Lew Rockwell Institute

As of 1980, the rolling 10-year and 20-year real GDP growth rates stood at 3.2% per annum and 3.5% per annum, respectively.

Owing to a slight boost from the good parts of Reaganomics—sweeping deregulation, tax rate cuts, and sound money, which were partially offset by the long-term ills owing to the abandonment of balanced budgets—the respective moving averages rose a tad to 3.5% and 3.6% per year by 1988, respectively.

Still, these rounding error gains in the moving averages of growth should be a reminder that whatever its philosophical virtues—and they were considerable—Reaganomics did not usher in a decisive or even measurable break from prior trends. That is to say, 1960 to 1980 was pretty much the heyday of Keynesian economics in Washington, and the 20-year moving average of growth at its endpoint in 1980 was 3.5%.

Yet in 1989, after a decade of Reaganomics–and at which point Bush the Elder had not yet moved his lips on tax increases—the 10-year moving average stood at, well, 3.1%. In other words, there was not a dime’s—nay, even a penny’s—worth of difference in the economic growth trend between the pre-1981 era of Keynesian economics and the half-assed version of supply-side economics implemented in the 1980s.

Of course, after that we got what amounted to Washington pragmatism, embodied in the tax increase and spending cut packages of Bush the Elder in 1990 and Bill Clinton in 1995.

What happened, of course, is the Federal budget was brought back to surplus, but this persistent withdrawal of so-called “stimulus”—whether viewed as supply-side tax incentives or Keynesian demand-side fiscal juice—did not detract from the almighty “growth” rate in the slightest. In fact, by the year 2000 when the Federal government ran a culminating +1.8% of GDP surplus, the 10-year moving average of growth stood at 3.2%, exactly where it had posted in 1980.

That is to say, after a round trip from Harvard Keynesianism through supply-side and back to the Wall Street-tinted Keynesian playbook under Bob Rubin and Larry Summers in the late 1990s, the trend of the GDP growth needle barely moved. The saving grace, of course, is that 3.2% per annum growth wasn’t all that bad.

Between 1980 and 2000, in fact, even as the Federal government was clawing its way back to balanced budgets and temporarily eschewing the practice of shifting the tax burden to future workers, the real median family income grew from $69,700 to $84,600 or by a healthy 1.0% per annum.

But that’s all she wrote. As of 2024, the true long-term economic weather vane—the 20-year moving average of real GDP growth—had fallen to just 2.0% or barely half the 1988 peak. And you can pin the tail on the two negative legacies that emerged from Ronald Reagan’s eight years in the Oval Office. These were—

• the horrid money-printing, Keynesianized version of central banking monetary central planning inaugurated by Alan Greenspan.
• The Dick Cheney proclamation that Federal deficits don’t matter much, thereby putting a stake in whatever was left of the balance budget religion in the GOP after $950 billion of Reagan deficits over 1981-1988.

Subsequent to the year 2000, of course, fiscal deficits returned and soared, and the Fed money-printers went bonkers. That is to say, the US economy experienced the greatest combined injection of fiscal and monetary stimulus ever. Yet the rise of real median family income ran out of stream!

Per Annum Growth In Real Median Family Income:

• 1960-1980: 1.93%.
• 1980 to 2000: 0.97%.
• 2000-2024: 0.76%.

Still, it wasn’t for lack of trying down on the banks of the Potomac. In fact, as of 2024, Federal spending was back up to 23.2% of GDP while Uncle Sam’s tax take from national income was back down in the sub-basement of modern history at 17.0% of GDP. Accordingly, the fiscal gap stood at the same 6.2% level of GDP, which had been first breached in peacetime during the dark days of 1983.

But this time, closing the resulting 6.2% GDP gap will be far, far harder than it proved to be during the Reagan era and the 1990s. That’s because the Fed has now shot its wad and has essentially hung itself out to dry on an inflationary $7 trillion balance sheet.

Yet, with inflation still stubbornly high, in excess of 3% per year, the Fed is in no position to clear the bond pits of Uncle Sam’s excess debt emissions via a resumption of madcap QE. The latter systematic falsification of bond prices and yields peaked at a staggering $120 billion per month of bond purchases before the pivot in March 2022.

Yet US Treasury debt emissions will soon hit $3 trillion per year. That means, in turn, that the UniParty clowns on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue will soon find themselves on a fiscal treadmill worthy of a medieval torture wheel.

To wit, Federal debt service costs on what will soon be $40 trillion of public debt will now rise by $700 billion per year in the face of even a 150 basis points rise in bond yields. And that happens to be the entirety of the Medicaid savings that the GOP RINOs are now fixing to gut.

As the man said, however, what are they going to do for an encore? When interest rates notch up steadily higher even as the public debt climbs by $3 trillion per year, the GOP’s spending cut cupboard will be bare by its own omission, having ruled out any cuts at all in Social Security, Medicare, Veterans, Defense, and interest payments or upwards of three-fourths of the budget.

While this may sound grim as a matter of future financial reality, what is even more outlandish is that the knuckleheads in the Trumpified GOP are wasting the meager savings in food stamps and Medicaid they had managed to cobble together on the following increases to the already bloated $1.0 trillion Pentagon budget.

For crying out loud, the annual cost of America’s invincible triad strategic nuclear force is just $75 billion per year, and another $200 billion or so would be more than enough for an impenetrable Fortress America defense of the continental shorelines and airspace.

Yet all the rest—upwards of $700 billion—goes to the service of Empire. That is, the capacity to fight Forever Wars we don’t need and to field global forces of invasion and occupation, which do absolutely nothing for the true Homeland Security of America.

In a word, the once former GOP Watchdog of the Treasury is lost because it gave up the balanced budget axiom during Reagan’s times for the siren song of growing your way out of debt or stabilizing the public debt at the current high fixed ratio to GDP.

The latter seems to be the game plan of Trump’s Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who was 18 years old when Ronald Reagan was elected on a campaign pledge to balance the Federal budget. Yet, at that time, the public debt stood at 30% of GDP, not today’s 120%.

Then again, we were apparently benighted back in 1981 when we launched a plan to balance the budget by 1984, which would have pegged the debt ratio at 33% of GDP and pushed it steadily lower as far as the eye could see as the US economy continued to expand.

According to Bessent-O-Nomics, by contrast, we should have been marching in the other direction—driving full speed ahead with massive deficits until we reached the promised land at 120% of GDP, where Uncle Sam would be, presumably, carrying just the right amount of debt!

In short, Scott Bessent is full of Wall Street bullshit.

He wants to sound “responsible” on the fiscal front yet not disturb the Washington fiscal game by allowing that deficits at 3% of GDP each year are just fine because if the economy grows by 3%, the towering debt-to-GDP ratio of the present time won’t get any worse!

Indeed, it is truly hard to think of a more pitiful attempt to rationalize the status quo in the guise of high principle.

And as for “growing your way out,” the bottom line is straightforward. The CBO baseline already embodies 2% real growth and 4% nominal GDP gains per year. And that’s all there is, there ain’t no more.

Reprinted with permission from David Stockman’s Contra Corner.

The post You Can’t Grow Your Way Out: The GOP’s Debt Delusion Exposed appeared first on LewRockwell.

Hello BeBe, this is the Peace President. I want to remind you of The Golden Rule — “He who has the gold makes the rules.” The gold is still the US dollar and we’ve been providing you with $3.8 billion in US taxpayer gold every year.

The new rule is, you now have two weeks to get your soldiers, lock stock and barrel, out of Lebanon, Gaza, and the West Bank and open the borders so UNRWA can get food, water, fuel and medical supplies to the remaining 2.1 million Palestinians you’re starving to death in Gaza. The UN estimates you’ve already killed about ~200,000, mostly women and children. That’s 6%, of the previous population.

You also have to stop bombing, droning and shelling everyone.

I’d also like to remind you that, thanks to whistle-blower Mordecai Vanunu and other sources, we know about Dimona and your nuclear progam, developed for you by France . And we know that while you try to hide it, you have around 90 active nuclear weapons.

And though you grouse that Iran might develop a nuke, so far Iran has voluntarily subjected itself to the most stringent nuclear inspections in history, yet you refuse to even let the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) inspectors into your country. Should we bunker-bomb your nukes?

I’ll be watching.

Your friend,
Donald

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

Hello Mr. lame-duck Zelenskyy. The Peace President here. I want to remind you of The Golden Rule — “He who has the gold makes the rules.” The gold is still the US dollar and we’ve been providing you with $182.8 billion in US taxpayer gold just since February of 2022.

You and I both know Mr. Putin’s main concern is nuclear missiles on the Ukraine/Russian border. That would put them 5 minutes from Moscow if Ukraine joined NATO, which is in the works. That would put Russia’s retalitory nukes in “launch on warn” mode, meaning no time to straighten out any mistakes or tech glitches, thus endangering all life on earth.

Further, Mr. Putin doesn’t want to take over Ukraine. Crimea overwhelmingly voted to return to being part of Russia anyway. And there’s the Russian-speaking Donbach provinces which were, as per the Minsk Agreements, supposed to be independent but Kiev wouldn’t stop attacking them and the guarantors of Minsk just laughed and wouldn’t do anything about it.

