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Moon of Alabama observes that Trump’s mineral deal with Ukraine creates indefinite indentured servitude for western Ukraine. Trump seems to see himself as General MacArthur to Zelensky’s Hirohito, after a great defeat, rather than two losers who a provoked – and lost – a war with Russia. As some have noted, a deal like this with the Americans may make unconditional surrender to a wealthy and Slav-sympatico Russia a far better alternative for the average Ukrainian.

Inauthentic leadership, corruption and cowardice all lead to failure in war, and in everything else. NATO, long afflicted with a lack of defensive mission, roams incoherently creating chaos. The European ruling elite sustains itself by losing wars slowly and endlessly for profit, and to stay out of prison or the gallows.

The New York Times “expose on Ukraine” revealed Western contempt for the Russian Army, as well as a Western sense of superiority vis a vis Ukrainians.  Former Zelensky advisor Oleksiy Arestovych says European and American elites see Ukrainians as “monkeys with grenades.”  After lying for over a decade about Ukraine, the Times now graces us with a pseudo-intellectual explanation of how the US elite and CIA constructed, fueled and guided this proxy war with Russia. Not a single neocon is mentioned in their shady mea culpa, nor does the Times own their part selling another Congressionally unauthorized war against a nuclear armed power.  In a nutshell, this is the story of US foreign policy for over 70 years.

Congress cheers the smooth diversion of defense profiteering from Afghanistan to Ukraine, and now from Ukraine to Gaza, Yemen, and Iran. Sun Tzu may not have said “follow the money,” but he did say “there is no instance of a nation benefiting from prolonged warfare.” Government media like the Times can see this in Ukraine, but refuses to acknowledge how 70 years of non-stop conflict, war and proxy war has destroyed the Constitution and impoverished the United States.

Notwithstanding its limited value to the US, or even to Europe, restoration and development costs to “fix” what the war damage has done to Ukraine is estimated at over $500 billion.  That’s ten times the cost to “fix” the damage US bombs have done to Gaza, estimated at a paltry $53 billion.  No wonder Trump would rather build profitable Gaza Riviera, using Arab money, instead of sacrificing the $200 billion Biden gave Ukraine plus the half a trillion it would take to clear the Ukrainian deathscape.

Here’s a thought:  Ukraine surrenders to a Russia-led and -funded reformation that meets the clear and salient objectives of the SMO.  Zelensky is the perfect foil for this “next step” because he is soundly disrespected by Trump and most Ukrainians. Trump will then place this “loss” on NATO’s doorstep, as he chides them for “not spending enough on defense.” NATO has long chosen expansion and intervention over strategic focus and military effectiveness, and it shows. Member states depleted their military inventories, voluntarily contracted their economic and energy options, and willingly entered a master-slave relationship with Washington DC and US-controlled global capital firms.  When their voters demand better, their elite capitols ban speech, blacklist parties and jail political challengers.

With Russia and Ukraine off the table, Trump can turn to his other projects. Having eaten their young and consumed their seedstock, EU and NATO face domestic demographic and political crises, and Trump holds the whip. NATO is unnecessary to the US, except as a submissive buyer of US weapons systems delivered a generation late with overpriced maintenance contracts.

Reality tells us Denmark with a divided and militarily denuded NATO can’t stop Trump from turning Greenland into a US protectorate. The US could spend five times the $4 billion that the Danish taxpayer gives to Nuuk each year, and create a tax free zone of wealthy Greenlanders at a fraction of the cost to rebuild and restore Ukraine. This is in no way advocating for the purchase, coercion or both of Greenland, or any expansion of the US military footprint.  I’m just trying to examine Donald’s business plan.

Trump sees the US, in part, as a business entity, carrying dangerous debt, having expensive commitments, and making repeated financial errors (expensive boutique wars among them).  He wants to spin-off the unprofitable parts (end some wars, reduce the immigrant welfare state).  He wants to target waste and inefficiency inside the company (via DOGE and DC swamp reduction).

Trump has been falsely told that foreign currency depreciation will totally offset his tariffs. That aside, his personal language of tariffs (and threats of tariffs) sound much like his language of war (and threats of war).  Lew Rockwell points out the language of war is the same used by trade protectionists and this isn’t by accident.  As Sun Tzu knows, no nation can benefit from prolonged warfare.

Which brings us to the Zionist state of Israel – and the undeniable fact that its weaknesses in faith, economy, and battle are becoming more and more apparent.

The Zionist government and its American lobbies are now seeking, Euro-style, to criminalize and ban American citizen, media, and journalistic criticism of the Israeli government, its soldiers and its protected criminal classes.  Instead of debating or proving that such criticism in unwarranted, Zionists seek to label such speech as anti-Semitic and silence it – and they have a point.  If a Jewish state can behave outrageously outside of religious, political and legal norms as it is doing in Gaza and the West Bank, in Syria, in Lebanon, and elsewhere, such un-countered criticism can lead to anti-Semitism.  If a Jewish democracy can murder and starve unarmed and unhoused people in the name of “justice” and infinite revenge, such un-countered criticism can lead to anti-Semitism.  In seeking to silence critics, the Zionist state reveals it has no counter to this criticism.  This speaks directly to its own inauthentic leadership, corruption and cowardice, and Israelis themselves are critically aware of this.

In the business world, a loss leader is a portfolio product that is subsidized and sold below cost, in order to increase brand popularity, loyal customers, and more profit overall.  After Trump deals with other planned spinoffs, efficiencies and cutbacks, Israel will remain the lone overseas loss leader for the United States – a loss leader that is failing to increase US global popularity, loyal allies, and profit.  The Zionist state is an ever-expanding, apartheid, genocidal, land-stealing entity in a permanent and  destructive war.  The more we subsidize it, the more money, market share, and respect for the American brand we lose. As time reduces the transactional relationship between Trump the politician and his biggest pro-Israel donors, what can, and what will, Israel’s government do to avoid its performance review, and the chopping block?

Trump may be on a workable path in openly viewing the US “republic” as a US corporation.  As he constructs his golden global legacy, he might wish to consider another bit of Sun Tzu wisdom. “The wheels of justice turn slowly, but grind exceedingly fine.”

The post After Ukraine and NATO Are Spun Off, Who’s Next? appeared first on LewRockwell.

“There are no conservatives in Cambridge, Massachusetts” – Steven B., PhD, Harvard, Brandeis, phone conversation

Dr. Shiva Ayyadurai, PhD, MIT, is a distinguished research biological-engineer and developer of artificial intelligence systems based in the high-tech and bio-tech corridors of Cambridge, Massachusetts who ran for president in the 2024 election. Dr. Shiva also sponsors the political awareness and self-health Truth-Freedom-Heath Movement. Below I evaluate the radical Shiva political awareness movement from a conservative perspective rather than lower myself to a rant of why I was compelled to disaffiliate from his movement.

“…the prime political imperative of our present situation – the refusal to identify with any horde” – Sociologist Peter Berger, Movements and Revolution, 1970.

Dr. Shiva Ayyadurai organized his Truth-Freedom-Health movement to serve as a support base for his run for the presidency in 2024 and to generate a working-class self-health movement to respond to the AI challenge to labor. Thus far his movement is mostly educational, focused on learning a biological systems approach to human health (not disease) and how systems engineering can explain the workings of everything from how the human bio-cell works to how the world political economy works. Shiva views social systems as working either like a thermostat (programmed closed system) or like a personal computer (open system requiring inputs).

His powerful “Shatter the Swarm” video explains how about 10,000 elites in the Knowledge Class oppress the Working Class by telepathically “swarming” like a flock of Starling birds for power, profit and control that keeps the Working Class divided, unorganized, unaware and unhealthy. He explains how politicians portrayed as anti-establishment are really “Not-So-Obvious Establishment” actors (among them Trump, Hillary, Biden, RFK, etc.). Shiva firmly believes in the utopian occupational ideology of Artificial Intelligence:  all trades, occupations, professions and gig work can be automated (regardless that automation is almost invariably not cost efficient).  However, as explained greater below, systems engineering cannot adequately explain the unintended consequences, blowbacks and the ironies of history.

The two rules for automating industry are that an efficient operation will magnify any manufacturing efficiencies but conversely will also magnify any inefficiencies. However, this ignores that making the process efficient will be prohibitively costly in a competitive market economy. But cost is unlikely to be as much a factor in a public-private venture socialist economy where government subsidizes private-public enterprises such as Tesla and Starlink, the same way as is done in China. Consider the analogy of greater efficiency of a jet engine that can transport 250 passengers but its immensely greater cost compared to a gasoline combustion engine that can transport 4 people. But buying a jet engine for a car would not be economic.

