Aggregatore di feed

Like many Americans, my heart swelled with pride as I watched the astronauts land safely in the Gulf of America. The SpaceX rescue of the stranded astronauts ended wonderfully, but it also highlighted an important lesson: why a relatively small company was able to succeed where a governmental bureaucracy (NASA) and its go-to military-industrial-complex contractor (Boeing) could not. That lesson becomes clear when viewed through the Catholic social teaching of subsidiarity.

Only after the intrepid space travelers were safe and heading home did the irony of the moment strike me. The combined might of NASA and Boeing—one of the country’s largest and oldest defense contractors—was powerless to bring the astronauts back from space. Instead, it was up to the upstart SpaceX to rescue them and return them to their families.

This space escapade should be a case study studied in business school titled: “How Large Organizations Lose Their Way and Betray Their Customers.”

The symbolism of SpaceX rescuing astronauts when governmental agencies and massive defense contractors were seemingly unwilling or unable to act underscores the relevance of the Catholic principle of subsidiarity.

What is subsidiarity? The principle of subsidiarity holds that decision-making should be kept at the most local and competent level possible rather than being centralized in large, bureaucratic institutions. It is a philosophical cornerstone of two of my favorite books: Small Is Beautiful by E.F. Schumacher and Small Is Still Beautiful by Joseph Pearce. These influential books critique large-scale corporate and industrial approaches, advocating for human-centered economies, sustainability, and policies that emphasize human thriving over other considerations.

A comparison of SpaceX to behemoth entities like NASA and Boeing exposes factors that help explain this ironic David-and-Goliath story.

The Players: NASA, Boeing, and SpaceX

NASA is a government agency with about 18,000 employees. It is burdened by bureaucracy and heavily influenced by politics. Really, politics in space? Yes, indeed. Elon Musk stated that political interference prevented an earlier rescue of the stranded astronauts.

Under the Biden administration, NASA aggressively promoted Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) policies to incorporate into its mission and workforce. In January 2025, NASA began dismantling its DEI programs following executive orders from President Trump. These federal directives were intended to eliminate policies fostering division and inefficiency within government operations. However, these reforms were too late for the marooned astronauts who had already been launched into space and had to be rescued by SpaceX.

Boeing was founded in 1916 and has grown into a massive, bureaucratic, and highly-regulated defense contractor and aerospace manufacturer. With approximately 155,000 employees, it operates within a top-down structure, making it heavily centralized. Once an industry leader in innovation, Boeing has stagnated due to excessive corporate bureaucracy, leading to serious safety failures like the 737 MAX crisis and ongoing supply-chain issues. The company’s reliance on outsourcing and cost cutting has undermined quality and worker autonomy. Recently, Boeing came under fire for embracing controversial DEI policies that critics say compromised quality control, contributing to numerous airline mishaps and aerospace failures.

In contrast, SpaceX, founded in 2002, operates with a leaner workforce of about 13,000 employees. SpaceX maintains a start-up culture that embraces localized problem-solving and innovation—closer to Schumacher’s vision of decentralized, human-scale enterprise. SpaceX hires employees based on merit rather than DEI policies, and it emphasizes private innovation and rapid decision-making.

Engineers at SpaceX have more autonomy, aligning with Schumacher’s principle that work should be creative, fulfilling, and localized. SpaceX’s groundbreaking process of returning its rockets for reuse rather than wastefully jettisoning the rockets like NASA does gives it high marks in the environmental sustainability column. SpaceX’s mission-driven approach fosters purpose and innovation—far more than Boeing’s corporate, bureaucratic stagnation does. SpaceX’s approach is more decentralized compared to Boeing’s, better aligning with subsidiarity by keeping decision-making at lower levels.

NASA and Boeing exemplify large-scale bureaucratic industrialism, which Schumacher critiques as inefficient and detached from human needs. Both NASA and Boeing get low scores on the subsidiarity scale with SpaceX getting higher marks for subsidiarity.

The footage of SpaceX’s Dragon vessel splashing down in the Gulf of America, along with stunning images of rockets returning to Earth and being caught mid-air by giant “chopstick” arms for precise landing and sustainable reuse, powerfully showcases the superiority of SpaceX’s more subsidiarity-friendly business model over NASA and Boeing’s centralized, bureaucratic approach.

Read the Whole Article

The post How Subsidiarity Got Astronauts Home and Gets the Mail Delivered appeared first on LewRockwell.

At a male-only lunch high up in the Alps the subject of AI came up. We were five friends, and four of them were in favor. “But it will kill good writing,” said yours truly. The rest agreed. Info will trump grace, was the conclusion. Some time ago a friend had AI imitate my column and she played it back to me. I listened carefully. It was a good imitation of probably the worst writing I have ever done, clumsy, obvious, and phony. I recounted the story to my friends at lunch. “So what else is new about your bad writing?” said one of my oldest friends.

Joking aside, no one reads any longer. When was the last time someone asked you what book you are reading. “What are you watching?” is what people ask nowadays. The devil screen is the enemy, and political correctness comes in a close second. Modern novels and books in general are about a lived experience, and we all know how boring a lived experience can be. Especially when it’s written by a neurotic female American, a drug-addicted, in-the-closet British chap, or a one-legged black South American lesbian. No wonder so many so-called intelligent people now watch cartoons nonstop.

Yep, books have gone with the wind, and please excuse the corn, but at my advanced age I find too many people very light on the stuff between the ears. Here’s Papa Hemingway on writing: “Prose is architecture, not interior decoration. When writing, a writer should create living people, not characters.” If only the nauseating narcissism of today’s writers would follow such advice, I might buy a novel or two, something I haven’t done in decades.

“A fellow scribe said that it was as necessary for a writer to have mastered the Maugham short story as it was for an artist to have mastered the art of drawing.”

Papa got the Nobel in 1954, and he damn well deserved it because he did more to change the style of English prose than any other writer in the 20th century. Papa wrestled over a sentence, even a word, for hours on end. His travails were put in writing to his editor Maxwell Perkins. Let’s face it: Getting it just right is very hard work, as one goes over yesterday’s sentences and spends a whole morning making corrections. What today’s bums have done is they’ve made writing easy by what they call stream of consciousness. It is a con, writing down everything that comes to mind and forgetting all about rhythm, euphony, and grace. All good writers write by instinct, but style counts a lot. As a young boy I remember well the narrow streets of Athens lined with whitewashed houses underneath the Acropolis, the smell of jasmine and the tap-tap of donkeys’ hooves on the cobbled paving, the trickle of the fountains, and the occasional cry of beggars. One needs to observe before one writes, and also to explore. These present-day untalented ones just let it spew out, as if their anger and despair make them interesting.

The hackneyed phrases one used to describe first loves were normal, and the reason Holden Caulfield remains immortal is because the writer keeps him young and innocent. The trick to good writing is, of course, to omit needless words. Good style is direct, conversational, unfussy, and definitely unpretentious. I’ve always considered Somerset Maugham the best of all Brit writers, and he should have been awarded a Nobel Prize that has gone to far, far lesser writers.

Willie Maugham’s short stories are better than anyone else’s, and that includes Guy de Maupassant and Irwin Shaw. The deceptive simplicity of his method of writing concealed a well-honed technique, and those who attempted to copy it failed and failed miserably. A fellow scribe said that it was as necessary for a writer to have mastered the Maugham short story as it was for an artist to have mastered the art of drawing. Unlike these shortcut phonies of today, Willie Maugham plotted his stories with deadly precision, twisted the tail of stories, and had unexpected denouements. His understated style, coupled with careful withholding of information, kept the reader in a state of pleasurable suspense.

Read the Whole Article

The post Maugham’s the Word appeared first on LewRockwell.

“This town is now as nervous as it’s ever been.”  That’s Congressman Chip Roy’s assessment of the mood in Washington, D.C., since President Trump’s return to the White House.  It’s one of several dozen refreshingly blunt descriptions of American politics in Ned Ryun’s new documentary based on his book, American Leviathan.  The documentary is available to anyone with an Internet connection, and it is nothing short of a declaration of war on the administrative state.

I highlighted Ryun’s book when it came out last September for several reasons.  First, it is a remarkably clear description of the ideas, people, and events that led us to this unique moment in history — when the inevitable clash between the authoritarian bureaucracy and the constitutional Republic has come to a head.  There was nothing “natural” about this process.  The vast and unaccountable administrative state did not arise from the U.S. Constitution; it is a repudiation of the Constitution.  The unelected bureaucracy does not reflect the wishes of the American people; it is the polar opposite of representative government.  No matter how many propagandists defend Big Government as “our Democracy,” the ever-growing Leviathan is thoroughly authoritarian in disposition.  It jealously guards its expanding powers and despises American citizens who insist that legitimate government comes only from the consent of the people.  It is such an unnatural beast that it must spy on Americans, censor their speech, and intimidate them into submission merely to maintain control.  The administrative state is “government by coercion” and the antithesis of limited government and individual liberty.

Second, Ryun is a rather unique political operative in that he “walks the walk” every bit as much as he “talks the talk.”  He is an effective warrior when it comes to getting Republicans elected, but he is also a tireless critic of the Deep State.  Those qualities are often mutually exclusive in high-stakes American politics where a person’s clout is usually directly proportional to his willingness to sell out personal principles.  Washington’s political machine — the Frankensteinian monstrosity composed of equal parts malevolent bureaucracy, corporate blackmail, academic blacklisting, news media gatekeeping, Intelligence Community skulduggery, and rank influence peddling — tends to scoop up “true believers” and recondition them into compliant cogs of the permanent government’s hive-mind, collectivist “Borg.”  Ryun is a rare political player who refuses to be “assimilated” or transformed into another D.C. “drone.”

Lastly, I wanted readers to mentally prepare for what would happen after President Trump won in November.  There were fifty days between the publication of Ryun’s American Leviathan and Trump’s victory, and while those crucial days required all of our efforts to make sure that he would, in fact, be re-elected, I knew that we would have no time to waste once he succeeded.  That’s where Ryun’s efforts really stand out.  His book is meant (1) to wake up those who have been sleeping during the century-long transformation of the American Republic into a tyrannical bureaucracy, (2) to re-energize those who have been fighting the good fight for most of their lives, and (3) to lay out the blueprint for restoring the Republic and destroying the Deep State.  I wanted readers to spend time before the election thinking about what would come next because winning was only “Step One” of a much larger operation.

Something that should be clear six months after American Leviathan came out in print is that President Trump and his closest advisors have long been preparing for this war against the administrative state.  They weren’t just running a political campaign the last few years; they’ve been planning their return to Washington, D.C., in meticulous detail.  From the moment the news media cartel was forced to announce Trump’s victory, those plans became active operations.  Critical personnel choices were announced.  Executive orders were finalized.  Litigation strategies were put into motion.  It is no coincidence that many of Ryun’s recommendations for “slaying Leviathan” are now official White House policy.  The Trump administration embraces American Leviathan’s proposition that the only way to save the Republic is to disembowel the unelected, unaccountable bureaucracy.

While Ryun’s book is an excellent resource for American minds desperate to break free from a century of bureaucratic hypnosis and Deep State conditioning, his documentary provides a kind of real time snapshot of the Trump administration’s ongoing “Leviathan hunt” today.  Among many interesting contributors to the film, Congressman Roy and Senators Jim Banks, Rick Scott, and Marsha Blackburn offer insightful perspectives regarding Trump’s impact on Establishment Washington, and Jeff Clark, Mike Davis, Steve Cortes, Bradley Watson, and Rachel Bovard provide excellent analysis of the many conflicts playing out publicly today.  Every speaker is strikingly candid about where all this is heading — a showdown between two incompatible systems of government from which only one may survive.

Senator Banks says plainly that the Deep State’s animus toward President Trump originates with the “three most dangerous words” he uttered during the 2016 campaign: “Drain the Swamp.”  As soon as then-candidate Trump identified the administrative state as not only an affront to the U.S. Constitution but also a threat to the American Republic, he became public enemy number one for the bureaucratic “blob.”  The Russia collusion hoax, the Mueller Inquisition, the farcical impeachments, the endless lawfare, and the ridiculous investigatory witch-hunts all arose because Donald Trump directly attacked institutions that have governed almost absolutely for over a century while avoiding serious public scrutiny.

In front of huge crowds, Trump called out agencies and bureaucrats by name and promised to rein in their out-of-control harassment of the American people.  The administrative state, having long exercised the constitutionally delegated powers of the Executive Branch while thumbing its nose at the elected president, correctly worried that Trump would reclaim legitimate Executive authorities that it had illegitimately usurped decades ago.  For a hundred years, America’s permanent ruling class has operated a state within a state in which the president is treated mostly as a figurehead and recognized as “chief executive” in name only.  In this absurd “Bizarro World” where low-level bureaucrats are quasi-kings and the three branches of government retain meager residual powers, the Constitution is a document that just gets in the Deep State’s way.

In Ryun’s documentary, Congressman Roy pulls no punches against the administrative state while laying well-deserved blame at the feet of lawmakers.  In lauding Elon Musk’s work to expose and eliminate government waste, fraud, and abuse, Roy says the American people have to hold Congress accountable.  “Because you’ve been searching for the enemy, and the enemy is right in front of you.  It is us.  It is Congress.  We’re the ones that continue to fund the very things” that enable the Deep State.  “We’re begging you to save us because we’re that bad.”  That’s a rather direct plea from a sitting congressman for the American people to rise up and demand an end to America’s unconstitutional bureaucracy.  In calling for the “slashing and burning” of Leviathan, Roy argues that DOGE shouldn’t stand for the Department of Government Efficiency but rather the Department of Government Elimination.  That’s a theme throughout Ryun’s documentary.

Read the Whole Article

The post The Trump Administration Goes To War Against Bureaucratic Tyranny appeared first on LewRockwell.

Comments open on YouTube

The post Captain Sherry Walker Reveals the Real Reason for All These Plane Crashes appeared first on LewRockwell.

