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Thanks, Gail Appel.

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The post Celebrating Murdered Babies appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, Chris Sullivan.

The post Pope Leo XIV’s SUPRISINGLY Good First Homily appeared first on LewRockwell.

Gail Appel wrote:

Jeffrey Epstein was a CIA asset involved in far more than sexual perversion and blackmail.

He was involved in weapons transfers, regime change coups including Ukraine, Libya, Egypt , Syria- Ukraine is the epicenter of the U.S. dirty dealings. And Qatar.

What 95% are getting wrong. Epstein was not working “ for” the Netanyahu government. Epstein was a socialist working with the corrupt globalist left US and the equally, if not more corrupt leftist Israeli traitors to coup Netanyahu and install a Labour regime that would revert to Socialism and graft to become a vassal state without sovereignty. Courtesy of the elites. Every nation state with conservative leaning Nationalist leaders who are anti-open borders, migrant incursion , Islamization, mass immigration and want to preserve the national culture.

India, Hungary, Poland, Slovenia, Italy, El Salvador, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, UAE, Israel, the U.S. with Trump ( and I’m wondering about his intent as of late) are the last of those standing in the way.

See here.

 

The post Ukrainian biolabs operator Metabiota linked to EcoHealth Alliance, World Economic Forum, and Jeffrey Epstein appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, Tim McGraw.

Irish Times

 

The post Did Trump Watch “Escape From Alcatraz” last Sunday and Decide to Open Alcatraz Prison? appeared first on LewRockwell.

Dear Lew, 

They used math to predict the next Pope. 

If I’m understanding this correctly, network science could potentially be used to uncover and expose the “informal networks and coalition-building” behind, say, the Gaza war, or any war for that matter. We wouldn’t have to worry about being accused of being “conspiracy theorists” (or antisemites) if we come out and say who’s behind it. Think how illuminating this could be for the everyday person.

Imagine if network science had existed back in the day: The people behind Jeffrey Epstein’s operation or Cardinal McCarrick’s operation could have been exposed, instead of allowing for these figureheads to be scapegoated, while the net-works continue to work, unabated.

Is network science the future of journalism? Could it succeed where journalism has failed? Perhaps it could put an end to the “conspiracy theory” epithet once and for all. 

Of course, this is assuming these powers are used for good, and not used, instead, to uncover the net-works and snuff out the good works-in-progress of those who oppose the powerful. 

See here.

 

The post An end to the “conspiracy theory” epithet? appeared first on LewRockwell.

David Martin wrote:

I certainly hope Matt Morse is right.  The fact of the matter is that up until a few days ago, Trump was dropping bombs for Israel on Yemen.  It is a good

 that that has ended.  Let’s hope he will also back away from his ethnic cleansing plan for Gaza.

Perhaps Trump is not, as many have feared, too compromised by the Adelson carrot and the Epstein stick to buck the Zionists.

Ethnic Cleansing 

 

The post He’s at his Breaking Point appeared first on LewRockwell.

Writes Patrick Foy:

Tufts doctoral student, Ms. Rumeysa Ozturk, has been ordered released from a Louisiana ICE detention center. Hurrah! You may recall her kidnapping off the street in Somerville, Massachusetts some weeks ago. What a lovely country. 

What was her crime? She co-wrote an op-ed in the college newspaper in support of the Palestinians. That’s it. A thought crime.

Marco Rubio, U.S. Secretary of State, is the front man who ordered and is justifying her abduction and that of other foreign students who have dared to criticize Israel’s ongoing genocide taking place Gaza. Little Marco’s argument is that such conduct (exactly like the once-peaceful protests at Columbia) endangers U.S. foreign policy “goals”. 

I’d love to know what this little man thinks those magnificent goals are. As we know, U.S. foreign policy, such as it is, is subordinated to Israel’s. That was true under Genocide “clueless” Joe and is even more so, if this is possible, under Donald “Israel First” Trump.

[Please refer to SpyFail by James Bamford. Israel’s well-funded covert agents have been working inside the U.S against its college students with complete impunity for years under bipartisan administrations.]

Going far out on the limb, Marco has proclaimed that student dissent and protests undermine the fight against “antisemitism” and even more ridiculously, “…could undermine the Middle East peace process by reinforcing antisemitic sentiment in the region and around the world and ultimately threatening a U.S. foreign policy goal of resolving the Gaza conflict peacefully.” So there! What a joke. 

Can you believe it?  Evidently, the current administration believes the average American Joe is brainwashed and stupid enough to accept it. There is little in the mainstream press, including Trump cheerleading Fox News, to contradict it. 

Besides, what “peace process”?! There is none. It ended a long time ago, perhaps in 2000 with the blowup of the Camp David talks sponsored by “Wooden Indian” Bill Clinton or maybe later at the 2007 Annapolis Conference. Both were a sham. 

As a practical matter, there is now simply no land left for a 2-state solution. None. Israel has taken all of Palestine through occupation, subjugation and genocide. God bless America for making it possible. No wonder college students are angry.

It seems that the current goals of American foreign policy under Trump and Rubio are the obliteration of Gaza with American arms and the establishment of Greater Israel, which would include all of Gaza and the West Bank, as well as East Jerusalem and the Syrian Golan Heights. 

Since there is no known daylight between the indicted war criminal Bibi Netanyahu and President Trump, such a goal is reasonable to assume. It is the next step. With Little Marco leading the charge as spokesman.

 

The post Will “Little Marco” explain, “What Peace Process”? appeared first on LewRockwell.

Volcanic white gold: A lithium deposit valued at $1.5 trillion has been discovered in the U.S.

 

By Jordan Joseph

Earth.com staff writer

McDermitt Caldera in Oregon is attracting attention for what could be one of the largest lithium deposits ever identified in the United States. Many view it as a potential boost for domestic battery production, while local communities voice concern over the impact on wildlife and cultural sites.

The excitement stems from estimates that value the deposit at about $1.5 trillion. Some geologists say these ancient volcanic sediments could contain between 20 and 40 million metric tons of lithium.

Lithium deposit exposes priorities

“This feature is 16 million years old, and we’re making decisions in a matter of years,” said Sammy Castonguay, a geologist at Treasure Valley Community College.

Castonguay’s statement has stirred local debate over how the development might reshape the high desert.

Industry advocates see a path to addressing the ballooning need for electric vehicle batteries.

Neighbors around the caldera and the McDermitt deposit worry that large-scale extraction could damage an ecosystem that supports pronghorn antelope, sage-grouse, and other sensitive species.

The environmental dilemma

A proposal from HiTech Minerals Inc. seeks to add roads and hundreds of wells to test for lithium in Malheur County.

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) once offered a brief window for public comment, which drew criticism from groups who say that’s not enough time to evaluate lasting changes.

The Oregon Chapter of the Sierra Club indicates they support cleaner energy but believe drilling must not come at the expense of fragile habitats.

Some see parallels to disputes in Nevada, where communities have fought lithium ventures they say threaten water sources.

Malheur County is among Oregon’s poorest areas, and certain residents hope new jobs might brighten its economic outlook.

“We need to do this the Oregon way – with full accountability and shared benefits,” said Greg Smith, director of economic development in Malheur County.

Why lithium deposits are so valuable

Cleaner transportation and renewable energy storage have skyrocketed demand for lithium. Its light weight and excellent electrochemical properties make it key in modern battery production.

