Here we go again. Congressman Massie refuses to support reckless government spending and increased debt. President Trump comes out to criticize Massie and says he should be primaried. Many will remember that we’ve been down this road before with the trillions in Covid spending (and subsequent inflation). Massie vehemently opposed the Covid spending, was criticized by President Trump, and was primaried. Massie was right and won the primary election. It’s not a good look for President Trump to do this again.

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Nine Years of Orange Man Bad

Mar, 11/03/2025 - 17:29

Thanks, Johnny Kramer.

9 years of Orange Man bad

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Kamala speaks at major AI conference

Mar, 11/03/2025 - 17:27

Writes David Krall:

Might it be that we have been wrong about Kamala all along? Instead of being the stupid dimwit we have come to believe, might she be speaking at such a high level, with an IQ that is off the charts, that we are simply not able to comprehend what she is saying? Is she, perhaps, at the level of (or even higher) an Einstein or a Tesla or a Newton or a Da Vinci?

Nahhhh

See here.

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Declassified 1978 Technocratic CIA Do Forecasts Marxist World Order

Mar, 11/03/2025 - 10:19

Thanks, Ginny Garner.

See here.

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Lab-Grown Milk Coming to a Supermarket Near You

Mar, 11/03/2025 - 05:01

Timothy Alexander Guzman, Silent Crow News – Everything is getting scarier by the day, in our modern-day society, we as human beings have a lot to worry about, thanks to the ruling class of globalists including their corporations, the Military-Industrial Complex, the Zionist cabal, Big Oil, Big Pharma, Big Tobacco, Big Tech and of course, Big Ag or Big Food which is what I want to focus on because they are in the process of creating lab-grown milk which can become a reality in your local supermarket.

Forbes just published an article on lab-grown milk called ‘First Lab-Grown Whole Cow’s Milk to Debut in The U.S.’ based on a brand called (are you ready for this?) ‘UnReal Milk’, yes, it’s an Orwellian title to say the least.

One of the reasons for this type of milk is to fight “Climate Change.” They say that dairy farmers are looking for ways to reduce their reliance on cows because they “fart” greenhouse gases known as methane gas. The United Nations has two main organizations that focus on the environment and agriculture, The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) have claimed that a cow can release more than 500 liters of methane per day, which supposedly accounts for about 3.7 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions released around the world.

According to Forbes, “Dairy farming is under increasing pressure for its environmental impact, consuming vast resources and emitting methane— a greenhouse gas far more potent than CO₂. As the food industry searches for lower-carbon alternatives, Boston-based startup Brown Foods is preparing to showcase UnReal Milk, the world’s first lab-grown whole cow’s milk— produced without a single cow.”

The lab-grown milk company, Brown Foods is a start-up company founded by Sohail Gupta, Bhavna Tandon and Avhijeet Kapoor. Gupta said that “UnReal Milk is produced using mammalian cell culture— replicating the nutrition, taste, and texture of traditional dairy. It can be processed into butter, cheese, and ice cream, offering a lower-carbon, cruelty-free alternative to conventional milk. Brown Foods claims its production method slashes carbon emissions by 82%, water use by 90%, and land use by 95%, without relying on livestock”.

Lab tests are already taking place according to biopharmaceutical manufacturing expert, Dr. Richard Braatz, who is a Professor of Chemical Engineering at MIT and is on the Scientific Advisory board for Brown Foods:

The first version of UnReal Milk is already undergoing lab validation. Independent testing from the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, affiliated with MIT, confirmed the presence of all essential dairy proteins, making the product structurally identical to traditional milk. Brown Foods has also confirmed that UnReal Milk contains the same milk fats, primarily triglycerides, and carbohydrates found in conventional dairy

They expect lab-grown milk to gain a third of the dairy market:

Rising greenhouse gas emissions, deforestation, and water scarcity linked to traditional animal agriculture have spurred innovation in plant-based, fermentation-derived, and lab-grown proteins. With increasing investment and technological advancements, these alternatives are rapidly moving from niche products to mainstream options.

In the lab-grown space, meat has dominated the spotlight, securing $2 billion in investments in 2022 and USDA approval in 2023, but lab-grown dairy is still carving out its place in the market. According to The Insight Partners, the dairy alternatives sector is on track to expand from $31.13 billion in 2023 to $70.60 billion by 2031. Some analysts project that animal-free dairy could eventually capture up to 33% of the $893 billion traditional dairy market

The idea of creating dairy products in labs has gained attention over the last few years since the growing concerns over Climate Change. An article published in 2022 by Global Corporate Venturing ‘Is lab-grown milk ready for the mainstream?’ says that Bill Gates and Israel has also been involved in the lab-grown milk business:

Since 2018, GCV has reported around 20 corporate investments in various lab-grown meat and milk startups such as Israel-based milk developer Imagindairy, which raised $15m in its latest seed funding round, with the Israel-based Strauss Group as their corporate investor. Motif FoodWorks, a food technology company developing alternative milks, also raised $226m in a series B round with Bill’s Gates Breakthrough Energy Ventures participating.

Israel, in particular, has become a hotspot for various lab-grown milk startups with the country seeking to be the first to end the climate and global food shortage crisis

There are different forms of creating lab-grown milk according to Forbes:

Efforts to produce milk without cows are taking various forms. Senara, a German startup, is growing cell-cultured mammary cells in partnership with dairy farmers, blending biotechnology with traditional milk production. Wilk, an Israeli venture, focuses on producing cultured milk fats, used in making cheese and yogurt. These approaches contrast with UnReal Milk, which is taking a fully lab-based route, aiming to replicate whole cow’s milk without relying on livestock or traditional dairy systems. For Brown Foods, the goal is not just to mimic dairy but to recreate it at a molecular level

It’s not just the US and Israel involved in producing lab grown products, Chile has its own laboratory experiments:

However, lab-grown milk units are appearing in other regions too. The Chile-based group NotCo, for example, uses laboratory and AI-based techniques to find plant combinations to replicate animal-based products.

