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Perhaps the greatest achievement of capitalism is the creation of the phenomenon of leisure, which has become the object of cultural recognition and celebration in modern capitalist countries.

For millennia prior to the dawn of the Industrial Revolution in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in Europe, the vast majority of men, women, and children toiled from dusk to dawn and beyond just to keep body and soul together. Leisure as we know it today did not exist except among kings and lords of the manor and their retainers. For ordinary people there were only brief respites from their labor on Sundays and holidays, during which they fulfilled their religious obligations. It was the enormous increase in the productivity of labor unleashed by the capitalist mode of production that bestowed meaningful “leisure time” on the masses, which has been celebrated in cultural media since the end of World War II. Because rock music is one of my favorite cultural media, I will analyze two classic songs recorded in the mid-1960s that recognize the close relationship between capitalism and leisure. Before I do so, however, I would like to say a word about the economics of leisure.

We tend to take leisure for granted because its production is instantaneous and its consumption is intermingled so closely with the consumption of the services of other goods in the form of “leisure activities.” Leisure is time that we choose to spend not working and therefore excludes the resting time physiologically required to restore the energy we need to function as acting beings. Working out at a health club, entertaining friends with a dinner party, and religious worship all require leisure as a complementary good. However, leisure is a good that cannot be bought and sold on the market. Like romantic love, friendship, and good reputation, it is also a (non-exchangeable) consumer goods because it is scarce and contributes directly to satisfying human wants and desires. Furthermore, just as spending money on exchangeable goods is costly, spending time on leisure activities also involves a cost. The cost of leisure is not directly monetary but rather the forgone opportunity to earn money from selling one’s labor services on the market to a business firm or laboring in one’s own business. For example, if a home care nurse earns $40 per hour and can vary her time worked in four-hour shifts, then it “costs” her $160 (before taxes) in forgone wages to “purchase” four additional hours of leisure by reducing her working hours from 36 to 32 hours per week.

Although leisure can be “produced” only by the person who intends to consume it and cannot be purchased from other people, the demand for leisure is subject to the same law of economics that governs the demand for exchangeable goods, namely, the “law of marginal utility.” This law states that as the supply of a good an individual possesses increases, the personal or “subjective” value he attaches to the good declines relative to the subjective values of other goods. Applied to the case we are about to consider, this law implies that as workers’ wages increase, enabling them to purchase greater quantities of consumer goods on the market, an hour of leisure tends to become relatively more valuable. This increases their willingness to “purchase” additional hours of leisure by reducing their hours worked and forgoing the wages they could have earned.

Since the dawn of the industrial revolution, which was ushered in by the ideology and system of capitalism, the astounding increase in saving and investment in capital goods and improvements in technology has driven labor productivity and real wages sharply upward. For example, as the graph below indicates, average weekly real wages—the amount of goods and services an average laborer could purchase with his or her weekly earnings—in the United Kingdom increased almost 20 times from 1800 to 2014. (An interactive version of the graph is here.)

In the United States, where the industrial revolution started much later than in Great Britain, the graph below shows that real average annual earnings of non-farm employees rose by 30 percent from 1865 to 1890. By 1988, an alternative index of real average hourly earnings in manufacturing in the United States was 55 times greater than it was in 1890. (An explanation and interactive version of the following graph is here.)

As real wages continued their dizzying rise, driven by rapidly increasing capital investment and industrialization, they were spent on acquiring the expanding supplies of consumer’s goods cascading onto markets. As noted, the subjective value of these goods tended to decline on laborers’ personal value scales relative to the value of leisure. To prevent an imbalance or “disequilibrium” of value between leisure and exchangeable goods from developing, laborers chose to progressively increase the proportion of their wages devoted to the purchase of leisure by reducing labor hours exchanged for wages on the market. In the example of the home care nurse above, the equilibrium of value between leisure and other consumer goods is restored when the subjective value of an additional four hours of leisure roughly equals—or more exactly, just exceeds—the value of $160 dollars of wages sacrificed or any collection of goods she could have purchased with that sum of money. If the nurse were to trade off any more wages for leisure, then her welfare would be reduced because the value of the added hours of leisure would drop below the additional wages and consumers goods she would have to forgo.

Let us look at how this adjustment process of leisure to the rise in real wages has played out historically. As the graph below shows, in the United States in 1870, production workers averaged 3,096 hours of labor per year. By 2017, the average annual working hours per worker had fallen to 1,755, a decline of over 43 percent. For the United Kingdom over the same period, these figures were 2,755 hours and 1,670 hours, respectively, a decline of nearly 40 percent in annual working hours. For the United States, almost three-quarters, or 31 percentage points of the 43 percentage-point decline in annual working hours during nearly a century-and-a-half, occurred during the 38 years from 1913 through 1950. In the United Kingdom, during the same 18-year period, annual working hours fell by nearly one-half of their total decline from1870 through 2017. (An explanation and interactive version of the following graph is here.)

By the advent of the 1960s, the notions of “the weekend” and “quitting time” or the “end of the workday” began to be portrayed in the news and cultural media as a cause and opportunity for celebration. Two rock songs released in the mid-1960s vividly illustrate this phenomenon. The first is titled “Five O’Clock World” (sometimes written “5 O’Clock World”) and was recorded by the American pop group The Vogues. The record, which can be heard here, peaked at number 4 on the Billboard’s Hot 100 chart in January 1966.

The lyrics of the first verse of the song laments the physical and mental anguish caused by the workday:

Up every morning just to keep a job
I gotta fight my way through the hustling mob
Sounds of the city pounding in my brain
While another day goes down the drain

The first chorus quickly transitions to an account of the worker’s eager anticipation of the end of the workday when he will emerge as literally a new person, stepping out of his work clothes and into a radically different world of leisure and consumption activities.

But it’s a five o’clock world when the whistle blows
No-one owns a piece of my time
And there’s a five o’clock me inside my clothes
Thinking that the world looks fine, yeah

The second verse transports us back to the workday world:

Trading my time for the pay I get
Living on money that I ain’t made yet
Gotta keep goin’ gotta make my way
But I live for the end of the day

The foregoing lyric refers to two capitalist institutions that helped make possible the enormous increase in labor productivity and real wages. First, there is the wages system itself, wherein workers voluntarily “trade their time” for money payment. The variation in wages rates among the different lines of production indicates to workers where their value to consumers and their own compensation are highest, while permitting them to choose the job that best suits them considering their personal preferences for particular working conditions. Then, there are the credit markets that enable workers with prospects of increasing incomes to borrow money in exchange for an interest premium and to enjoy a standard of living in the present that is higher than their current wages would permit. In terms of the lyrics, they are “living on money they ain’t made yet.” More importantly, capital markets, which include credit markets, prompt entrepreneurs to invest the continually increasing flow of scarce savings and capital in those production processes that increase workers’ productivity and raise their real wages. And it is precisely the astonishing increase in real wages under capitalism that has created “the five o’clock world” and allowed workers, in the words of the last line of the verse, “to live for the end of the day”—rather than face the grim prospect of returning home taking some nourishment and slumping into bed utterly exhausted.

In creating the world of leisure, capitalism also gave rise to the flourishing of family life and romantic love, for most people highly-valued goods whose consumption requires leisure. Fittingly, the song ends with a celebration of leisure, “the five o’clock world,” as an indispensable means for attaining these goods:

‘Cause it’s a five o’clock world when the whistle blows
No-one owns a piece of my time
And there’s a long-haired girl who waits, I know
To ease my troubled mind, yeah! . . .
In my five o’clock world she waits for me
Nothing else matters at all
‘Cause every time my baby smiles at me
I know that it’s all worthwhile, yeah

The second song that pertains to our theme is “Friday on My Mind.” Performed by the Australian rock band The Easybeats, the record, which can be heard here, was released in 1966 and reached number 16 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in May 1967 in the United States. It was a worldwide hit and, in 2001, was voted “Best Australian Song” of all time by APRA (Australasian Performing Right Association).

The lyrics begin with the worker’s subjective reaction to the drudgery of the work week and reveal his laser-like focus on the arrival of the weekend and the variations in his mood as it approaches:

Monday mornin’ feels so bad
Everybody seems to nag me
Comin’ Tuesday I feel better
Even my old man looks good
Wednesday just don’t go
Thursday goes too slow
I’ve got Friday on my mind

The chorus that follows celebrates the arrival of Friday evening and the worker’s impending physical and emotional release from the work week. It also alludes to two capitalist institutions that facilitate and promote the consumption of the leisure activities the worker longs for: the city and money (“bread”).

Gonna have fun in the city
Be with my girl, she’s so pretty . . .
Tonight I’ll spend my bread, tonight
I’ll lose my head, tonight
I’ve got to get to night
Monday I’ll have Friday on my mind

In the pre-industrial world, “the city” meant the capital city where the king and his family and court were ensconced. The capital was built and subsisted on the wealth that was expropriated by the ruling class through taxation of the producers—the craftsmen, artisans, and farmers inhabiting the towns and rural communities. It also served as the playground for the monarch and his royal cronies where they frolicked and cavorted, disgorging their ill-gotten gains on their leisure pursuits. Capitalism transformed cities from pleasure preserves for the politically powerful and privileged to centers of industry, finance, commerce, and entertainment where workers, capitalists, and entrepreneurs produced and then consumed the ever-increasing fruits of their efforts. The expansion and multiplication of cities under capitalism enabled and were driven by the expansion of the money economy until it encompassed all households and businesses. Money became the universal medium of exchange and money wages the “open sesame” for the masses to access the consumer goods—including things formerly considered “luxuries”—that gushed forth from capitalist mass production while indulging in the diversions and pleasures of leisure previously reserved to the ruling elites.

The second verse of the song again bemoans the tedium of the work week but suggests a prospective escape from traditional employment—but not from productive effort—via another capitalist institution:

Do the five day grind once more
I know of nothin’ else that bugs me
More than workin’ for the rich man
Hey! I’ll change that scene one day
Today I might be mad, tomorrow I’ll be glad
‘Cause I’ll have Friday on my mind

The “rich man” who irks and maddens the employee is, of course, the entrepreneur. In vowing to “change that scene one day,” the worker is declaring his intention to go to work for himself, to become an upstart entrepreneur, to out-compete the existing “rich men.” The song concludes with a repeat of the chorus with the worker keenly anticipating the imminent arrival of Friday evening mere hours away where await the delights and gratifications of the weekend.

Gonna have fun in the city
Be with my girl, she’s so pretty . . . .
Tonight I’ll spend my bread, tonight
I’ll lose my head, tonight
I’ve got to get to night
Monday I’ll have Friday on my mind

Note: The views expressed on Mises.org are not necessarily those of the Mises Institute.

The post Two Sixties Rock Songs That Celebrate Capitalism’s Greatest Creation appeared first on LewRockwell.

Robert Barnes has often spoken of how today’s perilous geopolitical situation is reminiscent of that on the eve of the Great War (World War I). Cloistered and insular political elites are displaying the same willful ignorance and haughty arrogance, the same incompetence and destructive disdain for future unintended consequences, as those earlier pompous leaders of Germany, Great Britain, Austria-Hungry, France, Italy, the Ottoman Empire, Czarist Russia, and the United States of America did then. Below are three famous observers lamenting on the Realpolitik consequences of this deadly folly:

Winston Churchill. statement to William Griffen, editor of the New York Enquirer in August of 1936

“America should have minded her own business and stayed out of the World War. If you hadn’t entered the war the Allies would have made peace with Germany in the Spring of 1917. Had we made peace then there would have been no collapse in Russia followed by Communism, no breakdown in Italy followed by Fascism, and Germany would not have signed the Versailles Treaty, which has enthroned Nazism in Germany. If America had stayed out of the war, all these ‘isms’ wouldn’t to-day be sweeping the continent of Europe and breaking down parliamentary government, and if England had made peace early in 1917, it would have saved over one million British, French, American, and other lives.”

America’s greatest journalist, H L Mencken on World War I

Baltimore Evening Sun, Nov. 11, 1931, “A Bad Guess,” H. L. Mencken

“Most of England’s appalling troubles today are due to a bad guess: she went into the war on the wrong side in 1914. The theory of her statesmen, in those days, was that, by joining France and Russia, she would give a death-blow to a dangerous rival, Germany, and so be free to run the world. But the scheme failed to work; moreover, it had unexpected and almost fatal results. Not only did Germany come out of the mess a dangerous rival still; France also became a rival, and a very formidable one. Worse, the United States was pumped up to immense proportions, and began to challenge England’s control of the world’s markets. The results are now visible: England has three competitors instead of one, and is steadily going downhill. If she had gone into the war on the German side she’d be in a much better situation today. The Germans would be grateful for the help and willing to pay for it (while the French are not); the French would be down and out, and hence unable to menace the peace of Europe; Germany would have Russia in Europe and there would be no Bolshevik [communist] nuisance; England would have all of Siberia and Central Asia, and there would be no Japanese threat and no Indian revolt; and the United States would still be a docile British colony, as it was in 1914. . . .

“The United States made a similar mistake in 1917. Our real interests at the time were on the side of the Germans, whose general attitude of mind is far more American than that of any other people. If we had gone in on their side, England would be moribund today, and the dreadful job of pulling her down, which will now take us forty or filthy years, would be over. We’d have a free hand in the Pacific, and Germany would be running the whole [European] Continent like a house of correction. In return for our connivance there she’d be glad to give us whatever we wanted elsewhere. There would be no Bolshevism [communism] in Russia and no Fascism in Italy. Our debtors would all be able to pay us. The Japs would be docile, and we’d be reorganizing Canada and probably also Australia. But we succumbed to a college professor [Wilson] who read Matthew Arnold, just as the English succumbed to a gay old dog who couldn’t bear to think of Prussian MP’s shutting down the Paris night-clubs.

“As for the mistake the Russians made, I leave it to history.”

And world-renowned economist and historian Murray N. Rothbard, in Wall Street Banks and American Foreign Policy:

“American entry into World War I in April 1917 prevented negotiated peace between the warring powers and drove the Allies forward into a peace of unconditional surrender and dismemberment, a peace which, as we have seen, set the stage for World War II. American entry thus cost countless lives on both sides, caused chaos and disruption throughout central and eastern Europe at war’s end, and the consequent rise of Bolshevism, fascism, and Nazism to power in Europe. In this way, Woodrow Wilson’s decision to enter the war may have been the single most fateful action of the twentieth century, causing untold and unending misery and destruction. But Morgan profits were expanded and assured.”

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The biggest battle in US Army history was the 1918 Meuse-Argonne offensive. This World War I battle is rarely mentioned in our media and school history books. Once a million American draftees were assembled for combat in France, they were ordered to charge into the strongest German positions, resulting in 26,277 American soldiers slaughtered in just 47 days. My grandfather, Eden C. Burris, Sr., after serving with General John J. Pershing in his campaign in Mexico chasing after the bandit Pancho Villa, later accompanied Pershing to France where he fought in the Meuse-Argonne offensive described above. I well remember his regaling me with his World War I exploits when I was a young adolescent.

Related Tale: “The 1914 American Invasion of Mexico”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZQGt…

“Winston Churchill was responsible for tragic Lusitania sinking”; John Spain: https://www.irishcentral.com/news/iri…

“World War I: Wasted Lives on Armistice Day”; History Net; https://www.historynet.com/world-war-…

“Meuse-Argonne Offensive”; video from the National Archives; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hhKk…

World War I: A Revisionist Reading List —  by David Gordon

Royal Cousins at War

Episode 1: A House Divided

Examines what impact the relationships between cousins Nicholas II of Russia, Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany and George V of the United Kingdom had on the outbreak of the First World War. This episode focuses on the story of the emerging divisions and rivalries between the inter-related royal houses of Europe during the 19th century.

Episode 2: Into the Abyss

The realignment of the European powers and the emergence of the alliance system in the years following the death of Queen Victoria, played a significant role for the three monarchs in the frantic, desperate days of July and August 1914.

Cousins at War  — Article

In May 1910, the monarchies of Europe came together in London, in an opulent show of strength, for the funeral of Edward VII. War and revolution in the ensuing decade heaped assassination, defeat and exile upon them. Author Theo Aronson portrays the European Royal Families at War.

The WWI Conspiracy – Part One: To Start A War — Documentary

The WWI Conspiracy – Part Two: The American Front — Documentary

The WWI Conspiracy – Part Three: A New World Order — Documentary

History Is Written By The Winners — Documentary

People’s Century: 1914 Killing Fields — Documentary

They Shall Not Grow Old — Documentary

I Didn’t Raise My Boy To Be A Soldier — Popular Song Before American Intervention In World War I

World War I: The American Legacy — Documentary

Trench Warfare — Documentary

World War I: Tactics And Strategy — Documentary

World War One Resources

The Christmas Truce of 1914 — Documentaries

The Great War and the Shaping of the 20th Century – episode 1: Explosion — Documentary

The Great War and the Shaping of the 20th Century – episode 2: Stalemate — Documentary

The Great War and the Shaping of the 20th Century – Episode 3: Total War — Documentary

The Great War and the Shaping of the 20th Century – episode 4: Slaughter — Documentary

The Great War and the Shaping of the 20th Century – episode 5: Mutiny –– Documentary

The Great War and the Shaping of the 20th Century – episode 6: Collapse — Documentary

The Great War and the Shaping of the 20th Century – Episode 7: Hunger and Hatred — Documentary

The Great War and the Shaping of the 20th Century – Episode 8: War Without End – Documentary

Who Was Edward M. House?  — Article by Robert Higgs

Phillip Dru, Administrator — Anonymous (Edward Mandel House)

The Intimate Papers of Colonel House — Book by Charles Seymour (editor)

Triumphant Plutocracy; the Story of American Public Life from 1870 to 1920, Book by Richard Franklin Pettigrew

Your Country At War and What happens To You After A War, Book by Charles A. Lindbergh, Sr.