Shiva also uses system engineering to explain caste and social class systems. But the social class system is enforced not only externally but also by internal controls. For example, a working-class conservative such as, say, longshoreman Eric Hoffer (The True Believer: Thoughts on Mass Movements), who may want to join a pro-labor movement nonetheless will be made to understand in unmistakable terms that he “would be happier elsewhere;” to wit precisely my experience as to why I was made to disaffiliate from the Shiva movement.  Thus, Shiva fails to focus his own “systems science” on the ‘group think’ of his own political movement, regardless that he promotes thinking for oneself.

Shiva ran in the primary election in 2018 as a Republican for US Senator in Massachusetts and as an independent for U.S. president on the 2024 ballot in 15 states and a write-in candidate in other states. He is inclined to the radical Leftist embrace of demonstrations and lawsuits that I believe would be precisely where the oligarch class wants to corral the working-class opposition.  Ipso facto, what did the Canadian Trucker Movement accomplish or the Yellow Vest Movement in France?  Nothing. Shiva’s own free speech lawsuit was successful but then the case was sealed. History is replete with irony and paradox and subterfuge.

Shiva himself admits he is sympathetic with Marxist Communism as far as the need to create community but not its authoritarianism.  Nonetheless, it is interesting to see who Shiva identified himself with on the cover of his 2016 book “The System and Revolution” which is nearly identical to the book covers and titles of V.I. Lenin’s 1917 “State and Revolution” and Karl Marx’s 1848 “On Revolution”.

Most people don’t know that Marx was never against Capitalism nor genuine religion and was a poet, mathematician, stock market speculator, gun toter who spent most of his inheritance buying rifles for Belgian peasants, tried to emulate a bourgeoisie family for his daughters better chances for marriage and advocated the end of Judaism. Marx was fired by bankers and industrialists for defending freedom of speech as a newspaper editor. He was an idealistic utopian who believed that only materialism drove history but never addressed the unintended consequences of revolutionary change. He contended he could predict the future of a classless society, but he could not foresee how advocacy for revolution in his “Communist Manifesto” would set up his book to be hijacked by oligarchs for political purposes.  It must be understood the “Manifesto” was paid propaganda by British oligarchs that the Manifesto criticizes as oppressors.  Nonetheless, Marx’s book morphed into a sort of sacred scripture that legitimatized mass murder mainly of 1.7 million of the working class in the Russian Revolution plus 7 million Ukrainian farmers in the Holodomor under the banner of creating a worker’s paradise. Irony.

Skepticism about Artificial Intelligence and Systems Engineering

Sociologist Peter Berger says there are three types of conservatives. Those conservatives of faith who are strongly opposed to any change and who believe the current social order is good, natural or sacred; and conservatives who desire change solely for profit making. Then there are the conservatives by lack of faith who are pessimists and skeptics by inclination and are suspicious about the promised benefits of social and technological change (the category to which I fall into).  Skeptical conservatives see social institutions as the result of accidents, ideological hijacking, co-optation, blowback, irony, etc., not design.  As Max Weber puts it: “It is not true that good can follow only from good and evil from evil, but that often the opposite is true”.

For example, the invention of the printing press and  Protestant Christianity inadvertently brought about legitimization of usury and profit that the Catholic Church had banned for centuries.

A mechanistic systems engineering approach fails to understand the messiness of history and that ideology often has an opposite result to what was intended typically due to oligarch co-optation of any oppositional social movement, witness Marxist Communism and the covert manipulation of secret societies.

Excepting Dr. Shiva’s personal knowledge of the caste system and freedom, technocrats have little comprehension of the discovery of freedom and how it has been destroyed time and again by some notion about the certainty of technological and scientific progress. Unfortunately, for the moment conservatives are on the side of AI to facilitate needed reforms to money corruption in government and are not considering the contingencies that monopolistic surveillance capitalism could end up as totalitarianism. This is why former Secretary of the US Treasury, Paul Craig Roberts, calls AI Surveillance Capitalism: “Bringing Us the Communism of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Mao, and Paul Pot Were Unable to Deliver.

Or let’s take Oracle computer technologies company founder Larry Ellison who has imperiously declared that the public will have to accept that AI will be soon used for surveillance of everyone’s commercial and banking activities and their entire personal life. He says everyone will have to wear cameras, like the police and those on probation do. So, criminals will just switch off their camera or not wear their camera and everyone else will have to wear cameras?  And how would this be enforced except by blocking one’s access to their bank accounts?  The entire population will be treated as if they are on probation!  What an innovation!  This is like those activist hysterics who fear that our brain will be controlled by implanting a chip in our body connected to Elon Musk’s satellites when this can be easily thwarted by covering the chip with aluminum foil.  The public are not automatons and are already switching back to check writing to buy groceries and paying utility bills, using cash rather than debit cards, and buying non-trackable cell phones in response to the invasion of privacy posed by AI. Fighting back by creating an activist “movement” and lawsuits will not be much help and employ tactics of the hard Left. More important than organizing any collective resistance movement are the actions of individual citizens to: abandon credit cards and go back to using cash and checks, to stop using the self-check out lane at grocery stores, supporting the chartering of state banks, issuance of state currency based on the value of labor and collateralized by gold and silver, stopping the issuance of digital ID’s (Social Security ID registration), using a gold-backed debit card, protecting against land grabs, hardening homes against suspicious firestorms facilitated by government negligence and covert actions and not relying on insurance companies (see here). .

Skepticism about the mRNA innovation has also gained momentum. For example, according to Our World Data online, the number of COVID vaccination doses per one million population in the U.S. dropped from 10,239 doses in April 2021, to 236 doses by May 2023, and to zero by August 2024, an underreported 100 percent decline! If the shots had been administered in, say, 1950, the likely proportion of people taking the shots would likely have been something like 95%. This attrition is probably due to the influence of the Internet. There was massive blowback to COVID vaccinations, albeit undisclosed.  That is why the effort to put mRNA in food which is occurring on Trump and RFK’s watch while concern about red dye 40 in children’s cereal is a diversion.

Conservatives should be skeptical about claims of the benefits of artificial intelligence.  In an occupation I am familiar with, automated real estate appraisals of homes are not statistically reliable (correlation coefficient, T-Test, F-Test, coefficient of variation) because to do multiple regression analysis at least 30 to 40 comparable sales are needed. Typically, there are only 3 to 6 sales available, and the entire market is a data set of unique outliers from one another.  For example, Zillow’s algorithm for pricing homes is based mainly on house size, then adjusted for time/price trend, and has failed to be proven reliable in adjudication many times. It is unreliable because there is insufficient data from which to extract the uniqueness of each property, such as building condition, obsolescence, corner location, style or luxury amenities or proximity to a next-door nuisance neighbor. Moreover, in commercial real estate the data on income, expenses and capitalization rates are kept proprietary by each owner, thwarting any automation of valuation altogether.   Artificial intelligence is oversold.  If automation is so profitable it would have been implemented long ago. Only government socializing the economy by public-private partnerships can make it viable.

Consider the Marxist concept of false consciousness applied to human health, which would assert that most people eat commercialized processed foods and undertake a Bourgeoisie lifestyle that is deleterious to their health interests.  This presumes that we know what clean foods and health are in the first place.  While “Big Farma” (corporate agriculture) has successfully sold the public on the virtues of a vegan diet, Dr. Bruce Ames, PhD, biochemistry, Cal Berkeley, found that plant-based foods have 10,000 times the natural pesticide toxins than industrial glyphosate (half of that from rat droppings from food storage).  Most plant foods need to be fermented, pressure cooked, boiled or soaked for human consumption but don’t expect even natural alternative doctors or bio-tech engineers to tell you this. Plants are excellent for detoxification but not for food unless prepared properly. There may be no such thing as organic or clean food because any non-nutrient metabolite that hypothetically seeps through the lining of a leaky gut can cause an autoimmune reaction (William Davis, MD, Super Gut, 2023).  Call me a skeptic.

Moreover, it has been known for 100 years that poop can ascend from the bowel due to a damaged ileocecal valve back into the duodenum food transfer chamber and seep into the bloodstream causing deadly metabolic sepsis blood poisoning (see page 53 of Dr. John Kellogg, MD, Autointoxication or Intestinal Toxemia, 1919; William Davis, MD, Supergut, 2023 ).  Disease can be caused by self-poisoning, something that bio-engineering and modern medicine has not grasped (see Charles Bouchard, Lectures on Autointoxication in Disease: or Self-Poisoning of the Individual – 1894). All disease starts in the gut – Hippocrates.  That microbiology and medicine are also based on self-serving ideologies is a very Marxist concept.

