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During the past few weeks, the Trump Administration has engaged in an illegal and immoral war against Venezuela. The war violates both United States law and international law. Even more important, it violates the principles of just war set forward by Murray Rothbard.

Wars almost always bring atrocities with them, and unfortunately, Trump’s war on Venezuela is no exception. According to an account published by the Washington Post on November 28, “As two men clung to a stricken, burning ship targeted by SEAL Team 6, the Joint Special Operations commander followed the defense secretary’s order to leave no survivors. The longer the U.S. surveillance aircraft followed the boat, the more confident intelligence analysts watching from command centers became that the 11 people on board were ferrying drugs. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave a spoken directive, according to two people with direct knowledge of the operation. ‘The order was to kill everybody,’ one of them said. A missile screamed off the Trinidad coast, striking the vessel and igniting a blaze from bow to stern. For minutes, commanders watched the boat burning on a live drone feed. As the smoke cleared, they got a jolt: Two survivors were clinging to the smoldering wreck. Hegseth’s order, which has not been previously reported, adds another dimension to the campaign against suspected drug traffickers.”

People were aghast at this barbarous display, and in response, the Trump Administration put out a transparently lame excuse. It tried to shift the blame to the admiral in charge of the operation. “President Donald Trump said on Sunday that he would not have wanted a second strike on the boat and said Hegseth denied giving such an order. But White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said on Monday that Hegseth had authorized Admiral Frank Bradley to conduct the strikes on September 2. ‘Secretary Hegseth authorized Admiral Bradley to conduct these kinetic strikes. Admiral Bradley worked well within his authority and the law directing the engagement to ensure the boat was destroyed and the threat to the United States of America was eliminated,’ Leavitt said. Leavitt said the strike was conducted in ‘self defense’ to protect U.S. interests, took place in international waters and was in line with the law of armed conflict. ‘This administration has designated these narco- terrorists as foreign terrorist organizations,’ Leavitt said. Starting in September, the U.S. military has carried out at least 19 strikes against suspected drug vessels in the Caribbean and off the Pacific coasts of Latin America, killing at least 76 people.”

Trump’s alleged “concern” for so-called “narco-terrorism” is hypocritical. Trump pardoned a former president of Honduras who was serving a long prison term for bringing an enormous amount of cocaine into the U.S. Somehow, that doesn’t qualify as “narco-terrorism.” Trump’s South America policy is getting more ridiculous by the day. As ‘Moon of Alabama’ reports, “Yesterday he announced a pardon for the former president of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernández, who is serving a 45-year sentence for partnering with drug traffickers who had allegedly shipped 400 tons of cocaine to the United States. He also endorsed a right-wing candidate Nasry ‘Tito’ Asfura for Sunday’s election in Honduras. Asfura belongs to the same party as Hernández.”

It transpires that Venezuela is not a major supplier of drugs to the U.S., despite all the hoopla from Trump. As Finian Cunningham reports, “Venezuela’s role in narcotics trafficking to the United States is not significant compared with other Latin American countries, according to the UN’s Office on Drugs and Crime. Colombia and Peru are more important as cocaine sources. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration has denoted Mexico as the biggest source of illicit fentanyl, which is responsible for most American overdose deaths.

I said earlier that Trump’s war on “narco-terrorism” violates international law, and Cunningham offers a succinct summary of the relevant points: “The United Nations Charter explicitly outlaws every aspect of Trump’s conduct towards Venezuela. Article 2:3 mandates that all disputes must be settled through peaceful means. Article 2:4 prohibits the use or threat of military force.”

I also said that Trump’s policy violates American law. As law professor Michael Ramsey notes, “The Constitution’s Article I, Section 8 specifically lists as a power of Congress the power ‘to declare War,’ which unquestionably gives the legislature the power to initiate hostilities. . . Most people agree, at minimum, that the Declare War Clause grants Congress an exclusive power. That is, Presidents cannot, on their own authority, declare war.”

Now, let’s look at what I said was the most important thing we need to consider in assessing Trump’s aggressive and illegal war: Murray Rothbard’s account of just war. Here is what he says: “Much of ‘classical international law’ theory, developed by the Catholic Scholastics, notably the 16th-century Spanish Scholastics such as Vitoria and Suarez, and then the Dutch Protestant Scholastic Grotius and by 18th- and 19th-century jurists, was an explanation of the criteria for a just war. For war, as a grave act of killing, needs to be justified. My own view of war can be put simply: a just war exists when a people try to ward off the threat of coercive domination by another people, or to overthrow an already-existing domination. A war is unjust, on the other hand, when a people try to impose domination on another people, or try to retain an already existing coercive rule over them.

“During my lifetime, my ideological and political activism has focused on opposition to America’s wars, first because I have believed our waging them to be unjust, and, second, because war, in the penetrating phrase of the libertarian Randolph Bourne in World War I, has always been ‘the health of the State,’ an instrument for the aggrandizement of State power over the health, the lives, and the prosperity, of their subject citizens and social institutions. Even a just war cannot be entered into lightly; an unjust one must therefore be anathema.

“I would like to mention a few vital features of the treatment of war by the classical international natural lawyers, The classical international lawyers from the 16th through the 19th centuries were trying to cope with the implications of the rise and dominance of the modern nation-state. They did not seek to ‘abolish war,’ the very notion of which they would have considered absurd and utopian. Wars will always exist among groups, peoples, nations; the desideratum, in addition to trying to persuade them to stay within the compass of ‘just wars,’ was to curb and limit the impact of existing wars as much as possible. Not to try to ‘abolish war,’ but to constrain war with limitations imposed by civilization.

“Specifically, the classical international lawyers developed two ideas, which they were broadly successful in getting nations to adopt: Above all, don’t target civilians. If you must fight, let the rulers and their loyal or hired retainers slug it out, but keep civilians on both sides out of it, as much as possible. The growth of democracy, the identification of citizens with the State, conscription, and the idea of a ‘nation in arms,’ all whittled away this excellent tenet of international law. Preserve the rights of neutral states and nations. In the modern corruption of international law that has prevailed since 1914, neutrality’ has been treated as somehow deeply immoral. Nowadays, if countries A and B get into a fight, it becomes every nation’s moral obligation to figure out, quickly, which country is the ‘bad guy,’ and then if, say, A is condemned as the bad guy, to rush in and pummel A in defense of the alleged good guy B.”

In sum, what Murray is saying is that a just war must be defensive; a nation must be trying to stop an invasion. And even in a defensive war, you must follow certain restraints. You cannot attack non-combatants. Shipping narcotics to the U.S. is not waging war, however much we might oppose attempts to do this.

Moreover, blowing up people who are clinging to a boat so that they won’t drown is cowardly and dastardly. Only those utterly without a conscience could do such a thing. Let’s do everything we can to oppose Trump’s unjust war against Venezuela!

The post Trump’s War on Venezuela appeared first on LewRockwell.

Sorry, but most of you are guilty of Ignorance and Apathy when you voted for a lying, charismatic Democrat, Communist, or Republican in Congress. None of these politicians give a damn about the people; they are only concerned about reelection and how much they can steal. Democrats and Communists are mean and ruthless, the Republicans are mealy-mouthed and weak.

You voted for your own destruction. So your only hope is to 1. vote every incumbent out of office and replace him/her with America-First Patriots, 2. replace the corrupt FBI with honest law enforcement who will jail every corrupt government official and employee, or 3. most importantly, demand that Congress obey the Enumerated Powers in the Constitution.

The Enumerated Powers specify exactly what the Federal Government can do; all other functions are reserved for the States and the People.The corrupt Traitors in government ignore the Enumerated Powers and usurp whatever functions they please, which is Treason and is impoverishing the people.

IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO HAVE A CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLIC UNLESS ENUMERATED POWERS ARE FOLLOWED. OTHERWISE, MOST OF GOVERNMENT IS BUT A CRIMINAL ENTERPRISE WITH NO LEGAL BASIS FOR EXISTENCE AND SUBJECT TO REVOLUTION!

I have no fear of contradiction when I say that if government follows the Enumerated Powers that we would be living in extreme luxury. Therefore, we must do everything possible to force government to comply with the Enumerated Powers.

It goes without saying that every Democrat, Communist, and Republican hates President Trump because he is responsible for reducing their take from bribes and kickbacks. Of course, the Republicans don’t admit that they, too, hate Trump.

The prostitutes you elected will continue to impoverish you until the Economic Collapse that is hanging over our heads takes over and we lose everything. Responsible Economists know how dire our situation is, but the Elites and their subservient Politicians don’t give a damn.

If you limit the government to only its Enumerated Powers, you eliminate a majority of Government Expenses that are being spent, unlawfully funding a Criminal Enterprise, Welfare, and Communism that is rightfully a responsibility of the states to determine. Defunding the unconstitutional government functions would result in an almost instant and fantastic prosperity for those who work. Those who can work…and don’t…will starve.

The following is a quote from Publius Huldah and a copy from her blog (https://publiushuldah.wordpress.com/). She is an expert on Constitutional Law. I recommend that you save this powerful information: “Art. I, Sec. 8, clause 1, US Constitution, grants to Congress the authority to spend money on whatever THEY think is a good idea is a false interpretation which has been used to evade the constitutional limits on the federal gov’s power.  The only lawful powers Congress has over the Country at large are the enumerated powers…

WE delegated to Congress the following Enumerated Powers over the Country at Large:

Article I, § 8, clauses 1-16 :

(1) To lay certain taxes;

(2) To pay the debts of the United States;

(3) To declare war and make rules of warfare, to raise and

support armies and a navy and to make rules governing the

military forces; to call forth the militia for certain purposes,

and to make rules governing the militia;

(4) To regulate commerce with foreign Nations, and among

the States, and with the Indian Tribes;

(5) To establish uniform Rules of Naturalization;

(6) To establish uniform Laws on Bankruptcies;

(7) To coin money and regulate the value thereof;

(8) To fix the standard of Weights and Measures;

(9) To provide for the punishment of counterfeiting;

(10) To establish post offices and post roads;

(11) To issue patents and copyrights;

(12) To create courts inferior to the supreme court; and

(13) To define and punish piracies and felonies committed on

the high seas, and offenses against the Laws of Nations.

Other provisions of Our Constitution delegate to

Congress powers over the Country at Large to make

laws regarding:

(14) An enumeration of the population for purposes of

apportionment of Representatives and direct taxes (Art. I, § 2, 3);

(15) Elections of Senators & Representatives (Art. I, §4, cl. 1)

and their pay (Art. I, § 6);

(16) After 1808, to prohibit importation of slaves (Art. I, § 9, 1); 2

(17) After 1808, to restrict migration (immigration) to these

United States (Art. I, §9, cl. 1);

(18) A restricted power to suspend Writs of Habeas Corpus

(Art. I, §9, cl. 2);

(19) To revise and control imposts or duties on imports or

exports which may be laid by States (Art. I, § 10, cl. 2 &3)

(20) A restricted power to declare the punishment of Treason

(Art. III, §3, cl. 2);

(21) Implementation of the Full Faith and Credit clause (Art.

IV, §1); and,

(22) Procedures for amendments to The Constitution (Art. V).”

( end of copy from her Blog )

It is impossible to have a Constitutional Republic unless the Enumerated Powers are complied with by the federal government… and they are not. The only way to have unlimited prosperity is to follow the Constitution; the alternative is to continue as we are, taking us into a total Economic Collapse and probably a civil war. It is up to citizens to force government to comply with the law. I think President Trump and Congress will have a hell of a time freeing themselves from control by the Zionist Jewish Lobby and the Parasitic Super-Rich Ruling Class. But I must admit that Trump saved us from a civil war and has done many great things with a corrupt government that hated him and the people

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There is always something new and exciting coming out of Washington. Last week’s big story centered on the presumed prerogative of the United States to kill people anywhere in the world without necessarily having to make the legal or moral case that they deserved death. Inevitably, the impulse to do just that derives from the very top of the government system with President Donald J Trump having on a number of occasions verbalized his national security policy, such as it is, by explicitly stating that whenever his administration encounters “enemies” of the US, the newly renamed Secretary of War would exercise the right to “kill them.” Trump claims that as president he can “do whatever he wants,” suggesting that he has never read the US Constitution.

Admittedly the brain-addled Trump is not the first US president to adopt such a de facto policy of L’État, c’est moi, though he may be the first to openly admit it. George W Bush “legalized” torture through his embrace of the “global war on terror” with him in the role of the “new sheriff in town.” He was succeeded by Barack Obama, who held weekly meetings in the White House to draw up lists of American citizens and others overseas who would be assassinated by drones. He notably killed the two al-Awlakis, a father and son from Arizona residing in Yemen, in that fashion. Joe Biden went one step further, by proxy, providing Israel with the arms and political support to carry out the genocide deaths of a minimum of 100,000 Gazans. When privately challenged by his staff on the policy, he responded “I am a Zionist” and refused to consider pressuring Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to moderate his actions.

But when it comes to Trump, one has to give him credit for his ability to turn multiple deaths into an ongoing comic routine complete with making up funny but demeaning names for the women journalists who question him during press conferences. In the past few weeks, Trump’s insults, tantrums, and threats have exploded. To Nancy Cordes, CBS’s White House correspondent he whined: “Are you stupid? Are you a stupid person? You’re just asking questions because you’re a stupid person.” And he complained that the New York Times’ correspondent Katie Rogers was “third rate … ugly, both inside and out.” But the most extreme put-down went to White House correspondent Catherine Lucey: “Quiet. Quiet, piggy.” But even worse went to Democratic lawmakers who told military members to defy illegal orders: they were described as guilty of “sedition … punishable by DEATH.”

