive test on a PCR test.

Not enough people think about this …

The problem with CDC’s reliance on a PCR test to hype a once-in-a-century pandemic is that virtually no American could get a PCR test before March 2020.

As it turned out, the CDC had produced only a tiny number of PCR “test kits” by early March 2020.

It was also the CDC that created the “testing protocols” which mandated that only citizens who’d recently been to China should be given such tests. Furthermore, with perhaps a few exceptions, the tests could be administered or analyzed only by the CDC at its Atlanta labs.

One reason I believe a novel virus (probably created in a lab) was circulating widely in America (and the world) prior to March 2020 is that the CDC and other public health “virus sleuths” clearly made a concerted effort to avoid testing tens of millions of American citizens who likely or possibly could have been infected by a “novel” virus in earlier months.

This “dog-that-didn’t-bark” evidence (things that should have happened but didn’t happen) suggests a conspiracy to conceal evidence of early spread.

For myself, this aversion to identifying possible earlier cases suggests a cover-up.

As I can think of no reason why public health officials might seek to cover-up evidence of a naturally-occurring virus, the counter-theory is that officials were probably trying to cover-up evidence of a novel virus that was made in a lab – perhaps a lab in China, but, also, perhaps a lab in the United States.

Expressed as three equations:

“Lab-created virus” = “Massive scandal.”

“Naturally-occurring virus” = “Nobody’s fault.”

Also, a third equation has always resonated with me:

“No serious or credible early-spread investigation” = “No ‘confirmation’ of early spread.”

Press reports of major flu outbreaks were omnipresent …

I had no problem finding scores or hundreds of contemporaneous news reports from newspapers, magazines, TV stations and Internet sites that document that the winter of 2019-2020 was an unusually severe flu season. Practically every weekly ILI Surveillance Report published by the CDC and state health agencies document the same thing.

To further emphasize a point central to my hypothesis … if far more people than normal became sick in the weeks and months before official Covid, this should not be viewed as a trivial or insignificant epidemiological observation.

While skeptics of my hypothesis might proclaim, “this was simply a coincidence,” such Covid scholars should at least acknowledge it is a very interesting or odd coincidence.

FWIW, I do not think conspicuously-larger numbers of American becoming sick in the weeks and months just before official Covid is/was an irrelevant coincidence. Indeed, I think this is exactly the type of evidence someone who was looking for evidence of early spread of a novel virus would expect to find.

Two other metrics ….

Two other key metrics also support the hypothesis that a very contagious novel virus could have been spreading in America in the weeks and months before the lockdowns. These metrics are “school closings due to illness” and “flu tests given.”

In my opinion, the number of “flu tests administered” in a given year might be the best metric to gauge if the 2019-2020 flu season produced more people with symptoms of Covid or ILI.

Far more flu tests were given in 2019-2020 …

Thanks to the eye-opening research compiled at two citizen-journalist websites (Hail to You and Health Freedom Defense Fund), I found data that compared the number of flu tests given in the same weeks of eight flu seasons. The primary sources are from the “Flu View” Surveillance Network and “CDC Weekly Surveillance Reports.”

Note: Working from three sources, I was able to tally and compare “flu-tests-administered” data from Weeks 5 to 14 of eight consecutive flu seasons and also, from another source, data that compared Weeks 40 through 14 for the three flu seasons before “official Covid.” (Unfortunately, the source document for the longer-period analysis is no longer available. However, I did save this data, which I have used in parts of this section.)

As these summaries show, 34 percent more sick patients were given flu tests in 2019-2020 than the prior year.

Also, the number of flu tests administered in 2019-2020 was at least 13.4 percent higher than the Flu Season of 2017-2018 – which was often described as the worst or most severe flu season in “40 years.”)

For this analysis, I wasn’t particularly interested in the percentage of flu tests that were “positive” for Influenza A or B in given flu seasons, but the number of flu tests that were administered to sick patients who visited a medical clinic.

(Per my research, the percentages of “positive” flu tests are fairly constant in given flu seasons, ranging from 5 to 30 percent depending on the week reviewed. Significantly, this means 95 to 70 percent of flu tests are negative. Still these “flu-negative” citizens must have been sick from “something” or else they wouldn’t have gone to the doctor and been given a flu test.

Total flu tests administered (Weeks 40 thru 14):

2019-2020: 1,047,958*

2018-2019: 782,412

2017-2018: 924,205

As these numbers reveal, at least 265,546 more flu test (34 percent more tests) were administered in the 2019-2020 flu season compared to the prior flu season of 2018-2019.

*Note: I could not find data for Week 45 of 2019, which means the total for the 2019-2020 season is an undercount of approximately 21,266 (the average of “flu tests given” in Weeks 44 and 46).

Comparisons 2019-2020 vs. 2018-2019

According to several CDC “Flu Burden” articles, the 2018-2019 flu season was the longest flu season where ILI was “elevated” above an expected baseline since the CDC began compiling ILI statistics. However, the 2019-2020 flu season had elevated ILI percentages at least three weeks longer than this “record” season.

Compared to the 2018-2019 season, more flu tests were administered to sick patients for 26 consecutive weeks in the 2019-2020.

Read the Whole Article

The post The Government Did Create a Contagious Virus in a Lab appeared first on LewRockwell.

The United States Navy (USN) and Marine Corps (USMC) keep increasing their military presence in the Southern Caribbean, more specifically in the vicinity of Venezuela’s coast. The last days of August saw a significant uptick in their activity, including American warships in eastbound transit through the Panama Canal. Only a week prior, White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt stated that US President Donald Trump was “prepared to use every element of American power to stop drugs from flooding into [the country] and to bring those responsible to justice”, also insisting that “many Caribbean nations and many nations in the region” supposedly “applauded the administration’s counterdrug operations and efforts”.

