Aggregatore di feed

The unilateral independence of Kosovo was declared in February 2008. The Bush administration had detached Frank Wisner Jr., the son of the legendary CIA Frank G. Wisner who led the CIA-MI6 coup d’Etat against Iran in 1953.

Frank G. Wisner Jr. was entrusted in establishing the “legal framework” of Kosovo which was conducive to establishing a so-called “Sovereign State.”

Kosovo is a member of the Bretton Woods institutions. Kosovo seeks membership of NATO, the EU and now Interpol.

The Interpol Executive Committee has decided that the application of Kosovo for membership in Interpol would be put on the agenda of the General Assembly to be held in Beijing, China, from 26 to 29 September 2017, Government of Kosovo stated Monday.

In a bitter irony, Kosovo president Hashim Thaci is still on the list of Interpol in relation to his links to organized crimes and the drug trade. Last February [2017] president Thaci requested the secretary-general of Interpol, Juergen Stock, “to cancel warrants for the detention of former Kosovo Liberation Army fighters who are wanted in Serbia over war crimes allegations.”

Kosovo is a mafia state which is supported by Washington and NATO. Criminals are the ideal heads of state. They obey orders from their puppet masters.

The accession of Kosovo to Interpol of a territory run by criminals?

Hashim Thaci was arrested more than 20 years later and indicted for war crimes. His criminal record was known and documented in 1998-99.

The following article was first published by Global Research in February 2008.

—Michel Chossudovsky, June 23, 2017

“Our orientations are clear. The building of the state of Kosovo, economic development, economic and social well-being and rigorous measures against corruption, organized crime and negative behavior, so we can have improved security and integrate Kosova into European Union structures.” —Hashim Thaci, chairman of the Democratic Party of Kosovo (PDK), Prime Minister of the Kosovo provisional government, former KLA leader and known criminal, now in prison in The Hague.

“The PDK, led by Hashim Thaci, former Kosovo Liberation Army [KLA] commander, took control of many municipalities after the war. The party has close links with organized crime in the province.” —The Observer, 29 October 2000

“Mr. Thaci, nicknamed “the Snake” during his KLA days, is a sharp-suited 32-year-old former rebel commander with poor oratory skills, links to organized crime and a determination to preserve relations between his party and the United States.” —The Scotsman, 20 October 2000

“I know a terrorist when I see one and these men are terrorists.” —US Special Envoy and Ambassador Robert Gelbard

“The KLA [formerly headed by Hashim Thaci] is tied in with every known Middle and Far Eastern drug cartel. Interpol, Europol, and nearly every European intelligence and counter-narcotics agency has files open on drug syndicates that lead right to the KLA…” —Michael Levine, former official of the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA)

“Hashim Thaci founded the “Drenica-Group” an underground organization that is estimated to have controlled between 10% and 15% of all criminal activities in Kosovo (smuggling arms, stolen cars, oil, cigarettes and prostitution).” —Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia

***

The US, the EU and the UN are supporting a Kosovo government headed by a known criminal, Prime Minister Hashim Thaci [then President of Kosovo].

The position of Prime Minister was created under the “Provisional Institutions of Self-Government (PISG)” established by the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK).

Under a UN mandate, the purpose of the provisional government was “to provide ‘provisional, democratic self-government’ in advance of a decision on the political status of Kosovo.

What this signifies is that the United Nations has not only set the stage for an “Independent” Kosovo government in violation of international law, it has also installed a Kosovo government integrated by the members of a criminal syndicate. All three Kosovo Prime Ministers, Ramush Haradinaj, Agim Ceku and Hashim Thaci, are war criminals.

The Kosovo Democratic Party headed by former KLA Commander Hashim Thaci is essentially an outgrowth of the former Kosovo Liberation Army.

US-NATO covert support to the KLA goes back to the mid-1990s. In the year preceding the 1999 bombing of Yugoslavia, the KLA was quite openly supported by the Clinton administration.

KLA leader Hashim Thaci was a protégé of Madeleine Albright. He was chosen by Albright to play a key role on Washington’s behalf at the 1998 Rambouillet negotiations.

The links of the KLA to organized crime have been documented by Interpol and the US Congress. The Washington Times in an article published in May 1999 describes the KLA and its links to the Clinton administration as follows:

Some members of the Kosovo Liberation Army [headed by the current Kosovo Prime minister Hashim Thaci] , which has financed its war effort through the sale of heroin, were trained in terrorist camps run by international fugitive Osama bin Laden — who is wanted in the 1998 bombing of two U.S. embassies in Africa that killed 224 persons, including 12 Americans.

The KLA members, embraced by the Clinton administration in NATO’s 41-day bombing campaign to bring Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to the bargaining table, were trained in secret camps in Afghanistan, Bosnia-Herzegovina and elsewhere, according to newly obtained intelligence reports.

The reports also show that the KLA has enlisted Islamic terrorists — members of the Mujahideen –as soldiers in its ongoing conflict against Serbia, and that many already have been smuggled into Kosovo to join the fight. ….

The intelligence reports document what is described as a “link” between bin Laden, the fugitive Saudi millionaire, and the KLA –including a common staging area in Tropoje, Albania, a center for Islamic terrorists. The reports said bin Laden’s organization, known as al-Qaeda, has both trained and financially supported the KLA. (Washington Times, May 4, 1999)

The Christian Science Monitor in an August 14, 2000 report describes the criminal network controlled by Thaci:

UN police suspect that much of the violence and intimidation has come from former KLA members, especially those allied with Hashim Thaci, the former KLA leader and head of the Democratic Party of Kosovo, one of the KLA’s political offshoots.

In one recent incident, the shop of an LDK activist in Mr. Thaci’s home village was sprayed with automatic gunfire – the second such attack since November.

Thaci’s party potentially has much to lose in the elections, which are for municipal offices only. After Serb forces withdrew last year, the KLA occupied town halls and public institutions across Kosovo and set up its own provincial government.

Although the UN has gradually asserted its own authority and placed representatives of other political groups in local governments, in places like Srbica ex-KLA members affiliated with Thaci’s party still exercise virtual complete control.

“These guys are not going to give up power that easily,” says Dardan Gashi, a political analyst with the International Crisis Group, a US-based research organization with an office in Pristina.

UN police also suspect organized crime is involved in some of the violence. They say that criminal groups engaged in racketeering, smuggling, and prostitution rely on close links to some people in power. The prospect of losing these connections – and the income they generate – may make them ill-disposed toward the LDK.

Officials say the problem is the worst in the Drenica region of Kosovo, the KLA’s heartland and a stronghold of Thaci’s party. Srbica, where Koci is the local LDK president, is one of the main towns in Drenica. (emphasis added)

The Heritage Foundation: Support the KLA-KDP, Despite Its Criminal Connections

The Heritage Foundation in a May 1999 report acknowledges that the KLA is a criminal organization. It nonetheless called for the support of the KLA by the Clinton administration:

Should the U.S. harness the KLA’s military potential against Milosevic’s brutal regime, despite the KLA’s unusual ideological roots and apparent ties to organized crime? … The KLA does not represent every group seeking an end to Milosevic’s brutal campaign and is known to have committed some atrocities of its own, it is the most significant force resisting Yugoslav aggression within Kosovo. Moreover, the scale and scope of its crimes have been dwarfed by the systematic campaign of terror unleashed by Yugoslav military, paramilitary, and police forces inside Kosovo. which Washington has done consistently since the 1999 war. (Heritage Foundation Report, 13 May 1999)

Shunning the KLA now will deprive the United States of the benefits of cooperating with a resistance force that is capable of ratcheting up the pressure on Milosevic to negotiate a settlement (Ibid)

The Heritage Foundation supports the Kosovo Democratic Party (KDP) which is integrated by former members of the KLA.

The KDP has retained its links to organized crime. This position of the Heritage Foundation broadly summarizes the attitude of the “international community” in relation to Kosovo. More recently, the Heritage Foundation, which plays a behind the scenes role in the formulation of US foreign policy, has been pushing for Kosovo “Independence”

Hashim Thaci

The evidence amply confirms that the prime minister of Kosovo [now president] never severed his links to organized crime.

A known criminal is being protected by the United Nations: He was arrested in Budapest in July 2003 on an Interpol warrant and was immediately released, following a request from the UN Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK). This is not an isolated event. There is evidence that the UN Mission and its international police force have protected the former KLA, which in the wake of the 1999 NATO bombing was relabeled the Kosovo Protection Corps (KPC) under a formal UN mandate.

According to Serbian Justice Minister Vladan Batic,

“the prosecution at the Hague war crimes tribunal has over 40,000 pages of evidence against former Kosovo Liberation Army leader Hashim Thaci.” (quoted by Radio B92, Belgrade, 3 July 2003)

In April 2000, US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright “ordered The Hague chief prosecutor Carla del Ponte to omit from the list of war crime suspects Hashim Thaci” (Tanjug, 6 May 2000). Carla del Ponte subsequently claimed that there was not enough evidence to indict Thaci on war crimes.

