Aggregatore di feed

______________________________________________________________________________________

di Ethan Yang

(Versione audio della traduzione disponibile qui: https://open.substack.com/pub/fsimoncelli/p/i-dati-in-via-di-sparizione-della)

Le informazioni sulla salute economica della Cina sono sempre più difficili da reperire. Sebbene Pechino sia sempre poco trasparente su qualsiasi cosa possa potenzialmente indicare instabilità o debolezza, questo comportamento sta raggiungendo un punto in cui i suoi tentativi di occultamento stanno trasmettendo un messaggio inequivocabile: l'economia cinese è in difficoltà.

Il 4 maggio il Wall Street Journal ha riferito che il Partito Comunista Cinese (PCC) sta “facendo sparire” enormi quantità di dati economici in seguito alle notizie di un crollo delle vendite di terreni, di una crescita stagnante del PIL, di una disoccupazione in aumento e persino di un calo della produzione di salsa di soia. 

“Pechino ha smesso di pubblicare centinaia di statistiche”, ha riportato il quotidiano, “la scomparsa dei dati ha reso più difficile per le persone sapere cosa sta succedendo in Cina in un momento cruciale, con la guerra commerciale tra Washington e Pechino che dovrebbe colpire duramente la Cina e indebolire la crescita globale”.

Il motivo per cui ciò sta accadendo è ovvio: il PCC, e in particolare Xi Jinping, sono preoccupati per le conseguenze che i dati economici negativi potrebbero avere sulla loro credibilità e sulla loro presa sul potere.

Non dovremmo affrettarci a concludere che siamo nel 1989, sul punto di assistere alla caduta del Muro di Berlino; né dovremmo concludere che si tratti semplicemente di una transizione strutturale prima che la Cina diventi una superpotenza tecnologica.

La realtà è probabilmente da qualche parte nel mezzo.

La Cina, come gli Stati Uniti, sta affrontando una miriade di difficoltà politico-economiche che non necessariamente faranno deragliare il Paese, ma preannunciano risultati mediocri in futuro. La differenza principale è che gli Stati Uniti dispongono di un sistema per rimuovere pacificamente i responsabili quando le loro idee falliscono.

La storia della crescita della Cina

La Repubblica Popolare Cinese, dopo una serie di riforme di mercato nel 1978 e l'adesione all'Organizzazione Mondiale del Commercio (OMC) nel 2001, ha vissuto un miracolo economico, passando dall'essere uno dei Paesi più poveri del mondo alla seconda economia più grande. Le spiegazioni sono molteplici e ampiamente citate, tra queste l'enfasi sulla produzione manifatturiera e su una manodopera a basso costo ma sempre più produttiva, un solido livello di istruzione, una governance stabile e una generale apertura alle imprese, soprattutto nei confronti di un regime comunista. La Cina, inoltre, adotta una linea di politica industriale su larga scala, un grado relativamente basso di libertà economica e un sistema politico che reagisce violentemente a qualsiasi cosa possa minacciare il potere del PCC. Quest'ultimo punto è particolarmente rilevante dopo il 2012, quando Xi Jinping, l'attuale presidente, è salito al potere e ha deciso che il Paese aveva ceduto troppo al presunto caos del settore privato, provocando una drastica riduzione delle libertà politiche ed economiche.

Con il rallentamento della crescita economica, dovuto sia a ragioni naturali che politiche, il governo cinese ha iniziato a diffondere sempre meno informazioni. La Cina, che un tempo vantava tassi di crescita annui a due cifre, ora cresce a un tasso di circa il 3-4%, secondo alcuni esperti. Sebbene questo dato possa essere considerato significativo per un Paese sviluppato come gli Stati Uniti, il PIL pro capite della Cina è di gran lunga inferiore e rimane un margine di crescita sostanziale.

Impedimenti alla crescita 

Parte del motivo di questo rallentamento della crescita è naturale. Con il progredire di un'economia, devono verificarsi determinati cambiamenti strutturali prima che essa raggiunga la fase successiva. Questo fenomeno è noto come “trappola del reddito medio”, uno in cui i Paesi rurali sperimentano una rapida crescita economica man mano che si modernizzano e progrediscono verso un'economia basata meno sull'agricoltura e più sulla produzione e sugli investimenti. Tuttavia la crescita inizia a rallentare perché la fase successiva, oltre la produzione manifatturiera, che non richiede una formazione specializzata, richiede invece determinati livelli di istruzione e infrastrutture. È facile costruire fabbriche e riempirle di lavoratori; creare invece le condizioni per startup tecnologiche, finanza aziendale e un'economia guidata dai consumi richiede più che semplice manodopera e una ragionevole stabilità. La Cina sta affrontando questo problema in questo momento, mentre si confronta con enormi disparità di sviluppo tra le sue ricche città costiere e l'entroterra rurale.

Un altro motivo per cui la Cina sta attraversando un rallentamento economico deriva dalle linee di politica del suo governo centrale. La crescita del PIL sta rallentando per una serie di ragioni, ma alcuni settori dell'economia sono particolarmente ostacolati dall'intervento governativo. Ad esempio, a seguito di un improvviso e aggressivo attacco normativo alle proprie aziende nell'ambito di una campagna nota come “Prosperità Comune” nel 2021, il mercato azionario cinese ha subito un impatto sostanziale e continua a essere in difficoltà.

La Campagna per la Prosperità Comune è stata aggravata dalla continua repressione della società cinese durante l'epidemia di COVID-19 e dall'uso della Strategia Zero COVID. L'indice composito di Shanghai, che monitora tutti i titoli della Borsa di Shanghai, è rimasto relativamente stabile, mentre Alibaba, l'equivalente cinese di Amazon, è trattato a meno della metà del suo massimo di ottobre 2020. La Cina, che aveva iniziato a costruirsi la reputazione di futuro del business, è ora vista dagli investitori come ostile e imprevedibile. Anche la sua dipendenza dal commercio estero per alimentare la sua base manifatturiera è sempre più vista come un difetto, mentre gli Stati Uniti e altri Paesi riequilibrano le loro relazioni con essa per ragioni sia economiche che geopolitiche.

La realtà è che le linee di politica industriali cinesi stanno iniziando a ritorcersi contro di essa. Un importante motore di crescita è sempre stato il settore immobiliare e ora è sull'orlo del collasso a causa degli anni di denaro facile e di pianificazione governativa che hanno lasciato il segno, in particolare con il default del gigante finanziario Evergrande. Le linee di politica industriali volte a sostenere settori specifici (dai semiconduttori ai veicoli elettrici) allocano in modo errato il capitale, causano inefficienze e sconvolgimenti di massa. Nel 2023, ad esempio, i titoli dei giornali erano pieni di resoconti di cimiteri di auto elettriche, poiché le persone hanno ritenuto più conveniente abbandonare completamente le proprie auto piuttosto che cercare di venderle. Il principale fattore scatenante di questo problema sono stati i sussidi sconsiderati che hanno sostenuto le aziende in fallimento e hanno incoraggiato i consumatori ad acquistare auto indipendentemente dal fatto che le loro città disponessero delle infrastrutture adeguate per supportarle.

Cosa significa tutto questo per il futuro?

Il rallentamento della crescita economica della Cina dovrebbe certamente essere visto come un'accusa alle linee di politica di Xi, e più in generale alla linea di politica industriale, e all'incapacità del modello autoritario di Pechino di affrontare adeguatamente le difficoltà strutturali della crescita economica. Ciò non significa necessariamente che la Cina crollerà domani, o che non sarà un contendente geopolitico per gli Stati Uniti. Il settore high-tech cinese continua a crescere, alimentando la crescita di settori strategici come i droni, le terre rare e l'intelligenza artificiale. Sebbene resti da vedere se le linee di politica industriali di Pechino catapulteranno il Paese nella modernità, c'è ancora spazio per la crescita, a un ritmo molto più moderato di quanto desiderato ovviamente. Si può affermare con certezza che troppe cose devono andare per il verso giusto affinché la Cina possa vedere la rapida crescita economica che i fautori della linea di politica industriale ritengono dovrebbe arrivare.

La Cina sperimenterà una crescita economica molto più lenta del previsto, ma il futuro probabilmente non porterà al collasso, bensì alla mediocrità. La domanda da porsi, quindi, è: come affronterà questo dilemma un'entità sempre più paranoica e autoritaria come il PCC?

Il governo cinese adotterà misure radicali per promuovere la libera impresa e ripristinare le relazioni con l'Occidente? Altamente improbabile. Come affronterà Xi Jinping le proposte, benintenzionate, di moderare alcune delle sue linee di politica? Accoglierà silenziosamente le critiche, o ricorrerà a purghe politiche? Ha già fatto entrambe le cose in passato.

Il risultato è probabilmente una via di mezzo. Si tratta di un comportamento sempre più imprevedibile da parte del governo cinese, che cerca da un lato di placare il malcontento popolare e dall'altro di reprimerlo. Il risultato finale è una debole crescita economica nel prossimo futuro e un mandato di Xi Jinping sempre più ansioso e incerto.

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

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

America is supposed to be a democracy, and people worry about whether elections are genuine or rigged. Should voting by mail be allowed? Should voters be required to show ID? In the current political climate, such questions are important, but there is an underlying premise that libertarians have good reason to question.

The premise is that America should be a democracy.  You might at first wonder “What is the alternative? Are you in favor of dictatorship?” The alternative I have in mind isn’t a dictatorship. Instead, I support libertarian natural rights. Each person owns himself and his property, and all transactions people make are voluntary. No person or group of people has the right to interfere with your individual rights. Having a vote doesn’t change matters: your rights don’t depend on approval by a majority. In this week’s column, I’d like to discuss several characteristically brilliant arguments against democracy advanced by our greatest libertarian theorist, Murray Rothbard. I will also talk about an argument advanced by an outstanding follower of Rothbard, Hans-Hermann Hoppe.

