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Thanks, John Frahm. 

Lifesite News

The post JD Vance defends American workers, blames 40 years of globalism for US deindustrialization appeared first on LewRockwell.

Writes Ginny Garner:

Lew,

Reaction of the Mary Ferrell Foundation from its president Jefferson Morley on X:

Here’s the statement of the Mary Ferrell Foundation from me, the vice president of the foundation, about today’s file release.#JFKFilesRelease #JFKRecords @InfoMferrell

“The first JFK files release of 2025 is an encouraging start. We now have complete versions of approximately… pic.twitter.com/Ptq4qf1a1D

— Jefferson Morley (@jeffersonmorley) March 19, 2025

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Thanks Gail Appel.

Last night.

The post The Road To Damascus appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, Gail Appel:

See here.

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Gail Appel writes:

But they don’t pay their NATO obligations, prohibit the most popular party from holding sway, continue flooding Germany with those who align with the Islamist Supremacist terror regimes and JD Vance is the Nazi.

Yet were expected to protect Germany.

Trump is right. The hell with the EU.

See this.

The post Germany sends 300m to the new Syrian “Government” days after 7000 Alowites and myriad ethic minorities were slaughtered appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, John Frahm.

Zoltán Kottász

The post EU Pledges Billions To Syria Despite Jihadist Massacre of Christians appeared first on LewRockwell.

John Smith wrote:

Lew,

This is revealing.

“Nathan Miller, a spokesperson for MTF and former Director of Speechwriting for Israel’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations, did not respond to multiple requests for comment asking for details about Adelson’s day to day involvement with MTF, whether MTF had any contact with the White House or State Department regarding the attempted deportation of Khalil, whether MTF had any evidence to support their claim that Khalil is a “Hamas supporter” and “came to the US to promote chaos and destruction,” and why the Facebook page targeting American campus protesters and universities is partially managed by individuals in Israel.”

The post The Israeli-American Trump mega-donor behind speech crackdowns appeared first on LewRockwell.

____________________________________________________________________________________

(Versione audio della traduzione disponibile qui: https://open.substack.com/pub/fsimoncelli/p/il-cambiamento-di-narrazione-piu)

Il cambiamento di narrazione più importante in questo periodo post-lockdown è stato il capovolgimento delle percezioni dello stato stesso. Per decenni, e persino secoli, è stato visto come il baluardo essenziale per difendere i poveri, dare potere agli emarginati, realizzare la giustizia, livellare il campo di gioco nel commercio e garantire i diritti a tutti.

Lo stato è stato il gestore saggio, che ha frenato l'eccesso di entusiasmo populista, smussato l'impatto delle feroci dinamiche di mercato, garantito la sicurezza dei prodotti, smantellato pericolose sacche di accumulo di ricchezza e protetto i diritti delle popolazioni minoritarie. Questa era l'etica e la percezione.

Per secoli la tassazione stessa è stata venduta alla popolazione come il prezzo da pagare per la civiltà, uno slogan inciso nel marmo nella sede centrale dell'IRS di Washington e attribuito a Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., che lo disse nel 1904, dieci anni prima che l'imposta federale sul reddito diventasse legale negli Stati Uniti.

Questa affermazione non riguardava solo un metodo di finanziamento; era un commento sul merito percepito dell'intero settore pubblico.

Sì, questa visione ha avuto oppositori a destra e a sinistra, ma le loro critiche raramente hanno avuto un impatto duraturo sull'opinione pubblica.

Nel 2020 è successa una cosa strana.

La maggior parte dei governi a tutti i livelli in tutto il mondo si sono rivoltati contro il loro popolo. È stato uno shock perché gli stati non avevano mai tentato prima nulla di così audace. Hanno affermato di esercitare la padronanza su tutto il regno microbico, in tutto il mondo; avrebbero dimostrato la validità di questa missione implausibile con il rilascio di una pozione magica realizzata e distribuita con i loro partner industriali che erano completamente indennizzati da richieste di responsabilità.

Basti dire che la pozione non ha funzionato. Tutti hanno comunque preso il Covid; quasi tutti se lo sono scrollato di dosso. A chi è morto sono state spesso negate le comuni terapie per far posto a un'iniezione che ha fatto registrare il più alto tasso di infortuni e decessi nella storia pubblica. Un fiasco peggiore sarebbe difficile da immaginare al di fuori della narrativa distopica.

A questa grande crociata hanno partecipato tutti i vertici, tra cui i mass media, il mondo accademico, l'industria medica, i sistemi informativi e tutta l'industria scientifica stessa. Dopo tutto la nozione di “salute pubblica” implica uno sforzo di “tutto lo stato” e di “tutta la società”. Infatti la scienza, con il suo alto status guadagnato in molti secoli di successi, ha aperto la strada.

I politici, le persone per cui la popolazione vota e che formano l'unica vera connessione che la gente ha con i sistemi sotto cui vive, hanno seguito il movimento, ma non sembravano essere ai posti di comando. Né i tribunali sembravano avere un ruolo importante. Sono stati chiusi insieme alle piccole attività commerciali, alle scuole e ai luoghi di culto.