Global interest in ramping up supply has fueled both exploration and debate. Many want a homegrown source to cut reliance on overseas materials, but critics stress that extracting metals can have lasting ecological implications.

Mining typically means large excavations, chemical processing, and water usage. Press releases and early studies mention concerns about dust, vehicle exhaust, and possible leakage of industrial byproducts.

Meanwhile, some economists argue that lithium’s high market price presents an opportunity to jump-start local development. Balancing those perspectives can be tough for rural communities.

Unique volcanic origins

Past eruptions formed the caldera and left mineral-rich clays across a wide basin. The environment eventually became a semi-arid habitat that’s important for migrating wildlife.

One study found high levels of lithium in these sediments, suggesting an unusually concentrated resource. Analysts say that if extraction methods prove efficient, the U.S. could rank among the top global suppliers of this metal.

The caldera lies near the Oregon-Nevada border. Projects on both sides have followed a similar pattern: geological surveys, land modification, and pilot drilling.

Some scientists emphasize that claystone deposits differ from salt brine operations found in South America.

Processing claystone may require more complex techniques, including acid leaching, which can raise questions about waste disposal and water safety.

Concerns for wildlife and culture

Habitat for sage-grouse is already shrinking, and many local groups fear the consequences of losing more desert terrain.

The region also holds deep cultural value for several Indigenous tribes.

Tribal leaders in nearby areas have contested past proposals by pointing to sites sacred for ceremonies and important for traditional ways of life. As the push for lithium grows, local voices want to remain central in discussions about land use.

Opponents argue that insufficient environmental reviews could harm unique species such as Lahontan cutthroat trout.

Past drilling in high desert regions showed that groundwater tables can be affected by large-scale operations. Proponents, though, say modern techniques and strong oversight may mitigate many risks.

Mixed signals on lithium’s future

Experts note that the caldera deposit could give the U.S. a competitive advantage in battery supply. At the same time, non-governmental organizations believe short-term profit shouldn’t overshadow the ecological and historical wealth found in Oregon’s high desert.

Mining companies emphasize their intent to follow federal standards and incorporate feedback from local communities. Yet friction persists over whether that outreach is genuine.

Sierra Club Oregon suggests it’s possible to develop lithium alternatives or find better ways to source the metal. Advocates of the project maintain that these clays represent a crucial resource in an era when every major carmaker is transitioning to electric models.

Disagreements arise from how fast these projects roll out, and whether rural populations have a real say in shaping them.

What’s next for this lithium deposit?

Local debates often center on water needs for drilling and processing. Some scientists point out that advanced recycling and new battery chemistries might alleviate the environmental strain.

Others say U.S. projects reduce dependence on foreign supply chains, which could lower geopolitical risks.

The trade-off is that most lithium deposits, wherever they are, carry certain environmental implications. A few watchers say this moment holds a chance to reevaluate how to conduct resource extraction.

As these Oregon proposals move ahead, investors are confident that demand for lithium won’t dip anytime soon, but local communities want to ensure they aren’t left with the mess once the initial excitement fades.

The study is published in Minerals.

 

The post Volcanic White Gold: A Lithium Deposit Valued at $1.5 Trillion Has Been Discovered in the U.S. appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, John Smith.  

DW News

 

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Thanks. John Smith. 

Middle East Eye

 

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Thanks, John Smith.

Middle East Eye

 

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Gail Appel wrote:

Hi Lew,

I keep belaboring the scope of the Ukraine scenario and this is just the tip of the iceberg. Would it surprise you to learn it dates back to Brezinzski ,Carter Rockefeller , Albright and Kissinger?

That Epstein, Soros, Nuland, Powers, Biden, Vindman, Obama, Avril Haines, Brennan , Muslim Brotherhood, McCain, Fiona Hill , Burissma , Atlantic Council were using Ukraine as a weigh station and weapons transfer for the Libya, Egypt and at the time, attempted Syrian and Netanyahu cups as well as Ukraine?

That the operations also included plundering Africa’s phosphate/phosphorus down the African coast to Libya?

How far back do the lies and corruption go?

See here.

 

The post Mitt Romney’s 9/11 involvement & Burisma / Ukraine appeared first on LewRockwell.

The same Western leaders who speak endlessly about “protecting Democracy” continue to rig elections, outlaw political parties, and prosecute candidates.  Germany has declared Alternative for Germany — now the country’s most popular party — an “extremist group” on par with domestic terror organizations.  The European Union helped Marxist globalists in Romania invalidate a presidential election and ban the winner from office.  France and Brazil have followed the U.S. example of bringing ludicrous criminal charges against popular anti-Establishment politicians, and while President Trump overcame the sham prosecutions targeting him, Marine Le Pen and Jair Bolsonaro are fighting just to survive.

Let’s not forget either that the Ukraine-Russia War drags on today only because U.S. and European forces helped overthrow the legitimately elected Ukrainian president, Viktor Yanukovych, back in 2014.  His transgression?  Yanukovych’s government was pushing back against the EU’s efforts to absorb Ukraine into its continental empire.  The same NATO and EU talking-heads who denounce Russia’s conquest of its neighbor are mostly mad because they hoped to conquer Ukraine first.

It’s a disorienting time for Westerners who once respected their civic institutions.  The Cold War mentality of the twentieth century created clear distinctions between closed, communist systems and rights-based, free societies.  In the West, people could freely practice the religious tenets of their respective faiths; in communist societies, people were expected to obey the quasi-divine strictures of the State.  In the West, people could own property and freely exchange goods and services; in communist societies, people owned nothing and received only what the State gave them.  In the West, people could speak their minds and publicly debate new ideas; in communist societies, people adhered to politically correct ideology under the constant threat of arrest, torture, and even death.  The West was supposed to err on the side of individual freedoms, even when those freedoms permitted awful people to say awful things.

Western societies did not always live up to the principles that distinguished them from totalitarian regimes, but respect for personal freedom did serve as an effective guardrail that kept Western governments from careening toward totalitarianism, too.

What’s going on today is entirely different.

Western governments treat religious faith as a disease that must be cured.  The faithful (particularly Christians and Jews) are quarantined from the rest of society and expected to hide their beliefs in public spaces.  Law enforcement agencies in the U.S., U.K., and continental Europe arrest Christians praying silently outside of abortion facilities.  When churches and synagogues are vandalized or burned down, those crimes are often excused and rarely solved.  In Canada, arsonists have largely been given a free pass due to the government’s borderline hatred for the Catholic Church.  During purported Catholic Joe Biden’s presidency, the FBI spied on Americans who celebrate the Traditional Latin Mass.  Politicians casually blame Jews for genocide (a slander that is sickeningly ironic) and speak of Christians as “nationalists,” “fundamentalists,” “far-right extremists,” “fascists,” and “Nazis.”

The combined effect of these government-sanctioned attacks against people of faith is threefold: (1) religious freedom is undermined; (2) the State’s worldview is elevated over all others; and (3) religions not explicitly partnering with the State are deemed national security threats.  These characteristics aptly describe the former Soviet Union’s hostility toward religion.  They aptly describe the Chinese Communist Party’s hostility toward religion.  And they aptly describe the West’s hostility toward religion today.

What about property and free markets?  Most Westerners are in debt.  They rent apartments or live in bank-owned homes. They make just enough to pay for their expenses each month and have no real savings.  A substantial portion of their income is confiscated indirectly through government regulations or directly through a panoply of government taxes.  Most Westerners receive some kind of government welfare in the form of subsidies, entitlements, healthcare, or retirement income.  An ever-increasing share of the Western population depends almost entirely upon the State.

