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* Image of Lebanese boys disfigured by Israeli boobytraps courtesy of Rania Khalek.

About the Sde Teima leaked rape tape, suffice it to say that, like the Hostage Square demonstrators in Tel Aviv, whose concern was exclusively for their hostages; the same Israeli society is not unhappy about crimes against Palestinians; but that one such crime had been made public, to the detriment of their criminally complicit countrymen. ~ilana

There’s a reason I purposefully avoided mention of the fracas in Israel over the leaked Sde Teiman video, in the companion column to this one: “Rape of Palestinian Men By IDF & Israeli Security Forces: Habitual.”

You see, the Hasbara herd seems to have one gift, in Israel and stateside. They live in a self-reverential and self-referential world: They talk from under wet cement about … themselves. And, they are training you to do the same: talk about them.

As hard as it is for this lot to compute; the genocide, however, is about their victims, Israel’s victims, the Palestinians.

About the Sde Teima leaked rape tape, suffice it to say the following: Like the Hostage Square demonstrators in Tel Aviv, whose concern was exclusively for only their hostages; the same Israeli society is not unhappy about crimes against Palestinians; but that one such crime had been made public to the detriment of their criminally complicit countrymen.

More so than mere publicity—after all, Israel is conducting genocide to a packed house, the world—Israel’s military advocate general worries that the leaked Sde Teiman footage will undermine Israel’s international legal impunity.

The case of the rectal-rape-with-objects of a Palestinian hostage, one among thousands held in the legal limbo of detention-without-trial, was leaked by the Military Advocate General’s office (MAG), whose apparatchiks had heretofore never expressed—nor acted to convey—regret, remorse, contrition, or penitence over the genocide ongoing. (So you know, Israel has merely shifted to “genocide lite” and to the “ghettoization” of the Strip.)

There are no nettles of conscience in the genocidal society. The on-camera rape has just become a PR (public relations) problem. Unless the world’s yelling can be quelled, Israel’s legal representatives fear for the country’s legal impunity, which is meant to last in perpetuity.

Like all shouting scraps in Israel, this one is entirely without an ethical or moral dimension. The leak of the filmed rape is but a procedural, administrative annoyance, the “Minister of Defense and many others in the political sphere and public discourse,” even claiming that any criminal proceedings constitute a “blood libel.”

At about this time, Israeli think-tank residents are fretting. As the Israel Democracy Institute (IDI) put it (in all sincerity), it is imperative to preserve “Israel’s legal and diplomatic ‘resilience’ internationally, and thus … our ability to protect IDF (Israel Defense Forces) service members from legal risks around the world.”

If the IDF justice system, headed by the [aforementioned] MAG [Military Advocate General], is not perceived as professionally independent, Israel will struggle to argue that there is no place to advance overseas legal proceedings against soldiers and commanders alleged to have violated the law of armed conflict, and that the Israeli justice system should be given primacy in handling suspects. (IDI)

Cloaking themselves in the raiment of decency, the code-word for “impunity” in Israeli think tanks is “resilience.” The country must remain “resilient” internationally.  Bathed in blood though it is; Israel and its military advocate general still want continued carte-blanche from the international community for their crimes. Hence the Brownian motion over the public rape of a Palestinian hostage.

Again, the leaked Sde Teiman tape threatens Israel’s legal impunity which is meant to last in perpetuity.

Let us, then, end forthwith conversation about Israel’s two-bit Kabuki players. We who inhabit the Global Genocidal Western Woke matrix have a responsibility to help pilot Palestinians through these dangerous shoals. Or, support those who are doing that work. Let’s, then, return to the resilient victims of the genocidal entity, the Palestinians.

Early in the genocide, in essays that provide a comprehensive chronology of the signal events, the people violated and the first principles flouted, I had picked up on—and postulated about—the seemingly systematic nature of the sexual sadism evinced by Israel’s army and security forces.

Palestinians are “living alongside serial-killing sexual sadists,” I remarked in a subsection of the essay, “Why The Israel-Occupied Levant Must be Liberated, S.O.S.,” further noting that “the pairing of sexual arousal and violence toward Palestinians, in the practices of the IDF and Israeli Security Forces, makes for a particularly irremediable pathology, the stuff of serial killers.”

As though Israel was not already outside all moral gravitational pull—the evidence for my deductions is now in. What we’ve known to be deductively true has been empirically confirmed. The social science is in: Palestinians are sexually brutalized by Israeli occupation forces!

If you had lingering doubts that sexual perversion and predation by the Israeli military and security forces is systemic and statistically significant—new social science nixes that naïve notion.

Incidents of sexual torture are not outlier cases. The Israel Occupation Forces are indeed a festering cauldron of serial-killing sadists and sexual deviants. Helpless Palestinians are the repository of this rot.

Having investigated the phenomenon and tabulated the results; the UN International Commission of Inquiry has revealed that rape, genital mutilation—of men, women, boys and girls—exhibitionism (public flashing); all the sexual perversions and paraphilias I had picked up on—are systemic, pervasive, carried out happily, seemingly ordained from above. No crime is a “one-off.”

“Israel uses sexual violence as a weapon of war,” concludes the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, writing, on March 13, 2025, that,

The frequency, prevalence and severity of sexual and gender-based crimes perpetrated across the Occupied Palestinian Territory leads the Commission to conclude that sexual and gender-based violence is increasingly used as a method of war by Israel to destabilize, dominate, oppress and destroy the Palestinian people. The Commission documented a pattern of sexual violence, including cases of rape and other forms of sexual violence, torture and other inhumane acts that amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Section number 222 of the report’s summary states that, “Israeli detention is characterized by widespread and systematic abuse and sexual and gender-based violence. These practices have increased significantly in severity and frequency since 7 October 2023, following orders and statements of the Minister for National Security Ben Gvir who is in charge of prisons. The mistreatment of Palestinian detainees by Israeli authorities is a result of an intentional policy that utilizes sexual, reproductive and other forms of gender-based violence to humiliate and degrade Palestinians in detention. This was observed across several facilities, temporary holding locations, during interrogation and while in transit.”

These Israelis are men and women of cold violence. Their hearts are as black as boot polish. The brutalized bodies of Palestinian men, women, and children; their pets and livestock bear this out. But broad-brush statements aggregating their practices are not enough.

Daily, the Palestinians’ closest neighbors, the settlers, make manifest their red-hot hatred toward them, stealing private Palestinian property, vandalizing installations on this land, regularly slaughtering helpless livestock with biblical cruelty (watch settlers gouge the eyes out of helpless lambs), and generally menacing Palestinian property owners. Most disturbing is the overt, perverted threat of sexual violence from settlers and their soldier helpers.

Indeed, the poisonous cabal of Israeli settlers and soldiers works cheek by jowl.

In “Holy Redemption: Stealing Palestinian Land,” a TRT World exclusive documentary, there is no editorializing. The videographers plainly followed and recorded these settlers in character. Twenty-nine minutes and 20 seconds into this TRT settler odyssey, Turkish TV captures a uniformed IDF, in cahoots with settlers, publicly manhandling himself on camera, in a manner not fit to print.

Said IDF soldier hisses:

“I spit on Palestine. F-ck your mother. I’m the Israeli Army.” He is not done. Just as I imagined this breed of Cain could not expose itself as more indecent, the same soldier comes close to indecent exposure. At the said timestamp, the atavistic, low-brow individual shows himself to be lacking the inhibitions to keep his perversion private. Reflexively. Quite obviously, this IDF had been aroused by threatening a helpless group of Palestinian homesteaders. He had likely imbibed a pornographic sensibility and had not been taught propriety and shame in public.