Interestingly, Mrs. Leavitt never mentioned which specific countries support such actions, nor did she explain how exactly warships armed with medium-range cruise missiles can be used in the supposed “heightened counternarcotics efforts”. Worse yet, the increasingly belligerent Trump administration is openly accusing Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro of supposedly “heading a narco cartel”, using it as a pretext to escalate its crawling aggression on the South American nation. The US State Department website unequivocally says that President Maduro allegedly “helped manage and ultimately lead the Cartel of the Suns, comprised of high-ranking Venezuelan officials”. Expectedly, without verifiable evidence.

“As he gained power in Venezuela, Maduro participated in a corrupt and violent narco-terrorism conspiracy with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), a designated Foreign Terrorist Organization. Maduro negotiated multi-ton shipments of FARC-produced cocaine; directed the Cartel of the Suns to provide military-grade weapons to the FARC; coordinated with narcotics traffickers in Honduras and other countries to facilitate large-scale drug trafficking; and solicited assistance from FARC leadership in training an unsanctioned militia group that functioned, in essence, as an armed forces unit for the Cartel of the Suns”, the accusation reads.

“In March 2020, Maduro was charged in the Southern District of New York for narco-terrorism, conspiracy to import cocaine, possession of machine guns and destructive devices, and conspiracy to possess machine guns and destructive devices,” the website adds, also claiming: “After initially offering a reward offer of up to $15 million for information leading to the arrest and/or conviction of Maduro in 2020, the Department of State on January 10, 2025, increased the reward offer to up to $25 million. On August 7, 2025, the Department announced the further increase in the reward offer to up to $50 million after the Department of Treasury sanctioned Cartel of the Suns as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist on July 25, 2025.”

The US also brags that “Maduro, as leader of Cartel of the Suns, is the first target in the history of the Narcotics Rewards Program with a reward offer exceeding $25 million”. Once again, there’s zero evidence to support a single claim on President Maduro’s “corrupt and violent narco-terrorism conspiracy”. On the other hand, Washington DC has no qualms about backing actual narco-terrorist entities, such as the Albanian extremists currently based in NATO-occupied Serbian province of Kosovo and Metohia, to say nothing of well over half a century of CIA-run drug-related back ops in virtually every country south of the Rio Grande. However, despite decades of sanctions and other forms of pressure, Caracas refuses to budge.

During his first term, Trump was particularly aggressive toward both Venezuela and Iran. Back in 2017, he threatened that the US has “many options, including a possible military option, if necessary”. He made similar statements with regards to Tehran, although he never acted on either during his previous presidency. However, Trump is now far more belligerent and has attacked Iran. Although it largely failed (despite his insistence that it was a “total success”), this demonstrates his willingness to engage in direct armed aggression. American forces in the region are far too few to allow a full-blown invasion, but they’re enough to be used in limited long-range precision strikes, likely on critical infrastructure (particularly in coastal regions).

Washington DC certainly understands this would be nowhere near enough to defeat the Venezuelan military, but it’s possible that the Trump administration is hoping to destabilize Caracas politically. For instance, destroying or damaging the remaining oil refineries would disrupt normal economic activity and exacerbate the Latin American country’s troubles that stem from illegal US sanctions and constant pressure. In turn, Washington DC probably expects protests to erupt or even a full-blown rebellion. This approach is quite common whenever the US finds it more challenging to invade directly. And indeed, Venezuela’s complex geography effectively makes it a combination of Afghanistan and Vietnam, which is an absolute nightmare for any remotely sensible military planner.

Venezuela already deployed around 15,000 troops in the states of Zulia and Táchira (both bordering Colombia). These units are mostly comprised of special police and military personnel, indicating that Caracas is worried about cross-border raids and infiltration. Such measures are perfectly understandable given America’s propensity to use sabotage and terrorist attacks to undermine targeted countries. Back in 2020, the CIA launched the so-called “Operation Gideon” precisely from Colombia, with two boats carrying approximately 60 insurgents commanded by two former members of the US Army Special Forces (better known as “Green Berets”). Both were employed as mercenaries by Silvercorp USA, a Florida-based PMC.

Such private military enterprises are quite common in the US and are used by the Pentagon in order to maintain plausible deniability in case of failure. Precisely this happened to “Operation Gideon”, which was effectively some sort of Trump’s “mini-Bay of Pigs” moment. This failure was attributed to multiple factors, with several US intelligence services accusing one another of “major security breaches”. In fact, back in January, Jordan Goudreau, the head of Silvercorp (himself a former “Green Beret”), accused the CIA and FBI of “sabotaging the operation”. However, whether that’s true or not is irrelevant, as Venezuela needs to be prepared for any similar incursions, particularly now that such actions might serve as the vanguard of direct US aggression.

Source Infobrics.org

The post US Escalates Its Crawling Aggression on Venezuela as Caracas Prepares Defenses appeared first on LewRockwell.

A blast is heard from up the Bayou Teche, from the direction of Leonville, Cecilia, or Breaux Bridge. Then comes the ring of a far-off bell, barely heard through the cattails and wall of cicadas, crickets, and katydids. The tolling rolls down the waterway clear and rhythmic, like the echo of an evening train passing through a rural town.

It is August 15, and the Fête-Dieu du Teche has begun again. And just like the crushing weight of the Louisiana sun, countless Cajuns up and down the Teche will find themselves overcome. Hearts are about to break.

For many whose homes cling to banks of the bayou—rock-ribbed Louisiana Baptists, staunch anti-papists, nonbelievers, and the long-ago fallen away—the bell echoes in the backcountry like a rooster’s crow announcing the dawn of something forgotten or pushed away. Long-closed doors to the trace of a memory begin to open and set in motion first steps back to their centuries-old Nova Scotian roots.

And what a wonderful unfolding of grace this must be for Cajun-born Fr. Michael Champagne, the Religious Superior of the Community of Jesus Crucified, who, a decade ago, imagined how a Eucharistic procession down the heart of the bayou might move something deep in souls.