How Diplomats Make War — Book by Francis Neilson

The United States and World War I — Article by John J. Dwyer

World War I and the Suppression of Dissent, Part 1 and II — Articles by Wendy McElroy

The Sinking of the Lusitania — Article by Kurt Hyde

Hidden History of WW1 — A transcript of the Lew Rockwell Show with John V. Denson.

Heritage of the Great War — Comprehensive WWI Website

Woodrow Wilson and World War I  — Murray N. Rothbard (audio lecture)

World War I as Fulfillment: Power and the Intellectuals — Murray N. Rothbard article

War Collectivism in World War I  — Book by Murray N. Rothbard

More than any other single period, World War I was the critical watershed for the American business system. It was a “war collectivism,” a totally planned economy run largely by big-business interests through the instrumentality of the central government, which served as the model, the precedent, and the inspiration for state corporate capitalism for the remainder of the twentieth century.

Merchants of Death: A Study of the International Armament Industry — Book by H. C. Engelbrecht and F. C. Hanighen

Here is the archetype of all post–World War I revisionism of a particular variety: the hunt for the people who made the big bucks off the killing machine. The Merchants of Death was, in many ways, the manifesto of a generation of people who swore there would not be and could not be another such war.

But here is the kicker: it was co-authored by the founder of Human Events, the conservative weekly. So this is no left-wing screed against profiteering. It is a careful and subtle, but still passionate, attack on those who would use government to profit themselves at the expense of other people’s lives and property.

Here is a sample of the ideological orientation: “The arms industry did not create the war system. On the contrary, the war system created the arms industry.… All constitutions in the world vest the war-making power in the government or in the representatives of the people. The root of the trouble, therefore, goes far deeper than the arms industry. It lies in the prevailing temper of peoples toward nationalism, militarism, and war, in the civilization which forms this temper and prevents any drastic and radical change. Only when this underlying basis of the war system is altered, will war and its concomitant, the arms industry, pass out of existence.”

This book is a wonderful example of what Rothbard called the “Old Right” in its best form. The book not only makes the case against the war machine; it provides a scintillating history of war profiteering, one authoritative enough for citation and academic study. One can see how this book had such a powerful effect.

Why re-release this book now? The war profiteers are making money as never before. They are benefiting from conflict as never before. Everything in this book has not only come to pass but as been made worse by a million times. So this treatise is more necessary than ever.

This is the real heritage of the American Right.

Merchants of Death Revisited: Armaments, Bankers, and the First World War — T. Hunt Tooley article

The year 2004 marked the seventieth anniversary of the publication of Engelbrecht and Hanighen’s Merchants of Death: A Study of the International Armament Industry, a book that made it into the general consciousness of most thinking Americans by the mid-twentieth century. The stark language of the title no doubt contributed to its fame. Moreover, the theme of arms merchants pushing for war is both easily understood and easily discussed, even by those who have not read it.

The World at War (Ralph Raico) — Video Lecture

The late Ralph Raico was a specialist in European classical liberalism and Austrian Economics. He learned economics under Ludwig von Mises, Murray Rothbard, and Friedrich Hayek, and was professor emeritus of history at Buffalo State College.

In this lecture, Raico teaches a Cato Summer Seminar group the history of World War I, the Great Depression, and World War II. He offers an in-depth look at the conditions which led to both wars and the ways in which governments throughout the 20th century have used war powers to justify and fuel their expansion.

Aftermath of the Great War — documentaries

Paris 1919, Part 1 — Feature Film

Paris 1919, Part 2 — Feature Film

War Is A Racket, by Smedley Darlington Butler

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Click Here:

Ben Bartee

 

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Click here:

The MAHA Report

 

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David Martin wrote:

“Zionism is a genocidal movement.”

Iran will not become a part of Yankeelandia anytime soon.

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Trump yes, but don’t forget Harry Truman. On this day in 1950, Truman announced that he was ordering his personal attack force, the U.S. military, to go fight in Korea. Over 36,000 American soldiers died, as usual, in vain and for a lie. What if American troops had all simply said, North Korea is no threat to us, hell no, we won’t go? I don’t know what would have happened in Korea, but I know that the families of over 36,000 American soldiers would not have lost fathers, brothers, sons, and uncles for no good reason.

The post Presidential Warmongering appeared first on LewRockwell.

 

di Francesco Simoncelli

(Versione audio dell'articolo disponibile qui: https://open.substack.com/pub/fsimoncelli/p/la-tavola-alta)

L'Europa, nel complesso, ha raggiunto il punto di non ritorno: quando il debito diventa impagabile, l'unico modo per liberarsene è quello di cancellarlo... e il modo migliore per farlo nel corso della storia è stato quello tramite una guerra. Ovvero, si vince una guerra, si acquisiscono gli asset del perdente e li si usa come collaterale per emettere nuovo debito nel sistema. Il problema per la cricca di Davos è che hanno fallito nuovamente in Russia, senza contare che quest'ultima è sopravvissuta ad altri attacchi precedenti: Napoleone, i bolscevichi, la Seconda guerra mondiale, la Guerra fredda. Hanno fallito in Cina: quest'ultima infatti ha preso il capitale che veniva estratto dagli Stati Uniti durante gli ultimi 40 anni, gli oligarchi locali hanno mandato al potere Xi e quest'ultimo ha tenuto i mercati dei capitali della nazione chiusi, oltre a far implodere determinate realtà interne che erano un cavallo di Troia (soprattutto nel mercato immobiliare) sotto forma di “investimenti occidentali”. Ecco perché la retorica ufficiale è passata da sostenere la Cina e agevolare, a livello normativo, che “invadesse” i mercati mondiali, al condannarla apertamente come “nemica dell'Occidente”. In questo modo diventa altrettanto impossibile guadagnare abbastanza potere politico per sovvertire il Paese dall'interno. E se ci pensate gli oligarchi russi hanno fatto lo stesso con Putin, visto che la Russia era sul punto di essere trasformata in una pedina con Yeltsin.

La Cina, infatti, sarebbe dovuto essere l'obiettivo successivo dopo la distruzione dall'interno degli Stati Uniti. Tutte le chiacchiere sull'ascesa dei BRICS come nuova superpotenza mondiale avevano tale scopo. Quando una nazione non agisce nel suo miglior interesse facendo cose stupide come hanno fatto gli USA nell'ultimo secolo, come ad esempio la Guerra al terrorismo, l'Obamacare, la spesa incontrollata, ecc. si capisce che non c'è niente di strutturale in ciò; non si tratta solo di corruzione. Certo è che quest'ultima emerge con più forza quando un Paese viene gestito da traditori. Lo Stato profondo americano non è affatto “americano”: è composto principalmente da globalisti transnazionali corrotti dall'interno (così come nella City di Londra, in Europa, a Singapore, a Hong Kong, a Zurigo, ecc.). In sostanza, si tratta di un network di persone le cui radici vanno indietro nella storia fino al vecchio sistema bancario olandese e veneziano. Questa è la cricca di Davos. Per chi ha visto la serie di film su John Wick, potremmo definirla la Tavola Alta.

Il motivo per cui odiano Trump, Putin, Orban, Xi, Georgescu, la Meloni, Fico, la Weidel, la Le Pen e tutti gli altri  “nazionalisti” è esattamente questo. Fino a tre anni fa era solo Trump e Putin, oltre a chi è andato dietro e fornito supporto alla Brexit; adesso si sono moltiplicati includendo anche Erdogan e Mohammed bin Salman in Arabia Saudita. Questa cricca, quindi, deve essere resa inoffensiva (improbabile che venga distrutta del tutto) e farlo significa non agire direttamente. Infatti i loro tentacoli sono ovunque e le relazioni che hanno intessuto sono vecchie di centinaia di anni. Soprattutto le relazioni a livello bancario, anche perché quando muovono i loro capitali non lo fanno tramite stanze di compensazione centralizzate... non lo fanno tramite i mercati regolamentati. Ecco perché, sin da quando è stato approvato il Dodd-Frank Act, ad esempio, il sistema bancario ombra americano è stato potenziato. Si ingessa il mercato regolamentato cosicché chi può permetterselo si rivolge a quello ombra. E ricordate sempre una cosa: i veri banchieri non hanno una pagina su Wikipedia.

Diversamente da quando c'era la Yellen, i titoli americani adesso hanno una maggiore credibilità. Oltre a ciò, rilassare la selva di regole partorite sulla scia del Dodd-Frank Act servirà a contrarre il sistema bancario ombra.https://t.co/5J1qBIeobW

— Francesco Simoncelli (@Freedonia85) June 18, 2025

Le persone comuni, quindi, non vedono davvero il potere che manipola e manovra, bensì un riflesso di quel potere. Vedono capi di stato, amministratori delegati, o consigli di amministrazione di grandi imprese agire contro i loro migliori interessi o contro i migliori interessi dei loro clienti, senza realizzare che in realtà c'è una forte influenza alle loro spalle affinché agiscano in tal modo. Per avere una prova di quanto scritto qui vi basta ricordare la storia più recente riguardo Facebook e Twitter. Un Zuckerberg o un Dorsey sono semplici tenenti, mentre gli ordini impartiti da uno Schwab sono quelli di un colonnello... ma i generali? Oh, i nomi di quelli rimangono ben nascosti nell'ombra. Molto probabilmente sono noti solo a gente dell'MI6. Comunque il modo di battere questa gente è forzarli fuori dalle ombre. Come? Ingrippando il motore tramite il quale scorrono i loro profitti. Qual è questo motore? Il dollaro e il sistema monetario americano, per essere più precisi l'eurodollaro come ho documentato nel mio ultimo libro Il Grande Default.

Al momento attuale, e per la prima volta nella storia forse, gli Stati Uniti sono davvero una nazione forte e indipendente. Il primo passo era quello di tornare a essere padroni della propria politica monetaria; il secondo quello della politica fiscale. Quello che ancora si fa fatica a capire in certi circoli e a livello generalista è che gli USA non erano affatto padroni della loro valuta finché è esistito il LIBOR. Tale meccanismo impostava il valore del dollaro in tutto il mondo, inclusi gli Stati Uniti stessi. Tutti i debiti della nazione (es. prestiti, carte di credito, mercati dei titoli, ecc.) erano una funzione determinata dal LIBOR. Se quest'ultimo iniziava a segnalare guai anche esterni agli Stati Uniti, la Federal Reserve veniva costretta ad alterare la sua politica monetaria in funzione di ciò che accadeva nel mercato del dollaro offshore.

I lavori iniziali, durante la prima amministrazione Trump, di sostituzione del LIBOR con il SOFR hanno segnato l'avvio di un cambio di passo. Il SOFR, infatti, è un tasso d'interesse di riferimento che si basa su cosa accade quotidianamente nei mercati monetari e dei pronti contro termine inversi americani. E diversamente dal LIBOR, il tasso americano è collateralizzato. Questo significa che se Londra finisce nei guai, non c'è più nessuno che può chiamare per aggiustare il tiro e spostare artificialmente un parametro in modo da coprire i suoi casini; o peggio, spostarlo talmente in alto da forzare la mano della FED quando il Paese invece non ne avrebbe avuto affatto bisogno. Non dimenticate che il sistema dell'eurodollaro è più sottoposto a leva dell'economia di un qualsiasi Paese, questo significa che un cambiamento minimo potrebbe avere effetti dirompenti. Quindi se avesse iniziato a salire velocemente, e di conseguenza anche la domanda di dollari per soddisfare la necessità di servire tutto il debito emesso in precedenza, la catena di guai avrebbe intaccato anche gli USA nonostante non fossero la fonte delle criticità e forzato la mano alla banca centrale americana nel taglio dei tassi (incentivando così l'azzardo morale in patria anche).

Infatti le rate dei mutui, delle carte di credito e di tutti quei debiti contratti dagli americani avrebbe iniziato a salire, costringendo così la FED a tagliare i tassi prim'ancora che i malinvestment del precedente ciclo fossero cancellati. Era così che le recessioni si diffondevano a macchia d'olio e gli USA venivano accusati di tutti i mali economici di questo mondo. Certo, la teoria Austriaca del ciclo economico spiega benissimo queste dinamiche, ma non si occupa di tracciare l'origine di queste distorsioni e così si perde anche la possibilità di capire CHI è da arginare. Per quanto si possa essere d'accordo con lo slogan “End the FED”, si finisce per essere (involontariamente) degli utili idioti al soldo della cricca di Davos dato che continuerebbero a esistere quelle figure che più hanno bisogno di dollari all'estero. Ogni ciclo economico che gli USA hanno sperimentato durante il “regno” dell'eurodollaro è servito a svuotare un po' di più il bacino della ricchezza reale del Paese.

Con l'entrata in pieno vigore del SOFR le cose sono cambiate: Powell, ad esempio, può rialzare di tassi oltre il 5% e l'economia americana non va in crash. L'ha fatto, ad esempio, nel 2023 quando la stampa gridava come una forsennata che così facendo avrebbe condannato l'economia americana... non è successo nulla; continua a farlo adesso nonostante la BCE tagli i tassi... l'economia americana è più forte di quella europea. Chi stava facendo crashare l'economia americana era la Yellen, la fautrice del rollover del debito di questa estate di cui molti analisti stanno lanciando l'allarme ma non ne capiscono a fondo le implicazioni. Gli manca il punto del SOFR e della contrazione dell'offerta di eurodollari, perni da cui viene innalzata la Grande riorganizzazione degli Stati Uniti. A tal proposito la recente approvazione al Senato del GENIUS Act aggiunge ulteriore spazio di manovra al Dipartimento del Tesoro per disinnescare questa bomba a orologeria fiscale (la stessa che sta fornendo margine a Bruxelles e Londra per tenere a galla l'euro tramite la manipolazione del front-end della curva dei rendimenti americana).

Recent reporting projects that stablecoins could grow into a $3.7 trillion market by the end of the decade. That scenario becomes more likely with passage of the GENIUS Act.

A thriving stablecoin ecosystem will drive demand from the private sector for US Treasuries, which back…

— Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent (@SecScottBessent) June 17, 2025

A sua volta questo significa che con il drenaggio da parte della FED dell'offerta di dollari offshore, la cricca di Davos è costretta a mettere sul tavolo il proprio di capitale e non più quello rubato altrove. Solo così stanno riuscendo a tenere solvibile l'intero sistema, soprattutto quello europeo. Senza contare che la liquidazione del Canada, con l'elezione di Carney, fa parte della “linea di sopravvivenza” della cricca di Davos. È così che questa gente sopravvive.

RISCRIVERE LA STORIA: IL GENESIS BLOCK

Il passaggio dal LIBOR al SOFR è stato un passaggio fondamentale nel modo in cui il mondo muove tutta la liquidità. Adesso sono gli Stati Uniti a impostare il prezzo del dollaro, internamente ed esternamente, non più gli altri. E il dollaro è ancora la valuta dominante nel mondo, nonostante le chiacchiere ideologiche di analisti indipendenti e stampa finanziaria di parte. La realtà è che le quote di mercato contano; gli accordi contano; i prospetti d'investimento contano; i prospetti dei fondi contano; le assicurazioni hanno regole su quello in cui possono o non possono investire. Tutte queste cose sono assolutamente sensibili al modo in cui scorre il denaro, non alla “logica” di chi vorrebbe che il mondo andasse secondo il suo metro di giudizio.

U.S. Dollar is now used in nearly 50% of global payments, the highest level in more than 12 years ???? Euro not so much… pic.twitter.com/sCJ3lFiPQq

— Barchart (@Barchart) May 29, 2025

Di recente sono stato a un'audizione nell'aula lavori della Camera dei Deputati dove ho potuto assistere a una serie di interventi in merito a Bitcoin. Per quanto paradossale possa sembrare, la narrativa riguardo la sua esistenza nel mondo attuale deve essere riscritta in base a quanto accaduto nel 2022. Infatti la sua nascita è avvenuta come forza di opposizione a un dollaro che era stato tradito e non funzionava come strumento per le persone comuni. Bitcoin è stato progettato e costruito in una situazione in cui il dollaro veniva tradito dalle stesse persone che si supponeva dovessero gestirlo. E la sua crescita è stata straordinaria in questo ambiente, soprattutto quando ci sono stati personaggi come Bernanke e la Yellen che hanno lavorato attivamente per distruggere il Paese e, per estensione, il sistema di riserva del dollaro (sebbene questo fosse già morto nel 2009 durante il primo QE e la coordinated central bank policy).

Da quando Powell ha iniziato a rialzare i tassi, quel cartello si è rotto e adesso ci troviamo in una fase di transizione. Nell'attuale contesto Bitcoin ha spazio come collaterale aggiuntivo che non ha rischio di controparte, come l'oro. Gli interventi in quell'audizione ancora danno per scontato che la FED stia lavorando contro il dollaro, i suoi interessi e quelli della nazione; praticamente nessuno si sta chiedendo: cosa succederebbe in un mondo in cui la FED difende sé stessa? La FED ha migliaia di miliardi di dollari in spazio di manovra, oltre alla capacità adesso di manovrare come davvero desidera l'idraulica del dollaro, e potete scommettere che userà Bitcoin per rinforzare il dollaro. Questo è il mondo in cui viviamo, questo è il mondo in cui le decisioni d'investimento devono essere fatte... oggi.

Tutta la narrativa di base riguardo alla solidità di Bitcoin in quanto hard asset è assolutamente vera e quanto scritto sopra non cambia la sua natura sana/onesta. Ciò a sua volta significa non snobbare Tether, perché senza di esso non ci sarebbe liquidità in Bitcoin. Ciò a sua volta significa non snobbare Ripple, perché eroderà il mercato del Forex che la City ancora oggi intermedia al 30% del totale. Questo mi rende un fan di Ripple, ad esempio? No. Questo significa che Ripple, ad esempio, è un progetto della Tavola Alta? Non lo so. So solo quello che accade e che viene portato all'interno di un nuovo sistema finanziario come blocco importante.

Crypto is not a threat to the dollar. In fact, stablecoins can reinforce dollar supremacy.