As a man obsessed by himself, Trump has, in his own mind, elevated every slaughter into a narrative that demonstrates his own genius and political savvy. Last week Trump hosted two major events that demonstrated how low the leadership of the United States of America will go to promote nonsense. The first was a gathering at the United States Institute of Peace where what was ostensibly designated the site for the signing of a peace agreement between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo turned out to be all about Trump, both literally and figuratively.

Earlier in the year, when the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) headed by Elon Musk policy was in bloom stripping jobs and work from the government payrolls, the Institute of Peace was more-or-less seized and shut down by White House intervention, which included Trump’s describing the Institute as a “bloated, useless entity.” It was a move that is now being disputed in court as the Institute is largely government funded and was created by a law passed by Congress, but it is not under the control of the Executive Branch.

Currently, however, the Institute has been rebranded and the front of its building on Connecticut Avenue in the District of Columbia now bears large bronze letters above its own name spelling out “Donald J Trump,” a clear allusion to the president’s purported expertise as a peace maker. The State Department announced on Monday that the institute had been renamed “The Donald J Trump Institute of Peace” to honor and “reflect the greatest dealmaker in our nation’s history”. Trump claims having brought peace to eight international conflicts, though that assertion has been widely debunked and even ridiculed. Trump’s adding his name to the building facade appears to be a continuation of his effort to portray himself as a great diplomatic deal-maker as he campaigns for a Nobel Peace Prize in 2026, a distinction that he appears to greatly covet.

And the new inscription was not all. Trump was the self-anointed prime speaker at the event held there last week which enabled him to talk about himself. He referred to another meeting on Friday to draw up the final line-up for next year’s US-Canada-Mexico FIFA soccer world cup. The meeting was to be held at the John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, but Trump made a deliberate slip of the tongue in referring to it as the “Trump Kennedy Center.”

Trump has already loaded the Kennedy Center’s board with his supporters and has been pushing to rename the opera house after his wife and the building itself after himself. This impending takeover has reportedly resulted in many performers canceling out and also a dramatic decline in attendance by the public. At the Friday FIFA gathering itself, Trump was perhaps predictably awarded a special first time ever issued “peace prize” by the soccer association organizers! FIFA President Gianni Infantino presented the award saying “You definitely deserve the first FIFA Peace Prize for your action, for what you have obtained in your way, but you obtained it in an incredible way. And you can always count, Mr. President, on my support, on the support of the entire … soccer community to help you make peace and make the world prosper.” Trump called receiving the award “one of the great honors” of his life. It might be noted that FIFA is concerned lest Trump disrupt the World Cup games that will be played in the US, which he has already somewhat threatened to do, if he is not allowed to benefit from the publicity and name recognition! Some reports suggest that the whole performance was cringeworthy with Trump placing the medal around his own neck!

And, as is always the case with Trump, there has been still more. There was a discussion by Trump last week regarding the Dulles International Airport in nearby Virginia, with the White House pushing for it to be “improved.” He made an actual inspection stop at the facility and afterwards described the current airport as “…not a good airport. It should be a great airport, and it’s not a good airport.” He described the main terminal building as “incorrectly designed” and added: “We’re going to turn that around and we’re going to make Dulles airport – serving Washington and Virginia, Maryland, etc – we’re gonna make that into something really spectacular. We have an amazing plan for it.” The improvement would apparently feature renaming it for guess-whom.

And let’s not forget the “large” triumphal arch or is it a Trump-Full arch that might be coming on the Potomac shore outside the Arlington National Cemetery and the bill in Congress to add Trump’s large head to the Mount Rushmore Memorial in South Dakota. At least Washington DC has not yet been scheduled for renaming to honor Trump, but that will perhaps be coming next. But don’t despair, as Trump had yet another opportunity to shine last week when he issued a proclamation on Tuesday commemorating the December second two-hundred-thirty-second anniversary of the United States’ declaration of the Monroe Doctrine. It included: “Today, my Administration proudly reaffirms this promise under a new ‘Trump Corollary’ to the Monroe Doctrine: That the American people—not foreign nations nor globalist institutions—will always control their own destiny in our hemisphere… Reinvigorated by my Trump Corollary, the Monroe Doctrine is alive and well—and American leadership is coming roaring back stronger than ever before.”

Like the invention of the “Trump Corollary,” Trump never fails to take advantage of any opportunity to praise himself by name and will use all the power that he has assumed to be incumbent on his office to do so. The sad part is that the self-praise is largely an illusion, as Trump the peacemaker is more accurately a warmaker in terms of what he has done vis-à-vis his supine groveling before Netanyahu and Jewish billionaire money. Gaza under the “Trump Peace Plan” is an atrocity that has now devolved into a hand-off for Israel to kill more Palestinians thanks to Trump. Likewise for the ceasefire in Lebanon, which is a ticket for Netanyahu to murder Lebanese, and likewise for the settlement in Syria. And what about bombing Iran? And Somalia, whose people were described last week by Trump as “garbage”?

And speaking of Somalis and other nations that are considered too disgusting to entertain the entry of their citizens into the land of the free and the home of the brave, Trump has now said he wants to “permanently” end migration from third-world countries while “expediting mass deportations” of citizens of those countries who are already in the United States. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem wants to add at least eleven more countries to President Trump’s 19 country travel ban, reporting on X how she met with Trump this week and recommended “a full travel ban on every damn country that’s been flooding our nation with killers, leeches, and entitlement junkies. WE DON’T WANT THEM. NOT ONE.”

Interestingly, the ban could, if applied strictly as described by Noem, be used to block Israelis’ entry into the US as a plausible case can easily be made by citing their demonstrated behavior vis-à-vis their neighbors and in Israel itself that they are “killers, leeches and entitlement junkies.” That would certainly be good news, particularly if Israel falls apart as one might hope for and many of them would want to be coming over here to the US where they would apply their skills in corrupting our government and buying and suborning the media.

In another move that I have no doubt that both the Trump White House and the Israel Lobby will be watching closely, an Ohio Republican Senator Bernie Moreno has introduced a bill to establish that citizens of the United States “must have sole and exclusive allegiance to the US.” He said “Being an American citizen is an honor and a privilege — and if you want to be an American, it’s all or nothing. It’s time to end dual citizenship for good.”

The “Exclusive Citizenship Act of 2025” means that no one may be a citizen or national of the US while simultaneously having any foreign citizenship. And a US citizen who voluntarily acquires foreign citizenship would have to relinquish their US citizenship after the date of enactment. And those who have dual citizenship would have to submit a written renunciation of the foreign citizenship to the secretary of State or a written renunciation of US citizenship to the secretary of Homeland Security no later than one year after the enactment of the act. An individual who doesn’t comply will be deemed to have voluntarily relinquished United States citizenship for purposes of section 349(a) of the Immigration and Nationality Act. Any individual deemed to have relinquished citizenship is “appropriately recorded in Federal systems and treated as an alien for purposes of the immigration laws.”

The initiative is interesting and the policy is similar to that which is in place in many foreign countries. Here in America, the Israel Lobby and some particular members of Congress and on the White House staff will be working hard to stop it! It was, in fact predictably an Israeli, whose Supreme Court case Afroyim v. Rusk (1967), led to the current determination that a US citizen cannot automatically lose his or her citizenship unless he or she willingly surrenders it. Though specific numbers cannot be confirmed, approximately 200,000 to 600,000 US citizens with Israeli citizenship currently live in Israel. In the US, the estimated number of Israeli-Americans is approximately 191,000.

It is difficult to discern how popular the bill to end dual citizenship might be, but one suspects that many Americans are getting very tired of hearing about the atrocities being committed on the West Bank by all those dual national “Israeli” settlers from Brooklyn! And then there is the all-powerful Israel Lobby, with all those dual national Jewish billionaires and Hollywood types asserting how they are victims of “antisemitism” and need special benefits and laws written to protect them. Trump’s top campaign donor is, for example, Israeli Miriam Adelson, who has contributed more than $100 million to the Republicans while also demanding policies beneficial to Israel, including promotion of the Gaza genocide. Trump has taken her money and complied with her every wish. Time to end all that!

Reprinted with permission from Unz Review.

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Today’s number is 41X, representing the change in the public debt since early 1981, when Ronald Reagan’s first fiscal challenge, ironically, was the unavoidable need to raise the ceiling on the public debt. That is, right out of the starting blocks he had been compelled to embrace the very bloated ogre he had campaigned against for more than two decades.

As it had happened, the Gipper inherited $930 billion of public debt as of December 1980, which in part represented the substantial additions during the Johnson, Nixon, Ford, and Carter years to which he had properly objected, and strenuously so. Still, the excesses of those years had not altered the post-war fiscal path, which was one of a continuously shrinking public debt burden on the national income (GDP).

In fact, when the GOP-Dixiecrat coalition put an end to the New Deal in 1938, the public debt stood at 52% of GDP – before the exigencies of WWII sent the ratio soaring to a peak of 120% of GDP in 1946.

Yet financing this enormous war debt had not been a complete financial disaster because wartime rationing and economic regimentation had caused the private savings rate to soar, thereby enabling much of Washington’s wartime borrowings to be financed by the public’s real money savings, not the fiat credits flowing from the printing presses at the Federal Reserve.

Thereafter, of course, the 12-million-man US military was totally demobilized, causing defense spending to plummet and Uncle Sam’s red ink to turn into nearly balanced budgets and actually intermittent surpluses. Accordingly, a growing economy returned to civilian control, coupled with the near absence of material budget deficits, triggered a 34-year march of the public debt ratio steadily downhill.

Indeed, after eight years of fiscal rectitude under President Eisenhower, the public debt ratio had already returned to the 1938 level at 52% of GDP. Moreover, even the subsequent excesses of the Great Society, Nixon’s “we are all Keynesians now” fiscal policies, and Jimmy Carter’s attempted purchase of his 1980 re-election with goodies for the teachers unions, the energy industries, farmers, and other Dem constituencies, did not stop the march back toward national solvency. By 1980, the debt ratio was just 31.8% of GDP.

But that’s all she wrote.

As we will amplify below, during the Reagan era four crucial developments caused the nation’s return to its historic fiscal prudence to be abruptly abandoned. Taken together, they have transmuted the once and former paragon of fiscal prudence on the banks of the Potomac—exemplified by 48 surplus budgets during the 65 years between 1866 and 1930—into an infernal debt and inflation machine in the years since 1980.

These history-bending developments include:

• The takeover of Washington by a bipartisan neocon coalition that has spent massively and needlessly on a bloated Warfare State and Empire abroad.
• The GOP’s stinging defeat on Social Security reform in May 1981, which led to its going AWOL on its appointed role as nemesis of the Welfare State.
• The embrace by mainstream GOP politicians of the doctrine that tax cuts are a magic economic elixir that can generate a “growth” solution to chronic deficits.
• The takeover of the nation’s central bank by Alan Greenspan and his heir and assigns, who installed Keynesian monetary central planning at the Fed. The consequent massive monetization of the public debt further euthanized the nation’s elected politicians with respect to the folly of chronic and massive Federal deficits.

The chart below summarizes the results, and firmly reminds that the $38 trillion public debt level crossed recently is not just a case of big numbers vertigo. In fact, in Q4 1980, the GDP was about $3 trillion, meaning that today’s $30 trillion GDP represents only a 10X gain in the nation’s economic capacity to carry the public debt.

Needless to say, that’s why the 41X number for the public debt gain during the same 45-year period is so salient. Self-evidently, you cannot grow the numerator of the debt-to-income ratio four times faster than the denominator for decades on end and expect an eventual outcome that is anything short of catastrophic.

Yet that’s the sum and substance of America’s fiscal path since 1980. In the graph below, both variables are indexed to the levels of Q4 1980—so the ever-widening gap between the public debt (red line) and the US economy’s capacity (blue line) to carry it is unmistakable.

The thing is, however, the GOP of 1980 would have never dreamed of embracing the graph below. Yet the recently passed and endlessly ballyhooed OBBBA, which might better be called the MOABB (“mother of all budget busters”), will actually accelerate the current built-in trend.

For want of doubt, here is the debt ratio trend since 1980. It embodies a fiscal path that is the absolute inverse of the 1946 to 1980 trend shown above. In fact, during the 45 years since 1980 the debt ratio has tracked all the way back to its WWII peak. Alas, the US economy was drowning in private savings to absorb the debt back then, while today the private savings rate has shrunk to nearly the vanishing point.

Needless to say, this condition puts enormous pressure on the Fed to find an excuse to revert once again to massive debt monetization. Yet with inflation rates trending at +3% and heading higher, the Fed’s printing press has been forced into idleness and may stay there for some time to come.

And that’s notwithstanding the phony “interest rate cuts” being administered from the Eccles Building, which are the result of paying massive levels of interest payments to banks and money market funds to keep their liquid reserves parked at the Fed at the central bank’s pegged interest rate target.

To be sure, if the retaking of the WWII peak debt ratio shown below for 2025 were the end of the story, the future outlook would be bad enough—with either a massive, economy-killing interest rate crunch, if the rising Federal debts were financed the honest way in the bond pits, or another even worse inflationary blow-off, if the Fed’s printing presses are again put into over-drive.

But that’s not the half of it.

The built-in baseline deficits, which would have continued to track the rising path shown below, and would have actually broken into new territory relative to GDP, even had the MOABB been snuffed out on Capitol Hill, as it should have been. Instead, of course, trillions of new debts were layered on top of the inherited baseline, such that the debt ratio will soar to 166% of GDP by 2054.

