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

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

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

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

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

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

As I wrote at that time:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Reprinted with permission from Moon of Alabama.

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Thanks, Johnny Kramer . 

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Thanks, Johnny Kramer. 

I wouldn’t work there for $100/hr.

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Thanks, John Frahm.

CNBC News

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Global Research

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Thanks, John Frahm.

The European Conservative

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J.K. Baltzersen wrote:

Sir,

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

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

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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.

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(Versione audio della traduzione disponibile qui: https://open.substack.com/pub/fsimoncelli/p/ingegnerizzare-la-realta-parte-3)

Dopo aver esplorato i meccanismi fisici e psicologici del controllo nella Prima parte e il loro impiego attraverso l'ingegneria culturale nella Seconda parte, ci rivolgiamo ora alla loro evoluzione definitiva: l'automazione del controllo della coscienza attraverso sistemi digitali.

Nella mia ricerca sul complesso tecnologico-industriale, ho documentato come i giganti digitali di oggi non siano stati solo cooptati dalle strutture di potere: molti sono stati progettati fin dall'inizio come strumenti per la sorveglianza di massa e il controllo sociale. Dalle origini di Google come progetto della DARPA ai legami familiari del fondatore di Amazon con l'ARPA, queste non erano solo startup di successo che in seguito si sono allineate agli interessi governativi.

Ciò che il Tavistock ha scoperto in anni di approfonditi studi – la risonanza emotiva prevale sui fatti, l'influenza dei pari supera l'autorità e la manipolazione indiretta ha successo laddove la propaganda diretta fallisce – costituisce ora la logica fondamentale degli algoritmi dei social media. Lo studio di Facebook sulla manipolazione emotiva e i test A/B sulle miniature di Netflix (approfonditi in dettaglio più avanti) esemplificano l'automazione digitale di queste intuizioni secolari, mentre i sistemi di intelligenza artificiale eseguono miliardi di esperimenti in tempo reale, perfezionando costantemente l'arte dell'influenza su una scala senza precedenti.

Proprio come Laurel Canyon fungeva da spazio fisico per orientare la cultura, le piattaforme digitali odierne funzionano come laboratori virtuali per il controllo della coscienza, estendendosi ulteriormente e operando con una precisione ben maggiore. I social media hanno ampliato questi principi attraverso l'amplificazione degli “influencer” e le metriche di coinvolgimento. La scoperta che l'influenza indiretta supera la propaganda diretta ora plasma il modo in cui le piattaforme regolano in modo sottile la visibilità dei contenuti. Ciò che un tempo richiedeva anni di meticoloso studio psicologico può ora essere testato e ottimizzato in tempo reale, con algoritmi che sfruttano miliardi di interazioni per perfezionare i loro metodi di influenza.

La manipolazione della musica riflette una più ampia evoluzione nel controllo culturale: ciò che è iniziato con una programmazione localizzata, come gli esperimenti della controcultura di Laurel Canyon, si è ora trasformato in sistemi globali, guidati da algoritmi. Questi strumenti digitali automatizzano gli stessi meccanismi, plasmando la coscienza su una scala senza precedenti.

L'approccio di Netflix è simile ai principi di manipolazione di Bernays in formato digitale, il che non sorprende, dato che il co-fondatore, Marc Bernays Randolph, è pronipote di Edward Bernays e pronipote di Sigmund Freud. Laddove Bernays utilizzava focus group per testare i messaggi, Netflix conduce test A/B su miniature e titoli, mostrando immagini diverse a utenti diversi in base ai loro profili psicologici. Il suo algoritmo di raccomandazione non si limita a suggerire contenuti, ma modella i modelli di visualizzazione controllando visibilità e contesto, proprio come Bernays orchestrava campagne promozionali che plasmavano la percezione del pubblico attraverso molteplici canali. Proprio come Bernays capì come creare l'ambiente perfetto per vendere prodotti, ad esempio promuovendo sale musica nelle case per vendere pianoforti, Netflix crea interfacce personalizzate che guidano gli spettatori verso scelte di contenuti specifiche. Il loro approccio alla produzione di contenuti originali si basa sull'analisi di dati psicologici di massa per creare narrazioni per specifici segmenti demografici.

Ancora più insidiosamente, la strategia di Netflix in materia di contenuti plasma attivamente la coscienza sociale attraverso la promozione selettiva e la sepoltura dei contenuti. Mentre i film che supportano le narrazioni istituzionali ricevono un posizionamento di rilievo, i documentari che mettono in discussione le versioni ufficiali spesso finiscono sepolti nelle categorie meno visibili della piattaforma o esclusi completamente dagli algoritmi di raccomandazione. Persino film di successo come What Is a Woman? hanno subito una sistematica soppressione su più piattaforme, a dimostrazione di come i gatekeeper digitali possano cancellare prospettive ostili pur mantenendo l'illusione di un accesso aperto.