In his great book Power and Market, Rothbard points out that democracy is caught in a contradiction. Democracy is rule by the majority. All political questions are to be decided by majority vote. Can a majority vote to end democracy? If it can, democracy would no longer exist. But if it can’t, then not all political issues are decided by majority vote. Whether to retain democracy is certainly a political issue. Democracy is thus either unstable or non-existent. As Rothbard puts it:

“In the first place, suppose that the majority overwhelmingly wishes to establish a popular dictator or the rule of a single party. The people wish to surrender all decision-making into his or its hands. Does the system of democracy permit itself to be voted democratically out of existence? Whichever way the democrat answers, he is caught in an inescapable contradiction. If the majority can vote into power a dictator who will end further elections, then democracy is really ending its own existence. From then on, there is no longer democracy, although there is continuing majority consent to the dictatorial party or ruler. Democracy, in that case, becomes a transition to a nondemocratic form of government. On the other hand, if, as it is now fashionable to maintain, the majority of voters in a democracy are prohibited from doing one thing—ending the democratic elective process itself—then this is no longer democracy, because the majority of voters can no longer rule. The election process may be preserved, but how can it express that majority rule essential to democracy if the majority cannot end this process should it so desire? In short, democracy requires two conditions for its existence: majority rule over governors or policies, and periodic, equal voting. So if the majority wishes to end the voting process, democracy cannot be preserved regardless of which horn of the dilemma is chosen. The idea that the ‘majority must preserve the freedom of the minority to become the majority’ is then seen, not as a preservation of democracy, but as simply an arbitrary value judgment on the part of the political scientist (or at least it remains arbitrary until justified by some cogent ethical theory).”

Rothbard raised another point that you can’t avoid hearing about, if you keep up with news. The competing political parties will try to rig electoral districts in their favor. Rothbard shows that this is an inevitable result of a “democratic” system in which people vote for their representatives:

“According to the ‘will of the people’ theory, direct democracy—voting on each issue by all the citizens, as in New England town meetings—is the ideal political arrangement. Modern civilization and the complexities of society, however, are supposed to have outmoded direct democracy, so that we must settle for the less perfect ‘representative democracy’ (in olden days often called a ‘republic’), where the people select representatives to give effect to their will on political issues. Logical problems arise almost immediately. One is that different forms of electoral arrangements, different delimitations of geographical districts, all equally arbitrary, will often greatly alter the picture of the ‘majority will.’ If a country is divided into districts for choosing representatives, then ‘gerrymandering’ is inherent in such a division: there is no satisfactory, rational way of demarking the divisions. The party in power at the time of division, or redivision, will inevitably alter the districts to produce a systematic bias in its favor; but no other way is inherently more rational or more truly evocative of majority will.”

One of the most common arguments in favor of democracy is that it provides a way to avoid violent revolution. If the majority wants a change, it just has to wait until the next election and can then vote itself into power. Rothbard says that this argument doesn’t work either. Elections aren’t the only way to avoid violent revolution and they also generate a contradiction, if the “democratic” majority vote for a different government from the one a violent revolution would have put into power:

“Perhaps the most common and most cogent argument for democracy is not that democratic decisions will always be wise, but that the democratic process provides for peaceful change of government. The majority, so the argument runs, must support any government, regardless of form, if it is to continue existing for long; far better, then, to let the majority exercise this right peacefully and periodically than to force the majority to keep overturning the government through violent revolution. In short, ballots are hailed as substitutes for bullets. One flaw in this argument is that it completely overlooks the possibility of the nonviolent overthrow of the government by the majority through civil disobedience, i.e., peaceful refusal to obey government orders. Such a revolution would be consistent with this argument’s ultimate end of preserving peace and yet would not require democratic voting.

“There is, moreover, another flaw in the ‘peaceful-change’ argument for democracy, this one being a grave self-contradiction that has been universally overlooked. Those who have adopted this argument have simply used it to give a seal of approval to all democracies and have then moved on quickly to other matters. They have not realized that the ‘peaceful-change’ argument establishes a criterion for government before which any given democracy must pass muster. For the argument that ballots are to substitute for bullets must be taken in a precise way: that a democratic election will yield the same result as would have occurred if the majority had had to battle the minority in violent combat. In short, the argument implies that the election results are simply and precisely a substitute for a test of physical combat. Here we have a criterion for democracy: Does it really yield the results that would have been obtained through civil combat? If we find that democracy, or a certain form of democracy, leads systematically to results that are very wide of this ‘bullet-substitute’ mark, then we must either reject democracy or give up the argument.”

Hans-Hermann Hoppe raises another question about the alleged good qualities of democracy. Democratic regimes will tend to take a short-run perspective on things. They know that their time in power is limited, so they will tend to take as much as they can now, while adopting a “who cares?” attitude to what comes afterward. In his outstanding book Democracy: The God That Failed, Hoppe says:

“A democratic ruler can use the government apparatus to his  personal advantage, but he does not own it. He cannot sell government resources and privately pocket the receipts from such sales, nor can he pass government possessions on to his personal heir. He owns the current use of government resources, but not their capital value. In distinct contrast to a king, a president will want to maximize not total government wealth (capital values and current income) but current income (regardless and at the expense of capital values). Indeed, even if he wished to act differently, he could not, for as public property, government resources are unsaleable, and without market prices economic calculation is impossible. Accordingly, it must be regarded as unavoidable that public-government ownership results in continual capital consumption. Instead of maintaining or even enhancing the value of the government estate, as a king would do, a president (the government’s temporary caretaker or trustee) will use up as much of the government resources as quickly as possible, for what he does not consume now, he may never be able to consume. In particular, a president (as distinct from a king) has no interest in not ruining his country. For why would he not want to increase his confiscations if the advantage of a policy of moderation-the resulting higher capital value of the government estate-cannot be reaped privately, while the advantage of the opposite policy of higher taxes-a higher current income—can be so reaped? For a president, unlike for a king, moderation offers only disadvantages.”

Let’s do everything we can to promote libertarian natural rights and to expose the fallacies of phony “democracy.”

The post What’s Good About Democracy? appeared first on LewRockwell.

On 7 March 2021, Swiss citizens voted already on the introduction of the electronic ID (e-ID) and rejected the government’s proposals by a landslide of 64.4% NO, against 35.6% YES.

This was just four years ago. And now the Swiss government puts the proposal again before the people. Not voluntarily. It was presented to both Swiss Parliamentary Houses and accepted, as is often the case, as the Swiss Parliament does not really represent the interests of the people, but the interests of business.

This is a clear signal that Switzerland has converted from a democratic republic to a corporation, with a corporate accounting system, where profit making is the Master, where the common people are the workers, and those at the head of the Corporation, like the Seven gnomes in Bern, are the Swiss Corporate Management, the CEOs so to speak.

Immediately, a referendum was launched against the e-ID, so that the government must present the e-ID proposal again to the Swiss people. This time with better prepared arguments with more lies and misinformation, because the essence of the e-ID remains the same: It would be a major step into full digital control, full digital enslavement of the population.

Just as a reminder, Swiss Parliamentarians absurdly have the right to sit on the boards of as many corporations and financial institutions as they desire. It is the epitome of conflict of interest.

It means we have in Switzerland a built-in lobby, close to unique worldwide, in a country that calls itself the heart of democracy.

Think again.

Now the case of YES or NO e-ID is again presented to the same people, with other arguments and, frankly, misinformation that should make a “yes” vote more palatable. What it really means, the Swiss Government wants to push this e-ID through, come hell or high water. What does that tell you about our government?

Can it be trusted as it pretends and want you to believe?

No way!

Why else would the Government disrespect the will of the people, so clearly expressed with an almost two-thirds voter rejection of e-ID in 2021, just four years ago?

Do not trust the government.

You have not forgotten the Covid scandal, better called Covid-crime — a good reason for disbelieving anything pushed by the Government against the will of the people.

Let us just enumerate a few of the most obvious arguments against an e-ID, arguments valid around the world, not just in Switzerland.

Arguments against e-ID include privacy risks, with legitimate fears of data tracking and exploitation for profiling and marketing by companies or authorities. Just think of the “cookies” you must approve for almost any article you want to read.

Security concerns are issues due to potentially insecure technology and insufficient protection against cyberattacks, i.e., data can be stolen and sold to who knows whom, for example to the so-called Five-plus One Eyes, the Secret Services of the US, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and guess who? Israel’s Mossad.

Data can also simply be used by our government for total control and manipulation of groups or individual citizens who do “not behave.” Digital data can be linked to bank accounts and block bank accounts, if the Master authorities deem it necessary, because a citizen is out-of-line with a corrupted and dictatorial government policy. Digital e-ID is the precursor for a Social Credit System.

Digital exclusion, or discrimination, is another issue as those unfamiliar with digital tools could be disadvantaged or forced out of accessing services. Additionally, there are fears of increasing coercion by companies or authorities to use the e-ID, and the possibility that it could, indeed, enable a social credit system.

Digital e-ID data could be used for blackmailing, either by your own government or by those who have stolen or bought your digital data.

Today, Swiss citizens at home and abroad must use their paper ID card or passport to prove their identity.

That is SAFE.

With digital e-ID, you must download one or various apps on your computer and smartphone to be able to upload a digital ID. Every new App is a new risk.

Like with electronic payment systems – another enslavement horror which unfortunately many people, especially the younger generations, have not yet realized – data on your smart phones can be hacked, and when your phone is lost or stolen, all your security is gone, including banking ID and everything linked to the digital e-ID.

For now, the Swiss Government says the e-ID will remain optional.

Wait a minute: That’s “for now.”  In 2026, the government is planning to introduce a biometric Swiss identity card (ID), a precursor to the e-ID. Have you been told about it?

The Swiss Government is among those governments which push most for an all-digitization of everything, including money. Once a certain level of digitization is reached, the next step to compulsory e-ID is easy. The government simply erases the validity of paper IDs – and what will you do against it?

You are then at the point of no return, digitally enslaved with hardly an escape.

An ALARM, please vote NO on 28 September 2025 on the digital e-ID, make it a resounding NO, against digitization of everything.

The original source of this article is Global Research.

The post Citizens of Switzerland Say No to the Electronic ID (e-ID) appeared first on LewRockwell.

Elon Musk has stated that he wants to make human beings a “multiplanetary species” by establishing a self-sustaining human colony on the planet Mars. While this is a sensible and laudable goal for the immediate future, in the long run there are much better places to establish human colonies in the Solar System. The best way to move humanity off Earth was outlined forty-nine years ago by visionary Gerard O’Neill in his book The High Frontier.

There are very significant challenges in constructing a human colony on Mars. The environment is harsh.  The average surface temperature on Mars is about minus 80 F, and the planet is subject to abrasive dust storms that can last for months.  The atmospheric pressure of Mar’s carbon dioxide atmosphere is only 1 percent that of Earth’s. Mars lacks a magnetic field, and human beings on the surface will be exposed to damaging levels of both cosmic and solar radiation. Mars’ gravity is 38 percent that of Earth, and people living under low gravity for long periods of time may experience health problems including bone density loss, muscle atrophy, and cardiovascular disease.  Perhaps most worrisome of all is the lack of a reliable and powerful energy source.  Potential solar power on Mars is only 40 percent that of Earth due to increased distance from the Sun and blockage by dust in the Martian atmosphere.  The importation of nuclear power from Earth is possible, but only at great expense and difficulty.