Even those with assets are kept under the government’s thumb.  Fiat money (government-issued currency not backed by a physical commodity such as gold) and central banks are antithetical to truly free markets.  By threat of violence, governments force citizens to buy and sell goods and services using innately worthless paper bills (or digital ones and zeroes) as a medium of exchange.  Those currencies retain value only so long as a government’s threat of force maintains the State’s monopoly over legal tender.  Gold doesn’t require a government agent with a gun to establish its value.  When central banks manipulate the money supply, they effectively distort all markets.  They create economic “winners” and “losers” by decree.  That’s a hallmark of a State-controlled economy, not a free market.  By increasing the money supply over time, central banks decrease the value of State-enforced currencies.  Conversely, they artificially raise the currency-denominated valuation of homes, stocks, and other real assets.

Read the Whole Article

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Forty years ago this month, I was commissioned a second lieutenant in the U.S. Air Force. I would be part of America’s all-volunteer force (AVF) for 20 years, hitting my marks and retiring as a lieutenant colonel in 2005. In my two decades of service, I met a lot of fine and dedicated officers, enlisted members, and civilians. I worked with the Army, Navy, and Marine Corps as well, and met officers and cadets from countries like Great Britain, Germany, Pakistan, Poland, and Saudi Arabia. I managed not to get shot at or kill anyone. Strangely enough, in other words, my military service was peaceful.

Don’t get me wrong: I was a card-carrying member of America’s military-industrial complex. I’m under no illusions about what a military exists for, nor should you be. As an historian, having read military history for 50 years of my life and having taught it as well at the Air Force Academy and the Naval Postgraduate School, I know something of what war is all about, even if I haven’t experienced the chaos, the mayhem, the violence, or the atrocity of war directly.

Military service is about being prepared to kill. I was neither a trigger-puller nor a bomb-dropper. Nonetheless, I was part of a service that paradoxically preaches peace through superior firepower. The U.S. military and, of course, our government leaders, have had a misplaced — indeed, irrational — faith in the power of bullets and bombs to solve or resolve the most intractable of problems. Vietnam is going communist in 1965? Bomb it to hell and back. Afghanistan supports terrorism in 2001? Bomb it wildly. Iraq has weapons of mass destruction in 2003? Bomb it, too (even though it had no WMD). The Houthis in Yemen have the temerity to protest and strike out in relation to Israel’s atrocities in Gaza in 2025? Bomb them to hell and back.

Sadly, “bomb it” is this country’s go-to option, the one that’s always on the table, the one our leaders often reach for first. America’s “best and brightest,” whether in the Vietnam era or now, have a powerful yen for destruction or, as the saying went in that long-gone era, “It became necessary to destroy the town to save it.” Judging them by their acts, our leaders indeed have long appeared to believe that all too many villages, towns, cities, and countries needed to be destroyed in order to save them.

My own Orwellian turn of phrase for such mania is: destruction is construction. In this country, an all-too-offensive military is sold as a defensive one, hence, of course, the rebranding of the Department of War as the Department of Defense. An imperial military is sold as so many freedom-fighters and -bringers. We have the mega-weapons and the urge to dominate of Darth Vader and yet, miraculously enough, we continue to believe that we’re Luke Skywalker.

This is just one of the many paradoxes and contradictions contained within the U.S. military and indeed my own life. Perhaps they’re worth teasing out and exploring, as I reminisce about being commissioned at the ripe old age of 22 in 1985 — a long time ago in a country far, far away.

The Evil Empire

When I went on active duty in 1985, the country that constituted the Evil Empire on this planet wasn’t in doubt. As President Ronald Reagan said then, it was the Soviet Union — authoritarian, militaristic, domineering, and decidedly untrustworthy. Forty years later, who, exactly, is the evil empire? Is it Vladimir Putin’s Russia with its invasion of Ukraine three years ago? The Biden administration surely thought so; the Trump administration isn’t so sure. Speaking of Trump (and how can I not?), isn’t it correct to say that the U.S. is increasingly authoritarian, domineering, militaristic, and decidedly untrustworthy? Which country has roughly 800 military bases globally? Which country’s leader openly boasts of trillion-dollar war budgets and dreams of the annexation of Canada and Greenland? It’s not Russia, of course, nor is it China.

Back when I first put on a uniform, there was thankfully no Department of Homeland Security, even as the Reagan administration began to trust (but verify!) the Soviets in negotiations to reduce our mutual nuclear stockpiles. Interestingly, 1985 witnessed an aging Republican president, Reagan, working with his Soviet peer, even as he dreamed of creating a “space shield” (SDI, the strategic defense initiative) to protect America from nuclear attack. In 2025, we have an aging Republican president, Donald Trump, negotiating with Putin even as he floats the idea of a “Golden Dome” to shield America from nukes. (Republicans in Congress already seek $27 billion for that “dome,” so that “golden” moniker is weirdly appropriate and, given the history of cost overruns on American weaponry, you know that would be just the starting point of its soaring projected cost.)

When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, fears of a third world war that would lead to a nuclear exchange (as caught in books of the time like Tom Clancy’s popular novel Red Storm Rising) abated. And for a brief shining moment, the U.S. military reigned supreme globally, pulverizing the junior varsity mirror image of the Soviet military in Iraq with Desert Storm in 1991. We had kicked the Vietnam Syndrome once and for all, President George H.W. Bush exulted. It was high time for some genuine peace dividends, or so it seemed.

The real problem was that that seemingly instantaneous success against Saddam Hussein’s much-overrated Iraqi military reignited the real Vietnam Syndrome, which was Washington’s overconfidence in military force as the way to secure dominance, while allegedly strengthening democracy not just here in America but globally. Hubris led to the expansion of NATO to Russia’s borders; hubris led to unipolar dreams of total dominance everywhere; hubris meant that America could somehow have the most moral as well as lethal military in the world; hubris meant that one need never concern oneself about potential blowback from allying with Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan or the risk of provoking Russian aggression as NATO floated Ukraine and Georgia as future members of an alliance designed to keep Russia down.

It was the end of history (so it was said) and American-style democracy had prevailed.

Even so, militarily, this country did anything but demobilize. Under President Bill Clinton in the 1990s, there was some budgetary trimming, but military Keynesianism remained a thing, as did the military-industrial-congressional complex. Clinton managed a rare balanced budget due to domestic spending cuts and welfare reform; his cuts to military spending, however, were modest indeed. Tragically, under him, America would not become “a normal country in normal times,” as former U.N. Ambassador Jeanne Kirkpatrick once dreamed. It would remain an empire — and an increasingly hungry one at that.

In that vein, senior civilians like Secretary of State Madeleine Albright began to wonder why this country had such a superb military if we weren’t prepared to use it to boss others around. Never mind concerns about the constitutionality of employing U.S. troops in conflicts without a congressional declaration of war. (How unnecessary! How old-fashioned!) It was time to unapologetically rule the world.

The calamitous events of 9/11 changed nothing except the impetus to punish those who’d challenged our illusions. Those same events also changed everything as America’s leaders decided it was then the moment to double down on empire, to become even more authoritarian (the Patriot Act, torture, and the like), to go openly to “the dark side,” to lash out in the only way they knew how — more bombing (Afghanistan, Iraq), followed by invasions and “surges” — then, wash, rinse, repeat.