Ho sperimentato questa censura in prima persona. Ho avuto la fortuna di lavorare come produttrice per Anecdotals, diretto da Jennifer Sharp, un film che documenta i danni causati dal vaccino contro il COVID-19, compresi i suoi. YouTube lo ha rimosso il primo giorno, sostenendo che le persone non potevano parlare delle proprie esperienze con il vaccino. Solo dopo l'intervento del senatore Ron Johnson il film è stato ripristinato, un esempio lampante di come la censura delle piattaforme metta a tacere le narrazioni personali che mettono in discussione le dichiarazioni ufficiali.

Questo controllo si estende all'intero panorama digitale. Controllando quali documentari appaiono in primo piano, quali film stranieri raggiungono il pubblico americano e quali prospettive vengono evidenziate nella loro programmazione originale, piattaforme come Netflix agiscono da guardiani culturali, proprio come Bernays gestiva la percezione del pubblico per i suoi clienti. Laddove i sistemi precedenti si affidavano a guardiani umani per plasmare la cultura, le piattaforme di streaming utilizzano l'analisi dei dati e algoritmi di raccomandazione per automatizzare la gestione della coscienza. I sistemi di strategia e promozione dei contenuti sulle piattaforme digitali rappresentano i principi di manipolazione psicologica di Bernays, operanti su una scala senza precedenti.

Reality TV: ingegnerizzare la percezione di sé

Prima che i social media trasformassero miliardi di persone in creatori di contenuti, i reality TV hanno perfezionato il modello dell'auto-mercificazione. Le Kardashian hanno esemplificato questa transizione: trasformandosi da star dei reality in influencer dell'era digitale, hanno dimostrato come trasformare l'autenticità personale in un marchio commerciabile. Il loro show non si è limitato a rimodellare le norme sociali relative a ricchezza e consumi, ma ha anche offerto una lezione magistrale sull'abbandono dell'esperienza umana autentica in favore di performance attentamente curate. Il pubblico ha imparato che essere sé stessi aveva meno valore che diventare un marchio, che i momenti autentici contavano meno dei contenuti elaborati, che le relazioni autentiche erano secondarie all'influenza della rete.

Questa trasformazione da persona a personaggio avrebbe raggiunto il suo apice con i social media, dove miliardi di persone ora partecipano volontariamente alla propria modificazione comportamentale. Gli utenti imparano a sopprimere l'espressione autentica a favore di ricompense algoritmiche, a filtrare l'esperienza genuina attraverso la lente di potenziali contenuti, a valutare sé stessi non con parametri interni ma attraverso metriche di “Mi piace” e condivisioni. Ciò a cui i reality TV avevano aperto la strada – la rinuncia volontaria alla privacy, la sostituzione del sé autentico con un'immagine commerciabile, la trasformazione della vita in contenuto – i social media lo avrebbero democratizzato su scala globale. Ora chiunque potrebbe diventare il proprio reality show, barattando l'autenticità per l'engagement.

Instagram incarna questa trasformazione, insegnando agli utenti a considerare la propria vita come un contenuto da curare, le proprie esperienze come opportunità fotografiche, i propri ricordi come storie da condividere con il pubblico. L'economia degli influencer trasforma momenti autentici in opportunità di marketing, insegnando agli utenti a modificare il proprio comportamento reale – dove vanno, cosa mangiano, come si vestono – per creare contenuti che gli algoritmi premieranno. Non si tratta solo di condividere la vita online: si tratta di rimodellare la vita stessa per renderla accessibile al mercato digitale.

Anche se questi sistemi diventano più pervasivi, i loro limiti diventano sempre più evidenti. Gli stessi strumenti che consentono di manipolare le correnti culturali ne rivelano anche la fragilità, man mano che il pubblico inizia a mettere in discussione le narrazioni manipolative.

Crepe nel sistema

Nonostante la sua sofisticatezza il sistema di controllo sta iniziando a mostrare crepe. L'opinione pubblica si oppone sempre più spesso a palesi tentativi di ingegneria culturale, come dimostrano gli attuali rifiuti da parte dei consumatori.