Switzerland. ‘Fight to the last cartridge, then use your bayonets!’  Gen. Henri Gulsan

So warned the retired US general Ben Hodges in an interview with the newspaper SonntagsBlick.  Hodges was the former US military commander in Europe.

Before frightened Swiss start moving their gold and cows to mountain shelters, they should recall that Hodges was one of the crack US generals who led the US army to win brilliant victories in Somalia, Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria.

Excuse me if I sound a bit cynical.  I was a volunteer in the US regular army during the Vietnam era.  I know the politicians handcuffed our generals at every turn.  But wars are about political goals, not killing as many people as possible.

Gen. Hodges implied that the Russians could steamroll flimsy Swiss defenses.  As a long-time resident of Switzerland, veteran war correspondent, and one of the first – if not the first – non-Swiss to be shown Switzerland’s top secret mountain forts, I advise all would-be invaders to steer clear of the small but fierce Helvetic Republic.

During the Renaissance, the thinker Niccolo Machiavelli said of the Swiss, ‘most heavily armed and most free.’  The Vatican’s Swiss Guards are a dramatic reminder of what was called ‘the Furia Helvetica’ when Swiss pikemen terrorized Europe’s battlefields.  Today, Swiss citizen soldiers keep their weapons at home and are renowned as sharpshooters.  I have been in the field with the Swiss Army and can attest to their military skills and professionalism.  Swiss mountain forts cover most entry points to the country.

I have long suspected that the secretive Swiss have a small number of nuclear weapons hidden in their Alpine redoubt.  Swiss engineers make advanced chemicals, tanks and aircraft.  Tactical nuclear weapons are just one more advanced degree.

Gen. Hodges warnings about Soviet Russian offensive strategy appear exaggerated but are still to be taken seriously.  I was made aware of the Soviet plan in 1990 to launch a huge envelopment campaign against NATO. 

The plan called for two or three Soviet mechanized armies to attack west from Czechoslovakia and burst into almost unarmed Austria. Red Guards tank armies would then race into southern Germany south of Munich and then drive north towards the main NATO resupply port at Antwerp.  In short, outflanking the bulk of NATO forces facing east and trapping most US ground forces in Europe.

This was, of course, a variation on the famous Schlieffen Plan of World War I in which the Germans tried a vast flanking movement around Paris.  It failed because Russian offensives drew off German divisions and led to their defeat on the Marne.

Swiss fortifications were built 1938-1960 to thwart a Soviet attack from Lichtenstein. The Sargans region on Switzerland’s eastern border is one of three major fortress zones in that country along with Gothard and St Maurice.  Interestingly, in the 1950’s, the Swiss and French began upgunning their forts to resist a possible attack by the Soviet Union.  This included some of the original Maginot Line forts of the 1930’s.

Today’s Russia shows no signs of planning to attack Europe in spite of western-generated war hysteria.  Moscow can barely deal with the weak Ukrainian forces.  Russia does not need more land.  But all the war propaganda in the west might just trigger an east-west conflict.

During WWII, Russia fielded over 200 divisions on the western front alone. Today, Moscow is lucky to deploy 24 and keeps warning it may have to resort to tactical nuclear weapons.  But it’s now springtime for western arms makers as the great Red Scare engulfs Europe.  I just bought stock of some German arms makers. The tough Swiss will be ready for whatever happens.

The post Watch Out Switzerland! The Red Army May Be Coming! appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks JJ.

The post Never Forget the COVID-19 “Facts” appeared first on LewRockwell.

At Hillsdale’s Constitution Day Celebration, Mike Benz explores the history and evolution of the intelligence state in the United States, detailing its origins, the establishment of covert operations, and the implications of political warfare.

Mike discusses key documents and events that shaped the intelligence community, including the CIA’s role in foreign elections and the transition from hard power to soft power in American foreign policy. The conversation also highlights the ongoing influence of the intelligence state in contemporary politics and its relationship with populism.

The post The History of the Intelligence State appeared first on LewRockwell.

The post Global Oil Rocked As Trump Slaps Secondary Sanctions On Venezuela Trade! appeared first on LewRockwell.

“The Special Relationship” is a term that is often used to describe the political, social, diplomatic, cultural, economic, legal, environmental, religious, military and historic relations between the United Kingdom and the United States or its political leaders.

A cornerstone of “the Special Relationship” is the collecting and sharing of intelligence, which originated during the Second World War with the sharing of code-breaking knowledge and led to the 1943 BRUSA Agreement, which was signed at Bletchley Park. After the war, the common goal of monitoring and countering the threat of communism prompted the UK-USA Security Agreement of 1948. This agreement brought together the SIGINT organizations of the US, the UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand and is still in place today (Five Eyes). The head of the Central Intelligence Agency station in London attends each weekly meeting of the British Joint Intelligence Committee.

“The Special Relationship” (book list

O.S.S. and “the Special Relationship” (book list)

The OSS and the Fathers of the CIA (book list)

From Empire to International Commonwealth: A Biography of Lionel Curtis, by Deborah Lavin

This is the first biography of Lionel Curtis, a highly influential figure in international affairs throughout the first half of the twentieth century. He was instrumental in extending self-government to the ‘new South Africa’ in 1910, India in 1916, and Eire after 1921. He worked to associate the Commonwealth with America in 1918 and towards a united Europe in 1948. He was founder of the Round Table, the Royal Institute of International Affairs, and the Oxford Society.

From the Back Cover
Lionel Curtis C.H. once counted among the great and good, working behind the scenes of international politics and honoured as the ‘pioneer of a great idea’ – international federation as the natural successor to empire. He advocated federation as the way to create a new South Africa after the Boer War; he called for self-government in India in 1912; in 1921 he was instrumental in attempting to pacify the Irish Troubles by treating Eire as if it were a self-governing Commonwealth Dominion. He went on to preach the conversion of the Empire-Commonwealth into a multinational federation, which, in association with the United States, would serve as a model for a united Europe, and even for world government. He founded the Round Table think-tank, the Royal Institute of International Affairs at Chatham House, and the Oxford Society. He lobbied indefatigably for his vision of the Commonwealth as a new world order, to be more effective than the League of Nations in making wars obsolete. In the process, he exasperated nationalists and imperialists alike as a prophet of apparently lost causes. He deserves to be remembered not only for what he achieved but for what he was: the bore who never lost a friend; the optimist who stuck to his belief when all was lost; the third-class scholar who became a Fellow of All Souls; the visionary riding his hobby-horse into the drawing rooms of high political society and yet invited affectionately to return. The remarkable character of the man and the influence he exerted on the history of the Empire and Commonwealth are explored in this authoritative biography.

About the Author
Deborah Lavin is Principal of Trevelyan College, and President of the Howlands Trust, University of Durham.

The post “The Special Relationship” appeared first on LewRockwell.

They sit on hundreds of billions of dollars in endowments while whining and wailing like scalded babies when DOGE cuts their lavish subsidies by a few million.  The more cutting the better for these dysfunctional incubators of socialism.

Humorous side note:  I once held a privately-funded endowed chair.  Since the chair holders were generally paid more than the average professor, a socialist philosophy professor (the only allowable type) complained about this unconscionable inequality in a letter to the editor in the school newspaper, condemning me especially for being “by far the best endowed” of all the chair holders.  I was told at the time that I then became the talk of the female employees at the university.

The post Elite University Presidents are the Biggest Scam Artists in Society appeared first on LewRockwell.

Il manoscritto fornisce un grimaldello al lettore, una chiave di lettura semplificata, del mondo finanziario e non che sembra essere andato "fuori controllo" negli ultimi quattro anni in particolare. Questa è una storia di cartelli, a livello sovrastatale e sovranazionale, la cui pianificazione centrale ha raggiunto un punto in cui deve essere riformata radicalmente e questa riforma radicale non può avvenire senza una dose di dolore economico che potrebbe mettere a repentaglio la loro autorità. Da qui la risposta al Grande Default attraverso il Grande Reset. Questa è la storia di un coyote, che quando non riesce a sfamarsi all'esterno ricorre all'autofagocitazione. Lo stesso è accaduto ai membri del G7, dove i sei membri restanti hanno iniziato a fagocitare il settimo: gli Stati Uniti.

____________________________________________________________________________________

(Versione audio della traduzione disponibile qui: https://open.substack.com/pub/fsimoncelli/p/come-bruciare-220-miliardi)

Nel pieno della pandemia COVID, con la BCE impegnata a mantenere bassi gli spread sovrani e le regole fiscali dell'UE sospese, l'Italia ha lanciato quello che sarebbe diventato uno degli esperimenti fiscali più costosi della storia. Il Primo Ministro Conte annunciò che il governo italiano avrebbe sovvenzionato il 110% del costo delle ristrutturazioni abitative. Il “SuperBonus”, come sarebbe stato chiamato, avrebbe migliorato l'efficienza energetica e stimolato un'economia che era cresciuta a malapena negli ultimi due decenni. I consumatori non avrebbero dovuto affrontare né vincoli economici, né di liquidità: “Nel settore edile verrà introdotto un Superbonus con cui tutti potranno ristrutturare la propria abitazione e renderla più green. Non spenderete un centesimo per queste ristrutturazioni. (Giuseppe Conte, 13 maggio 2020)”.

Lo stato avrebbe pagato ai proprietari di case il 110% del costo di ristrutturazione delle loro proprietà attraverso un meccanismo finanziario innovativo: anziché sovvenzioni dirette in denaro, il governo italiano avrebbe emesso crediti d'imposta trasferibili. Un proprietario di casa averbbe potuto scaricare questi crediti direttamente sulle proprie tasse, farli scaricare agli appaltatori sulle fatture, o venderli alle banche. Questi crediti sono diventati una sorta di valuta fiscale, uno strumento finanziario parallelo che funzionava come debito fuori bilancio (Capone e Stagnaro, 2024). L'impostazione ha creato intenzionalmente l'illusione di un proverbiale pasto gratis: ha nascosto il costo per il governo italiano, poiché ai fini della contabilità europea i crediti si sarebbero presentati solo come entrate fiscali perse piuttosto che come nuova spesa.

Il SuperBonus ha creato le condizioni per quella che il ministro dell'Economia di Draghi, Daniele Franco, ha definito “una delle più grandi frodi nella storia della Repubblica” (Capone e Stagnaro, 2024). Gli appaltatori spesso gonfiavano i costi di ristrutturazione; ad esempio, un progetto da €50.000 poteva essere dichiarato come €100.000. La banca acquistava il credito d'imposta da €110.000 a un valore quasi nominale, consentendo all'appaltatore di intascare la differenza, a volte condividendola con il proprietario della casa. A volte, invece, non veniva eseguito alcun lavoro, nel qual caso le fatture per lavori inesistenti su edifici fasulli erano uno strumento perfetto per la criminalità organizzata. I crediti fraudolenti potevano quindi essere rivenduti più volte in un mercato non regolamentato di sconti fiscali sostenuti dallo stato. Nel 2023 le autorità hanno stimato che tali attività fraudolente erano costate ai contribuenti €15 miliardi.

Nel 2024 era chiaro che il pasto era tutt'altro che gratis. I costruttori andavano in giro offrendosi di pagare le persone per ristrutturare le loro case. Un piano inizialmente preventivato in €35 miliardi avrebbe finito per costare ai contribuenti italiani €220 miliardi (€160 miliardi di Superbonus + €60 miliardi per il credito di restauro delle facciate al 90% e altri crediti del 65%), circa il 12% del PIL.[1] I costi annuali sono aumentati vertiginosamente dall'1% del PIL nel 2021, al 3% nel 2022 e al 4% nel 2023. Solo 495.717 abitazioni sarebbero state ristrutturate, il che significa che il costo medio del programma era di circa €320.000 per casa.[2] Ciò è accaduto in un Paese già gravato da un debito pari al 140% del PIL, che affronta enormi passività pensionistiche non finanziate pari a oltre il 400% del PIL e il cui debito è classificato Baa3 da Moody's, un gradino sopra lo status di “spazzatura”. Il costo è irrisorio rispetto ai €71 miliardi di sovvenzioni che l'Italia ha ricevuto dal piano di ripresa e resilienza dell'Unione europea. Nonostante la scarsa copertura sulla stampa internazionale, il Superbonus è stato uno degli errori fiscali più costosi della storia.

Due documenti della Banca d'Italia e uno dell'FMI hanno analizzato l'impatto del programma. Mentre gli investimenti reali in abitazioni pro capite sono aumentati del 67% rispetto a un Paese comparabile “sintetico”, Accetturo, Olivieri e Renzi (2024) hanno concluso che “i benefici per l'economia nel suo complesso in termini di valore aggiunto sono stati inferiori ai costi dei sussidi”. I costi di costruzione sono aumentati drasticamente: l'indice dei costi di costruzione è cresciuto di circa il 20% dopo la pandemia e ha fatto registrare un altro aumento del 13% dopo settembre 2021, con il Superbonus direttamente responsabile di circa 7 punti percentuali di tale aumento, secondo Corsello ed Ercolani (2024). Il prezzo dell'installazione di impalcature, un primo passo essenziale per la ristrutturazione, è aumentato del 400% entro la fine del 2021.

La valutazione dell'FMI è ancora più critica. Lo stimolo alla crescita è stato “limitato rispetto alle dimensioni delle risorse fiscali spese”, ha concluso, citando “perdite nelle importazioni, consistenti sconti sulle fatture, maggiori rincari sui prezzi nell'edilizia, spiazzamento di altri investimenti e uso improprio di fondi pubblici”. Nel frattempo l'occupazione nell'edilizia era entrata in un ciclo di espansione e contrazione, poiché le aziende si erano espanse per catturare i sussidi, per poi trovarsi di fronte a un baratro quando il programma ha iniziato a concludersi.

Anche i benefici ambientali del programma hanno avuto un costo astronomico: qualsiasi calcolo risulterà in ben oltre €1.000 per tonnellata di anidride carbonica (rispetto a un prezzo sul mercato delle emissioni di circa €80 per tonnellata). Mentre il Superbonus è stato presentato come un'importante operazione di efficienza energetica e riduzione delle emissioni di gas serra, è stato il più grande singolo caso di greenwashing dei nostri tempi.