Le forze di controllo in ogni nazione risalivano a qualcos'altro che normalmente non consideravamo governo: erano gli amministratori che occupavano agenzie considerate indipendenti dalla consapevolezza o dal controllo della popolazione. Lavoravano a stretto contatto con i loro partner industriali nella tecnologia, nella farmaceutica, nel settore bancario e nella vita aziendale.

La Costituzione non aveva importanza e nemmeno la lunga tradizione di diritti, libertà e legge. La forza lavoro era divisa tra essenziale e non essenziale: le persone essenziali erano la classe dirigente più i lavoratori che la servivano, tutti gli altri erano considerati non essenziali per il funzionamento della società.

Si supponeva che fosse per la nostra salute, che lo stato si prendesse cura di noi, ma questa affermazione ha perso rapidamente credibilità, mentre la salute mentale e fisica precipitavano. La solitudine ha sostituito la comunità, i cari sono stati separati con la forza, gli anziani sono morti da soli con funerali digitali, matrimoni e funzioni religiose sono stati cancellati, le palestre sono state chiuse e poi riaperte solo per chi indossava la mascherina e i vaccinati, le arti sono morte, l'abuso di sostanze stupefacenti è salito alle stelle perché, mentre tutto il resto era chiuso, i negozi di liquori e i negozi di marijuana erano aperti.

Ecco quando le percezioni sono cambiate radicalmente. Lo stato non è ciò che la maggior parte delle persone pensava, è qualcos'altro. Non serve la popolazione, serve i propri interessi. Ed essi sono profondamente intrecciati nel tessuto dell'industria e della società civile. Le agenzie governative vengono catturate e la loro attenzione scorre principalmente verso chi ha le giuste connessioni.

Il conto è stato pagato dalle persone che sono state considerate non essenziali e che sarebbero state compensate con pagamenti diretti sfornati dalla stampante monetaria. Nel giro di un anno ciò è sfociato in un'inflazione che ha ridotto drasticamente il reddito reale durante una crisi economica.

Questo enorme esperimento di pianificazione farmacologica ha finito per capovolgere la narrazione che aveva ampiamente coperto gli affari pubblici per tutta la nostra vita. La terribile realtà è stata trasmessa all'intera popolazione in modi che nessuno aveva mai sperimentato prima. Secoli di filosofia e retorica sono stati fatti a pezzi davanti ai nostri occhi, mentre intere popolazioni si sono ritrovate faccia a faccia con l'impensabile: lo stato era diventato una grande truffa, o addirittura un'impresa criminale, un meccanismo che serviva solo i piani e le istituzioni delle élite.

Generazioni di filosofie ideologiche hanno inseguito conigli immaginari e questo vale per tutti i dibattiti principali sul socialismo e il capitalismo, ma anche per i dibattiti su religione, demografia, cambiamenti climatici e molto altro. Quasi tutti sono stati distratti dal vedere le cose che contano, andando a caccia di cose che in realtà non contano.

Questa presa di coscienza ha travalicato i tipici confini partigiani e ideologici. Coloro che non amavano pensare a questioni di conflitto di classe hanno dovuto affrontare i modi in cui l'intero sistema stava servendo una classe a spese di tutti gli altri. I sostenitori della beneficenza statale hanno dovuto affrontare l'impensabile: il loro vero amore era diventato malevolo. I campioni dell'impresa privata hanno dovuto affrontare i modi in cui le aziende private hanno partecipato e beneficiato dell'intero fiasco. Hanno partecipato tutti i principali partiti politici e i loro sostenitori giornalistici.

Nessuno dei precedenti ideologici è stato confermato nel corso di quegli eventi e tutti sono stati costretti a realizzare che il mondo funzionava in un modo molto diverso da quello che ci era stato detto. La maggior parte dei governi del mondo era controllata da persone che nessuno aveva eletto e queste forze amministrative erano leali non agli elettori ma agli interessi industriali nei media e nell'industria farmaceutica, mentre gli intellettuali di cui ci eravamo a lungo fidati accettavano le affermazioni più folli, condannando il dissenso.

A rendere le cose ancora più confuse, nessuno dei responsabili di questo disastro ha voluto ammettere l'errore o anche solo spiegare il proprio ragionamento. Le questioni scottanti erano e sono così voluminose da essere impossibili da elencare per intero. Negli Stati Uniti, avrebbe dovuto esserci una commissione Covid, ma non è mai stata istituita. Perché? Perché i critici superavano di gran lunga gli apologeti e una commissione pubblica si è rivelata troppo rischiosa.

Troppa verità potrebbe uscire allo scoperto, e poi cosa succederebbe? Dietro la logica della distruzione basata sulla salute pubblica, c'era una mano nascosta: interessi di sicurezza nazionale radicati nell'industria delle armi biologiche che è vissuta a lungo sotto copertura. Questo è probabilmente ciò che spiega lo strano tabù riguardante l'intera trama: chi sa non può dire, mentre il resto di noi che ha fatto ricerche su questo argomento per anni si ritrova con più domande che risposte.

Mentre aspettiamo un resoconto completo di come i diritti e le libertà siano stati schiacciati in tutto il mondo, quello che Javier Milei ha definito un “crimine contro l'umanità”, non si può negare la realtà dei fatti: era certo che ci sarebbe stato un contraccolpo, la cui ferocia non avrebbe fatto che intensificarsi quanto più a lungo è stata ritardata la giustizia.

