The Real Historical Story of the Soviet Union, Unvarnished and Pulling No Punches
The real Soviet story is brutal. This documentary, based on released KGB files, is uncompromising. Though it starts by telling the story of the murder of millions of Ukrainians in the “Holodomor” in 1933, the 2008 documentary film goes far beyond merely exposing Soviet atrocities.
The film shows the close connections – philosophical, political and organizational – between the Nazi and Soviet systems. Russians, who have spent decades whitewashing their own history and making Soviet communism palatable, protested the film.
The Soviet Story offers an alternative history of an Allied power which helped the Nazis to fight Jews and which slaughtered its own people on an industrial scale. The Soviet Story’ also discusses the impact of the Soviet legacy on modern day Europe and helps us understand Vladimir Putin’s attack on Ukraine.
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Stagflation Arrives — Unemployment & Inflation Are Rising Together
Throughout all of human history, central planning has a perfect 100% failure rate. Yet, there is never a shortage of central planners. Even America, which began with a very limited government, has morphed into a web of planners, and agencies, and red tape, and unelected bureaucrats galore. Prices are manipulated to such an extreme degree that rational decision-making and investment become near impossible. Forget consumers. The goal is to get in charge of the state, and force your will onto everyone else. Eventually, this all falls to pieces; and everyone is forced to re-learn what freedom and limited government means again … That is, until the next batch of central planners arrive on the scene.
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Reality
Writes Bill Madden:
The video below, like most communications these days, is entirely too long. But, you might want to watch about 10 minutes of the video as I feel the warning is legitimate and totally opposite of the feel good B.S. being fed to us every day by the mainstream media. More people are not concerned because most people are ignorant and apathetic
Also, I don’t feel comfortable having a political leader like Donald Trump who was elected because he wasn’t Kamala. If overly large egos equated to effective governance, we’d be in good shape but overly large egos are a detriment to effectiveness in any endeavor.
Trump is upset with Putin because he won’t stop the war in Ukraine that we started and funded with over $200 billion of taxpayer money. Putin doesn’t work for Trump. Trump is upset with Fed Chairman Powell because he won’t lower interest rates when real inflation: www.shadowstats.com is soaring. Try reducing spending Mr. President and interest rates will eventually come down. You might begin with the military aid going to Israel and Ukraine.
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Why, as a Former History Teacher, I Never Watch (or Recommend Others to View) the History Channel
The History Channel’s Mendacious Propaganda Concerning the World Wars, by Charles Burris
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What a Great Gift to RFK, Jr. (and American Taxpayers)
Some 1,000 CDC bureaucrats have reportedly signed a letter demanding that RFK, Jr. resign. What a great gift to RFK, Jr. — and the nation. Now he knows exactly who to fire immediately.
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Arrested
You may have heard about the recent arrest of comedian Graham Linehan at Heathrow airport for three tweets he wrote while in the United States.
Linehan created or co-created the sitcoms Father Ted, Black Books, and The IT Crowd (that last one is a favorite of my wife’s).
Linehan describes the scene:
The moment I stepped off the plane at Heathrow, five armed police officers were waiting. Not one, not two—five. They escorted me to a private area and told me I was under arrest for three tweets….
When I first saw the cops, I actually laughed. I couldn’t help myself. “Don’t tell me! You’ve been sent by trans activists.”
Linehan reports that the officers themselves were generally kind, and in general seemed sympathetic. Commentators have been saying that crazy, open-ended UK laws have put officers in crazy situations, in which they are expected to arrest people like Linehan. I myself would say: at that point, if you haven’t started questioning your career choice, there’s something wrong upstairs.
Linehan continues:
The civility of individual officers doesn’t alter the fundamental reality of what happened. I was arrested at an airport like a terrorist, locked in a cell like a criminal, taken to hospital because the stress nearly killed me, and banned from speaking online — all because I made jokes that upset some psychotic crossdressers.
To me, this proves one thing beyond doubt: the UK has become a country that is hostile to freedom of speech, hostile to women, and far too accommodating to the demands of violent, entitled, abusive men who have turned the police into their personal goon squad.
(If you’d like to see the Tweets that got him arrested, you’ll find them here.)
There are in fact people defending the arrest of a man for tweets.
Green Party leader Zack Polanski, for example, described the posts as “totally unacceptable” and the arrest as “proportionate.”
(Whenever you’re tempted to say, “At least these lefties aren’t Hillary Clintonites who would start a war over a cup of coffee,” remember this incident: these are not our friends.)
Another Twitterite, a “Richard Angwin” with over 200,000 followers, unbosomed this gem: “Linehan’s arrest for hate-mongering tweets is a fitting cap to his obsessive transphobia, proving that even ‘free speech’ warriors can’t escape accountability for their toxic rants.”
So he boasts about wanting to live in a country in which a monopoly enforcement institution will decide what constitutes “hate” (he’s sure “hate” will be defined so as to target his enemies), and then arrest people for statements that he dislikes. (We can dismiss the idea that anyone was “threatened” by these three silly tweets.)
(Here’s another thing that grinds the old man’s gears, by the way. Disagreeing with the left can’t just be a difference of opinion: it has to be a clinical diagnosis with “phobia” in the name. This is how it’s been since at least the Soviets. Hence the absurd neologism “transphobia.”)
On Twitter I likewise came across a British lawyer, Stephanie Hayden, who insisted there was nothing amiss in what had happened to Linehan.
I looked more closely and discovered that this very same woman had posted just days before that she’d run into Iraq war supporter John Kerry at the airport and had excitedly gotten a selfie with him.
Linehan harmed no one. Kerry shares responsibility for pointless and catastrophic misery and loss of life. Iraqis, however, do not matter to progressives, who squeal with delight to get selfies with murderers.
In the UK the arrest has even mainstream outlets discussing the absurdity of the free-speech situation over there and calling for change.
Well, that’s about the least one can say about it.
Never pay for a book again: TomsFreeBooks.com
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How To Stop Israel From Starving Gaza
Israel, with US complicity, is committing genocide in Gaza through the mass starvation of the population as well as direct mass murders and the physical destruction of Gaza’s infrastructure. Israel does the dirty work. The US Government funds it and provides diplomatic cover through its UN veto. Palantir, through “Lavendar,” provides the AI for efficient mass murder. Microsoft, through Azure cloud services, and Google and Amazon through the “Nimbus” initiative, supply core tech infrastructure for the Israeli army.
This marks 21st-century war crimes as an Israel-US public-private partnership. Israel’s mass starvation of the people of Gaza has been confirmed by the United Nations, Amnesty International, Red Cross, Save the Children and many others. The Norwegian Refugee Council, along with 100 organizations, have been calling for an end to Israel’s weaponization of food relief. This is the first time that mass starvation has been officially confirmed in the Middle East.
The scale of the starvation is staggering. Israel is systematically depriving food to more than 2 million people. Over half a million Palestinians face catastrophic hunger and at least 132,000 children aged under five are at risk of death from acute malnutrition. The scale of the horror is thoroughly documented by Haaretz in a recent article entitled “Starvation is Everywhere.” Those who are able to somehow access food distribution sites are routinely fired on by the Israeli army.
As a former US ambassador to Israel has recently explained, the intention to starve the population has been present from the start. Israel’s Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu recently declared, “there is no nation that feeds its enemies.” Minister Bezalel Smotrich recently stated, “whoever doesn’t evacuate, don’t let them. No water, no electricity; they can die of hunger or surrender. This is what we want.”
Yet despite these glaring declarations of genocide, US representatives at the UN repeatedly deny the facts and cover for Israel’s war crimes. The US alone vetoed Palestine’s admission to the UN in 2024. The US now denies visas to Palestinian leaders to come to the UN in September, yet another violation of international law.
The US has used its power and especially its veto in the UN Security Council to abet Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians and to block even the most basic humanitarian responses. The world is aghast but seems paralyzed before the the Israel-US murder machine. Yet the world can act, even in the face of US intransigence. The US will stand naked and alone in its criminal complicity with Israel.
Let’s be clear. The overwhelming voice of humanity is on the side of the people of Palestine. Last December, 172 countries, with more than 90 percent of the world population, voted to support Palestine’s right to self-determination. Israel and the US were essentially isolated in their opposition. Similar overwhelming majorities are repeatedly expressed on behalf of Palestine and against the actions of Israel.
Israel’s thuggish government now counts solely on US support, but even that may not be there for long. Despite Trump’s intransigence and US government attempts to stifle pro-Palestinian voices, 58% of Americans want the UN to recognize the State of Palestine, compared to only 33% who do not. Moreover, 60% of Americans oppose Israel’s actions in Gaza.
Here are practical steps that the world can take.
First, Türkiye has set the correct course by ending all economic, trade, shipping, and air links with Israel. Israel is currently a rogue state, and Türkiye is right to treat it as such until Israeli-created mass starvation ends, and a State of Palestine is admitted to the UN as the 194th member, with the borders of June 4, 1967. Other states should immediately follow Türkiye’s lead.
Second, all UN member states that have not yet done so should recognize the State of Palestine. So far, 147 countries recognize Palestine. Dozens more should do so at the UN Summit on Palestine on September 22, even over the vociferous objections of the US.
Third, the Arab signatories to the Abraham Accords, Bahrain, Morocco, Sudan, and the UAE, should suspend their diplomatic relations with Israel until the Gaza siege ends and the State of Palestine is admitted to the UN.
Fourth, the UN General Assembly, by a vote of two-thirds present and voting, should suspend Israel from the UN General Assembly until it lifts its murderous siege on Gaza, based on the precedent of suspending South Africa during its Apartheid regime. The US has no veto in the UN General Assembly.
Fifth, UN member states should stop the export of all technology services that support the war, until the siege of Gaza ends and Palestine’s membership in the UN is adopted by the UN Security Council. Consumer companies such as Amazon and Microsoft that persist in aiding the Israel Defence Forces in the context of a genocide should face the wrath of consumers worldwide.