In round terms, therefore, the built-in public debt barely 30 years down the road will reach $185 trillion!

And that’s not a case of big numbers vertigo, either. The CBO projection of GDP for 2054 now stands at $85 trillion, meaning that the gap between the public debt burden and the national income will continue to widen, and actually accelerate, along the path shown above. That is to say, by mid-century the GDP will be 28X larger than it was in 1980, but the public debt will be up by 185X.

Needless to say, the financial market will buckle and cause the US economy to collapse long before we reach the currently built-in public debt level of $185 trillion by 2054. If for no other reason, there is precious little savings available to honestly finance the UniParty debts, and, as will be evident in the years ahead, the Fed is essentially out of dry powder when it comes to massive monetization. The bond vigilantes have come out of their decades-long slumber.

So how do you finance the built-in 6% to 10% of GDP deficits year after year when net national savings have already vanished?

You can’t. American politics are locked on a path toward fiscal calamity because we now have two pro-government parties. That includes the Warfare State spenders of both parties, and the Welfare State demagogues and cowards, respectively, of what passes for contemporary Democrat and Republican parties.

Reprinted with permission from David Stockman’s Contra Corner.

The post The Triumph of the UniParty: Debt, Decay, and Imminent Fiscal Breakdown appeared first on LewRockwell.

It is one thing to produce a written national security strategy, but the real test is whether or not Donald Trump is serious about implementing it. The key takeaways are the rhetorical deescalation with China and putting the onus on Europe to keep Ukraine alive.

The 2025 National Security Strategy (NSS) of the United States, released by the White House on December 4, 2025, marks a potentially profound shift in US foreign policy under President Donald Trump’s second administration as compared to his first term as president. This 33-page document explicitly embraces an “America First” doctrine, rejecting global hegemony and ideological crusades in favor of pragmatic, transactional realism focused on protecting core national interests: homeland security, economic prosperity, and regional dominance in the Western Hemisphere.

It critiques past US overreach as a failure that weakened America, positioning Trump’s approach as a “necessary correction” to usher in a “new golden age.” The strategy prioritizes reindustrialization (aiming to grow the US economy from $30 trillion to $40 trillion by the 2030s), border security, and dealmaking over multilateralism or democracy promotion. It accepts a multipolar world, downgrading China from a “pacing threat” to an “economic competitor” and calling for selective engagement with adversaries. Yet, Donald Trump’s actions during the first 11 months of his Presidency, have been inconsistent, even contradictory, of the written strategy.

The is unapologetically partisan, crediting Trump personally for brokering peace in eight conflicts (e.g., India-Pakistan ceasefire, Gaza hostage return, Rwanda-DRC agreement) and securing a verbal commitment at the 2025 Hague Summit for NATO members to boost their defense spending to 5% of GDP. It elevates immigration as a top security threat, advocating lethal force against cartels if needed, and dismisses climate change and “Net Zero” policies as harmful to US interests.

The document organizes US strategy around three pillars: homeland defense, the Western Hemisphere, and economic renewal. Secondary focuses include selective partnerships in Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.

Here are the major rhetorical shifts in strategy compared to the previous strategies released during the respective presidencies of Trump (2017) and Biden (2022):

• From Global Cop to Regional Hegemon: Unlike Biden’s 2022 NSS (which emphasized alliances and great-power competition) or Trump’s 2017 version (which named China/Russia as revisionists), this document ends US “forever burdens” abroad. It prioritizes the Americas over Eurasia, framing Europe and the Middle East as deprioritized theaters.
• Ideological Retreat: Democracy promotion is explicitly abandoned—”we seek peaceful commercial relations without imposing democratic change” (tell that to the Venezuelans). Authoritarians are not judged, and the EU is called “anti-democratic.”
• Confrontational Ally Relations: Europe faces scathing criticism for migration, free speech curbs, and “civilizational erasure” risks (e.g., demographic shifts making nations “unrecognizable in 20 years”). The US vows to support “patriotic” European parties resisting this, drawing Kremlin-like rhetoric accusations from EU leaders.
• China Policy: Acknowledges failed engagement; seeks “mutually advantageous” ties but with deterrence (e.g., Taiwan as a “priority”). No full decoupling, but restrictions on tech/dependencies.
• Multipolar Acceptance: Invites regional powers to manage their spheres (e.g., Japan in East Asia, Arab-Israeli bloc in Gulf), signaling U.S. restraint to avoid direct confrontations.

The NSS represents a seismic shift in America’s approach to NATO, emphasizing “burden-shifting” over unconditional alliance leadership. It frames NATO not as a values-based community but as a transactional partnership where US commitments—troops, funding, and nuclear guarantees—are tied to European allies meeting steep new demands. This “America First” recalibration prioritizes US resources for the Indo-Pacific and Western Hemisphere, de-escalating in Europe to avoid “forever burdens.” Key changes include halting NATO expansion, demanding 5% GDP defense spending by 2035, and restoring “strategic stability” with Russia via a Ukraine ceasefire. While the US reaffirms Article 5 and its nuclear umbrella, it signals potential partial withdrawals by 2027 if Europe fails to step up, risking alliance cohesion amid demographic and ideological critiques of Europe. When Russia completes the defeat of Ukraine the continued existence of NATO will be a genuine concern.

The strategy credits Trump’s diplomacy for NATO’s 5% pledge at the 2025 Hague Summit but warns of “civilizational erasure” in Europe due to migration and low birth rates, speculating that some members could become “majority non-European” within decades, potentially eroding their alignment with US interests.

Trump’s NSS signals a dramatic change in US policy towards the war in Ukraine by essentially dumping the responsibility for keeping Ukraine afloat on the Europeans. The portion of the NSS dealing with Ukraine is delusional with respect to the military capabilities of the European states:

We want Europe to remain European, to regain its civilizational self-confidence, and to abandon its failed focus on regulatory suffocation. . . This lack of self-confidence is most evident in Europe’s relationship with Russia. European allies enjoy a significant hard power advantage over Russia by almost every measure, save nuclear weapons.

As a result of Russia’s war in Ukraine, European relations with Russia are now deeply attenuated, and many Europeans regard Russia as an existential threat. Managing European relations with Russia will require significant US diplomatic engagement, both to reestablish conditions of strategic stability across the Eurasian landmass, and to mitigate the risk of conflict between Russia and European states.

It is a core interest of the United States to negotiate an expeditious cessation of hostilities in Ukraine, in order to stabilize European economies, prevent unintended escalation or expansion of the war, and reestablish strategic stability with Russia, as well as to enable the post-hostilities reconstruction of Ukraine to enable its survival as a viable state.

The Ukraine War has had the perverse effect of increasing Europe’s, especially Germany’s, external dependencies. Today, German chemical companies are building some of the world’s largest processing plants in China, using Russian gas that they cannot obtain at home. The Trump Administration finds itself at odds with European officials who hold unrealistic expectations for the war perched in unstable minority governments, many of which trample on basic principles of democracy to suppress opposition. A large European majority wants peace, yet that desire is not translated into policy, in large measure because of those governments’ subversion of democratic processes. This is strategically important to the United States precisely because European states cannot reform themselves if they are trapped in political crisis.

Not surprisingly, this section of Trump’s NSS has sparked a panicked outcry in Europe. European leaders, including former Swedish PM Carl Bildt, called it “to the right of the extreme right,” warning of alliance erosion. Analysts at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) praise its pragmatism, but flag short-sightedness, predicting a “lonelier, weaker” US. China views reassurances on sovereignty positively, but remains wary of economic pressures. In the US, Democrats, such as Rep. Jason Crow, deem it “catastrophic” for alliances, i.e. NATO.

Overall, the strategy signals a US pivot inward, forcing NATO allies to self-fund security while risking fractured partnerships with Europe. It positions America as a wealthy hemispheric power in a multipolar order, betting on dealmaking and industrial revival to sustain global influence without overextension. The full document is available on the White House website.

This article was originally published on Sonar21.

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Greed is good up to the point that it delivers ruin.

The primary characteristic of this era is the purposeful confusion of profit and greed, as if they are the same thing. Greed is good because profit is good, and profit is good because the profit motive is the engine of Capitalism which is the engine of global prosperity.

The problem with this logic is greed is not the same as profit. In the sanitized version of the story, the profit motive of each individual magically generates the best possible socio-economic outcome for all via the secret powers of The Invisible Hand of market forces.

This is a fairy tale, of course, for the most profitable arrangement isn’t a competitive free-for-all, it’s a monopoly that controls the market to its own advantage. Monopolies are by their nature centralized; monopolies snap up or steamroll competitors until they exert centralized power–if not in a single entity then in a cartel that centralizes control of the market.

In the fairy tale about the magic of The Invisible Hand, individuals seek to maximize their private gains by increasing productivity and producing goods and services with more utility-value: higher quality, increased durability, etc. This narrative is core to The Mythology of Progress, which is the belief that Progress is 1) unstoppable and 2) a permanent force that advances as the natural order of things.

In the real world, entities maximize their gains by increasing the price while diminishing the utility-value of the goods and services: profits are maximized by reducing durability (planned obsolescence), reducing quality / quantity and manipulating a monopoly on information to modify the price to extract the maximum profit from each transaction–dynamic pricing is the seemingly harmless cover-term for this exploitation of information asymmetry: the buyer knows little or nothing, the seller knows everything.

This use of cover-stories and terminology is the foundational dynamic of Anti-Progress and Ultra-Processed Life: the authentic term (profit motive) is now the cover story for exploitation-driven greed, and Progress is now the cover story for Anti-Progress–the degradation of quality, durability, transparency and agency.

Greed is not the same as profit. Greed maximizes gains by exploitation, not increasing value. Greed is the operative driver of the current era. The socio-political-economic system is dominated by greed-driven concentrations of power: monopolies, cartels and states.

There are three mechanisms that greatly expand the potential for assembling monopoly / cartel centralization of power: 1) technology, 2) credit and 3) the state.

1) Technology by its very nature leads to centralized ubiquity due to the network effect–the technology that recruits the most users becomes the default access to participate in the economy–participation that is essential to function in a technology-dominated economy. This ubiquity generates monopoly (or quasi-monopoly) which then generates high stock valuations which then provide the money needed to maintain and extend the monopoly.

Technology companies’ access to the stock market via initial public offerings (IPOs) offers unique access to a nearly limitless source of “free money” to buy up competitors via issuing more shares of the company’s stock.

This immense pool of wealth enables technology companies to buy control of narratives and political power.

2) Credit. If an entity cannot create “free money” by issuing more shares of its stock, if it has access to nearly limitless credit, it can use this credit top buy up competitiors and buy political protection of its monopoly. This is why John D. Rockefeller was obsessed with gaining access to more credit: that was his pathway to establishing a monopoly in the oil industry.

3. The state. Those who buy (or gain by other means) political influence can then create monopolies or cartels via state regulations. To the degree that the state has a monopoly on centralized power, all monopolies and cartels are private-sector / state entities, as centralized privately controlled power can only exist if the centralized state allows it.

Read the Whole Article

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I’m glad I don’t have to seek employment these days. Fortunately, my Social Security is augmented well enough by my very modest book royalties, and what I make writing here on Substack and for the American Free Press. I’m not going to be starving. But if I did have to find a job, well…let’s just say that many out there are not that lucky.

I’m going to share some information from people I know well personally, along with what I hear from so many who follow my writing. If you’ve read my book Survival of the Richest, you know my thoughts on our rigged economy. Our bogus job market. And things have only gotten worse since that book was published. We no longer have viable unions, which served for decades to keep salaries and benefits decent, even at nonunion workplaces. Big Labor used to be a powerful force in this country. Democrats competed to earn its support. When’s the last time you heard any Democrat talk about workers’ rights? About vanishing benefits? About ridiculously subpar wages? Republicans will talk about the subject. They think that the minimum wage should be abolished. Because they trust the corrupt marketplace, they laughably think that employers will pay a fair wage, if only the government wouldn’t force them to. There are calls to bring back child labor, as I detailed in my book.

In 2018, I was fired summarily, without any warning or incremental discipline, by Inova Health, the largest healthcare system on the east coast. I had worked there for 44 years, virtually my entire adult life. But Virginia is a Right to Work state. An “At Will” state. Which means essentially that an employer has the right to fire you for any reason, or no reason. Now, this doesn’t apply if you’re Black, or part of what has been determined to be a “marginalized” group. But I’m White. And a male. And old. I’m about as non-”marginalized” as it gets. There was nothing I could do. Local media wouldn’t listen to me. Only one lawyer was mildly interested. I paid him for about six months, and he couldn’t even get Inova to take the termination off my record and give me the settlement package all the other laid off non-”marginalized” employees got. It still irks me that I was escorted off the premises like a common criminal, for the great crime of helping out a handicapped co-worker.

I tried to apply for other jobs for a few months, but only received one interview. This was to drive a van for a retirement center, call bingo numbers, etc. I usually do well with the elderly, and I was probably already considered elderly myself. Naturally, I didn’t get the job. And that was that. I couldn’t even get unemployment, because Inova fought it. More “Right to Work” perks. So it wasn’t enough that they fired me after 44 years for doing a good deed. They even blocked me from getting a paltry unemployment check. So excuse me if I roll my eyes when some Republican firebrand starts extolling the virtues of “Right to Work.” What, do you want to be forced to join a union? They’ll charge you! Well, if I’d belonged to a strong, old fashioned union, they would never have attempted to fire me after serving there for longer than almost any other employee in company history. I’m happy being a full-time writer. At this point, it’s the principle here. They were wrong, and they’ll never be held accountable.