So, had we really beaten the Vietnam Syndrome in the triumphant year of 1991? Of course not.  A decade later, after 9/11, we met the enemy, and once again it was our unrepresentative government spoiling for war, no matter how ill-conceived and ill-advised — because war pays, because war is “presidential,” because America’s leaders believe that the true “power of its example” is example after example of its power, especially bombs bursting in air.

The “All-Volunteer” Force Isn’t What It Seems

Speaking as a veteran and a military historian, I believe America’s all-volunteer force has lost its way. Today’s military members — unlike those of the “greatest generation” of World War II fame — are no longer citizen-soldiers. Today’s “volunteers” have surrendered to the rhetoric of being “warriors” and “warfighters.” They take their identity from fighting wars or preparing for the same, putting aside their oath to support and defend the Constitution. They forget (or were never taught) that they must be citizens first, soldiers second. They have, in truth, come to embrace a warrior mystique that is far more consistent with authoritarian regimes. They’ve come to think of themselves — proudly so — as a breed apart.

Far too often in this America, an affinitive patriotism has been replaced by a rabid nationalism. Consider that Christocentric “America First” ideals are now openly promoted by the civilian commander-in-chief, no matter that they remain antithetical to the Constitution and corrosive to democracy. The new “affirmative action” openly affirms faith in Christ and trust in Trump (leavened with lots of bombs and missiles against nonbelievers).

Citizen-soldiers of my father’s generation, by way of contrast, thought for themselves. They chafed against military authority, confronting it when it seemed foolish, wasteful, or unlawful. They largely demobilized themselves in the aftermath of World War II. But warriors don’t think. They follow orders. They drop bombs on target. They make the war machine run on time.

Americans, when they’re not overwhelmed by their efforts to simply make ends meet, have largely washed their hands of whatever that warrior-military does in their name. They know little about wars fought supposedly to protect them and care even less. Why should they care? They’re not asked to weigh in. They’re not even asked to sacrifice (other than to pay taxes and keep their mouths shut).

Too many people in America, it seems to me, are now playing a perilous game of make-believe. We make-believe that America’s wars are authorized when they clearly are not. For example, who, other than Donald Trump (and Joe Biden before him), gave the U.S. military the right to bomb Yemen?

We make-believe all our troops are volunteers. We make-believe we care about those “volunteers.” Sometimes, some of us even make-believe we care about those wars being waged in places and countries most Americans would be hard-pressed to find on a map. How confident are you that all too many Americans could even point to the right hemisphere to find Syria or Yemen or past war zones like Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq?

War isn’t even that good at teaching Americans geography anymore!

What Is To Be Done?

If you accept that there’s a kernel of truth to what I’ve written so far, and that there’s definitely something wrong that should be fixed, the question remains: What is to be done?

Some concrete actions immediately demand our attention.

*Any ongoing wars, including “overseas contingency operations” and the like, must be stopped immediately unless Congress formally issues a declaration of war as required by the Constitution. No more nonsense about MOOTW, or “military operations other than war.” There is war or there is peace. Period. Want to bomb Yemen? First, declare war on Yemen through Congress.

*Wars, assuming they are supported by Congressional declarations, must be paid for with taxes raised above all from those Americans who benefit most handsomely from fighting them. There shall be no deficit spending for war.

*Americans are used to “sin” taxes for purchases like tobacco and alcohol. So, isn’t it time for a new “sin” tax related to profiteering from war, especially by the corporations that make the distinctly overpriced weaponry without which such wars couldn’t be waged?

To end wars and weaken militarism in America, we must render it unprofitable. As long as powerful forces continue to profit so handsomely from going to war — even as “volunteer” troops are told to aspire to be “warriors,” born and trained to kill — this violent madness in America will persist, if not expand.

Look, the 22-year-old version of me thought he knew who the evil empire was. He thought he was one of the good guys. He thought his country and his military stood for something worthy, even for “greatness” of a sort. Sure, he was naïve.  Perhaps he was just another wet-behind-the-ears factotum of empire. But he took his oath to the Constitution seriously and looked to a brighter day when that military would serve only as a deterrent in a world largely at peace.

The soon-to-be-62-year-old me is no longer so naïve and, these days, none too sure who’s evil and who isn’t. He knows his country is on the wrong path, that the bloody path of bullets and bombs (and profiting from the same) is always perilous for any freedom-loving people to travel on.

Somehow, America needs to be put back on the freedom trail that inspires and empowers citizens rather than wannabe warriors brandishing weapons galore. Somehow, we need to aspire again to be a nation of laws. (Can we agree that due process is better than no process?) Somehow, we need to dream of being a nation where right makes might, one that knows that destruction is not construction, one that exchanges bullets and bombs for ballots and beauty.

How else are we to become America the Beautiful?

Reprinted with permission from TomDispatch.com.

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Just as happened with the opening of the dams in Valencia (Spain), which official authorities continue to attribute solely to weather conditions without offering a complete explanation, the same situation is now repeating itself in the face of the widespread blackout in Spain, Portugal, and southern France. New data is emerging, but, as usual, more doubts than certainties prevail.

We begin with the news that in 2021, the Austrian government warned of the possibility of a major blackout that could affect Europe in the next five years. Austrian Defense Minister Klaudia Tanner was the one who publicly warned about this threat, stressing the importance of taking preventive measures in the face of a potential energy crisis.

It was in October 2021 that the Austrian government issued a warning that, at the time, went unheeded by most in Europe (supposedly). However, today, in light of recent events, that warning seems like an eerie and chilling omen. Under the slogan “Blackout: What to do if everything shuts down?“, the Austrian Ministry of Defense distributed leaflets, organized national drills, and posted official videos on YouTube instructing the population on how to survive a massive energy collapse. Minister Claudia Tanner was clear: “Blackout is not a possibility, it is a certainty,” she stated, while General Robert Bridger warned of “an event that would paralyze cities and destroy the digital economy.“

Official video of the Austrian government

But what motivated Austria, a country with no obvious energy crisis at the time, to mobilize its army and civil society? Experts pointed to four critical factors: dependence on Russian gas, the increase in cyberattacks on infrastructure, the vulnerability of power grids due to reliance on intermittent renewable energy, and a lack of investment in maintenance. However, behind these technical reasons, many suspect a darker plan, and that what happened could only be a test or warning of what is to come.

On the other hand, there is a TikTok video published on April 15, 2025, in which he predicts a “partial global blackout” that would occur on April 28, 2025, stating that it would be “the beginning of a real blackout” with bank failures, social media outages, and urban chaos. The message, shared millions of times, included a reference to a forgotten episode of The Simpsons where Homer receives a message on his television: “Shutting down humanity.” We know this cartoon series is part of the system; it’s not just a coincidence, but functions as a tool that offers clues and snippets of what’s planned to happen, akin to Predictive Programming.

Finally, we have news of a strange text message that Catalan mayors (Spain) received warning of a power outage hours before the major blackout. On the night of Sunday, April 27, at 10:38 p.m., the mayor of Vilaplana, Josep Bigorra, received a message saying: “We are working to restore the power supply as soon as possible.” Minutes later, the mayor checked the E-Distribución website for “outage” symbols in places like Reus, the capital of Baix Camp. But nothing happened; the grid remained stable. “There wasn’t a single outage,” says Bigorra, who shared the text message on social media, puzzled. Was it a computer error? A false alarm? Or, as subsequent events suggest, a chilling warning of what was to come?

