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The general public is completely unaware of the real stakes in the negotiations between Washington and Tehran. This article presents a situation in which lies have been piling up over three decades, making any progress particularly difficult. Contrary to popular belief, the nuclear issue in Iran is not whether Tehran will acquire an atomic bomb, but whether it will be able to help Palestine without resorting to weapons.

A month and a half ago, I announced that even before concluding peace in Ukraine, President Donald Trump would open negotiations with Iran [1]. As usual, commentators steeped in Joe Biden’s ideology showered me with sarcasm, while my colleagues, specialists in international affairs, noted my observations [2].

The difference between the two lay in their understanding of the negotiations in Ukraine. For the former, it was Donald Trump’s revenge against Volodymyr Zelensky, or a genuflection before Vladimir Putin. For the latter, it was, on the contrary, a desire for peace with Russia in order to devote US resources to its economic recovery.

It follows that the two sides approach the Iranian issue differently. For the former, it is a matter of continuing the chaos that began during the first term with the withdrawal from the nuclear agreement (JCPOA). Conversely, for the latter, it is a desire for peace with Iran, given that it is the only regional power that supports the resistance to Israel.

In early March 2024, President Donald Trump sent a letter to the leader of the Revolution, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The existence of this document was mentioned by the author himself during his speech to Congress on March 4, and then debated in the press. According to Sky News Arabia, which read this document, Donald Trump called for negotiations, while specifying: “If you reject the outstretched hand and choose the path of escalation and support for terrorist organizations, I warn you of a swift and determined response […] I am writing this letter with the aim of opening new horizons for our relations, away from the years of conflict, misunderstandings and unnecessary confrontations that we have witnessed in recent decades […] The time has come to leave hostility behind and open a new page of cooperation and mutual respect.” A historic opportunity presents itself to us today […] We will not stand idly by in the face of your regime’s threats against our people or our allies […] If you are willing to negotiate, so are we. But if you continue to ignore the world’s demands, history will testify that you missed a great opportunity.”

Simultaneously, the United States and the United Kingdom launched several attacks against Ansar Allah in Yemen. Unlike previous attacks, these did not target hidden military targets, but rather political targets scattered among the civilian population. They therefore killed leaders of the movement and many other collateral victims, which constitutes war crimes.

It should be recalled that Ansar Allah, pejoratively referred to by Westerners as the “Houthi family gang” or “the Houthis,” attacks Israeli ships in the Red Sea in order to force Tel Aviv to agree to allow humanitarian aid to pass through to Gaza.

Washington and London, believing that this was hampering international trade, and having failed to obtain approval from the Security Council, resumed the war. They initially targeted military objectives and quickly realized that these, buried deep within the country, could not be significantly affected.

Donald Trump’s letter only arrived in Tehran on March 12, and the Iranian response was slow in coming. It is important to understand that while Tehran was flattered by Washington’s secret handwritten approach, it could not accept several aspects of its behavior.

• First, the United States, faithful to Trump’s Art of the Deal technique, threatened Iran while trying to placate it. International relations are not governed by the same rules as business. Giving in to threats is a sign of weakness that the Iranians could not accept in these negotiations. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei commented on March 28: “The enmity of the United States and Israel has always existed. They threaten to attack us, which we believe is not very likely, but if they commit a misdeed, they will certainly receive a strong blow in return.” If the enemies think they can instigate sedition in the country, the Iranian nation itself will respond to them.” President Donald Trump further emphasized this on March 30, telling NBC News: “If they don’t reach an agreement, there will be bombing. It will be bombing like they’ve never seen before.”

According to the United Nations Charter (Article 2, paragraph 4), “members of the Organization shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.”
The negotiations were therefore compromised before they even began.

• Moreover, massacring the leaders of Ansar Allah was a gratuitous war crime: General Qassem Soleimani, by reorganizing the “Axis of Resistance,” had given Iran’s former proxies their complete freedom. Tehran currently has no influence, other than ideological, over Ansar Allah. Ambassador Amir Saeid Iravani therefore raised these points at the United Nations [3].
• Finally, and most importantly, Donald Trump, by accumulating contradictory signals, did not allow the Iranians to assess his relations with Israel. Does he support the project of a binational state in Palestine (the one promoted by the United Nations)? Or of a Jewish state in Palestine (“Zionism”)? Or that of a “Greater Israel” (“Revisionist Zionism”)? No one knows for sure.

Ultimately, Iran sent a secret response to the secret letter from the United States, and negotiations were able to begin, but only indirectly. That is, the two delegations did not speak directly to each other, but only through a mediator. In this way, Tehran responded to the invitation, but expressed its disapproval of the manner in which it was convened.

Intervening directly, France and the United Kingdom convened a closed-door meeting of the Security Council. Paris and London wished to address several outstanding issues. As nothing has been leaked, it is unclear whether President Emmanuel Macron and Prime Minister Keir Starmer wanted to clarify what had caused all other attempts at negotiations to fail or, on the contrary, to obscure what could have been further obscured.

The following day, March 13, Mohammad Hassan-Nejad Pirkouhi, Director General for International Peace and Security at the Iranian Foreign Ministry, summoned the ambassadors of the United States, France, and the United Kingdom. He criticized them for an “irresponsible and provocative” meeting of the Security Council, which abused UN mechanisms. He emphasized that while Iran no longer respects its commitment not to enrich uranium above 3.67%, it is still respecting its JCPoA commitments to IAEA inspectors and fulfilling its obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

It should be recalled that, generally speaking, Iran, following the United States, withdrew from the JCPoA and the secret bilateral agreements of the time, yet it still observes its JCPoA commitments [4]. In contrast, France and the United Kingdom, while claiming to respect the JCPoA, have taken no measures to address the consequences of the US withdrawal, in violation of the spirit of the text. The United Kingdom immediately responded by stating that it was prepared to reinstate UN sanctions by October 18 (the deadline for this procedure) if Iran did not curb its uranium enrichment. The UN sanctions were, in fact, suspended, not repealed.

Three rounds of indirect negotiations have already taken place. The US delegation was led by Steve Witkoff, President Donald Trump’s special envoy for the Middle East, and the Iranian delegation by Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi. The first and third meetings were held in Muscat and Oman, while the second was held at the Sultanate’s embassy in Rome, in the presence of the Director of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Rafel Grossi of Argentina. Sayyid Badr bin Hamad bin Hamood al-Busaidi, Omani Foreign Minister, acted as mediator at each opportunity, moving back and forth between the delegations.

Numerous statements were made by the US side, accumulating imprecisions and contradictions, both regarding previous rounds of negotiations and especially regarding Washington’s red lines. Each side therefore believes it understands what it wants. In Iran, too, the public debate is particularly obscure. However, we note that one current, drawing lessons from the Libyan and Korean affairs, maintains that if Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini were still alive, he would likely rescind his fatwa condemning weapons of mass destruction and, on the contrary, authorize the atomic bomb. Not because he would now find it moral from a Muslim perspective, but because it would protect Iran from the threats it faces. Indeed, Muammar Gaddafi’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, which was on the verge of acquiring such a bomb, voluntarily dismantled its facilities and received congratulations from Washington before being crushed by it. Meanwhile, Kim Jong-un’s Democratic People’s Republic of Korea still manages to resist the Pentagon because it possesses the bomb and boasts about it.

On April 22, in a lengthy interview with Time Magazine, President Donald Trump clarified his thinking. In it, he declared that he had withdrawn the United States from the JCPoA and ordered the assassination of General Qassem Soleimani in order to deprive Iran of its ability to fuel resistance against Israel; a precondition for regional peace. He had never explained this, and this helps us understand his intention during these negotiations. [5]

Meanwhile, Benjamin Netanyahu’s “revisionist Zionists” (not to be confused with simply “Zionists”), continuing three decades of lies, have increased pressure to sabotage the ongoing contacts [6]. In Washington, their chief leader, Elliott Abrams, published a memo [7] outlining what he calls “the seven deadly sins” of previous US administrations toward Iran. This document helps us understand the position of the warmongers.

According to this note, the JCPoA negotiated by the Obama administration would not have succeeded in curbing Iran’s nuclear ambitions and, by returning some blocked funds, would have given it the means to fight Israel. However, during the 5+1 talks in Lausanne and Geneva, all the actors (except the United States represented by Secretary of State John Kerry) had reached the conclusion that there had been no military nuclear program in Iran since 1988 and the fatwa of Imam Ruhollah Khomeini. This point, always contested by Israel, was just confirmed on March 24 by the Director of US Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, during her Senate hearing and in her annual report on threats against her country [8]. It is absolutely clear to Germany, China, France, the United Kingdom and Russia (and probably to many others) that the Israeli accusation is based on nothing; that it’s pure deception.

• 1) Based on this oft-repeated lie, the “revisionist Zionists” rely on the fact that Iran, in response to the United States’ withdrawal from the JCPoA and the secret agreements it signed with John Kerry, has continued its uranium enrichment to 60%, and demand that Tehran be banned from all uranium enrichment.
This demand must be clearly understood: it would prohibit Iran from any civilian program, including, for example, radiation treatments that are practiced by Western countries in all their hospitals.

This claim amounts to a desire to return Iran to underdevelopment. It corresponds to the way in which certain European states have banned their colonies from modern activities in order to maintain their domination.

2) The “revisionist Zionists” continue by demanding that the negotiations not be limited to the nuclear program, but also include the issue of missiles. For years, France and the United Kingdom have falsely claimed that Tehran’s development of ballistic and hypersonic missiles violates UN sanctions. To do so, they deliberately confuse the research and production of ballistic missiles with the nuclear warheads they could carry if Iran possessed them.

Russia and China have repeatedly intervened to remind the Security Council “that none of the existing international instruments and mechanisms, including the Missile Technology Control Regime or the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, explicitly or implicitly prohibits Iran from developing missile and space programs.” » [9]

During the Iranian bombing of Israel on October 1, 2024, it turned out that all Iranian missiles and drones missed their targets or were shot down in flight, with the exception of all hypersonic missiles, which all hit their targets. This issue, unrelated to nuclear matters, is therefore essential for Israel.

