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The post No War No NATO appeared first on LewRockwell.

I am indebted to fellow Substack author, Jon Fleetwood, for drawing my attention to a deeply intriguing memo that was part of the JFK files that were just dumped. Fleetwood’s piece on the memo is linked below.

The CIA memo, dated 19th July 1967, opens with a long quotation from an article published in Ramparts, June 1967.

As Fleetwood points out, though the Ramparts piece was already public:

…the newly released CIA files are significant because they confirm the Agency was aware of Underhill’s allegations at the time and considered them serious enough to document in an internal intelligence report.

The Ramparts piece and the CIA memo relate to a man named J. Garrett Underhill.

“J. Garrett Underhill had been an intelligence agent during World War II and was a recognized authority on limited warfare and small arms.

A researcher and writer on military affairs, he was on a first-name basis with many of the top brass in the Pentagon.

He was also on intimate terms with a number of high-ranking CIA officials—he was one of the Agency’s ‘un-people’ who perform special assignments.”

What is intriguing about the subject is the following:

“The day after the assassination, Gary Underhill left Washington in a hurry. Late in the evening he showed up at the home of friends in New Jersey. He was very agitated.

A small clique within the CIA was responsible for the assassination, he confided, and he was afraid for his life and probably would have to leave the country.

Less than six months later Underhill was found shot to death in his Washington apartment. The coroner ruled it suicide.”

Ah, yes, the D.C. coroner ruled it a suicide. I recently wrote a book about homicides staged to look like suicides. It is likely that many murderers have gotten away with this trick.

The CIA memo continues quoting the Rampart’s article:

“The verdict of suicide in Underhill’s death is by no means convincing.”

His body was found by journalist Asher Brynes of The New Republic:

“He had been shot behind the left ear, and an automatic pistol was under his left side. Odd, says Brynes, because Underhill was right-handed.”

Brynes also stated:

“Brynes thinks the pistol was fitted with a silencer, and occupants of the apartment building could not recall hearing a shot. Underhill obviously had been dead several days.”

“The friends whom Underhill visited say he was sober but badly shook. They say he attributed the Kennedy murder to a CIA clique which was carrying on a lucrative racket in gun-running, narcotics and other contraband, and manipulating political intrigue to serve its own ends.”

Underhill believed:

“Kennedy supposedly got wind that something was going on and was killed before he could ‘blow the whistle on it.’”

The friends, despite knowing Underhill to be “perfectly rational and objective,” initially struggled to believe him. But as the memo records:

“I think the main reason was… that we couldn’t believe that the CIA could contain a corrupt element every bit as ruthless—and more efficient—as the mafia.”

The totality of circumstances—including the fact that the CIA insisted on keeping this memo top secret until now—suggests that Underhill knew what he was talking about and that his stated fear was well-founded.

To be sure, it’s possible that Underhill did not know—or chose not to disclose to his friends—the extent of the activity in which the “CIA Clique” was involved. It may have been more than just gun-running, narcotics, and other contraband.

Going pack to the Roman Praetorian Guard, the trouble with elite security services is that the secrecy they are granted almost inevitably tempts at least some of their members to engage in nefarious enterprises. Considering this, it strikes me as remarkable that the CIA hasn’t assassinated more than just one president.

A plausible reason for this is that, since Kennedy, the CIA has been able to intimidate and blackmail politicians into compliance instead of killing them. If my memory serves, CIA counterintelligence chief James Jesus Angleton once visited an independent-minded Senator in his office and nonchalantly repeated verbatim the Senator’s bedtime conversation with his wife the night before. Instead of having Angleton arrested, the Senator was frightened into compliance.

Here’s the first paragraph of the memo:

Note that the RYBAT marking meant that CIA employees were not allowed to photocopy it.

It also strikes me as notable that the author of the CIA memo does not write any sort of assessment of the validity of the story reported in Ramparts.

That Underhill was found shot to death in his Washington D.C. apartment suggests that someone whom he trusted had given him the impression that he was safe and did not need to flee abroad.

Readers who enjoy real-life cloak and dagger stories should check out the full MEMO, which contains many other intriguing elements.

See also Jon Fleetwood’s report on this memo: ‘Small Clique Within the CIA Was Responsible for the Assassination’: JFK Files

This originally appeared on Courageous Discourse.

The post Deeply Intriguing Memo in JFK File Dump appeared first on LewRockwell.

“Weebles wobble, but they don’t fall down.”

Well, maybe not.

There was a time when you could get a hotel room in Las Vegas for five bucks and even adjusted for inflation that would be about $40 dollars today.

Of course, there have always been “whale” penthouses and suites, but the lumpen gambler – if they played their cards right – could “Do Vegas” cheaper than any other tourist mecca would cost.

No kids of course, but that was kinda the point then – everything that happened in Vegas stayed in Vegas, except maybe for accidental child support and/or a bout with chlamydia.

Then larger developers had a thought – what if you actually started charging people rates for food and rooms that were closer to what they would pay in any other large city, any other destination?

So the room rates went up, then the food, then the rooms again, then the things for kids to do were added, then the fancy shops were added, then the rooms went up again and what had been a loss leader intended to get people to gamble turned into a profit center.

And the room rates kept rising and then it stopped and they came back down a skoosh.

Why?

Because the casino owners had a limit as to what they could charge rooms that would not significantly lessen the gambling. In other words, if you charge $100 for a room, people will still spend $1,000 gambling over the weekend – charge $200 and the gambling drops.

And, as Vegas became more expensive for the Average Joe, that’s what happened so the costs were dialed back.

The food and room and booze cost “Y axis” was risen only to the point that the gambling “X axis” did not decline.

Note – it should be remembered that much of this occurred after the mob “left” town – the rooms were cheap because it was difficult (taxes, forms, sales tax receipts that needed to match, etc.) to skim off them when compared to the gambling take. Legit businesses do not really have to worry about that problem so they could raise rates without irking Vinnie “The Wop” DePlante from Cleveland.

The new owners had hit and then set the “Vegas Point” for non-gambling costs.

Has the same now occurred for higher education and government?

Save for serious/problematic gamblers, most people use “extra” or vaca money to gamble – they figure it into the cost of the trip (though, after losing $1,400 in 12 minutes at the craps table, even regular tourists can look longingly at the limitless ATM and think their son really is sorta dumb and really doesn’t need ALL that money in the college fund, now does he…?)

And universities are hitting that same recoil point.

Fewer and fewer people now see the point of paying for a sociology masters, for a philosophy of science degree due to the cost involved and the scattered return on investment – the concept of a pure educations– which is meant to teach a couple of specific things but more importantly to a create “bullshit” detector” about everything else matters and should forever.

It is very true that paying for school – even if you really don’t learn anything which seems to be one of the major issues for kids today – can get you one thing: the ticket into the “credentialed” club and that is extremely valuable.

But the value of that membership seems to be declining as the “socialist statist socialite globalist consultant assistant deputy secretary of historical propriety” club itself has come under fiercer and fierce attack of late.

And with the past decade of diversity rather than raw talent-based admissions and other academic absurdities, the value of the membership itself is declining.

Academia has become the weird old country club that was terribly important and wonderful and powerful decades ago but decided to continue to keep out the whippersnappers and the artists and the Black and the Jews (in many colleges, that is literally and not just figuratively true) and saw itself decline into ratty pointlessness.

Education costs have skyrocketed, leaving inflation ashamed.

Read the Whole Article

The post The Vegas Point appeared first on LewRockwell.

On March 15th, Chris Hedges headlined “On the Precipice of Darkness: Normalizing genocide and the new world order”, and opened:

My old office in Gaza is a pile of rubble. The streets around it, where I went for a coffee, ordered maftool or manakish, had a haircut, are flattened. Friends and colleagues are dead, or more often have vanished, last heard from weeks or months ago, no doubt buried somewhere under the broken slabs of concrete. The uncounted dead. In the tens perhaps hundreds of thousands.

Gaza is a wasteland of 50 million tons of rubble and debris. Rats and dogs scavenge amid the ruins and fetid pools of raw sewage. The putrid stench and contamination of decaying corpses rises from beneath the mountains of shattered concrete. There is no clean water. Little food. A severe shortage of medical services and hardly any habitable shelters. Palestinians risk death from unexploded ordnance, left behind after over 15 months of air strikes, artillery barrages, missile strikes and blasts from tank shells, and a variety of toxic substances, including pools of raw sewage and asbestos.

and one of the many apt reader-comments was:

ChesterView

Thanks for this very moral piece. It amazes me that Gaza is not the only thing talked about in the news and on the street.

Israel’s cruelty, a longstanding property, is not surprising. Our partnership with them is. We can thank the billionaires’ ownership of our politicians and media for that. We are now very clearly a vassal state of our great friend , dearest ally and the only democracy in the middle east.

Short of a revolution I don’t see how this changes.

I agree with that, but go even further: America needs to vigorously oppose Israel (our largest-by-far, at $337B, foreign-aid recipient), because Israel is our nation’s most dangerous and evil enemy, and has done incalculable harm to the American people and to the reputation of the American nation — not ONLY harms to its own neighbors.

Concerning what “ChesterView” said, “We can thank the billionaires’ ownership of our politicians and media for that”: on March 18th, Eli Clifton headlined at “Responsible Statecraft”, “The Israeli-American Trump mega-donor behind speech crackdowns: Miriam Adelson is more than a funder of the Maccabee Task Force, she’s also its president”. The Republican Miriam Adelson, a citizen of both Israel and America, and leading donor to both Trump and Netanyahu, was Trump’s 2024 third-largest donor at $106 million but was his top 2020 donor at $90,016,000 (Las Vegas Sands & The Adelson Clinic (against narcotics-addiction) — she wants people to be addicted to gambling instead of to narcotics). (However, in 2016, Trump’s top political donor, at only $15,511,600, had been the Democratic Party mathematician James H. Simon’s Renaissance Technologies hedge fund.) Her “Maccabee Task Force” “FIGHTING ISRAEL HATE ON COLLEGE CAMPUSES” equates all opposition to Israel as being “anti-Semitism,” and despises America’s First Amendment’s free-speech and free-press clauses, so that whatever she calls “anti-Semitism” (such as protesting against Israel’s and America’s ethnic-cleansing of Gaza) must be prosecuted in the U.S. and everywhere — there must be no condemnation of Israel or of its policies, regardless of what the U.S. Constitution says.

So, Eli Clifton reported:

The Trump administration’s effort to deport a Columbia University graduate student, Mahmoud Khalil, in retaliation for Khalil’s role in campus protests opposing Israel’s war in Gaza, showed the lengths the White House is prepared to go to police speech about Israel.

The administration’s unprecedented decision to seek the deportation of a U.S. permanent resident without bringing any criminal charges has an overlooked ally, however: the largest financier of Trump’s three presidential campaigns, Israeli-American billionaire Miriam Adelson.

Adelson’s support for the administration’s campaign to stifle criticism of Israel on college campuses isn’t a new focus but her alignment with the levers of state powers to implement her vision are unprecedented. In fact, tax documents reveal that she is directly overseeing a social media campaign targeting Khalil and Columbia University. …

Trump’s decision to target Khalil wades into murky waters. His attempt to deport a U.S. permanent resident for protesting Israel’s war in Gaza is polarizing and raises questions about why the president is so determined to protect the largest recipient of U.S. foreign assistance — a recipient of U.S. tax dollars proven exempt from Trump’s blitz against foreign aid — from criticism on college campuses. But one doesn’t have to look far to see he has an ally in this fight.

While Maccabee Task Force’s website makes no mention of Miriam Adelson, the group’s most recent IRS filing reveals she is far more than just its major funder. The Israeli-American billionaire is also MTF’s president. And under her leadership the group — with its sizable social media presence, particularly on Facebook where it has over 317,000 followers — came out swinging against Khalil and Columbia University with vitriolic and profane attacks.

“FAFO,” read a March 6 post from MTF, shorthand for “fuck around and find out,” a phrase warning that actions have consequences. “The sad truth is that the admin at Columbia couldn’t even be bothered to pretend to care about the safety of Jewish students until the Whitehouse [sic] threatened the prospect of losing $5B,” said MTF. “And even then, they still might think it’s better to appease the pro-terror mob. Not on our dime.”