Right there on film is that pathological pairing of violence and sexual arousal, the stuff of serial killers!

In another unremarkable vignette, filmed by B’Tselem, an Israeli human rights group, an armed settler threatens a Palestinian farmer in the South Hebron Hills with rape. “Rape in the name of God,” a la SdeTeiman, promises settler Shem Tov Luski, to a mortified, modest Palestinian man. “No officers were dispatched, and the residents were advised to file a complaint at the Kiryat Arba police station,” reports Wikipedia.

At one point, the “Halachic right to rape” (See “Sde Teiman: Genocide, Snuff Films, Extra-Judicial Assassinations & Rape Are De Facto Legal in Israel”) had been issued from the very top of Israeli moral precincts.

His flesh softer than sin, the delightful Rabbi Col. Eyal Karim, the head of the military rabbinate of the Israel Defense Forces, had instructed, in 2016, that, essentially, any carnal demands of the flesh be allowed: “As part of maintaining fitness for the army and the soldiers’ morale during fighting, it is permitted to …satisfy the evil inclination by lying with attractive Gentile women against their will… .’ News of the rabbinical rape-injunction came courtesy of Israel’s own YnetNews.com.

Before Rabbi Karim, there was Shmuel Eliyahu, chief rabbi of Safad, who “urged a genocide in Gaza and excused rape by soldiers.” (Via Electronic Intifada.)

Israel’s female soldiers are as sadistic and malevolent. In a clip, “Israel’s ‘Sick’ Female Guards,” young Israeli uniformed IDF females and security police terrorize Palestinian men as they shuttle from one check point to the next.

We zoom out again to the abstraction of the aggregated data:

214. “Israel has targeted civilian women and girls directly, acts that constitute the crime against humanity of murder and the war crime of willful killing. Women and girls have also died from complications related to pregnancy and childbirth due to the conditions imposed by the Israeli authorities impacting access to reproductive health care, acts that amount to the crime against humanity of extermination. …”
215. “Palestinian men and boys have been subjected to specific persecutory acts intended to punish them collectively. The way in which these often-sexual acts are committed, including their filming, photographing and dissemination online, in conjunction with similar cases being documented in several locations, shows that forced public stripping and nudity, as well as sexualized torture and ill-treatment, are part of the persecutory attack against men and boys committed to punish, humiliate and intimidate Palestinian men and boys into subjugation. …”
216. “Specific forms of sexual and gender-based violence such as forced public stripping and nudity, sexual harassment including threats of rape, as well as sexual assault, de facto form part of the Israel Security Forces (ISF) standard operating procedures towards Palestinians. The Commission concludes that these and other forms of sexualized torture, including rape and violence targeting the genitals, are committed with either explicit orders or an implicit encouragement by the top civilian and military leadership. The Commission found that all its documented incidents of sexual and gender-based violence committed by members of the ISF were met with impunity. Under these circumstances, the civilian and military leaders are as responsible for these crimes, as are the direct perpetrators. …”

In the “widespread use of sexualized violence against men and boys,” the Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention and Human Security has [too] identified several specific patterns of sexualized violence that are indicative of a genocidal process, not all overlapping the findings of the International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory:

Life-force atrocities (including ritualized humiliations); separation of families and other reproductive violence; and possible elitocide through the use of sexualized violence.

By “elitocide,” the Lemkin Institute is probably referring to sexual violence to whittle at the finest and noblest; the people we most rely on: altruistic aid and rescue workers, healers in their clinics ministering to their patients, peace activists, writers, reporters and intellectuals recording the crimes for posterity.

Dr. Adnan Al Bursh, for example. The 50-year-old renowned orthopedic surgeon headed the orthopedic department at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. “A doctor. a stellar surgeon. The embodiment of Palestinian ethics, Dr. Al Bursh was likely raped to death.”

To genocide, snuff films, the torture and torching of animals, and the rape and robbery of their Palestinian owners; to bombings, boobytrapping and extra-judicial assassinations the world over—add “elitocide.”

Another new term to add to Israel’s lexicon of crime. All this, remember, is customary, informal law in the Genocidal Society.

***

* Image of Lebanese boys disfigured by Israeli boobytraps courtesy of Rania Khalek.

The post Israelis NOT Sweating Sde Teiman Rape! Prosecutor Concerned Rape Tape Undermines Israel’s Legal Impunity appeared first on LewRockwell.

Click Here:

John Leake

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BBC News

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Tim McGraw wrote:

Zionists are as evil as humans can be. Donald J. Trump facilitates this evil. He has no morals. Colonel Aguilar is an honorable man.

See this.

The post Colonel Aguilar’s Personal Account of the Genocide in Gaza appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, David Martin.

The post Uniparty Perverts Prepare for Day of Reckoning appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, Saleh Abdullah.

The post Finished AI Data Centers Have No Electricity — AI Fraud Can’t Fake Reality appeared first on LewRockwell.

Jesse Trentadue wrote:

The post Gwin Faulconer Lippert’s Interview with Jesse Trentadue appeared first on LewRockwell.

Click here:

The Libertarian Institute

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John Leake

The post In Desperate Need of a Crisis appeared first on LewRockwell.

JFK Files: The 14-Minute Gap They Don’t Want You to Hear

Mark Groubert and Eric Hunley of America’s Untold Stories sit down with Rex Bradford, President of the Mary Ferrell Foundation and legendary JFK researcher, to explore one of the most chilling mysteries in Cold War history: The Fourteen Minute Gap.

What was erased?

Who was responsible?

And why has it taken decades—and lawsuits—to uncover the truth?

Rex has spent over 25 years scanning and analyzing declassified documents hidden from the American public. In this episode, he reveals how Cold War politics, CIA operations, and internal government deception collided in the aftermath of the JFK assassination.

The erased White House audio

The missing connections between the CIA, Oswald, and Cuba

The truth buried in Cold War cover-ups

What the Mary Ferrell Foundation uncovered after 1992’s JFK Records Act The deeper we dig, the darker it gets. *****************************************

Join us November 21st–23rd, 2025 in Dallas at JFK Lancer Conference (or Virtually) Tickets now available at https://assassinationconference.com/

Virtual tickets start at $75.99

In-person tickets start at $149.99 Discount Code: Use UNTOLD10 at checkout for 10% off

*****************************************

The post America’s Untold Stories – JFK Files: The 14-Minute Gap They Don’t Want You to Hear appeared first on LewRockwell.

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David Martin wrote:

The only man on the Epstein client list.  Really remarkable!

See here.

The post The Intel Scandal Behind Prince Andrew’s Twisted Epstein Exploits appeared first on LewRockwell.

La traduzione in italiano dell'opera scritta da Wendy McElroy esplora Bitcoin a 360°, un compendio della sua storia fino ad adesso e la direzione che molto ptobabilmente prenderà la sua evoluzione nel futuro prossimo. Si parte dalla teoria, soprattutto quella libertaria e Austriaca, e si sonda come essa interagisce con la realtà. Niente utopie, solo la logica esposizione di una tecnologia che si sviluppa insieme alle azioni degli esseri umani. Per questo motivo vengono inserite nell'analisi diversi punti di vista: sociologico, economico, giudiziario, filosofico, politico, psicologico e altri. Una visione e trattazione di Bitcoin come non l'avete mai vista finora, per un asset che non solo promette di rinnovare l'ambito monetario ma che, soprattutto, apre alla possibilità concreta di avere, per la prima volta nella storia umana, una società profondamente e completamente modificabile dal basso verso l'alto.