Com'è potuto accadere?

Il SuperBonus è nato in un momento di trasformazione nel pensiero politico-economico su entrambe le sponde dell'Atlantico.

Riccardo Fraccaro, avvocato, politico del Movimento Cinque Stelle, seguace della Modern Monetary Theory e architetto del SuperBonus, vedeva il programma come un modo per spingere un'espansione fiscale nel rispetto delle norme UE. Progettando il Superbonus come un sistema di crediti d'imposta trasferibili, Fraccaro e i suoi consulenti hanno creato uno strumento finanziario parallelo che non venisse registrato immediatamente come debito pubblico (Capone e Carlo Stagnaro, 2025).[3]

Il SuperBonus incarnava lo spirito di quel momento: il debito come motore della crescita. Sarebbe stato finanziato in parte (circa €13,95 miliardi) tramite l'emissione obbligazionaria europea da €750 miliardi nell'ambito di NextGenerationEU. Come la Bidenomics negli Stati Uniti, prometteva di raggiungere simultaneamente più obiettivi trasformativi: stimolo economico, equità sociale e protezione ambientale. E come molti programmi post-pandemia, rifletteva la convinzione che le linee di politica passate fossero state troppo timide e che i vincoli di bilancio tradizionali potessero essere tranquillamente ignorati nel perseguimento di obiettivi sociali più ampi.

Una volta avviato, il SuperBonus si è rivelato politicamente impossibile da fermare. I benefici si sono concentrati tra varie fasce di elettori: proprietari di case che hanno ottenuto ristrutturazioni, il movimento ambientalista e appaltatori che hanno visto un'attività in forte espansione. I costi, sebbene enormi, sono stati distribuiti tra tutti i contribuenti e rinviati al futuro attraverso il meccanismo del credito d'imposta. Nessun governo, di sinistra, tecnocratico o di destra, è stato in grado di resistere alla sua logica. Il Parlamento ha costantemente respinto i tentativi di limitarne la portata, anche dopo che le stime di frode hanno raggiunto i €16 miliardi. In veste di Primo ministro, Mario Draghi, nonostante abbia pubblicamente criticato il programma per aver triplicato i costi di costruzione, non è riuscito a fermarlo: la sua azione iniziale è stata quella di semplificarne l'accesso. Quando il suo governo ha tentato di frenare gli abusi, il Movimento Cinque Stelle ha reagito con rabbia e sono stati contrastati anche i modesti controlli sui trasferimenti di credito. Nel 2023 il governo di Giorgia Meloni ha dovuto affrontare le stesse opposizioni: i gruppi industriali hanno protestato, i partner della coalizione si sono tirati indietro. Il ministro dell'Economia Giancarlo Giorgetti ha avvertito i colleghi: “Temo che non abbiate capito la gravità della situazione”.

Tuttavia, non è solo la politica italiana che avrebbe dovuto porre fine a tutto questo. Oltre al parlamento, ci sono due potenziali meccanismi per evitare tale avventurismo fiscale in un Paese già gravato da uno dei più alti carichi di debito in Europa. Primo, le regole fiscali e la Commissione europea; secondo, il mercato, i cosiddetti bond vigilantes. Entrambi hanno fallito.

Le regole fiscali erano state sospese a causa del Covid, ma questo non esonerava la Commissione europea, che è responsabile di tali regole, dalla sua responsabilità nella questione. Il Recovery and Resilience Facility (il fondo di ripresa dal Covid finanziato dall'UE) è stato progettato con una rigorosa condizionalità, assicurandosi che i fondi fossero erogati solo dopo che gli stati membri avessero raggiunto traguardi sulle riforme e rispettato le raccomandazioni del “semestre europeo”. Alla Commissione europea è stato ordinato di rivedere i piani di ripresa nazionali, verificare la conformità con gli obiettivi strutturali e trattenere i pagamenti se le condizioni non fossero state soddisfatte. Nel caso del Superbonus italiano, questo meccanismo ha fallito.

La Commissione ha approvato l'inclusione del Superbonus nel PNRR italiano dopo la sua progettazione, con piena consapevolezza del fatto che questo programma includeva un sussidio del 110%. Quando il programma è poi cresciuto ben oltre l'ambito approvato dall'UE, trasformandosi in un'enorme passività fiscale senza supervisione, la Commissione ha permesso ai fondi di continuare a fluire. Anche quando le proiezioni del deficit italiano sono andate fuori controllo, non è riuscita a riconoscere, o ha deliberatamente ignorato, che il SuperBonus era diventato un veicolo incontrollato per sprechi e frodi.

Poi ci sono i bond vigilantes. Ma, come John Cochrane, Klaus Masuch e io sosteniamo nel nostro prossimo libro, “Crisis Cycle”: grazie alla garanzia implicita della BCE i legislatori italiani non sono vincolati dai mercati. Potrebbero ragionevolmente aspettarsi (e Capone e Stagnaro, 2024, sostengono che l'abbiano fatto) che:

• La BCE impedirebbe qualsiasi picco significativo nei costi di prestito attraverso i suoi programmi di acquisto di obbligazioni;

• Il costo fiscale potrebbe essere attenuato distribuendolo negli anni attraverso crediti d'imposta;

• Se emergesse una pressione sul mercato, la BCE interverrebbe acquistando titoli di stato italiani.

Questo calcolo si è rivelato corretto. Quando il deficit italiano è schizzato alle stelle nel 2023 a causa del SuperBonus, passando da un previsto 5,5% all'8% del PIL, non c'è stato panico sul mercato. Gli spread obbligazionari italiani sono rimasti contenuti, grazie al Transmission Protection Instrument (TPI) della BCE, il quale ha rassicurato gli investitori senza che la BCE dovesse nemmeno intervenire. Rimuovendo il vincolo della disciplina di mercato, la BCE ha permesso al SuperBonus di persistere molto più a lungo di quanto sarebbe altrimenti accaduto.

Non tutti i programmi futuri saranno così eclatanti come il SuperBonus, che è molto probabilmente una delle linee di politica fiscali più stupide della memoria recente. Come ha affermato la Ragioneria generale italiana nella sua retrospettiva del 2024: “Il SuperBonus era significativamente diverso dai precedenti benefici i cui effetti erano noti. Per la prima volta è stata consentita la copertura completa dei costi, aumentando l'attrattiva della misura ed eliminando sostanzialmente il conflitto di interessi tra fornitori e acquirenti”.

Ma il SuperBonus illustra un problema più profondo che l'Europa si trova ad affrontare: i meccanismi tradizionali per la disciplina fiscale sono crollati. Le forze di mercato (gli acquirenti di obbligazioni) sono stati neutralizzati dall'intervento della BCE. Le regole fiscali della Commissione europea, già indebolite da ripetute violazioni da parte di grandi Paesi come Francia e Germania, vengono sostituite da nuove regole che, poiché si basano sulla contrattazione bilaterale, forniscono pochi vincoli reali. E i sistemi politici nazionali, liberati dalla pressione del mercato, trattano sempre più la spesa finanziata dal debito come un pasto gratis.

Questa erosione della disciplina non è limitata all'Italia. Il deficit della Francia è arrivato al 6,1% del PIL. La Spagna ha invertito la sua riforma pensionistica post-crisi proprio quando l'Italia stava approvando il SuperBonus, con conseguenze negative molto più grandi per la sostenibilità fiscale. In un mondo in cui la BCE interverrà sempre per prevenire la pressione nel mercato obbligazionario e Bruxelles non può far rispettare in modo credibile le regole fiscali sui grandi stati, una politica fiscale sostenibile diventa quasi impossibile.

Gli stessi meccanismi progettati per proteggere l'euro potrebbero ora indebolirlo. Quando la BCE interviene per impedire la pressione del mercato sui titoli di stato, rimuove una forza disciplinare cruciale sulle linee di politica fiscali nazionali, creando incentivi perversi per i politici ad espandere la spesa senza riguardo per la sostenibilità a lungo termine. Un'unione monetaria senza unione fiscale può funzionare solo se gli stati membri mantengono linee di politica di spesa sostenibili. Ma l'Europa ora si ritrova intrappolata in una trappola che lei stessa ha creato: i suoi strumenti di lotta alla crisi stanno erodendo costantemente la disciplina necessaria per la sopravvivenza dell'euro. Finché l'Europa non troverà un modo per ripristinare vincoli significativi sulle linee di politica di spesa nazionali preservando al contempo la stabilità finanziaria, ogni espansione “temporanea” dei rischi di spesa diventerà permanente, ogni intervento “una tantum” della BCE rischia di diventare di routine e le tensioni sottostanti nell'unione monetaria continueranno a crescere.

[*] traduzione di Francesco Simoncelli: https://www.francescosimoncelli.com/

Supporta Francesco Simoncelli's Freedonia lasciando una “mancia” in satoshi di bitcoin scannerizzando il QR seguente.

Riferimenti

• Accetturo, Antonio, Elisabetta Olivieri, e Fabrizio Renzi. Incentivi per le ristrutturazioni abitative: evidenze da un ampio programma fiscale. N. 860. Banca d'Italia, Area Ricerca Economica e Relazioni Internazionali, 2024.

• Capone, Luciano e Carlo Stagnaro. “Superbonus: Come Fallisce una Nazione”, Rubbettino Editore (novembre 2024).

• Capone, Luciano e Carlo Stagnaro. Le cattive idee hanno cattive conseguenze: il SuperBonus italiano e l'influenza della MMT. Mimeo, febbraio 2025.

• Cochrane, John, Luis Garicano e Klaus Masuch. “Crisis Cycle: Challenges, Evolution, and Future of the Euro” Princeton University Press, di prossima pubblicazione (giugno 2025).

• Corsello, Francesco, e Valerio Ercolani. Il ruolo del Superbonus nella crescita dei costi delle costruzioni in Italia. N. 903. Banca d'Italia, Area Ricerca Economica e Relazioni Internazionali, 2024.

• Eurostat (2023a). Manuale sul deficit e debito pubblico – Implementazione dell'ESA 2010. Edizione 2022. Lussemburgo: Ufficio delle pubblicazioni dell'Unione europea.

____________________________________________________________________________________

Note

[1] In parte, la sorpresa nei confronti delle aspettative è che il Ministero delle Finanze non aveva modellato la risposta comportamentale dei consumatori. A differenza del Ministero, Luciano Capone, giornalista de Il Foglio (e autore di un libro che racconta la storia del programma), ha capito gli incentivi perversi fin dall'inizio, avvertendo a maggio 2020: “I clienti non andranno in giro a chiedere ai costruttori uno sconto ma, al contrario, un aumento del prezzo”. Gli incentivi contano.

[2] Il SuperBonus in senso stretto era di €160 miliardi (gli altri €60 miliardi sono il credito di restauro delle facciate e altri crediti, come spiegato nel testo). Se immaginiamo 500.000 abitazioni, la ristrutturazione media riceveva un sussidio di €320.000.

[3] Ecco la spiegazione di Capone e Stagnaro (2025) riguardo la questione contabile: “I crediti d’imposta non pagabili sono trattati come entrate fiscali negative e non come spese, saranno registrati quando saranno utilizzati per ridurre gli oneri fiscali, impattando sui conti per l’importo esatto utilizzato ogni anno” (Eurostat, 2023: 88). Tuttavia, se il credito d’imposta è trasferibile (come lo era il SuperBonus), se il credito d’imposta può essere trasferito a terzi, tale credito d’imposta deve quindi essere considerato un credito d’imposta pagabile e deve essere registrato nei conti nazionali come un’attività del contribuente e una passività del governo (Eurostat, 2023: 86)”.

____________________________________________________________________________________

Writes Joseph T Salerno:

Roderick Long posted this quote from Ayn Rand fon his FB page under the title “Rand vs Trump and Musk”.  According to Rand and, presumably, Long rapid deregulation and decontrol a la Trump and Musk is “disastrous, arbitrary, dictatorial action”.

The post Roderick Long appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, Ginny Garner.

JFK FILES: CIA REJECTED LONE GUN THEORY

A newly released memo from the JFK files — known as the Donald Heath memo — confirms the CIA itself rejected the lone gunman explanation in the weeks following JFK’s assassination.

The document reveals senior agency officials… https://t.co/OpfuRe4Ek6 pic.twitter.com/hYZTaB3Kyp

— Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) March 21, 2025

The post JFK Files: CIA Didn’t Believe the Lone Gunman Theory appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, Johnny Kramer. 

The post Tim Dillon – Ridge Wallet and Blue Chew ads appeared first on LewRockwell.

Donald Trump published the following on “Truth Social” about the heroic Congressman Tom Massie, in response to Massie’s voting against Trump’s budget proposal: “Thank you to the House Freedom Caucus for just delivering a big blow to the Radical Left Democrats and their desire to raise Taxes and SHUT OUR COUNTRY DOWN! They hate America and all it stands for. That’s why they allowed MILLIONS of Criminals to invade our Nation. Sometimes it takes great courage to do the right thing. Congressman Thomas Massie, of beautiful Kentucky, is an automatic “NO” vote on just about everything, despite the fact that he has always voted for Continuing Resolutions in the past. HE SHOULD BE PRIMARIED, and I will lead the charge against him. He’s just another GRANDSTANDER, who’s too much trouble, and not worth the fight. He reminds me of Liz Chaney before her historic, record breaking fall (loss!). The people of Kentucky won’t stand for it, just watch. DO I HAVE ANY TAKERS??? Anyway, thank you again to the House Freedom Caucus for your very important vote. We need to buy some time in order to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, GREATER THAN EVER BEFORE. Unite and Win!!! (italics removed)

Was Trump justified in what he said? Of course not! Trump continually campaigned on the promise to cut spending, but the budget proposal he supports was much higher than that of President Obama, as the great David Stockman has pointed out: “But for crying out loud, Donald, Congressman Massie has actually read every line of this 110 page abomination and knows that it provides spending authority of $1.658 trillion, which is 47% more than Big Spender Obama’s last budget. It will virtually cancel every dime DOGE has allegedly saved.”