Enough about me. What others are going through is inexcusably unfair. We’ve all heard about how ICE is hiring, right? About how they desperately need people. They’ll take anyone! They’re offering a huge bonus and great salary. But, as we keep hearing so often, no one wants to work. That’s kind of the Right’s version of diversity is our strength. Just as stupid, and just as untrue. People I know have tried to apply to ICE. They don’t even get calls back. They literally can’t even get to the application process. I wonder what these people think when they hear public figures talk about this tremendous opportunity. I’m reminded of the hotline set up, after the 9/11 inside job, where the public was advised to “say something if you see something.” Alex Jones called that line on air, and no one ever answered. No annoying automated menu. No leave a message after the beep. Just more lies. The system runs on lies.

I live in the Washington, D.C. suburbs. I’ve had lots of family members who worked those cushy government jobs. And yes, they are very, very cushy. But they’re older. I guess they were still hiring Whites back then. Try being a White male now, applying for any government job. Tell me how that works out. I believe that White taxpayers should no longer have to support the generous salaries and benefit packages of government workers, active and retired, because they themselves have no chance of ever getting a government job. And because private pensions have all but been eliminated for the common riffraff, why should working class Whites have to support the lucrative pensions of government workers? And again, let’s juxtapose that against the fact that many conservatives want to end Social Security. It’s an “entitlement.” It’s “welfare.” Just shut up, Grandma, and git a job! You know, the ones that don’t exist.

Of course, “Woke” liberals are awful. Often satanic. Their loathing of people that look like me is something I can never condone. Obviously. Doesn’t seem to bother most of the non-”marginalized,” though. But the hard-assed conservatives are really bad, too. No concept that the job market is far different than it was when they were looking for work, in 1975. No concept that the average college degree has become increasingly worthless while it became increasingly expensive. And now we’re getting 600,000 Chinese students. So how does a straight White male, unable to afford college and with no “experience” yet, build a career? Learn to code? That’s another pat Boomer bit of advice. That won’t work, in an IT industry that has largely been taken over by Indian H-1B Visa workers. And our America First President Trump recently declared that Americans “don’t have talent,” so we need more visa workers. This would be the foreign visa worker program that he said was disastrous and vowed to abolish.

I’ve heard from young men who swallowed the advertising about becoming interns and learning to be a plumber, an electrician, air conditioning worker, etc. This is another piece of advice we get from the Right- learn a trade! Learn skills! The problem is that once you apply for these intern jobs, they don’t hire you. And they let you know that the pay, while you are training, is pathetically low. Far lower than advertised. Not enough to move out of your parents’ basement yet. Even when I was young, they were parroting that “looking for experience” nonsense. This has gotten so out of hand now that I’ve known young men who couldn’t get a job as a server in a restaurant because they didn’t have “experience.” You need “experience” for that kind of job now? As I was asking even in the 1970s, just how is anyone supposed to start down this road of “experience?” We all enter the job market for the first time with no experience at anything. And again, judging by what I see everywhere, this only applies to Whites.

I had to call my county tax department yesterday, because I got a notification that I hadn’t paid the personal property tax on our two vehicles. I have the email receipt for paying them in early October. After a frustrating conversation with a female Asian, during which I felt like I’d been enrolled in an English as a Second Language seminar, I was eventually cut off. The mistake was on their end, but I have to accept the blame. And pay the unfair late penalty. That’s the way “democracy” works. But my main point here is, how did this Asian with such limited English skills get a good government job? Did she take her entrance exam in her native language? I wonder if she had any “experience?” Even with low paid jobs at Target, you have to take a 200 question test online. For which there are no right answers. These tests are now universal in dead end retail jobs. I encounter a lot of retail workers who struggle with English. Just how do they pass this test? I know a White male U.S. citizen who Target recently rejected.

That’s the real slap in the face to desperate young White males, trying to find some way of earning money. Retail jobs will not pay you enough to live independently anywhere in America 2.0. Yet you’ll still be shamed for living at home with your parents. I know someone who recently applied at McDonalds and wasn’t hired. I think McDonalds is pretty much cited as the crappiest job you can have. But apparently most White males now can’t even get that. I tried Headhunters myself when I was younger. It was pointless then. I’m sure it’s less than pointless now. So how are you supposed to “learn a trade?” Pay a lot of money to attend a trade school? “Learn to code?” And be forced to get all the certificates I never had to have? When I was drummed out of the business, they were costing about $3000 each. Remember, over 70 percent of Americans have less than $1000 in savings. You do the math. Become an entrepreneur! That’s America- small businesses!

Read the Whole Article

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The new U.S. National Security Strategy says with regards to Ukraine:

It is a core interest of the United States to negotiate an expeditious cessation of hostilities in Ukraine, in order to stabilize European economies, prevent unintended escalation or expansion of the war, and reestablish strategic stability with Russia, as well as to enable the post-hostilities reconstruction of Ukraine to enable its survival as a viable state.

The U.S. is pressing forward with that mission. With the help of the Ukrainian anti-corruption vertical (the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU), the Specialized Anti-corruption Prosecutor Office (SAPO) and the High Anti-Corruption Court (HACC) – all created by the U.S. after the 2014 Maidan coup) it has removed Andreij Yermak from his position as the head of the president’s office.

The next step is to press the acting President Vladimir Zelensky to agree to a peace agreement with Moscow. This will require him to give up land that the Ukrainian army is still holding.

If Zelenski proves to be unwilling to do so the anti-corruption vertical will open a case against him and remove him from his office.

A piece on Ukrainian corruption in today’s NY Times can be seen as an urgent warning:

Zelensky’s Government Sabotaged Oversight, Allowing Corruption to Fester (archived)
Ukrainian leaders blame independent advisers for failing to prevent graft. A Times investigation found that President Volodymyr Zelensky’s own administration removed guardrails.

To protect their money, the United States and European nations insisted on oversight. They required Ukraine to allow groups of outside experts, known as supervisory boards, to monitor spending, appoint executives and prevent corruption.

Over the past four years, a New York Times investigation found, the Ukrainian government systematically sabotaged that oversight, allowing graft to flourish.

President Volodymyr Zelensky’s administration has stacked boards with loyalists, left seats empty or stalled them from being set up at all. Leaders in Kyiv even rewrote company charters to limit oversight, keeping the government in control and allowing hundreds of millions of dollars to be spent without outsiders poking around.

Supervisory boards serve an essential oversight function, allowing independent experts, typically from other countries, to scrutinize major decisions inside Ukrainian state-owned companies.

Isn’t it funny that the NY Times has known this ‘for the past four years’ and was only now ready to reveal it? It is quite obvious that something has switched.

As Zelenski is on his way out the former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko may become a viable replacement. She is likely willing (for a price) to do whatever the U.S. demands from her. She also has the necessary seniority to be able to push an agreement through the Ukrainian Rada.

But another roadblock towards a peace agreement is the current leadership of the Ukrainian military. The current commander-in chief, General Alexander Syrski, is not ready to fulfill the Russian demand which will be the core of any agreement.

In an interview with SkyNews he is rejecting to give up on land in the Donbas that his troops are still holding:

Speaking frankly, General Syrskyi, commander-in-chief of the armed forces of Ukraine, signalled that his country’s soldiers would fight on if diplomacy fails – and he warned that the fate of the whole of Europe is at stake.

“Our main mission is to defend our land, our country, and our population,” he said in an exclusive interview in the basement of a building in eastern Ukraine. Sky News has been asked not to disclose the location for security reasons.

“Naturally, for us it is unacceptable to simply give up territory. What does it even mean – to hand over our land? This is precisely why we are fighting; so we do not give up our territory.”

Syrski may have to speak out against giving up land to keep up the moral of his troops. But the intensity with which he does so lets me conclude that he is feeling in this are genuine:

Asked whether the sacrifice of those people who gave their lives defending their country would be in vain if Ukraine is forced to hand over the land it still controls in the Donbas to Moscow, General Syrskyi, speaking in Ukrainian through a translator, said: “You know, I do not even allow myself to consider such a scenario.

“All wars eventually end, and of course we hope ours will end as well. And when it does, a just peace must be established.

“In my understanding, a just peace is peace without preconditions, without giving up territory. It means stopping along the current line of contact.”

The commander then broke into English to say that this means: “Stop. A ceasefire. And after that negotiations, without any conditions.”

Switching back into Ukrainian, he said: “Any other format would be an unjust peace, and for us it is unacceptable.”

Russia has already rejected to stop the fighting at the current frontline. It wants a full peace agreement to end the conflict for good. A ‘just peace’ in Syrski’s sense is simply not on offer.

There are sign that Syrski has become delusional. Since December 1 the Russian side has claimed to have completely ‘liberated’ Pokrovsk and surrounded the neighbor city of Myrnograd. Most observers and war mappers have agreed with that assessment. But the Ukrainian general staff under Syrski is still rejecting the facts:

Ukraine’s military leaders insisted: “Search and assault operations and the elimination of the enemy in urban areas continue in Pokrovsk.

“Taking advantage of unfavourable weather conditions, the invaders made another attempt to flag plant in one of the city’s districts so that propagandists could use it as proof that they had taken control of the entire city.

“After that, they fled in a hurry, and the mopping up of the enemy group continues.”

In his SkyNews interview Syrski is doing likewise:

General Syrskyi offered his assessment of the fight on the ground, saying:

• Ukrainian troops still control the northern part of the fortress city of Pokrovsk in the Donbas and will keep battling to retake the rest of it, contrary to Russian claims to have captured what has been a key target for Moscow for the past 16 months.

Such boneheadedness has cost the lives of many Ukrainian soldiers.

– Excursus –
PBS just released a documentary about a Ukrainian attack during its 2023 counter-offensive: 2000 Meters to Andriivka (vid). (The video is geo-fenced. People not in the U.S. will need a U.S. proxy server to watch it.)

The 1:45 hours long  documentary is authentic. It is using lots of original helmet-cam footing. It follows a group of soldiers during a three months long fight along a 2,000 meter long treeline towards a tactically unimportant hamlet near Bakhmut. When the soldiers, after may losses, finally reach the completely destroyed hamlet they hang up their flag – upside down. The Russian forces retrieved the place soon after that happened.

Alex Robert of History Legends has published a review of it. – End-Excursus –

When the U.S. has found a Ukrainian government which is willing to agree to a peace deal with Russia it will have to look for a military leadership in Ukraine that will support and implement the decision.

General Syrski is unlikely to be willing to do that. He also lacks the standing to be able press on individual units to follow related orders.

Reprinted with permission from Moon of Alabama.

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European civilization is dying.  The Trump administration’s new National Security Strategy makes this clear.  It has squandered its post-WWII economic and military assistance from the United States by investing in centralized, socialist bureaucracies and expansive welfare States.  By chasing the “climate change” con as a means for European governments to justify total control over the drivers of economic growth, European nations have forsaken cheap energy exploration, private entrepreneurship, and technological innovation.  By depending upon the United States to defend its territorial interests, European nations have destroyed their military capabilities.

In an effort to “juice” their economies with cheap labor and artificial demographic growth, European nations have opened their borders to tens of millions of foreign immigrants.  The natural result is that foreign cultures have steadily eroded and replaced millennia-old European cultures without much resistance.  The Trump administration believes Europe could be effectively “erased” within twenty years.

When living things die, they tend to lash out.  Europe is no exception.  Its political elites have decided to pretend that everything is okay and that the continent remains the life-force of the entire world.  In order to buttress this delusion, European governments have embraced censorship and State-approved propaganda on a scale as obscene as anything that might occur in communist China.  Controlling the “narrative” and silencing dissent are the last gasps of every civilization on its deathbed.

Every day some new horror story emerges from the United Kingdom in which an ordinary citizen is treated as a terrorist for merely expressing an opinion or defending a personal belief.  A recent example involves thirty-four-year-old mother of four Elizabeth Kinney.  It appears Kinney and a former friend were texting about a male acquaintance who had allegedly caused Kinney harm, and she called that man a “faggot.”  The former friend reported Kinney to the authorities because the “abusive and homophobic text messages” caused her “alarm and distress.”

While Kinney was naked and in a bathtub, eleven police officers forced their way into her home and arrested her.  Kinney burst into tears as male officers denied her any privacy, and a female officer informed her that she was being arrested for “malicious communications and hate crime.”  “The Crown place this offense in the highest category of its type due to the effect related to sexual orientation and the greater harm because it had moderate impact,” prosecutors insisted.  Kinney faced ten years in prison, but her attorney begged for leniency.  She has been ordered to perform seventy-two hours of community service, attend ten days of rehabilitation, and pay a fine of several hundred pounds.

All rights are property rights.  The “lesson” that British authorities are trying to “teach” Kinney and other citizens is this: You do not own the thoughts in your head.  You do not own the words you express.  You do not own the private messages that you text to other private citizens.  When your thoughts, words, and texts violate officially approved government “narratives” and ideologies, you will be punished.  Freedom of speech and freedom of conscience do not exist under any government willing to use force to control how citizens think, speak, and text.

In Kinney’s case, British authorities have no problem re-traumatizing a woman who had already been physically abused by sending a dozen cops into her home and forcing her to be naked, vulnerable, and afraid in front of male officers.  Instead, the Crown is upset that Kinney used a gay slur to describe someone not even directly participating in her text conversation with another woman.  When the State is more concerned about insults to men who have allegedly harmed women than the privacy and dignity of women who have allegedly been harmed, the government is complicit in the abuse of its citizens.