____________________________________________________________________________________

(Versione audio della traduzione disponibile qui: https://open.substack.com/pub/fsimoncelli/p/sulla-strada-verso-un-super-stato)

L'Unione Europea è finanziata dai contributi dei suoi stati membri, almeno questo è quanto stabilito dai trattati istitutivi. Nella pratica l'UE ha da tempo intrapreso altre strade.

Al centro dell'architettura finanziaria europea c'è una netta separazione tra responsabilità e obblighi: l'articolo 125 del Trattato sul funzionamento dell'Unione Europea (TFUE), la cosiddetta “clausola di non salvataggio”. Essa stabilisce, inequivocabilmente, che né l'Unione né i singoli stati membri possono accollarsi i debiti di altri stati. Lo scopo di questa disposizione è impedire effetti di free-rider (azzardo morale) a spese degli altri stati membri: ogni stato è responsabile dei propri oneri.

Tuttavia la clausola non esclude il sostegno politico, purché non implichi l'assunzione dei debiti preesistenti di altri stati. Un esempio significativo di questa pratica sono stati i programmi di salvataggio per la Grecia durante la crisi del debito sovrano di quindici anni fa.

L'articolo 310 del TFUE disciplina ulteriormente il bilancio dell'UE: entrate e spese devono essere in pareggio ogni anno e il bilancio può essere finanziato solo tramite risorse proprie, come i contributi degli stati membri, le tariffe doganali, o le entrate approvate. Sono vietati i prestiti indipendenti della Commissione europea che superino il quadro approvato.

Insieme queste regole costituiscono la spina dorsale giuridica della politica finanziaria dell'UE: nessuna responsabilità automatica, nessun debito autonomo dell'UE e solo spese completamente coperte.

Questa struttura è stata scelta deliberatamente per impedire l'emergere di un super stato a Bruxelles e per difendere il raggio d'azione nazionale degli stati membri dall'espansione della burocrazia di Bruxelles.

Teoria & pratica

Questa è la teoria. In pratica l'UE ha costantemente aumentato la sua presenza sul mercato obbligazionario. Tutto è iniziato nel 1976 con la prima obbligazione della Comunità Europea a sostegno di Italia e Irlanda durante la crisi petrolifera. Negli anni '80 e '90 sono seguite altre emissioni per Francia, Grecia e Portogallo, sempre volte a dimostrare solidarietà collettiva e ad allentare le tensioni fiscali.

La crisi finanziaria del 2008-2010 ha segnato una svolta decisiva: con il Meccanismo europeo di stabilizzazione finanziaria (MESF) e, nel 2012, con il Meccanismo europeo di stabilità (MES), l'UE ha iniziato a sostenere deliberatamente gli stati membri sovraindebitati attraverso l'emissione di obbligazioni. Nel 2010 la Banca centrale europea ha annunciato che avrebbe acquistato titoli di stato europei sul mercato aperto per impedire il collasso dell'unione monetaria, sempre in stretto coordinamento con le istituzioni dell'UE.

Gli anni del COVID hanno visto una nuova dimensione: per la prima volta l'UE ha emesso obbligazioni sociali nell'ambito del fondo “SURE”. Contemporaneamente è stato avviato il programma “Next Generation EU”, il quale ha fornito circa €800 miliardi in aiuti per la crisi. Dal 2025 l'Unione ha fatto sempre più affidamento sulle cosiddette “obbligazioni sostenibili” (obbligazioni verdi) e prevede di emettere buoni del Tesoro a breve termine per una migliore gestione della liquidità.

L'UE e la BCE operano ora in tandem, integrando strumenti di finanziamento sempre nuovi nei mercati dei capitali. Il segnale è chiaro: siamo pronti a soddisfare la crescente domanda di eurobond. E come garanzia non ci sono solo i contribuenti europei, ma anche la liquidità praticamente illimitata della BCE. Cosa potrebbe mai andare storto?

Domanda di mercato

Per la seconda metà del 2025 la Commissione europea aveva previsto di emettere fino a €70 miliardi in obbligazioni UE in sei aste con scadenze comprese tra tre e trent'anni. Già a marzo 2025 la Commissione aveva fatto registrare il più grande incremento di emissioni obbligazionarie al mondo, per un totale di €30,62 miliardi; tre soli collocamenti hanno totalizzato €13,7 miliardi.

La domanda era abbondante, grazie al duplice sostegno degli stati membri e della BCE: l'emissione di un'obbligazione settennale nell'ottobre 2024 aveva ricevuto richieste 17 volte superiori alla domanda. Le obbligazioni verdi sono particolarmente al centro dell'attenzione: sono previsti fino a €250 miliardi nell'ambito di NextGenerationEU, di cui €48,91 miliardi già emessi.

Attualmente i rendimenti di queste obbligazioni sono circa 40 punti base superiori a quelli dei Bund tedeschi, il che le rende interessanti per gli investitori.

Quo Vadis UE?

L'Unione Europea si sta innegabilmente muovendo verso una forma di stato autonomo. Le sue rigide direttive ideologiche e il tono apodittico adottato dai rappresentanti della Commissione nei confronti degli stati membri hanno di recente portato la stessa Commissione a negoziare unilateralmente l'accordo commerciale UE-USA.

Indipendentemente dall'esito, ciò invia un segnale chiaro: il potere decisionale e la competenza politica si stanno spostando dalle capitali nazionali a Bruxelles, dove una burocrazia centralizzata sta prendendo sempre più il sopravvento.

Un ritorno all'autonomia nazionale e una Commissione limitata alle funzioni essenziali sembrano fuori questione. Questo si riflette nella proposta di bilancio dell'UE per il periodo 2028-2034 della Presidente della Commissione, Ursula von der Leyen, la quale prevede un budget di circa €2.000 miliardi, con un aumento del 40% rispetto al periodo precedente.

La megalomania fiscale di Bruxelles ha un unico obiettivo: consentire all'UE di finanziare le proprie attività in modo indipendente, sfruttando i vincoli fiscali degli stati membri. I €650 miliardi residui, formalmente da raccogliere tra gli stati membri, pendono come una spada di Damocle sui negoziati in corso, una pressione costante che consente alla Commissione di applicare i propri piani di finanziamento attraverso il mercato obbligazionario.

A parte Ungheria e Repubblica Ceca, vi è un ampio consenso sul fatto che il finanziamento di Bruxelles proverrà sempre più dal mercato obbligazionario: nessun bilancio nazionale sarebbe in grado di gestire prelievi aggiuntivi. I piani della Commissione sono quindi tacitamente approvati.

La BCE come prestatore di ultima istanza

Tutto fa pensare a un modello di co-finanziamento che rende l'UE sempre più indipendente dai bilanci nazionali. I vincoli istituzionali – come quelli imposti ai singoli stati membri – vengono di fatto aggirati, così come il divieto originario di indebitamento imposto dalla Commissione. Passo dopo passo l'Unione si sta trasformando da una confederazione vincolata da regole a un attore finanziario gestito centralmente, sempre più autonomo nel decidere le proprie risorse e priorità.