For readers unaware of the Fête-Dieu du Teche—Louisiana’s annual waterway procession on the Solemnity of the Assumption—the following is an image of its starting point: Canon fire pierces humid morning skies and sends a single boat, Vessel #1—the bell boat—down the serpentine waters that have flowed through these parts since before the birth of Christ. Thereafter, a phenomenon begins, where, over the past eleven years, Jesus Christ has floated back into the lives of fallen-away Catholics and Protestants, where an inner movement rises and begins to pull them back to the sacraments and faith of their martyred Acadian forebears.

The bell boat alerts families to something strange happening up the Teche. So they head to swinging porch doors that open into the ancient waterway; and before they are able to fuss about their privacy being trespassed upon, boat after boat begins to appear at a bend in the bayou.

Thereafter, a woody and warm scent overpowers the immovable loamy incense of the Teche; it is a pleasing smoke that moseys past the bank and floats like slow-motion sensory overload into backyards. Louisianans, some unmoored from the faith of their French-Canadian ancestors, feel the air becoming Catholic. Vessel #2 is the mist-covered thurible boat,purposed to burn and puff out incense that prepares the way for the Savior of the World in Vessel #3.

When Jesus, in the Eucharist, emerges in the haze, He is high-throned on an altar in a long-stemmed golden monstrance bordered by a few dozen sharp-edged rays. He is raised high but neatly protected beneath the shade of a canopy that all but grazes the tips of silvery-gray moss dripping from tree limbs like Louisiana tinsel. A young woman passenger glorifies Him by singing old Latin songs—“Panis Angelicus,” “Pange Lingua Gloriosi,” the “Ave Verum Corpus,” or any number of other hymns in a voice that carries up and down the Teche through a headset and a small microphone. The love songs to the King of Kings cut straight through the wall of swamp insects, and the tolling of the bell is forgotten.

Onlookers see that Vessel #3 seems to be a sacred place, sardine-packed with cassocked and habited men and women in veils who, for the next eight or so hours, will kneel to adore Jesus in the bow. They will interchangeably glorify and consider His Majesty through silent contemplation or pray from breviaries, rosaries, or from the hymnals by their sides.

Over the years, this vision of the Eucharist boat and its quiet adorers has caused many thousands of men and women to fall to their knees. Because the sensus fidei rises quickly in them, their eyes often begin to burn and well, where tears fall and mix with moistened faces. Even Protestants have admitted to a spark in the soul and different kind of feeling in their gut. They know Vessel #3 is the reason for the Fête-Dieu du Teche—so some of these converts-to-be find themselves whispering words of adoration, and, for the first time, they drop the long-guarded belief that God could not become a wafer in a host; they begin to vulnerably embrace Him as the Slaughtered Lamb hidden in True Bread.

Thereafter, most stick around for another quarter of an hour to watch the long and lazy fleet of trailing vessels. Boat after boat floats by, filled with folks they recognize from the Piggly Wiggly or bank and post office lines. Old high school teammates and childhood friends or a neighbor or co-worker wave, where he or she has become a public witness to the Body, Soul, Blood, and Divinity of Jesus Christ. These trailing folks make periodic pit stops to dock their boat and make thirty-minute visits to old riverside churches or shaded grassy areas, where they merge with hundreds of other Catholics unable to find room on a boat but who wanted to join the pilgrimage nonetheless to pray a Rosary and Benediction.

It should be no surprise that Fr. Champagne chose to pierce hearts on the bayou. He grew up on the banks of the 125-mile-long Teche. As a school boy, he was told stories of the Acadian heroes who survived unimaginable hardship as they traveled south and down the Teche after refusing to kiss the British king’s ring. The priest had always seen the river as an escape route—the primary means of transportation for his ancestors’ 18th-century exodus from Nova Scotia.

So, all these years later, Fr. Champagne knew how the waterway procession might become the floating torchlight that would guide secular and fallen-away Cajuns to the upheaval, when old family members were murdered by British soldiers or endured torture, persecution, and imprisonment for refusing to leave the Catholic Faith.

Read the Whole Article

The post A Cajun Priest and the Acadian Solution to Soft Priests in a Soft Church appeared first on LewRockwell.

Fruitless discussions about ‘security guarantees’ for Ukraine continue. It will still take time until it is acknowledged that there is no way to implement them. Meanwhile other ideas are cropping in.

Some dimwits in Europe still think that they will be able to prevent Russia from taking care of its security interests:

On Thursday, French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer will co-host a meeting of the “coalition of the willing” comprised mostly of European allies. The discussions are expected to involve what potential security guarantees for Ukraine could look like and what type of peacekeeping force might be required.

The idea is to establish a setup that would prevent Russia from relaunching attacks on Ukrainian territory if a peace deal or cease-fire is established between the two countries.

President Donald Trump has signaled that the United States could play some kind of role in the effort, although he has ruled out putting American forces in Ukraine. [NATO Secretary-General Mark] Rutte on Wednesday also said the expectation was that the U.S would be involved in some form.

There will be no ceasefire in Ukraine. There will be a peace agreement in the form of a treaty. Ukraine and Russia sides will have to agree to its parameters. The Russian site will insist that Ukraine will be demilitarized and that no foreign forces will be stationed on its land.

European countries are unable to give any real ‘security guarantees’. What they could provide is a minuscule force of a few thousand men stationed somewhere in Ukraine. Such a force would be eradicated within minutes should, after a peace agreement, the conflict in Ukraine reignite.

The Ukrainian regime has come to understand that. It has moved away from requesting ‘security guarantees’ in form of foreign soldiers. It instead wants a huge amount of foreign money to buy and make new weapons.

As the New York Times wrote yesterday:

Ukraine Pursues a Weapons Buildup More Potent Than Any Security Guarantee (archived) – New York Times
Kyiv sees a well-equipped army as a stronger deterrent to Moscow than any Western pledges to defend it. It is working to attract billions to buy more arms.

Kyiv wants not only to sustain its army through the current war but also to make it the backbone of any postwar settlement, with the goal of deterring Russia from invading again. As Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president, recently put it: “Ukraine must become a steel porcupine, undigestible for potential invaders.”

