Lew Rockwell Institute

David Martin wrote:

US Africa Command confirmed that no civilians were killed or injured in a press release, adding that “protecting civilians remains a vital part of the command’s operations to promote a more secure and stable Africa.”

https://nypost.com/2025/02/03/us-news/video-shows-trump-ordered-airstrikes-in-somalia/

Tell it to the Houthis and to the Palestinians slaughtered by the bombs we supply to Netanyahu.  

Trump’s been into the Somalia bombing for quite a long time: US Bombed Somalia Amid Russian Invasion of Ukraine | Common Dreams

Bombs and Propaganda

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Writes David Neal:

The anniversary of the Liberty Attack- A couple of us here have been discussing this event-

I plan to go up to Arlington for the ceremony- This video is a discussion with a historian who makes many documentaries about various events, and here he interviews Philip Tourney, a survivor of the attack.

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Pluto9999 wrote:

Hi Lew

Although a true “cashless” society would indeed be a hardship, Mr Barnes prediction of everyone actually having to contract electronically is shortsighted, in that he minimizes the power of the free – or in this case – the black market.  Despite the enormous waste of resources to combat the drug trade, it still hums along, avoiding most crackdowns.  In a “cashless” society that same power will be unleashed in providing people with another cash asset – most likely gold – to facilitate transactions.  In fact, in an ironic twist, the state cracking down on cash may finally move us toward a solid non-fiat currency – gold.

Have a great Tax Freedom Day June 12, and thank you for all that you and the Mises Institute do!

The post Here’s How a Cashless Society Will Impact the World appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, Saleh Abdullah.

The post Ron Desantis Says Property Taxes are a Scam: Damn Right appeared first on LewRockwell.

Recently, I watched a documentary on Larry Nassar. He was the team doctor for the U.S. Women’s national gymnastics team from 1996-2014. In January, 2018, Nassar was convicted of possessing child pornography and ten counts of sexual assault. He was sentenced to an astounding 100-235 years in prison.

Nassar had been accused of sexually assaulting at least 265 young girls. This was a real case of #MeToo Syndrome, as seemingly every girl he had coached eventually joined in, telling their own stories, which as far as I can tell were extremely scant on details. Color me skeptical, as usual. I have yet to hear any media outlet tell Nassar’s side of the story. What was his explanation? I’ve watched two specials on Nassar, and there wasn’t a single talking head, a single defense lawyer, who at least attempted to provide some context. The most incredible aspect of these charges was that the accusers- again, not sure how many, but perhaps all of them as far as I know- revealed that their parents were present during the abuse. You might be thinking, wait a minute, how could a sexual assault happen in front of parents? Yeah, that’s what I was wondering about. If I understand correctly, Nassar is accused of touching these girls inappropriately, while their parents were right there in the same room.

Again, the case is a bit fuzzy on specifics, as happens all too often in the #MeToo world. It seems that Nassar’s conduct was first reported in June, 2015, when the personal coach of a female gymnast heard her discussing Nassar with another girl. Once the #MeToo effect kicked in, it was eventually alleged that Nassar had been abusing girls since as early as 1994. Some victims would claim they reported his behavior to his superiors at Michigan State University in 1997. I suppose Michigan State initially denied this, but I don’t know for sure, because the media coverage is essentially a prosecutorial brief. Three former gymnasts would appear on 60 minutes in February, 2017, to accuse Nassar of sexually abusing them. They also, very tellingly, used the virtue signaling phrase “emotionally abusive environment.” Nassar was accused of inserting his finger in the vaginas of an unclear number of girls, in the presence of an unclear number of parents, who somehow never recognized it.

In October, 2017, Olympic gold medalist McKayla Maroney did indeed use the #MeToo hashtag on Twitter, charging that Nassar had repeatedly molested her for eight years. Once the parade of former gymnasts read their victim impact statements in court, Nassar had zero chance at any kind of impartial justice. I think I’m the only one in the world who is opposed to victim impact statements, which are not evidence, and serve only to emotionally manipulate the proceedings. Apparently, Nassar was still claiming to be “an innocent person” behind bars, when he was stabbed ten times in July, 2023. I’d sure like to know what Nassar’s defense was. You certainly can’t find out from any television program on the subject, or anywhere else online. If Nassar is the monster he’s being portrayed as, then I’m guilty of asking pointless questions. But I can’t help but be skeptical about these kinds of collective tales of victimhood.

“Victims” and “survivors” are all the rage in our society. And they’re almost always female. Was there ever some kind of #MeToo moment for sodomized altar boys? I must have missed that. Do they get to call themselves “victims” and “survivors” of sexual assault for the rest of their lives? And I’m pretty sure that virtually all of them who were abused were abused by penises, not fingers. The same thing with boy scouts. A lot of them came out later and claimed abuse. But it just wasn’t the same. There was no giant cavalcade of now male adults who’d been in the same troop coming forth belatedly with “yes, I was abused too” allegations. Few of them were granted softball interviews, where they were treated as “victims” and “survivors,” not human beings who were making serious allegations long after the fact. There is a strange camaraderie between female “survivors,” which you just don’t see with males.

The same media which accepted without question any gymnast’s belated accusation against Nassar went apoplectic at suggestions that the John Podesta emails, published by Wikileaks, contained “coded” references to child sex, because of the massive and inordinate use of the terms “pizza” and “pasta.” In one email, there was a ridiculous reference to a napkin left behind at a party, that contained a “pizza related map.” The owner of Comet Ping Pong certainly posted some bizarre things on Instagram, but that was all “debunked.” The entire media- including most of the alt media- assures us of that. Some suitable “nut” fired a gun in Comet Ping Pong, and that somehow settled the case. Ignore the photo of the little girl duct taped to a table there. Recently, that gunman just happened to be shot dead by our brave law enforcement officers during some kind of traffic stop. Nothing to see here. Just ask the fact checkers.

What is odd is how easily such claims are accepted, when the alleged abuser is a lone individual, like Nassar, with no powerful political connections. Compare that to the kids who alleged sexual abuse- and again, not with fingers- from the most powerful people in Nebraska, as detailed in John DeCamp’s book The Franklin Cover-Up. Not only were those almost all boy victims ignored by the media, the only female victim, Alisha Owen, was convicted of perjury and sentenced to 9-29 years in prison. She had accused the most influential local figures, from a newspaper publisher to the chief of police, with genuine rape. No parents present. The only documentary ever produced on the case, Conspiracy of Silence, was pulled from airing at the last moment, and can only be seen online, in a very poor quality video copy. The accusations were detailed, and included an inadvertent description of Bohemian Grove, where our top leaders cavort, with no females anywhere in sight, every July in the California hills.

The preschoolers who made identical accusations against those who ran the McMartin Preschool in California were again treated much more skeptically than the girl gymnasts would be. Despite the fact that a doctor testified to evidence of anal trauma in the vast majority of these preschoolers, the entire mainstream media took the side of the adults accused of much more graphic sexual crimes than Nassar ever was. The preschoolers were scoffed at. Much as one of the main boy accusers in the Franklin case was found dead under highly suspicious circumstances, the woman who first reported her concerns about McMartin would later die in questionable fashion as well. That tends to happen to those who point out examples of what the late Dave McGowan called the international Pedophocracy. If you’re a wildly unbalanced woman like E. Jean Carroll, your claims of rape in some unspecified year long ago are believed. But not if you’re a preschooler with a traumatized anus.

My radar is triggered when I hear constant references to not only dubious #MeToo “survivors,” but also upon noticing how every woman (again, not men) whose cancer goes into remission can don the mantle of “survivor.” As someone who wrote Bullyocracy, the definitive word on bullying, I’ve long wondered why middle-age adults, still haunted by what they experienced at the hands of other kids decades earlier, aren’t called “survivors.” Can those who’ve been ripped off in some financial scheme claim they “survived” that? They surely were real victims. Hasn’t any husband who was cheated on “survived” his wife’s adultery? What about all the blue collar workers, and common laborers, who’ve been mistreated and abused by excessively strict bosses over the decades? Weren’t they “victims?” Can’t they say they “survived” a very bad experience? We’ve all been sold defective products- lemons. Why can’t we virtue signal about being “victims” and “survivors” of crony capitalism?

What about Jared Fogle, the former Subway spokesman? Again, I watched a one-sided documentary on his case, and I still don’t know exactly what he really did with underage girls. He had a female friend, who was a former radio DJ, and oddly took it upon herself to expose him for something she had no idea he was guilty of at first. She recorded all their phone calls, and like an undercover cop in a chat room pretending to be a 12 year old, she did everything she could to lead him on, even insinuating that she thought such things were ‘hot.” The clearly smitten Fogle, who’d been bullied himself as a fat youngster, I think just started telling her what she wanted to hear, naively believing it would impress her. At any rate, Fogle was convicted and sentenced to fifteen years for child pornography and child sexual abuse. But it’s unclear just what children Fogle abused, and if so, the circumstances surrounding it.

I’ve never been raped, or sexually abused. It must be awful. According to the information I found online, the average prison sentence for rape is eight years. Believe it or not, the average sentence for murder is only 15-25 years. So how does a guy like Nassar, who was accused of inserting his fingers into various vaginas, most often while parents were present, get 100-235 years? I mean, even if he did do that to hundreds of girls, certainly that must be considered a lesser offense than actual rape, or even murder? Maybe I just don’t understand the #MeToo mindset. Perhaps I’m shamefully insensitive to all the tearful victim impact statements. I’m a civil libertarian, and my first impulse is to look for loopholes in any prosecution. I’ve found very few cases where there weren’t tons of loopholes. Reasonable doubt everywhere. But you can’t fight #MeToo, and the victimhood of “survivors.”

I know I’m going against the grain here, as usual. I’m used to being in the distinct minority. Recently, Kat Timpf, a young regular on Fox News’ popular Gutfeld program, was diagnosed with breast cancer when she gave birth to her first child. I think they said it was Stage 1- which is the beginning stage, according to my limited knowledge. Stages of cancer are sometimes like categories of hurricanes. It’s confusing. At any rate, Timpf rather surprisingly chose to undergo a double mastectomy, which doesn’t seem to have been necessary. Maybe she remembered the example set by actress and CFR member Angelina Jolie, who had a mastectomy even though she didn’t have cancer. And wasn’t “transitioning.” She said she did it because of her family history. I’m not close to being a member of the CFR, so that doesn’t make sense to me. At any rate, opting for such radical measures seems to augment the whole “survivor” status.

