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When asked about the cost of their government’s support of the State of Israel, some Americans will say it’s $3.8 billion a year — the amount of annual military aid the United States is committed to under its current, 10-year “memorandum of understanding” with Israel. However, that answer massively understates the true cost of the relationship, not only because it doesn’t capture various, vast expenditures springing from it, but even more so because the relationship’s steepest costs can’t be measured in dollars.

Since its 1948 founding, Israel has been far and away the largest recipient of American foreign assistance. Though the Ukraine war created a brief anomaly, Israel generally tops the list every year, despite the fact that Israel is among the world’s richest countries — ranked three spots below the UK and two spots above Japan in per capita GDP. Driving that point home, even when using the grossly-understating $3.8 billion figure for US expenditures on Israel, America gave the Zionist state $404 per person in the 2023 fiscal year, compared to just $15 per person for Ethiopia, one of the poorest countries on Earth and America’s third-largest beneficiary that year.

Source: Council on Foreign Relations

Israel’s cumulative post-World War II haul has been nearly double that of runner-up Egypt. What most Americans don’t realize, however, is that much of Egypt’s take — $1.4 billion in 2023 — should be chalked up to Israel too, because of ongoing US aid commitments rising from the 1978 Camp David Accords that brokered peace between Egypt and Israel. The same can be said for Jordan — America’s fourth-largest beneficiary in fiscal 2023 at $1.7 billion. US aid to the kingdom surged after it signed its own 1994 treaty with Israel, and a wedge of Jordan’s aid is intended to address the country’s large refugee population, comprising not only Palestinians displaced by Israel’s creation, but also masses who’ve fled US-led regime-change wars pursued on Israel’s behalf.

Then there’s the supplemental aid to Israel that Congress periodically authorizes on top of the memorandum of understanding (MOU) commitment. Since the October 7 Hamas invasion of Israel, these supplements have exceeded the MOU commitment by leaps and bounds. In just the first year of the war in Gaza, Congress and President Biden approved an additional $14.1 billion in “emergency” military aid to Israel, bringing the total for that year to $17.9 billion.

One must also consider the fact that, given the US government runs perpetual deficits that now easily exceed $1 trillion, every marginal expenditure, including aid to Israel, is financed with debt that bears an interest expense, increasing Americans’ tax-and-inflation burden.

On top of money given to Israel, the US government spends huge sums on activities either meant to benefit Israel or that spring from Israel’s actions. For example, during just the first year of Israel’s post-Oct 7 war in Gaza, increased US Navy offensive and defensive operations in the Middle East theater cost America an estimated $4.86 billion.

Those Gaza-war-related outflows have not only continued but accelerated. For example, earlier this year, the Pentagon engaged in an intense campaign against Yemen’s Houthis. In proclaimed retaliation for Israel’s systematic destruction of Gaza, the Houthis have targeted Israel, and ships the Houthis said were linked to Israel. In response, America unleashed “Operation Rough Rider,” which often saw $2 million American missiles being used against $10,000 Houthi drones, and cost between one and two billion dollars.

President Trump’s military strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities — amid a war initiated by Israel on contrived premises — cost America another one to two billion dollars, according to early estimates. Even before the attack on a nuclear program the US intelligence community continues to assess is not aimed at producing a weapon, the Pentagon was already spending more money on Israel’s behalf, helping to defend the country from Iran’s response to Israel’s unprovoked aggression. The run-up to US strikes itself entailed a massive and costly mobilization of American forces and equipment to the region, as the Pentagon readied for multiple scenarios.

Propelled by Israel’s powerful US-based lobby, by Israel-pandering legislators, and by a revolving cast of Israel-favoring presidents, cabinet members, and national security officials, the United States has consistently pursued policies in the Middle East that place top priority on securing Israel’s regional supremacy.

Among the many avenues used to pursue that goal, none has been more costly than that of regime change, where an outcome that results in a shattered, chaotic state is seemingly just as pleasing to Israel and its American collaborators as one that spawns a functioning state with an Israel-accommodating government — and where the cost is often measured not only in US dollars but in American lives and limbs.

Of course, the most infamous such regime-change effort was the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. “If you take out Saddam, I guarantee you that it will have enormous positive reverberations on the region,” current Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu assured a US congressional hearing. Doing his part to aid a Bush administration dominated by Israel-aligned neoconservatives bent on taking out one of Israel’s regional adversaries, Netanyahu also said there was “no question whatsoever” that Hussein was “hell-bent on achieving atomic bombs.”

The drive to topple Syria’s Iran-allied Assad government is another prominent example of regime change on behalf of Israel, as the two countries sought to sever the “Shia Crescent” that — due in great part to Saddam’s ouster — presented a continuous pipeline of Iranian influence extending to Israel’s borders. To the contentment of the US and Israeli governments, Syria is now led by an al Qaeda alumnus who’s reportedly poised to relinquish Syria’s long-standing claim on the Golan Heights, which Israel captured in 1967.

Taken together, the price tag of US military operations in Iraq and Syria, including past and future medical and disability care for veterans, totals $2.9 trillion, according to Brown University’s Costs of War Project. The human toll has been even more mind-boggling: upwards of 580,000 civilians and combatants killed, with perhaps two to four times that number indirectly perishing from displacement, disease and other factors. More than 4,600 US service-members died in Iraq, and 32,000 were injured, many of them enduring amputations and burns. Alongside mass suffering, these and other US interventions undertaken to ensure Israel’s regional supremacy have fomented enormous resentment of the United States across the region.

Those resentments help drive another massive debit in the Israel’s account with the United States: Any thorough assessment of the costs of the relationship must reflect the fact that US backing of Israel is a principal motivator of Islamist terrorism directed against Americans, and there’s no greater example of that fact than 9/11.

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Deputy FBI Director Dan Bongino just posted the following communique on X:

Update: Public corruption will not be tolerated as the Director and I vigorously pursue bad actors who violated their oaths to all of us. We view the theft of public funds the same way. It’s a crime against all of us. Today, in conjunction with the DOJ and our federal partners, we are announcing the results from the largest healthcare fraud investigation, as measured by financial losses, in DOJ history. The investigation spanned 50 federal districts, and resulted in nearly 3 billion dollars in false claims with over 15 million illegal distributions of pills. We seized 245 million dollars, we charged 324 defendants, 96 medical professionals, and the intended losses from these bad actors approached 15 billion dollars. Results matter. Talk is cheap. And this is not even the beginning of the beginning. If you’re stealing from the public, or violating your oath to serve, then we’re coming for you too. God bless America, and all those who defend Her.

The announcement reminded me of the 2019 book Code Blue: Inside America’s Medical Industrial Complex, by Mike Magee, an MD and former physician-spokesman for Pfizer. As he memorably described the corruption of the U.S. healthcare system.

Cozy relationships and generous gratuities have demonstrated a remarkable ability to corrupt even those we would instinctively put on the side of the angels, including members of the biomedical research community, deans of medical schools, directors of continuing medical education programs, officers at the NIH and FDA, and even seemingly altruistic patient advocacy organizations like the American Cancer Society.

A theologian looking at all this might conclude that American health care has lost its soul. A behavioral economist would point us toward studies showing that the exercise of moral judgment in a business context draws on a completely different cognitive framework from the one we use in making such decisions in our personal lives.

A $15 billion dollar fraud. This comes on the heels of a $2.75 billion federal fraud case in 2024, in which 193 people, including 76 doctors, nurses, and other medical professionals, were accused of illegally distributing millions of pills of the stimulant Adderall and of conducting fraudulent schemes involving $176 million of drug and alcohol abuse treatment services.

The industry is so thoroughly infested with money-grubbing hucksters, humbugs, and scumbags that it reminds me of the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, which are so given to wickedness that God decides to annihilate them out of sheer disgust.

To be sure, as Plato pointed out in The Republic, fraud and injustice always proliferate in a Republic in which the citizens fail to tend properly and diligently to their affairs, including their health.

Plato argues that a proliferation of doctors and lawyers is a symptom of an unjust society. The presence of many doctors and lawyers suggests a society riddled with illness and disputes.

This article was originally published on Courageous Discourse.

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President Trump, to his credit, demanded a ceasefire between Israel and Iran. Both countries agreed to it. Then, the president became very angry with Israel because, as he said, “As soon as we made the deal, they came out and they dropped a load of bombs the likes of which I’ve never seen before.”

But as I write this column, the ceasefire is still in effect. I hope it lasts. However, just two days before the ceasefire, we dropped ten 30,000-pound bunker bombs on Iran, a country that had not even shot one bullet at us.

Please, God, let this be the end of our involvement in the war between Israel and Iran.

This is Israel’s war. It is not our war. Netanyahu and Israel First neocons led us into a very unnecessary war in Iraq that cost the lives of so many young Americans, and led to the blinding and maiming of thousands more. It was not worth their sacrifice.

Donald Trump was elected as president in 2016 primarily because of his opposition to the war in Iraq, and because he promised to put America First.

The overwhelming majority of Americans – both Democrats and Republicans – do not want this country stuck in another war in the Middle East.

This is not our war; it is Netanyahu’s war. The very respected foreign policy expert and Columbia professor, Jeffrey Sachs, a Jew, has described Netanyahu as “one of the most violent and dangerous people in this world.”

Tom Friedman, the longtime New York Times columnist and also a Jew, wrote in his column of May 9 that “Netanyahu is not our friend.”

Israel claimed it had killed Iran’s top eight generals and its nine leading nuclear scientists even before the U.S. dropped its bombs.

Israel also claimed it had destroyed Iran’s ground-based air defense capabilities and had achieved total air superiority even before we got involved.

If their claims are true, Israel was already winning this war. They started this war, let them finish it – without us.

Israel supposedly had two main goals in invading Iran: To stop Iran’s nuclear weapons program and to foster regime change there.

Well, all of our top intelligence officials in both Democratic and Republican administrations had certified for years that Iran was not building any nuclear weapons. Tulsi Gabbard, now our highest intelligence official, also certified this again in her congressional testimony on March 25.

Netanyahu was so eager to go to war against Iran – he has cried wolf so many times, for 30 years, always falsely saying Iran was just weeks or months away from developing a nuclear bomb.

Netanyahu claimed many times that Iran was the main purveyor of terrorist violence around the world. Actually, it has been Israel that has spread violence throughout the Middle East.

The late Charley Reese, who in 1999 was voted as the most popular columnist by C-Span viewers, wrote in 2002: “The big pushers for war with Iraq are the usual suspects – Americans with a long record of pretending to speak about American interests, when in fact, they are pushing an Israeli agenda.” Today, you can replace the word “Iraq” with the word “Iran.”

As far as its goal of regime change is concerned, the very respected foreign policy analyst, John Mearsheimer, said you cannot achieve that goal with only an air campaign. Americans definitely do not want to see the boots of our troops on the ground in Iran.

Too many of our presidents and their top advisors have seemingly wanted to be new Winston Churchills. They seem to feel more important if they can lead us into another war.

Eisenhower, who spent his career in the military, was strong enough to resist this impulse in 1956 when Israel demanded that we support its war against Egypt.

Mitchell Bard wrote about this in The Times of Israel in 2014: “Eisenhower went on television to criticize Israel’s failure to withdraw from Egypt and warned he would impose sanctions if it failed to comply. Eisenhower was prepared to cut off all economic aid, to lift the tax-exempt status of the United Jewish Appeal, and to apply sanctions on Israel.” What courage that was.

Today, almost every member of the U.S. Congress is afraid to criticize Israel’s bombing, killing, and starving of many thousands of little children because of the Israel Lobby’s power and ability to direct massive campaign contributions for them or against them.

President Trump said on February 13 that he wanted to cut the defense budget in half. Now he is pushing a “Big Beautiful Bill” to increase defense spending by $150 billion, moving it to over one trillion dollars a year.

On May 13 in Riyadh, President Trump criticized neocons, nation builders, and interventionists. Then, unfortunately, he bowed to the wishes of warmonger neocons by approving the dropping of bombs on Iran.

And, finally, President Trump said in his Inaugural Address: “We will measure our success not only by little battles we win, but also by the wars that end, and perhaps MOST IMPORTANTLY, THE WARS WE NEVER GET INTO.”

Candidate Trump reportedly accepted a $100 million campaign contribution from Miriam Adelson in return for a promise to support Israel in every way. Hopefully, he can resist this pressure and go down in history as an anti-war, peace president like Eisenhower.

This article was originally published on The Knoxville Focus.

The post This Is Israel’s War – Not Our War appeared first on LewRockwell.