At the center of these efforts is a new NATO-backed procurement system that will channel European funds into buying U.S. weapons for Ukraine. President Volodymyr Zelensky hopes the system will enable $1 billion in purchases each month, with a particular focus on acquiring U.S.-made Patriot air-defense systems to expand Kyiv’s limited arsenal.
…
Ukraine is focused on developing its own security guarantees that its much larger neighbor cannot undermine. Kyiv’s domestic weapon production and its acquisition of Western arms are areas where Moscow has little leverage.

“This is not something the Russians can really discuss,” said Alyona Getmanchuk, Ukraine’s new ambassador to NATO. “That’s our advantage.”
…

Ukraine does not only want to receive lots of weapons, paid for by Europe, but also wants to build a weapon industry with financing also coming from foreign sources:

[Maksym Skrypchenko, the president of the Transatlantic Dialogue Center, a research group in Kyiv,] said Ukraine was working to channel Western money not only into buying foreign weapons but also into its own defense industry, which has grown rapidly during the war but still lacks the funding needed to produce at scale.

That could allow Ukraine to produce the very missiles Western partners have been reluctant to supply — or have delivered under strict usage limits — for fear of escalation. The United States, Britain and France have provided small batches of ballistic and cruise missiles, but their use is restricted so that they cannot be used to strike major Russian cities like Moscow. Germany has long refused to transfer its long-range Taurus cruise missiles.

Fire Point, the Ukrainian defense firm behind the Flamingo missile, said it would welcome Western funding to speed up production. The company says it currently makes one missile per day, but plans to increase output sevenfold by this fall. Ukraine has also developed a short-range ballistic missile named Sapsan that recently entered production.

That this is a serious attempt by Ukraine to move the ‘security guarantee’ discussion towards a record financial transaction to Kiev is underlined by an op-ed by its former Foreign Minister  Dmytro Kulebain the Washington Post:

Ukraine doesn’t need a security guarantee (archived) – Dmytro Kuleba / Washington Post
Western boots on the ground won’t secure peace. Arming Ukraine and politically integrating it will.

[S]tationing foreign troops far behind the lines as “reassurance forces” (the option most often floated as an alternative to more robust peacekeeping) would also have limited effect. The Ukrainian people would almost certainly welcome such deployments. But reassurance forces would neither hasten the war’s end nor prevent hostilities from reigniting after any ceasefire. Moscow, meanwhile, has already rejected the idea, claiming it would be a pretense for putting a NATO presence on Ukrainian soil.

Instead of debating such dead ends, Ukraine’s partners should immediately move to provide a robust assistance package, coupled with firm commitments to Ukraine’s political integration in the West. Weapons need to be provided at an even larger scale — to be mass-produced in Western countries as well as in Western-financed factories inside Ukraine. Ensuring uninterrupted supply on a strict timeline is vital. The buildup of a European military-industrial complex needs to take place alongside Ukraine’s admission to the European Union as a full member on an accelerated (though still merit-based) schedule.

The attempt to get ‘security guarantees’ in the form of money for weapons and weapon fabrications is just as doomed as the idea of putting western troops on the ground.

From the NYT piece quoted above:

Europe has already outpaced the United States in military aid, providing roughly $95 billion to Washington’s $75 billion, according to the Kiel Institute for the World Economy.

Ukraine has already received weapons at a value of $170 billion. How much did they deter the Russian from fighting?

The Europeans have difficulties to grow their economies while facing higher interest rates and aging societies. It is ludicrous to expect that they will indefinitely continue to finance weapons for Ukraine.

The idea of building western-financed weapon factories in Ukraine can already be seen as a failure.

The NYT piece asserts:

Kyiv’s domestic weapon production and its acquisition of Western arms are areas where Moscow has little leverage. 

“This is not something the Russians can really discuss,” said Alyona Getmanchuk, Ukraine’s new ambassador to NATO. “That’s our advantage.”

The Russia Armed Forces disagree with that statement.

Germany allegedly provided the money and technology to develop the short-range ballistic missile named Sapsan which was to be produced in Ukraine.

By August 11 the Russia forces had ended that endeavor:

Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) claimed Thursday that it crippled Ukraine’s ability to launch strikes deep inside Russia after it carried out a special operation along with the Defense Ministry against Ukrainian missile production facilities.

The FSB said it had discovered the locations of buildings and air defense systems involved in the production and protection of Ukraine’s Sapsan ballistic missile system, also known by its export designation Hrim-2, in the Sumy and Dnipropetrovsk regions.
…
Russia’s Defense Ministry said […] the strikes were conducted throughout July, targeting Ukrainian design bureaus, rocket fuel production facilities and missile assembly plants in the Dnipropetrovsk and Sumy regions.

The Russian military also said it destroyed four launchers of the Western-supplied Patriot surface-to-air missile system and a U.S.-made target detection and guidance radar in the Dnipropetrovsk region alone.

The FSB claimed that Ukraine had developed the Sapsan/Hrim-2 with financial support from “specialists” of an unidentified Western European country.
…
Ukrainian media previously reported that the Sapsan missile completed combat testing in May after successfully striking a Russian military target at a range of almost 300 kilometers (186 miles).

Another deep strike hit the factory of a U.S. manufacturer of electronic circuit boards, Flex-tronic, in western Ukraine. Circuit boards are needed for Ukraine’s mass drone production. Six hundred employees, working the night shift to allegedly ‘build coffee makers’, had fled into the companies bunkers when several cruise missiles arrived. It took several days to expunge the fire.

A Turkish company had built and equipped a factory to make Bayraktar drones in Ukraine. The factory was supposed to open at the end of August. Days before the official opening Russian missiles arrived:

The factory where Turkish Bayraktar drones are assembled continues to burn near Kiev. The day before, several Russian missiles hit the workshops. The building was seriously damaged. The production process was disrupted.

The video of the fire is published today, August 29, by Channel Five.

Together those were at least three large strikes in just one month against western-financed weapon production sites in Ukraine. Any future weapon factory build with western finance in Ukraine will receive a similar treatment.