Seventh, the UN General Assembly should dispatch a UN Protection Force to Gaza and the West Bank. Typically, it would be the UN Security Council that mandates a protection force, but in this case, the US will block the Security Council with its veto. There is another way.
Under the “Uniting for Peace” mechanism, when the Security Council is deadlocked, the authority to act passes to the General Assembly. After a Security Council session and the almost inevitable US veto, the issue would be brought before the UNGA in a resumed 10th emergency special session on the Israel-Palestine conflict. There, the General Assembly can, by a two-thirds majority not subject to US veto, authorize a protection force in response to an urgent request from the State of Palestine. There is a precedent: in 1956, the General Assembly authorized the UN Emergency Force (UNEF) to enter Egypt and protect it from the ongoing invasion by Israel, France, and the United Kingdom.
At the invitation of Palestine, the protection force would enter Gaza to secure emergency humanitarian aid for the starving population. If Israel were to attack the UN protection force, the force would be authorized to defend itself and the Gazans. Whether Israel and the US would dare to fight a UNGA-mandated force protecting the starving Gazans remains to be seen.
Israel has crossed the clear line into the darkest crimes — starving civilians to death and shooting them as they line up, emaciated, for food. There is no further line to cross, nor time to lose. The family of nations is being tested and summoned to action as it has not been in decades.
This article was originally published on Other News.
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Entitled, Demanding–and Shunned
Since we didn’t need relationships in a transactional system, we no longer have any.
To connect multiple threads into a coherent understanding, let’s start with a real-life story. We’re handy but some breakdowns require outside assistance. The fridge failed (GE brand, less than two years old) and it turned out to be difficult to find a repair tech. One had retired, others were swamped, one didn’t return multiple calls, another had left the trade for another trade, and GE’s own service only covers repairs under warranty (i.e. one year).
One of my wife’s cousins had spoken highly of an experienced repair guy, and in leaving the gent a message my wife mentioned her cousin as the source of the recommendation. He had no business listing online; everything was word of mouth.
The gent eventually returned her call, asked for the model/make information, and agreed to swing by to diagnose the problem.
During their conversation the gent mentioned his 40+ years in the appliance / repair business, and that he only does work for people he knows. He no longer responds to strangers recommended by people he knows, as he’s had bad experiences with newcomers and will have nothing to do with them. He only returned our call because we were family members of someone he knows.
His list of previous customers numbers in the hundreds, and these trustworthy, respectful people keep him as busy as he wants.
My shorthand for his bad experiences with strangers: they’re entitled, demanding, discourteous, and find excuses not to pay him. His response is to shun those customers he doesn’t already know, or in our case, family members of people he does know. (He knew two of my wife’s cousins.)
Now let’s connect a few more threads. Ours is an advocacy system. You want something, you have to advocate for it, often persistently, as “the squeaky wheel gets the grease.” Customer service had degraded to the point where the system seeks to reduce costs by grinding down customers so they give up.
Advocacy merges easily into threats. After a trip in Asia, I knew I was on a US-flagged airline when a passenger who’d been accidentally jostled by another passenger snapped, “I’ll sue you!” (This is one of those “only in America” things: “I’ll sue you!”)
The appliance tech mentioned that when a stranger outright refused to pay him and he said he would remove the part he’d just installed, the customer threatened to “call the police.”
Threats are tactics, of course, to bulldoze your opponent, but they can also be the emotional response of those who grasp their powerlessness in the system.
Americans confuse rights, entitlements and advocacy. Our rights are rather limited, and are defined by an enormous body of legal rulings. Our entitlements–for example, to receive medical care under the Medicare or Medicaid programs–are often taken as rights, but they’re not the same: we may be entitled to care but that isn’t a guarantee we’ll receive the care, as that depends on the local availability of enterprises who accept Medicare / Medicaid patients.
Providers can bail out of these programs, and those mandated to provide coverage (emergency rooms for example) can close down.
Entitlement leads to demands presented as advocacy which morphs into “it’s my right.” Well, actually, it’s rarely our “right,” beyond advocating our position via free speech, filing complaints with regulatory authorities or legal proceedings.
Now let’s connect the final set of threads: the difference between transactions and relationships, systems that are based on transactions and systems that are based on relationships–not just immediate family and friends, but extended family ties and reciprocal-help relationships that are the core of community–a much used and abused term for what is largely a hollow slogan.
Ours is a transactional system: everything you need or want is for sale via a financial transaction. nobody needs a relationship to buy whatever they want; they just need money or credit. We approach a complete stranger who is employed by Corporate America or the government, and complete a financial transaction.
In a transactional system, we don’t do anything for anyone unless we’re paid. OK, help a stranger with a flat tire maybe, but develop reciprocal-aid ties with neighbors and others? We don’t have time for those kinds of “investments” that “don’t pay off.”
Consider the difference between an appliance repair conducted as a transaction and one based on relationships. If the appliance is under warranty, the issuer of the warranty is obligated to arrange a repair by the contractual stipulations of the warranty. (“Some conditions apply,” of course, meaning there may be exclusions, limits of liability, etc. Sorry about that, you should have read the fine print.)
The customer and the repair tech are strangers. The transaction is arranged by strangers in a corporate office. This transaction is lauded in the abstract as proof of the “trustworthiness” of the system.
A transactional system works marvelously until it breaks down. For example, the hospital closes due to financial losses, and so the ER is closed, too. We can demand our right to medical care but it’s no longer available in our area. Or the warranty repair service is no longer available in our area, sorry.
The fragility of these transactional systems is hidden until they break down. And when they degrade and break down, then we’re left with systems based on relationships–systems which have largely vanished in a highly mobile, rootless culture that’s distilled everything down to “trustworthy” transactions.
If everyone is constantly moving, there is no way anyone can know members of your extended family because they’re scattered thousands of miles apart.
In a transaction-based culture, relationships have little value, so they’re depreciated. Why bother maintaining or forming relationships when you can get everything you want or need by staring at a screen?
Until all those hyper-optimized transactional systems start breaking down. Then the value of relationships is suddenly revalued–but few have any reciprocal-aid relationships with practical value. Networking is a superficial, shallow simulacrum of actual relationships, and that’s all we have left.
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Epstein Victims Consider Releasing Their Own List
The co-sponsors of a bill that would force the government to release all available Jeffrey Epstein documents held an hour-long press conference Wednesday that included statements from Epstein’s victims. One said that she and others were considering releasing their own list.
“[We] Epstein survivors have been discussing creating our own list,” Lisa Phillips said. “We know the names. Many of us were abused by them. Now, together as survivors, we will confidentially compile the names we all know, who are regularly in the Epstein world. It will be done by survivors, and for survivors. No one else is involved. Stay tuned for more details.”
Lisa Phillips: “Us Epstein survivors have been discussing creating our own list… We will confidentially compile the names we all know who were regularly in the Epstein world.”pic.twitter.com/gtAUGk6slc
— Thomas Sowell Quotes (@ThomasSowell) September 3, 2025
Phillips spoke near the end of the conference. She was one of eight victims (nine if you count deceased victim Virginia Giuffre’s family) to make statements in support of the Epstein Files Transparency Act (EFTA), which would force the House of Representatives to vote on the complete release of everything the government has related to Jeffrey Epstein (with the exception of victim-related redactions).
The Discharge Petition
Since Republican leadership has been unwilling to bring the bill up for a vote, EFTA co-sponsors Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) and Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) are circulating a discharge petition to circumvent the House speaker. If they get 218 signatures, they can force a vote. Right now, they are just two shy. The petition has signatures from 212 Democrats, but only four Republicans. In addition to Massie, the other Republicans are Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, Nancy Mace of South Carolina, and Lauren Boebert of Colorado.
Massie argued that despite various Epstein files being released by the government, “that does absolutely nothing.” He said the public receives some information, but it’s information curated by the government. On Tuesday, the House Oversight Committee released more than 33,000 pages of documents related to the Epstein investigation. Massie pointed out that everything the DOJ has released so far is either heavily redacted or information that’s already been made available to the public, which, he says, accounts for 70 percent. The White House is calling Massie’s attempt to have all the Epstein information released a “hostile act,” an indication that it opposes full transparency.
One of the victims’ lawyers, Bradley Edwards, elaborated on why it’s so important that EFTA go through. He said all the documents and evidence they’ve worked so hard to gather “hide behind protective orders, confidentiality agreements, and bank secrecy laws,” adding:
That is why this discharge petition is so important. While we have seen the documents, you haven’t. And when you see the documents, you’re going to be appalled.
The discharge petition, Edwards added, means that “nothing is off-limits” — from CIA documents, to FBI documents, to financial records. “Everybody knows that … corruption flourishes in secrecy.” He also said that he had filed lawsuits against JPMorgan and Deutsche Bank proving that they “knowingly provided the financial infrastructure for a sex trafficking operation.”
A Nonpartisan Issue
Both the politicians and the victims — or survivors, as they prefer to be called — stressed that this was a nonpartisan issue. Greene said this was something that “Republicans and Democrats should never fight about,” but that it instead “should bring us all together.”
“The only motive for opposing this bill would be to conceal wrongdoing,” one of the victims observed.
Massie, who is being targeted by President Donald Trump in the 2026 primary, took issue with the president calling the Epstein saga a hoax. “This is not a hoax,” he said. “This is real. There are real survivors. There are real victims to this criminal enterprise. And the perpetrators are being protected because they’re rich and powerful and political donors to the Establishment here in Washington, D.C.”
Everyone at the press conference agreed that Epstein was a monster who played a role in the assault of hundreds, if not thousands, of underage girls, and that the only reason there is not more known about him is because he was rich and well connected. Khanna put it this way:
Americans are asking a very simple question: How is it possible that in the richest, most powerful country in the world there are corrupt special-interest forces, both foreign [and] domestic, that are preventing the release — that have a stranglehold on our government and are preventing the release of the full Epstein files. There is something that is rotten in Washington…. Today we stand with survivors, we stand against Big Money, we stand to protect America’s children. That is really what this is about.