Digital assets are one of the most important phenomena in the world right now, yet they have been ignored by national governments for far too long.

This administration is committed to… pic.twitter.com/vWsLgYyNW7

— Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent (@SecScottBessent) June 18, 2025

Ora mettiamo insieme tutti i pezzi che possono sembrare sparsi a terra. Tether porterà a livello digitale il dollaro “analogico”, raggiungendo gli angoli più sperduti del mondo a prezzi ridicoli. Gli unbanked avranno accesso al mercato più liquido e affidabile della Terra. Inutile dire il potenziale che ha ciò sullo sviluppo tecnologico, industriale e sociale di qualsiasi regione ancora arretrata. Tether rappresenta la tokenizzazione dei titoli di stato americani, visto che nel suo bilancio la parte del leone la fanno questi asset. Questo significa, a sua volta, una domanda crescente e sostenibile del debito americano. Cosa non c'è nelle riserve di Tether? Titoli europei, canadesi, cinesi, ecc. Non solo, ma la credibilità di questo sistema viene puntellata dal collaterale a supporto della natura fiat del dollaro: oro e Bitcoin. Senza rischio di controparte e hard asset per eccellenza, entrambi coprono il debito americano e disincentivano corse agli sportelli. Non solo, ma attraverso il tramite dei titoli di stato americani Bitcoin collateralizza il SOFR. Lo ripeto, diversamente dal LIBOR, il SOFR è un tasso di riferimento collateralizzato.

Integrando di nuovo l'oro nel sistema monetario e introducendo per la prima volta Bitcoin in esso, si riduce la leva nel sistema finanziario. Più la si riduce, più ci si avvicina al proverbiale sound money. Con i mercati con sottostante questi hard asset, la liquidità temporanea e necessaria per “facilitare” gli scambi non sarà più foriera di gravi deformazioni economiche. Non scordiamoci la teoria e il mismatch tra pagamenti e produzione, come ci ha insegnato lo stesso Mises.

Tutti stanno impazzendo per il rilassamento delle regole del Supplemental Leverage Ratio, che ricordiamolo riguarda il collaterale più credibile e liquido al momento ovvero i titoli di stato americani, e “stranamente” la cosa di cui preoccuparsi veramente passa inosservata. Diversamente da quando c'era la Yellen, i titoli americani adesso hanno una maggiore credibilità. Oltre a ciò, rilassare la selva di regole partorite sulla scia del Dodd-Frank Act servirà a contrarre il sistema bancario ombra. Sto parlando dell'allentamento delle regole europee sulla cartolarizzazione degli asset. Non mi sorprende, visto che c'è un coordinamento sulla stampa finanziaria e da parte degli analisti “indipendenti” a far apparire come il malato cronico e incurabile gli Stati Uniti. Balle. Qui davvero devono tremare i polsi, perché dentro questi pacchetti ci può essere di tutto e la situazione economica/finanziaria europea è appesa a un filo. E sono pronto a scommettere che ci finirà anche l'immondizia obbligazionaria ucraina insolvente.

DUE DOLLARI

Infine ci saranno due dollari: uno circolerà all'interno degli Stati Uniti, un altro a livello internazionale. Questo è un concetto ancora difficile da digerire visto che siamo stati cresciuti a vedere un mercato globale per il dollaro e ancora non si riesce pienamente a concepire una divisione dello stesso per diversi mercati. Ovviamente il primo sistema è stato creato dai globalisti per i propri scopi. Ed è per questo che Powell ha detto più di una volta che il biglietto verde potrebbe perdere in futuro il suo status di valuta di riserva ad appannaggio di altro. Questo è uno scenario che si verificherà nel momento in cui il DXY schizza in alto e i debiti esteri denominati in dollari costringeranno le altre nazioni a scegliere qualcos'altro per onorarli (un po' come stava per succedere alla vigilia degli Accordi del Plaza). Fino a quel momento, però, la domanda di denaro si concentrerà su quell'asset più liquido e commerciabile: il dollaro. Agli USA non interessa, visto che il loro scopo adesso non è più essere i prestatori di ultima istanza del mondo, bensì rimettere a posto le cose in patria.

Molto probabilmente le grandi banche americane emetteranno le proprie stablecoin, andando progressivamente a mettere da parte la necessità di un sistema bancario centrale. Questo a sua volta risolverà il problema di un honeypot possibile da catturare e far ripiombare la nazione in un nuovo incubo come quello in cui i globalisti avevano il comando. Se poi da qui si arriverà alla eliminazione dell'imposta sul reddito, allora il film sarà riavvolto abbastanza da far ripartire le cose laddove si erano lasciate: il punto storico quando ancora la sostenibilità era una virtù. L'imposizione di dazi va in quella direzione...

La circolazione di un dollaro interno, compensato attraverso il sistema Federal Reserve regionale, e di uno esterno, ovvero Tether, rappresenta in sostanza l'erezione di un barriera contro i contraccolpi della recessione globale che ancora attanaglia le principali economie del mondo sin dal 2008. Quelli che stanno implementando gli USA non sono altro che controlli di capitali soft.

Ecco perché le altre nazioni del mondo stanno alzando un polverone nei confronti dei dazi e del bilanciamento degli squilibri commerciali a svantaggio degli Stati Uniti. Perché hanno riscoperto la teoria economica solida? No, usano gli utili idioti che la sventolano per portare acqua al loro mulino. Prendiamo ad esempio il Canada. Quest'ultimo ha un surplus commerciale tale che gli permette di incassare $10 miliardi al mese e questi sono dollari che possono essere sottoposti a leva nel mercato dell'eurodollaro. Non un granché, ma per il momento sufficienti a rallentare il processo. Per la cricca di Davos qualunque fonte, per quanto esigua di dollari, va bene per cercare di sopravvivere alla prova di forza imposta da Washington. La sua strategia attualmente è quella di aprire quanti più fronti possibili, uno di questi è quello fiscale con l'opposizione alla Big Beautiful Bill, e impantanare in essi l'amministrazione Trump affinché non concluda nulla; il passo successivo è rubare le elezioni di medio termine e sabotarla definitivamente. Di conseguenza la chiusura di questi fronti è importante, tergiversare non è affatto un'opzione. Da qui la necessità di fare dell'Iran un esempio.

A riprova di quanto sostengo nel thread citato https://t.co/Vs4rZjX96P pic.twitter.com/whegCyLiw4

— Francesco Simoncelli (@Freedonia85) June 16, 2025

E sulla scia di ciò l'Europa pare aver recepito il messaggio.

Altro fronte che si accinge a chiudersi. La "power politics" funziona e gli USA non sono più quelli del pre-2022, che l'UE ha derubato ben volentieri. Molto probabilmente la dimostrazione di forza sfoggiata contro l'Iran serviva anche a questo.https://t.co/0qWH1jmcOl

— Francesco Simoncelli (@Freedonia85) June 17, 2025

La parte ironica di tutta questa storia è che la Tavola Alta non userà hard asset come strategia per replicare. Non li vogliono affatto. Il loro “modello di business” è quello di rivendere la vita dei suoi sottoposti a una manciata di spiccioli rispetto a quanto esige in termini monetari, temporali ed energetici.

IL GUINZAGLIO FINANZIARIO

La Tavola Alta non vuole hard asset a copertura delle società che parassita perché ciò significherebbe mettere fine al modo in cui conduce i propri affari. Il suo scopo non è costruire, creare affidabilità e credibilità; il suo scopo è consumare per i propri scopi a scapito dell'ospite malcapitato. Come ha scritto E. M. Burlingame in un suo articolo d'opinione, si tratta di “un attacco sistematico alla sovranità economica di una nazione [...]. Questo ciclo ha rovesciato imperi e ha quasi posto fine agli stati moderni”. Potremmo immaginarlo come un guinzaglio che man mano viene stretto fino a far esplodere la testa del malcapitato. Secondo l'articolo citato, possiamo identificare sette fasi in cui ciò accade:

1. Infiltrazione e influenza: i globalisti si insinuano nella leadership di un Paese, fingendosi consiglieri o alleati.
2. Intrappolamento col debito: erogano prestiti insostenibili, bloccando le nazioni in cicli di rimborso.
3. Identificazione degli asset: risorse preziose come terreni, industrie, basi imponibili e infrastrutture vengono prese di mira.
4. Destabilizzazione economica: i mercati vengono manipolati per aggravare le crisi.
5. Scambi debito-attivi: i beni vengono sequestrati in cambio di una riduzione del debito.
6. Estrazione e sfruttamento: la ricchezza viene prosciugata attraverso l'estrazione di profitti.
7. Abbandono e collasso: la nazione è distrutta, le sue ricchezze perdute. 

Negli Stati Uniti si è arrivati alla fase tra 6 e 7. Il Canada allo stesso livello. In Cina era stato avviato lo stesso processo fino a quando gli oligarchi della nazione non hanno eletto Xi. In Russia era stato avviato lo stesso processo fino a quando gli oligarchi della nazione non hanno eletto Putin. Negli USA è successa la stessa cosa con le ultime elezioni: Trump è stato messo lì dagli oligarchi della nazione, ovvero Dipartimento della difesa, industria tecnologica e Wall Street. Da questo punto di vista tutte queste nazioni sono un esempio e una volta che l'esempio viene portato a livelli mondiali tutti vogliono togliersi questo guinzaglio. Ed è anche per questo che la mia ipotesi è che USA-Cina-Russia creeranno un circuiti commerciale per ridimensionare l'Europa e i colonialisti europei. In questo modo è possibile capire come mai, oltre a voler eradicare la privacy entro il 2027 e introdurre un euro digitale scoperto, sul suolo europeo è stato bandito uno strumento come Tether.

La capitalizzazione di mercato di Tether è un potente strumento, ora in mano alla Federal Reserve, per digitalizzare l'analogico e coprirlo con hard asset (oro e Bitcoin). Tutte le altre stablecoin sono state giustiziate perché, come ho descritto nel Capitolo 16 del mio ultimo libro, Il Grande Default, revisionando la storia di FTX, erano un rubinetto per portare dollari all'estero. La BCE non potrà mai percorrere un percorso del genere, dato che il suo obiettivo è distruggere tutto il debito del continente. Il suo obiettivo è convogliare le banche centrali nazionali sotto la sua unica egida, far collassare tutto il vecchio debito, emetterlo di nuovo sotto forma di perpetual debt, ripulire i bilanci e implementare l'integrazione fiscale. Questo è il piano della Tavola Alta per l'Europa e il Regno Unito: far confluire tutte le vecchie banche nazionali del continente nella BCE e renderla la banca centrale della Commissione europea. In sostanza, farla diventare come la Federal Reserve visto che attualmente sono due cose diverse dato che operano in base a parametri operativi differenti.

Prove di unione fiscale. Senza l'accesso facilitato agli eurodollari, con cui parassitare la ricchezza altrui, l'UE è un guscio vuoto che cerca disperatamente di sopravvivere nel deserto industriale che ha creato spremendo fino all'osso i contribuenti.https://t.co/AQKpOLcMHk

— Francesco Simoncelli (@Freedonia85) June 18, 2025

Per farlo c'è bisogno di un'autorità singola che impone tasse e spende. Ecco perché Macron vuole un esercito europeo; ecco perché continuano a emettere obbligazioni tramite la Commissione europea (dapprima per il cambiamento climatico, poi le obbligazioni SURE durante la pandemia, poi le obbligazioni SURE per la guerra in Ucraina). Hanno provato qualsiasi cosa immaginabile, ma il mercato continua a respingere tutti i tentativi. Questo, in realtà, significa che chiunque sia dietro Trump sa come battere queste persone.

La geopolitica, la politica nazionale, i mercati finanziari sono guidati tutti dalla stessa storia: la vera guerra non è (ancora) cinetica, bensì finanziaria. Se l'amministrazione Trump dovesse perdere la guerra finanziaria, allora essa diventerebbe cinetica perché è l'unica altra opzione.

CONCLUSIONE

La Scuola Austriaca è ottima per un'analisi approfondita della radice dei problemi economici. Ciò a sia volta significa un ampliamento delle prospettive: il modo in cui opera la FED nel contesto di ciò che sappiamo e abbiamo scoperto riguardo l'eurodollaro. Alla fine tutti rispondono agli incentivi, anche la “malvagia” FED. Cosa succede quando quest'ultima deve affrontare una minaccia esistenziale? Non sto parlando del crack-up boom, ma della guerra contro la City di Londra e la cricca di Davos. Privarsi di questo strumento significa far vincere l'avversario a tavolino. Perché, vedete, esiste di fatto il valore soggettivo ed è indubbio. Al contempo, l'interconnessione dei vari valori soggettivi va a formare una realtà oggettiva che non si può discutere, bensì osservare. Le proprie prescrizioni lasciano il tempo che trovano e invece si deve agire nel proprio miglior interesse in base agli input che riceviamo. Ovviamente si tratta di figure, quelle istituzionali, che non sono affatto schierate per il “bene” della popolazione; non esistono buoni o cattivi, ma solo una variegata scala di grigi. Scegliere una parte e quindi migliorare la propria posizione, in questa strana coincidenza storica di interessi tra FED e investitori/risparmiatori/gente comune, non significa abiurare i principi e la teoria. Significa semplicemente non voler finire dalla padella alla brace, cosa che accadrebbe se venisse rimossa dall'equazione la FED e la Banca d'Inghilterra/BCE avessero campo libero. Soprattutto, poi, quando si realizza che gli USA sono un esempio virtuoso attualmente nel mondo intero e che l'indipendenza dalla Corona inglese è avvenuta solo di recente. Per quanto potesse essere un indipendenza politica formale, non lo è mai stato dal punto di vista finanziario; ecco perché il passaggio dal LIBOR al SOFR è qualcosa di epico e spartiacque. Cosa succede quando non sono più i globalisti al controllo della banca centrale più potente del mondo bensì un gruppo, diciamo, di “patrioti” che pensa principalmente ai propri interessi e quelli della nazione in cui vivono?

Quando Powell ha ripetuto, in diverse occasioni, che in futuro ci sarebbe stato spazio per più di una valuta di riserva mondiale stava implicitamente suggerendo il corso d'azione che sarebbe stato intrapreso negli USA per proteggere il dollaro. Attualmente il biglietto verde possiede tutti e tre gli aspetti di una valuta che viene usata internazionalmente e che è sottoposta, quindi, al Dilemma di Triffin: unità di conto, mezzo di scambio, riserva di valore. L'unità di conto può rimanere, perché è quella caratteristica che conta di meno in questo caso. Per quanto riguarda il mezzo di scambio, invece, la digitalizzazione sta portando alla ribalta una serie di soluzioni che permettono la diversificazione. Non c'è bisogno di una singola valuta per evitare i costi del Forex intermediati dalla City di Londra. Per il settlement ormai, con la rivoluzione Bitcoin, non c'è bisogno che sia una cosa sola. Ciò che conta è che i costi si stiano riducendo e che si possa evitare di pagare il pedaggio agli intermediari. Quest'ultimo aspetto è quello critico, perché i proventi da esso vengono trasformati in potere politico.

L'emancipazione dalla Tavola Alta può passare esclusivamente da questa via: abbandonare il vecchio sistema e dominare il proprio. È una questione di sopravvivenza non di bontà d'animo o benevolenza nei confronti della popolazione. E questa coincidenza di obiettivi può e dovrebbe essere capitalizzata.

Sopravvivere e pensare alla propria “salute” significa anche rinunciare a parti del vecchio sistema che avevano reso (artificialmente) dominante gli USA sui mercati. Non farlo significa far materializzare tutte quelle voci che vogliono concorrenti spuntare in ogni angolo del mondo e sottrarre lo scettro di punto di riferimento finanziario agli Stati Uniti. Possono farlo, e forse un giorno sarà così, ma ciò che vediamo sui mercati è una “ri-dollarizzazione” e l'uso diffuso di un asset liquido e ancora credibile. La volontà di ripulire la propria casa fiscale/monetaria da parte dello Zio Sam avvalorerà ancora di più la scelta di selezionare il dollaro per le transazioni internazionali, anche senza imposizioni di sorta. C'è poco da girarci intorno: i mercati monetari americani sono i migliori al mondo. Nessuno dice che sarà un cammino liscio e senza ostacoli, ma non ci sono altre opzioni. Rispetto a una cricca di Davos che odia visceralmente le persone e il loro individualismo, meglio gente come quella dei NY Boys che sono sostanzialmente indifferenti alle persone comuni e perseguono i propri interessi.

Il loro interesse principale adesso è duplice: aggiustare il flusso di cassa della nazione (troppe spese) e il problema delle passività (soprattutto quelle non finanziate). Il primo problema si risolve tagliando la spesa, agevolando la crescita del settore privato tagliando le tasse e limitando la fuoriuscita di dollari all'estero tramite i dazi. A causa delle politiche ambientali, poi, molti asset americani sono valutati 0 sul bilancio della nazione. Una volta contabilizzati il debito americano apparirà molto più sostenibile. Questo accoppiato, inoltre, con una Federal Reserve che continua a ridurre il ritmo della stampa di denaro.

Il mio esercizio su questo blog è quello di individuare le cause alla radice dei mali economici e qual è quella cosa che si può cambiare di più per migliorare il mondo nel breve, medio e lungo termine. Chi è il nemico più vicino? Quali sono i suoi punti di forza e debolezza? Come neutralizzarli? Abbiamo capito ormai che si tratta di Londra e Bruxelles. I tre passi per togliere loro potere sono:

1. Accesso precluso al denaro pubblico: niente più soldi delle tasse per far pagare tutti i conti agli americani;
2. Accesso precluso al denaro privato: raid ai proventi dei cartelli e delle ONG, cosa che ad esempio ha scatenato le rivolte a Los Angeles;
3. Prosciugare la loro ricchezza: si tratta dei fondi rubati nel corso dei secoli e stipati in banche di cui nessuno ha mai sentito parlare.