Per diversi anni il mondo ha atteso le ricadute politiche, economiche, culturali e intellettuali, mentre i responsabili si sono aggrappati alla speranza che l'intera storia sarebbe scomparsa. Dimenticatevi del Covid, continuavano a dirci, ciononostante la portata della calamità non se n'è andata.

Viviamo ancora in mezzo a tutte le conseguenze, con rivelazioni minuto per minuto su dove sono andati a finire i soldi e chi era esattamente coinvolto. Sono stati sprecati miliardi di dollari mentre il tenore di vita delle persone è precipitato, e ora la domanda più scottante è: chi ha preso quei soldi? Le carriere vengono distrutte mentre famosi crociati anti-corporativi come Bernie Sanders si rivelano essere i maggiori beneficiari della generosità farmaceutica del Senato degli Stati Uniti.

La storia di Sanders è solo un dato tra milioni. La notizia del gran numero di racket è come una valanga. I giornali che pensavamo stessero raccontando la vita pubblica si sono rivelati corrotti. I fact-checker lavoravano sempre per il sistema di censura. I censori proteggevano solo sé stessi. Gli ispettori che credevamo stessero tenendo d'occhio la situazione erano sempre coinvolti nel gioco. I tribunali che tenevano d'occhio gli eccessi dello stato li stavano alimentando. Le burocrazie incaricate di far rispettare le leggi erano di per sé delle legislature non controllate e non elette.

Il cambiamento è illustrato dall'USAID, un'agenzia da $50 miliardi che sosteneva di fare lavoro umanitario ma che in realtà era un fondo nero per i cambi di governo, operazioni dello Stato profondo, censura e corruzione delle ONG su una scala mai vista prima. Ora abbiamo i dati. L'intera agenzia, che ha dominato il mondo come un colosso incontrollato per decenni, è destinata alla discarica.

E così via.

E questo non vale solo per gli Stati Uniti: la stessa dinamica sta prendendo forma in tutto il mondo industrializzato.

L'intero sistema di governo, concepito non come un canale democraticamente eletto per la tutela degli interessi dei popoli, ma piuttosto come una rete intricata e non eletta di racket industriale con una classe dirigente al comando, si sta sgretolando sotto i nostri occhi.

Ora ci sono vaste fasce della popolazione mondiale che bruciano di un desiderio ardente di ripulire il settore pubblico, denunciare le truffe industriali, riportare alla luce tutti i segreti tenuti nascosti per decenni, rimettere il potere nelle mani del popolo come l'era liberale aveva promesso molto tempo fa, cercando al contempo giustizia per tutti i torti subiti in questi ultimi cinque anni infernali.

L'operazione Covid è stata un audace tentativo globale di dispiegare tutto il potere dello stato, in tutte le direzioni da e verso cui fluiva, al servizio di un obiettivo mai tentato prima nella storia. Dire che ha fallito è l'eufemismo del secolo. Ciò che ha fatto è stato scatenare fuochi di rabbia in tutto il mondo, e interi sistemi legacy sono in procinto di bruciare.

Quanto è profonda la corruzione? Non ci sono parole per descriverne l'ampiezza e la profondità.

Chi se ne sta pentendo? I media generalisti, l'establishment accademico tradizionale, l'establishment aziendale tradizionale, le agenzie del settore pubblico, tutto il resto, e questo rammarico non conosce confini partigiani o ideologici.

E chi sta esultando o, almeno, applaudendo? I media indipendenti, la cittadinanza di base, i deplorevoli e non essenziali, i saccheggiati e gli oppressi, i lavoratori e i contadini che sono stati costretti a servire le élite per anni, coloro che sono stati emarginati attraverso decenni di esclusione dalla vita pubblica.

Nessuno può sapere con certezza dove andremo a parare – e nessuna rivoluzione o controrivoluzione nella storia è esente da costi o complicazioni – ma una cosa è certa: la vita pubblica non sarà mai più la stessa per le generazioni a venire.

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

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

Thanks,  John Smith. 

The Future of Freedom Foundation.

The post Trump’s Denial of Due Process Is Tyranny appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, John Smith. 

The Future of Freedom Foundation.

The post Trump’s Use of Immigration Controls To Destroy Free Speech appeared first on LewRockwell.

Robert Barnes in one of his best and most insightful interviews. Comprehensive and authoritative in tracing and outlining the systemic sources and backgrounds of these corrupt nefarious actors over time. He remains the brilliant attorney/political analyst who shines the disinfecting light of illumination and clarity upon understanding the tragic, chaotic world in which we live.

That is why key observers across the political spectrum recognize that Barnes is not only a master litigator and top-notch attorney but one of the most in depth, articulate, well read and street-smart experienced political analysts in the nation. Whether it involves the institutionalized criminal machine cartels of the Democrats and Republicans or the deep state, he is a true polymath reminiscent of Murray N. Rothbard in his power elite analysis of Realpolitik.

The post Rebel Capitalist Interviews: Legal Expert Robert Barnes Reacts to Trump Challenging Biden’s Pardons appeared first on LewRockwell.