“When a long train of abuses and usurpations… evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government.”—Declaration of Independence (1776)

We are now struggling to emerge from the wreckage of a constitutional republic, transformed into a kleptocracy (government by thieves), collapsing into kakistocracy (government by the worst), and enforced by a police state algogracy (rule by algorithm).

This week alone, the Trump administration is reportedly erecting protest barricades around the White House, Congress is advancing legislation that favors the wealthy, and President Trump is grandstanding at the opening of a detention center dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz.”

Against such a backdrop of government-sponsored cruelty, corruption and shameless profiteering at taxpayer expense, what, to the average American, is freedom in an age when the government plays god—determining who is worthy of rights, who qualifies as a citizen, and who can be discarded without consequence?

What are inalienable rights worth if they can be redefined, delayed, or revoked by executive order?

Frederick Douglass posed a similar challenge more than 170 years ago when he asked, “What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July?”

His question was a searing indictment not just of slavery but of a government that proclaimed liberty while denying it to millions—a hypocrisy that persists in a system still governed by institutions more committed to power than principle.

Every branch of government—executive, legislative, and judicial—has, in one way or another, abandoned its duty to uphold the Constitution. And both parties have prioritized profit and political theater over justice and the rights of the governed.

The founders of this nation believed our rights come from God, not government. That we are born free, not made free by bureaucrats or judges. That among these rights—life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness—none can be taken away without destroying the very idea of government by consent.

And yet that is precisely what’s happening.

We now live under a government that has become judge, jury, and executioner—writing its own laws, policing its own limits, and punishing those who object.

This is not what it means to be free.

When presidents rule by fiat, when agencies strip citizenship from naturalized Americans, when police act as both enforcers and executioners, and when courts rubber-stamp the erosion of basic protections, the distinction between a citizen and a subject begins to collapse.

What do inalienable rights mean in a country where:

• Your citizenship can be revoked based solely on the government’s say-so?
• Your freedom can be extinguished by surveillance, asset seizure, or indefinite detention?
• Your property can be taken, your speech censored, and your life extinguished without due process?
• Your life can be ended without a trial, a warning, or a second thought, because the government views you as expendable?

The answer is stark: they mean nothing—unless we defend them.

When the government—whether president, Congress, court, or local bureaucrat—claims the right to determine who does and doesn’t deserve rights, then no one is safe. Individuals become faceless numbers. Human beings become statistics. Lives become expendable. Dignity becomes disposable.

It is a slippery slope—justified in the name of national security, public safety, and the so-called greater good—that leads inevitably to totalitarianism.

Unfortunately, we have been dancing with this devil for far too long, and now, the mask has come off.

This is what authoritarianism looks like in America today.

Imagine living in a country where government agents crash through doors to arrest citizens merely for criticizing government officials. Where police stop and search you on a whim. Where carrying anything that resembles a firearm might get you arrested—or killed. Where surveillance is constant, dissent is criminalized, and loyalty is enforced through fear.

If you’re thinking this sounds like America today, you wouldn’t be far wrong.

But this scenario isn’t new. It’s the same kind of tyranny that drove American colonists to sever ties with Great Britain nearly 250 years ago.

Back then, American colonists lived under the shadow of an imperial power and an early police state that censored their speech, surveilled their movements, taxed their livelihoods, searched their homes without cause, quartered troops in their towns, and punished them for daring to demand liberty.

It was only when the colonists finally got fed up with being silenced, censored, searched, frisked, threatened, and arrested that they finally revolted against the tyrant’s fetters.

The Declaration of Independence—drafted by Thomas Jefferson and signed on July 4, 1776, by 56 men who risked everything—was their response. It was more than a list of grievances. It was a document seething with outrage over a government which had betrayed its citizens, a call to arms against a system that had ceased to represent the people and instead sought to dominate them.

Labeled traitors, these men were charged with treason, a crime punishable by death, because they believed in a radical idea: that all people are created to be free. For some, their acts of rebellion would cost them their homes and their fortunes. For others, it would be the ultimate price—their lives.

Yet even knowing the heavy price they might have to pay, these men dared to speak up. They understood that silence in the face of tyranny is complicity. So they stood together, pledging “our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor” to the cause of freedom.

Even after they had won their independence from Great Britain, these new Americans worked to ensure that the rights they had risked their lives to secure would remain secure for future generations.

The result: our Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments to the Constitution.

The Constitution and Bill of Rights were meant to enshrine the liberties they fought for: due process, privacy, free speech, the right to bear arms, and limits on government power.

Now, nearly two and a half centuries later, those freedoms hang by a thread.

Imagine the shock and outrage these 56 men would feel were they to discover that almost 250 years later, the government they had risked their lives to create has been transformed into a militaristic police state in which exercising one’s freedoms—at a minimum, merely questioning a government agent—is often viewed as a flagrant act of defiance.

In fact, had Jefferson and his compatriots written the Declaration of Independence today, they would almost certainly be labeled extremists, placed on government watchlists, targeted by surveillance, and prosecuted as domestic threats.

Read the Declaration of Independence again, and you’ll see the grievances they laid at the feet of King George—unjust laws, militarized policing, surveillance, censorship, and the denial of due process—are the very abuses “we the people” suffer under today.

Had Jefferson written the Declaration about the American police state in 2025, it might have read like a criminal indictment of the crimes perpetrated by a government that:

Polices by fear and violence:

• raiding family homes in the dead of night with SWAT teams that shoot pets and traumatize children;
• targeting vulnerable individuals—including the disabled and neurodivergent—for arrest under pretexts of noncompliance;
• killing unarmed citizens for not complying quickly enough;
• using roadside cavity searches and rectal probes as tools of humiliation and control.

Surveils and represses dissent:

• spying on its own citizens, reading private messages, tracking movements, and mining personal data;
• collecting DNA from innocent Americans and compiling biometric databases without consent;
• tracking drivers with license plate scanners and red-light cameras without due process;
• detaining protesters, journalists, and whistleblowers without trial, often labeling them as domestic threats;
• jailing veterans for criticizing the government;
• placing ordinary Americans on watchlists and labeling dissent as terrorism.

Strips away rights:

• seizing property through civil asset forfeiture without charges or due process;
• building secret prisons and detention centers shielded from judicial oversight;
• stripping citizenship from those it deems disloyal, making constitutional rights conditional;
• criminalizing homelessness, dissent, and disloyalty as pretexts for exclusion and punishment;
• criminalizing routine behavior under vague laws that fuel mass incarceration and overcriminalization.

Concentrates unchecked power in the executive:

• bypassing Congress with executive orders, sidelining the courts, and ruling by decree;
• weaponizing federal agencies to suppress opposition and silence critics;
• treating constitutional limits as optional and the presidency as a personal fiefdom.

These are not isolated abuses.

They are the logical outcomes of a government that has turned against its people.

They reveal a government that has claimed the god-like power to decide who gets rights—and who doesn’t. Who counts as a citizen—and who doesn’t. Who gets to live—and who becomes expendable.

All along the spectrum of life—from the unborn child to the elderly—the government continues to treat individuals endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights as if they are criminals, subhumans, or enemies of the state.

That is not freedom. It is tyranny.

And it must be called by its true name.

The truth is hard, but it must be said: the American police state has grown drunk on power, money, and its own authority.

The irony is almost too painful to articulate.

On the anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence—a document that rebuked government corruption, tyranny, and injustice—we find ourselves surrounded by its modern-day equivalents.

This week’s spectacle—protest barricades, legislation to benefit the rich, and Trump’s appearance at Alligator Alcatraz, a.k.a. “Gator Gitmo”—shows how completely we have inverted the spirit of 1776.

That a president would celebrate the Fourth of July while inaugurating a modern-day internment camp—far from the reach of the courts or the Constitution—speaks volumes about the state of our nation and the extent to which those in power now glorify the very forms of tyranny the Founders once rose up against.

This is not law and order.

This is political theater, carceral cruelty, and authoritarianism in plain sight.

It is what happens when a nation that once prided itself on liberty now builds monuments to its own fear and domination.

The spectacle doesn’t end with detention camps and barricades. It extends into commerce, corruption, and self-enrichment at the highest levels of power.

President Trump is now marketing his own line of fragrances—a branding exercise so absurd it would be laughable if it weren’t a flagrant violation of the Constitution’s Emoluments Clause. His investments are booming. And all across his administration, top officials are shamelessly using public office to line their pockets, even as they push legislation to strip working-class Americans of the most basic benefits and protections, while claiming to be rooting out corruption and inefficiency.

This is not governance. This is kleptocracy—and it is happening in plain sight.

In the nearly 250 years since early Americans declared their independence from Great Britain, “we the people” have worked ourselves back under the tyrant’s thumb—only this time, the tyrant is one of our own making.

The abuses they once suffered under an imperial power haven’t disappeared. They’ve evolved.

We are being robbed blind by political grifters and corporate profiteers. We are being silenced by bureaucrats and blacklists. We are being watched by data miners and digital spies. We are being caged by militarized enforcers with no regard for the Constitution. And we are being ruled by presidents who govern not by law, but by executive decree.

Given the fact that we are a relatively young nation, it hasn’t taken very long for an authoritarian regime to creep into power.

Unfortunately, the bipartisan coup that laid siege to our nation did not happen overnight.

The architecture of oppression—surveillance, militarism, censorship, propaganda—was built slowly, brick by brick, law by law, war by war.

It snuck in under our radar, hiding behind the guise of national security, the war on drugs, the war on terror, the war on immigration, political correctness, hate crimes and a host of other official-sounding programs aimed at expanding the government’s power at the expense of individual freedoms.

The building blocks for the bleak future we’re just now getting a foretaste of—police shootings of unarmed citizens, profit-driven prisons, weapons of compliance, a wall-to-wall surveillance state, pre-crime programs, a suspect society, school-to-prison pipelines, militarized police, overcriminalization, SWAT team raids, endless wars, etc.—were put in place by government officials we trusted to look out for our best interests.

The result is an empire in decline and a citizenry under siege.

But if history teaches us anything, it’s that the power of the people—when awakened—is stronger than any empire.

For decades, the Constitution has been our shield against tyranny.

But today, it’s under siege. And now we must be the shield.

Surveillance is expanding. Peaceful dissent is being punished. Judges are being targeted. The presidency is issuing decrees and bypassing the rule of law.

Every institution meant to check power is being tested—and in some cases, broken.

This is the moment to stand in front of the Constitution and defend it.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, the fight for freedom is never over. But neither is it lost—so long as we refuse to surrender, refuse to remain silent, and refuse to accept tyranny as the price of safety.

It is time to remember who we are. To reclaim the Constitution. To resist the march toward authoritarianism. And to reassert—boldly and without apology—that our rights are not up for negotiation.

This article was originally published on The Rutherford Institute.

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This now seems to happen with some regularity:

An explosion struck the Marshall Islands-flagged oil tanker Vilamoura, carrying approximately one million barrels of crude, off Libya’s coast, according to its Greek operator, TMS Tankers. – Greek City Times, Jul 1 2025

The explosion flooded the engine room, disabling the vessel. TMS Tankers reported that the ship, which departed from Zueitina, Libya, en route to Gibraltar, will be towed to Greece on Tuesday or Wednesday. The cause of the explosion remains undisclosed.

The possibility that the Vilamoura was hit by a mine was raised on Friday by security firm Vanguard, but it said that nothing had been confirmed by officials.

The operator distanced itself from speculation that the ship had been targeted by saboteurs.

According to the Financial Times this is at least the fifth tanker (archived) this year that had became casualty of some explosives:

A series of mysterious limpet mine attacks on oil tankers has shaken the shipping world, prompting speculation that the explosions were part of a state-backed sabotage campaign.

Five vessels have been hit by deliberate blasts this year, with the latest incident flooding the engine room of the Greek-owned tanker the Vilamoura last week as it sailed off the coast of Libya.

All the vessels called at Russian ports within weeks of the attacks, prompting some security experts to suggest that Ukraine had a hand in the explosions.

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The FT account leaves out a Russian cargo ship that was attacked with explosives and sank in late 2024:

The Russian operator of a cargo ship that sank in the Mediterranean Sea between Spain and Algeria said Thursday that it had been hit by a series of explosions in an act of sabotage.

Oboronlogistica, a state-controlled company that operated the Ursa Major freighter, said it was wrecked by three powerful explosions just above the water line in what it described as a “terrorist attack” that caused it to sink.