The Adelson led and funded group went even further than attacking Columbia, it launched attacks on Mahmoud Khalil himself, claiming he was a “Hamas supporter,” when no evidence backing this claim has been provided, cheered that “Deporting Mahmoud Khalil after wreacking [sic] havoc at Columbia U campus is a positive step in the right direction,” and claimed (again without providing evidence) that “Mahmoud Khalil came to the US to promote chaos and destruction.”

The social media posts also cheered on the Trump administration’s threat to permanently withhold funding from Columbia unless the university implemented a variety of reforms, including the adoption of a definition of antisemitism that equates anti-Zionism with antisemitism.

In response to Columbia suspending, expelling, and revoking degrees from 22 students for their involvement in campus protests, MTF said, “They waited until $400M in grants were yanked. They could have shown moral character at any point but chose not to.”

This is the way America is ruled now, and it has long been so.

On 23 May 2020, I headlined “Israel — an enemy of America”, and reported — as I shall again here, because the history and documentation it presents is always being ignored:

——

Do the American people gain more than we lose from supporting (and from having billions of our tax-dollars each year donated to) the apartheid and racist Jewish Israel against the Palestinians — the descendants of the Arabs who prior to Israel’s creation were the vast majority of that land’s population?

The argument that Israel is pro-American is so blatantly false as to be ludicrous, but the argument that America is pro-Israeli is so true as to be itself ludicrous, because Israel is and has always constituted a national security threat against, and actually an outright enemy of, the American people. All of this will be documented here, especially because there is so much published that contradicts it, all based on lies, as will here be shown.

On May 16th, the neoconservative U.S. Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, threatened the International Criminal Court, on behalf of the Government of Israel, and against any other government than Israel to represent the interests of the Palestinians, which people Israel’s Government has always actually considered to be enemies, instead of citizens to whom the Government of Israel has any obligation. Pompeo — on behalf of Israelis, and certainly not in the interests of the American people — headlined, falsely, at the U.S. State Department, “The International Criminal Court’s Illegitimate Prosecutions”, and he said (also falsely) “The International Criminal Court is a political body, not a judicial institution.” He then went on to assert:

“On April 30, the ICC Prosecutor re-affirmed her attempt to exercise jurisdiction over the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza through a new filing to the Court. As we made clear when the Palestinians purported to join the Rome Statute [not actually ‘purported to’ but did, in fact, agree to the terms of that statute, in order to — and they did — sign and join so as to become subject to the ICC’s international jurisdiction, which happened on 1 April 2015, though Pompeo says there that it never happened], we do not believe the Palestinians qualify as a sovereign state.”

He closed this false allegation by this threat: “If the ICC continues down its current course, we will exact consequences.” Though Palestine signed and became a member-state, and the U.S. refused to do so, he threatens the ICC with unspecific “exact consequences,” if the ICC so much as even considers Palestine’s case. This is injury being heaped upon insult to the ICC and to international criminal law, which that Court holds the world’s supreme international authority to investigate and to prosecute.

In America, even individuals who are charged with murder are considered to have a right to legal representation that is not hostile to them but instead to represent them against the Government. Of course in fascist regimes such as Hitler’s Germany and Mussolini’s Italy, the Government rejected that American principle, but America’s current Government, via this Secretary of State, likewise rejects it, in order to protect Israelis, not Americans, against the ICC. Neither Israel nor U.S. has ever signed, because both Governments intend to be international criminals, and want themselves not to be prosecutable. However, Palestine is a signatory to that Court’s jurisdiction, yet the U.S. regime refuses to recognize any rights of Palestinians, including no right before that Court, which Court both Israel and the U.S. reject.

The U.S. regime constantly is asserting that it invades other countries in order to “uphold the rule of law”, but that is only to its own law. Therefore this regime is only an international outlaw, and being an international outlaw nation is certainly not what America’s Founders had intended when they wrote the U.S. Constitution. This current American regime does not represent the American people, because it does not represent our Constitution — neither as it was originally written, nor as subsequently Amended. This current U.S. regime is thus a renegade U.S. Government; it is, itself, a tyranny, such as America had warred against prior to 1946. Indeed, never until recent decades was the U.S. Government condemning and rejecting international law — but it does this routinely now, even while insisting that it invades other countries in order to “uphold the rule of law” and to “protect human rights.”

What the U.S. regime represents in this particular case is the interests of the apartheid nation of Israel, and not the interests of the American people. It insults and obstructs the interests of the American people, just as Israel insults and obstructs the interests — and the human rights — of the Palestinian people. Furthermore, Pompeo’s presumption that Israel represents the Palestinian people resembles Hitler’s presumption that his Government represented Germany’s Jews, and Botha’s presumption that apartheid South Africa represented South Africa’s Blacks. In all three instances the tyrant who asserts it, is asserting that the enemy of those people not only represents them, but is the sole and exclusive governmental authority which can represent them. In the slave-holding American southern states, the same claim had been made that they and only they represented their slaves. Those states cited the Bible as authority, because it authorizes slavery, but tyrants can always cite some allegedly infallible scripture in support of their tyranny, and it’s just as evil, nonetheless, whatever that scripture might be.

Albert Einstein was a prominent American when he was one of the signatories to a letter to the editor of the New York Times, on 4 December 1948, in which he and many other prominent American Jews condemned as “fascists” Menachem Begin and Yitzak Shamir and their gangs, who slaughtered whole Arab villages in order to seize their land for Zionist Jews to take as ‘Israel’. The signatories strongly condemned that movement — the movement which created this apartheid, racist ‘Israel’ — as being “akin in its organization, methods, political philosophy and social appeal to the Nazi and Fascist parties,” against which America had waged World War II. But today’s American Government represents those “Nazi and Fascist parties,” against their victims, even though during WW II, Americans had even died fighting against such evil people as the founders of Israel’s Government were.

Had Americans been wrong in WW II to have fought against Nazis and Fascists, or are today’s Americans aware that the current U.S. Government is protecting Israel’s ideological nazis and fascists (who call themselves “Zionists”) against any rights for Palestinians — against rights for the descendants of the survivors of Jewish racist fascism or nazism? Does Israel represent American values, really — or instead the values of America’s enemies, such as the current U.S. Government is (as will be subsequently exemplified here)?

Furthermore:

On 8 June 1967, Israel intentionally attacked and sank the USS Liberty, slaughtering 34 of our sailors, and injuring another 172. The official U.S. government inquiry by an independent study Commission headed by Admiral Thomas H. Moorer, found that, “after eight hours of aerial surveillance, Israel launched a two-hour air and naval attack against the USS Liberty, the world’s most sophisticated intelligence ship.” “Unmarked Israeli aircraft dropped napalm canisters on the Liberty’s bridge, and fired 30mm cannons and rockets into our ship.” “Israeli torpedo boats later returned to machine-gun at close range three of the Liberty’s life rafts that had been lowered into the water by survivors to rescue the most seriously wounded.” “There is compelling evidence that Israel’s attack was a deliberate attempt to destroy an American ship and kill her entire crew.” “Israel committed acts of murder against American servicemen and an act of war against the United States.” “The White House deliberately prevented the U.S. Navy from coming to the defense of the Liberty.” “Surviving crewmembers were later threatened with ‘court-martial, imprisonment or worse’ if they exposed the truth; and were abandoned by their own government.” “The White House deliberately covered up the facts of this attack from the American people.” “This attack remains the only serious naval incident that has never been thoroughly investigated by Congress; to this day, no surviving crewmember has been permitted to officially and publicly testify about the attack.” “There has been an official cover-up without precedent in American naval history.”

The USS Liberty Veterans Association delivered to the Executive Agent for the U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, on 8 June 2005, their own 35-page study report backing this up and urging retaliation. It quoted from Richard Helms, the Director of Central Intelligence at the time of the USS Liberty attack. He supported, as Helms put it, “the board’s finding that there could be no doubt that the Israelis knew exactly what they were doing in attacking the Liberty. I have yet to understand why it was felt necessary to attack this ship or who ordered the attack.” The Veterans Association concluded that, “the fact that the Israeli government and its surrogates in the United States have worked so long and hard to prevent an inquiry itself speaks volumes as to what such an inquiry would find. The USS Liberty Veterans Association, Inc. respectfully insists that the Secretary of the Army convene an investigatory body to undertake the complete investigation that should have been carried out thirty-eight years ago.” Their study and urging were simply ignored.

The Palestinians’ cause is also the cause of the American people. The current American Government, bi-partisanly in both of its political Parties, does not represent the American people (except the ones who have been deceived by Zionist lies) — it is hostile against us, and does only what it must in order to fool us into thinking to the contrary of the ugly reality.

When Einstein and those other prominent American Jews in 1948 wrote condemning the individuals who had created Israel, here was the immediate historical context:

The 452-page study, published in 1974, The Population of Israel, which was produced for the Demographic Center of the Prime Minister’s Office in Israel and by the Institute of Contemporary Jewry of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, mentions only in passing, on its page 401, that there were an “estimated 1,200,000 settled Arabs in Palestine at the end of 1947″ and acknowledges there also that the total number of Arabs then “within the territory of Israel” was 777,700. The next page then mentions — also only in passing — that “The estimate of Non-Jews found in Israel in 1949 (including some returnees, during 1949) is about 160,000.” (That number included not only Arabs but all “non-Jews,” such as non-Arab Christians.)

So: even Israel (though they never explicitly assert this, since it’s so damning) has acknowledged that over (777,700-160,000=) 617,770 of the 777,700 Arabs who were “within the territory of Israel” in 1947, or over 80% of them all, were gone in 1949. Though they never assert this elimination of 80%+ of that land’s Arabs, they give those numbers, from which any reader who can add and subtract will inevitably conclude that at least 80% of the Arabs disappeared from “Israel” during 1948, which happens to have been the year of Israel’s creation. 80+%. Only less than one-fifth of them were still in Israel. European Christians — not only Germans and not only in Germany but in many countries — perpetrated the Holocaust against Jews, and those 80+% of “Israel”s Arabs got treated by these surviving Jews remarkably like European Christians had treated so many of these Jews. These Jews absorbed into themselves what had been the the worst majority-Christian culture (especially its prevalent bigotry, though now having a different target) and then practiced it against the local Muslims in this part of Arabia. Whether or not they were practising what they preached, they practised what they had learned. And without the continuing and ongoing yearly support of the American people, this could not have happened and still be happening. It would not happen.

On April 29th, the great independent American investigative journalist Gareth Porter headlined “With apparently fabricated nuclear documents, Netanyahu pushed the US towards war with Iran”, and he reported that there is “little room for doubt that the documents introduced to Western intelligence [in] 2004 were, in fact, created by the Mossad.” Those are the documents upon the basis of which American sanctions were placed against Iran for its having a nuclear-weapons program (which Israel itself actually does have), which Iran did not have and was not even seeking — the documents were Israeli forgeries.”

“Netanyahu’s multiple levels of deception have been remarkably successful, despite having relied on crude stunts that any diligent news organization should have seen through. Through his manipulation of foreign governments and media, he has been able to maneuver Donald Trump and the United States into a dangerous process of confrontation that has brought the US to the precipice of military conflict with Iran” — instead of against Israel (which might be warranted). Netanyahu has even lied to claim that Hitler didn’t initiate the idea of exterminating all of the world’s Jews, the leader of the Palestinians initiated that idea. Just as Hitler lied to ‘justify’ spreading his hatred, Netanyahu likewise does, and Pompeo also does. Maybe the biggest difference between them is that only the U.S. regime claims to be “upholding the rule of law” and “protecting human rights” while it flagrantly violates both. The brazenness of the U.S. regime’s hypocrisy is unprecedented and historically unique, but otherwise it’s a rather normal fascist — if not nazi — government.

American taxpayers spend $3.8 billion per year as a donation to Israel’s military. Every American (including all recent Presidents) who has participated in imposing that burden upon us is a traitor, and so too is every American who has hidden or tried to hide from the American public the reality, instead of to prosecute it. This Government, by such liars, rapes the minds of the American people.