In July 2021, NotCo raised $235m in a series D round that saw various corporations such as the global banking firm Catterton Partners and the US-based holdings company, Endeavor

Lab-Grown Breast Milk is Now Being Engineered for Newborns and Infants

They call it cell-cultured human milk for newborn babies and infants, the US based company ‘Biomilq’ was founded in 2019. Michelle Egger, co-founder, and the CEO of the company said that “Our product will shift demand away from the dairy industry, benefitting the planet while nourishing babies with a 100% human alternative feeding option,” she continued, “By shifting demand away from the liquid global dairy market, parents who cannot or choose not to breastfeed could still rely on a nutritious alternative feeding option without feeling the need to make a trade-off between their child’s health and the environment.”

Egger also said that “Scale-up and regulatory obstacles are a consistent challenge in the cellular agriculture industry,” She claims that this process will be a viable nutritious option for babies, “With that being said, in preparation for our upcoming product, we have begun engineering work to translate our experimental results at the benchtop scale to pilot production, making milk outside the body a reality that will lead to a novel option for infant nutrition.

Dr. Joseph Mercola has criticized Big Ag and their plans to create fake foods for many years once said that “The justification for creating synthetic milk substitutes is, of course, preventing and reversing “climate change.” That’s the justification used to sell virtually all fake foods. In reality, however, they will perpetuate and worsen adverse effects on the environment.” Mercola made it clear that “Lab-created foods are ultraprocessed and therefore qualify as junk food. Fake meat and dairy cannot replace the complex mix of nutrients found in grass fed beef and dairy, and it’s likely that consuming ultraprocessed meat and milk alternatives may lead to many of the same health issues that are caused by a processed food diet.”

From lab-grown meats, chicken, seafood, and even pet foods, now they want you and your children to drink lab-grown milk that you might find in your local supermarket all in the name of fighting climate change.

This originally appeared on Silent Crow News.

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Has Trump Seen Proof that Funds For Ukraine Were Stolen?

Mar, 11/03/2025 - 05:01

Yesterday I watched two videos. The first was President Trump’s interview with Maria Bartiromo in which he declared that Zelensky took money from Biden like “candy from a baby.”

The second video I watched was of what appeared to be a Ukrainian soldier crying as hard as I have ever seen a grown man cry. And he wasn’t just any grown man, but an extremely tough looking one.

With so much propaganda being slung around on the internet, I hesitate to share it. I believe he was speaking Ukrainian and not Russian, and amid sobs, he was raging at the men who run his country, including Zelensky. His grief-stricken rant did not include much exposition. He seemed to assume that his audience would understand precisely what he was talking about. His overall lament was that he and his friends had been screwed.

Have the ordinary soldiers of Ukraine been screwed—that is, sent ill-equipped to the front while the oligarchs who run their country and their senior officers have siphoned much of the money and sold many of the sophisticated weapons on the international market?

The crying soldier reminded me of Siegfried Sassoon’s World War I poem, “Base Details.”

If I were fierce, and bald, and short of breath, …
I’d live with scarlet Majors at the Base,
And speed glum heroes up the line to death.
You’d see me with my puffy petulant face,
Guzzling and gulping in the best hotel,
Reading the Roll of Honour. “Poor young chap,”
I’d say—”I used to know his father well;
Yes, we’ve lost heavily in this last scrap.”
And when the war is done and youth stone dead,
I’d toddle safely home and die—in bed.

It’s an ancient soldier’s lament. The senior officer class, the lords, and their banker friends live exceedingly well while the “glum heroes”—i.e., ordinary soldiers, get run into the meat grinder.

I don’t have proof, but I have a strong hunch that a great deal of the money and weapons that our Glorious U.S. Government has sent to Ukraine have been stolen. Multiple international watchdog organizations have long characterized the country as one of the most corrupt on earth. For years, a small number of billionaire oligarchs have owned all of the assets in a nation in which the median household income is about $1,000 per annum.

I get the impression that President Trump has been presented with documentary proof of what has, for me, been a mere hunch. Someone has shown him evidence that billions of American funds have been siphoned off by shady players in Ukraine.

The gigantic flow of weapons from the U.S. to Ukraine raises the suspicion that the country has become a supply depot for international arms dealers. Years ago, when I lived in Vienna, I used to go to a place called the Broadway Bar owned by a Hungarian pianist named Bela Koreny, and there I would occasionally bump into a glamorous Israeli who once told me after a few drinks that he was an arms dealer. I didn’t really believe him—I figured it was just a cool-sounding thing to say to impress girls. On the other hand, I’m not a girl, and he seemed to know a lot about international arms dealing. Curious to learn more, I read a few books about the trade.

Some of the most notable arms dealers in history were Iranians such as Adnan Khashoggi, Manucher Ghorbanifar, and Cyrus Hashemi. Most Americans today probably don’t remember the Iran Contra Affair that involved U.S. arms trafficking to Iran between 1981-1986. The harebrained reasoning—both in Washington and in Tel Aviv—was that it was a good thing to maintain the war that was then raging between Iraq and Iran.

Thus, while at the exact same time the Reagan Administration was publicly declaring that no one should sell arms to Iran, it was secretly working with Israeli agents to sell arms to Iran — about $2 billion per annum worth between 1980 and 1985.

This shady traffic culminated in 1985, when National Security Advisor Robert McFarlane—a typically naive Washington knucklehead—was talked into a deal whereby the Iranians would get Hezbollah to release U.S. hostages being held in Lebanon in exchange for 100 U.S. TOW missiles.

Wikipedia provides a pretty good summary of the Affair.

The idea behind the plan was for Israel to ship weapons through an intermediary (identified as Manucher Ghorbanifar) to the Islamic Republic as a way of aiding a supposedly moderate, politically influential faction within the regime of Ayatollah Khomeini who was believed to be seeking a rapprochement with the US; after the transaction, the US would reimburse Israel with the same weapons, while receiving monetary benefits.