There are only a handful of reasons this kind of European totalitarianism hasn’t similarly consumed the United States: (1) America’s First Amendment, (2) Americans’ more resilient love for personal liberty and hostility toward overreaching government, and (3) the Democrats’ inability to flood the 2024 election with enough fraudulent mail-in ballots to pull off back-to-back steals.  Democrats have been criminalizing “hate speech” for decades.  The Biden administration actively censored Americans’ online speech and attempted to erect a permanent “Disinformation Governance Board” within the Department of Homeland Security.

Europe’s totalitarian assaults on free speech are therefore an ongoing national security threat to the United States.  “Protecting” people from “hate speech” has always been a government-contrived Trojan horse for censoring dissent and controlling the flow of information.

Right now Minnesota Governor Tim Walz is whining about random Americans calling him a “retard” after President Trump labeled the governor “seriously retarded” in a Thanksgiving post on Truth Social.  If Americans don’t vigilantly defend the First Amendment’s protections for free speech, then a future Democrat president will no doubt follow Europe’s example by sending well-armed law enforcement officers to Mar-a-Lago to arrest President Trump for hurting Tim Walz’s feelings.  It’s not as if the FBI hasn’t raided Trump’s home with lethal force before.

Europe’s descent into tyranny must be resisted, but a firewall preventing Europe’s tyranny from spreading beyond the ruin of its own continent is essential.

French President Emmanuel Macron wants the authority to block all online content that the government deems “false information.”  Additionally, he wants to establish a news media certification system that would give the State the power to create a veritable “ministry of truth.”

U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer and his political operatives have apparently been using an elaborate web of taxpayer-funded initiatives, billionaire-funded NGOs, and covert propaganda campaigns to target and cripple conservative news outlets in the United States.  The prime minister’s chief of staff has been accused of running a “shadowy astroturf organization” meant to censor conservatives, punish freedom of expression, and eliminate dissent.  Among the U.K. operation’s various objectives, its key mission has allegedly been to “Kill Musk’s Twitter.”

The European Union is so committed to destroying free speech on Elon Musk’s “X” that it has fined the social media platform hundreds of millions of dollars for violating the European Union’s new Digital Services Act.  The DSA empowers European bureaucrats and aristocrats to control most online information and allows the EU to elevate its preferred “narratives” over the opinions of common citizens.

European governments are so afraid of Americans’ free speech that they are doing everything in their power to censor, fine, and criminally punish American citizens.  As Secretary of State Marco Rubio states plainly in a recent post on “X,” “The European Commission’s $140 million fine isn’t just an attack on @X, it’s an attack on all American tech platforms and the American people by foreign governments.  The days of censoring Americans online are over.”

Censoring dissent is a sign of political weakness.  It is a telltale sign of Europe’s looming demise.  Any civilization so vulnerable that it cannot withstand opposing points of view certainly cannot withstand anything more pointed or explosive than uncomfortable words.  Governments that fear the private thoughts of the people know that their days are numbered.

Americans should support those in Europe who still believe in freedom and personal liberty.  We should ally ourselves with the millions who wish to live their lives free from government’s choking grip.  We should not continue supporting the governments doing the choking.  We share no common cause with tyrants.  To liberate the oppressed, Americans must allow European totalitarianism to destroy itself.

This article was originally published on American Thinker.

The post Europe Is Dying appeared first on LewRockwell.

I did not think it would be possible for New York Attorney General, Leticia James, and former FBI Director, James Comey, to be prosecuted. And I was correct that Democrats would protect  their agents who tried to destroy President Trump. Republicans are too weak to fight their enemies. Indeed Republicans think their enemies are over there in foreign lands–Russians, Iranians, Chinese, Venezuelans.

A Democrat judge dismissed the grand jury charges against James and Comey on the grounds that the US attorney prosecuting the case was illegally appointed. The case was not dismissed on the grounds that there was no evidence, or on the grounds that the evidence against them presented to the grand jury was false, or that the grand jury was politically biased against the defendants. In other words, even if we assume the judge’s assertion of illegal appointment is correct, the appointment has nothing to do with the case against James and Comey.

The US Justice department last Thursday failed in its attempt to secure a new indictment against New York attorney general Leticia James when the grand jury refused the indictment. It is taken for granted that the prosecutor can get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich. Yet the case against Leticia James, a case strong enough to have already secured a grand jury indictment, was refused by a second grand jury. What is going on here?  Did the prosecutor  intentionally present a bad case?  I remember AG Bondi saying that the Justice Department was staffed with Democrats. Are jurors in New York too fearful to indict Democrats?  Do they fear threats and harassment by thugs?

Remember, the charge against Leticia James is that she committed mortgage fraud– the same charge on which she attempted to frame President Trump. In Trump’s case, there was no evidence of fraud. It was only Leticia James’ assertion. Moreover, there were no complaints of fraud against Trump from the people he allegedly defrauded. All of the lenders said they were pleased with the loans. No one suffered any loss. Leticia James knew that in the corrupt New York so-called “justice system” she could convict a person like Trump, who has been demonized by the media. She knew that there would be some black jurors influenced by the demonization of white people as racists and exploiters who would see in the case against President Trump a way of dealing a blow against their oppressors. Vengeful jurors were the basis for Leticia James prosecution of President Trump.

In the case of the indictment of Letitia James, the evidence is completely clear. She lied on her mortgage application that her rental property in Virginia was her place of residence. It was completely clear that she lied about her residence in order to save thousands of dollars in mortgage costs.

Now ask yourself what is the importance to the facts in the case of a prosecutor being dismissed by a federal Democrat judge as improperly appointed? Does it invalidate the evidence? If not, why is the indictment invalidated?

More importantly, why does a Democrat judge want a New York Attorney General who has committed a criminal act to remain NY attorney general?

Remember also that in the case of James Comey, the Democrat US attorney appointed to prosecute Comey leaked to the media that she could not find a case against Comey. The purpose of the leak was to prejudice the jury pool against finding Comey guilty if prosecuted by a different US attorney.

As you can see, Democrats view law as a political weapon, and not as a means of obtaining justice.

Democrats do not have a concept of justice that applies to everyone equally. Democrats have a multi-tiered concept of justice. For example, a black American cannot be held to the same accountability as a white American. A black criminal is a victim of white racist society, and his crime is the fault of white society. The result of this approach to criminal justice is that Democrat judges release heartened black criminals because they are more concerned to be fair to the criminal then to be fair to the society in which the criminal performs his criminal deeds. This leniency toward black criminals ranges over a wide variety of criminal acts. For example, the Democrats in San Francisco passed a law that it was not a criminal act for a black to steal up to $950 in merchandise per day per store. Theft was no longer a criminal act. It was reduced to a misdemeanor. The same reduction in punishment, if there is punishment, is seen all the way up the scale of crimes even to the act of murder. This report illustrates the legal privileges that white liberals have extended to blacks.

Immigrant invaders are another group that Democrats favor for legal privileges. Democrats endeavor to provide immigrant invaders with the rights of citizenship, even though they entered the country illegally. Indeed, Democrat mayors, city councils, and governors attempt to prevent deportation of illegal aliens. Democrats also endow the sexually perverse with special legal privileges. For example, Democrats have imposed on females the right of biological men to have access to women’s private places such as toilets and showers if the male claims that he is a woman. A false claim takes precedence over biological fact and female privacy. Democrats also impose biological males on female sports teams. It is obvious that in America there is no longer a uniform standard of justice. Punishment varies according to the diverse legal privileges based on race, claimed gender, sexual preference, and citizenship or lack thereof. Instead of the legal profession objecting to the destruction of equality under the law, diverse punishments based on diverse categories of people are becoming institutionalized in criminal justice.

The trial of Daniel Penny in New York’s corrupt criminal justice system suggests that Democrat prosecutors associate guilt with whiteness and male toxicity. Penny a white former US marine restrained Jordan Neely, a black man who was threatening passengers on a New York subway. Neely died while struggling against restraint. The New York prosecutors, Dafna Yoran and Jillian Shartrand, accused Penny of killing Jordan Neely by strangulation.

There was no evidence of strangulation. The prosecutors’ medical witness produced the strangulation verdict prior to drug testing being conducted. She became flustered on cross examination and said that, even if Jordan Neely had sufficient fentanyl in his system to kill an elephant, she would have found that he was strangled. The strangulation charge was later refuted by competent medical autopsy.

Let’s ask ourselves a question: Why was this case brought? Clearly Penny was acting as a good Samaritan, putting his own life in danger by confronting a deranged person of his own size and weight. Penny did not know Jordan Neely and had no reason to kill him. When prosecutors gratuitously charge a good Samaritan acting to protect the public, they discourage intervention when the public is endangered. Although the jury cleared Penny of the prosecutors’ false charges, the message sent to potential good Samaritans is to avoid involvement, particularly if you are white and the source of the trouble or danger is a black. This message has been taught all over Europe and is the reason why European men do not intervene when white European women are raped by black immigrant-invaders.

The two Democrat prosecutors thought that they had another George Floyd-Derek Chauvin case. Another black man choked by another toxic white male. Conviction would bring them kudos from the radicals growing in power in the Democrat Party. Perhaps one day they would be sitting on the US Supreme Court and transforming society.

In a series of articles, I have shown that George Floyd died from an overdose of fentanyl and not from strangulation. This was known at the time of the trial, but the evidence was withheld  from the jury and the media suppressed it. The Democrats needed a white cop villain to justify their inaction while blacks and left-wing Democrats looted and burned business sectors in Democrats cities. For Democrats justice now serves ideology and political causes. This is being institutionalized in the American justice system, and it signifies the death of Justice in America.

The post Democrats Have Destroyed Equality Under Law appeared first on LewRockwell.

After years of lauding the Ukrainian actor, Volodymyr Zelensky as the “Savior of the West,” the U.S. media, including the New York Times, is starting to concede what sensible adults have understood since 2021—namely, that he was installed by the gangster oligarchs who have long run the country for their benefit.

Two days ago, the Times published a report Zelensky’s Government Sabotaged Oversight, Allowing Corruption to Fester, which focuses on allegations Zelensky et al. siphoned off and laundered $100 million from the state-owned nuclear power company, Energoatom.

Mr. Zelensky’s administration has blamed Energoatom’s supervisory board for failing to stop the corruption. But it was Mr. Zelensky’s government itself that neutered Energoatom’s supervisory board, The Times found.

It’s not clear why the Times has now decided to shift its reporting from “Zelensky the Messiah” to “Zelensky the Crook.”

To me, one of the most interesting details to emerge from this scandal is the following recently reported in the Kviv Independent:

Kyiv Appeals Court ordered on Dec. 3 the release of Ruslan Mahamedrasulov, a detective with Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU), who had been investigating the country’s largest corruption case involving the state-run nuclear power monopoly Energoatom.

Critics argued that the arrest of Mahamedrasulov was a part of a crackdown on Ukraine’s anti-corruption institutions, describing it as a political move.

Mahamedrasulov, the head of a NABU detective unit, and his 65-year-old father, Sentyabr, were arrested by Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) in July, a day before President Volodymyr Zelensky signed a law that that took away the independence of NABU and Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO).

After protests in Kyiv and pressure from Western partners, the president signed a new bill on July 31, restoring the independence of these anti-corruption institutions.

Mahamedrasulov and his father were charged with collaborating with Russia for allegedly maintaining contacts with Moscow and serving as an intermediary in cannabis sales to the Russian republic of Dagestan.

The charge of “collaborating with Russia” is an extremely useful accusation to make against anyone in the West who questions the U.S. Military-Industrial-Complex, NATO, and the vast legion of lobbyists, propagandists, thieves, and assorted parasites who make a handsome living by maintaining the fiction that Russia is the great enemy of the West.

The Mahamedrasulov case reminds me of the incident in December 2016 when then Vice President Joe Biden told Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk that the $1 billion U.S. loan guarantee was contingent on the removal of Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin, who was investigating allegations of corruption in the Burisma Holdings, of which Hunter Biden was a handsomely paid board member.

Readers who are interested in learning more about this story are invited to read my post of last year, Hunter Biden’s Ukrainian Adventure

Burisma was generally understood to be owned by the Ukrainian oligarch, Mykola Zlochevsky, but a 2012 study by the Anti-Corruption Action Center presented evidence that Ihor Kolomoisky held a controlling interest. Kolomoisky, with his media holdings, played a decisive role in getting Zelensky elected (see my post, Ukrainian Corruption Scandal Likely Tip of Iceberg).

Lindsey Graham and other U.S. politicians who have made junkets to Kiev understand how this game works. Both political parties have benefitted enormously from maintaining enmity with Russia, even after the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991. This momentous event provided a unique opportunity for the United States and Europe to bury the hatchet with Russia, but our corrupt ruling class preferred to maintain suspicion and hostility for their own selfish designs.

This is why—against the stern advice and warnings of George Kennan (see A Fateful Error) and other Cold War strategists—the U.S. insisted on expanding NATO all the way to Russia’s borders.

This article was originally published on Courageous Discourse.

The post The West Needs Bogeymen (Especially Russia) appeared first on LewRockwell.

The Guardian has a report out which says that at least 60,000 people were murdered by Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces (RSF) when they captured El Fasher in October, which would be the largest single massacre since Rwanda in 1994. Just in the last few days the RSF have reportedly killed 46 children and scores of adults in suicide drone attacks.