It is a thoroughly bipartisan rape. For example, the Obama Administration was working likewise to block independence for a separate Palestinian state; only their tactics were different (because they represented Democratic Party billionaires, instead of — like Trump — Republican Party billionaires). Victoria Nuland of Obama’s State Department threatened UNESCO just as Mike Pompeo of Trump’s State Department now threatens the ICC. In fact, in this video, you can see her at a press conference defending this. The only difference is that Republican and Democratic billionaires pursue different tactics to fool different groups of voters. Republican billionaires fool conservative ones, while Democratic billionaires fool liberal ones. That’s how they get the voters bipartisanly to support spending $3.8 billion per year so that Israel can spend $3.3 billion more on weapons that those American billionaires’ firms manufacture than would otherwise be the case — it’s all just a gravy train for America’s billionaires, and not only for that fascist foreign regime, which uses their weapons. Anybody who thinks that this American regime isn’t likewise fascist doesn’t understand how fascism works. (Mussolini sometimes called it “corporationism.”) The fascism of one country is no better than the fascism of another, no matter whether it’s Hitler’s “Deutschland über alles!” or Trump’s “America First!” They’re all doing basically the same mental rape. To call such a regime ‘democratic’ is to insult democracy.

So: yes, Israel’s Government and America’s Government are allies, but both of them are enemies of their respective public, which they only nominally represent. Each represents only its own billionaires. It’s all business — for the billionaires, the owners of the nation’s mega-corporations (including especially ones such as Lockheed Martin). And to call this ‘democracy’ is not only to insult democracy but to rape, yet further, the public’s mind.

——

That was my 23 May 2020 “Israel — an enemy of America”.

On 15 February 2017, I headlined “Russia now runs the peace process to end Syria’s War” and reported that al-Quaeda in Syria was backed by the U.S. Government so as to overthrow the non-sectarian Government of Assad and install an al-Qaeda or other pro-Saud government there. Finally, the U.S. Government succeeded there.

On 30 January 2025, ZeroHedge headlined that the head of Syria’s al-Qaeda, Abu Mohammad al-Jolani (aka Ahmad al-Sharaa) “Declares Himself President Of Syria After Canceling Elections & Constitution”. On March 2nd, Vanessa Beeley headlined that “The Zionist ‘loot unit’ strips Gaza, south Lebanon and Syria of weapons and valuables”. On March 15th, RT News headlined “‘This isn’t war. It’s genocide’: Why the world is silent about massacres in Syria” and reported that “In one of the darkest nights in Syria’s recent history, coordinated attacks on rural Latakia resulted in mass executions. Survivors tell of masked men storming their villages, dragging families from their homes, and carrying out public executions. Those who resisted were burned inside their homes, leaving behind entire neighborhoods reduced to smoldering ruins.”

Essential in order for Americans to become able to re-establish a degree of democracy (such as had existed under FDR but ended at his death on 12 April 1945) would be 100% terminating the U.S. Government’s alliance with (and its actual subordination to) Israel, and acknowledging that the U.S. Government itself is our main enemy. Chasing after foreign enemies can do no good if the main enemy — in this case our own billionaires — is the existing Government, right here at home.

This originally appeared on Eric’s Substack.

The post Evidences that Israel Controls the U.S. Government appeared first on LewRockwell.

International Man: Since its inception in 2009, the US government has been largely hostile toward Bitcoin—but that changed dramatically with Trump’s victory in the 2024 election.

For the first time, the leader of the world’s most powerful nation is openly pro-Bitcoin.

What’s your take on this remarkable shift?

Doug Casey: Maybe Trump was brought around to appreciating the merits of Bitcoin by his association with Silicon Valley tech guys and various Bitcoin bros. The recent creation of Trumpcoin has added a couple of billion to his net worth and undoubtedly cemented his enthusiasm. Although, like 99% of the zillions of meme coins out there, Trumpcoin appears to serve no useful purpose and has zero tangible value.

Bitcoin, on the other hand, has real value—even though it’s just a mathematical construct floating in the ether. In today’s world, Bitcoin is a reasonable money. Through the last 5,000 years of history, gold has been money, followed by silver and, to some degree, copper. We can now add Bitcoin to that short list.

Let me take a moment to review what constitutes a good money, which has six essential characteristics. It must be durable, divisible, convenient, consistent, usable, and limited.

It must be durable. That’s why we don’t use wheat as money. Gold is ultra-durable. So is Bitcoin, barring a catastrophic collapse of the electrical grid and the internet—a very small but real danger.

It must be divisible. That’s why we don’t use artwork as money. Gold is highly divisible; Bitcoin, as a mathematical concept, is infinitely divisible.

It must be convenient. That’s why we don’t use lead as money. Gold has a very high unit value, but in today’s computer-oriented world, where everybody is umbilically attached to an electronic device, Bitcoin passes that test and is arguably superior.

It must be consistent. That’s why we don’t use real estate as money. As an element, every piece of pure gold is chemically identical. As a mathematical concept, each Bitcoin is just like every other. Since the weight and purity of gold has to be assayed, however, Bitcoin is arguably superior.

It must have use value. This point is why I was a late adopter of Bitcoin; at first, I couldn’t figure out what you could use it for. It took me a while to realize it’s more easily transferable than gold. However, its sole use is as money, and it’s increasingly being accepted as such.

It must be “hard.” That’s a term Nick Giambruno likes to use, meaning that it can’t be created out of thin air, which is why fiat paper is a poor money. It’s why gold is a good money, and Bitcoin is arguably an even better money. That’s because the supply of Bitcoin is mathematically fixed, while the supply of gold can grow through mining.

So, back to answering the question: Why has Trump, at least as an individual, shifted his view toward Bitcoin? I’d say (even though much of Trump’s thinking defies logic), he sees that Bitcoin makes logical sense. Bitcoin is a satisfactory money.

International Man: Recently, President Trump signed an Executive Order establishing a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve.

The plan is to retain 100% of the Bitcoin currently held by the US government—approximately 208,109 BTC (roughly $20 billion), or about 1% of the total supply—along with all future acquisitions for the reserve.

What do you make of this development?

Doug Casey: Well, it doesn’t make a lot of sense when the government has an officially acknowledged debt of about $37 trillion, which is growing by $2 trillion a year.

Of course, that’s just acknowledged debt. When you add in various unofficial, contingent, and hidden liabilities, the US government is really underwater, more like $200 trillion. Having a strategic Bitcoin reserve is trivial in the big scheme of things.

We should also ask how the government acquired that Bitcoin.

Almost all of that has been confiscated from people like Ross Ulbricht, who were simply transacting business in Bitcoin. We can argue that the US government’s “strategic reserve” is based on stolen Bitcoin. An increasing amount of the government’s income is from uncontested and unadjudicated property seizures. That’s a very bad trend.

International Man: Do you think other nation-states will follow the US’s lead and begin accumulating Bitcoin as a strategic asset? Do you think the growing trend of governments holding Bitcoin as a reserve asset will weaken the fiat currency system? If so, what could be the broader implications?

Doug Casey: Almost every government in the world is bankrupt, meaning its liabilities significantly exceed its assets. Holding Bitcoin as an asset, instead of using it to pay off debts, amounts to speculating in Bitcoin. Should government officials have that power? That’s apart from the fact that we don’t want or need a currency “backed” by Bitcoin, just as we don’t want a government currency “backed” by gold. The proper approach is to cut out the unnecessary and dangerous middleman and use Bitcoin, gold, silver, or whatever themselves directly as money.

Does it make any sense for governments to hold significant amounts of Bitcoin or gold? No, not really. Not beyond what’s needed for the normal conduct of its limited duties. Governments should hold a minimum of assets.

This naturally brings us to a very basic question: What’s the purpose of government?

Government is pure force and coercion, and those things should be limited. It’s argued, therefore, that government should only have a military to defend its bailiwick from outside aggression, a police force to defend citizens from criminals inside the country, and a court system. There’s no reason for government involvement in economic activities, including accumulating assets.

Government assets have necessarily been taken from the people by taxation or confiscation. Contrary to the popular meme, government isn’t “We the People”. It’s better viewed as a dangerous predator. As such, it’s best to limit the government to a minimum of everything and anything. I realize that most people will think it’s an outlandish concept, but government should be strictly held to the three functions that I just mentioned.

Anything that helps dethrone government fiat currency is a step in the right direction.

Government should not be in the money business. Just as it should not be in the education business, the food business, the transport business, or any other commercial activity. Its proper sphere is defense, police, and the courts. And one can argue—I certainly do—that those things are so important to the conduct of a civil society that they shouldn’t be left to the state (here’s the link to The Market for Liberty).

International Man: Now that Bitcoin has been established as a strategic reserve asset, where does it go from here? What are the investment implications?

Doug Casey: From a strictly investment point of view, forgetting about what “should” happen, Bitcoin is going higher. For better or worse, the US and other governments’ accumulation of Bitcoin will put a lot of new buying pressure under a mathematically limited supply.

Bitcoin is becoming more widely recognized as being of value. It will be widely accepted as a viable money.

Even though it’s crowding $100,000, it’s going higher. As is gold.

Reprinted with permission from International Man.

The post US Government’s Bitcoin Pivot and What Comes Next appeared first on LewRockwell.

The post Terrific Viva Frei Interview: Live with Gad Saad! Tesla on Fire! Canada on TDS! And “Suicidal Empathy” Turns Violent? appeared first on LewRockwell.

Writes Garner:

Lew,

Everyday is another opportunity to learn, and 12 years after Roger Stone published his book “The Man Who Killed Kennedy: The Case Against LBJ” he is learning that Israel was a key player in the assassination of JFK. In a recent interview with Alex Jones, Stone said he was on page 20 of Michael Collins Piper’s 2004 book “Final Judgment: The Missing Link in the JFK Assassination.” The landmark work implicates Israel in the November 22, 1963 coup d’etat.

Kennedy was also in conflict with the State of Israel.

Israel sought to develop nuclear weapons, but Kennedy opposed the idea.

After JFK’s assassination, President Lyndon Baines Johnson approved Israel’s pursuit of the nuclear bomb.

Another factor in all of this. pic.twitter.com/82ISNOqGuQ

— Roger Stone (@RogerJStoneJr) March 18, 2025

 

The post Roger Stone: JFK’s Opposition to Nuclear Bombs for Israel Led to His Assassination appeared first on LewRockwell.

Writes Ginny Garner:

Lew,

Is the entire American pension system going to be bankrupted? Ever heard of back floating rate loans? Private equity firms have taken out adjustable rate loans on which the interest goes up every 30-60 days. Successful companies are going bankrupt trying to pay off these loans. The banks are repackaging loans as CLOs sold to pension funds as great debt. This will touch every industry around us because the private equity firms own day care centers, vet clinics, emergency rooms, HVAC companies, pet stores, nursing homes, doctor’s offices, orthodonics, and builders. This was done intentionally using the carried interest loophole. People might riot if the banks got bailed out again like in 2008; this time most will go along with it because it is the pension funds of their grandparents and parents.

THE NEXT 2008 IS HAPPENING NOW

Party City. Joann’s. Forever 21. Big Lots. ALL COLLAPSING.

But this isn’t just “retail struggling.” This is financial arson.

Private equity rigged the system. They built a time bomb. And now? It’s detonating.

A MEGATHREAD: pic.twitter.com/rpKcxwxDxd

— Tiffany Cianci (@TheVinoMom) March 17, 2025

The post The Next 2008: Private Equity Bubble To Bankrupt Pension Funds appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, John Frahm.

Lifesite News

 

The post Mark Carney was an early supporter of government crackdown against the Freedom Convoy appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, John Smith.  

AlJazeera

 

The post Two-thirds of people Israel killed in Gaza strikes were women and children appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, John Smith. 

Antiwar.com

 

The post Israel Doesn’t Care About the Captives. It Always Planned To Reboot the Genocide appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, John Smith. 

Mondoweiss

 

The post A child in Gaza watched his mother burn alive. Then he died too. appeared first on LewRockwell.