Secret Israeli arms sales and shipments to Iran began in that year, even as, in public, “the Reagan Administration” presented a different face, and “aggressively promoted a public campaign […] to stop worldwide transfers of military goods to Iran”. The New York Times explained: “Iran at that time was in dire need of arms and spare parts for its American-made arsenal to defend itself against Iraq, which had attacked it in September 1980”, while “Israel [a US ally] was interested in keeping the war between Iran and Iraq going to ensure that these two potential enemies remained preoccupied with each other”.

I fear that this is the kind of shady deal that has been going on in Ukraine, only on a much bigger scale. What is especially terrifying about it is the possibility that many people in the U.S. government will work hard to conceal the reality of what has been going on with U.S. money and weapons.

To make matters even more complex, I suspect that the Russians could provide Trump with good intelligence about the fate of U.S. arms and money in Ukraine. The trouble with this is that the Americans have been heavily conditioned by our corrupt and lying intelligence agencies to believe that any intelligence coming from the Russians is necessarily disinformation.

We saw this in the case of the Wikileaks Clinton-DNC-Podesta emails and in the case of Hunter Biden’s laptop. Whenever corrupt U.S. intelligence agencies want to cover for Washington’s corrupt political establishment, they claim that the evidence thereof is “Russian Disinformation.”

It’s possible that President Trump is now in a position to end this corrupt horror show, but he faces enormous resistance to doing so.

This originally appeared on Courageous Discourse.

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The Trade Wars: You Are Not Prepared

Mar, 11/03/2025 - 05:01

We all know the ancient Chinese curse: May you live in interesting times!

Oh, OK, it’s not ancient and it’s not Chinese, but it’s a good curse, nonetheless. And it’s hard to think of a more apt description of 2025 than “interesting.”

It seems like every day this year there’s been a new, blockbuster story to displace yesterday’s blockbuster story from the 24/7 doomscroll feed.

Israel is preparing a “Hell Plan” for Gaza.

The EU is creating its own army and setting up its own nuclear deterrence.

A 108-year-old Japanese woman has just been recognized as the world’s oldest female barber.

Truly, we are living in world-historical times.

Given all of these amazing events, it would be easy to overlook the decidedly less sexy story about tariffs and trade disputes. But if we do ignore the global trade war that is currently brewing, we run the risk of overlooking one of the most important stories of all.

As we shall see, the trade war isn’t just a spat over the flow of fentanyl or the price of aluminum. It’s about the future of the global economy, and, ultimately, the next Great Powers war. In other words, the future of you, your family and civilization itself is on the line here.

Today, let’s explore what’s happening, why it’s happening and what you can do about it.

THE TRADE WAR STARTS

Oh, what a difference a week makes!

Just last week, the stock markets were riding high, the banksters were predicting solid global economic growth in 2025 and Canadians and Americans thought some booing at a hockey game was about as vicious as things were going to get between the two countries this year.

Cut to this past Thursday: the Dow Jones was down 1,300 points, banksters were slashing their economic predictions and Canadians had already started boycotting Kentucky bourbon and threatening to cut off energy exports to their neighbour to the south.

So, what happened? A trade war happened, that’s what.

Specifically, the deep state that operates the puppet known as Donald Trump enacted a 25% tariff on Canadian and Mexican goods and a 20% tariff on Chinese goods because of . . . *checks notes* . . . fentanyl? . . . or dairy? . . . or cars? . . . or something. The point is, Canada and Mexico have been taking advantage of Uncle Sam, and it’s about time they pay! What idiot signed this horrible Canada-US-Mexico trade agreement, anyway?

Oh, right.

Well, never mind all that! The war is over! Trump’s deep state handlers have promised (another) one month pause on (some of) the tariffs!

. . . Nah, just kidding! The war continues. Less than 24 hours after announcing the pause comes the threat that Uncle Sam will be hitting Canadian dairy and lumber with new tariffs today. (Or maybe Tuesday.)

Regardless of which tariffs do or don’t kick in on which particular dates, we’re about to learn a funny thing about trade wars: you can start them with a simple declaration but you can’t end them the same way. The US may or may not be “pausing” its tariffs, but Canada is keeping its first wave of retaliatory tariffs in place and renewing its threat of a second round of tariffs in April. China, meanwhile, is vowing to fight back even harder after accusing the US of “two-faced acts” and of “meeting good with evil.”

And that war is expanding. After Trump’s threats last month to levy 25% tariffs on products from the EU, the EUreaucrats have fired back, mulling a number of countermeasures, including “block[ing] agricultural products containing pesticides banned in the region.” (But relax, everyone! The “Make America Healthy Again” administration is going to get rid of all those poisonous pesticides anyway, right?!)

Now China is hitting back . . . at Canada? That’s right, the Chicoms have just announced $2.6 billion in agricultural tariffs against the Great White North for levies that Ottawa introduced against China last October.

Feeling dizzy? Of course you are. But that’s the point. For the New World Order to be brought in, the old order must first be destroyed, and nothing sweeps away 80 years of international relations like the world’s undisputed unipolar superpower reneging on its own trade deals, threatening to rip up security pacts that it wrote in the first place and musing about invading its erstwhile allies.

Now, as conspiracy realists who were certainly not fans of the Old World Order, we might be tempted to cheer this whole spectacle on. “Good! Let the system burn!”

But unfortunately a trade war is never just a trade war, and this international firestorm isn’t about cutting a better deal for the average working stiff.

In fact, when you start to look at what this trade war really portends, things get very dark very quick.

THE REVERSE KISSINGER

OK, obviously this trade war isn’t about the 43 pounds of fentanyl that crossed from Canada into the US last year. And it’s not about the price of tea in China. Heck, it’s not even about the price of milk in Saskatoon. So, what is it about?

Well, one theory that’s been floated (and denounced!) by the inside-the-Beltway policy wonks is that Trump is attempting a “reverse Kissinger.”

You see, back in the depths of the Cold War, Henry Kissinger—at the behest of the Rockefellers, naturally—flew to China for a top-secret mission to normalize relations between the US and China. It might be hard for those who weren’t around at the time to understand it, but the US establishing diplomatic relations with communist China in the midst of a Cold War against communism was utterly shocking.