• 3) The “revisionist Zionists” also demand that monitoring be carried out on Western terms, not Iranian terms. However, for the time being, Iran is subject, with its own consent, to the strictest IAEA verification procedures ever enacted. Tehran complies scrupulously, and it is difficult to see why new ones should be imposed on it, unless one wants to create a problem where none exists.

• 4) The “revisionist Zionists” continue by asserting that the threat of US force must not be abandoned prematurely. Yet this is the only civilized way to proceed, as set out in the United Nations Charter (Article 2, paragraph 4) cited above.

Knowing that Israel lacks the means to attack Iran alone and that Tel Aviv continues to pressure Washington to draw it into a war against Tehran, it is easy to understand what this fourth point conceals.

• 5) Then, the revisionist Zionists oppose the easing of UN sanctions and unilateral coercive measures by the United States, the United Kingdom, and the European Union on the grounds that this would encourage Iran to finance terrorism. We are not talking here about the assassinations Tehran orders abroad, but about its support for Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, and the Resistance in Iraq, knowing that it no longer provides financial and military support to Ansar Allah. However, the conflicts in Palestine, Syria, and Iraq are all instances of popular resistance to Israeli military actions. They are legitimate under international law (which does not mean that all actions carried out in their name are legitimate).

This demand, therefore, aims exclusively to allow Israel to violate UN resolutions even longer, not to prevent their violation by Iran.

• 6 and 7) The “revisionist Zionists” conclude by demanding that Iran’s other “malign behaviors” not be ignored and that anti-terrorism sanctions not be eased to gain a nuclear advantage. However, Iran, like other states, does not engage in “malign behaviors” toward the United States. What we’re talking about here is Iranian support for the resistance to Zionism, which revisionist Zionists understandably fear will resume significant financial support.

This lengthy discussion has presented the substance of the negotiations between Washington and Tehran. It should be noted that Donald Trump’s team is riddled with figures convinced by the rhetoric of the revisionist Zionists. Many congressmen, both Democrats and Republicans, do not approach the Middle East through their own experience, but through the prism of their main donor, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Merav Ceren, who has just been appointed head of the Israel-Iran portfolio at the White House National Security Council, is a dual national, an officer in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) [10]. However, the head of the US delegation to Oman, Steve Witkoff, is a real estate developer working in several countries, not only in the United States, but also in Muslim states. He has already demonstrated his independence of mind by negotiating on the Ukrainian issue and listening to the arguments of both sides. There is no reason, and certainly not his Jewish faith, to suspect him of bias. Thus, he reacted positively when the Iranians reiterated their proposal to make the Middle East a nuclear-weapon-free zone like Latin America [11] ; a proposal… that includes Israel.

The fourth round of negotiations will be held on May 3. Both sides now realize that peace will depend on Donald Trump’s ability to break with the revisionist Zionists and make concrete progress on the fate of the Palestinians.

—

[1] “After Ukraine, Iran?”, by Thierry Meyssan, Translation Roger Lagassé, Voltaire Network, 20 March 2025.

[2] « La paix de Trump en Ukraine face à la “paix mondiale” de Poutine (avec la Chine), de Gaza à l’Iran », par Alfredo Jalife-Rahme , Traduction Maria Poumier, La Jornada (Mexique), Réseau Voltaire, 21 mars 2025.

[3] “Iran denounces US threats to peace”, by Amir Saeid Iravani , Voltaire Network, 31 March 2025.

[4] “Iran denies non-compliance with JCPoA and Resolution 2231”, by Amir Saeid Iravani , Voltaire Network, 9 December 2024.

[5] «Full Transcript of Donald Trump’s ‘100 Days’ Interview With Time», Eric Cortellessa and Sam Jacobs, Time Magazine, April 25, 2025.

[6] “Who’s afraid of Iran’s civilian nuclear programme?”, by Thierry Meyssan, Voltaire Network, 27 July 2010.

[7] «Avoiding the seven deadly sins of a bad iranian nuclear deal», March 24, 2025.

[8] «Annual Threat Assessment of the US Intelligence Community», Office of the Director of National Intelligence | March 2025.

[9] For instance : “Russia denounces Western accusations against Iran”, by Vasily Nebenzya , Voltaire Network, 8 June 2022.

[10] «Trump’s NSC Director for Israel and Iran Previously Worked for Israeli Ministry of Defense», Ryan Grim & Saagar Enjeti, Drop Site, April 21, 2025.

[11] “Negotiations between Iran and the United States are progressing in Oman; a nuclear Tlatelolco Treaty for the Middle East?”, by Alfredo Jalife-Rahme , La Jornada (Mexico) , Voltaire Network, 22 April 2025.

The post The Stakes of Donald Trump’s Negotiations With the Islamic Republic of Iran appeared first on LewRockwell.

The details of the ceasefire negotiations between the U.S., Europe and Ukraine continue to make headlines despite being largely irrelevant for an end of the conflict in Ukraine.

In an interview with Brazilian paper O Globo (in Portuguese) Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov again repeated the Russian demands for peace in Ukraine.

It requires:

• an end of Ukraine’s ban on negotiations with Russia,
• for Ukraine to go back to the status of a neutral and non-aligned country in accordance with the Declaration of State Sovereignty of Ukraine in the 1990’s,
• an end of the policies of legally and physically destroy everything Russian: the language, media, culture, traditions, and Russian orthodoxy
• the international recognition of Russia’s ownership of Crimea, the DPR, LPR and the Kherson and Zaporizhia regions.

There must also be measures to legal fix those positions, to make them permanent and to have enforcement mechanisms.

Also required is, says Lavrov, (edited machine translation):

.. a schedule for the task of de-and desnazifiction in Ukraine, and the lifting of the sanctions, actions, lawsuits and arrest warrants, and the transfer of assets to Russia which are ‘frozen’ in the West. Also, we will look for reliable warranties for the security of the Russian Federation, and against the threats created by the hostile activity of Nato, the European Union and its individual member states on the country’s borders in the west.

There is then no change in the Russian position since its President Vladimir Putin explained it at length on June 14 2024.

Meanwhile the U.S. is very publicly negotiating with Ukraine and Europe about some ceasefire conditions along the lines the pro-Ukrainian (and neo-conservative?) General Kellogg has long promoted (also here):

Kellogg’s implicit assumptions were that Russia is highly vulnerable to a sanctions threat (its economy perceived as being fragile); that it had suffered unsustainably high casualties; and that the war was at a stalemate.

Thus, Kellogg persuaded Trump that Russia would readily agree to the ceasefire terms proposed – albeit terms that were constructed around patently flawed underlying assumptions about Russia and its presumed weaknesses.
…
All of Kellogg’s underlying assumptions lacked any basis in reality. Yet Trump seemingly took them on trust. And despite Steve Witkoff’s subsequent three lengthy personal meetings with President Putin, in which Putin repeatedly stated that he would not accept any ceasefire until a political framework had been first agreed, the Kellogg contingent continued to blandly assume that Russia would be forced to accept Kellogg’s détente because of the claimed serious ‘setbacks’ Russia had suffered in Ukraine.

Given this history, unsurprisingly, the ceasefire framework terms outlined by Rubio this week in Paris reflected those more suited to a party at the point of capitulation, rather than that of a state anticipating achieving its objectives – by military means.

In essence, the Kellogg Plan looked to bring a U.S. ‘win’ on terms aligned to a desire to keep open the option for continuing attritional war on Russia.

In his O Globo interview Lavrov again made it known that Russia can not and will not commit to a temporary freeze of the conflict without having a clear path towards the larger peace agreement.

In sight of this it is funny how Russia has managed to hand the tar-baby of blocking a ceasefire to the (former) Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelenski.

Despite U.S. pressure for a fast deal Russia does not expect any quick resolution of the conflict. It just announced a new unilateral ceasefire from May 8 to May 10, i.e. around the 80th anniversary of its victory in World War II on May 9.

It is another public sign that Russia is willing to adhere to a ceasefire agreement IF the conditions are right.

Trump still tries to behave like a neutral mediator in a conflict between Kiev and Moscow. He wants to impose a peace deal that projects his personal ‘greatness’.

But the U.S. has been and continues to be the main party of the war with Russia while Ukraine is the mere proxy force that does the bleeding. Trump can not impose a fast solution to end the war because he still can not accept that he is a main party in it.

Russia is winning the war. A solution can only be found when the U.S. is ready to (silently) acceptance its defeat.

Trump can still end the war and declare it a “win”. But only if he agrees to the conditions that Russia laid out.

Reprinted with permission from Moon of Alabama.

The post Russia Rejects Trump’s Freeze of the War in Ukraine appeared first on LewRockwell.

Why is it that not a single “COVID” criminal has been indicted by Trump’s Justice Department or – in the case of pardoned criminals such as Dr. Fauci – compelled to testify before Congress and thus be placed in the position of having to tell the truth about what they did or lie about it again and thus be subject to criminal charges on that account?

Why hasn’t there been a single arrest of anyone on the infamous Epstein List?

There was an arrest made recently – of a judge who appears to have been one of Trump’s political enemies. What about enemies of the public such as Fauci and Brix and Albert Bourla and the dozens of state officials who morphed into Gesundheitsfuhrers during the “emergency”?

Well, that might just explain it.

Who declared – and never ended – the “emergency,” even long after it became clear there wasn’t one? Remember: It was the “emergency” that green-lit the Warp Speeding of the mRNA drugs into production without the usual requirements that lots of testing for safety and efficacy be done prior to allowing them on the market. And – in this unique case – there was no market because the drugs were aggressively pushed on people who were told that if they did not take them, they faced the loss of their jobs and very possibly the loss of their status as free Americans. No more working out at the gym or eating out or even entering a store to shop unless you could prove you had been “vaccinated.” ‘That didn’t actually happen, but it came damn close to happening. Many people expected it was going to happen and that was enough to coerce them into getting “vaccinated.”

Does anyone remember?

More finely, has everyone forgotten who declared the “emergency” that set the predicate for everything that followed? More finely still, has everyone forgotten the fact that Trump left the “emergency” in place long enough to assure the selection of his successor, via unprecedented mail-in balloting and election months rather than Election Day? That even after the selection – when he was still legally the president and had the power to end the “emergency,” he failed to do so?