More generally, the UN Mission has acted as an accessory in protecting a criminal syndicate.

In November 2003, criminal proceedings against several former KLA commanders were initiated in Belgrade. These included Hashim Thaci, Agim Ceku and Ramush Haradinaj. Both Haradinaj and Ceku’s names are on Interpol lists.

Read the Whole Article

The post Kosovo, America’s ‘Mafia State’: The US-NATO-EU Support a Political Process Linked to Organized Crime appeared first on LewRockwell.

Earlier this month, French President Emmanuel Macron proposed his country take over America’s role as the “nuclear protector” of the “old continent”. Apparently, the French nuclear umbrella would encompass the entire EU and “deter Russia”. Macron tried to justify this by claiming “[President Vladimir] Putin is now threatening all of Europe” and declared that “Russian aggression knows no borders”. He insisted the EU/NATO “needs to prepare”.

It would seem he’s trying to fill the power vacuum as the US is looking to shift its strategic focus to China and the Asia-Pacific. The endemically and pathologically Russophobic United Kingdom seems to be supporting the French initiative, as it falls perfectly in line with its strategy of pushing continental powers against each other.

However, while Paris is daydreaming about “protecting all of Europe”, the reality of its capabilities shows that it can barely defend itself. Namely, during a visit to Haute-Saône, Macron confirmed “the arrival of the new version of the ‘Rafale’ fighter jet” at Air Base 116 in Luxeuil-les-Bains, which will reportedly benefit from a modernization investment of €1.5 billion ($1.64 billion).

According to local media, the French president wants to “make Air Base 116 in Luxeuil-les-Bains, in Haute-Saône, the site for the future ‘Rafale’ models, the key components of nuclear deterrence”. During a speech delivered on March 18, Macron also announced that France would “increase and accelerate orders for ‘Rafale’ jets,” which he said was “an imperative in the face of the geopolitical shift”.

However, there’s just one problem – the two new “Rafale” squadrons (around 40 aircraft in total) won’t be deployed to Air Base 116 in Luxeuil-les-Bains before 2035. According to Macron, 2,000 military personnel and civilians will need at least ten years to join the base that’s slated to be modernized. He also added that “Luxeuil-les-Bains will be the first base to host the next version of the ‘Rafale’ and its hypersonic nuclear missile by 2035”, calling it “a symbol of the renewal of the modernization of our nuclear deterrent”.

The hypersonic missile Macron is referring to is almost certainly the ASN4G (Air-Sol Nucléaire de 4ème Génération, literally meaning 4th generation nuclear air-to-ground (missile)). The weapon is a nuclear-armed, scramjet-powered, air-launched hypersonic cruise missile.

The ASN4G is still under development by MBDA, with assistance from the ONERA. It’s slated to replace the ASMP (Air-Sol Moyenne Portée, literally meaning medium-range air-to-ground), a nuclear-tipped, ramjet-powered, air-launched supersonic cruise missile (maximum speed up to Mach 3). Depending on the version, the ASMP can have a range of up to 600 km, while the ASN4G is expected to increase this to at least 1,000 km.

The French military defines this as a “pre-strategic deterrence role”. The missile is expected to be deployed on the upcoming “Rafale F5”. The claim that the ASN4G will be hypersonic means that it’s supposed to fly at speeds exceeding Mach 5, although the exact figure is yet to be disclosed. Macron also claims that its development is “not linked to the international context”.

This is rather difficult to believe, as Air Base 116 in Luxeuil-les-Bains is the closest to the German border, which prompted many media outlets to portray this as a “signal that France could deploy strategic weapons in defense of the EU/NATO”. The fact that Macron made the announcement from that base implies it was used to promote this idea. Paris has three other air bases that house parts of its nuclear arsenal: Saint-Dizier (Haute-Marne), Istres (Bouches-du-Rhône) and Avord (Cher).

Only the first one (located in northeastern France) is relatively close to Germany. The other two are located in southern and central parts of the country, respectively. On the other hand, Air Base 116 in Luxeuil-les-Bains is also a part of the so-called “permanent security posture”.

Paris says that the aircraft stationed at the base can be deployed to “national, multilateral or NATO missions, notably over the Baltic States” and that it “plays a key role in air security, both on national territory and in the airspace of allies, particularly on [NATO’s] eastern flank”. This is certainly a concerning prospect, as it means the new “Rafale” jets armed with the ASN4G nuclear-tipped missiles could be deployed along Russian borders.

Military sources report that the new missile can fly between Mach 6 and 7. Although far behind Russian hypersonic weapons, it could still cause a dangerous escalation. On the other hand, the 2035 timeframe is not exactly reassuring for either France or other EU/NATO members (provided there are no delays, which is common when it comes to such complex systems).

Meanwhile, Moscow has at least a dozen hypersonic weapons already in service, including the air-launched 9-S-7760 “Kinzhal” missiles, multirole, multi-platform 3M22 “Zircon”, as well as the ground-based “Oreshnik”. In addition, there are at least that many under development, including for Russia’s battle-proven, next-generation Su-57 multirole fighter jets.

Even the Kremlin’s first-generation hypersonic missiles such as the 9M723 of the “Iskander” system exceed the capabilities of the French ASN4G (which, as previously mentioned, is a decade away in the best-case scenario). In other words, Paris is trying to play a game of “nuclear chicken” with Moscow while still at least ten years away from deploying remotely similar weapons that the latter has had in service for nearly a decade (“Kinzhal” was inducted in 2017).

Not to mention that the resurgent Russian military operates a much more potent thermonuclear arsenal – by far the largest and most powerful in the world. In fact, the difference between the number of warheads in Russia and the US is larger than the combined arsenal of the UK and France (around 500). London and Paris both have SLBMs (submarine-launched ballistic missiles), with the latter also operating nuclear-capable aircraft, including the aforementioned “Rafale”.

Still, this is a lower level of deterrence than in countries like Russia, China, India and the US which have nuclear triads (aircraft, submarines and land-based missiles), without even considering the size of Moscow’s strategic arsenal which is upwards of a dozen times larger than the combined Franco-British stockpile.

This originally appeared on InfoBrics.

The post France Can’t Deploy New Air-Launched Nuclear-Tipped Missiles Before 2035 appeared first on LewRockwell.

Statists are up in arms over President Trump’s decision to terminate the Voice of America and other U.S. government propaganda outlets that fall under the control of a federal entity called the U.S. Agency for Global Media. USAGM also encompasses Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia, and Radio Martí.

Statists are saying that these propaganda outlets have long been great promoters of freedom. Harkening back to World War II, they say that Voice of America was a worthy competitor to propaganda being published by the Nazi regime. They say that ever since World War II, the U.S. governmental propaganda outlets have also been an important voice for freedom in countries under totalitarian or authoritarian rule.

But a fundamental question must be asked: What business does a government in a genuinely free society have owning a propaganda outlet? Sure, I understand that Nazi Germany had a great propaganda program led by Joseph Goebbels. But does that mean that in order to fight Nazism, the U.S. government needed to have its own propaganda program to compete against that of Nazi Germany?

Undoubtedly, Voice of America and the rest of the U.S. propaganda outlets have long praised “capitalism” and criticized “socialism” in their broadcasts. But how do they reconcile that position with U.S. government ownership of a radio station? Isn’t a government owned radio station a socialist project?

Moreover, one can be fairly certain that these U.S. propaganda outlets refrained from condemning discomforting programs and activities of the U.S. government itself. For example, while one could undoubtedly find all sorts of pronouncements condemning Russia for its invasion of Ukraine, my hunch is that one would never find any condemnation of the U.S. government’s invasions and wars of aggression against Afghanistan and Iraq. For that matter, I’m fairly certain that Voice of America has never criticized the role that NATO played in provoking the Russia-Ukraine war.

I’m also willing to bet that there has never been any condemnation of the multiple regime-change operations, both at home and abroad, on the part of the U.S. national-security establishment, including by coups and assassinations. For that matter, I’ll bet that they have also been silent when it came to U.S. practices like torture and indefinite detention during the much-vaunted “war on terrorism.”

While I’m sure there have been plenty of criticisms of communist Cuba, especially through Radio Martí, my hunch is that silence was the approach toward the Pentagon’s and CIA’s torture center, prison camp, and kangaroo judicial system on the U.S. side of Cuba.

In fact, one could easily be forgiven for viewing Radio Martí as part of the U.S. government’s decades-old quest for regime change in Cuba. Has Radio Martí ever condemned the never-ending efforts by the U.S. national-security state to effect regime change in Cuba, including through its decades-old brutal economic embargo, its many assassination plots, and its acts of terrorism inside Cuba? I would venture to say no.

Socialism is bad whether it’s being in engaged in by National Socialist Germany, communist regimes in Cuba, China, North Korea, and Vietnam, the United States, or any other country. Trump is right to dump the U.S. government-owned propaganda outlets into the trash bin of history. They never should have been brought into existence.