Greene said that she had recently heard that Epstein had ties to other countries, including Saudi Arabia, Russia, and Israel.
Victim Testimonies
The victims’ testimonies were similar. They were approached when they were between 14 and 16 years old. Someone they knew asked if they wanted to make $200 to massage “an old rich guy.” However, they soon found out that they were obligated to give more than a massage. Plus, they were asked to recruit other girls as they had been recruited. Another similarity is that none of those who went to the authorities had success — until attorneys like Edwards took on their case.
Perhaps alleged victim Courtney Wild summed it up best as to what this is about:
We need transparency. It’s time for us to see beyond the curtain — Why was Jeffrey Epstein so protected? Who is still being protected? And who protected them all? — so the world can understand how Jeffrey was able to abuse so many of us for so long.
This article was originally published on The New American.
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Cardinal McElroy Asks Vatican To Laicize Whistleblower Priest Claiming DC Sex Abuse Cover-up
Cardinal Robert McElroy of Washington, D.C., is seeking to laicize Father Michael Briese, a whistleblower archdiocesan priest, for refusing to take down blog posts detailing allegations that two priests who remain in good standing with the archdiocese, Father Adam Park and Father Carter Griffin, had sexually abused seminarians as well as allegations of a cover-up of the allegations by both McElroy and his predecessor, Cardinal Wilton Gregory.
In an August 12 letter, McElroy informed Briese that he was requesting his laicization with the Dicastery for the Clergy in response to his supposed “defamatory” claims on his personal Substack against himself, Gregory, the two accused priests, and the archdiocesan curia; however, he notably did not refute any of the charges.
In an exclusive interview with LifeSiteNews, Briese rebutted McElroy’s charge that his claims were defamatory, detailed McElroy’s and Gregory’s alleged years-long cover-up of abuse, the prelate’s efforts to have him silenced, their alleged homosexuality, and more.
McElroy’s letter informing Briese of his impending laicization
In his letter to Briese, McElroy emphasized his hope that, during a July 30 meeting, Briese would agree to take down his “defamatory” articles in exchange for continuing a limited priestly ministry for the poor. However, because the priest refused this offer and continued to push McElroy on his, Cardinal Gregory’s, and the archdiocese’s alleged cover-up of sexual abuse, the cardinal said the laicization process will continue.
“I was particularly hoping that such an avenue might emerge because it would allow you to pursue some initiatives in your own priesthood that would serve the poor, that have been so much at the heart of your service in the Church,” McElroy wrote. “But even as we discussed such an approach, you threatened on two separate occasions in our conversation to bring down the Church and me personally, as well as Cardinal Gregory.”
“For these reasons, I must continue the process that has begun to dismiss you from the clerical state,” he added. “It is inconsistent with your identity as a priest to continue the pattern of character assassination that has wounded so many without justification, and as the pastor of this local church, I cannot stand (by) while you do so.”
Briese stressed to LifeSiteNews that McElroy did not once refute any of the allegations of abuse by the priests or the cover-up by him, Gregory, and the archdiocese.
“(McElroy) hangs himself here because he’s trying to throw everything on me as disobedience. But he never says that I falsely accused (my) archbishop, he doesn’t say it’s a lie,” the priest said. “He’s just not holding himself accountable.”
“I’ve been obedient for seven years. I have followed the orders by Gregory (and McElroy), but I’m not going to pretend that the homosexual promiscuity in our priesthood today is acceptable,” he added.
Alleged DC clerical abuse
In 2021, Father Adam Park, the former vice rector for seminary life at the Pontifical North American College (NAC) in Rome, was accused in a lawsuit by a former seminarian of harassing and preying upon him. Park then quietly stepped down from his position at the NAC but remained in good standing within the archdiocese.
As Briese noted in his August 22 letter to McElroy and on his Substack, a former NAC seminarian came forward and not only corroborated the first seminarian’s story but also alleged that Park had pushed other seminarians to “pleasure him,” once had a “sexual encounter” with a male flight attendant, and has lived as an active homosexual throughout his priesthood.
According to rumors, Park is currently back in Rome pursuing a doctorate in sacred theology, but LifeSiteNews was unable to corroborate this information.
Another former seminarian from the Saint John Paul II Seminary came forward, accusing Father Carter Griffin, then the seminary’s vice rector, among other clergy, of sexually harassing him. Griffin has since been promoted to rector of the seminary.
Griffin had defended himself by stating that “people in my position don’t do things like that,” per a 2019 letter from the seminarian and his family to then-Archbishop Christophe Pierre, detailing the accusations against the priest.
Briese’s letter in response to McElroy
Ten days after McElroy sent his letter, Briese responded with a letter of his own, noting that the cardinal had failed to answer any of his allegations, and underscored that he wasn’t trying to defame anyone but rather was informing the faithful of the serious allegations against two archdiocesan clergy after they failed to act.
“Before I wrote about the sexual allegations … against Father Park, I attempted – on several occasions without success – to discuss them with Cardinal Wilton Gregory,” the priest wrote. “His refusal to meet with me led me to believe that he was covering up the abuse allegations made against Father Park, as well as abuse allegations (from) the family of former Baltimore seminarian … made against Father Carter Griffin.”
This is what happens when real men have had enough of covering for corrupt criminals who are destroying the Catholic faith pic.twitter.com/LEG0ISKEDe
— Mark Lambert (@sitsio) August 30, 2025
“Because of the plethora of evidence and sworn testimony against Father Park, I would be in violation of the Safe Environment Polices of the Washington Archdiocese and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops if I obeyed you and Cardinal Gregory by covering up and retracting what I reported about Father Park,” he added.
Briese also sent a copy of the letter to Pope Leo XIV through Cardinal Christophe Pierre, allowing the Vatican to decide whether the allegations were unfounded and if the attempted laicization was justified. While the priest stressed to LifeSiteNews that he is not optimistic the Vatican will ultimately side with him, the priest felt it was important that they have a record of his accusations.
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Britain’s Descent Towards Civil War Is No Accident
Having lived in Australia for the past three years, I sense that this country is the least advanced down the road towards the multicultural dystopia confronting much of Europe. That is not to say there is room for complacency: Australia has its own canaries in the coal mine, echoing trends observable across the Western world. Yet relative prosperity, firm immigration policies, a distinct welfare regime (mandatory health insurance, means tested pensions), a robust federal system, and above all a unique electoral framework of three-year cycles and compulsory voting all help, willy-nilly, to keep politicians on a short leash and broadly tethered to the popular will.
The greatest safeguard against social fracture and disintegration in Australia, however, is not institutional design but rather watching Britain implode in real time. Many Australians, still bound by ties of kinship and tradition to the old country, see in the United Kingdom both a cautionary tale and an anti-role model: a once-settled, relatively harmonious state busily teaching the world how to dismantle itself through the enthusiastic embrace of liberal dogma.
As an observer no longer resident in Britain, I am reluctant to pontificate on the fate of my homeland. Yet it is a sight to behold: an establishment seemingly bent on self-destruction, clinging to an incontinent immigration system and an almost devotional attachment to international and human rights laws that disadvantage its own citizens. The Epping hotel protests — complete with the Home Office’s recourse to legal appeals — illustrate the point. No doubt the legal complexities are real, as David McGrogan rightly pointed out in these pages, but such manoeuvres only pour petrol on an already combustible national mood.
One is left to wonder whether Britain’s Labour Party, now so hopelessly enthralled by socially progressive ideology, will ever rediscover the ability to represent anything resembling national sentiment — or whether it will, like the Conservatives, simply perfect the art of political self-evisceration.
On Civil Strife and Academic Exile
It should surprise no one that talk of civil strife and even civil war has been in the air for months. Into this debate I enter only on the edges, sitting in the cheap seats, offering a few side notes alongside far more insightful voices.
My former colleague at King’s College London, David Betz, has recently emerged as the primus inter pares in the debate about the possibility of civil war in Britain. Back in early 2019, we co-authored an essay examining the grim prospects for British democracy and the road to internal conflict that already loomed on the horizon.
That essay, The British Road to Dirty War, explored the hollowing out of British democratic institutions — a long-running process that had by then left politics little more than a façade. The Brexit psychodrama exposed the extent of the rot. The political class, determined to thwart the referendum result, behaved with a deranged mixture of denial and contempt for the electorate. We saw in this not merely a passing convulsion but the symptom of a chronic condition — one destined, sooner or later, to end badly, Brexit or no Brexit.
For me, the article was merely the latest offence in a long career of thought criminality — though until then I had usually managed to get away with it, courtesy of the last tattered vestiges of pluralism in British universities. This time was different. The arraignment came swiftly. Confronted with unwelcome facts, several so-called colleagues — fluent in sanctimony, illiterate in reality — filed their denunciations, East German–style. Readers may recall that I recounted the episode in the Daily Sceptic under the title ‘What I Learned from My College Stasi File‘.
This was, in the end, the proximate cause of my ousting as head of the Department of War Studies and my departure for Australia. Yet distance brings a certain clarity. It exposed, with brutal simplicity, not just the barren and increasingly authoritarian nature of British higher education, but the slow unravelling of a once-settled nation — methodically dismantling the very foundations on which its stability once rested.
Enter the Civil Wars Debate
Viewing Britain from afar is sobering: the decline of a nation under the stewardship of its self-anointed managerial and political elite — a class long sustained by illusions of mastery, even as the evidence mounts to the contrary. Into this breach, David Betz took up the ‘civil wars’ thesis and carried it forward. He did the heavy lifting: assembling the scholarly scaffolding, laying out the nuts and bolts of the argument, and presenting it with a careful authority that is both brave and necessary. His work is rightly receiving the attention it deserves, recognition for both intellectual rigour and the courage to say what the political classes would prefer unsaid.