As we now know, Heinz’ visit helped to plant the seeds of the Rockefeller-backed China World Order that have sprouted here in the 21st century. But there was a Machiavellian geopolitical strategy in this ploy as well. Kissinger and his deep state handlers reasoned that by bringing the Chicoms into the globalist fold, they could deepen the Sino-Soviet split and, ultimately, play their Chinese frenemies off against the Soviets.

The “reverse Kissinger” theory, then, holds that Trump’s moves on the geopolitical chessboard are the new deep state’s attempt to repeat the Kissinger strategy, but in reverse. According to this theory, instead of partnering up with China to isolate Russia, the Trump swamp-dwellers are partnering up with Russia to isolate China.

Seen through this lens, some of the seemingly chaotic events of recent weeks appear to add up. Disrupting America’s commerce with its closest trading partners, for instance, creates a pretense for dropping sanctions against Russia. And if the US drops support for Ukraine in its war against Russia, it offers Putin an incentive to ditch Beijing—which has never been fully supportive of the Ukraine war—and instead cozy up to Washington.

But, like all trendy geopolitical hypotheses posited by the Beltway jet set, this “reverse Kissinger” theory, too, is full of holes.

First, for what it’s worth, Chinese President-For-Life Xi Jinping and Russian President-For-As-Long-As-He-Wants Putin have already come out to dismiss the idea that the US is capable of driving a wedge between them and their “true friendship.”

More seriously, Vladimir Putin is not Chairman Mao, China is not the Soviet Union, and none of the incentives in this “reverse Kissinger” strategy—if such a strategy even exists—play out in the way they did for Kissinger and the geopolitical strategists of the 1970s.

Back in the 1970s, there was a Sino-Soviet split that was used as a wedge to drive China towards the West. Today, not only is there no such split, but Sino-Russian relations are arguably better than they’ve ever been, with China now buying up over half of Russian exports and the two countries continuing to increase military cooperation and technology transfers. In fact, given China’s reliance on the US as a key buyer of its exports and its reliance on the US-led world trading system for access to world markets, it would arguably be much easier for the US to lure China away from Russia than to lure Russia from away from China.

Regardless of whether this “reverse Kissinger” hypothesis is true or not, however, it does point to an important underlying fact: this trade war is not about trade. It’s about the shaping of a New World Order. And the reality is, whatever Trump and his cabinet of billionaires and tech oligarchs may think they are doing, they are just playing their part in a much larger story. One that is leading us toward a Great Powers war.

Read the Whole Article

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A Forgotten Defender of Tradition

Mar, 11/03/2025 - 05:01

What do T.S. Eliot, Charles Williams, Dorothy L. Sayers, and Hugh Ross Williamson have in common? The answer is that they were all commissioned to write plays for the annual Canterbury Festival. T.S. Eliot had written Murder in the Cathedral about the martyrdom of St. Thomas Becket; Charles Williams wrote Thomas Cranmer of Canterbury, about the 16th-century Protestant “reformer”; Dorothy L. Sayers wrote The Zeal of Thy House, about the architect who oversaw the medieval rebuilding of Canterbury Cathedral; and Hugh Ross Williamson wrote His Eminence of England, about Cardinal Pole, the last Catholic Archbishop of Canterbury.

What these four writers don’t have in common is that Eliot, Williams, and Sayers all remained Anglicans whereas Williamson would be received into the Catholic Church in 1955, two years after his highly controversial play had been performed and boycotted at the Canterbury Festival.

The controversy surrounding the play was caused by Williamson’s choice as his subject of Cardinal Pole, who had opposed Henry VIII’s establishment of the Anglican Church and who had remained staunchly and defiantly Catholic in the midst of England’s rupture from Rome. Even the famous actor and convert to the Faith, Robert Speaight, who played Cardinal Pole in the Canterbury Festival production, conceded that Williamson’s choice was “a curious one for an Anglican festival.” Audiences were low, indicative of a boycotting of the play by angry Anglicans, and it was noted that the incumbent Archbishop of Canterbury was conspicuous by his absence.

Hugh Ross Williamson would be no stranger to controversy. It might even be said that he positively courted it, somewhat like Hilaire Belloc in whose footsteps he walked. Like Belloc, he would become an indefatigable defender of the Catholic Church against what Belloc had called the “enormous mountain of ignorant wickedness” that constituted “tom-fool Protestant history.” Two years prior to the production of the controversial play on Cardinal Pole, Williams had written The Gunpowder Plot, in which he argued convincingly that the notorious plot to blow up Parliament had been facilitated by government agents intent on the entrapment of angry Catholics. His book was dismissed at the time but has since gained credence following the publication of a book by Antonia Fraser which made a similar argument from the historical records.

Similarly, in The Day Shakespeare Died, published in 1962, he presented the evidence for Shakespeare’s Catholicism at a time when it was much less mainstream than it is today to argue that the Bard of Avon owed his allegiance to the Church of Rome.

Williamson’s conversion to Catholicism had been influenced by the Anglo-Catholicism of T.S. Eliot, whom he had long admired, and also by the works of G.K. Chesterton. “He was always talking about Chesterton,” his daughter recalled, “and he thought his Orthodoxy was one of the best books he’d read. I would think Orthodoxy probably had an important influence on his intellectual and spiritual development.” The importance of Chesterton’s classic work would appear to be confirmed by the title that Williamson chose for his autobiography, The Walled Garden, which was inspired by a metaphor in Chesterton’s book.

At the time of his reception into the Church, he was an Anglican clergyman, which meant that his conversion would cost him and his family very dearly financially. They lost the vicarage in which they were living and the income he had been earning. His wife, who had accompanied him into the Church, was working to support the family, and Williamson earned money as chairman of the BBC’s The Brains Trust, a very popular TV show in which he and other members of a panel of “experts” would answer questions sent in by viewers.

Shortly after his reception into the Church, he was informed by Hugh Carleton Greene, a senior BBC executive, that he was no longer needed as a member of the panel. He was informed by Greene’s wife, off the record, that he had been removed from The Brains Trust because “you present the wrong image now you are a Catholic.” He protested that it was 1955, not 1555, but Mrs. Greene reiterated that “a trendy Anglican clergyman was fine but a Catholic convert was not.” Ironically, Hugh Carleton Greene’s own brother, the novelist Graham Greene, was a famous convert to the Faith.