Perhaps that is why not one lower-tier “COVID” criminal has been held accountable for what was done under guise of the “emergency.” Indicting these lower-tier criminals or even calling the pardoned ones, such Fauci, before Congress to be compelled to indict themselves might raise difficult questions. Ones that Trump’s supporters might find awkward and probably for just that reason get very upset when raised. Of a piece with the way ardent “maskers” got very upset when anyone raised questions about “masking.” This reaction being symptomatic when trying to reason with people who believe.

Have we been played – again? Are we who believed Trump – if re-selected – would pursue justice by indicting “COVID” criminals and the creeps on Epstein’s list – similar to the people who believed in “masks”? The overlap is uncomfortable to consider.

But belief wanes as time passes and not one “COVID” criminal has been held accountable and not one of the creeps on Epstein’s list, either. We are told that the federal government is now more “efficient” on account of “waste” and “fraud” having been rooted out by DOGE. There was a temporary high, like the one that attends snorting a line of coke. It felt good to see USAID closed and those scenes of federal “workers” bitching about their lost jobs and perks – all of it paid for by the taxes we’re forced to pay.

But have our taxes been lowered? Does it really matter, at the end of the day, whether the money taken out of our pockets is spent more “efficiently”? Is that supposed to make us happier about being forced to pay?

Has a single thing been done to make government less omnipresent? Less tyrannical? In fact the opposite is being done – as for egregious example the aggressive pushing of what is styled the REAL ID, which is to say a federally mandated internal passport that Americans are being told they must get if they wish to travel by airplane from state to state within the United States. How long before it will be required in order to be allowed to travel by car or otherwise from state to state?

Did you hear that the attorney general has announced your home can be Hut! Hut! Hutted! by government goons without a warrant if said goons claim they say they suspect “illegals” may be within?

These are all impolitic things to bring up in certain quarters because they threaten certain beliefs.

Perhaps, in the end, it is better to think – even when doing so raises questions that challenge our comfortable beliefs.

This originally appeared on Eric Peters Autos.

The post Not One Indictment appeared first on LewRockwell.

On April 20, 2025, Easter Sunday, the Board of Trustees of the World Economic Forum (WEF) called for an extraordinary meeting behind closed doors.

The Board of Trustees includes among others BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, former US Vice President Al Gore, Jordan’s Queen Rania Al Abdullah and European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde as members. BlackRock is the WEF’s most important sponsor. Thus, BlackRock’s voice must weigh accordingly.

What they debated was a new Wall Street Journal (WSJ) article, apparently based on an anonymous whistleblower letter, this time accusing Klaus Schwab and his wife Hilde Schwab of misusing the WEF Foundation’s money and property for personal purposes.

Mentioned were personal massages, luxury air-travel at the WEF’s expense, for personal trips and the use of a CHF 30-million restored historic mansion, paid for with WEF money, to be used for WEF special events, but is mostly used for Klaus Schwab and his family’s personal purposes.

Mr. Schwab apparently also used junior staff to withdraw thousands of dollars from ATM machines for his personal use. Verbally quoting the WSJ: The Schwabs, “mixed their personal affairs with the Forum’s resources.”

The WSJ article also repeated accusations of discrimination, sexual harassment and nepotism within the organization, points already mentioned in a WSJ’s article about a year ago. See this.

The Board opened an immediate investigation into these allegations. Schwab said he would take legal action against the WSJ and decided – or was told – to resign immediately from the Board’s chairmanship. He stepped back last year as President and CEO of the WEF, but assumed the Chair for the Board of Trustees with a timeline through 2027. This timeline was cut short by the whistleblower and the WSJ article.

Screenshot from WSJ

Other WEF executives, especially the Schwab’s children, also exited following a board probe into workplace culture, a topic that has plagued the WEF for years, but came to the fore the first time a year ago.

With immediate effect the Board decided on an interim replacement for Klaus Schwab, a former longtime President and CEO of Nestlé, Peter Brabeck-Letmathe. He was CEO and chairman of the Nestlé Group from 1997 to 2008. Brabeck was deputy chair of the WEF’s Board of Trustees.

Brabeck is not less controversial than Schwab. He was and still is a staunch defender of the idea that water is not a public good. Mr. Brabeck is perhaps best known for declaring that water is not a human right, but a market commodity. When he led Nestlé, the food giant was one of the global leaders in the privatization of water. Brabeck is also an aggressive promoter of GMOs (genetically modified organisms).

GMO food may have significant negative health effects and especially, it does not allow farmers to collect seeds from one harvest to the next. This has severe implications for farmers, especially in so-called developing countries, or the Global South.

India is a case in point, where GMO seeds were sold without telling the farmers that the plants’ seeds could not reproduce, i.e., could not be used for next year’s harvest. When the farmers realized, they could not afford buying every year GMO seeds, thousands committed suicide, as they were unable to maintain and feed their families.

Nestlé under Mr. Brabeck was also at the forefront of a scandal about powdered milk that should replace breastfeeding.

Nestlé especially targeted Africa, where the product was introduced against healthy common breastfeeding habits. As we also know in the west, breastfeeding provides babies and children with a basic, strong immune system, which powdered milk for infants does not.

In addition, rising prices of Nestlé’s powdered milk made that women could no longer afford it, and since they did not start with breastfeeding, they did not produce breast milk. With the combination of unnatural powdered milk, lack of breastmilk and the natural immune system, many babies got sick and often died.

See this for more details (watch below):

Mr. Brabeck is known for his anti-human and anti-Human Rights stance on many issues growing to ever-more importance in the current geo-political and economic environment we are living.

Mr. Brabeck certainly does not make the WEF a better place. Perhaps to the contrary. For sure, a number of investigations – WEF internals and externals – and lawsuits are already ongoing or pending.

For the full WSJ article, see this.

Screenshot from WSJ

At the outset all of this might look like the globalists agenda is gradually dismantling. Maybe it is, maybe it is not.

Just imagine for a moment a different scenario. During last Easter weekend, several “coincidences” happened basically simultaneously:

• The WEF long-time Chair and founder (1971), Klaus Schwab, resigns and the WEF embarks on a major restructuring, the result of which is not known yet;
• Pope Francis gives his last benediction in his Easter message to hundreds of thousands of his followers in St. Peter’s Square in Vatican City, in Rome, and then he dies the following morning; and
• Hollywood announces the end of its Woke agenda, see this.

Who knows what else happened on that crucial Easter weekend 2025. There are no coincidences. Easter is the celebration of resurrection. The Deep State, or whatever else you may call this evil entity which is currently pretending to run the world, is full of symbolism and rituals.

Coud it be that globalism is sensing an ever-stronger pushback by the people, so they feign a collapse, when in reality, they take the lull in people’s attention to regroup, to reappear later with new much stronger strategies to take over the world?

It is like a ceasefire which is used by the weaker to re-arm and re-strategize their aggression. This is not just a hint to the Ukraine ceasefire, but a tactic followed worldwide.

We must be aware that a Cult movement with the monetary power they have behind and over hundred years of preparation, will not just go away. They will fight to the last world-citizen, if they are not defeated before. As Bill Gates once said – not verbatim, but by meaning – in one of his more lucid moments, “even if I disappear, the system is so strong and well prepared, it will continue the same without me.”

We, the People of the world, must make sure that the movement for deglobalization continues back to human rights and basic human values, as well as away from digitization, from the digital Gulag, will continue until we are free and sovereign people again.

And yes, it is possible, if we are aware and conscious.

The original source of this article is Global Research.

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Why would Russia take such an enormous burden off the political West’s back? It was NATO that started all this and pushed us all to the brink of a world-ending thermonuclear confrontation just so it could inflict a strategic defeat on Moscow. Well, now that the tables have turned, there are zero reasons for the Kremlin to pay for damages of the political West’s aggression.

Ever since the special military operation (SMO) started, trying to guess how far Russia would go seems to be everyone’s favorite pastime. Some people think it should secure only areas that are predominantly Russian-speaking, which includes the four oblasts (regions) already under Russian control, namely DNR, LNR, Zaporozhye and Kherson, as well as Kharkov, Nikolayev and Dnepropetrovsk. Along with Crimea, these areas constitute over 40% of former Ukraine’s territory. However, it should be understood that the rest is not as homogeneous as one would think. Namely, Russian is also widely spoken in Chernigov, Sumy, Poltava, Cherkassy, Kiev, Kirovograd and Zhitomir oblasts, as well as in most urban areas throughout the country.

However, due to the disastrous policy of korenizatsiya (Russian: коренизация, roughly translated as “nativization”) during Soviet times, the clear-cut Russian identity of the vast majority of people in the country (with the obvious exception of western regions) was gradually replaced by a loose Ukrainian one. Thus, what we got is a somewhat convoluted definition of so-called “Russian-speaking people”. In reality, these are ethnic Russians who have partially lost their identity or even identify as “Ukrainians”. Their reintegration into the wider ethnic Russian identity would be a gradual process that could take years (if not decades). However, this begs the question – where do you draw the line? What’s more, there’s also the question of strategic security.

Namely, if Russia were to retake only areas where Russian is spoken by the vast majority of inhabitants (80% or more), this would still leave oblasts such as Sumy and Chernigov in the hands of the Kiev regime. No Russian general worth his salt would ever accept such a deal, as it would allow NATO to use them to deploy missiles that could reach Moscow in minutes. In addition, leaving the rest of former Ukraine to the Neo-Nazi junta would mean they’d still be a threat to Russia’s security, regardless of their status within or outside of the EU/NATO. Thus, it’s clear that the process of demilitarization and denazification needs to be implemented in the entire former Ukraine. However, does that mean the Kremlin should retake this ancient Russian land in its entirety?