It said in a statement carried by Russia’s state RIA Novosti news agency that the explosions left a hole in the ship’s starboard and filled the engine room with acrid smoke, hampering the crew’s attempts to access it. The company added that the damage to the engine room made it impossible to activate pumps and keep the ship afloat.
…
The company said the ship, one of Russia’s largest cargo ships, had sailed from St. Petersburg and was carrying two heavy cranes and other equipment to the port of Vladivostok on Russia’s far eastern coast.

All these attacks seem to have been made with magnetic limpet mines. These get attached to a ships hull while the ship is anchored or moored. They can be exploded by a timer or radio signal.

The campaign against Russian related ships may well be an Ukrainian operation. But I would be astonished to learn that the British are not involved in it.

Ukraine is not known for wide access to ports in the Mediterranean Sea and for the necessary qualified diving specialists. Britain’s Special Boat Service is:

The SBS has a subunit dedicated to operating Swimmer Delivery Vehicles (SDVs) known as the SDV Troop.

Such vehicles, launched from submarines, are ideal for installing limpet mines to the hull of unsuspecting ships.

Britain has helped to plan the Ukrainian attack in Kursk. It has been involved in several sabotage operations by the Ukrainian Military Intelligence Service on Russian ground. British soldiers are dying on the battlefield in Ukraine.

When investigating the sabotage operations against those ships the Russian counter terrorism forces should look out for British, not for Ukrainian, actors.

Reprinted with permission from Moon of Alabama.

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In my remarks this evening, I would like to set the stage for the Rothbard Graduate Seminar by addressing a pernicious and deeply entrenched myth about Murray Rothbard and Man, Economy, and State: namely, that Rothbard possessed a superficial knowledge of mainstream economics when writing his treatise. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, Rothbard deeply engaged with mainstream economic theory throughout his treatise. This is not surprising given that, when Rothbard wrote his treatise, he was a well-trained neoclassical economist who was completely conversant with the research methods and various strands of doctrine that composed the emerging “neoclassical synthesis.” This synthesis of the ideas of Alfred Marshall, Leon Walras, and John Maynard Keynes would come to dominate academic economics in the U.S. by the mid-1950s. The leading architects of this approach were John Hicks, Franco Modigliani, Alvin Hansen and, especially, Paul Samuelson.

Rothbard enrolled at Columbia University in 1942 at the age of sixteen. At age nineteen he received his A.B. degree with honors in economics and mathematics and soon after enrolled in Columbia’s Ph.D. program in economics. In the 1940s, Columbia University was a leading academic institution in the U.S. and housed one of the top three economics departments in the nation. It rivaled the University of Chicago and Harvard University, producing more doctoral degrees than either institution. Notable faculty included Arthur F. Burns, the foremost institutionalist and a leading authority on business cycles; John Maurice Clark, a leading Marshallian and pioneer in Keynesian economics; Harold Hotelling, the renowned mathematical statistician; Joseph Dorfman, an institutionalist and influential historian of American economic thought; and George Stigler, the founder of Chicago price theory.

Rothbard took courses with all these eminent economists but was especially influenced by the institutionalists Burns and Dorfman, and there was mutual admiration between Rothbard and both professors. Burns expected Rothbard to make “a prominent place for himself” in the world. Rothbard recalled that in his lectures Burns “was a brilliant theorist” and his “critique of orthodox theory . . . was excellent.” Rothbard held Dorfman in high esteem as a historian of economic thought, writing that “his knowledge of the sources is unparalleled.” He acknowledged Dorfman as one of his “mentors” along with Ludwig von Mises in the dedication of his two-volume treatise on economic thought. Dorfman in turn appreciated Rothbard’s abilities and agreed to chair his dissertation committee. When the dissertation was completed, Dorfman lobbied to have it published by Columbia University Press.

In addition to studying the institutionalist approach under its contemporary leaders and learning Chicago price theory from its leading light, Rothbard spent an entire year in an honors seminar going chapter by chapter through Marshall’s Principles of Economics, then the bible of neoclassical economics. But Rothbard did not just absorb different theoretical approaches and doctrines at Columbia; he also immersed himself in the study of conflicting economic methods, namely, institutionalism and positivism.

Prior to the 1940s most economists, going back to the British classical economists, utilized the deductive method to develop economic theories by tracing out the logical implications of a handful of general assumptions about human behavior and the technical conditions of production. This methodological approach culminated in the early 1930s in Lionel Robbins’s monograph, Essay on the Nature and Significance of Economic Science. However, beginning in the early 1900s the deductive method was rejected by many economists at Columbia in favor of the Baconian empirical method championed by the Institutionalists. According to this method, economic theories could be discovered only by the painstaking and copious collection and collation of facts. During the 1940s, however, both the deductive and institutionalist methods were being rapidly swept aside by the on-rushing tide of positivism. The positivists argued that economic theory is developed by forming tentative hypotheses from basic assumptions about human nature and then testing these hypotheses based on how well they predict historical or future patterns of economic facts. Both the positivist and institutionalist approaches thus champion empirical analysis, but only positivism allows for a body of economic theorems that precedes investigations of historical episodes.

It was during this period of methodological ferment and transition that Rothbard took a course on the philosophy of economics from Ernest Nagel, one of the leading exponents of logical positivism. Nagel’s criticisms of institutionalism favorably impressed Rothbard, who took copious notes on Nagel’s lectures. Commenting that Nagel made “the most convincing case for neo-classical economic theory,” Rothbard sent his lecture notes to Arthur Burns. Burns was impressed with Rothbard’s notes and sent them to Milton Friedman, a former student and then colleague of Burns’s at the National Bureau of Economic Research. Friedman was then writing his famous article on “The Methodology of Positive Economics.” Friedman wrote at the top of the first page of Rothbard’s notes, “Arthur: many thanks. I found it interesting, and, of course, agreed.”

Although Rothbard was favorable to Nagel’s positivist criticisms of institutionalism, he rejected out of hand the statistical basis of the positivist method. Specifically, he enrolled in a graduate mathematical statistics course offered by Hotelling but quickly became disillusioned when he realized after a few lectures that statistical inference was based on what he called the “groundless assumption” of a normal distribution.

At this stage of his intellectual evolution, Rothbard recalled that he possessed only an “instinctive feeling or insight . . . that there was something wrong with” institutionalism and positivism. Positivists were right to criticize institutionalists for their attempt to discover theories by amassing and sifting through reams of data. At the same time, the institutionalists were on the mark when they attacked the positivists’ use of false assumptions. Their addition of more realistic supplementary assumptions only covered up, and did not substantively change, the theoretical edifice built upon false premises. Rothbard’s elite Columbia education thus left him with an inchoate feeling that something was wrong with both approaches to economics. He later reflected that he “tended to agree with institutionalist critiques of Keynesians and mathematicians, but also with the latter’s critiques of the institutionalists.”

Unfortunately, Rothbard did not then fully grasp the alternative to institutionalism and positivism, the deductive method, which had been the traditional approach in economics from its inception as a science in the 18th century. Furthermore, he did not know that significant improvements had been recently made in this method by Ludwig von Mises. The praxeological method logically deduced theorems only from assumptions that were self-evidently true, meaning that neither the assumptions nor the theorems required empirical verification. As Rothbard recalled, “Nagel of course had never heard of praxeology at the time, and unfortunately I hadn’t either.”

Returning to doctrine, Rothbard was thoroughly trained in Keynesian economics at Columbia, where the faculty included both old-style Keynesians along Alvin Hansen-Seymour Harris lines and what Rothbard called the “younger mathematico-Keynesians” such as Albert G. Hart. In addition, Burns, whom Rothbard hailed as a “a brilliant theorist,” engaged with Keynesian economics in his courses. Burns criticized Keynesian macroeconomics for inconsistently building on Marshall’s microeconomic, partial-equilibrium theory of the firm. In an unpublished article written in 1947 for Frank Chodorov’s Old Right broadsheet, analysis, Rothbard set out the full Keynesian model and then elaborated a Marshallian critique along the lines suggested by Burns.

By the time he completed his course work at Columbia, then, Rothbard was a well-trained, if somewhat uneasy, neoclassical economist well versed in all the elements of contemporary economic theory and method that would soon coalesce into Samuelson’s so-called “neoclassical synthesis.” This theoretical approach would dominate economics from the mid-1950s until it crashed and burned during the stagflation of the mid-1970s.

After passing his orals in 1948, Rothbard embarked on his doctoral dissertation. Completed by 1951 and entitled “The Panic of 1819: Reactions and Policies,” it was a thorough examination of contemporary opinion on the causes of and remedies for the panic. Although Rothbard amassed a plethora of facts for his dissertation, he refrained from any theoretical investigation. He did not try to empirically test a theory along positivist lines, nor did he seek to discover a new theory from a mass of facts as the institutionalists taught. Burns, a member of Rothbard’s committee, was dissatisfied with the dissertation, and his mentor Dorfman deferred to his more formidable colleague. Rothbard’s Ph.D. degree was finally awarded in 1956, after Burns departed Columbia for a post in the Eisenhower administration.

Despite learning from distinguished economists at Columbia, Rothbard by his own admission “had never been able to find a comfortable home in economic theory.” But Rothbard took a huge intellectual leap forward when he discovered through FEE the thought of Ludwig von Mises and read his recently published magnum opus, Human Action. Rothbard began regularly attending Mises’ weekly seminar at NYU. Even before completing Mises’s treatise, Rothbard converted to Austrian economics and adopted Mises’ praxeological approach to economic theory, which revitalized the deductive method by grounding it in the fundamental fact of human action. At about the same time, Rothbard realized that the limited-government, laissez-faire position was “logically untenable” when he was unable to answer the objection raised by left-liberal friends that if people could collectively decide that government should provide police, courts, and military defense, then why couldn’t they decide that government should also operate steel mills or dams. Rothbard’s epiphany led him to adopt a pure anarcho-capitalist position.

The absurd myth that Rothbard ignored mainstream economic theory in constructing his theoretical system is laid to rest once and for once his schooling in economics is taken into consideration. Indeed, Rothbard’s conversion to praxeology would not have been so swift or complete had he not undergone such intensive and high-level training in the economic methods and theories of the day. On the other hand, despite his intellectual brilliance and his independent recognition that many core doctrines of the orthodox economics of the time were profoundly erroneous, Rothbard would never have developed into the economist he became without his encounter with Mises and Human Action.

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

The post The Young Rothbard: an Uncomfortable Neoclassical Economist appeared first on LewRockwell.

Most bishops who responded to a Vatican questionnaire about restricting the Latin Mass said reversing Pope Benedict XVI’s liberation of the traditional rite ‘would cause more harm than good.’

Journalist Diane Montagna revealed in a July 1 report that the Vatican’s overall assessment of the consultation of bishops, which was believed to have prompted Pope Francis to implement the 2021 motu proprio Traditionis Custodes, stated that the majority of bishops were satisfied with the implementation of Summorum Pontificum and believed that making changes to Pope Benedict XVI’s motu proprio would do “more harm than good.”

“The majority of bishops who responded to the questionnaire stated that making legislative changes to Summorum Pontificum would cause more harm than good,” the report said.

The report notably contradicts Pope Francis’ claim in his letter accompanying Traditionis Custodes, which stated that the bishops’ assessment found the implementation of Pope Benedict’s motu proprio to be a key source of division in the Church.

“An opportunity offered by … Benedict XVI, intended to recover the unity of an ecclesial body with diverse liturgical sensibilities, was exploited to widen the gaps, reinforce the divergences, and encourage disagreements that injure the Church, block her path, and expose her to the peril of division,” the late Argentine pontiff wrote.

But, according to the report, the Vatican’s overall assessment shows that while the bishops had concerns about division caused by attendees of the Tridentine Mass rejecting the Second Vatican Council and other disagreements, the majority of the “gaps,” “divergences,” and “disagreements” that Francis cited actually stem from the resistance by a minority of bishops to Summorum Pontificum.

“The majority of bishops who responded to the questionnaire, and who have generously and intelligently implemented Summorum Pontificum, ultimately express satisfaction with it,” the report stated. “In places where the clergy have closely cooperated with the bishop, the (divisions) has become completely pacified,” the report continued.

Traditionis Custodes, which has led to the suppression of numerous Latin Masses around the world, has been denounced by clergy and scholars as a repudiation of the perennial practice of the Catholic Church and even of solemn Church teaching.

Cardinal Raymond Burke has affirmed that the traditional liturgy is not something that can be excluded from the “valid expression of the lex orandi.”

“It is a question of an objective reality of divine grace which cannot be changed by a mere act of the will of even the highest ecclesiastical authority,” the cardinal wrote in 2021.

Liturgical scholar Dr. Peter Kwasniewski has also implored priests to resist Traditionis Custodes and its accompanying Responsa ad dubia “regardless of threats or penalties,” since obedience to these documents would undermine the very mission of the holy Catholic Church.