None of the preceding challenges are insurmountable, but there are much better places establish human colonies in space. As Gerard O’Neill explained, it’s entirely feasible to construct artificial cities in space near Earth-Moon LaGrange points L4 and L5. These locations are 585 times closer to Earth than Mars and there is sufficient space to house a human population that is of the order of 10 billion, comparable to Earth’s present population of 8.2 billion. Living conditions in these stations will resemble the Garden of Eden, unsurpassed in comfort and quality of life.

A significant advantage to O’Neill colonies is the availability of vast amounts of power from solar insolation. Solar power on Earth is limited by atmospheric blockage, the Earth’s rotation, and oblique impingement at most latitudes.  Altogether, the intensity of solar radiation in outer space is about 5 to 7 times higher than can be harvested on Earth. Furthermore, this number can be increased arbitrarily by focusing and reflecting sunlight onto photovoltaic panels with mirrors. Compared to the surface of Mars, the solar power potential will be at least ten to twenty times greater.

Human beings require 100 percent Earth-normal gravity for optimal health. This is easily provided on an O’Neill colony by rotation. O’Neill described rotating spheres or pairs of cylinders that can house 10,000 to as many as 10,000,000 people. While living quarters can be maintained at Earth-normal gravity, other areas of these space cities will experience much lower gravity which can be exploited for recreational activities such as human-powered flying.

No one wants to live in a sterile, artificial environment that is cramped, without trees, grass, sunlight, parks, gardens, or flowers. All of these amenities will be present in an O’Neill colony. Sunlight can be brought inside through mirrors and windows. Every personal residence will have a garden and perhaps an orchard.  There will be green spaces, parks, and bodies of water.  Both plants and animals can be introduced to form stable ecological communities. Butterflies, honey bees, and hummingbirds will be included, but obnoxious species such as ticks, mosquitos, and cockroaches will be strictly excluded.  Weather will be perfect, day after day, year after year. Both temperature and humidity will be set at optimum levels for human comfort. Natural hazards will be absent.  There will be no earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, volcanic eruptions, landslides, floods, droughts, tornadoes, or wildfires. On Earth, it’s virtually impossible to stop an epidemic disease like Covid, influenza, or the Bubonic Plague from spreading through the entire human population. In space it will be a relatively simple matter to confine and limit a plague through quarantines. While it is true that space itself provides hazards in the form of radiation and meteorites, shields can be constructed to protect from these.

Given sufficient energy, information, and raw materials, anything permitted by the laws of nature is feasible. Nearly all of the materials needed to construct space cities can be found either on the Moon or in the Asteroid Belt. The Moon is rich in silicon, oxygen, iron, aluminum, titanium, and magnesium. Water can be found in permanently sheltered craters. Because the Moon’s gravity is relatively weak, raw materials can be efficiently and inexpensively lifted into space using a nuclear-powered catapult.  Volatile elements such as carbon, nitrogen, and sulfur are scarce on the Moon, but can be mined from asteroids. Moving materials from the Asteroid Belt to near-Earth orbit will be a challenge, but is facilitated by the fact that the transport will in effect be downhill, toward the Sun and lower potential energy. Rocket fuel itself can be obtained from carbonaceous asteroids by extracting and processing carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen. Perhaps the greatest challenge will be locating and moving quantities of nitrogen, essential for agriculture and to generate Earth-like atmospheres.

Food production on an O’Neill-type space colony will be straightforward. Human beings have extensive experience growing plants under controlled conditions in greenhouses. In space, production of edible plants will be engineered for optimization of light, temperature, and humidity. There will be no need to use pesticides, because all harmful weeds, insects, viruses, and fungi will be excluded from the beginning. Greenhouse atmospheres can be supplemented with carbon dioxide to speed plant growth. Techniques such as vertical farming and hydroponics will be utilized. All plant nutrients, water, and human waste products will be recycled endlessly. What makes such ideal systems feasible is the availability of virtually unlimited electric power from solar energy. Animal husbandry in space will be more challenging. Aquaculture of fish is certainly possible. Chickens and turkeys need relatively little space, pigs a little more. Cows require significant space, about one acre per animal, but it’s possible to envisage specialized structures entirely devoted to meat and milk production. The maximum human living area on a large O’Neill colony is about 800 square kilometers (197,684 acres), so a specialized colony could support approximately 100,000 animals. Even if this rough estimate is too high by a factor of ten, production facilities with 10,000 animals could supply significant amounts of food.

The construction of human colonies in space will undoubtedly be the greatest engineering and construction project in human history. While this superficially appears to be a hopelessly difficult and complex task, it can be easily accomplished by breaking it down into small steps. This is a principle known to every computer programmer.  Large and complex programs are written as a series of short subroutines. Once the subroutines are tested, they can be assembled into a large program that runs flawlessly.  There is nothing new about incrementalism. A lever is a form of mechanical incrementalism, whereby small movements are used to move heavy weights. The Gothic Cathedrals of the High Middle Ages were constructed by repeating relatively simple patterns of ribbed vaults and pointed arches. Stone blocks were chiseled to standard sizes and dimensions using molds and templates.

Since O’Neill published The High Frontier in 1976, much of what was then speculation is now a straightforward extrapolation of existing and well-established trends. The development of reusable rockets, technological advances, commercialization, and economy of scale have caused the cost of moving material out of the Earth’s gravity well to drop by nearly two orders of magnitude, from about $50,000 (2020 $US) per kilogram to $100 to $1500.  There have been significant advances in machine learning, artificial intelligence (AI), and robotics. AI will be able to write perhaps 80 to 90 percent of the computer code necessary. The abilities of humanoid robots are in a nascent, but rapidly evolving stage.  At the present time, robots can replace humans in perhaps 30 percent of tasks, but it is likely that this number will rise to 70 or 80 percent in a few decades.  In the last 50 years, the efficiency of photovoltaic cells that provide electric power has approximately doubled, from about 10-12 percent to 23-25 percent. Research panels have reached efficiencies in the range of 40-50 percent.

The rate at which space colonies are constructed will be slow at first. There will be a period of initial investment before construction activity can begin. The establishment, for example, of lunar and asteroid mining operations will require significant allocation of resources with little to no return for several years. There will be continuous increases in efficiency and productivity though trial-and-error, and the rate of construction will increase dramatically as time passes.

The prospect of living in an artificial structure in space no doubt incurs horror and revulsion in some people. But the move to space is only the culmination of a long-term trend that began hundreds of thousands of years ago when people first sought to shelter themselves by stretching animal hides over wooden poles. No one desires to live naked in the woods. And there is a great advantage to a large human population. Larger populations facilitate the specialization of labor that drives human progress. There will be more people who can innovate, maintain, and transmit knowledge and complex skills.

The movement of humanity into space will also increase human freedom and reduce conflict and war. Historically, the leading causes of war have been competition for resources, territorial disputes, and disagreements concerning religion, economics, and culture. Space offers abundant resources for everyone. Solar energy is unlimited, and the amount of raw material that is available in the Solar System is enormous. Incentives for theft and depredation will be removed. At some point, the technology will be sufficiently advanced that a structure capable of housing a million people can be constructed by simply pushing a button. People with different ideas, cultures, and religions will be able to live any way they choose. An Islamic space city, for example, could be governed by Sharia Law. A libertarian city would minimize regulations and the size of government. And communists can construct utopian communities with shared property and guaranteed income.

Most people will choose to live in space because the quality of life in space will be superior to that on Earth. Human population on Earth will be reduced to a caretaking staff, and the entire planet can be turned into a park and nature preserve. The Earth’s natural environment will be both preserved and restored. Toxic waste dumps and environmental damage will be cleaned up and repaired by robotic labor. Millions of bison will once again roam the Great Plains of North America, and wolves will repopulate the continent. People will visit Earth the same way they visit Yellowstone Park today.

The movement of humanity into space is not the end, but a beginning. It will be a prelude to interstellar travel and the slow spread of human colonies throughout the galaxy. The experience and knowledge gained in robotics and artificial intelligence will be used to send robotic probes to promising stars. Once it arrives, a probe will survey a chosen stellar system to see if that system has the raw materials and energy to sustain human life. If so, each autonomous probe by itself will begin reproducing and constructing the machines necessary to fabricate an entire world suitable for human habitation. This is the process nature itself uses when an oak tree grows from an acorn:  a small amount of initial energy combined with information is utilized to gather energy and materials from the environment to fabricate a structure of arbitrary size and complexity. The process of interstellar migration will be slow, due to the enormous distances involved, but it is conceivable, if not inevitable, that biological science will be capable of extending human lifespan. The future is just beginning.

The post Our Future in Space appeared first on LewRockwell.

I’m deep into writing my latest book. It will be even more controversial than the ten that came before it, if such a thing is possible. I am going after a true sacred cow. It will be fully sourced and documented, and the points will be irrefutable. Numbers don’t lie quite this often. I expect to be called lots of predictable names.

This picture shows the great Tom Brady with three of his New England Patriots’ White wide receivers. That was almost as many as the rest of the league had combined. This group won a couple of Super Bowls, and had the number one offense in football for several years. And yet no other team, in a supposedly “copycat” league, tried to mimic their formula of taking White skill position players from off the scrap heap, which no other teams wanted. Despite the Patriots’ great success, the other teams in the league continue to ignore White skill position players. No one has talked about this. If anyone else has noticed it, they’ve opted to forever hold their peace. Well, I’ve noticed it, and am talking about it regularly. I don’t care if anyone calls me “racist.” This is about fundamental fairness. And merit. We know that the best person rarely gets the plum job, but most of us still think that the best players play.

Sports has been both a passion and a pain in the ass to me, my whole life. I saw things as a player, and then as a youth sports coach, that really raised questions. Now this is hardly surprising, since it obviously takes very little for me to question something. I recall one basketball game, where I was coaching an 8 year old girls’ team. The other team had a huge kid, who just happened to be Black. I held my tongue, but doubted she could possibly be only 8. This girl ran roughshod around the court, knocking over my girly girls, and committed probably twenty fouls in the first quarter alone. She also took every shot for her team. Fortunately for us, she had zero skills and missed all of them. I attempted to point out how unfair it was to allow a bigger kid to foul with impunity, but the referee threatened me with a technical. She finally made a free throw, after clearly jumping at least a foot over the line. I protested, and he told me, “I’m not going to take her heart away.” What? He was, of course, a typical White cuck.