What is often glossed over is the fact that women do make false rape claims. And when that is exposed, they are rarely prosecuted for it. Look at the Duke lacrosse case, where racial politics were front and center, and caused an unquestioning state controlled media to not only accept the Black stripper’s ludicrous story, but also dox the White players accused, by publishing the home addresses of their families. How many men have languished in prison for years, or even decades, and then been cleared of rape by DNA evidence? How many of those who falsely accused them, robbing them of a large portion of their lives, were ever prosecuted? Isn’t that kind of the ultimate disinformation? You know, the kind the government is so concerned about? I guess it depends upon which side your disinformation is buttered on. You could argue that serving years in prison for a rape you didn’t commit is as bad as rape itself.

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On June 4th the Florida Supreme Court will hear Oral Argument in a free speech case that could affect all attorneys and other professionals in the state and their basic right to free speech. The case involves Attorney Christopher W. Crowley, a former candidate for State Attorney in Florida’s 20th Circuit. Crowley was a target of a bar complaint, and the Florida Bar is trying to take away his legal license for political speech during a partisan Republican Primary race for State Attorney.

Crowley lost in a combative political campaign, against Amira Fox for State Attorney. After the campaign, Crowley was targeted with what appear to be frivolous Bar complaints by political opponents. Instead of dismissing the complaints, the Florida Bar has engaged in an anti-First Amendment crusade. The Florida State Bar charged Christopher Crowley with defamation of his political opponent, Amira Fox, after Mr. Crowley raised concerns about his political opponent during their political campaign in a Republican primary.

The referee, in the case recommended Christopher Crowley, Esq. to a 60-day suspension of his law license, for engaging in ‘controversial’ political speech during a Republican Primary campaign in Florida’s 20th district for State Attorney. Crowley appealed this decision, and the case will be heard in the Florida Supreme Court on June 4, 2025.

Nonpartisan judicial races have strict rules for attorneys campaigning for those offices, these rules have not been construed to apply to all political races. There currently is nothing in Florida Bar rules about restrictions on running for partisan political office. This judge’s creative application of judicial rules to non-judicial races disregards the First Amendment in an area that is considered the most sacred form of speech, political speech.

The Florida Bar appeared to be applying Maoist tactics in the case attempting to coerce Crowley to metaphorically put on a dunce hat and apologize for his incorrect speech during his political campaign.

Crowley’s ordeal is featured in a chapter in a new book by Lisa Miron, called WORLD ON MUTE: How Workplace Speech Committees are Destroying our Nations, and Eliminating our Civil Liberties. The book addresses the issue of professional organizations attempting to silence free speech under the threat of licensure removal.

Surprisingly, the case has not garnered much attention from alternative media. The outcome may impact all attorneys running for political office in the State of Florida and potentially all licensed professionals.

The campaign was nasty back and forth and Crowley made an issue of his opponent Amira Fox’s father’s book that was dedicated to his daughters and her uncle who had allegedly been a PLO member. Crowley was arrested because supporters held a raffle to raise money, which he never deposited and returned. At the time Crowley alleged that it was Amira Fox who had him arrested. Crowley then alleged that Amia Fox was corrupt claiming that Amira Fox interfered with a grand jury in a case.

The actual accusations and political mudslinging are irrelevant. The issue is whether the First Amendment applies to political races. The answer should be an obvious yes.

Crowley’s attorney is arguing that his speech is protected and that the Court must use a subjective rather than an objective standard, meaning that the speaker must knowingly make false statements:

“Nor is professional speech entitled to any lesser weight on the constitutional scales. The Court “has not recognized ‘professional speech’ as a separate category of speech. Speech is not unprotected merely because it is uttered by ‘professionals.’” Nat’l Inst. of Fam. & Life Advoc. v. Becerra, 585 U.S. 755, 767 (2018). Thus, a “State may not, under the guise of prohibiting professional misconduct, ignore constitutional rights.” Id. at 769 (citation omitted). “For example, th[e] Court has applied strict scrutiny to content-based laws that regulate the noncommercial speech of lawyers.” Id. at 771. Thus, the First Amendment will not tolerate tipping the constitutional scales in favor of the State by excusing the requirement that an attorney-speaker be shown to have a subjective recklessness before penalizing defamatory speech of a public official or figure—even a public legal officer or candidate.”

Since 2020, Western nations such as Canada and Western Europe have denigrated into countries resembling former Soviet bloc countries, while Eastern Europe has appeared to be greater defenders of liberty. In America the ‘Cancel Culture’ has become a common term as individuals are cancelled on social media.

Arguably, the Florida Bar is acting under the color of law and is therefore restrained by the Constitution. The Florida Bar, while a private organization, is an instrument of the government. Since being a member in good standing is a requirement of licensure in the legal profession it is painfully obvious that the Florida Bar is acting on behalf of the State of Florida.

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How would people react if, on the third time their broken-down car was towed to the same repair shop for the same problem, the swaggering mechanic told them: “Sure — the engine doesn’t work today but — follow me on this — next year, you will drive from coast to coast, and get 90 miles to the gallon!”

Yet if a politician promises to fix the world, people applaud and follow him regardless of previous crashes.

Woodrow Wilson revolutionized the political exploitation of idealism. In his 1917 speech to Congress calling for war against Germany, Wilson proclaimed that “the world must be made safe for democracy.” He described the U.S. government as “one of the champions of the rights of mankind” and stated the goal of the war was to “bring peace and safety to all nations and make the world itself at last free.”

Wilson endlessly invoked the ideal of liberty as he seized nearly absolute power over Americans, including the power to conscript millions of Americans to fight wherever he chose (including Siberia) and to commandeer entire industries.

While Wilson is today hailed as a visionary, in his own time, he became loathed as a demagogue. The more people embraced the ideals he proclaimed, the easier it became to defraud them. Americans’ idealism was fanned by ruthless censorship of any criticism of the government’s war effort.

The 1919 Paris peace talks shredded Wilson’s pretensions and made a mockery of the cause for which he sent more than a hundred thousand Americans to their death. One of Wilson’s top aides, Henry White, later commented: “We had such high hopes of this adventure; we believed God called us and now we are doing hell’s dirtiest work.” Historian Thomas Fleming, the author of The Illusion of Victory, noted, “The British and French exploited the war to forcibly expand their empires and place millions more people under their thumbs.” Fleming concluded that one lesson of World War I is that “idealism is not synonymous with sainthood or virtue. It only sounds that way.”

The 1920 presidential election was a referendum on Wilson-style idealism. As H. L. Mencken wrote on the eve of the vote, Americans were tired “of a steady diet of white protestations and black acts; they are weary of hearing highfalutin and meaningless words; they sicken of an idealism that is oblique, confusing, dishonest, and ferocious.” Mencken explained why a typical voter would support Warren Harding: “Tired to death of intellectual charlatanry, he turns despairingly to honesty imbecility.”

Herbert Hoover’s subjugation idealism

Herbert Hoover, who campaigned as the Mastermind of the Age when he was elected president in 1928, invoked idealism to perpetuate subjugating foreigners to U.S. rule. When Congress enacted a bill to provide for the independence of the Philippine Islands, Hoover vetoed it in early 1933 because “We have a responsibility to the world … to develop and perfect freedom for these people.” Hoover rejected Congress’s bill because “it does not fulfill the idealism with which this task in human liberation was undertaken.” As long as the United States had not given Filipinos “perfect freedom,” it was entitled
to keep them under its thumb. Hoover’s assertion that idealism spurred the U.S. policy is difficult to reconcile with the killings of scores of thousands of Filipinos who resisted the U.S. takeover of their islands in the early 1900s. Hoover’s veto ensured that the United States remained mired in the Philippines until the Bataan death march and beyond.

FDR’s practical idealism

President Franklin Roosevelt was hailed as an idealist because he urged people to have faith in government to solve the nation’s problems. FDR assured the Young Democratic Clubs of America in 1940 that “you need practical idealism to make the present machinery function better.” “Practical idealism” signified FDR’s boundless faith in his own economic manipulations, such as setting the price of gold on a whim, reversing policies at the flip of a coin, and whipsawing anyone who counted on his promises. During World War II, FDR idealized American allies, touting the Soviet Union as one of the “freedom-loving nations.” Roosevelt’s glorification of the Soviets helped beget the infamous Yalta agreement that effectively consigned 100 million plus Germans, Czechs, Poles, and Hungarians to serfdom under Stalin. By deluding Americans, FDR’s idealism set the stage for a backlash that propelled the Cold War.

JFK’s service idealism

John F. Kennedy exploited idealistic appeals to capture the presidency in 1960. JFK talked as if the U.S. government could practically solve all problems, from ending tyranny (intervening everywhere against Communism) to ending worldwide poverty (with Peace Corps volunteers magically lifting foreign nations simply by their mere presence). Kennedy’s glorification of public service was simply an updating of the 1920s cult of service. But since he appealed for people to join the government instead of the Kiwanis, he was considered a visionary.

LBJ’s Vietnam idealism

In 1965, President Lyndon Johnson proclaimed, “For 188 years, the strongest fiber of America has been that thread of idealism which weaves through all our effort and all our aspiration.” Three years later, amidst rising antiwar protests, LBJ warned, “Idealism without commitment is like a bright light burning in a vacuum. Commitment without idealism can easily become frenzied and destructive.” At a 1968 presidential prayer breakfast, Johnson combined God and idealism to try to redeem his biggest muddle: “Belief in a divine providence is … a compelling challenge to men to attain the ideals of liberty, justice, peace, and compassion. It is often — as it is today in Vietnam — a call for very great sacrifice.” Johnson’s comment came the day after the start of the Viet Cong’s Tet Offensive, which stunned Americans who had swallowed LBJ’s boasting about how the enemy was nearly vanquished.

Nixon’s corrupt idealism

The backlash from LBJ’s “credibility gap” helped elect Richard Nixon, a politician renowned for dirty pool since his first red-baiting congressional victory in 1946. After his defeat in the 1960 presidential race, Nixon rebuilt his political fortunes as a born-again idealist. Bromides permeated his first presidential term: “Idealism without pragmatism is impotent…. The key to effective leadership is pragmatic idealism.” Alternatively, “Idealism without realism is impotent. Realism without idealism is immoral.” Nixon declared in 1971 at the University of Nebraska: “I believe one of America’s most priceless assets is the idealism which motivates the young people of America.”