Kwasniewski has made the point that “the traditional liturgical worship of the Church, her lex orandi (law of prayer),” is a “fundamental” “expression of her lex credendi, (law of belief), one that cannot be contradicted or abolished or heavily rewritten without rejecting the Spirit-led continuity of the Catholic Church as a whole.”

‘The traditional Mass belongs to the most intimate part of the common good in the Church. Restricting it, pushing it into ghettos, and ultimately planning its demise can have no legitimacy. This law is not a law of the Church because, as St. Thomas [Aquinas] says, a law against the common good is no valid law,’” he said in a speech at the 2021 Catholic Identity Conference.

Recently, a letter-writing campaign was launched by the Faithful Advocate, inviting parishes and Catholics across the country to write to Pope Leo XIV, “asking him to abrogate Traditionis Custodes and protect the Sacred Liturgy worldwide.”

This article was originally published on Lifesite News.

The post Vatican Report Reveals Most Bishops Did Not Want Pope Francis’ Latin Mass Crackdown appeared first on LewRockwell.

Israel is an ‘annihilatory state.’ It does not seek to live alongside its Arab and Persian neighbors as an equal. Rather, it aims to maintain hegemony across the Middle East. At bottom, Israeli atavists don’t want educated, erudite neighbors, equals with whom to make magic in the region; they want subjects they can sanction and slaughter into submission. ~ilana

IT’S ABOUT PALESTINE. Of all the known facts about Israel’s war of aggression against Iran, now nominally suspended by Trump, this is the most important. Incisively put by Craig Mokhiber, “Iran is the last, independent, frontline state that refuses to submit, to normalize the crimes against the Palestinian people.” Quite simply, “Iran was being punished for its support for the Palestinians.” If you are free of the prefrontal lobotomy that comes with subscriptions to the Murdoch or Adelson Media; you will grasp this.

Israel’s unprovoked, illegal war against Iran was not in anticipatory self-defense by any stretch, explains Mokhiber—prominent and principled scholar on the international law (always bringing it back to its natural-law elements). It was old-fashioned aggression, Normalized by Israel and its sponsors, wars of aggression are considered the “supreme crime” in international law (the natural law and libertarian law are agreed).

Israel’s trademark terrorism was aimed at sundering Iranian sovereignty. Before the Iranian Revolution, locus of control over Iranian affairs resided in Washington, D.C., a synonym, we can now all agree, for Tel Aviv. The 1979 Revolution took decision-making away from Tel-Aviv and returned it to Teheran. What the 1979 Iranian Revolution militated against; Israel seeks to reinstate.

For its part, the United States of America, Israel’s lickspittle co-belligerent, is now viewed, certainly in West Asia, as a mulish military power that doesn’t know Shiite from Shinola.

Trump, you’ll recall, stumped our county—the president has forgotten at whose pleasure he serves—promising peace. He delivered war. Commentators Chas Freeman and Scott Ritter, both in-the-know, had divulged early on that the president had been engaged in “diplomacy-as-deception” with Iran. Having connived with Israel, Trump knew in advance of Israel’s impending “surprise” attack. He had engaged in fake negotiations with the Islamic Republic. With the help of the CIA, Mossad and MI5—the Israeli terrorists then smuggled the needed materiel into Iran. A con-man, concluded Dr. Foad Izadi, an Iranian academic.

Not that Israel needs a reason to war—but more so than a war of aggression for regime change, Israel’s June 13 sneak attack on Iran was meant to eliminate Iran as we know it.

Professor John Mearsheimer, one of America’s most distinguished scholars of international relations, offers a description of Israeli aims in terms that contradict the defunct, deceptively Panglossian ideas of a “two-state solution” and a “peace process.” Over and above regime change, Israel, in Mearsheimer’s always-careful estimation, has a “deep-seated interest” in breaking apart—in fracturing—the surrounding nations.

Iran’s ‘Rogue’ Status

Israel’s gestalt is annihilatory. As shown during two years of genocide and ongoing destruction in neighboring countries, Israel is an “annihilatory state.” The Hebrew verb lechasel לחסל)), to eliminate, is used quite promiscuously by the pedestrian minds on the piss-poor TV panels, on the street and in the Knesset.

There exists in Israel a condition that is as much a part of the nation’s collective “soul,” as it is the “souls” of individual Israelis. The mindset is Jewish supremacy; the shared endeavor emanating from it is regional, military supremacy.

Commensurate with this pathology; Israel does not seek to live alongside its Arab and Persian neighbors as an equal. Rather, it aims to maintain hegemony across the Middle East. Wherever and whenever the pro-liberation, pro-Palestinian axis of resistance surfaces, Israel will move—not to negotiate with or resolve “conflicts” with it, but to eliminate it and restore Israeli hegemony.

To wit, notice how Israel, methodically and spitefully, picks off peace negotiators. The “genocidal entity” made an attempt on Ali Shamkhani’s life. He was lead negotiator on nuclear talks with the United States, before June 13. The illegal and immoral assassination of Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas chief diplomat, falls into this category of elimination (chisul/חסול). There were others. Against the laws of war, Iranian scientists and non-combatant elite military personnel were targeted in their family homes—and will continue to be eliminated at a pace, in line with Israel’s predatory, cannibalizing nature.

This annihilatory impetus, the core of Israel, accounts for why, as has been observed, documented and anatomized over 20 months, Israel revels in wiping out Arab (and Persian) human capital—intellectuals, men and women of the arts, in the applied and theoretical sciences, reporters, activists, healers and humanitarians. If you wanted to enjoy your neighborhood; you would not perennially reduce it to a primordial, pre-civilization stage, as in Gaza, by wiping out knowledge, experience, strength; smarts, beauty and goodness.

This eliminatory core of Israeli society, as I emphasized in March of 2024, accounts for why Israel targets “the very fabric of a society—immeasurable human capital—including otherwise- indissoluble, extended family networks, the kind of generational bonds we in the West can only dream of, whittled down and depleted in numbers and in their native energy.”

At bottom, these Israeli atavists—during the offensive in Iran, they murdered nearly 900 Palestinians in Gaza—don’t want educated, erudite neighbors, equals with whom to make magic in the region; they want subjects they can sanction and slaughter into submission. All the better to bring them to their knees, where they now languish, Iran, Yemen and Palestine excepted.

As Israel sees it, the Arab Peninsula and the Levant must bow not toward Mecca and Medinah but to the Mad Dog Medinah (מְדִינָה is country in Hebrew). Regional submission is achieved by reducing the region to rubble, on any pretense and at every turn, and making it utterly dependent financially on America, which itself is, as we now know, in thrall to Israel. With a coopted Arab world, the US can assume the status of dictator as well as benefactor.

On the facts, then, which is the rogue state, Israel or Iran?

Israel launches wars of aggression on its neighbors. Iran does not. Israel, not Iran, is a promiscuous proliferator of nuclear weapons. It is believed to possess “90 plutonium-based nuclear warheads and has produced enough plutonium for 100-200 [more] weapons.” Iran is a party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Israel is not. Unlike Iran, so far, Israel has rejected any IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) oversight, any inspections and safeguards. In marked contrast, Israel, not Iran, is a genocidal entity. Israel, not Iran, had begun this war, is conducting air raids on neighboring nations, and committing mass murder daily.

Iran & Terrorism

And unlike Israel, Iran doesn’t practice state terrorism; it reluctantly and ably defended the realm.

Warnings, stateside, of “a heightened threat environment in the United States” from Iran have been issued by the US National-Terrorism-Industrial-Complex. These generally portend a false-flag operation. The “country of origin for the largest number of foreign-born terrorists” is Ameri-Israel’s good friend Saudi Arabia. Between 1975 and 2024, the Saudis were responsible for 2,354 murders on American soil; Iranians for … none… not one.

To change that, FBI entrapment operations, dubbed sting operations or counterterrorism, are routinely launched—and are likely underway right now. Beware! These stings are governed not by laws passed by Congress, but by creative handles. A vintage FBI entrapment method is when some needly simpleton is enticed by FBI agents into committing a crime he or she had no intention of committing until approached.

Bum joke, perhaps, but we all need a laugh. As a likely example of entrapment, I give you the case of Masih Alinejad, an inconsequential Iranian-American regime-change “journalist.” The woman, with her mad-hatter, tumbleweed hair, mouths the kind of cliched ideas of which we have an abundance in America.

Ms. Alinejad had alleged that she had been the target of a kidnapping plot by the Iranian mullahs. She also said “the Federal Bureau of Investigation had approached her eight months prior with photographs taken by the plotters.” Nudge-nudge, wink-wink, say no more.

Come off it, Ms. Alinejad. In rebuttal, I’d say that I don’t believe that the Iranian supreme leader (whose life the grubby Israelis have recently threatened) wants her back. I don’t believe the mullahs think Masih is a keeper. If anything, theirs was a desperate plea: America, please keep Iranian regime-change agitators like Masih Alinejad away.

IRAN & WMD

The current status of Iran’s nuclear capability has never been the issue, although the “genocidal entity,” Israel, is pursuing, and will pursue, “wars to preserve its own nuclear monopoly” in the region.

Before she turned tail (to wag the dog for Trump), Tulsi Gabbard, Director of National Intelligence (DNI), “delivered the U.S. Intelligence Community’s (IC) collective conclusions covering a broad swath of national security issues and geographic areas—including the threat posed by Iran and its possible development of a nuclear weapon.” “The IC continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Khamenei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program that he suspended in 2003,” reported Gabbard, who “was echoing an assessment that U.S. intelligence agencies have been making since 2007.”

Not unrelated to the manufacture of Israel’s casus belli is that the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) appears to no longer act impartially, as it did in the build up to war on Iraq, under the leadership of Dr. Mohammed ElBaradei. The utterances of Rafael Grossi, the IAEA’s mercurial director general, had helped justify kinetic action against Iran.

Prior to Israel’s unprovoked war of choice on Iran, the vainglorious Grossi had been roaming the region, raising alarm about the Islamic Republic. Distilled, Grossi’s May 31, 2025 report, “Verification and monitoring in the Republic of Iran in light of United Nations Security Council resolution 2231 (2015),” very plainly equates his annoyance with Iran with weapons-grade enrichment by Iran.

Grossi’s hornet’s nest is in the IAEA’s use of Palantir necro-software. According to Wikipedia, Grossi’s hokum WMD report was generated for the IAEA by Palantir Artificial Intelligence software.

Palantir makes a tidy sum in the necro-industry, peddling software for mass surveillance (and attendant, “alleged” executions). In Gaza, Palantir software is “alleged” to have enabled Israel’s Unit 8200 in the algorithmic generation of kill lists.

Without evidence other than “a mosaic of AI storytelling,” Grossi had continued to cook up stories against Iran. Following the June 22 American aerial and amphibian strikes on that heavily sanctioned nation; Grossi took to blabbering about amounts, down to the kilogram, of uranium enriched and secreted away in Iran. Sometimes it was 400 kilograms, other times 900. Post haste, the agency’s WMD sightings have since been walked back. “We did not have any proof of a systematic effort to move into a nuclear weapon,” Grossi sheepishly told CNN’s Christian Amanpour on June 17.

The costs of Israel’s warmongering have pyramided. Is it not time to look this particular gift horse in the mouth?

Back To Beginnings: Palestine

What is the basic cause for this trouble in the greater Middle East, asks Dr. John Mearsheimer, speaking to the Notre Dame International Security Center. Who is responsible for the offensives begun, after October 7, by Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, and assorted militia in Syria and Iraq, against which the United States elects to wage low-grade wars?

There are two dueling opinions. The genocidal regime and its partners—they had planned, before October 7, to drop the Palestinians out of history—all blame Iran. Iran is said to form the gravitational pull; is the “master puppeteer” of Hamas, Hezbollah, even the plucky Yemeni Ansar Allah movement.

These Israel-centric asininities are enforced by the West’s obedient “terrorist” designations—and by discussions so riddled with cliches as to be devoid of meaning. A favorite reductionism, for example, is the “proxy” word, disgorged by the clubby DC foreign-policy establishment and Israel’s sub-intelligent ruling elite. By Foreign Policy Inc’s telling, these complex and variegated regional Arab communities—the Resistance—are engaged in an unprofitable, punishing enterprise spanning decades, because commanded by Iran. Never mind what the principals themselves say.In its deeply rooted intellectual mendacity, the Western foreign-policy establishment does not believe that patriotism, nationalism, and fellow-feeling exist among groups outside the Occident. (I’m being cynical.) Unchallenged, the national security and foreign policy conglomerate contends that the Houthis’ valiant military intervention on behalf of the Palestinians, massacred daily with Western imprimatur, is no more than the protest of marionettes manipulated by their Iranian masters. As this mindset goes, only Anglo-Ameri-Israeli “soldiers” act in solidarity with their people.