I bring that incident up to emphasize how widespread the favoritism towards Black athletes extends, in every sport, at all levels. White fans, White referees, and White parents, see a Black kid, and everything that Black kid does on the court or field is viewed through the prism of athletic superiority. I once saw a little Black kid, who literally couldn’t dribble, shoot, or pass, make a select basketball team simply because he had his hair in corn rows and was wearing an Allen Iversen jersey. Take that kind of prejudiced perception to a warp speed level, and you will begin to understand how all those same Whites view Blacks who are wearing an NFL or NBA uniform. The pandering and condescension we see toward common, everyday Blacks by cucked out Whites becomes unbearably nauseating when the Black is an athlete. If you haven’t seen it, watch the movie The Fan, starring otherwise hopelessly “Woke” Patton Oswalt, where a White fan is beaten severely by his Black hero, who he still loves.

The following quote should give you an idea of how the sports “journalism” community treats every Black athlete: “In profile, against the orange sun setting into the smog over the industrial badlands of northern New Jersey, Barber’s facial structure is so defined that you imagine you know what he will look like in a thousand years, long after the flesh has decomposed and he is only bone. His face is all sharp angles and perfect planes. His broad smile bares gleaming white, evenly arrayed teeth, an extra helping of perfection after the symmetry of his features.” This was not written about one of humanity’s greatest benefactors. Karl Taro Greenfeld (I know you’re shocked by the name) was referring here to former NFL running back Tiki Barber. Barber was a decent player, but no superstar. Of course, because he’s Black, he’ll almost certainly make the Hall of Fame. I will have a whole section of the book devoted to undeserving Black Hall of Famers in every sport.

Mac McClung won the NBA slam dunk contest the last three years. So, evidently this White man can not only jump, but jump better than any other professional basketball player. And yet, amazingly he is not actually really in the NBA. No team can seem to find a way to feature such a phenom, such a feel good story. Now, I wonder why that is? Remember how popular tiny Mugsy Bogues was? McClung isn’t small, despite cucky old White sports talking head Skippy Bayless calling him a “little White Boy.” Bogues was only 5 foot 3 inches tall. And had a fourteen year NBA career. You can watch the NBA for the next century, and you’ll never see a 5 foot 3 White player with a 14 second career, let alone 14 years. But Bogues was Black. And so he was cute, humble and lovable. All the adoring Whites wanted to pat his head. But McClung is literally ignored other than when he keeps winning the slam dunk contests. And the league doesn’t appear to even want him.

Most Whites accept the shocking number of Blacks in football and basketball especially, because they instinctively believe they are better athletes. I’m sure they laughed uproariously at the film White Men Can’t Jump. But my research shows that it isn’t just Mac McClung who most decidedly can jump. And run. These unheralded and mistreated Whites often jump higher and run faster than their Black counterparts. Beyond the athletic numbers, Whites often dominate on the field, when they are given a fair chance. The problem is that the vast majority of them are not given a fair chance. Such a small minority group can’t innocently have such disproportionate representation in these celebrated and well paid professional sports. It’s just as unnatural and mathematically impossible as it is for an ethnic/ religious group that is just two percent of the population to run every movie studio, television network, and record company. And, significantly, the sports “journalism” community.

The numbers even shocked me. The NFL came up with something called a Relative Athletic Score (RAS), which measures a variety of skills, like the 40 yard dash, high jump, cone shuttles, bench press, etc. You don’t hear much about it now because too many of the overpromoted Black prospects produced low RAS scores, and too many of the unrecognized White prospects produced high RAS scores. Every search engine tries to hide these facts, as surely as if you were searching for information about the Epstein List or Bohemian Grove. Black 40 times and RAS scores are only available when they are good. And they also “tweak” the scores of White prospects, always to make them worse. For instance, star college running back Cam Skattebo’s decent 4.56 40 time became 4.65 and then 4.7. Black players, conversely, often see their numbers “tweaked” in a positive direction. It’s all very, very obvious.

I won’t go too much into the statistical minutiae here, in order not to lose the interest of those who ignore sports. Which I really should be doing. At any rate, you’ve all heard of Tim Tebow. I will make a very strong case in the book that he was the most unfairly treated athlete in the history of the world. The fact that he was of good character, openly Christian, and stood out like a clove of garlic in the den of NFL vampires, certainly didn’t help him. But it was his great athleticism, his unstoppable running ability, his chiseled frame, that did him in. The NFL decided a long time ago that few if any Whites should be allowed to run the ball. It might not look kosher (pun intended) if a “White Boy” was shown either bowling over the magnificent Black defenders, or outracing them down the field. I will provide plenty of examples of great White players who were drummed out of the league for just this reason.

When I was a kid, there were lots of White sports stars. Now there are virtually none. There are still Whites producing at a high level, but they are largely underpublicized by the same state controlled media that lies about everything. Have any of you heard of Cal Raleigh? He just became the first catcher in Major League Baseball history to hit 50 home runs in a season, and joined Mickey Mantle as only the second switch hitter to ever do it. So ESPN must be going crazy over him, right? The Karl Greenfelds of the world must be devising new homoerotic ways to describe his shocking manliness. Guess again. He is not now, and never will be a household name. He’s White. He’s irrelevant. Every backup Black point guard and cornerback will garner more news coverage for their latest escapade with the law, from which they always emerge unpunished. It’s a White privilege thing, you wouldn’t understand.

The two best players in the NBA right now are arguably White guys. Nikola Jokic has won three of the last four NBA Most Valuable Player awards, and was cheated out of the other. Luka Doncic is right there with him, and just as undeniably White. But I don’t hear the awed reverence in the tones of the odious Stephen A. Smiths of the world, or the perverted lust in the words of the Greenfelds writing about them. White players are only discussed on any sports talk show in order to ridicule them. Tom Brady will probably be the last true White superstar, and even he was largely hated by both the sports “journalists” and what I call the Drunk White Fans. Sure, he may look like a movie star, but can he inspire the Greenfelds of the world to wax rhapsodic about what his face would look like in a thousand years? Of course, he won a record 7 Super Bowls, but he doesn’t wear pimp outfits or do “creative” end zone dances.

Conservatives are no help on this issue. They firmly believe that sports is a meritocracy. Virtually no other sector in our crumbling society uses merit as a basis for hiring and promoting. Conservatives fully understand that the fraud of DEI taints all other areas of life, but remain committed to a belief that sports is somehow sacrosanct. So the highest percentage of Blacks, succeeding beyond what 99% of Whites and other races are able to, achieve because they are just that good. Better than what White quarterback Eli Manning smilingly called “slow ass White Boys.” Since Affirmative Action was created primarily to give Blacks an advantage in the workplace, why would the industry where you find the largest percentage of wealthy and celebrated Blacks somehow not be considered a giant DEI project? Especially now since some Thought Criminal like me has taken the time to thoroughly prove statistically just how overtly Blacks have been favored in sports.

Drunk White Fans have such man crushes on their Black sports heroes that the number of violent crimes they are accused of is meaningless. Like Patton Oswalt’s character in The Fan, there is never a moral component to their idolatry. Oswalt’s character was severely injured himself by his Black idol, and yet his primary concern was that the player not be suspended. He didn’t have to worry about him being prosecuted, because Black athletes are almost never prosecuted. And when they are, a jury that probably includes both Drunk White Fans and Blacks who are in racial solidarity with them, invariably find them not guilty. Think of Kobe Bryant’s rape case, where for the first time in history, the rape victim’s name was reported by the media. Not a peep from the feminists about this. Bryant was Black. They would have objected if the accused player was just some “slow ass White Boy.” Below is Cam Newton, former NFL player whose ridiculous outfits Whites routinely drool over.

Read the Whole Article

The post Exposing the Fraud of Black Athletic ‘Superiority’ appeared first on LewRockwell.

Comments open on YouTube

The post SSRIs and School Shootings, FDA Corruption, and Why Everyone on Anti-Depressants Is Totally Unhappy appeared first on LewRockwell.

“We are headed into darker times. War could return to Iran at any moment.” – Max Blumenthal, founder of The Grayzone news site

“We are in extremely dangerous times. You need to know the truth but you act on it at your own peril.” – Judge Andrew Napolitano, host of the podcast “Judging Freedom”

Both of these dire predictions were made at an event called Icarus Fest sponsored by The Grayzone and featuring its courageous journalists. Nonetheless, there was hope in the 150 or so dissident voices united to support peace and end US funding for the wars in Ukraine and Gaza. Attendees traveled to the Williams Center Rutherford, New Jersey from all over the US including Seattle for a day of discussion and Q&A. The audience was also united in its admiration for the brave correspondents who spoke. Later that evening comedian, broadcaster, podcaster and fellow dissident voice for peace Jimmy Dore performed. His stand-up act proved by speaking truth to power and fiercely defending the First Amendment, he is carrying on the legacy of the late, great George Carlin.

With Judge Napolitano’s presence, The Grayzone event was an opportunity for the populist progressive/socialist “left” and populist libertarian/constitutionist “right” to bypass divide and rule strategy of the oligarchs to unite for peace and diplomacy in opposition to Zionist, British and global elitist control over US foreign policy. These destructive forces are waging wars attempting to prop up the failing empire and the biased, controlled media manufacturing consent with its pro-war propaganda. A week earlier, Judge Napolitano moderated a panel featuring Blumenthal and his wife, journalist Anya Parampil, at the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity “Blueprint for Peace” conference held near, as Blumenthal calls it, “the corridor of death” lined with the paid conspirators of the military industrial complex.

Event topics were Ukraine, NATO and the War for Eurasia; Greater Israel: Where Does It End?; and American Empire in the Age of Trump. Thaddeus Russell moderated the panel on Ukraine comprised of Wyatt Reed and Kit Klarenberg. Grayzone journalists have been enduring “horrendous” circumstances attempting to cover the war in Donbas. Dissent is treated as treason, and accordingly, these reporters have been de-banked, arrested, censored, and accused of being terrorists or agents for Iran, Russia, and/or China. Americans are mostly ignorant about the war run by elites for the empire, Russell stated, and US foreign policy has been ruled by an irrational fear of Russia dating back for centuries. Interestingly, he pointed out Russia supported the American Revolution. The concept of total world dominance is a British idea and Russia is standing in the way of complete conquest by these globalists. It is not for us to decide how Russia handles the LBGTQ+ issue, one speaker noted.

Greater Israel panel moderator Sabby Sabs said the hatred of Palestinians is embedded in the culture in Israel. Israeli policy is putting Jews at risk with its celebration of genocide, Katie Halper said, and called those denying the murder of Palestinian children “morally bankrupt, foul ghouls. “ Being anti-Zionist is a key to her identity as a Jew, she noted, but anti-Zionist Jews are dismissed as self-hating. Journalists attempting to report the atrocities in Gaza have been killed. Blumenthal astutely noted Zionism is a messianic secular movement enforced by people who don’t believe in God yet they believe God gave them the land. No change in US policy is possible until AIPAC registers as an agent for a foreign government. Jeffrey Loffredo related details about his arrest and interrogation by Israel, how he was given emasculating pink sandals to wear and consigned to solitary confinement, and how he endured his regular requirement to subject himself to interrogation by the Israeli military.