This is the most complex question of the NATO-orchestrated Ukrainian conflict. On April 24, during a meeting with Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre, US President Donald Trump was asked about concessions Moscow is offering during peace talks. He said that it’s “stopping taking the whole country”, calling it a “pretty big concession”. In practice, this means that the new American administration is aware that Russia has the capacity to retake all of Ukraine and that the fact that it’s not doing this means it wants a peaceful resolution. President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov effectively confirmed this by saying that peace could be accomplished if the Kiev regime forces fully withdraw from the aforementioned four oblasts that joined Russia back in 2022.

The mainstream propaganda machine is already reporting that this was the “first formal indication Putin has given since the war’s early months three years ago that Russia could step back from its maximalist demands”. However, these supposed “maximalist demands” were never enshrined in any official policy or document of the Kremlin. The four oblasts formally joined Russia on September 30, 2022, after most of their inhabitants voted to do so in a referendum. This constitutes approximately 20% of former Ukraine’s territory, which is nowhere near the aforementioned “maximalist demands”. What’s more, the Trump administration is now trying to prevent even this by throwing the “Crimea recognition” carrot.

However, this is not even a question as far as Russia is concerned, as the status of Crimea was resolved over a decade ago. Trump has acknowledged that NATO expansionism caused the conflict, so he’s now offering neutrality for Ukraine, as well as a formal recognition of Crimea as part of Russia. The Kiev regime is adamant that this is “unacceptable”, but such a deal is certainly nothing spectacular for Moscow either. Namely, what guarantees does the Kremlin have that such a deal would be honored? The political West has made countless promises in the last several decades, including the “not one inch to the east” back in 1990. However, this was a blatant lie from which all other conflicts in post-Cold War Europe stem, including Yugoslavia.

Reports in US media suggest that Washington DC will supposedly demand from Russia “to acknowledge Ukraine’s right to maintain its military and defense sector as part of any future peace deal”, with Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff reportedly “expected to present the demand to Putin in the next upcoming round of negotiations”. However, this goes against Moscow’s goals of demilitarization and denazification. Namely, the former Ukrainian military was effectively hijacked by CIA-backed Neo-Nazi organizations and then used to conduct what can only be described as a genocidal war against the people of Donbass and other Russian-speaking regions in NATO-occupied Ukraine. Thus, demilitarization and denazification are inextricably tied.

In practice, this means that the Kremlin cannot tolerate the existence of any form of Ukrainian Armed Forces that aren’t thoroughly vetted and purged of Nazi elements. Even then, these troops would need to give up on all long-range strike capabilities or major assault formations that could be used against Russia. The same goes for the rest of the state apparatus, particularly intelligence services, as these openly espouse terrorist tactics (the latest example being the murder of Russian Major General Yaroslav Moskalik). Without this, the Kremlin won’t even consider any “peace proposal” simply because there can be no peace as long as Nazis are in power. In practice, this means Russia will need to take part in the formation of a new Ukrainian government.

In turn, this suggests that Moscow won’t retake all of Ukraine, as claimed by the mainstream propaganda machine. It’s simply not in its interest to do so. Namely, the NATO-orchestrated Ukrainian conflict destroyed much of the country’s economy while its already catastrophic demographic situation has been exacerbated to a breaking point. With upwards of 15,000,000 refugees (mostly in “evil” Russia, mind you) and internally displaced, the country’s economic viability is virtually gone. Most of those who are left are the elderly, while there are also millions of disabled veterans (many of them forcibly conscripted by the Neo-Nazi junta). Not to mention the fact that well over a million Ukrainian men have died in this NATO-orchestrated conflict.

In other words, why would Russia take this enormous burden off the political West’s back? It was NATO that started all this and pushed us all to the brink of a world-ending thermonuclear confrontation just so it could inflict a strategic defeat on Moscow. Well, now that the tables have turned, there are zero reasons for the Kremlin to pay for damages of the political West’s aggression. Thus, whatever rump state remains of former Ukraine, it will need to be turned into a denazified DMZ (demilitarized zone) that will serve as a buffer between Russia and NATO. What’s more, even then, a lasting peace will be possible only if the world’s most vile racketeering cartel restructures the European security architecture in line with Moscow’s national interests.

This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

The post Would Russia Retake All of Ukraine? appeared first on LewRockwell.

Western Nomenklatura habitually gets “surprised” when outcomes do not match the expectations peddled by their MSM months or years before the reality checks. And of late this becomes more painfully obvious by the day, especially on the ter-rain of US war for Russia’s resources /1-3/. Had they been a bit smarter, and not cut off the Russian information sources (be-cause they disseminate “Russian propaganda” !!!), most of the lies that were spread would have been saved – and with them, the reputation of the “free, democratic” world and its “impeccable information services”. They would have seen through the set ups like Bucha, the systematic bombing by Ukrainians of civil targets in Russia, the multiple terrorist actions by Zelensky’s men, the fakes of Russians bombing civilian targets in Ukraine which in reality is the damage done by Ukrainian projectiles unsuccessfully attempting to shut down Russian precision rockets, the deliberate targeting of their own POW’s in Russian custody resulting – in just two occasions! – in killing close to 200 and wounding another 200 or so…

Had they not shut the Russian sources of information, the latest state of affairs on the front and south slash west of it would alarm all those who fight Russia with the hands of the Ukrainian soldiers. It has transpired that the desertion is taking now waterfall proportions, that the partisan movement is more and more active – not only by revealing target coordinates and the timing of human manning, especially whenever foreign soldiers, officers, “advisors”, etc. are present, and respectively the body count appraisal, but as well carrying out sabotage actions on their own (blowing up fuel reservoirs, manufacturing facilities, railway carriages, etc.) – and that the population at large is much less afraid now to exhibit frustration and anger with the Nazis destructing their land.

Obviously, the lack of such realistic feedback makes it rather difficult to navigate between the string of failures in Mariupol, Soledar, Bahmut/Artemovsk, Avdeevka, etc. and tie them all with lack of equipment/ammo. Even while being mostly not completely educated, under-equipped dummies, the Western “leaders” (“elites” as they’d like to be referred to) now started to comprehend the deep hole they managed to dug themselves into: cheering the lies they’ve been served by the UkroNazis all these have been quick to pride themselves with NATO involvement as a side in the conflict; some semi-idiots even boasted that their own individual country (France, UK,… to name but a few) was being a side. And obviously to top them all the multiple time accused in criminal conduct Gynecologist-in-Chief of the not strictly legitimate supranational European Or-ganization outdid every single one of them, trumpeting how the EuroAtlantic Alliance is united (under her leadership, mind you!) in what was expected to be a successful crusade against Russia, with no lesser target but splinter the great country into dozens of smaller pieces – for presumed (wise, democratic, human-prosperity-serving) control by the Evil Empire…

Now that the end of this Civil war II of Russia /4,5/ is near, all those who exposed themselves as thoroughly irresponsible “political leaders,” “statesmen,” “military leaders” and what have you, need to either bite the bullet or acknowledge defeat. Biting the bullet will mean a fully blown hot WWIII – with the nuclear option left to the West to pick first, if at all; a non-nu-clear confrontation NATO-Russia will finish soon after the start, with NATO going belly up. The reason for that prediction is that the irresponsible planners for this conflict, military and political alike, believe that they will have the time to prepare (estimated as 12-18 months). As mentioned above having cut themselves off “the Russian propaganda outlets” they have no clue what the real situation on the ground is – and that on top of having no clue what kind of countries Russia and Ukraine are, and what kind of people inhabit them /6-8/. Failing to listen at least to the few Western political observers or/and military analysts who dig deep before making statements (Jimmy Dore, Tucker Carlson, Andrew Napolitano, Clayton Morris, Doug-las McGregor, Scott Ritter, Scott Bennett, Larry Johnson,…) the brainwashed/recruited-through-purchasing “leaders” of the likes of Jens Stoltenberg, Ursula von der Leyen, Josep Borrell, Joe Biden, Antony Blinken, Boris Johnson, Lloyd Austin,… have clearly succeeded in incriminating themselves as instigators of war on behalf of NATO – a “war until the last Ukrainian,” as it became firmly imprinted in the minds of millions. Hence they will soon have the choice to walk back with merely a repri-mand – or go through and risk to be on the bench of accused, during Nürnberg 2.0. So do as well a few US Nomenklaturchiks, such as Sen. Lindsey Graham, House Speaker Michael Johnson, etc. who have made statements for the record, having consis-tently incriminated themselves as US officials calling for the war to continue (forever, if possible, for the benefit of America), supplying equipment and ammo, advisors, etc.

We understand that all these individuals are mere servants of the US’ MIC, the institution with a permanent need of armed conflicts – and with growing pace, to keep the business from imploding. In fact, already long ago we have identified NATO as the International Marketing arm of US MIC /9,10/. We also observed that the then Presidential candidate Donald Trump, having noticed what kind of big problem for the global peace the aggressive alliance NATO is, promised to retire it thus correcting what should have been done by the time the Warsaw Pact was dissolved (1991). And then the reason why President Trump did not do it was identified as the damage to the state revenue, employment, etc. such unprepared move would incur (the influence by the respective lobby can not be neglected either).

What the informed observers would tell is that after months of responding by precision strikes at military-related infrastruc-ture to Kiev’s terrorist acts of continuous shelling of civilian targets in villages and towns deep in Russian territory, Moscow decided to create a sanitary zone along the border. Russian troops’ advances there have created panic in nearby Harkov, even though Putin declared that taking Harkov is not in the plans for the moment. Given the success of the current operational strategy, the goals of this push south in direction Harkov seem to be (i) reaching the line of Lipcy, the village from which the continuous shelling of Belgorod and its region (whereby the number of victims – civilians only! – is in the hundreds) with HI-MARS operated (allegedly) by American crew; and (ii) drawing reserves from the other fronts. Next, whichever other front is weakened, the strike can come comfortably in. And shortly after most new equipment from the last promised batches is destroyed, the operation for freeing Nikolaev and Odessa can begin, immediately after which comes Pridniestrovie…

The semi-retarded current Western political “elite”, i.e. the International Nomenklatura, had come up with the most ridicu-lous solution of the problem – their pet project labeled “Ukraine” (they strictly avoid the qualifier “Nazi” since the next thing would be accusations in breaching the respective Articles in Nürnberg Protocols and the UNO Agreement): A conference in Switzerland (whereby invited is everyone in the world except Russia) is supposed to decide on ending the armed conflict in Ukraine! More stupid of an idea I have never heard of in my entire life! The dummies started to realize what they really are, soon after Russia’s BRICS partners refused to waste their time. And then there comes the next hurdle, for the West: Zelensky’s mandate ends today, 20.05.24. For his NATO/US curators this means weakening their position after his legitimacy expires, while for the Russians who are meticulous in following the international normatives this adds at least one more degree of freedom… Just as a hint: capitulation and temporary occupation are indispensable, for achieving everlasting conflict resolu-tion, and reconciliation – as is in just about every Civil war. And, in case you haven’t got it yet: NATO is obsolete!