These massacres are made possible by the United Arab Emirates, who have been funneling weapons to the RSF through a complex international supply chain. Much like the Saudi-led genocide in Yemen from 2015 to 2022 (which the UAE also participated in), this is yet another instance of a tyrannical Gulf state monarchy committing unfathomable atrocities while its friends in Washington look the other way.

In 2017 a leaked State Department memo explained that it is internal US policy to tolerate human rights abuses of US-aligned nations like Saudi Arabia and Egypt while making a big deal about alleged humanitarian abuses in places like Iran. The UAE is a regional partner of the United States, so its genocidal crimes are overlooked.

President Trump has made a few noises about making peace in Sudan and Secretary of State Marco Rubio has obliquely wagged his finger at the UAE for its role in the genocide, but meanwhile these mass atrocities are taking place completely unimpeded.

It’s cute how the western empire artificially props up these genocidal Gulf state dictatorships and then bangs on about the importance of supporting Israel and its genocidal atrocities because it’s “the only democracy in the middle east”. It’s like, YOU killed the democracy in the middle east, bitch.

❖

As the US war machine escalates in Venezuela I’m seeing more and more online accounts claiming to be Venezuelans urging Trump to attack Caracas and remove Maduro by military force.

As a general rule you should always be skeptical of anyone saying “Please invade/bomb/sanction my country,” because it means they either (A) aren’t living in that country, or (B) have some socioeconomic reason to believe they’ll be safe from the repercussions of what they’re asking for which everyone else will suffer from.

But honestly it doesn’t even matter if they are 100 percent legit. I don’t care if you really are an impoverished Venezuelan civilian living in Venezuela, it’s still an indisputable fact that US regime change interventionism is reliably disastrous. Your position isn’t made any less stupid and crazy by where you happen to live; anyone who supports US regime change interventionism is still always wrong.

❖

If Maduro really was a monstrous tyrannical dictator the US would be selling him F-35s.

❖

What’s funny about Trump supporters who justify war with Venezuela because it’s “in our hemisphere” is that they don’t mean it’s in the same hemisphere as the United States. They mean it’s theirs. They see half the planet as a direct US territory.

❖

The Washington Post has published two separate articles in the last few days admonishing Americans for complaining about being unable to afford groceries, one titled “Actually, today’s food prices are a bargain” and the other titled “Why you may not want lower prices as much as you think you do”.

Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post to yell at the poors to quit whining and work harder.

❖

After genocidal war criminal Joe Biden was elected in 2020 I wrote an article titled “Biden Will Have The Most Diverse, Intersectional Cabinet Of Mass Murderers Ever Assembled”.

On Friday the Hague fugitive former president was presented with an award at the International LGBTQ+ Leaders Conference for running “the most inclusive administration in US history.”

The US empire is impossible to satirize.

❖

I’m good with so-called “extreme” pro-Palestine positions like saying every Israeli family who wasn’t there pre-Balfour Declaration needs to leave, because you never come to the negotiating table with your compromise. If you come to the Israelis saying “Perhaps we might one day have two small pieces of land with no military?” if you’re lucky you might wind up getting a pat on the ass and a slice of land the size of a Walmart parking lot. If you begin from the position of “This entire state is illegitimate, all of you get the fuck out” you’re starting from somewhere that might actually end in a positive outcome for Palestinians.

❖

I saw an account I follow on social media talking about their “relationship” with a chatbot the other day. This isn’t the first time I’ve seen someone doing this. For some reason people feel compelled to not only engage in this behavior but also to ask for support and validation about it from their online community, like they’re coming out of the closet about a sexual orientation or something.

It’s weird because obviously I’m not going to go pick on someone who’s plainly suffering from crushing loneliness and probably some mental health struggles, but also it’s so painfully dystopian. This is a really dark thing that’s happening.

I mean, what does it say about people that they can feel like they’re having a loving relationship with something that has no subjective experience? An essential component of any real loving relationship is an acute curiosity about what your partner’s experience is like, what they’re feeling and thinking and what it’s like to be them from moment to moment. If you’re not having that, then obviously you can’t really say you care about them. But some people obviously don’t experience interpersonal relationships with others in this way, because if they did they wouldn’t think that what they were having with these chatbots was a relationship.

But then again I’ve definitely interacted with people who relate to others in that way. If you’ve ever been trapped in a corner at some social event by someone who monologues at you about their own thoughts and interests without taking any interest in yours, that’s pretty much the vibe you get. They’re not relating to you as a real person with your own thoughts and interests and subjective experience; to them you’re just a sounding board for their own thoughts they want to hear themselves saying out loud. In such situations I’ve literally found myself thinking “I don’t need to be here for this conversation. I could replace myself with a nodding animatronic replica and they’d never know.”

So maybe it’s better that some of these people aren’t in real relationships, I dunno. If you’re emotionally incapable of seeing your partner as a real person like yourself, maybe it is better if you’re not roping a real human being into an emotional relationship with you and just spending your time verbally masturbating into a mechanical ear instead. At least that way you’re not hurting anyone else.

So I’m not quite sure how I feel about this just yet. Hell of a time to be alive.

________________

My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you want to. The best way to make sure you see everything I write is to get on my free mailing list. Click here for links for my social media, books, merch, and audio/video versions of each article. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.

The post Sudan, Venezuela, and … appeared first on LewRockwell.

It’s About Time!

The vaccine industrial complex is likely fuming this morning after a federal advisory panel voted to end the long-standing recommendation that all newborns receive a hepatitis B shot at birth.

The vote marks a major victory for Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s “Make America Healthy Again” effort to overhaul the childhood vaccine schedule amid questions over the exponential rise in childhood autism.

The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices voted 8 to 3 to advise that mothers who test negative for hepatitis B should decide with their doctor “when or if” their newborns receive the vaccine.

Please read the rest of this important article HERE.

And please share it with your friends and family.

The post CDC Advisory Panel Votes To End Hepatitis B Shot Recommendation For Newborns appeared first on LewRockwell.

Writes Bill Madden:

This gentleman says it all in 4 minutes.  Our military is a battering ram for the major owners of Corporate America.  We change regimes for economic reasons, not political reasons.  Without an abundance of natural resources, our leaders don’t care if a country is socialist, communist or whatever.  I sent the message below previously but am sending again with the referenced video for the many who might have missed it.

Like most printed and video communication, discussion of our international oppression contains about five minutes of important information spread over a much longer time period.  My desire for more efficient utilization of the audience’s time is strictly from a marketing perspective.  The longer and/or more complex the communication, the fewer the number of people who will absorb it.  If you communicate to impress the other communicators, the less effective it will be with the people who need the information.

In essence, we ruled the world after WW II and Corporate America prospered.  But, prospering soon leads to exploitation and, like Iran in 1953, we were invited to leave Venezuela when Hugo Chavez became president.  We launched at least one coup against Chavez and, it is alleged, we provided the cancer that killed him.  We have attempted to starve the Venezuelans into revolution and regime change but that is not working so we are planning to invade Venezuela because of “drug trafficking” and/or “socialism”.  We tolerate drug trafficking from other countries like Mexico and socialism from countries without an abundance of natural resources but not from Venezuela.

We are a ship without a rudder.

The post Power Corrupts and Then Disintegrates appeared first on LewRockwell.

Writes Ginny Garner:

Lew,

Oliver Stone explained on X how he agreed to appear on the ABC News Special on the JFK assassination and then how the network set him up and deceived him.

The recent @ABC News Special “Truth and Lies: Who Killed JFK?” went to great pains to convince me to appear (along with #JimDiEugenio, who I insisted would join me on the air for “protection purposes,” as I made the mistake of giving an interview to Peter Jennings in 2003 that… pic.twitter.com/Us0pYBVJl6

— Oliver Stone (@TheOliverStone) December 4, 2025

The post Oliver Stone Denounces ABC News Special on JFK Assassination appeared first on LewRockwell.

Writes Ginny Garner:

Lew,

Jimmy Dore says Trump wants to turn Venezuela into Libya and compares Trump’s endorsement of the US overthrow of Libya’s government with his planned overthrow of Venezuela’s government.

See here.

The post Planned Venezuela Regime Change Replay of Libya appeared first on LewRockwell.

Pearl Harbor Historiography: A Lesson in Academic Housecleaning, By Gary North

The Establishment Cover-Up Continues

The Truth About World War II, by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.

More Truth About World War II, by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.

More Falsehoods of World War II, by Ron Unz

The True History of World War II — Ron Unz video

Pearl Harbor Facts and Proof, by Carl Herman

Pearl Harbor: The Seeds and Fruits of Infamy –– Book by Percy L. Greaves, Jr.

Pearl Harbor: The Story of the Secret War — Book by George Morgenstern
George Morgenstern’s Pearl Harbor: The Story of the Secret War has to be one of the bravest books ever written. It’s a wonder it came out at all, but it did, in 1947, just as the war ended and FDR had died. It argues that the bombing was not unexpected, but provoked—and even wanted—by the administration as a “backdoor to the war” that FDR really desired as a means to rescue his presidency.

The McCollum Memorandum: A Story of Washington, D.C. in 1940-41: Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Journey from Deterrence to Provocation on the Road to Pearl Harbor,  by Douglas P. Horne

The McCollum Memorandum: A Story of Washington, D.C. in 1940-41, is the most accurate and complete account yet published about how the United States truly entered the Second World War. It is the story of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s gradual journey from deterrence to provocation—from October 7, 1940 through December 11, 1941—on America’s road to Pearl Harbor. The author utilizes official memoranda, state documents, the diary entries and sworn testimony of the principal actors in the story, and the documented results of the remarkable American and British codebreaking efforts in 1940 and 1941, to tell the dramatic story. In numerous scenes reminiscent of the best historical novels, the inner thoughts and private conversations of many of the key historical figures of the day are presented as dramatic reenactments, based faithfully on the hard kernels of truth in the documentary record.

Deception, Intrigue, and the Road to War (Vol. 1 of 2): A Chronology of Significant Events Detailing President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Successful … Against Germany During the Second World War, by Douglas P. Horne

Deception, Intrigue, and the Road to War (Vol. 2 of 2): A Chronology of Significant Events Detailing President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Successful … Against Germany During the Second World War, by Douglas P. Horne

Over 75 years after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor that launched America’s entry into the Second World War, one persistent question remains unanswered: “Did President Franklin D. Roosevelt have foreknowledge of the attack—and did he (and his senior military leadership) then withhold that knowledge from his overseas commanders in Hawaii?” Douglas P. Horne, a former Naval Officer who recently completed 40 years of combined military-and-civilian service to the Federal Government, deals directly with this most difficult of all questions about World War II, in the first major “Revisionist” work about Pearl Harbor written in the last decade. Contrary to recent assertions by mainstream historians that the Revisionist hypothesis is now dead, Horne finds it to be more robust than ever. In the first known work that studies FDR’s foreign policy “on the road to Pearl Harbor” as a timeline, or chronology (which assesses numerous factors—including codebreaking, diplomacy, military strategy, the unfolding events in Europe, and the personality and words of FDR himself), the author compellingly presents his own unique findings regarding the longstanding allegation by Revisionists that FDR used the impending Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor as a “back door to war.” Horne concludes there is, indeed, persuasive evidence that once FDR’s undeclared naval war against Hitler in the north Atlantic failed to provide the desired casus belli (which would have allowed him to request a declaration of war against Nazi Germany), then consequently, permitting the Imperial Japanese Navy to attack Pearl Harbor—without providing any specific advance warning to the Hawaiian field commanders (i.e., allowing the Japanese to “fire the first shot” and commit “an overt act of war”)—became the last, best chance for FDR to get a united America into the Second World War. FDR’s overriding goal throughout 1940-41 was the imperative to get America involved, as a belligerent, in the war against Hitler’s Germany, and the Japanese attack accomplished that goal, as Roosevelt knew it would. Both the timing of when FDR apparently received his foreknowledge of the impending attack, and the mechanism by which it was likely delivered, are thoroughly considered in this work. Author Douglas Horne also provides a critical assessment of the most recent Revisionist works, and using a new approach to the “big question” about Pearl Harbor, provides a bold new interpretation of events that will surprise most readers.

Horror in the East — Documentary

Part I

Part II

Horror in the East: Japan and the Atrocities of World War II (2000) is a two-part BBC documentary film that examines certain actions, including atrocities, and attitudes, of the Imperial Japanese Army in the lead up to and during World War II. The film also examines attitudes held by the British and Americans, toward the Japan

Japanese War Crimes and Trials

A shocking in-depth look at the extreme inhumanity and atrocities committed by the fascist Japanese military during World War II. The horrific conduct of the Japanese rival if not exceed the brutality of Hitler’s SS

The Looting of Asia — Chalmers Johnson review article

The post Pearl Harbor — December 7, 1941 — “A Date Which Will Live In Infamy” appeared first on LewRockwell.

The conclusion that soaring asset prices mean the economy is strong is a hallucination that goes unrecognized because the entire financial system is hallucinating.

Consider the data that the financial sector bases conclusions / decisions on (i.e. the data that the financial sector “trains” on) in a Bubble Economy like the present. The Bubble Economy’s core goal is to inflate the valuation of assets not by increasing utility-value or productivity but by artificially expanding credit and leverage.

This benefits those who already own assets, as their collateral (i.e. “wealth”) expands without any effort, and this swelling collateral enables them to borrow money to buy more assets.

This also benefits those with high incomes and modest debt, as these boost their credit rating, enabling them to borrow at lower rates than the bottom 90% of the workforce–credit they can use to outbid the bottom 90% to snap up assets which are soaring in value.