During the panel on empire, Judge Napolitano, who described himself as an “antiwar and anti-empire fanatic” asked why no viable antiwar movement exists in America. There is currently no draft, responded Christian Parenti. Conscription, along with the evening network news’ exposure of the atrocities as well as the bodies of US soldiers in flag-draped coffins, ended public support for the Vietnam War. Aaron Mate blamed former President Obama who told protesters to go home; the DNC which concocted the Russiagate fable after the 2016 presidential election, and Hillary Clinton who refused to criticize the neoliberals. “A sub-culture of total intolerance spirals down to irrelevant issues,” he noted, while critical issues like war are submerged. Anya Parampil, citing the Founding Fathers’ non-interventionist perspective, explained why and how Trump is attempting to topple the government in Venezuela. Parenti talked about the unreality of those trying to keep the empire going and the repression of free speech at US universities. Napolitano denounced the arrests of law firm attorneys and the existence of 850 overseas US military bases.

Jimmy Dore passionately ranted in support of free speech and against censorship violating the First Amendment with laws to persecute and censor critics of US foreign policy or Israel. He appeals to his audience to understand they are being manipulated to fight each other when they should unite against the oligarchs to oppose the wars. “We live in an age of spectatorship, not spiritualism,” he said, describing himself as a “lazy Catholic” who has had personal experiences that have given him a knowing he will spiritually live forever.

Grayzone event videos are here.

Related links:

https://thegrayzone.com

https://judgenap.com

https://jimmydore.com

The post Grayzone Event for Peace appeared first on LewRockwell.

My wife, Ellen, and I have danced in many places: in Newark’s Rutgers’ Student Center and law school basement parties and the chic, but short-lived, Club America; also at New York City’s early-80s Danceteria, mid-80s Lincoln Center outdoor Summer Swing and the Nightingale dive bar on the Lower East Side. On our honeymoon, we got down—literally—in a very dark, subterranean Costa Rican concept disco called El Tunel Del Tiempo (The Time Tunnel). Two years later, we danced under moonlight and palm trees alongside a Vieques, Puerto Rico oceanfront patio/bar. We also carried on at the painfully-loud Rodeo Bar New Year’s Eve 1990 party with Ellen carrying a bellyful of a baby who became a rock drummer.

Decades later, kids raised, we Salsa-ed to an almost deafening ten-person band with a horn section in a packed, small Medellin club called Son Havana. Perhaps most memorably, we bopped until we almost dropped in some unfancy, yet exotic places in Nicaragua. On our first trip there, we did so in a big, circular, open-air, but crowded, corrugated zinc-roofed pavilion surrounded by a 20-foot-high chain-link fence in an urban shanty town at Masaya’s edge. In the mountain city of Matagalpa during a subsequent visit, the club had a dance floor aside a ceiba tree left in place and allowed to grow through a gap cut into another metal roof. It rained through that gap the night we were there, so we danced some of the time in an indoor/outdoor downpour.

We’ve often stuck out like sore thumbs, for decades by complexion and more recently, by age as well. We have some great memories from these nights: clapping or howling along with people in crowded, loud, dark places often to jumpy, unfamiliar tunes in Spanish with some incongruous stuff like a Donna Summer medley thrown in, as other partiers in these crowded, dark venues surrounded us and signaled us to bust moves inside their human circle. These experiences aren’t stories with a quirky plot or a funny ending. Rather, in addition to the affection shared between Ellen and I, there was, with the larger group, shared motion, exuberance, mutual affinity and some amusing visuals and comments.

Are we great dancers? Not really, though one night in a large, waterfront Gloucester, Mass bar with a funky jazz band, of my friends labeled me “the best, straight, white, male dancer” he had seen. In life, one’s happiness often depends on who one is compared, or compares oneself, to. Despite all of TV’s trivia, singing and dancing contests, not every human activity needs to be a competition. When one goes all-in, what was once fun can turn into work.

Ellen and I have a basic sense of rhythm, coordination, and a core, cross-genre repertoire and we’re comfortable moving to music. Ellen’s a better dance follower than I’m a leader. As in life, she knows what I’m trying to communicate. As some—mostly women—say, women have to do everything men do, only backward and in heels. Though I can skate backward in circles in ice hockey skates and hardly any women can. So take that!

I feel the same way about dance as my brother’s artist friend, whom I mentioned last week, felt about the vaxxes: it’s something I’m supposed to do. Not as, with the vaxx, a concession to social pressure or some misplaced sense of duty, but instead, to celebrate my love for Ellen, community with unknown others and gratefulness for having vital and flexible bodies with unspecified, yet inevitable expiration dates.

—

This past Friday evening, Ellen and I went to a county/arts group-sponsored outdoor “Salsa by the Bay” in Perth Amboy, New Jersey’s hillside Bayview Park. Perth Amboy is a densely populated, de-industrialized city of 55,000. Most of its old houses have small, if any, yards. A belt of highways and former factories—now warehouses—set its western and northern edges. Raritan Bay makes up the city’s eastern and southern boundaries. Perth Amboy’s location isolates it from the many other cheek-to-jowl cities and towns in the New York Metropolitan Area. It’s alone in a crowd.

Friday had the best weather of any day/night this summer. Before the eight-person band began to play, we sat on a park bench on a small hill, basked in a light breeze and gazed out at the wide bay and the sailboats in the marina in the foreground below as the sun dropped beyond the hill horizon behind us. Once you get a few miles from the Turnpike, New Jersey isn’t as ugly as they say.

The band played from nearly sunset until after dark. We danced nearly the whole hour-and-a-half. We were rusty and didn’t remember the full array of moves we had developed while, during peak Scamdemic, we did Saturday Night Salsa in our living room.

While those nights were pleasing, it’s much better to be among a crowd of people who are actively on the floor. The women dress up and make-up to varying degrees. Some of them arrive in groups and happily dance with each other until men approach them and ask them to. Men don’t dance with each other. At least in the places we go to.

Being in a public dance setting clearly displays the pleasing and sometimes amusing physical and social differences between men and women. Life is more real and enjoyable when we don’t pretend that women and men are the same.

On Friday night, about 200 people, 80% Latin, 10% Black and 10% White, stepped the Salsa in close proximity on the impromptu floor of stone pavers about 100 feet in front of, and 30 feet in elevation above, the gazebo/bandstand, which had the bay behind it. Though no one was drinking, everyone was smiling. There were even a few kids under five bouncing to the music at their parents’ knees. No one wore a mask.

I hadn’t been in a public dance setting since before the Scamdemic began. Seeing so much motion and joy was beautiful. It sucked that such gatherings were forbidden during a contrived crisis.

—

At any decent party, as on Friday, many people pair off in close proximity to other couples. On that evening, I thought briefly, and with derisive detachment, of all of the microbes being exchanged as dancers held hands, wrapped their arms around and breathed on each other and those nearby. No one seemed to be thinking about germs. Microbes have always been here. Before 2020, clubgoers never hid from these. They didn’t even consider them.

It’s not clear when or why the public largely, though belatedly, abandoned its Covophobia. It’s not as if The Virus—whatever it was or wasn’t—has disappeared. Some people are still said to be dying from it. I learned the day before Salsa Night that one of my relatives, vaxxed to the max, has just “gotten Covid” for at least the third time. In 2021, this same person stormed out of a room I had entered without a mask. She didn’t return until after I went home an hour later. Warning to re-entrants: I might’ve recklessly left some germs behind. Though somehow, I never got sick.

Any remotely healthy person could have safely danced at close range and/or with strangers any time during the Scamdemic. Dancing is a fun, low-cost Covid survival test. If you could move your body on two feet for ten minutes, The Virus couldn’t kill you. If you could dance even a little, you were far better protected from SARS-CoV-2 than was the most isolated, masked, vaxxed and boosted person who couldn’t. This had, by mid-March, 2020, already been proven by research. Why didn’t officials “Follow The Science?”

Since 2020, some people have aged out of salsa-bility, as Ellen and I soon might. During the past five years, as they were told to hide from others and wait for The Virus to be “crushed,” and their joints or organs worsened from age or inactivity, many aging but still-breathing individuals missed their last chances to do various enjoyable, physical and mental health-building activities like this. No one at any age should have forgone fun because the government and media effected a politically and economically-driven Scam. Life is short: ain’t nobody got time to waste.

—

I’m not sure about this but I suspect that some of the males and females at Friday’s Salsa by the Bay either danced with people they knew, or with strangers, and went home and put their bodies even more closely together than they did while the band had blared and its members repeatedly and characteristically sang “Bai-le! Bai-le!”

Such unions often occur in the post-dance darkness. I speak from some experience here. When they do, even more microbes are exchanged. Oh, the humanity!

On this germy theme, some officials who demanded that everyone quarantine themselves were caught having extramarital affairs during the lockdowns. New York City’s “Covid Czar” admitted that he participated in orgies. To civilians who didn’t already know that officials were playing them, such arrogant conduct should have underscored how phony the Covid response was.

If disease statistics are ever again to be believed, STD rates dipped for a few months in March-June 2020. Some attributed this to decreased testing. Regardless, thereafter, these rates continued their years of increase, especially among gay males. STD rates among that demographic far outnumber those among the general populace.

Public health officials selectively tolerate health risk, based on political correctness. If public health officials really want to crush infectious diseases, why don’t they police-tape the doors on gay bars?

They might say that doing so wouldn’t stop such interaction; sex seekers, gay or straight, will just default to hook-up websites. Though just as Covid dissidents’ messages were censored as “misinformation,” public health officials could block internet hook-up sites “to advance the public interest.” Why don’t they apply, to STDs, the core Covid Era principle that any intervention is “worth it, if it just saves one life?”

For that matter, how did a government that not only endorses but profits from sales of alcohol, tobacco and now, marijuana, justify locking down, masking, testing and injecting an entire society when only the old and baseline unhealthy were at any— and microscopic—risk?

Those who still think the Covid interventions were driven by the public health concerns of earnest experts should wake up and realize that they fell for a massive lie.

Read the Whole Article

The post Dance Floors and Coronamania appeared first on LewRockwell.

I continue to believe that it is more important to watch what Donald Trump does rather than focus on what he says. However, his remarks during the meeting of his cabinet earlier this week regarding negotiations to end the war in Ukraine are alarming and merit attention. When asked about Sergei Lavrov’s comment that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is not legitimate, Donald Trump dismissed the statement, saying:

It doesn’t matter what they say. Everybody’s posturing. It’s all bullshit, okay. Everybody’s posturing.