The US is bombing Yemen again after Houthi leaders announced that their blockade on Israeli shipping would resume due to Israel’s siege on Gaza.

Trump could have used Washington’s immense leverage over Israel to force Netanyahu to honor the ceasefire agreement and allow aid into Gaza. Instead he let the IDF lay siege to Gaza and started bombing Yemen for Israel, because he’s a warmongering Israel cuck.

Trump is bombing Yemen for Israel, rushing weapons to Israel despite its flagrant ceasefire violations, and rolling out authoritarian measure after authoritarian measure to stop Americans from criticizing Israel. Because that’s what you get when you vote for America First.

Do you want to know how much of a pathetic Israel lackey Trump is? Earlier this month his nominated hostage envoy Adam Boehler went on CNN and proclaimed that the United States is “not an agent of Israel”. Days later, the White House withdrew Boehler’s nomination.

❖

Known things:

1. Trump is a servant of Israel.

2. Trump is on the Epstein flight logs.

3. Epstein worked with Israeli intelligence.

4. Epstein was running a sexual blackmail operation.

5. Trump is obstructing the release of the Epstein files.

Question:

Exactly how many kids did Trump rape?

❖

It’s cool how Republicans are finally dropping that phony “We’re populists fighting the Deep State” schtick and returning to their authentic “Anyone who opposes authoritarianism loves terrorists, let’s fight more wars in the middle east” roots.

Trump supporters would wipe their asses with the US Constitution and deport their own mothers if doing so would help their government send one more 2000-pound bomb to Israel.

❖

The other day I shared a report about Israel continuing its insanely evil practice of murdering children in Gaza with sniper drones, and I got multiple people in my replies commenting “Release the hostages!” as a response.

Israel supporters are the worst people in the world.

❖

I have no sympathy for Israelis, nor for Israel supporters who say they “feel unsafe”. This isn’t because I am uncaring, it’s because I know any sympathy I might point in that direction will be harnessed and used to murder Palestinians, start wars, and destroy free speech rights.

❖

When you proclaim that anti-Zionism is antisemitism and then Zionism murders tens of thousands of children, you are naturally going to see a rise in “antisemitism” as you have defined it. That’s all this whole “antisemitism crisis” narrative has been from the very beginning.

Zionism is not a religion, it’s a fucking political ideology. It’s always legitimate to criticize a political ideology. Saying it’s evil forbidden speech to express disdain for Zionism is the same as saying it’s evil forbidden speech to express disdain for white nationalism. Zionism is the political ideology which supports the west’s decision to drop an apartheid ethnostate on top of a pre-existing population and maintain that apartheid ethnostate by any amount of violence and abuse necessary.

You can’t butcher children by the tens of thousands with the backing of the most powerful war machine on the planet in the name of supporting this political ideology and then legitimately cry victim when people have something to say about it. That’s not a thing.

❖

People tend to bluff the opposite of whatever hand they’re holding; newbies do it in poker, and everyone does it with their ego. Conservatives are afraid of everything, so they posture as hypermasculine tough guys. Liberals are bootlickers who act like heroes of social justice.

You see this dynamic everywhere, on the personal level as well as political. The person who feels small acts big. The person who feels dumb acts like a know it all. You see some bloke acting like he’s better than everyone else and think “That guy needs to be brought down a few pegs,” but really he’s only doing that because he feels inferior to everybody; you can’t bring him down any lower than he’s already brought himself. They’re all just bluffing the opposite of the hand they believe they’ve been dealt.

_______________

My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you want to. Go here to find video versions of my articles. If you’d prefer to listen to audio of these articles, you can subscribe to them on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud or YouTube. Go here to buy paperback editions of my writings from month to month. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.

The post Trump Is Bombing Yemen For Israel appeared first on LewRockwell.

Have you ever wondered what makes a person snap? What causes a normal, quiet, everyday citizen, loving mother, or doting father to lose it all and fight like a caged animal? What can cause a small village to rise up and rebel against an oppressive police force and start killing them? What is the switch that gets flipped that causes a city to pour two million people into the streets, chanting and demanding to be heard by their government?

Lately it feels more and more as though we are on standing on the edge of some yawning precipice peering over the crest into darkness. What is more troubling to me is that we have been down this path before. The sense of unease is almost palpable to me sometimes; it is more evident if you are paying attention. If you are able to eliminate the white noise of the world for a minute; hit the pause button on the playlist of daily life for a while and look around, listen, you may start to recognize that you too are caught up in events that will soon change all our lives.

For several years I have felt an unsettling sense that we need to be prepared, that life is going to throw us a big, fat, greasy curve ball soon and we better not be caught napping. To try and proactively address that warning voice I started planning and taking steps to prepare my family to be able to weather events in the future. I am certainly not alone in this concern as you can easily see by the tremendous growth of the prepper movement. In the spectrum of probable events, there are a lot of potential scenarios. Natural disasters and emergencies occur every day all over the world, but you have to broaden your gaze and look to current events and history as well. One of the things that I think is a valid potential event to consider is a collapse of our way of life which leads to an authoritarian oppressive government.

Are we reaching a tipping point?