Ricordo a tutti i lettori che su Amazon potete acquistare il mio nuovo libro, “Il Grande Default”: https://www.amazon.it/dp/B0DJK1J4K9 

Il manoscritto fornisce un grimaldello al lettore, una chiave di lettura semplificata, del mondo finanziario e non che sembra essere andato "fuori controllo" negli ultimi quattro anni in particolare. Questa è una storia di cartelli, a livello sovrastatale e sovranazionale, la cui pianificazione centrale ha raggiunto un punto in cui deve essere riformata radicalmente e questa riforma radicale non può avvenire senza una dose di dolore economico che potrebbe mettere a repentaglio la loro autorità. Da qui la risposta al Grande Default attraverso il Grande Reset. Questa è la storia di un coyote, che quando non riesce a sfamarsi all'esterno ricorre all'autofagocitazione. Lo stesso è accaduto ai membri del G7, dove i sei membri restanti hanno iniziato a fagocitare il settimo: gli Stati Uniti.

____________________________________________________________________________________

di Aaron Day

(Versione audio della traduzione disponibile qui: https://open.substack.com/pub/fsimoncelli/p/la-liberazione-incompiuta-nella-guerra)

Le ultime due settimane sono state a dir poco surreali. Se avete seguito il mio viaggio negli ultimi due anni e mezzo, sapete che ho dedicato la mia intera vita a mettere in guardia contro l'imminente minaccia delle valute digitali delle banche centrali (CBDC) e la crescente repressione dello stato contro le criptovalute. Quando il presidente Trump ha preso tre misure che sono una risposta diretta a tutto ciò per cui ho combattuto (perdonare Ross Ulbricht, vietare qualsiasi ricerca su una CBDC statunitense e annullare l'Ordine esecutivo 14067 di Biden), il mio spirito era al settimo cielo.

Ma sentivo che non tutto era ancora compiuto.

All'inizio, quel senso di incompiutezza, l'ho attribuito al fatto di aver combattuto (e perso) così tante battaglie contro lo stato che lo shock mi aveva scombussolato, o forse era una sorta di stress post-traumatico. Ho vissuto momenti bui, divorzi, anni di guerra legale, e ho imparato che la ripresa spesso implica l'affrontare dure verità, perdonare le persone che ti hanno ferito e poi, cosa più dura di tutte, perdonare te stesso. Alla fine sostituisci la rabbia o la tristezza con l'accettazione e il dolore si attenua, facendoti diventare più saggio.

Tuttavia non è così semplice, o diretto, perché mentre la mossa di Trump di annullare l'Ordine esecutivo 14067 è stata un passo in avanti enorme, la brutale “guerra giudiziaria” scatenata da quell'ordine continua. Decine di aziende e individui nella comunità delle criptovalute stanno morendo dissanguati per le spese legali e le perdite aziendali, e alcuni affrontano persino condanne a pene detentive che ti cambiano la vita. È difficile festeggiare quando ci sono ancora tante persone intrappolate sotto lo stesso meccanismo contro cui stavamo tutti combattendo.

Credo che se le persone, e il presidente Trump, comprendessero veramente la devastazione causata da quella repressione, chiederebbero vera giustizia. Finché ciò non accadrà, non posso permettermi di festeggiare, non finché non verranno liberati coloro ancora intrappolati in una guerra che non avrebbe mai dovuto essere combattuta in primo luogo.

Contesto

Nel 2009 ho visto la mia seconda azienda, una fiorente impresa sanitaria, crollare sotto il peso di linee di politica federali come l'Obamacare, il Dodd-Frank Act e l'eccesso di potere del procuratore generale Eric Holder. Non ero finito nel mirino personalmente; ero solo un ingranaggio in quel meccanismo chiamato “danno collaterale” nell'implacabile espansione del governo federale. Per anni mi è stato detto, “Il pendolo oscilla sempre”, ma non l'ho mai visto tornare indietro. Invece il debito continuava a crescere, il dollaro continuava a perdere valore e le guerre infinite andavano avanti. La delusione più grande è arrivata dai repubblicani che non solo si rifiutarono di abrogare l'Obamacare, ma lo ampliarono tramite il Medicaid.

Disperato per un cambiamento, sono diventato un attivista politico. Ho gestito organizzazioni che reclutavano candidati libertari per le elezioni statali e federali e mi sono persino gettato nella mischia. Nel 2018, però, avevo perso ogni fiducia nella politica, che non sembrava mai rallentare la crescita del governo federale. Quindi ho rivolto lo sguardo a ciò che credevo potesse far pendere la bilancia a favore della libertà individuale: le criptovalute. Da quando ho sentito parlare per la prima volta di Bitcoin nel 2012, ho visto come il denaro decentralizzato potesse minare la tirannia delle banche centrali e alimentare la libertà economica in tutto il mondo. Più lo studiavo, più mi rendevo conto che questa tecnologia poteva eliminare inutili intermediari in tutto, dalle negoziazioni azionarie alle catene di fornitura ai titoli immobiliari.

Dopo l'arrivo del Covid è emerso qualcosa di ancora più oscuro: ho iniziato a notare uno sforzo statale concertato per colpire aziende e individui esattamente all'intersezione tra criptovalute e libertarismo. Molte di queste persone erano amici intimi dei miei tempi in cui presiedevo il Free State Project, o persone che partecipavano a eventi come il Liberty Forum e il Porcfest. Jeremy Kauffman ha creato LBRY (noto anche come Odysee), un'alternativa a YouTube resistente alla censura, solo per essere perseguitato dalla SEC per cinque anni, distruggendo di fatto la sua attività (anche se la tecnologia sopravvive ancora). Ian Freeman e i Crypto Six sono rimasti intrappolati in una vasta operazione governativa per aver gestito bancomat Bitcoin, cosa che ha coinvolto talpe e trappoloni da parte di più agenzie governative.

Allarmato, ho iniziato a scavare. Non sono cieco di fronte ai cattivi attori nel mondo delle criptovalute, ma queste erano persone che promuovevano piattaforme di libertà di parola e interazioni economiche pacifiche, non menti criminali. Alla fine ho scoperto l'Ordine esecutivo 14067 di Biden, firmato il 9 marzo 2022. Il suo duplice scopo era inequivocabile: accelerare l'adozione di una CBDC statunitense e lanciare un assalto governativo totale alle criptovalute. Con la brutale repressione in pieno svolgimento, e altri Paesi che correvano per introdurre le CBDC, sapevo che dovevo suonare l'allarme. Ho scritto un libro, The Final Countdown: Crypto, Gold, Silver, and the People’s Last Stand Against CBDC Tyranny, esponendo tutto. Ho anche partecipato alle primarie presidenziali repubblicane sperando di poter usare la piattaforma per informare il pubblico e gli altri candidati.

Ho incontrato per la prima volta Vivek Ramaswamy durante la campagna elettorale nel New Hampshire e gli ho consegnato una copia del mio libro. Con mio grande stupore, non solo l'ha letto, ma nei mesi successivi ne abbiamo approfondito il contenuto in più occasioni, in conversazioni approfondite. Poiché la mia unica missione nella corsa alla presidenza era quella di mettere in luce la minaccia incombente delle CBDC, e poiché Vivek sembrava “capirlo” meglio di chiunque altro, ho proposto di ritirarmi e di sostenerlo, a una condizione: avrebbe dovuto firmare il mio impegno anti-CBDC.

Dovete capire che il New Hampshire è speciale. Sede del Free State Project, vanta una comunità libertaria enorme e unita. In una precedente corsa presidenziale statale, avevo ottenuto quasi 18.000 voti. Il mio sostegno aveva un po' di peso in quella che si stava delineando come una primaria sul filo del rasoio, e di fondamentale importanza. Sebbene Vivek abbia concluso la sua campagna prima che potessimo finalizzare l'impegno e il sostegno, ha esortato Trump a denunciare le CBDC proprio prima del voto nel New Hampshire. Quella mossa sottolinea quanto fosse forte l'influenza del movimento libertario qui nel Granite State. Sono grato a Vivek per questo, poiché Trump ha esplicitamente riconosciuto a Vivek il merito di averlo informato su questa importante questione.

4 luglio 2023: con mia grande sorpresa Vivek aveva effettivamente letto il mio libro e ne avevamo discusso.

Trump ha annunciato di essere contrario alle CBDC nel New Hampshire poco prima delle primarie

Dopo che mi sono ritirato dalla corsa alle presidenziali, abbiamo intrapreso un tour nazionale (e alla fine globale) per mettere in guardia le persone sui pericoli incombenti delle CBDC e per dimostrare come prosperare utilizzando valute alternative come oro, argento e criptovalute basate sulla privacy (Zano, Monero, ecc.). Personalmente non ho più avuto un conto in banca dal 2019, un atto di resistenza individuale contro il crescente stato di sorveglianza. Per me il modo migliore per fermare la tecnocrazia è usare denaro privato, non controllato dallo stato.

Non possiamo permetterci di essere compiacenti. Ciò che potrebbe sembrare una vittoria potrebbe non essere altro che un gioco di prestigio semantico. Ecco perché voglio approfondire il vero impatto dell'Ordine esecutivo 14067 di Biden, ora revocato, e di come abbia scatenato un'ondata di “giustizialismo” che sta ancora rovinando vite e perché cancellarlo non ha ancora fatto scomparire quelle ripercussioni.

Questa battaglia per la libertà finanziaria ha trovato un alleato inaspettato nel Presidente Trump, il quale comprende in prima persona la strumentalizzazione del potere governativo.

La guerra di Trump contro il controllo digitale dello Stato profondo

La guerra dello Stato Profondo contro la libertà finanziaria

Quando Donald Trump ha graziato Ross Ulbricht e revocato l'Ordine esecutivo 14067 di Biden, non è stata solo un'altra decisione politica, bensì personale. Trump sa in prima persona cosa significa essere presi di mira da agenzie federali trasformate in armi. Proprio come il Dipartimento di Giustizia, l'FBI e i procuratori statali lo hanno perseguitato senza sosta con incriminazioni e giustizialismo, queste stesse agenzie durante l'amministrazione di Biden hanno mosso guerra agli innovatori nel mondo delle criptovalute e ai sostenitori della libertà.

I parallelismi sono sorprendenti. Mentre Trump ha affrontato procedimenti giudiziari motivati ​​politicamente a New York, Georgia e DC, i pionieri delle criptovalute come Roger Ver affrontano accuse fiscali retroattive progettate per metterli a tacere. Mentre gli avvocati di Trump vengono perquisiti e le comunicazioni private sequestrate, la comunità delle criptovalute osserva i propri team legali affrontare intrusioni simili. È lo stesso copione, schierato contro diverse minacce al potere istituzionale.

La posizione di Trump contro la tirannia digitale

Trump ha capito che la repressione di Biden riversata sul mondo delle criptovalute non riguardava la protezione degli investitori, ma il controllo. Proprio come i nemici di Trump hanno cercato di metterlo a tacere tramite divieti sui social media e restrizioni bancarie, l'Ordine esecutivo 14067 di Biden mirava a eliminare la libertà finanziaria:

• Strumentalizzando la SEC contro progetti innovativi nel mondo delle criptovalute;

• Usando l'IRS per terrorizzare i sostenitori delle criptovalute

• Impiegando il Dipartimento di Giustizia per criminalizzare gli strumenti di privacy;

• Sfruttando la FDIC per operare un debanking nei confronti delle aziende di criptovalute.

Il bersaglio: l'innovazione americana

L'amministrazione Biden non ha solo attaccato le criptovalute, ma ha preso di mira anche il vantaggio competitivo dell'America. Mentre la Cina corre avanti con il suo yuan digitale, la repressione delle criptovalute di Biden ha paralizzato l'innovazione statunitense. Trump capisce che la leadership americana nell'era digitale richiede di abbracciare, non di schiacciare, le nuove tecnologie che migliorano la libertà.