Se il debito dovesse mai sfuggire al controllo, come ormai prassi comune nell'UE, la Banca Centrale Europea sarebbe pronta a fungere da prestatore di ultima istanza. Questo funzionerà finché i mercati dei capitali manterranno fiducia nell'affidabilità creditizia dell'UE, in particolare nella capacità di pagamento della Germania. Se la fiducia dei mercati crollasse, la BCE sarebbe costretta a intervenire in un modo che farebbe impallidire la crisi del debito del 2010. L'euro sarebbe allora storia passata. L'UE sta camminando sul filo del rasoio.

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

Supporta Francesco Simoncelli's Freedonia lasciando una mancia in satoshi di bitcoin scannerizzando il QR seguente.

Writes Ginny Garner:

Lew,

Candace Owens continues her investigation into the assassination of her friend Charlie Kirk. 

“I have no doubt Tucker Carlson and I are being threatened, that’s pretty obvious. It’s very obvious nobody thinks Egypt is behind it. The last time that narrative ran was probably the USS Liberty, that was the plan, to make us think Egypt had attacked us. Israel attacked hat ship. Israel is growing increasingly alarming in terms of legislation they are trying to get passed, trying to censor our speech, trying to take over social media campaigns.” – Candace Owens 

She provides details on the Egyptian plane tracking Charlie and his wife Erika that landed at the Provo airport near the assassination site; exposes possible financial shenanigans at TPUSA; and reveals the license plates of rental cars at the airport, and more. 

The post Charlie Kirk Assassination: TPUSA Financial Improprieties and the Egyptian Plane appeared first on LewRockwell.

Ludwig von Mises argued that the “nineteenth century philosophy of liberalism,” or the classical tradition of liberalism, is not founded on equality but on liberty. He rejected the notion that all men are factually or substantively equal. He saw the notion of substantive equality—what is sometimes called real equality or true equality—as incompatible with individual liberty, and as a Trojan horse for coercive interventionist schemes designed to equalize all members of society. He saw liberty as essential to peaceful coexistence and to Western civilization itself. Thus, Mises took seriously the threat posed to peace and prosperity by the egalitarian schemes with which governments aim to equalize all their citizens. In his book Liberalism, he traced the roots of the erroneous belief in equality to the Enlightenment:

The liberals of the eighteenth century, guided by the ideas of natural law and of the Enlightenment, demanded for everyone equality of political and civil rights because they assumed that all men are equal.…

Nothing, however, is as ill-founded as the assertion of the alleged equality of all members of the human race. Men are altogether unequal. Even between brothers there exist the most marked differences in physical and mental attributes. Nature never repeats itself in its creations; it produces nothing by the dozen, nor are its products standardized.

Similarly, Friedrich von Hayek rejected the idea that the classical liberal ideal of justice is based on equality. He argued in the Constitution of Liberty that justice must be based on individual liberty, which is not predicated on a presumption that everyone is equal. He cautioned that “we must not overlook the fact that individuals are very different from the outset…. As a statement of fact, it just is not true that ‘all men are born equal.’” Murray Rothbard picked up this theme in Egalitarianism as a Revolt against Nature, arguing that a world in which all human beings are equalized by state coercion and force would be a Procrustean world of horror fiction. He asked:

What, in fact, is “equality”? The term has been much invoked but little analyzed. A and B are “equal” if they are identical to each other with respect to a given attribute. Thus, if Smith and Jones are both exactly six feet in height, then they may be said to be “equal” in height… There is one and only one way, then, in which any two people can really be “equal” in the fullest sense: they must be identical in all of their attributes.

Yet Hayek, like Mises, defended the principle of equality before the law. Although they both rejected the notion of substantive equality, they argued that formal equality—or equality before the law—is essential to social cooperation under the rule of law. If equality under the law is not based on factual equality, on what is it based? It may seem contradictory to uphold formal equality while rejecting substantive equality, but, as Hayek explained, substantive equality actually undermines formal equality because it fails to acknowledge the very reason why formal equality is important. Justice in the classical liberal ideal was described as blind, not because there are no differences between people, but because justice is blind to their differences. The principle of blind justice is completely lost when people assume that we can only have the same rights when we are, in fact, the same, and that everyone has to be made the same through whatever interventions can make them equal, in order to align with the fact that we all want to have equal rights. The reason justice is blind is because that is the best way to maximize the scope of individual liberty. Under blind justice, nobody is subjected to legal obligations or penalties to which others are not subject, based purely on his personal identity or characteristics. As Hayek put it, “Nothing, however, is more damaging to the demand for equal treatment than to base it on so obviously untrue an assumption as that of the factual equality of all men.” Both Mises and Hayek saw individual liberty as the only rationale for formal equality, and insisted that equality under the law is the only form of equality that is compatible with liberty. In his book Liberalism, Mises argued that:

…what [liberalism] created was only equality before the law, and not real equality. All human power would be insufficient to make men really equal. Men are and always will remain unequal.… Liberalism never aimed at anything more than this.

One might ask why the law should bother to uphold formal equality, or equal treatment under the law, if people are not, in fact, equal. Mises gave two reasons. The first reason is that individual liberty is essential to social cooperation. He argued that individual liberty is justified because it promotes the good of the whole, and that classical liberalism “has always had in view the good of the whole, not that of any special group.” The good of the whole can only be achieved through social cooperation, and there can be no social cooperation where men are not free. He defined society as “an association of persons for cooperative action,” and cooperation is maximized when people are free to engage in peaceful and voluntary exchange based on the division of labor. The good of the whole, and social cooperation, are in turn dependent on individual liberty and private property rights. Mises saw this as the essential distinction between classical liberalism and socialism:

Liberalism is distinguished from socialism, which likewise professes to strive for the good of all, not by the goal at which it aims, but by the means that it chooses to attain that goal.

The second reason is “the maintenance of social peace.” Mises argued that peaceful co-existence is essential to civilization and prosperity, and requires that everyone must have the same rights under the law. A legal system which gives special privileges to one group at the expense of another leads inevitably to resentment, hostility, conflict, and ultimately war. Mises argued that “class [or group] privileges must disappear so that the conflict over them may cease.” Similarly, Rothbard emphasized that egalitarian schemes lead inexorably to conflict, warning that any society which sets out to produce equality sets off down the road to tyranny: “An egalitarian society can only hope to achieve its goals by totalitarian methods of coercion.”

Socialists object to the classical liberal notion of formal equality by arguing that if men are not, in fact, equal then the law ought, as far as possible, to at least try to make men equal. They suggest achieving this by abolishing any privileges enjoyed by some that are not available to others, or by creating special rights for those who lack the privileges enjoyed by others, to compensate for their disadvantages. Mises rejected this notion of “privilege.” What a man earns from his skill or talent, what is acquired under the rules of private property, cannot be deemed to be a “privilege,” because it is justified as necessary for social cooperation and the good of the whole:

The fact that on a ship at sea one man is captain and the rest constitute his crew and are subject to his command is certainly an advantage for the captain. Nevertheless, it is not a privilege of the captain if he possesses the ability to steer the ship between reefs in a storm and thereby to be of service not only to himself, but to the whole crew.

Mises therefore saw formal equality, or equality under the law, as an essential component of liberty. His defense of liberty was, in turn, based on the fact that liberty is essential to human flourishing. The significance of liberty as the philosophical foundation of equality is clear—it follows that any equality “rights” that undermine individual liberty are invalid. They are indeed phony rights, as Rothbard put it.

The post An Austrian Perspective on Equality appeared first on LewRockwell.

President Trump is incensed, again.