We also know that you were judiciously talking peace as early as March of 2022, less than a month after Russia’s “Special Military Operation” started but then, at behest of the Military Industrial Complex (MIC) part of the Deep State, warmonger Biden’s Sec. of State Anthony Blinken dissed calls for a ceasefire, saying U.S. must build up Ukraine’s military instead and then along came the UK’s former PM, Boris Johnson, also heading peace off at the pass — because there’s little MIC profit in peace.

I promised my people peace in 24 hours or less even before I was elected, but the Biden MIC managed to hold things up. However as you may notice, I’m finally beginning to get a handle on this and my Pentagon is withholding the first of many consignments of Biden military gear you expected to recieve.

As I warned you when you came to the White House, you just don’t have the cards.

Keeping that in mind, I suggest you don’t waste any more time in suing for PERMANENT peace. Again.

Yours for peace and The Nobel Prize,
Donald Trump

HERE for updates, additions, comments, and corrections.

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Everyone’s still talking about Bob Vylan, and rightly so. A crowd full of westerners happily being led through a chant of “Death, death to the IDF” at the 2025 Glastonbury Festival was a historical landmark moment for the 21st century, and the group’s persecution at the hands of western governments is once again highlighting the way our society’s purported values of free thought and free expression go right out the window wherever Israel is concerned.

But one thing that’s not getting enough attention is the fact that many, many other acts also spoke out in support of Palestine at that same festival, and that the crowd was full of attendees waving Palestinian flags. Supporting Palestine and opposing Israel’s genocidal atrocities is just what’s cool now.

This is a massive cultural development, because it means we are seeing the emergence of actual, meaningful rebellion in western counterculture for the first time arguably since the Vietnam War. The artists and their fans aren’t just talking the talk of sticking it to the establishment anymore.

For generations the ruling class has been successfully stomping out all politically relevant counterculture, first in the form of direct frontal assault by official government operations like COINTELPRO, and then by the way all major platforms and studios are owned by plutocrats who benefit from the imperial status quo and refuse to elevate anyone who might pose a threat to it.

There have of course been countless artists in every generation who put on a rebellious face and give the finger to authority, but they’ve never presented any kind of threat to real power. Punk rockers who sing “fuck the man” but never advance any actual tangible causes. Satanic panic bands and shock rock superstars scaring church ladies and stirring culture wars. Bands voicing criticisms of the Iraq invasion but making it about supporting the Democratic Party. Celebrity musicians promoting social justice and equality without ever saying anything that might inconvenience the oligarchs and empire managers who rule our world.

The rich and powerful don’t care if you dye your hair or pierce your nose or kiss a member of the same sex or say Hail Satan. They don’t care if you support one mainstream political faction over the other, or if you yell empty words about anarchy and revolution that aren’t pointed toward any real material goals. They care very much, however, if you are undermining public consent for military and geopolitical agendas they’ve worked very hard to propagandize the public into accepting.

The establishment never dropped the hammer on Marilyn Manson. Lady Gaga never ran into trouble with the state for singing that gay people are Born This Way. Ozzy Osbourne is living in the lap of luxury with an estimated net worth of $220 million. But groups like Kneecap and Bob Vylan are being subjected to police investigations and visa revocations for taking a stand on Palestine.

Which, of course, is only going to make their position more popular among young people with a defiant streak in them.

It’s hard to imagine how western governments could make support for Palestine look more attractive to western youths, really. Here’s this unimaginably horrific mass atrocity that they can all watch unfolding on their phone screens in real time every single day of the year, and they’re being told “You’re not allowed to oppose this. We, the stuffed shirts in Washington and London, command you to obey. If you think unauthorized thoughts and chant unauthorized chants, we are going to get very huffy and upset.”

I mean, can you think of anything more fun?

This is after all the generation who’s been told that they need to accept being poorer and sicker than their parents and grandparents and that they’ll never own a home no matter what they do, knowing full well that the crusty old bastards finger-wagging at them for opposing an active genocide are the same freaks who’ve refused to do anything to steer their planet’s ecosystem away from looming disaster. They have every reason to want to express defiance, and nothing to lose by doing so.

A real, politically meaningful counterculture has been born in the western world, and our rulers are already showing us that they’re afraid of it. This is a fascinating time to be alive.

__________________

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The CIA has published a ‘tradecraft review’ of the 2016 ‘Intelligence Community Assessment’ which had claimed that Russia had interfered in the 2016 presidential election.

The review found what had been obvious to anyone. The 2016 assessment had not followed the normal process for such papers but had based its conclusions on no or insignificant evidence.

Or, as the NY Post headlines: Obama’s Trump-Russia collusion report was corrupt from start

A bombshell new CIA review of the Obama administration’s spy agencies’ assessment that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election to help Donald Trump was deliberately corrupted by then-CIA Director John Brennan, FBI Director James Comey and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, who were “excessively involved” in its drafting, and rushed its completion in a “chaotic,” “atypical” and “markedly unconventional” process that raised questions of a “potential political motive.”

Further, Brennan’s decision to include the discredited Steele dossier, over the objections of the CIA’s most senior Russia experts, “undermined the credibility” of the assessment.

At that time the ICE was leaked to various media outlets. It was finally published shortly before Trump’s first inauguration.

As I wrote at that time:

Up to today there is no public evidence that Russia hacked the Democratic National Council and/or released DNC material to Wikileaks. After today’s new intelligence report (pdf) there is still no such evidence. … There are rather wild assertions and a lot of conjecture but zero facts that could be accepted as proof.

When I wrote the above on January 6 2017 I tried to set it the story into the bigger picture:

When Hillary Clinton was defeated in the U.S. presidential election the relevant powers launched a campaign to delegitimize the President elect Donald Trump.

The ultimate aim of the cabal is to kick him out of office and have a reliable replacement, like the Vice-President elect Pence, take over. Should that not be possible it is hoped that the delegitimization will make it impossible for Trump to change major policy trajectories especially in foreign policy. A main issue here is the reorientation of the U.S. military complex and its NATO proxies from the war of terror towards a direct confrontation with main powers like Russia and China.

The cabal consists of President Obama, the defeated candidate Hillary Clinton, neoconservatves like the State Department’s cookie dispenser Victoria Nuland, the Republican senators McCain and Lindsay and the military-industrial complex. (One of the few neocons planted near to Trump, former CIA director James Woolsey, threw the towel today and left the Trump transition team.)

A major role in directing the plot has fallen to Obama’s consigliere John Brennan, the current director of the CIA. Another role has been delegated to the various military and NATO think tanks like the Atlantic Council and the British RUSI and reliable proxies within the media.

The current emphasis of the campaign is on the release of emails and papers from the Clinton campaign through Wikileaks. It is alleged that some releases were gained through hacking, planned and executed by the Russian government. Trump had announced that he plans to seek good relations with Russia, the power that the cabal had earlier chosen as the new enemy de jour.

But there is a problem. There is no real evidence that a “hack” ever happened. There is no evidence that Russia is involved. None at all.

The whole scheme, supported by the made up ‘Intelligence Community Assessment’, was used to, more or less, sabotage Donald Trump’s first two years as president.

It also helped to create negative sentiment against all things Russia. This was revenge for Russia’s disruption of U.S. plans for Ukraine. It had taken Crimea, the big prize the 2014 coup plotters had hoped to gain, off the table. The negative sentiment against Russia, especially from Democrats, has prevailed since.

That the CIA, under Director John Ratcliffe, is now condemning the 2016 Intelligence Community Assessment as shady does not mean that he is willing to apply the lessons learned from its faulty creation to today’s intelligence products.

He will, just like then CIA Director John Brennan, fake anything that is needed to support his and his presidents policies. Just look at this from the day before Trump ordered bombing Iran:

CIA Director John Ratcliffe reportedly told the White House that Iran is nearing the technical threshold for a weapon. White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt echoed this, saying Iran needs only a political decision to begin building a bomb, which could take as little as two weeks.

Some US officials cite “Israeli” intelligence, particularly Mossad’s estimate that Iran is just 15 days away from producing a bomb.

However, others within the American intelligence community challenge that timeline, maintaining that Iran would likely need several months to a year to complete a functional weapon.

Ratcliffe was clearly bullshitting when he repeated the Mossad claims in the White House. Just like he was bullshitting when he later asserted that Iran’s program has been set back for years.

All claims made by ‘Intelligence Agencies’, independent of having been made in 2016, 2025 or in the future, have be taken with huge loads of salts. Intelligence claims are made to support policies, not because they are truthful.

Reprinted with permission from Moon of Alabama.

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Thanks, Johnny Kramer . 

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Thanks, Johnny Kramer. 

I wouldn’t work there for $100/hr.

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Thanks, John Frahm.

CNBC News

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Click Here:

Global Research

The post Genocide Convention: Liable of Arrest and Punishment. Heads of State, Heads of Government Supportive of Genocide against the People of Palestine appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, John Frahm.

The European Conservative

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J.K. Baltzersen wrote:

Sir,

Let us remember the late Dr. Gary North on this Fourth of July.

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. . . than an Indian-Muslim communist from Uganda.  If this guy becomes the next NYC mayor, the nickname for the city will be changed from “The Big Apple” to “The Big Hammer and Sickle.”

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“Society has failed you,” Mammy Yoakum once told a spoiled brat, “but I won’t.” The Dogpatch matriarch then proceeds to wail tar out of the little hellion. Li’l Abner was syndicated in about 1000 newspapers before its last strip ran in 1977. The cartoon’s demise long preceded the time ‘too big to fail’ came into common circulation. Chrysler’s bailout arrived roughly two years after Mammy’s voice was forever extinguished.