La strada da seguire

Le azioni di Trump segnalano una rottura decisiva con l'agenda di controllo digitale dello Stato profondo:

• Perdonare Ross Ulbricht: significa aver riconosciuto la natura motivata politicamente delle azioni penali sulle criptovalute;

• Vietare le CBDC: significa aver riconosciuto la necessità di proteggere gli americani dalla sorveglianza sotto forma monetaria;

• Annullare l'Ordine esecutivo 14067: significa aver posto fine alla guerra all'innovazione delle criptovalute.

Ma la lotta non è finita. Decine di pionieri delle criptovalute devono ancora affrontare accuse motivate politicamente. Proprio come Trump combatte per prosciugare la palude, questi innovatori hanno bisogno di protezione dalle agenzie governative strumentalizzate.

Un invito all'azione

Trump può consolidare la sua eredità di paladino della libertà finanziaria:

• Ordinando la revisione immediata di tutti i casi avviati ai sensi dell'Ordine esecutivo 14067;

• Ordinando alle agenzie governative di abbandonare le azioni penali motivate politicamente;

• Istituendo normative chiare e pro-innovazione sulle criptovalute;

• Proteggendo i diritti alla privacy nella finanza digitale.

La posta in gioco non potrebbe essere più alta. Come ha detto Trump: “Non vogliono me, vogliono voi: e io mi frappongo nel mezzo”. Lo stesso vale per i pionieri delle criptovalute. Lo Stato profondo non sta solo attaccando loro, sta attaccando il diritto di ogni americano alla libertà finanziaria.

Per comprendere la portata completa di questo assalto alla libertà finanziaria, dobbiamo esaminare esattamente come l'Ordine esecutivo 14067 di Biden abbia scatenato un'ondata senza precedenti di conformità coordinata.

Ordine esecutivo 14067, Parte 1: Esplorazione di una CBDC

Avevo sentito voci sulle valute digitali delle banche centrali (CBDC) per anni, un dollaro digitale che un giorno avrebbe potuto alimentare il reddito di cittadinanza o essere legato ai punteggi di credito sociale. Ma non mi ero mai reso conto di quanto velocemente questi piani stessero avanzando in tutto il mondo. Nel 2020 circa 35 Paesi stavano studiando le CBDC (con la sola Cina che ne stava sperimentando una). Nel 2022 oltre 100 Paesi si erano uniti alla corsa. E oggi? Ben 134 nazioni, che rappresentano il 98% del PIL globale, hanno in corso iniziative CBDC. Quasi la metà è andata oltre la semplice ricerca e almeno 11 sono già state inaugurate.

Negli ultimi due anni mi sono immerso in questo argomento, scavando nei progetti globali e osservando attentamente cosa stesse succedendo negli Stati Uniti. È stato allora che ho scoperto che gli Stati Uniti avevano testato almeno tre progetti pilota CBDC dal 2019 e che il nostro dollaro era già altamente digitale, il che significa che poteva essere monitorato, programmato e censurato. Più scoprivo, più diventava ovvio: le CBDC sono la rampa di accesso alla tirannia digitale.

Non si tratta solo di Stati Uniti contro Cina, o Occidente contro BRICS. È una battaglia per il libero arbitrio. Stiamo affrontando un programma di lunga data per una moneta digitale globale unica (potenzialmente basata sul credito energetico), abbinata a un sistema di credito sociale che ricorda l'Agenda 2030 delle Nazioni Unite. Date agli stati il potere di tracciare, programmare e censurare il denaro e non passerà molto tempo prima che spuntino fuori i punteggi di credito sociale e ID digitali. Una volta che ciò accadrà, la libertà sarà un ricordo del passato.

Poi è arrivato l'Ordine esecutivo di Biden. All'improvviso tutto ha avuto senso:

Il vero obiettivo dietro l'Ordine esecutivo di Biden era quello di schiacciare qualsiasi progetto di ispirazione libertaria, quelli che minacciavano direttamente una valuta digitale completamente programmabile, tracciabile e censurabile. Dopotutto se le persone non hanno alternative, saranno costrette ad accettare la tirannia totale di una CBDC. Eliminate la concorrenza e potrete lanciare una valuta digitale senza alcuna resistenza.

Questo è esattamente il motivo per cui le persone e le organizzazioni incentrate sulla libertà sono finite nel mirino. Nessuno sceglierebbe volontariamente una valuta digitale controllata a livello federale se esistessero delle alternative, quindi la via più rapida per l'adozione di massa è garantire che tali alternative non vedano mai la luce del giorno.

 

Ordine esecutivo 14067, Parte 2: Un approccio statale a tutto tondo alla regolamentazione degli asset digitali

Non potrò mai sottolineare abbastanza quanto sia stato spietato l'assalto dell'amministrazione Biden all'industria delle criptovalute. Non si è trattato di un insieme sparso di azioni di coercizione, ma di un attacco coordinato, dall'alto verso il basso. Quando dico “tutto il governo”, intendo che quasi ogni branca federale si è schierata contro le criptovalute, tutto in una volta. Lasciate che vi mostri esattamente come si è svolto.

Biden ha trasformato il governo federale in un'arma per schiacciare l'industria delle criptovalute. Nell'immagine qui sopra, ho evidenziato solo sei delle agenzie coinvolte.

1. La Securities and Exchange Commission: da quando la SEC ha iniziato a prendere di mira le società di criptovalute nel 2013, ha avviato 173 azioni di coercizione contro aziende e individui. Il 63% di tali azioni è avvenuto solo nei due anni successivi all'ordine esecutivo di Biden. Mentre la SEC afferma che i suoi obiettivi primari sono proteggere gli investitori da frodi e manipolazioni di mercato, e promuovere mercati ordinati, le sue azioni legate alle criptovalute hanno spesso soffocato l'innovazione, in particolare tra i progetti orientati al libertarismo che sfidano la spinta per le valute digitali delle banche centrali (CBDC). Un problema importante è la tendenza della SEC a etichettare molti token come titoli illegali senza fornire un quadro chiaro affinché questi progetti diventino conformi. In realtà, una grande quota di questi token sono “utility token”, non “token di investimento”. Gli utility token funzionano più come i token arcade: li acquistate per accedere o utilizzare un prodotto o un servizio. Il loro valore deriva da quanto sono utili all'interno di una determinata piattaforma, pensate ai crediti su un sito Web o a una valuta di gioco in un videogioco. Per natura non sono progettati per generare profitti basati sugli sforzi di qualcun altro, che di solito è il segno distintivo di un titolo. I token di investimento, invece, vengono acquistati con l'aspettativa di guadagnare un profitto se l'impresa sottostante ha successo, in modo simile all'acquisto di azioni in una società o alla partecipazione ai suoi ricavi. In base alla legge tradizionale sui titoli, gli utility token non rientrerebbero normalmente nella competenza della SEC. Tuttavia essa ha ampliato le sue definizioni per includere molti di questi progetti nel suo ombrello di applicazione, prendendo di mira in particolare quelli con tecnologie mature e funzionali. Io sosterrei la legalizzazione totale dei token di investimento. Potrebbero rivoluzionare i mercati dei capitali offrendo ai piccoli investitori nuove vie per finanziare le startup e agli imprenditori nuovi modi per accedere al capitale. Tuttavia, dopo oltre due decenni di navigazione tra raccolta fondi, capitale di rischio e investment banking, sono convinto che la SEC sia più interessata a mantenere lo status quo che a salvaguardare veramente gli investitori. Questo, tuttavia, è un argomento per un altro giorno.


2. Il Dipartimento di Giustizia: esso si è concentrato sulle risorse digitali incentrate sulla privacy, perseguitando gli sviluppatori che le hanno create. Nell'agosto 2023 Roman Storm, co-fondatore di Tornado Cash, è stato arrestato per aver creato un software che “mescola” le transazioni per mantenerle private, trovandosi ad affrontare accuse di riciclaggio di denaro e “trasmissione di denaro senza licenza” che avrebbero potuto fargli “guadagnare” 45 anni di prigione. Poi, nell'aprile 2024, i fondatori di Samourai Wallet, Keonne Rodriguez e William Lonergan Hill, sono stati accusati allo stesso modo di trasmissione di denaro senza licenza per aver codificato un'app che protegge l'identità degli utenti, correndo il rischio di farsi 20 anni di prigione. Un altro sviluppatore di Tornado Cash, Alexey Pertsev, è stato arrestato nei Paesi Bassi nel 2022 per motivi simili, rischiando anche lui una condanna a 20 anni. Ciò che tutti questi sviluppatori hanno in comune è che hanno scritto software per la privacy, non servizi finanziari tradizionali. Eppure il Dipartimento di Giustizia sta trattando il codice informatico, destinato a proteggere l'anonimato degli utenti, come se fosse una vera e propria impresa criminale. Ciò espone un netto conflitto: la spinta per la privacy finanziaria nelle criptovalute si scontra con la spinta dello stato per la massima sorveglianza. E con le valute digitali delle banche centrali (CBDC) all'orizzonte, valute progettate per la completa trasparenza delle transazioni, la battaglia sul fatto che la privacy rimanga un diritto, o diventi un crimine, si sta solo intensificando.


3. L'IRS: dal 2022 ha intensificato la sua repressione delle criptovalute, introducendo nuove regole che obbligano i broker di asset digitali a presentare il modulo 1099-DA per le transazioni, in sostanza mettendo in luce ogni mossa che fate nell'ecosistema delle criptovalute. Il caso di Roger Ver è un ottimo esempio. Ver è accusato di aver evaso quasi $50 milioni in tasse, un'accusa grave e fasulla che esploreremo più in dettaglio in seguito. Prendendo di mira uno dei più influenti sostenitori del denaro peer-to-peer, l'IRS non mira solo ad abbattere un oppositore delle CBDC; sta anche creando un pericoloso precedente che potrebbe tornare indietro retroattivamente e in avanti indefinitamente, espandendo la presa dell'agenzia sugli utenti di criptovalute ovunque. Questa spinta è sostenuta da un'infusione di $80 miliardi nell'IRS, la quale ha assunto oltre 87.000 nuovi agenti, molti dei quali ora concentrati sulle criptovalute, lavorando in tandem con i principali exchange per tracciare le transazioni. Il risultato? Un sistema di controllo fiscale rafforzato e armato che dovrebbe far suonare campanelli d'allarme ovunque e per chiunque.


4. La FDIC: dal 2022 è stata al centro di una tempesta che molti chiamano Operation ChokePoint 2.0, uno sforzo dietro le quinte per impedire alle attività legate alle criptovalute di usufruire dei servizi bancari. Questa spinta includeva la chiusura forzata di Signature Bank e Silvergate Bank, due importanti istituzioni favorevoli alle criptovalute, che a loro volta hanno spianato la strada al sistema FedNow della Federal Reserve. La FDIC ha anche impedito a Custodia Bank di ottenere un conto master, marginalizzando un modello pro-crypto dal sistema bancario tradizionale. In una recente intervista al podcast di Joe Rogan, Marc Andreessen ha rivelato che gli amministratori delegati nel settore tecnologico che lavorano nel mondo delle criptovalute per anni sono stati silenziosamente esclusi dal sistema bancario. Tale epidemia non è limitata alle criptovalute; il presidente Trump ha di recente preso di mira Bank of America come bersaglio politico, dato che personaggi di alto profilo, come Melania Trump, Barron Trump, Joseph Mercola, Kayne West, Eric Prince e Catturd (da X) hanno tutti dovuto affrontare la chiusura dei loro conti. Questa ondata di misure di controllo è diventata un altro artefatto della posizione aggressiva dello stato, evidenziando un inquietante schema di strumentalizzazione delle istituzioni finanziarie contro minacce sia ideologiche che tecnologiche.