He characterized Lavrov’s remarks—and the broader Kremlin rhetoric on Zelensky’s legitimacy—as meaningless showmanship, emphasizing that such claims should not obstruct peace efforts. Trump did not directly defend Zelensky, but instead focused on downplaying the significance of Russia’s statements and suggested that “everyone is just putting on a show” in ongoing negotiations.

I believe that Trump genuinely believes this, and he is dangerously mistaken. President Putin and Foreign Minister Lavrov are not posturing when they try to explain to clueless westerners that they do not believe that Zelensky is the legitimate President of Ukraine. While Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy did not explicitly “cancel” the presidential election, as Ukrainian law prohibits holding elections during martial law, which has been in effect since Russia’s full-scale invasion on February 24, 2022, the reality from the Russian perspective is that a negotiated agreement with Zelensky could easily be overturned or rejected once Ukraine holds the required election.

The scheduled presidential election, expected in March or April 2024, was automatically postponed due to this legal restriction under Article 19 of Ukraine’s “On the Legal Regime of Martial Law,” which bans presidential, parliamentary, and local elections during martial law. Martial law has been extended in 90-day intervals by the Verkhovna Rada (Ukraine’s parliament), with the latest extension as of July 2025 lasting until November 5, 2025.

Based on Zelensky’s multiple public remarks since his last meeting with Trump at the White House, it is clear that he is completely disinterested in reaching a peace agreement with Russia.

Stephen Bryen has just published a new piece on his Substack, and it provides an explanation for Zelensky’s recalcitrance… NATO is going to attack Russia. Steve writes:

While Putin has flown off to meet with his two buddies, Xi Jinping and Kim Jong Un, in China on an unprecedented four day jaunt, NATO, with full US backing, is stepping up its effort to hand the Russian army a major defeat and, following that, introducing NATO troops to “stabilize” Ukraine.

What is the evidence? First and very noticeable is the US decision to ship 3,350 missiles to Ukraine, ostensibly to be paid for (someday?) by the Europeans (which ones is not defined). These are known as Extended Range Attack Munitions (ERAM), a type of air launched cruise missile missile. The Aviationist reports that “Ukrainian Air Force’s F-16s, Mirage 2000s and its fleet of Russian-origin MiG-29s, Su-25s and Su-27s would be able to operate it. This new weapon would be an addition to the AASM Hammer and GBU-39 SDB already employed by Ukrainian fighters.”

According to open source intelligence, ERAMs have a range of 250 miles. However, that is the range once launched by an aircraft. Washington says it opposes Ukrainian missile attacks on Russian territory, and while it is restricting the use of long range HIMARS, it is not restricting the use of ERAM. Reportedly ERAM carried a 500 lb. warhead, far larger than any Ukrainian UAV and more than double any of the different HIMARS missiles (M31 Utility Warhead, ATACMS warhead). It may be that ERAMs can be fielded with cluster munitions, although much about the ERAM is uncertain.

Ignore what Trump says, watch what he does. Deploying ERAMs is not a gesture of peace or de-escalation. While it is possible that this action was taken without Trump’s knowledge, now that the information is public he has not countermanded the order.

Steve goes on in his article (I encourage you to read it in its entirety) to highlight the faulty assumptions that NATO planners and leaders are making:

NATO has understood Russia’s use of North Korean troops as an admission that Russia faces manpower shortages and instability in the Russian army, and that Russia is taking heavy casualties in the Ukraine war. NATO may be reading Putin’s statements that he has no intention of attacking Europe now or in future as an admission that he cannot attack Europe with an army that is too small and one that has been broken by the Ukraine war. Part of the pushback can be found in the Saratoga Foundation report, “A Systems View of Russia’s Early Failure in Ukraine.”

Now Russian sources are reporting two developments that indicate that a new offensive will soon materialize, heavily supported by NATO, and aimed at Crimea.

Those sources say that the US and its NATO partners have significantly increased overhead intelligence gathering preparing for the coming attack.

Once again we have Western leaders — both military and political — wrongly interpreting Russia’s execution of a special military operation as a sign of weakness. The belief that Russia is suffering “manpower shortages and instability” is beyond ridiculous. During the course of the last 42 months, Russia has doubled the size of its army and is now conducting multiple offensive operations in Zaporhyzhia, Dniepropetrovsk, Donetsk, Kharkiv and Sumy. Even if we accept as true the false Western claims about Russia suffering massive casualties, the fact remains that even with such losse Russia has 1.3 million men in uniform and carrying arms. Instead of being “broken,” the Russian army has enhanced its capabilities and developed new techniques, especially with the use of drones, that far exceed anything NATO is capable of doing.

Besides conducting the ground war, Russia continues to enjoy a lopsided advantage in the use of missiles and drones. It has carried out massive strikes on missile production facilities and other key logistic nodes in the past week, and shows no sign of weakness on that front.

A NATO-backed attack on Crimea will put increased pressure on President Putin to shift from the Special Military Operation to full war footing. NATO’s inability to supply Ukraine with something as simple as artillery shells is just one indicator of NATO’s impotence if it decides to up the ante with Russia.

This article was originally published on Sonar21.

The post Donald Trump Still Does Not Understand the Russia’s Position Regarding Ukraine appeared first on LewRockwell.

Ever since I first encountered the medical field, something struck me as off about their relentless focus on blood pressure. Before long, I began to notice that the blood pressures the same acquaintances (e.g., relatives or friends) shared with me varied immensely. As I was pondering this, a long-time spiritual teacher shared with me their belief that the relentless focus on blood pressure was due to it being much easier to measure than blood perfusion (healthy blood flow).

Then, as I became more acquainted with the medical field, I began to notice a consistent pattern—whenever a drug existed that could treat a number or statistic, as the years went by, the acceptable number kept on being narrowed, making more and more people eligible to take the drugs that treated the number.

For example, as I discussed recently, once the statins drugs entered the market (which unlike their predecessors, could effectively lower cholesterol), the acceptable blood cholesterol levels kept on being lowered, and before long almost everyone was told they would die from a heart attack unless they started a statin—despite statins have an almost non-existing mortality benefit (e.g., taking them for 5 years at best makes you live 3-4 days longer) and causing (often severe) side effects for roughly 20% of users. Broadly recommending these drugs hence appears unconscionable, but as I showed in that article, these unjustifiable guidelines were a product of clever pharmaceutical marketing and targeted bribery of public officials.

In this article, I will attempt to show how something similar happened in the field of blood pressure. As this is an immensely controversial position to take (e.g., measuring and documenting blood pressure is one of the most routine procedures during a medical visit), I’ve done my best to clearly present the evidence for this perspective so you can make your own determination.

Conventional Blood Pressure Perspectives

Since blood vessels are elastic structures filled with fluid, that fluid holds them under pressure. Blood pressure, in turn, is typically measured by determining how much external force is needed to exceed the artery’s pressure and compress it so that blood no longer flows through it. Low blood pressure (hypotension) is a problem because it prevents blood from reaching the areas where it’s needed (e.g., orthostatic hypotension or POTS describes a common situation where people become lightheaded as they stand up due to insufficient blood being pushed into the brain), but in most cases, medicine instead focuses on the consequences of high blood pressure. Within the existing model, those consequences are:

•Weakened blood vessels become more likely to break open and leak as higher blood pressure pushes against them. This for instance is why Emergency Rooms aggressively lower the blood pressure of patients who show up with symptoms of “hypertensive emergency” such as a severe headache and a significantly elevated blood pressure. Likewise, whenever a critical blood vessel ruptures (e.g., the aorta or one in the brain), once the bleed has been confirmed, the first step in managing it is to lower the patient’s blood pressure (so less blood leaks out) after which they are sent to surgery.

•Excessive pressure on the arteries strains and damages them, causing the lining of the vessels to become damaged and gradually develop atherosclerosis.

•Excessive blood pressure damages the internal organs (termed end-organ damage), leading to premature failure and early death (e.g., from a heart attack or kidney failure).

Because of this, high blood pressure is viewed as one of the greatest preventable causes of cardiovascular disease and thus a chief focus of all medical visits is ensuring a patient achieves a sufficiently lowered blood pressure.

Unfortunately—that chain of logic has quite a few gaps in it.

Variable Blood Pressure

Blood pressure (BP) is immensely variable. For example, pressures at the periphery (where BP is typically measured), which when studied is found to vary by around 14 points. This thus frequently leads to individuals being erroneously diagnosed with hypertension and put on blood pressure lowering medications despite having normal blood pressures (leading to those medications making them hypotensive).

This phenomenon in fact is so common (constituting 15-30% of hypertension diagnoses) that it is often referred to as “White Coat Hypertension,” a name derived from the fact stress is one of the things that commonly elevates blood pressure, and since visiting a doctor is a stressful experience, many patients hence have temporarily elevated blood pressures there. Because of this, the guidelines suggest having patients who are diagnosed with hypertension have multiple measurements to confirm it (e.g., with home blood pressure monitoring), but unfortunately, this often does not happen.

Note: one common source of error when measuring blood pressure is the wrong sized cuff being used for the patient. Another is that patients frequently have significantly different blood pressures in each arm. This helps to explain why it is commonly estimated that 25% of those diagnosed with hypertension do not have it.

Likewise, there is a surprisingly poor correlation between peripheral blood pressure and the central blood pressure inside the aorta. For example, one large study found a significant difference between the blood pressure within the aorta and the arm, and that the aorta pressure had a much stronger correlation to the likelihood of cardiovascular disease.
Note: different classes of blood pressure medications have very different effects on central versus peripheral blood pressure.

What Affects Blood Pressure?

If fluid at a set pressure tries to move through a tube, as the tube shrinks, the pressure it creates (e.g., on the walls of the tube) will increase, while if the tube enlarges, the pressure it exerts will decrease. The body in turn continually controls where blood in the body goes by changing the heart rate and fully or partially constricting the arteries, allowing it to shunt blood to where it is most needed (e.g., by dilating arteries in that area).

Blood pressure is thus a product of two factors: the amount of blood in the arteries and the constriction or relaxation of the arteries containing it.

Note: since arterial BP is greater than venous BP, it’s what’s measured externally (as veins compress long before arteries do and only arterial blood has a signature pulsatile wave created by the heartbeat).

Since each beat of the heart pushes blood into the arteries and hence increases the pressure within them, two different blood pressure values exist—the baseline pressure (known as the diastolic pressure) and the pressure when the heart contracts (known as systolic pressure). The blood pressure values you see (e.g., 140/90), represent that maximum and minimum.