Hence now that everyone and their dog saw that the front north of Harkov is collapsing, the Ukrainian soldiers give up en masse, and the Russians keep grinding methodically on the other fronts thus slowly but steadily advancing as well, the NATO top will have to decide (or ask Joe for his directive, wise as he still may be): open direct confrontation or give up on Kiev? The Ukrainian military top keeps shooting hundreds of rockets, missiles, drones, etc. towards civilian targets in the Russian Federation (including its new territories – Crimea, Donbass, etc.) in order to show activity, after receiving some new supplies: ATACMS, Storm Shadow, HIMARS… 90% of which are intercepted and destroyed in flight. But for the Stoltenbergs, Macrons, Shappses, Borells, Austins, Sumaks and the rest the question to ponder should be “Do I wish to risk to be sitting on the bench of the accused, in a Nürnberg 2.0?” Some of them should be smart enough to contemplate the scenario which I am advancing since years: and even those who now believe they are untouchable (especially those covered by America’s exceptionalist arrogance attitude) might find out that the new multipolar order (the BRICS era) has abolished the self-given prerogatives and privileges enjoyed by the previous (self-appointed) world ruler, ergo Nürnberg is Nürnberg. Should wit and fear prevail, NATO’s origin and evolution will look as described briefly in Table I

Table I: NATO’s history in brief

click on the image to enlarge

click on the image to enlarge

Source – Fig. 1: Some of Hitler’s Wehrmacht’s soldiers and officers who be-came NATO generals during the first decades of setting up the mil-litary organization in its early stage. Could one expect from NATO anything but duly car-rying out the very orig-inal idea epitomized by the title of Operation Unthinkable? “Attack and destroy Soviet Rus-sia, conquer its land, enslave its population” has been the obsession of many a psychotic dis-order-possessed brains, for centuries in a row, and with a very predict-able outcome, too.

Part Two: EU

All considerations shared above with reference to NATO’s rise and fall are pertinent here, too – and not to a small effect due to the fact that the players are of the same sort, Nomenklaturchiks all of them, and sometimes even identical individuals, just jumping the playground. So here we’ll touch on the few parameters that really differ:

• EU started as economic union. The embryo being a cartel agreement between German and French coal and steel industri-alists such that they could compete with US ones based on comparable scale, it did later on evolve into European Economic Community (EEC). As such it was quite successful, at least until it consisted of member states featuring comparable PPP and having at least some segments with economy of scale.
• Pushed by Deep State’s operatives of the likes of Soros and Schwab, the emphasis shifted from economics to political goals. Along this line, due to refusal by the common people to live in a political union, given that the economics-based one was satisfactory to all, the European Union has constituted itself as a very illegitimate entity /11/. However, this did not disturb those who pushed the agenda, and their puppets are happy to deliver politically correct blah-blah in exchange of life they are not qualified to earn outside this environment – the fact that the EU’s top positions are not subject to election does not bother their holders. They are oblivious that most of their deeds are border line to criminal, unconstitutional, illegal – and that one day there might be judgment coming down…
• A couple of decades later the degradation is total. The degenerates who “lead” us all do not even comprehend how badly EU is going down – first morally, and then monetarily, too. Soros’ puppets do not realize how many times they breached the original agreements; neither do they count the illegal at the core alterations of their own previous accords. The guideline is to implement all directives that come from WEF and OS, serving Deep State’s agenda. Most recently, EU’s fascist type statehood transpired during the “COVID plandemic.” And just when we, the ordinary people, thought we‘d get them to pay for all the trouble they have caused to the population at large, the war in Ukraine was their savior. Now we need to wait for the war’s end, and for the Nürnberg type trial the BRICS++ will organize thus all culpable would get what they deserve – having been amongst the most active actors, the EU top can not be overlooked.
• The EU collapse/split may not necessarily happen simultaneously with NATO’s one. It will probably take more time, until the Germans determine what do they want. I doubt that they will keep supporting the states where prosperity on credit will soon celebrate its 50th It may not be immediate but it should happen one day – for if the Germans do not rebel at all it would mean Germany is finished, dissolved in the liberastic sea. The key here is, of course, that the end of the war in Ukraine means the end of Nazism in Ukraine. Where Germans will stand in this final, is key – primarily for their own Ger-man collective psyche; individual one notwithstanding.

References:

1. https://www.academia.edu/20045616/USA_s_semi_hot_war_for_control_of_Russia_s_natural_resources_the_Syrian_episode
2. https://www.academia.edu/78692948/USAs_semi_hot_war_for_Russias_vast_resources_Ukraine_as_a_proxy
3. https://www.academia.edu/110999273/Nazi_Ukraine_is_rushing_towards_an_endspiel_akin_to_Nazi_Germanys_one_Nazi_Is-rael_is_not_far_behind
4. https://www.academia.edu/98585602/Russia_s_Civil_War_II_is_the_world_s_only_defense_against_the_next_assault_by_Soro-so_Gateso_Schwaboids
5. https://www.academia.edu/95903013/AD_2022_Back_to_USSR_2_0_
6. https://www.academia.edu/112640464/Explaining_Russia
7. https://www.academia.edu/6847478/Explaining_Ukraine
8. https://www.academia.edu/89483737/The_ongoing_clash_of_civilizations_does_not_fit_Huntingtons_definition
9. https://www.academia.edu/107888839/Evil_Empire
10. https://www.academia.edu/104243728/Quo_vadis_Homo
11. https://www.academia.edu/40162717/The_EU_is_an_illegitimate_entity_short_term_consequences_and_mid_to_long_term_ outlook

The post The Agony of NATO and EU Culminates as ‘Project ‘Nazi Ukraine’ Nears Its End appeared first on LewRockwell.

Step into the shadows with Mark Groubert and Eric Hunley as they uncover the secret history of David Atlee Phillips—a CIA mastermind whose fingerprints are found on some of America’s darkest chapters. In this explosive episode of America’s Untold Stories, we expose Phillips’ murky ties to the JFK assassination and his covert operations in Mexico during the height of Cold War tensions. As the CIA’s Chief of Operations for the Western Hemisphere, Phillips moved pawns on the world stage with chilling precision. What secrets was he hiding? What role did he really play in one of history’s greatest mysteries? Through rare documents, eyewitness accounts, and fearless analysis, Groubert and Hunley pull back the curtain on a world built on lies deception and power. If you think you know the story, think again.

*****************************************
Join us November 21st–23rd, 2025 in Dallas at JFK Lancer Conference (or Virtually)

Tickets now available at https://assassinationconference.com/
Virtual tickets start at $75.99
In-person tickets start at $149.99

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The post America’s Untold Stories – CIA Secrets Exposed David Atlee Phillips and JFK appeared first on LewRockwell.

Gail Appel has wrote:

I thought this was an SNL spoof. The guy is a stereotypical caricature. But I remembered that Jimmy  Fallon has been hosting the Tonight Show for years and SNL is no longer funny.

This ridiculous human cartoon is a Michigan Dem Congressional member. A lawmaker. He was ELECTED. The joke is on us.

See here.

The post Congressman Shri Thanedar introduces articles of impeachment against President Trump appeared first on LewRockwell.

Gail Appel wrote:

Something is very wrong within our military. Poorly trained pilots, naval crews, equipment failure, low morale, lack of physical and mental fitness, fatigue, paucity of equipment and under Biden, the lowest number of recruits historically. The UniParty was cheering for a mandatory, permanent draft- male and female. Had Kamala won, it would have been codified.

Of course, it had nothing to do with DEI, “ Anti-Racist Training”, anti-white, anti-Christian, antisemitic, anti-male humiliation, pronouns , trans-first policy or the purge of the most highly skilled, experienced top notch performers- SEALS, Green Berets, fighter pilots- Expelled for “ racism”, refusing the clot shots or speaking out against the rot, corruption, inability to act when facing danger and the ineptitude of leadership.

The second link lists the number of aviation disasters, near disasters, deaths that were avoidable . Most occurred during training exercises. The number of Black Hawk copters is staggering, but the warships and Stealth jets are more horrifying. Combined with the $86 billion in top of the line equipment left in Afghanistan and everything Biden sent to Ukraine- we cannot fight two small wars simultaneously or God forbid- an invasion/attack on our homeland.

See here.

The post $56M Loss: US Fighter Jet Sinks in Red Sea While Evading Drone and Missile Attack appeared first on LewRockwell.

Tim McGraw wrote:

Finally, some good news!

Charges Dropped Against South Dakota Ranching Family by AG Secretary Collins

The post Charges Against South Dakota Ranching Family Dropped by AG Secretary Collins appeared first on LewRockwell.

Gail Appel has wrote:

I thought this was an SNL spoof. The guy is a stereotypical caricature. But I remembered that Jimmy  Fallon has been hosting the Tonight Show for years and SNL is no longer funny.

This ridiculous human cartoon is a Michigan Dem Congressional member. A lawmaker. He was ELECTED. The joke is on us.

See here.

The post Congressman Shri Thanedar introduces articles of impeachment against President Trump appeared first on LewRockwell.

The post 100 Days Of Trump 2.0 appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, John Frahm.

The Federalist

The post Christianity Is The Target Of ‘Christian Nationalism’ Hysteria appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks David Martin wrote:

Megyn Slams White House Correspondents’ Dinner for Celebrating Media Coverage of Biden Cognitive Decline

Might I remind people that Buelahman’s video, “Joe Biden: Earth Angel Parody,”  as one can see, appeared even before Biden had picked Kamala Harris as his running mate for the 2020 race. 