As a Catholic, Hugh Ross Williamson became a great defender of the Faith. Continuing his works of history, The Beginning of the English Reformation, published in 1957, invited comparisons with Belloc’s How the Reformation Happened. The following year, on the centenary of the Marian apparitions at Lourdes, he wrote a book, The Challenge of Bernadette, as well as a television play on St. Bernadette, Test of Truth, and a stage play, The Mime of Bernadette, which was produced at the Albert Hall. In 1961, his play on St. Teresa of Avila, with Dame Sybil Thorndike cast in the title role, was premiered at the Edinburgh Festival. A man of many parts (literally!), he was also an actor on both stage and screen, performing under the stage name Ian Rossiter.

The final years of Hugh Ross Williamson’s life were dominated in defending the Traditional Latin Mass from the efforts being made by iconoclastic modernists to eliminate it. He had always loved the beauty of the Canon of the Mass which was the subject of his book The Great Prayer, published in the year of his conversion, and he had no time for those who argued that the new rite was closer to the Mass of the early Church, a claim which scholars as estimable as Cardinal Ratzinger have shown conclusively to be false. For Williamson, such liturgical “primitivism” was absurd:

[T]he return to the “primitive” is based on the curious theory of history, sometimes referred to as “Hunt the Acorn”. That is to say, when you see a mighty oak you do not joy in its strength and luxuriant development. You start to search for an acorn compatible with that from which it grew and say: “This is what it ought to be like.”

Read the Whole Article

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Tariffs Are Theft

Mar, 11/03/2025 - 05:01

The US and China came closer to a full-fledged trade war last week when China imposed tariffs of up to 15 percent on key US agricultural exports. This was retaliation for President Trump’s increasing of tariffs on Chinese exports to the United States from 10 percent to 20 percent.

China’s retaliatory tariffs show how export-dependent industries are harmed by protectionist policies. Even if other countries refrain from imposing retaliatory tariffs, exporters can still suffer from reduced demand for their products in countries targeted by US tariffs. Businesses that rely on imported materials to manufacture their products also suffer from increased production costs thanks to tariffs. President Trump acknowledged how tariffs harm US manufacturers when he granted US automakers’ request for a one-month delay in new tariffs on imports from Mexico and Canada.

Many American consumers who are struggling with high prices are concerned that President Trump’s tariff policy will further increase prices. They are right to be concerned. Contrary to popular belief, foreign businesses do not pay tariffs. Tariffs are paid by US businesses that wish to sell the imported goods. When tariffs are increased, the importing businesses try to recoup their increased costs by increasing their prices. Consumers then must choose whether to pay the higher price, find a cheaper alternative, or do without the product. Whatever they choose, consumers will be worse off because they cannot spend their money the way they prefer.

Tariffs may provide a short-term benefit to the protected businesses. However, tariffs could keep businesses alive that should be allowed to fail so the business owners and workers can put their talents to use in other endeavors that would more greatly benefit and the whole economy.

Defenders of tariffs, including President Trump, claim the revenue from tariffs can be used to “offset” the revenue government loses from tax cuts. Some even claim that tariffs can generate enough revenue to allow the government to repeal the income tax. The problem with this is that a tariff brings in more revenue to “pay for” tax cuts only to the extent the tariff does not cause consumers to cease buying imported goods. Thus, the tariffs, to bring revenue to the government, must not be large enough to discourage Americans from buying foreign products. The more tariffs increase government revenue, the more they will tend to fail in bringing about another often promoted tariff goal — an increase in the purchase of domestic goods.

According to the Tax Foundation, if President Trump’s tariff plan for China, Mexico, and Canada were fully implemented, it would increase federal tax revenue by 142 billion dollars this year — an average tax increase of over one thousand dollars per household. The tariffs would also decrease economic output. This does not account for the decline in consumer satisfaction caused by consumers being forced to alter their consumption choices because of government-caused price increases. It also does not account for the new businesses, products, and jobs that could have been created had government not drained resources from the productive economy via tariffs.

The economic effects are a good enough reason to oppose raising tariffs. However, the main reason to oppose tariffs is that tariffs, like all taxes (including the inflation tax), are theft.

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It’s Rescission Time

Mar, 11/03/2025 - 05:01

The politicians who run the GOP on Capitol Hill are about ready to rug-pull Elon Musk and his patron in the Oval Office big time. That is, the so-called “clean CR [continuing resolution]” that Speaker Johnson is apparently cooking up will ratify the entirety of the runaway spending in the last Biden budget, thereby cancelling virtually every single dime that the DOGE operation has purportedly saved.

This awful outlook, of course, is a consequence of the stacked institutional mechanics that Elon Musk is just beginning to grasp.

For example, the appropriations authority for every one of the hundreds, if not thousands, of idiotic foreign aid contracts that DOGE has exposed and cancelled must by law be recycled and respent on another contract. And therefore spent on projects perhaps only slightly less stupid but in any case no less unaffordable.

We are referring to the Impoundment Control Act of 1974 and the passel of UniParty-appointed Federal district judges waiting to pounce in favor of lawsuits claiming funds are being illegally withheld by the executive.

To be sure, the anti-impoundment provisions of the 1974 Act are inconvenient albeit probably consistent with the black letters of the Constitution that delegate the power of the purse to Congress. But fortunately, there is a pretty creative hack that might be the next best thing to the now proscribed impoundment tool that Richard Nixon overused, thereby triggering the rebuke to presidential discretion embodied in the 1974 Act.

To wit, as Elon Musk apparently discovered earlier this week the Congressional rescission tool is a pretty good workaround to unspend money that has already been appropriated. This method of cutting existing spending authority does require Congressional approval within 45 days, but rescissions are subject to an up-or-down vote and no filibuster in the Senate.

So what the DOGE team needs to do right now is bundle up a massive pile of rescissions and send them to Capitol Hill to be voted upon as a pre-condition to consideration of the next CR.