Massie wasn’t disturbed by Trump’s threat, posting on Twitter that “Doesn’t work on me. Three times I’ve had a challenger who tried to be more MAGA than me. Doesn’t work. None busted 25% because my constituents prefer transparency and principles over blind allegiance.”

Massie is sound on Covid: “I have a bill to end the COVID jab mandate for legal immigrants, but Trump just suspended the mandate.” “Hallelujah!” he added. The representative also slammed former President Joe Biden in a separate post for initially approving the requirement. “But the reality is this: President Biden invented this cruel and unscientific mandate without congressional approval, so President Trump could end it today with his pen,” he wrote.” “I will sign an order to stop our warriors from being subjected to radical political theories and social experiments while on duty,” Trump said. “It’s going to end immediately. Our armed forces will be able to focus on its sole mission: defeating America’s enemies.”

Trump says he wants to end America’s involvement in the Ukraine war, but we are still shipping arms to Ukraine, and Trump has rescinded his withdrawal of American intelligence to guide Ukraine in its missile strikes. After Zelensky accepted Trump’s demands, he has indicated that if Putin does not agree to a cease fire, there will be dire consequences for Russia.  All Trump cares about is that Zelensky kowtows to him. Massie, on the other hand, favors an immediate withdrawal of all arms shipments and financial aid to Ukraine. “Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) were the only lawmakers who voted against four bills on Wednesday that either reprimanded Russia and Belarus or supported Ukraine more than ten weeks into Moscow’s war. Greene and Massie were the only two lawmakers to vote “no” on three of the four bills. The fourth piece of legislation received resistance from 56 Republicans. All four bills passed through the House with bipartisan support. The GOP duo was the only opposition to the Russia and Belarus Financial Sanctions Act, which asserts that foreign entities and individuals under the jurisdiction of U.S. institutions are required to comply with sanctions the Biden administration has slapped on Moscow and Minsk. Reached for comment about his votes against the legislation, Massie told The Hill that the bills he objected to would put Americans at risk and lengthen the Russia-Ukraine conflict, among other claims. “Congress has voted for ten bills now that will put US citizens at risk, prolong the conflict in Ukraine, waste tax-payer money, increase domestic food and energy prices, and draw us further into this conflict. I have voted against all of them,” he wrote in a statement.”

As everybody knows, the heart of Trump’s economic policy is support for tariffs. Tariffs are ruinous for American consumers and an assault on a basic principle of the free market. As our great Mises Institute President Tom DiLorenzo has written, “There’s a saying in economics that a tax on imports is also a tax on exports. This is because if America’s foreign trading partners are impoverished by protectionist tariffs, they will then have fewer dollars with which to purchase American goods in international trade, especially agricultural products. This will obviously harm American exporters and their employees and communities. This is also patently unfair. There is nothing more anti-populist than protectionist tariff taxes. President Trump has repeatedly stated with great excitement that with his impending huge tariff tax increases “we,” meaning the federal government, are “going to take in A LOT of money.” Well now. Since when has it been the priority of the Trump administration to drain the pockets of American consumers and businesses with tariff taxes so that the federal bureaucracy can become even more enlarged and bloated than it already is? Isn’t that a flat contradiction of all of President Trump’s campaign promises, not to mention the professed goal of the DOGE?”

Massie is opposed to tariffs. As Steve Hanke, one of the foremost authorities on free trade, has noted, Masse said that “[Tariffs] create a whole industry of lobbyists who come to Congress looking for exemptions from these tariffs… It becomes a nightmare.” Hanke added that Massie is one of the few on Capitol Hill who understands how the CORRUPT tariff system works.

Massie also wants a complete shutoff of US aid to Israel. The left-wing magazine The Nation has noted the anomaly that Massie often votes against his fellow “conservatives” on aid to Israel: “But on matters of war and peace, he often sides with progressives, positioning himself as a libertarian-leaning Republican who opposes US military interventionism and military aid packages for foreign countries, including Israel. That stance has drawn sharp criticism from neoconservatives in general, who worry about the return of the sort of old-school Republican isolationism that reflexively opposed military interventions and foreign aid packages, and in particular from AIPAC, which has objected to his many votes against aid to Israel, as well as his rejection of resolutions backing Netanyahu’s government. Leading up to the Kentucky GOP primary on May 21, the AIPAC-affiliated United Democracy Project spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on attack ads against the incumbent. One such ad announced, “Israel, the Holy Land, [is] under attack by Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah and Congressman Tom Massie. Massie responded by calling out the attack ads, arguing that the “AIPAC superPAC just bought $300,000 of ads against me because I am often the lone Republican for freedom of speech, against foreign aid, and opposed to wars in the Middle East.” And Republican primary voters rallied to his defense, giving the incumbent three-quarters of the vote in the contest against his two rivals, including a former contender for the state’s Republican gubernatorial nomination. Massie said the results were a message for AIPAC, declaring on election day, “AIPAC, your smear campaign on this American has backfired.” He also said the result was a signal to his party’s leadership in Washington. “I don’t vote for wars, and I don’t vote for foreign aid,” Massie said. “That puts me apart from most of my colleagues in Washington, D.C., but hopefully my colleagues will see that you can get 75 percent of the vote back home if you just represent those things in the Republican Party.”

Let’s do everything we can to support Thomas Massie’s fight for the free market and a non-interventionist foreign policy! As the great Dr. Ron Paul has said, “He happens to believe that you’re supposed to follow your oath of office; it’s no more complicated than that.”

The post The Great Tom Massie appeared first on LewRockwell.

It didn’t take long for Donald Trump to show his true colors.

Trump won a landslide election last November primarily on the promise to STOP America’s “stupid” wars. It is now obvious to everyone that, while Trump might be able to negotiate a deal to stop the war in Ukraine—a war that Russia has already won—he is decidedly intent on accelerating and expanding U.S. wars in the Middle East.

But as soon as I tell the truth about the morbid duplicity of Trump’s mind and the moral derangement of Trump’s heart, evangelicals ferociously respond with examples of the “good” things he is doing, as if any of that erases the evil he is inflicting on both America and the world.

Evangelicals are eaten up with the disease of Prophetic Dispensationalism and see Trump as a harbinger of their eschatology. Prophetic Dispensationalism is a moral and spiritual cancer that befalls the brain and hardens the heart. And it is an epidemic among evangelicals.

I well remember when I was a young pastor. I heard several prominent fundamentalist/evangelical pastors use James 5:20 to justify any act of wickedness they might commit in the same way that they use Genesis 12:3 to justify every act of wickedness that Zionist Israel does commit.

James 5:20 says, “Let him know, that he which converteth the sinner from the error of his way shall save a soul from death, and shall hide a multitude of sins.” (KJV)

Their interpretation of this verse was that if a Christian was a “soulwinner” and won people to Christ, God would “hide” the “multitude” of the soulwinner’s “sins.” In other words, as long as a Christian was a soulwinner, none of his sins mattered—no matter how vile and wicked they might be.

That’s the same mindset of today’s Trump toadies. As long as Trump is doing something right, he cannot be condemned for anything he does wrong.

But Donald Trump has chosen a course that could lead America into World War Three and turn our constitutional republic into an authoritarian dictatorship where the fundamental mark of a free society—the freedom of speech—is eviscerated.

Regarding the latter point, Judge Andrew Napolitano and Professor John Mearsheimer (West Point, U.S. Army, U.S. Air Force, PhD Cornell University, professor, University of Chicago) had this exchange:

Professor John Mearsheimer: The truth is, Judge, that the single greatest threat to freedom of speech in the United States, at this point in time, is Israel and its supporters here in the United States. It’s truly amazing the extent to which Israel’s supporters are going to enormous lengths to shut down free speech, not only on university campuses but all across the country.

Judge Napolitano: Unbelievable. I forgot to play this clip a few minutes ago. This is the boss of Marco Rubio, the boss of Attorney General Bondi, the boss of Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem talking about the freedom of speech.

President Donald Trump video clip: And I have stopped all government censorship and brought back free speech in America. It’s back.

Mearsheimer: I’m actually surprised at the extent to which Trump and his administration are suppressing free speech. I mean, I knew it wouldn’t be perfect once he took office, but I’m amazed.

This case that you’re referring to involving this gentleman at Columbia University is just the tip of the iceberg. There’s just all sorts of activities taking place on the part of the government to shut down free speech, especially with regard to the Israel-Palestine conflict.

We have a huge problem here. And the idea that Donald Trump is facilitating free speech and taking off all obstacles to free speech is laughable.

Indeed.

Regarding the former point, George Galloway and Col. Douglas Macgregor had this exchange:

Col. Macgregor: I think Netanyahu is practicing American foreign policy through ventriloquy. He’s simply moving Trump’s mouth, and Trump is saying what he wants him to say.

And that is unfortunately, tragically, the perception in the United States: that Trump is not a free actor. That he is simply a puppet. And the puppet master is Netanyahu.

George Galloway: It is quite extraordinary to the extent that there is video, I’ve seen it, you will have too, of Trump actually pulling his [Netanyahu’s] chair out, having him sit down and then pushing his chair in like you would do to your good wife. This is the president of the United States practically waiting at table on a visiting politician, moreover, one for whom there’s an extant international arrest warrant.

Col. Macgregor: Well, remember that President Netanyahu does not simply represent six plus million Israeli Jews. He represents Jewish international power and capital. And so, he is treated differently for that reason, if none else.

It would be a mistake to say, “Why is President Trump allowing himself to be manipulated or exploited by this man who represents so few people?” That’s a mistake. This is a larger concentration of capital and power that he represents. And Trump knows that, and he’s dependent upon it. He was dependent upon it to get elected. So, now he’s doing what they elected him to do.

Again, it didn’t take long.

Whatever the Trump/Musk Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) cutbacks might be, we already know that Trump has ZERO intention of reducing overall government spending. He just rammed a stopgap spending bill through Congress that keeps federal spending at Joe Biden levels. Conservatives don’t want to remember that Trump added over $8 trillion to the national debt during his first term in office—the same amount as Biden. But consider that Trump’s spending didn’t include federal expenditures for underwriting the Covid tyranny.

Whatever money Trump wants to save by terminating Ukraine’s cash cow, he intends to throw into an expanded U.S. war in the Middle East.

Israel has (illegally) stopped its ceasefire with Gaza and resumed the genocide (using the bombs and missiles, etc., that Trump shipped to Israel after becoming president) while, at the same time, Trump launched massive bombing raids on Yemen, killing mostly innocent women and children.

Max Blumenthal told Judge Nap that Trump owns the Gazan slaughter, that he (Trump) admitted to unleashing “this slaughterhouse in Gaza . . . on the civilian population.”

Trump is Joe Biden’s eidolon.

On Trump’s war in Yemen, Dr. Ron Paul writes:

Over the weekend President Trump ordered a massive military operation against the small country of Yemen. Was Yemen in the process of attacking the United States? No. Did the President in that case go to Congress and seek a declaration of war against the country? No. The fact is, Yemen hadn’t even threatened the United States before the bombs started falling.

Last year, candidate Trump strongly criticized the Biden Administration’s obsession with foreign interventionism to the detriment of our problems at home. In an interview at the Libertarian National Convention, he criticized Biden’s warmongering to podcaster Tim Pool, saying, “You can solve problems over a telephone. Instead they start dropping bombs. Recently, they’re dropping bombs all over Yemen. You don’t have to do that.”

Yet once in office, Trump turned to military force as his first option. Since the Israel/Hamas ceasefire plan negotiated by President Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff, Yemen has left Red Sea shipping alone. However, after Israel implemented a total blockade of humanitarian relief to citizens of Gaza last week, Houthi leaders threatened to again begin blocking Israel’s Red Sea shipping activities.

That was enough for President Trump to drop bombs and launch missiles for hours, killing several dozen Yemeni civilians – including women and children – in the process.

After the attack, Trump not only threatened much more force to be used against Yemen, but he also threatened Iran. His National Security Advisor Mike Waltz added that the US may start bombing Iranian ships in the area, a move that would certainly lead to a major Middle East war.

Like recent Presidents Bush and Obama, candidate Trump promised peace after four years of Joe Biden’s warmongering and World War III brinkmanship. There is little doubt that with our war-weary population this proved the margin of his victory. Unfortunately, as with Bush and Obama, now that he is President, he appears to be heading down a different path.

Or actually the same path.

Trump is quickly proving that his campaign rhetoric about being a “peace president” was a bald-faced lie. Trump is merely the latest in a long line of puppet presidents. As Col. Macgregor said, “[Trump] is simply a puppet. And the puppet master is Netanyahu.”

Even Scott Ritter, who is strongly predisposed to supporting Trump, had fiery words for Trump after he began bombing Yemen. Here are excerpted comments during his interview with Judge Napolitano:

Trump is an idiot.

It isn’t going to work, Mr. President.

And what’s going to happen is one of two things. One, you’re going to look foolish, because you’re going to have to back down when your secretary of defense says, “We can’t escalate any further without putting 700,000 boots on the ground. That’s a major invasion that will cause the entire region to blow up. Oil prices will spin out of control, and your economy will crash and you’re finished, Mr. President. You’re done. Everything you’re trying to do. The American people will not tolerate $120 oil, because they can’t economically. All the changes you’re making are predicated upon a foundation of economic stability, which will not be here if you throw oil security/energy security out the window by going to war with Iran. Stop it.”

Or, he will actually go to war, thinking that somehow American bombs ordered by Donald Trump take on some sort of angelic property and blow up with greater violence and more terror than any other bomb ever made. And then the Iranians will shut down the Strait of Hormuz, blow up American installations, destroy Israel and invite an American nuclear retaliation. And boom, the man who thought he was going to get the Nobel Peace Prize will go down in history as the greatest warmonger in modern history.