I tentativi recenti di palese sfruttamento culturale, come campagne di marketing aziendale e narrazioni basate sulle celebrità, hanno iniziato a fallire, segnalando una svolta nella tolleranza delle persone per la manipolazione. Quando Bud Light e Target – aziende con i loro profondi legami con l'establishment – ​​hanno dovuto affrontare una massiccia reazione negativa da parte dei consumatori nel 2023 per le loro campagne di messaggistica sui social, la velocità e l'entità del rifiuto hanno segnato un cambiamento significativo nel comportamento dei consumatori. Importanti società di investimento come BlackRock hanno dovuto affrontare una resistenza senza precedenti di fronte alle iniziative ESG, facendo registrare flussi di denaro in uscita significativi che le hanno costrette a ricalibrare il loro approccio. Persino l'influenza delle celebrità ha perso il suo potere di plasmare l'opinione pubblica: quando decine di celebrità di prima categoria si sono unite a sostegno di un unico candidato alle elezioni del 2024, il loro sostegno coordinato non solo non è riuscito a influenzare gli elettori, ma si è ritorto contro di loro, suggerendo una crescente stanchezza del pubblico nei confronti del consenso artificiale.

Il pubblico sta riconoscendo sempre di più questi schemi di manipolazione. Quando video virali mostrano decine di conduttori di telegiornali che leggono copioni identici riguardo una “minaccia alla nostra democrazia”, ​​la facciata del giornalismo indipendente crolla, rivelando il continuo funzionamento di un controllo narrativo sistematico. L'autorevolezza dei media generalisti sta crollando, con frequenti rivelazioni di narrazioni artificiose e fonti travisate che scoperchiano la persistenza di sistemi di comunicazione centralizzati.

Persino l'industria del fact-checking, progettata per rafforzare le narrazioni ufficiali, si scontra con un crescente scetticismo man mano che le persone scoprono che questi arbitri “indipendenti” della verità sono spesso finanziati dalle stesse strutture di potere che affermano di monitorare. I presunti custodi della verità fungono invece da garanti del pensiero accettabile, e le loro piste di finanziamento portano direttamente alle organizzazioni che dovrebbero supervisionare.

La presa di coscienza pubblica si estende oltre i messaggi aziendali, fino a una più ampia consapevolezza che i cambiamenti sociali apparentemente organici sono spesso frutto di ingegneria. Ad esempio, mentre la maggior parte delle persone è venuta a conoscenza del Tavistock Institute solo attraverso le recenti controversie sull'assistenza nei confronti dell'affermazione di genere, la loro reazione suggerisce una consapevolezza più profonda: che i cambiamenti culturali a lungo accettati come evoluzione naturale potrebbero invece avere autori istituzionali. Sebbene ancora pochi comprendano il ruolo storico del Tavistock nel plasmare la cultura fin dai tempi dei nostri nonni, un numero crescente di persone si chiede se trasformazioni sociali apparentemente spontanee possano essere state deliberatamente orchestrate.

Questa crescente consapevolezza segnala un cambiamento fondamentale: man mano che il pubblico diventa più consapevole dei metodi di manipolazione, l'efficacia di questi sistemi di controllo inizia a diminuire. Ciononostante il sistema è progettato per provocare intense risposte emotive – più sono oltraggiose, meglio è – proprio per impedire un'analisi critica. Mantenendo il pubblico in un costante stato di indignazione, sia difendendo che attaccando figure come Trump o Musk, ciò distrae dall'esame delle strutture di potere sottostanti in cui queste figure operano. L'acuto stato emotivo funge da scudo perfetto contro l'indagine razionale.

Prima di esaminare in dettaglio gli odierni meccanismi di controllo digitale, l'evoluzione dai monopoli hardware di Edison alle operazioni psicologiche del Tavistock fino ai sistemi di controllo algoritmico di oggi rivela più di una semplice progressione storica: mostra come ogni fase si sia intenzionalmente basata sulla precedente per raggiungere lo stesso obiettivo. Il controllo fisico della distribuzione dei media si è evoluto nella manipolazione psicologica dei contenuti, ora automatizzata attraverso sistemi digitali. Man mano che i sistemi di intelligenza artificiale diventano più sofisticati, non si limitano ad automatizzare questi meccanismi di controllo, ma li perfezionano, imparando e adattandosi in tempo reale attraverso miliardi di interazioni. Possiamo visualizzare come distinti domini di potere – finanza, media, intelligence e cultura – siano confluiti in una rete integrata di controllo sociale. Mentre inizialmente questi sistemi operavano in modo indipendente, ora operano come una rete unificata, ognuno dei quali rafforza e amplifica gli altri. Questo quadro, perfezionato nel corso di un secolo, raggiunge la sua massima espressione nell'era digitale, dove gli algoritmi automatizzano ciò che un tempo richiedeva un elaborato coordinamento tra le autorità umane.