Can ‘too big to fail’ ever amount to anything less than classic doublethink? ‘If it aint’ broke, don’t fix it’ is a small business axiom. Fly a little higher and it can equal fiscal heresy. Whatever they get caught red-handed doing, the rod cannot be taken to our betters on Wall Street or high in the Alps. In places other than skid row, you’d think, when balance sheets don’t reach black management must take its lumps.  Not so at the tippy-top tiers of world finance; the suits will get their whipping boys. Guess who they always turn out to be? The corporal consequences of red books at meta-fiscal planes are always suffered by the lowest pay grades.

If you look at banking through a conventional lens, how is success measured? Would anyone find the results of the sub-prime mortgage crisis an example of responsible lending? The very foundation of the loaning business is good judgment on the capability – and inclination – of the borrower to pay the money back.

In 1930 The JP Morgan Group, Kuhn Loeb and other American banks were having trouble getting payments on what they lent Britain and France for WWI. The indebted nations told collectors that Germany had to pay them first. By that year, Allied accountants still hadn’t decided how much Germany could be taken for over The Great War. Some estimates had them paying through the nose into the 1970’s. What American bankers did know was that they were owed several King’s ransoms lent to France and England. Finances were tight the world over at the time. Still, there was nothing about shaking down losers in the terms when Wall Street extended those billions.

The “Jerries” were destitute and without means to make reparations payments. The ex-entente said that the debt couldn’t be settled until the Krauts were in a position to be leaned on again. Doesn’t that mean that several of the best addresses on Wall Street, including 23, would have been wiped out if the Allies had lost the war? It certainly goes to motive in April 1917. In any case, the intended fix was cooked up by Hjalmar Schacht, Charles Dawes, Owen Young and Montague Norman. It went by the name Bank for International Settlements based in Basel, Switzerland. Behind the front men stood JP Morgan Jr., Thomas Lamont and other American bankers afraid of getting stiffed.

Ninety-five years later it’s unclear what got fixed. The only sure thing the BIS accomplished was betrayal.  During WWII the bank aided Nazi Germany facilitating international transactions. Their original mission was to get Deutschland to pony up. Despite never getting a reparating mark, the BIS is still with us. Why that is should be a mystery of international intrigue. It isn’t. The international banking clan is insatiable and won’t ease their grip on any ruse that eases the path toward absolutist management. The BIS, with no legit reason to exist for many decades, now demands to rule on all financial transactions. Presently, they make no secret of this. They prevail over Western central banking and most people have no idea they exist. That helps as they wrest decision making from average voters and depositors.

The Great Depression impeded much progress with reparations, and then Hitler came to power. Payments ceased altogether. Anyone second guessing the scheme to hand The Central Powers the whole tab for WWI a century ago is irrelevant today. Whatever the amount assessed, the world is burdened with a debt that will never be repaid. The first legacy of The Great War was amped up statism that revealed itself in the USSR, Mussolini’s Italy, Franco’s Spain, Nazi Germany and elsewhere. International Banks continue to collect interest in the form of fabulous benefits doled out by modern states. They are the ideological heirs of the guiltiest parties in 1914. And, like other usurers with enforcement goons, no one is safe with principal outstanding. The settlement of WWI was the ultimate boon to the universal church of statism. The first of its secret tenets is rule by stealth and deceit.

That sect has had its saints over the years. Their holy synod must switch them around from time to time. First on the list is the pivotal man who made it all possible.

HL Mencken was trying to be funny when Star-Spangled Men ran in The New Republic September 21, 1920. The piece lampooned the depths civilians stooped to flaunting ‘patriotism’ during the war. It’s most famous and quoted line advocates a medal for: “University presidents …” [who] “cashiered every-professor unwilling to support Woodrow for the first vacancy in the Trinity”. That placement — above sainthood — proved not far off.

When US senator Gerald Nye (R-ND) held hearings on war profiteering, they were known by the title of a book on the subject, Merchants of Death. Once the inquiry began in 1934 public support was overwhelming. Everybody knew Wall Street made a killing on the carnage and had ginned up support for US entry into the conflict. The media of the day covered proceedings with frequent headlines – Nye sold copy at a pace — but on The Hill other priorities prevailed.  The sessions were abruptly halted February 24, 1936. Woodrow Wilson’s name had come up and into question — Democrats held 75 seats, Republicans 17 — the reigning party went into frenzy. You might have thought Jesus Christ himself was in the dock.

Carter Glass, Democrat of Virginia ruled appropriations; the so-called “southern gentleman” was widely renowned for demanding civility and decorum in the body. The first Democrat chief-exec of the 20th century, however, was too holy for reexamination. Any semblance of manners and self-restraint were instantly abandoned. What people get away with through displays of excess, artificial emotion is among the most disturbing – and manipulative — features of human nature.

 Glass made a furious speech on the Senate floor, agonizing over any hint of stain upon the sacred memory of president 28, pounding his knuckles so hard on the desk they became bloody. Whether professors were actually cashiered or not – and some probably were – the “Merchants of Death” investigation certainly was. The erosion of Wilson’s reputation was a long slow process. By the time it finally reached the nadir it deserved the worldwide damage he’d unleashed had already crested.

In the meantime, international organizers were inspired by the Wilsonian vision which had failed at Versailles. They began to meet up more regularly and start exclusive clubs. Among the first was The Council on Foreign Relations. It came out of The Inquiry which had bungled every step of its original role. The eggheads and experts were assembled to ensure a stable post-war Germany. The Versailles Peace Conference they attended guaranteed the opposite.

The only concession to Wilson’s 14 Points in negotiations was the creation of Yugoslavia. If coups, assassination and massacres were the aims, that nation-building scheme was a marvelous success. The American delegation might have gotten a clue where things were headed when Clemenceau said “Fourteen! God only had ten.” Those slick experts Woody employed to save the world didn’t get “it” or anything they were after. The ones following in their footsteps at the Pratt mansion today still see themselves as the sharpest cats around.

Before the leaders of our ancestors decided to drag American farm boys into what Senator George Norris of Nebraska called a “the greatest holocaust the world has known” in 1917, players on Wall Street were in neck deep. Charles Schwab, who was forced out of the Morgan Group after being photographed gambling for high stakes at Monte Carlo, made the opening deal for Bethlehem Steel with Winston Churchill, who was then First Lord of the Admiralty in the Fall of 1914. Wilson, to his credit, said no. But Okayed a later arrangement that allowed Bethlehem to assemble naval vessels and truck them in parts to a dormant Canadian port. That development is the actual birth of the military-industrial complex Eisenhower later warned us of.

There’s a supposed controversy over whether or not Jack Morgan, the Dupont clan and cronies were doing their damndest to get the US committed in 1917. This is about like asking if anyone actually petitioned Hank Paulson for bailouts in 2008. We now know that at least 700 banks and other corporate entities were extended funds in the Troubled Asset Relief Program. Is there any evidence a single eviction was averted by this process?

The stakes in 1917 were far higher. Later, in his antiwar speech, Norris asks:

To whom does war bring prosperity? Not to the soldier who for the munificent compensation of $16 per month shoulders his musket and goes into the trench, there to shed his blood and to die if necessary; not to the brokenhearted widow who waits for the return of the mangled body of her husband; not to the mother who weeps at the death of her brave boy; not to the little children who shiver with cold; not to the babe who suffers from hunger; nor to the millions of mothers and daughters who carry broken hearts to their graves. War brings no prosperity to the great mass of common and patriotic citizens. It increases the cost of living of those who toil and those who already must strain every effort to keep soul and body together. War brings prosperity to the stock gambler on Wall Street–to those who are already in possession of more wealth than can be realized or enjoyed.

He goes on as poignantly:

 Their object in having war and in preparing for war is to make money. Human suffering and the sacrifice of human life are necessary, but Wall Street considers only the dollars and the cents. The men who do the fighting, the people who make the sacrifices are the ones who will not be counted in the measure of this great prosperity that he [a stockbroker cited in his letter to clients] depicts. The stockbrokers would not, of course, go to war because the very object they have in bringing on the war is profit, and therefore they must remain in their Wall Street offices in order to share in that great prosperity which they say war will bring. The volunteer officer, even the drafting officer, will not find them. They will be concealed in their palatial offices on Wall Street, sitting behind mahogany desks, covered up with clipped coupons–coupons soiled with the sweat of honest toil, coupons stained with mothers’ tears, coupons dyed in the lifeblood of their fellowmen.

My own grandfather was wounded twice in WWI, at St. Mihiel. The old boy got a Purple Heart and a knapsack full of humorous, outlandish tales out of it. That may have been less than just compensation. He wasn’t in the Bonus Army of 1934, but did support it. He had 5 children to raise at the time under very demanding conditions … that were mostly brought on by the war itself. Traveling 133 miles north from Petersburg Va., to camp out in DC wasn’t a practical option.

Doing a Google search of “Bank of International Settlements demands control of financial transactions” produces no relevant hits on page one. On page two we get, “One Bank to Rule them All: The Discreet Power of the Bank for International Settlement.” It covers how they slink around avariciously to amass the knowledge and power to render common citizens less able to have any say-so over financial fate.

Just five years ago Benoit Coeure, then chair of BIS, made a statement on the need to maintain physical cash.

“No one wants to force consumers to choose their payment methods. Diversity is a good thing and it fosters innovation. The goal is to offer choice, which means allowing consumers to continue paying with currency issued by the central bank.”