5. Il Dipartimento del Tesoro degli Stati Uniti: dal 2022 ha scatenato un livello di forza normativa sul settore delle criptovalute senza precedenti, culminando in un accordo da record da $4,3 miliardi con Binance per presunte violazioni antiriciclaggio e sanzioni. Questa sanzione senza precedenti, la più grande di sempre, ha inviato un messaggio forte e chiaro: le criptovalute sono un pericolo per il controllo finanziario tradizionale e lo stato era pronto a smantellarle. Prendendo di mira un peso massimo come Binance, il Dipartimento del Tesoro non ha solo punito un trasgressore delle regole; voleva spianare la strada alle CBDC. In un regime del genere, le nozioni di privacy, decentralizzazione e autonomia personale rischiano di essere spazzate via sotto la bandiera “sicurezza e regolamentazione”. In altre parole il Dipartimento del Tesoro aveva trasformato la sua autorità in un'arma per inaugurare un'era di sorveglianza finanziaria e controllo statale.


6. La Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC): dal 2022 ha aumentato la sua attenzione sullo spazio delle criptovalute, con circa il 60% delle sue azioni di controllo mirate alle criptovalute. Una parte significativa di queste azioni è stata rivolta alle piattaforme di finanza decentralizzata (DeFi). Per comprendere la DeFi, immaginate un mercato digitale gestito da programmi informatici auto-eseguibili, chiamati “smart contract”, i quali facilitano prestiti e scambi di asset senza il bisogno di una banca tradizionale o di un intermediario finanziario per supervisionare la transazione. Questo approccio è in netto contrasto con la finanza convenzionale, in cui grandi istituzioni o enti normativi fungono da gatekeeper, e pone una sfida direttamente all'idea delle valute digitali delle banche centrali (CBDC). Invece di avere un'autorità centrale che controlla la creazione e il flusso della valuta, la DeFi incentiva la creazione di asset finanziari peer-to-peer regolati da codice informatico. Per questo motivo la mossa della CFTC contro la DeFi, vista in casi come Ooki DAO, era progettatata a frenare questo settore in espansione applicando le regole finanziarie esistenti che presuppongono un'autorità centralizzata. Allo stesso tempo, limitando l'ascesa della DeFi, i regolatori volevano spianare la strada alle CBDC, che si affidano alla supervisione centralizzata per gestire la politica monetaria e monitorare l'attività finanziaria.

Il costo umano della repressione delle criptovalute da parte dell'amministrazione Biden

Dietro queste azioni ci sono persone reali le cui vite sono state distrutte dall'assalto coordinato del governo federale. Mentre la SEC ha decantato le statistiche di applicazione e il Dipartimento del Tesoro ha celebrato multe record, intere famiglie sono state distrutte, i risparmi di una vita vaporizzati e decenni di lavoro innovativo distrutti. Ogni caso di seguito non rappresenta solo una tragedia individuale, ma un avvertimento per chiunque osi sfidare il controllo statale sul denaro. Questi non sono solo fascicoli di casi, sono storie di americani che hanno rispettato la legge, cercato consulenza legale, creato attività legittime e si sono comunque ritrovati nel mirino dello stato.

1. Roger Ver: “Ho iniziato immediatamente a sensibilizzare sul caso di Roger nel momento in cui è stato arrestato in Spagna l'anno scorso. Perché? Perché in base al successo senza precedenti di Roger nella diffusione del denaro digitale peer-to-peer come alternativa alle banche centrali negli ultimi 15 anni, egli è il nemico numero 1 per coloro che spingono le CBDC e il principale obiettivo dell'Ordine esecutivo 14067”. Sebbene il caso di Roger Ver tecnicamente precedesse l'Ordine esecutivo 14067, la decisione finale di convocare una giuria popolare e incriminarlo non è stata presa prima del 2024, ma dopo che suddetta legge ha fornito il quadro per colpire in modo aggressivo coloro che promuovevano alternative al denaro controllato dallo stato. Non si è mai trattato di tasse; si trattava di eliminare uno dei sostenitori più efficaci del denaro digitale decentralizzato. Ver ha trascorso gli ultimi 15 anni a promuovere instancabilmente il denaro digitale peer-to-peer, investendo e promuovendo Bitcoin e in seguito Bitcoin Cash affinché si potesse creare un mondo in cui gli individui, non gli stati, controllassero i propri destini finanziari. I suoi sforzi non riguardavano solo l'innovazione nel mondo delle criptovalute; erano una sfida diretta a un sistema che si basa sul controllo per finanziare guerre, imporre la coercizione economica e mantenere il potere. Dall'adozione pionieristica di Bitcoin nel commercio al finanziamento di iniziative globali che hanno ampliato la libertà finanziaria, Ver è stato in prima linea in ogni importante sviluppo della finanza decentralizzata. È proprio a causa di questo impatto che è diventato il bersaglio principale dell'Ordine esecutivo 14067, uno strumento progettato per spianare la strada al lancio di una CBDC, schiacciando qualsiasi seria opposizione. Ma l'attacco a Ver è più di un semplice assalto alle criptovalute: il governo federale non lo ha solo accusato di reati fiscali; ha cancellato uno dei principi fondamentali della giustizia violando il privilegio tra avvocato e cliente. I pubblici ministeri hanno fatto irruzione nel team legale di Ver, sequestrato comunicazioni private e distorto i suoi meticolosi sforzi per conformarsi alle leggi fiscali. Questa mossa stabilisce un precedente terrificante: anche quando gli individui seguono alla lettera i consigli legali, possono comunque essere perseguiti se sono considerati una minaccia politica. Ancora più pericolosa è la capacità dell'IRS di riscrivere retroattivamente la cronologia finanziaria per scopi politici. Quando Ver è espatriato, Bitcoin era un asset non classificato senza chiare linee guida fiscali. Per garantire la conformità, assunse alcuni dei migliori avvocati fiscali, contabili ed ex-procuratori federali. Eppure, anni dopo, il governo federale ha reinterpretato arbitrariamente la politica fiscale, trasformando le sue azioni un tempo legittime in un crimine. Questa è un'azione penale selettiva nella sua forma più sfacciata, un avvertimento a qualsiasi innovatore o imprenditore che nessuna diligenza legale li proteggerà se si oppongono all'agenda dello stato. La sua incriminazione ai sensi delle politiche post-Ordine esecutivo 14067 segnala un pericoloso precedente: l'uso dell'IRS come arma politica per mettere a tacere il dissenso e criminalizzare coloro che sfidano lo status quo. Prendendo di mira Ver, il governo degli Stati Uniti ha inviato un messaggio agghiacciante: l'adozione di nuove tecnologie finanziarie al di fuori del controllo statale incontrerà gravi ritorsioni. Se questa azione penale regge, consoliderà un'era in cui la conformità non è più una questione di legge ma di favore politico e coloro che sfidano l'egemonia monetaria affronteranno l'annientamento legale. Questo caso non riguarda solo Roger Ver, riguarda il futuro della libertà finanziaria. Se sono riusciti a fare questo all'uomo che più ha sponsorizzato il denaro elettronico peer-to-peer, possono farlo a chiunque. Esiste un breve documentario che espone il calvario di Roger. Tracciando parallelismi con i destini di Julian Assange e John McAfee, presenta resoconti di prima mano, sconvolgenti eccessi e un duro avvertimento per chiunque tenga alla libertà finanziaria. Potete leggere il mio articolo più approfondito sul tema, Why Roger Ver Deserves a Presidential Pardon, e potete rimanere aggiornati sul caso firmando una petizione a sostegno di Roger su freerogernow.org.


2. Ian Freeman: l'uomo che ha introdotto Roger Ver a Bitcoin nel 2010, è stato arrestato il 16 marzo 2021, mesi prima che l'Ordine esecutivo 14067 di Biden fosse anche solo un luccichio negli occhi di Washington. Eppure, dopo la sua approvazione, le agenzie federali hanno raddoppiato i loro sforzi per farlo tacere, portando a una condanna a otto anni di carcere il 2 ottobre 2023. Mia moglie e io eravamo in tribunale quel giorno, e ciò a cui abbiamo assistito è stato un tentativo, politico, a tutto campo di abbattere una figura chiave sia nel mondo delle criptovalute che nel movimento per la libertà. Ian e il suo socio in affari, Mark Edge, sono co-conduttori di Free Talk Live, un programma radiofonico trasmesso a livello nazionale che è stato una delle voci più influenti nella promozione della libertà personale. Si stima che fino al 10% dei partecipanti al Free State Project abbiano scoperto per la prima volta la comunità libertaria del New Hampshire grazie a quel programma; infatti parlare direttamente con Ian e Mark ha avuto un ruolo importante nella mia decisione di trasferirmi nel Granite State. Chiaramente il governo federale non stava solo inseguendo l'ennesimo appassionato di criptovalute, stava prendendo di mira un intero movimento che ha innescato un cambiamento nel mondo reale. Il reportage investigativo di Jacob Hornberger espone come il Dipartimento di Giustizia abbia utilizzato un agente dell'IRS sotto copertura, che si spacciava per un concessionario di automobili, per attirare Ian in uno scenario di “spaccio di droga” inventato, uno schema che Ian alla fine ha rifiutato. Ma il Dipartimento di Giustizia ha comunque trasformato tutto in accuse penali. Al momento della sentenza i pubblici ministeri sono andati oltre, facendo sfilare davanti al giudice vittime di truffe sentimentali per insinuare che Ian le aveva ingannate, nonostante non ci fossero accuse o condanne del genere. Questa narrazione era così fuori dal mondo che l'ufficio di libertà vigilata inizialmente si è rifiutato di designare questi individui come “vittime” idonee al risarcimento. È ovvio che il suo caso non aveva niente a che fare con la giustizia; si trattava di mettere a tacere un sostenitore del denaro decentralizzato e della libertà. L'appello di Ian è fissato per il 5 febbraio 2025 presso la Corte d'appello di Boston. Se vi interessa resistere all'eccesso federale e difendere il diritto alla libertà finanziaria e personale, scoprite come sostenere il caso di Ian su www.freeiannow.org.


3. Joe Roets: Dragonchain, spesso definita “la blockchain americana”, aveva a capo Joe Roets, paladino della libertà individuale in un panorama finanziario che gravita verso la centralizzazione. Offrendo una blockchain completamente operativa e alimentata da un utility token (DRGN), anziché da una moneta speculativa, Dragonchain voleva offrire un'alternativa alle CBDC. Il suo approccio trasparente, l'attenzione alla privacy e l'architettura supportata da brevetti rappresentavano una sfida diretta al controllo centralizzato, portando molti a credere che la causa della SEC, che rivendicava offerte di titoli non registrati, fosse alimentata più dal desiderio di sopprimere una tecnologia concorrente che dalla protezione degli investitori. Poiché Dragonchain aveva prodotti e clienti reali prima di introdurre DRGN, funzionava più come uno strumento che come un meccanismo di raccolta fondi, sottolineando ulteriormente la sua legittimità. I sostenitori affermano che l'impegno di Dragonchain per la libertà personale e la decentralizzazione, attributi chiave che minacciano una CBDC, l'hanno reso un obiettivo primario ai sensi dell'Ordine esecutivo 14067. Se volete mostrare il vostro sostegno, prendete in considerazione la possibilità di firmare questa lettera aperta di supporto.


4. Steven Nerayoff: molto prima che l'Ordine esecutivo 14067 accendesse la miccia su quella che molti vedono come una spinta verso le CBDC, il governo federale stava già stringendo le sue maglie attorno ai sostenitori delle criptovalute e della libertà. Nella mia intervista dell'anno scorso con Steven Nerayoff ho condiviso il suo straziante resoconto di un raid dell'FBI nella sua casa, descrivendo in dettaglio una scena sconvolgente più adatta a un film thriller che a un arresto di routine. Nerayoff ha insistito sul fatto che il caso di estorsione risultante è stato fabbricato ad arte per costringerlo a incriminare altre persone come Roger Ver, Patrick Byrne, Bruce Fenton e Naomi Brockwell. In risposta Nerayoff ha intentato una causa da $9,6 miliardi contro il governo federale, con il famoso avvocato Alan Dershowitz tra coloro che lo rappresentano. Nerayoff sostiene che la sua ordalia è stata tutt'altro che un incidente isolato, suggerendo invece che riflette un'escalation sistemica di “giustizialismo” precedente all'Ordine esecutivo 14067, che il governo federale ha sfruttato per accelerare il controllo sugli asset digitali e spianare la strada alle CBDC, stritolando l'ethos di libertà che l'ecosistema delle criptovalute era stato progettato per proteggere.