La fine del gioco digitale

Le piattaforme digitali odierne rappresentano il culmine dei metodi di controllo sviluppati nel corso dell'ultimo secolo. Laddove un tempo i ricercatori dovevano studiare manualmente le dinamiche di gruppo e le risposte psicologiche, i sistemi di intelligenza artificiale ora eseguono miliardi di esperimenti in tempo reale, perfezionando costantemente le loro tecniche di influenza attraverso l'analisi massiva dei dati e il monitoraggio comportamentale. Ciò che Thomas Edison ottenne attraverso il controllo fisico dei film, le aziende tecnologiche moderne ora lo realizzano attraverso algoritmi e la moderazione automatizzata dei contenuti.

La convergenza tra sorveglianza, algoritmi e sistemi finanziari rappresenta non solo un'evoluzione tecnica, ma anche un'escalation di portata inimmaginabile. Questa convergenza è a tutti gli effetti intenzionale. Si pensi che Facebook è stato lanciato lo stesso giorno in cui la DARPA ha chiuso “LifeLog”, il loro progetto per tracciare “l'intera esistenza” di una persona online. O che le principali piattaforme tecnologiche ora impiegano numerosi ex-agenti dei servizi segreti nei loro team “Trust & Safety”, per determinare quali contenuti vengano amplificati o soppressi.

I social media acquisiscono dati comportamentali dettagliati, che gli algoritmi analizzano per prevedere e modellare le azioni degli utenti. Questi dati alimentano sempre più i sistemi finanziari attraverso il credit scoring, la pubblicità mirata e le valute digitali delle banche centrali (CBDC). Insieme, questi elementi creano un circuito chiuso in cui la sorveglianza perfeziona il targeting, modella gli incentivi economici e fa rispettare le norme dell'ordine dominante al livello più granulare. Questa evoluzione si manifesta in modi diversi:

• Il monopolio infrastrutturale di Edison è diventato la proprietà della piattaforma;

• Gli studi in psicologia del Tavistock sono diventati gli algoritmi dei social media;

• L'infiltrazione mediatica dell'Operazione Mockingbird è diventata moderazione automatizzata dei contenuti;

• I controlli morali del Codice Hays sono diventati le “linee guida della community”.

Più nello specifico, il progetto originale di controllo di Edison si è evoluto in forma digitale:

• Il suo controllo delle apparecchiature di produzione è diventato la proprietà della piattaforma e l'infrastruttura cloud;

• Il controllo della distribuzione nelle sale cinematografiche è diventato la visibilità algoritmica;

• L'applicazione dei brevetti è diventata i Termini di servizio;

• La blacklist finanziaria è diventata la demonetizzazione;

• La sua definizione di contenuto “autorizzato” è diventata “standard della community”.

Il monopolio brevettuale di Edison gli ha permesso di stabilire quali film potevano essere proiettati e dove, proprio come le piattaforme tecnologiche odierne utilizzano Termini di servizio, diritti di proprietà intellettuale e visibilità algoritmica per determinare quali contenuti raggiungono il pubblico. Laddove Edison poteva semplicemente negare ai cinema l'accesso ai film, le piattaforme moderne possono silenziosamente ridurre la visibilità attraverso lo “shadow banning” o la demonetizzazione.

Questa evoluzione dal controllo manuale a quello algoritmico riflette un secolo di perfezionamento. Laddove il Codice Hays vietava esplicitamente i contenuti, i sistemi di intelligenza artificiale ora li deprioritizzano in modo sottile; laddove l'Operazione Mockingbird richiedeva redattori umani, gli algoritmi di raccomandazione ora modellano automaticamente il flusso di informazioni. I meccanismi non sono scomparsi: sono diventati invisibili, automatizzati e molto più efficaci.

La pandemia ha dimostrato con quanta accuratezza e rapidità i moderni sistemi di controllo possano creare consenso e imporre il rispetto delle norme. Nel giro di poche settimane i principi scientifici consolidati sull'immunità naturale, la trasmissione all'aperto e la protezione mirata sono stati sostituiti da una nuova ortodossia. Gli algoritmi dei social media sono stati programmati per amplificare contenuti basati sulla paura, sopprimendo al contempo punti di vista alternativi, mentre le testate giornalistiche coordinavano i messaggi per mantenere il controllo narrativo e le pressioni finanziarie garantivano il rispetto delle norme istituzionali. Proprio come la precoce conquista delle istituzioni mediche da parte di Rockefeller un secolo fa ha plasmato i confini della conoscenza accettabile, la risposta alla pandemia ha dimostrato quanto questo sistema possa attivarsi in modo efficace in caso di crisi. Gli stessi meccanismi che un tempo definivano la medicina “scientifica” rispetto a quella “alternativa” ora determinano quali approcci di salute pubblica possono essere discussi e quali sistematicamente soppressi.