The post Press Finally Coming Clean about Biden’s Brain appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, John Smith

Antiwar.com Original

The post 50 Years On: US Elites Learned Nothing From the Vietnam Defeat appeared first on LewRockwell.

The post The Bullet That Trump Dodged appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, John Smith. 

Haaretz.com

The post ‘Not About Protecting Jews’ | Over 550 American Rabbis Sign Letter Rejecting Trump’s Antisemitism Agend appeared first on LewRockwell.

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

____________________________________________________________________________________

(Versione audio della traduzione disponibile qui: https://open.substack.com/pub/fsimoncelli/p/siamo-tutti-affetti-da-sindrome-post)

Non è possibile quantificare con esattezza quanto trauma mentale e psicologico esista oggi nel Paese e nel mondo, e non mi fiderei di nessuno studio che ci abbia provato a quantificarlo. Ma una cosa è chiara, abbiamo perso l'equilibrio nella conoscenza di qualcosa che gli scienziati credevano da tempo di poter sapere: se e in che misura un'economia stia crescendo e prosperando, o stia andando nella direzione opposta.

Sembra che tutti stiano improvvisando, ultimamente. Da quando i lockdown hanno interrotto l'informazione, è stato difficile distinguere tra un'evoluzione positiva e una negativa.

I notevoli ribassi subiti dai principali indici finanziari negli ultimi due mesi sembrano aver innescato un cambiamento nel sentimento pubblico, da indifferente a cupo. Probabilmente questo non ha nulla a che fare con l'enorme ricchezza detenuta nei conti pensionistici.

Ogni aggiornamento della pagina sembra portare altre cattive notizie.

Questo ha a sua volta influenzato la propensione alla spesa e le prospettive in generale.

Eppure c'è qualcosa di strano che sta accadendo: l'inflazione è effettivamente in calo rispetto al trend quadriennale e mostra i dati migliori sin dal 2020. Anche l'indice dei prezzi al consumo (IPC) riflette questo dato. Le prospettive occupazionali nel settore privato stanno leggermente migliorando.

Perché il sentiment dei consumatori è improvvisamente crollato? È strano perché ci sono scarse prove di un cambiamento improvviso, a meno che non siano i dazi a essere la causa, il che è inverosimile (secondo me).

Una possibile teoria: la popolazione soffre di una forma di disturbo da stress post-traumatico economico, un termine clinico per quello che un tempo veniva chiamato stanchezza da battaglia e shock da bombardamento. È ciò che accade allo spirito umano di fronte a qualcosa di inaspettato, terribile e in definitiva traumatizzante. Ci sono fasi di recupero che vanno dalla negazione, alla rabbia, alla contrattazione e alla depressione, con l'accettazione come fase finale.

Potremmo essere arrivati ​​a questo punto. Da anni ormai i media nazionali e le agenzie governative sostengono che tutto va bene. L'inflazione si sta raffreddando, la crescita dell'occupazione è forte, la ripresa è alle porte. Innumerevoli articoli sui media hanno lamentato il divario che separa i dati reali dalle percezioni dell'opinione pubblica. Siamo stati incoraggiati a credere che “chiudere l'economia” non sia stato poi così grave, solo qualcosa che si fa prima di riaccenderla.

Smettetela di lamentarvi! Siete ricchi!

È stato il picco del gaslighting economico, qualcosa di cui molti di noi si lamentano ormai da cinque anni.

Nel 2024 il Brownstone Institute ha commissionato uno studio più approfondito e ha rilevato che gli Stati Uniti erano in recessione tecnica dal 2022 e senza una vera ripresa sin dal 2020. Gli autori sono giunti a questa conclusione esaminando i dati sui prezzi del settore piuttosto che le sottostime del Bureau of Labor Statistics. Li hanno confrontati con una stima realistica della produzione e hanno mostrato tutto il loro lavoro. Nessuno ha mai contestato lo studio.

Questo è anche il quinto anniversario del più grande trauma delle nostre vite, i lockdown che hanno distrutto milioni di aziende, chiuso ospedali e chiese, limitato la circolazione e decimato la vita economica. Nessuno avrebbe mai pensato che una cosa del genere fosse possibile.

È stato un trauma pari a quello di un tempo di guerra. Ancora oggi la gente è riluttante a parlarne, proprio come il nonno non ha mai parlato delle sue esperienze durante la Seconda guerra mondiale.

Eccoci qui oggi, disperatamente vicini a ritrovare la normalità e con questo è arrivato un campanello d'allarme per quanto riguarda le finanze delle famiglie. Il reddito reale è in calo, i risparmi sono in calo, le bollette sono in aumento, i tagli sono necessari. Sono stati rinviati per anni, mentre i mass media strombazzavano le glorie della ripresa di Biden che invece non esisteva o era un ologramma alimentato dal debito.

Ora arriva l'indice sulla fiducia dei consumatori dell'Università del Michigan: dopo tre anni di grandi guadagni, stranamente coincidenti con la presidenza Biden, adesso mostra un crollo tremendo, stranamente coincidente con l'insediamento di Trump. Ciò che lo rende particolarmente strano è che l'inflazione è in realtà inferiore ora rispetto a quattro anni fa. Gli ultimi dati non mostrano nulla di tutto ciò.

Vi mostrerei un grafico, ma l'Istituto per la Ricerca Sociale dell'Università del Michigan non pubblica i suoi dati più recenti per un mese intero. Bisogna pagare per averli. Ecco perché nessun servizio pubblico di grafici può fornirvi quei dati. Ehi, devono pur guadagnare qualcosa, no? Chi può biasimarli per questo?

Beh, c'è un problema, uno che non mi sarei mai aspettato. Ho sempre pensato che i dati dell'Università del Michigan fossero più affidabili di quelli di un'agenzia federale. Sembrano provenire dalla “vera” America, uno stato di passaggio con veri scienziati indipendenti.

È bastata una rapida occhiata su Grok per scoprire che l'Istituto per la Ricerca Sociale, e questo sondaggio in particolare, è uno dei principali destinatari dei finanziamenti federali. Provengono dal National Institutes of Health, dalla National Science Foundation, dalla Social Security Administration e da altri.

Il totale ammonta a circa $100 milioni all'anno, dalle vostre tasche alle loro. Poi vendono i loro dati al settore privato – che derivano da un sondaggio su 1.000 persone – realizzando un profitto. Questa storia prima era sconosciuta e, in verità, nessuno ha mai pensato di mettere in discussione dati gloriosi e oggettivi provenienti dai migliori capoccioni che abbiamo.

In passato non mi sarebbe mai venuto in mente di esaminare le fonti di finanziamento per questo tipo di ricerca. Ma le cose stanno cambiando: ora capiamo il meccanismo. Il governo federale vi tassa, alimenta le università e le ONG, queste generano ricerca e propaganda per alimentare la macchina burocratica, e il ciclo continua. Gli esempi sono innumerevoli e hanno portato a una valanga di scienza fasulla negli ultimi cinque anni.

Non abbiamo prove dirette che gli ultimi dati sul sentiment dei consumatori siano falsi. Potrebbero essere del tutto reali, un'indicazione che solo ora le persone si stanno svegliando da uno stato onirico di negazione e confusione durato quattro anni – sintomatico di stress post-traumatico o di shock post-traumatico dovuto al trauma dei lockdown. D'altra parte viene da chiederselo, dato che ora sappiamo che questo centro di ricerca è in realtà a sussidio federale.

L'altro giorno ero al bar di un aeroporto e un uomo mi ha chiesto del mio braccialetto di sensibilizzazione. C'è scritto: “Non sarò più messo in lockdown”. Si chiedeva cosa significasse.

Sapendo che probabilmente era ancora nella fase di negazione, gli ho spiegato che cinque anni prima tutti i nostri diritti erano stati cancellati, l'economia era stata fatta crollare deliberatamente e la vita era stata stravolta da decreti, in attesa dell'uscita di un nuovo vaccino che non avrebbe funzionato ma che tutti erano stati costretti a iniettarsi comunque.

Ho cercato di non dare troppo nell'occhio o di non dilungarmi troppo, quindi ho lasciato perdere.

La sua risposta: “Sì, che schifo”.

Lunga pausa.

Ha poi proseguito: “Non abbiamo ancora fatto i conti con tutto questo, vero?”

“No”, ho risposto.

È tornato alla sua birra e non ha detto altro.

I giorni prima del lockdown sono stati davvero il nostro ultimo momento di innocenza.

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

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There are always statistical games that can be played to mask the realities of our neofeudal economy and society. But “narrative control” can’t obscure the facts or the banquet of consequences that these realities have set.

Not everyone in America gained ground as a result of the rampant hyper-financialization and hyper-globalization of the 21st century. Let’s begin our analysis of who gained ground and who lost ground in the year 2001, when China entered the WTO (World Trade Organization) and offshoring / globalization shifted into high gear and when the Federal Reserve began ramping up its financialization / monetary manipulation–oops, sorry, policy interventions.

The top 1% and the top 10% gained ground. The bottom 90% lost ground, especially the bottom 50%. Wage earners lost ground, while corporate insiders, financiers, speculators using leverage and those lucky enough to be born long enough ago to buy assets at pre-bubble valuations gained ground.

If you want to argue with these facts, argue with the Federal Reserve Database. All these charts are drawn from the St. Louis Federal Reserve FRED Database.

Let’s start with the varying multiples generated by asset bubbles since 2001.

NASDAQ up 9.3X
Corporate profits up 6.2X
Case-Shiller Housing Index up 3X

Those are some serious bubbles, given that $1 in 2001 is $1.80 in today’s currency.

If the NASDAQ index had risen at the same rate as inflation since 2001, it would be 3,340, not 17,166.

Corporate profits would be $1.26 trillion annually, rather than $4.3 trillion. Hmm, $3 trillion a year is a nice chunk of extra change for gutting national security, quality and durability by offshoring essential industries.

The Case-Shiller Housing Index would be up from 110 in 2001 to 200 today, rather than 323.