The only thing new about the technocrats of Silicon Valley and Technology Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts is they want to get rid of humans altogether and replace them with robots and algorithms. Even Dr. Shiva advises that all white collar and blue-collar jobs are going to disappear due to AI.  Nonetheless, AI is uneconomic in a market-based economy and can only thrive in a socialist economy.  Once institutionalized, AI may be impossible to reverse just as Communism was.  We don’t want China to conquer us, but we ironically proceed to support the transition to a socialist economy under the guise of artificial intelligence so we can “win the AI war with China.” The antidote is a free market economy, local banks, the issuance of state currencies backed by real labor and collateralized with gold or silver not debt.

Trapped Between the System and the Horde

Technocrats and activists both have the same traits of humorlessness and the constant seriousness of the Bolshevik revolutionists in Russia. Sociologist Peter Berger states: “Activists by inclination, almost to a man, are contemptuous…and irredeemably humorless.”  Humorless technocrats like Larry Ellison are invariably found at the top of organizations in both the system and the anti-system hordes and the anti-anti-system hordes. Beware of those who can’t tell a joke, even a sick joke given that our systems for food, medicine and even religion are covertly malevolent. There was a sort of almost religious transcendence operating even under the old Soviet Communism system by subversive joke telling (see Ben Lewis, Hammer and Tickle: The Story of Communism: A Political System Almost Laughed Out of Existence, 2009). “It’s the Law of Faust’s Devil’s Bargain: the worst the times, the better the jokes” (Ernst Royle).

The corporate oligarchs want to keep us diverted to political mobilization and protests, mostly symbolic lawsuits, and natural health veganism and crusades against supercilious red dye 40 and glyphosate, not putting pressure on state legislatures to allow the creation of local economies by state banks and currencies that would protect privacy and civil liberties. Must I repeat this sentence to underscore its importance vis-à-vis the Shiva Movement?

If you’re going to join the Shiva movement, be aware that you must be a loyal automaton and adhere to group think because that is what involvement with a quasi-religious militant movement requires for it to be successful. The same organization tactics apply for a labor union or a Communist cell (see Philip Selznick, TVA and the Grass Roots: A Study in the Sociology of Formal Organization, 1953; Philip Selznick, The Organizational Weapon: A Study in Bolshevik Strategy and Tactics, 1951). Group Think and Swarm behavior are two sides of the same coin. But you better be a Lefty or you will be drubbed out. The slogan that the Shiva movement is beyond Left and Right is not correct in my experience.

Caught Between the System Swarm and the Group Think Horde, Why I Disaffiliated from the Dr. Shiva Movement, Wayne Lusvardi.

The post Caught Between the System Swarm and the Group Think Horde appeared first on LewRockwell.

International Man: Under the previous administration, we saw an aggressive push against so-called “disinformation”—fact-checkers, censorship, and suppression of views outside the mainstream narrative. At the same time, there was a strong focus on social justice, gender ideology, and migrant protection.

What’s your perspective on that era and its impact on free speech?

Doug Casey: It’s no longer okay to have a difference of opinion in politics and academia. Not so long ago, it was possible to have a polite discussion and ask Socratic questions to determine what’s right or wrong. Not anymore.

Free speech is one of Western Civilization’s most important contributions to the world. Throughout history, of all the world’s cultures and civilizations, only the West made free speech and free thought into cultural icons. Free speech is a major reason why the West—with all its flaws—has always been not only different from but objectively better than any other. Incidentally, just saying that can now get you canceled or even prosecuted in some places.

Without free speech, it’s very hard to have free thought because if you’re forced to keep concepts within the confines of your own mind, it’s very hard to explicate, expand, and concretize them. What’s going on now is extremely dangerous. It amounts to putting tariffs on others’ ideas so they can’t enter your brain.

Europe and the Anglophone world—Australia, New Zealand, England, the US, and Canada—are turning into police states where thought crime is a real thing that can be prosecuted. It’s not 1984 yet, but things are rapidly moving in that direction.

One of the most perverse aspects of the trend is that universities have become the center of this anti-freedom groupthink. They once were— and should be—centers of discussion, debate, and free thought. That’s no longer true. They’ve become institutionally corrupt. They’re no longer even places to hang out, party, and pick up a few idle facts while delaying the onset of maturity. They’ve mutated into something destructive and dangerous, as illustrated by the recent scandals at Colombia, Harvard, and Penn.

95% of American universities have become indoctrination centers. It’s quite amazing. Most of the teachers and administrators are Woke or Marxist and actively destructive to young minds. The schools are scams, losing money even with tuitions crowding $100,000 per nine-month year. They’ve become self-licking ice cream cones mainly benefitting the staff.

International Man: Now, under the new Trump administration, those left-leaning agendas seem to have fallen out of favor.

Has the pendulum swung the other way?

Doug Casey: I can only say that as bad as things look today, they would have been much, much worse if Kamala Harris had been installed as the US President. But we should take a moment to comment on Trump, who currently bestrides the world like a colossus.

As I’ve been saying for years, Trump has no philosophical center. He doesn’t have any core beliefs. The good thing about him, and the reason why he’s popular, is that he’s a cultural conservative who wants to preserve many aspects of what was good in America. But he doesn’t have any consistent view of the world. He just does whatever seems like a good idea at the time, flying by the seat of his pants. I fear that he suffers from megalomania. Things could get out of control because he lacks a philosophical core. His military threats and his using tariffs as weapons could lead to a genuine catastrophe.

That said, what Elon Musk is doing with DOGE is absolutely great. As is Trump’s anti-Wokeism. Wokeism has become an ideological force. It’s a set of memes, beliefs, and feelings—psychological aberrations, really—that have captured the West.

Wokism is defined by things like LGBTQ, DEI, intersectionality, safe spaces, trigger warnings, irrational pandering to minorities, identity politics, guilt about being white, abolishing traditional norms and culture, and disavowing Western values in particular. It’s actually a spiritual illness. Throughout history, there have been lots of similar episodes—the Inquisition, witch hunts, Jacobinism, Leninism, Hitlerism, Maoism, and many, many more.

It’s fine that Trump reacts against what amounts to a mass psychosis. But you can’t win a battle of ideas just by reacting against them. It’s good to destroy the foundations of Woke. They’re evil—a word rarely used since it was inadvertently discredited by religious fanatics. The problem is that, at best, Trump will just create a vacuum, and that vacuum can be filled by almost anything in today’s world. It seems unlikely, in the resulting chaos, that it will be filled by the things which actually made America great—free speech, free thought, free markets, individualism, rationality, the rule of law, and a half dozen other things I outlined in the article here.

International Man: Beyond cultural issues, we’re also seeing the political right suppress certain kinds of speech. The Trump administration has cracked down on campus protests and issued an executive order targeting anti-Semitism, stating:

“President Trump’s new Order takes forceful and unprecedented steps to marshal all Federal resources to combat the explosion of anti-Semitism on our campuses and in our streets since October 7, 2023.”

How do you view this development?

Doug Casey: The real question, the important question, is: What’s the government doing on campuses in the first place?

The State and its minions have absolutely no place on campuses. Injecting force and politics into academia is poisonous. Entirely apart from that, the US university system has outlived its usefulness. Almost all of them are intellectually dead. They’re essentially indoctrination centers attached to hedge funds. They’re no longer centers of free thought and critical thinking to help you find a direction in life, determine what’s right or wrong, and build your character. If you take STEM courses, you’ll pick up some facts at best. But that’s not what education is about.

Worse, looking at Trump’s statement, he’s looking to defend one group, the Jews, and particularly Israel. It’s none of the government’s business. And it’s not about promoting freedom. It’s about taking sides in a dispute between two antagonistic groups—the Muslims against the Jews, or the Palestinians against the Israelis. Trump isn’t solving the problem. He’s making it worse by choosing sides. Local police and the University itself are responsible for preventing violence.

International Man: From the left and now the right, it seems like free speech is increasingly conditional—depending on who’s in power and what views are deemed acceptable.

Do you believe the First Amendment is being eroded from both ends of the political spectrum?

Doug Casey: Unfortunately, the political spectrum is only divided into left and right.

Historically, the Left has always talked about free speech and social freedom. They never really believed in them, but they were overt about hating economic freedom. The Right always pretended to defend economic freedom but traditionally hated freedom of speech and social freedom. They’re really two sides of the same coin and should both be thrown out. Only libertarians believe in both free minds and free markets as a matter of principle.

The US Constitution was intended to defend citizens from government. But unfortunately, the Constitution is now a dead letter. It’s been completely interpreted out of existence. It’s become a meaningless sham. I don’t think that’s likely to change because the people it governs no longer have any philosophical or moral grounding.

In recent elections, particularly the last, half of the population voted for actual communists—although they always avoid that word. The only way this can be solved, if it can be solved, is by returning to a government which exists only to prevent violence and allow people to pursue free minds and free markets.