The Zionist Deep State that put Joe Biden in office in 2020 to assist Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza put Donald Trump in office in 2024 to assist Israel’s war against Yemen. And you can take this to the bank: Attacking Yemen is just the first phase in the Zionist plan to attack Iran. Donald Trump was put in office to wage the U.S./Israeli war against Iran.

Perhaps RumorMillNews.com has the best summary of what we’re talking about today:

Has Trump gone insane, or is it just his rabid Zionism getting the best of him?

Maybe the question is moot, since Zionism is a disease that leads to insanity.

At the same time that Trump is supposed to be negotiating with Putin for peace in Ukraine, I see headlines such as this, today, from George Eaton’s news update:

“Trump says every shot fired by the Houthis will be looked upon as being fired from Iran.”

“JUST IN – Trump threatens Iran for any further Houthi attack.”

“U.S. WARNED IRAQ OF IRAN STRIKE UNDER TRUMP.”

“Iranian media is reporting that at least 4 Iranian missile ships have crossed the Strait of Hormuz, with protection from the IRGC navy.”

“Trump orders sending 35 warships and 1,750 US Marines to the Middle East.”

“Iran’s armed forces remain on high alert, prepared for “full-scale defense and a severe counterattack” against enemy interests in the Middle East, Iran’s Nournews said.”

And finally, from White House spokeswoman Caroline Labate: “The Israeli attacks were coordinated with us, the gates of hell are about to open, and President Trump is unafraid to defend our ally and friend, Israel!”

So is she referring to the Israeli bombing of displaced Palestinians living in tents on the streets of Gaza that were set ablaze last night? I can see no other point of reference, and this is certainly a new one on us.

Is Trump’s blind ego riding so high that he is unaware of what Iran can do?

Zionism is a disease similar to Trump Derangement Syndrome. Trump has it bad, and I hope that because of his illness, it doesn’t end badly for all of us. [Emphasis added]

And while I’m trying to keep up with all of these rapidly unfolding developments in a struggling attempt to keep readers fully informed, I must include statements made by the quintessential Jewish Zionist, Professor Alan Dershowitz. These statements are at once foreboding and realistic for the State of Israel.

I’m not going to be as optimistic as the last four speakers. We have survived in the past. That doesn’t mean we are going to survive in the future.

The United States will survive. That is for sure, no matter who is in charge. We have a system of checks and balances; it’s working. The United States will survive. Israel’s survival is not guaranteed.

These statements come from the mouth of one of the world’s leading antichrist Zionists, Alan Dershowitz: “Israel’s survival is not guaranteed.” Indeed, it’s not, contrary to the erroneous belief of America’s Christian Zionists. But it is truly incredible to hear this from the mouth of one such as Dershowitz.

To see just a smidgen of factual information confirming what Dershowitz said, watch this short 1-minute video.

If you watch Dershowitz’s address, you will hear him castigate the eminent Jewish scholar Norman Finkelstein. Accordingly, I will let Professor Finkelstein respond for himself:

Netanyahu is an accurate representative of Israeli society. It’s not as if he is an excrescence, that’s the fancy word for like an artificial outgrowth. He’s not an excrescence. The fact that he is the longest-sitting prime minister of Israel, there’s a very good reason for it, because he is an obnoxious, self-righteous Jewish supremacist. And that is a reflection of 95% of Israeli society: obnoxious, Jewish supremacists, self-righteous society. Netanyahu is less an orchestrator than he is a reflection of Israeli society.

Unlike the people of America who voted for Trump due to his promise to end America’s “stupid” wars, evangelicals voted for Trump due to his rabid support for the warmongering State of Israel. In other words, Trump was elected by two groups of voters that were polar opposites, each group voting for the same man for reasons completely counter to the reasons of the opposite group.

Wouldn’t it be ironic for the Christian Zionists who voted for Trump due to his rabid support for Israel to wind up becoming the instruments of the destruction of the Zionist state, which even Alan Dershowitz admits is very feasible?

As the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD was required by God for the Early Church to understand Christ’s New Covenant, so, too, the destruction of the Zionist state (as speculated by Scott Ritter above) might be required by God for the Western Church to understand Christ’s New Covenant, because the truth of Christ’s New Covenant has been lost to America’s evangelicals since 1948.

It would appear to be more than poetic justice if God were to use Donald John Trump as He used Titus Flavius Vespasianus.

Regardless, very quickly after being inaugurated, President Donald Trump has shown his true colors.

Reprinted with permission from Chuck Baldwin Live.

The post Trump Shows His True Colors appeared first on LewRockwell.

My 10th grade English class had devoted a semester to the works of William Shakespeare, and that seemed appropriate given his place in our language and our culture.

During those months, I’d read about a dozen or so of his plays and had been required to memorize one of the most famous soliloquies in Macbeth. Even today, decades later, I discovered that I could still recite it by heart, a fact that greatly surprised me.

By common agreement, Shakespeare ranks as the towering, even formative figure of our globally-dominant English language, probably holding a position roughly comparable to that of Cervantes for Spanish and perhaps Goethe and Schiller for German. Many of the widespread phrases found in today’s English trace back to his plays, and in glancing at Shakespeare’s 12,000 word Wikipedia article, I noticed that the introduction described him as history’s foremost playwright, a claim that seemed very reasonable to me.

Although I’d never studied his works after high school, over the years I’d seen a number of the film versions of his famous dramas, as well as some of the Royal Shakespeare Company performances on PBS, and generally thought those were excellent. But although my knowledge of Shakespeare was meager, I never doubted his literary greatness.

During all those years I remained only dimly aware of the details of Shakespeare’s life, which were actually rather scanty. I did know that he’d been born and died in the English town of Stratford-upon-Avon, which I’d once visited during the year I studied at Cambridge University.

I’d also vaguely known that Shakespeare had written a large number of sonnets, and a year or two after my day trip to his birthplace, there was a long article in the New York Times that a new one had been found. Shakespeare’s stature was so great that the discovery of a single new poem warranted a 5,000 word article in our national newspaper of record.

I’m not sure when I’d first heard that there was any sort of dispute regarding Shakespeare’s personal history or his authorship of that great body of work, but I think it might have been many years later during the 1990s. Some right-wing writer for National Review had gotten himself into hot water for his antisemitic and racist remarks and was fired from that magazine. A few years later my newspapers mentioned that the same fellow had just published a book claiming that Shakespeare’s plays had actually been secretly written by someone else, a British aristocrat whose name meant nothing to me.

That story didn’t much surprise me. Individuals on the political fringe who had odd and peculiar ideas on one topic might be expected to be eccentric in others as well. Perhaps getting fired from his political publication might have tipped him over the edge, leading him to promote such a bizarre and conspiratorial literary theory about so prominent a historical figure. The handful of reviews in my newspapers and conservative magazines treated his silly book with the total disdain that it clearly warranted.

I think about a decade later I’d seen something in my newspapers about that same Shakespeare controversy, which had boiled up again in some other research, but the Times didn’t seem to take it too seriously, so neither did I.

A few years later, Hollywood released a 2011 film called Anonymous making that same case about Shakespeare’s true identity, but I never saw it and didn’t pay much attention. The notion that the greatest figure in English literature had secretly been someone else struck me as typical Hollywood fare, pretty unlikely but probably less so than the plots and secret identities found in the popular Batman and Spiderman movies.

By then I’d grown very suspicious of many elements of the American political history that I’d been taught, and a couple of years after that film was released, I published “Our American Pravda,” outlining some of my tremendous loss of faith in the information provided in our media and textbooks, then later launched a long series of a similar name.

But both at that time and for the dozen years that followed, I’d never connected my growing distrust of so much of what I’d learned in my introductory history courses with what my introductory English courses had taught me during those same schooldays. Therefore, the notion that Shakespeare hadn’t really been the author of Shakespeare’s plays seemed totally preposterous to me, so much so that I’d even half-forgotten that anyone had ever seriously made that claim.

However, last year a young right-wing activist and podcaster dropped me a note about various things and he also suggested that I consider expanding my series of “conspiratorial” investigations to include the true authorship of the Shakespeare plays. He mentioned that the late Joseph Sobran had been a friend of his own family, explaining how that once very influential conservative journalist had been purged from National Review in the early 1990s and then published a book arguing that the famous plays had actually been written by the Earl of Oxford, while various other scholars had taken similar positions. That had been the 1990s controversy I’d largely forgotten.

I told him that I’d vaguely heard of that theory over the years, probably even reading one or two of the dismissive reviews of that Sobran book when it appeared, but had never taken the idea seriously. Indeed, during my various investigations of the last decade or so, I’d concluded that something like 90-95% of all the “conspiracy theories” I’d examined had turned out to be false or at least unsubstantiated and I expected that this one about Shakespeare was very likely to fall into that same category. But almost all of my recent work had focused upon politics and history and I thought that a short digression into literary matters might be a welcome break. So I clicked a few buttons on Amazon and ordered the Sobran book as well as another more recent one he’d recommended to me on the same topic, then forgot all about it.

As an outsider to the literary community, I found it extremely implausible that for centuries the true identity of the greatest figure of the English language had remained concealed from all the many hundreds of millions who spoke that tongue, or the multitudes who watched his famous plays performed, or studied his works at universities. How likely was it that until a couple of decades ago, none of our greatest writers, critics, and literary scholars, numbering in the many dozens or more, had ever suspected that all the Shakespeare plays had actually been written by someone else?

But one reason I was much more willing to consider investigating this matter was that since the 1990s my opinion of Sobran had considerably improved. At the time he’d published his book, I’d barely been aware of him, but after his bitter Neocon enemies had stampeded America into our disastrous Iraq War following the 9/11 Attacks, he and all those others who had previously warned of their growing political influence and subsequently suffered at their hands had greatly risen in my estimation.

Furthermore, my content-archiving project of the early 2000s had included all the issues of National Review, and I’d discovered Sobran’s enormously important role in that conservative flagship publication, cut short when the Neocons had forced Editor William F. Buckley Jr. to purge him.

In sharp contrast to my own background, Sobran himself had originally begun his career in English literature before switching to conservative journalism in the 1970s and a year or two ago I’d briefly described his unfortunate fate:

Although the name of Joseph Sobran may be somewhat unfamiliar to younger conservatives, during the 1970s and 1980s he possibly ranked second only to founder William F. Buckley, Jr. in his influence in mainstream conservative circles, as partly suggested by the nearly 400 articles he published for NR during that period. By the late 1980s, he had grown increasingly concerned that growing Neocon influence would embroil America in future foreign wars, and his occasional sharp statements in that regard were branded “anti-Semitic” by his Neocon opponents, who eventually prevailed upon Buckley to purge him. The latter provided the particulars in a major section of his 1992 book-length essay In Search of Anti-Semitism.

Oddly enough, Sobran seems to have only very rarely discussed Jews, favorably or otherwise, across his decades of writing, but even just that handful of less than flattering mentions was apparently sufficient to draw their sustained destructive attacks on his career, and he eventually died in poverty in 2010 at the age of 64. Sobran had always been known for his literary wit, and his unfortunate ideological predicament eventually led him to coin the aphorism “An anti-Semite used to mean a man who hated Jews. Now it means a man who is hated by Jews.”

Sobran had been a nationally-syndicated columnist and a regular commenter on the CBS Radio network, so his personal fall was a considerable one. Given that he’d written his Shakespeare book just a few years after his final ouster from National Review, he still had retained some of his previous standing, helping to explain why this work had been reviewed in several publications albeit unfavorably, rather than simply ignored.

When the Shakespeare books I’d ordered eventually arrived, I set them aside and only much later finally got around to reading them. As I did so, I was quite surprised at what I discovered.

Published in 1997, Sobran’s Alias Shakespeare was quite short, with the main text only running a little more than 200 pages, and although I began it with extreme skepticism, the 15-odd pages in the Introduction quickly dispelled much of that.

The author started by emphasizing that nearly all the mainstream Shakespeare scholars have always dismissed as ridiculous any doubts about the authorship of the plays, and he himself had taken that same position, including during his years of graduate school, when he had focused on Shakespeare studies.

Moreover, once he eventually became suspicious of this conventional view and began investigating the topic, he “entered a bizarre world of colorful people, totally unlike the academic world.” Their various theories of authorship included Francis Bacon, a wide variety of different British noblemen, and even Queen Elizabeth I, and these numerous activists often bitterly quarreled with each other. Yet Sobran argued that it was important to remember that “so many important discoveries have been made by dubious scholars, intellectual misfits, and outright cranks.” Meanwhile mainstream scholars had almost entirely ignored the Shakespeare authorship issue, claiming it didn’t exist.

Sobran’s attitude seemed a very reasonable one on that controversial literary subject, and he maintained that same judicial tone throughout the book, often emphasizing his uncertainty on many of the issues that he was raising.

Although I’d assumed that only cranks and fringe eccentrics had ever questioned Shakespeare’s authorship, I was very surprised to discover that over the last century or two the list of such “heretics” included many of our most illustrious English-language literary figures and intellectuals, including Walt Whitman, Henry James, Mark Twain, John Galsworthy, Sigmund Freud, Vladimir Nabokov, and David McCullough. Some of our most notable actors and dramatists, especially those known for their Shakespearean roles were also skeptics: Orson Welles, Sir John Gielgud, Michael York, Kenneth Branagh, and Charlie Chaplin. A few years after the publication of Sobran’s book, Sir Derek Jacobi, a renowned Shakespearean actor, provided the Forewords to other books taking that same position. Supreme Court Justices John Paul Stevens, Sandra Day O’Connor, and Antonin Scalia were also numbered among the Shakespeare skeptics.

Obviously, all these eminent literary, dramatic, and intellectual figures might easily be mistaken, but as an ignorant outsider who had barely been aware that any serious dispute even existed, I read the rest of Sobran’s book with far more of an open mind than when I’d turned the first page.

The telling point that Sobran made in his first chapter was that aside from the huge corpus of the literary works commonly attributed to him, our solid knowledge of Shakespeare’s life and activities is so scanty as to almost be non-existent, mostly consisting of a tiny handful of short business records and documents showing that he had once testified in a minor lawsuit. This was hardly what we would expect of such a towering literary figure.