The prospect of civil conflict is no longer whispered in private but debated openly. This is a healthy development. Britain and Europe are grappling with the results of elite overreach — economic stagnation, political paralysis, social fragmentation — and the question is no longer whether such conditions exist, but what their long-term trajectory will be. Far better, then, that the discussion takes place in public than festers underground, smothered by nervous institutions. Thanks to outlets such as the excellent Military Strategy Magazine and the unruly but indispensable independent podcasters, the necessary debate has been given air and light.
More recently, James Alexander has added his voice in the Daily Sceptic, drawing a distinction between the writings of David Betz and those of David A. Hughes. He discerns a contrast between what he sees as Betz’s view — that the country is stumbling toward civil war through elite incompetence and mismanagement — and Hughes’s contention that the road to conflict is intentional, a deliberate course imposed upon society.
I confess I have not yet encountered Hughes’s work, but Alexander suggests he is among the vanishingly small number of truly dissenting academics. If so, that alone marks him out as worth reading: in the present climate, dissent is the rarest form of intellectual courage.
On Dichotomies and Deliberate Designs
Alexander’s treatment is thoughtful and nuanced, and he is right to insist that both vantage points deserve consideration, particularly Hughes’s radical reframing of political reality. Yet his depiction of the dichotomy is flawed. To suggest that Betz’s survival within academia implies he is not fundamentally challenging its ideology is, frankly, a misreading. Survival in that system is not comfort or acceptance; it is endurance at the margins. David and I both narrowly survived our purging after publishing ‘The British Road to Dirty War’. In my case, ‘survival’ amounted to a kind of neo-transportation — admittedly more gilded than the original, but no less real for that.
Nor is it accurate to claim that Betz merely observes elites ignoring the breakdown of civilisation while Hughes contends they actively intend it. That is too neat, too binary. Having written extensively with David Betz, I can say our position has never been that elites are simply incompetent — though many, of course, demonstrably are. Rather, their actions form a discernible pattern, and patterns imply purpose. Whether or not the chaos we now endure is consciously engineered at every turn is almost beside the point: the consequences are here, and we must all live with them.
The record of intentionality, in fact, is undeniable. Under Tony Blair, the Labour government pursued a policy of demographic transformation. As Andrew Neather — then a speechwriter and adviser to Blair — acknowledged in the Evening Standard in 2009, that immigration policy was shaped in part by the desire “to rub the Right’s nose in diversity“. That was no accident, no bureaucratic mishap. It was an explicit goal, and its consequences are now written across Britain’s social fabric. Likewise, the current Labour leadership under Sir Keir Starmer operates from a post-nationalist outlook, one that treats the very idea of nationhood as negotiable, even alien, to the political class.
David and I set out this argument in 2020 in a short article, ‘Empires of “Progress”‘, where we identified a clear elite strategy of re-importing techniques of imperial governance into the domestic realm. The aim was to rule by division: to fracture society into communities, reward loyal in-groups and discriminate against the majority through a two-tier system of justice, policing and social policy. In other words, to adapt the colonial logic of ‘divide and rule’ for use at home. This was not incompetence. It was contrivance.
Meet the New Imperialists
Who are these new imperialists? They appear under fresh guises — ‘diversity coordinators’, anti-racism activists, curriculum decolonisers, climate campaigners — but their mission is unchanged: to manage society by division. Their worldview is relentlessly categorical: race, religion, identity. Favoured minorities and immigrant groups, often not oppressed in any meaningful sense, are elevated into protected castes, while the majority is relegated to second-class status. This is not progress; it is imperial management in modern dress. Like their predecessors, they are buoyed by moral certainty and a conviction of their right to rule.
Meet the new imperialists: same as the old imperialists.
Western societies have not, therefore, polarised by chance. A movement — most visible on the progressive Left — embraces a radical perspectivism that seeks to manufacture conflict and destabilise once-stable societies. This is no startling discovery. Peter Collier and David Horowitz documented it decades ago: the student radicals of the 1960s sought revolution, not reform. They demanded constitutional rights even as they denounced the constitutional order, exploiting democracy’s tolerance to undermine it. When they tired of being outsiders, they burrowed into the institutions — universities, bureaucracies — and entrenched themselves. It was, as Collier and Horowitz observed, a deeply cynical strategy: use democracy’s freedoms to dissolve democracy itself.
Today, with the maturation of the boomer generation, those same radicals — or their intellectual heirs — occupy positions of power. They are the imperial managers of our age. To call this the product of bumbling incompetence is naïve. It was strategy, not accident.
Where it may yet unravel is in the arrogance of the new imperium. They imagine themselves clever enough — and the public credulous enough — that such policies can be pursued without provoking resistance. But arrogance is no substitute for foresight. Once matters tip into open conflict, escalation takes on its own momentum. Anger is already stirring — and anger, once roused, is the fuse of history.
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The Power Resides in the Enemies of Truth
RootsAction is an activist site founded by two progressives to defend the public interest from “an increasingly extremist Republican Party.” RootsAction believes that both parties are compromised by corporate money and power, is against the wars, and was endorsed by Barbara Ehrenreich, Cornel West, Daniel Ellsberg, and Naomi Klein, all principled persons whether or not you agree with them.
Some of the organization’s positions are reasonable–put limits on Super PACs to limit the amount of bought government; consider the risks of nuclear power plants–others are half-baked by ignoring the adverse consequences.
Therefore, I was surprised to receive from RootsAction an email addressed specifically to me, not a mass mailing, calling for Robert F. Kennedy’s removal as Health Secretary. Their case against Kennedy is that the limits he has put on the Covid vax, now proven to have caused more deaths and health injuries than Covid, and on other vaccines associated with the plethora of new childhood illnesses that did not previously exist, together with regulations to improve food safety, “is causing future deaths and suffering on a large scale.” As there is no evidence for this charge, the question arose in my mind whether RootsAction was being paid by Big Pharma as a part of Big Pharma’s policy of putting its profits ahead of Americans’ health and safety. Just as President John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy Jr’s uncle, was considered a risk to the power and profit of the US military/security complex, Robert F. Kennedy Jr is considered a risk to the power and profit of Big Pharma.
This suspicion increased when I saw that RootsAction was predicting future deaths from constraints Kennedy placed on the corrupt revolving door between Big Pharma and the CED, NIH, and FDA and cessation of federal funding for Big Pharma-serving propaganda.
How is it possible that RootsAction has learned nothing from the proliferation of scientific peer-reviewed studies documenting the disastrous effects of the Covid Vax, lockdowns, and masks? As the whore media continues to hide these established results from the public in exchange for Big Pharma advertising revenues, it is possible that RootsAction simply doesn’t know the facts.
The CDC directors and bureaucrats who were fired were fired for putting Big Pharma’s profits ahead of the public’s health. Many of them came from Big Pharma and many returned to Big Pharma.
The Covid Pandemic was an orchestration. Just as RootsAction disapproves, I assume, of the current orchestrations to promote wars, such as Iran’s alleged “nuclear weapons” and Venezuelan President Maduro’s alleged “narcotics cartel,” like Saddam Hussein’s “weapons of mass destruction” and Assad’s “use of chemical weapons,” RootsAction should disapprove of Big Pharma’s orchestration to remove Robert Kennedy.
For many years my columns have emphasized the decline in the ability of truth to get a hearing. There are many reasons for this: The rise of ideological agendas for which truth is an obstacle, the concentration of the print and TV media in six mega-companies thereby making it possible to establish official narratives regardless of their truthfulness, and an insouciant and largely ignorant population without the interest and ability to examine the official narratives. Indeed, today in the US education consists of indoctrinating students with official narratives and cancelling those who challenge the narratives. The simple fact is that truth is disappearing, because it does not serve the agendas of the ruling elites.
This explains why it is so difficult for Robert Kennedy, Donald Trump with his mandate, and anyone else to set things right. The power resides in the enemies of truth.
Consequently, important issues, often crucial ones, are settled by canceling the narrative challenger, smearing him, arresting him on false charges, passing a law to protect the narrative, or simply by ignoring the challenge which is the whore media’s response to the Covid scandal.
Impossible you say? Think about the recent Russiagate hoax. The entirety of the Biden regime, Democrat Party, TV, print, and NPR media, liberal-left intellectuals and professors, RINO Republicans like Republican Senate Leader Mitch McConnell, the Entire UK and EU press and public figures supported the Russiagate hoax. Yet, as we now know for certain, never was a greater lie perpetuated on the world. The only question remaining is whether those responsible will be held accountable or whether the ruling elite are just too powerful to ever be held accountable. See this.
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Court of Public Opinion
Here we go again. Going against the grain is right up my alley, especially when every single person who has ever heard of the word “tennis” disagrees. It happened last week at the US Open, and it had everyone agreeing that Taylor Townsend, a black female American tennis player, had been the victim of a racist attack by a Latvian white female player by the name of Ostapenko. Gee whiz, if everyone in the media and among the players says so, it must be right, n’est-ce pas, as they say in the land of cheese. Well, I say no, they’re all wrong and Ostapenko was right in calling Townsend uneducated and lacking class.
For any of you who follow the sport, the two women shook hands after the black American had won—rather easily, I’d say, after a close first set. That is when the Latvian player told the American she lacked class. The reason was because Townsend failed to signal having won a point on a net cord. It is not in the rules, and Townsend had no obligation to say anything, except for one thing: In all my years of playing in tournaments, or watching the game, I’ve never, ever seen someone win a point on a net cord without the gesture acknowledging it. Jelena Ostapenko is now a racist to end all racists, according to the media that genuflected in front of Townsend’s martyrdom. You’d think some Ku Klux Klanner had jumped onto the court and struck the black player with a burning cross. The worst was one Larry Brooks, of the New York Post, writing that the Latvian was “like an unhinged passenger dragged off a flight after causing a ruckus.” He went piling on, stating that the Latvian was talking in code, meaning many other terrible things.