Gli scienziati della Dichiarazione di Great Barrington hanno sperimentato sulla propria pelle cosa significa essere cancellati non solo dalla censura classica, ma dalla mano invisibile della soppressione algoritmica: le loro opinioni sepolte nei risultati di ricerca, le loro discussioni segnalate come disinformazione, la loro reputazione professionale messa in discussione da campagne mediatiche coordinate. Questa tripletta di soppressione ha reso invisibili le opinioni dissenzienti, dimostrando come le piattaforme moderne possano convergere con il potere statale per cancellare l'opposizione mantenendo l'illusione di una supervisione indipendente. La maggior parte degli utenti non si rende mai conto di ciò che non vede: la censura più efficace è invisibile ai suoi obiettivi.

L'acquisizione di Twitter da parte di Elon Musk ha offerto uno spiraglio di luce, svelando pratiche precedentemente nascoste come lo shadow banning e la soppressione algoritmica dei contenuti attraverso la pubblicazione dei Twitter Files. Queste rivelazioni hanno dimostrato quanto le piattaforme avessero integrato l'influenza del governo federale nelle loro politiche di moderazione, sia attraverso pressioni dirette che attraverso l'adesione volontaria, cancellando il dissenso con il pretesto di mantenere gli standard della comunità. Ciononostante anche Musk ha riconosciuto i limiti della libertà di espressione in questo contesto, affermando che “libertà di parola non significa libertà di accesso”. Questa ammissione sottolinea una realtà duratura: anche sotto una nuova leadership, le piattaforme rimangono vincolate dagli algoritmi e dagli incentivi che plasmano visibilità, influenza e redditività economica.

Forse la massima espressione di questa evoluzione è la proposta di introduzione delle valute digitali delle banche centrali, le quali trasformano i meccanismi di controllo sociale in infrastrutture finanziarie. La fusione di metriche ESG con la valuta digitale crea un controllo granulare senza precedenti: ogni acquisto, ogni transazione, ogni scelta economica diventa soggetta a un punteggio automatizzato di conformità sociale. Questa fusione di sorveglianza finanziaria e controllo comportamentale rappresenta la massima espressione dei sistemi di controllo che hanno avuto origine con i monopoli fisici di Edison. Integrando la sorveglianza nella valuta stessa, stati e aziende acquisiscono la capacità di monitorare, limitare e manipolare le transazioni in base al rispetto dei criteri ufficiali, dai limiti di utilizzo dell'anidride carbonica alle metriche di diversità fino ai punteggi di credito sociale. Questi sistemi potrebbero rendere il dissenso non solo punibile, ma anche economicamente impossibile, limitando l'accesso a beni di prima necessità come cibo, alloggio e trasporti per coloro che non rispettano i comportamenti approvati.

Ciò che ha avuto inizio con l'attento studio della psicologia di massa condotto dal Tavistock, testato attraverso i rudimentali esperimenti emotivi di Facebook e perfezionato attraverso moderni sistemi algoritmici, rappresenta oltre un secolo di evoluzione del controllo sociale. Ogni fase si è basata sulla precedente: dai monopoli fisici alla manipolazione psicologica all'automazione digitale. I social media odierni non si limitano a studiare il comportamento umano, ma lo plasmano algoritmicamente, automatizzando la manipolazione psicologica di massa attraverso miliardi di interazioni quotidiane.

Scollegarsi da Matrix: un percorso di ritorno alla realtà

Comprendere questi sistemi è il primo passo verso la liberazione. Man mano che il meccanismo del controllo raggiunge il suo apice, aumentano anche le opportunità di resistenza. La fine del potere centralizzato presenta un paradosso: gli stessi sistemi progettati per limitare la libertà hanno al loro interno le proprie vulnerabilità.

Sebbene l'evoluzione dai monopoli fisici di Edison agli odierni controlli algoritmici invisibili possa sembrare schiacciante, rivela una verità cruciale: questi meccanismi sono costruiti, e ciò che è costruito può essere smantellato o aggirato.