So how did each household sector do since 2001?

Net worth of top 1% up 5X
Net worth of 90-99% up 3.9X
Net worth 50-90% up 3.2X
Net worth bottom 50% up 3X

How much of the nation’s total household net worth does each sector own now in dollars?

Total net worth: $160.2 trillion
top 1%: $49.4 trillion
90%-99%: $58.3 trillion
Top 10%: $107.7 trillion
Bottom 90%: $52.5 trillion
Bottom 50%: $4 trillion

How much of the nation’s total household net worth does each sector own now as a percentage of total net worth?

Total net worth: $160.2 trillion
Top 1%: 31%
90%-99%: 36.5%
TOP 10%: 67.5%
Bottom 50%: 2.5%
50%-90%: 30%
BOTTOM 90%: 32.5%

Since wealth is concentrated in the top layer of each sector–the top 1% own the lion’s share of the top 10%’s net worth, and the top 10% of the 50% to 90% sector own the lion’s share of that sector’s net worth–we can say with confidence that the top 20% own roughly 80% of the net worth–in line with the Pareto Distribution (the 80/20 rule).

What’s lost in this aggregate number is the extreme concentration of income-producing wealth (and thus political power) in the top 0.1% of the citizenry and the mere crumbs left to the bottom 60%. As many of us have pointed out over the past 15 years, the only accurate description for this system is neofeudal, where a New Nobility owns the wealth and political power, the bottom 80% are modern-day debt-serfs and the “middle class” is now the 90% to 99% sector, with those in the 80% to 90% sector having just enough home equity to fancy themselves “middle class” in name if not in ownership of income-producing assets or political influence.

The NASDAQ stock market index: up 10X at its recent peak.

Corporate profits up 6.2X as surveillance pricing, monopoly price-gouging, crapification, planned obsolescence and extortion have worked marvelously well in stripmining the citizenry to enrich the top 10% who own 90% of all stocks, the “shareholders.”

Wage earners’ share of the nation’s income has been slashed over the past five decades. Unsurprisingly, hyper-financialization and hyper-globalization did nothing to reverse this decline of American labor in favor of global capital.

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Donald Trump and the Shadow of McCarthyism

Last month the Trump Administration launched an unprecedented assault against academic and intellectual freedom in America, targeting many of our most elite institutions of higher education.

As an example of this, enormous pressure was exerted against Columbia University in New York City by withdrawing $400 million in annual federal funding and demanding its full cooperation with the arrest of foreign students who had been critical of Israel’s massacre of Gazan civilians. Trump officials also required that Columbia’s prestigious Middle Eastern Studies program and other research centers be placed under “academic receivership,” ensuring their tight ideological control by pro-Israel overseers.

Faced with the dire threat of such a massive loss of funds, Acting President Katrina Armstrong acceded to those demands, but then resigned, much like her predecessor had done seven months earlier.

For similar reasons, the top leadership of Harvard University’s Middle Eastern Studies Center was forced to resign, seemingly destroying the academic independence of that prestigious institution eighty years after it had first been established. But apparently that preliminary academic concession was deemed insufficient, and Trump officials soon froze more than $2 billion in such federal funding to America’s most prestigious university. When Harvard resisted further demands, Trump illegally threatened to revoke Harvard’s non-profit status, ban all foreign students, and essentially attempt to destroy it.

Our government declared that all these attacks upon America’s top academic institutions were part of its sweeping ideological campaign to root out campus antisemitism, with that term now extended to include “anti-Zionism,” namely sharp criticism of the State of Israel and its policies.

The successful Hamas raid of October 7, 2023 had been followed by relentless Israeli attacks against the helpless civilians of Gaza, and these had prompted a huge wave of pro-Palestinian campus protests during 2024, outraging the Israeli government and its pro-Israel American supporters. The latter included many Jewish billionaire donors who exerted their enormous influence to successfully demand unprecedented crackdowns that involved the arrest of some 2,300 students and soon stamped out those demonstrations.

Despite that major success, the Zionist donors regarded their victory over the protesters as incomplete. With the pro-Israel Biden Administration now replaced by the even more strongly pro-Israel Trump Administration, they demanded that this campaign be extended to rooting out the ideological forces that they deemed responsible.

Under their influence, Trump and his top aides declared their intent to arrest and deport any foreign students who had participated in those campus protests or otherwise expressed their sharp criticism of Israel, and this soon resulted in a series of shocking incidents.

For many decades, legal permanent residents of the U.S. were assumed to possess all the same rights and privileges as American citizens, certainly including the Constitutional protections of our Bill of Rights. Their Green Cards could only be revoked for very serious crimes such as rape or murder, and cancelling student visas for ideological reasons was almost as rare.

But under Trump this completely changed. Secretary of State Marco Rubio declared that a central foreign policy goal of the American government was combatting antisemitism everywhere across the world and anti-Zionism fell into that same category. Therefore those foreign students who strongly criticized Israel should be removed from American soil, and he cancelled the visas or Green Cards of some 300 of them, ordering their immediate deportation, with the total eventually rising to 1,500.

Some of the resulting scenes were quite shocking. A young Turkish doctoral candidate attending Tufts University on a Fulbright Scholarship was snatched off the streets of her Boston-area town by six masked federal agents, hustled into an unmarked car, and transferred to a holding cell in Louisiana in preparation for her deportation. Other raids on Columbia student housing by teams of federal agents picked up a Palestinian Green Card holder with an American citizen wife eight months pregnant. A South Korean undergraduate who had lived in the U.S. since the age of seven went into hiding to avoid a similar fate, while a student from India quickly fled to Canada to avoid arrest.

None of these university students had committed any crimes, but they were seized by federal agents in campus raids or grabbed from the streets of their cities merely for having expressed public criticism of the foreign government of Israel. Nothing as bizarre as this had ever previously happened in America.

For example, the Tufts student was abducted for having co-authored an op-ed in her campus newspaper a year earlier supporting the implementation of policies passed by an overwhelming vote of her own university’s Community Senate. The text of the piece that prompted her arrest was so anodyne and dull that I found it difficult to read without nodding off.

Repressive police states that arrest students for criticizing the government have hardly been uncommon throughout history. But I’d never previously heard of one that only implemented such measures for criticizing a foreign government. This demonstrated the true lines of sovereignty and political control governing today’s American society.

The declared aim of the Trump Administration and its ideological allies has been to completely root out and eliminate anti-Zionism across American universities. However, I think the likely outcome of this harsh ideological crackdown may be to destroy intellectual freedom at those institutions, thereby also destroying much of their global influence. Several weeks ago, I discussed these strange and alarming developments in an article.

• The Zionist Destruction of American Higher Education
  Ron Unz • The Unz Review • March 31, 2025 • 7,300 Words

The Forgotten Menace of Soviet Communist Subversion

As might be expected, these dramatic Trump Administration attacks against free speech and academic freedom provoked a huge wave of sharp criticism, both across the mainstream media and among private individuals, and the word most often used to condemn such policies was “McCarthyism.” Throughout the month of March, I saw that term regularly expressed in angry YouTube interviews, published opinion pieces, and even in some of my personal email exchanges.

Yet although my own very critical article ran well over 7,000 words, it included no mention of either Sen. Joseph McCarthy nor his anti-Communist political crusade of the early 1950s. Trump’s actions seemed orders-of-magnitude more serious and unjustified than anything ever proposed by McCarthy, so I regarded any such comparisons as absurd and ridiculous.

Over the last three generations, the political methods employed by that notorious Republican junior senator from Wisconsin have become an almost universal byword for attacks against freedom of thought and speech, so much so that in recent years they have often been found in the angry accusations of Republicans, conservatives, and right-wingers as well as by their more leftward counterparts. Indeed, with a few notable exceptions, any popular defense of McCarthy or his policies has become so rare that “McCarthyism” has almost been transformed into a generic, non-ideological term for totally unjustifiable political repression.

Two-term President Ronald Reagan was widely credited by his supporters with having won our half-century long Cold War against the Soviet Union and they also claimed that he had revitalized our economy, so at the time they hailed his policies as “Reaganism.” Yet although he loomed very large during his own era, his political stature has dwindled away so rapidly during the last couple of decades that I almost never see him favorably cited by conservatives younger than fifty, nor any mention of his eponymous package of policies. Indeed, no one has even bothered creating a Wikipedia page on “Reaganism.”

Meanwhile, McCarthy and his brand of politics are still widely discussed, and I think that no other political figure from our nearly 250 year national history has inspired a similar term that remains in common use. Indeed, many have suggested that McCarthy ranks as the single most universally vilified figure in American political history, while “McCarthyism” has become the shorthand for spewing forth careless, error-prone, and often dishonest accusations of treachery against political opponents. The Wikipedia page for that term runs a massive 14,000 words.

As I’ve often explained, I spent most of my life paying little attention to modern American history, drawing my limited understanding from introductory textbooks and the mainstream media coverage that I absorbed. Therefore, I never questioned that the accusations of Communist espionage and subversion made by Sen. McCarthy had been wildly exaggerated and often fallacious, nor that the resulting McCarthyite era had represented a terrible black mark in American politics. According to that standard account, his dark shadow over American society was only lifted when he over-reached himself and was politically destroyed through the joint efforts of Republican President Dwight Eisenhower, the Democratic Party, and the American Army establishment.

But as I began reading more serious historical works, my perspective changed. I discovered that Communist spies and agents of influence in America had been far more numerous and powerful than I had ever imagined, and this became an important early strand in my American Pravda series.

Almost exactly a dozen years ago I opened my original article of that name by describing these shocking revelations, although I still expressed great skepticism toward McCarthy himself and his methods:

In mid-March, the Wall Street Journal carried a long discussion of the origins of the Bretton Woods system, the international financial framework that governed the Western world for decades after World War II. A photo showed the two individuals who negotiated that agreement. Britain was represented by John Maynard Keynes, a towering economic figure of that era. America’s representative was Harry Dexter White, assistant secretary of the Treasury and long a central architect of American economic policy, given that his nominal superior, Secretary Henry Morgenthau Jr., was a gentleman farmer with no background in finance. White was also a Communist agent.