Less than one year later Augustin Carstens, General Manager of the bank said this:

“We don’t know who’s using a $100 bill today and we don’t know who’s using a 1,000 peso bill today. The key difference with the CBDC is the central bank will have absolute control on the rules and regulations that will determine the use of that expression of central bank liability, and also we will have the technology to enforce that.”

Who should we believe? Large numbers of think tanks and international organizations have been promoting the elimination of cash for years. There’s zero discussion in their pronouncements about any need to consult popular volition on the matter. Eswar Prasad of The Brookings Institute placed, Cash will soon be obsolete. Will America be ready? in the New York Times July 22, 2021. It ran curiously close behind Carstens financial Papal Bull. The article included:

 “The end of cash is on the horizon, and it will have far-reaching effects on the economy, finance and society more broadly.”

Let’s look at some potential “far reaching effects on the economy.” Cyprus’ financial crisis of 2012 was “solved” with a more controversial remedy than the Wall Street bail outs under Hank Paulson in the US. It became known as the “bail-in.” Here’s how Nathan Lewis of Forbes described the deal in May 2013:

The difference with the “bail-in” is that the order of creditor seniority is changed. In the end, it amounts to the cronies (other banks and government) and non-cronies. The cronies get 100% or more; the non-cronies, including non-interest-bearing depositors who should be super-senior, get a kick in the guts instead.

Here’s what it looked like in Cyprus:

All insured deposits (individuals and legal entities) up to €100.000 have, as of 26 March 2013, been transferred from Laiki Bank to the Bank of Cyprus. In addition, the entire amount of deposits belonging to financial institutions, the government, municipalities, municipal councils and other public entities, insurance companies, charities, schools, educational institutions, and deposits belonging to JCC Payment Systems Ltd have been transferred to the Bank of Cyprus.

Did you get that? Financial institutions (e.g. German banks, and central banks including the Bundesbank) get full repayment, along with government entities, while everyone else gets to eat sand.

If you were robbing a bank, would you take only a little of the money in the vault? No, you would take all of it. The bankers see it the same way when they rob you.

Once you have performed the initial crime of sticking the losses with the non-crony creditors (who are generally senior), while the cronies (who are generally junior) get out scot-free, you might as well keep going.

This is one of the more grotesque examples of the high-handed, larcenous maneuvers large-scale financial institutions’ are capable of. These crimes can only succeed when abetted by confederates at top-tiers of government.

We have already seen numerous instances of political-ins standing idly by, as people are deprived of their rightful property and earnings merely for voicing honest views. In many cases government officials abet these thefts behind the scenes. No one has compiled, so far, on how many occasions it was actually the factual truth that was suppressed with censorship and de-monetization.

Government, corporations and quasi-governmental international predators – like the BIS – feel fully entitled to amass and archive any scrap of detail about common citizens. Delving deeply into what the globalist community is up to, or has planned, is rarely featured in major media reports. It’s a kind of coverage that falls under numerous different labels: Conspiracy theory, fascism, hate, paranoia even treason in cases like Ed Snowden’s. These rhetorical bludgeons avert scrutiny of uber-democratic international plots to rule through cronyism, collusion, high-brow hobnobbery and mission creep. The plan to keep hard currency out of your pocket has been afoot for years. The keenest advocates have always been international wheeler-dealers. Once a person’s every financial resource is in the clutches of bankers and corporatocracy – recording each move — what other instrument to coerce conformity is necessary?

Five years ago Jack Goldsmith and Andrew Keane Woods placed Internet Speech Will Never Go Back to Normal in The Atlantic. The two lawyers, from Harvard and Arizona State University respectively, fully advocated People’s Republic of China style social credit scores here in the States. Isn’t Chinese leadership – and leadership generally — where public scrutiny should be directed? It would cost much less than all the snooping directed at Joe Six-Pack. Putting all financial action on a digital page for despots to examine, is what’s most necessary to get society where these two barristers would take us. It’s eye-balling people like themselves that they find a species of lese-majeste.

High brow thinkers like Larry Fink, Klaus Schwab and Augusten Carstens and the late David Rockefeller have assured us that everything they’ve proposed is in the name of “financial efficiency” and “a more integrated world” – whatever that is. More efficient for who? Every leap and bound accomplished so far by globalist jet-setting players corresponds chronologically with less buying power for serfs. The BIS is the top dog in the pecking order but a syndicate of other international organizations is also in on it. It’s the priority of the UN’s “Better then Cash Alliance.” Ruth Godwin-Groen triumphantly notes the corporate entities brought on board in the video. What means the UN deploys to garner their compliance remains unknown to people who never voted on the matter. A central banking system with knowledge and “control” (Carstens’word) of all liquidity would render global governance a fait accompli almost instantly.

The abuses of bankers, including the very bankers behind initial centralization are not arcane. WWI followed hot on the heels of the Federal Reserve System and the 16th amendment. In 1913, when federal income tax went into effect, an unmarried payer had to make $3,000 a year or more to be liable for 1%. Less than 4% of Americans earned that much. The top rate was 7% for incomes over $500,000. By 1917 $2000 per annum was the threshold and the rate doubled to 2%. The highest earners’ rate climbed nearly tenfold to 67%. The government’s sudden necessity to crank up the shakedown was the war.  It was at about this time Randolph Bourne said “War is the health of the state.”

Almost all of the new lucre generated by upping the levy went to arms manufacture and ended up paid out to fat cats in South Manhattan. Morgan and pals expected their end when the honor bound Gauls and Anglo-Saxons honored obligations. Jack’s crew must have thought they were dealing with Joan of Arc and Florence Nightingale. These chumps were left holding the bag. It’s less connected citizens who will end up holding it if the organizations founded by the Morgan group prevail in the end.

Let’s be clear, American’s were taxed to exact funds that went to nearly straight to Wall Street after we entered The Great War. Alan Brugar claimed each deceased American earned profiteers $10,000, which may be an underestimate. US families lost 115,516 sons in the conflict, which would place earnings at a little over one billion. The war’s cost was over 10 billion. Another 320 some thousand were non-fatal casualties. Perusing the 125 US Congressional Medal of Honor winners from WWI, you’ll not find the surnames Morgan, Davison, Lamont, Kuhn, Loeb, Dupont, Schwab, Rockefeller, Whitney, Brown or Harriman among them. American soldiers counted casualties and rations while Wall Street counted receipts.

The most renowned Harvard grad of WWI was Wall Street attorney Charles Whittlesey who led The Lost Patrol. Standing to the end against an overwhelming German force less than 200 of his 554 men made it out. The ex-soldier lawyerly documented his intentions before jumping into the Atlantic from the SS Toloa in 1921. He must have wondered what it was all for. 104 years ago, even the insiders probably hadn’t fully realized the fiscal opportunities only war can provide. Whittlesey’s corpse was never found.

Anyone willing to place all their shekels, or the knowledge of where they were spent, into the grip of the offspring of The Merchants of Death is a threat to us all. They are truer believers than anyone Eric Hoffer ever dreamed of.

International organizations seldom operate openly. The stealthy conclaves and communiqués of business moguls, media magnates and political potentates are concealed for a reason. To tactically evade the principle ‘one man, one vote.’

A comprehensive ledger of each and every worldwide expenditure would abandon any pretense of privacy rights. Meanwhile, the ones advocating such measures have no intention of baring all themselves. Transacting at high levels with states is only one ploy corporate leviathans would use covering their trails. Ultimately, any such plan as total digitization would render both individual and popular dissent extinct. An ultra-organized economic state, like the USSR, never went to that extreme, nor has The People’s Republic … yet.

Any entity that can influence – and potentially rule on — intimate details of your financial disposition with near anonymity is too despotic by far already. When such quasi-governmental professoriates’ can never be called to account, society has failed both them and us. Failing upwards to a place above reproach has the makings of a classic dystopia flick. We are on the verge of that script being ‘based on true events.’

The post Who Needs To Know? appeared first on LewRockwell.

International Man: As the US approaches its 250th anniversary, how would you compare the personal and economic freedoms Americans have today with those envisioned by the Founding Fathers in 1776?

Doug Casey: The US has had a good, long run as a beacon of freedom for the entire world, but nothing lasts forever. Things started changing radically with the War Between the States, and the ascendancy of progressives like Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. Then came FDR with his New Deal, and Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society. And it’s accelerated downhill from there.

The trend in the US is critically important. However, Western civilization is in decline throughout the world. And it’s more than just a civilizational issue. There’s a rot in ethics, philosophy, and even the makeup of the population. People of European descent are declining all over the world, especially in Europe itself, where the native population is dropping rapidly. Even in the United States, figures show that the white population dropped by 250,000 in the last year, while the populations of all other ethnic groups rose substantially.

So, to answer the question: Apart from the huge and obvious changes in technology, I think the US founders would find the country culturally unrecognizable. This trend is underscored by the presumptive election of Zohran Mamdani as mayor of New York. He’s young, affable, charismatic. His appeal is understandable relative to the corrupt and constipated alternatives. But he’s also a Muslim communist who openly wants to overthrow what’s left of American traditions in the largest and most important city in the country.

I discussed this at some length in a conversation with Matt Smith on our podcast.

International Man: What do you see as the most dangerous erosions of civil liberties in the US today—and how did we get here?