Nixon’s invocations on idealism did not dissuade him from lying and lawbreaking across the board. Nor did gushing over youthful idealism deter him from perpetuating the Vietnam War and sending 20,000 potential American idealists to their deaths.

Reagan’s hypocritical idealism

In 1981, President Ronald Reagan told the Conservative Political Action Committee: “There is, in America, a greatness and a tremendous heritage of idealism which is a reservoir of strength and goodness. It is ours if we will but tap it.”

Reagan was deified by conservatives for preaching that “government is the problem, not the solution.” The Reagan presidency illustrates how idealizing a politician allows him to do as he pleases. The trust and support Reagan garnered enabled him to dictate a national drinking age (18), rev up the drug war, create new handouts for business and farmers, and bankroll guerrilla conflicts and repression abroad. But because Reagan constantly praised liberty, his power grabs were asterisks instead of outrages.

Clinton’s bombing idealism

Bill Clinton captured the presidency in 1992 in part thanks to idealistic-sounding  appeals for reviving faith in government. In his first term, his idealism was personified by AmeriCorps — the paid “volunteer” program that provided cheering squads when Clinton arrived at airport tarmacs around the nation. Throughout his second term, Clinton continually assured audiences: “I’m more idealistic today than I was the day that I took the Oath of Office” — as if his idealism was proof of his virtue. Clinton portrayed the  U.S. bombing of Serbia in 1999 as American idealism at its best: “Because we believe every human being has the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness … we are proud to stand with our Allies in defense of these ideals in Kosovo.” But the U.S. bombing merely reversed the roles, permitting the Kosovo Liberation Army to terrorize Serb civilians as the Serb Army had previously abused ethnic Albanians.

Bush’s military idealism

President George W. Bush portrayed his invasion of Iraq as American idealism at its best. In his May 1, 2003, “Mission Accomplished” speech aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, Bush hailed “the character of our military through history” for showing “the decency and idealism that turned enemies into allies.” Speaking three weeks later at a Republican fundraiser, he bragged, “The world has seen the strength and the idealism of the United States military.” Washington Post columnist David Ignatius declared in late 2003 that “this may be the most idealistic war fought in modern times.” Bush’s ideals did nothing to resurrect the American soldiers or Iraqi civilians killed after his perpetual brazen false claims paved the way to the U.S. attack on Iraq.

Obama’s assassination idealism

Barack Obama probably did more damage to idealism than any president since Woodrow Wilson. In his first inaugural address, Obama declared that America’s “ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience sake.” But one of Obama’s most shocking legacies was his claim of a prerogative to kill U.S. citizens labeled as terrorist suspects without trial, without notice, and without any chance for the marked individuals to legally object. Obama’s lawyers even refused to disclose the standards used for designating Americans for death. Drone strikes increased tenfold under Obama, and he personally chose who would be killed at weekly “Terror Tuesday” White House meetings that featured PowerPoint parades of potential targets.

In 2011, Obama draped his decision to bomb Libya by invoking “democratic values,” and the “ideals” that he asserted were, he said, “the true measure of American leadership.” Obama was so convinced of the righteousness of targeting dictator Muammar Qadaffi that his appointees signaled that federal law (such as the War Powers Act) could not constrain his salvation mission.  At that point, the terrorist groups fighting Qaddafi were already slaughtering civilians.  In the chaos that subsequently engulfed Libya, ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were killed during an attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi. When their corpses arrived back in the U.S., Obama hailed the victims for embodying “the courage, the hope, and yes, the idealism, that fundamental American belief that we can leave this world a little better than before.” Obama’s soothing rhetoric failed to deter the proliferation of slave markets where black migrants were openly sold in Libya.

Idealism and tyranny

Nowadays, idealism is often positive thinking about growing servitude. Idealism encourages citizens to view politics as a faith-based activity, transforming politicians from hucksters to saviors. The issue is not what government did in the past — the issue is how we must do better in the future. Politicians’ pious piffle is supposed to radically reduce the risk of subsequent perfidy.

Idealistic appeals permit politicians to stack the deck in listeners’ minds. To believe an idealistic speech is to “do good” — akin to displaying a “Support our Troops” decal on one’s automobile. Idealism is the most dangerous species of political lie. The idealistic draping confers an obligation to believe, or at least to defer. The moral bonus a politician receives for invoking ideals usually exceeds any demerits for lying. Thus, lying about ideals is a guaranteed win for politicians.

Self-government cannot survive people idealizing their rulers. Telling citizens to glorify contemporary politicians is like urging battered wives to idealize their husbands. Why should we expect political idealism to be more honest than politics? It is time to cease being idealistic about idealism.

This article was originally published in the May 2025 issue of Future of Freedom.

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International Man: Revisionist history refers to the re-examination and reinterpretation of historical events, which can be done to correct inaccuracies, update understanding, or challenge prevailing narratives.

This just sounds like applying critical thinking to history.

What’s your take?

Doug Casey: The essence of critical thinking is to question every proposition and then investigating the answers for accuracy and logic. It’s important to pursue answers to their root causes and never accept things at face value.

The problem with history, certainly as it’s taught in schools, is that its many versions are presented as fact with no nuance. Looking at history is very much like examining an elephant, where one person feels a leg and thinks it’s a tree trunk, and another feels the elephant’s trunk and thinks it’s a snake.

It’s said that the CIA made up the term “revisionist history” during the 60s as an aid to debunking interpretations they didn’t like. The powers that be, the establishment, don’t like revisionism for at least two reasons.

Number one, a thorough investigation of history requires detailed and well-explained answers. That might uncover crimes involving powerful people. They might be imprisoned, bankrupted, or seriously embarrassed. Revisionist history can overthrow the ruling order, therefore rulers always oppose it.

Number two, it can overturn myth. Myth is a double-edged sword. It’s often a good thing because it can be a tie that binds a people together, even if it’s not true. However, reality and truth are usually better than myth in the long run. So, we shouldn’t be afraid of overturning myths, even if they’re useful.

In any event, much of standard history contains crimes that should be recognized. As Gibbon said, “History is indeed little more than a catalog of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind.”

International Man: Why is there so much controversy and negative stigma associated with challenging widely accepted contemporary or historical events?

In a free society, shouldn’t that be considered healthy and necessary?

Doug Casey: Yes. But it’s never in the interests of the Establishment to uncover crimes or overturn favorable myths. Every country romances its history to present itself in the best light possible. The average guy just accepts what he’s told. As Sam Cooke’s song, “Wonderful World”, says: “Don’ know much about the Middle Ages, jus’ look at the pictures, and turn the pages.”

For instance, take the Revolutionary War. It wasn’t just a revolutionary war. It could be described as a war of secession, but people don’t like to describe it that way because that makes it comparable to the War Between the States, which was another war of secession.

Revisionist history shows that the Revolutionary War was also a civil war in which perhaps a third of the country’s population was on the side of the Crown. Only a third were rebels, and the other third were neutral. The Indians and many black slaves fought for the British. But that revelation compromises the nature of our national myth, and some people who hate the idea of America like to emphasize the negatives. I, for one, like our founding myths. But I also like truth and accuracy.

The same kind of problems arise to an even greater extent in the War Between the States—which itself is a Revisionist name for the Civil War. The myth is that it was fought to free the slaves. But that’s totally untrue. The slaves weren’t freed until the middle of the war, and then only in the southern states, not in the northern states. The main basis of the war was about taxation. And secondarily, about whether new territories could be admitted to the union as slave states.

The US government’s main source of income was import duties. But the South was paying the lion’s share of those import duties, which were raised significantly to protect northern manufacturers.

That was the major reason for the South seceding, not slavery. Slavery was highly controversial in both the North and South, but it wasn’t the reason for the war itself. Few talk about that because it seems more noble to have the victor be the good guy fighting to free slaves, as opposed to maintaining economic advantage.

You can’t maintain a free society unless you can debate about factual matters and what’s right and what’s wrong. However, teachers just repeat what the government says. And the narrative can change radically. Even as we speak, historic myths are being replaced by recently minted propaganda. We’re on the edge of seeing the statues of Washington and Jefferson replaced by those of George Floyd.

We’re not as bad by any means as China or the USSR, where the whole society was based on a lie, and it couldn’t even be questioned. But we’re moving in that direction with current views of political correctness and wokism.

International Man: The comedian Norm Macdonald once joked:

“It says here in this history book that, luckily, the good guys have won every single time. What are the odds?”

What are some historical examples of when the so-called “good guys” didn’t win?

Doug Casey: We all know the old aphorism, “I’m a freedom fighter. You are a rebel. He’s a terrorist.” It’s often a matter of perception. And the fact is that everyone thinks he’s a good guy.

Even the worst mass murderers like Alexander, Genghis Kahn, Stalin, Hitler, and Mao—all thought what they were doing was both good and necessary.

It’s a question of deciding who the good guys really are. Look at the battles between the Hatfields and the McCoys. They both thought they were on the right side of the issue. Or the wars between the Europeans and the Native Americans. Both sides had excellent arguments for killing each other.

It’s like the battle of the Alamo. Yes, the Americans were brave and fighting for something they believed in. But at the same time, the Mexican army was quite correct in trying to kick out invaders that were violating their territorial rights.

There are many examples like that. My own view is that the “good guys” are on the side of individual liberty and have a preference for non-violence.

International Man: Most people would agree with the phrase “the winners write the history books.”

However, when it comes to certain historical events, the same people would likely accuse you of being a dangerous extremist promoting hate crimes.

What do you make of this amazing display of cognitive dissonance?

Doug Casey: Well, it’s part and parcel of the study of history. Emotions get higher the closer we are to events. Especially where those who were involved are still alive. Major players in history are rarely saints; they usually have Machiavellian or Kissingerian morals. They’re inclined to cover up crimes or bad intentions. You’re not allowed to hold some views. If you do, you’re a heretic. And heretics are often burned at the stake.

Pearl Harbor is a good example. It’s now obvious that Roosevelt provoked the Japanese and was looking to force their hand and get them to attack. He was aware the attack was coming but was willing to sacrifice Pearl in order to make Americans righteously angry.