The countervailing theory, “the alternative scenario,” argues Dr. Mearsheimer, is that Israel is responsible.” That “it is largely a result of Israel’s occupation that the Palestinians attacked Israel on October the 7th. Having assessed the evidence for the theory of Iranian hegemony over resistance militias, Mearsheimer, a scrupulous scholar of “great-power politics” (and a patriot who served in the US Air Force for five years), has found there to be “little evidence that Iran is responsible for all these conflicts in the Middle East.” For the longest time, Dr. Mearsheimer has argued that on the evidence, “Israel is principally responsible for the conflict in the Middle East. Israel and its barbaric Occupation of the Palestinians.”

Israel’s baleful presence in the de facto annexed territories is why every American president has understood the imperative of a solution to the Palestinian plight, without which Intifadas—one, two, three, ad infinitum—would culminate in events like October 7.

The “blame-Iran, change-the-Iranian-regime” tedious cant was begun by Israel in the 1970s and is at the behest of Israel, seconds Dr. Stephan Walt. It was during the 1990s, that the US acceded to Israel and began excluding Iran. In 1994, confirms Ali M. Ansari, professor of Iranian History at the University of St. Andrews, “In line with Israel’s budding rapprochement with the Arab world” and the signing of “a peace treaty with Jordan”—Israel “switched its strategic perspective from one that cast Iran as a [regional] balancer to one that saw Iran as the enemy. Henceforth, the United States would be encouraged by Israel to ostracize and isolate the Islamic Republic.” (“The Shallow Roots of Iran’s War With Israel,” Foreign Affairs, May 29, 2024.)

What Dr. Ansari cannot say, I will: Israel’s “strategic perspective” requires everywhere and always an enemy. This designated enemy will be tarnished by a blood libel, an abstraction: he, she or they will be said to be antisemitic, baying for Jewish blood. This blood libel ignores the truth, because when facts and reality are scrutinized, it’s Arabs that are being exterminated daily en masse, with western grants of government privilege, not Israelis.

You have to hand it to Israel. It has positioned itself as the world’s cross, a curse that every individual not Jewish-Israeli is born into and must carry like an albatross.

The post IRAN: Everything You Need To Know But Were Too Afraid of the Israel Lobby To Ask appeared first on LewRockwell.

It is a strange feature of our times that when a priest fulfills his sacred duty it becomes news. Such is the case with Fr. Ian Vane, who rightly refused Holy Communion to British MP Chris Coghlan after Coghlan’s public support for assisted suicide. Such an action by a priest should be common—as common as “Catholics” who promote evils while maintaining a public platform are today.

Receiving the Eucharist while in a state of mortal sin is a sacrilege because it profanes the sacredness of the sacrament by placing Him in a marred vessel. Instead of receiving the graces normally associated with reception of the Eucharist, one who receives Communion in a state of mortal sin causes further spiritual harm and compounds the sin. This teaching is not ambiguous, and it never has been. It can be found in Scripture itself: “And therefore, if anyone eats this bread or drinks this cup of the Lord unworthily, he will be held to account for the Lord’s body and blood” (1 Corinthians 11:27, Knox). Thus, a priest who denies Communion in such cases is attempting both to assist the parishioner and prevent an act of sacrilege.

There is a profound injustice in the all-too-common cases wherein pastors remain silent when a parishioner ignores the teachings of the Church, publicly encourages serious sins, and then presents himself for Communion. Such is the case with so many nominally Catholic members of Congress who have voted in favor of abortion or even against the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act. In these scenarios, there are really only two possibilities:

1. The priest does not care enough about the soul of the communicant to act.
2. The priest does not believe that the teachings of the Church have merit, or that they matter in any transcendent way.

That’s all there is. The complex interplay of Church politics, the onslaught of media criticism, and irate or offended parishioners all fall under the umbrella of the first option. The priest must choose if he cares more about the soul of the parishioner than the trial that he will have to endure for doing what he was called to do. Fr. Ian Vane said yes, which is refreshing to the point of being remarkable.

When priests continue to offer Holy Communion in these cases, we might consider how that affects other members of the Church. The decision communicates (excuse the pun) an indifference toward their souls and a flippancy about their spiritual battles. After all, everyone is engaged in a spiritual war—our souls are being fought for. The decisions that we make bear consequences in this life and the next. Good priests acknowledge that reality.

There is a corresponding horror and romance in recognizing the degree to which our own decisions matter. It’s why the modern insistence of hoping Hell is empty can seem aspirational until it reduces our decisions and our humanity to nought.

Fr. James Schall, S.J., reminds us:

But if the doctrine of hell is true, if it is a real possibility for each person as a result of his choices, of his putting disorder into his soul and into the world, it means that our ordinary affairs are shot through with unimaginable significance. 

This is even more true with the decisions that relate to the sacred, or that relate directly to Him who Is.

Fr. Vane told the BBC, “As priests, we are custodians of the sacraments,” which is confirmed by Canon Law. Yet, to a people who have grown dim to the graces offered therein, the idea of a need for a custodian is anathematic, or at least incomprehensible. An indifference to acts of scandal quickly translates into an indifference toward Divine Law—and an indifference toward God Himself, who is profaned.

This disregard is then taught to parishioners, including the next generation, who watch how we act. That is so often how banal and irreverent liturgies result in younger generations leaving their parishes when they mature—because a demonstrated indifference is tantamount to a lived apostasy. If they have only ever seen Catholics acting as if the sacraments do not matter, they may reach an age wherein they believe the actions of their elders.

A priest himself causes scandal when he willfully contributes to the ignorance of his parishioners with regard to the moral law. He asserts, via his indifference, that those sins aren’t a “big deal” and don’t require us to change ourselves.

As a devout Catholic, if I were to err unknowingly, and especially if I was doing so in a public way, I would want to know. If I was jeopardizing my relationship with Christ and placing my soul at risk, I would want to know. Moreover, the faithful have a right to know, and priests have a duty to inform them. Those who take the Faith seriously desire to know when they are placing their souls in peril. Those who do not practice the Faith have no reason to approach the Eucharist, for reception of Communion is not a token of affiliation but an intimate encounter with Christ and His Church.

We are called to die to ourselves, to change who we are to become anew in Christ. Too often it is insinuated, with rolled eyes, that we are instructed to follow a system of frivolous rules without cause, as if the Church hierarchy invented a penal code in their boredom. Instead, Christ left us a Church to guide us in properly following Him. Moreover, our lives become better when we do so because they are then properly ordered.

Read the Whole Article

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The ideology of transsexualism is undoubtedly one of the most heated topics of our time.

One common misapprehension among those who argue against it is the assumption that this debate can be settled on the merits of the argument. This, however, is not the case.

Trans advocates have not arrived at their position by considering facts or evidence, nor do they operate by logic or reason.

For example, most human beings—including children—readily see and understand that biological men cannot become women, nor can women become men.

What trans activists advocate thus runs in complete contravention to the physical and physiological reality that is plain to everyone. These individuals are willing to assert, with a straight face, something that is obviously and patently untrue.

By taking this position, they reveal themselves to be fundamentally dishonest. This is why hard evidence, facts, and sound arguments do not typically carry weight with trans advocates. If they did, they would not espouse their position.

Because their stance is at odds with reality, they cannot defend it through argument or appeal to facts.

This is evident in how they typically respond to challenges. Rather than engaging in argumentation, they often become agitated and angry, quickly resorting to recriminations. Their usual strategy is to terminate the debate by leveling accusations of hate, transphobia, or similar charges.

They behave this way because they cannot rationally support their standpoint. If they could, they would naturally plead their position in a sensible and coherent manner.

The inability of pro-trans advocates to rationally justify their views explains their relentless efforts to censor the opposing side. It is highly revealing that perhaps no other issue is surrounded by such an extensive censorship infrastructure as that of transsexualism.

Opposing views are quickly shut down under the guise of hate speech, transphobia, or discrimination. So extreme is the drive toward censorship in the trans debate that its proponents are unwilling to even acknowledge legitimate objections to the pro-trans outlook. In an astonishing distortion of moral sensibility, those who oppose it are cast as morally deficient.

This extreme situation persists in mainstream discourse, even though a vast majority of the population considers the pro-trans position wrong and rejects the agenda advanced by activists.

The severe level of censorship surrounding the trans issue indicates the weakness of its advocates’ arguments. Unable to provide effective arguments to support their view, they resort to silencing the opposition. And they have been largely successful in this endeavor. We rarely hear meaningful critiques of trans ideology from official organs of sanctioned conversation.

This reflects a broader principle: the desire to censor is positively correlated with the weakness of the censors’ argument. If someone has a strong argument—or believes they do—they do not try to censor. On the contrary, they are eager to present their view to the opposition.

As a rule, we encounter the greatest levels of censorship to protect views that are the least defensible. Trans ideology, which so flagrantly contravenes obvious physical and physiological realities, is perhaps the most conspicuous example of this.

Other examples include the COVID vaccines or the allegedly unprovoked Russian aggression in Ukraine. Past instances include the Hunter Biden laptop or Joe Biden’s dementia, among others. All these are or were indefensible positions, which is why their proponents erected elaborate systems of censorship to forestall evidence-based, rational discussion. Those in opposition were immediately dismissed as morally deficient, evil, or outright crazy, labeled as conspiracy theorists, homophobes, anti-vaxxers, racists, Kremlin agents, and so forth.

Returning to the trans issue, it serves as a litmus test for basic honesty and integrity. Those willing to deny the obvious reality before everyone’s eyes cannot be considered good-faith participants in political discourse. Their stance shows they have little respect for evidence, reality, facts, reason, or truth and are inclined to disregard them for the sake of their ideological agenda.

This applies to anyone who advocates censoring their political opponents on any issue of concern.

Therefore, it was disappointing to observe the Trump administration attempting to silence those who sought to draw attention to the genocide in Gaza. As with trans ideology, the censorship in this instance is not explicitly admitted but is carried out under false pretenses—in this case, accusations of antisemitism.

Trump’s censorship effort is wrong for two main reasons. First, people should be able to say whatever they want as long as they do not directly incite violence toward others (as protected by the Constitution and upheld by the Supreme Court). Second – based on what we daily see on our screens – those alleging genocide in Gaza cannot be too far from the truth. After all, Trump himself admitted during a press conference with Benjamin Netanyahu that the place has been turned into “a demolition site.”

It is unfortunate that Donald Trump, who has been severely victimized by censorship from the political Left, has resorted to this tactic himself. However, it should be noted that Trump’s censoriousness regarding Israel’s Gaza tactics is an exception, whereas censorship on the Left is systemic and widespread.

Nevertheless, Trump’s censorship attempt vis-a-vis Israel’s activities in Gaza is wrong and is potentially the first step down a slippery slope. We must be vigilant not to adopt the unjust tactics we rightfully condemn in our opponents.

The post Censorship Transsexualism, and the Tragedy in Gaza appeared first on LewRockwell.

Yesterday the United Kingdom High Court of Justice refused to authorize an application for a new inquest into the death of a UK citizen during the 9/11 attacks.  The attorney general’s prior refusal to authorize a new inquest was “not justiciable” and immune from judicial review.

Geoff Campbell was murdered in the North Tower on 9/11.  His brother Matt Campbell provided to the UK courts compelling evidence that the North Tower was destroyed by pre-planted explosives and incendiaries rather than the impact of Flight 11 into the North Tower.

For example, William Rodriguez was in the basement of the North Tower on 9/11 and just before Flight 11 hit the North Tower heard and felt an explosion.  Rodriguez stated in an interview, “I was in the basement, which is the support floor for the maintenance company, and we hear like a big rumble. Not like an impact, like a rumble, like moving furniture in a massive way. And all of sudden we hear another rumble, and a guy comes running, running into our office, and all of skin was off his body.”

Why is the UK refusing to objectively investigate the murder of a British citizen on 9/11, especially when the victim’s family has provided evidence that shows that the impact of Flight 11 was not the cause of the North Tower’s collapse?

The United Kingdom was a main ally of the United States during the so-called “War on Terror”, which was launched after the 9/11 attacks.  We know that the US government refused to objectively investigate the 9/11 attacks and employed fear-mongering and jingoistic rhetoric to convince a frightened American public into supporting the brutal and unprovoked wars of aggression that were waged after 9/11.