Reprinted with permission from Future of Freedom Foundation.

The post Voice of America Has No Place in a Free Society appeared first on LewRockwell.

When I was an economics professor, I often wondered if what my faculty colleagues and I were teaching students about economic policy had any validity. I left Stanford University, went to Washington, D.C., and joined the congressional staff in order to experience how policy is made. In the House, I helped Rep. Jack Kemp introduce supply-side economics to his colleagues. I became chief economist of the House Budget Committee on the Republican side, and then staff associate for Senator Orrin Hatch on the Joint Economic Committee.

My success in explaining to Congress that there was an alternative to Keynesian demand management, which had no solution for stagflation, led to President Reagan appointing me assistant secretary of the Treasury for economic policy. Having learned how policy is made (and unmade), I now had the assignment to implement a new one.

The story of my experience is useful to economists. As one of my graduate professors, Ronald Coase, used to tell his class, “It would help economists to occasionally look outside the window of the box they keep themselves in.”

The conflict between merit and redistribution that is characteristic of the American political system and the influence of established explanations are not the only problems confronting a policymaker, especially if he is introducing a new approach. As Niccolò Machiavelli wrote in The Prince, “There is nothing more difficult, more perilous or more uncertain of success than to take the lead in introducing a new order of things.”

Intra-party Power Struggles, Not Economics, Are the Main Influence on Policy

One of the many problems a policymaker faces is that policies affect different interest groups in different ways. Some benefit, some don’t, and I don’t mean just in a material or economic way. Most of the things that influence economic policy have nothing to do with economics. They have to do with power. The party establishments that control the parties intend to stay in control. The organized interest groups that control the party establishments intend to continue in control.

Few Americans understand that the main political fight is not between the two parties but within the administration of the party in power. Within the parties the fight is over who controls the party. When the fight is between the establishment and a populist rival like Ronald Reagan or Donald Trump, it can get very nasty.

During the first year of the Reagan administration, much of the battle was between President Reagan and his Treasury allies (primarily me and Secretary Don Regan) on one side and Reagan’s chief of staff, Jim Baker, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, Murray Weidenbaum, and Office of Management and Budget (OMB) director David Stockman on the other.

The fight within the Reagan administration had its origin in Reagan taking the Republican nomination for president away from the establishment’s candidate, George H. W. Bush, former CIA director. Reagan was considered an outsider, and he was “dangerous” because the Republican establishment could lose its grip on the party to a populist whose basis was in the people and not in the organized interest groups.

Reagan was advised that he must take the defeated George H. W. Bush Republican establishment into his administration or suffer the fate of Barry Goldwater, who rejected Nelson Rockefeller after he defeated him in the Republican presidential nomination. Consequently, the Republican establishment helped the Democrats defeat Goldwater, the Republican populist candidate.

Nancy Reagan judged by appearances, and Bush’s man, Jim Baker, a polished dresser, presented to Nancy a better image than Reagan’s laidback California crew to be standing by her husband. Baker was appointed chief of staff. So, from the start Reagan and his supporters in the administration were handicapped by an establishment operative being chief of staff of the Reagan Revolution.

Only Reagan had offered a solution to the problem of “stagflation.” It was called supply-side economics. Lacking a solution to offer during the campaign for the nomination, Bush termed Reagan’s policy “voodoo economics.” This, of course, played into the hands of the Democrat opposition and the liberal media determined to undermine President Reagan as a Grade B movie actor who believed in fairy tales about tax cuts paying for themselves.

Supply-Side Economics and Its Foes

The aspersion Bush cast on Reagan’s policy had some traction in Republican ranks because of Republicans’ traditional fear of budget deficits. Republicans such as Bob Dole and George H. W. Bush believed that budget deficits resulting from reduction in taxes would stimulate consumer spending, raise inflation and interest rates, crowd out private investment, and worsen the stagflation that emerged from Keynesian demand management during the Carter administration. Traditional Republicans had been well indoctrinated by Keynesian economists—whom, paradoxically, the Republicans opposed—that fiscal policy such as reductions in tax rates only affected the demand side of the economy. They believed that a tax rate reduction could only add to inflationary pressures by adding to consumer demand.

Many on Wall Street saw it the same way as Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker. The two main Wall Street economists—Dr. Doom and Dr. Gloom (Henry Kaufman and Albert M. Wojnilower)—stayed busy at work creating hysteria over the “coming Reagan deficits.”

Volcker was also obsessed by the belief that the deficits resulting from the tax rate reduction would fuel the already high inflation. Volcker’s concern was apparent in Treasury’s meetings with him. The Treasury found Volcker immune to under- standing the administration’s assault on stagflation by shifting the aggregate supply schedule instead of the aggregate demand schedule. The Treasury asked Volcker to gradually reduce the growth rate of money as the tax rate reductions, delayed at Stockman and Weidenbaum’s insistence, came into effect.

Having attended Volcker’s meeting with his outside advisers, I advised Secretary Regan that Volcker, fearful of being blamed for the higher inflation he believed the tax rate reduction would cause, would throw on the monetary brakes and into recession we would go before the tax rate reductions would go into effect. As OMB director, David Stockman was relying on inflation to offset the effect on tax revenues of the tax rate reduction (the tax system was not indexed at the time of Stockman’s forecasts) and thus balance the budget; the deficits implicit in Stockman’s inflation assumption and in Volcker’s monetary policy would be blamed on Reagan’s supply-side policy, which economists considered a threat to their investment in Keynesian macroeconomics. Ears would be closed to the Treasury’s explanation. The Treasury, lacking a dynamic revenue model, used the static revenue forecast that a dollar of tax cut would lose a dollar of revenue and, therefore, spelled out the deficits. Stockman hid the deficits with his high inflation forecast. Volcker then collapsed the money supply, and the drop in nominal GNP exposed Stockman’s deficits. A dishonest liberal media blamed the deficits on a mythical Treasury claim, a claim which it never made, that the tax cuts would pay for themselves.

Art Laffer and Jude Wanniski talked at times of tax cuts paying for themselves by expanding the revenue base. Walter Heller made the same point in behalf of the Kennedy tax rate reductions. In testimony before the Joint Economic Committee of Congress on February 7, 1977, Heller, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers in the Kennedy administration, said: “Did it [the Kennedy tax rate reduction] pay for itself in increased revenues? I think the evidence is very strong that it did.” Economists with a redistributive agenda, hostile media, and politicians attributed statements made by Laffer and Wanniski to the Treasury and to Reagan. Laffer and Wanniski were trying to calm Republican fear of budget deficits by pointing out that incentives can improve the tax base. The Laffer Curve does not say tax cuts pay for themselves. It merely illustrates that there are two tax rates that will produce the same revenues: a high tax rate on a small base and a low tax rate on a large base.

Walter Heller, who as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers had championed President Kennedy’s large reduction in tax rates, said that Reagan’s similar tax rate reduction would inject too much inflationary purchasing power into the economy and asked, “How can the economy absorb that big an expansionary punch without aggravating our already intolerable inflation?” (Wall Street Journal, February 10, 1981). He didn’t ask this question when he was championing the Kennedy tax rate reduction.

Everyone, except Reagan, the Treasury, and the Wall Street Journal editorial page, was still operating inside the Keynesian box. None had bothered, Fed chairman Paul Volcker least of all, to listen to the explanation that reductions in the marginal rate of taxation shifted the aggregate supply schedule and resulted in more production for the same money supply. The way to beat stagflation was to increase output relative to money, and inflation would decline. It is always difficult to introduce a new way of thinking. People have a vested interest in existing dogma because that is where their human capital is invested.

Another way of looking at the policy issue is that supply-side economics differed from the interest rate theory of the cost of capital. We were able to show that taxation substantially affects the cost of capital, whereas the cost of capital is inelastic with respect to changes in interest rates (Roberts, Robbins, and Robbins 1986). I have often wondered if economists missed the effect of taxation on the cost of capital because capital theory developed prior to the income tax.

Noting the rate at which liberal media was building opposition to Reagan’s supply-side policy, budget director David Stockman concluded that Reagan would not succeed and moved into the Republican establishment balanced-budget camp which had no solution to stagflation. Jim Baker thought that a small tax rate reduction—5 percent—would be sufficient for the administration to declare a victory, while not being large enough to add significantly to the budget deficit, inflation, and interest rates. Baker perceived the opportunity to use the media to portray the Bush people as modifying Reagan, which would position them for taking credit for Reagan’s successes and solidify the establishment’s hold on the Republican Party, thereby keeping Rep. Jack Kemp at bay.

Losing Some Battles but Winning the War

The problem was Reagan didn’t go for it, and neither did I. Without retelling the story in my book (Roberts 1984), Jude Wanniski summed up 1981 in his Polyconomics newsletter: “If there is anyone who deserves a supply-side medal with oak-leaf cluster it is Craig Roberts.” I lost some skirmishes, Wanniski said, but I won the war. And I did get the medal, in fact two of them—the U.S. Treasury’s silver medal for “outstanding contributions to the formulation of U.S. economic policy” and the French Legion of Honor for “the restoration of economic science and policy after a half century of state interventionism.”