Doug Casey: All things become corrupt and wind down over time. The Second Law of Thermodynamics affects political systems just as it does the physical world. Everything degrades and dissolves. Unfortunately, that includes the US Constitution. It’s been interpreted, amended, and disregarded into a dead letter.

That’s particularly true of the Bill of Rights, which is the most important part of the Constitution. And the most important part of the Bill of Rights is freedom of speech. All the other freedoms rest upon it. Because if you have a thought and you can’t express it, you’re as good as a slave. You can work and pay taxes, but if you say the wrong thing, you’ll be punished. Best to restrict what you think and say to the weather, sports, and the condition of the roads. And be careful what you say about the weather…

For what it’s worth, the situation is much worse in the UK, Germany, and Canada, among others. Simply making members of protected groups uncomfortable is cause for prosecution and jailing. Hundreds of people have been fined and/or jailed in those countries just for saying—or being perceived to have said—something considered politically incorrect by the powers that be.

International Man: Many Americans still believe they live in the ‘land of the free.’

In your view, is this a myth? What freedoms do they think they have that, in reality, they no longer do?

Doug Casey: Myth rules people’s beliefs and actions vastly more than does reality itself. For instance, soldiers are taught to think and say that they’re fighting for freedom. That’s accepted as a tautology. But in fact, US soldiers rarely fight for freedom. They fight for the government, which has sent them to some shithole, where they don’t speak the language or understand the culture. And where, typically, most of the locals view them as invaders.

People believe they have freedoms. But those freedoms mainly exist as holograms. They’re insubstantial phantoms. Our vaunted freedoms are so eroded they exist mostly as myth—but, as I said earlier, myth is much more powerful than reality. I outlined the 12 characteristics of Western Civilization here.

Americans think they have free thought, but that’s been overruled by political correctness and thought crimes. Free speech has been overruled by cancel culture. Free markets have been pretty much regulated out of existence. We think we have limited government, but the State is absolutely everywhere and in everything.

Individualism is deemed antisocial and is overruled by identity politics. Rationality, logic, and science are deemed “white” or impositions of “the patriarchy.”  Liberty is seen as a danger that needs to be excluded from safe spaces. The very concept of progress may lead to inequality, which makes progress a dangerous thing.

The list can go on, but freedoms that were self-evident facts 250 years ago have been completely watered down. A year ago, I discussed the 20 points Michael Moore put forward, which he said proved the average American is basically socialist and left-leaning. We analyzed them and found that he was absolutely right. He didn’t fabricate anything. Sad to say, “the land of the free” is a myth.

International Man: How is the US education system failing to instill the principles of liberty and critical thinking that underpinned the American Revolution?

Doug Casey: Not only is it failing to instill these things, but it’s doing exactly the opposite. It’s indoctrinating students with socialist principles. That’s no surprise. It’s to be expected because the public school system is run by government employees who naturally think like bureaucrats. They’re all members of teachers’ unions, which are among the most left-wing of labor organizations.

It’s a far cry from the one-room schoolhouse of the past, where kids—rather than being imprisoned and listening to mostly irrelevant lectures from a bureaucrat—were, in effect, taught by a mentor. The older kids would help the younger kids, breeding responsibility. Schools today exist, at great expense, for two reasons: 1) to indoctrinate the kids, 2) to keep them off the street while their parents are at work.

The school system in the US is dysfunctional and should be replaced with something else. Matt Smith and I are now completing a book that will explain exactly what that would be. It’s pointless to complain unless you can offer a positive solution.

International Man: What roles do central banking, taxation, and economic regulation play in the decline of freedom and liberty in the US?

Doug Casey: The three things you mentioned make economic prosperity much harder to achieve. Central banking causes inflation, which, along with taxation, makes it very hard for the average guy to build capital. It’s extremely hard for someone who produces more than he consumes to save the difference, because those savings are being inflated out of existence. Worse, he can only save what’s left after lots of direct and indirect taxation. If you do manage to put together some savings, economic regulation makes building a business extremely expensive and risky.

The net result of government is that the average guy is impoverished and in debt. It’s hard to experience freedom when you’re actually an indentured servant. And yet people think the State is their friend, and they can vote their way to liberty and prosperity.

Reprinted with permission from International Man.

The post Erosion of Freedom in America Ahead of Its 250th Anniversary appeared first on LewRockwell.

If Iran resumes enrichment while rejecting IAEA inspections, then Trump will target Iran’s underground facilities with a low-yield B61-11 nuclear weapon

You can usually tell which side won a war by simply observing ‘what happens’ after the hostilities end. Following the announcement of a ceasefire between Iran and Israel, millions of Iranians poured onto the streets of Tehran, chanting patriotic songs and waving flags in a spontaneous display of jubilation. In contrast, there were no festivities or celebrations in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem where the mood was noticeably more somber and gloomy. What this indicates is that most people believe that Iran won the war.

We are not ignoring the fact that Iran’s threshold for success in the conflict was much lower than Israel’s. As the aggressor, Israel needed to achieve its strategic goals to claim victory, while Iran only needed to withstand the assault, which it managed to accomplish with great ease. Regardless of whether this benchmark is equitable, the result is evident: for 12 days, Iran held its own, matching Israel’s aggression blow-for-blow, eventually forcing Israel to seek a ceasefire. In short, Iran won.

Israel made a number of miscalculations in its approach to Iran which severely undermined its chances of success. It’s two biggest mistakes, were its overconfidence in its own multilayered air defense systems (Note– Arrow 2, Arrow 3, David’s Sling, Iron Dome and THAAD) which proved to be woefully inadequate in defending the country’s strategic assets. Israeli war planners also grossly undervalued Iran’s impressive ballistic missile capability which exceeds Israel’s dated arsenal and ranks among the best in the world. In last week’s article, we provided a long list of the key military, intelligence, industrial and energy facilities that were obliterated by Iran’s precision guided ballistic missiles and which Israel’s ineffective air defense system failed to intercept. We now believe that Israel’s military experts must have realized –no more than a week into the fighting– that they were gravely over-matched and needed to find a diplomatic off-ramp pronto. But –for whatever reason– they stubbornly persisted with their anemic offensive for nearly a week hoping for a miracle. When the miracle failed to arrive, Netanyahu goaded Trump into bombing Iran’s nuclear sites in order to establish a pretext for ending the conflict. In short, Israel had been looking for a way to end the hostilities long before the fighting formally ended, which means they knew their strategic aims would not be achieved.

The outcome of the conflict has been particularly instructive for Israeli leaders who now realize that they are incapable of winning a conventional war with Iran. Unfortunately, that lesson has ominous implications for the rest of the world as no one seriously thinks that Netanyahu is going to ditch his life-long dream of a Greater Israel extending across the region. If a conventional war against Iran cannot be won, then Israel must escalate to the next level of military confrontation. That is the rationale behind Netanyahu’s unexpected trip to Washington next week. He wants Trump to lead the next round of fighting with a nuclear bomb.

In my opinion, people are so relieved that the conflict lasted just 12 days, that they are ignoring the signs that the world is be on the brink of something truly horrific. This is from Tuesday’s Times of Israel:

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will fly to Washington early next week to meet with US President Donald Trump, a White House official confirmed to The Times of Israel Monday night, amid intensifying efforts by Washington to end the war in Gaza and free hostages held there for nearly two years.

The July 7 visit will mark Netanyahu’s third trip to Washington to meet Trump since the US president returned to office in January 2025, and will come exactly two weeks after Israel and Iran agreed to a US-brokered halt to a 12-day air war that saw long simmering tensions between the arch foes explode into open conflict for the first time….

The second US official said Trump would also discuss Iran and Syria during the meeting with Netanyahu. According to the official, the president planned to use the meeting to tout military achievements during the war against Iran. Though primarily an Israeli-led offensive, the US briefly joined on June 22 by attacking three Iranian nuclear sites, dropping massive ground-penetrating bombs on the hardened subterranean Fordo facility and firing missiles at the Natanz and Isfahan plants….

Trump has claimed that the US strikes “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear capabilities, but other US officials have offered more measured assessments amid lingering questions over how badly the program was damaged and the effectiveness of the bombing campaign….

Iran has consistently denied seeking to acquire nuclear weapons. However, it enriched uranium to levels that have no peaceful application, obstructed international inspectors from checking its nuclear facilities, and expanded its ballistic missile capabilities. Israel said it had recently taken steps toward weaponization. Times of Israel

The article is largely a diversion aimed at concealing Netanyahu’s real motive which is to draw Trump deeper into Israel’s war with Iran. I assure you, Bibi is not looking for Trump’s input on developments in Gaza nor will the US determine whether there’s going to be a ceasefire with Hamas or not. The only rational explanation for Netanyahu’s surprise visit is that he wants to persuade Trump on a matter of great urgency that requires man-to-man arm-twisting to ensure that Bibi ‘gets his way.‘ Once Netanyahu convinces Trump to ‘go nuclear’, he thinks Iran will be forced to capitulate allowing Israel to impose its imperial diktat across the region. Here’s former weapons inspector Scott Ritter discussing Iran with Judge Andrew Napolitano on Monday:

Note the following: 400 kilograms of uranium hexafluoride enriched to 60% is missing and no one seems to know where it is. The Iranians said the secured it and it wasn’t impacted by the strikes. We know that since January 2021, Iran has been producing centrifuges that are no longer accounted for by the IAEA because Donald Trump withdrew from the JCPOA in 2018 in which accounting for centrifuges was part of the inspection regime…. (Iran ended its partial cooperation after the EU countries refused to honor their part of the deal by lifting sanctions)

Iran said they were no longer bound to the terms of the nuclear treaty and prevented the IAEA account for the centrifuges. You can build a lot of centrifuges in four years, and Iran has over a dozen buried sites similar to Fordow that could be easily converted, in fact, they were in the process of declaring a third uranium conversion facility when the bombing took place. My point is, there is nothing stopping the Iranians from building advanced centrifuge cascades in other locations now undeclared, because they don’t trust the IAEA because the IAEA spied on Israel on behalf of Israel and the United States and provided critical information that was used to destroy facilities and assassinate scientists.