Such a situation was hardly unique in American government during the 1930s and 1940s. For example, when a dying Franklin Roosevelt negotiated the outlines of postwar Europe with Joseph Stalin at the 1945 Yalta summit, one of his important advisors was Alger Hiss, a State Department official whose primary loyalty was to the Soviet side. Over the last 20 years, John Earl Haynes, Harvey Klehr, and other scholars have conclusively established that many dozens or even hundreds of Soviet agents once honeycombed the key policy staffs and nuclear research facilities of our federal government, constituting a total presence perhaps approaching the scale suggested by Sen. Joseph McCarthy, whose often unsubstantiated charges tended to damage the credibility of his position.

The Cold War ended over two decades ago and Communism has been relegated to merely an unpleasant chapter in the history books, so today these facts are hardly much disputed. For example, liberal Washington Post blogger Ezra Klein matter-of-factly referred to White as a “Soviet spy” in the title of his column on our postwar financial system. But during the actual period when America’s government was heavily influenced by Communist agents, such accusations were widely denounced as “Red-baiting” or ridiculed as right-wing conspiracy paranoia by many of our most influential journalists and publications. In 1982 liberal icon Susan Sontag ruefully acknowledged that for decades the subscribers to the lowbrow Readers Digest had received a more realistic view of the world than those who drew their knowledge from the elite liberal publications favored by her fellow intellectuals. I myself came of age near the end of the Cold War and always vaguely assumed that such lurid tales of espionage were wildly exaggerated. I was wrong.

• Our American Pravda
  Ron Unz • The American Conservative • April 29, 2013 • 4,500 Words

Since my knowledge of American history ran no deeper than my basic textbooks and mainstream newspapers and magazines, the last decade or so has been a journey of discovery for me, and often a shocking one. I came of age many years after the Communist spy scares of the 1950s had faded into dim memory, and based on what I read, I always thought the whole matter more amusing than anything else. It seemed that about the only significant “Red” ever caught, who may or may not have been innocent, was some obscure individual bearing the unlikely name of “Alger Hiss,” and as late as the 1980s, his children still fiercely proclaimed his complete innocence in the pages of the New York Times. Although I thought he was probably guilty, it also seemed clear that the methods adopted by his persecutors such as Joseph McCarthy and Richard Nixon had actually done far more damage to our country during the unfortunate era named for the former figure.

During the 1990s, I occasionally read reviews of new books based on the Venona Papers—decrypted Soviet cables finally declassified—and they seemed to suggest that the Communist spy ring had both been real and far more extensive than I had imagined. But those events of a half-century earlier were hardly uppermost in my mind, and anyway other historians still fought a rear-guard battle in the newspapers, arguing that many of the Venona texts were fraudulent. So I gave the matter little thought.

Only in the last dozen years, as my content-archiving project made me aware of the 1940s purge of some of America’s most prominent public intellectuals, and I began considering their books and articles, did I begin to realize the massive import of the Soviet cables. I soon read three or four of the Venona books and was very impressed by their objective and meticulous scholarly analysis, which convinced me of their conclusions. And the implications were quite remarkable, actually far understated in most of the articles that I had read.

Consider, for example, the name Harry Dexter White, surely unknown to all but the thinnest sliver of present-day Americans, and proven by the Venona Papers to have been a Soviet agent. During the 1940s, his official position was merely one of several assistant secretaries of the Treasury, serving under Henry Morgenthau, Jr., an influential member of Franklin Roosevelt’s cabinet. But Morgenthau was actually a gentleman-farmer, almost entirely ignorant of finance, who had gotten his position partly by being FDR’s neighbor, and according to numerous sources, White actually ran the Treasury Department under his titular authority. Thus, in 1944 it was White who negotiated with John Maynard Keynes—Britain’s most towering economist—to lay the basis for the the Bretton Woods Agreement, the IMF, and the rest of the West’s post-war economic institutions.

Moreover, by the end of the war, White had managed to extend the power of the Treasury—and therefore his own area of control—deep into what would normally be handled by the Department of State, especially regarding policies pertaining to the defeated German foe. His handiwork notably included the infamous “Morgenthau Plan,” proposing the complete dismantling of the huge industrial base at the heart of Europe, and its conversion into an agricultural region, automatically implying the elimination of most of Germany’s population, whether by starvation or exodus. And although that proposal was officially abandoned under massive protest by the allied leadership, books by many post-war observers such as Freda Utley’s The High Cost of Vengeance have argued that it was partially implemented in actuality, with millions of German civilians perishing from hunger, sickness, and other consequences of extreme deprivation.

At the time, some observers believed that White’s attempt to eradicate much of prostrate Germany’s surviving population was vindictively motivated by his own Jewish background. But William Henry Chamberlin, long one of America’s most highly-regarded foreign policy journalists, strongly suspected that the plan was a deeply cynical one, intended to inflict such enormous misery upon those Germans living under Western occupation that popular sentiment would automatically shift in a strongly pro-Soviet direction, allowing Stalin to gain the upper hand in Central Europe, and many subsequent historians have come to similar conclusions.

Even more remarkably, White managed to have a full set of the plates used to print Allied occupation currency shipped to the Soviets, allowing them to produce an unlimited quantity of paper marks recognized as valid by Western governments, thus allowing the USSR to finance its post-war occupation of half of Europe on the backs of the American taxpayer.

Eventually suspicion of White’s true loyalties led to his abrupt resignation as the first U.S. Director of the IMF in 1947, and in 1948 he was called to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee. Although he denied all accusations, he was scheduled for additional testimony, with the intent of eventually prosecuting him for perjury and then using the threat of a long prison sentence to force him to reveal the other members of his espionage network. However, almost immediately after his initial meeting with the Committee, he supposedly suffered a couple of sudden heart attacks and died at age 55, though apparently no direct autopsy was performed on his corpse.

Soon afterward other Soviet spies also began departing this world at unripe ages within a short period of time. Two months after White’s demise, accused Soviet spy W. Marvin Smith was found dead at age 53 in the stairwell of the Justice building, having fallen five stories, and sixty days after that, Laurence Duggan, another agent of very considerable importance, lost his life at age 43 following a fall from the 16th floor of an office building in New York City. So many other untimely deaths of individuals of a similar background occurred during this general period that in 1951 the staunchly right-wing Chicago Tribune ran an entire article noting this rather suspicious pattern. But while I don’t doubt that the plentiful anti-Communist activists of that period exchanged dark interpretations of so many coincidental fatalities, I am not aware that such “conspiracy theories” were ever taken seriously by the more respectable mainstream media, and certainly no hint of this reached any of the standard history textbooks that constituted my primary knowledge of that period…

The particular timing of events may sometimes exert an outsize influence on historical trajectories. Consider the figure of Henry Wallace, probably still dimly remembered as a leading leftwing Democrat of the 1930s and 1940s. Wallace had been something of a Midwestern wonder-boy in farming innovation and was brought into FDR’s first Cabinet in 1933 as Secretary of Agriculture. By all accounts, Wallace was an absolutely 100% true-blue American patriot, with no hint of any nefarious activity appearing anywhere in the Venona Papers. But as is sometimes the case with technical experts, he seems to have been remarkably naive outside his main field of knowledge, notably in his extreme religious mysticism and more importantly in his politics, with many of those closest to him being proven Soviet agents, who presumably regarded him as the ideal front-man for their own political intrigues.

From George Washington onward, no American president had ever run for a third consecutive term, and when FDR suddenly decided to take this step during 1940, partly using the ongoing war in Europe as an excuse, many prominent figures in the Democratic Party launched a political rebellion, notably including his own two-time Vice President John Nance Garner, who had been a former Democratic Speaker of the House, and James Farley, the powerful party leader who had originally helped elevate Roosevelt to the presidency. FDR selected Wallace as his third-term Vice President, perhaps as a means of gaining support from the powerful pro-Soviet faction among the Democrats. But as a consequence, even as FDR’s health steadily deteriorated during the four years that followed, an individual whose most trusted advisors were agents of Stalin remained just a heartbeat away from the American presidency.

Under the strong pressure of Democratic Party leaders, Wallace was replaced on the ticket at the July 1944 Democratic Convention, and Harry S. Truman succeeded to the presidency when FDR died in April of the following year. But if Wallace had not been replaced or if Roosevelt had died a year earlier, the consequences for the country would surely have been enormous. According to later statements, a Wallace Administration would have included Laurence Duggan as Secretary of State, Harry Dexter White at the helm of the Treasury, and presumably various other outright Soviet agents occupying all the key nodes at the top of the American federal government. One might jokingly speculate whether the Rosenbergs—later executed for treason—would have been placed in charge of our nuclear weapons development program.

As it happens, Roosevelt lived until 1945, and instead of running the American government on behalf of Stalin, Duggan and White both died quite suddenly within a few months of each other after they came under suspicion in 1948. But the tendrils of Soviet control during the early 1940s ran remarkably deep.

As a striking example, Soviet agents became aware of the Venona decryption project in 1944, and soon afterward a directive came down from the White House ordering the project abandoned and the records of Soviet espionage destroyed. The only reason that Venona survived, allowing us to later reconstruct the fateful politics of that era, was that the military officer in charge risked a court-martial by simply ignoring that explicit Presidential order.

In the wake of the Venona Papers, publicly released a quarter century ago and today accepted by almost everyone, it seems undeniable that during the early 1940s America’s national government came within a hair’s breadth—or rather a heartbeat—of falling under the control of a tight network of Soviet agents. Yet I have only very rarely seen this simple fact emphasized in any book or article, even though this surely helps explain the ideological roots of the “anti-Communist paranoia” that became such a powerful political force by the early 1950s.

Obviously, Communism had very shallow roots in American society, and any Soviet-dominated Wallace Administration established in 1943 or 1944 probably would sooner or later have been swept from power, perhaps by America’s first military coup. But given FDR’s fragile health, this momentous possibility should certainly be regularly mentioned in discussions of that era.

• American Pravda: Our Deadly World of Post-War Politics
  Ron Unz • The Unz Review • July 2, 2018 • 5,700 Words

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