Unfortunately, government has become the source of all solutions, funding, and everything else. As I’ve explained before, since government is pure force, it should do nothing but protect you from force. Force from abroad with the military, and force inside the country with the police and a court system.

Unfortunately, those three extremely important elements of a civil society can be easily corrupted by the type of people who are inevitably drawn to government.

International Man: Given these trends, from disinformation crackdowns to culture wars to campus speech battles, where do you see this headed? What does the future of free speech look like in the US?

Doug Casey: I’ve said numerous times over the last decade that the US is headed towards a civil war.

For a while, with the defeat of the Democrats—who have mutated into thinly disguised communists, Marxists, and socialists—it looked like we might have a “Morning in America.” But it turns out that morning only lasts six hours.

I think we’re headed towards something like a civil war, though nothing resembling the unpleasantness of 1861 to 1865.

The point is that when you have 350 million people compressed into a political aggregation that no longer shares a common culture, religious values, economic interests, or political beliefs and no longer has any internal cohesion, it can only be held together by force. And that’s the way the US is headed.

It’s a real pity because the concept of America was unique in the world; it was the only country that was overtly founded on the principles of free minds and free markets. But it’s completely lost the plot and has transformed from a guiding light to an active danger, both to itself and the world at large.

Reprinted with permission from International Man.

The post Bipartisan Assault on Free Speech appeared first on LewRockwell.

There is nothing more dangerous than an incomplete picture of history. A hundred years from now, if the powers-that-be have their way, the few children still allowed to be born (due to carbon controls) will be regaled with school lessons about the “Dark Ages of Nationalism” – When humanity was divided into warring states and divided societies that refused to embrace multiculturalism “to the detriment of all”.

They will say that a “great movement” for globalism and wokeness arose and that the courageous revolutionaries fought evil conservative fascists using any means necessary. The political left will be painted as heroes fighting, not for freedom, but for equity and the “greater good”. Western culture, Christianity, meritocracy, moral objectivity, personal liberty and appeals to reason will be demonized as relics of the old world – Monstrous constructs that prevented civilization from attaining true “oneness”.

None of this will be true, of course. The majority of wars are triggered by globalist interests, not nationalists, and the political left is a gaggle of insane zealots hellbent on destroying the west. But, as they say, history is written by the victors.

Many conservatives and liberty advocates still don’t understand that we are in the middle of a 4th Generation conflict. It’s not a political or ideological disagreement, it’s a war; a guerrilla war in which the enemy hides behind civilian status and the legal apparatus.

They use our moral code and our constitutional provisions against us. They find loopholes in the governmental structure and exploit those weaknesses. They turn our society into a living suicide bomb, all while claiming they hold a position of ethical superiority. It has happened before…

If you get the chance I highly recommend readers check out the in-depth investigative analysis of professor and economist Antony Sutton; specifically his book ‘Wall Street And The Bolshevik Revolution’. In it he describes the historical timeline of how Trotsky and Lenin were funded and aided by the elites of the era. The key leaders of the Marxist takeover of Russia could not have done what they did without the help of American and European globalists.

In other words, the globalists created a Marxist terror campaign across Europe and then used it to drive the public into the arms of another socialist empire in the form of The Third Reich.

In Germany, people supported fascism because they sought to drive out and eliminate the social rot created by Bolshevik relativism (very similar to the rot we see in America today). For instance, sexual degeneracy was rampant in Germany after WWI. The very first transgender clinic was founded in Berlin in 1919. The Marxists lobbied for the legalization of abortion in order to garner more female support.

The rise of the “sexual reformation” was initiated and the 1920s equivalent of the “Gay Pride” movement was born. Pedophiles began to creep out of the woodwork – The concept of underage prostitution and “rent boys” was a notable problem in Berlin.

Questions of personal liberty are fair to argue. But without moderation, psycho-sexual obsessions embraced on a large scale can trigger social collapse. The true intent of any sexual reformation is to normalize cultural and psychological outliers. Weimar Germany in the 1920s was very much like America in the 2020s in this way.

Then there was hyperinflation, economic hardship and vying political factions that drove fear into common Germans. The fascists offered a clear vision, they offered economic prosperity, they offered domestic peace, they offered an end to the morally bankrupt madness of the left, and the public jumped at the chance. It was not a good choice, but it was better to them than allowing a communist takeover.

The globalists have a tendency to attack a target population from two sides, using chaos they control, and then order they control. Marxism plays the role of chaos, and fascism plays the role of order.

Most of us are familiar with the idea of the Hegelian Dialectic. However, I would argue that the situation is much more complex today than it has ever been. There is only one true option; order is the obvious choice. Leftists and globalists must be removed from power.

But how do we avoid doing what the Germans did? How do we remove the leftist threat without diving headfirst into our own brand of totalitarianism? It might not be possible.

As I warned in my article ‘Terror Attacks Kick Off In 2025 – It’s Only Going To Get Worse So Be Prepared’, published in January, there is now a rising tide of leftist sabotage. Today, activists across the country are using property destruction for intimidation. It’s not going to stop there. This is just the first phase.

There’s the judicial overreach by activist judges to thwart any cuts to the bureaucracy, and the attempts to stop deportations of illegals. There’s steady online threats of assassination and calls for alliances with foreign adversaries and terror groups. Just be ready for bombings, shootings and the rampaging mobs because that’s all coming this summer, I have no doubt.

The risk of martial law being declared is very high if things go the way I suspect they will go, and a majority of the US public will applaud the idea. Donald Trump has taken measures to follow through on every one of his campaign promises so far and I believe that this has earned him the benefit of the doubt. However, if he did call for martial law under the circumstances I describe to expedite matters, conservatives would be falling into a classic government power trap.

Once that door is opened it will be hard to reverse matters, and there’s no guarantee that the right wing will be in control of the machine as it shifts from checks and balances into a streamlined top down autocracy. We almost fell off that cliff under the Biden Administration during covid and it’s a miracle the country is still in one piece.

The scary thing is, beyond the hypothetical risks involved, it’s difficult to argue that martial law is unreasonable. The leftists are making it very hard for us to want to fight for their liberty, and frankly most conservatives would not care if they were shipped off to an isolated island somewhere to cannibalize each other. If you examine how these activists rationalize their violence on social media, one can only conclude that they need to be locked up or booted out of the country. They’re not redeemable.

Their actions are designed to elicit a call of force from conservatives. Then the activists rush to to the global stage and scream “You see! The right wingers really are the fascists we said they were!” The mere act of applying law and order becomes “tyranny” by the definition of the progressives.

In the meantime, a lot of libertarians are still out there in the wilderness searching for a perfect solution in which no one’s rights are stepped on and all viewpoints are respected. I’ve accepted that this is not going to happen. There is no silver bullet, no magically pure society in which everyone leaves everyone else alone. In a war, someone’s rights are going out the window.

It’s a zero sum game for conservatives because the more we accommodate the political left and treat them like fellow citizens rather than an enemy insurgency, the more the US will degrade into chaos. If we respond to them as enemies, crushing them like the bugs they are, then we become the bad guys and potentially welcome in a level of government power that could hurt us all in the end.

My solution is an ugly one and it’s something that most conservative commentators don’t want to touch with a ten foot pole: Instead of relying on government power to stop the political left and the globalists, common Americans should organize and handle the problem independently. This removes the danger of government overreach and constitutional trespass.

The average American is not limited by the constitution, the government is. We don’t have to respect the legal rights of NGOs. We don’t have to give leeway to leftist rioters because we’re afraid of political optics. We don’t have to let globalists operate in the US with impunity and without fear. Keep in mind that the US was NOT founded as a libertine nation where anything goes.

The Founders believed in revolution against tyranny, not revolution against morality. They believed in freedom, as long as it’s freedom WITH responsibility. They believed in rules and order, not anarchy. There’s no way on Earth they would have tolerated leftist and globalist machinations. Neither should we.

When we do act, we have to make sure we don’t create a governmental Golem that ultimately turns on us.

Reprinted with permission from Alt-Market.us.

The post How Globalists Use Crazed Leftists To Piss Off the Populace and Provoke Dictatorship appeared first on LewRockwell.

The irony of it is that we’re still living in the thick of so many of the left’s bad ideas and policies. Biological boys are still excelling in girls’ sports, and every Democrat in the Senate voted against a law to stop it. I could go on, but let’s look at how the media is reacting to The Donald’s Second Coming.

A New York Times columnist who is among the very few not suffering from a nervous breakdown after the last election wrote: “I think parallels with Nazi Germany are overdrawn; the word fascism may likewise muddy more than clarify. America won’t become North Korea, but we could look more like Hungary.” He then predicted with great assurance that Trump will go after checks and balances, will crush independent referees and civil society institutions, including the media, and will recruit shadowy private enforcers to intimidate critics.