By August 1981, Reagan’s tax bill was passed into law. With my job done, there was nothing left for me to do in the Treasury. Normally, when a president signs a bill, those responsible for its successful passage are invited to a White House signing ceremony and given one of the pens used to sign the bill into law. As his way of letting me know that I wasn’t appreciated, Jim Baker or his deputy Richard Darman “forgot” to invite me to the signing ceremony. Reagan noticed and sent me the lovely letter that is displayed on the “About” page of my website (Roberts n.d.). The letter, of course, is worth more than a signing pen, and I thanked Jim Baker for it.

There was talk of shifting me to the Federal Reserve Board. Reagan confidant Justin Dart, Rep. Jack Kemp, Chase Manhattan Bank chairman and CEO George Champion, and other influential confidants of Reagan’s were behind it. It would have caused Volcker a heart attack. But Don Regan and I saw that it wasn’t yet time for me to go. Jim Baker and David Stockman were already at work controlling the narrative placed in the media that Reagan would repudiate his “excessive” tax rate reduction in his January 1982 State of the Union message. This, of course, ensured that no work or investment decisions would be made on the basis of a tax reduction whose life might be short-lived. Despite media reports that the tax reduction would be repealed, Volcker was nevertheless at work strangling the money supply.

Stockman began secret interviews with a left-wing journalist, William Greider, aimed at discrediting Reagan’s economic policy. A victory was being turned into a defeat. Jim Baker argued that even a small tax reduction could be successfully pre- sented as a Reagan victory. For Baker the issue was political perception, not fixing the economy. The threat to Reagan’s economic policy was serious, because his other agenda— an end to the Cold War—was based on the success of his supply-side policy. The George H. W. Bush Republican establishment had Reagan’s presidency set up to go up in flames.

Whereas I had managed to keep the percentage reduction in marginal tax rates from being significantly molested, I had been unable to block Stockman’s insistence that the tax rate reduction be phased in over three years, with the first reduction being limited to 2.5 percent, which was cancelled by the high rate of inflation, as the income tax was not indexed for inflation at that time. Phased in over three years, the tax reduction would be cancelled by the inflation rate. The tax rate reduction needed to hit all at once to have its impact. But Stockman and Jim Baker had Senate Republicans and Republican business leaders all in a huff about deficits. They wanted to raise taxes instead of lowering them. For Republicans, the solution to every economic problem was to balance the budget. It was this mindlessness with which I was at war.

Stockman’s argument was, of course, the budget deficit. Phasing in the tax rate reduction would produce a smaller deficit. Additionally, inflation by raising nominal incomes would raise nominal GDP and produce more tax revenues to cover the deficit. Stockman was relying on inflation to balance the budget by pushing taxpayers into higher tax brackets. This was not the president’s policy, as I pointed out to Stockman.

I told Stockman that he was hiding deficits behind his high inflation projections, but that inflation was going to collapse either as a result of the supply-side policy if we were able to secure the Fed’s cooperation, or from the Fed in fear of our policy slamming on the brakes and bringing on recession, which the Fed did. Volcker’s recession collapsed GDP and tax revenues and created budget deficits that were promptly blamed on the tax cut, which, being delayed, had yet to be implemented. The “Reagan deficits” were the Volcker deficits and the Stockman deficits covered up by Stockman’s high projected inflation rates. Over the next years, the inflation rate collapsed, instead of hitting all-time highs as Wall Street and academic economists had predicted.

It is a myth that the Treasury said the tax cuts would pay for themselves. The Treasury’s official position, based on its traditional static revenue model, was that every dollar of tax reduction would lose a dollar of tax revenue. But the initial deficits would fade with the expansion that followed, unless spending was left out of control. We kept reminding people that the agenda was to cure stagflation, not to balance the budget. The tax system had to be used to increase the quantity supplied at every price by increasing the cost of leisure in terms of forgone current income and increasing the cost of current consumption in terms of forgone future income.

During the autumn of 1981, immediately following the passage of the tax rate reductions, the battle raged inside the administration to whittle down or even totally repeal the supply-side reduction in marginal tax rates. The George H. W. Bush part of the administration had turned against the Reagan administration’s victory.

It was the Treasury against Stockman at OMB, the White House chief of staff, the vice president, and the Council of Economic Advisers. As neither side would yield, three times the decision was taken to the White House. Each time Ed Meese and President Reagan’s men sided with the Treasury. As soon as the presidential delegation left the room, Jim Baker would ask Don Regan, “Don, can’t the Treasury make a better case?” And it would start all over again. After the third time, Regan asked me why Reagan didn’t fire those who didn’t hear his decisions. My answer was that Reagan was very non-confrontational and was relying on the Treasury. I think it was December when Regan told me he had had enough and was going to Florida. “It’s in your hands.”

Triumph and Departure after Reagan’s 1982 State of the Union Address

The morning of Reagan’s State of the Union address in January 1982, the lead article on the Wall Street Journal’s front page, a plant by Baker or Stockman, said that Reagan was going to back away from his irresponsible tax cut in his State of the Union speech.

Roger Mudd, the anchor for NBC News in those days, called me. “Craig,” he said, “it looks like you are going to be repudiated tonight and the supply-side policy cast aside.” I had just finished reading Reagan’s State of the Union address, as the speechwriters had sent it over for my approval. I advised Roger not to take that line because Reagan was not backing off his policy. Roger laughed. Convinced that supply-side economics and I were done for, he offered to set me up in a room in the Capitol with a television so I could watch my repudiation in Reagan’s State of the Union speech, and he would come in immediately after Reagan’s address and we would go live on national TV as NBC’s lead interview on the president’s speech. He was surprised when I accepted.

In his State of the Union address Reagan delivered a stinging rebuff to his OMB director and chief of staff. Strongly reaffirming his commitment to his economic program, Reagan declared: “The doubters would have us turn back the clock with tax increases that would offset the personal tax-rate reductions already passed by this Congress. Raise present taxes to cut future deficits, they tell us. Well, I don’t believe we should buy their argument” (Reagan 1982).

Having heard the opposite of what he expected, Mudd was shaken. Immediately we went live: “Craig, the president has just repudiated the advisers who tried to get him to raise taxes. They have egg all over their faces! What can they do?” I replied, “They can wipe the egg off their faces and get back on the president’s team.” Within seconds of my statement, my wife got a furious call from a Stockman aide whose voice she recognized: “We are going to get Craig and all his friends.” Being a British lady, she was upset at the barbarity of the American government in Washington. I had served the president, which was my duty, not the establishment, and the establishment was going to “get me.”

At the White House press conference the next morning, the first question Larry Speakes had to answer was, “Is Jim Baker still employed today? . . . He led the losing fight, and the general who gets beaten usually gets thrown out.”

Reporters and columnists began telling the story of how senior aides had worked to undermine congressional and business support for the president’s program. In a front-page story in the Wall Street Journal on February 2, 1982, reporters Rich Jaroslovsky, Ken Bacon, and Robert Merry told how Baker and Stockman operated against the president by building “momentum with leaks and pressure.”

I knew that Reagan could not throw out his vice president’s right-hand man, who had done so much to undermine the president of the United States, and that Reagan was stuck with Baker until Reagan’s second term, when Don Regan would take over as chief of staff. I knew that Baker, Stockman, Darman, and Larry Kudlow would use their friends in the media to destroy my reputation. I had done my job. Harvard University Press wanted the story. A prestigious chair was created for me, and I had no intention of spending years in internal administration fights. I explained the situation to Secretary Regan and President Reagan, and they agreed to keep my departure a secret so that the media could not make it look like I was driven out of the administration. Reagan said he would ensure that I escaped alive. He said he had further need for me in the future. I left and eased into the new William E. Simon Chair in Political Economy, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Georgetown University. Later Reagan appointed me to a secret presidential committee to assess the CIA’s opposition to Reagan’s plan to end the Cold War. This is another story, one that brought me up against the CIA.

Thwarting Continued Assaults on Reagan’s Policies from within the Party

My second victory over the establishment was as short-lived as my first victory. I was no longer in the Treasury to beat back the third assault from within the Reagan administration on Reagan’s supply-side policy. The assault was not coming from the Democrats. It was coming from the Republican establishment.

Determined not to be defeated in their agenda to “moderate” Reagan, by April 1982 Baker and Stockman were marching Reagan into a tax increase by lying to him that it was a tax reform, not a tax increase. They left the reductions in the personal income tax rates alone and focused on the business tax cut added to the Kemp-Roth bill by Treasury undersecretary Norman Ture. The business tax cuts consisted of accelerated depreciation.