This message, however, was no exception. Other mayors in the region reported similar receipts, all at the same time and with the same contradiction: warnings of nonexistent outages.

Fourteen hours later, at 12:33 on Monday, April 28, Spain was completely blacked out, in an unprecedented event. A second text message arrived in Bigorra with a disturbing explanation: “Due to a national zero (sic), the power supply has been lost. We are awaiting instructions from Red Eléctrica Española (REE).“

The term “national zero” lacks a recognized technical definition. A typo? A cipher? While the Spanish government blames an “unprecedented incident,” official responses are brief. Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez announced “open lines of investigation,” but no one explains why the alarm systems failed, or why it took some municipalities more than 24 hours to restore power. The coincidence between the premonitory text message and the massive blackout has generated a flurry of theories. Independent experts point out that the messages could be part of an internal emergency protocol at E-Distribución, designed to prepare authorities before a scheduled outage. But what does a “national zero” have to do with an unannounced blackout? Could the text message have been an unauthorized leak from a compromised system? The words “national zero” evoke scenarios from military drills, such as those described in declassified NATO documents.

Questions Officials Fail to Answer:

• Why did E-Distribución send false alerts hours before the collapse?
• What does the term “national zero” mean?
• Why did the Iberian electricity system, designed to withstand isolated failures, collapse completely?
• Are there internal records that prove a structural failure prior to the blackout?

While authorities persist in their attempt to clarify the facts, citizens remain in uncertainty facing an enigma that seems to have overtones of a cover-up. The text message, far from being a simple error, could represent the tip of the iceberg of secret plans.

Read the Whole Article

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Overall, the Zionist-dominated American media is silent, thus keeping the American people ignorant regarding the apocalyptic-type fires that are burning in Israel.

In the summertime, wildfires are common in the Western United States (and Western Canada), as those of us who live in the West can testify. Fires are typically started by either human negligence (campers not extinguishing their campfires, smokers discarding burning cigarettes in tinder environments, etc.) or by nature, most notably lightning strikes.

But the United States is an extremely large country, including millions of acres of natural habitat that is intrinsically highly flammable. On the other hand, Israel is a tiny country, about the size of the State of New Jersey—or even smaller. While wildfires in the Middle East are not uncommon, the endemic forests and wildernesses are not of the highly combustible varieties as are grown here in the U.S. and Canada.

Since the advent of the State of Israel in 1948, the Zionist state has planted hundreds of millions of non-native plants, trees and shrubbery that are highly combustible and have contributed to an increase of wildfire disasters not previously known in the region of Palestine—including Israel.

See this report in the Jerusalem Post.

But the current wildfires raging in Israel are unprecedented in their furor. This column will contain a couple of videos of the fires raging in Israel that I hope readers will take the time to watch. When you see them, I think you will agree with me that the fires are not only terrifying, but they possess an almost apocalyptic aura about them.

I’ll begin with a transcription of this video report:

Israel Now! Worst Wildfire in Jerusalem’s History Forces Thousands To Evacuate & Left Devastations

Jerusalem, Israel, April 30-May 1, 2025

On April 30, 2025, flames surged across Highway 1, the main artery between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, forcing terrified drivers to abandon their vehicles and flee on foot as smoke turned day into night.

This was not a scene from a disaster film. It was the grim reality when one of the most devastating wildfires in Israel’s history erupted just west of Jerusalem.

In a matter of hours, the fire advanced rapidly, threatening entire communities. Over 10,000 residents from at least 10 villages, including Beit Meir, Shoresh, Giv’at Ye’arim and Ramat Raziel, were forced to evacuate. The situation was chaotic as firefighters struggled to control the inferno, while entire families fled their homes with little more than the clothes on their backs.

The Eitanim Psychiatric Hospital was also evacuated, with two patients initially reported missing amid the disorder.

Thick black smoke blanketed the capital, causing severe air pollution and triggering health alerts across the region.

Meanwhile, crucial highways, like Route 1, the main Jerusalem-Tel Aviv route, were shut down, leading to heavy traffic and delays in evacuation efforts.

By the end of the day, the fire had consumed more than 17 square kilometers of land, devastating forests, agricultural land and natural reserves. The firestorm had reached near-catastrophic proportions, with wind speeds exceeding 50 kilometers per hour, pushing the flames rapidly through dry, overgrown vegetation. At least 20 homes were reported lost, and thousands more were left in danger. It became one of the largest wildfires in Israel’s history, underscoring the vulnerability of the region to such climate-related disasters.

Fire and Rescue Services Commissioner Dedi Simchi confirmed that the fire was man-made but stressed that investigations were ongoing. No formal arrests have been made as of yet, and the authorities are careful not to draw any conclusions before the investigation is complete. It is important to note that anyone arrested in connection with the fire is innocent until proven guilty, and further investigations will determine the exact cause.

In typical Netanyahu fashion, the Israeli prime minister was quick to blame the fires on Hamas. Israelis are experts at feigning perpetual victimhood status while hiding their own criminal aggression.

The region has experienced heightened temperatures and strong winds, both of which contributed to the rapid spread of the flames. Environmental Protection Minister Tamar Zandberg linked the fire to broader climate change patterns, warning that these types of fires are becoming more frequent and intense across the country, especially as the climate crisis continues to take hold.

As the blaze raged on, emergency services were stretched to their limits. Israel declared a state of national emergency in response to the escalating crisis. Over 120 firefighting teams were mobilized, including specialized search and rescue units from the military. Twelve firefighting aircraft were deployed to contain the blaze, with support from international firefighting crews. Italy and Croatia sent planes to help extinguish the flames, while other countries, including Greece, Cyprus and Bulgaria, were also asked to send additional firefighting planes to help fight the fires. But reports say that Greece and Cyprus refused to help. [Emphasis added]

Despite their best efforts, the firefighting teams struggled to access the worst-hit areas, as roads were closed and visibility was severely reduced due to smoke and ash.

In addition to the firefighting teams, medical emergency units were deployed across the region to assist evacuees and those trapped in the fire zone. At least 20 people were injured, most suffering from smoke inhalation or burns. Medical teams reported that the conditions were particularly dire for elderly people and young children, who were at higher risk due to the hazardous air quality.

Ambulances and rapid-response motorcycle units were stationed along key roads, ready to assist the injured and transport them to hospitals. These units worked tirelessly to evacuate civilians from the most dangerous zones, but the chaos of the situation made rescue operations extremely difficult. Some residents were forced to shelter in place, waiting for emergency services to arrive.

The damage was severe. The fire destroyed homes and businesses and inflicted lasting harm on the natural environment. Vast areas of forest in the Jerusalem hills, home to rare plant species and wildlife, were reduced to ash. The Environmental Protection Ministry issued high-pollution alerts, urging residents, especially those with respiratory issues, to stay indoors. Large sections of natural reserves and national parks were devastated, with critical habitats lost and ecosystems left in ruin. Recovery of these areas will take years.

As the fires came under control, focus shifted to relief. The Israeli government approved $21 million in emergency aid for shelter, medical care and immediate needs. Thousands of displaced residents were placed in temporary housing, supported by local councils and volunteers providing food, water and essentials.

But experts warn the recovery will be long. Rebuilding homes and infrastructure will take months. And restoring the damaged land will require major environmental efforts.

Again, I urge readers to watch the 9-minute video from which this transcription was taken.