We have seen in recent events, by now almost too numerous to mention, the effects of a rising frustration with the way things are. It isn’t necessary to go into all of the individual reasons, but as a society there are more and more outpourings of frustration on a global scale. There are increasingly tightening restrictions against people. There is a manipulation of markets and the economy. There is a great increase in the loss of freedom and there is a more open antagonism and almost outright animosity by Government towards their people.

Governments exist either because they have come to power through force and violence or they have been elected and given power by the people. The force and violence crowd usually have their roots in the military and we like to call them Dictators. There have been a ton of them throughout history; Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Kim Jong iL and now his son, Saddam, Gaddafi, the list goes on and on. Dictators don’t care about the people and usually kill anyone who gets in their way. It is a fact that government has killed more people than any other cause, disease or reason.

The other side of the coin is what is usually called Democracies. I am lumping a lot of governments in here I know, but the democracies are usually elected and formed with the consent of the people with the noble goal of securing rights or protecting the people over whom they govern. Almost without fail however, Democratic Governments eventually do not want to answer to the people and at some point they most certainly will not be told what to do by the people to the point of ignoring the will of the people (for the people’s own good of course). Now these governments that are supposed to secure the liberties of their people are becoming more openly hostile to the same people they have sworn to defend. Funnily enough the democratically elected governments now seem to want to hang on to power with the same methods of force and violence as dictators. How else can you explain arming themselves with ammo, ignoring the constitution, purchasing assault vehicles and preparing to confiscate firearms?

When governments will steal money outright from the citizens in order to pay bills that were not incurred by the people we have a problem. When government spies on its people and uses that information against them punitively we have a problem. When Government uses the force of the military that was supposed to defend the people that was paid for by the people, for the purposes of killing the people, we have a big problem. When someone brings to light crimes by the government and is labeled as the one who is a danger, we have a problem.

The problem is that governments around the world are viewing their people as the problem and there really seems to be only one way throughout history that this is ever rectified. My fear is that we are already set on a course that won’t be changed with laws, great political leaders, or a return to the values of a golden age in time long past.

The Fine Line – The Straw that breaks the camel’s back

The fine line between someone who is a law-abiding citizen and a murderer is one that exists purely in our souls. There is nothing physical that is different from a person who follows the rules and someone who breaks them. The urge to pull the trigger isn’t something you can see and it isn’t a trait to test for, so it must be our own individual sense of right and wrong. Of good and evil.

I know that some will argue that a psychopath is definitely recognizable by character traits and maybe even brainwaves or chemistry. That may be true, but you can be a psychopath (clinically) without ever hurting anyone. By the same token, you can take a life while being perfectly “sane”.

If you hold a knife in your hand, you are just as capable of using that to stab or cut someone as the murderer in the next town, but that thought never enters the mind of an overwhelming majority of people. A baseball bat in your hands can easily be swung with great force connecting it to the back of a skull, but this thought never appears in our heads; that is unless we are forced into a corner. When a person is in desperate fear for their lives, the unspoken rules of right and wrong are broken. The processes that we follow every day are overridden in the cause of rage or self-preservation. What was unthinkable before is now very real, necessary and even righteous with the right circumstances.

When the right buttons are pushed, anyone can lose it. When the fear of dying or of losing someone you love is so overpowering, the “fine line” that has been keeping us sane, law-abiding and good is easily shattered. When this happens, all bets are off.

We as a people, a country are still rather firmly attached on the good side of this line. We have not yet completely been driven to abandon all hope and lash out. We have not yet been so harmed, have not gotten to the point that we have nothing to lose and are ready to lose it, but this may be coming in the future.

The force and violence that is being used now to quell the dissatisfaction of people globally is increasing. The methods to cease the complaining of the rabble has been relatively minor with some exceptions. Tear gas, rubber bullets, mace and batons only work up to a point though. When the time comes that people can no longer abide, there won’t be enough police to stop them using riot control techniques. The military doesn’t have enough people to stop the entire population unless those people peacefully agree to surrender, so what will they do? Do you believe any government will quietly step down and admit that they are obviously not speaking for the people anymore? No. They will resort to more force and violence and people will die. Either that or you have a coup like they had in Egypt and guess who took over to “restore order”? Yep, the Military.

What will be the inevitable response by the authorities?

The Chinese people who started to revolt against the police in their town did so because the authorities were “placing restrictions on their culture, language and religion”. China is no picnic compared to America and we clearly know they have lived through far worse oppression than we have, but this was the straw that broke the camel’s back for them?

The protests which turned into an estimated two million citizens of Brazil had started simply enough with a protest over a rise in the rates of public transportation.

In America, what will be the trigger that causes people to rise up and say we aren’t going to take this anymore and more importantly what will happen when/if we do?

Read the Whole Article

The post What Is America’s Tipping Point and What Are You Prepared to Do When It Comes? appeared first on LewRockwell.

“America should side with the rebels in the Democratic Republic of Congo,” says Michael Rubin, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a beltway conservative think tank.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), formerly known as the Congo Free State, the Belgian Congo, and Zaire, is the second largest country in Africa. It should not be confused with the smaller Republic of the Congo. According to the CIA’s World Factbook: “The territory that is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo has more than 200 ethnic groups that trace their histories to many communal organizations and kingdoms.” The country has suffered from poverty, civil wars, armed conflicts, and economic and political instability for decades.