Note: one reason why this stretching is important is because when the vessels contract back to their normal size once the systolic pressure fades, that recoil pushes blood further along into the circulation.

Blood pressures lowering medications hence work by loosening the arterial walls, reducing the total blood in circulation, or weakening the contraction of the heart (or through some combination of those effects).

What Causes High Blood Pressure?

Most cases of high blood pressure (90-95% of them) are what is known as “essential hypertension” or “primary hypertension” which is a fancy (and rarely questioned) way of saying “elevated blood pressure without a known cause.” More importantly, the fact there is no known cause for most cases of elevated blood pressure has been a widespread belief in medicine for decades. Typically, the only cause we hear about is “eating salt,” despite the fact that the most detailed review of this subject found that drastic salt reduction typically results in less than a 1% reduction in blood pressure.

For the remaining 5-10% (known as secondary hypertension), recognized causes include reduced blood flow to the kidneys (which sets off a signal to raise the blood pressure because the kidney believes there isn’t enough blood perfusion), sleep apnea, or having a rare tumor which dumps large amounts of adrenaline into the blood (which constricts blood vessels and increases the heart rate).

Note: a kidney (especially the left) being in the wrong position (which is quite common) can functionally compress the renal artery. However, until an actual stenosis (narrowing) of the artery, this can be quite difficult to identify with conventional measurements. Additionally, as I showed in a recent article on the importance of sleep, poor sleep is immensely damaging to cardiovascular health and those effects extended to blood pressure (e.g., one study found a single night of partial sleep deprivation raised SBP [systolic blood pressure] by 6, another found SBP raised by 6 and DBP by 3 while a third study found it raised SBP 4.5 and DBP by 2.6 alongside using fMRI imaging to show it also impaired the brain’s control of blood vessel function).

Since the cause of hypertension isn’t known, medicine thus focuses on specific risk factors that are known to be associated with it such as being over 65, having diabetes, eating too much salt, insomnia, obesity, not exercising, stress, being an alcoholic or other people in your family having high blood pressure. Keep these risk factors in mind as you read the next section.

Note: of these causes, I and many of my colleagues believe one of the most under-appreciated ones is anxiety, as frequently, effectively treating anxiety (which is discussed further here) can resolve a case of high blood pressure, which would otherwise receive (often indefinite) pharmacologic treatment.

Read the Whole Article

The post Unmasking The Great Blood Pressure Scam appeared first on LewRockwell.

Three recent peer-reviewed studies, including two published this week, provide “IRREFUTABLE Grounds for Immediate Market Withdrawal of COVID-19 mRNA Injections,” according to a leading expert on the dangers of mRNA vaccines.

“Two MAJOR papers were just published in the past 48 hours, building directly on our recent landmark study,” wrote Nicolas Hulscher, an epidemiologist and administrator at the McCullough Foundation.

“Together, the international evidence has converged: mRNA injections are unsafe, ineffective, contaminated, and in violation of international law,” Hulscher said.

One study published this week, “COVID-19 Injections: Harms and Damages, a Non-Exhaustive Conclusion,” found that the injections contain engineered elements in violation of the Biological Weapons Convention. The study found that the COVID-19 jabs had damaging effects on recipients’ cardiovascular, reproductive, and immune systems:

• Cardiovascular system: strong links to myocarditis, heart attacks, strokes, and arrhythmias
• Reproductive system: high rates of pregnancy loss, stillbirths, and neonatal deaths
• Immune system: collapse marked by viral reactivation, autoimmune disease, and cancer acceleration

The second study published this week, “Regulatory and Safety Assessment of COVID-19 mRNA-LNP Genetic Vaccines in Japan: Evidence for Revocation of Approval and Market Withdrawal,” noted that 103 million people in that country were injected without any nationwide safety investigation or long-term monitoring.

Researchers concluded that the COVID-19 shots were “misclassified as ‘vaccines’  rather than gene therapy products, allowing the product to bypass stricter regulatory standards.

“Critical studies (were) never conducted,” according to the study authors, who documented legal and ethical breaches, including concealment of harms, suppression of mortality data, and approvals granted without clinical trials. 

The two new studies confirm a report earlier this year produced by Hulscher, Dr. Mary Talley Bowden, and Dr. Peter McCullough, published in the journal Science, Public Health Policy and the Law, that claimed risks from COVID-19 vaccines “far outweigh theoretical benefits.”

“COVID-19 vaccination campaigns around the globe have failed to meet fundamental standards of safety and efficacy, leading to mounting evidence of significant harm,” the researchers explained.

More than 81,000 physicians, scientists, researchers, and concerned citizens, 240 elected government officials, 17 professional public health and physician organizations have demanded withdrawal of the COVID-19 vaccines from the market.

The total number of COVID-19 vaccine deaths reported to VAERS-adjusted deaths exceeds 589,000 in the U.S. and 17 million around the globe.

“Together, these three studies converge on the same conclusion: Immediate global withdrawal of COVID-19 mRNA injections is essential to prevent further loss of life,” Hulscher declared on X.

“Now is the time to stand on the right side of history — or be remembered by future generations as complicit in one of the greatest tragedies of our time,” he added.

This article was originally published on Lifesite News.

The post New Studies Provide ‘Irrefutable’ Grounds for Immediate Withdrawal of COVID-19 mRNA Shots appeared first on LewRockwell.

A 23 year old transgender freak fired into a church killing two children and wounding many. The concern expressed by Jacob Frey, mayor of Minneapolis?  “The shooting should not be an excuse for people to direct hate at our trans community.”

The unexamined question is why did random shootings of strangers appear for the first time in 1966? There was no such thing in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. At Georgia Tech students had guns in their dorm rooms and fraternity houses. At UVa students had guns and whiskey in their dorm rooms. No one was shot. Today guns are prohibited on campuses, and there are constant shootings that have spread to work places, shopping malls, and churches.

Clearly, something has changed to cause behavior, which my generation never would have considered, to become increasingly common. What is the cause?

Is it the endless number of vaccinations? The antidepressants needed? My generation did not have the vaccinations and antidepressants and did not need them. Is it the distancing from God caused by endless liberal attacks on Christianity? Is it the milieu of hatred created by endless denunciations? Is it the lack of restraint and self-control that modern child raising produces?

It doesn’t help to understand what has happened to blame guns. Karl Marx would scoff at the reification of inanimate objects by liberals. As long as causes, such as gun control, use the shootings for their agenda, we will not obtain insight into what has produced a 23 year old person who can fire away at children in a church.

The replacement of moral and responsible behavior with irrational murder for no visible purpose desperately needs explanation. Has Satan taken over, thereby removing morality as a constraint on imperfect humans?

This is an interesting question. Is it a question of pills, vaccinations, broken homes, the 2nd Amendment, or any other stock explanation, or are we, weakened as we are by the decline in religious belief, faced with the triumph of evil over good?

Watching the world’s indifference to the Israeli extermination of the Palestinian people, has Satan decided that now is his time?

Has Satan made a good decision? Is there any moral strength anywhere in the world capable of resisting Evil?

Where is the effort to abolish nuclear weapons which can abolish Earth?

Is the traditional alliance of Israel with Satan taking us into The End Times?

The post Are the End Times Upon Us? appeared first on LewRockwell.

“Today, many people use psychology as a new form of mysticism: as a substitute for reason, cognition and objectivity, as an escape from the responsibility of moral judgment, both in the role of judge and judged. Psychologizing is condemning or excusing specific individuals on the grounds of their psychological problems, real or invented, in the absence of, or contrary to, factual evidence.” – Ayn Rand, The Psychology of Psychologizing, 1971.

The professional cognoscenti class can’t seem to figure out Donald Trump’s “personality”, as if every world and domestic conflict is implausibly a consequence of Trump’s psychological dynamics, bombastic speech outbursts on “X” and his frequent use of the working-class word for horse dung. Even the highly educated commentariat at libertarian Judge Andrew Napolitano’s “Judging Freedom”online forum have joined the fashionable trend of attributing their perception of Trump’s moral failings to his personality. What follows is an attempt at understanding Trump, not a defense of Trump. (Disclosure: I did not vote for Trump in 2024).

Trump’s Knowledge Class Psychologizing Critics

One of the most recent attempts to explain Trump comes from former British intelligence officer and diplomat, Alastair Crooke who asserts Trump is not a self-made man but has a magnetic “Jungian” personality. By “Jungian” (from psychologist Carl Jung) Crooke means motivated by mythical archetypes, but not in the same authoritarian mold of Hitler or bombastic Mussolini. But no one is self-made, least of all presidents. The most un-self-made US president was the mentally normal university president Woodrow Wilson who gained office by an election rigged by the Bank of London, proceeded to abolish constitutional government by the people, established the Federal Reserve and forced isolationist America into the unnecessary WW1, entirely fought to keep the Germans from aligning with Russia against Britain (see Gerry Docherty, Hidden History: The Secret Origins of the First World War, 2014 and John Maxwell Hamilton, Manipulating the Masses: Woodrow Wilson and the Birth of American Propaganda, 2024).

Brazilian journalist Pepe Escobar, apparently echoing his BRIC’s sentiments, says Trump is an ‘incendiary’ self-absorbed all-powerful god-like Roman emperor who is a moral failure (BRICS, Brazil, Russia, India, China new world order).

Eminent former US Army officer and conservative Douglas MacGregor asserts Trump is impulsive and is not the person we voted for and is controlled by the oligarchs he surrounded himself with as well as London and New York banks. MacGregor asserts that what Trump promised during the 2024 election is all myth. Moreover, MacGregor says Trump is deluded to think that he must sell 1,000 US cruise missiles to Ukraine to attack civilian targets in cities in Russia to bring an end to the war (i.e., war crimes). But Trump can only go so far in gainsaying powerful senator Lindsey Graham, Congress and the Military Industrial Complex.  MacGregor says Trump is coerced by Britain’s delusions of grandeur that they can exert the same power they had as a Neo-Colonial Empire pre-1945.  But Trump rudely left Europe’s top leaders standing in a hallway for 45 minutes outside his office before he held court over the future of NATO with them. Was it theater?

Nuclear weapons inspector Scott Ritter says Trump is a pretend tough-guy bluffer and a narcissistic Neocon war hawk who continues to indirectly fund the Ukraine War despite his campaign promises to end it.  Ritter sees Trump as Netanyahu’s lackey, but Netanyahu secretly takes orders from the Bank of London. Israel is not a self-made sovereign nation but was formed by London banks to control and plunder oil-producing states in the Middle East. Ritter says Trump doesn’t understand Russia, but does Ritter understand Israel is synthetic and weaponized?  Israel is like the scapegoat child in a dysfunctional family who must do the “acting out” (behave badly) for European family elites and banks. Ritter is aware, but doesn’t mention, that should Trump refuse to countenance Britain he may end up like the other US presidents removed by British banks: Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley and JFK (witness the US Civil War, see Xavient Haze, The Suppressed History of American Banking: How Big Banks Fought Jackson, Killed Lincoln and Caused the Civil War, 2016).