As I said, this bum was the least anti-Trump among the paper’s motley crew, one that eerily reminds me of early Nazi propaganda back in the ’30s. To his credit, the bum did not specifically state that The Donald is being fitted for boots and a German military uniform. In The New Dentist, formerly The New Yorker, the editor David Remnick, unlike the Times man, does not hold back. Like his old man the dentist, he drills and drills like a deranged orthodontist on speed, probably dreaming he’s got The Donald open-mouthed on his chair. “In record time he has brought shame and disorder to the country.” I first thought he was referring to Sleepy Joe, but no, he meant the tall blond one. The dentist’s offspring then goes after Musk: “He flashes a smile of privilege and malice.” He means Musk, but it sounds as if he’s talking about his old man after a tooth extraction. Remnick then goes on to predict we will end up like Turkey—the country, not the bird—and prays that working-class folks will see the light sometime soon.

“Anna Wintour, who was born working-class, now acts as if she were to the manor born.”

What I find amusing is that those who scream the loudest about working people’s concerns are the least likely to know anyone who works and does not live off a Newhouse charity called Condé Nasty. Never mind. There are phonies and there are phonies, but the phoniest of all are those who scream the loudest about working-class people’s rights but can hardly say hello to the elevator operator in their posh building. Go to a Condé Nast office and see for yourself. Anna Wintour, who was born working-class, now acts as if she were to the manor born, but some of us are unfortunately old enough to remember her when she was hustling back in rainy old London. Wintour hates Trump, but she’s known for having said good morning to elevator operators. At times, that is.

Wintour’s loathing of Trump has brought him the luck needed to reach the highest office, of that I’m sure. Otherwise, my crystal ball tells me that the D.C. elites—fraudsters who oversaw waste, fraud, and graft, and used the federal budget as a kitty bank—will try to take revenge on the house cleaners, namely Trump and Musk. The federal bureaucracy is as crooked as they come, and the N.Y. Times is its guardian. A lot of powerful people are going to see their livelihoods curtailed, and they’re not going to go quietly. In will step the Times and The Washington Post with hit pieces on Musk that will get some fools to believe that DOGE is overdoing it. There will be lots of reaction to the Trump-Musk alliance, and even talk of calls for the military to depose Trump and arrest Musk, such is the despair of the entitled elite.

They’re squealing like pregnant penguins, the little darlings, but such are the joys of overdoing it. Musk is cleaning the Augean stables of bureaucracy, and there’s nothing the little darlings can do about it.

This originally appeared on Taki’s Magazine.

The post Wintour of Our Discontent appeared first on LewRockwell.

None of the people applauding Trump’s war on Yemen because “the Houthis are attacking ships” will tell you why the Houthis started attacking ships.

The pundits won’t say, and the people don’t know.

After two weeks of interacting with people who support Trump’s war I can confidently say that none of them know why the war is happening. They know it has something to do with the Houthis attacking ships in the Red Sea, but they never have any idea why those attacks started happening in the first place. They generally assume it’s because the Houthis are just plain evil and want to attack ships, or because Iran ordered them to do it in order to take over the middle east. The words “terrorists” and “pirates” come up a lot.

They legitimately do not know it’s a blockade aimed at halting Israel’s genocidal atrocities in Gaza, and that all attacks had ceased while the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas was in effect. They have no idea that Ansar Allah only announced the Red Sea blockade would resume after Trump and Netanyahu actively collaborated to sabotage the ceasefire and resume starving Gaza, or that they hadn’t even resumed attacks yet when Trump began bombing them.

My latest piece in @Mondoweiss: Yemen is acting responsibly to stop genocide and the U.S. is bombing them for it https://t.co/STmueYMCdR

— Craig Mokhiber (@CraigMokhiber) April 2, 2025

They do not know that the Houthis succeeded in causing an 85 percent reduction in shipping activity to Israel’s Port Eilat, putting effective pressure on the Netanyahu regime to end the Gaza holocaust. They do not know that Trump’s reason for bombing Yemen is the same reason as Biden’s: because the US empire believes it should be allowed to back Israel’s genocide without any consequences or resistance of any kind.

They’re supporting a war without knowing why they support it. This is possible because they not only don’t know why the war is happening — they also don’t care. They would support literally anything Trump did for any reason whatsoever, because they are mindless infantile cultists and not free thinking adults.

They don’t need to know why Trump is bombing Yemen, all they need is to be assured in a confident-sounding tone that the people he is bombing deserve to be bombed. As long as they receive that assurance, they don’t ask any further questions. They don’t even bother doing a few seconds worth of research. All they care about is supporting whatever Trump and his pundits tell them to support.

When you see how effective the Houthis have been at using Yemen’s critical location to shut down Red Sea traffic, you understand why the US spent years backing a horrific genocidal military campaign trying to get rid of them. pic.twitter.com/kL3fYDqJlY

— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) December 21, 2023

And what keeps blowing my mind is that they’re still supporting Trump’s war even after seeing the leaked Signal chat featuring Trump’s own team privately acknowledging to each other that it isn’t really necessary. They know that chat exists. They saw Trump officials talking about how there’s no real reason the bombing needs to happen right now and at most it can be used to “send a message” (whatever that means). But they’ve been aggressively defending Trump’s war this whole time anyway.

Really all that would need to happen for the Houthis to permanently stop attacking ships would be for Trump to use the immense amount of leverage the White House has over Israel and force Netanyahu into a permanent ceasefire. That’s how he could make himself into the “President of Peace” Tulsi Gabbard says he is instead of another disgusting warmonger advancing all the longstanding neocon war agendas his political faction pretends to oppose.

But that all it is. Pretending. They’re all phonies and frauds. A bunch of George W Bush Republicans LARPing as Ron Paul libertarians. Bleating human livestock cheering for every act of mass military slaughter they are instructed to cheer for.

______________

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The post They Tell You The Houthis Attack Ships, But They Never Tell You Why appeared first on LewRockwell.

Legendary award-winning filmmaker and political activist turned freedom fighter, Aaron Russo, left us an explosive legacy before his passing. In a never-before-seen interview that challenges official narratives and lays bare the hidden threads of power, this award-winning filmmaker and freedom fighter offers a chilling glimpse into how the global system operates from the shadows. In this 2007 interview with Alex Jones, conducted shortly before his passing after a prolonged battle with cancer, Russo offers a deep and revealing analysis of the conversations he had with his friend Nick Rockefeller. Throughout the conversation, he unravels an intricate web of corruption, financial control, and government manipulation that has subjugated not only the United States, but also the rest of the world.

An Unexpected Journey Toward Truth

Aaron Russo’s story begins as a successful entrepreneur and creative visionary. He pioneered the women’s fashion industry, creating the first bikini bottoms for women in 1963, and later founded the Electric Theater in Chicago, a nightclub that became a haven for hippies during the turbulent 1968 Democratic Convention. But it was precisely there that Russo experienced what he calls “my awakening.”

Russo, a man who always championed individuality and freedom, tells us how his awakening was not a singular event, but a progression of realizing the growing inhibitions of the government. One key incident, the senseless raid on his Chicago nightclub, opened his eyes to systemic corruption, although he initially thought it was a local problem. The falsification of facts by authorities and the subsequent extortion by the police were a brutal education in the true nature of power. “That was my awakening,” Russo confesses. “I thought this was America. I thought we lived in a country where there was justice.”

This incident marked the beginning of a personal transformation that would lead Russo to question everything from tax policies to the very structure of the American government. “At first, I thought it was just Chicago,” he reflects. “But then I realized this wasn’t local; it was systemic.“

But Russo’s insight transcended local corruption. Through his research for the film “America: Freedom to Fascism,” he exposed the core of the system:

• The Federal Reserve is a private bank that controls the issuance of money, forcing the government to borrow and tax the labor of citizens to pay interest to these private bankers. In 1980, Ronald Reagan stated that not one cent of income tax would go to the nation, but directly to the Federal Reserve.
• The IRS (Internal Revenue Service) is a symptom of this problem, and although Russo acknowledges that the Supreme Court has ruled it lacks the authority to tax labor and wages based on the 16th Amendment, he advises paying taxes for fear of retaliation, comparing it to paying the mob.
• We are led to believe that we live in a democracy, but this is an orchestrated lie. The Founding Fathers abhorred democracy, envisioning us as a constitutional republic where individual rights are protected from the will of the majority. Democracy is the rule of the 51% over the 49%, while in a republic, the 99% cannot take away the rights of the 1%.

But Russo’s vision delves even deeper into the shadows, revealing a sinister agenda for the future, directly from an insider: Nick Rockefeller. According to Russo, the banking industry’s ultimate plan is the creation of a one-world government, controlled by them, through of stages such as the European Union and the attempt at the North American Union.