“Polite society calls it virtue signaling. I call it cowardice.”
Brooks is a fool, bending over backward to show he doesn’t have a racist bone in his body, but what he does have is an opportunistic streak that will invent anything in order to show what an anti-racist he is. Polite society calls it virtue signaling. I call it cowardice. Naomi Osaka, who plays for Japan but is also black and has won the US Open twice, called it the worst thing that you can say to a black tennis player in a white sport. Is that so? So when black football players in American pro football, which is 80 percent black, call white players names—which they do in good humor all the time—that is okay. Basketball is 95 percent black, and I’ve heard some pretty good jibes about whites playing the game. But nobody seems to mind when blacks call us honkies and worse.
The jerk Brooks went further, bringing up Arthur Ashe and Althea Gibson and Serena Williams. Ashe and Gibson were wonderful in every respect. They had manners on and off the court, and I knew them both, although Althea was a friend whereas Ashe was an acquaintance. But Serena Williams was a thug, ill-mannered on court, a bully, someone who threatened and intimidated referees and players alike, a foulmouthed cheater who plays nice now that her playing days are over.
The Noo Yawk Open has now degenerated to the point that a Norwegian player complained that it was hard to play while breathing in marijuana smoke. Just think about this. If you light a normal cigarette you most likely will be escorted out of the stadium, but smoking pot, getting drunk, and being noisy are acceptable. The dress code reflects the degeneration of a once-wonderful sport played by ladies and gentlemen. Soon someone will play in a G-string and will have the headlines to him- or herself. In the meantime, watch out for Ostapenko. I predict her few words to a black American will haunt her to her grave. Unlike Christianity, woke does not forgive or forget. Townsend is now a victim—as all black people are in America and the U.K.—and I predict she will go on to greater things, having survived the death-defying trauma of being told she had no class nor manners.
This article was originally published on Taki’s Magazine.
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The West Just Watched the World Shift in Tianjin
At the recent Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in Tianjin, leaders representing over half of humanity signaled the rise of a multipolar world order. As China, Russia, India, and Central Asia push new financial and trade systems, the West risks being left on the sidelines.
When the leaders of China, Russia, India, and several Central Asian states gathered in Tianjin last week for the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) Summit, the world should have paid far closer attention. Collectively, the countries represented at the table account for more than half of humanity, command immense reserves of natural resources, and increasingly drive a larger share of global GDP. This is not a peripheral coalition but a core pillar of the international system in the making.
Yet much of the Western press treated the gathering as little more than a diplomatic sideshow, overshadowed by domestic political debates or the latest updates from NATO. That was a mistake. What unfolded in Tianjin was not just another regional summit. It was the clearest indication yet that the unipolar world of U.S. primacy, which dominated the decades after the Cold War, is giving way to a new and contested multipolar order.
The symbolism was unmistakable. Beijing positioned the SCO as a platform for “equal partnership,” implicitly contrasting it with Western alliances built around hierarchy and U.S. leadership. Moscow emphasized strategic coordination in the face of sanctions and military pressure from the West. India, while carefully balancing its ties with Washington, underscored its role as a civilizational power charting an independent path. The Central Asian republics, long seen as geopolitical battlegrounds between outside powers, asserted their relevance as connectors of trade, energy, and security across Eurasia.
Beyond symbolism, the summit carried substance. Agreements on energy cooperation, cross-border infrastructure, digital technology, and security coordination point toward an increasingly institutionalized bloc. Taken together, they signal that the SCO is evolving from a loose forum into a framework capable of shaping the rules of the 21st-century world.
For policymakers in Washington and European capitals, the lesson is sobering. Ignoring the SCO or dismissing it as a talking shop risks overlooking the consolidation of an alternative power center that is steadily building legitimacy outside of Western institutions. For the rest of the world, particularly in the Global South, Tianjin served as a reminder that power is no longer concentrated in a single pole, but dispersed across multiple capitals with diverging visions of order.
The summit was therefore more than a diplomatic calendar entry. It was a milestone in the slow but unmistakable rebalancing of global power and a process that will define international politics for decades to come.
A New Architecture Emerges
Chinese President Xi Jinping used the summit to press his vision of a world that renders Cold War mentalities a matter of the past. His remarks were not mere diplomatic pleasantries; they were a direct critique of the U.S.-led alliance system and its reliance on deterrence, sanctions, and bloc politics. Backed vocally by Vladimir Putin, Xi pledged to accelerate the creation of a multipolar order in which Western dominance would be checked by new centers of power across Eurasia and beyond [1].
What distinguished Tianjin from previous summits was that these calls were tied to concrete initiatives. Beijing unveiled a 10-year development strategy for the SCO, underwritten with billions of dollars in loans and grants earmarked for infrastructure, energy corridors, and digital connectivity projects [2]. This framework goes well beyond aspirational communiqués: it signals a deliberate attempt to institutionalize the SCO as both an economic and geopolitical force.
One of the boldest proposals on the table was the creation of a dedicated SCO development bank that poses an explicit challenge to the Bretton Woods institutions, particularly the IMF and World Bank. Such a body, if realized, would allow SCO members to finance projects without the conditionalities often imposed by Western lenders. It would also complement other Chinese-led initiatives such as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and the Belt and Road Initiative, weaving them into a broader Eurasian financial ecosystem.
The implications are far-reaching. For decades, the global financial order has revolved around institutions headquartered in Washington and Brussels, shaping development trajectories in the Global South. By offering alternative sources of capital, Beijing and its partners are signaling that the monopoly of Western financial governance is coming to an end. The SCO’s proposed bank would not only fund railways, pipelines, and fiber-optic networks across Eurasia but also serve as a symbolic assertion of financial sovereignty.
The message from Tianjin was unambiguous: the institutions of the West will no longer go unchallenged. A parallel architecture emerging reflects the priorities of Beijing, Moscow, New Delhi, and the capitals of Central Asia. It is not yet clear how cohesive or durable this architecture will prove, but its mere existence underscores that the world has moved beyond unipolarity. The battle is no longer over whether the West will be challenged, but over how rapidly alternative institutions can be consolidated, and how effectively they can deliver.
Central Asia at the Core
The Shanghai Cooperation Organization is increasingly positioning Central Asia as the backbone of the emerging multipolar world. Far from being a peripheral region, the Central Asian republics are becoming the crossroads of Eurasian connectivity and influence. Trade corridors linking Shanghai to St. Petersburg are facilitating the movement of goods, capital, and people across thousands of kilometers. Energy pipelines crisscross Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and beyond, ensuring that the region’s vast natural resources flow to both Chinese and Russian markets while integrating it into a broader strategic network. Meanwhile, digital “Silk Roads” are introducing Chinese standards for 5G, artificial intelligence, and telecommunications infrastructure, further embedding Beijing’s technological footprint across the continent [3].
For decades, Central Asia was largely treated as a geopolitical periphery, a buffer zone caught between the lingering influence of Russia and the rising ambitions of China. Moscow maintained traditional security ties and economic leverage, while
Beijing cultivated trade and investment links primarily through infrastructure projects. Western powers, by contrast, engaged only sporadically, mostly through development aid or counterterrorism initiatives. The region’s strategic importance was recognized, but its potential as a hub of independent, multipolar influence remained unrealized.
That era is now coming to an end. With the SCO providing both institutional frameworks and concrete projects, Central Asia is transitioning from a passive periphery to an active strategic heartland of the new order. Its cities, railways, pipelines, and digital networks are not just local assets but the connective tissue of a Eurasian system designed to operate largely independently of Western-dominated institutions. By anchoring trade, energy, and technology in Central Asia, Beijing, Moscow, and their partners are effectively recasting the region as a central node in the global architecture of power.
The implications are profound. Central Asia is no longer a “backyard” for external powers; it is a linchpin of geopolitical strategy, economic integration, and technological standard-setting. As the SCO continues to consolidate its influence, the region’s rising prominence underscores that multipolarity is not merely a distant aspiration; it is being physically and institutionally constructed, rail line by rail line, pipeline by pipeline, and gigabyte by gigabyte.
The Electro-Yuan Gambit
Perhaps the boldest and most consequential development in Tianjin was Chinese President Xi Jinping’s call to expand the use of the yuan in energy settlements.
Analysts quickly dubbed the concept the “electro-yuan,” a system designed to link China’s digital currency with cross-border trade in oil, gas, and electricity. Unlike conventional trade settlements, which rely on correspondent banking in U.S. dollars, the electro-yuan would enable real-time, blockchain-enabled transactions directly between SCO member states, bypassing traditional financial intermediaries.
This is about far more than convenience or modernization. If widely adopted, the electro-yuan could significantly weaken the petrodollar system, which has underpinned U.S. financial dominance since the 1970s. The dollar’s centrality in global energy markets has long allowed Washington to exert extraordinary influence over international finance and foreign policy. By creating a credible alternative settlement system, Beijing and its SCO partners would undermine this leverage, diminishing the reach of dollar-based sanctions and reducing the United States’ ability to enforce geopolitical objectives through financial pressure.
The implications extend beyond energy. A robust electro-yuan network could accelerate the internationalization of China’s digital currency, the e-CNY, and provide a model for other nations seeking to hedge against the dollar. Coupled with SCO-led development projects and cross-border trade corridors, it represents a deliberate attempt to construct the “plumbing” of a parallel financial system that operates on terms favorable to Eurasian partners rather than Western institutions.
The ripple effects for global markets could be profound. If SCO countries begin pricing energy, commodities, and infrastructure projects in yuan rather than dollars, it could reduce demand for U.S. currency reserves, influence exchange rates, and reshape global investment flows. Commodity markets may see shifts in pricing benchmarks, particularly in oil and natural gas, as the electro-yuan provides a viable alternative to the dollar-based contracts that dominate today. For investors and multinational corporations, reliance on the dollar as the default currency for trade and finance may gradually diminish, introducing new risks and opportunities in hedging, capital allocation, and currency management.