As I watched this video and others, including this one, the thought that immediately came to my mind was “Sodom and Gomorrah.”

Contrary to the unscriptural assertions of evangelicals, modern Israel is anything but a “holy land.” Israel is a cesspool of debauchery, corruption and criminality rivaling anything found in the seven condemned Canaanite nations during the days of Moses and Joshua.

Israel is the abortion capital of the world; it is the sodomite capital of the world; it is the pornographic capital of the world; and it is the genocidal capital of the world. If God spares Zionist Israel, He will need to apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah.

But God is Just. And Zionist Israel will not be spared His justice. Neither will Israel’s puppet-state: America.

The blood of millions of innocents shed by seventy-seven years of pillage, rape, mass murder, genocide and ethnic cleansing by Jewish Zionists and their Christian Zionist collaborators in America cries out of the ground for justice. God hears those cries, and He will answer.

I, again, urge readers to read the book The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine by Ilan Pappe. I mean it when I say, if you have not read this book, you are ignorant of the reality of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, including what’s happening in Gaza and the West Bank today.

I can say that because I thought I understood the Middle East, until I read Pappe’s blockbuster book. I then realized I knew almost nothing about Palestine—even after traveling there and seeing the land for myself. Albeit I did learn and can personally testify to the compassionate, kind and genuine Christ-like spirit of the tens of thousands of Palestinian Christians living in the land. They make America’s “Christians” look like heathens. And by virtue of the enthusiastic support of America’s “Christians” for Israel’s genocide in Gaza, they are proving that they are.

Pappe is one of Israel’s most renowned historians, and this book might be his pinnacle achievement.

Find Pappe’s book here.

In my third message in the Old Covenant Wars series last Sunday entitled Israel’s Laws of War Against The Seven Canaanite Nations, I showed the historical reality that indeed “God is no respecter of persons.”

The iniquities of the seven Canaanite nations that God used Israel to destroy were replicated in Israel itself. Accordingly, God used the Assyrians, Babylonians and Romans to do to the Hebrew nations of Israel and Judah what God used Israel to do to the Canaanites.

Again, God is no respecter of persons—or nations.  And that includes Zionist Israel.

Since the U.S. government—controlled by the Israel lobby—and evangelical Christians have shown no interest in holding Israel accountable to the “laws of Nature and of Nature’s God,” the government of Heaven itself will doubtless be obliged to hold that iniquitous, murderous state to account.

The fires in Israel today could be a precursor to the fire of God’s judgment upon satanic Israel—fire that may make the fire and brimstone of Sodom and Gomorrah look like child’s play.

If I were John Hagee, Robert Jeffress, John MacArthur and Greg Laurie, I would start preparing sermons explaining how the next destruction of Jerusalem fits into their propagandistic prophecy doctrines of Christian Zionism before the smoke starts rising, because by then no one will believe anything they have to say.

And the way things are going, that day might not be that far away.

P.S. Today I am announcing the release of my third message DVD in the Old Covenant Wars series that I delivered last Sunday entitled Israel’s Laws of War Against The Seven Canaanite Nations.

This one message, by itself, obliterates the prophecy doctrines of Christian Zionism. It shows the truth from the Old Testament of God’s divorce from Biblical Israel, how God cast Israel “out of [His] sight” and how God destroyed Israel in the same way and for the same reasons that He destroyed the Canaanite nations. Again, God is no respecter of persons—or nations.

I trust that after you watch this message, you will want to share it with as many people as you can.

Reprinted with permission from Chuck Baldwin Live.

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From the Tom Woods Letter:

Well, how about this:

There have been sharp cutbacks at the National Endowment of the Arts (NEA) and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), amidst word that the President would like to see them both abolished.

Word that the Department of Education would be abolished sent left-liberals into a frenzy: why, this will be a terrible blow for education! After all, the Department of Education has the word “Education” in its name!

You, dear reader, are thankfully more sophisticated than that.

You know perfectly well that the abolition of these unconstitutional federal departments will not mean we won’t have any arts or humanities.

The annual budget of the National Endowment for the Arts is in the neighborhood of $200 million. Private funding of the arts, on the other hand, is in the billions annually. So we would indeed survive without the NEA — as indeed we did for our entire existence before 1965.

I might add that modernism in art often carried with it a sense of entitlement: artists came to believe that if voluntary support for their work was not forthcoming, this was a failure of the public rather than of their art.

These were misunderstood geniuses, you see, trying to challenge the public rather than cater to it. How dare you expect them to be like everyone else and have to create things people like in exchange for compensation! Why, you’re crushing their precious artistic freedom!

State funding in the United States, which eventually came in the form of the NEA, partially solved this problem. Now art could receive support on the basis of who wrote the best grant applications, as opposed to who created art that people could actually stand.

(Of course, there’s never been anything stopping private benefactors from supporting whatever art they like.)

As for the NEH: in an age of crowdfunding, worthy projects that may have been funded by federal dollars in the past can still proceed. Projects the regime would rather (in effect) keep secret because they’re woke and ridiculous will have less success.

The American Historical Association cautions us that we need the NEH in order to support “the complex, nuanced view of our nation’s history and culture that come only from deep research.”

Attend one of the professional societies’ academic conferences. Tell me that you’re encountering a “complex, nuanced view of our nation’s history” there. That’s leftspeak for “you’re a bunch of dumb racists, and your official history should be a series of Bolshevik-style humiliations.”

Thirteen years ago, having long since given up on our professional historical associations, I took matters into my own hands and launched Liberty Classroom, my dashboard university whose courses you can consume at any time or day or night.

Here you’ll find — taught by me, and by people I trust — the history your teachers kept from you, or didn’t know themselves. Economics, too. Even logic — which I’d say we could use more of, wouldn’t you?

Dozens of courses designed to make you a formidable debater, and to cure the educational malpractice that was imposed on us all.

Our master (lifetime) membership even includes my courses for the Ron Paul Curriculum, which means among other things you’ll learn Western civ directly from me, from the ancient world to the present.

Your school may have screwed you, but it’s never too late to become the educated person you want to be — and to have any lingering p.c. b.s. physically removed from your brain.

Until tomorrow we’re having our anniversary sale, celebrating 13 years of truth-telling.

The link:

https://www.LibertyClassroom.com

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On Friday morning, President Trump proclaimed on his Truth Social: “We are going to be taking away Harvard’s Tax Exempt Status. It’s what they deserve!” Trump is being hailed as a hero for demanding that the IRS bring Harvard University to its knees.

But Trump is following in the footsteps of President Richard Nixon, whose racketeering with the IRS helped pave the way to the collapse of his presidency. Trump is also forgetting the rallying cry of Republican opposition to the Obama regime. Political targeting of nonprofit entities is “the hallmark of authoritarian nations,” House Majority Leader Eric Cantor declared in 2014.

Trump’s triumphal tax code decree was a follow-up to an April 15 message he posted on Truth Social: “Perhaps Harvard should lose its Tax Exempt Status and be Taxed as a Political Entity if it keeps pushing political, ideological, and terrorist inspired/supporting ‘Sickness?’ Remember, Tax Exempt Status is totally contingent on acting in the PUBLIC INTEREST!”

And who has unlimited prerogative to define the “PUBLIC INTEREST”? Donald Trump, of course!

Trump’s Treasury Department formally requested last month that the IRS revoke Harvard University’s tax exempt status. Trump ally Newt Gingrich predicts that the Trump administration is “going to go after a whole bunch” of universities’ tax-exempt status.