A Look Inside the Elite

According to Russo, Rockefeller contacted him after seeing one of his videos critical of the establishment. What followed was an unusual relationship: while they enjoyed dinners and philosophical conversations, Rockefeller attempted to recruit him as part of the global elite, offering him business deals and even membership in the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). The real intention was to silence his dissenting voice and make him part of his plan.

However, this closeness gave Russo access to chilling information. In one of the most explosive revelations, Rockefeller confessed to him eleven months before 9/11 that there would be a catastrophic event that would justify military invasions in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as the implementation of massive control measures under the pretext of fighting terrorism.

“He told me there would be an event, although he never specified what it would be,” Russo recounted. “From that event, we would invade Afghanistan to build pipelines from the Caspian Sea, invade Iraq to seize the oil fields, and establish bases in the Middle East.”

According to Russo, it was clear that the alleged terrorist act was a massive hoax without a tangible enemy, part of a carefully designed strategy to establish a regime of fear and control over both the American and global population. He maintains that 9/11 was carried out by individuals within the government and banking system to instill terror and subjugate citizens.

“The war on terror is a total fraud,” he stated emphatically. “There is no one to defeat. It’s endless because it’s designed to be. That way they can do whatever they want to the American people.”

Another disturbing aspect of the interview is Rockefeller’s portrayal of women’s liberation as a deliberate tool to break up families and increase tax revenue. According to Russo, Rockefeller admitted that the Rockefeller Foundation funded feminist movements not for noble ideals, but to achieve two main goals:

• Taxing the half of the population that previously didn’t work outside the home.
• Disintegrating the family structure by sending children to school at an early age, where they could be indoctrinated to view the state as their primary guardian.

This strategy, according to Russo, has had devastating effects on marginalized communities, especially among Black families in the United States, where illegitimacy rates have jumped from 10% decades ago to 90% today due to welfare policies that discourage men from being in the home.

Rockefeller also openly discussed with Russo the elite’s ultimate agenda:

• The reduction of the world’s population. He expressed concern that there was an excess of people on the planet and advocated for a drastic decrease in population, suggesting it should be cut in half.
• The implantation of microchips to control society. This chip, he explained, would serve as a universal identification system that would allow bankers and rulers to monitor and regulate every aspect of our lives. “It’s part of their plan to establish a centralized world government.”
• The elimination of physical money. These chips would store all of an individual’s financial and personal information, allowing absolute control over the population. “If you protest or rebel, they simply turn off your chip,” he warns. “Without access to money or basic resources, you instantly become a pariah.”

It’s astonishing to see how his 2007 predictions are materializing today. Indeed, all of these points have been fulfilled since 2021. People continue to die by the thousands around the world as a result of vaccines; microchips were already implemented in 2021, with the introduction of graphene-based nanotechnology; and the elimination of cash and the introduction of a currency are gradually being implemented in all countries.

Continuing the interview, Rockefeller hinted that those who possess certain privileges within this new order would have immunity from common laws. For example, he mentioned that there are special cards (“KMA,” or “Kiss My Ass”) that guarantee legal protection for members of the elite, exempting them from fines, arrests, and other legal consequences.

Perhaps Russo’s most forceful criticism is directed at the Federal Reserve, the central bank he claims is responsible for the United States’ massive debt and loss of economic sovereignty. He denounced the government’s borrowing from private bankers when it could issue its own interest-free currency.

The Origin of the Modern Crisis

Russo begins by pointing to a pivotal point in American history: 1913, the year the Federal Reserve was founded. According to him, this event marked the beginning of an economic and moral collapse that has brought the country to the brink. Before the creation of the Fed, Russo asserts, the United States lived in an era of economic stability without significant inflation. A dollar had the same value for decades, allowing families to plan their lives with confidence. However, since 1913, everything has changed.

And make no mistake, this inflation is no accident. It’s a deliberate tool! By printing unbacked money, these bankers have devalued our currency, forcing the working class into deeper debt and becoming less competitive globally. This is a war on the middle class!

Russo doesn’t stop at criticizing only the Federal Reserve; he goes further, pointing out how this institution is interconnected with other global central banks. “The bankers own the United States Congress,” he declares, quoting Senator Dick Durbin, who publicly admitted that bank lobbyists have absolute control over Capitol Hill. But the dominance of these actors is not limited to the US. According to Russo, the Bank for International Settlements in Switzerland acts as the “central bank of all central banks,” coordinating efforts to establish a world government under the control of a financial elite.

This elite, made up of families like the Rockefellers, uses its influence to control and manipulate both the economy and politics, creating false divisions between left and right so that we don’t see the true puppet masters who are above all else. “It doesn’t matter if a Republican or a Democrat wins; both parties are bought,” Russo asserts. His vision is clear: to create a world where institutions replace people as the dominant actors, eliminating any vestige of individual sovereignty.

Read the Whole Article

The post We Are Facing the Most Dangerous Totalitarian Movement in History appeared first on LewRockwell.

read the news today, oh boy. About a lucky man named Elon Musk. But he lost out on one thing: he didn’t get a top secret briefing on Pentagon war plans for China. And the news people breathed a sigh of relief.

With apologies to John Lennon and The Beatles, a day in the life is getting increasingly tough to take here in the land of the free. I’m meant to be reassured that Musk didn’t get to see America’s top-secret plans for — yes! — going to war with China, even as I’m meant to ignore the constant drumbeat of propaganda, the incessant military marches that form America’s background music, conveying the message that America must have war plans for China, that indeed war in or around China is possible, even probable, in the next decade. Maybe in 2027?

My fellow Americans, we should be far more alarmed by such secret U.S. war plans, along with those “pivots” to Asia and the Indo-Pacific, and the military base-building efforts in the Philippines, than reassured by the “good news” that Comrade Billionaire Musk was denied access to the war room, meaning (for Dr. Strangelove fans) he didn’t get to see “the big board.”

It’s war, war, everywhere in America. We do indeed have a strange love for it. I’ve been writing for TomDispatch for 18 years now — this is my 111th essay (the other 110 are in a new book of mine) — most of them focusing on militarism in this country, as well as our disastrous wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere, the ruinous weapons systems we continue to fund (including new apocalyptic nuclear weapons), and the war song that seems to remain ever the same.

A few recent examples of what I mean: President Trump has already bombed Yemen more than once. He’s already threatening Iran. He’s sending Israel all the explosives, all the weaponry it needs to annihilate the Palestinians in Gaza (so too, of course, did Joe Biden). He’s boasting of building new weapons systems like the Air Force’s much-hyped F-47 fighter jet, the “47” designation being an apparent homage by its builder, Boeing, to Trump himself, the 47th president. He and his “defense” secretary, Pete Hegseth, continually boast of “peace through strength,” an Orwellian construction that differs little from “war is peace.” And I could, of course, go on and on and on and on…

Occasionally, Trump sounds a different note. When Tulsi Gabbard became the director of national intelligence, he sang a dissonant note about a “warmongering military-industrial complex.” And however haphazardly, he does seem to be working for some form of peace with respect to the Russia-Ukraine War. He also talks about his fear of a cataclysmic nuclear war. Yet, if you judge him by deeds rather than words, he’s just another U.S. commander-in-chief enamored of the military and military force (whatever the cost, human or financial).

Consider here the much-hyped Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) led by that lucky man Elon Musk. Even as it dismantles various government agencies like the Department of Education and USAID, it has — no surprise here! — barely touched the Pentagon and its vast, nearly trillion-dollar budget. In fact, if a Republican-controlled Congress has any say in the matter, the Pentagon budget will likely be boosted significantly for Fiscal Year 2026 and thereafter. As inefficient as the Pentagon may be (and we really don’t know just how inefficient it is, since the bean counters there keep failing audit after audit, seven years running), targeted DOGE Pentagon cuts have been tiny. That means there’s little incentive for the generals to change, streamline their operations, or even rethink in any significant fashion. It’s just spend, spend, spend until the money runs out, which I suppose it will eventually, as the national debt soars toward $37 trillion and climbing.

Even grimmer than that, possibly, is America’s state of mind, our collective zeitgeist, the spirit of this country. That spirit is one in which a constant state of war (and preparations for more of the same) is accepted as normal. War, to put it bluntly, is our default state. It’s been that way since 9/11, if not before then. As a military historian, I’m well aware that the United States is, in a sense, a country made by war. It’s just that today we seem even more accepting of that reality, or resigned to it, than we’ve ever been. What gives?

Remember when, in 1963, Alabama Governor George Wallace said, “Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, and segregation forever”? Fortunately, after much struggle and bloodshed, he was proven wrong. So, can we change the essential American refrain of war now, war tomorrow, and war forever? Can we render that obsolete? Or is that too much to hope for or ask of America’s “exceptional” democracy?