Obama Pentagon advisor Col. Larry Wilkerson says Israel is “our tool but we make it look like we are their tool”.  He says this deceptive role reversal is insanity. According to Wilkerson, Trump is poorly informed and has no independent advisors outside the Deep State (like himself) and follows junk advice. But Wilkerson acknowledges Trump’s instincts are to force Britain to fight its own wars. Wilkerson says Britain is living out its imperial dreams through the US as if it were still an empire.

Ayn Rand’s Psychology of Psychologizing and Trump’s Role Conflicts

One might think Trump must have a split or multiple personality disorder to garner all these critical psychological caricatures. To get a more accurate Polaroid-like real time picture of Trump we must abandon the American-Freudian tendency to describe politicians using psychoanalytic cliches.  This is why libertarian Ayn Rand opposed evaluating politicians by psychologizing and mythologizing, preferring  ‘objectivism’ instead in her novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged.

A conflicting social role framework is better than pop psychology from which to understand Trump in the circumstances he finds himself in circa 2025. The Big Picture circumstances involve the weaning of America off its alliances with the former European Colonial World Order (Britain, Netherlands, France, Germany) who are faced with bankruptcy and have instigated wars to capture the spoils of Russia, Ukraine and Gaza to rescue themselves.

One need not embrace the notions that Trump “trumps” his opponents with superior 4-D Chess skills, is a religious messiah, or has an ingrained pathological personality.  Rather, Trump’s self, like our own selves, is not solid or fixed and moves from one expected situation and audience to another, called role alternation. If one wants to clearly understand Trump, they must enumerate the situations in which there is role conflict between all the roles he must play. But this isn’t done in modern journalism. Instead, short-hand psychological cliches often prevail (see Anton Zijderveld, On Cliches: The Supersedure of Meaning by Function in Modernity (1979).

Unlike the roles most people must fulfill, the role of president is chock full of political opponents, vested interest groups, the deep state and murderous enemies that result in seemingly inconsistent and confusing role behaviors to outsiders and critics. The irreconcilable moral conflicts of the presidency does not necessarily mean that Trump lacks “character”, necessarily has a split personality, or is a psychopath (see sociologist Peter L. Berger on the inconsistency between social roles in his Invitation to Sociology: A Humanistic Perspective, 1963). It means he is all too human. But he is in the proverbial situation of having to serve two-or-more masters at any one time.

This is why even the master teacher of how one sometimes must do evil, Niccolo Machiavelli, asserted that rulers must do religious penance for their evil actions in necessary emergency situations. But rulers should also avoid gratuitous public confessions or dramatic displays of their moral guilt. Nonetheless Machiavelli held that penance does not annul ultimate moral culpability for doing evil for which one may lose their soul.  Machiavelli said that evil cannot be wished away or denied, because one can never get away with doing evil under cover of doing good (Niccolo Machiavelli, An Exhortation to Penitence, 1523 and Discourses I:6). However, I rather doubt anyone, outside devout Christians or Muslims, do private penance or confession with respect to the Gaza-Ukraine Wars. Trump may not be a psychopath with no conscience, but he has made it clear he wants to be the “winner”, which opens the door to moral dilemmas.  However, Trump’s ridiculous proposal to develop Gaza as a resort is interpreted to be a nonserious political diversion to assuage Israel. Same with his pretend bombing of Iran. Ayn Rand’s ethic of “objectivity” offers clarity in such situations but no resolution to the moral dilemma involved.

Trump’s Situation Box and Split Speech

Moreover, Trump is subtly re-aligning the US with the new economic order of BRICS by condemning Russia and China in public while otherwise ingratiating himself with Putin and Jinping. Does speaking tough to appease the military and industrial complex while speaking backstage with Russia and China reflect a “multiple personality disorder”, impulsivity, idiocy or realpolitik? I tend to believe Trump’s contradicting speech is pragmatic but often uses bombastic diversion from his real behind the scenes dealings. Trump’s speech for domestic consumption is not the same as his emissarial discussions.

The charges of Trump being a psychological sock puppet oddly comes at a time when:

• Trump successfully pulled off an ice-breaking summit with Vladimir Putin in Alaska.
• Has temporarily mobilized the National Guard to cut off any repeat of the staged race riots and arson in Blue Cities financed by 25 high tech corporations centered in San Francisco in 2020-2022.
• Has requested the DOJ to pursue RICO anti-racketeering charges against George Soros who used US AID funds to weaponize city prosecutors against the safety of the citizenry.
• Has taken moves to capture control of the Federal Reserve Bank.
• Has exercised his power to rescind $4.9 billion in foreign aid under the USAID program for “woke, weaponized and wasteful” spending authorized by Congress on the grounds it contradicts US interests.
• Trump’s HHS Director Robert Kennedy Jr. fired the new CDC director after which the CDC staff spilled into the street to protest under the rationale of a threat to public health. No AI replacement at CDC.

No, the Ukraine War is not solely about NATO incursions and threats to Russia’s safety. Rather, the war is an attempt by bankrupt Monopoly Capitalist Globalists centered in London to steal and plunder the resources and oil of East Asia and the Southern hemisphere with threats of proxy wars fought by the US and Israel, while threatening nuclear war (see Alex Krainer, The Coming Collapse of Britain, August 2024). Nor is the US-Israel proxy war with Russia in Ukraine a war against “Communism”, as the British manufactured Russian Gulags never happened (see Solzhenit-SPIN: Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag was a Deep State British Lie, Aug. 19) and the Cold War was a hoax (Richard Poe, How the British Invented Communism (and Blamed It on the Jews, 2024). And after 1991, Russia abandoned Soviet style Communism, only to have their markets plundered by Wall Street.

Facetiously, at least Trump has plenty of experience with bankruptcies and turning around money losing casinos!  I’m not a Trump promoter, but psychologizing and mythologizing indicates to me such writers don’t know whether the binds that Trump finds himself in would stand the test of morality or not; they can only psychologize or mythologize it.

Even former advisor to President Reagan, Paul Craig Roberts, in his article “Can Trump Find a Way Out of the Box He is In?” wrongly believes NATO incursions on Russia are the sole blame for the wars when it is more likely they are wars of extraction, piracy and kleptocracy between two systems of world governance: the fast-declining globalist European former colonialist British (American) empire and the emerging BRICs New World Order of cooperation, sovereignty, sound money, and the prospect of peace. Trump apparently wants to eventually transition the US to the BRIC’s bandwagon. My guess is that Rand would find that objectively more virtuous than psychologizing about Trump’s personality.

Is Trump His Own Court Jester?

Ancient Greece and Rome institutionalized the role of the court jesters, satirists and poets such as Juvenal, Horace, Homer and Aesop who had the freedom to talk and mock princes candidly, albeit comically, without punishment. In medieval Britain, there were street jesters such as Punch and Judy that used puppetry and comedy to exercise their license to free speech. The Roman emperor Commodus was his own jester, which may explain the so-called insanity of other Roman rulers such as Caligula and Nero who attempted to transcend the invisible chains that bind rulers from telling the truth. But the French Revolution ended the institutionalized role of the court jester. And Jeffrey Epstein was no court jester!

In his book The History of Court Fools by Dr. John Doran (1858), stories are told of princes who have had to play the role of fool or their own jester.  One such ruler was Nassir of the Netherlands who took delight in puppet shows. At one such puppet show, the king encroached close to the stage and using a pair of scissors cut the strings to the puppets, adding some comedy to the presentation.  Perhaps Trump’s sometimes “unpredictable” actions, bullyism, and crude speech should be understood in the same context of cutting the puppet strings with its “Perfidious Albion” of parasitical and war mongering Great Britain and Western Europe rather than some nebulous clichés of psychological moral failures.

Psychologizing Trump is Useless: Or is Trump His Own Court Jester? Judge Andrew Napolitano, Alastair Crooke, Scott Ritter, Pepe Escobar, Col. Douglas MacGregor, Col. Larry Wilkerson, Ayn Rand The Psychology of Psychologizing, Paul Craig Roberts, Wayne Lusvardi

The post Psychologizing Trump Is Useless: Or Is Trump His Own Court Jester? appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, Tim McGraw.

BuzzFeed

The post 22 Things that are Fading from Society appeared first on LewRockwell.

Click Here:

Eric Zuesse

The post How U.S. Governments Are Imprisoning Opponents of Israel’s Gaza Genocide appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, Tim McGraw.

See here.

The post Just Plain Floats appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, Saleh Abdullah.

MintPress News

The post Epstein, Mossad, and the CIA: Inside the Maxwell Family’s Secret Web appeared first on LewRockwell.

Writes Patrick Foy:

Here’s an especially important and informative update by Professor Mearsheimer on the two outstanding Washington-generated and enabled conflicts, the war over Palestine and the war in Ukraine. Many facts and insights. Both wars I regard as evidence of U.S. foreign policy failure. American neocons and neoliberals, on the other hand, regard them as successes because they demonstrate Washington’s world leadership. As usual, I ask, to what end? The so-called leadership is clearly misguided.

The clips [starting at 17:20 on the video] of Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich addressing his domestic audience about the true nature of Israel’s actions in Gaza support what Mearsheimer and a handful of others have been saying all along. Mearsheimer notes that Smotrich’s, “honest description…stands in marked contrast to what Prime Minister Netanyahu and Israel’s supporters in the United States are saying about Israeli policy. Smotrich’s remarks are both sickening and illuminating.”

True to form, when it comes to Israel and Ukraine, America is being used by the Washington foreign policy elite to further hidden agendas.

The post Stomachs Explains the Genocide… appeared first on LewRockwell.

Vicki Marzullo wrote:

I always said Trump sucks on foreign affairs.

See here

The post We’re going to war appeared first on LewRockwell.

Chris Sullivan wrote:

Hamas might be a really bad outfit, but what does anybody actually know about it?

If I’m not mistaken, Israel and the US helped it get going and it carried the election when the US was so concerned about “democracy.”

I know that the major “news” organizations never report anything accurately or truthfully, so I have no way to decide what Hamas is. The October 7th account has been shown to be largely false and that’s probably the case with everything we’re told.

The post Unthinkable act by MTG, Tucker Carlson against AIPAC, Netanyahu regime appeared first on LewRockwell.