Although his movements and places of residence were largely unknown, we did know that he ended his days back home at Stratford, living there for at least five years and perhaps a dozen. From that period came his last will and testament, which constituted the only written artifact we have from his entire life, running just 1,300 words. That document is very puzzling, giving no indication that he had ever owned a single book or any literary manuscript. There were no signs of any intellectual interests or literary patrons, and the style was so plodding and semi-literate compared to some other testaments of that era that it seemed difficult to believe that it could have been written or dictated by one of the greatest stylists of the English language.

As Sobran pointed out, that will included three of Shakespeare’s six surviving signatures, all of which were quite irregular, hardly what we would expect from someone who wrote so frequently. Indeed, a document expert cited by a leading Shakespeare scholar claimed that all of Shakespeare’s signatures were probably made by different hands. Since we have no solid evidence that Shakespeare ever attended grammar school, this suggested the astonishing possibility that Shakespeare may have been unable to write his own name. Indeed, both of Shakespeare’s parents, his wife Anne Hathaway, and his daughter Judith were apparently illiterate, signing their names with a mark.

Unlike so many of his contemporaries, whether literary figures or otherwise, not a single letter written by Shakespeare has ever been found despite enormous research efforts, nor a single book that he had ever owned.

Although Shakespeare would have certainly ranked as one of Britain’s leading literary lights, he never offered any public tribute nor statement at the death of Elizabeth I in 1603 nor at the accession of her successor James I, and when he himself died in 1616, no one in London seemed to have taken any notice of his passing.

As Sobran emphasized, although Shakespeare lived and worked for 51 years in Britain, much of that time in the London metropolis, he seemed almost to have existed as a ghost, apparently invisible to nearly all his contemporaries. Numerous thick Shakespeare biographies have been published by various scholars, but aside from the inferences they drew from the enormous body of literary work attributed to him, their contents were almost entirely based upon speculation, given the near total absence of any known facts.

A central problem raised by all those who doubted that the plays were actually written by the actor from Stratford was that the plots and descriptions heavily relied upon far-reaching knowledge of classical history and foreign countries, Italy in particular, while their supposed author certainly had no higher education.

One very surprising fact that I’d never previously known was that all the published plays and other literary works had sometimes been released anonymously, sometimes under the name “Shake-Speare” including the dash often used for pseudonyms in that era, or sometimes under the name “Shakespeare.” Meanwhile, the man from Stratford and his entire family, including both parents and children, almost always spelled their names “Shakspere.”

Elizabethan spelling was often irregular, but it seemed rather odd that the man we today believe was the famous playwright apparently never used the name under which his plays were published or that we today call him. This sharp distinction has conveniently allowed the books and articles of these Shakespeare dissenters to easily distinguish in their text between the “Shakespeare” who was the author of the plays and the “Shakspere” who was the obscure inhabitant of Stratford.

Consider an amusing rough analogy. Samuel Clemens was one of America’s greatest writers, with all of his works published under the pen-name of Mark Twain. But suppose those facts had not been widely known at the time, and a generation or two later, after all those aware of Twain’s true identity had passed from the scene, literary experts had located an obscure Southern businessman named “Mark Tween,” and convinced themselves that he had actually been the famous author.

In effect, Sobran and his allies were arguing that for the last several centuries the literary establishment of the English-speaking world has been suffering from one of the most egregious cases of mistaken identity in all of human history, with most of its tenured faculty members perhaps being too embarrassed to ever even consider that possibility.

Read the Whole Article

The post Who Wrote Shakespeare’s Plays? appeared first on LewRockwell.

“It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world.”

– George Washington

“Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations. Entangling alliances with none.”

– Thomas Jefferson

Flowers bloom, pollen builds, and temperatures rise. Bees bounce from bush to blossom, as branches burst with birds and buds.

On the Vernal equinox, the earth enjoys a fleeting balance. Dark and light, bull and bear, red and white… all continue the eternal quest for an elusive crown.

But some stories are inordinately skewed, certain coins show only one side. In this brief moment of precarious equilibrium, let’s even the scale with some forbidden thoughts.

Origin Story

The Second World War is the origin story of the international “rules-based order”.

A global conflagration that took 70 million lives, unleashed nuclear weapons, laid waste to much of the world, and caused eight decades of proxy conflicts is known as “the good war”.

Its supposed “moral” is that liberal alliances are needed, and must deploy force to thwart acts (or potential acts) of rogue aggression or racial prejudice.

This has been called the “load-bearing myth” of World War II. It’s the basis for every subsequent military intervention, and for obligating Americans to defend Israel no matter what.

For these reasons, the greatest catastrophe in human history can never be questioned. Nor can we remind each other that it started a couple decades earlier, by intervention rather than reticence.

We must assume it’s always Munich 1938… but never Sarajevo 1914. The former lesson is almost always misunderstood. The latter is frequently forgotten, and repeatedly re-learned.

That seems to be happening again.

Those who think it unwise to continue the Ukraine war are maligned as sniveling cowards and a craven appeasers… just as anyone who questions US support for Israel’s government is reflexively smeared as an implicit “anti-semite” (if not an overt one). It’s easier to dismiss skeptics by impugning their motives than to engage them by addressing their arguments.

Those who want to end the killing in Ukraine are derided as “Neville Chamberlains”. This is a tired tactic, but a predictable one.

Whether Slobodan Milosevic, Saddam Hussein, or Vladimir Putin… anyone who dares defy US hegemony becomes a new “Hitler”, to be aggressively resisted by wannabe Churchills.

But invoking “Chamberlain” is an odd insult, particularly from people who insist “we” must fight to defend the Ukraine.

Neville Chamberlain wasn’t the peacenik they presume. He was the Prime Minister who gave the disastrous security guarantee to Poland. The “Chamberlains” in the current conflict are those who would do the same for the Ukraine.

Unfortunately, there are plenty of them. Many condemned President Trump for daring to talk to Putin, much less deal with him. But that’s diplomacy. It’s what leaders are supposed to do.

Eisenhower hosted Khrushchev, Roosevelt held summits with Stalin, Reagan dealt with Gorbachev, and Nixon met with Mao. All were wise to do so. Yet when Trump spoke to Putin, his domestic enemies and global “allies” pitched a fit.

Which raises a broader question.

Loaded Word

How are western Europeans, the Ukraine, and Israel (which was peopled mostly by eastern Europeans) “allies” of the United States? What do they do for us?

They buy weapons, receive “aid”, and funnel cash to compliant politicians and connected corporations. This has been going on since the Marshall Plan. But political payoffs and corporate welfare do nothing for most taxpayers who foot the bill.

Three years ago, few Americans had heard of the Ukraine. Had it vanished, they’d never have known.

Why should they? Unless they’re from there or (like me) have a wife who is, why would they care?

Would they die to defend Donetsk? Does who rules Luhansk affect their lives?

Of course not. The location of a boundary between Russia and the Ukraine (or whether even there is one) makes no difference to them. Nor should it.

Yet Americans in forlorn towns and crime-ridden cities are somehow obliged to preserve (or expand) arbitrary borders between distant peoples. Not just on the Ukrainian steppes, but in western Europe and the eastern Mediterranean.

On the other side of the Black Sea (which is 6,000 miles from the United States), our “Greatest Ally” keeps enticing us into trouble. Last week, President Trump attacked Yemen. This act not only contradicted what he said about prior administrations a few months ago. It was also unconstitutional (as if that matters).

Even worse, it was a war crime that killed innocent civilians… ostensibly in response to Houthi strikes on Red Sea shipping.

But the Houthis hadn’t attacked American vessels. They’d harassed Israeli ones, and put a major port out of business.

They did so in reaction to the US-funded Israeli slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza. The Houthis set their sights on US ships only after Trump ordered strikes on Yemen.

Instead of getting the hell out of this tumultuous region, the president upped the ante and made matters worse. He said he’d hold Iran accountable for any future Houthi attacks, risking a wider war on behalf of our “ally”… against a country posing no threat to the United States.

Acting as if Boston or Baltimore had been bombed, Trump’s press secretary announced that

“all those who seek to terrorize not just Israel, but also the United States of America, will see a price to pay. All hell will break loose.”

Of course, no one had “terrorized” America. And most who’d do so would be incited by the US government enabling what Israel does.

Whether or not you support Israel, this is obvious. Everyone knows it. But it’s not supposed to be said. Nor are the consequences allowed to be acknowledged.

As with attacks on innocent people anywhere, those on Israelis are indefensible. Yet they (should) have nothing to do with the United States.

But because the US government sticks its nose where it doesn’t belong, American citizens are needlessly endangered by the inevitable blowback.

In a world of self-imposed tripwires, the one in Israel is the most prominent example of how a misguided alliance turns another country’s priorities into America’s problems. In the Middle East and Europe, the US government is a spider spinning webs to ensnare itself.

I can see why our “allies” would welcome this arrangement. I would too if I were them. But we’re not them.

Any country we call an “ally” is usually an albatross. They cost money we don’t have to cause problems we don’t need.

Let’s be honest. If we stopped being “allies” with Israel, Ukraine, or western Europe (or anyone, for that matter), which side would be worse off?

Even the word “ally” is loaded. Allied for what? Against whom? The appellation presumes an enemy. It’s another weird relic of the Second World War, invoked whenever our meddlers implore us to make another mess.

The “Axis” epithet is wielded the same way. Mussolini’s descriptor is hurled to evoke fear of scary countries we’re supposed to loathe. George W Bush famously revived it when he lumped Iran, Iraq, and North Korea into an imbecilic “Axis of Evil” to justify war on Iraq after a bunch of Saudis attacked the U.S.

Foreign Affairs (naturally) used it to describe collaboration among Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran. How odd that these nations might work together to guard against governments that express eagerness to destroy each of them.

As always, language is instructive. Why aren’t China, Russia, and Iran referred to as “allies” of each other? Why aren’t the Europeans and Israelis part of an American “axis”?

Perhaps for the same reason the Russian incursion into Ukraine is an “unprovoked attack”, but US invasions of Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Serbia, Grenada, Panama, and Vietnam were “self-defense”.

The True Isolationists

This isn’t to imply Americans should isolate themselves. International interaction and exchange should be free and open, with force reserved only for self-defense from imminent threats. By not butting into everyone else’s affairs, the US would face few of those.

The true “isolationists” are proponents of wars and sanctions that limit trade and inhibit travel. They cower behind economic embargoes, divisive alliances, and kinetic conflict. Non-interventionists shun such seclusion, advocating peace, commerce, and honest friendship with every country.

John Quincy Adams, who drafted the Monroe Doctrine (which stipulated not only that Europeans stay out of America’s hemisphere but that the US not meddle in theirs), famously asserted that

“America goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.”

In the northern hemisphere, the heat rises and shadows shorten. We embrace the light and spurn the dark. It’s time to tend our own garden, and stop picking weeds from other farmers’ fields.

This originally appeared on Premium Insights.

The post Entangled Alliances appeared first on LewRockwell.

The walls are closing in on your financial freedom—but not in the way most Americans believe.

While the debate rages over the future threat of Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs), a far more insidious reality has already taken hold: our existing financial system already functions as a digital control grid, monitoring transactions, restricting choices, and enforcing compliance through programmable money.

For over two years, my wife and I have traveled across 22 states warning about the rapid expansion of financial surveillance. What began as research into cryptocurrency crackdowns revealed something far more alarming: the United States already operates under what amounts to a CBDC.

• 92% of all US dollars exist only as entries in databases.
• Your transactions are monitored by government agencies—without warrants.
• Your access to money can be revoked at any time with a keystroke.

The Federal Reserve processes over $4 trillion daily through its Oracle database system, while commercial banks impose programmable restrictions on what you can buy and how you can spend your own money. The IRS, NSA, and Treasury Department collect and analyze financial data without meaningful oversight, weaponizing money as a tool of control. This isn’t speculation—it’s documented reality.

Now, as President Trump’s Executive Order 14178 ostensibly “bans” CBDCs, his administration is quietly advancing stablecoin legislation that would hand digital currency control to the same banking cartel that owns the Federal Reserve. The STABLE Act and GENIUS Act don’t protect financial privacy—they enshrine financial surveillance into law, requiring strict KYC tracking on every transaction.

This isn’t defeating digital tyranny—it’s rebranding it.

This article cuts through the distractions to expose a sobering truth: the battle isn’t about stopping a future CBDC—it’s about recognizing the financial surveillance system that already exists. Your financial sovereignty is already under attack, and the last off-ramps are disappearing.

The time for complacency has passed. The surveillance state isn’t coming—it’s here.

Understanding the Battlefield: Key Terms and Concepts

To fully grasp how deeply financial surveillance has already penetrated our lives, we must first understand the terminology being used—and often deliberately obscured—by government officials, central bankers, and financial institutions. The following key definitions will serve as a foundation for our discussion, cutting through the technical jargon to reveal the true nature of what’s at stake:

Before diving deeper into the financial surveillance system we face today, let’s establish clear definitions for the key concepts discussed throughout this article:

Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC)

A digital form of central bank money, issued and controlled by a nation’s monetary authority. While often portrayed as a future innovation, I argue in “Fifty Shades of Central Bank Tyranny” that the US dollar already functions as a CBDC, with over 92% existing only as digital entries in Federal Reserve and commercial bank databases.

Stablecoin

A type of cryptocurrency designed to maintain a stable value by pegging to an external asset, typically the US dollar. Major examples include:

• Tether (USDT): The largest stablecoin ($140 billion market cap), managed by Tether Limited with reserves held by Cantor Fitzgerald
• USD Coin (USDC): Second-largest stablecoin ($25 billion market cap), issued by Circle Internet Financial with backing from Goldman Sachs and BlackRock
• Bank-Issued Stablecoins: Stablecoins issued directly by major financial institutions like JPMorgan Chase (JPM Coin) or Bank of America, which function as digital dollars but remain under full regulatory control, allowing programmable restrictions and surveillance comparable to a CBDC.