So, we don’t know where the centrifuges are, we don’t know where the already enriched uranium is …and let’s say the Iranians did enrich it to over 90%, the facility that converts it into metal that will be used in a weapon is 100 meters underground untouched. So, Donald Trump doesn’t know what he’s talking about or he’s simply lying to the American people, but there’s no professional in the world who would say that Iran’s nuclear program has been totally destroyed The evidence directly contradicts that assertion. Will Trump Nuke Iran; Interview with Scott Ritter, You Tube, 6 minute mark

Video Link

There it is in black and white. Iran has abandoned transparency because the IAEA used its access to nuclear sites to conduct espionage on Israel’s behalf. So, now, all the IAEA cameras have been removed, and the inspections have stopped. There is no longer any monitoring of Iran’s sites. If we couple that development with the fact that Trump is determined to prevent any additional enrichment, then we have the makings of a pretext that will be used to justify the upcoming attacks on Iran’s nuclear sites; only this time, conventional “bunker busters” will be replaced with some variation of the low-yield, earth-penetrating B61-11 nuclear bomb, which is designed to penetrate hardened underground targets before detonating. That is the logical upgrade from the GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrators (MOPs) that were previously employed.

Keep in mind, there are a number of fanatics in the US foreign policy establishment who would like to see the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons lowered so these species-ending munitions could be used on the battlefield or –in this case– to eliminate the threat of WMDs falling into the “wrong hands”. This is no longer a far-fetched prospect but a highly likely probability as new alliances grow stronger challenging Washington’s ability to preserve the rapidly-collapsing “rules-based order.”. The temptation to use “tactical” nukes will eventually be too seductive to resist.

In any event, there is nothing a Zionist warlord like Netanyahu would prefer more than to have his good friend Trump spearhead the next aggression on Iran by lobbing a few nuclear bunker busters in the direction of Fordo, Natanz and Isfahan. In Bibi’s mind, that would pave the way to Iran’s capitulation followed by Israel’s de facto domination of the entire region. Game. Set. Match.

Bottom line: Israel lost Round 1 to Iran which means they must up-their-game. That is why Netanyahu has planned an emergency meeting with Trump, so Israel can activate Plan B. Regrettably, Iran has made Bibi’s job easy for him by terminating relations with the IAEA, which has turned Iran’s nuclear program into a black box. Netanyahu will use Iran’s action as proof that they have resumed enrichment and are just days from developing a nuclear weapon. Trump will feel compelled to act more aggressively than before by giving the green light to a more forceful attack. Here’s more from Ritter:

Bottom line: I believe Donald Trump is committed to a policy of regime change. He would like to have the nuclear program eliminated…but he’s boxed himself into a corner because what happens when it is discovered that the nuclear sites are intact (US bombs did not “obliterate” them), so now you have a nuclear enrichment program that Trump said he would never allow to exist. So what happens? Will Trump Nuke Iran; Interview with Scott Ritter, You Tube

Ritter’s analysis is hard to refute, after all, he’s merely connecting the dots while assuming that Trump will stick to his original pledge to totally eliminate Iran’s uranium enrichment program. If that can’t be achieved with conventional weapons, then Trump will move up the escalatory latter to nukes. It all seems pretty straightforward. Here’s Ritter again:

Judge Andrew Napolitano— So what’s he going to do? Do you think Trump will be tempted to use nuclear weapons on Iran?

Scott Ritter– Yes…… The fact of the matter is there’s only two ways to take out the Iranian nuclear program. One: The Iranians do it voluntarily. (Regime change followed by abandoning enrichment.) The other way is nuclear weapons, and there’s a war plan in place that is already designed to do this. (In his first term) Trump was told our conventional munitions can’t do this, that it would require nuclear weapons. So, a new nuclear deployment plan was developed making nuclear weapons available to target these facilities. So, I think Trump will probably go into a long-range regime change game now, but if that fails, Trump may have no choice but to either reverse course ….or use a nuclear weapon.

Look, DARPA, (Note– Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, is a research and development agency of the U.S. Department of Defense) took two years –according to Sec-Def Pete Hegseth– to come up with this ‘strike option’ against Fordow, so, if it didn’t work, what other options do you have? (implying that the use of nukes is inevitable)

I am fearful that the domestic opposition that could stop a war isn’t manifesting itself, so, unless something else happens, I’m afraid we are on a weeks or months-long path towards the potential of nuclear weapons being used against Iran. Will Trump Nuke Iran; Interview with Scott Ritter, You Tube

Of course, we could be wrong. It could be that Netanyahu actually wants to discuss a ceasefire in Gaza with his dear friend, Donald Trump. But we think that is highly unlikely. We think Bibi is laser-focused on Iran, the last significant obstacle blocking the Zionist dream of Greater Israel and regional hegemony. All he needs to do is convince our credulous president that Iran is building a bomb and can only be stopped with a nuclear bunker buster. It might take some coaxing, but Bibi is certainly ‘up to the task’.

After that, it’s just a matter of getting American pilots to drop the bombs.

Reprinted with permission from The Unz Review.

The post Will Bibi Ask Trump to Nuke Iran? Ritter Says ‘Yes’ appeared first on LewRockwell.

“Healthcare” grift, graft, fraud and financialized skims / scams will bankrupt the nation.

I’ve been writing about America’s healthcare system for 18 years, emphasizing two enduring themes: 1) our lifestyle is unhealthy, with predictable consequences and 2) healthcare as it is currently configured will bankrupt the nation all by itself.

This recent article on how having a baby without complications now costs over $44,000 adds a third theme: the tragi-comic insanity and absurdity of the “healthcare” system that has been normalized, as if this is the only possible way to organize healthcare:

“And They Wonder Why The Birth Rate Is Declining”: A Mother Went Viral For Revealing The Costs Of Being Pregnant In America:

Lastly, Kayla reveals that her baby received a bill, too, which added up to $12,761.30 without insurance. For their family of five now, the cost of insurance per month is $2,500 — a nearly $400 increase from when they were just a family of four. “We’re still waiting for him to process on our insurance,” she explains, “so, for now, this is the cost without it.”

One user said, “America’s healthcare system is a joke… how does the newborn have a $12k bill?”

It’s more than a joke–it’s travesty of a mockery of a sham of a system that actually improves health. There’s an even darker side of the picture–the takeover of the system by financiers and fraudsters–which truth be told is a redundancy.

We can now add a fourth theme: stripped of purposeful opacity, America’s “healthcare” system is nothing more than a structured financial skim/scam. Before we dig into that, here are a few of the dozens of posts I’ve written on “healthcare” since 2008:

U.S. Lifestyle + “Healthcare” = Bankruptcy (June 19, 2008)

The “Impossible” Healthcare Solution: Go Back to Cash (July 29, 2009)

Why “Healthcare Reform” Is Not Reform, Part II (December 29, 2009)

Sickcare Will Bankrupt the Nation–And Soon (March 21, 2011)

How Healthcare Became Sickcare (March 18, 2022)

Let’s start with what childbirth cost back when healthcare was paid in cash. Here are the costs of childbirth in 1952 at one of the finest hospitals on the West Coast, The Santa Monica Hospital: $30:

According to the BLS Inflation Calculator, $1 in 1952 is $12.13 today, so adjusted for inflation, the $30 fee to deliver a baby would be $363 today. Here are maternity rates from 1952:

A private room was $19, or $230 in today’s currency. OK, so we have fancier equipment now, more staff, etc., but really–does that explain what once cost less than $1,000 in today’s money–paid in cash, no insurance–now costs $44,000? No. Here’s why: structured financial skims/scams.

Dutch Rojas (@DutchRojas) is a go-to source for explaining the opaque way “healthcare” skims / scams siphon off hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars. Consider these X posts:

Why is healthcare expensive?
You go to your doctor.
Same building, same service.
But now it’s 3x the price, because they sold to a health system.

The secret?
A “facility fee” was added.
Medicare and commercial payers just hand it over.

It’s not for better care.
It’s for ownership.

Every consolidation deal is a bet against the patient and you’re footing the bill.

And the politicians love every bit of it…

Provider Taxes: The Most Elegant Grift in American Healthcare
It’s not a tax.

It’s a laundering operation.

Here’s how it works:

North Carolina’s ‘nonprofit’ health systems are running a $40+ billion hedge fund operation disguised as healthcare.
They’re extracting hundreds of millions in tax exemptions while paying CEOs tens of millions.

This is the largest wealth transfer scheme in the American healthcare system.

This doesn’t even include outright Medicare/Medicaid fraud, overbilling, unnecessary tests, medications and procedures, and a nearly endless menu of other enrichment schemes passed off as “care.” These billions go to the “owners,” not the frontline healthcare providers / workers.