We think there is enough fraud, waste, and abuse lying around, in fact, that a $300 billion rescission package could be sent to the Hill within the next week, which might well become known as “The Mother of All Rescissions”(MOAR)!

The proposition would be simple. Either pass MOAR or shut down the government when the current CR expires on March 14th. You choose. And keep it closed until the $300 billion of savings are approved by both Houses and signed by President Trump.

Moreover, to add stiffening to backbones on Capitol Hill, a “nay” vote on MOAR should carry an expectation of being primaried in 2026 on the GOP side of the aisle or being targeted for all-out attack on the Dem side among incumbents in districts/states that returned strong Trump majorities in 2024.

With interest expense having crossed the $1 trillion per year mark and rising rapidly, the nation’s fiscal accounts are now on the verge of plunging into a doom loop. That is to say, a cycle of rising Treasury yields, rising interest expense, and accelerating growth of the public debt that feeds back upon itself.

For instance, just since the end of FY 2024 on September 30th, the public debt has risen by nearly $850 billion, which amounts to $5.5 billion of new borrowing per day, including weekends, holidays, and snow days. So if the cycle is not broken soon, it will become beyond repair—especially if the impending tariff wars lead to an economic upheaval, which is entirely likely.

So in summary, here are the elements from which a $300 billion MOAR package could be assembled. It should be cautioned, however, that even something this big would be merely a down payment on the $2 trillion of annual deficit reductions actually needed, and not all of it would reduce cash outlays and borrowing immediately. That’s because, as will be explained in Part 2, some of the rescission amounts are for unobligated appropriations that might otherwise expire unused.

Still, the MOAR would amount to the crossing of the Fiscal Rubicon. If the Trump/DOGE forces can show that Congress can be compelled to walk the plank on real, material spending cuts, the remaining herculean tasks—sweeping reform of entitlement and drastic downsizing of the War Machine—will be far easier to accomplish.

Rescission of Leftover Pandemic Relief Appropriations at SBA and the Departments of Energy, Education, HHS, Labor, and HUD: $139 billion.
Rescission of Wasteful Foreign Aid Spending: $31 billion.
Rescission of Funding For 5 Wasteful DOD Weapons Programs: $30 billion.
6.5% Across-the-board Rescission of FY 2025 CR Funding Levels For all Discretionary Appropriations: $100 billion.
Total Rescission Package (MOAR): $300 billion.

We will provide a detailed analysis of the first three lines of the MOAR package later. But it should be noted here that the proposed 6.5% rescission of what would otherwise be Biden-level CR spending for each and every agency, department, and program in FY 2025 would hardly take a nick out of the inflation-adjusted dollars available to the far-flung agencies of the Federal government.

Thus, in nominal terms, combined defense and nondefense appropriations have risen by 47% since FY 2016—from $1.128 trillion to $1.658 trillion in FY 2024. As shown in the table below, about 40% of that gain came on Trump’s watch and 60% under Biden.

The $1.658 trillion figure would be the basis for the “cut-and-paste” CR for FY 2025, but even when you adjust the 2016 figure for the Federal spending deflator according to the Commerce Department, the constant dollar figure for Obama’s last budget would be $1.426 trillion (FY 20-24 $).

What that means is that Speaker Johnson believes the Federal bureaucracy can’t live with a +16% raise in real terms from Big Spender Obama’s funding level.

We have reached the point where a purported Republican Speaker wants not only to embrace Biden spending in current dollars, but even best Obama levels in constant dollars!

Yet here’s the thing: Real median household income only grew by 10% during that eight-year period. So what the DOGE team and their allies in the House Freedom Caucus should be shouting to the rafters is why in the hell should govenrment bureaucracies be getting a raise nearly twice as large as Main Street America has experienced since 2016?

And, besides, the 2016 funding level was the result of the Obama years, which were not exactly characterized by austerity.

In any event, the proposed 6.5% or $100 billion across-the-board rescission from what would otherwise be FY 2025 CR levels would still result in discretionary appropriations at $1.558 trillion. That’s a +9.3% gain from Obama levels and should be more than enough for a government that is otherwise plunging into fiscal calamity.

This originally appeared on Brownstone Institute.

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Bad News Comes in Small Packages

Mar, 11/03/2025 - 05:01

There’s a change taking place in supermarkets – one that’s going largely unnoticed, in spite of the fact that it’s becoming a new norm.

Packaging for products, particularly foodstuffs, is getting downsized. Folger’s coffee, Chobani Yoghurt, Fritos, etc. – all are being offered in smaller packages than before.

The resizing is not dramatic; in fact, it’s so small – sometimes less than 10% – that it’s hard to imagine why they’re bothering to do it.

This is particularly true of items that come in plastic packaging. Gatorade, for example, has been reduced in size from 32 to 28 ounces, but the price is the same.

To the consumer, a change in the size of a plastic Gatorade bottle doesn’t raise an eyebrow, but for food producers, it’s a significant event. Each time a new bottle is designed, even if the change is very slight, new moulds must be designed and machined. And every machine in every factory across the country that produces the bottles must be fitted with new moulds. Then, the injection-moulding machine must be re-calibrated to insert a smaller amount of polyethylene into the mould, and the moulding time must be re-calibrated.

Injection moulding machines are notoriously temperamental, and it can take weeks or months to fine-tune them to perform consistently in continual production. Very costly.

While this information is boring for most of us, it’s of great importance to the producer of the product.

Resizing packaging is a last resort for any producer of goods. A simple downsizing is costly enough that he wouldn’t entertain the idea unless he’s backed into a corner and can’t do anything else. If an entire industry is downsizing products, it means something more concerning than just a few companies trying to remain competitive.

And, in fact, a writer for Consumer World commented recently that price increases and smaller packaging “comes in waves,” but that “We happen to be in a tidal wave at the moment.”

But, again, all this is small potatoes to the consumer – it’s not his problem. So why should we bother to think about the minutiae of food production when we have bigger issues to concern us?