Tokenization

The process of converting rights to an asset into a digital token on a blockchain or database. This applies to both currencies and other assets like real estate, stocks, or commodities. Tokenization enables:

• Digital representation of ownership
• Programmability (restrictions on how/when/where assets can be used)
• Traceability of all transactions

Regulated Liability Network (RLN)

A proposed financial infrastructure that would connect central banks, commercial banks, and tokenized assets on a unified digital platform, enabling comprehensive tracking and potential control of all financial assets.

Cryptocurrencies specifically designed to preserve transaction privacy and resist surveillance:

• Monero (XMR): Uses ring signatures, stealth addresses, and confidential transactions to conceal sender, receiver, and amount
• Zano (ZANO): Offers enhanced privacy with Confidential Layer technology that can extend privacy features to other cryptocurrencies

Programmable Money

Currency that contains embedded rules controlling how, when, where, and by whom it can be used. Examples already exist in:

• Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) that restrict purchases to approved medical expenses
• The Doconomy Mastercard that tracks and limits spending based on carbon footprint
• Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) cards that restrict purchases to approved food items

Know Your Customer (KYC) / Anti-Money Laundering (AML)

Regulatory frameworks require financial institutions to verify customer identities and report suspicious transactions. While ostensibly aimed at preventing crime, these regulations have expanded to create comprehensive financial surveillance with minimal oversight.

Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) / Patriot Act

US laws mandate financial surveillance, eliminate transaction privacy, and grant government agencies broad powers to monitor financial activity without warrants. These laws form the legislative foundation of the current financial control system.

STABLE Act / GENIUS Act

Proposed legislation would restrict stablecoin issuance to banks and regulated entities, requiring comprehensive KYC/AML compliance and effectively bringing stablecoins under the same surveillance framework as traditional banking.

Understanding these terms is essential for recognizing how our existing financial system already functions as a mechanism of digital control, despite the absence of an officially designated “CBDC.”

The Digital Dollar Reality: America’s Unacknowledged CBDC

The greatest sleight of hand in modern finance isn’t cryptocurrency or complex derivatives—it’s convincing Americans they don’t already live under a Central Bank Digital Currency system. Let’s dismantle this illusion by examining how our current dollar already functions as a fully operational CBDC.

The Digital Foundation of Today’s Dollar

When most Americans picture money, they imagine physical cash changing hands. Yet this mental image is profoundly outdated—92% of all US currency exists solely as digital entries in databases, with no physical form whatsoever. The Federal Reserve, our central bank, doesn’t create most new money by printing bills; it generates it by adding numbers to an Oracle database.

This process begins when the government sells Treasury securities (IOUs) to the Federal Reserve. Where does the Fed get money to buy these securities? It simply adds digits to its database—creating money from nothing. The government then pays its bills through its account at the Fed, transferring these digital dollars to vendors, employees, and benefit recipients.

The Fed’s digital infrastructure processes over $4 trillion in transactions daily, all without a single physical dollar changing hands. This isn’t some small experimental system—it’s the backbone of our entire economy.

The Banking Extension

Commercial banks extend this digital system. When you deposit money, the bank records it in their Microsoft or Oracle database. Through fractional reserve banking, they then create additional digital money—up to 9 times your deposit—to loan to others. This multiplication happens entirely in databases, with no new physical currency involved.

Until recently, banks were required to keep 10% of deposits as reserves at the Federal Reserve. Covid-19 legislation removed even this minimal requirement, though most banks still maintain similar levels for operational reasons. The key point remains: the dollar predominantly exists as entries in a network of databases controlled by the Fed and commercial banks.

Already Programmable, Already Tracked

Those who fear a future CBDC’s ability to program and restrict money use miss a crucial reality: our current digital dollars already have these capabilities built in.

Consider these existing examples:

• Health Savings Accounts (HSAs): These accounts restrict spending to approved medical expenses through merchant category codes (MCCs) programmed into the payment system. Try to buy non-medical items with HSA funds, and the transaction is automatically declined.
• The Doconomy Mastercard: This credit card, co-sponsored by the United Nations through its Climate Action SDG, tracks users’ carbon footprints from purchases and can shut off access when a predetermined carbon limit is reached.
• Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) cards: Government assistance programs already use programmable restrictions to control what recipients can purchase, automatically declining transactions for unauthorized products.

These aren’t theoretical capabilities—they’re operational today, using the exact same digital dollar infrastructure we already have.

Read the Whole Article

The post The Stablecoin Trap: The Backdoor to Total Financial Control appeared first on LewRockwell.

PART ONE: The essence of international law is progressive.

A law cannot exist if there are individuals or organizations that fall within its scope but which stand “above the law” — can’t be prosecuted no matter how flagrantly they violate it. EQUALITY BEFORE THE LAW IS THE FOUNDATION-STONE OF LAW, and if any exceptions can be allowed, those are ONLY the ones that are stated IN the law as being NOT within its scope — and, thus, the fundamental principle of law is that a law exists ONLY if all individuals or organizations that fall within its scope are subject to investigation and prosecution if they violate it. Otherwise, it’s NOT a “law.” To call it a law is false. The United States Government and its colonies such as Israel can’t be prosecuted for violating international law no matter how flagrantly they violate it. Consequently, international law no longer exists. What DOES exist, then? The traditional ethic does: Might makes right.

For example: Whatever happened to the International Court of Justice’s (ICJ’s) so-called ‘investigation’ by the International Criminal Court (ICC) into South Africa’s detailed 99-page fully documented case that Israel’s leaders are committing ethnic cleansing if not genocide in Gaza? The CIA-edited and written Wikipedia (which blacklists (blocks from linking to) sites that aren’t CIA-approved) article “South Africa’s genocide case against Israel” asserts that

On 5 April 2024, the court set the schedule for comprehensive submissions of legal opinions by South Africa and Israel. The time limit for the South African memorial was set to be 28 October 2024, and for the Israeli response 28 July 2025.[122] South Africa filed its memorial on 28 October 2024.[123][124][125] In accordance with the ICJ’s rules, the memorial is not public. It contains over 750 pages of text and over 4,000 pages of exhibits and annexes.

Consequently, in this legal case, presented by South Africa, which was accepted by the ICJ (International Court of Justice) on 29 December 2023, the jurists will commence their consideration of Israel’s defense, starting on 28 July this year, which might be already after the crime (whatever it might be) has been completed.

On page 93 of the 99-page pdf (or p. 184 of the 194-page document) of the South African filing of the case, is the following:

D. The Risk of Irreparable Prejudice and Urgency

136. The Court “has the power to indicate provisional measures when irreparable prejudice could be caused to rights which are the subject of judicial proceedings or when the alleged disregard of such rights may entail irreparable consequences”557. In particular, the Court has the power to indicate provisional measures “if there is urgency, in the sense that there is a real and imminent risk that irreparable prejudice will be caused before the Court gives its final decision”558. As the Court recently confirmed, “[t]he condition of urgency is met when the acts susceptible of causing irreparable prejudice can ‘occur at any moment’ before the Court makes a final decision on the case”559.

137. For the purposes of its decision on a request for the indication of provisional measures in a case involving allegations of violations of the Genocide Convention, “[t]he Court is not called upon . . . to establish the existence of breaches of the Genocide Convention, but to determine whether the circumstances require the indication of provisional measures for the protection of rights under this instrument”560, as “found to be plausible”561. As held by the Court, this does not require it to “make definitive findings

That prior Court expressed its concern that “there is real and imminent risk that irreparable prejudice” meaning in this case genocide and-or mere ethnic cleansing “will be caused (by Israeli troops armed and guided by American weapons and satellite intelligence, but note here that ONLY Israel and NOT the U.S. is being ‘investigated’ by this Court; so, immediately — because of this inequality before the law — this is not a court of law, but of prejudice in favor of Joe Biden etc.; so, this is already a quasi-court involved with quasi-law) “before the Court gives its final decision,” which will therefore settle nothing but instead create interminable debate because that “decision” will be received as propaganda instead of as anything worthy of respect.

That exemplifies the actual non-existence of international law.

We still live in a Might-makes-right world, NOT (not yet, at least) an international-law world. Why is this?

PART TWO: The source of people’s ethics is an allegedly holy inerrant Scripture.

Every religion is based upon an allegedly holy inerrant Scripture, which contains the unchangeable laws or “commandments” of some anthropomorphized Deity or Almighty ‘God’, such that the “good” is defined as serving that ‘God’ — adhering to its commandments — not serving regular people (THEREFORE: Democracy is impossible in ANY nation whose Government, including its Constitution, recognizes some religion’s “Holy Scripture” as being the SUPREME law in that land — it’s a theocracy instead of a democracy; no other document, than that Scripture, can actually BE its Constitution, because that function, as being the basis for the nation’s laws, has already been ceeded to that Scripture).

Furthermore: unlike any Constitution in any democratic country, any such ‘holy Scripture’ is presumed to be inerrant and therefore cannot even possibly be amended — no provision in it says how its basic laws (the Constitution) may become changed; and, so, though every democratic Constitution allows for Amendments, NO ‘holy Scripture’ can allow any, at all.

What is the DEFINING attribute of “God”? Is it “good”ness? In numerous instances, ‘holy Scripture’ says “God” ordered the extermination of an entire category of people — such as Caananites, and such as homosexuals. No, certainly, the defining attribute isn’t “goodness.” Is it instead power — the idea that the Deity is “The Almighty” — the very personification of power? Obviously yes, because ‘God’ is traditionally described as having created the universe — a creation-story is normally included in any ‘holy Scripture’. So: virtually all religions, which is to say every organized faith-based community, worships POWER: the principle that “Might makes right” is literally at its very foundation. Consequently: if EQUALITY BEFORE THE LAW IS THE FOUNDATION-STONE OF LAW, then under any RELIGIOUS law, INEQUALITY before the law is the very foundation-stone of law; and, so, religious law is the exact opposite of “law” in the sense of any democracy. Not only is that not “natural law” (it cannot be accepted as constituting “law” in, say, physics, or biology — not in any of the sciences), but it is FORCED “law,” imposed in order to serve the deity, instead of to serve the public. So, it is entirely artificial: it is, indeed, fraudulent.

Though fraudulent, it is the way human society still and currently IS.

On page 72 of the pdf (p. 142 of the document) of South Africa’s 99-page submission against Israel, appears this:

On 28 October 2023, as Israeli forces prepared their land invasion of Gaza, the Prime Minister [Netanyahu] invoked the Biblical story of the total destruction of Amalek by the Israelites, stating: “you must remember what Amalek has done to you, says our Holy Bible. And we do remember”446. The Prime Minister referred again to Amalek in the letter sent on 3 November 2023 to Israeli soldiers and officers447. The relevant biblical passage [1 Samuel 15:3] reads as follows: “Now go, attack Amalek, and proscribe all that belongs to him. Spare no one, but kill alike men and women, infants and sucklings, oxen and sheep, camels and asses.”448.

In other words: their ‘God’ has commanded them to exterminate the Palestinians. This commandment is stated not only in 1 Samuel, which isn’t within their allegedly inerrant and holiest of all Scripture, the first five books of the Bible, which is in every synagogue and is called the Torah, but it is likewise commanded several times ALSO inside the Torah itself, such as:

Here are some of those specific biblical passages that ARE in the Torah (and therefore even MORE binding upon Jews than is 1 Samuel):

Genesis 15:18-21

“On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abraham and said, ‘To your descendants I give this land, from the river of Egypt [the Nile] to the great river, the Euphrates, including the lands of the Kenites, the Kenizzites, the Kadmonites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaim, the Amoriotes, the Caananites, the Girgashites, and the Jebusites.’”

Deuteronomy 7:1-2

“You must not let any living thing survive among the cities of these people the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance: the Girgashites, the Amorites, the Caananites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. You must put them all to death.”

Deuteronomy 7:16

“Destroy every nation that the Lord your God places in your power, and do not show them any mercy.”

Deuteronomy 20:16-18

“When you capture cities in the land he Lord your God is giving you, kill everyone. Completely destroy all the people: the Hittites, the Amorites, the Caananites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, as the Lord has ordered you to do. Kill them so that they will not make you sin against the Lord by teaching you to do all the disgusting things they do in the worship of their gods.”

Israel’s Government takes such passages as ‘justifying’ what they do to Palestinians. And the vast majority of Israelis agree with that viewpoint. America’s Government says it doesn’t like what Israel is doing, but nonetheless continues to provide almost all of the weaponry and satellite intelligence in order to do it, and is therefore co-equal with Israel in doing this genocide, but (since America pretends to be not a theocratic nation [and our Constitution is entirely secular, so anything at all theocratic in the U.S. Government would actually be traitorous], and not even an aristocratic nation, but instead a democratic nation — though it now IS actually an aristocratic nation) alleges that it isn’t participating in the genocide. That allegation by the U.S. Government is clearly a lie.

Following after that in South Africa’s case against Israel, are many similar biblical citations by other top Israeli officials. Also, some of Israel’s traditional heroes are cited, such as (p. 76 or 150):

— Israeli army reservist “motivational speech”: On 11 October 2023, 95-year old Israeli army reservist Ezra Yachin — a veteran of the Deir Yassin massacre during the 1948 Nakba — reportedly called up for reserve duty to “boost morale” amongst Israeli troops ahead of the ground invasion, was broadcast on social media inciting other soldiers to genocide as follows, while being driven around in an Israeli army vehicle, dressed in Israeli army fatigues: “Be triumphant and finish them off and don’t leave anyone behind. Erase the memory of them. Erase them, their families, mothers and children. These animals can no longer live . . . Every Jew with a weapon should go out and kill them. If you have an Arab neighbour, don’t wait, go to his home and shoot him . . . We want to invade, not like before, we want to enter and destroy what’s in front of us, and destroy houses, then destroy the one after it. With all of our forces, complete destruction, enter and destroy. As you can see, we will witness things we’ve never dreamed of. Let them drop bombs on them and erase them.”477

The descendants of “the Hittites, the Amorites, the Caananites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites” and of “the Kenites, the Kenizzites, the Kadmonites, … the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaim, the Amoriotes, … [and of] the Girgashites” had been allegedly ordered by ‘God’ to be exterminated, but not all of them actually were exterminated; and, so, now, the Israelites — with American assistance — are trying to complete the job, starting with the residents in Gaza.