For policymakers in Washington and Brussels, the message is stark: the rules of global finance may be shifting beneath their feet. A system that decouples trade and investment from the dollar would not only reduce the United States’ economic influence but also recalibrate global alliances, making financial sovereignty a tangible tool of statecraft for countries like China, Russia, and their SCO partners.
In short, the electro-yuan is more than a financial experiment but a strategic gambit, signaling that the SCO is not content merely to challenge Western hegemony rhetorically. It is building the infrastructure that could one day rival, and perhaps circumvent, the very foundations of U.S.-led global economic power, with consequences that extend to every corner of the global market.
India’s Pragmatic Hedge
The presence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the Tianjin summit lent the gathering even greater weight and global significance. Historically cautious about Chinese-led initiatives, India has often approached regional multilateral frameworks with skepticism, wary of being overshadowed by Beijing or Moscow. Modi’s participation signaled a subtle but meaningful shift in India’s strategic calculus that acknowledged engagement, rather than isolation which is essential in a rapidly evolving multipolar world.
At Tianjin, New Delhi agreed to concrete measures aimed at rebalancing trade with China, loosening visa restrictions, and enhancing connectivity initiatives within the SCO framework [4]. These steps demonstrate a willingness to separate economic pragmatism from ongoing territorial and border disputes, particularly in regions such as Ladakh and Arunachal Pradesh. By compartmentalizing these issues, India is signaling that it can cooperate on economic and regional integration while maintaining its security concerns.
For India, engagement in the SCO is not a matter of siding with Beijing or Moscow. Instead, it reflects a strategic hedging approach: mitigating the risks posed by tariff threats from Washington, strengthening resilience against supply chain disruptions, and ensuring that it cannot be sidelined from emerging Eurasian trade and infrastructure networks. By participating actively, India secures a voice in shaping regional rules and norms rather than remaining a passive observer to a process that will define the geopolitical landscape for decades.
This approach aligns with India’s broader foreign policy of “strategic autonomy” wherein flexibility is maintained to navigate between competing power centers while advancing national interests. At the same time, India continues to cultivate robust partnerships through the Quad (with the U.S., Japan, and Australia) and its growing bilateral ties with Washington. In practice, this means India is simultaneously engaging with China-led institutions like the SCO while strengthening security and technological cooperation with the U.S.-led Indo-Pacific bloc. This dual-track strategy allows New Delhi to hedge against uncertainty on multiple fronts: it ensures access to Eurasian markets and energy corridors without sacrificing strategic alignment with Western partners.
The Tianjin summit thus reflects a uniquely complex Indian strategy: neither confrontation nor unconditional alignment, but calculated engagement, ensuring that India remains both relevant and resilient as global power structures shift. By balancing its SCO participation with Quad commitments, India positions itself as a pivotal actor capable of bridging competing spheres of influence, maximizing strategic flexibility in an era defined by multipolar competition.
The West on the Sidelines
The Tianjin summit was a warning shot: the world is moving on, with or without the West. While Washington and Brussels continue to wield significant economic, military, and diplomatic power, their ability to unilaterally dictate global terms is steadily eroding. For decades, Western institutions such as the IMF, World Bank, NATO, and dollar-based financial systems served as the primary levers of influence, shaping trade, development, and security outcomes across the globe.
Today, however, alternative frameworks like the SCO are demonstrating that other nations can pursue prosperity and security without relying solely on Western guidance.
Across Eurasia, countries are increasingly prioritizing strategic autonomy over rigid alignment. They seek options that provide economic resilience, infrastructure development, and energy security without the political strings often attached to Western loans or alliances. From pipelines in Central Asia to digital connectivity projects extending China’s 5G standards, the SCO is offering practical alternatives that simultaneously advance regional integration and multipolar governance.
The message is clear: the rules and institutions of the West are no longer the only game in town. Nations that fail to recognize this realignment risk being left behind not just economically, but politically and strategically. Participation in emerging trade corridors, digital networks, and financial mechanisms will increasingly define influence in Eurasia and beyond. Those who ignore these shifts may find their voice diminished in global decision-making and their access to vital markets and resources constrained.
Moreover, the SCO’s rise signals a broader psychological shift. For decades, Western primacy framed global debates and set expectations of power projection.
Tianjin revealed a growing willingness among Eurasian states to assert their own terms, challenge Western norms, and pursue partnerships that align with their strategic interests rather than defaulting to U.S. or European approval. The West can no longer assume that its preferences will automatically shape outcomes; influence must now be earned, negotiated, and, in some cases, competed for.
In short, the Tianjin summit underscores a central truth of the emerging era: multipolarity is not a distant possibility as it is taking shape here and now. To remain relevant, Western policymakers must move beyond complacency and recognize that a world with the SCO at its center demands engagement on terms that are increasingly pluralistic, flexible, and contested. Ignoring this reality is not just shortsighted but a strategic liability.
A Multipolar Future
What unfolded in Tianjin was not the birth of a new Cold War but the emergence of something far more complex and consequential: a multipolar future in which the West is no longer the sole arbiter of global norms, trade, and security. This is not merely a shift in power; it is a transformation of the architecture of international relations. Multiple centers of influence such as Beijing, Moscow, New Delhi, and the capitals of Central Asia are actively shaping the rules, institutions, and economic flows that will define the 21st century. The West, powerful as it remains, is increasingly one participant among many rather than the default decision-maker.
The unipolar era of American dominance, which followed the Cold War, had its run, dictating the terms of finance, trade, and security for decades. The Tianjin summit, however, signaled that the next chapter will be written differently. The SCO is not simply a forum for dialogue; it is a deliberate effort to institutionalize an alternative framework for regional and global governance, encompassing trade, energy, technology, and finance. From the expansion of the yuan in energy settlements to infrastructure corridors across Central Asia, the SCO is constructing the material and institutional foundations of a multipolar order that can operate independently of Western-led institutions.
This new reality poses a strategic test for the West. Can Washington and Brussels adapt to a world in which their primacy is no longer assumed, and influence must be negotiated rather than imposed? Or will they risk being relegated to the sidelines, observing as new power centers define the economic rules, geopolitical alignments, and technological standards that will shape global affairs for decades to come?
Crucially, multipolarity is not zero-sum since it does not necessarily mean confrontation, but it does demand recognition that influence, leverage, and legitimacy are now dispersed. States and institutions that cling to a unipolar mindset may find themselves increasingly marginalized, while those capable of engaging with multiple power centers, hedging risks, and participating in alternative frameworks will thrive.
Tianjin was therefore more than a summit; it was a glimpse of the emerging world order in motion. The SCO, with its blend of economic initiatives, security coordination, and financial innovation, illustrates that the 21st century will be defined by complexity, interdependence, and competition among multiple poles of power. The central question now is whether the West will acknowledge and adapt to this new reality or allow others to shape the future on their own terms.
Notes
- Xi Jinping criticises ‘bullying behaviour’ and Putin blames west for Ukraine war at Shanghai summit | China | The Guardian
- SCO has a 10-year plan for a multipolar world, China’s Wang Yi says | South China Morning Post
- Central Asia electro-yuan can be Xi’s summit win | Reuters
- SCO summit signals strategic shift amid US tariff uncertainty – The Economic Times
The original source of this article is Global Research.
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Gaza’s Looming Cancer Epidemic
A week after the Hamas attacks on October 7, 2023, a large explosion incinerated a parking lot near the busy Al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City, killing more than 470 people. It was a horrifying, chaotic scene. Burnt clothing was strewn about, scorched vehicles piled atop one another, and charred buildings surrounded the impact zone. Israel claimed the blast was caused by an errant rocket fired by Palestinian extremists, but an investigation by Forensic Architecture later indicated that the missile was most likely launched from Israel, not from inside Gaza.
In those first days of the onslaught, it wasn’t yet clear that wiping out Gaza’s entire healthcare system could conceivably be part of the Israeli plan. After all, it’s well known that purposely bombing or otherwise destroying hospitals violates the Geneva Conventions and is a war crime, so there was still some hope that the explosion at Al-Ahli was accidental. And that, of course, would be the narrative that Israeli authorities would continue to push over the nearly two years of death and misery that followed.
A month into Israel’s Gaza offensive, however, soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) would raid the Indonesian Hospital in northern Gaza, dismantling its dialysis center with no explanation as to why such life-saving medical equipment would be targeted. (Not even Israel was contending that Hamas was having kidney problems.) Then, in December 2023, Al-Awda Hospital, also in northern Gaza, was hit, while at least one doctor was shot by Israeli snipers stationed outside it. As unnerving as such news stories were, the most gruesome footage released at the time came from Al-Nasr children’s hospital, where infants were found dead and decomposing in an empty ICU ward. Evacuation orders had been given and the medical staff had fled, unable to take the babies with them.
For those monitoring such events, a deadly pattern was beginning to emerge, and Israel’s excuses for its malevolent behavior were already losing credibility.
Shortly after Israel issued warnings to evacuate the Al-Quds Hospital in Gaza City in mid-January 2024, its troops launched rockets at the building, destroying what remained of its functioning medical equipment. Following that attack, ever more clinics were also targeted by Israeli forces. A Jordan Field Hospital was shelled that January and again this past August. An air strike hit Yafa hospital early in December 2023. The Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis in southern Gaza was also damaged last May and again this August, when the hospital and an ambulance were struck, killing 20, including five journalists.
While human-rights groups like the International Criminal Court, the United Nations, and the Red Cross have condemned Israel for such attacks, its forces have continued to decimate medical facilities and aid sites. At the same time, Israeli authorities claimed that they were only targeting Hamas command centers and weapons storage facilities.