Such facilities are just too big and obvious to operate in total secret. The Russian security service will find them and mark them for destruction as soon as the most expensive machinery for them has been installed and is ready to go.

‘Security guarantees’ in form of western troops on the ground are just not going to happen.

‘Security guarantees’ in form of weapon deliveries or weapon production within Ukraine are not sustainable.

The only real ‘security guarantee’ Ukraine can get is through a piece agreement with Russia. This will require Ukraine  to give up on land, to commit to neutrality and to behave well.

President Alexander Stubb of Finland argues in the Economist that Ukraine should follow his country’s (previous) model:

What Finland could teach Ukraine about war and peace (archived) – Economist
President Alexander Stubb argues Ukraine can repeat Finland’s success

Finland’s experience has been cited from the start of the war in Ukraine—both as a model to avoid and one perhaps to follow. Mannerheim’s speech was circulated in President Volodymyr Zelensky’s office in the first months of the war, but was put to one side.

The peace that was imposed on Finland in 1944 was hardly just. But it could have been worse. Finland handed over 10% of its territory, including Karelia and half of Lake Ladoga. Its army was restricted, as was its ability to join NATO. It was forced to let Russia lease a naval base on Porkkala, a peninsula in the Gulf of Finland just 30km from the capital. And, because it had joined forces with Hitler, it was forced to pay reparations to the Soviet Union which had attacked it five years earlier.

To much of the world, this was a defeat. To Mr Stubb, whose father was born in the territory annexed by the Soviet Union, and whose summer house stands in Porkkala, back in Finnish hands since the 1950s, it looks different.

The simple secret of living peacefully next to a mighty neighbor, Finland had found, was to behave well:

Lacking any security guarantees from the West or anyone else, Finland exercised this independence not by turning anti-Russian—which would almost certainly have resulted in another invasion—but by building one of the most successful countries in Europe. “People didn’t wait for perfect conditions. They worked with what they had,” Risto Penttilä, a foreign-policy expert, explains.

In politics and in the media Finland carefully avoided anything that could anger Moscow. To most outsiders, what became known as “Finlandisation” was a servile form of appeasement. To Mr Stubb and most of his countrymen, “it was the definition of realpolitik at a time when we did not have a choice.” It allowed Finland to stick to its core values: universal education, social welfare and the rule of law.

The ‘Finlandization’ of Ukraine, if done seriously, would satisfy major Russian demands – neutrality, demilitarization and denazification. It is a realistic base for successful peace talks.

I am encourage that the Economist, as a major mainstream outlet, has picked up on this.

For the idea to ripen it will have to wait until the powers-that-be have recognized that all other variants of ‘security guarantees’, be they troops on the ground or weapon-fabrications, are rather pipe-dreams than serious plans.

Reprinted with permission from Moon of Alabama.

The post Ukraine’s Best Security Guarantee Is Finlandization appeared first on LewRockwell.

It appears more and more people are challenging the United Nations narrative that CO2 emissions are causing disastrous climate change. Indeed, there are signs that the narrative is collapsing. The book Climate CO2 Hoax – How Bankers Hijacked the Environment Movement provides evidences and testimonies from renowned international climate scientists that contradict the UN assertion that climate change is caused by CO2 emissions or methane. (The 1992 UN Rio Earth summit involved the establishment of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) as an international environmental treaty to combat “dangerous human interference with the climate system” – a treaty signed by 154 states.)

In the book I refer to the conclusion of the Climate Intelligence Foundation (CLINTEL) that the climate changes naturally and slowly in its own cycle; and that CO2 emissions or methane from livestock, such as cows, are not the dominant factors in climate change. The number of signatories of the CLINTEL World Climate Declaration has now risen to 2,000. Coincidentally

The conclusions of the Climate Intelligence foundation include the following:

“There is no climate emergency. Therefore, there is no cause for panic and alarm. Natural as well as anthropogenic factors cause warming… Warming is far slower than predicted… Climate policy relies on inadequate models… CO2 is plant food, the basis of all life on Earth: CO2 is not a pollutant. It is essential to all life on Earth. Photosynthesis is a blessing. More CO2 is beneficial for nature, greening the Earth: additional CO2 in the air has promoted growth in global plant biomass. It is also good for agriculture, increasing the yields of crops worldwide.”

Patrick Moore, co-founder of Greenpeace, and President of Greenpeace in Canada for seven years, states:

“the whole climate crisis is not only fake news its fake science… of course climate change is real it’s been happening since the beginning of time, but it’s not dangerous and it’s not caused by people… Most of the scientists who are saying it’s a crisis are on perpetual government grants… you don’t have a plan to feed 8 billion people without fossils fuels or get the food into the cities…” – Patrick Moore, co-founder of Greenpeace

I also have experience in the field, including at United Nations Environment; at the UK Government Dept of Energy and Climate Change; and as a PhD researcher on the subject of sustainability. See also the books Climate CO2 Hoax and Transcending the Climate Change Deception Toward Real Sustainability.

The United Nations and the globalist Davos World Economic Forum declared the necessity of reaching a worldwide goal of “net zero carbon” by 2050. Massive transformations have been underway worldwide setting the stage for creation of what in the 1970’s was called the New International Economic Order. In reality it is a blueprint for worldwide technocratic totalitarian corporate-communism. The EU, a political project of globalists from its very inception, has been leading this agenda and plans to become the world’s first “carbon neutral” continent by 2050 and reduce its CO2 emissions by at least 55% by 2030.

With a virtual monopoly on mainstream media as well as social media, the ‘climate change is caused by CO2’ lobby brainwashed much of the world into believing that we should eliminate hydrocarbons including petroleum, natural gas, and coal. This bogus claim is cover for an ulterior agenda. CO2 is not carbon or soot, it is an invisible, odorless gas essential to plant photosynthesis and all life forms on earth, including us.

The myth of manmade climate change due to CO2 emissions has become so normalised amongst all political parties worldwide and in the general population, that at times it seems as if one is living in an entire society ‘blind to the truth’. Images of the apocalyptic movie and book ‘Day of the Triffids’ springs to mind. In this book almost the entire population of the Earth has become physically blinded. In 2023, it appears we are living through a society that has largely become ‘mentally blinded’ to the truth.