The U.S. tax code specifies the years over which various kinds of business investments can be depreciated. Some of the schedules were very long, and inflation had eroded their real values. Something needed to be done to shorten the write-off periods. It is possible that too much was done to improve the situation for business, and that the pendulum had gone too far in the other direction. Nevertheless, this was a “tax reform” Reagan could accept as it left his personal tax rate reductions alone.

Cleverly, Stockman and Baker tied Reagan conservatives’ demand for spending cuts to the tax increase. They told Reagan the tax increase was a necessary part of the deal for the Democrats to accept spending cuts. The taxes rose and so did spending.

Stockman was not content to mislead President Reagan only about taxes. He also misled Reagan about spending bills in order to discredit Reagan with Republican senators and humiliate him with overridden vetos. Stockman chose a spending bill that funded popular programs such as jobs for the elderly to help them make ends meet, which was funded $2 billion less than Reagan had requested. Stockman told Reagan that the appropriation was a “budget-buster” in order to get Reagan to veto the bill. Senate Appropriations Committee chairman Mark Hatfield said, “By no responsible account can this be called a budget-buster.” Many saw that Reagan was being manipulated by his chief of staff and budget director. Senator Mark Andrews declared, “Frankly I’m getting sick and tired of David Stockman and his mirror acts. . . . He’s not serving the nation well, he’s not serving the president well, he’s not serving his party well” (Dewar 1982).

Even Democrat Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill called on Stockman to resign for failure to keep the president correctly informed about the spending bills. Jim Baker had to be aware of Stockman’s perfidy, but he protected Stockman, who remained in office doing as much damage as he could to the Reagan Revolution. It was like what Trump’s appointees did to him during his first term.

Rowland Evans and Robert Novak, columnists who closely watched the Washington scene, saw the tax increase as Baker’s attempt to portray supply-side economics as a failure and thus to remove Jack Kemp as a contender for the presidential succession. Others concluded that Reagan was not sufficiently involved to take control of his policy. The liberal-left columnists had a field day.

The administration of Reagan’s successor, President George H. W. Bush, again raised taxes, and their target this time was the personal income tax rates. As Reagan and I were absent the scene, they had a free hand. Nevertheless, although they raised the personal tax rates, they left them significantly below the rates that prevailed prior to the supply-side reduction in Reagan’s personal tax rate reductions. Even today, the tax rates are lower than they were prior to the Reagan tax rate reduction.

The real value of the Reagan tax cut was due to Senator William Armstrong’s amendment and to my success in bringing the administration on board with Senator Armstrong’s amendment, which had passed the Senate, to index the personal income tax for inflation. Over time even a low rate of inflation would inflate all incomes into the top bracket. In the House, the Democrats had come up with their own supply-side tax cut. White House speechwriters were looking for a way to differenti- ate Reagan’s tax cut bill from the Democrat one that cut rates more in the first two years. My principal deputy, Steve Entin, produced a graphic showing that indexing provided the dramatic comparison that the White House was seeking. Reagan was delighted. He used it in his television address just prior to the vote. Reagan quipped that the Democrat’s tax cut is larger “if you’re only planning to live two more years.” Without indexing, inflation eroded the benefit of the Democrat tax cut bill.

I can take satisfaction that my efforts, together with those of my Treasury colleagues, the White House speechwriters, and White House economist Martin Anderson, forty-four years ago in behalf of a supply-side economic policy have had a positive impact for four decades. Subsequent policymakers who offshored jobs, destroyed supply chains and the tax base of manufacturing and industrial states, created monopolies, financialized the economy, and weaponized the dollar, thus setting in motion the loss of the dollar’s role as reserve currency, have a great deal to answer for. For me, I can point to an enduring success. If the top marginal tax rates were still 70 percent on investment income and 50 percent on earned income, we would hardly have an economy at all.

The Permanence of the Supply-Side Revolution

There was no significant difference between the Kennedy tax cut in 1964 and the Reagan tax cut in 1981. The only difference is in the economic interpretation of tax rate reductions.

In the Keynesian view, a tax rate reduction stimulates consumer demand by leaving more money in the pockets of consumers to spend. The result is a rise in aggregate demand that leads to an increase in employment and investment in order to meet the higher demand, but it can also result instead in inflation with prices instead of output and employment rising if high tax rates discourage increases in output.

In the supply-side view, a tax rate reduction changes two important relative prices that cause an increase in aggregate supply. One of the prices is the price of leisure in terms of forgone current income. Lowering tax rates raises the cost of leisure in terms of the income you give up by, for example, taking Friday afternoons off. If you are in a 50 percent marginal tax rate, you only get to keep 50 cents of each additional dollar you earn. If the tax rate is cut to 30 percent, you get to keep 70 cents of each additional dollar you earn. Thus a lower tax rate makes leisure more expensive and encourages more labor supply.

The other price is the price of current consumption in terms of forgone future income. If you deplete your income in consumption instead of saving and investing, you forgo higher future income from investments not made. If the tax rate on investment income is 70 percent, each dollar of investment income only brings you 30 cents. If the tax rate is lowered to 50 percent, the reward to saving and investing rises to 50 cents for every dollar earned. Therefore, a reduction in the tax rate on investment income makes current consumption more expensive in terms of forgone future income and encourages more investment.

Whereas Keynesian demand-side economists believe fiscal policy such as changes in tax rates only affects aggregate demand, supply-side economists point out that some fiscal policies, such as changes in tax rates, directly affect aggregate supply. The supply-side revolution resulted from the realization after decades of demand management that fiscal policy directly affects aggregate supply. The Keynesian policy of stimulating consumer demand with Federal Reserve money creation while restraining output with higher tax rates resulted in stagflation. The supply-side solution was to remove the disincentives to work and invest caused by high tax rates.

Paul Samuelson, the top-of-the-line Keynesian economist in those days, agreed with the supply-side correction of fiscal policy. But he wondered how powerful the supply-side effect would be. Was it strong enough to have a significant effect? Paul Evans, a Stanford University economist, had already answered Samuelson’s question. I asked the Treasury staff to re-estimate Evans’s work on the impact of the Kennedy tax rate reduction on consumption and saving. Had the Kennedy tax cut caused consumption to rise or saving to rise? The empirical record was clear. Consumers spent a smaller percentage of their lower-taxed incomes. There was a marked increase in the real volume of personal saving following the Kennedy tax cut, and the saving rate, which had been declining during the early 1960s, rose sharply. It remained high for a decade, until rising marginal tax rates from a non-indexed tax system pushed it down. It was clear that the Kennedy tax rate reduction worked because of its supply-side effects.

The two tax rate reductions in the latter half of the twentieth century kept the American economy alive. The Kennedy tax rate reduction in 1964 slowed the erosion of America’s economic potential, and the Reagan tax rate reduction in 1981, married with the indexation of the tax rates, boosted the economy’s potential. A return to sound economic policies that focus on boosting productivity in the long run would help return the country to the strong growth path it enjoyed during the Reagan era.

References

Dewar, Helen. 1982. Senate Joins House, Overrides Reagan Veto. Washington Post, September 10.

Heller, Walter. 1977. Testimony before the Joint Economic Committee of Congress, February 7.

Reagan, Ronald. 1982. Address Before a Joint Session of Congress Reporting on the State of the Union, January 26.

Roberts, Paul Craig. n.d. https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/pages/about-paul-craig-roberts/.

_______, 1984. The Supply-Side Revolution. Harvard University Press.

Roberts, Paul Craig, Aldona E. Robbins, and Gary F. Robbins. 1986. The Relative Impact of Taxation and Interest Rates on the Cost of Capital. Technology and Economic Policy, edited by Ralph Landau and Dale Jorgenson. Ballinger.

VOLUME 29, NUMBER 4, SPRING 2025, pages 693-703

https://www.independent.org/pdf/tir/tir_29_4_10_roberts.pdf 

—

Paul Craig Roberts, who played a crucial role in enacting the tax cuts of the 1980s and in forging the political emergence of supply-side economics, reflects on his experience in Washington. He emphasizes that intra-party power struggles, not economics, are the main influence on policy.  — Editor, The Independent Review

Paul Craig Roberts is chairman of the Institute for Political Economy. He had academic careers as senior research fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and William E. Simon Chair in Political Economy, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Georgetown University; journalism careers as associate editor and columnist for the Wall Street Journal and columnist for Business Week; government careers as a member of the U.S. congressional staff and as assistant secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration; and business careers as a director of industrial and financial companies.

The post My Time in the Reagan Administration appeared first on LewRockwell.

According to- Anthony Hernandez: U.S. farmers are under siege, but these attacks are also happening worldwide. The first farmers to receive governmental interference in the Amish community, a self-sustaining pioneer-type community, grow their food, make their foods, make furniture, and other products. They are Bible-believing people who stay on their own but also sell their products to stores and sell foods at farmer’s markets and roadside stands. –Full report…

If the society broke down into city states because of one of the many risk facing us came to fruition, why assume this would end farmer markets? The farms at risk for extreme weather and Global Warming, higher heat and drought and floods are large maga-farms with mono-crops that do not grow sustainably. They lack the soil depth and health and risk another dust bowl in the least.