This time it is over the increasing cost to renovate the U.S. Air Force Academy Cadet Chapel in Colorado. The cost of the Cadet Chapel restoration project, which began in September of 2019, has now ballooned to almost $335 million, and is not expected to be completed until November of 2028.

“The United States Air Force Academy Cadet Chapel has been a CONSTRUCTION DISASTER from the time it was built in 1962. The earlier stories are that it leaked on Day One, and that was the good part. Hundreds of Millions of Dollars have been spent,” said Trump on social media. He also termed it a “mess” and a “complete architectural catastrophe.”

Located in Colorado Springs, Colorado, on the campus of the U.S. Air Force Academy (USAFA), the Cadet Chapel was completed in 1962, and was named a U.S. National Historic Landmark in 2004. The chapel stands 150 feet tall, and is 280 feet long and 84 feet wide. Its most notable architectural feature is its 17 spires.

The Cadet Chapel was built to “meet the spiritual needs of cadets and staff.” It houses a Protestant chapel, a Catholic chapel, a Jewish chapel, a Muslim chapel, a Buddhist chapel, and a Falcon Circle for Wiccan, Pagan, and Druid worshippers. There are also “all-faith” rooms for other religious groups to use.

USAFA superintendent Lt. Gen. Richard Clark stated about the renovation:

Whether you’re a cadet, a graduate or among the thousands of visitors each year who enter our gates, we know the place this amazing building has in the hearts of many who support our Academy. We’re disappointed too. We’re disappointed we can’t open the chapel doors as soon as we originally thought, but in the end, we’re doing the right work at the right time for the right reason: preserving this national historic landmark for generations of cadets, graduates and Americans.

There has been much hand-wringing over how the Air Force could allow its chapel to deteriorate so much that it needs to be closed for years for renovations costing so much.

But here is a question that no one is even considering: Should the Air Force even have a chapel in the first place?

Of course not.

First of all, the federal government has no business constructing a chapel anywhere in any government building. Not on a military base. Not in a Social Security office. Not at a national park. Not in the Capitol building. Not in the White House. Not in a Post Office. Not in an office building. Not in a courthouse. Since when is it the concern of the federal government to do something to “meet the spiritual needs” of anyone? It is not the job of the government to encourage or facilitate the practice of religion any more than it is the job of government to hinder or prohibit the practice of religion.

It should be noted that this has nothing to do with the First Amendment:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Constructing a chapel is not establishing a religion. The issue is simply the proper role of government.

Second, with a government chapel comes government chaplains and government control. Taxpayer-supported chaplains are expected to serve two masters: God and the state. I have written about the evils of Christians being military chaplains here and here. A government chapel means that it is the government who ultimately decides who gets to preach and what they are allowed to preach.

And third, what connection is there between religion and a branch of the U.S. military? There is none whatsoever. Religion—any religion—is supposed to uphold and pursue the sanctity of life, non-violence, virtue, respect, compassion, toleration, kindness, peace, and the Golden Rule. Contrast these things with what is done by the Air Force. The Air Force bombs countries that pose no threat to the United States, maims and kills foreigners who never harmed any American, makes widows and orphans, engages in offense while calling it defense, destroys property and infrastructure, kills civilians and calls it collateral damage, helps to carry out a reckless, belligerent, and meddling U.S. foreign policy, and carries out unjust, immoral, and unnecessary military operations.

The actions of the Air Force cannot be sanctified by having a chapel on the grounds of the Air Force Academy. Young men and women of any religion should aim higher than a career in the Air Force.

The post Should the Air Force Have a Chapel? appeared first on LewRockwell.

China’s innovation drive is reaching fever pitch in 2025. Let’s cut to the chase and focus on four crucial domains.

1.The Huawei Factor

Huawei is already testing its first, self-developed EUV lithography machine capable of producing 3nm chips. Trial tests are going full blast at the research center in Dongguan, and mass production should start in 2026.

It’s impossible to overstate how much of a game-changing paradigm this Chinese breatkthrough – specifically in laser-induced discharge plasma (LDP) – is all about. It’s set to turn the seminconductor technology environment totally upside down.

The physics involved in Huawei’s LDP is fundamentally different from the method employed by the Dutch ASML’s de facto monopoly. This being China, it’s simpler, smaller and cheaper.

Huawei’s technology is bound to smash that monopoly while solidifying China’s chip independence. Talk about cost efficiency: Huawei aims to produce EUV machines at a fraction of the cost of ASML’s (around $350 million for each unit), and no less than flood China with homegrown 3 nm chips.

All that is happening after the proverbial Western “experts”, following the 2019 sanctions imposed by Trump 1.0, dictated that China would take up to 15 years to just catch up. After all, EUV technology is too deeply embedded in the Western-controlled supply chain. It was assumed that China would never be able to smash the monopoly.

Well, of course any monopoly is smashable when public-private partnerships – in academia and tech – release untold billions of dollars into R&D, rally the best minds, and focus on building an EUV eco-system from scratch.

This is not only about tech; it’s a geoeconomic and geopolitical earthquake. There was a serious debate going on across China that it would be a matter between 2 and 3 years to cut off any dependence on US/Western tech. Well, Huawei and SMIC will be moving closer to mass production of these 3 nm chips already by next year. Not hard to do the math on where the future of global chipmaking lies.

Invest In R&D And Reach Patent Heaven

Now cut to Fan Zhiyong, Huawei’s Vice-President and Minister of Intellectual Property, talking at the company’s 6th Innovation and Intellectual Property Forum this past Tuesday.

He explained how “from the brand-new HarmonyOS 6 operating system to the powerful Atlas 950 supernode, our R&D team has achieved remarkable successes. Although many leading software and hardware products are massive systems engineering projects, we are making every effort to make them open to everyone.”

Huawei conducts an innovation and intellectual property forum nearly every year, discussing the importance of open/protected intellectual property as well as promoting its Top Ten Inventions: this year they featured, among others, supernodes; the Harmony OS; foldable screens; short-range optical interconnects; and next-generation solid state drives.

There’s no secret: a lot of investment in R&D is behind all these breakthroughs. Over the past five years, Huawei has invested more than 20% of its annual sales revenue in R&D. According to the EU Industrial R&D Scoreboard 2024, Huawei is Number 6 globally in R&D expenditure.

Huawei does not see these accomplishments as leading to a “closed garden”. On the contrary: the strategy is to foment an “open industry”, including the launch of a series of new open source software and hardware.

This opennes is reflected by the fact that Huawei is one of the world’s largest patent holders. By the end of 2024, Huawei held over 150,000 valid authorized patents globally, ranging from over 50,000 Chinese patents to over 29,000 patents in the U.S. and 19,000 in Europe.

And that brings us to…

2. Total Tech Sufficiency

And of course that is centered on AI. Cut to three recent key tech moves:

A. Beijing has banned foreign AI chips in every state-funded data center across the nation. Exempted will be only a few private companies which build their own data centers.B. Local and regional governments were encouraged and are already subsidizing the electricity bills of AI data centers. China has a key infrastructure advantage over the US: cheap and extremely abundant power – as I saw it in my recent travels in Xinjiang. That is essential to offset the cost of switching to domestic chips, a more energy-intensive operation. For example, Huawei’s AI server system – CloudMatrix 384 – consumes more energy than Nvidia’s NVL72 system.C. Beijing is also rolling out a new, ambitious “AI Plus Manufacturing” plan, included in the broader AI Plus initiative.