What can be done? The unfortunate reality is that the blind are leading the blind; and the politicians and leaders whatever their political colour, green or otherwise, will never rock the boat of the ‘institutional orthodoxy’ or relinquish their bloated government salaries, regardless of whether they are aware of the truth or not.

The current green energy/renewable technologies being promoted by the UN and WEF, are not a viable solution for the world’s energy supply.

Most ‘green policies’ are based on mathematical madness and in the above books I also describe that the current green energy/renewable technologies being promoted by the UN and WEF, are not a viable solution for the world’s energy supply. Although these technologies have some limited viability in certain locations and scenarios, the fact remains that the Energy Returned on Energy Invested is much too low – in essence the entire process is mathematically flawed.

This is evidenced by the work of scientists, including Professor David MacKay, former Regius Professor of Engineering at Cambridge University and former Chief Scientific Advisor at the UK Department of Energy and Climate Change in his book Sustainable Energy without Hot Air, see Endnote [i]. His analysis shows the mathematical absurdity of wind energy and that an area twice the size of the entire country of Wales would need to be completely covered with wind turbines to meet the energy demand in the U.K., based on average energy consumption per person. The creation of wind energy infrastructure is in most parts of the world a massive waste of existing fossil fuel resources.

Climate policy and green energy involve economic suicide – the example of Germany

Let us consider the example of Germany as detailed in an article by strategic risk consultant F. William Engdahl, see Endnote [ii]. In Germany, Angela Merkel and the German government as part of a 2001 government strategy to rely on solar and wind and other “renewables” aimed to make Germany the first industrial nation to be “carbon neutral.” F. William Engdahl described that:

• this strategy has been an economic catastrophe. Germany had one of the industrial world’s most stable low-cost and reliable electric generation grids, but today Germany has become the world’s most expensive electric generator.
• the energy inefficient wind and solar, today costs some 7 to 9 times more than gas. To reach targets by 2030 Deutsche Bank even admitted the state will need to create an “eco-dictatorship”, see Endnote [iii].
• by 2025 an estimated 25% of existing German windmills will need replacement and waste disposal is a colossal problem

Furthermore, a massive input of concrete and aluminum is needed to produce solar or wind farms, all of which requires cheap energy to produce; but solar and wind is not cheap it is very expensive. Consider also that the amount of added electricity needed for a ‘zero carbon’ EU by 2050 would be far more than today, as countless millions of battery chargers will need grid electricity with reliable power.

While the people of the world pay suffer large energy price increases many renewable energy corporations made massive windfalls via subsidies and profits via government led climate policy.  In its forced transition to renewables, while banning nuclear energy, Germany has paid a very high price in this ridiculous climate crusade of mathematical madness. Author Thomas Kolbe has described in a recent article that a group of German industrial labor representatives has broken ranks, and in an open letter to Chancellor Friedrich Merz, they fiercely criticize Berlin’s climate policy:

“A group of industrial works councils is calling on Chancellor Merz to halt the climate policy suicide run. Since COVID lockdowns, over 300,000 jobs in Germany’s industrial core have vanished. Energy-intensive production has become a fantasy—especially when competitors like the U.S. pay up to 75% less for electricity… These are not outliers—they’re survivors of Germany’s failed “green transformation.” ArcelorMittal recently scrapped its green steel plans—despite billions in offered subsidies. BASF is cutting 700 jobs in Ludwigshafen. The “green restructuring” of Germany’s economy now reads like an industrial obituary. Every day, another subsidized project collapses into the dustbin of central planning…

By issuing a public letter, they’re committing open defiance. They’re aiming straight at the Green Deal—the administrative metastasis that has paralyzed Europe’s economic lifeblood… After 35 years of subsidizing wind and solar, grid stability hasn’t improved—yet grid costs are in the hundreds of billions. The high energy prices aren’t just socially unjust; they’re an existential threat to prosperity and civil peace… This protest has grassroots power—it comes from people living the reality of failed climate economics, not from think tanks or talking heads…” – Thomas Kolbe, author and journalist

The so-called green economy is not green at all

The western world has become shackled by nonsensical policies that claim to be environmentally friendly; however, the green mask is slipping. In reality, we see that vast industrial processes to create a so-called green infrastructure have been offshored; and green industrialisation has been ramped up to produce vast numbers of electric vehicles, wind turbines, solar panels, etc; thus causing yet more ‘real pollution’ to land, air and water systems via industrial mining for rare earth metals etc, see this article.  Furthermore, after decades of subsidies, wind and solar still only produce around 5% of the world’s primary energy supply. The maths do not add up, the Energy Returned on Energy Invested in too low. The green economy is littered with an army of expensive toys that do not create value, for example electric vehicles. Meanwhile, the tax payer is forced to pay the bill via taxes and increased energy costs, while renewable energy corporations reap vast subsidies and ‘policy-led’ profits.

The bill to create a nonsensical and vast worldwide green energy infrastructure is so large it will never be paid. More government debt piled upon existing debt leaves the people impoverished via taxes that ultimately end up in the coffers of the world banking cartel. See also the book Demonic Economics and the Tricks of the Bankers.

Driving an electric car is fake environmentalism – Elon Musk debunked

Electric vehicle (EV) drivers are suckers for mega-corporate advertising, ignorantly proud of so-called low-carbon eco-cars. Apparently, unaware that the manufacture of millions of EV batteries, requires huge mining operations to acquire and refine large quantities of rare earth metals, such as lithium, rhodium and cobalt; that these metals have to be mined out of the ground using machinery which is powered by carbon-emitting vehicles powered by diesel or petrol; and importantly, that the mining and refining processes can cause significant and extensive pollution to land, air and water systems, for example in rural China and Mongolia, see Endnote [iv]. Unlike the fake climate agenda, these are real environmental problems.