Possiamo già intravedere barlumi di resistenza. Come ho osservato nella mia indagine sulle origini delle Big Tech, le persone chiedono sempre più trasparenza e autenticità, e una volta che vedono questi sistemi di controllo, non li dimenticano più. La reazione pubblica contro l'evidente strumentalizzazione ideologica – dalle campagne di sensibilizzazione aziendale alla censura delle piattaforme – suggerisce una presa di coscienza di questi metodi di controllo. Il rifiuto pubblico delle reti di informazione aziendali a favore del giornalismo indipendente, l'esodo di massa dai social media manipolativi verso alternative decentralizzate e il crescente movimento verso la costruzione di comunità locali dimostrano come la consapevolezza porta all'azione. L'ascesa di piattaforme impegnate a favore della libertà di parola, anche all'interno di sistemi centralizzati, dimostra che alternative alla manipolazione algoritmica sono possibili. Sostenendo la trasparenza, riducendo la dipendenza dalla moderazione automatizzata dei contenuti e supportando il libero scambio di idee, queste piattaforme sfidano lo status quo e contrastano il predominio delle narrazioni centralizzate. Basandosi su questi principi, le reti veramente decentralizzate rappresentano la nostra migliore speranza di resistenza: eliminando completamente i controlli, offrono il massimo potenziale per contrastare il controllo gerarchico e favorire l'espressione autentica.

La battaglia per la libertà di coscienza è oggi la nostra lotta più importante. Senza di essa, non siamo attori autonomi, ma personaggi non giocanti (PNG) nel gioco di qualcun altro, che compiono scelte apparentemente libere all'interno di parametri attentamente costruiti. Ogni volta che mettiamo in discussione una raccomandazione algoritmica, o cerchiamo voci indipendenti, incriniamo la matrice di controllo. Quando costruiamo comunità locali di persona e supportiamo piattaforme decentralizzate, creiamo spazi che vanno oltre la manipolazione algoritmica. Questi non sono solo atti di resistenza: sono passi verso la rivendicazione della nostra autonomia come attori umani consapevoli piuttosto che come PNG.

La scelta tra coscienza autentica e comportamento programmato richiede discernimento quotidiano. Possiamo consumare passivamente contenuti curati, o cercare attivamente prospettive diverse; possiamo accettare suggerimenti algoritmici, o scegliere consapevolmente le nostre fonti di informazione; possiamo isolarci in bolle digitali, o costruire comunità di resistenza nel mondo reale.

La nostra liberazione inizia con la consapevolezza: questi sistemi di controllo, sebbene potenti, non sono inevitabili. Sono stati costruiti e possono essere smantellati. Abbracciando la creatività, promuovendo connessioni autentiche e ripristinando la nostra sovranità, non ci limitiamo a resistere alla matrice di controllo, ma rivendichiamo il nostro diritto fondamentale a essere artefici del nostro destino. Il futuro appartiene a coloro che sono abbastanza consapevoli da vedere il sistema, abbastanza coraggiosi da rifiutarlo e abbastanza creativi da costruire qualcosa di migliore.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He goes on as poignantly:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here’s what it looked like in Cyprus:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Reprinted with permission from International Man.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Video Link

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Reprinted with permission from The Unz Review.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How Healthcare Became Sickcare (March 18, 2022)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And the politicians love every bit of it…

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

It’s a laundering operation.

Here’s how it works:

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

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

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

Read the Whole Article

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Reprinted with permission from Future of Freedom Foundation.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Strategic partners Russia–China get on board 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We want war against Russia and China 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This article was originally published on Taki’s Magazine.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Miller: They’re a sovereign country

Said: That received $22 billion

Miller: That number isn’t correct

Lee: What is correct number

Miller:… pic.twitter.com/4a4w7TMJAD

— Assal Rad (@AssalRad) October 8, 2024

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

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

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

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

Call it the Trumpanyahu administration.

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Today, July 4, America celebrates the 249th anniversary of the adoption of our Declaration of Independence.

On July 4, 1837, John Quincy Adams said these words about Independence Day:

Why is it that, next to the birthday of the Savior of the world, your most joyous and most venerated festival returns on this day [Independence Day]? . . . Is it not that, in the chain of human events, the birthday of the nation is indissolubly linked with the birthday of the Savior? That it forms a leading event in the progress of the Gospel dispensation? Is it not that the Declaration of Independence first organized the social compact on the foundation of the Redeemer’s mission upon earth? That it laid the cornerstone of human government upon the first precepts of Christianity, and gave to the world the first irrevocable pledge of the fulfillment of the prophecies, announced directly from Heaven at the birth of the Savior and predicted by the greatest of the Hebrew prophets six hundred years before?