Organic farms and permaculture farms are resistant to weather extreme and bounce back more easily. This is because they grow many crops along side perennials, have strong soils because the emphasize sustainability over profit. Many small farms though monocrop of annuals are small enough, surrounded by trees and other small farms growing different crops which helps yield stronger soils mostly because they cannot afford so many herbicides and fertilizers so most fall back on manure which is usually plentiful and cheap at least out here.

So most small farms are somewhat sustainable, even alley, and roof top ones are. And though a few also will likely fail for many reasons (economics ironically is the likest), most will survive. Yet many potential crisis we face today as they faced last time we were in a like Gilded Age or oligarchy, Its the jobs that fail and this includes banks and supermarkets.

But farmers market might if those farms that survive have enough to sell and people they want to sell to have money or can barter for food instead and the government just doesn’t seize this. Of course this assumes the crisis is that the capitalistic system collapsed again as it did a century ago. If this was worse likely governments would collapse at the federal level of loose control of most of the states.

How state governments survive depends on, how close they were to the event. Martial law might follow and this scenario is the seizing risk. Another risk is roving bands taking food before it can be sold and killing farmers.

Yet farm communities likely would build community in the chaos and have protection from neighbors who do not farm and are job less (likely for part of harvest). Still the farmers markets in this scenario would be insulated and limited to those in those communities.

This didn’t happen during the great depression yet farms food stayed out in the farm areas and fed people there mostly as transpiration broke down. This is why so many people in cities starved. Those in the country did far better. So farmer’s markets might still exist, yet can you afford them or if bartering offer something they can use living so far away?

Additional:

What would happen if there was no farmers markets in the United States?

If there were, for no good reason, no farmers markets, then farmers and their consumers would get together and create them!

Because that is where they came from; fulfilling a need.

With the end of the petroleum age facing us in the next decade or two, expect farmers markets to become more and more popular. The growing uncertainty about the quality and healthfulness of industrially-produced food is creating a growing “know your food producer” movement.

The forces arrayed against farmers markets are formidable. Basically, the entire industrial food industry has absolutely no interest in being cut out of consumers’ lives, which is what farmers markets do, by fostering direct-to-consumer relationships with food producers. In fact, they are spending lots of lobbying money to put an end to farmers markets.

Case in point: a dozen or so years ago, the BC Deputy Minister of Agriculture, Rory McAlpine, barnstormed the province, warning consumers about how dangerous the meat supply was, because, y’know, just any farmer could slaughter, butcher, and sell meat to just any consumer. Heaven forbid!

Forget for a moment that not a single case of farm-butchered food poisoning had been reported to the BC Centre for Disease Control. Not. A. Single. One. People who eat their own food tend to have safe food, unlike the guy who would never eat in the burger joint that he had worked at. But the politicians and their industrial-farming buddies had to protect the public!

So McAlpine put a system into place whereby all meat was required to go through provincially-licensed and inspected abattoirs. (That’s Canuck for “slaughterhouse.”) Our small island, once renown for its lamb, saw our meat production slashed by about 70% over the next few years. We held bake sales and other fund raisers and raised $700,000 to put an abattoir on the island in an attempt to stop the economic drain — money that could have been spent on schools, hospitals, libraries, or perhaps even a four-season farmers market structure.

Having accomplished his master’s bidding, McAlpine left politics and got a cushy, newly-minted job as “Head of Government Relations” for Maple Leaf Meats. Less than two months later, Maple Leaf killed two dozen meat consumers with tainted meat!

You could not make this stuff up. Any editor or publisher would say, “Not credible.” But it happened.

Consumers are increasingly dissatisfied and untrustful of the industrial food system. If there were no farmers markets, you would be forced to eat whatever the industrial food system and their government pansies allow you to eat.

This originally appeared on EarlKing56.family.blog.

The post U.S. Farmers Are Under Siege? Food Security Crises Going on in the U.S appeared first on LewRockwell.

Remember in The Dark Knight when we all applauded the Joker for heroically blowing up a hospital?

Or remember when we watched Star Wars and cheered for the protagonist Darth Vader as he destroyed a planet to punish the rebel scum for daring to resist him?

How about when we watched Schindler’s List anxiously hoping the Nazis would be able to thwart the diabolical scheming of the villain Oskar Schindler to prevent them from committing genocide?

Or when we watched Avatar and cheered for the interstellar megacorporation and its army of mercenaries to displace the indigenous people of Pandora to steal their land?

Israel just blew up Gaza’s only cancer hospital (the Joker style).

The IDF has been occupying this hospital for over a year, using it as a military post, & now shamelessly claims it was a “Hamas compound”

How can any sane person trust Israel when they always lie so blatantly? pic.twitter.com/LRtSycyoJN

— Muhammad Shehada (@muhammadshehad2) March 21, 2025

Or when we watched The Pelican Brief hoping the heroes would find some way to kill Julia Roberts and Denzel Washington to stop them from reporting the truth about their crimes?

Or when we watched The Pianist and wept at the evil Jews attacking innocent Nazis in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising?

Or when we watched The Lord of the Rings and booed the villainous men, elves and dwarves fighting to survive a siege by Saruman’s heroic army of orcs?

Or when we watched V for Vendetta on the edge of our seats worried that the government would fail to stomp out the rebellion, suppress the truth from coming out, and impose more authoritarian measures on the people?

Or when we watched Revenge of the Sith and cheered for the hero Anakin Skywalker mass murdering children in order to wipe the Jedi out of existence?

This order is clear-cut evidence of a crime against humanity: https://t.co/LzTPYkD6qb

— Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate) March 22, 2025

Yeah, I don’t remember that either.

Nobody seems to have trouble figuring out who the real villains are when it’s happening in the movies. The narrative managers and spinmeisters make it a lot harder to sort out the villains from the victims in real life.

Normally it’s misguided to view any conflict as simply evil villains murdering innocent victims, but not with Israel and Gaza. It’s an apartheid state that’s backed by a globe-spanning empire, raining bombs onto a giant concentration camp packed full of children because they’re the wrong ethnicity.

It’s pretty black and white, actually.

________________

My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you want to. Go here to find video versions of my articles. If you’d prefer to listen to audio of these articles, you can subscribe to them on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud or YouTube. Go here to buy paperback editions of my writings from month to month. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.

The post In Movies We Understand That the Genocidal Child Murderers Who Blow Up Hospitals Are the Villains appeared first on LewRockwell.

Writes Wayne Goodfellow:

A good start by Robert Kennedy Jr, Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. 

The post Transparency on what is in the food we eat appeared first on LewRockwell.

Writes Gail Appel:

It’s a beautiful day!

See here.

The post DOGE Blocks 52 Million Earmarked For WEF appeared first on LewRockwell.

Ginny Garner wrote:

Lew,

Columbia University student Mahmoud Khalil was protesting for a free Palestine and against the end to genocide in Gaza when he was arrested. He was a negotiator for Columbia United Apartheid Divest demanding the university divest from any company that does business with the Israeli military. Khalil has written an article from his detention facility in Louisiana. 

See here.

The post Arrested Columbia University Says He is a Political Prisoner appeared first on LewRockwell.

Writes Johnny Kramer:

This may be the best two-minute ad against government schools that I’ve ever seen; imagine sending your child to be “educated” by someone like this.

The post Wisconsin “teacher” comments on Trump disallowing biological men in women’s sports appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, Johnny Kramer.

The post Larry David vs The World appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, Ginny Garner. 

Need to Know News

The post Conspiracy Theorists Were Right About Israel’s Ties to JFK Assassination appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, Ginny Garner. 

Need to Know News

The post Huge Structures Discovered Over 1.5 Miles Below Great Pyramid of Giza appeared first on LewRockwell.

Click Here:

Jon Rappoport

The post The medical Nazis of New Zealand versus the brilliant Dr. Sam Bailey appeared first on LewRockwell.

Writes Stephen Mack:

Lew,

Hegseth may front some chump change savings initiatives, but in reality not Trump, not Hegseth, not Congress and not Musk are friends of the taxpayers.

See here.

The post DOGE Delusion? appeared first on LewRockwell.

Click Here:

Life News

The post Kash Patel Releases New Records Exposing How FBI Under Biden Targeted Pro-Life Christians appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, John Frahm.

The American Conservative

The post War on Iran Would Be No Cakewalk appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, John Smith. 

Antiwar.com

The post Perilous Times for Personal Liberty appeared first on LewRockwell.

The Legacy of Carroll Quigley

The Professor and the President

“As a teenager I heard John Kennedy’s summons to citizenship. And as a student at Georgetown, I heard the call clarified by a professor I had named Carroll Quigley, who said America was the greatest country in the history of the world because our people have always believed in two great ideas: first, that tomorrow can be better than today, and second, that each of us has a personal moral responsibility to make it so.”