Taking on the MICIMATT(SH)

Former CIA analyst Ray McGovern did America a great service when he came up with the acronym MICIMATT, or the Military-Industrial-Congressional-Intelligence-Media-Academia-Think-Tank complex, an extension of President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s military-industrial complex, or MIC (from his farewell speech in 1961). Along with the military and industry (weapons makers like Boeing and Lockheed Martin), the MICIMATT adds Congress (which Eisenhower had in his original draft speech but deleted in the interest of comity), the intelligence “community” (18 different agencies), the media (generally highly supportive of wars and weapons spending), academia (which profits greatly from federal contracts, especially research and development efforts for yet more destructive weaponry), and think tanks (which happily lap up Pentagon dollars to tell us the “smart” position is always to prepare for yet more war).

You’ll note, however, that I’ve added a parenthetical SH to McGovern’s telling acronym. The S is for America’s sporting world, which eternally gushes about how it supports and honors America’s military, and Hollywood, which happily sells war as entertainment (perhaps the best known and most recent film being Tom Cruise’s Top Gun: Maverick, in which an unnamed country that everyone knows is Iran gets its nuclear ambitions spanked by a plucky team of U.S. Naval pilots). A macho catchphrase from the original Top Gun was “I feel the need — the need for speed!” It may as well have been: I feel the need — the need for pro-war propaganda!

Yes, MICIMATT(SH) is an awkward acronym, yet it has the virtue of capturing some of the still-growing power, reach, and cultural penetration of Ike’s old MIC. It should remind us that it’s not just the military and the weapons-makers who are deeply invested in war and — yes! — militarism. It’s Congress; the CIA; related intel “community” members; the mainstream media (which often relies on retired generals and admirals for “unbiased” pro-war commentary); academia (consider how quickly institutions like Columbia University have bent the knee to Trump); and think tanks — in fact, all those “best and brightest” who advocate for war with China, the never-ending war on terror, war everywhere.

But perhaps the “soft power” of the sporting world and Hollywood is even more effective at selling war than the hard power of bombs and bullets. National Football League coaches patrol the sidelines wearing camouflage, allegedly to salute the troops. Military flyovers at games celebrate America’s latest death-dealing machinery. Hollywood movies are made with U.S. military cooperation and that military often has veto power over scripts. To cite only one example, the war movie 12 Strong (2018) turned the disastrous Afghan War that lasted two horrendous decades into a stunningly quick American victory, all too literally won by U.S. troops riding horses. (If only the famed cowboy actor John Wayne had still been alive to star in it!)

The MICIMATT(SH), employing millions of Americans, consuming trillions of dollars, and churning through tens of thousands of body bags for U.S. troops over the years, while killing millions of people abroad, is an almost irresistible force. And right now, it seems like there’s no unmovable object to blunt it.

Believe me, I’ve tried. I’ve written dozens of “Tomgrams” suggesting steps America could take to reverse militarism and warmongering. As I look over those essays, I see what still seem to me sensible ideas, but they die quick deaths in the face of, if not withering fire from the MICIMATT(SH), then being completely ignored by those who matter.

And while this country has a department of war (disguised as a department of defense), it has no department of peace. There’s no budget anywhere for making peace, either. We do have a colossal Pentagon that houses 30,000 workers, feverishly making war plans they won’t let Elon Musk (or any of us) see.  It’s for their eyes only, not yours, though they may well ask you or your kids to serve in the military, because the best-laid plans of those war-men do need lots of warm bodies, even if those very plans almost invariably (Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, etc.) go astray.

So, to repeat myself, how do you take on the MICIMATT(SH)? The short answer: It’s not easy, but I know of a few people who had some inspirational ideas.

On Listening to Ike, JFK, MLK, and, Yes, Madison, Too

Militarism isn’t exactly a new problem in America. Consider Randolph Bourne’s 1918 critique of war as “the health of the state,” or General Smedley Butler’s confession in the 1930s that “war is a racket” run by the “gangsters of capitalism.” In fact, many Americans have, over the years, spoken out eloquently against war and militarism. Many beautiful and moving songs have asked us to smile on your brother and “love one another right now.” War, as Edwin Starr sang so powerfully once upon a time, is good for “absolutely nothin’,” though obviously a lot of people disagree and indeed are making a living by killing and preparing for yet more of it.

And that is indeed the problem. Too many people are making too much money off of war. As Smedley Butler wrote so long ago: “Capital won’t permit the taking of the profit out of war until the people — those who do the suffering and still pay the price — make up their minds that those they elect to office shall do their bidding, and not that of the profiteers.” Pretty simple, right? Until you realize that those whom we elect are largely obedient to the moneyed class because the highest court in our land has declared that money is speech. Again, I didn’t say it was going to be easy. Nor did Butler.

As a retired lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Air Force, I want to end my 111th piece at TomDispatch by focusing on the words of Ike, John F. Kennedy (JFK), Martin Luther King, Jr. (MLK), and James Madison. And I want to redefine what words like duty, honor, country, and patriotism should mean. Those powerful words and sentiments should be centered on peace, on the preservation and enrichment of life, on tapping “the better angels of our nature,” as Abraham Lincoln wrote so long ago in his First Inaugural Address.

Why do we serve? What does our oath of office really mean? For it’s not just military members who take that oath but also members of Congress and indeed the president himself. We raise our right hands and swear to support and defend the U.S. Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic, to bear true faith and allegiance to the same.

There’s nothing in that oath about warriors and warfighters, but there is a compelling call for all of us, as citizens, to be supporters and defenders of representative democracy, while promoting the general welfare (not warfare), and all the noble sentiments contained in that Constitution. If we’re not seeking a better and more peaceful future, one in which freedom may expand and thrive, we’re betraying our oath.

If so, we have met the enemy — and he is us.

Ike told us in 1953 that constant warfare is no way of life at all, that it is (as he put it), humanity crucifying itself on a cross of iron. In 1961, he told us democracy was threatened by an emerging military-industrial complex and that we, as citizens, had to be both alert and knowledgeable enough to bring it to heel. Two years later, JFK told us that peace — even at the height of the Cold War — was possible, not just peace in our time, but peace for all time. However, it would, he assured us, require sacrifice, wisdom, and commitment.

How, in fact, can I improve on these words that JFK uttered in 1963, just a few months before he was assassinated?

“What kind of peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war. Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave. I am talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living…

I speak of peace because of the new face of war. Total war makes no sense in an age… when the deadly poisons produced by a nuclear exchange would be carried by wind and water and soil and seed to the far corners of the globe and to generations yet unborn… surely the acquisition of such idle [nuclear] stockpiles — which can only destroy and never create — is not the only, much less the most efficient, means of assuring peace.

I speak of peace, therefore, as the necessary rational end of rational men. I realize that the pursuit of peace is not as dramatic as the pursuit of war — and frequently the words of the pursuer fall on deaf ears. But we have no more urgent task.

Are we ready to be urgently rational, America? Are we ready to be blessed as peacemakers? Or are we going to continue to suffer from what MLK described in 1967 as our very own “spiritual death” due to the embrace of militarism, war, empire, and racism?

Of course, MLK wasn’t perfect, nor for that matter was JFK, who was far too enamored of the Green Berets and too wedded to a new strategy of “flexible response” to make a clean break in Vietnam before he was killed. Yet those men bravely and outspokenly promoted peace, something uncommonly rare in their time — and even more so in ours.

More than 200 years ago, James Madison warned us that continual warfare is the single most corrosive force to the integrity of representative democracy. No other practice, no other societal force is more favorable to the rise of authoritarianism and the rule of tyrants than pernicious war. Wage war long and it’s likely you can kiss your democracy, your rights, and just maybe your ass goodbye.

America, from visionaries and prophets like MLK, we have our marching orders. They are not to invest yet more in preparations for war, whether with China or any other country. Rather, they are to gather in the streets and otherwise raise our voices against the scourge of war. If we are ever to beat our swords into plowshares and our spears into pruning hooks and make war no more, something must be done.

Let’s put an end to militarism in America. Let’s be urgently rational. To cite John Lennon yet again: You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one. Together, let’s imagine and create a better world.

The post Ending Militarism in America appeared first on LewRockwell.

There is a pretty constant discussion on social media in general and the Catholic blogosphere in particular about the flight from marriage among young people. A subset of that discussion came up in a recent tweet, where discussants debated whether a woman who has reached 30 and not found her “ideal” will have to “settle” for an “average” guy.