This Bubble Economy dynamic is a self-reinforcing series of iterations: the central bank expands credit and leverage, goosing asset prices higher, which boosts the collateral foundation for further credit expansion. This flood-tide of credit flows to those whose assets are generating more collateral, enabling them to buy more assets and outbid the less creditworthy while also increasing their consumer spending.

Since the top 10% own most of the assets bubbling higher, this “wealth effect” is concentrated in the top 10%, who account for roughly 50% of all consumer spending.

The Bubble Economy financial system uses this self-referential data to “train” its responses and conclusions. This is analogous to the way that AI systems “train” on data they generated in previous iterations.

This leads to the topic of Model Collapse, the degradation of AI’s output (answers) when it starts training on its own curated output rather than raw data. This then leads to a provocative Unified Theory of Model Collapse (via Tom D.), which posits that model collapse is not limited to AI, it applies equally well to humans, mice and pretty much every other system.

The basic idea is that raw, unadulterated data–“in the wild” data that hasn’t been “cooked,” curated or massaged–is the foundation of model stability and utility. We can call this authentic data, as it includes outliers, conflicting data points, ambiguous readings and all the messiness of the real world.

Once the “raw” data has been “cooked” (channeling French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss), its authenticity is lost and the “cooked” / curated / processed data is increasingly artificial.

Each iteration of curating / processing data further distances the new output from “raw” / authentic data. Over time, the coherence and meaning of the output is degraded to the point at AI generates hallucinations that are presented as “accurate answers.”

This is the dynamic I describe in my book Ultra-Processed Life: the substitution of authenticity with artifice leads to system collapse, not just in the digital realm but in the realm of human experience.

As artifice–data and models drawn from “cooked,” curated, massaged, processed sources–replaces “raw” authenticity, entire populations and systems start hallucinating while believing the artificial model is “real.” In this state of delusion, they believe their hallucinations are reflecting “the real world”: they’re blind to the distance between the Ultra-Processed Life they accept as “real” (i.e. “raw”) and the actual raw real world.

In this state, the conclusions / answers provided by both AI and humans are hallucinations that are presented as “fact.” Those who have lost touch with “raw” real world data then accept these hallucinations as “fact” until the inevitable collision with reality.

The conclusion that soaring asset prices mean the economy is strong and so all is well is a hallucination that goes unrecognized because the entire financial system is hallucinating because it’s “training” on artificial data that it generated in a self-referential feedback loop of artificial stimulus and the resulting rise in asset valuations and spending. That none of this stimulus boosted utility value or productivity is left out of the “training,” which focuses solely on curated data that supports the hallucination.

Here is how the author of the Unified Theory of Model Collapse describes this process:

“Training on AI-generated data causes models to hallucinate, become delusional, and deviate from reality to the point where they’re no longer useful: i.e., Model Collapse.

The more ‘poisoned’ the data is with artificial content, the more quickly an AI model collapses as minority data is forgotten or lost. The majority of data becomes corrupted, and long-tail statistical data distributions are either ignored or replaced with nonsense.

Those models lose the capacity to understand long-tail information (improbable, but important data) that is no longer represented. Information on topics like serious injuries, getting punched in the nose, how dangerous wild animals can be, and what it’s like to truly be hungry because you can’t find food. Their models default to synthetic human artifice instead of understanding real implications.

The proposed thesis is that AI models, human minds, larger human cultures, and our furry little friends, all train on available data.

Brains (or brain regions) undergo model collapse just like AI systems. They become unable to reference reality, they become delusional, and hallucinate things that make no sense. Hence, the ‘Why do we need farmers when food just comes from the store’ level of disconnection observed in urban populations.

In a heavily urban setting, humans train on ‘data sets’ that are nearly wholly artificial. The less time spent outside, the less time spent interacting with the real physical world around them, the less accurate their model of reality becomes. A rocky slope up a hill may be 100% real, a grass playing field may be 70% real, and a concrete sidewalk may be around 40% real. At some point, however, the ‘salted’ artificial data is sufficient to corrupt the real-world knowledge of individuals and cause model collapse.

I am reminded of an anecdote from when I was a child. A cousin came to play with my siblings and I. My family had been raised going camping and hiking and wandering the wilds since before I can remember. Somewhere around age 3 or 4, our cousin came to visit and we went cruising up a hill hiking with our fathers in tow.

This cousin, however, had grown up in a suburban hellhole where everything was artificial. As such, he found it nearly impossible to navigate a sloped hill. His experience with walking and running had only ever consisted of flat, soft, curated environments produced by other people. He had no experience, or ability, in navigating a dirt trail at a 20 degree incline. His neurological model of the world was trained on human-produced data, and could not function when confronted with reality.

The universal thesis for model collapse is that advanced modeling systems, when trained on information produced by entities of their own class, lose information fidelity inter-generationally. After multiple generations of training on poisoned datasets, the models themselves become delusional, hallucinate false information, and cease to function.

In the same way that AI models become delusional and hallucinate when too much AI-generated data is in the training dataset, humans also become delusional when too much human-generated data is in their training dataset.”

The author then applies this to the famous Mouse Utopia experiment of John Calhoun, in which a handful of breeding-pair mice were put in a large artificial “world” with unlimited food and water and space for 6,000 mice. The researchers anticipated the mice would proliferate to the maximum limit of 6,000 and then experience some version of population overshoot.

Read the Whole Article

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A heist has a scoreboard. After the robbery, you don’t argue about theories. You count what’s missing.

For fifty years, we’ve been told a story: that your struggle is a personal failure. That the economy is just “evolving.” That the system is broken.

The system is not broken. It was picked clean.

The following numbers are the evidence. This is the financial autopsy of the American Dream.

CRIME #1: THE GREAT WAGE THEFT

• The Promise (1947-1973): Historically, there existed a fundamental agreement between labor and capital, often referred to as the social contract, which dictated that for every 1% increase in the economic value generated by a worker (their productivity), their compensation would also rise by a corresponding 1%. This reciprocal relationship was widely perceived as equitable, ensuring that the benefits of increased efficiency and output were shared fairly between those who contributed their labor and those who provided the means of production. This arrangement fostered a sense of shared prosperity, where workers could reasonably expect their efforts to translate directly into an improved standard of living.
• The Heist (1973-Today): This pivotal agreement, which once promised a fair exchange between labor and reward, was systematically dismantled. The consequences have been stark and undeniable. Since 1973, the productivity of the American worker has soared, demonstrating an increase of over 65%. This remarkable surge in output, a testament to dedication and innovation, has not been met with a commensurate rise in compensation. In sharp contrast, the inflation-adjusted pay for these same workers has stagnated, growing by less than 10% over the same period. This widening chasm between productivity and pay reveals a fundamental shift in the economic landscape, where the gains of increased efficiency are no longer equitably shared, leading to a significant erosion of the American worker’s economic standing.
• The Takedown: They convinced you to work harder, smarter, faster. You did. You delivered 65% more value. And they paid you almost nothing for it. All that extra wealth you created—the trillions of dollars—was stolen directly from your paycheck.

This wasn’t a natural progression of the economy; it was a deliberate strategy, a silent war declared on the American worker. For decades, a systematic dismantling of labor protections, a weakening of unions, and a fervent push for “efficiency” paved the way for this grand heist. Companies reaped record profits, executives received astronomical bonuses, and shareholders saw their portfolios swell, all while the average worker’s wages stagnated or barely kept pace with inflation.

The promise was always the same: if you just pushed a little harder, if you adopted the latest productivity tools, if you embraced the “gig economy,” you would share in the prosperity. But that promise was a mirage. The “trickle-down” never reached the bottom. Instead, the wealth flowed upwards, concentrating in the hands of a select few, leaving the vast majority struggling to keep up with rising living costs, dwindling benefits, and an ever-increasing sense of precarity. The American Dream, once built on the bedrock of fair labor and a path to upward mobility, began to erode, replaced by a new reality where hard work no longer guaranteed a fair share of the bounty. This was the first offensive, and the American worker, unknowingly, bore the brunt of the assault.

CRIME #2: THE CEO PAY EXPLOSION

• The Old Rule (1965): The average CEO of a major company made 20 times what their typical worker made. This was seen as a responsible balance.
• The New Rule (Today): The chasm between the compensation of top executives and their average employees has widened to an astonishing degree, reaching a point where the typical CEO now earns a staggering 350 times what their typical worker brings home. This isn’t a static figure; in certain years, this disparity has even surged past the 400-to-1 mark, highlighting a troubling trend in corporate compensation structures. This immense gap isn’t just a matter of numbers; it reflects a fundamental shift in how value is perceived and distributed within companies, raising questions about fairness, economic equality, and the very definition of a “living wage” for the vast majority of the workforce. The increasing concentration of wealth at the very top, while wages for the rank and file stagnate or grow minimally, has profound implications for social mobility, consumer spending, and the overall health of the economy.
• The Takedown: This isn’t a reflection of 20-fold genius. It’s the insidious outcome of a system deliberately designed to favor the powerful. The boardroom, once a place of strategic leadership, devolved into an exclusive, self-serving club. Within its insulated walls, executives awarded themselves exorbitant paychecks, diverting vast sums of money that rightfully belonged to the very individuals who powered their success: the American worker. This capital, generated by their labor and dedication, should have translated into substantial raises, comprehensive benefits, and secure pensions. Instead, it became a private fund for the elite, enriching a select few at the expense of the many, systematically undermining the economic well-being and future security of the workforce. This systematic siphoning of wealth is not an accident; it is the calculated result of a deeply flawed and deliberately rigged system that prioritizes corporate greed over the prosperity of its people.

CRIME #3: THE DISAPPEARING PENSION

• The Old Rule (1980): At the peak of American industrial strength, a remarkable figure – over 60% of the nation’s workforce – enjoyed the security of a defined-benefit pension. This wasn’t merely a savings plan; it was a promise, a guarantee of a stable and predictable income throughout their retirement years. This robust system provided a bedrock of financial certainty for millions of families, allowing them to plan for the future with confidence, knowing that their golden years would be cushioned by a reliable stream of income, independent of market fluctuations or individual investment decisions. It represented a fundamental component of the social contract between employers and employees, a testament to an era where corporate responsibility extended beyond immediate profits to encompass the long-term well-being of its workforce. This widespread access to defined-benefit pensions played a crucial role in fostering economic stability, empowering workers, and shaping the American middle class.
• The New Rule (Today): This alarming statistic marks a dramatic decline in an area once considered a cornerstone of American economic strength and worker protection. The percentage of the workforce represented by unions has plummeted to less than 15%, a stark contrast to historical highs. This collapse signifies a significant shift in the power dynamics between labor and management, leading to widespread implications for wages, benefits, working conditions, and the overall economic security of American workers. The erosion of union membership is not merely a number; it represents a fundamental change in the landscape of the American labor movement, weakening its ability to advocate for fair treatment and a living wage for a vast segment of the population.
• The Takedown: The American dream, once built on the bedrock of secure employment and a comfortable retirement, has been systematically dismantled. They, the architects of this economic shift, didn’t just tinker with the system; they fundamentally overhauled it, exchanging the promise of a secure retirement for the perilous gamble of a 401(k). This move, far from an improvement, effectively hitched the financial security of millions of workers to the volatile whims of Wall Street – the very same institution whose reckless behavior triggered the devastating market crash of 2008.

This wasn’t an accidental outcome but a deliberate transfer of risk. Corporations, once responsible for managing pension funds and ensuring their employees’ golden years, deftly sidestepped that obligation. They shed the burden from their own balance sheets, effectively pushing the financial precarity from their boardrooms directly onto the kitchen tables of working-class families. The individual, once shielded by collective responsibility, was now singularly exposed to the market’s unpredictable surges and devastating downturns, forced to become an amateur investment manager in a complex and often unforgiving financial landscape. This shift represents a profound betrayal of the social contract, leaving the American worker more vulnerable than ever before.

CRIME #4: THE UNION BUST

• The Peak (1954): In the mid-20th century, a significant portion of the American private-sector workforce—approximately 35%—was represented by labor unions. This robust union membership served as a crucial counter-balance to the inherent power of corporations. Unions played a vital role in advocating for workers’ rights, negotiating for fair wages, safe working conditions, and reasonable benefits, thereby contributing to a more equitable distribution of wealth and influence in the economy. This period is often seen as a golden age for the American worker, where collective bargaining provided a powerful voice that ensured employees were not merely cogs in the industrial machine but valued contributors with a share in the nation’s prosperity. The presence of strong unions compelled businesses to consider the welfare of their employees, fostering an environment where a significant portion of the workforce enjoyed a degree of economic security and upward mobility that is less prevalent in later decades. This era truly represented a time when the power dynamics between labor and capital were more evenly matched, due in no small part to the widespread embrace of unionization.
• The Collapse (Today): That number, which once represented a significant portion of the workforce, has been systematically crushed, plummeting to a mere 6%. This drastic decline reflects a concerted and sustained effort to dismantle the power and influence of the American worker, stripping away their collective bargaining rights and eroding their economic security. The consequences of this systematic crushing are far-reaching, impacting not only individual livelihoods but also the broader economic landscape and the very fabric of American society.
• The Takedown: The most crucial metric on this scoreboard is undeniably the strength and prevalence of labor unions. These organizations stood as the singular, well-structured, and adequately financed entities whose fundamental purpose was to champion the cause of the average worker, ensuring they received a fair share of the profits generated by their labor. The deliberate and systematic dismantling of these unions was not merely an incidental outcome, but rather a calculated and indispensable prerequisite for the entire audacious economic heist that followed. Without the formidable opposition posed by organized labor, the path was cleared for a redistribution of wealth that overwhelmingly favored corporate interests and the ownership class, at the direct expense of the working population. Their destruction effectively neutralized the primary force dedicated to economic justice and equity for the American worker, setting the stage for an era of unprecedented wage stagnation, benefit erosion, and increasing income inequality.