The Death of Gaza’s Only Cancer Center
In early 2024, the Turkish-Palestinian Friendship Hospital, first hit in October 2023 and shuttered in November of that year, was in the early stages of being demolished by IDF battalions. A video released in February by Middle East Eye showed footage of an elated Israeli soldier sharing a TikTok video of himself driving a bulldozer into that hospital, chuckling as his digger crushed a cinderblock wall. “The hospital accidentally broke,” he said. Evidence of Israel’s crimes was by then accumulating, much of it provided by the IDF itself.
When that Turkish-Palestinian Friendship Hospital opened in 2018, it quickly became Gaza’s leading and most well-equipped cancer treatment facility. As the Covid-19 pandemic reached Gaza in 2020, all oncology operations were transferred to that hospital to free up space at other clinics, making it the only cancer center to serve Gaza’s population of more than two million.
“This hospital will help transform the health sector,” Palestinian Health Minister Jawad Awwad said shortly before its opening. “[It] will help people who are going through extreme difficulties.”
Little did he know that those already facing severe difficulties due to their cancer diagnoses would all too soon face full-blown catastrophe. In March 2025, what remained of the hospital would be razed, erasing all traces of Gaza’s once-promising cancer treatment.
Before October 7, 2023, the most common cancers afflicting Palestinians in Gaza were breast and colon cancer. Survival rates were, however, much lower there than in Israel, thanks to more limited medical resources and restrictions imposed by that country. From 2016 to 2019, while cases in Gaza were on the rise, there was at least hope that the hospital, funded by Turkey, would offer much-needed cancer screenings that had previously been unavailable.
“The repercussions of the current conflict on cancer care in Gaza will likely be felt for years to come,” according to a November 2023 editorial in the medical journal Cureus. “The immediate challenges of drugs, damaged infrastructure, and reduced access to specialized treatment have long-term consequences on the overall health outcomes of current patients.”
In other words, lack of medical care and worse cancer rates will not only continue to disproportionately affect Gazans compared to Israelis, but conditions will undoubtedly deteriorate significantly more. And such predictions don’t even take into account the fact that war itself causes cancer, painting an even bleaker picture of the medical future for Palestinians in Gaza.
The Case of Fallujah
When the Second Battle of Fallujah, part of America’s nightmarish war in Iraq, ended in December 2004, the embattled city was a toxic warzone, contaminated with munitions, depleted uranium (DU), and poisoned dust from collapsed buildings. Not surprisingly, in the years that followed, cancer rates increased almost exponentially there. Initially, doctors began to notice that more cancers were being diagnosed. Scientific research would soon back up their observations, revealing a startling trend.
In the decade after the fighting had mostly ended, leukemia rates among the local population skyrocketed by a dizzying 2,200%. It was the most significant increase ever recorded after a war, exceeding even Hiroshima’s 660% rise over a more extended period of time. One study later tallied a fourfold increase in all cancers and, for childhood cancers, a twelvefold increase.
The most likely source of many of those cancers was the mixture of DU, building materials, and other leftover munitions. Researchers soon observed that residing inside or near contaminated sites in Fallujah was likely the catalyst for the boom in cancer rates.
“Our research in Fallujah indicated that the majority of families returned to their bombarded homes and lived there, or otherwise rebuilt on top of the contaminated rubble of their old homes,” explained Dr. Mozghan Savabieasfahani, an environmental toxicologist who studied the health impacts of war in Fallujah. “When possible, they also used building materials that were salvaged from the bombarded sites. Such common practices will contribute to the public’s continuous exposure to toxic metals years after the bombardment of their area has ended.”
While difficult to quantify, we do have some idea of the amount of munitions and DU that continues to plague that city. According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United States fired between 170 and 1,700 tons of tank-busting munitions in Iraq, including Fallujah, which might have amounted to as many as 300,000 rounds of DU. While only mildly radioactive, persistent exposure to depleted uranium has a cumulative effect on the human body. The more you’re exposed, the more the radioactive particles build up in your bones, which, in turn, can cause cancers like leukemia.
With its population of 300,000, Fallujah served as a military testing ground for munitions much like those that Gaza endures today. In the short span of one month, from March 19 to April 18, 2003, more than 29,199 bombs were dropped on Iraq, 19,040 of which were precision-guided, along with another 1,276 cluster bombs. The impacts were grave. More than 60 of Fallujah’s 200 mosques were destroyed, and of the city’s 50,000 buildings, more than 10,000 were imploded and 39,000 damaged. Amid such destruction, there was a whole lot of toxic waste. As a March 2025 report from Brown University’s Costs of War Project noted, “We found that the environmental impact of warfighting and the presence of heavy metals are long-lasting and widespread in both human bodies and soil.”
Exposure to heavy metals is distinctly associated with cancer risk. “Prolonged exposure to specific heavy metals has been correlated with the onset of various cancers, including those affecting the skin, lungs, and kidneys,” a 2023 report in Scientific Studies explains. “The gradual buildup of these metals within the body can lead to persistent toxic effects. Even minimal exposure levels can result in their gradual accumulation in tissues, disrupting normal cellular operations and heightening the likelihood of diseases, particularly cancer.”
And it wasn’t just cancer that afflicted the population that stuck around or returned to Fallujah. Infants began to be born with alarming birth defects. A 2010 study found a significant increase in heart ailments among babies there, with rates 13 times higher and nervous system defects 33 times higher than in European births.
“We have all kinds of defects now, ranging from congenital heart disease to severe physical abnormalities, both in numbers you cannot imagine,” Dr Samira Alani, a pediatric specialist at Fallujah General Hospital, who co-authored the birth-defect study, told Al Jazeera in 2013. “We have so many cases of babies with multiple system defects… Multiple abnormalities in one baby. For example, we just had one baby with central nervous system problems, skeletal defects, and heart abnormalities. This is common in Fallujah today.”
While comprehensive health assessments in Iraq are scant, evidence continues to suggest that high cancer rates persist in places like Fallujah. “Fallujah today, among other bombarded cities in Iraq, reports a high rate of cancers,” researchers from the Costs of War Project study report. “These high rates of cancer and birth defects may be attributed to exposure to the remnants of war, as are manifold other similar spikes in, for example, early onset cancers and respiratory diseases.”
As devastating as the war in Iraq was — and as contaminated as Fallujah remains — it’s nearly impossible to envision what the future holds for those left in Gaza, where the situation is so much worse. If Fallujah teaches us anything, it’s that Israel’s destruction will cause cancer rates to rise significantly, impacting generations to come.
Manufacturing Cancer
The aerial photographs and satellite footage are grisly. Israel’s U.S.-backed military machine has dropped so many bombs that entire neighborhoods have been reduced to rubble. Gaza, by every measure, is a land of immense suffering. As Palestinian children hang on the brink of starvation, it feels strange to discuss the health effects they might face in the decades ahead, should they be fortunate enough to survive.
While data often conceals the truth, in Gaza, numbers reveal a dire reality. As of this year, nearly 70% of all roads had been destroyed, 90% of all homes damaged or completely gone, 85% of farmland affected, and 84% of healthcare facilities obliterated. To date, Israel’s relentless death machine has created at least 50 million tons of rubble, human remains, and hazardous materials — all the noxious ingredients necessary for a future cancer epidemic.
From October 2023 to April 2024, well over 70,000 tons of explosives were dropped on Gaza, which, according to the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, was equivalent to two nuclear bombs. While the extent and exact types of weaponry used there are not fully known, the European Parliament has accused Israel of deploying depleted uranium, which, if true, will only add to the future cancer ills of Gazans. Most bombs contain heavy metals like lead, antimony, bismuth, cobalt, and tungsten, which end up polluting the soil and groundwater, while impacting agriculture and access to clean water for years to come.
“The toxicological effects of metals and energetic materials on microorganisms, plants, and animals vary widely and can be significantly different depending on whether the exposure is acute (short term) or chronic (long term),” reads a 2021 report commissioned by the Guide to Explosive Ordnance Pollution of the Environment. “In some cases, the toxic effects may not be immediately apparent, but instead may be linked to an increased risk of cancer, or increased risk of mutation during pregnancy, which may not become evident for many years.”
Given such information, we can only begin to predict how toxic the destruction may prove to be. The homes that once stood in the Gaza Strip were mainly made of concrete and steel. Particles of dust released from such crumbled buildings can themselves cause lung, colon, and stomach cancers.
As current cancer patients die slow deaths with no access to the care they need, future patients, who will acquire cancer thanks to Israel’s genocidal mania, will no doubt meet the same fate unless there is significant intervention.
“[A]pproximately 2,700 [Gazans] in advanced stages of the disease await treatment with no hope or treatment options within the Gaza Strip under an ongoing closure of Gaza’s crossings, and the disruption of emergency medical evacuation mechanisms,” states a May 2025 report by the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights. “[We hold] Israel fully responsible for the deaths of hundreds of cancer patients and for deliberately obliterating any opportunities of treatment for thousands more by destroying their treatment centers and depriving them of travel. Such acts fall under the crime of genocide ongoing in the Gaza Strip.”
Israel’s methodical destruction in Gaza has taken on many forms, from bombing civilian enclaves and hospitals to withholding food, water, and medical care from those most in need. In due time, Israel will undoubtedly use the cancers it will have created as a means to an end, fully aware that Palestinians there have no way of preparing for the health crises that are coming.
Cancer, in short, will be but another weapon added to Israel’s ever-increasing arsenal.
Reprinted with permission from TomDispatch.com.
The post Gaza’s Looming Cancer Epidemic appeared first on LewRockwell.
Trump’s Attack on the Federal Reserve
President Trump’s relentless attacks on the independence of the Federal Reserve help remind us why the Constitution established a totally different monetary system than the one under which we have all been born and raised.