When Bill Clinton spoke these stirring words to millions of Americans during his 1992 acceptance address before the Democratic National Convention upon receiving his party’s nomination for President of the United States, the vast multitude of his television audience paused for a micro-second to reflect: Who is Carroll Quigley and why did he have such a dramatic effect on this young man before us who may become our country’s leader?

Carroll Quigley was a legendary professor of history at the Foreign Service School of Georgetown University, and a former instructor at Princeton and Harvard.

He was a lecturer at the Industrial College of the Armed Forces, the Brookings Institution, the U. S. Naval Weapons Laboratory, the Foreign Service Institute of the State Department, and the Naval College.

Quigley was a closely connected elite “insider” to the American Establishment, with impeccable credentials and trappings of respectability.

But Carroll Quigley’s most notable achievement was the authorship of one of the most important books of the 20th Century: Tragedy and Hope – A History of the World in Our Time.

No one can truly be cognizant of the intricate evolution of networks of power and influence which have played a crucial role in determining who and what we are as a civilization without being familiar with the contents of this 1,348-page tome.

It is the “Ur-text” of Establishment Studies, earning Quigley the epithet of “the professor who knew too much” in a Washington Post article published shortly after his 1977 death.

In Tragedy and Hope, as well as the posthumous The Anglo-American Establishment: From Rhodes to Cliveden, Quigley traces this network, in both its overt and covert manifestations, back to British racial imperialist and financial magnate Cecil Rhodes and his secret wills, outlining the clandestine master plan through seven decades of intrigue, spanning two world wars, to the assassination of John Kennedy.

Through an elaborate structure of banks, foundations, trusts, public-policy research groups, and publishing concerns (in addition to the prestigious scholarship program at Oxford), the initiates of what are described as the Round Table groups (and its offshoots such as the Royal Institute of International Affairs and the Council on Foreign Relations) came to dominate the political and financial affairs of the world.

For the ambitious young man from Hope, Arkansas, his mentor’s visionary observations would provide the blueprint of how the world really worked as he made his ascendancy via Oxford through the elite corridors of power to the Oval Office.

The Conservatives Discover Carroll Quigley

Published in 1966, Tragedy and Hope lay virtually unnoticed by academic reviewers and the mainstream media establishment. Then Dr. W. Cleon Skousen, the noted conservative author of the 1961 national best-seller, The Naked Communist, discovered Quigley, and the serious implications of what Quigley had revealed. In 1970, Skousen published The Naked Capitalist: A Review and Commentary on Dr. Carroll Quigley’s Book Tragedy and Hope.

This was soon followed by None Dare Call It Conspiracy. This slim volume by Gary Allen (and Larry Abraham) provided the massive paradigm shift of grassroots, populist conservatives from mere anti-Communism to a much larger anti-elitist world-view.

Millions of copies of these books came into print, and the conservative movement changed forever.

Copies of Tragedy and Hope began disappearing from library shelves. A pirate edition was printed. Quigley came to believe that his publisher Macmillan had suppressed his book. Dr. Gary North, the esteemed writer well known to readers of LewRockwell.com, has an interesting discussion of these curious facts in the chapter, “Maverick ‘Insider’ Historians,” in his book, Conspiracy: A Biblical View, available on-line.

However some persons believe Carroll Quigley was simply amplifying earlier research in conservative authors Emanuel Josephson’s Rockefeller ‘Internationalist’: The Man Who Misrules The World, and Dan Smoot’s The Invisible Government, or that of the radical sociologist C. Wright Mill’s The Power Elite, which had outlined these same elite networks of power.

I disagree with that narrow assessment. Although there is much to disagree with in interpretation in Quigley’s book, the originality and titanic scope of the work cannot be doubted or disparaged.

In a book much praised by Murray Rothbard, author Carl Oglesby’s The Yankee and Cowboy War: Conspiracies From Dallas To Watergate, has a fascinating discussion of Quigley within a wider framework of American power politics and subterranean intrigue.

And in a volume hailed by Gore Vidal, Christopher Hitchens, before he morphed from Trotskyist man of letters to Neocon mouthpiece, had some insightful musings along the line of Quigley in his Blood, Class, and Nostalgia: Anglo-American Ironies.

In the Preface to his book, The Anglo-American Establishment: From Rhodes to Cliveden, Quigley noted:

“I have been told that the story I relate here would be better left untold, since it would provide ammunition for the enemies of what I admire. I do not share this view. The last thing I should wish is that anything I write could be used by the Anglophobes and isolationists of the Chicago Tribune. But I feel that the truth has a right to be told, and once told, can be an injury to no men of good will. Only by a knowledge of the errors of the past is it possible to correct the tactics of the future.”

Although his book was written in 1949 it was not published until after his death in 1981. Ironically Quigley was correct concerning the contents of his expose’. As Murray N. Rothbard pointed out in his semi-autobiographical masterwork, The Betrayal of the American Right, the Midwestern voice of Old Right non-interventionism, Colonel Robert McCormick’s Chicago Tribune, published a contemporaneous series of hard-hitting muckraking articles in 1951 attacking what Rothbard described as “the Wall Street-Anglophile Establishment”: “Rhodes’ Goal: Return U.S. to British Empire,” “Rhodes Ideals Slant State Department Policies,” “Rhodes’ Wards Hawk Global Scheme in U.S.,” “Rhodes Grads Influential in Eastern Press — Aid British, Global Propaganda,” “Even Congress Not Immune to Rhodes’ Ideas,” and “OWI Propaganda Linked to Rhodes Men.”

And now President Donald Trump has publicly stated, on the record, his desire to fulfill the long-term, century old insidious goal of the globalist Anglo-American Elite Establishment, to become members of the British Commonwealth of Nations.

The US joining the Commonwealth of Nations is the ULTIMATE BETRAYAL of an American First foreign policy.

The oldest goal of the Cecil Rhodes’ Round Table (the Royal Institute of International Affairs at Chatham House) in London and the Council on Foreign Relations in New York composing the Anglo-American Establishment in the UK and the USA is for the American government to join the Commonwealth of Nations. This was the birth of the “Special Relationship” of the modern New World Order globalist concept.

Donald Trump Suggests US Could Join British CommonwealthDonald Trump agrees to make US part of Commonwealth because he ‘loves King Charles’

President Donald Trump has suggested that he might accept an offer from King Charles to join the British Commonwealth. It comes after he said he ‘loves’ the monarch

So who composes the Commonwealth of Nations?

While you are perusing this list think of these nations’ totalitarian attitudes and egregious policies during the COVID-19 lockdowns and today regarding attacks upon freedom of speech, the rule of law, and lack of constitutional restraint toward respecting individual rights and liberties of their citizens.

What, in the name of God, is Trump thinking?

In The Old Days Life Was So Much Simpler

The “Special Relationship” (book list)

The Anglo-American Establishment: From Rhodes to Cliveden, by Carrol Quigley

Tragedy and Hope: A History of Our World in Our Time, by Carrol Quigley

UNION NOW / UNION NOW WITH BRITAIN (2 Vols) by Clarence K. Streit

Union Now, by Clarence K. Streit

The Great Reset and the Struggle for Liberty: Unraveling the Global Agenda, by Michael Rectenwald (Author), Lew Rockwell (Foreword)

The post Trump Voices the ULTIMATE BETRAYAL of an American First Foreign Policy appeared first on LewRockwell.

A few weeks ago I published a long article on the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, reviewing the available evidence on that notorious document of the very early twentieth century and attempting to evaluate its credibility and provenance.

My ultimate verdict was rather hum-drum. I concluded that the work was likely fictional, but probably reflected a widespread quiet understanding of the enormous hidden influence of Jewish groups across Europe, whether as bankers, political advisors, or revolutionaries.

A couple of generations earlier, the popular novels of Benjamin Disraeli, the very influential Jewish-born British Prime Minister, had made exactly that sort of claim, with a character representing Lord Rothschild explaining that a network of Jews operating from behind the scenes secretly dominated most of Europe’s major governments. These notions probably served as an important inspiration for the Protocols.

Around the time that the Protocols came to light, similar sentiments were widespread in even the most reputable circles. For example, Dr. David Starr Jordan, the founding president of Stanford University and one of America’s foremost public intellectuals, published Unseen Empire in 1913. In that work, favorably reviewed in the influential Literary Digest, he argued that a network of intermarried Jewish banking families had quietly gained financial control over all of Europe’s major countries and therefore exercised greater real influence over their government policies than did any of their various elected legislatures, kings, or emperors.

Indeed, the Protocols only began to attract widespread international attention after the top leadership of the Bolshevik Revolution was recognized as being overwhelmingly Jewish. That radical movement had seized control of the mighty Russian Empire in 1917, and then unsuccessfully attempted to do the same in the rest of Europe, with failed uprisings in Germany, Hungary, and other locations.