Trump dovrebbe porre fine immediatamente alla guerra nei tribunali

Dal punto di vista di Roger, Ian, Joe, Steven e migliaia di altri che sono stati colpiti dall'applicazione dell'Ordine esecutivo, i suoi effetti sono ancora in vigore.

Apprezzo il fatto che Trump sia impegnato e abbia molte priorità; tuttavia lui, più di chiunque altro, può comprendere il prezzo che il giustizialismo ha sulla vita di una persona. Ha affermato che vuole che gli Stati Uniti siano leader mondiali sia nell'intelligenza artificiale che nelle criptovalute. Ha anche affermato che vuole rendere di nuovo grande l'America e inaugurare un'età dell'oro. Dopo aver concesso la grazia a Ross Ulbricht e aver annullato l'Ordine esecutivo 14067, so che dovrei dargli il beneficio del dubbio. Tuttavia non possiamo davvero essere leader nel mondo delle criptovalute se i pionieri, sui cui sforzi è stato costruito l'intero ecosistema, rimangono vittime del giustizialismo della precedente amministrazione Biden.

Presidente Trump, nello spirito delle sue coraggiose grazie per gli imputati del 6 gennaio, dovrebbe ordinare immediatamente ai suoi incaricati presso la SEC, la CFTC e il Dipartimento di giustizia di abbandonare tutte le azioni esecutive nell'Ordine esecutivo 14067 di Biden. Ciò include, ma non è limitato solo a loro, i casi contro Roger Ver (evasione fiscale), Ian Freeman (scambio di bitcoin senza licenza) e Joe Roets di Dragonchain (titoli non registrati). Queste azioni sono state intensificate sotto un Ordine esecutivo progettato per promuovere una CBDC, un programma che ha respinto, e per eliminare le criptovalute decentralizzate e incentrate sulla libertà.

Naturalmente se viene scoperta una vera attività criminale, sarà un giusto processo ad accertarlo. Fino ad allora, una presunzione di innocenza dovrebbe sostituire l'atmosfera di “colpevole fino a prova contraria” che ha preso piede sotto l'approccio ostile dell'amministrazione Biden. Intraprendere questo passo placherebbe la percezione che l'apparato giudiziario americano venga trasformato in un'arma per spianare la strada a una CBDC. Sarebbe anche in linea con la sua visione più ampia di un mercato fiorente, in cui innovazione e libertà personale, non l'eccesso di potere del governo federale, dettano il ritmo per il futuro finanziario americano.

Perché ancora non posso festeggiare

Mettetevi nei panni di Roger Ver per un momento. Ogni mattina si sveglia da solo in un Paese straniero in cui non parla la lingua. Non abbraccia i suoi genitori da oltre un decennio. Ogni due giorni deve dimostrare a un'aula di tribunale di non essere fuggito e, nel frattempo, il mondo si entusiasma per una nuova età dell'oro delle criptovalute costruita in parte sulle sue spalle. Vive nel terrore costante che la polizia possa irrompere, portarlo via e rispedirlo negli Stati Uniti, dove lo attende una condanna quasi certa all'ergastolo.

E perché? Ha pagato le tasse, assunto professionisti e messo tutti i puntini sulle “i”. Non si tratta di tasse; è un gioco di potere. Con la repressione dell'amministrazione Biden, Roger è diventato un simbolo, qualcuno che doveva essere neutralizzato affinché le CBDC potessero avanzare senza opposizione.

Quindi come possiamo celebrare una cosiddetta “vittoria” se persone come Roger, e tante altre, rimangono intrappolate in questo incubo giudiziario? La vera chiusura di questo capitolo buio arriverà solo quando potrà camminare libero e ogni caso motivato politicamente contro gli innovatori nel mondo delle criptovalute verrà finalmente abbandonato. Forse allora potrò credere che questa volta sarà davvero diverso. Forse allora decenni di promesse non mantenute, crescente potere statale e il senso strisciante di tradimento perpetuo, anche se brevemente, lasceranno il posto a qualcosa di meglio.

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

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“Freedom isn’t free” we have been told by the martially inclined. A good idea of what they meant was presented to the world before the saying ever caught on. 1972 was when the AP ran the Nick Ut photo  “Napalmed Girl”. It depicted 9-year-old Phan Thi Kim Phuc running down a rural Vietnamese road naked, molten and sobbing. Her village, where US ordnance had just detonated, incinerated in the background. The picture literalized “collateral damage” for anyone rationalizing in newsy abstractions.

In the years since the once-called “police action” in Viet Nam, another cliché started making the rounds: “we have to fight them over there, so we won’t have to over here.” Supposedly, American freedoms remain intact because the military, stealthily abetted by our cloaks and daggers, have been deployed oceans away for over a century. Going by this reasoning, your right to protest against Richard Nixon 50 years ago was paid for by skin off Kim Phuc’s back.

Ut’s photo arrived less than 3 decades after the end of WWII carnage. Mass atrocity and human suffering were things many people had gotten used to. Casualty figures in daily reports became as routine as sports statistics.

During the 80 years between the war and today much ink has been spilled on the role and responsibility of major media. Does any other kind of “non-fiction” narrative contain as many blind spots as when journalists cover journalism? In the 50’s and 60’s boys too young to vote or drink were conscripted to face enemy fire without any declaration of war. The upper ranks of the news corps of the time were known to consort regularly with policy makers in charge of such decisions. Downing heady liquids as they dined, news industry execs could be part of the planning. In general they’ve been spared much blame or credit for global fate post VJ Day.

By the end of the Johnson administration the wisdom of so-called “Wise Men” began to be called out. Students, not media, led the pack. Some of the informing classes came around, eventually. Others still hold that higher standards reigned in the Cronkite age. Is it true? Was it a journalistic era that writers and academics should recall nostalgically? Would reviving it make American news great again?

Functionally literate people are well aware of the litigious accomplishments of the NYT and WP on the question of “prior restraints.” Where those not quite as erudite are concerned, film-land hasn’t neglected the Pentagon Papers case either. What Daniel Ellsberg divulged was vital to public understanding of relations between Washington and Saigon. But official documents don’t necessarily tell the whole story?

 What are the chances, for example, that our initial forays into Viet Nam got rolling steam from a third martini poured for Joseph Alsop at Kay Graham’s house? Is it even a question? Coteries like the renowned Georgetown Set still have sway in American policy making. While there is little accounting in published letters for the impact of their influence. It’s considered “conspiratorial” to pry into discussions at secretive conclaves that news industry chieftains attend.

Ut’s iconic image continues to be worth millions of words. It was the South Vietnamese Air force that mistakenly dropped napalm on their own side in Trang Bang that day. But that’s hardly the point.  The US provided the ordnance and had been wantonly bombing all over Viet Nam and neighbors for years. There were many other Kim Phucs outstanding who never got the benefit of a camera. Whatever emotions that little girl evoked, the prerogatives of US leadership loom large in the background.

A lot of mainstream media ire has been devoted to giving too wide an audience to voices considered mendacious and unqualified. The remnants of the traditional scribing trade – and “tradecraft”  maybe the better word considering historic entanglements with secret agencies — from the pre-internet age have devoted little circumspection to their own foibles, failures and faults. Their relationships with movers and shakers in the most destructive years of US policy, have never been given a fair shake.

The Sunday, March 2nd NYT Opinion section features the anonymous editorial “Trump Loves Free Speech Only When It’s His.” It’s not hard to find statements, actions and policies of 47 that support this contention. Is it difficult to back up the very same accusations aimed at Biden and many of Trumps other opponents? Consider this sentence:

Officials in Washington have spent the past month stripping federal websites of any hint of undesirable words and thoughts, disciplining news organizations that refuse to parrot the president’s language and threatening to punish those who have voiced criticism of investigations and prosecutions.

While it’s unlikely Trump’s “Gulf of America” will catch on, Biden renamed over 600 pieces of US real estate. You can describe denying journalists’ access as “disciplining” but it still fails to rise to the level of violating the 1st amendment. Government pressure on electronic media, to limit the spread of viewpoints an administration opposes, comes much closer to crossing that line. If the AP sought Kissinger and Nixon’s permission to run Ut’s photo, what do you think would have happened? Content on federal websites and published material has always been in the clutches of political ins. The bill-of-rights exists to protect you from government employees – not government employees from government.

This administration, however, is mustering the arms of government to suppress speech it doesn’t like and compel words and ideas it prefers.”

Does siccing the FBI on parents at school board meetings count as “mustering the arms of government”? What about planting a predatory G-Man in the congregation of a Catholic Church? When it comes to livid linguistic movements suppressing “speech it doesn’t like and compel[ing] words and ideas it prefers,” is the Republican Party really the first transgressor the NYT editorial board could think of? They could call their mothers if they knew what to call them. Academic institutions crank out Democrats like the Fed prints currency. They have been demanding a speech revolution, and conformity to it, that no autocrat yet known would try impose, for years. By limiting the words people can choose from they hope to limit what can be thought. It is difficult to believe this hadn’t occurred to the editorial’s authors. And dismal to imagine they thought they could get away with ignoring it.

Trump and Musk’s attitudes on open dialogue leave much to be desired. The idea they started this war of words and other weapons, however, on words, strikes anyone following current events for the last 2 decades as surreal. That’s without going over major media’s selective treatment of content during the era. Both men’s resort to litigation over matters of speech is troubling. It doesn’t come close though, to the number of people who lost their jobs over speech trivialities in recent years and had to litigate to retain them. Meanwhile, people like Taylor Lorenz wail like banshees before the camera getting an unsolicited taste of their own literary medicine. There is a growing caste in the United States demanding unfettered speech for themselves and a muzzle on the masses. This is where we get to the NYT’s most problematic line referring to regime 47:

“It sees the press not as institution with an explicit constitutional privilege but as a barrier to overcome …”

In the age of modern communication, should the press be seen as an “institution”? Was it in 1791 when the first amendment was ratified? Does the NYT hold that the “explicit constitutional privilege” alluded to is one solely prescribed for entities like themselves and not all other citizens? The very people raging over concentrated fortunes and corporate power have long opposed wildcat competition in the news industry.

During litigation of Citizens United v. FEC, most journalists opposed the plaintiff. “Corporations are not people” we heard, and heard, and still hear. It didn’t bother speakers of those words that their own speech was not restricted from wide audiences at election time. It didn’t count, they said, because they were employed by large media corporations. The prevalence of this double standard across the blue world is nearly universal. What makes news industrialists more trustworthy than other kinds of entrepreneurs?

Just how does mega-media somehow evade the human frailty that rendered CU illegal under McCain-Feingold? One reason the law made no sense is that political content shows up in The Simpsons, Bill Nye Science Guy, Oprah and everything in between. Hillary the Movie made no bones about what it was up to, and you had to pay the cable company extra to see it. CNN was free and ubiquitous in every commercial airport the whole time. Nearing the end the NYT says:

The current administration may argue that these steps [bulleted above in the article] are simply payback for an American political left that can be rightly criticized for policing speech in recent years, from trying to shut or shout down conservative speakers to trying to enforce adherence to its own list of acceptable words and phrases like “pregnant people,” the “unhoused,” “ “incarcerated individuals” and “Latinx.”

But the Trump administration’s early and furious reaction to criticism and pungent speech isn’t just guilty of the same sins; it expands on them, worryingly, with the powers of the state. If the MAGA movement were really confident that the American public stood firmly behind the new intolerance, then why not welcome serious news reporting or even the jeers of critics and let the best ideas win?

What “serious news reporting” is could stand some elaboration, especially from this source. A report can easily be 100% factual without including 100% of pertinent facts. A good example of that is defense of continued concealment of the JFK assassination files. At least 3000 are still classified, but 99% are out there and that’s supposed to satisfy the ingrates. Meanwhile, the combined influence of the FBI, CIA and other spookdoms to stifle internet-wide discussion of the Hunter laptop is supposedly not due to “powers of the state.”

There’s no justification for Trumpian maneuvers to control language and dummy up critics, but has any reliable measuring stick been applied by the NYT proving admin 47 is a worse offender than 46? Biden was certainly sneakier.