Have the deluded green politicians considered what would be the environmental consequence of transitioning the entire world population to EVs, for example, for a population of 8 billion to be using about 2 billion EVs, at around 1 per family? The real pollution to land and water systems from the mining of rare earth metals, such as lithium, for EV batteries would be massive. For example see a picture of toxic lithium leach fields in Chile in this article.

Furthermore, the push to end gasoline or diesel transport by 2035 in favour of EVs is based on a lie as the lithium-ion battery-powered vehicles have a total “carbon footprint” when the effects of mining lithium and producing all parts are included, that is worse than diesel autos. The deluded greens are trying to get us all driving EVs, but EVS are still driven by electricity produced from fossil fuels and will most likely continue to be. Furthermore, EVs are not at all an efficient use of energy as the well to tank efficiency of this electrification process has been estimated at around only 37%.

There appears to be a growing realisation that electric transport is something of a ‘road to nowhere’.

Green politics is concerned with fitting in with a deceptive UN climate and sustainable development narrative

The majority of green policies, seemingly worldwide, are based on the misleading narrative that CO2 causes climate change. A generation of young people and deluded CO2 activists have been misled like sheep. This ‘group think’ and a need to be accepted by ones social or political peer group has turned many people into dumb animals – like sheep. Such concerns take away from the attainment of knowledge, truth, and deeper meaning.

The policies of international mega-banks and international institutions, such as the UN and the WEF, are driving environmentally destructive ‘globalisation painted green’. Green politics is fake environmentalism. The green political parties appear to be brainwashed by decades of UN-promoted propaganda; and appear to be unaware that the real environmental movement was essentially ‘hijacked’ by the Rothschild banking dynasty in 1992 at the UN Earth summit. This is detailed in the testimony of whistleblower George Hunt, see this video.

The green political parties founded in many countries in the early 1980s were often focused on policies for ecology, food security, local resilience, and local governance. The original founders of the green movement in the early 1980s, and the sustainability visionaries of the 1970s are better described as localists not globalists, for example the well-known E.F. Schumacher, author of the books Small is Beautiful  and This I Believe. However, nowadays this focus on local or regional sustainability appears to have been largely displaced by climate alarmism.

It should be noted that it is the world’s central bankers that are behind the decision to reduce CO2 emissions worldwide and are entirely funding and controlling the advancement of the worldwide project of combatting man-made climate-change. This project involves an attempt to de-carbonise the activities of the entire world population. In December 2015, the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) created the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosure (TCFD), which represents $118 trillion of assets globally, see Endnote  [v]. In essence this means that the financialization of the entire world economy is based on meeting nonsensical aims such as “net-zero greenhouse gas emissions”.

In addition, seemingly most political parties are championing the deceptive UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). I decode the deceptive SDGs in the above book.

[i] The book “Sustainable Energy without Hot Air” by Professor David MacKay, Regius Professor of Engineering at Cambridge University and former Chief Scientific Advisor to the UK’s Department of Energy and Climate Change, is available for free at: https://withouthotair.com/

[ii] Source: https://www.globalresearch.ca/great-zero-carbon-criminal-conspiracy/5736707

[iii] Source: https://www.dw.com/en/german-wind-energy-stalls-amid-public-resistance-and-regulatory-hurdles/a-50280676

[iv] Source: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/aug/07/china-rare-earth-village-pollution

[v] Source: https://data.parliament.uk/DepositedPapers/Files/DEP2019-0718/Green_Finance_Strategy.pdf

Same in the U.S. In my travels, I saw wasteland. thousands upon thousands of miles of nothing and every town desolate. All the money had been withdrawn. Thousands of small towns once lit by familied love and charity, gone. Not an accident of fate. It had been decided by the Malthusian technocrats who wanted to bunch the talking pigs in cities where they could be further degraded into arty punks, petty criminals and indentured labourers for the mega-corps and government. And best case, confused by their “sexuality”. Fighting over scraps, while the country was cleared to be taken.

The post The Climate CO2 Hoax and the Flaws of Green Energy appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, Rick Rozoff.

The post Epstein Victims Speak Live Right Now from US Capitol appeared first on LewRockwell.

The post More War: Trump Orders US Strike On Alleged ‘Drug Boat’ In International Waters appeared first on LewRockwell.

Writes John Leo Keenan:

A Palestinian journalist in Gaza, Ruwaida Amer, explained why Palestinian journalists are targeted directly:

 “Why is Israel targeting Palestinian journalists in Gaza? Simple. We are the only ones able to document and transmit what is actually happening on the ground. Every image, every testimony, every broadcast we produce pierces through the wall of Israel’s official narrative. That makes us dangerous: by recording the displacement, the starvation, and the relentless bombardment, we expose Israel’s actions to the world.

And so, we are deliberately attacked. Cameras are treated as weapons, and those who hold them as combatants. Our very presence threatens Israel’s ability to sustain its genocidal path — which is why it is doing everything it can to snuff us out.” 

This from the NYT is very good (clear):

“Videos Contradict Israel’s Rationale for Deadly Hospital Attack” 

https://www.nytimes.com/video/world/middleeast/100000010370105/nasser-hospital-gaza-israel-attack-videos.html?searchResultPosition=8

Amer’s article:

https://www.972mag.com/maryam-abu-daqqa-gaza-journalists/

The post Netanyahu said the attack against the Nasser Hospital in Gaza was a “terrible mishap” appeared first on LewRockwell.

Writes Bill Madden:

There are a lot of problems in the world.  When you begin to think that we live in a sane world, please read the titles of the VT articles in order to restore your cynicism.

The post VT Foreign Policy Daily Report appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, David Martin.

Bitchute Video

The post Crybullies appeared first on LewRockwell.

Click Here:

Nicolas Hulscher, MPH

The post The mRNA Reckoning Has Begun appeared first on LewRockwell.

Writes David Martin

See article here.

Huntsville, the largest city in Alabama, is now poised to become a central location in operations to expand U.S. military might to the cosmos to compete with rivals like Russia and China.