Yes, the Japanese were the aggressors. But at that point, they were being backed into a corner as the US cut off their oil and steel. People don’t want to believe that because they want to believe that the US is always in the right—we’re always the good guys. I’m sympathetic to that view, if only because the US is unique in having been founded on overtly libertarian principles. But that doesn’t mean its government always, or even usually, acts according to its principles.

The Kennedy assassination in 1963 is another example. I have no doubt that Oswald was a patsy. Who did it? I don’t know, but I suspect it was the CIA that Kennedy wanted to disband. It amounted to a coup d’etat. But, whatever the real facts are, they’ll never come out because it would make the US look like a banana republic, reveal criminals, and destroy more of our founding myth.

We really don’t know exactly who’s responsible for 9/11. All we know is the accepted narrative. There are all kinds of unanswered but obvious questions, like what actually happened to building number 7. Looking for the truth, even in the most intellectually honest matter, will get you accused of being a conspiracy theorist.

International Man: Given everything we’ve discussed today, what are the implications as the world is headed for its most chaotic period since WW2? What can the average person do to protect himself and even profit?

Doug Casey: There are at least three major disasters unfolding before our very eyes: the Ukraine, Gaza, and potentially Taiwan. And I’m afraid that the US government is on the wrong side of all of them.

The Russians were pushed into attacking the Ukraine much the way the Japanese were pushed into attacking Pearl Harbor. It’s a border war between Kiev and Moscow that has been blown way out of proportion. The US thinks it’s clever to sacrifice Ukrainian manpower to hurt Russia.

Gaza amounts to another type of border war, albeit one that’s been going on for about 3000 years. Who really owns Palestine, the Jews or the Arabs? Why is that a concern of the US?

As for Taiwan, I suspect historians will see a lot of similarities to what happened in Vietnam and Korea. In all three, the US gets involved in a conflict on the other side of the world in completely alien cultures, millions die, and there’s a huge amount of destruction.

In all these cases, Americans are writing history at the moment. But the US, which has transformed into a degenerate empire, is now on the wrong side of history. A hundred years from now, other powers will be writing the standard version of history—not us. But that doesn’t augur well for Americans in the here and now, that’s for sure.

So, what can the average person do to protect himself or even profit?

Plan your life around it being an unstable world. And in that kind of world, you want stable investments that won’t dry up and blow away.

I am a fan of two approaches. One includes owning gold and real estate—physical things. The second would be adopting the stance of a speculator to capitalize on the chaos that is definitely going to wash over the world in the near future.

Reprinted with permission from International Man.

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“If one company or small group of people manages to develop godlike digital superintelligence, they could take over the world. At least when there’s an evil dictator, that human is going to die. But for an AI, there would be no death. It would live forever. And then you’d have an immortal dictator from which we can never escape.”—Elon Musk

The Deep State is not going away. It’s just being replaced.

Replaced not by a charismatic autocrat or even a shadowy bureaucracy, but by artificial intelligence (AI)—unfeeling, unaccountable, and immortal.

As we stand on the brink of a new technological order, the machinery of power is quietly shifting into the hands of algorithms.

Under Donald Trump’s watch, that shift is being locked in for at least a generation.

Trump’s latest legislative initiative—a 10-year ban on AI regulation buried within the “One Big Beautiful Bill”—strips state and local governments of the ability to impose any guardrails on artificial intelligence until 2035.

Despite bipartisan warnings from 40 state attorneys general, the bill passed the House and awaits Senate approval. It is nothing less than a federal green light for AI to operate without oversight in every sphere of life, from law enforcement and employment to healthcare, education, and digital surveillance.

This is not innovation.

This is institutionalized automation of tyranny.

This is how, within a state of algorithmic governance, code quickly replaces constitutional law as the mechanism for control.

We are rapidly moving from a society ruled by laws and due process to one ruled by software.

Algorithmic governance refers to the use of machine learning and automated decision-making systems to carry out functions once reserved for human beings: policing, welfare eligibility, immigration vetting, job recruitment, credit scoring, and judicial risk assessments.

In this regime, the law is no longer interpreted. It is executed. Automatically. Mechanically. Without room for appeal, discretion, or human mercy.

These AI systems rely on historical data—data riddled with systemic bias and human error—to make predictions and trigger decisions. Predictive policing algorithms tell officers where to patrol and whom to stop. Facial recognition technology flags “suspects” based on photos scraped from social media. Risk assessment software assigns threat scores to citizens with no explanation, no oversight, and no redress.

These algorithms operate in black boxes, shielded by trade secrets and protected by national security exemptions. The public cannot inspect them. Courts cannot challenge them. Citizens cannot escape them.

The result? A population sorted, scored, and surveilled by machinery.

This is the practical result of the Trump administration’s deregulation agenda: AI systems given carte blanche to surveil, categorize, and criminalize the public without transparency or recourse.

And these aren’t theoretical dangers—they’re already happening.

Examples of unchecked AI and predictive policing show that precrime is already here.

Once you are scored and flagged by a machine, the outcome can be life-altering—as it was for Michael Williams, a 65-year-old man who spent nearly a year in jail for a crime he didn’t commit. Williams was behind the wheel when a passing car fired at his vehicle, killing his 25-year-old passenger, who had hitched a ride.

Despite no motive, no weapon, and no eyewitnesses, police charged Williams based on an AI-powered gunshot detection program called ShotSpotter. The system picked up a loud bang near the area and triangulated it to Williams’ vehicle. The charge was ultimately dropped for lack of evidence.

This is precrime in action. A prediction, not proof. An algorithm, not an eyewitness.

Programs like ShotSpotter are notorious for misclassifying noises like fireworks and construction as gunfire. Employees have even manually altered data to fit police narratives. And yet these systems are being combined with predictive policing software to generate risk maps, target individuals, and justify surveillance—all without transparency or accountability.

It doesn’t stop there.

AI is now flagging families for potential child neglect based on predictive models that pull data from Medicaid, mental health, jail, and housing records. These models disproportionately target poor and minority families. The algorithm assigns risk scores from 1 to 20. Families and their attorneys are never told what the scores are, or that they were used.

Imagine losing your child to the foster system because a secret algorithm said you might be a risk.

This is how AI redefines guilt.

The Trump administration’s approach to AI regulation reveals a deeper plan to deregulate democracy itself.

Rather than curbing these abuses, the Trump administration is accelerating them.

An executive order titled “Removing Barriers to American Leadership in Artificial Intelligence,” signed by President Trump in early 2025, revoked prior AI safeguards, eliminated bias audits, and instructed agencies to prioritize “innovation” over ethics. The order encourages every federal agency to adopt AI quickly, especially in areas like policing and surveillance.

Under the guise of “efficiency,” constitutional protections are being erased.

Trump’s 10-year moratorium on AI regulation is the logical next step. It dismantles the last line of defense—state-level resistance—and ensures a uniform national policy of algorithmic dominance.

The result is a system in which government no longer governs. It processes.

The federal government’s AI expansion is building a surveillance state that no human authority can restrain.

Welcome to Surveillance State 2.0, the Immortal Machine.

Over 1700 uses of AI have already been reported across federal agencies, with hundreds directly impacting safety and rights. Many agencies, including the Departments of Homeland Security, Veterans Affairs, and Health and Human Services, are deploying AI for decision-making without public input or oversight.

This is what the technocrats call an “algocracy”—rule by algorithm.

In an algocracy, unelected developers and corporate contractors hold more power over your life than elected officials.

Your health, freedom, mobility, and privacy are subject to automated scoring systems you can’t see and can’t appeal.

And unlike even the most entrenched human dictators, these systems do not die. They do not forget. They are not swayed by mercy or reason. They do not stand for re-election.

They persist.

When AI governs by prediction, due process disappears in a haze of machine logic.

The most chilling effect of this digital regime is the death of due process.

What court can you appeal to when an algorithm has labeled you a danger? What lawyer can cross-examine a predictive model? What jury can weigh the reasoning of a neural net trained on flawed data?

You are guilty because the machine says so. And the machine is never wrong.

When due process dissolves into data processing, the burden of proof flips. The presumption of innocence evaporates. Citizens are forced to prove they are not threats, not risks, not enemies.

And most of the time, they don’t even know they’ve been flagged.

This erosion of due process is not just a legal failure—it is a philosophical one, reducing individuals to data points in systems that no longer recognize their humanity.

Writer and visionary Rod Serling warned of this very outcome more than half a century ago: a world where technology, masquerading as progress under the guise of order and logic, becomes the instrument of tyranny.

That future is no longer fiction. What Serling imagined is now reality.

The time to resist is now, before freedom becomes obsolete.

To those who call the shots in the halls of government, “we the people” are merely the means to an end.

“We the people”—who think, who reason, who take a stand, who resist, who demand to be treated with dignity and care, who believe in freedom and justice for all—have become obsolete, undervalued citizens of a totalitarian state that, in the words of Serling, “has patterned itself after every dictator who has ever planted the ripping imprint of a boot on the pages of history since the beginning of time. It has refinements, technological advances, and a more sophisticated approach to the destruction of human freedom.”

In this sense, we are all Romney Wordsworth, the condemned man in Serling’s Twilight Zone episode “The Obsolete Man.”

“The Obsolete Man,” a story arc about the erasure of individual worth by a mechanized state, underscores the danger of rendering humans irrelevant in a system of cold automation and speaks to the dangers of a government that views people as expendable once they have outgrown their usefulness to the State. Yet—and here’s the kicker—this is where the government through its monstrous inhumanity also becomes obsolete.

As Serling noted in his original script for “The Obsolete Man,” “Any state, any entity, any ideology which fails to recognize the worth, the dignity, the rights of Man…that state is obsolete.”

Like Serling’s totalitarian state, our future will be defined by whether we conform to a dehumanizing machine order—or fight back before the immortal dictator becomes absolute.

We now face a fork in the road: resist the rise of the immortal dictator or submit to the reign of the machine.

This is not a battle against technology, but a battle against the unchecked, unregulated, and undemocratic use of technology to control people.

We must demand algorithmic transparency, data ownership rights, and legal recourse against automated decisions. We need a Digital Bill of Rights that guarantees:

• The right to know how algorithms affect us.
• The right to challenge and appeal automated decisions.
• The right to privacy and data security.
• The right to be free from automated surveillance and predictive policing.
• The right to be forgotten.

Otherwise, AI becomes the ultimate enforcer of a surveillance state from which there is no escape.

As Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google, warned: “We know where you are. We know where you’ve been. We can more or less know what you’re thinking about. Your digital identity will live forever… because there’s no delete button.”

An immortal dictator, indeed.

Let us be clear: the threat is not just to our privacy, but to democracy itself.

As I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, the time to fight back is now—before the code becomes law, and freedom becomes a memory.

This article was originally published on The Rutherford Institute.

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Colorful career criminal Willie Sutton once may (or may not) have been asked why he robbed banks. “Because that is where the money is,” he supposedly replied. A similar principle may explain the first foreign trip of President Donald J. Trump’s second term, which was not to a traditional U.S. ally in Europe. Rather, he set off to visit the capitals of the Gulf hydrocarbon potentates Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates. In royal palaces there, he feasted and was offered hundreds of billions of dollars in investments in American companies and opportunities for the Trump Organization, too. Qatar even courted controversy by giving him a $400 million Boeing 747-8 plane to serve as a future Air Force One.

And the publicity was regal. Strikingly missing, however, was a side trip to Israel or any evident consultations with the extremist government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Instead, Israel was frozen out and blindsided by Trump’s pronouncements. On the eve of his trip, the president took the Israelis by surprise when he abruptly announced that he would halt his (costly and fruitless) bombing campaign against the Houthis of Yemen. Israeli leaders then had to listen to Trump proclaim that the U.S. “has no stronger partner” than Saudi Arabia, with which he brokered a $142 billion deal for American arms. The United Arab Emirates has a sovereign wealth fund of $2.2 trillion, while Saudi Arabia’s is $1.1 trillion and that country’s leader, Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, has already deposited $2 billion of it in the investment firm of Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner. Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund has $526 billion. And such sums don’t even include those countries’ vast currency reserves, earned by selling petroleum and fossil gas.

And in that single, several-day trip, President Trump managed to realign U.S. Middle Eastern policy to center on — and yes, it should be capitalized! — an Axis of the Plutocrats, Gulf sheikhs who are using their galactic fortunes to reshape the region from Libya to Sudan, Egypt to Syria, and who are hungrily eyeing new investment opportunities in areas like the emerging artificial intelligence industry.

Syria: A Very Strong Background

Oh, and while he was traveling Trump revealed that Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan and Saudi Arabia’s bin Salman had indeed convinced him to lift American sanctions on Syria, a step distinctly opposed by the Israelis. While in the Saudi capital of Riyadh, he even held a surprise meeting with fundamentalist Syrian President Ahmad al-Shara, who had once led an al-Qaeda affiliate. Asked about whether the Israelis opposed the step, Trump replied, “I don’t know. I didn’t ask them about that.” In fact, the Associated Press reported that, in an April meeting with Trump, Netanyahu had specifically pleaded with him not to lift those sanctions on Syria, since he claimed he feared that the new fundamentalist government there might eventually stage an attack on Israel.

Trump appears to have been entirely unmoved by Netanyahu’s plea. After meeting al-Shara in Riyadh, the president summed up his view of the former guerrilla and supporter of hardline Salafi Islam this way: “Young, attractive guy. Tough guy. Strong past. Very strong past. Fighter.” On recognizing Damascus’s new government and issuing a waiver on those congressionally mandated sanctions, Trump observed, “Now it’s their time to shine… So, I say, ‘Good luck, Syria.’ Show us something very special.” It’s worth noting that al-Shara claims he wants good relations with all his country’s neighbors and is open to peace with Israel.

You wouldn’t know it from Netanyahu’s heated rhetoric, but during the Syrian civil war of the last decade, Israel did give medical help to the Support Front (Jabhat al-Nusra) that al-Shara founded and led when it was fighting against Bashar al-Assad’s dictatorial regime. Since al-Shara’s group sometimes persecuted the heterodox Druze minority in Syria, this step outraged Israel’s own Druze minority, some of whom at one point attacked an ambulance taking a wounded Syrian rebel to an Israeli hospital, while the group’s leaders lobbied Netanyahu to cease aiding the al-Qaeda-linked outfit.

Netanyahu’s recent suggestions to Trump that al-Shara, now in control of much of Syria, poses a threat to Israel, were therefore wholly disingenuous. Moreover, the jackboot is entirely on the other foot. As soon as the revolution in Damascus succeeded, Netanyahu ordered an orgy of destruction, bombing naval ships in the Syrian port of Latakia and military installations across the country, leaving Syria virtually helpless. Israeli troops then marched into Syria, occupying swathes of its territory and taking control of a dam that supplies 40% of its water. Israeli far-right cabinet member Bezalel Smotrich then pledged that Israel’s multi-front war of expansion there would only end when Syria was — you couldn’t put it more bluntly than this — “dismantled.”

Now, Israeli analysts not only fear a resurgent Syria but also worry that since Erdogan has Trump’s ear on Syrian policy, he will be emboldened. Turkey, after all, backed the rebel group that has now taken power and is their main international sponsor. Turkish fighter jets are already operating in northern Syrian air space, and Israel’s attempt to establish hegemony over its southern regions is endangered by Turkish claims that, going back to Ottoman times, Syria has always been in its sphere of influence.

Iran: No Nuclear Dust

Trump also sidelined Netanyahu during his trip by continuing to press for a new nuclear deal with Iran. His Gulf Arab hosts showed a collective enthusiasm for the ongoing talks and Trump revealed that Qatar’s ruler, Tamim Bin Hamad Al Thani, had indeed lobbied him to begin direct discussions with Iran. The Gulf Arab monarchies fear being caught in the crossfire of any future American-Israeli war with Iran. The leaders of Qatar and the other Gulf states are anxious that the (all too literal) fallout from any aerial strikes on enriched nuclear materials in Iran could drift onto their populations, affecting their water supplies. Trump tried to reassure his hosts that “we’re not going to be making any nuclear dust in Iran,” adding that he wanted to try negotiations first in hopes of forestalling any such outcome.

During both the first Trump administration and the Biden administration, Washington’s pitch to the Gulf Arab states was that they should recognize Israel, do business with it, and form a military alliance with it against Iran. Jared Kushner succeeded in making this argument to the postage-stamp Gulf countries of the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, which signed the Abraham Accords with Israel on September 15, 2020.

However, Kushner and then-President Biden failed to bring Saudi Arabia aboard. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman resisted going on a war footing with Iran, especially after the devastating 2019 attack by that country or one of its proxies on the Kingdom’s Abqaiq refinery, which underlined Riyadh’s vulnerability. Not surprisingly, then, in March 2023, the Saudi foreign minister joined his Iranian counterpart in Beijing, where the two countries restored diplomatic relations and began deconfliction talks.

Once Israel launched its total war on the Gazan population in October 2023, bin Salman could hardly sign on to the Abraham Accords. In the region, it would have looked as if he were helping to destroy the Palestinian Arabs while putting a target on Iran, one of the Palestinians’ few remaining state champions. Unlike Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia has a substantial citizen population — some 19 million people — whose opinions the government has to be at least a little bit anxious about, especially since the blood of the average Saudi is indeed boiling at the daily atrocities being committed by Israel in Gaza. Last year, bin Salman’s office leaked to Politico that he feared he would be assassinated if he recognized Israel under such grim circumstances and he insisted on the need for an independent Palestinian state (which seemed to get Washington off his back on the issue).

In addition, Trump appears to have developed the same fascination that possessed Barack Obama when it comes to “opening” Iran the way Richard Nixon once opened China. Nothing, of course, could be more unwelcome in Tel Aviv. Netanyahu has repeatedly threatened to attack Iran’s civilian nuclear enrichment facilities (though Western intelligence agencies do not believe that country actually has a nuclear weapons program). In an April meeting, Trump informed Netanyahu that he wanted to try negotiations before anybody attacked Iran and pointedly gave the prime minister a copy of his book The Art of the Deal.

Qatar: A Fundamental Role

If Qatar did convince Trump to try negotiating with Iran, then Sheikh Tamim won a major round in the contest for influence with the American president. It was a victory in keeping with Doha’s longstanding regional role as a mediator and seeker of peaceful solutions to conflict. And the rise of Qatari influence is another blow to Netanyahu, who has attempted to sideline the Gulf gas giant even though he was happy to make use of its services.

Since Hamas’s bloodthirsty October 7, 2023, attack on Israel, elements of the Israeli government and its supporters have attempted to blame Qatar for supposedly supporting and bankrolling Hamas. The allegations are breathtakingly false and serve as a smokescreen for Hamas’s actual patron (in a manner of speaking), Netanyahu himself. They were aimed, however, precisely at turning Qatar into a distrusted regional pariah, a ploy that has so far failed spectacularly.

That the fundamentalist Hamas movement came to power at the ballot box in Gaza in 2006 and could not be dislodged struck Netanyahu as a potential blessing. The bad blood between Hamas in Gaza and the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) on the West Bank left Palestinians politically divided. Netanyahu made that very rivalry a pretext for preventing the establishment of a state for the five million stateless Palestinians under Israeli occupation. He put severe import-export restrictions on Gaza but otherwise allowed Hamas to run it as its own fiefdom. Hamas rocket fire from time to time (which seldom did any real damage) was a price Netanyahu was then willing to pay. He had a close associate act as a go-between regarding transfers of money from Qatar and Egypt into Gaza for civilian aid and administration. From 2021 on, Egypt and Qatar deposited aid money for Gaza civilian reconstruction in an Israeli bank account, and then Israel transferred it to the Gazans.

That’s right: Bibi Netanyahu was once functionally Gaza’s comptroller. Moreover, in 2011-2012, the Obama administration asked Qatar to host members of the Hamas civilian politbureau so that they could take part in indirect negotiations with both the U.S. and Israel. The favor Qatar did for Washington and Tel Aviv, however, would prove burdensome to its diplomacy. In 2018, the emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim, grew so frustrated with Hamas that he decided to kick its officials out and cease sending aid to Gaza. Terrified that his divide-and-rule approach to the Palestinians might be jeopardized, Netanyahu frantically dispatched the head of the Israeli intelligence outfit Mossad to Qatar to plead with the emir to continue the arrangement.

In 2020, The Times of Israel revealed that Mossad head Yossi Cohen had written a letter to Tamim about the Gaza money transfers, saying: “This aid has undoubtedly played a fundamental role in achieving the continued improvement of the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip and ensuring stability and security in the region.” As late as 2023, other Israeli government officials were still sending similar messages, according to that paper. The subsequent attempt of the Netanyahu government to shift blame for its disgraceful Gaza policy onto Qatar has struck few seasoned observers as plausible.