How is Nick Ut’s Pulitzer winning photo relevant to all of this? The process that led America down the postwar path of coup d’etat, political meddling abroad, assassination attempts, riot incitement, nods at massacre, foreign invasions and other skullduggery included the participation and enabling powers of media moguls of the day and their minions. Any description of ante-internet news reporting as pristine, exacting, honest and honorable is pure propaganda. It was a duplicitous age of hidden agendas, corporate coercion, misdirection and covered up culpability. Men with little confidence in their constituents or consumers decided tomorrow’s headlines at lavish tables, usually with a snootful as they ruled on copy fit for the masses. “Napalmed Girl” was among the fruits reaped from what they sowed.

Numerous policy disasters have plagued the US and the world over recent generations. Is there any journalistic principle or philosophy that would have done better standing in the way of state engineered atrocities like coups in Tehran and Guatemala City, The CIA’s bungled Operation Valuable Fiend, Viet Nam, Iran Air Flight 655, 1983’s Marine Barracks bombing in Beirut or the second Gulf War? The institutionalized media of the US came up short covering these developments. They were often in on the processes that led to grisly results.

Meanwhile, a professoriate led by Tim Wu at Columbia, claims to advocate for free speech. That high-priest and acolytes assure the laity that the trouble is too much information, too much speech. Contradicting them on social media equals interrupting the sermon from the pews. Wu would solve the “problem” of a misled public by limiting the audience people he disagrees with can reach.

The unavoidable fact is that “institution”-alized informers had their chance. The lesson to learn from their abuses, highhandedness, informational blackouts and emotional proximity to their human subjects is that social media should be treated like any other common carrier. Allowing the public free and unfettered access choosing electronic sources of information is the best shot we have at bringing unruly ruling-classes to heel. A racket passing itself off as a professional caste proved incapable of watching power structures faithfully without being drawn into them.

Whatever Trump does, deplatforming, demonetizing and blackballing anyone from acquiring willing electronic subscribers is presently the most perilous threat to free speech. News providers that see themselves as institutions had exhausted their credibility by 1963. That was when Phil Graham made a scene and complained to a room full of publishers in Phoenix, Arizona about, among other things, the influence of the CIA on daily copy. He was dragged from the stage and hospitalized. The top brass of The Company had been meeting for drinks and dinner at Graham’s house for years by then. A few months later he shot himself.

The post Inflating the Cost of Free Speech appeared first on LewRockwell.

“We will not stand idly by while this regime pulls the wool over the eyes of the American people,” proclaimed Sheria Smith, the president of American Federation of Government Employees unit representing more than a thousand federal Education Department employees fired by the Trump administration. The New York Times frets that the layoffs could devastate the agency that “tracks student achievement and enforces civil rights laws in schools.”

But ever since it was created by President Jimmy Carter, the Education Department has done far worse than “pull the wool” over Americans’ eyes. Federal mandates and bureaucratic meddling have helped mentally blight millions of children.

More than 150 years ago, abolitionist Frederick Douglass declared, “Once you learn to read, you will be forever free.” But federal education policymakers have prevented legions of kids from reaching that road to freedom.

No modern American president did more than Barack Obama to canonize bigoted standards in federal education policy. President Obama championed subsidies for public schools so that “the federal government can play a leading role in encouraging the… high standards we need.” But, as part of its convoluted plans to reduce the achievement gap, the Obama administration cajoled most states into setting lower academic goals for blacks and Hispanics. From 2009 onwards, the feds rubber-stamped official plans under which white and Asian students were expected to perform far better than black and Hispanic students. (I bashed the discriminatory policy in USA Today in 2014).

The feds bankrolled the District of Columbia’s plan to boost the percentage of white students who passed reading tests from 88 percent to 94 percent while the percentage of black students who passed rose from 41 percent to 71 percent. At DC’s Wilson High School, the goal was for 67 percent of black students and 95 percent of white students to pass math tests by 2017. Cynical Washingtonians joked that Wilson High had a two-track system, and its graduates went either to Yale or to jail.

The federal Education Department approved Tennessee’s plan to raise the passing rate for English III courses for white students from 45.6 percent to 65.4 percent between 2011 and 2018 while the passing rate for black students leaped from 17.6 percent to 47.6 percent. The feds approved Minnesota’s plan to achieve 82 percent proficiency in 11th grade math for white students, 66 percent for Hispanic students, and 62 percent for black students.

Alabama’s goals for the 2013-14 school year called for 91.5 percent of white third graders and 79 percent of black third graders to pass math. Tim Robinson, the father of two black school children, complained to the Tuscaloosa News: “I think having a low bar means they can just pass them on. I think it’s dumbing our race down and preparing our boys for prison.”

The Virginia NAACP denounced the new scoring regime. State Sen. Mamie Locke, the chair of the Virginia Legislative Black Caucus, protested: “We believe that education is the ‘great equalizer’ in our society…. The state’s new system of benchmarks for performance is antithetical to this goal.” Further south, the Florida PTA protested: “By setting ethnicity-based goals, the door is open for continued discrimination.”

In some states, the racial double scoring was simply bureaucratic finagling to keep federal cash flowing into state coffers. Elois Zeanah, President of the Alabama Federation of Republican Women, declared that there was,

…no way would these standards, which have racial overtones, be accepted if there had been an opportunity for public debate. Parents have no idea that their elected state education officials, and the state superintendent of education, are forcing different standards on their children based on their family income and race.

As historian Walter Russell Mead warned, “In practical terms, this is setting up a system in which some teachers will think they’ve succeeded as long as the black kids in a class reach a certain low level of proficiency.” University of Michigan education professor Carla O’Connor complained that the tests schools used measure only “basic-level skills and now we’re saying we don’t think certain populations of students can even meet those expectations.”

The Education Department required states to specify exactly how far each racial and ethnic group of students at each school would progress over the following years. The spreadsheet with Washington State’s formal plan for each school contained more than 47,000 separate lines. That was a level of education planning akin to the Soviet central planners who pretended to foretell the yields for every crop on every collective farm in the next Five-Year Plan. In the same way that collective farms submitted grossly exaggerated harvest data to Moscow, many schools were caught falsifying student results to fulfill federal mandates. States missed most of the goals but that didn’t matter because federal funding kept flowing.

If Lester Maddox—one of the most racist governors in the 1960s—had officially announced lower learning goals for blacks in Georgia’s schools, he would have been tarred by every editorial page north of the Mason-Dixon Line. Because Obama was usually portrayed with a halo, his racial profiling in the classroom was largely ignored. But the policies scorned the message of the 1954 landmark decision in Brown v. Board of Education. The Supreme Court stressed that segregation could “generate a feeling of [black] inferiority…that may affect [children’s] hearts and minds in a way unlikely to ever be undone.” Maybe none of the Obama administration education policymakers read or remembered that 1954 decision?

Obama’s racial profiling dismally failed. Despite soaring government spending on schools, the racial achievement gap “is now 30 percent larger than it was 35 years ago,” according to Stanford University education professor Linda Darling-Hammond. But many Democrats and perhaps many laid-off Education Department bureaucrats still believe that a bigger federal iron fist can solve all problems.

Luckily, millions of parents and some states are done waiting for Uncle Sam to fix schools. “Mississippi went from being ranked the second-worst state in 2013 for fourth-grade reading to 21st in 2022,” the Associated Press reported. The “Mississippi Miracle” is based on a return to phonics—a reading method that succeeded for generations until progressive reformers replaced it with new-fangled methods that guaranteed full-employment for learning disability consultants. Mississippi fourth graders have higher reading scores on the National Assessment of Education Progress than do fourth graders in Minnesota—a liberal state long known for high education standards (and now best known for wacky Governor Tim Walz). Forty-seven percent of Mississippi fourth graders are black while only 13 percent of Minnesota fourth graders are black. But the method of teaching reading mattered more than the race of the students.

America can no longer afford a “no-fault” federal education policy. Torpedoing the Education Department is one of Trump’s most encouraging reforms.

Education Secretary Linda McMahon declared that the layoffs are only “the first step of eliminating bureaucratic bloat” as part of a “new era of accountability.” Expect endless caterwauling about how the mass firings at the Education Department will doom America’s future. But terminating that department is the best guarantee that the feds will not inflict more idiocy upon hapless kids across the land.

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

The post The Feds Have Been the Main Source of Racial Bigotry in Classrooms appeared first on LewRockwell.

A repugnant tactic of authoritarianism is categorizing people’s desire for or exercise of freedom as illness that government should suppress. An example of this was the deeming of dissidents in the Soviet Union as mentally ill to justify their detention and punishment.

In America, there has long been resistance against an effort to similarly have the United States government medicalize the exercise of gun rights as a means to circumvent the constitutional protection of the right to bear arms contained in the Second Amendment. In the 1990s this resistance led to congressional imposition of a spending prohibition against the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) advocating or promoting gun control.

The effort to prevent the US government from using medicalization to crack down on gun rights appears to have had a success in the new Trump administration with the removal from the HHS website of a guns and public health advisory from the preceding Biden administration. Abené Clayton reported Monday at the Guardian:

The Trump administration has removed former surgeon general Vivek Murthy’s advisory on gun violence as a public health issue from the US Department of Health and Human Services’ website. This move was made to comply with Donald Trump’s executive order to protect second amendment rights, a White House official told the Guardian.

The strange thing is that while the Trump administration appears to be taking action to cut off HHS threats to Second Amendment rights, HHS is helping lead Trump administration efforts to expand US government threats to First Amendment rights. Medicalization to restrict free speech, assembly, and petition is on the ascendancy at HHS as demonstrated by a March 3 announcement by HHS, the Department of Education (ED), and the General Services Administration (GSA) concerning the US government’s Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism, created the month before, reviewing actions or inactions of Columbia University relative to “antisemitism” and potential penalties that may be imposed upon that university. This is all justified in the announcement by reference to a January 29 executive order of President Donald Trump that employs a peculiarly expanded definition of antisemitism incorporated into an executive order from Trump’s first term that includes positions against to the Israel government in addition to the commonly understood definition that concerns positions against an ethnicity or religion.

“Anti-Semitism – like racism – is a spiritual and moral malady that sickens societies and kills people with lethalities comparable to history’s most deadly plagues,” declared HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. in the announcement. That is medicalization in a nutshell: Your “bad thoughts” are a plague the government must stop to protect public health.

Four days later — on March 7, HHS, ED, and GSA were back with a new announcement that, due to review by the Joint Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism, about 400 million dollars in US grants to Columbia University had been canceled, with more grant cancelations expected to follow. Then, on March 13 the HHS, ED, and GSA followed up with a letter to Columbia University using the denial of funding as leverage to demand the university crack down on free speech, assembly and petition, as well as change, and even hand to US government control over, a variety of university policies and procedures.

Meanwhile, the US government is making an example of Mahmoud Khalil who was involved in protests challenging US foreign policy and related to Israel at Columbia University. The US government has arrested and detained him, and is seeking his deportation, because Khalil apparently did nothing more than exercise First Amendment protected rights.

These actions against Columbia University are not one-off. A February 28 press release from the Department of Justice (DOJ) listed ten universities — Columbia University plus George Washington University; Harvard University; Johns Hopkins University; New York University; Northwestern University; the University of California, Los Angeles; the University of California, Berkeley; the University of Minnesota; and the University of Southern California — as subject to visits from the Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism because their campuses “have experienced antisemitic incidents since October 2023.” Expect the list to keep growing.

Leo Terrell, described in the February DOJ press release as “[l]eading Task Force member and Senior Counsel to the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights,” made clear in an included quote that the Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism means business. He stated:

The Task Force’s mandate is to bring the full force of the federal government to bear in our effort to eradicate Anti-Semitism, particularly in schools. These visits are just one of many steps this Administration is taking to deliver on that commitment.

It looks like we are witnessing the beginning of a major crackdown on First Amendment rights. The US government, however, will claim this development is nothing to worry about because the purpose is to make America healthy again.

This originally appeared on The Ron Paul Institute.

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