The reason that the Federal Reserve — or central bank — was established as an independent federal agency was because it’s a very bad idea to have a president deciding monetary policy. That’s because presidents inevitably want to use the monetary system to benefit themselves politically, which ordinarily means expanding the money supply to create an artificial sense of economic prosperity, which then enables a president to exclaim, “Do you see how beneficial my tariffs and other economic policies are?” Then, when prices of things start rising in response to the expanded quantity of devalued money in the system, a president can easily blame the rising prices on such things as greed, profiteering, Big Oil, and so forth, with hardly anyone realizing that the president’s monetary policies are the reason for the price rises.
By making the Fed independent of presidential control, the idea is that the people at the Fed would manage the money supply in a responsible, non-political way. Of course, this is pure nonsense. Throughout the long history of the Federal Reserve, there have been instances where Federal Reserve officials have responded and reacted to political events, oftentimes with the intent to benefit one political party over another.
But the most important thing to understand about America’s central bank is that it is based on the socialist principle of central planning, which, as Ludwig von Mises pointed out, produces “planned chaos.” That’s what we have had during the entire existence of the Federal Reserve — planned monetary chaos. That’s because no one, no matter how smart, can centrally manage something as complex as money, especially in a very complex market economy like that of the United States.
Thus, the establishment of the Federal Reserve in 1913 was a bad idea from the very start. While the ostensible purpose was to have a governmental entity that would stabilize money and the banking system, the result has been the exact opposite.
The Framers established a totally different monetary system — one that had no central bank as well as no paper money. Our American ancestors knew that if they established a paper-money system, the president or the central bank would end up printing vast quantities of paper money to finance their schemes and their wars. They knew that the inflation of the money supply would end up going on forever. The government would be able to plunder and loot the citizenry through monetary debasement — i.e., the indirect tax of inflation.
So, the Constitution established a monetary system based on the official money being gold coins and silver coins rather than paper money. The federal government was only given the power to coin money, not print money. Moreover, the states were expressly prohibited from making anything but gold coins and silver coins legal tender or official money.
In this way, presidents would not be able to play political games to benefit themselves by printing up more money because gold and silver cannot be printed. While the Constitution authorized the federal government to borrow money by issuing debt instruments such as bills, notes, and bonds, everyone understood that these debt instruments were not money but instead promises to pay money, with the money being gold coins or silver coins.
That monetary system, which lasted for more than 100 years, was one of the important factors (along with no income taxation, welfare state, Social Security, Medicare and economic regulations and minimal immigration controls) that contributed to the extraordinarily high level of economic prosperity in the late 1800s. In fact, people were actually using their savings to invest in 100-year bonds issued by corporations because they knew they would retain their value since they were payable in gold coins.
It all came to an end with President Franklin Roosevelt’s extraordinary “emergency” decree in 1933 that effectively amended the Constitution by ending America’s gold-coin/silver-coin monetary system in favor of a monetary system based on irredeemable paper money. Combined with the Federal Reserve, which had been launched in 1913, FDR’s paper money system put America on the road to planned monetary chaos, including booms and busts, ever-expanding quantities of money, and constant debasement of paper money.
The real issue shouldn’t be whether President Trump should be trying to control the Federal Reserve. They real issue that the American people should be discussing and debating is whether to abolish the Federal Reserve and restore a monetary system based on gold coins and silver coins or, even better, adopt Friedrich Hayek’s concept of a totally free-market monetary system, one that would entail a separation of money and the state.
Reprinted with permission from The Future of Freedom Foundation.
The post Trump’s Attack on the Federal Reserve appeared first on LewRockwell.
Trump Now Likely To Be Forced To Release the Epstein Files
On September 2nd I headlined “1 Republican and 6 Democrats in House Try to force Trump to Release Epstein Records”, but in the past 24 hours that has already become 3 Republicans and 203 Democrats.
The Democratic Party propaganda-news-medium National Public Radio (NPR) headlines today (September 3rd) “Epstein survivors join with lawmakers in calling for full release of government files” and pretends that this was “an effort led by Reps. Ro Khanna, D-Calif. and Thomas Massie, R-Ky., to force a House vote that would require the Justice Department to release its records in full, with redactions to protect information about victims and ongoing investigations,” though, actually, the only “Sponser” and author of the Petition was the Republican Thomas Massie, and the Democrat Ro Khanna wasn’t even listed among the six Democrats who were included yesterday as joining in to support it: he became the 54th Representative to sign it — hardly a “leader” in it — he just wanted to get onto what by then had clearly become a winning bandwagon (especially for Democrats).
It’s lying like this (sometimes blatant like this) by Democratic Party ‘news’-media, that is driving more and more Democratic Party registered voters to reregister as being Independent, because they increasingly recognize that — just like Republican Party voters have been routinely deceived to support the Republican Party — Democratic Party voters have been routinely deceived to support the Democratic Party.
On 12 January 2024, Gallup headlined “Independent Party ID Tied for High; Democratic ID at New Low” and reported that whereas Democratic Party support has been declining rather steadily ever since Obama entered the White House in 2008, and Republican Party support had plunged sharply to new lows during GW Bush’s second term 2004-2008, Independents — which when Obama entered the White House in 2008 were tied with Democrats, and the Republican Party was deeply unpopular because of Bush — rose from 35% of the electorate in 2009 to 43% in 2014 and repeated that all-time high of 43% again in 2022, and repeated it yet again in Gallup’s next, which poll was in 2024 (but reported by them in 2025): yet again 43%. So: in 2024, 28% were Republicans, 28% were Democrats, and 43% were Independents, according to the 2025 Gallup news-report about Americans’ political self-identifications.
In other words: whereas a high of 34% were Republicans in 2004, and a high of 36% were Democrats in 2008, now both parties are at 28%, while Independents are stable at 43%, which is way higher than EITHER Party has ever achieved since Gallup started polling this matter in 1988.
Right now, the trend is ESPECIALLY endangering the Democratic Party. On August 20th, the Democratic Party’s New York Times headlined “The Democratic Party Faces a Voter Registration Crisis: The party is bleeding support beyond the ballot box, a new analysis shows.” It opened:
The Democratic Party is hemorrhaging voters long before they even go to the polls.
Of the 30 states that track voter registration by political party, Democrats lost ground to Republicans in every single one between the 2020 and 2024 elections — and often by a lot.
That four-year swing toward the Republicans adds up to 4.5 million voters, a deep political hole that could take years for Democrats to climb out from.
Change in share of registered voters, 2020-24 …
All told, Democrats lost about 2.1 million registered voters between the 2020 and 2024 elections in the 30 states, along with Washington, D.C., that allow people to register with a political party. (In the remaining 20 states, voters do not register with a political party.) Republicans gained 2.4 million.
It quoted Democratic office-holders saying that the solution needs to be the Democratic Party’s policies moving even farther to the right, toward the super-rich and authoritarianism — that this slide is a result of the American public’s wanting to expand the military and armaments-production more, and to cut Social Security, education, health care, and aid to the poor. But actually, the data — which the NYT doesn’t even mention — proves the exact opposite. The billionaires want that Party to move rightward, but the American public, as shown in those polls, clearly want it to move leftward — and the NYT publishes the views of the billionaires’ agents (and ignores the relevant data: the polling-data on the public’s actual policy-priorities). So: that’s just yet more of the Democrtic Party’s ‘news’-propaganda media
Consequently: more and more voters now are Independent, and it has become the largest of the three categories. But there is no “Independent” Party. If one will form, then billionaires will donate to it, so that, like both of the existing Parties, it too will be receiving most of its money from the billionaires and will therefore serve the billionaires, just like both of the existing Parties do, and long have been doing.
The reason for this terminal corruption of the U.S. Government is that in an electoral ‘democracy’, all of the potentially winning Parties receive most of their money from the richest .01% of the richest .01% of the population, and therefore are dependent upon and therefore MUST serve them, regardless of the actual needs of the public.
The only way to solve this problem is to do away with selecting Government leaders by means of public elections by billionaires-deceived voters, and to replace it by lottery-democracies, in which all legislators — the individuals who WRITE the laws — will be selected by a purely random means, a lottery; and those legislators then will select from amongst themselves the head-of-state. (A Constitutional Amendment would be needed in order to do this.) I have described the system here. The documentation that it’s necessary is here.
In short: without this change, democracy is impossible to achieve, and what we today call “democracy” isn’t at all representing the policy-priorities of the public, but DOES represent the policy-priorities of billionaires — which are virtually the opposite of the public’s policy-priorities. It’s dictatorship by the billionaires. That is why we need this change. The world is getting worse — not better. It is moving even farther to the right. Do you want this for your children, and for theirs? If the answer is no, then we need a Constitutional Amendment. It is necessary.
Regardless which of the billionaires’ Parties will win, and which of them will lose, we’ll have a Government by and for the billionaires, not by and for us. That is the reality, as-of now.
We don’t have this bad Government by mere incompetency; we have it by design: it has been built into its design. Maybe the writers of our Constitution didn’t trust the public enough. Maybe they distrusted the public too much. But we need a Government that serves the public — NOT that serves only the richest .01% of the richest .01%, as we now have. This change is necessary.
Right now, we have a government that serves the richest .01% of the richest .01%. The Epstein affair is merely one of the innumerable examples of this.
This article was originally published on Eric’s Substack.
The post Trump Now Likely To Be Forced To Release the Epstein Files appeared first on LewRockwell.
‘Statistically almost impossible’ – 4 AfD candidates have died ‘suddenly and unexpectedly’ before key state election
Thanks, Saleh Abdullah.
The post ‘Statistically almost impossible’ – 4 AfD candidates have died ‘suddenly and unexpectedly’ before key state election appeared first on LewRockwell.
Has Iran Beaten America and Israel in the Race for Hypersonic Weapons?
Thanks, Saleh Abdullah.
The post Has Iran Beaten America and Israel in the Race for Hypersonic Weapons? appeared first on LewRockwell.
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