Regarding Trump’s recent visit, the Israeli genocide in Gaza was the one outstanding issue on which Gulf leaders appear to have made little headway. After a roundtable with Qatari business leaders, the president said of Gaza, “Let the United States get involved and make it just a freedom zone.” These remarks, wholly detached from reality, did not clarify whether he still agreed with Netanyahu on a plan to ethnically cleanse the Gaza Strip, which no one in the Arab Gulf could accept. In any case, insiders say Trump is frustrated that Netanyahu doesn’t “wrap up” the war, but that the president has not exerted the pressure necessary to stop it.

A Stark Pivot

Trump’s foreign policy trip marked a stark pivot away from what had long been a neoconservative version of Middle Eastern policymaking in Washington. In the era of President George W. Bush, some officials typically argued that Israel was Washington’s only reliable democratic partner in the Middle East and that all policy in the region should be organized around that reality. In the process, of course, they downplayed the plight of the Palestinians, claiming in 2002 that peace would only come in the region when the Iraqi government of Saddam Hussein was overthrown. They gradually developed a rhetoric for stuffing Washington’s version of democracy down the gullets of Middle Eastern regimes — at the point of a gun, if necessary. They either marginalized Arab regimes or sought to scare them into an alliance with Israel. Their ultimate goal then was a war on Iran that would overthrow the government there. “Everyone wants to go to Baghdad. Real men want to go to Tehran,” they used to proclaim in a creepy combination of male chauvinism and juvenile jingoism.

Trump’s own regime is, of course, not free of either toxic masculinity or a jejune hyper-nationalism. However, unlike Bush and the neocons, the 47th president seems uninterested in kicking off long, debilitating foreign wars, which his base has come to hate. Still, think of him, at least in part, as Trump of Arabia. Of course, he’s mainly interested in making money for himself and his wealthy backers there. If Israel gets in the way of deal-making with the Gulf plutocrats, it could become an annoyance that Trump might feel he can’t afford. So far, however, the president seems unwilling to make the hard choices necessary to end the genocide and position the Middle East and the U.S. for prosperity, leaving us all in limbo with only a new Trump Tower in Dubai to show for it.

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Elon Musk expressed his disappointment in the Trump administrations bill, passed by the House, that avoided an automatic tax increase that would have occurred at the conclusion of 2025 by making permeant the 2017 tax reductions and which increased spending on defense and US border security.  Musk mistakenly thinks that this bill undermines his and DOGE’s effort to reduce the federal deficit.

Musk should see his and DOGE’s success not in terms of deficit reduction, but in terms of eliminating waste, fraud, and grift from the federal budget.  According to reports, Musk and DOGE have stopped the theft of $175 billion from American taxpayers who have desperate needs for their own money.  Instead, the money has gone to fake companies set up by Democrats to enrich themselves and their political allies via government contracts at the expense of the American people.

Reducing the grift by $175 billion is no small achievement. It could be much larger, but corrupt Democrat judges and media are at work blocking DOGE and shutting down Elon Musk.

What Musk should emphasize is the contrast between Trump being the peace president and Trump’s increase in military spending.

America has dangerous internal enemies, but its foreign ones are manufactured by the CIA, which needs enemies for its budget and power, by the Israel Lobby, which hopes to continue using the US against Arabs and to convince Washington to attack Iran, and by the Zionist neoconservative closely allied with Netanyahu who assert US hegemony as defined by the Wolfowitz Doctrine. 

I am now going to make a statement that Musk, financial journalists, American conservatives, and Republicans will dismiss as nonsense:

The US deficit is not a problem as long as the US dollar is the world reserve currency.

The national debt of the country that is the world reserve currency comprises the reserves of the central banks of the world.  As long as the US dollar is the means of settling international balances, an increase in the issue of US Treasuries means an increase in the reserves of the central banks in the world.  The foreign central banks and their governments are happy.  With more reserves (US debt held in US Treasuries), central banks can expand their country’s money supply and the country can grow.

The world would be unhappy if the US debt ceased to grow as it would mean the central bank reserves of all other countries would stagnate, thus limiting growth.

Those who worry that the US cannot pay off the bonds representing its national debt do not understand that the US debt is denominated in US dollars and can be easily paid by the Federal Reserve creating dollars to redeem the bonds.

It seems forever that I have been trying to teach economists, the Treasury, the Federal Reserve, the financial journalists, the Republicans, and conservatives that as long as the dollar is the reserve currency America’s national debt will be held in the form of US Treasuries as reserves in the world’s central banks. As US debt rises, so does the reserves of the world’s central  banks, and everyone is happy.

The danger to US national debt is not its size.  The danger is the weaponization of the dollar which threatens the continued acceptance of the dollar as reserve currency.  Sanctions on countries and the seizure of the Russian central  bank’s dollar reserves introduce real risk into holding reserves in US dollars.

What is threatening America’s ability to finance its debt are the US sanctions that have caused the rise of BRICS and the search for alternative payment methods to the US dollar.

Why this simple fact is too complicated for economists, financial journalists, politicians, conservatives, and Elon Musk to understand is beyond me. The US dollar has been the reserve currency for about 80 years.  For most of this time conservatives and David Stockman have predicted America’s imminent death by debt.

Losing the role of world currency is deadly.  When Great Britain lost the role to the US after World War II, the British transitioned from riches to rags.

The post The Problem Is the Weaponization of the Dollar, Not the US National Debt appeared first on LewRockwell.

We don’t understand the negotiations in Ukraine and the Middle East because we don’t understand the difference between wars and civil conflicts. We approach peacemaking as if it were a matter of dividing up common property during a divorce, after a few years of living together. But wars are of unparalleled intensity and are rooted in long-standing conflicts, often spanning several generations. Generally speaking, material conditions, suffering, and violence are of secondary importance compared to injustices.

We know nothing about the content of the negotiations the Trump administration has conducted with the Yemeni Ansar Allah, and we know only a very small amount about those it is conducting with Iran, Israel, and Russia. We know nothing more than a few statements here and there, not intended to make us understand what’s happening, but rather to keep those who oppose peace at a distance and reassure those who hope for it.

Furthermore, the negotiating method of this business leader turned head of state, like Donald Trump, is dizzying. He strives to evoke incoherent positions and maintain none, simply to shake up his partners in the hope of getting their assets out of their pockets. This method, which has nothing diplomatic about it, ignores the underlying causes of conflicts. It only acknowledges what each side complains about. Ultimately, it can lead to agreements that some signatories might accept at the moment, but later regret.

In any case, we must act quickly. The wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, even though they have diminished in intensity, continue to kill and destroy. The sensational announcements that this or that war could have been resolved in a few days have already run up against harsh realities.

True diplomats and true warriors don’t aim to win over others, but to live with them. They can’t get along with business leaders who want to be the best, but they can solve problems with the help of those who intend to produce what can be useful to others. Donald Trump is of this ilk.

However, the current problems are not Russian, but primarily American. This could also be the case with Palestine and Iran. Making progress on the Ukrainian conflict requires, first and foremost, not changing the Russian point of view, but addressing the unconditional support of some Westerners for the “integral nationalists,” historical allies of the Nazis. It quickly became clear to the Trump team that the Russian claim to “denazify” Ukraine was not a war propaganda invention [1]. There are several hundred monuments to the glory of Reich collaborators in Ukraine, not to mention buildings and avenues bearing their names [2]. Reading the works of Dmytro Dontsov, particularly his book Націоналізм (Nationalism), is now mandatory in the Ukrainian armed forces; a work equivalent to Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf (My Struggle) [3]. The most important church in Ukraine was banned because it recognizes the authority of the Patriarch of Moscow. Several million books were burned because they were written in Russian, that evil language, or because they were written by Russian authors, such as Alexander Pushkin (1799-1837) or Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910). All opposition political parties have been banned, and the current president, Volodymyr Zelensky, has banned new elections by extending the martial law that prohibits them every three months.

To address this issue, Donald Trump must give the Ukrainians something in return. He chose to question the savagery Russia displays when it is certain it is right, which it is. The Western press chose to focus only on the passage where the US president wonders if Vladimir Putin has gone mad. But in the same post, he also denounced Volodymyr Zelensky’s speech. He thus equated the Russian president’s cruelty with the Ukrainian leader’s bad faith. It is important to realize that while emotionally he gives the Ukrainians the upper hand, politically he gives it to the Russians.

It turns out that we belong to a civilization where emotion has replaced reason. We mourn with the fundamental nationalists, believing we share the suffering of the Ukrainians. However, in time, we will recognize the facts and turn against the fundamental nationalists we support today, or even against Ukrainians in general, because we will be ashamed of our current positions. This is the way of history: we always return to positions we can be proud of.

Vladimir Putin has already anticipated our reversal. According to him, the European Union’s unilateral coercive measures will not last. We will eventually return to our former loves, when we celebrated Franco-Russian friendship. This is why he is holding back his army, whose military superiority would have allowed him to capture Odessa long ago and thus complete the reconstruction of the old Russia.

This is what’s at stake now. Territorial boundaries matter little compared to relationships between people. Material issues are always secondary to individual freedom. The people living in Ukraine will have no trouble accepting the partition of their country once they are freed from the pressure exerted on them by the fascists who massacred their great-grandparents.

Donald Trump knew nothing about the history of Russia and Ukraine, but he’s learning quickly. He no longer believes the Western delusions that Moscow wants to invade Ukraine, and then the rest of Europe. Nor does he believe the delusions of Kaja Kallas and the Balts, for whom Russia is a “prison of peoples” that must be dismembered.

Similarly, Donald Trump knew nothing about the history of Israel and Iran, but he learned that the revisionist Zionists of Yitzak Shamir organized SAVAK, the political police of the Shah, Reza Pahlevi, and his Prime Minister, the Nazi General Fazlollah Zahedi, who had just left British jails after the overthrow of Mohammad Mossadegh [4]. It is difficult to admit, but yes, the terrible SAVAK was organized by Israeli Jews, “revisionist Zionists,” in the service of a Nazi general [5], just as it is difficult to admit that the Ukrainian integral nationalists killed many more of their compatriots than foreign enemies. Donald Trump and his negotiator, Steve Witkoff, have understood that what is at stake in the Middle East is not military nuclear power (even if it is Israel and not Iran that has the bomb), but the second round of crimes committed by the Shah’s regime with the discreet support of certain Israelis.