Adams was exactly right. The United States of America is the only nation in human history established by (mostly) Christian people upon 2,000 years of Christian thought and God’s Natural Laws and dedicated to the purpose of religious and personal liberty and equal justice under the law.

When I was being interviewed for a documentary movie (I’m featured in 19 full-length documentary films and TV specials), the producer asked me to iterate the basic principles upon which America was founded. Based on my study of the Declaration, Constitution, Bill of Rights and the copious supplemental writings of the Founding Fathers, here, I believe, are the principles upon which America was founded:

1. That man is created equal under God, and, as such, human life is a sacred gift of God.

2. That the Natural rights of the individual are unalienable and superior to the will of the state.

3. That government exists to protect the Natural rights and liberties of man, not to provide man with public benefits and favors.

4. That a man is innocent until proven guilty, that he has the Natural right to a trial by jury and the right to a defense attorney.

5. That people have a Natural right to choose their own form of government.

6. That individuals have a Natural right and duty to bear arms for their own protection and the protection of their communities.

7. That the power and reach of the central government needs to be limited, being held in check by independent sovereign states, free, independent juries and state citizen militias.

8. That religious liberty is the core of America’s freedoms.

9. That the people have a Natural right and duty to alter or abolish any government that has become tyrannical.

10. That America was created as a constitutional republic.

11. That only sound money would be used as legal tender so as to keep the federal government from amassing excessive debt.

12. That America would always promote and protect a free market economy with limited governmental interference.

13. That a man’s home is his castle and his personal property can never be seized except by arduous due process.

14. That a free society depends upon the acceptance and application of God’s Natural Laws relating to the pursuit of happiness and peace, upon governmental adherence to the Law of Nations and upon the promotion of our Creator’s foundational moral code of human conduct.

15. That liberty depends upon the unfettered exercise of the Christian faith, including strong, uninhibited preaching from America’s pulpits.

The Declaration begins:

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world. 

The Declaration ends:

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. — And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.

Here are a few statements from America’s founders after the Declaration was approved by Congress:

John Hancock said,

There! His Majesty can now read my name without spectacles. And he can double the reward on my head. (The Crown had put a reward of 500 pounds sterling on Hancock’s head. That amounts to over $140,000 in today’s money.)

And never forget that John Hancock’s famous signature would not have even been on the Declaration of Independence had not Pastor Jonas Clark of the Church of Lexington and several of his brave congregants risked their lives to save Hancock from the British troops who had marched on Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775, for the purpose of arresting (and killing) Hancock and Sam Adams (who was also protected by the men of the Church at Lexington) and seizing the arms of the colonists.

George Washington said,

The preservation of the sacred fire of liberty, and the destiny of the republican model of Government, are justly considered as deeply, perhaps as finally staked, on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people.

Thomas Paine said,

Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it.

Stephen Hopkins, a signer of the Declaration from Rhode Island, said as he signed the document,

My hand trembles, but my heart does not.

Indeed, Hopkins (and the rest of the signers) had reason to tremble. Of the 56 men who signed the Declaration of Independence, nine died of wounds or hardships during the war. Five were captured, imprisoned and tortured. Several lost wives, children or entire families. Two wives were brutalized and tortured. All were, at one time or another, the victims of manhunts and driven from their homes by British soldiers. Twelve signers had their homes completely burned. Seventeen lost everything they owned.

Carter Braxton, a wealthy planter and merchant, saw his ships swept from the seas by the British Navy. He sold his home and properties to pay his debts and died in rags.

Thomas McKean was so hounded by the British that he was forced to move his family constantly. He served in Congress without pay, and his family was kept in hiding. His possessions were seized by the British, and he died in poverty.

At the Battle of Yorktown, Thomas Nelson Jr. noted that British General Cornwallis was using his home for his headquarters. Out of respect to Nelson, General Washington refused to fire on the dwelling. Nelson privately urged Washington to open fire on his home, saying it was no longer his home but was now the headquarters of the enemy. The home was subsequently destroyed. Nelson died bankrupt.

Francis Lewis had his home and properties destroyed by the British. They jailed his wife, and she died within a few months.

John Hart was driven from his wife’s bedside as she was dying. Their 13 children fled for their lives. His fields and his gristmill were laid to waste. For more than a year, he lived in forests and caves, returning home to find his wife dead and all of his 13 children vanished. He never saw them again.