This is not the first time that Trump sought to financially torpedo American colleges he disapproved. In July 2020, Trump tweeted:

Too many Universities and School Systems are about Radical Left Indoctrination, not Education. Therefore, I am telling the Treasury Department to re-examine their Tax-Exempt Status… and/or Funding, which will be taken away if this Propaganda or Act Against Public Policy continues. Our children must be Educated, not Indoctrinated!

Trump’s approved education program doesn’t include standard rules on capitalization. Also, what in hell is an “Act Against Public Policy”?

To understand this controversy, it is important to distinguish between direct government aid and federal tax laws that enable deductions. If the Trump administration seeks to curtail federal funding of colleges across-the-board, that is not a violation of the rights of any specific college. As Connor O’Keeffe argued here on April 23, there are good reasons to end all federal subsidies to universities and colleges.

But permitting a president to seize veto power over the tax status of any individual or organization in the land is a recipe for tyranny. According to the New York Times, “Even an attempt at changing Harvard’s tax status would signify a drastic breach in the independence of the I.R.S. and its historical insulation from political pressure.” But the official storyline overlooks more than a half century of sporadic IRS vendettas against non-profits.

President John F. Kennedy used the IRS to attack the tax-exempt status of conservative organizations. The Ideological Organizations Audit Project targeted the Christian Anti-Communist Crusade, the American Enterprise Institute, the Foundation for Economic Education, and many other organizations. A 1976 Senate committee report noted, “By directing tax audits at individuals and groups solely because of their political beliefs, the Ideological Organizations Audit Project established a precedent for a far more elaborate program of targeting ‘dissidents.’”

Richard Nixon—who became president in 1969—never let perfidious precedents gather any dust. His administration speedily created a Special Services Staff to mastermind what a memo called “all IRS activities involving ideological, militant, subversive, radical, and similar type organizations.” More than 10,000 individuals and groups were targeted because of their political activism or slant between 1969 and 1973, including Nobel Laureate Linus Pauling (a left-wing critic of the Vietnam War) and the far-right John Birch Society. The IRS was also given Nixon’s enemies list to, as White House counsel John Dean said, “use the available federal machinery to screw our political enemies.” The University of North Carolina non-profit tax status was one of the targets on the IRS list.

Congress responded to Nixon’s abuses by enacting legislation to severely restrict political contacts between the White House and the IRS. That legislation tacitly conceded that the 1952 legislation enacted to prevent the same problem had utterly failed. But the post-Watergate IRS reform did not impede President Bill Clinton. In 1995, the Clinton White House and the Democratic National Committee produced a 331-page report entitled “Communication Stream of Conspiracy Commerce” that attacked conservative magazines, think tanks, and other entities and individuals who had criticized President Clinton. More than 20 conservative organizations—including the Heritage Foundation and the American Spectator magazine—and almost a dozen individual high-profile Clinton accusers, such as Paula Jones and Gennifer Flowers, were audited.

During the Obama years, IRS officials blocked almost 300 conservative organizations from getting tax-exempt status, targeting groups with names such as “Tea Party” and those that “advocated education about the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.” Conservative non-profits were also hit by far more audits. In 2016, a federal appeals court ruled the IRS had committed “unconstitutional acts against” right-wing nonprofits.

Trump’s command for the IRS to target Harvard violates a law prohibiting the IRS from targeting nonprofits “for regulatory scrutiny based on their ideological beliefs.” Many Americans understandably despise a pompous institution whose graduates and professors perennially pay far more homage to Leviathan than to the Constitution. As heroic whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg declared in 1970, the Pentagon Papers provided thousands of pages documenting “twenty years of crime under four presidents. And every one of those presidents had a Harvard professor at his side, telling him how to do it and how to get away with it.” Harvard has sent far more warmongers, torture-apologists, and authoritarian zealots to Washington since the end of the Vietnam War.

But the Trump administration’s demands to Harvard could set precedents for obliterating academic freedom far and wide. The Trump administration wants to ban Harvard from enrolling any foreign students who Trump appointees label “hostile to the American values.” If Biden was still in power and inflicted a twisted version of that standard on young Americans—anyone who had attended a (privately-funded) Mises Institute program or seminar—might be banned from colleges that received any federal funds or a tax exemption. The administration is also demanding that Harvard appoint a Trump-approved auditor to assess whether its programs and departments suffer from “ideological capture.” Trusting a Trump appointee to be a fair judge of ideology is like appointing Bill Clinton to be chaperone of a girls basketball team.

Perhaps Trump presumes he has nothing to fear thanks to a Supreme Court ruling last summer that expanded presidential immunity. But Trump and his lawyers would do well to study how waves of scandals destroyed President Nixon despite his far more triumphant re-election than Trump enjoyed. In 1974, the House Judiciary Committee articles of impeachment charged Nixon with endeavoring “to cause, in violation of the constitutional rights of citizens, income tax audits or other income tax investigations to be initiated or conducted in a discriminatory manner.” Nixon’s IRS machinations—along with that Watergate scandal and a bevy of other crimes and outrages—helped sway many people to view him as a scoundrel. Nixon resigned rather than face a Senate trial which he was sure to lose.

“Harvard has been hiring almost all woke, Radical Left, idiots and ‘birdbrains’… teaches Hate and Stupidity, and should no longer receive Federal Funds,” Trump raged on Truth Social.

Contrary to Trump’s assumptions, “woke” is not such a grave and imminent peril as to nullify all limits on presidential power. Americans can enjoy scoffing at the Ivy League without cheering a politician seeking to financially raze any institution that fails to curtsy to him.

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

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A classic strategy in business is to replace something freely available with a patentable commodity everyone is then forced to purchase. Beyond this being highly exploitative, in many cases, the synthetic substitute is a poor imitation of what nature created and hence creates a myriad of problems for humanity.

This very much characterizes what happened to infant nutrition and allowed formula sales to become a 90.91 billion annual market. In turn, two major problems have followed the switch away from natural milk:

• Infant formula is full of unhealthy components that promote allergies and obesity (e.g., the first ingredient in formula is often corn syrup and then followed by seed oils—which remarkably federal law requires to be in infant formula due to a law based on flawed nutritional science from the 1960s that was never updated).

• Breast milk was designed to be one of most nutritious foods a developing infant could have and contains many vital components which will never be possible to synthetically replicate.

Note: in some cases, the milk a mother produces is not enough for her infant. In those cases, a supplemental natural infant formula can be highly beneficial to her infant, but only if it is composed of natural ingredients which adequately provide the critical nutrients infants need and if it uses raw rather than pasteurized milk (as this preserves the vital nutrients milk contains and prevents it from turning into a potent allergen).

In this article, we will explore the numerous benefits of breastmilk, not just for the infant, but for the mother as well. We’ll examine how the unique components of breastmilk contribute to a healthier immune system, stronger brain development, and even a reduced risk of chronic diseases later in life. Additionally, we’ll look at how maternal health and diet impact the quality of breastmilk, highlighting the importance of support systems for mothers to ensure successful breastfeeding. Ultimately, the evidence supports what many already know: breastmilk is truly irreplaceable.

Breastmilk: Nature’s Perfect Food

Breastmilk contains a variety of complex bioactive molecules which allow the mother to continually aid the growth and health of their child such as:

• Numerous vital growth factors (e.g., ones that facilitate the development of the gastrointestinal tract,1,2,3,4).