Alabama city population from my 2012 AAA Road Atlas:

Birmingham    242,820
Montgomery   201, 568
Mobile,             198,915
Huntsville       158,216

But, amazingly, the article is right.  Huntsville is, indeed, now the largest city in Alabama.

And why is that?  The article tells us in so many words:

The city is a major hub for defense contractors and aerospace companies, including Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman. The Army’s Space and Missile Defense Command is also located in Huntsville, which is nicknamed “Rocket City” because of its role in building the first rockets that helped the U.S. reach the moon.

And what’s wrong with Colorado?

“The problem I had with Colorado, one of the big problems, they do mail-in voting,” Trump said. “So they have automatically crooked elections.”

Trump is really on the money with that one.  Check out Paul Craig Roberts’ latest article.

The purple state of Virginia better vote Republican in its off-year election this fall for the benefit of Wallops Island.

The post Why is Trump moving Space Command headquarters to Alabama? Inside the decision appeared first on LewRockwell.

Click here:

Global Research

The post How the Global Elite Prepares to Replace Governments with Global Agentic AI appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, David Martin.

See this.

The post Former UN Chief Exposes October 7 appeared first on LewRockwell.

Writes Bill Maden

Re: Since World War II the United States has not declared war even though it has been in a continuous state of war. It is no coincidence that none of these “wars” have been won. From 1950 Korea to 2025 Yemen and everything in between.

The major owners of Corporate America are not interested in winning wars.  They are interested in their quarterly profit distributions so we get no-win wars.  The “rules of engagement” are always structured to protect the enemy from annihilation which our forces are easily capable of doing. 

After reading: “The Brothers”, and “The Secret Team”:

I’m more convinced than ever that our alphabet agencies work directly for the major owners of Corporate America.  I believe that these wealthy families control our entire government but that the conduits of influence and control are shorter for the alphabet agencies than the other parts of government with the conduit for the CIA being the shortest.  The U2 that crashed in Russia to prevent the Paris Peace Summit back in 1960 was sabotaged during pre-flight.  According to Prouty’s book, it was not shot down, it flamed out due to a half-filled hydrogen tank.  The hydrogen was needed at high altitudes to maintain combustion.

The Cold War was very profitable and, like no-win hot wars, the profiteers wanted it to continue.

The post Re: Department of War? – Ron Paul’s 2 Sept. Column appeared first on LewRockwell.

The winner of New York City’s Democratic mayoral primary was Zohran Mamdani, a Muslim democratic socialist who has been a member of the New York State Assembly since 2021. Conservatives are ecstatic that they have a professing socialist to attack so as to deflect attention away from their support of socialistic programs and policies like Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, and public education.

Mamdani advocates higher taxes on rich property owners, corporations, and millionaires; free childcare for children up to five years old; rent control; fare-free city buses; raising the city’s minimum wage; single-payer healthcare; and city-owned grocery stores.

Although many conservative opponents of Mamdani are hypocrites, their criticisms of his plans are nevertheless spot on—except for one thing.

Mamdani has advocated the decriminalization of prostitution. He told reporters he wants his policies to reflect those of ex-mayor Bill de Blasio, who advocated “community-centered services” for sex workers instead of arrest.

Incumbent Mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat and a socialist in all but the name, and an opponent of Mamdani in the November election, is now the darling of conservatives for making this remark:

I’m a man of God, just as Mamdani says he’s a Muslim. I don’t know where in his Quran it states that it’s OK for a woman to be on the streets selling their body. I don’t know what Quran he is reading. It’s not in my Bible. As a man who said he is of faith, I don’t quite understand what religion supports prostitution. You’re not doing any service to a woman who is on the street who is forced to sell her body for whatever reason.

So, is prostitution okay?

From a health and morals perspective, prostitution is certainly not okay, even if it is 100 percent voluntary and does not involve trespassing on someone’s private property.

I have no argument with anyone who says that prostitution is immoral, sinful, bad, unnatural, debauched, lewd, unholy, lascivious, indecent, shameful, unhealthy, risky, and potentially dangerous.

No one with any sense—except a deranged left-libertarian opposed to value judgments at all—would support or be ambivalent about his wife, daughter, aunt, mother, grandmother, granddaughter, mother-in-law, niece, or sister being involved in prostitution. No one but a libertine (which should never be confused with a libertarian) wants prostitutes hanging out on their street corner or near the local high school.

From a libertarian perspective; that is, a property and freedom perspective, prostitution is okay—not because it is wholesome, good, or harmless (it is just the opposite)—but because it is not the job of government to concern itself with how people choose to make a living, spend their money, or have sex as long as they don’t violate the personal or property rights of others when they are doing these things.

What consenting adults do on their private property, or on the property of others with permission, is none of the government’s business (and it is none of your business) as long as their actions don’t infringe upon the rights of others. This is still true even if what they are doing is immoral, and even if the majority of Americans don’t approve of what they are doing.

There is a big difference between not approving of someone’s actions and thinking the government should arrest, fine, and imprison someone for doing something that some people don’t approve of.

Two things that Mayor Adams said deserve a challenge: “I don’t quite understand what religion supports prostitution. You’re not doing any service to a woman who is on the street who is forced to sell her body for whatever reason.”

First of all, no religion “supports” prostitution. Not arresting, fining, and locking in a cage prostitutes and their clients is not supporting prostitution. And second, just because a woman is on the street selling her body does not mean that she is being forced to do so. Not every prostitute has a pimp, and not every pimp is forcing women to sell their bodies. And neither is poverty to blame. There are plenty of poor women in every city in the United States who would not even think of engaging in prostitution.

Now, none of it means that libertarians countenance trespassing, loitering, or other violations of property rights that might occur when prostitutes seek or service customers. And none of this means that prostitution that involves coercion, trafficking, children, assault, exploitation, or kidnapping is okay. These are real crimes that no free society would approve or tolerate.

So, from a moral standpoint, prostitution is not okay; however, from a property and freedom perspective, it is okay. Therefore, from a legal perspective, prostitution should be okay as well.

The post Is Prostitution Okay? appeared first on LewRockwell.