Rubin, a former Pentagon official who defended Bush’s Iraq War, laments that European and American policymakers often “automatically or arbitrarily castigate rebellions and insurgencies as counter to freedom and U.S. interests.” He concludes that the United States should not “side with a corrupt Congolese government that cultivates China and whose dictator seeks an illicit third term,” but should “recognize that what the rebels in eastern Congo face are the same groupings that perpetrated genocide or now cheer it on” and work with the rebels “to build their capacity and help them govern freely and fairly.”

So, whom should America side with: the government of the DRC or the rebels?

America should side with no one.

It doesn’t matter what violations of rights that either side has committed. It doesn’t matter how many murders either side has committed. It doesn’t matter how many rapes either side has committed. It doesn’t matter what atrocities that either side has committed. It doesn’t matter what war crimes either side has committed. It doesn’t matter how many innocent civilians either side has killed.

It is terrible that any other these things have happened. The world can at times be a terrible place. But not only can the United States not right every wrong, stop terrible things from happening, or correct every injustice in the world, it should not even attempt to do so. What is happening in the DRC is simply not the concern of the U.S. government. A foreign policy of neutrality and nonintervention is not only the policy of the Founders, it is a sane, moral, and common-sense policy as well. It is not the job of the United States to be the policeman, fireman, mediator, or social worker of the world.

If someone in the United States is concerned about anything that is happening in the DRC, Ukraine, Ethiopia, Sudan, Gaza, Myanmar, Syria, Yemen, Haiti, or any other place where there are armed conflicts, human rights abuses, or terrible things, then he is perfectly free to use his own resources and enlist others to help him undertake regime change, support one side in a civil war, protect civilians, rescue children, right wrongs, remedy injustice, or kill the bad guys. What he should not do is expect the U.S. government to pick his favored side.

The post America Should Side With No One appeared first on LewRockwell.

During the Biden regime, Trump criticized the Democrats for dropping bombs on Yemen.  You don’t have to do that, Trump said, you can talk through problems over the telephone.  Now it is Trump who is bombing Yemen.

Those few who think about foreign affairs chalk it up to another Trump favor to Israel.  Even so, it makes no sense.  It doesn’t help to stop the killing in Ukraine to start the killing in Yemen and to continue the killing in Gaza and the small remnant of the West Bank. Is Trump for peace or just partly for peace depending on location?

Trump’s bombing of Yemen could turn into something bigger. Trump’s national security advisor said that Washington might begin bombing Iranian warships.  He didn’t explain the point of it or address the consequences.  The bellicosity emitting from the Trump regime calls into question Trump’s sincerity about peace in Ukraine.

Indeed, the way Trump took up the Ukraine negotiations struck me as either thoughtless or calculated to inflame the situation.  The Ukraine conflict is Washington’s proxy war with Russia, and this is the way Russia understands it.  A successful negotiation has to take place between Trump and Putin.  Instead, Trump negotiated with Zelensky a temporary cease fire and then threatened Putin if he failed to agree.  By so doing, Trump presented Putin with a fait accompli, hardly a way to build trust. As Putin surely knows, it is not an agreement if one side is coerced into it.

Elsewhere on the Trump front I see what look to me to be puzzling mistakes.  Before issuing all those shutdown and firing orders, Trump should have first let DOGE uncover and publicize the fantastic uses of the federal budget for unwarranted purposes.  Then with the case made, it becomes difficult for federal judges to try to overturn the remedy.

Yesterday a Senate vote underlined the danger of acting in advance of persuasion.  26 Republicans, including the Senate Majority Leader, voted with Democrats not to include in the spending cuts those Trump ordered for USAID.  When nearly half of the Republican Senate prefer to continue funding transgender comic books in Peru and DEI training sessions in Serbia despite their concern with the budget deficit, proper groundwork is missing.  In domestic fights assaults must be as carefully prepared as military assaults.  

The sound and fury emitted from the Oval Office provides the presstitutes with much to misrepresent and use as weapons against Trump.  Hopefully, the presstitutes will further discredit themselves rather than Trump. 

In the meantime Trump should take a break from talk and action and figure out how to get his war for America’s renewal  better organized.

The post Are Things Going Amiss? appeared first on LewRockwell.

President Trump on Monday announced that his administration is about to release 80,000 pages relating to the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Jr. Trump told reporters the mass-release will happen on Tuesday afternoon. Fittingly, he broke the news on an afternoon visit to the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

“While we’re here, I thought it would be appropriate: Tomorrow we are…giving all of the Kennedy files,” Trump told reporters. “I don’t believe we’re going to redact anything. I said ‘Just don’t redact. We can’t redact’. It’s going to be very interesting…you’ll make your own determination.” On Monday evening, Rep. Anna Paulina Luna said the released files will be accessible at the National Archives JFK Assassination Records website.

Three days after his January inauguration,Trump signed an executive order instructing Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and Attorney General Pam Bondi to come up with a plan for “the full and complete release of all John F. Kennedy assassination records,” and records relating to the killings of Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. The order made the JFK files the first priority. “More than 50 years after these assassinations, the victims’ families and the American people deserve the truth,” said Trump in announcing the order.