• MicroRNA (which are protected from digestion and hence able to absorb into the body), which guides the development of tissues throughout the body, regulate critical gene expression, prevents allergies (e.g., to foods), and produce many critical parts of the developing immune system.

• A unique set of antibodies and immunoglobulins are produced by the mother to both protect the infant against expected pathogens in the environment (e.g., what the mother has encountered) while the infant’s immune system is still developing, and guide the development of their immune system.

• Key cytokines such as TGF-β, IL-6 and IL-10 which also play a critical role in much of the previous (e.g., promoting oral tolerance, supporting immune system development, and enhancing intestinal epithelial proliferation and repair).1,2,3
Note: a major problem with many vaccines is that they tend to provoke a Th2 response (which eliminates certain extracellular pathogens but also creates autoimmunity) and suppress the Th1 response (which eliminates intracellular pathogens and cancers). Breastmilk inhibits immune cells shifting to a Th2 state and can change a Th2 response into a more balanced Th1-Th2 response.

• A variety of enzymes that both help the infant’s digestive tract break down the ingested milk and release key peptides from breastmilk components (that both develop the immune system and directly eliminate pathogenic organisms),1,2,3 along with many other enzymes and bioactive molecules that inhibit microbial growth (e.g., lactoferrin, lysozymes and mucin, interferon and fibronectin).

• A protein with potent anticancer activity (against over 40 types of cancers) that does not harm normal cells and has successfully treated cancer in humans. It also has powerful antimicrobial activity and enhances bacterial sensitivity to antibiotics.

• Breastmilk contains endogenous cannabinoids that are important for human development (e.g. by affecting appetite, mother-child bonding, immune function, brain development and motor function).1,2

Note: the most potent milk a mother releases is the colostrum (the first milk). In parallel, over the years, many have discovered that colostrum from healthy cows has healed a variety of challenging illnesses and significant injuries.

Furthermore, breastmilk also contains a variety of nutrients which are invaluable for the developing infant such as:

• Human Milk Oligosaccharides that support the growth of healthy gut bacteria (e.g., bifidobacteria and lactobacilli), reduce inflammation, and contribute to immune system development.

• Essential fatty acids, cholesterol (and many other unique lipids) which are critical for brain development, eye development, and cognitive function (e.g., academic success). These fats are not present in infant formula (or present in relatively low levels—except in animal milk substitutes, as it’s well recognized copious fats are necessary for their growth) and many experts in the field believe their absence from formula is one of the reasons why breastmilk is so much healthier for infants. Human breastmilk also contains bile salt-stimulated lipase, an enzyme absent in cow’s milk and most other commonly consumed milks (e.g., formula) which is specifically adapted to enhance the digestion and absorption of fats and cholesterol in human infants.
Note: cholesterol is also necessary to produce hormones (e.g., boys undergo a surge of testosterone in the first 1-3 months of life which is pivotal in masculinizing their bodies).

• Highly bioavailable nutrients (e.g., iron), which allows much lower concentrations of them needed in milk than formula (which then prevents those nutrients from competing with the absorption of other critical nutrients, such as iron added to infant formula interfering with the critical absorption of zinc).

Note: if breastmilk (or formula) is stored, it should never be microwaved to warm it (as this destroys many critical nutrients). Likewise, most sources of donated human breastmilk will pasteurize them (which destroys many of these vital components in milk).

In short, I would argue that the complexity of breastmilk makes it unlikely a synthetic substitute will ever be able to replace it (e.g., many of the bioactive molecules it contains cost thousands of dollars to synthesize).

The Benefits of Breastmilk

Beyond being less likely to be overweight or have a dysfunctional metabolism (e.g., breastfeeding halves the risk of diabetes), many other benefits have also been attributed to breastfeeding such as:

• Lower rates of infections (e.g., pneumonia, ear infections) and lower hospitalization rates (e.g., for infections).

• Lower rates of gastrointestinal issues (e.g., stomach problems, constipation, gas, diarrhea) and allergies (e.g., being half as likely to develop asthma).

• Being half as likely to die from Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (a condition decades of evidence shows is linked to vaccination).

• Being less likely to develop cancers (particularly leukemia).

• Improved brain development (particularly white matter growth).

• Improved cognition (e.g., verbal and spatial skills or mathematical ability and working memory). Likewise, breastfeeding for 12 months was associated with a three-point increase in IQ (along with a 0.8 point increase for each additional month), and higher educational and financial success in life.

• Being significantly less likely to develop autism or ADHD.

Note: many of the conditions breastmilk prevents often follow vaccination. Breastmilk’s ability to prevent those conditions is likely due to it reducing the Th2 response, improving the physiologic zeta potential, and reducing the total allergen burden seen with formula feeding (as consuming allergens exacerbates existing autoimmune processes). This is particularly consequential for premature infants, as for a variety of reasons they are both significantly less likely to be breastfed and significantly more vulnerable to vaccine injuries (e.g., this has extensively been shown with their risk for dying from vaccination).

Breastfeeding also offers significant benefits to the mother, both immediately after pregnancy and later in life. In the short term, it promotes better infant bonding, enhances maternal mood, aids in post-pregnancy weight loss, and reduces the likelihood of developing postpartum depression.1,2 Over the long term, in addition to each childbirth lowering the risk of breast cancer by 7%, breastfeeding over 12-months of breastfeeding reduces the risk of breast cancer by 4.3%, ovarian cancer by 34% (and by up to 91% with extended breastfeeding), as well as decreasing the risks of endometrial cancer and high blood pressure.

Early Feeding

As I show here, many of these benefits attributed to breastfeeding are also seen in mothers who avoid the more invasive (and often unnecessary) hospital birth procedures. It hence should come as no surprise that mothers who undergo invasive birthing procedures are significantly less likely to breastfeed—which again illustrates the critical need for our society to reexamine how we handle bringing our children into this world and raising them.

For example, skin-to-skin contact (which is often is prevented at hospital births) provides many immense benefits to infants (including make them less likely to cry1,2,3,4) and to their mothers including stimulating the a critical maternal release of oxytocin (a hormone necessary for lactation), and in one study infants separated from their mothers during the first week of life were half as likely to breast feed (37% vs. 72%). Newborns infants are eager to latch in the first 30 minutes following birth and this early period is critical for both the infant (e.g., to set the rhythm of feeding and to obtain the mother’s colostrum which is only present for a few days after birth) and the mother (as the maternal oxytocin release from suckling helps to expel the placenta, contract the uterus, and hence minimize postpartum blood loss). For these reasons, it is critical to ensure this early feeding occurs over the first several days of the child’s life, and if possible not to introduce any artificial nipples (e.g., pacifiers or bottles) during that time.

Likewise, analgesia during childbirth or delaying the start of breastfeeding has been shown to impair the ability of the infant to breastfeed. Because of this, it’s important to be informed about the hospital birthing process before you arrive, have appropriate support while there, and if at all possible, to deliver at a “baby friendly” hospital.

Note: one popular practice is to wrap infants in blankets to soothe them, prevent them from moving and help them get to sleep. While this practice is viewed as safe if done correctly (which it often is not) I am not a fan of swaddling infants as I feel they should be moving, swaddling has repeatedly been linked to doubling the risk of sudden infant death, developmental hip dysplasia, overheating the baby, and not breast feeding—particularly if the infant is swaddled immediately after birth.

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