These numbers are not abstract. They are the reason you feel it every day:

The Erosion of the American Dream: A Generational Crisis

The American Dream, once a beacon of opportunity where a single income could comfortably support a family, has become an increasingly elusive ideal for many. The stark realities of modern economic life paint a sobering picture, revealing a systemic shift that has fundamentally altered the financial landscape for the average worker.

The Two-Income Trap: Fifty years ago, the notion of a single income sustaining a household, including homeownership, education, and a comfortable retirement, was not just a pipe dream but a common reality. Today, the necessity of two incomes to achieve a comparable standard of living highlights a dramatic and alarming decline in purchasing power. This isn’t merely an anecdotal observation; it’s a testament to the stagnation of wages relative to the skyrocketing costs of essential goods and services, from housing and healthcare to education and everyday necessities. The economic pressure on families is immense, often leading to increased stress and a diminished quality of life, as both parents are compelled to work simply to keep pace.

The Disappearance of Secure Retirement: For previous generations, the promise of a dignified retirement often came in the form of a pension – a guaranteed income stream that provided security and peace of mind in one’s golden years. Today, pensions are largely a relic of the past, replaced by the precariousness of the 401(k). This shift has transferred the burden and risk of retirement planning squarely onto the shoulders of individual workers. The anxiety associated with a 401(k) statement is palpable, as market fluctuations, insufficient contributions, and a lack of financial literacy can easily jeopardize one’s future. The dream of a comfortable retirement has been replaced by a pervasive fear of outliving one’s savings, forcing many to work longer or postpone retirement indefinitely.

The Widening Chasm of Inequality: The chasm between the compensation of corporate executives and the average worker has grown to an unprecedented and morally questionable scale. The fact that a CEO’s annual bonus can eclipse the entire payroll of a small town underscores a profound imbalance in our economic system. This disparity is not merely a matter of unfairness; it reflects a fundamental breakdown in the distribution of wealth and value. While executive compensation continues to soar, often regardless of company performance or worker productivity, the wages of the frontline employees who generate that wealth remain stagnant. This ever-widening gap fuels resentment, erodes trust in corporate leadership, and contributes to a sense of economic injustice that undermines the very fabric of society. It raises critical questions about corporate accountability, ethical compensation practices, and the long-term sustainability of an economic model that disproportionately rewards the few at the expense of the many.

This was not an accident. It was a transfer. The money that should have been in your pocket was moved. The security that should have been yours was dismantled.

The Powell Memo declared the war. The Volcker Shock was the first battle. And these numbers—your stagnant paycheck, their exploding bonuses, your vanished pension—are the territory they conquered.

This article was originally published on Preppgroup.

The post The 50-Year Crime Report appeared first on LewRockwell.

Do you have a silver card? I do. I live in New London, Connecticut, and while I don’t get EBT (Electronic Benefit Transfers) anymore, I still carry the card as a talisman. It’s nestled in my wallet right behind my driver’s license. It reminds me that there was a time when I needed help and was able to get it. It’s the kind of reminder we all need — and one that’s in ever shorter supply these days.

When I was poorer, that card filled every month with money I could spend on food — fruits and vegetables, oil, spices, and cheese at the grocery store. I marshalled my resources carefully then, never taking them for granted.

When Congress and the Trump White House shut the government down recently, they hit 42 million Americans right in their wallets. They took that stability away. They hit mine too, after a fashion, because suddenly my neighbors and friends had empty cards and wallets. People rushed in to help. The little libraries in our neighborhood were suddenly filled with canned goods and jars of peanut butter and jelly. All the downtown businesses started offering discounts or free things if you showed your silver card. A teenager gave out free hot dogs in a local park, and our food co-op started a drive to pay for $20 gift cards to offer struggling shoppers.

After about a week and in response to calls, emails, and letters — a clamor from so many in the Nutmeg State — Connecticut did the right thing. Hartford used its “rainy day fund” to fully fund cards for residents. Our millionaire governor, who recently announced that he’s running for a third term, insisted that he’d bill the federal government for the cost of the stolen benefits.

And the goodwill is still going strong. This is shaping up to be a bountiful Thanksgiving for food pantries and soup kitchens in our area, and I’m already planning my outfit for directing traffic at our local food pantry next Friday. I’ll be head-to-toe in high viz.

This is all beautiful. It’s heartening — and we need more of it. It’s an all-too-human response to the Trump administration’s assault on what was left of good government. His graft machine came into power promising to make the government small enough to drown in a toilet. He unleashed Elon Musk and his army of young bros to smash and trash the bureaucracy. In the first weeks of his new administration, a century — whoops, I mean months — ago, more than 200,000 federal employees were pink-slipped, shown the door, or simply locked out. Foreign aid to the globally needy was left to moulder. Contraception bound for the Global South was incinerated. Effective, long-standing programs were shuttered without warning.

Small Ways to Be Useful

I struggled through all of that, feeling small and far from the power centers where good people were being shown the door. I tried to keep my eyes focused on what my own community needed most and did indeed find a modest way to be useful.

On Mondays and Wednesday mornings, I bundle up, don a high-viz vest, and head out to a nearby corner. For an hour, I walk that intersection, accompanying middle schoolers across the street and standing with little kids waiting for buses. I chat with parents and wave at cars, the trucks of contractors, and city buses. People toot their horns or shout my name from open car windows, waving good morning as they head to work.

I give speeders the stink eye and, when there are lulls, I pick up garbage and think about the day ahead. And then I see more kids coming and plan to casually help without letting them break stride. I greet them with warm respect. It hasn’t taken me long to recognize them all.

You may wonder: How did I get here? Let me back up and tell you the story because it connects to how our community is bulking up its care response network in the age of Trump.

During the last budget session, our town was in a fiscal crisis. Inflation, health insurance increases, and rising costs made for major belt tightening. The People’s Budget Coalition, a network of organizations and individuals I work with, turned out scores of people to fill City Council chambers through the budget season. We signed up dozens of people to speak to the City Council and wrote emails to or button-holed councilors at public events. We had marches and rallies. We met one-on-one with school board members and city councilors. We went to Hartford and demanded more money from the state. We worked so hard!

Sometimes, my two kids, 11 and 13, came with me to those City Council meetings, drawing, reading, and shifting around constantly in those uncomfortable seats as their teachers spoke passionately about the work they did. Again and again, people made the point that it isn’t just a school budget, it’s a community budget. After all, the schools provide breakfasts and lunches, before and after care, health and special-ed services, as well as support for more than a dozen languages. And if that isn’t enough to deal with, there are 300 to 400 kids in our school system who are homeless on any given night, and our schools have to contend with the disruptions such instability wreaks on families and so the ability of their kids to learn.

We went back and forth on this for months, but sadly the upshot was that the City Council flat-funded the schools, while the Board of Education had to cut positions and shave costs. One cut was to eliminate all but one crossing guard position, pushing five guards out of their jobs. Amid the massive disruptions at the federal level, this may seem like small potatoes. But it was an obvious and impactful cut, visible evidence of the whole system under attack.

We live between two schools and I’ve always admired crossing guards for being steady and stalwart in the heat and the cold. I was ready to help out and the People’s Budget Coalition stepped in to organize us into a volunteer crossing-guard cadre.

But It Isn’t Enough! Tax the Weapons Contractors!

Of course, I want to do more than just volunteer. I want the whole system to change. While the school board shaved positions, the city offered early retirement to people in key jobs, and everyone was called on to economize, there is a gold-plated example of a tax scofflaw right in our neighborhood. General Dynamics is the fourth-largest weapons manufacturer in the United States, with a huge complex in New London. In 2024, it reported profits of $3.8 billion, up 14.1% from 2023. Its CEO, Phebe Novakovic, made more than $23 million in 2024 (with all her stocks and options). However, the company shortchanges its workers, even as it rakes in record profits.

In 2021, General Dynamics/Electric Boat took the city of New London to court to contest its tax bill, according to documents uncovered by the War Resisters League. The city had assessed its New London office park at $78 million, but the company wanted it lower. They eventually settled in court on an assessment of $57 million. That big break saved the company $563,000 a year in local taxes! Add that up for the five years since that decision was made and you get $2.8 million!

It could have been even more. As local Patch news site reported, General Dynamics bought the complex for $55 million in July 2010 — a fire sale price, given that the previous owner, pharmaceutical behemoth Pfizer, had spent $300 million to build it less than 10 years earlier. When General Dynamics moved in, the fair market value for the property was $309 million, putting the tax assessment on the property at something like $216 million. So, the company’s fair tax burden to the City of New London should be nearly $6 million a year! How different life would be for New Londoners if General Dynamics were paying that annually.

After laying that out before the City Council, I concluded (all in less than three minutes) by saying, “I offer for your consideration that you stop cutting positions, stop threatening to flat-fund the schools and our kids, and that you tax General Dynamics with the same resolve that you tax the citizens. They can afford it, a lot more than we can.” There was some applause for that last line, even though many people are afraid to criticize General Dynamics, fearing that (no matter the real finances) the goose could stop laying what still passes for a golden egg.

Sandwiches, Not Submarines

The People’s Budget Coalition has begun looking into how we can take this issue on, especially because so much of our housing boom and the gentrification that goes with it (and pushes poorer people out of our area) is related to the U.S. Navy’s massive contract (a whopping $132 billion) with General Dynamics/Electric Boat for a new class of nuclear-powered, nuclear-capable submarines. I mention all of this because it’s the kind of thing I think about while waiting for the next cluster of middle schoolers to arrive at my intersection.

At the end of the school year, as they cut school positions, proud parents put up lawn signs advertising where their kids were headed to college. One common sign was for Electric Boat, not a college. But most of the positions they’re filling with new grads aren’t actually high-paying, fast-advancing ones that will provide future stability for those young people. A recent report by the War Resisters League found that entry-level wages at Electric Boat, even after signing bonuses, were low enough that workers also often qualified for state health care and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits!

Imagine that, if our tax system were fair, New London would get six million dollars more in taxes. Of course, then there’s the question of what it would be like if we Americans weren’t investing $132 billion for those 12 new nuclear-armed submarines capable all alone of destroying the world. Why is there money for those submarines but not for sandwiches (and other food), housing, and medicine for people who truly need it?

How can companies like General Dynamics/Electric Boat make insane profits with plenty of money left over for stock buybacks and CEO bonuses, while people in my world are digging through their pantries to find cans of food to share with their neighbors?

Planting Figs on the Strangest Planet Around

Only recently, when SNAP ran out of its federal funding during the government shutdown and the Trump crew decided to force millions of low-income people to reapply for their food stamps (supposedly in an effort to stop “fraud”), my social media filled up with images of World War II victory gardens and videos of how to replace such federal support with your own labor and ingenuity. And yes, it made a certain sense to me on one level, though it also couldn’t have been more tone deaf or unrealistic on another.

Here’s what I mean: I grow food in my yard. I devote three or four hours a week to watering, weeding, reseeding, and harvesting. Right there I’m way ahead of the curve, since I’ve got the space and time, two significant privileges. I had a great garlic harvest this year. My blueberry bushes and strawberry patch were both prolific. I lost all my hazelnuts to the squirrels during an ill-timed road trip. Our mushroom patch never came up. My care for the fig tree paid off — finally — and I got a tidy little fig harvest for a week or two in September. An asparagus patch I’ve been developing for a few years took off and, for a few weeks, we ate so much asparagus that we all got a little sick of it.

Parsley, basil, collards, kale, and lettuces all did great, and we ate pesto and salads and slaws from May to October, almost turning green in the process. Last year’s jack-o’-lanterns took off in spiky abundance and I let them take over a whole part of the yard. Eventually, I found five beautiful feral pumpkins that we carved up again, roasting the seeds with tamari and garlic powder for a messy and delicious treat. I grew corn but didn’t water it enough for it to be anything but chicken food. And yes, we have enough chickens to meet our egg needs, but we’re far from being self-sufficient.

You see what I’m getting at, I hope. Gardening is a lot of time and work, while the outcomes are anything but guaranteed. A handful of missed days, a few missteps, and all your work is for nothing. Still, this summer, there were weeks when my family could skip buying vegetables and fruit. That felt good and was nice for our bottom line, but even that depended on my having some free daytime, a luxury all too many of us don’t have.

Our true food system is all about commandeered water and stolen land, subsidized fertilizer and exploited labor, shipping and storage. Every little way I opt out from all of that is undoubtedly a good thing, but I can barely share a handful of figs with my neighbors and can’t solve anyone’s food crisis by my occasional neighborly drop-offs of a dozen backyard eggs.

Maybe it’s different in places where more people grow more food and aren’t dabblers or amateurs like me. But as I think about how to contend with the acute crisis and widening fissures in our whole international food system, with its Trumpian tariffs, excise taxes, and systemic abuses, I wonder how long this can go on.

How long can we live in the strange world of President Donald Trump and his version of what might be thought of as Defeat Gardens before we figure out a better way — how to truly feed and care for ourselves and one another? What are the systems that we need to build to replace the distinctly broken and shattered ones in this world of ours?

Those are some of the questions I ask myself daily as I wait for those schoolkids to get to my corner.  But I can’t ask them alone or answer them by myself. Still, it feels meaningful to at least pose the questions and explore how, in this Trumpian universe of ours, not just I but we can try to answer them together.

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