Read the Whole Article

The post America’s ‘Healthcare’ System Is Now a Structured Financial Skim/Scam appeared first on LewRockwell.

Yesterday, I wrote about the decades-long obsession that the U.S. national-security establishment — i.e., the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA — has had with Cuba. Long ago, as part of their Cold War against the Reds, U.S. national-security state officials convinced themselves that Cuba’s communist regime posed a grave threat to U.S. “national security,” whatever definition is placed on that ridiculous term. Of course, they’ve now got President Trump on the target-Cuba bandwagon.

Not surprisingly, there are tons of Republicans, conservatives, and, no doubt, even libertarian right-wingers who are ecstatic about Trump’s recent executive decree that strengthens and reinforces the brutal economic embargo that the U.S. government has had on Cuba for more than 60 years. Hope for regime change in Cuba springs eternal for these people notwithstanding more than six decades of deadly and destructive failure to achieve that goal.

What these people, many of whom call themselves “freedom advocates,” fail to realize — or maybe they do and just don’t care — is that the U.S. embargo against Cuba has destroyed the economic liberty of the American people. In fact, I’m willing to bet that most Americans don’t realize that. While the embargo, acting in tandem with Cuba’s socialist economic system, brings extreme impoverishment and maybe even death by starvation to Cubans, many Americans think that it is a neutral measure insofar as the American people are concerned.

Not so! Anyone who cheers for the embargo is, at the same time, cheering the destruction of his own liberty. That should hit home with everyone who celebrates the Fourth of July.

Many people believe that it is illegal under U.S. law to travel to Cuba. Actually, it’s not. The reason is that U.S. officials never wanted to portray themselves as destroying a right that has always been considered basic, natural, and fundamental — the right of freedom of travel.

Thus, to avoid doing that, U.S. officials instead made it illegal for Americans to spend money in Cuba. So, you’re free to travel there but as soon as you spend money there on anything, including food, hotel, transportation, or just a tip — you are in violation of U.S. law.

Let me qualify that. It’s only Americans who spend money in Cuba without the official permission of the U.S. government who are in violation of U.S. law. If you’re able to get official permission to spend money there, you’re okay. Thus, it’s not the actual spending of money that is considered to be a grave offense. It’s doing it without official permission that is the grave offense.

What happens to an American who travels to Cuba and spends money there without official permission? Upon his return to the U.S., he is fined. The fine can be hefty. For example, one company was fined $31,000 for doing photo shoots in Cuba. Another was fined $220,000 for doing hotel bookings there.

But while most of the actions taken involve fines, the U.S. government has the option of going after someone criminally under what has become a popularly used law from World War I — the Trading with the Enemy Act. Even though the two nations are not at war with each other, Cuba is considered to be an “official enemy” of the United States. Therefore, any economic activity on the part of an American could be said to be “trading with the enemy.” In that case, under the discretion of federal prosecutors, the violator is looking at the possibility of a felony indictment, prosecution, and punishment with fine and jail time.

A good example of this phenomenon was the U.S. criminal prosecution of two Americans who organized some sailboat races between Key West and Cuba in the late 1990s. U.S. officials went after them with a vengeance for daring to trade with “the enemy.” They were indicted and faced the possibility of 15 years in prison and $350,000 in fines. A judge later dismissed the charges, and the government ended up settling for $15,000 in fines.

What’s important to note about all this is that with its embargo, the U.S. government has destroyed the economic liberty and private-property rights of the American people. After all, as Thomas Jefferson implied in the Declaration of Independence, people have the natural, God-given right to do whatever they want with their own money. It’s their money after all. It doesn’t belong to the government. Thus, people have the natural, God-given right to travel to Cuba or wherever else they wish to travel and spend whatever amount of money they want — all without the official permission of U.S. officials.

A dark irony in all this is that in the effort to bring down Cuba’s communist regime, U.S. officials have adopted the same types of controls over the money and economic activities of the American people that the Cuban socialist regime exercises over the money and economic activities of the Cuban people. But hey, I’m sure U.S. officials would say: What better way to celebrate the Fourth of July than by cheering the destruction of our own liberty here at home through the targeting of innocent people with death abroad?

Reprinted with permission from Future of Freedom Foundation.

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The defense ministers of all 10 members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) met last week in Qingdao, in China’s Shandong Province.

That, in itself, is the stuff drama is made of. Not only because it was a warm-up for the main SCO annual summit later this year in Tianjin with heads of state. But mostly because on the same table we had top BRICS members Russia, China, India and Iran, plus Pakistan; an Indian defense minister visiting China for the first time in five years and facing his Pakistani counterpart after their latest serious exchange of fire; and the Iranian minister closely consulting with Beijing immediately after the Israel–Iran ceasefire kabuki orchestrated by POTUS.

If that was not intriguing enough, the SCO meeting in Qingdao took place almost simultaneously with the NATO summit in The Hague.

Pakistani Defense Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif cut to the chase, remarking how, unlike NATO, the SCO can “further peace in this region.” China’s Defense Minister Dong Jun stressed that the SCO plays the role of a “stabilizing anchor.”

The now-fragmented (thanks to US President Donald Trump) collective west has no idea what the SCO is all about. The SCO is a 25-year-old multilateral organization, founded a few months before 9/11, and consists of 10 full member states, two observer nations, and 14 dialogue partners: nearly half of the world’s population, from Eastern Europe (Hungary) all the way to the Indian Ocean and the Pacific Rim.

The SCO is not an Asian NATO – as in an offensive military alliance, and it doesn’t want to be; rather, in a quintessentially Chinese formulation, it prefers to affirm itself as a “giant ship of security.”

Initially conceptualized to fight against what the Chinese define as “three evils” – terrorism, separatism, and extremism – the SCO has seriously evolved into a mechanism of economic cooperation. Its latest round table at the St. Petersburg Economic Forum less than two weeks ago, for instance, was hosted by SCO Secretary-General Nurlan Yermekbayev, moderated by the ultra-experienced Sergey Katyrin, president of Russia’s Chamber of Commerce and Industry, and focused on the challenges of creating a common SCO logistics, financial and energy infrastructure.

This panel moderated by Alexey Gromyko, director of the Institute of Europe of the Russian Academy of Sciences and with the secretary of the Union State (Russia–Belarus) Sergey Glazyev as the main speaker, intertwined the SCO with the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU), debating what is the role to be played by the post-Soviet space in the emerging multipolar economy.

So the SCO today promotes not only joint counterterrorism drills and intelligence sharing, but also economic cooperation fine-tuned to the cultural expectations of different civilizations. It’s a multipolar organism by definition.

Strategic partners Russia–China get on board 

The heart of the matter in Qingdao had to evolve around what can be called the Primakov triangle – a nod to former Russian prime minister Yevgeny Primakov who envisioned a post-Soviet, autonomous Russian powerhouse in a new multipolar order. Today, we see that prescience in a “RIC” composed of Russia, Iran, and China, and not India: These three independent civilizational states are, at the moment, the top three actors advancing the complex Eurasia integration process.

Russian Defense Minister Andrey Belousov met privately with Chinese Defense Minister Dong Jun, as well as with Iranian Defense Minister Aziz Nazirzadeh. At the SCO table, Belousov did not mince his words.

He said that US and Israeli attacks on Iran breach the UN Charter and international law; he confirmed that Moscow had proposed to broker a de-escalation; and he re-emphasized that “the role of international institutions designed to ensure global stability has fallen to an unacceptable level.”

Belousov also stressed all 10 Ministers’ top headache: that “terrorist ideologies” and “transit of militants” continue to spread from West Asia to Afghanistan.

On Ukraine, Belousov was quite predictable; Russia is steadily advancing, and Kiev resorts to “terror tactics” as it contemplates doom. None of the players at the SCO table would dream of contradicting him.

So, where was India amidst all this action? Well, refining its shopping list. Defense Minister Rajnath Singh personally asked Belousov for urgent upgrades to the Su-30MKI and much faster delivery of the remaining S-400 Triumf. These are part of a hefty $5.43 billion deal; three units have been delivered, and the next two will arrive by early 2026.

These S-400s were instrumental during Operation Sindoor – India’s mini-war against Pakistan.

Immediately after Trump’s Israel–Iran “ceasefire” kabuki, Tehran approached Beijing to examine buying options for a substantial batch (at least 40) of Chinese J-10CE fighters (the export version of the J-10C). These negotiations, by the way, have been going on for at least 10 years.

From an Iranian point of view, in terms of low cost and availability, the J-10C might be a better option than the Russian MiG-35s and Su-35Es (the export version of the Su-35S). But it’s important to remember that the Su-35 and the J-10C represent two different classes of jet fighters. Nothing prevents Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) from buying both – a case of interacting strategic partnerships.

Diplomatic sources confirm that Iran already has Su-35s. It is unclear how many, but certainly more than two. Russia is more than ready to sell up to two squadrons. Each squadron would have 12, so a total of 24 jets.

The consensus in Moscow is that Iran will step up simultaneous purchases of top-of-the-line Russian and Chinese fighter jets. And certainly air defense, as in Russian S-400s. The drama that unfolded in the past two weeks goes way beyond the artificial and superficial debate on whether Tehran lacked help from its close, strategic Russian–Chinese allies.

While the IRGC wants those fighter jets after the painful lessons of Israel’s 12-day war, it needs most of all to fine-tune its internal counter-intelligence and insurgency apparatus. A substantial amount of punishment suffered by Iran came from domestic saboteurs who launched drones, planted bombs, and surveyed high-value targets to be murdered.