Well, in actual fact, there’s no issue that’s of greater importance to us than the supply of food. Until recently, we’ve been able to be fairly complacent about food availability, as most of us have been accustomed to the shelves at the supermarket remaining full. But, recently, there have been a few scares. Some items have gone missing for several months. Certainly, the shortage of baby formula was important enough to have appeared on the evening news for several weeks.

But what if all food products were, without warning, in short supply? What if a percentage of the supermarkets began shutting their doors across the country?

Let’s back up a bit here.

In decades past, it was the norm for most major supermarkets to have their own warehouses, where backup stock could be stored. If, for any reason, shipments were delayed by, say, a snowstorm, the shelves could be restocked locally until the weather improved.

In addition, payment terms of 30 days net were not uncommon in the industry.

Markups, too, were substantial enough that items that were marked up 10%, 20%, or more could cover for those items that could not be marked up as much but were necessary as a draw to get customers through the door. A store owner might decide, “Put 5% on the milk, and we’ll get the shortfall back on the Häagen–Dazs.”

But, over the last decade or more, the food industry has taken repeated economic hits. In each case, the industry has attempted to give the impression that there were no problems – that it has been business as usual. But, truth be told, the viability of the industry as a whole has degraded considerably.

The food industry has, for years, gotten by on a retail markup as low as 2% on most items. Also, suppliers are demanding three-day payment turnarounds in order to get by. In addition, the local warehouses that most supermarkets once maintained are largely gone. Supermarkets now rely on semi-weekly deliveries from wholesalers to keep the shelves full. There’s minimal backup supply.

What all this means is that the food industry, from the producers to the wholesalers, to the retailers, has no wiggle room left. At this point, the industry resembles a boxer who has given up and dropped his hands and is just waiting for the knockout punch.

It will come as no surprise to the reader that inflation is increasing due to dramatic government spending. In the last ten years, more currency has been created than in the previous 230 years put together. Dramatic inflation is unavoidable.

If significant inflation were to occur in any given month, food industry profits would be eliminated for the month. This now happens periodically in the industry, but it’s recoverable the following month. (The next shipment is marked up enough to cover inflation, and while the profit for the month in question is never recovered, the industry survives.)

However, if a mere three consecutive months of significant inflation were to occur, we might expect to see the lights going off in supermarkets across the country. Those that are the most heavily in debt would go first. They’d be followed in the following months by others for as long as the inflation trend continued.

If any nation were to lose suppliers and retailers in, say, shoes or washing machines, shortages would occur, and we would simply adjust. Our old shoes would go to the cobbler rather than being thrown out. We’d call the washing machine repairman if we couldn’t go to the appliance store and buy a new one.

But food is different. It’s the one product that must be replaced immediately. We cannot simply postpone our need for food for a period of weeks or months.

A decade ago, when I wrote that food shortages would take place in the coming economic crisis, unsurprisingly, few people took the notion seriously, as the warning had been made so early. But those shortages have now begun. They’re not yet serious, but we’re now seeing the warning signs.

Back then, I additionally projected that the shortages would become severe enough that food riots would take place and, worse, that famine would occur for the first time in living memory in the First World.

If there’s a shortage of shoes or washing machines – let’s say 10% or even 20% – we’d simply adjust. But if there’s a 10% or 20% shortage of food, it means that some retailers have folded and that a given area no longer receives food.

If producers, wholesalers, and retailers shut their doors in greater numbers, there is famine. It will be selective – that is – it will be greater in some areas than others.

And, of course, that’s a hard concept for us to wrap our heads around in an economy that until now allowed us to simply pop around to Burger King if we got a bit peckish.

So, the downsizing of a Gatorade bottle doesn’t mean that tomorrow, we’ll be without food. This is a mere symptom of a greater problem. But it’s a warning sign that we should be paying closer attention to an industry that has run out of wiggle room and may soon become unsustainable.

If and when that happens, the outcome will be far more important than any of the other economic concerns that we presently focus on.

Reprinted with permission from International Man.

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The Glow of the Gaslight

Mar, 11/03/2025 - 05:01

CBS 60-Minutes’ Gaslighter-in-Chief Scott Pelley was at it again Sunday night trying to put over the story that Donald Trump had unfairly cashiered a broad swathe of federal agency Inspectors General — whose job it is to investigate crime, mischief, and administrative malfeasance. In the spotlight sat one Hampton Dellinger, Special Counsel to the independent Office of Special Counsel, who just resigned after a court battle over his firing weeks ago.

Do you have any idea what a laugh riot that is? Dellinger’s job was to protect whistleblowers and enforce the Hatch Act (against public employees engaging in partisan political activities). Would you say he did a great job protecting FBI whistleblowers who testified before Congress last year — say, FBI agents Marcus Allen, Garret O’Boyle, and Steve Friend? They were suspended without pay, not allowed to seek other employment, lost homes, were financially wrecked, and hung out to dry by then-FBI boss Christopher Wray. Was Hampton Dellinger heard to make a peep about that? (Nope.) So much for protecting whistleblowers.

You can state categorically that thousands of federal employees have been engaged in what they call “the Resistance” since the first Trump administration. They openly advertise themselves as the Resistance. The Resistance is simply and purely Democratic Party activism. How is that not a violation of the Hatch Act? Hampton Dellinger did not notice any of it. Maybe that’s why he got fired, ya think?

About those many Inspectors General fired from the various agencies. . . considering what is now known about the fantastic racketeering operations run during the Biden years — e.g., the USAID money laundry, the gazillion dollars flushed through the EPA to grifters such as Stacey Abrams under the Inflation Reduction Act’s climate change provisions, the vast royalties paid to NIH employees by Pharma companies for aiding in their product development — do you think the Inspectors General have done a bang-up job of protecting the US public against waste, fraud, and crime? (Maybe not so much, ya think.)