Point A is ultra-pertinent because Trump 2.0 is debating whether to allow Nvidia to sell a downgraded version of its Blackwell chips to China. Nvidia’s CEO Jensen Huang is lobbying for it like there’s no tomorrow, desperate of losing the Chinese market to Huawei for good. He bombastically announced that China is only “nanosenconds” behind the US on semiconductors.

Point C is also ultra-pertinent because as we saw with the Hauwei factor, Beijing is going for no holds barred AI chip self-sufficiency.

Beijing is deploying a very clever strategy. No foreign chips in data centers means a de facto protected market to domestic chip innovators which match foreign chip performances. Talk about a massive incentive.

Li Lecheng, Minister of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), has announced that MIIT will soon issue an “AI Plus Manufacturing” plan, focusing on rolling out AI upgrades in key industries; expanding intelligent assisted design, virtual simulation, and early defect detection; promoting brand new AI-enabled mobile phones and computers; and accelerating R&D for next-generation intel devices such as humanoid robots and brain-computer interfaces.

In a nutshell: that is how Beijing wants to implement AI in every nook and cranny of the Chinese economy. It’s a no holds barred total innovation strategy. Sanctions? What sanctions?

What A Stable And Resilient China May Accomplish

3. Clean Energy

This revolution is already on – with China leaping ahead of the whole collective West, installing, for instance, nearly 900 gigawatt of solar capacity, more than the US-EU combo.

Last year, China generated 1826 terawatt/hour of electricity out of solar and wind power – five times the energy equivalent of all its nuclear warheads.

Yes: that’s a certified energy superpower.

4. An Early-Warning Detection Big Data Platform

The Nanjing Research Institute of Electronics Technology – China’s number one defense-electronics center and a hub of key innovation even under US sanctions – is developing a ground-breaking “distributed early-warning detection big data platform” capable of tracking up to 1,000 missile launches worldwide in real time.

The platform fuses data from an enormous array of space-, air-, sea-, and ground-based sensors, using advanced algorithms to distinguish warheads from decoys and proceed to action across secure networks.

The system integrates literally anything: fragmented, heterogeneous data streams from multiple sources – radars, satellites, optical, electronic reconnaissance systems – no matter where they come from, and when.

Cue to the system’s integration with interceptor missiles. During the Victory Day military parade last September in Beijing, China presented a new generation of air defense and anti-ballistic missiles, including the HQ-29, capable of intercepting hostile missiles beyond the atmosphere. Call it the Chinese Dragon Dome.

These are only 4 vectors amid the concerted Chinese tech drive, one of the key themes of the next Five-Year Plan to be approved next March in the “Two Sessions” in Beijing.

Now cut to Ronnie Chan, the Chair Emeritus of the Asia Society and the chairman of its Hong Kong Centre. He’s one of those affable old-school Hong Kong elite members who’s seen it all – and capable of synthesizing what’s ahead in a sharp and sweet manner. What he said recently at a seminar organized by the Shanghai Development Research Foundation could not be more relevant.

Let’s take just three key takeaways:

1. “The Chinese people are resilient and patient. As long as domestic stability is maintained, external pressure only strengthens their endurance (…) in this China–U.S. rivalry, there will be no true winner, but the side that stands longer in the end will be China.”

2. “China’s economy has not been over-financialised, and it continues to be grounded in the real economy. Only when manufacturing is strong can a nation remain stable and resilient.”

3. “China must stay calm — neither blindly optimistic nor blindly pessimistic. China possess a vast market, a complete industrial chain, and a diligent population. As long as internal stability holds, external pressures cannot defeat it. The real opportunities ahead do not lie in real estate or finance, but in the service sector and innovation-driven real economies.”

There is no Chinese “miracle”: it’s all about planning and hard work. And now to the next stage: no holds barred innovation.

This article was originally published on Sputnik News.

The post Tech Sinica – China’s Relentless Innovation Drive appeared first on LewRockwell.

According to newly released emails, the United States Intelligence Community, led by the CIA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, held regular meetings with Dr. Ralph Baric, one of America’s leading coronavirus experts, since at least 2015.

Senator Rand Paul’s office has worked for years to obtain the documents.

Baric has been accused of engineering the Covid-19 virus in his lab at the University of North Carolina, but he has never had to testify about his role in the pandemic despite his well-documented collaboration with the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

The newly released emails reveal that the CIA hoped to discuss “Coronavirus evolution and possible natural human adaptation with Baric” and that Baric held quarterly meetings with members of the Intelligence Community.

These emails are just the latest additions to the suspicious amalgamation of facts implicating the US Intelligence Community’s role in the origins of the pandemic, as discussed in The Covid Response at Five Years.

A very brief overview of the timeline suggests that the CIA and the Intelligence Community are implicated in the creation of the virus, a lab leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and censorship to evade any public scrutiny for their role in the pandemic.

• 2015: The Intelligence Community held quarterly meetings with Dr. Ralph Baric and discussed “possible human adaptation” to coronavirus evolution.
• 2019-2020: The CIA had a spy working at the Wuhan Institute of Virology doing “both offensive and defensive work” with pathogens, according to Seymour Hersh. That asset reports in early 2020 that there was a laboratory accident that resulted in the infection of a researcher.
• March 18, 2020: The Department of Homeland Security replaced Health and Human Services as the lead Federal Agency responding to Covid, as explained in depth in Debbie Lerman’s The Deep State Goes Viral.
• Spring 2020: The CIA offered bribes to scientists to bury their findings refuting the “proximal origin” theory advanced by Dr. Anthony Fauci, according to a whistleblower. The House Oversight Committee explains: “According to the whistleblower, at the end of its review, six of the seven members of the Team believed the intelligence and science were sufficient to make a low confidence assessment that COVID-19 originated from a laboratory in Wuhan, China.” Then, however, the “six members were given a significant monetary incentive to change their position.”
• 2020: Dr. Fauci began holding secret meetings at CIA headquarters “without a record of entry” in order to “influence its Covid-19 origins investigation,” according to a whistleblower. “He knew what was going on…He was covering his ass and he was trying to do it with the Intel community,” the whistleblower told Congress.”
• 2021: Scientists in the Department of Defense compiled significant evidence suggesting Covid emerged from a lab leak, but President Biden’s Director of National Intelligence, Avril Haines, banned them from presenting their evidence or participating in a discussion on the origins of the virus.
• 2021: CISA, an agency within the Department of Homeland Security, implemented a program known as “switchboarding,” where officials dictated to Big Tech platforms what content is permissible or prohibited speech.
• 2022: The Department of Homeland Security announced it will establish a “Disinformation Governance Board.” The Ministry of Truth is only discontinued when the absurdity of its chief censor, Nina Jankowicz, receives sufficient blowback from the public.

What exactly was the play here? A populist impulse has been alive in the American electorate since the end of the Cold War. A growing popular demand on the left and right has been for a government that serves the people and not some globalist, bureaucratized, and militarized scheme that only benefits the ruling class.

In 2015, Donald Trump, a consummate outsider to the ruling elites, was ascending in political stature in ways that no one expected. He was saying outrageous things on stage – such as that the Iraq war was a disaster – and people loved it.

The establishment’s choice, Jeb Bush, was wiped out early in the primaries. This was not about Trump personally, however; it was about the traditional demand in these circles to control the controllers. Since the assassination of JFK, this has always been the way, always justified in the public interest. Trump was not their choice.

The real interest has been the consolidation and expansion of power of a rogue Intelligence Community, headed by the CIA. Tapping Baric’s expertise was part of a deliberate strategy to increase that dominance through bioweapons.