I know that such “discussions” are tilted clickbait, intended to elicit barbed comments. I, rather, want to go back to a different problem. The National Marriage Project, whose research on marriage trends is far more valuable than much of the babble either the never-ending Synod groups or Pontifical Academy for Life assembles, hit this nail on the head over 20 years ago in a report: “Who Wants to Marry a Soul Mate?” It warned that, especially among but not limited to young women, there was a growing phenomenon of imagining there is somebody out there who would fulfill one’s every wish and dream, provide total emotional succor, and bring utter contentment to one’s life.

The “soul mate” ideal of marriage was going strong a few years ago, and, honestly, it probably still continues to coast along in people’s—especially young women’s—minds. It would be interesting, however, to see updated social science data as to whether despair about finding that “soul mate” has fueled the flight from marriage.

Consider, after all, Disney’s reboot of Snow White. I haven’t seen it, but the “re-visioning” of what Rachel Zegler called its “dated” tale centers on a heroine convinced of her own powers, without needing that guy.

No human being is, of course, going to be that total and comprehensive “perfect” match. To expect that is to set you and the other up for failure. Even the best of couples will disagree. Also implicit in the “soul mate” vision is the expectation not that I should be the “soul mate” of another but that what determines the propriety of the match is whether the other fulfills me. Not getting out of that egocentric focus will poison any relationship.

Consider the very terms of the discussion: Will I “settle?” Neo-Protagorean women seem to think they are “the measure of all things,” another misleading perception likely to leave them—contrary to their real desires—unfulfilled. Pace Zegler’s “update,” one finds one’s self by losing, not tightly clinging to, one’s self.

These are basic truths of Catholic marriage theology that the world desperately needs to hear and ponder if it is to get out of the suicidal, egocentrically focused mindset that is destroying the formation of marriages and young families. This is where the communion, participation, and mission focus of the Church belongs, not self-referential talk.

There are hooks to be found in our American culture. I recommended Marty as a Valentine’s Day film. It’s about an average-looking Italian Catholic working-class guy who’s entered his 30s, wants to get married, but hasn’t found the girl—until he meets an “average” Irish Catholic woman equally looking for love.

Thirteen years ago, I also asked: “Do you want to marry George Bailey or Prince Charming?” Because “soul-mate” marriage is looking for Prince Charming, a creature so rare Snow Zegler White replaces him with Girl Boss (and, in a few years, likely a litter of cats). Though it’s thought of as a “Christmas movie,” It’s a Wonderful Life has a broader perspective and, in many ways, is amazingly modern.

George Bailey is also an “average” guy. Initially, it might seem he is without ambition: He still lives at Ma Bailey’s. He hasn’t gotten a college degree. Mary, whom he’ll marry, has. Should she “settle” for him? Or Sam Wainwright? George couldn’t afford a McMansion. He gave Mary a fixer-upper that—given the staircase railing finial that keeps detaching—is more fixer than upper.

Is the question—for the Baileys and for moderns—one of “settling”? Or, rather, how one defines “Prince Charming”?

This originally appeared on Crisis Magazine.

The post The Prince Charming Problem appeared first on LewRockwell.

Once upon a time political establishments would focus on defeating their opponent/challenger in elections.  Now they imprison them or stop them from running, as the Democrats tried to do to trump with four criminal indictments.  In Brazil Jair Bolsonaro faces alleged coup charges. In Romania, a host country for a US missile base on Russia’s border, Calin Georgecu has been falsely charged with “incitement to actions against the institutional order,” which in translation means running for president against Washington’s puppet government, which he is now barred from doing.  In France Marine Le Pen has been sentenced to two years in a jail cell and a five year ban on running for president of France.

Le Pen’s party holds the largest number of seats in the French legislature or National Assembly. Recent polls show her with a 10 point lead over the establishment candidate, so the establishment protected itself by putting her in prison.  Understand what this means, the French people are being denied by the French government the political representation that they want.

In Ukraine the “democracy” the West is so concerned to protect has been ruled for some time by a dictator whose term of office has expired.  I am beginning to have some concern that Trump himself could become part of the dissolution of Western democracy.  Why has Trump jumped all over Russian President Putin, who has kept Trump’s agreement, while protecting Zelensky, who has not kept the agreement, from Putin’s criticism?  Is it because Trump is studying Zelensky’s ability to rule beyond his term in office?  Other developments indicate weakening American democracy.  Trump’s kowtowing to Israel has destroyed the First Amendment, which is the foundation of American democracy, and Democrat judges are destroying confidence in judicial rulings by their interference with President Trump’s powers.  These are not healthy developments.  A judiciary that has discredited itself cannot rein in an ambitious leader.

I have written a lot about the collapse of the belief system in the West, such as yesterday’s article.  This is an immensely serious problem, and I have been unable to get any attention given to it.  

Throughout the Western World the main focus of the educational system is to undermine the belief system that maintains accountable government, which means a government accountable to the people and not to an establishment of vested interests.  The erosion of the belief system is far advanced.  President Trump is certainly not helping when he sacrifices the Constitution of the United States to protecting Israel from criticism.  

Ideas have consequences, and the consequence of the destruction of our ideas that uphold liberty is tyranny, which has raised its ugly head in France, Romania, and Brazil, and perhaps in America.

The post The Western World Has Abandoned Democracy appeared first on LewRockwell.

US ARMY Colonel (Retired) and diplomat Ann Wright calls them all out!

The post They’re all going to hell for the genocide in Gaza appeared first on LewRockwell.

MM Comment:

One of the most persistent objections when presenting the overwhelming evidence that viruses do not exist or cause a particular disease is for someone to immediately ask the following question, expecting to shut the conversation down completely:

Well then, What Causes (It)?

Please watch at least the first 9 minutes this video, HERE.

You will love the examples Dr Tom Cowan gives to clearly answer this question.

Highly Recommended 

For a deeper dive into the scholarship please also read these resources, HERE and HERE.

Thanks to MT for alerting us to this video segment.

The post Well, If Viruses Don’t Exist Then What Causes (Measles, Chickenpox, Etc Etc Etc)? appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, John Frahm.

The European Conservative

The post Is The West About To Implode? appeared first on LewRockwell.

Click Here:

Alon Mizrahi on the Israel bubble

The post Notable and Quotable… in the Classical Liberal tradition appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, Johnny Kramer. 

Tim Dillon On The Snow White Flop

The post Tim Dillon on The Snow White Flop appeared first on LewRockwell.

Johnny Kramer wrote:

BYD Announces Home Solar-Powered Humanoid Robot for $10,000! – CleanTechnica

The Chinese EV and battery giant has just introduced a general-purpose robot powered with advanced AI that can reportedly do difficult and nuanced tasks for you, like do the laundry, fold your clothes, vacuum, rake leaves, and even scrub the bathtub and toilets.

Whereas Tesla has a long-term goal of one day producing 1 million Optimus robots a year, bringing the cost down to $30,000 each, BYD is introducing this new humanoid robot at $10,000, with deliveries beginning in December 2025. That’s still a healthy chunk of cash, but it’s much more accessible to large portions of the population — the upper middle class or possibly even middle class, given the utility of the robot.

Going one step further, this BYD robot, named “BoYoboD,” is solar powered! It comes with a solar power charging kit that you place outside. When the robot gets low on battery — you can set that to be 10%, 20%, or whatever you prefer — it goes and plugs itself into a portable solar panel plus battery system that charges it up. So, yeah, BYD is going one step forward yet again and really building our dreams.

Naturally, the robot can also plug in your electric car for you. However, BYD has clarified that the robot can’t drive (yet).

The post BYD Announces Home Solar-Powered Humanoid Robot for $10,000 appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, Johnny Kramer. 

REVEALED: How Barack Obama Secretly Worked Behind the Scenes to Sabotage Kamala Harris | The Gateway Pundit | by Cristina Laila

The post How Obama Secretly Worked To Sabotage Harris appeared first on LewRockwell.

The post Jason Whitlock: How Black ‘Diss Culture’ Killed Austin Metcalf appeared first on LewRockwell.

Tim McGraw wrote:

Sam Neill is right. America is not a happy place.

The post Sam Neill’s (NZ Actor) Opinion of Living and Working in Hollywood and America appeared first on LewRockwell.

Kevin Duffy wrote:

Hi Lew,

How are these “reciprocal tariffs” being calculated?  

By country: “Tariffs Charged to U.S.A.” = trade deficit / imports.

According to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, “This calculation assumes that persistent trade deficits are due to a combination of tariff and non-tariff factors that prevent trade from balancing.” 

What if they’re not?  What if other factors might be involved: 

– Low savings 

– High government borrowing 

– Direct foreign investment 

– Indirect foreign investment (stocks) 

– Willingness of foreign central banks to hold U.S. dollars as reserve currency 

The economic illiteracy, hubris and recklessness of the people behind these decisions (Trump, Vance, Lutnick, Bessent and Miran) is truly staggering.

The post Reciprocal tariff calculations appeared first on LewRockwell.