—

[1] “Who are the Ukrainian integral nationalists ?”, by Thierry Meyssan, Translation Roger Lagassé, Voltaire Network, 15 November 2022.

[2] « Nazi collaborator monuments in Ukraine », Lev Golinkin, Foward, January 27, 2021.

[3] Le suprémacisme blanc : Peuples autochtones et Great Reset, Lucien Cerise, Culture et racines (2021).

[4] « SAVAK : A Feared and Pervasive Force », Richard T. Sale, Washington Post, May 9, 1977. Debacle : The American Failure in Iran. Michael Ledeen, Vintage (1982).

[5] “The contradictions of modern Iran” Part One, Part Two, by Thierry Meyssan, Translation Roger Lagassé, Voltaire Network, 4 August 2020.

The post How Donald Trump Discovers the Art of Political Negotiation appeared first on LewRockwell.

The Biden administration was aware of cardiovascular dangers associated with the COVID-19 vaccines as early as its second month in office yet delayed disclosing them for months, according to a report by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.

The Daily Wire obtained a copy of the report, which uncovered a February 2021 email from Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC) Vaccine Safety Technical Work Group (VaST) co-lead Lauri Markowitz that reported of the almost 1,000 post-vaccination deaths reported at the time, those with “known” causes were “often cardiovascular.”

The report further noted that Israel, which began vaccinating earlier than the United States, notified CDC officials that it found “large reports of myocarditis, particularly in young people, following the administration of the Pfizer vaccine.”

However, “(r)ather than provide the public and health care providers with immediate and transparent information regarding the risk of myocarditis following mRNA COVID-19 vaccination, the Biden administration waited until late June 2021 to announce changes to the labels for the Moderna and Pfizer COVID-19 vaccines based on the ‘suggested increased risks’ of myocarditis and pericarditis,” the report found. “Even though CDC and FDA officials were well aware of the risk of myocarditis following COVID-19 vaccination, the Biden administration opted to withhold issuing a formal warning to the public for months about the safety concerns, jeopardizing the health of young Americans.”

“For a number of months, they were talking about these things. At some point in time, they actually internally said, ‘Is there a signal of myocarditis, a safety signal?’ And the answer was ‘Yes,’” said Republican Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, chair of the committee. “And yet, a couple of days later, they decided not to issue a warning on the Health Alert Network (HAN). Rather than provide informed consent, the federal health agencies, the Biden administration, covered it up. They downplayed the signals.”

Johnson added that the Biden administration stonewalled his committee, but the Trump administration is “beginning to produce records, pursuant to the chairman’s subpoena, that should have been provided years ago, without redactions, to Congress and the public.”

The federal Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) reports 38,615 deaths, 220,701 hospitalizations, 22,531 heart attacks, and 29,150 myocarditis and pericarditis cases as of April 25, among other ailments. CDC researchers have recognized a “high verification rate of reports of myocarditis to VAERS after mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccination,” leading to the conclusion that “under-reporting is more likely” than over-reporting.

An analysis of 99 million people across eight countries published in the journal Vaccine “observed significantly higher risks of myocarditis following the first, second and third doses” of mRNA-based COVID vaccines, as well as signs of increased risk of “pericarditis, Guillain-Barré syndrome, and cerebral venous sinus thrombosis,” and other “potential safety signals that require further investigation.” In April 2024, the CDC was forced to release by court order 780,000 previously undisclosed reports of serious adverse reactions, and a study out of Japan found “statistically significant increases” in cancer deaths after third doses of mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines, and offered several theories for a causal link.

In January, a long-awaited Florida grand jury report on the COVID vaccine manufacturers found that while only a miniscule percentage of the millions of vaccinations resulted in serious harm based on the data it had access to, such events do occur, and there are “profound and serious issues” in pharmaceutical companies’ review process, including reluctance to share what evidence of adverse events they did find.

This article was originally published on Lifesite News.

The post Biden Admin Knew Covid Shot Risks in Early 2021 But Kept Silent for Months: Senate Report appeared first on LewRockwell.

Americans are taught in school that the Smoot-Hawley tariff legislation of 1930 greatly exacerbated the Great Depression and sent the world spinning off into a decade of debt deflation and economic contraction. This seems to make sense until we remember that the history of the United States over the past century was written largely by progressives. In fact, the Great Depression began in 1920 with a decade of falling prices for farm products, a deflationary wave that eventually engulfed the real estate sector and the entire US economy.

What is missed by many discussions of Smoot-Hawley during and after that period, is the fact that the economic collapse of the 1930s was already a given with or without the new tariff law. The impetus behind the political decision to raise tariffs was a misguided reaction to the collapse of agricultural prices, but the force behind this deflationary wave was primarily “positive” factors such as new technology and innovation. The deflation that began after WWI decimated farm communities and eventually led to the collapse of real estate prices, particularly Florida real estate.

Support for protectionism was the consistent refrain from the corporate and farm lobbies in Washington in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and was supported by members of both political parties. But the real underlying cause of the powerful political push to raise the existing tariffs even higher at the end of 1929 may be found in the substantial changes that were occurring in the American economy.

Many historians and economists blame the level of tariffs after World War I and particularly during the Great Depression for making more severe the economic contraction and unemployment following the 1929 market crash. The passage of the Fordney-McCumber Tarif Act in 1922 symbolized the unique Republican penchant for trade protectionism — and currency inflation — that stretched decades back in time to the party’s inception in the 1850s.

In his 2005 book, “Making Sense of Smoot Hawley,” Bernard Beaudreau argues that the imposition of tariff protection for U.S. industry in 1930 was simply a continuation of the policies implemented by the Republican Party after they returned to power in 1920. Beaudreau cites the rising productivity of U.S. factories, the spread of electrification throughout America, and the continued influx of cheap foreign-produced food and manufactured goods as the chief cause of the deflation during this period. Bread production, for example, became automated in the 1920s, contributing to a decline in bread prices.

Imports were still perceived to be a threat by the American manufacturers of that day, despite already high tariff levels. Underemployment was the result of the lack of demand and thus falling product prices that resulted in the 1930s. American industry became too efficient too quickly, resulting in a global surplus of goods and an equally dangerous lack of demand. Air-conditioning and improved transport helped to leverage the future value of Florida swamp land into a towering speculative bubble that collapsed two years before the Great Crash of 1929.

A century before the invention of such things as “artificial intelligence” or AI, American workers worried about technology taking their livelihoods. Senator Reed Smoot (1862-1941), Republican of Utah, said of Smoot-Hawley: “To hold the American tariff policy, or any other policy of our government, responsible for this gigantic deflationary move is only to display one’s ignorance of its universal character. The world is paying for its ruthless destruction of life and property in the World War and for its failure to adjust purchasing power to productive capacity during the industrial revolution of the decade following the war.”

The onset of the Great Depression from the summer of 1929 on brought the unemployment rate from 4.6 percent in 1929 to 8.9 percent in 1930. Congress sought to correct this imbalance by limiting imports via the Smoot-Hawley tariff. While there is little doubt that higher tariffs made the Great Depression worse, higher levies on imports may not have been the primary factor. Indeed, the introduction of electricity and other innovations drove strong growth in many sectors of the economy, but not on the farm.

This alternative view of the role of Smoot-Hawley in turning the market crash of 1929 into the Great Depression of the 1930s is important to understanding the narrative of the 1920s. Following the Great Depression and World War II, the U.S. position regarding tariffs changed dramatically, in part because much of the industrial capacity of Europe and Asia was destroyed by the conflict.

Under the rubric of rebuilding the postwar world, America embraced a policy of open markets and free trade. This policy created enormous wealth and prosperity in the first several decades after the end of the Second World War. Later it sacrificed American jobs and industrial capacity to other nations. With the election of President Donald Trump in 2024, the US has embarked upon an explicit policy of rebalancing America’s trade relationship with the world by using the threat of tariffs to compel negotiations.

Far from being a detriment to Americans, the threat of tariffs wielded by President Trump is a mechanism for ensuring that other nations embrace reciprocity – “fair dealing” in classical American terms – to ensure that predatory behavior by modern mercantilist superstates such as China does not injure American workers and industries. In this sense, President Trump is inheriting the traditional, pro-labor political mantle of the Democratic Party following World War II.

Mainstream histories of this period make it seem that the Smoot-Hawley tariff was a prime factor behind the worsening economy, but the currency devaluation by Roosevelt and his refusal to lower tariffs that were already in place after decades of enlightened Republican rule were more significant. Progressive researchers pretend that the devaluation of the dollar and gold-backed securities somehow led to increased income and demand, but these assertions ignore the massive liquidation of debt and equity that occurred in the 1930s. It is closer to the mark to say that tariffs did not help, but the seizure of gold and devaluation of the dollar were systemic events manufactured by Roosevelt and his New Dealers that seem to have been the larger negative factor for the economy.

In his memoirs, President Herbert Hoover noted that the dollar devaluation by FDR was effectively an increase in the tariff from the perspective of the cost to American buyers: “The Democrats have made a great issue out of the disasters they predicted would flow from the modest increases in the Smoot-Hawley tariff (mostly agricultural products). The fact was that 65 percent of the imported goods under the tariff were free of duty, and that legislation increased tariffs on the 35 percent dutiable goods by somewhere around 10 percent. But the greatest tariff boost in all our history came from Roosevelt’s devaluation.” Hoover goes on to illustrate that both imports and exports per capita declined in the United States between 1935 and 1938 due to the regressive, anti-business policies of the New Deal.

This article was originally published on Daily Reckoning.

The post Did Smoot-Hawley Cause the Great Depression? appeared first on LewRockwell.

Interview with James Patrick: The Great Taking

As many of my clients, friends and regular readers know well, I’ve spent the better part of the last decade criticizing all the great evils and trespasses of the State and its crony capitalist accomplices. I’ve written extensive analyses and gave many speeches warning fellow citizens about the dangers that lie in government power grabs and authoritarian transgressions. The most important of these risks can, without fail, be found in monetary matters and in the banking system. After all, whoever controls the money, controls the world.

By now, those of us who have studied monetary history and who carefully observe how the current system operates, are fully aware of the fact that fiat currencies are devoid of any real value. Whatever perceived value they have is totally dependent on the State and even the very notion of ownership over one’s savings is illusory. Savers can just wake up one day and find that they no longer have access to their bank accounts, as we saw in Canada, or even that part of their savings is simply gone, as we saw in Cyprus.