Of all the IGs, Michael Horowitz of the DOJ has been in place since 2012 and mysteriously remains on the job. He was on-the-scene through the entirety of RussiaGate, including the Crossfire Hurricane flimflam, the immense mischief perpetrated in the FISA Court, the whole run of the deceitful Mueller Special Counsel op, the 2020 election fraud, the FBI-sponsored J-6 riot (and the DNC / RNC pipe bomb caper), the Hunter Biden laptop shenanigans (and Biden Family bribery scheme), the feckless Durham investigation (on the origin of RussiaGate), and the matrix of lawfare cases launched by Merrick Garland against Mr. Trump in the 2024 election year. Seems like Mr. Horowitz missed a few things. How would you rate his Inspector General-ship? And why is he still in that office?

By now, you might have grokked that there is another side to the story presented by Scott Pelley, whose mission is to get the deranged half of the American public to go boo-hoo over ersatz threats to Our Democracy. Which might lead you to ask: how and why, exactly, is CBS so deeply invested in protecting the Administrative State (let’s call it) from allegations of corruption? Answer: CBS is the servant of the US Intel Community and its blob tentacles. They are captured. They do as they are told for their masters.

As it happens, Mr. Trump launched a $20-billion lawsuit against CBS last October for fiddling with the interview that candidate Kamala Harris did on 60-Minutes in such a way that it presented a false record of her answers in order to boost her floundering election campaign. So, let’s suppose we have been seeing CBS play a game of hardball against Mr. Trump, consistently painting the once-again president as a villain in case presiding U.S. District Judge Matthew J. Kacsmaryk in the Northern District of Texas happens to have nothing better to do on Sunday evenings than watch 60-Minutes, out of sheer habit, like so many Americans.

Notice that you haven’t heard a whole lot for two weeks from AG Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel. They have had their hands full attempting to clean up big messes in the Southern District of NY’s DOJ office and its companion, the Manhattan FBI office, where many lawyers and agents have been fired in recent days. Among other things, the FBI office in New York supposedly sat on reams of evidence in the Jeffrey Epstein case. Much flappery has been made over that. But, considering Mr. Epstein’s service to the Intel blob, and its political servants especially, is it really plausible that any truly significant evidence remains?

The FBI raided Epstein”s Manhattan townhouse in July, 2019. They found CDs and hard drives galore and lots of photos of underage girls. None of the videos ever managed to leak out. Do you find that suspicious, considering how sensationally incriminating they would have been? Would you guess that is because they were destroyed? Personally, I wouldn’t expect much now.

But I do expect Ms. Bondi and Mr. Patel to develop a great many cases out of the aforesaid far-ranging corruption — overlooked by all those Inspectors General — that occurred throughout government at least since 2016, and probably involving a whole lot of well-know names, including Presidents Obama and Biden. It takes a lot of time and care to construct cases worth bringing to grand juries. Also consider that Dan Bongino will not take up his duties as FBI Deputy Director until March 15. As it happens, Mr. Bongino wrote several books about RussiaGate and its spin-offs. He will have a pretty good idea of exactly where to look and who to talk to, and he will be in-charge of making that happen. Be patient.

Reprinted with permission from JamesHowardKunstler.com.

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Is President Trump an Israeli Puppet?

Mar, 11/03/2025 - 05:01

President Trump has given every indication that he is as concerned with Israel’s interest as he is with the interests of MAGA Americans. I have expressed the hope that Trump’s sickening kowtowing to Israel is a strategy to keep the Israel Lobby off his back until he can deal with other opponents who stand in the way of his domestic agenda. I still have this hope, but it has been shaken by the Trump administration’s sacrifice of constitutionally protected free speech in order to protect Israel from criticism.

Last Friday the Epoch Times reported that the Trump administration had cancelled $400 million in federal grants to Columbia University for failing to act on allegations of anti-semitism. The Trump administration’s “Joint Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism” consists of the departments of Justice, Education, Health and Human Resources, and the General Services Administration. The members of this task force are well positioned to ingratiate themselves with Israel, which can easily result in well-enumerated positions after their time in government is over.

What does the Trump task force mean by “anti-semitism”? It means protests against Israel’s destruction of Palestine. It means that no matter how horrific Israel’s war crimes and no matter the ICC’s indictment of Netanyahu, for students and faculty to protest genocide or mass murder, if Israel is the perpetrator, is “anti-semitic.” It is OK to protest against other countries, but not against Israel.

Protests against Israel’s actions are equated with harassment and persecution of Jewish students at Columbia. This equation implies that Jewish Americans identify with Israel and not with the United States. Does an immigrant from England feel harassed and persecuted if Americans protest against England? President Trump has branded protests against Israel “illegal protests.” In other words, Trump is saying that the exercise of free speech if Israel is the target is illegal because it is anti-semitic. Protesters can say whatever they wish about Americans, Russia, China, Muslims, and Palestinians, but not about Israelis.

Trump is also guilty of conflating Israeli citizens with American Jewish citizens. If Trump applied his Israeli standards to all ethnicities, no one would be able to express any criticism and protest any action by any government.

Trump declared: “All Federal Funding will STOP for any College, School, or University that allows illegal protests. Agitators will be imprisoned or permanently sent back to the country from which they came. American students will be permanently expelled or, depending on … the crime, arrested.” Trump did not explain how the First Amendment became illegal. Does his dictate apply to Black Lives Matter and Antifa, to LGBTQ protests?

Do Trump, the DOJ and other departments realize that they have criminalized a constitutionally-protected right if that right is used to protest Israel’s mass slaughter of Palestinians? In the United States is it now illegal to protest genocide if Israelis are the perpetrators?

I was surprised that Columbia, a wealthy private university, was receiving $400 million in US taxpayers’ money. But it turns out that $400 million is only the tip off the iceberg. The Epoch Times reports that Columbia “holds about $5 billion in federal grant commitments.”

This is big money even for Columbia. In response to the money threat, the university’s administration accepted the Trump administration’s destruction of the First Amendment and quickly got on board with the Trump administration. Columbia announced that its administration is “fully committed to combatting antisemitism” and “looks forward to ongoing work with the new federal administration to fight antisemitism.”

Trump and his supporters do not recognize the blatant contradiction between suppressing free speech and Making America Great Again.

America’s greatness did not come from tyranny. America’s greatness resides in the civil liberties guaranteed by the US Constitution. It is disheartening to find the First Amendment under assault by the Trump regime.

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