Per quanto le soluzioni non siano perfette per i punti 1 e 2, l'amministrazione Trump sta facendo un buon lavoro. Il punto cruciale è il terzo: come si fa affinché mettano in gioco i loro di soldi? Come si fa a far percepire loro dolore economico in prima persona? Si rende altamente costoso il loro accesso al capitale e si tagliano le fonti di approvvigionamento al collaterale. In questo modo devono per forza rivolgersi ai loro di fondi per mandare avanti le guerre che vogliono. Come si batte un nemico che ha più armi, più potere e più denaro di voi? Lo si manda in rovina. Come lo si manda in rovina senza che esso se ne accorga? Gli si fa pensare che può vincere e lo si impantana nella fallacia dei costi irrecuperabili. Un esempio “sul campo” riguardo questa tattica è la strategia russa nel non voler far saltare in aria nemmeno uno dei venti ponti sul fiume Dnieper. La NATO ha continuato quindi a rifornire l'Ucraina, convincendosi che avrebbe potuto battere la Russia (l'unico distrutto a Kherson era stato precedentemente danneggiato severamente dagli stessi ucraini).

Lo stesso sta accadendo in Europa dove è stata costruita una camera di risonanza dove gli utili idioti elogiano l'UE senza rendersi conto che vengono privati della loro ricchezza per mantenere vivo un colosso dai piedi d'argilla. Quando poi la cricca di Davos dovrà mettere in campo i propri di fondi, perché “i soldi degli altri” finiscono sempre (soprattutto ora con la contrazione dell'offerta di eurodollari e la LBMA che vede sanguinare le proprie riserve d'oro), allora quello sarà il momento esatto dove attaccare in forze per sottrarli. E sulla faccia della Terra ci sono solo pochissime istituzioni in grado di fare una cosa del genere: la Federal Reserve è una di queste.

Ciò che vedremo in futuro sarà un suo ritorno a quello che era prima degli anni '30, effetto anticipato dalla regionalizzazione dei tassi d'interesse e del costo del capitale. Essa sarà il prestatore di ultima istanza per il mercato domestico e per quello delle stablecoin basate sul dollaro; imposterà il valore del dollaro per i mercati internazionali, decidendone il valore per chiunque sarà costretto a bussare alla sua porta.

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

The War Party is pointing, laughing, and gloating… ridiculing skeptics of Iran attacks for being wrong, as if warning against war isn’t prudent.

Its proponents want to embed the notion that it’s more reckless to doubt armed intervention than to promote it, and that minding our own business is a greater danger than butting into everyone else’s.

But the burden of proof is always on those who urge war. That’s why the framers of the Constitution demanded such consequential action be debated in Congress, and be undertaken only after that body declares war.

Semantic Somersaults

Regardless its tactical merits, the attack on Iran lacked such sanction and was therefore illegal. The president has no Constitutional authority to start a war. That’s why some “conservative” influencers resort to semantic somersaults that would make Bill Clinton blush:

How is this different from “I. Did. Not. Have. Sex. With. That. Woman?” I suppose that depends on what your definition of “is” is.

Article II, Section 2 states the President “shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States.”

Only Congress can call the military into “actual service of the United States” – by declaring war… which Congress hasn’t done since WWII.

The armed forces are not the president’s personal plaything. He can’t commit them to airstrikes, invasion, attack, or battle without Congress calling them to service by declaring war. The Constitution wasn’t written in hieroglyphics or Morse Code. This isn’t complicated.

There are no exceptions for “emergencies” (a word not found in the Constitution) or extraordinary circumstances. The War Powers Resolution of 1973 didn’t override this requirement. That wasn’t a constitutional amendment, and doesn’t supersede the original document.

If anything, it was a feeble (and unconstitutional) attempt to restrain rogue presidents by requiring them to inform Congress before initiating hostilities. In essence, it’s an illegal law. Congress can’t delegate its power to the president.

Symptom of the Disease

But Trump didn’t even abide by that act. He didn’t notify Congress he was attacking Iran. As with his strikes on Yemen a few months ago, he just did it.

Like other modern presidents, this one is merely an acute symptom of a festering disease. Like all others this century (and most in the last one), Trump violated his oath by launching attacks without Congressional approval.

Like those predecessors, Trump should be impeached for this. If waging unauthorized war isn’t an impeachable offense, nothing is.

He won’t be, for the same reasons Biden, Obama, Clinton, and the Bushes weren’t. Congress generally approves of these discretionary wars, but wants to shun responsibility for starting them.

By offloading accountability onto the executive, members avoid smudging their name with the stain of a vote. They’ll happily take vicarious credit if attacks happen to go well, yet dodge blame when they invariably go bust.

Will this one? Who knows? We’re not even sure what “this one” is.

While Trump kept Congress out of the loop, he and the Iranians reportedly kept each other informed, providing advance warning of their respective attacks. The Iranians removed their uranium before the Americans attacked. The US cleared its base in Qatar before Tehran did.

Is this true? I don’t know. Except for those making this mess, no one does. But it’s a weird war in which antagonists provide advance notice of impending attack.

In the sad saga of our government’s endless wars, perhaps this theater is just for show? I hope so. But what happens when someone forgets his lines or refuses to play his part?

It’s Own Foil

After two decades of military disasters wasting trillions of dollars and millions of lives, some of us worried that attacking Iran could be catastrophic. Perhaps President Trump proved us wrong.

But I doubt it.

The quality of a decision isn’t a function of its outcome. Reckless choices can occasionally work out. Wise ones will sometimes flop.

Yet each potentially sets a precedent, by instilling welcome humility or reinforcing unwarranted hubris. Like a kid who wins big on his first trip to the casino or multiplies his money on his maiden stock pick, “victory” can be its own foil.

With any luck, Israeli lackeys and their war stooges were right that this crisis has subsided after some token bombings. But even if that’s correct (and we hope it is), the US government took extraordinary risks for little reason.

Iran had no nuclear weapons and wasn’t a threat to the United States. With no declaration from Congress, the president jeopardized the security of soldiers and citizens to thwart a regime that posed no threat to the American people. And (for what it’s worth) he wasted more resources and weapons to do it.

Who knows what happens from here? After one week of the Iraq war, its cheerleaders were sipping Champagne and slapping backs. A few years later they were making excuses and issuing apologies.

That’s not unusual. Wars often open with appealing plots to suck us in. Then come surprise twists and unforeseen endings. Like a clear dawn on the slopes of Vesuvius, initial impressions can be deceptive.

Before Salamis, the Persians seemed set to throttle the Greeks. Who thought the Romans would overcome the Carthaginians after Cannae?

What were the prospects for independence when Washington was cornered on Long Island, or when the British captured Philadelphia and plundered the South? After the Battles of Manassas (both of them), Southerners confidently cheered the defeat of the Yankees. Until Vicksburg and Gettysburg, it seemed likely Lincoln would lose his abominable war.

When considering any interventions, the Second World War is the historical example our modern jingoists insist we reference, as if the best analogs for assessing the country between Afghanistan and Iraq are… Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan.

Fine.

How did “the Good War” look a few months in? Was the summer of 1940 a reliable harbinger of what was to come? What about two years later? How many Germans were high-fiving in the Reichstag when Hitler’s army reached the Don?

Altho’ we’re supposed to forget the Iraq War (or assume it’s irrelevant to what might happen next door), confidence overflowed within days of that invasion. It wouldn’t last.

Read the Whole Article

The post Were War Opponents Wrong? appeared first on LewRockwell.

As the clock ticked away on the Donald’s two weeks ultimatum to Iran—-surrender or I will bomb you to smithereens—the bright line between legitimate homeland security, on the one hand, and the pursuit of Empire, on the other, has never been more illuminated. The fact, is there is no basis in homeland security for POTUS’ ultimatum because Iran has no military capacity whatsoever to harm any American from Bangor Maine to San Diego California.

After all, it has no blue water navy or air or sealift capacity to put a single Iranian soldier on the shores of New Jersey. It also has not a single long-range bomber that can reach New York City or any other US city, with or without a nuclear payload.

Likewise, its longest range missile has an arc of just 2,000 kilometers, which is only half-way to the Strait of Gibraltar, which is 5,000 kilometers away from Tehran; and, even more to the point, only one-fifth of the way to Washington DC, which is 10,000 kilometers away.

At the same time, Iran’s $12 billion defense budget is a pittance which amounts to just 1.2% of the Pentagon’s $1 trillion annual budget. That is, the entirety of Iran’s military might is equal to about 100 hours per year of US defense spending.

And when it comes to the economic and industrial base necessary to pose a realistic enduring military threat, fuhgeddaboudit: No nation with just $400 billion of GDP—and which GDP is heavily dependent upon oil and natural gas exports that can be bottled up in the Persian Gulf with ease—is not a threat to America’s 75 times larger $30 trillion of technologically-advanced and industrially diversified GDP.

So, Iran is just plain no military threat. Full Stop. End of story.

Moreover, if America were still a constitutional Republic adhering to the founders’ wise admonition to pursue friendly commerce with all nations but entangling alliances with none, the Donald’s two week ultimatum would not have been on the table at all, nor even under discussion anywhere on the banks of the Potomac. No peaceful republic minding its own business would dream of bombing a nation 10,000 kilometers away–no matter how disagreeable and noxious were its rulers or how hostile its relations with one or more nearby neighbors in the region.

Indeed, war is so inimical to the very health and well being of liberty that the founders counseled against it in no uncertain terms. James Madison himself would have excoriated Donald Trump’s current threat to trample upon yet again the War Powers reserved exclusively for an act of Congress, reflecting the voice of all the people, in order to engage in an utterly discretionary act of war unrelated in any way to defense of the American homeland:

“Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people. The same malignant aspect in republicanism may be traced in the inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war, and in the degeneracy of manners and of morals, engendered by both. No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.” —James Madison

To to contrary, the very idea of dropping 30,000 pound bunker buster bombs on Iran’s Fordow nuclear enrichment site was purely a stratagem of Empire. And in this case, another foray into the middle east in behalf of an “ally” that his done precious little to enhance America’s Homeland Security over the decades since 1948, but is the overwhelming reason why the map below appears as it it does.

Even today, there are upwards of 51,000 US troops in the region surrounding Iran but all of them are attributable to the contingencies of Empire, not the necessities of Homeland Security. These former factors which unnecessarily position US forces and military assets in harms’ way include defense of Israel, protection of the Persian Gulf oil supplies and functioning as the regional and global gendarme for the alleged good of mankind.

But all of these reasons are illicit, as we amplify below.

For example, why in the hell would a peaceful republic even think about stationing 900 US servicemen in the failed state of Syria (before and after the fall of Assad)?

Unfortunately for its polyglot of 17 million Alawites, Druse, Sunnis, Christians, Kurds, Turkmens, Armenians, Yezidis and countless more ethno-fragments it has been reduced to a hell-hole of misery by Washington’s 15-year multi-billion interventions in behalf of “regime change”. Yet how in the bloody hell did this tiny $25 billion fragment of a country have any bearing whatsoever on the Homeland Security of America?

Surely, by now the same can be said of the 2,000 US military personnel stationed in Iraq, where its own government—one that Washington allegedly liberated from Saddam’s evil clutches—has now pronounced Washington persona non grata.

Likewise, the 10,000 troops stationed in Kuwait is beyond hideous. After all, this “country” actually amounts to little more than a large oilfield surrounded by a few camels, royals and foreign workers. Ditto when it comes to the nearly 15,000 in Qatar and Bahrain, which are hothouse petro-economies generally for sale to the highest bidder.

And most preposterous of all is the 6,500 US sailors aboard ships in the Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf. Neither of these inland seas have any bearing at all on the defense of the American shorelines or airspace—-to say nothing of nuclear deterrence.

The fact is, a fulsome defense of the American homeland requires none of the bases shown above, nor does it need any allies in the entire region (or elsewhere). That’s because the two requisites of a homeland security are an invincible nuclear deterrent and an ironclad Fortress America defense of the US shorelines and air space.

Neither of these requisites require entangling alliances abroad, foreign military bases or intervention against states like Iran. And it makes no matter whether or not they espouse a noxious theocratic ideology or hold hostile views of their neighbor—not when they pose no threat whatsoever to the US nuclear deterrent or Fortress America conventional defense.

As it happens, the US nuclear deterrent sports 1,750 active warheads buried deep in 400 Minutemen missile silos, 13 Ohio Class submarines cruising the deep ocean bottoms and 66 strategic bombers. This entire invincible triad deterrent, however, costs just $75 billion per year and requires no foreign bases or operations.

Likewise, several hundred billion additional would provide more than an adequate continental air force and attack submarine defense of Fortress America. So in the order of $500 billion plus of the current $1 trillion Pentagon budget is actually for the pursuit of Empire, not direct homeland security.

One excuse for Empire, of course, has long been Persian Gulf oil security, but five decades after the early 1970s oil shocks one thing is damn obvious: Any regime that gains control of substantial petroleum reserves, whether friendly or hostile to Washington, produces them to the maximum extent because all regimes in the modern world need all the oil export revenues they can muster. As we saw recently, even the head-choppers of ISIS pushed the rickety old oil wells of northeastern Syria to their maximum capacity.

There is no petroleum security need at all, therefore, for the 5th fleet in the Persian Gulf or any of the dozens of land bases in the middle east. At length, any temporary production cutbacks or outages cause the global oil price to rise and worldwide markets to adjust production and conservation levels in the global economy with alacrity.

Thus, in the mid-1970s the real post-embargo oil price in 2025 dollars was about $75 per barrel, which is the same as it is today. Trillions of US military spending and middle east interventions in the interim have had no effect at all, as the global price of oil has oscillated $25 up and $25 down from its current $75 per barrel market-driven equilibrium for the past 50 years.

Index of Constant Dollar Oil Price, 1974 to 2025

Needless to say, the argument that massive Washington military intervention is needed in the middle east to combat terrorism is actually upside down. The limited number of terrorist attacks on the US homeland—including the freakish tragedy of 9/11—were all done by Sunni militants, not Iranian Shiites.

And it is also now pretty clear that the Sunni-based terrorist episodes have been blow-back for massive and multiple US incursions in the middle east that have resulted in a staggering level of death and destruction. According to GROK 3, the estimated number of Middle Easterners killed due to U.S. military interventions there since the First Gulf War ( i.e. over 1990 to 2023) is approximately 1.8–2.7 million. This includes direct (combat) and indirect (starvation, disease, displacement) deaths in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and Libya.

Finally, there remains the issue of why Washington has self-deputized itself to insure that Iran does not get the nuke. And also, in the Trumpian version, not even the right to uranium enrichment, which is guaranteed to all 191 signatories of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT).

At the present time, 30 NPT signers have active nuclear reactors and a half-dozen of them enrich their own uranium. However, since the Empire Firsters have designated and demonized Iran as a global terrorist state, it alone has been subjected to massive Washington campaigns, including brutal economic sanctions and periodic military attacks like the assassination of IRGC leader Qassem Soleimani in January 2020.

Accordingly, as we will amplify in Part 2, the relentless campaign against Iran by Washington is far from a rational response to a nation that actually has a religious edict against nuclear weapons.

Iran even agreed in 2015 to a sweeping, intrusive and onerous international control and inspection regime to guarantee that no future government would abandon that principle or depart from its obligations as a signatory to the NPT. Yet even though the IAEA confirmed they had strictly adhered to the deal, Donald Trump recklessly repudiated it in 2018, owing to the fact that the arrangement was negotiated by Barrack Obama and demanded to be cancelled by Bibi Netanyahu and his neocon confederates at home and abroad.

Part 2: No Need For Bunker Busters

We have observed on multiple occasions that Donald J. Trump is an unhinged, egomaniacal Caesarist who knows no limits to power. Indeed, it would appear that he believes himself to be the CEO of the world, bombing Iran last weekend for the good of mankind despite the fact that it poses no military threat whatsoever to the USA, as we amplified in Part 1; and now instructing world oil producers in Clint Eastwood fashion to “not even think about” failing to pump whatever it takes to compensate for any shortfall of supply that may result from his reckless and utterly unjustified blunderbuss attack on the second largest Persian Gulf producer.

For want of being misunderstood, the Donald even issued his warning in ALL CAPS. The Trump-O-Nomics economic con job just plain can’t stand oil above $70 per barrel!

“EVERYONE, KEEP OIL PRICES DOWN. I’M WATCHING! YOU’RE PLAYING RIGHT INTO THE HANDS OF THE ENEMY. DON’T DO IT!”

Well, Holy Moly, who made Donald Trump or any other president of the USA the petroleum czar of the planet? And besides, when you look at the slate of global oil producers virtually all the spare production capacity is chock-a-bloc inside the two-mile wide shipping lanes of the Strait of Hormuz—which his foolish bombing run put exactly in harms’ way.

Indeed, it might well be wondered who this ALL CAPS bellicosity is directed at. At the present time, 25 million barrels per day of petroleum (crude plus natural gas liquids) is produced at locations inside the narrow neck of the Strait of Hormuz, or one-quarter of the global supply. If Iranian production of 4.8 million barrels per day is withheld, or if tanker traffic through Hormuz slows sharply due to soaring insurance rates or cautionary behavior of tanker operators—six of whom have already performed abrupt U-turns at the Hormuz entrance in the last day or so—then who might the Donald be planning to threaten if they don’t open the taps on any idle capacity?

In fact, the most logical source of supply reduction would be Iran itself. According to Goldman Sachs, a 1.75 mb/d cutback by Iran, which would amount to just 35% of its current production, would raise the world oil price to $90 per barrel. So we suppose the Donald could send the bombers on a second Iranian run, this time as punishment for failing to produce the amount of oil demanded by the POTUS.

Failing that “option”, if the Saudis or the UAE—the two Gulf producers with material spare capacity— decided out of an abundance of caution to take the price windfall and hold production constant, exactly how would the Donald make good on the above ALL CAPS threat? Bomb them, too?