Last month, the FBI disclosed that, pursuant to the order, it found approximately 2,400 new records pertaining to the JFK assassination, saying they “were previously unrecognized as related to the JFK assassination case file.” It gave no indication about the substance of that batch of records. In 2022, the National Archives claimed that more than 97% of its Kennedy assassination documents were available to the public. At the time, the agency said the entire collection comprised approximately 5 million pages.

President Trump on JFK Files: “We are tomorrow announcing and giving all of the Kennedy files…I don’t believe we are are going to redact anything…it’s going to be very interesting…approximately 80,000 pages.” pic.twitter.com/0NW4QdLSzL

— CSPAN (@cspan) March 17, 2025

“People have been waiting decades for this,” said Trump on Monday. “I said during the campaign that I’d do it, and I’m a man of my word.” Over those decades, a growing consensus has formed around the belief that the official story is false. On the other hand, there are many competing theories about who was really responsible. Here are just a few hypotheses (if your top theory isn’t listed, share it in the comments):

• The CIA killed JFK because of its outrage over his failure to invade Cuba in the wake of the failed Bay of Pigs invasion, and his desire to “splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it into the winds.”
• The Soviet Union killed JFK in retaliation for embarrassing the USSR in the Cuban Missile Crisis.
• Cuba’s Fidel Castro killed JFK because of US assassination attempts on him, and/or because of the Bay of Pigs invasion.
• The Mafia killed JFK because of Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy’s crackdown.
• Vice President Lyndon B Johnson conspired to kill JFK to take power.
• Israel killed JFK because of his opposition to the country’s nuclear weapons development, potential sympathy with the Palestinians’ right to return to homes they were expelled from in 1948, and insistence that the American Zionist Council register as agents of Israel pursuant to the Foreign Agents Registration Act.

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr — son of RFK and nephew of JFK — may have had a big influence on Trump’s move to release the long-secret documents. He’s Trump’s Secretary of Health and Human Services, and he’s long pointed to the CIA as being a top suspect in both assassinations. “The evidence is overwhelming that the CIA was involved in the murder and in the cover-up [of my uncle],” RFK, Jr said in a 2023 podcast interview. Regarding his father’s death, he said evidence of the CIA’s guilt is “circumstantial” yet “convincing.”

In 1992, Congress passed the John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act, which required the release of all records by 2017. Under that law, further delays are only allowed with a presidential certification that

• “Continued postponement is necessary due to an identifiable harm to the military defense, intelligence operations, law enforcement, or conduct of foreign relations, and
• Such identifiable harm is of such gravity that it outweighs the public interest in disclosure.”

There are questions swirling around what will be released on Tuesday afternoon. It’s unclear if this will truly represent “all” of the remaining pages, or if — contrary to Trump’s reassurance to reporters — some released documents may contain redactions that leave long-suffering transparency advocates aggravated.

The JFK Files I’m expecting tmrw pic.twitter.com/P6hkGvW7q1

— An0maly (@LegendaryEnergy) March 18, 2025

If they do this with the JFK files, we riot. pic.twitter.com/uyIph4rsIU

— Green Lives Matter (@Ultrafrog17) March 17, 2025

Reprinted with permission from Zero Hedge.

The post ‘We Can’t Redact’ – 80,000 Pages Of JFK Assassination Documents To Drop Tuesday Afternoon, Says Trump appeared first on LewRockwell.

A war economy is characterized, above all, by an extremely high time preference (i.e., a focus on the present). The conduct of war requires that scarce resources—previously allocated to the production of capital or consumer goods—be reallocated to the mobilization and operational readiness of the nation’s fighting forces. As Mises said, “War can be waged only with present goods.”

The economy, therefore, rearranges and “shortens” the overall structure of capital to favor the immediate production of finished goods. Capital is then consumed in great haste to satisfy the war effort. Labor, resources and capital goods are directed towards the production of consumer goods, instead of the more distant stages of the capital structure, which, as stated before, are oriented towards the future and the perfection of the production structure. The whole capitalist structure is turned upside down. Joseph Schumpeter explained,

Our poverty will be brought home to us to its full extent only after the war. Only then will the worn-out machines, the run-down buildings, the neglected land, the decimated livestock, the devastated forests, bear witness to the full depth of the effects of the war.

The transition to a present-oriented war economy leads to what Salerno calls a regressive economy, no longer building for future prosperity but for the present destruction of capital. War is synonymous with lost opportunities, wasted time, and the abandonment of the use of resources in genuinely productive alternative enterprises. Since the state has privileged access to stocks of resources, it also destroys all incentives for individuals and private companies to renew these stocks.

The general decumulation of capital is, therefore, the logical conclusion of any war economy. It is impossible not to think of Frédéric Bastiat—what we see and what we don’t see—and of all the opportunities and wealth lost forever. It is also impossible not to point out the enormous hypocrisy of Keynesian economics which believe that war and material destruction can generate wealth if they lead to production and full employment.