An objective investigation into the 9/11 attacks would likely reveal very inconvenient truths for the United States government and its key allies such as the United Kingdom.

The post UK Court Denies New Inquest into Death of 9/11 Victim appeared first on LewRockwell.

Click Here:

The MAHA Report

 

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Trump’s war on American consumers is proceeding.  He announced today that imports from Vietnam will be taxed with a 20 percent tariff tax, 40 percent for goods that have to change ships during the journey.  This will allow certain American corporations to jack up their prices and, as some Vietnamese businesses drop out of the export market prices of those goods will increase even more.

The post A War Trump is Actually Winning appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, Johnny Kramer.

The post RFK Jr. on the REAL Cause of the Chronic Disease Epidemic appeared first on LewRockwell.

Two in favor, one against.  

The post Three American Declarations Regarding Independence and Voluntary Union 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.

____________________________________________________________________________________

da The Epoch Times

(Versione audio della traduzione disponibile qui: https://open.substack.com/pub/fsimoncelli/p/gli-stati-uniti-possono-produrre)

Potrebbero volerci fino a cinque anni per sviluppare una filiera nazionale in grado di sostituire il monopolio globale della Cina nella lavorazione delle terre rare per trasformarle nei materiali necessari a produrre di tutto, dagli iPhone ai caccia F-35.

Secondo Melissa Sanderson, membro del consiglio direttivo dell'American Rare Earths e co-presidente del Critical Minerals Institute, gli Stati Uniti possiedono la maggior parte dei 17 elementi delle terre rare e 50 minerali essenziali nel sottosuolo, ma non hanno la capacità industriale di trasformarli in metalli lavorati e magneti.

“Attualmente negli Stati Uniti non abbiamo alcun produttore di magneti”, ha detto la Sanderson a The Epoch Times.

Ha affermato che è per questo che la Cina il 4 aprile ha imposto restrizioni all'esportazione di sette elementi “pesanti” facenti parte della categorie delle terre rare, in risposta all'annuncio di ulteriori dazi del presidente Donald Trump il 2 aprile. Dopo gli aumenti dei dazi, gli Stati Uniti stanno attualmente applicando un'imposta del 145% sulle importazioni cinesi, con l'esenzione per l'elettronica per ora.

“Spero vivamente che, mentre l'amministrazione sta lavorando su quest'area critica (senza tanti giri di parole, è un'area critica), si renda conto che c'è questo divario di vulnerabilità, un divario di quattro o cinque anni, indipendentemente da come lo si guardi, in termini di aumento della produzione nazionale”, ha affermato la Sanderson.

L'ordinanza di Trump del 2 aprile concede al Segretario al Commercio Howard Lutnick 180 giorni di tempo per suggerire in che modo il governo federale possa contribuire a sviluppare una filiera nazionale “circolare” per le terre rare.

Il presidente sta anche valutando la possibilità di un'ordinanza che autorizzi l'estrazione mineraria in acque profonde e lo stoccaggio commerciale.

Qualunque cosa faccia l'amministrazione, con un'adeguata riforma dei permessi, deregolamentazione e incentivi pubblico-privati, l'industria risponderà, ha detto l'economista Antonio Graceffo a The Epoch Times.

“La risposta breve è che se la Cina vietasse in modo permanente la vendita di minerali di terre rare agli Stati Uniti, sarebbe una cosa positiva perché costringerebbe gli Stati Uniti a trovare una soluzione”, ha affermato.

Graceffo, analista che scrive sulle relazioni commerciali tra Stati Uniti e Cina per The Epoch Times, ha affermato che esistono “un sacco di soluzioni” per costruire una filiera nazionale di terre rare, comprese le negoziazioni in corso con l'Ucraina.

“Certo, possiamo superare il problema”, ha detto, “a lungo termine andrà molto meglio se la Cina ci taglia fuori. [L'industria] troverà sicuramente una soluzione”.

Ian Lange, professore di economia alla Colorado School of Mines, concorda. “Sono ottimista”, ha detto.

Lange ha affermato che esistono materiali sostitutivi per le sette terre rare soggette a restrizioni e alcuni produttori gli hanno detto che possono sopravvivere anche senza.

Si è chiesto se la Cina possa sostenere le restrizioni all'esportazione di terre rare, dal momento che le industrie americane costituiscono il suo mercato più grande.

“Vedremo se si tratta di una vera impresa o solo dell'ennesimo ostacolo da superare”, ha detto Lange a The Epoch Times. “E negli ultimi due anni abbiamo gradualmente potenziato la catena di approvvigionamento”.

“Siamo quasi arrivati ​​ad avere qualcosa di concreto qui negli Stati Uniti”.

Ma “quasi” è un termine relativo quando si parla di estrazione mineraria e raffinazione, dove i progetti proposti possono richiedere normalmente dai 10 ai 20 anni per essere approvati.

“Lontano da qui”

L'American Rare Earths, con sede in Australia, fa parte di una serie di start-up negli Stati Uniti impegnate nell'estrazione di terre rare e minerali essenziali.

L'azienda processerà anche disprosio e terbio, due delle sette “terre rare pesanti” soggette a restrizioni, costruendo una raffineria vicino alla sua miniera di Halleck Creek, fuori Wheatland, nel Wyoming. Il disprosio è utilizzato nei magneti integrati in motori e generatori per turbine eoliche, veicoli elettrici e barre di controllo di reattori nucleari. I composti del terbio sono utilizzati in elettronica, semiconduttori e illuminazione fluorescente.

L'azienda, che possiede anche una miniera in Arizona, ha ottenuto una sovvenzione di $7,1 milioni dal Wyoming e una lettera di interesse per un finanziamento fino a $456 milioni dalla United States Export-Import Bank per produrre quella che afferma essere una fornitura ventennale di terre rare essenziali, tra cui disprosio e terbio.

Sempre nel Wyoming, Ramaco Resources sta avviando la costruzione di un giacimento di terre rare dal valore stimato di 1,5 miliardi di tonnellate e di un impianto pilota di lavorazione presso la sua miniera di Brook, mentre Rare Element Resources ha avviato “operazioni di lavorazione e separazione proprietarie” presso il suo impianto dimostrativo di Bear Lodge a Upton.

La USA Rare Earths, con sede in Oklahoma, che quest'anno aprirà una fabbrica di “neo-magneti”, ha prodotto quest'anno il suo primo campione di ossido di disprosio dalla sua miniera di Round Top, in Texas, e lo ha elaborato nel suo impianto di ricerca a Wheat Ridge, in Colorado.

Ucore Rare Metals sta sviluppando il Louisiana Strategic Metals Complex ad Alexandria con $20 milioni di incentivi statali, mentre Energy Fuels, una società di estrazione dell'uranio, sta elaborando sabbie di monazite per estrarre terre rare nel suo mulino di White Mesa nello Utah.

Entrambe sono società di proprietà canadese.

I due operatori più importanti nel settore delle terre rare negli Stati Uniti sono l'australiana Lynas Rare Earths, il più grande sviluppatore di terre rare al mondo al di fuori della Cina, e la MP Materials Corp. con sede a Las Vegas.

Entrambi sono essenziali per la lavorazione delle terre rare per il Dipartimento della Difesa degli Stati Uniti, che è a metà di un piano quinquennale per costruire una “catena di fornitura sostenibile dalla miniera ai magneti” per soddisfare le sue esigenze entro il 2027.

Nel 2023 la sussidiaria di Lynas Rare Earth, Lynas USA, ha ricevuto un premio di $258 milioni per costruire un impianto di separazione commerciale di 150 acri a Seadrift, in Texas, per la lavorazione di terre rare pesanti come disprosio e terbio.

A gennaio il Pentagono ha dichiarato di aver raddoppiato la richiesta iniziale di un progetto, andando oltre le esigenze militari, per “rafforzare la resilienza della catena di approvvigionamento per [...] l'industria high-tech in rapida crescita nonché [...] le esigenze di sicurezza nazionale”.

Nel 2022 il Dipartimento della Difesa degli Stati Uniti ha assegnato a MP Materials $35 milioni per costruire un impianto di lavorazione a Mountain Pass, in California.

E nel 2024 ha ricevuto un credito d'imposta federale di $58,5 milioni per costruire il primo impianto di produzione di magneti in terre rare completamente integrato del Paese a Fort Worth, in Texas, per i motori dei veicoli elettrici GM.

Nel 2024 MP Materials ha raggiunto il livello di produzione più alto mai registrato negli Stati Uniti a Mountain Pass, consegnando oltre 45.000 tonnellate di ossidi di terre rare e prodotti raffinati.

La produzione comprendeva un record statunitense di 1.300 tonnellate di ossido di neodimio-praseodimio, elementi chiave nei “magneti permanenti”, che mantengono la loro forza magnetica per decenni.

“Questa pietra miliare segna un importante passo avanti nel ripristino di una filiera di fornitura di magneti di terre rare completamente integrata negli Stati Uniti”, ha affermato James Litinsky, amministratore delegato e fondatore di MP Materials, in una dichiarazione di gennaio.

“Abbiamo raggiunto un punto di svolta significativo per la competitività di MP e degli Stati Uniti in un settore vitale”.

Tuttavia sia Lynas Rare Earth che MP Materials producono più terre rare di quanto possano processare. Per sostenere le attività, devono esportare gran parte di ciò che estraggono.

“MP è sostanzialmente il più grande fornitore offshore di terre rare della Cina”, ha affermato Jack Lifton, presidente esecutivo del Critical Minerals Institute, sottolineando che la Shanghai Resources Industrial & Trading Co., con sede in Cina, ha acquistato 32.000 tonnellate per un valore di $350 milioni da MP Materials nel 2024.

MP Materials non ha risposto alle telefonate né alle richieste di interviste via e-mail.

Se la Cina dovesse pagare un dazio del 145% per esportare terre rare lavorati negli Stati Uniti, “sarebbe un suicidio finanziario mantenere quel [ritmo di esportazione] perché non potrebbero farlo: costerebbe loro più del valore”, ha dichiarato Lifton a The Epoch Times.

Meredith Schwartz, ricercatrice associata presso il Progetto sulla Sicurezza dei Minerali Critici del Center for Strategic & International Studies, ha affermato che Lynas, pur essendo il maggiore produttore al di fuori della Cina, invia ancora ossidi in questo Paese perché non dispone di una capacità di raffinazione sufficiente.

Ha affermato durante un podcast del 14 aprile che, sebbene l'Australia abbia Lynas, continuerà a dipendere dalla Cina per la raffinazione delle terre rare almeno fino al 2026.

“Ma anche quando questi impianti saranno pienamente operativi” presso MP Materials e Lynas negli Stati Uniti, saranno ancora lontani dalla capacità commerciale e di produzione cinese, ha affermato la Schwartz.

Mentre MP Materials ha prodotto 1.300 tonnellate di ossido di neodimio-praseodimio nel 2024, “nello stesso anno la Cina ne ha prodotto circa 300.000 tonnellate”, ha affermato.

Ciononostante si stanno facendo progressi, ha affermato la Schwartz, osservando che, sebbene USA Rare Earths abbia definito la purificazione del suo primo ossido di disprosio “una svolta” per l'industria nazionale delle terre rare, “resta ancora molto lavoro per trasformare la produzione di campioni in laboratorio in una produzione commerciale su larga scala”.

“Anche con i recenti investimenti gli Stati Uniti sono ben lontani dal raggiungere l'obiettivo [del Dipartimento della Difesa] di una filiera dalla miniera al magnete indipendente dalla Cina e sono ancora più lontani dal competere con avversari stranieri in questo settore strategico”, ha affermato.

“Sviluppare capacità di estrazione e lavorazione richiede uno sforzo a lungo termine, il che significa che gli Stati Uniti saranno in svantaggio nel futuro prossimo”.

Permessi e riforma dei finanziamenti

La Schwartz ha affermato che i percorsi per la costruzione di una filiera nazionale di terre rare sono inclusi in una relazione del 2023 della Commissione Speciale della Camera sulla Competizione Strategica tra gli Stati Uniti e il Partito Comunista Cinese, intitolata “Reset, Prevent, Build: A Strategy to Win America's Economic Competition with the Chinese Communist Party”.

In essa si raccomanda al Congresso di incentivare la produzione nazionale di magneti in terre rare attraverso agevolazioni fiscali per i produttori statunitensi, un'iniziativa che Graceffo approva, purché accompagnata dalla tanto attesa riforma dei permessi.