Consequently, the facts of this case are indisputable that Israel is indeed committing ethnic cleansing if not outright genocide in Gaza; but, how will the ICJ, and then the ICC after it, be dealing with the case: As expressing biblical law; or instead as expressing international law?

The strongest existing sign of the answer to that question will now be documented here:

The CIA-edited and written Wikipedia (which blacklists (blocks from linking to) sites that aren’t CIA-approved) article on Julia Sebutinde focuses on her being a female Black who rose from Uganda’s middle class to become now the ICJ’s Acting President after her having entered Edinburgh University’s Law School in 1990, graduated with a Master of Laws degree in 1991, and then being awarded an honorary Doctor of Laws there in 2009, after her being pushed forward by the U.N.; and, then on 13 December 2011, Sebutinde received an absolute majority of votes in both the Security Council and the General Assembly, and thus was declared elected to join the ICJ, which she now heads. Though the Wiki article does make mention of her “Plagiarism controversy” (“Her dissenting opinion has been accused of plagiarizing from pro-Israel sources,[25][27] as well as plagiarism from Wikipedia and the BBC. According to a Palestinian researcher at the Doha Institute, Majd Abuamer, “at least 32 percent of Sebutinde’s dissent was plagiarised”.[28]”), she is otherwise held to be not controversial. But here is the reality:

——

https://x.com/_ZachFoster/status/1883555090465804702

https://archive.is/LTnAF

Conversation

Zachary Foster [Princeton U. historian of Palestine]

@_ZachFoster

Breaking: the President of the International Court of Justice (@CIJ_ICJ), Julia Sebutinde, plagiarized sections of her dissenting opinion (https://icj-cij.org/node/204162) in which she voted against all provisional measures of South African’s case of Israel’s genocide of Palestinians.

On p. 6, Sebutinde writes: “”The name “Palestine” applied vaguely to a region that for the 400 years before World War I was part of the Ottoman Empire.”

This sentence was plagiarized word for word from a 2021 article published by Douglas J. Feith by the

@HudsonInstitute

titled, “The Forgotten History of the Term “Palestine,” (https://hudson.org/node/44363) in which he writes:

““Palestine” applied vaguely to a region that for the 400 years before World War I was part of the Ottoman empire.”

It gets worse. Sebutinde plagiarized the next two sentences as well. She writes:

“In 135 CE, after stamping out the second Jewish insurrection of the province of Judea or Judah, the Romans renamed that province “Syria Palaestina” (or “Palestinian Syria”). The Romans did this as a punishment, to spite the “Y’hudim” (Jewish population) and to obliterate the link between them and their province (known in Hebrew as Y’hudah). The name “Palaestina” was used in relation to the people known as the Philistines and found along the Mediterranean coast.”

These 2 sentences were also plagiarized from the same Feith piece, in which he writes:

“In 135 CE, after stamping out the province of Judea’s second insurrection, the Romans renamed the province Syria Palaestina—that is, “Palestinian Syria.” They did so resentfully, as a punishment, to obliterate the link between the Jews (in Hebrew, Y’hudim and in Latin Judaei) and the province (the Hebrew name of which was Y’hudah). “Palaestina” referred to the Philistines, whose home base had been on the Mediterranean coast.”

Sebutinde make a pitiful attempt to change a word here or there, but this is a textbook case of plagiarism. Feith’s piece is not cited in her legal opinion, even though she copied and pasted multiple sentences from the piece.

What a joke of judge. She’s making a mockery of the ICJ and should be removed immediately.

4:38 PM · Jan 26, 2025

Zachary Foster

@_ZachFoster

It gets worse. She also plagiarized at least 4 sentences from The Jewish Virtual Library (https://jewishvirtuallibrary.org/myths-and-facts-israel-146-s-roots#:~:text=In%201937%2C%20a%20local%20Arab,for%20centuries%20part%20of%20Syria.%22…).

Here are the 4 sentences from Sebutinde, and then the 4 sentences from the Jewish Virtual Library immediately following:

1. Sebutinde: “Prior to the

Show more

Zachary Foster

@_ZachFoster

Correction: In the first tweet in this thread, I should have noted, the dissenting opinion (w/the plagiarism) was with regard to the “Legal Consequences arising from the Policies and Practices of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem.” I

Show more

Kitt

@Kittfornow

“She’s making a mockery of the ICJ and should be removed immediately.”

That she chose Douglas Feith to plagiarize from should in and of itself should be grounds for removing her immediately.

automne

@jepresume

wow! this is brilliant! congrats!

• Zachary Foster
  @_ZachFoster
  Follow
  Historian of Palestine | Ph.D @Princeton
  | Palestine Newsletter & Courses ↓

——

https://novaramedia.com/2025/02/20/the-icjs-new-acting-president-is-a-christian-zionist-what-does-that-mean-for-israel/

https://archive.is/bq79E

“The ICJ’s New Acting President Is a Christian Zionist. What Does That Mean for Israel? An ill omen.”

by Louis Matheou, 20 February 2025

On 14 January, the Ugandan judge Julia Sebutinde, a devout Christian Zionist accused of plagiarising pro-Israeli sources to defend the occupation of Palestine, was appointed acting president of the international court of justice (ICJ) in The Hague. The only justice to oppose all six provisional measures the court issued last year in South Africa’s genocide case against Israel, Sebutinde’s record raises serious concerns about impartiality amid efforts to hold Israel accountable for its grave violations of international law.

Sebutinde’s appointment comes at a decisive moment for the global legal order, as UN experts warn that states’ widespread failure to uphold their legal obligations towards [i.e., on regard to prosecuting] Israel threatens the very foundation of international law.

Novara Media spoke to legal experts about what Sebutinde’s appointment means.

The deciding vote.

The first African woman to sit on the ICJ, Sebutinde was appointed as the court’s acting president after Nawaf Salam left the role in January 2025 to become prime minister of Lebanon. As vice-president at the time, Sebutinde automatically assumed the responsibilities of the presidency.

The president of the ICJ holds a variety of procedural powers that could allow them to influence the genocide case in favour of Israel, should they decide to.

If judges cannot reach a majority decision in deliberations – including final judgments and provisional measures – the president casts the deciding vote. And even if the court rules that genocide has been committed in the Gaza Strip, the president can still influence the wording of the final judgment in ways that limit the ruling’s impact.

If they choose, the president can appoint the drafting committee of the final judgment. They will also preside over final revisions to the text. In this process, the president could dilute the ruling’s wording and narrow its scope to shield Israel from more severe legal consequences and enforcement measures. This could allow the court to acknowledge genocide whilst setting an extremely high threshold for proving that Israel is directly responsible. However, this is a worst-case scenario.

The president can, however, steer cases in more understated ways.

Jeff Handmaker is associate professor of legal sociology at the International Institute of Social Studies in The Hague. “Given the subtleties in how the ICJ conducts its work,” he told Novara Media, “it is not difficult to imagine how Sebutinde’s evident bias in favour of Israel would influence her by administering the trial in a manner favourable to Israel.”

“This soft power she would hold could manifest, for example, in: the limiting or extending of speaking times allocated during court sessions, deadlines imposed for filing of pleadings, the ability to make corrections to a legal filing, the furnishing of copies to the respective state parties or drawing on experts and witnesses.”

It is possible that Sebutinde may serve the remainder of Salam’s term, which is due to last until February 2027. If she does, she will oversee the crucial period in South Africa’s genocide case: Israel is set to present its defence brief by July 2025, and whilst the court has not yet specified an exact date for the final judgment, it will probably fall within the current presidential term.

Handmaker suspects, however, that the ICJ is unlikely to leave Sebutinde in the role that long. “It is more likely that, in order to preserve the integrity of the court’s independence and impartiality in the eyes of the international law community and the general public, a fresh election will be held,” he said.

Yet even if Sebutinde’s term is short, she could influence the court’s business significantly. Given her judicial record, which has consistently reflected her deeply held Christian Zionist beliefs, this has already generated deep concern among those advocating for Palestinian liberation.

‘Extreme views.’

Sebutinde is a member of the Watoto church, a Pentecostal Christian community based in the Ugandan capital of Kampala and founded by Pastor Gary Skinner, a dedicated Christian Zionist. Skinner trumpets an impending “end times” – a series of events culminating in the second coming of Christ, including the return of the Jews to Israel.

Sebutinde has explicitly acknowledged the influence of the Watoto community on her worldview and her legal practice: “Godly values of integrity, honesty, justice, mercy, empathy, and hard work that the Skinners and Watoto church instilled and nurtured in me over the years account for who I am today, and have immensely contributed to my incredible career as a judge in Uganda and a judge at the International Court of Justice.”

Whilst judges inevitably hold views based on cultural and religious influences, Handmaker warns that “the extreme religious and ideological views of Sebutinde, which include extensive biblical references in her dissenting judgements, align closely with the standpoint of the Israeli government, rather than emanating from her professional role as a senior judge and president of the ICJ.”

Judge Sebutinde declined Novara Media’s request for comment.

Standing with Israel.

In January 2024, the ICJ issued six provisional measures to Israel, including orders to prevent genocide in Gaza and allow humanitarian assistance into the Strip. The measures received near-unanimous backing from the 17-judge panel – even Israeli judge Aharon Barak supported two of the six measures.

But one judge voted against every single measure: Sebutinde. So extreme was her opposition to the provisional measures that Uganda’s ambassador to the UN, Adonia Ayebare, publicly distanced the Ugandan government from Sebutinde.

In her dissenting opinion against the ICJ majority, where she was obliged to provide a full and conscientious legal justification for her decision, Sebutinde largely disregarded South Africa’s extensive legal arguments.

Sebutinde argued that there were “no indicators of a genocidal intent” by Israel and that “the controversy or dispute between the state of Israel and the people of Palestine is essentially and historically a political or territorial (and, I dare say, ideological) one … not a legal one calling for judicial settlement.’”

Six months later, in her dissenting opinion against the ICJ’s landmark advisory opinion that found that Israel’s occupation of the West Bank violates international law, Sebutinde went further. She cast doubt on the existence of Palestine as a distinct historical territory, claiming that the name “Palestine” only “applied vaguely to a region that for the 400 years before World War I was part of the Ottoman Empire.” Sebutinde then reproduced Zionist narratives of the biblical “bond” of the Jewish people to ancient Israel, citing the Old Testament to trace this “from prehistory to the end of Ottoman rule.”

Shahd Hammouri, senior legal consultant at Law for Palestine and lecturer in law at the University of Kent, rejects Sebutinde’s reasoning. She told Novara Media: “There’s nothing in international law that says that you get to claim land on the premises of how you interpret religion – otherwise I could start a religion tomorrow morning and claim the United States as spiritually my land.”

Plagiarising Zionists?

Yet Sebutinde’s written judgments do more than reflect the influence of her Christian Zionist beliefs. They appear to have been partly plagiarised from pro-Israeli sources. Historian of Palestine Zachary Foster has alleged that significant sections of Sebutinde’s dissenting opinion against the ICJ’s advisory opinion on Israel’s West Bank occupation were lifted from pro-Israel commentators and advocacy groups.

In her account of the “historical nuances” of the Israeli occupation, Sebutinde appears to have copied several sentences from an opinion piece written by US neoconservative Douglas J Feith, an avowed Zionist and a former under-secretary of defense, often referred to as the architect of the Iraq war. Sebutinde then seems to lift four sentences nearly word-for-word from a page of the Jewish Virtual Library, an online encyclopedia published by the American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise, a non-profit organisation created to “strengthen the US-Israeli relationship”.

Later in the opinion, when discussing the failures of a two-state solution, Sebutinde repeats several sentences almost verbatim from a video produced by PragerU, a rightwing media outlet whose CEO, Marissa Streit, previously served in the Israeli military intelligence unit 8200. The video’s narrator, David Brog, is the executive director of the Maccabee Task Force, a group dedicated to resisting the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement on North American campuses, and the director of Christians United for Israel. …

——

I wrote yesterday about the Maccabee Task Force, to explain how the bi-national Israeli-Amercan thirty-billionaire who donated over $100 million to Trump’s 2024 campaign has gotten from him the type of policies toward Israel and Palestinians that she had wanted. Among the masses, America might be somewhat theocratic, but among the billionaires, America is actually an aristocracy, and Trump is now serving them (or at least the Republican billionaires) as their king.

Both Jews and Christians accept this Scripture (the Bible and especially the Torah in it) as reflecting ‘God’s Will’ — Commandments, even. Whom does this leave out? Non-Jews, and non-Christians, of course — and this includes almost all Palestinians (who instead were there damned by that ‘God’). Thus, on 22 January 2025, I headlined “Trump has already doomed his Presidency.”, because his chosen U.N. Representative is just like Sebutinde is, and supports the genocide in Gaza for the same reason she does. This is what happens with a religious-based ethic — not with an ethic that’s fit for democracy.

FDR’s plan for the U.N. (he invented the U.N. but he died and Truman got to control the writing of its Charter and so it failed) included a Charter (or Constitution) that would define “aggression” and firmly outlaw it, and which would also in other ways produce an ENFORCED body of international laws, in a democratic federal republic of the world’s nations, which would constitute a REAL world Government, with Legislative, Judicial, and Executive branches, an authentic global democracy of nations. This is what would be needed in order to transform from the existing might-makes-right world to instead a world that would serve the people and NO clergy and NO aristocracy (except perhaps WITHIN nations, because such a U.N. would concern ONLY inter-national — and NO national, or “intra-national” — laws). Either we will get FDR’s plan, or we will get chaos.

This originally appeared on Eric’s Substack.

The post International Law Is Now Suspended, if Not Eliminated. appeared first on LewRockwell.