The two patriots most responsible for the Declaration of Independence, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, both died on the same day: July 4, 1826—the 50th anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration. Daniel Webster gave the eulogy for both men on August 2 of that year. He concluded his remarks with these words:

It [the Declaration of Independence] is my living sentiment, and by the blessing of God, it shall be my dying sentiment. Independence now and independence forever.

Amen! This should be the living and dying sentiment of every American.

Reprinted with permission from Chuck Baldwin Live.

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There were three independence movements in America prior to the War to Prevent Southern Independence (1861-1865).  The American Revolution was a war of secession to gain independence from the British empire.  The New England Federalists plotted to secede from the union beginning with the Jefferson presidency (1801) and culminating with their Hartford Secession Convention of 1814 where in the end they decided to remain in the union, confident that New Englanders could control and dominate it (and they of course were right).

A mostly forgotten independence movement is the 1850s secession movements in “the middle states” – New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland – where there was a widespread desire to secede from the Washington, D.C. empire.  (See William C. Wright, The Secession Movement in the Middle Atlantic States).  These states contained secessionists who wanted to join a Southern confederacy, form their own confederacy of states, and to just allow the South to secede in peace.  New Jersey had the largest secession movement, followed by New York City and New York state’s Hudson Valley.

The most popular position was to allow the Southern states to secede in peace, giving the lie to the refrain by “mainstream” historians that there was “unity” in the North regarding the invasion of the South in 1861.  Edward Everett, the vice presidential candidate of the Constitutional Union Party in 1860, said that “To expect to hold fifteen States in the Union by force is preposterous . . . too monstrous to be entertained for a moment.”

The majority of Maryland’s state assembly favored peaceful secession but in1861 the Lincoln regime imprisoned all of them, thereby prohibiting them from meeting to discuss the issue of peaceful secession.  At the time most Marylanders believed that forcing a state at gunpoint to remain in the union and governed by Washington, D.C. would destroy the founders’ concept of a voluntary union.

Fernando Wood, the mayor of New York City at the time, wanted the city to secede from the state and the U.S. and become a free trade zone.  (The Republican party, on the other hand, wanted to increase the average tariff rate from 15% to the 50% range).  The New York state legislature issued a resolution on January 31, 1861 condemning the use of force to force the Southern states to remain in the union.  Horatio Seymour, a former governor of New York, supported the creation of an independent “Central Confederacy” that would also secede from the Washington, D.C. empire.  New York Times editor Henry J. Raymond favored peaceful secession as did New York Tribune editor Horace Greeley.

Pennsylvania being a steel industry state, the Republican party there was strongly protectionist and pro-Lincoln, but the state Democratic party supported peaceful secession.  William C. Wright wrote that “The leadership of the [Pennsylvania] Democratic Party as well as most of its rank and file favored a policy of no coercion.”

New Jersey, “more than any of the other five Middle Atlantic states, said William C. Wright, supported the creation of a Central Confederacy” and its congressional delegation supported peaceful secession of the Southern states, as did a large majority of the state’s newspapers.

Delaware had strong support for a Central Confederacy as well, but Lincoln ordered the Federal army to occupy the state and, as with Maryland, prevent the state legislature from discussing the issue.  The “First State” was prevented from declaring the union to be voluntary under threat of bombardment by its own federal government.

What all of this shows is that: Secession was the very principle of the American Revolution; the New England Federalists, led by George Washington’s Secretary of State Timothy Pickering of Massachusetts,  understood this when they strategized over and plotted peaceful secession for thirteen years; at the outset of the War to Prevent Southern Independence everyone understood the union to be voluntary and not coerced, as with the twentieth century Soviet union.

Lincoln dreamed up a new and ahistorical view of the American constitution and forced his view on the country at gunpoint.  His theory, as summarized by legal scholar James Ostrowski, is as follows:

1. No state may ever secede from the Union for any reason.
2. If any state attempts to secede, the federal government shall invade such a state with sufficient military force to suppress the secession.
3. The federal government may require all states to raise militias to be used to suppress the seceding state (or states).
4. After suppressing the secession, the federal government may rule by martial law until such time as the state accepts permanent federal supremacy.
5. After the secession is suppressed, the federal government may force the states to adopt new state constitutions imposed upon them by federal military authorities.
6. The president may, on his own authority and without consulting any other branch of government, suspend the Bill of Rights and the writ of Habeas Corpus.

If conservative self-proclaimed constitutionalists believe that all of this is constitutional, then they obviously possess a different constitutional document than you and I do.  Moreover, the reason why all of the above is essentially a forgotten part of American history is that it flatly contradicts the Official History concocted by the victors after the War to Prevent Southern Independence.

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