“Servirà che Trump abroghi o riduca alcune delle restrizioni ambientali e probabilmente anche alcuni dei nostri alleati faranno lo stesso”, ha affermato, suggerendo che i produttori americani svilupperanno efficienze per produrre prodotti migliori e meno costosi.

“Una volta che riporteremo queste cose a casa, avremo tutte quelle menti brillanti, tutte quelle persone istruite, motivate dal profitto. Questo farà progredire lo sviluppo tecnologico perché troveremo modi migliori di fare le cose”.

“Quando si pagano $25 o $30 all'ora gli operai, si è fortemente incentivati a trovare modi più efficienti di fare le cose, piuttosto che quando si è in Cina e si viene pagati 8 centesimi all'ora”.

La Sanderson ha affermato che l'amministrazione Trump “sta compiendo uno sforzo eroico nell'affrontare le principali criticità che hanno colpito l'industria di questo Paese negli ultimi 50 anni circa”.

Ha affermato che la riforma dei permessi è il primo di questi punti critici.

“Il sistema è antiquato, inefficiente e soggetto a contenziosi, il che è ciò che mantiene i buoni progetti sulla lavagna per oltre 20 anni”, ha affermato. “È questo il problema da affrontare: rimuovere queste barriere”.

Lifton ha affermato che l'amministrazione Trump deve istituire un “mercato organizzato” per le terre rare senza la Cina. È sorpreso che i gruppi industriali non l'abbiano ancora fatto.

“Non c'è un filo conduttore, nessuna organizzazione comune. Si potrebbe pensare, ad esempio, che le case automobilistiche si riuniscano e dicano: 'Sentite, non parleremo dei nostri [problemi] competitivi, dei costi relativi, di come sarà il nostro modello per l'anno prossimo; parleremo invece di un approvvigionamento comune di motori a magneti permanenti a terre rare perché ne abbiamo tutti bisogno'”, ha affermato.

La Sanderson ha detto che un altro punto critico per le terre rare che l'amministrazione Trump sta affrontando è una nuova “forma di partenariato pubblico-privato” che utilizzi i fondi della Development Finance Corp. e del Dipartimento della Difesa “per fungere da ancora per attrarre investimenti privati”.

American Rare Earths, ad esempio, ha ricevuto l'autorizzazione da $456 milioni dall'U.S. Export-Import Bank attraverso le azioni esecutive del presidente che impongono la resilienza della catena di approvvigionamento, ha affermato.

“L'Ex-Im Bank non è mai stata istituita per finanziare questi progetti” finché non le è stato ordinato di farlo dal presidente, secondo la Sanderson.

Con i cambiamenti apportati dall'amministrazione Trump, un progetto minerario non necessita di un cliente “che abbia la garanzia di acquistare tutto o una parte del prodotto” per poter beneficiare di sovvenzioni e prestiti, il che rende il processo più rapido, ha affermato.

Il finanziamento è un problema nell'industria mineraria, ma è di grande preoccupazione nello sviluppo delle terre rare, ha affermato la Sanderson.

“Avete trovato un sacco di belle rocce nel terreno. Ottimo per voi. Ora avete bisogno di finanziamenti per trasformarvi in ​​una vera e propria società mineraria”, ha affermato. “Le banche statunitensi tendono a non concedere prestiti in questo settore”.

L'estrazione e la lavorazione delle terre rare richiedono “un capitale estremamente elevato e una volta investito e avviate le operazioni [...] non investiranno se non prevedono di gestire la miniera per 10 o 20 anni”, ha affermato Didier Lesueur, amministratore delegato del Western Research Institute di Laramie, nel Wyoming.

Lifton ha affermato che “i grandi capitali non sono interessati” alle terre rare. Ha osservato che le grandi società minerarie globali come Rio Tinto non vogliono estrarle.

“Quindi, per quanto se ne parli, si tratta di una piccola impresa [nel contesto dell'industria mineraria]”, ha affermato.

“[Estrarre terre rare da] rocce ospitanti [è] una specie di arte oscura. È un'attività proprietaria, molte operazioni sono proprietarie. Nessuno vi dice esattamente come si fanno le cose, e anche quando accade, bisogna essere un super specialista per capirlo”.

Ci sono molti passaggi costosi tra il terreno e il mercato, “e tra l'altro, bisogna scavare [...] ed è molto costoso”, ha detto Lifton.

La Sanderson ha affermato che è difficile estrarre le terre rare dal materiale in cui sono inserite “e concentrarle a un livello che renda il progetto economicamente sostenibile”.

“Non tutti i giacimenti si 'concentrano' a sufficienza da renderli bancabili” ha affermato.

Anche le tempistiche sono difficili da confrontare nello sviluppo delle terre rare, ha affermato.

“Qualsiasi stima fatta da un'azienda – in qualsiasi settore, del resto – su quando pensa che un nuovo impianto, una nuova miniera o un nuovo impianto di lavorazione entrerà in funzione, è sempre una stima approssimativa basata sullo scenario più favorevole, in cui la catena di approvvigionamento non crolla, il prezzo non diventa ingestibile, le condizioni meteorologiche sono favorevoli, ecc.”, ha detto la Sanderson.

Tuttavia, ha affermato Lifton, con oltre $400 miliardi in crediti d'imposta e altri incentivi disponibili attraverso l'Inflation Reduction Act del 2022 – almeno per ora – “Washington sta galleggiando sui fondi per questi progetti”.

Lesueur ha affermato che costruire una catena di approvvigionamento nazionale per le terre rare richiederà tempo e vale la pena prenderselo per farlo bene.

“È possibile farlo rapidamente? No”, ha detto. “In modo sostenibile? Sì. Ci vuole tempo perché la maggior parte di questi progetti, come la miniera di Halleck Creek di American Rare Earth, sono 'progetti greenfield', il che significa che partono da zero”.

Al momento l'industria nazionale delle terre rare è “solo una piccola cosa in un grande appezzamento di terreno”, secondo la Sanderson.

“Ma ehi, si inizia in piccolo e si cresce, giusto?” ha concluso.

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

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On Friday, the Supreme Court clobbered perhaps America’s most aggressive and intolerant LGBTQ+ school indoctrination program. By a vote of 6 to 3 in the case of Mahmoud v.Taylor, the court upheld parents’ right to exempt their children from biased sex and gender lessons that violated their religious values. The court’s ruling is a bitter reminder that public education is the most expensive “gift” that most Americans will ever receive.

Montgomery County, Maryland is the most liberal turf in one of the most liberal states in the nation. The Montgomery County Public School (MCPS) system prides itself on injecting progressive values into its 116,000 students. MCPS launched a gender-sex education program beginning in pre-kindergarten. The mandate was wildly unpopular with parents. The program initially offered an opt-out option—similar to what almost every other school system in the nation offers. But after too many parents signaled they wanted their kids out, the county canceled the opt-out. County bureaucrats sounded like antebellum plantation owners complaining about too many runaway slaves. An organization representing Muslim, Ukrainian Orthodox, and Catholic parents sued the school system. Their goal was not to prohibit the controversial textbooks but to exempt their kids from the indoctrination.

I live in Montgomery County and I have heard the anguish over this policy from foreign-born Uber drivers with children in local schools. Those Uber contractors came to this nation to pursue the American dream and are horrified to see how teachers are becoming deadly enemies of their family values and of their children’s contentment with their own bodies. When the drivers implore me to explain the local school policy, I can only lament that “crazy as a loon” doesn’t translate.

In 2019, the state of Maryland issued regulations to promote “viewing each student’s” “gender identity and expression,” and “sexual orientation” as “valuable.” Government officials and political appointees arrogated to themselves the prerogative to redefine gender in the state of Maryland. In choosing books for the curriculum, the MCPS Board said it “would review options through an ‘LGBTQ+ Lens’ and ask whether books ‘reinforced or disrupted’ ‘stereotypes,’ ‘cisnormativity,’ and ‘power hierarchies,’” according to a court brief filed by parents. That brief also noted that “teachers are told to frame disagreement with [pro-LGBTQ] ideas as ‘hurtful,’ and to counter with examples of ‘men who paint their nails’ or ‘wear dresses.’ The guidance documents also instruct teachers—twice—to ‘disrupt the either/or thinking’ of elementary students about biological sex.” The goal is to instill in children “a new perspective not easily contravened by their parents,” as the MCPS Board admitted.

In 2020, MCPS reported a 500 percent increase in the number of black and Hispanic kids failing math thanks in part to pointless covid school shutdowns. But that was a trifle compared to the 582 percent increase in the number of kids self-identifying as “non-binary” in local schools. “Disrupting children’s thinking” has been so successful that school medical intake forms indicate that almost half of students identified themselves as non-binary. MCPS justifies keeping young kids’ gender transitions secret in order to protect children from their own parents.

No data has been disclosed on how many of those students have been swayed to take puberty blockers that will leave them barren for life—even though most kids who have gender doubts later accept what they were born with. There is no data on how many females have had double mastectomies or how many boys have had genital-altering surgery. Non-binary kids are far more likely to suffer mental illness, but the schools did not disclose any data on how their crusade boosted the use of antidepressants and other psychiatric drugs. One survey found that more than half of transgender and non-binary youth considered committing suicide in 2022.

No wonder the parents’ lawsuit complained that MCPS promoted “political ideologies about family life and human sexuality that are inconsistent with sound science, common sense, and the well-being of children.”

A few decades ago, supposedly only reactionaries objected to public schools providing sex education. If such “lessons” had been limited to how to avoid pregnancy and venereal disease, then there would have been little or no harm or controversy. But that became the camel’s nose in the tent. Sex education became obsessed with redefining gender and radically changing how kids viewed themselves and American society.

In order to mold kids’ values, Montgomery County schools destroyed the innocence of childhood by placing a massive focus on sex starting at age 3. Encouraging kids to doubt their gender and sexual orientation before puberty can blight their lives. Even the local association of school principals vehemently objected to the program, finding it “problematic to portray elementary school age children falling in love with other children, regardless of sexual preferences.” Principals also opposed books and programs that “support the explicit teaching of gender and sexual identity”; invite “shaming comments” toward students who disagree, and are “dismissive of religious beliefs,” according to a court brief. Pro-LGBTQ+ advocates have provided no evidence on the benefits of encouraging kids to torment themselves about their own gender for years before they reach puberty. It doesn’t take 10 years of indoctrination to sway teenage boys to lust for female bosoms.

This case epitomizes how “free” schools subjugate parents and other taxpayers. When the Supreme Court heard oral arguments on this case, Justice Jackson scoffed: “If the school teaches something that the parent disagrees with, you have a choice. You don’t have to send your kid to that school, you can put them in another situation.” But many of the parents objecting cannot afford either private schools or homeschooling their kids.

Justice Samuel Alito—writing for the court majority—declared,

A government burdens the religious exercise of parents when it requires them to submit their children to instruction that poses “a very real threat of undermining” the religious beliefs and practices that the parents wish to instill… And a government cannot condition the benefit of free public education on parents’ acceptance of such instruction.

Most parents pay taxes that could cover much if not all of the cost of their kids’ schooling. Parents’ rights vanish as soon as their tax dollar is deposited into government coffers. Paying for schooling indirectly turns parents from buyers into beggars. Public schools vivify how control over financing for a service leads to political controls over people’s lives. Justice Alito scoffed at the three Justices who opposed the opt-out: “According to the dissent, parents who send their children to public school must endure any instruction that falls short of direct compulsion or coercion and must try to counteract that teaching at home.” As long as government officials don’t strap children into their chairs and directly use electronic mind zappers, progressives assume officialdom hasn’t gone too far.

The Supreme Court made the right call in upholding parents’ right to opt-out their kids. But how did government schools ever become so arrogant as to claim a right to determine what each child thought about personal, moral, and religious issues? The power of government schools remains a dire threat to parents, children, and to the future of liberty.

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

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In recent years, many Americans have become refocused on the Constitution in a spirit of returning the country to its original objectives and values.

This is not surprising. The US has deteriorated, both economically and governmentally, to such a degree that the very structure of the US is in danger of collapse. Small wonder that many Americans are hoping for a return to the simplicity and unified focus that can be found in the country’s original “business plan.”

The framers of the American Constitution borrowed ideas from historical governmental structures, particularly the Roman Republic. They added a few new ideas and came up with a document that may well be the finest concept that has yet been written by which to govern a country.

It is difficult for us to grasp today that, at the time the new Republic was created, it was viewed by the rest of the world as an experiment. Not even the framers of the Constitution were convinced that the Republic would last. After all, the country was broke from having fought a major war, they had no currency of their own and none of them had previously held political office.