Moreover, outside the Hormuz choke point the five largest non-US producers are Russia, China, Canada, Mexico and Nigeria, which between them account for 25.2 mb/d or actually slightly more than the Persian Gulf producers. But given all the barking that the Donald has already done at the first four of these during just five months in office—the mega-tariff card has already been played—we are not sure that even the Donald would be up for sending the B-2s.

Of course, there is always “drill, baby drill” in the USA. Yet at nearly 22 million barrels per day—including 13.5 mb/d of crude oil and shale plus another 8 mb/d of natural gas liquids, lease condensates and refinery gains—US production of petroleum liquids is already at the tippy-top of the historic charts and at near-term industry capacity. For example, during the last showdown with Iran in 2015, when the JCPOA was negotiated, USA liquid petroleum production was one-third lower at 14.3 mb/d.

In short, the above ALL CAPS post from this morning is just one more indication that the Donald is sliding by the seat of his ample britches as he huffs and puffs his way right into another self-inflicted Persian Gulf oil crisis. That’s because any prolongation of the War on Iran jointly initiated by the world’s two great megalomaniacs—Donald Trump and Bibi Netanyahu—has very serious potential to spill-over into an interruption of the 25.0 mb/d of petroleum that flows through the Strait of Hormuz.

The latter could readily happen, of course, whether owing to soaring insurance rates, tanker diversions or a break-out of actual kinetic conflict if tit-for-tat exchanges—like today’s Iranian attack on the US base in Qatar—should go astray. Given the very high short-run inelasticity of petroleum demand, any serious supply disruption–even 10% of the throughput at Hormuz—would generate $100+ per barrel oil prices in a heartbeat.

And then, of course, the madman who makes no never mind about the Constitution’s delegation of the war powers to the Congress, would respond with an all out war on Iran. And do so for every reason of egomaniacal satisfaction and no reason of homeland security whatsoever.

Current Global Petroleum Production

Indeed, the Donald’s unjustified rampage against Iran has already gone so far afield that his henchmen in the Administration are demanding that other major global powers, whether they have a beef with Tehran or not, must now muscle the Iranians into abject acquiescence to Washington’s attack on their sovereignty. Or as Bibi Netanyahu’s emissary at the US State Department said,

“I would encourage the Chinese government in Beijing to call them about that, because they heavily depend on the Straits of Hormuz for their oil,” Rubio replied.

“But other countries should be looking at that as well,” he added. “It would hurt other countries’ economies a lot worse than ours. It would be, I think, a massive escalation that would merit a response not just by us but from others.”

That’s right. Washington’s utterly unnecessary attacks now threatens hundreds of billions—even trillions—of economic harm to global oil importers, but it’s their job to clear up the mess!

This is so absurd as to put us in mind of the 12-year who killed both of his parents, and then threw himself upon the mercy of the court on the grounds that he was an orphan!

As we insisted in Part 1, there is absolutely zero reason for attacking Iran because with or without uranium enrichment–or even HEU (highly enriched uranium) for a bomb—Iran is no threat whatsoever to the Homeland Security of America. Indeed, in the very worst imaginable case—where Tehran manages to fabricate a primitive nuclear bomb or two— they have nothing remotely capable of delivering it to the US homeland: To wit, Iran’s longest range missile has an arc of 2,000 kilometers at maximum, but the nearest US shore is 10,000 kilometers from Tehran.

To be sure, the world–including the Iranian people themselves—would be far better off if Iran or any other current nonnuclear country never got the bomb. The irony, however, is that Iran does not want the bomb, but it is being driven in that direction by the relentless pressures, demonizations and attacks from the War Capital of the World on the banks of the Potomac and its accomplices in Israel.

For want of doubt, just consider that by all present accounts, very little if any of the 409 kilograms of 60% enriched uranium that Iran was alleged to posses was destroyed by the Saturday night bombing. And it’s also likely that most of Iran’s modern high yield IR-6 centrifuges were not destroyed deep in their mountain bunkers at Fordow, as well.

As to the near bomb-grade material, arms control expert Jeffrey Lewis showed this morning that the 400+ Kg of 60% material had been moved to underground tunnels near the Isfahan Uranium Conversion Facility. Despite extensive Israeli and US attacks the facility, there does not seem to have been any effort to destroy these tunnels or the material that was in them.

In any event, as a NPT (nonproliferation treaty) signatory and operator of a 3,000 megawatt civilian nuclear reactor at Bushehr, Iran was allowed to have the 7,582 kilograms of civilian reactor grade enriched uranium that the IAEA last certified, as well as the 1,257 kilograms of medical grade uranium (20%).

What was really up for debate was just the 409 kilograms of 60% enriched material in its possession that could be spun to 90% weapons grade in a relatively short time. But for crying out loud, it is goddamn obvious to anyone not looking for an excuse for war that Iran had produced this material as a bargaining chip in order to get a new nuke deal with Washington, and thereby pave the way for lifting the brutal and demented economic sanctions that Washington has again imposed on Iran.

Iran’s Enriched Uranium Stockpiles As Of May 2025

The proof of the bargaining chip pudding could not be more evident in the graph below. During the 10-year run-up to the 2015 nuke deal with the Obama Administration, the Iranians increased their enriched uranium stock piles to just slightly below the current

level, to about 9,000 kilograms. But in an almost mirror image of the present, only about 350 kilograms of that material was enriched to the 60% purity level or the threshold of weapons grade HEUs.

That is to say, it was generated as a bargaining chip, and that was exactly its fate. Upon activation of the JCPOA in 2015, all of the 60% material was destroyed as certified by the IAEA. At the same time, the total stockpile of civilian grade material was also reduced by 97% to de minimis working levels, as further certified by the IAEA. Indeed, Iran ended up retaining only 300 kilograms of its 9,000 kilogram stockpile—an amount that could have been readily stored in the Donald’s wine cellar at Mar-a-Lago.

As it happened, of course, the Donald recklessly canceled the deal in May 2018 on the grounds that it had to be a bad deal by definition because he didn’t negotiate it. Of course, that foolish move only caused the Iranians to restart the stockpiling process yet again, as is so explicitly depicted by the green line in the graph below.

The irony, therefore, is that after the Donald’s feckless bombing campaign the Iranians likely have close to 100% of the 9,248 kilograms (including the 409 Kg of 60% material) held last week still in tact. That’s based on pretty convincing satellite photos showing that all of the Donald’s amateur “art of the deal” head fakery about “two weeks to decide” on the bombing enabled the Iranians to drive trucks up to the Nantanz and Fordow facilities and remove the stockpiles to safe sites elsewhere.

Stated differently, Obama negotiated the Iran enriched stockpile to down by about 97%, while the Donald bombed roughly the same level of stockpile from 9,000+ kilograms to, well @ 9,000 kilograms!

That same is likely true for the halls of centrifuges at Nantanz and Fordow. Under the 2015 deal, Iran had agreed to reduce the number of centrifuges by 70% from 20,000 to 6,000 and actually did so after the deal took effect. Moreover, it effective enrichment capacity had been reduced by significantly more because the remaining Natanz centrifuges consisted exclusively of its most rudimentary, outdated equipment—that is, first-generation IR-1 knockoffs of 1970s European models.

Not only was Iran not allowed to build or develop newer higher yield centrifuge models, but even the old slow-pokes remaining were permitted to enrich uranium to a limit of only 3.75% purity. That is to say, to the generation of fissile material for power plants that is not remotely capable of reaching bomb grade concentrations of 90%.

Equally importantly, the agreement eliminated enrichment activity entirely at Fordow. The latter was Iran’s only truly advanced, hardened site that could withstand an onslaught of Israeli bombs or US bunker busters, and it was agreed that zero enrichment activity would take place there, subject to full IAEA inspection.

Instead, Fordow became a small time underground science lab devoted to medical isotope research and was crawling with international inspectors. In effectively decommissioning Fordow and thereby eliminating any capacity to cheat—–what Iran got in return was at best a fig leave of salve for its national pride.

That is, again, until Donald Trump ixnayed the deal that the Obama team had so painstakingly negotiated. Subsequently, of course, the Iranians restarted enrichment activities at Fordow, and instead of zero slow-poke IR-1 centrifuges, it installed a phalanx of high speed IR-60 models.

And yet, and yet. The dust still have not settled on the receipts from Friday’s nights bomb-a-thon, but there is every indication that it did not achieve the 70% reduction in centrifuge machines obtained peacefully in the 2015 deal.

Nor is the tiresome neocon-Israeli claim that the JCPOA was fatally defective persuasive in the slightest. That’s just Warfare State propaganda, repeated over and over by the subservient corporate press.

For instance, take the case of the heavy water reactor at Arak. For years, the War Party had falsely argued because “plutonium”. That is, the civilian nuclear reactor being built there was of Canadian “heavy water” design rather than GE or Westinghouse “light water” model. Accordingly, when finished it would have generated plutonium as a waste product rather than conventional spent nuclear fuel rods.

In truth, the Iranians couldn’t have bombed a beehive with the Arak plutonium because you need a reprocessing plant to convert it into bomb grade material. Needless to say, Iran had no such plant, no plan to build one, and no prospect for getting the requisite technology and equipment.

But even that bogeyman was dispatched by the Obama nuke deal that the Donald saw fit to shit can the first time around. The 2015 deal required Iran to destroy or export the heavy water reactor core of its existing plant and replace it with a core that cannot produce material which can be reprocessed into weapons grade plutonium. All of these requirements were subject to rigorous international inspection and, in fact, were actually complied with before Trump cancelled the deal.

Of course, Iran’s reward for compliance was that Israel bombed the Arak facility during last week’s raids, apparently to destroy a plutonium source that had already been dismantled. Perhaps that was just to make sure…..that Iran would never want to negotiate with Washington again.

Beyond that, Iran had also agreed to and had complied with a robust program of inspections to prevent smuggling of materials into the country to illicit sites outside of the framework facilities. That encompassed imports of nuclear fuel cycle equipment and materials, including so-called “dual use” items which are essentially civilian imports that could be repurposed to nuclear uses, even peaceful domestic power generation.

In short, even a Houdini could not have secretly broken-out of the box contained in the 2015 agreement and then confronted the world with some kind of fait accompli threat to use the bomb.

To do so would have required diversion of thousands of tons of domestically produced or imported uranium and the illicit milling and upgrading of such material at secret fuel preparation plants. It would also have involved the secret construction of new, hidden enrichment operations of such massive scale that they could house more than 10,000 new centrifuges. It would have also required the building of these massive spinning arrays from tens of thousands of components smuggled into the country and transported to remote hidden enrichment operations—all undetected by the massive complex of spy satellites overhead and covert US and Israeli intelligence agency operatives on the ground in Iran.

Finally, it would have required the activation from scratch of a weaponization program which has been dormant according to the US National Intelligence Estimates (NIEs) for more than a decade. And then, that the Iranian regime—–after cobbling together one or two bombs without testing them or their launch vehicles—would nevertheless have been willing to threaten to use them sight unseen.

So what we had in the JCPOA was an end to any prospect that the Iranians would abandon the Ayatollah’s own fatwa against nuclear weaponization. There was also zero 60% enriched material left; stockpiles of permitted enriched uranium were reduced to de minimis working levels; and an airtight international inspection regime was in place. They only thing left was a residual enrichment capacity to supply the Bushehr nuclear power plant with enriched uranium from an Iran based source.

And, indeed, after several decades of drastic economic sanctions and periodic military attacks by both Israel and Washington, why would the Iranians not insist on having their own enrichment capacity, as is guaranteed to signatories by the NPT in any event?

Otherwise, Bushehr could have been shutdown at whim by a Washington fatwa against enriched uranium exports to Iran.

What the Donald has single-handed accomplished in his two turns at bat, therefore, is to replace that workable JCPOA arrangement with an Iranian government that now more than ever will endeavor to have a nuclear bomb insurance policy. That is, Iran still has plenty of enriched uranium and probably a goodly hall full of centrifuges. It also has a supreme leader in the Ayatollah, who, if not actually dead, may be thanking his lucky stars that he did not receive the 2025 Muammar Gaddafi reward for trying to cooperate with Washington in yet another round of negotiations after the JCPOA double-cross—even as the Gaddafi treatment was bestowed upon his chief negotiator and top generals by the Donald’s confederates in Israel.

And this complete madness gets us to the real issue underlying the Donald’s current unhinged rampage. To wit, the USA should not even posses military capacities and offensive weapons like the bunker busters used last weekend by the dangerous cowboy currently domiciled in the Oval Office.

What we have going is now an extreme version of “kill them from the sky warfare” that Sunday afternoon warriors have been advocating ever since the infantry butchery of Vietnam. Indeed, from JD Vance on down the talking point is no boots on the ground—-we will just keep pursuing “peace through strength” via raining lethal ordnance from the sky via bunker busters when necessary or waves of Tomahawk cruise missiles, from safe launch hideaways below the surface.

The issue of whether this kind of bloodless warfare (on our side) can actually succeed militarily is an open question and a debate for another time. But here’s the thing. We don’t need bunker busters to effect an invincible triad strategic deterrent because the proven logic and efficacy of MAD (mutually assured destruction) is that the certainty of a devastating anti-city retaliation stops an attack before it happens. Taking out the other side’s ICBM’s with bunker busters, in fact, would destabilize the equation and endanger the deterrence and peace because by design they would function as counter-force weapons in the strategic nuclear arena.

As for an ironclad defense of the American homeland from conventional military attack, bunker busters are useless. What you need, instead, is fusillades of drones, cruise missiles, fighter jets and attack submarines stationed in the American Homeland to protect the shorelines and airspace from conventional military invasion.

That is to say, the War Capital of the World bivouacked on the Potomac has outfitted the Oval Office with a War Machine that is mainly designed for the pursuit of Empire, not the maintenance of Homeland Security. And now the American people have mistakenly elected a brash, ill-informed Caesarist, whose unquenchable ego is bound and determined to use them.

Reprinted with permission from David Stockman’s Contra Corner.

The post Hey, POTUS, America First Ain’t Got No Beef With Iran And Don’t Need No Bunker Busters, Neither appeared first on LewRockwell.

Note: the requirement to vaccinate is largely based on ACIP’s assessment (and the CDC’s) that the vaccine’s benefits outweigh its risks. Due to the dogmatic faith surrounding vaccination and ACIP’s members having massive conflicts of interest favoring vaccination, virtually every vaccine put before them ends up on the schedule and as a result, each generation of (sicker) children gets even more of them.

A key reason for this is because only a small set of injuries are tested for (typically those that are minor or very rare) and hence officially “exist,” while the much broader gamut of vaccine injuries are swept under the rug. Today, due to RFK’s bold action to replace ACIP’s members, a very different committee will have its first meeting today. For that reason, I felt it was important to highlight one major complication of vaccines; the widespread neurological injuries they cause.

From birth, we are taught that vaccines were one of the most remarkable discoveries in history, and were so safe and effective that many now unimaginable plagues vanished with few to no side effects occurring in the process. In truth, give or take, every part of that mythology is false, and remarkably similar vaccine disasters occur every few decades.

Much of this results from the fact that it is very difficult to produce safe vaccines due to both their mode of action and the methods used in their production. As such, the best “solution” which could be found to this problem was to insist in lockstep that vaccines were safe and erase any memory that vaccine disasters had in fact occurred, thereby making it possible to gaslight anyone who was severely injured by a vaccine and claim their injury was just anecdotal or a product of anti-vaccine hysteria.

For example, recently I discussed how vaccines cause autism, and focused on a central argument used to debunk the link between the two—that the only reason people believe vaccines cause autism is because a disgraced British doctor published a fraudulent 1998 study claiming they did and then made everyone start hallucinating that vaccine injuries were occurring.

This mythology however, ignores that brain injuries were a longstanding problem of vaccination. For example, a 1982 NBC news program revealed that many parents were having children develop “post-pertussis encephalopathy” after taking the DPT vaccine, that most doctors refused to report this.

To quote that program:

Medical knowledge about severe reactions to the whooping cough vaccine goes back to the early 1930s. Report after report has been published in medical journals since then. In 1948, two American doctors reported on case histories of many children who had been brain damaged or died from DPT vaccines in Boston. The following year, another doctor surveyed pediatricians across the country and found still more. Those studies have been forgotten.

Likewise, in 1985, one of the most popular talk shows in America (the Donahue show) hosted a segment where doctors from both sides (and neurologically injured members of the audience) debated the risks and benefits of vaccination and the ethics of mandates. To the best of my knowledge, this was the last time an open debate of vaccination aired on mainstream television.

Diagnostic Obfuscation

In both of these 1980s TV programs and many of the earlier studies on vaccine injuries, the brain damaged children were described as becoming “mentally retarded” or “severely retarded.” However, in the 1990s, “retarded” began to be phased out due to it being deemed too stigmatizing, with Obama, in 2010 signing a law that replaced all instances in Federal statutes of “mentally retarded” and “mental retardation” with “intellectual disability.”

This is important as it is commonly argued that the increase in Autism is not due to an environmental toxin (e.g., vaccines) but rather more and more “normal” things being reclassified as autism. One of the primary studies that supported the reclassification argument, is a 2009 study from California that actually showed 26.4% of children who had previously been diagnosed as “mentally retarded” became “autistic” (as did another commonly cited study).

Since autism is deliberately undefined, it encapsulates both profound (severe) autism (25-30% of cases) and autistic traits (e.g., having manageable neurological deficits or “being on the spectrum”). This wordplay hence blends them together, making it possible to slander statements on severe autism while simultaneously tricking people into believing the increase is actually just in autistic quirks.

However, as the CDC shows, roughly 26.7% of autistic children have “profound autism,” and is continually increasing:

Likewise, when the 1986 Vaccine Injury Act was passed, it acknowledged a few specific neurological injuries that were frequently seen from vaccines, one of which was encephalopathy from MMR (which is now labeled as “autism” and “not caused by vaccines”).