Although I thought that the Protocols had probably been fabricated, I noted that many very highly regarded contemporaneous sources had at least initially regarded it as the factual record of a Jewish conspiracy seeking to overthrow all of Europe’s Christian governments and ultimately seize control of the world. For example, I passed along the account of Douglas Reed, a leading Times of London correspondent of that era:

As Reed told the story, the Protocols first gained attention in 1920 when the document was translated into English by one of Britain’s top Russia correspondents, who died soon afterward. His employer, the Morning Post, was one of the oldest and most sober British newspapers, and its editor then drew upon his entire staff to publish twenty-three articles on the document, calling for a thorough investigation. The Times of London then ranked as the world’s most influential media outlet and it took a similar position in a long May 8, 1920 article, while Lord Sydenham, a foremost authority of that day, later did the same in the pages of the Spectator.

The series of Morning Post articles was entitled “The Jewish Peril,” and later that same year it was collected together and published as The Cause of World Unrest. This book was released in both Britain and America and included a very lengthy introduction by the editor, with the contents now easily available online. As I explained:

These articles repeatedly cited the works of Nesta Webster, a British writer who had published a lengthy historical analysis of the French Revolution a year earlier, and two of her personal contributions to the Morning Post series on the Protocols were also included at the end of the volume, while she may have more heavily contributed to the entire anonymous series…

The following year, Webster published World Revolution, her own much longer work on closely-related themes, describing the appearance and growth of secret, conspiratorial movements aimed at overthrowing all of Europe’s established Christian monarchies and replacing them with radical, socialistic governments. The author traced all of this back to the 18th century Illuminati movement of Adam Weishaupt, claiming that this project had gradually subverted the existing Masonic lodges of France and the rest of Continental Europe, then afterward used Freemasonry as the vehicle for its dangerous revolutionary plotting.

Although Webster argued that Jews had only been an insignificant early element of this conspiratorial movement, by the mid-nineteenth century they deployed their huge wealth to gain enormous influence in that project, probably becoming its leading force. She devoted much of the last chapter of her book to the Protocols, regarding its contents as an excellent summary of the secret plans of those subversive movements, whether or not the document itself was actually what it purported to be.

Based upon my own very mainstream historical reading, I’d always regarded talk of secret revolutionary plotting by the Illuminati, Freemasons, or any such similar groups as almost the epitome of crackpot lunacy, and I’d scarcely even heard of Webster, who had been the leading writer on such matters. However, I discovered that some of Webster’s prominent contemporaries had been very impressed with her scholarship and had reached somewhat similar conclusions.

The most notable example of such support for Webster’s research came from British Cabinet Minister Winston Churchill. Around the same time that the Morning Post was beginning its long series on the Protocols, Churchill published a major article in the Illustrated Sunday Herald that seemed to take a similar position on the dangerous plots of subversive international Jews, while singling out Webster for praise, especially noting her important research on the French Revolution.

• American Pravda: The Protocols of the Elders of Zion
  Ron Unz • The Unz Review • January 20, 2025 • 12,800 Words

Although I’d barely heard of Webster, during the early decades of the twentieth century she seemed to have been a far more influential figure than I’d ever imagined, with her research apparently becoming an important source for the views and writing of Winston Churchill, Douglas Reed, and others. I also discovered that she came from a very elite background, given that her father had been a top figure at Barclays Bank, one of Britain’s leading financial institutions.

In 1924 she published Secret Societies and Subversive Movements, apparently summarizing her accumulated research on that controversial subject, and it included an Appendix sharply disputing the allegations of plagiarism in the Protocols that had appeared in the media during the previous couple of years. According to her Wikipedia entry, by then Hilaire Belloc, a leading British literary figure himself widely accused of antisemitism, had begun privately denouncing her as “antisemitic” and her work as “lunatic,” and she later became an active supporter of Sir Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists.

I carefully read her 1924 book and found many of its theories to be outlandish and very doubtful. She argued for the existence of a centuries old conspiratorial movement dedicated to the destruction of Christian civilization, with its earliest roots stretching back to the infamous Order of Assassins of the Middle East. According to Webster, some of the doctrines of that notorious Muslim cult had been absorbed by the Knights Templar, the very wealthy and powerful organization founded during the Crusades.

In 1307 King Philip IV of France had suppressed the Templars, arresting many of their top leaders, torturing them into confessions of Satanism, and then burning them at the stake, with the Pope officially disbanding the order a few years later. My history books had always claimed that Philip’s motive had probably been to cancel the large financial debts he owed to that organization while also eliminating a powerful political rival. But Webster argued that the charges of the French king were true, and the top leadership of the Templars had indeed become secret worshippers of Satan.

Furthermore, following the killing of its leaders and its general suppression, the surviving secret society had eventually become a founding element of the later Freemasonry movement in Continental Europe, retaining a distorted legend of the betrayal and murder of its top leader and a bitter antipathy towards both the Catholic Church and the French monarchy.

According to Webster, another very important strand in these secret societies dedicated to subverting established European order was Jewish Cabalism, which was a major root of the support for magic and supernatural rituals often found in those organizations.

Webster’s book included nearly 900 footnotes referencing various Medieval texts and scholarly histories of that era written in English, French, and German, as well as works on the origins of Freemasonry. But I lacked the knowledge and inclination to investigate any of that material. And although the Masonic movement was indeed quite influential during the 18th and 19th centuries, its 16,000 word Wikipedia article only contained a single brief reference to Webster as an anti-Masonic writer. There were also related articles on Masonic conspiracy theories and Judeo-Masonic conspiracy theory that covered such topics in greater detail, but these failed to include any mention of Webster or her works.

So based upon present-day evidence, Webster came across as very much a fringe crackpot, someone whose research would hardly be taken seriously in respectable circles, with the favorable if very brief mention by Churchill being merely a puzzling anomaly. However, I discovered that this was actually not the case.

During the early 2000s, I’d spent a number of years building a content-archiving system that contained the near-complete archives of a couple of hundred of our leading publications of the last 150 years, and it proved very useful in obtaining a much more balanced evaluation of Webster and her works.

I discovered that a long list of her books were in that system, together with their contemporaneous reviews, and the latter demonstrated that although quite controversial, she had hardly been regarded as a fringe figure at that point. The New York Times, the Nation, and Commonweal had reviewed her books, as had such very influential publications of that era as the Saturday Review of Literature, the Bookman, and the Outlook. Leading academic journals such as the American Historical Review and Political Science Quarterly had done the same, while Foreign Affairs had noted and briefly described a couple of her books.

Some of these reviews, especially those appearing in liberal or leftist periodicals, had been sharply critical, challenging her “conspiratorial” reading of historical events in much the same way that modern day writers almost uniformly did. But she had also had her strong defenders as well.

For example, Wilbur Cortez Abbott, the Francis Lee Higginson Professor of History of Harvard University, published a long and highly favorable 1920 review of her book on the French Revolution, which he characterized as “extraordinarily interesting” in his very first sentence. Although he went on to admit that her thesis was “not wholly new,” he emphasized that it had never “been worked out in such detail,” nor with such completeness. As a result, he said that the book must “be reckoned with by anyone who wishes to recognize and understand the springs of popular movements, then or now.” The long review in the New York Times also certainly accepted all of her research on the true history of that event as important and correct.

Academic periodicals were similarly mixed. The fairly brief review in Political Science Quarterly emphasized the “immense amount of contemporary material” she had brought to bear in support of her “most novel and astonishing interpretation of the great event of the eighteenth century. ” And although the discussion in the American Historical Review was rather negative, it still admitted that English publications had been “much impressed” by her book, explaining that the Spectator had declared it “a veritable revelation.”

This very wide divergence of verdicts on Webster and her works was emphasized several years later by Prof. Abbott, who opened his 1925 review on her Secret Societies book in the prestigious Saturday Review by declaring:

There is no person now engaged in writing history concerning whose work there is such sharp divergence of opinion as there is in regard to Mrs. Webster…she has been the object of more praise and of much more attack than almost any one since Macaulay. That circumstance is due alike to her choice of subject, her point of view, and her method of approach. Revolution is always an extraordinarily difficult topic for historical treatment. Its passions long outlive its events…the publisher who warned Mrs. Webster of the probable results of her labors observed to her, “Remember that if you take an anti-revolutionary line you will have the whole literary world against you.”

Thus, one hundred years ago a top Harvard historian writing in one of America’s most influential publications had repeatedly praised Webster’s research. But a century of relentless ideological pressure had subsequently marginalized her and her books to such an extent that they had become dismissed and almost forgotten as the conspiracy-nonsense of a fringe crackpot. This remarkable transformation has probably gone unrecognized by almost all of today’s mainstream academics , for whom Webster remained invisible.

Taken together, these appraisals by leading past scholars persuaded me to take her work seriously, especially her lengthy volume on the French Revolution that had so impressed Churchill.

Read the Whole Article

The post Political Conspiracies and the French Revolution appeared first on LewRockwell.