It has been stated that the Constitution is brilliant in its brevity; that it had not become bogged down in reams of detail. This is true. One only need look at the weighty Constitution of the European Union as an example of how not to write a constitution.

The implication of the simplicity of the Constitution is that the framers were fully in agreement on the basics, and, that they felt that the rest could be sorted out later by the Legislature. This is partly true – thankfully, the framers were not politicians and they did believe that simplicity was better. But the document is also brief because the committee of ten that wrote it disagreed so extensively on some basic concepts that it was difficult to get anything on paper that they could all accept.

They did agree that they would form a Republic and that it would be run by democracy. (Today, these words have, to some extent, lost their meaning. A republic is a form of government in which each citizen possesses stated rights… while democracy is only a means of governing, in which each citizen has an equal vote. The US is no longer a republic and it can be argued that it is no longer run by true democracy.)

From the beginning, the primary disagreement was the role of the Federal Government.

John Adams, who later found the Federalist Party and became the first Federalist president, argued that a strong central government was essential to hold the states together (at that time, the word “state” meant “country”).  Jefferson disagreed, arguing that “That government governs best that governs least,” and sought to have as minimal a central government as possible. Jefferson later helped found the Democratic Republican Party and became the first Democratic Republican president. To a great degree, Jefferson won out backed by the Constitution’s principle author, James Madison, and others.

However controversial the founding concepts were, we assume today that once the Constitution had been signed, that was it, done deal. But this was not so. Almost immediately the various factions began to “interpret” the Constitution and even recommend amendments… each seeking to bend the Constitution into the direction that would allow him to achieve his personal goals for the union. (Does this sound familiar?)

From the start, Alexander Hamilton (first Secretary of the Treasury) sought to create taxation. When Jefferson admonished him by saying that they had just fought a war to end taxation by King George, Hamilton responded that this taxation was different, as they would be the recipients of the money, not the king. This event should remind us that in every country, in every era, there will always be those who adjust their ideals according to whether or not they themselves are in power.  At that time, Hamilton also attempted to create the Bank of the United States — a federal bank.

To Americans today, Jefferson has emerged as the hero of the Constitution and deservedly so. As president, however, when he had the opportunity to purchase Louisiana for the bargain price of $15,000,000… he couldn’t resist. He had previously often argued that the central government should not make major expenditures and then pass the bill to the states. Yet at the time, the Louisiana Purchase was the greatest expenditure that had yet been considered by the Federal Government.

Jefferson made possible the western expansion of the US by making the purchase. But in doing so, he allowed future presidents to take on huge expenditures. Was he right to sacrifice his own principles in order to do so?

This trend continues today on a grand scale. Even the most conservative politicians have their pet projects they feel should be fully funded… while de-funding the projects of others.

Human nature dictates that while we may strive to agree on basic principles, as soon as we have agreed, we begin making exceptions. Human nature also dictates that power corrupts. In the early days of the union, Washington, Jefferson and even Adams believed that to accept public office when called upon was a duty… but… that having completed a term or two, it was time to return to the farm. Yet they all found that once having been in office, they were reluctant to leave.

So, where does this leave us today? Has nothing changed? Actually yes, there have been significant changes… each one for the worse.

First, beginning with John Quincy Adams, the concept of career politician has come into existence. Ideally, each candidate for office should have had an alternate career prior to running for office. At the very least, this would provide some objectivity. But career politicians generally have a very poor grasp of the real world, because they have never worked in it.

Second, the bureaucracy has become so ponderous that the bureaucracy itself routinely takes precedent over the best interests of the country in the present day, pork is still being seen as more important to legislators than a balanced budget.

The US is now entering the greatest period of crisis since the creation of the union itself. What will be the fate of the Constitution? Will it be discarded? Will there be revolution?

I believe that the answer will be that the Constitution will remain… but will have ever-decreasing significance. The reasons are these: First, politicians of today no longer represent the voters. They represent those who pay for their campaigns. These groups are already in control of the country and, to them, the Constitution is irrelevant. Second, all Americans receive benefits of some kind from the federal government. They can wave the flag all they want, but when their pet entitlements are threatened, they will scream bloody murder. The fact that the entitlements are not allowed for in the Constitution will have little significance.

In the end, with or without electoral shakeups, with or without a second revolution, Americans will argue in favor of their own entitlements and against the entitlements of others.

This is not an issue that will reach a resolution. Just as in ancient Rome, once the republic had become watered down to the point of corruption on the one side, and entitlements on the other, the republic had run its course and the slow collapse began. Concurrently, the “barbarians” (the third-world of their day) took the lead both economically and governmentally and Rome became a backwater.

The writing of the American Constitution was a high-water mark in governmental history. Today, however, the truth is that not even those who profess to honor it would be prepared to make the sacrifice necessary to live by it. Just like the Romans before them who settled for “bread and circuses”, rather than economic recovery, Americans will choose the inevitable decline of their country rather than give up “entitlements.”

Reprinted with permission from International Man.

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The ‘long war’ to subvert Iran, weaken Russia, BRICS and China is on hold. It is not over.

At one level, Iran plainly ‘won’. Trump had wanted to be regaled with a reality-TV style, splendid ‘Victory’. Sunday’s attack on the three nuclear sites indeed was loudly proclaimed by Trump and Hegseth as such – having ‘obliterated’ Iran’s nuclear enrichment programme, they claimed. ‘Destroyed it completely’, they insist.

Only … it didn’t: The strike caused superficial surface damage, perhaps. And seemingly was co-ordinated in advance with Iran via intermediaries to be a ‘once and done’ affair. This is a habitual Trump pattern (advance co-ordination). It was the mode in Syria, Yemen and even with Trump’s assassination of Qasem Soleimani – all intended to give Trump a quick media ‘victory’.

The so-called ‘ceasefire’ that rapidly followed the U.S. strikes – albeit not without some hiccoughs – was a hastily assembled ‘cessation of hostilities’ (and no ceasefire – as no terms were agreed). It was a ‘stop-gap’. What this means is that the negotiating impasse between Iran and Witkoff remains unresolved.

The Supreme Leader has forcefully laid down Iran’s position: ‘No surrender’; Enrichment proceeds; and the U.S. should quit the region and keep its nose out of Iranian affairs.

So, on the positive side of cost-benefit analysis, Iran likely has enough centrifuges and 450 kg of highly enriched uranium – and nobody (except Iran) now knows where the stash is hidden. Iran will resume processing. A second plus for Iran is that the IAEA and its Director-General Grossi have been so egregiously subversive of Iranian sovereignty that the Agency most likely will be expelled from Iran. The Agency failed in its basic responsibility to safeguard sites at which enriched uranium was present.

The U.S. and European intelligence services thus will lose their ‘eyes’ on the ground – as well as forego the IAEA’s Artificial Intelligence data collection (on which Israel’s identification of targets likely was heavily dependent).

On the cost side, militarily, Iran of course suffered physical damage, but retains its missile potency. The U.S.-Israeli narrative of Iranian skies as ‘open wide’ to Israeli aircraft is yet another deception contrived to support the ‘winning narrative’:

As Simplicius notes: “There remains not a single shred of proof that Israeli (or American, for that matter) planes ever significantly overflew Iran at any time. Claims of ‘total air superiority’ have no grounds. [Footage] up until the final day shows Israel continued relying on their heavy UCAVs [large surveillance and strike drone aircraft] to strike Iranian ground targets”.

Furthermore, drop tanks from Israeli planes were recorded washing up on Iran’s northernmost Caspian shores, suggesting rather, stand-off missile launches were being mounted by Israel’s Air Force from the north (i.e. from Azerbaijani airspace).

Up a level in the cost-benefit analysis, one must move to the bigger picture: That the destruction of the nuclear programme was pretext, yet not the main objective. The Israelis themselves say that the decision to attack the Iranian State was taken last September/October (2024). Israel’s intricate, costly and sophisticated plan (de-capitation, targeted assassinations, cyber-attack and the infiltration of drone-equipped sabotage cells) that unfolded during the 13 June sneak attack was focussed on one immediate aim: the implosion of the Iranian state, paving the path to chaos and ‘regime change’.

Did Trump believe in the Israeli delusion that Iran was on the brink of imminent collapse? Very likely, he did. Did he believe the Israeli story (reportedly concocted by the IAEA Mosaic programme) that Iran was speeding ‘towards a nuclear weapon’? It seems possible that Trump was suckered – or more likely, was willing prey – to the Israeli and U.S. Israeli-Firster narrative building.

As the Ukraine issue has proved more intractable than Trump expected, the Israeli promise of an ‘Iran ready to implode, Syria-style’ – an ‘Epic’ transformation to a ‘New Middle East’ – must have been alluring enough for Trump to brusquely sweep aside Tulsi Gabbard’s assertion that Iran had no nuclear weapon.

So, has the Iranian military response and the massive popular rallying to the flag been a ‘big win’ for Iran? Well, it is certainly a ‘win’ over the ‘brink of regime change’ pedlars; yet perhaps the ‘win’ needs refining? It is not a ‘forever win’. Iran cannot afford to let its guard down.

‘Iranian unconditional surrender’ is, of course, now off the cards. But the point here is that the Israel establishment, the pro-Israeli lobby in the U.S. (and possibly Trump too), will continue to believe that the only way to guarantee that Iran never moves toward threshold weapon status – is not through intrusive inspections and monitoring, but precisely via ‘regime change’ and the installation of a purely western puppet in Tehran.

The ‘long war’ to subvert Iran, weaken Russia, BRICS and China is on hold. It is not over. Iran cannot afford to relax or to neglect its defences. What is at stake is the U.S. attempt to control the Middle East and its oil as a buttress to its dollar trading primacy.

Professor Hudson notes that “Trump had expected that countries would respond to his tariff chaos by reaching an agreement not to trade with China – and indeed to accept trade and financial sanctions against China, Russia and Iran”. Clearly, both Russia and China understand the geo-financial stakes surrounding a ‘no surrender’ Iran. And they understand too, how regime change would make Russia’s southern underbelly vulnerable; how it could collapse the BRICS trade corridors, and be used as a wedge separating Russia from China.

Put plainly: the U.S. long war likely will be resumed in a new format. Iran notably has survived this acute phase of the confrontation. Israel and the U.S. bet all on an uprising of the Iranian people. It didn’t happen: Iranian society united in the face of aggression. And the mood is more robust; more resolute.

However, Iran will ‘win’ all the more if the authorities seize on the euphoria of a united society to impart a new energy into the Iranian Revolution. The euphoria will not last forever – absent action. It is a paradoxical and unexpected opportunity offered to the Republic.

Israel, by contrast, having launched its ‘psychic-shock war’ to overturn the Iranian State, has quickly found itself in a situation where its enemy did not surrender, but responded. Israel found itself the target of large-scale retaliatory strikes. The situation quickly became critical – both economically and in the depletion of air defences – as Netanyahu’s desperate appeals to the U.S. for rescue, duly attested.

Moving to the wider geo-political cost-benefit level, Israel’s standing (at the regional level) of being unassailable when fused to American power, has taken a blow: ‘Think of it this way, in ten or twenty years, what will be remembered … [the de-capitation strike and the targeted killings of scientists] … or the fact that Israeli cities burned for the first time; that Israel failed to defang Iran’s nuclear program, and flopped with every other major objective it had, including regime change?’.

“The fact is, Israel suffered an historic humiliation that has destroyed its mystique”. Gulf States will have some difficulty to digest the larger meaning to this symbolic occurrence.

And though Trump’s electorate seemingly is satisfied that America participated in the war minimally – and apparently is happy to reside cocooned in a miasma of exaggerated self-congratulation – there is significant evidence that the MAGA faction of the Trump coalition, simultaneously is reaching the conclusion that the U.S. president is increasingly becoming part of the Deep State system that he so ardently criticised.

There were two key issues in the last U.S. Presidential election: immigration and ‘no more forever wars’. Trump, today, despite highly confusing and contradictory massaging, is clear that a forever war is not off the table: “If Iran builds nuclear facilities again – then in that scenario – the U.S. will strike [again]”, Trump has warned.

That – and the increasingly bizarre posts that Trump pens – seem to have had the effect of radicalising the Populist base against Trump on this issue.

For the rest of the world, Trump’s recent postings are disturbing. Perhaps they work for some Americans, but not elsewhere. It means that Moscow, Beijing or Tehran find it harder to take such erratic messaging seriously. Equally troubling, however, is how divorced from geo-political reality, in a succession of cases, Team Trump has proved to be in their situation assessments. Amber lights are flashing in many capitals across the world.

The views of individual contributors do not necessarily represent those of the Strategic Culture Foundation.

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