Remarkably, despite twelve new vaccines and decades of science since 1986, almost no additional neurological injuries have been added to the table (as there is a massive conflict of interest in acknowledging the injury and thus the government having to pay for it).

In tandem, research into vaccine neurological injuries was systematically prevented. Placebo-controlled trials were deemed “unethical,” while research showing harms was dismissed as “junk science” for lacking placebo controls. When researchers conducted studies anyway, data was blocked from publication and researchers faced retaliation (e.g., an Oregon pediatrician lost his license). These studies (summarized here) showed massive increases in chronic illness. Our society did too:

Likewise, large databases containing vaccinated and unvaccinated data were withheld from researchers and remarkably when RFK’s team gained access, HHS employees illegally deleted the database.

The Hazards of Immunization

In 1966, an eminent bacteriologist wrote “The Hazards of Immunization” which disclosed a large number of forgotten vaccine disasters he’d collected (both through his team surveying the medical literature and insiders sharing their private files with him) in the hope it could lead to safer vaccines as the same disasters kept on repeating and would likely continue to do so unless his profession acknowledged those risks.

In his compilation of vaccine injuries (which he felt represented less than 1% of them) he highlighted many devastating injuries (many of which happened to soldiers) that we continue to see today. Some of the key themes he covered included:

•How many vaccines have been shown to cause immune suppression and makes latent infections become severe and hence suddenly appear.

•How the mentality behind manufacturing vaccines makes hot lots almost unavoidable and has led to many vaccine disasters throughout history—a problem which was sadly “solved” by simply giving vaccine manufacturers immunity from injury lawsuits.

•That a wide range of autoimmune and neurological injuries were caused by each vaccine and antiserum.

What follows is a small sampling of the forgotten neurologic vaccine injuries Wilson shared:

Typhoid Vaccine

In the pre-antibiotic era, the typhoid vaccine was essential for militaries and tolerated despite its frequent complications. Many of these were of the conditions (i.e., Landry’s paralysis) we now refer to as Guillain-Barré syndrome (e.g., one of Guillain and Barré’s first GBS cases came from a typhoid vaccine).

Reports included:

• Polyneuritis with shoulder pain spreading to knees, leading to disturbed sensation, balance problems, and ongoing pain (1916).
• A soldier becoming blind for 10 days, and another developing convulsions (1919).
• 10 cases with severe headaches, seizures, paralysis, and one fatal GBS-like case (1920).
• Over 50 neurological injuries including nerve inflammation and widespread nerve damage (1954).
• Numerous other cases of paralysis or GBS, sometimes diagnosed as polio,1,2,3 including one where autopsy showed widespread brain destruction.

Note: medical students are taught that GBS is primarily due to infections (including the flu) and is a rare one in a million complication of influenza vaccination. I believe GBS is massively unreported as over the years, I’ve met so many people who developed it (or knew someone who did). For example, the 1976 Swine Flu vaccine (which had many parallels to the COVID vaccine) was pulled for causing 1 in 100,000 recipients to develop GBS, but a colleague who was in practice had roughly 6% of their patients get GBS from the vaccine.

Yellow Fever

Hot Yellow Fever vaccines neurologic injuries were reported throughout the literature:

• A fatal 1934 case began with neurological symptoms, progressing to paralysis and death 14 months later. Autopsy showed extensive myelin degeneration and brain cell changes. Many similar cases were also reported.
• A 1936 case where vaccination caused acute meningitis, seizures, and mental confusion, with another paper revealing the lot caused nervous disturbance in at least three others.
• A 1936 report found that a third of 5699 recipients had reactions, including severe neurologic or visceral ones.
• A 1943 report showed one lot caused 1.65% of recipients to develop encephalitis, while another caused 0.06% along with a 1953 paper that found 0.3-.0.4% did (of whom 40% then died).
• A 1953 WHO report documented 12 encephalitis cases with 3 deaths in Costa Rica, 83 cases with 32 deaths in Nigeria, and 254 cases in Brazil

Rabies

It was not long after the Pasteurian method was taken into routine use that attention was drawn to cases of neuroparalysis. Among the directors of the Pasteur Institutes there was a conspiracy of silence, caused by fear of bringing Pasteur’s method into disrepute.

It was difficult to find a vaccine dose strong enough to prevent rabies but weak enough not to cause paralysis. Rabies vaccine injuries averaged a 10-16.85% fatality rate and were one of four types:

• Dorsolumbar myelitis (most common, 5% fatality rate)
• Encephalomyelitis (second most common, 5% fatality rate)
• GBS (30% fatality rate)
• Peripheral neuritis affecting cranial nerves

As these injuries were often underreported, their incidence widely varied between studies:

Measles

A 1966 case occurred in a 14-month-old who developed encephalitis 11 days after vaccination, first showing facial twitching, then fever, stopped eating, and became semi-conscious. By day 15, the child had weakness on the left side and frequent severe seizures. After four months, the child still had left-sided weakness and possible mental impairment.

Read the Whole Article

The post The Hidden Tragedy of Neurological Vaccine Injuries appeared first on LewRockwell.

International Man: Israel and the US have recently initiated their long-anticipated war with Iran.

How do you see it unfolding, and what consequences might follow?

Doug Casey: Anything anyone says may be overtaken by events an hour from now. This is an ultra-fluid situation. If the Three-Body Problem has become famous for its unpredictability, we’re dealing with something like a Twelve Body Problem here.

The consequences of the unprovoked US attack on Iran are completely unpredictable on one level—but totally predictable on another. Among the many unpredictable parts is whether the Iranians will close the Straits of Hormuz and/or the Red Sea entrance to the Suez. Will they seriously attack the numerous US bases around them? Or proceed to build or buy some nukes to counter Israel? How will Iran—quite justifiably at this point—retaliate in any of a hundred different ways? Exactly how does the US/Israel expect to win without invading?

The only predictable part is that the attack moves the world closer to going all-out in WW3.

It’s odd that Iran has been painted as a terrorist state. Why do I say that? The fact is that Iran’s conflict has been solely with Israel. It’s clearly supported Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, and Ansar Allah (the Houthis) in Yemen—but those groups only attack Israel, for their own reasons. Iran has—notwithstanding the US Embassy incident in 1979 coincident with the overthrow of the Shah, a US puppet—never attacked the US or anyone else.

What about “Death to America”? It’s just stupid, counterproductive rhetoric, on a par with the late Senator John McCain’s moronic chants of “Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran.” At least up until Saturday’s unprovoked attack, Iran presented absolutely zero threat to the US.

In fact—and I know this will enrage reflexively nationalistic readers—from an objective point of view, the US can be seen as a terrorist state. The US Government is constantly invading and overthrowing regimes and assassinating leaders—scores of times since WW2, usually in pitiful little nothing/nowhere Third World shitholes. Trump is the one making violent threats. Israel killed, maimed, or seriously wounded about 3400 Lebanese with boobytrapped pagers in their war with Hezbollah. And, of course, its one-sided war against Hamas in Gaza has killed 60,000. You’d think the Israelis might say, “Enough, already”…

However, at some point, the shoe might be on the other foot. Some group or regime may counterattack by massively assassinating US officials. Or attacking US bases with drones, much the way the Ukrainians did in the heartland of Russia. These are technically very easy feats. Both the US and Israel are playing with fire.

International Man: Public opinion in the US has shifted notably. Support for Israel has declined, especially among younger Republicans.

Congressman Thomas Massie conducted an informal poll on X, where 85% of respondents opposed the US providing weapons to Israel.

What’s your take on this shift in public sentiment?

Doug Casey: Maybe a lot of people have heard that, for many years now, the US has given Israel about $4 billion a year in aid, plus weapons. Americans don’t approve of putting a foreign government on welfare. That’s in addition to another $4 billion to Egypt, bribing them to be Israel’s BFF.

Meanwhile, Trump has been acting like a schizophrenic. He makes a point of not being sure what he’ll do, back and forth, on and off, all the while threatening and name-calling like an adolescent. The world’s greatest negotiator? Hardly. No sensible person can take him seriously. And only a fool tries to negotiate with a bully who threatens violence.

The situation is greatly complicated by the US relationship with Israel. Is it the 51st state of the Union? Many seem to think they’re at least our ally—which is ridiculous. They’re an extremely costly liability. Israel acts only in Israel’s best interest. They bring nothing to the party. They’re using the US as a patsy and playing it for a sucker.

And although American Jews overwhelmingly support Israel, Israel isn’t helping their cause. It’s not just what’s going on with the universities, where there’s lots of anti-Jewish sentiment. The antics of Kanye West have underlined how Jews seem to control politics, business, finance, law, academia, entertainment, and the media. It’s no wonder the average American thinks that about a third of the US population is Jewish, when in fact, there are only about 6 million or so American Jews, which means they’re about 2% of the population. Maybe I shouldn’t observe that. It’s the “third rail” for what’s left of free speech in what’s left of America.

It’s not about Jews, per se. The majority always resents it when a small group seems to sway a country’s direction. Much the same thing has happened with blacks. Americans are also experiencing “black fatigue.” Most Europeans who haven’t been to the US, as well as anyone who watches TV commercials, think that the US is about 50% black and most couples are biracial.

International Man: Historically, false flag operations have been used to justify involvement in unpopular wars.

How likely do you think such a tactic is today, especially to build support for another war in the Middle East?

Doug Casey: What’s going on now is an unprovoked attack from Israel and the US. It’s a purely offensive war. Of course, the Israelis justify this by saying that the Iranians are on the point of developing nuclear weapons, but they’ve been saying that for the last 30 years.

The fact is that practically any country in the world can develop nuclear weapons. It’s an 80-year-old technology. And the Israelis are in no position to speak since they’re said to have a nuclear arsenal of about 200 bombs. Even the North Koreans, one of the world’s most poverty-stricken shitholes, have bombs. Anybody can have them and likely will. Why is Iran a special case? Should Israel be censured for threatening to use the “Samson Option” if it seems they’re losing a war?

But, to answer your question, it’s always better to fabricate an atrocity so you can play the victim. The Japanese did that before they invaded China in World War II. The Germans did that in Poland before they invaded. It’s a reliable gambit.

Our friend Michael Yon (link) has asserted that of the 10, 20, or 30 million migrants that are wandering around the US, there are likely a couple of un-uniformed but well-organized armies among these young, military-age men. They can be activated in what amounts to a guerrilla war. And who’s to say that one of these groups wouldn’t attack the US from within and claim to do so on the part of Iran?

International Man: If the war doesn’t unfold as Israel and the US intend, what might the broader geopolitical implications be? Could this accelerate the decline of US hegemony and the rise of a multipolar world?

Doug Casey: Now that the US is actively involved—as opposed to just supporting Israel with money and weapons—we have a lot to lose. It would be a gigantic embarrassment on the scale of Vietnam or Afghanistan.

On the other hand, if the US “wins” and Iran collapses, the place could fall into civil war. Most of Iran is Persian. But Iranian Kurds might split off to join the Kurds in Syria, Turkey, and Iraq to form a new nation-state.

There are lots of imponderables. Is the average Iranian sick of the mullahs who’ve been in charge for the last 45 years? Undoubtedly, lots of Iranians are. But the Big Satan’s attack might unite Iran the way only a war can. Will the Republican Guards take over? “We” don’t know what’s going on in Iran, as evidenced by Tulsi Gabbard, who is head of the US intelligence community, saying that we have no indication that Iran has a nuclear weapon or is moving toward one. Then Trump says he doesn’t care what she says, whereupon she recants. I guess his buddy Bibi gave him the straight scoop.

Or maybe Ted Cruz—I pity the poor fool for his appearance on Tucker Carlson—is advising Trump.

One thing is for sure: when the US sticks its nose into the business of countries on the other side of the world, it always ends badly, just as it did with Iraq—which it transformed from a military power into a chaotic failed state. Or Libya, which our unprovoked attack turned into two countries at war with each other. Or Afghanistan, where we conducted an unprovoked invasion, killed a few hundred thousand peasants, spent a couple of trillion dollars, and 20 years later left the Taliban in charge, as it was before the US invaded.

International Man: What are the potential economic and financial consequences of the Israel-Iran war—particularly regarding inflation, energy prices, national debt, and the financial markets?

Doug Casey: If the US and Israel create chaos in Iran, is the US going to be on the hook to rebuild it? For that matter, now that Israel has destroyed Gaza, is the US going to relocate the Gazans and rebuild Gaza? As Saudi Prince MBS’s phony alignment with Israel destabilizes Saudi Arabia, will we have to invade them, too? I think the answer may be “yes” to all those questions.

The fact is that the Muslim world dislikes, fears, and distrusts what they call “the Zionist entity.” They feel Palestine was invaded by Zionists starting with the first Aliyah 125 years ago and that the place was conquered demographically, economically, politically, and militarily. It’s nothing new. I expect white Californians will feel like Palestinian Arabs in a couple of generations.

There’s no point in rehashing the pros and cons of both sides here. This is a massive replay of the feud between the Hatfields and the McCoys in West Virginia. Taking sides is idiotic. I simultaneously wish them both well, with a pox on both their houses. The only solution is complete non-intervention by the US.

Reprinted with permission from International Man.

The post Iran-Israel Conflict: Will It Mark the End of American Hegemony? appeared first on LewRockwell.

The status quo has pushed everything to an extreme of hollowed-out instability to maintain a superficial appearance of normalcy and stability. But it’s all fake.

The phrase that best describes the present era is hollowed out. By hollowed out I mean the exterior facade still looks pretty much the same as it did in the past, but the internal structure has corroded / eroded to the point that little remains of what provided strength and stability. What’s left is the illusion of stability.

Our spectacles have been hollowed out, lifeless, rote repeats of past performances, reduced to unintentional parodies of what was once vibrant.

Our entertainment has been hollowed out, dominated by remakes, retreads, threadbare extensions of tent-pole franchises and sound-alike songs.

Even our outrage has been hollowed out, perfunctory displays phoned in from afar, as we all know outrage has been exhausted along with everything else.

Our “innovation” has been hollowed out, with toys such as flying motorcycles and self-driving taxis presented as “solutions” to phantom “problems,” “solutions” that boil down to hype, clickbait or another reach for higher corporate profits. The most visible result of AI is AI Slop:

AI Slop: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (29 min) (via Richard M.)

Our incentives have been hollowed out, leaving only the most perverse extremes. The motivation to flood social media with AI Slop is the faint hope of creating a viral link that earns a pittance for the AI Slopper.

Our realm of romance has been hollowed out, leaving a hellscape of dating sites and the wreckage left by ubiquitous online porn.

Our food has been hollowed out, ultra-processed slop remorselessly worked into “new” “innovative” products that are parodies of quality and innovation: you’ve just got to try the new jalapeno-yuzu-crawfish bagel…

Our politics have been hollowed out, with the only useful reform–requiring politicians to wear the logos of their corporate campaign donors–nixed because it would have made obvious what everyone knows: politics is now an open auction for favors and influence.

It would be far more honest if we conducted the passage of congressional bills as open auctions on eBay for all to bid and all to see: Buy Now for only $500,000: a tax break hidden deep inside the untouchable Defense Appropriations Bill.

Our economy has been hollowed out in virtually every sector, from Higher Education to Healthcare to housing. Much of what passes for “growth” is either waste (BS work, planned obsolescence, fraud), statistical trickery or artificial stimulus.

The shell remains standing but it now requires massive injections of borrowed money to prop up the rotted facade. Consider Higher Education. Before it was hollowed out, millions of college students were educated without needing to enter debt-serfdom to pay tuition and fees. As this chart shows, student loans were zero in 1993.

Now there’s $1.5 trillion in student loans. The number of administrators quadrupled, while federal legislation made student debt the one form of debt that cannot be discharged in bankruptcy, effectively legalizing debt-serfdom.

The Higher Ed / student loan industry’s relentless hype machine drummed the idea that doom awaited any young person without a university degree, or better yet, a graduate degree or MBA. The net result, as we all know, is a vast over-supply of MBAs, graduates of law schools and computer programmers, all fields currently being decimated as AI tools do to white-collar work what industrial robots did to blue-collar factory work.

Meanwhile, back in the real economy, the nation has a severe shortage of skilled trade workers–yup, the kind of work denigrated by the “you gotta go to college” machine. Yes, the kind of work AI and robots can’t do: What AI Can’t Do Faster, Better, or Cheaper Than Humans (June 2, 2025)

The housing and mortgage sectors have also been hollowed out, creating overpriced facades propped up by $2+ trillion in Federal Reserve purchases of mortgage-backed securities (MBS). How did millions of households manage to buy homes from 1946 to 2001 without the Fed nationalizing the mortgage sector and inflating one housing bubble after another in the process?

Read the Whole Article

The post Hollowed Out appeared first on LewRockwell.

Now the LORD had said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house, unto a land that I will shew thee:
And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing:
And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed. (Genesis 12:1-3)

Since Israel’s attack on Iran, and especially since President Trump bombed Iran, many conservative, evangelical, and fundamentalist Christians have begun making rash and unqualified statements like “Iran was about to get a nuclear bomb,” “I support Israel,” “Iran shouldn’t be allowed to have a nuclear weapon,” “I stand with Israel,” “Iran deserved to be bombed,” “bombing Iran was an act of self-defense,” “I stand with President Trump,” “we need to support the troops,” “President Trump is the commander in chief,” “President Trump did what Obama and Biden didn’t do,” “Israel has a right to defend itself,” “Iran was a threat to Israel,” or “Iran was a threat to the United States.”

Some of these Christians have foolishly referenced Genesis chapter 12, quoted above, as if that justifies the military actions of Israel and the United States.

Because a small but vocal contingent of evangelical “leaders” who are considered to be dispensationalists (in actuality, most are very nominally so) are among those who are cheerleaders for the U.S. and Israeli bombing of Iran, Christians and others who are not dispensationalists have stepped up their attacks on dispensationalism as if it is the reason that some evangelicals have turned into warvangelicals.