We want war against Russia and China 

Now compare all these Eurasian interactions in Qingdao with what happened in The Hague. Essentially, after being blackmailed by the appalling NATO Secretary-General Mark “Hello Daddy” Rutte, the European Union (EU) decided to allocate a whopping €650 billion (approximately $695.5 billion) of funds it doesn’t have to buy US weapons to declare war on Russia – and later China.

That brings us to the five percent kabuki. For every NATO member to spend five percent on offense, with their combined debt already exceeding 80 percent of GDP, they would need to nearly triple the €325 billion (approximately $381.2 billion) they spent on weapons in 2024, thus reaching nearly one trillion euros.

EU citizens with a brain can easily do the math: There will be a non-stop orgy of “cost-cutting,” tax hikes, and disappearing social benefits to finance the weaponizing. And stealing €300 billion (approximately $351.75) of Russian assets won’t help, because that won’t cover even a one-year increase.

All ministers at the SCO table in Qingdao knew that NATO was at war with Russia, and then China does not even qualify as a lousy Monty Python sketch. Russia already has 13,000 missiles and counting, and will soon be able to produce up to 300 hypersonic Oreshniks a year – more than enough to paralyze every single port and airport in Europe.

It was quite intriguing to observe Russian President Vladimir Putin’s immediate follow-up to what was discussed at the SCO in Qingdao. Cue to the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU) forum in Minsk, at which Putin said, “thankfully, the situation in the Middle East is stabilizing. The longstanding conflict between Israel and Iran is, thanks to God’s grace, now behind us.”

Or, maybe not, if statements of Israeli officials are anything to go by. Still, for the Russian president, what always matters most is geoeconomics. At the forum, Putin highlighted the EAEU’s preferential agreements with Vietnam, Singapore, and Serbia, plus an imminent agreement with the UAE, saying: “Mutually beneficial relationships with countries across Eurasia, Africa, and Latin America are actively advancing.” Not to mention further cooperation with the BRICS, the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), ASEAN, the African Union, and, of course, the SCO.

And just as the ministers were leaving Qingdao, it was officially confirmed: Iran ditched the American GPS system for China’s Beidou. Talk about a sharp, bold move in the tech war chessboard. Next step: to snatch all those Su-35s and JC-10CEs.

The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of The Cradle.

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Okay, you sport fans out there, The Gilded Age is back on our idiot boxes, and it’s a welcome respite from the garbage that untalented directors and writers of today have been shoving down our throats. At least garbage had its uses before it turned to waste, but this recent stuff…words fail me. When was the last time we watched a black man speaking normal English, smiling, and not using the f-word nonstop while threatening to kill somebody white? On our screens, that is. Back in the good old days, screenwriters were terribly good writers with names such as Tennessee Williams, Irwin Shaw, Scott Fitzgerald, Gore Vidal, Tom Stoppard, and Billy Wilder among many other exceptional scribes, and they produced such classics as The Best Years of Our Lives, All About Eve, and Gone With the Wind, the latter with a little help from one Margaret Mitchell.

But I don’t want to dwell on the lack of talent among moviemakers today. (An exception is my friend Michael Mailer’s Hearts of Champions and Cutman, the latter an outstanding film.) It’s obvious that talent and Hollywood have parted ways, hence when a costume drama like The Gilded Age comes along, it’s welcome. Mind you, like Henry James and Edith Wharton before him, The Gilded Age auteur Julian Fellowes—a pretty good social climber himself—does overcook things. In other words, yes, one had to conform back then in order to be invited to Mrs. Astor’s balls, but definitely not as much as the abovementioned writers would have us assume. The Astor family began as German butchers, after all, so her snobbery was predictable. Here in America, social standing was based on only one thing—money—yet tradition played almost as big a role. If your ancestors had come over early, and especially if they had fought for the creation of what is now known as the US of A, you were special in the social ladder.

“Like Henry James and Edith Wharton before him, The Gilded Age auteur Julian Fellowes does overcook things.”

No longer. The WASP hierarchy has gone the way of the Titanic, while the Jewish ascendancy is at present in full bloom and rising. The WASPs had a good run, but unlike their aristocratic European counterparts, they blew it by drinking too much, spending too much on polo ponies, and paying too much alimony and tax. In other words, they didn’t make sure of their strong position both in society and in government. It is too early to tell, but their Jewish replacements will not make the same mistakes.

But back to The Gilded Age. The actor playing the Duke of Buckingham portrays him on the straight and narrow, the real-life Buckingham having earned his title by being King James’ bum boy back in the 1600s. (He had a grisly end.) Everyone seems to be on the make on the series, a gross exaggeration, I am sure, but nevertheless with some truth to it. The difference with European society is amazing. And I’ll tell you why: In the old continent, the Bible aside, the most important book that decreed who was who was the Almanach de Gotha—if you were in it, you were in; if you were not, you were out. Mind you, there were poets and writers and musicians and actors who would never be in the Gotha book but were ever present in the great salons of the aristocracy. The Gotha listed all titles, and Le Petit Gotha listed royal, princely, and ducal titles. (If you’re confused, don’t worry.)

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Titles were handed out by ruling kings, and the highest were princely ones. I once tried to explain them to a sweet Texas lady, but I was unsuccessful. “If you’re a princess, why aren’t you royal?” she asked. “Because you’re a Serene Highness, not a Royal Highness,” said I. No go. Ironically, yours truly is in the Gotha book, but I came in through the back door. My wife was born a Serene Highness, so her hubby and children and their descendants are in for good. (The Schoenburgs have been nobles since the 11th century—a pretty good run, I’d say.)

So, while in the good old USA money got Mister Moneybags a good seat at the table, in Parisian, London, Roman, Madrid, and other European drawing rooms it was titles that came first. Landed gentry managed to keep their assets for hundreds of years because land is more stable than hard cash. And the nobility partook in politics and protected itself from the demands of the great unwashed. The latter are now scrubbed clean but still screaming their heads off when someone like Bezos makes a Venetian splash. I went to two grand Venetian balls when very young, back when Italians were really struggling, and I remember the crowds cheering as we disembarked from our gondolas into the palaces. Now they boo. Envy is the 21st century’s disease.

What watching The Gilded Age brought to mind was the following: What would those uptight Edith Wharton characters have thought of such “society” figures of today as the Kardashians, the Hiltons, the Kushners, and the Dillers, all attendees to the Bezos nuptials? American high society died some thirty years ago—Winston and C.Z. Guest were the last—and was replaced by celebrities like those just mentioned. God help us.

This article was originally published on Taki’s Magazine.

The post Act Your ‘Age’ appeared first on LewRockwell.

Honestly at this point they should just get Netanyahu his own room in the White House and a desk in the Oval Office.

The prime minister of Israel is taking his third trip to the White House in the five months since Trump has been back in office. I have immediate blood family members who I love with all my heart and visit less often than this.

This comes as the Trump administration revokes the US visas of British punk rap duo Bob Vylan ahead of a US tour for chanting “Death, death to the IDF” at a concert in the UK. Trump’s sycophantic supporters who spent years complaining that their free speech rights were under assault appear fine with their government deciding what words Americans are allowed to hear in their own country.

This also comes as Trump actively intervenes in the Israeli judicial system to prevent Netanyahu’s corruption trial from moving forward.

The president has repeatedly taken to social media to demand that Israel abandon its corruption case against the prime minister, at one point even implying that the US could cut off arms supplies if his trial isn’t canceled.

“The United States of America spends Billions of Dollar a year, far more than on any other Nation, protecting and supporting Israel,” Trump said. “We are not going to stand for this. We just had a Great Victory with Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu at the helm — And this greatly tarnishes our Victory. LET BIBI GO, HE’S GOT A BIG JOB TO DO!”

It’s so revealing what the US government is and is not willing to threaten conditioning military supplies on, and what it’s willing to interfere in Israel’s affairs to accomplish.

Ever since the Gaza holocaust began we’ve been hearing lines like “Israel is a sovereign country” and “Israel is a sovereign state that makes its own decisions” when reporters ask why the White House doesn’t leverage arms shipments to demand more humanitarian treatment for civilians in the Gaza Strip. But the president of the United States is willing to leverage those same arms shipments to directly interfere in Israeli legal proceedings which have nothing to do with the US government in order to get Netanyahu out of trouble.

Wow, watch exchange with StateSpox@SMArikat: US-tax payers have given [] almost $23 billion in the last year, you have no leverage?

Miller: They’re a sovereign country

Said: That received $22 billion

Miller: That number isn’t correct

Lee: What is correct number

Miller:… pic.twitter.com/4a4w7TMJAD

— Assal Rad (@AssalRad) October 8, 2024

And it would appear that the president’s intervention has been successful; Netanyahu’s corruption trial has since been postponed.

When it comes to committing genocide using American weapons funded by American taxpayers, Israel is a sovereign state upon which the US can exert zero leverage or control. When it comes to meddling in the corruption trial of a man who is wanted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court, the White House pulls no punches in protecting its favorite genocide monster.

There is no meaningful separation between the US and Israeli governments. They’re two member states in the undeclared empire that sprawls across the entire western world, and Trump and Netanyahu are two of the most depraved and most consequential managers of this empire today.

They are thick as thieves. They are partners in crime.

Call it the Trumpanyahu administration.

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