It seems perhaps crazy to imagine that there was a playbook for maintaining control by the old guard and that the pandemic option was among them. But perhaps it was. After all, Anthony Fauci frequently warned of a coming pandemic, and intelligence worked with universities and corporations for years and on multiple occasions to game out pandemic exercises (Event 201 and Crimson Contagion).

What we have here are new breadcrumbs pointing to a genuine coup attempt, one that grew as each stage in the deployment failed, culminating in relentless media campaigns, lawfare, and even assassination attempts. The newest evidence further reinforces the existence of a ruling class willing to engage in sadistic policies that compared with the worst of the last years of the Roman Empire.

Of course, this was not just about politics in the US. Populist movements had come alive the world over, from Europe to the UK to Brazil. Fully 194 countries were locked down over several weeks, with the claim that the problem would be fixed with universal human separation followed by injection of a compliant population. The scenario being built here through these releases is nothing short of terrifying.

Where are the investigations, hearings, commissions, and courts? At the very least, and in any case, Baric and members of the Intelligence Community must testify under oath about their role in gain-of-function research, the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and the cover-up that began in 2020.

This article was originally published on Brownstone Institute.

The post Was Covid Always a CIA Plot? appeared first on LewRockwell.

As more and more people are awakening to the dangers of vaccines, they are gradually discovering a problem vaccine safety advocates have had to deal with for decades—talking to vaccine zealots is like speaking to a brick wall and regardless of the evidence you put forward, you can’t reach them (sometimes seeming as though you are speaking to a religious fanatic who is unwilling to even consider the “blasphemy you are spewing forth”).

For example, in 2009 after nephrologist Dr. Suzanne Humphries noticed patients (particularly hospitalized ones) kept on developing kidney failure after flu shots, she experienced significant pushback from trying to delay vaccinating until discharge:

In the past when I was consulted on kidney failure cases and said, “Oh that was the statin/antibiotic/diuretic that did that!” instantly the drug would be stopped—no questions asked. Now, however, a new standard was applied to vaccines. It didn’t matter that the internist’s notes in the charts said, “No obvious etiology of kidney failure found after thorough evaluation.”

The next time the medical chief of staff and I met in the corridor, an oncologist was present. At one point, I asked the chief, “Why doesn’t anyone else see the problem here? Why is it just me? How can you think all this is okay? Why is it now considered normal to vaccinate very sick people on their first hospital day?” The oncologist gave an answer that surprised me. She said, “Medical religion!” and turned and walked away.

Several months went by, and the medical executive committee met to discuss my concerns, without allowing me to be present at the meeting. I was informed in writing that the nursing staff were becoming confused by me discontinuing orders to vaccinate and that I should adhere to hospital policy. I thought this odd, given that nurses are not accustomed to giving the same treatment to every patient, and are fully capable of reading individualized orders.

As time went on, it was interesting seeing the divide in the hospital staff. Nurses would bail me up in quiet corners and tell me stories that completely backed up what I was seeing. They would guardedly support me, when their superiors were out of eye- or ear-shot.

I wrote all the cases out and put together a comprehensive brief for the hospital administration, but to no avail. Not even science could get through as the snake-oil salesmen continued to deny my findings.

I kept presenting the administration with facts they could not respond to, in the hope that they would get a blinding revelation of the obvious. Finally, they recruited the Northeast Healthcare Quality Foundation, the “quality improvement organization” for Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont, to get me off their backs. Dr. Lawrence D. Ramunno sent a letter invoking the fallacy of authority, which adamantly informed me that hospital vaccination against influenza virus would become a global measure for all admissions in 2010 [due to Obamacare], and that my evidence of harm was not significant because 10 professional organizations endorse vaccination.

This condescending, vapid letter…illustrated callous disregard of clinicians at the highest level, and the willful blindness prepared to ignore clearly documented cases, and their own medical literature. Not satisfied with demanding that I practice automaton obedience to dictates from on high, they initiated a shadow observation, where everything I did and wrote in the hospital, from then on, was observed and scrutinized.

Note: prior to Obamacare effectively mandating flu shots for healthcare workers, many doctors I knew did not vaccinate as they felt there were negligible benefits to the shot and real potential risks and thought the new mandate didn’t make sense. I do not believe my sample was biased as other sources corroborated it (e.g., this 2009 CNN segment discussed New York healthcare workers protesting a state law requiring annual flu shots for them)—making it remarkable how quickly a simple mandate was able to shift critical thinking on this topic to an irrational embrace of vaccination (especially given how people I’ve met who got Guillain-Barré syndrome from a vaccine).

Worse still, decades of propaganda have enshrined a number of ridiculous standards and rationalizations to defend vaccines you are always expected to argue against if you so much as question them.

Note: propaganda is a tool that is used to convince the population that something which goes against their interests and cannot be logically justified is actually “good for them.” For this reason, propaganda is emotional rather than logical in nature, and frequently will use emotional arguments that on the surface appear logical but once you peer deeper are not.

Why Do People Believe in Vaccines?

Once people awaken to the vaccine issues, one of the most frequent questions which emerges is why the medical field has such a rigid ideological attachment to them. I would argue it is due to three interrelated reasons:

First, human society has always been defined by competing groups vying for status and wealth, and what many do not appreciate is that, historically, it is a very recent development that doctors attracted the prestige and salary the profession commands. This I would argue was ultimately a result of two things:

•Market monopolization (via the American Medical Association) and technological developments birthing an incredibly profitable medical industry, which generated the funding to market a newfound faith in it to the entire country and required doctors (and faith in doctors) to serve as the keystone for the industry.

•Medicine creating a mythology that it rescued us from the dark ages of disease, and hence deserves its supremacy in the current social hierarchy. As “vaccines ending infectious diseases” is a central part of that mythology, to maintain their existing prestige, those within the conventional medical system are essentially forced to double-down on the absolute supremacy of vaccines, regardless of the evidence against them, or the fact, as Secretary Kennedy brilliantly shows here, there is no actual evidence vaccines were responsible for the decline in infectious disease the medical industry falsely claimed credit for.

Note: when Dr. Humphries raised her concerns about influenza vaccines causing kidney failure, colleagues used the mythology of medicine’s most esteemed vaccines to dismiss her (e.g., “[the chief of internal medicine] went on to remind me that ‘smallpox was eradicated by vaccines, and polio was eradicated in the United States by vaccines.’”). This eventually motivated Humphries to scrutinize that mythology and create the pivotal book Dissolving Illusions that showed exactly why that mythology was a lie.

Secondly, there is a well-known phenomenon in psychology known as the Dunning-Kruger effect, which states that the less competence or knowledge individuals have in an area, the more they will overestimate their competency and knowledge (e.g., as the DMSO series I’ve written has attracted more attention, an increasing number of DMSO hit pieces have been written and I’ve found that the more nonsensical, erroneous or misinformed the arguments presented are, the more confidently and aggressively their proponents espouse them and the more resistant they are to considering any conflicting data).

In medicine, there is a massive amount of information that needs to be learned, so in most cases doctors are forced to take short cuts throughout their training where again and again they assume if A is true then B is true without understanding exactly why A leads to B or how tentative the link can be and in which situations it does not apply. Likewise, when the public (especially members of the media) appraises medical information, rather than try to understand how A becomes B, they typically take the pronouncement of an expert (e.g., a doctor) that “A always leads to B” as all there is to say on the subject.