As an unapologetic theologically conservative Christian who is a dispensationalist, I want to say that whatever blessing Israel does mean, blessing Israel certainly doesn’t include:

• Confounding the government of Israel with the people of Israel
• Supporting regime change
• Taking money from Americans to give foreign aid to the government of Israel
• Giving weapons to the government of Israel
• Agreeing with everything that the government of Israel does
• Thinking that Netanyahu can do no wrong
• Believing that the U.S. government should bomb Iran for Israel
• Calling offensive military actions defensive
• Believing everything that Netanyahu says
• Denying that there is an Israel Lobby in the United States
• Supporting U.S. military intervention in the Middle East
• Backing everything that President Trump does
• Appeasing the country of Israel
• Supporting ethnic cleansing
• Turning a blind eye to Israel’s annual gay pride parades in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv
• Supporting a reckless, belligerent, and meddling U.S. foreign policy
• Dismissing the killing of women and children as collateral damage
• Supporting collective punishment
• Ignoring the 1967 attack on the USS Liberty by Israel
• Denying that Israel owns most members of Congress
• Calling opponents of Israel’s military actions anti-Semitic or pro-Palestinian
• Supporting assassinations
• Excusing the atrocities committed by IDF soldiers
• Supporting indiscriminate bombing
• Thinking that God needs the help of the United States to protect Israel
• Supporting the razing of Gaza
• Inviting Netanyahu to address the U.S. Congress
• Supporting the installation of U.S. puppets as leaders of countries in the Middle East
• Making excuses for everything that Israel does

Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, and most prominent supporters of U.S. and Israeli military actions against Iran are anything but dispensationalists and wouldn’t know Clarence Larkin from H. A. Ironside. Those who are or claim to be—like pop dispensationalists John Hagee, Franklin Graham, Robert Jeffress, Jack Graham, and Mike Huckabee—blindly support U.S. wars and military interventions and almost everything that the state of Israel does because they are warvangelicals, not because they are dispensationalists. I have written about them and their ilk for over 20 years, to which I refer the reader.

The post What Blessing Israel Doesn’t Mean appeared first on LewRockwell.

In baseball there is a rare but beautiful pitch known as the knuckleball.  It is difficult to learn and takes a lifetime to perfect.  It glides through the air without spin and zigzags from side to side before reaching the plate.  Even the best knuckleball pitchers struggle to throw it effectively.  Most catchers simply can’t react fast enough to the ball’s late movements to keep it in their mitts.  Hall of Fame hitters look silly as they swing two feet away from a ball traveling slowly around their bats.  When a knuckleball pitcher is on his game, batters never look more frustrated.

President Trump might just be the greatest knuckleballer of all time.  In both domestic and foreign policy, he throws these pitches whose in-air movements seem to betray the laws of physics.  His adversaries stand at the plate with big smiles and expect to launch Trump’s slow tosses over the fence.  His putative allies trying to catch the ball behind home plate don’t like what they see and keep calling for a different pitch.  But the president just grins and says, Now watch: I’m going to throw this thing very slowly, and that guy up there will fall over trying to hit it.  It’ll be fabulous.  And that’s exactly what happens.

As I write this, there is a tenuous ceasefire between Iran and Israel after two weeks of fighting.  Trump is already trademarking it “The 12 Day War.”  Will peace prevail?  We will see.  But did anybody expect the possibility?  Not really.

The president’s announcement of an end to the war came only two days after he sent American pilots on a daring mission to obliterate Iran’s nuclear facilities.  That operation, codenamed Midnight Hammer, included multiple head fakes.  While President Trump indicated that he might take two weeks before hitting Iran, decoy B-2s headed West to Guam.  With the eyes of the world looking in the wrong direction, stealth bombers took off from Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri for an 18-hour journey into hostile territory.  The pitch came in slow and steady and struck Iran’s nuclear capabilities before anyone even knew the ball was in the catcher’s mitt.

The reaction to Trump’s nuclear strikeout was as frantic as a hitter slamming his bat on the ground after swinging at a ball bouncing several feet before the plate.  Those who have argued against any new U.S.-led wars in the Middle East immediately feared a protracted conflict.  Those who have argued for regime change in Iran hoped that U.S. boots on the ground would soon follow.  Democrats who had been calling Trump a “chicken” for going easy on Iran flipped positions, condemned the attack, and started calling for his impeachment.  All the while, Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, was working behind the scenes to find a peaceful solution.

The ball zigzags through the air, and nobody is sure where it will land.  Three paragraphs after noting that there is a “tenuous ceasefire,” I must add that Iran and Israel are now exchanging fire, and President Trump is rhetorically spanking both countries.  Because his administration is working desperately for Middle East peace, the same pundits who applauded his Iran attack yesterday are mad today.  Similarly, those who excoriated the attack as “unconstitutional” yesterday are today having second thoughts.  As witty catcher Bob Uecker once said, “the way to catch a knuckleball is to wait until it stops rolling and pick it up.”  Right now Trump’s knuckleball in the Middle East is still rolling.

One of the crazy things about a knuckleball pitcher is that the effectiveness of the pitch can ebb and flow.  I loved watching Tim Wakefield throw for the Boston Red Sox.  He could make the Bronx Bombers look like Little Leaguers still hitting from a tee.  But sometimes he’d throw two or three awful innings and give up a bunch of runs.  Most managers pull their pitchers when that happens; it takes a manager with nerves of steel to stick with a knuckleballer handing out home runs.  Even when Ol’ Wake was struggling, though, he could often miraculously turn things around and pitch a lights-out complete game.  When using a knuckleballer to strike out the side, patience is the key.

Think of some of the crazy pitches that Trump has used to strike out the Democrat party.  He has Democrats defending Hamas baby-killers, Iranian “Death to America” terrorists, violent illegal aliens, child castration, and men beating up women in competitive sports.  The president keeps telling his catcher, Watch: I’ll get them to argue against sending foreign murderers and rapists back to their own countries.  The umpire is listening and murmuring, What kind of moron would swing at that?  And Trump just smiles and whispers behind his glove, The kind of morons who vote for Hillary, Kamala, and Dementia Joe, that’s who!  Trump releases the ball, and while it moves in midair, the Democrats call him vulgar names.  Dim-Dems hack at it from all directions but strike out as the ball travels slowly across the plate.

As funny as it is to see Democrats swinging ferociously and falling to the ground with every Trump pitch, it is also pretty amusing to see all the players supposedly on his team freaking out from the dugout.  The neocons are screaming for endless war.  The so-called “free traders” are busy disparaging tariffs.  The multinational conglomerates hope that they’ll still get to use slave labor overseas.  The Establishment Old Guard are tired of Trump’s “culture war” at home and want to get back to the business of making money from real war in Ukraine.  Batboy Volodymyr Zelensky thinks it’s time to put in a new pitcher.  Why can’t he just pitch like a normal Republican? the benchwarmers keep asking one another.  Nobody’s seen a Republican knuckleballer on the mound before.

Read the Whole Article

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The ongoing pundit discussions whether or not the US attack destroyed the three Iranian nuclear facilities, which might or might not have been involved in developing a weapon, with many challenging the Trump administration’s report that all three facilities were destroyed, is stupid and even dangerous.  The whore media, incapable of thought, is desperate to do Trump in on any and every thing. Why are intelligent analysts keeping the issue alive for the biased media?  I won’t name them, but they need to think before they speak.

Why?  At this time based on the information I have been able to gather, Gilbert Doctorow appears to be correct that the Trump administration’s claim, whether true or not, has eliminated Netanyahu’s only reason for war with Iran.

We should be thankful.

War with Iran is more dangerous than Washington, Moscow, Beijing, Tel Aviv, and Tehran know. Iran is a more formidable opponent than the five Muslim countries Washington has destroyed for Israel. Iran can do damage to Israel, to US bases and naval assets in the region, and to world economies by closing the Strait of Hormuz and raising the oil price by restricting the supply.

Additionally, Iran is a strategic buffer for Russia. If Iran is put into chaos, inflow the CIA’s jihadists into the Muslim provinces of the Russian Federation.

If Iran’s oil falls under US control, China is cut off from an important part of its energy supply.

So far, Russia and China are standing apart from Iran.  But what happens when China doesn’t want to lose another round of oil investments like Washington caused China in Libya when Gaddafi was overthrown?

What happens when Putin realizes, if he ever does, that the demise of Iran opens Russia to CIA jihadists?

Having foolishly stood aside, Russia and China would have to enter the conflict.

What would be the consequences?

How much better if Russia and China had prevented the conflict by placing Iran under their nuclear umbrella or by publicly announcing a mutual defense treaty among the three countries.  But there was no vision.

Russia and China, having failed in their responsibility, left the problem with President Trump. On our side, let us not discredit Trump’s claim and, by doing so, resurrect Netanyahu’s justification for war with Iran.  It would be difficult for Trump to resist Netanyahu’s pressure given Israel’s extraordinary influence in the US. Let’s pre-empt Israel’s pressure for more war by supporting Trump’s statement that there is no longer a nuclear threat from Iran.

The post Let Trump Save Us From War With Iran appeared first on LewRockwell.

What can an Iranian learn from Syria?

Iranians must understand (and many no doubt do) that the Western political class has been criminalized.

Just as the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW)(1)  is a corrupt agency which enabled the downfall of Syria and the installation of an al Qaeda junta, so too is the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) corrupt.

Video by Fox News, March 12, 2021

Transcript:

LeaAnn Duncan

June 14 at 12:43 PM

WikiLeaks: US intelligence assessed just weeks ago that #Iran is not building a nuclear weapon

“The IC [Intelligence Community] continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Khamanei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003.

The IC is monitoring if Tehran decides to reauthorize its nuclear weapons program.” – Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, 25 March 2025

Then there is the question of opposition.  In Syria, Washington and allies installed an al Qaeda junta.  In Syria, Washington and allies pretended that the opposition was moderate when  in fact they were supporting al Qaeda and ISIS all along. Al Qaeda and ISIS were the “opposition”.  Iran needs to be aware of these deceptions.

The ”New Syria” has been committing genocide(5) against Alawites, and now Christians are once again being targeted.

The West does not want democracy or freedom in Iran.  It wants a puppet government just like its al Qaeda puppet in Syria.

Washington wants Iran’s oil(6) and resources and its subservience in its drive for geopolitical hegemony, and full spectrum control. Remember Wesley Clark: 7 countries in 5 years.  Iran is on the list.

Washington’s world conquest,(7) its permanent warfare and its pre-planned Supreme International crimes are consistent with the label Fourth Reich.  It acts like a global dictator imposing its supremacist will beneath waves of war propaganda.

The Third Reich ended badly, but the supremacist ideology which disregards and corrupts international law, which has criminalized the Western political class, which wages permanent warfare based on war propaganda, lives on.

Notes

(1) “Tulsi Gabbard on OPCW Corruption. ” marktanliano.net website, 26 March, 2021. (Tulsi Gabbard on OPCW Corruption. – Mark Taliano) Accessed 24 June, 2025.

see also: ‘Corrupted’ ICC Is a Tool to Be ‘Used by NATO Leaders, But Never Against Them’/ By Svetlana Ekimento – Mark Taliano

(2) Saheil C. ” IAEA is doing in Iran what OPCW (Organisation for the Prevention of Chemical Weapons) did in Syria./ By Saheil C -” marktanliano.net website. 24 June, 2025 (“IAEA is doing in Iran what OPCW (Organisation for the Prevention of Chemical Weapons) did in Syria.”/ By Saheil C – Mark Taliano) Accessed 24 June, 2025.

(3) Press TV, “Secret documents seized by Iran expose IAEA chief’s close cooperation with Israel” 12 June, 2025. (Secret documents seized by Iran expose IAEA chief’s close cooperation with Israel) Accessed 24 June, 2025.

See also: How the U.S. and Israel Used Director General Rafael Grossi to Hijack the IAEA and Start a War on Iran – Global ResearchGlobal Research – Centre for Research on Globalization

(4) Saheil C. ” IAEA is doing in Iran what OPCW (Organisation for the Prevention of Chemical Weapons) did in Syria./ By Saheil C -” marktanliano.net website. 24 June, 2025 (“IAEA is doing in Iran what OPCW (Organisation for the Prevention of Chemical Weapons) did in Syria.”/ By Saheil C – Mark Taliano) Accessed 24 June, 2025.

(5) Mark Taliano,”Well-Documented Ethnic Cleansing and Genocide in Syria.” Global Research, 14 April, 2025. (Well-Documented Ethnic Cleansing and Genocide in Syria – Global ResearchGlobal Research – Centre for Research on Globalization) Accessed 24 June, 2025.

(6) Prof. Michel Chossudovsky, ” Video: U.S. and Western Allies Behind the Genocide. Israel’s Role in the U.S.-NATO War Against Iran (1953-2024)Video on the Criminalization of Politics” Substack (Video: U.S. and Western Allies Behind the Genocide. Israel’s Role in the U.S.-NATO War Against Iran (1953-2024) ) Accessed 24 June, 2025.

7. Prof. Michel Chossudovsky,”Video: War and Globalization, America’s Roadmap of Conquest, Blueprint for Global Domination: Michel Chossudovsky” Global Research, 14 June, 2025. (Video: War and Globalization, America’s Roadmap of Conquest, Blueprint for Global Domination: Michel Chossudovsky – Global ResearchGlobal Research – Centre for Research on Globalization) Accessed 24 June, 2025.

The original source of this article is Global Research.

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Both the system and the word “democracy” were invented by the Greeks, specifically the Athenians. “Demos” was the ancient word for “people,” hence the rule of the people is democracy. I’ve always preferred the selective kind, as practiced by the Brits until late in the 19th century—when one needed to own property before qualifying to vote—and the kind that made ancient Athens great, an obligatory education before being allowed to cast a ballot. That kept the demagogues in their place, because if you are correctly educated you can sniff out the fraud and duper from a mile away.

No longer. Fake news is now believed to be the truth, especially when spread by the media, experts at disinformation. Here are a few examples taken at random from the papers I have in front of me, one week before this article appears: A columnist for the Bagel Times seriously notes that Hitler in 1935 had not as yet enforced a police state in Germany but was just like Trump is today, nuanced but nevertheless bound to turn into a dictator. Now, the man writing this rubbish, Kristof, may scare some children and impress some old ladies, but anyone who knows the difference between Germany in 1935 and the USA in 2025 knows that this theory is not only childish, but written for idiotic children at that.

“American emphasis on individual freedom has come at the expense of families and communities.”

A further editorial in the paper of disinformation charges Trump with corruption and weakening American democracy by his self-dealing. No proof, just charges. In the meantime, democracy is being challenged as 10 to 12 million foreign nationals who walked into these United States during Biden’s time and joined the already 12 to 20 million illegal aliens residing here present a problem. While American citizens were required to present multiple forms in order to travel within the country, illegal entrants were flown across the nation often stealthily without any valid ID at all. If that’s democracy at work, I’m an overripe banana. In the City of Angels—ha ha—foreign flags come out while rioters against law and order burn the place down. Why? Because illegal aliens who have committed crimes are being arrested and deported. And the black female mayor of the city takes the side of the criminals, while the governor of California also plays it safe. In my not-so-humble opinion, something is very wrong here, and it’s democracy not working, nothing else.

Which brings me to the reasons why we need a bit of autocracy, and why we need it now. Egalitarianism seems to be the culprit of what ails these United States, the passions of the mob having taken over what once upon a time was known as civil disobedience. The passions of the mob saw an illegal migrant lighting up a sleeping American woman and watching her burn to death while he fanned the flames with his shirt. Nice. The burned woman was suffering from mental problems, but her immolation soon turned into just another statistic. Like the rape of a dead man in a New York subway by yet another illegal migrant, only arrested after the gruesome incident. Necrophilia lives among illegal aliens in New York City. So what is to be done? Easy. As previously stated above, we need some autocracy and we need it now.

The major threat to the West’s security today emanates from its own pusillanimity. Global elites and immigrants are stacked against good middle-class and working-class guys. The L.A. violence will keep expanding in the U.S. and in Europe, especially in France and the U.K. The latter will see whites in the minority in 25—yes, 25—years, and what comes next is anyone’s guess. Will sharia law prevail? It will probably be shoved up the Brit bum, and the latter will as usual say, “Thank you.”

The battle will have to be fought not only in the streets but also in the classroom. What sets fire in our streets is our complacency and the fifth column of the media. (The fifth column were the pro-German French working for appeasement back in 1939.) And then there’s the great replacement theory that argues that liberal elites are behind a conspiracy to replace white Europeans with migrants from Africa and the Middle East. The rise of non-white immigration in Europe dwarfs any other potential dangers, yet no politicians except a few like Nigel Farage in Britain seem to bother with it.

The great German academic Hans Hoppe, an acquaintance of mine, argues that universal suffrage has supplanted rule by the natural elite. In other words, the foreign criminal has as many or more rights than the law-abiding citizen. A benevolent strongman is needed, according to Hoppe—and Taki—someone who would rule efficiently and prioritize the well-being of his subjects. If I had my way, journalists would have to report the truth, not their truth, and would be prevented by the state when acting like East German Stasi, informing on citizens who didn’t agree with them. I would also abolish Pride Month, because, as Norman Mailer put it so well, “Just because you take it up the bum doesn’t mean we have to watch parades for a month that celebrate it.”

Let’s face it. Liberalism has trampled traditional values underfoot, and many of us are mad as hell and won’t take it anymore. (Sorry, Howard Beale.) American emphasis on individual freedom has come at the expense of families and communities and has turned us into non-related selves—afraid, alone, marionettes controlled by left-wing puppeteers. Egalitarianism is the bad guy wearing a black hat; an autocratic strongman is the good one, and he wears a white one.

This article was originally published on Taki’s Magazine.

The post A Bit of Autocracy appeared first on LewRockwell.

The following are two indirectly related personal experiences I have had, the first sometime in mid-2012, the second, an as-yet-to-be-resolved experience in media res.