What might come as a much more disturbing surprise, however, is that this risk and this uncertainty over one’s property rights extends to securities too. In the interview that follows, James Patrick talks about the subject of his new documentary, “STOP IT! The Great Taking”, which shines a much-needed light on a little-known but deeply consequential transformation in global securities law. He exposes the shocking shift that occurred through a series of legislative changes in the US and the EU that very quietly transferred legal rights from investors to large financial institutions. This resulted in the legal redefinition of ownership rights over stocks, bonds, and other assets that investors believe they fully own, when they practically, effectively and legally don’t.

—————

Claudio Grass (CG): Nice speaking with you again James. Many people have heard of the term “The Great Taking” put forth by David Webb but could you briefly summarize the issue.

James Patrick (JP): Sure. The story involves a fraudulent practice that developed within the financial services industry of surreptitiously using client securities as collateral on their own trades and lending them to other firms for use as collateral on speculative bets. This practice became widespread in the 1970s, but changes in law to legalize this fraud were established in the US in the 1990s and harmonized into EU law in the 2000s.

CG: So, whose securities are being used exactly? Is it the stocks and bonds that retail investors buy through their broker?

JP: Unfortunately, this is being done to all securities in the market. All investors in securities, big and small, even sophisticated and institutional investors, are exposed to the risk of the failure of their brokers and the financial intermediaries above them in the system. Even when clients are told their accounts are “segregated,” they in fact are not. All client securities are kept in pooled accounts, and from there are pledged as collateral. This is done over and over again in rehypothecated “collateral chains.”

When any of these firms using client assets fail, clients are only entitled to “pro rata share” (a proportional share) of what is left over of the firm’s assets, and have a subordinate legal claim to recover their property behind secured creditors of the contracts their securities were posted as collateral to.

CG: That is quite surprising. How is that even legal?

JP: In answer to your question, this is how it became legal. The fraudulent use of client collateral began as an illegal act and developed into a widespread industry practice. This led to a concerted multi-decade lobbying effort to make significant changes within securities and bankruptcy law to legalize the practice. These changes to law expose all holders of securities to total risk of loss should the firms using their securities go bankrupt.

The first big legal change made was in the US in the 1994 revision of Article 8 of the Uniform Commercial Code, which is the primary section dealing with securities. This UCC amendment introduced two novel legal concepts. The first was, direct title to a security was substituted with a contractual claim on a security called a “Securities Entitlement.” The significance of this being a contractual claim is very weak in a bankruptcy proceeding.

The second novel legal concept was, in the event of bankruptcy, priority to the client’s securities was given to the secured creditor of the derivatives contract using the client securities as collateral ahead of the client (entitlement holder). The 1994 revision of Article 8 was used as a model for harmonizing these changes into EU law between the years 2004 and 2014, as evidenced by documents between the “Legal Certainty Group”, (the working group tasked with implementing these changes in securities law in the EU), and lawyers at Federal Reserve Bank of NY.

CG: So, clients are at risk of total loss at any time should the firms using their assets go bankrupt, correct? And who are the secured creditors exactly?

JP: Client securities are posted as initial margin on derivatives contracts and if the market moves against their positions, they have to put up more collateral or their initial margin gets wiped out. Each derivatives contract has a secured creditor, that takes control of the collateral pledged. The problem the industry faced, is that when client securities are posted as collateral many times, on multiple derivatives contracts, and these contracts fail, the secured creditors of those failed contracts get to take the collateral. But there is not just one, there are many and a priority contest ensues between multiple secured creditors. Industry needed legal certainty that the secured creditors would come ahead of the clients. Client’s claims to their property needed to be eliminated for the derivatives industry to function at such leveraged levels.

Another significant legal obstacle the industry faced was bankruptcy law. Prior to changes in bankruptcy law, if a client’s securities were seized on the eve of bankruptcy, this would be constructive fraud or a fraudulent transfer. So, changes in bankruptcy law were enacted federally in the United States in 2005 and 2006, that amended the “Safe Harbor” provisions and established the 546(e) exemptions which specifically exempted fraud. They actually carved out exemptions for the very criteria of constructive fraud and fraudulent transfer. I know all this sounds fantastical, but it’s true and in black and white in the law.

These changes to law have led to wild speculation in the derivatives market, which is now estimated to be valued at around 2 quadrillion dollars. The underlying value of all securities held at the Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation (DTCC) in NY and at Euroclear in Belgium are around 130T. Given not all the 130T are being used as collateral, we are talking about a system wide leverage rate of over 20X, with US treasury bonds sometimes exceeding 150X leverage.

CG: How come the average investor is totally in the dark about this issue? Even seasoned professionals are most likely not entirely aware of the risk they are exposed to in the markets. How did such incredibly important and game-changing legal shifts occur without any public disclosure, let alone debate?

JP: These changes were snuck in under the radar but in plain sight. Although the broader banking, repo, and derivatives industry benefitted from them, very few people within the industry understand the big picture and broader risks this created… And big institutional investors have no idea, let alone a retail customer, even if he has hundreds of millions of dollars in the markets.

Alongside these changes, the repo market, that was really cultivated by JPMorgan, has become the primary money market between banks. These repurchase agreement contracts are inherently prone to cause systemic illiquidity should there be downturns in the market. The BIS has written many reports warning of “margin spirals” in such a scenario.

CG: Wow, so what can be done about this?

JP: Well, within the EU not much to be honest, as a lot of this has been enacted in EU code that supersedes national governments. So, short of dismantling the EU itself, I don’t see a clear legal strategy to change any of that. National governments within the EU need to assert their sovereignty, exit the EU and protect their citizens.

But in the US, because the foundational legal change was enacted on the state level and can be undone on the state level by striking a few exceptions in 1994 Article 8 revision. This would unravel the legal structure industry put in place to encumber client securities. If these bills to amend Article 8 are passed in any one state, that would allow large firms to rewrite their custodial contracts to be under that state’s laws, giving them priority to their securities if their broker or other financial intermediaries pledging their securities went bankrupt.

If we don’t make these changes, we will own nothing and be unhappy.

CG: Can you elaborate a bit more on that last point? If nothing changes, what do you anticipate will happen next? How would you expect the worst-case scenario to play out and what “dominoes” would have to fall to get there?

JP: In the worst-case scenario, we see a decline in prices within the derivatives market that causes a cascade of collateral calls. As this occurs collateral gets sold, irregardless of the price fetched on the market, and the entire collateral market freezes up and everyone’s securities get transformed to US treasuries and taken by secured creditors.

In the end, this would end up being the “too big to fail” banks that suck up all the collateral. Everyone would lose their savings and the wealth of society would be transferred into the hands of the few and no one would legally be able to dispute it, short of an armed revolution. We would then live in a much poorer world outlined by UN initiatives such as the C40.org where meat and dairy, long distance travel and cars would be out of reach of common people who would live in “15 minutes cities.”

CG: How did you get involved with this issue?

JP: Well, I’m from Washington, DC… don’t hold that against me… and I was always researching who is really in control of our ‘out of control’ government. I concluded the banking interests behind the Federal Reserve were really the ones in charge. So, I searched for best analysis of how the Fed works and this led me to Austrian economics. They provided the best analysis of the business cycle and the problems arising from fractional reserve banking. The 300-year-old practice of banks lending out their client’s deposits as loans, with the interest on those loans being profit of the bank, is a strikingly similar to the current industry practice of pledging and lending out client’s securities, with the return from those trades being the profit of the firm.

I was finishing up a doctorate on monetary and banking reform and the threat of CBDCs to civil liberties when the covid episode began. This widespread violation of our civil rights angered me so I decided to do something about it and embarked on the largest international documentary on the subject called Planet Lockdown, which you contributed greatly too Claudio. 18 months ago, I met David Webb at a conference in Sweden we were both speaking at. I approached him about making a film on the issue and we decided to make a documentary. He and several other bankers, some of whom worked in the Eurodollar market, helped me to understand this securities issue and bring my understanding of the financial markets up to date from where Austrian analysis left off. Within 3 months of starting the film, some lawyers who read his book in South Dakota began introducing laws at the state level to amend Article 8 of the UCC that would restore priority to clients to their own securities, ahead of the secured creditors. We were interviewing G Edward Griffin when David and I first heard about these efforts and the film quickly became about the legislative efforts of 2024 to amend article 8, and the rest is history. G Edward Griffin was the one who suggested the film be titled “STOP IT!”. The film came out in late January and can be seen for free at TheGreatTakingReport.com.

CG: Can you talk a bit about your experience making the film? And did you encounter any pushback during the production or after its release?

JP: If you mean harassment, no I did not. Still very few people know about this issue and those that do know parts of it do not understand the broader implications. It’s because of interviews like this one that more can find out about it and put pressure on their legislators to strike these laws legalizing theft and fraud.

CG: Quite the story. Is there anything else you’d like to end with?

JP: Everyone can see the film at TheGreatTakingReport.com. I am publishing a technical report for sophisticated investors and fund managers to better understand the inherent risks in the securities market. My report reviews the relevant changes in law in US and EU that have undermined property rights to securities and outline the unrecognized risk faced by all investors.

I would also like to encourage any US citizens to contact their state legislators to amend article 8. This is a realistic goal and the first step to restoring our property rights and peacefully deflating a 2 quadrillion dollar derivatives bubble that threatens to bring down the world economy.

Anyone can contact me with questions at [email protected]

The post Interview With James Patrick: The Great Taking appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, Jerome Barber. 

How Tech Giants are Perfecting The Hidden Architecture of Subjugation

The post The Invisible Lead appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, Johnny  Kramer 

His grandfather was 63 when his father was born, and his father was 75 when he was born.

President John Tyler’s grandson dies at 96, 180 years after he left White House

The post Grandson of 10th US President John Tyler, who left the White House 180 years ago, dead at 96 appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, Saleh Abdullah. 

Notice how we didn’t hear much if anything about DOGE cleaning house in the Pentagon, the CIA etc..

See here.

The post Lockheed, Boeing & Northrop Will Be The Reason Why U.S. Could Lose The Next War, Experts Warn; Here’s Why appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, Saleh Abdullah. 

The post Nobel Laureate Busts the AI Hype appeared first on LewRockwell.