Since A often does not actually lead to B, and people do not like admitting they are wrong (especially if, like doctors, an incredible personal investment was required to attain the social status they hold), when confronted with inconsistencies in their beliefs, the typical response will be to double-down on their position rather than try to critically understand the additional data.

All of this, in short, encapsulates what I routinely observe when I see doctors or those aligned with “the science” defend (essentially-indefensible) aspects of vaccination.
Note: another common psychological mechanism at work, cognitive dissonance (not wanting to admit something you’ve invested yourself in was wrong), is particularly applicable to doctors, as it is a heavy burden to acknowledge you had harmed a significant number of people you willfully vaccinated.

Third, a strong argument can be made that societies cannot function without some type of unifying faith or spirituality (particularly since in the absence of one, people will frequently seek out one to adopt). In our culture, a rather peculiar situation emerged where religion was cast out by broad swaths of the society and replaced with science (under the belief it would create a fairer and more rational society) but the underlying need for a widespread faith was never addressed.

Because of this, much of science gradually morphed into the society’s religion, resulting in it claiming to be an objective arbiter of truth, but in reality, frequently being highly dogmatic and irrational as it seeks to establish its own monopoly over the truth (which has led to many labeling the current societal institution of science as “scientism”). As such, when science is discussed, religious terminology is often used by its proponents (e.g., “I believe in science,” “I believe in vaccines,” “anyone who denies climate change is reprehensible and must be silenced”).

The Religion of Medicine

Over the years, many have made the observation, medicine, by claiming dominion over life and death (and creating modern miracles like reviving the dead with cardiac resuscitation or awing the public with their ability to see through flesh with x-rays) has come to function as the foundation of the new religion of science.

Modern Medicine can’t survive without our faith, because Modern Medicine is neither an art nor a science. It’s a religion… The Church of Modern Medicine deals with the most puzzling phenomena: birth, death, and all the tricks our bodies play on us—Robert S. Mendelsohn

One of the first people who alerted me to this idea was Dr. Mendelsohn, who in his 1979 book, Confessions of a Medical Heretic argued that medicine was a dogmatic institution that prioritized authority, control, and ritualistic practices (which were treated as infallible doctrines requiring blind obedience from patients) over patient well-being, data transparency, and evidence-based care. There, he:

• Highlighted “unwritten rules” in medicine, such as doctors compulsively rushing to prescribe new drugs before their side effects are fully known, as examples of this rigid, faith-like adherence to protocol over science (particularly since debacles routinely followed this blind faith in new pharmaceutical drugs).

• Demonstrated how many routine practices and procedures caused significantly more harm than benefit (e.g., x-rays for tonsillitis later creating thyroid cancer) but could not be challenged due to the dogmatic nature of medicine, leading to similar debacles being repeated in each ensuing decade.

• Demonstrated that many illnesses that are routinely treated with (harmful) interventions would recover on their own, especially if augmented with simple natural healing practices.

• Argued that medicine’s tendency to withhold foundational medical information from the public (hence forcing them to trust the doctor’s opinion rather than their own judgement) was fundamentally unethical.
Note: this critique was raised in the pre-internet age where medical journal information was not widely available to the public. I believe this in part explains why journal articles published at this time (many of which I cite in this newsletter) were much more candid, whereas in later decades information which potentially incriminated the medical profession rarely made it to publication.

• Argued medicine’s compulsion to “do something” as a faith-based impulse rather than rational care, equating medical overreach with religious zeal that harms believers.

• Noted that in addition to patients being attacked for challenging the faith, doctors who did were treated as heretics and cast out (e.g., by being forced to resign from the hospitals they worked at).

Nowhere does the Church’s Inquisition emerge as clearly as it does through the drugging of children as a means of control… Modern Medicine sets up its Inquisition to define behavior which doesn’t conform as sick.

Mendelsohn’s work, in turn, was hugely impactful and played a huge role in shifting medicine away from the paternalistic model to one where patients began to be provided with data and allowed to play a role in deciding what care was optimal for them. For example, he made numerous highly impactful appearances on national television appearances such as this 1983 debate on the dangers of vaccines.

Note: over the last month, I compiled 54 other news segments that were aired on the dangers of vaccines that would never be aired now (and can be viewed here).

Nonetheless, many of the issues Mendelsohn highlighted persist to the present day. For example, doctors who tried to prevent COVID patients from dying by deviating from the ineffective remdesivir protocols were kicked out of their hospitals, the experimental mRNA vaccines were embraced with an unstoppable religious zeal by the medical community despite very little being known about them at the time and data on the safety or efficacy of the COVID vaccines was withheld from the public despite continual efforts and lawsuits to obtain them.

Read the Whole Article

The post Why Have Vaccines Become a Religion? appeared first on LewRockwell.

Donald Trump’s victory in the 2024 presidential election was due in large part to his promises to pursue an America First foreign policy and rein in inflation. One year later, prices remain high, and President Trump is more focused on overseas meddling than on the American people. This has helped enable Democrats to win governor races in Virginia and New Jersey, and self-described Democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani to win the New York City mayor race by running on “affordability.”

Since the election, President Trump has made a number of proposals to ease the burden of high prices. One of the president’s proposals is changing federal housing regulations to encourage lenders to offer 50-year mortgages. Though a 50-year mortgage in comparison to a 30-year mortgage could reduce monthly mortgage payments by over a hundred dollars for a median price home, it could also roughly double interest payments made over the life of the mortgage. So, while the longer mortgage may provide a short-term benefit, in the long run it is a losing proposition for potential homeowners.

President Trump also proposed using the revenue from his tariffs to give most Americans at least 2,000 dollars. This may provide some help for struggling Americans, but it does not compensate for the damage inflicted on the American economy by the tariffs.

President Trump has also announced plans to reduce tariffs on some countries in regard to coffee, bananas, and other agricultural products. This reduction in the tariffs has come with an admission from the Trump administration that the high tariffs have led to increased prices and thus harmed Americans. Hopefully, President Trump will provide more relief from his tariffs, including relief aimed at helping American manufacturers who rely on imports for raw materials and tools.

While Democrats talk about “affordability,” most are unwilling to support the free-market policies that produce abundance and affordability. Instead, they want more government interventions in the marketplace — even though history shows government interventions cause price increases and shortages. For example, New York City Mayor-elect Mamdani thinks the way to address housing costs in New York City is through new price controls on rent. He does not seem to understand that a reason housing costs are so high in New York City is because of the city’s existing rent control law.

Another example is congressional Democrats’ “solution” to the large increases in Obamacare premiums being to extend the 2021 “temporary” Obamacare subsidies enacted as part of covid relief legislation. Unfortunately, the Republican alternative appears to be to just send Americans money to use to pay medical costs.

Politicians with both parties ignore the real cause of price inflation: the Federal Reserve. When the Federal Reserve increases the money supply, it reduces the dollar’s value, thus increasing the average American’s cost of living. A major reason the Fed devalues the dollar is to monetize the ever-increasing federal debt by purchasing Treasury securities. Therefore, an important action the president and Congress could take to make America affordable again would be to reduce federal spending and start paying down the over 38 trillion dollars debt. Congress should also pass legislation forbidding the Federal Reserve from purchasing federal debt.

Congress should also pass the Audit the Fed bill, legislation exempting precious metals and cryptocurrencies from capital gains taxes, and a repeal of any other laws that prevent Americans from using alternative currencies. Auditing and ending the Federal Reserve is the true affordability agenda.

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