Following the passing of my father in 2012, I shipped numerous items (including some furniture) from Los Angeles to Vienna, Austria. Among the items shipped were ca. ten large cans of freeze-dried food purchased from major disaster-preparedness food supplier, Mountain House.

The shipment went from the port of Los Angeles to a port in the UK, where it was to have been unloaded andimmediately transferred to a truck that would bring my shipment though the UK – Europe tunnel and over land to Austria.

Upon arrival of my shipment in the UK, I received an e-mail requesting some information regarding the contents of the cans of freeze dried food. I found this odd, as the contents of each can were clearly written on the outside of the cans. (And all the cans were sealed.)

Not satisfied with information provided right there on the food products, the Brits were requesting “more details” (???) After I informed them that “I had no more ‘details,” they then requested that I contact Mountain Farms so that they provide more documentation regarding the contents of the cans of freeze-dried food.

I spoke with a representative at Mountain Farms on the phone, who thought the request beyond absurd, as it was indeedso absured as to be “surreal.” But, “okay” he said, he would provide some additional (ridiculous and nonsensical) information which I promptly forwarded on to the British officials.

After which I was informed by a British customs official that the information was “not enough.” And as there was nothing left to be done to “honor” (??) their ridiculous request for still more information, I told them this in the hope that this would put an end to their antics and that the cans of freeze-dried food would be forwarded on to me in Austria with the rest of my shipment.

And then what?

Now here is where it goes beyond the absurd, descending into something along the lines of “sado-masochistic.”

I was then informed that all ten cans of freeze-dried food were to be confiscated by the British officials, but, but, . . . in order to carry out their confiscation, they would need considerable time to go through my entire shipment (which was somewhat considerable, as I was moving a portion of my American household to Austria). The cost for their efforts? 2,000 British pounds!!

Should I not submit to their “extortion,” I was informed that they would hold on to (not release) my entire shipment. And because the shipment contained important contents of my American household, I had no choice but to submit to their quite clear “extortion.”

What are the chances that the British officials tossed into the garbage ten large “new” cans of high-quality freeze-dried food in SEALED cans? And what are the chances that one or more officials took the items home?

Despite my love of many things in the UK, I vowed at once to never again set foot inside the country. And I adhere to that to this day.

Now on to my current as yet un-resolved experience which though quite different has a similar “smell” to my British experience of 2012.

Towards the end of March this years (2025), I shipped one non-valuable (only “sentimental” value) earring to a Jewelry repair ship outside New York City. Earlier in the year, I lost one of the earrings; then in mid-March typed into the Google search box, “replacement of lost earring,” which brought me to this very nice and interesting shop outside of New York City. I sent them a photo of the one remaining earring and they then informed me that it would be possible for them to reconstruct a second near-identical earring.

And so, I shipped the one earring to the shop express mail.

While in the middle of completing my order, someone in the shop informed me that they could make, if I would like, two instead of just one duplicate. I gave them the go-ahead on that.

Soon after that I was informed that the package had been shipped express mail (UPS) and that I should be receiving it shortly.

On June 16, I received a request on my mobile phone from UPS to pay (on-line) customs’ duty for my shipment which I promptly did.

But then, . . . enter in the ridiculous and absurd.

When I went on-line (the UPS website) to track my package from its arrival in Vienna to my home in the Austrian Alps, I discovered that the package was being held up pending the need for “missing information.”

Despite the above, however, I had not received any request from UPS regarding this “missing information.” What information was being requested? And where should it be sent?

I then proceeded to contact someone at UPS, first in Austria (no success), next in Germany (no success) and then in the USA. When I finally reached someone in the USA, I was informed that they could not help me and that I must contact someone “local.” So back to square one, or shall we say, “square zero.”

I then tried the chat box on the UPS website where I was informed that they would be “happy” to help me with “any” problem/issue that I have.

But when I typed in my problem in the most simple and succinct way possible, what did I get? A “cookie cutter” reply that had zero to do with my problem. I reframed my question every which way, but nada.

Then somehow, either via another phone call or some info on the internet, I got an e-mail address ([email protected]) to which I wrote a request that they inform me as to what “information” they were “missing,” and to provide an e-mail address to which I could send this info.

I received the following e-mail reply:

Dear Madam,

In order to clear the shipment we need the original Export documents when you sent the shipment for repair.

If the package was shipped with ups please provide us with the tracking number and we will take care of it.

Thank you.

With no one signing off on this e-mail (no specified person to whom I can reply, . . . how nice!) Might I be dealing here with “AI”? Could be. Maybe I am part of some widespread “AI” testing program to help them determine where they are in its application.

So then, I was able to locate the shipping documents from when I shipped the one earring from Vienna, Austria to Long Island City, USA.

I sent them this document and explained to them that I only shipped one earring to the USA, but received three earrings back because the Jewelry shop outside of New York City had fabricated for me two new earrings as replacement for my one lost earring. I also informed them that I had already paid customs duty on my shipment (for the cost of the production of the two new earrings).

I sent them this information yesterday and as of today, I am still informed on the UPS website that my shipment is still being held in some warehouse pending the receipt of “missing information.”

We are not talking here about some expensive earrings made of gold and with precious stones or anything of that nature. We are talking about earrings of silver (with minimal silver) and a small moonstone for each earring. For which I paid ca. $30 in the late-1990s.

The shop charged me $470 for procuring all the earring components + the hand-fabrication of two new earrings, not exactly an amount to garner much attention (one would think) in connection with the crossing of borders.

So what is this all about then?

Could be that at one level here, we are dealing with “AI,” and if that be the case then I am part of a “test” as I believe that we are in an important stage of their AI rollout where they are testing it from and in many different perspectives.

But in the case of the earrings, it is surely not about the “money” (i.e., any charges that can be accrued from any additional customs’ fee add ons, which at this point would be insignificant). Nor is it about attempted violation of any law on my part, or of me simply being up-to-something-not-good via this shipment from the USA to Austria (i.e., trying to secure some illegal type item, like, for instance “Ivermectin”!!)

To understand what is going on here, we have to return to my earlier British experience of 2012. Okay, in the case of Brits, yes, they were extorting me for the handsome sum of 2,000 pounds, something that does not enter into the current situation.

The British incident was about the untold pleasures of extortion, it was a gleeful shout out that “we can do whatever we want.” It is to put it more precisely about “harassment.” Yes, it is the “harassment” that lies at the heart of both the British and the current experience.

When it comes to the rules and the bureaucratic details that are in play in Austria today, it is most surely not Austria that is speaking here. It is the EU. And 2012 in the UK was pre-Brexit, so EU operating there too. Leaving outside “the Great Reset,” “build back better” and all that, the EU is all about creating maximum suffering for EU citizens, particularly the middle class from top to bottom. It is about destruction for the sake of destruction.

I think that most would agree that in addition to a culling of the global population, it was the intention of the “Covid” operation (Psy-Op) to weaken a large sector of those not killed by the bio-weapon masquerading as a “vaccine.”

One way that large swaths of the global population have been “weakened” is through ruined health, but there has alsobeen financial/economic devastation and countless other forms of human devastation.

I am completely convinced that the “harassment” fits right in with this. It is just another way in which human beings across the globe are being significantly “weakened.” As this kind of “harassment” becomes more and more widespread, as it is becoming, it begins to effect people’s health. People weaken.

The only reason I have chosen to publicly present the above experiences is to call attention to the kinds of experiencesthat many are having today (across the globe, but more and more in the West) and which may seem at best anecdotally interesting (and annoying) but of no great significance.

But when taken cumulatively in the lives of each and every one of us and then again taken cumulatively on a global scale, it may be that such “anecdotal” individual experiences are playing perhaps a more important role than we think when it comes to our health and well-being.

The post Two Indirectly Related Personal Experiences appeared first on LewRockwell.

Iran is the kid on the playground that isn’t intimidated by the bully and is willing—and able—to fight back.

President Donald Trump not only attacked a sovereign foreign state (Iran) without provocation, without congressional approval and without constitutional or moral justification, he has also joined the likes of Joe Biden and G.W. Bush in the ranks of war criminals.

I doubt that anyone in America is more qualified to speak to constitutional and legal (and unconstitutional and illegal) acts than legal scholar Judge Andrew Napolitano. In a recent interview with USMC Major/UN Weapons Inspector Scott Ritter, Judge Nap said the following:

What the president of the United States did was profoundly unconstitutional, absolutely unlawful, was an impeachable offense and was a war crime. Under our Constitution only the Congress can declare war, not the president. And Congress can only declare war on a country that poses an immediate and grave military threat to the United States of America. President Trump has started a war with Iran, which poses no threat—let alone immediate or grave—whatsoever to the national security of the United States of America. Under an unconstitutional statute, but still the law, the War Powers Resolution, the president is required to give notice to Congress and give Congress an opportunity to respond before he attacks a foreign country. He can carry out the response, but he has to tell Congress and give Congress an opportunity to respond. He not only ignored the Constitution, he ignored that law. As unconstitutional as it is—it hasn’t been tested by the courts—it is still the law. The president ignored it. Killing people and destroying property in another country without a just cause is a war crime. It is the moral and legal equivalent of a high crime and misdemeanor. It is an impeachable offense. And it is time for the American public and the Congress to do something about it.

There you have it: What Trump did in attacking Iran was not only unconstitutional, but it was also a war crime, “the moral and legal equivalent of a high crime and misdemeanor,” which is an impeachable offense.

Military scholar Scott Ritter followed the judge’s statement with his own analysis. Ritter said:

What they [the U.S. military] did is carry out an illegal war of aggression. It’s a war crime. It’s not just a war crime, Judge Jackson from the Nuremberg trial period, lead prosecutor of the Nazi war criminals, asserted that the war of aggression is the ultimate war crime, because from this war of aggression all other crimes emanate. This is what we did. I don’t know why Americans are proud of this. This is an act of perfidy, a surprise attack, an undeclared act of aggression that had no foundation in justification. Again, to justify something like this, which is the equivalent of what we would say a preemptive act of self-defense, so there needs to be an imminent threat, an imminent threat, that can only be dealt with through this act of aggression.

Iran was in the process of negotiations that would resolve all of the issues that could be perceived as a threat. So, there is no imminent threat.

Moreover, we know that the sites that had been targeted—three nuclear sites: Isfahan, Natanz and Fordow—were empty, that these strikes would have zero impact on an Iranian nuclear program that had long since been evacuated from these sites and sent to other locations. It’s come out that this strike plan, which was done in cooperation with Israel, was something that had been planned more than a year ago and actually been practiced by the United States and Israel. So, this was a pre-planned strike against three designated sites that had no military value. So, this is purely an act of theater, and any military commander that puts American lives at risk to carry out an act of political theater should literally have their commissions revoked and be drummed out of the service. There was no justification for this.

As I have documented in past columns, Donald Trump likes to portray himself as an emperor, and now he is acting like one.

Here is my four-minute statement on Trump’s unlawful attack against Iran from last Sunday.

Trump has now proven to the world that 1) He was a bald-faced liar when he told the American people he wanted to be a peace president, 2) He remains a bald-faced liar by attacking a country while his administration was in the process of negotiating a peace settlement with that nation, and 3) He is nothing more than a paid lackey of the Zionist government in Tel Aviv and the Israel lobby.

Virtually everything America does in the Middle East is at the behest of Israel. This U.S. attack against Iran was no different. As former CIA analyst Larry Johnson said, “Netanyahu calls the shots.”

The idea that Israel wants peace is ludicrous! Israel has been the world’s greatest destabilizing force since its inception in 1948. And it has also been the most belligerent military aggressor in the world since its inception.

Netanyahu himself will NEVER agree to peace, because keeping Israel at war is the only way that he can stay out of prison. If peace were to ensue in the Middle East, Netanyahu and his wife would immediately be tried and convicted of mass corruption and bribery charges and would spend the rest of their lives in prison. The only way Netanyahu stays out of jail is to keep his country at war.

And by keeping Israel at war, Netanyahu keeps America at war, because 1) Israel has zero military superiority in the Middle East without the backing of the United States, and 2) Netanyahu knows that the Israel lobby controls the politicians in Washington, D.C., including Donald Trump.

The nations of the world know that the Zionist government in Tel Aviv is a rogue government. It always has been and always will be. Its actions are constantly outside the rule of law: judicial, Natural, moral, civil and international. And it does so with impunity because the United States constantly runs interference and provides cover for it.

And now the combined administrations of Joe Biden and Donald Trump have turned the government in Washington, D.C., into a rogue state of its own. These two presidents—and the Congress that turns a blind eye to their unlawful conduct—have turned America’s foundational principles upside down.

Biden and Trump have taken the nation that was called the “City upon a Hill” by Puritan preacher John Winthrop—who penned this moniker to his sermon in 1630 to describe America as a bastion of hope, faith and freedom to the world, the nation whose birth certificate (the Declaration of Independence) announces its parents as being “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God”—and turned that nation into a lawless, murderous lapdog of the rogue iniquitous State of Israel.

And what Netanyahu and his Zionist extremists in Israel want is to turn Iran into another Libya. They have said this openly and often. In other words, their goal is the total destruction of Iran. Why? Because Israel cannot control Iran, and this is unacceptable. Israel’s goal is total regional hegemony.

Israel is the elementary school bully that wants every kid on the playground in total submission to his will. Iran is the kid on the playground that isn’t intimidated by the bully and is willing—and able—to fight back.

In fact, by committing these war crimes against Iran, Israel and the U.S. are making it more likely that Iran will pursue a nuclear weapon, as this might be the only way Iran is assured of its own survival.

A case for a nuclear Iran 

Kenneth Waltz, one of the most influential realist thinkers in international relations, argued in a controversial 2012 Foreign Affairs article titled “Why Iran Should Get the Bomb” that a nuclear-armed Iran might actually stabilize the Middle East, rather than destabilize it.

Waltz’s theory is rooted in neorealism (or structural realism), which sees the international system as anarchic, and posits that states act primarily to ensure their own survival. From this perspective, nuclear weapons are the ultimate deterrent, and their spread, under specific conditions, can actually lead to greater stability. Consider North Korea: since developing nuclear weapons and delivery systems, its behavior has arguably become more calculated and status-quo-oriented. It also encouraged Trump to extend an olive branch to Kim Jong-un.

Israel remains the sole nuclear power in the Middle East, a monopoly fostering strategic imbalance and absolute impunity. The emergence of a rival nuclear-armed state, even with minimal second-strike capability, would force belligerent sides to act with greater caution. Conflicts would likely be reduced to face-saving precision strikes, as seen with nuclear-armed India and Pakistan. Despite hosting radical militant groups, Pakistan has behaved as a rational actor within the nuclear matrix.

Similarly, a nuclear Iran could reduce its reliance on asymmetric proxy strategies – such as its support for Hamas or Hezbollah – because its security would primarily rest on deterrence.

Some critics however warn that if Iran acquires nuclear weapons, Saudi Arabia may rapidly follow suit. A moot point, except that Riyadh bankrolled Islamabad’s nuclear weapons program under America’s watch during the 1980s Soviet-Afghan War which featured beloved “anti-Soviet warriors” like Osama bin Laden!

There are also persistent reports which suggest that some Pakistani nuclear assets may already be stationed in Saudi Arabia, under the command of senior Pakistani officers. In the event of a regional nuclear escalation, Riyadh can simply request transfer at will.

Historical precedents also do not support alarmist non-proliferation fears. When North Korea acquired nuclear weapons, neither South Korea nor Japan followed suit. Deterrence, once established, tends to cool ambitions, especially when the cost of escalation becomes too high.

            (Source)

The discussion that is NEVER broached publicly is: Why can a belligerent/aggressor state such as Israel have nuclear weapons (which technology it stole from the United States) but a mostly passive state such as Iran cannot?

Remember that the only reason Iran has not tried to build a nuclear weapon to date (confirmed by National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard only weeks ago) is due to the fact that such a weapon is seen as a violation of Shia Islamic law by Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

However, the flagrant acts of international aggression demonstrated by Israel and the U.S. of late may indeed persuade Khamenei that the only way Iran can survive is that it has the deterrence of a nuclear weapon at its disposal. Notice that the U.S. is not using South Korea as a proxy for war with North Korea. Why not? Because North Korea has nuclear weapons.

Plus, Iran might not need to build a nuclear weapon in order to obtain one.

I have read reports that say several countries including Russia and Pakistan have already said they could provide Iran with some of their nuclear arsenal (as apparently Pakistan has already provided nuclear weapons to Saudi Arabia). This kind of military support between Sunni and Shia Muslims has the potential of putting the belligerent bully of the Middle East (Israel) permanently in its place.

The old saying still holds true: “Necessity is the mother of invention.” If Iran believes it is necessary to obtain a nuclear weapon for its survival, then obtaining one would be seen as its only option.

Wouldn’t it be ironic if the criminal conduct of Netanyahu and Trump to pound Iran into submission turns out to be the catalyst for Iran obtaining the ability to permanently maintain its sovereignty?

In the meantime, don’t expect Israel to abide by any ceasefire agreement brokered by Trump for very long. Again, Netanyahu needs war to stay out of prison. And Netanyahu also knows that no matter what Trump says, he is still in Israel’s pocket.

Israel’s (and thus America’s) war with Iran has just begun. Remember that Iran still has thousands of hypersonic ballistic missiles (which neither U.S. nor Israeli defenses can stop) that it can launch on Israel.

Furthermore, Iran has already inflicted so much damage in Israel that thousands of Israelis—including members of the Knesset—are fleeing the country. The truly paradoxical part of this story is that Iran has so crippled Israel economically, militarily, emotionally and financially that the Zionist state may actually be standing on its last legs.

But for America’s part, Donald Trump has allowed Israel to drag us into another “stupid” (Trump’s word) foreign war.

And, as did his predecessors, Donald J. Trump has now joined the ranks of war criminals.

Reprinted with permission from Chuck Baldwin Live.

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