Financing War through Taxation

From the point of view of economic theory, it is perfectly possible for a state to raise the funds needed to achieve its war aims by raising taxes and borrowing from its population. On paper, there is no need for monetary inflation.

Taxation—which amounts to a seizure of the disposable income of a population—takes two forms: a reduction in consumption by individuals or a reduction in the income they save. These choices reflect a change in the time preference of consumers: where the former maintain a low time preference, the latter adopt a higher one. During wartime, the second option tends to be the norm, as individuals are naturally reluctant to sacrifice their usual standard of living in order to preserve their ability to save. This leads to higher interest rates in the economy, as available savings in the form of time deposits are reduced.

It is also important to note that because taxation reduces the disposable income of individuals, it also limits their ability to spend or save as they see fit. This, in turn, limits the market’s ability to allocate resources efficiently on the basis of consumer demand. Taxes make poor use of capital because the government has little incentive to allocate resources efficiently and because the government’s priorities do not necessarily coincide with those of individuals. This misallocation of capital damages the productive structure of society as a whole, even more so in times of war when the government decides to raise taxes to reallocate capital for the purpose of destruction.

Salerno also mentions an alternative to taxation to finance the war effort: the confiscation of non-reproducible goods other than money. We are thinking here of animals, vehicles, food, clothing, etc., which the state might confiscate from its population. In essence, this technique is very similar to taxation, but much less effective. Proof of this is the way it was used by the Bolsheviks during the Russian Civil War (1917-1923), the results of which were, not surprisingly, absolutely disastrous.

Finally, in wartime, the oppressive nature of taxation is all too visible to a population that can see first hand the damaging effects of war on society as a whole. A war that is too visible quickly becomes unpopular, draining the enthusiasm of both civilians and workers. This can lead to unrest and a dangerous defeatism for the state. The state cannot allow this to happen as it is engaged in a fight to the death against its rival, as total war dictates. Other financing techniques must be found.

Financing the War through Monetary Inflation

With inflation, the government decides to “monetize” its debt by selling bonds to the central bank. Since it has no money of its own, the central bank simply prints new money to buy these bonds. It can do this on the primary market, with the government, or on the secondary market, directly with commercial banks. This way, the central bankers inject money created ex nihilo into the economy and, at the same time, become the main financiers of total war.

As already mentioned in connection with the theories of capital and monetary calculation dear to Austrian economists, money is the most marketable commodity in an economy. As the basis of monetary calculation, it is the “guiding star of action,” the compass that guides the exchanges made by entrepreneurs and other individuals and makes it possible to lengthen the capitalist structure of society as a whole. By opting for monetary inflation, the state seeks, above all, to conceal from the population the all-too-visible signs of war. In other words, to hide the rise in interest rates, the bankruptcies, and the real cost to the economy of a massive increase in time preference.

Monetary inflation completely distorts the nature of money and falsifies economic calculation. Money is weaponized by the state, which channels it directly into military industries instead of the rest of the economy. The imbalance resulting from this monetary injection gradually spreads throughout society in the form of an uneven rise in prices. As Mises rightly explained, the first beneficiaries of the newly-printed money can still buy consumer goods at previous market prices (i.e., before they have had time to rise due to inflation).

This situation of economic disorder is not necessarily easy to identify in wartime, because of the false economic boom created by the massive injection of liquidity into the economy. While inflation may temporarily stimulate economic activity, it actually leads to accelerated capital consumption. Over time, it destroys the very capacity to create wealth, as the real value of savings and investments no longer matches the economic reality of the market. Inflation turns money into a “veil,” a “device for concealing costs,” as Salerno so aptly describes it.

The War Economy: The Road to Economic Fascism

War thus implies massive state intervention in the economy, justified by the exigencies of war. In many cases, however, this intervention continues after the war. The monetary inflation used to finance wars can thus lead to what Salerno calls “economic fascism” (i.e., total state control of the economy).

In times of war, the state has arrogated to itself the power to make all crucial decisions, not only on monetary matters, but also on taxation and production. The global war economy eventually became a fully planned economy, a “fascist economy” in its original definition: it was no longer private companies that decided what to produce, but the state that decided for them. This transformation into a fascist economy often goes hand-in-hand with the establishment of an all-powerful state, often in the form of a police state, necessary to suck up, confiscate, and redirect to the war effort all the disposable capital and income of a society.

There’s no shortage of historical examples: one of the most famous is the German Empire’s infamous Hindenburg Plan of World War I. The plan called for total economic mobilization to optimize Germany’s limited resources. The increase in military production was logically achieved at the expense of civilian consumption and by introducing rationing for the population. The author Günter Reiman describes such a system as a “vampire economy,” which—in permanent and total war—inevitably consumes all the capital of a society.

And that’s the point of this rich chapter from Money: Sound and Unsound Money: a war economy, geared to total war, with only one outcome in sight—the total annihilation of the enemy—has no choice but to vampirize its own economy and destroy the capital of its own citizens.

To achieve this, the central authorities can rely on fiat currency, the perfect tool for hiding the true cost of war from the individual, while at the same time draining the nation’s entire capital in order to condemn it to destruction. In short, war is always a negative-sum game: everyone loses, including the victorious nation. It loses not only its freedom, but also its capitalist structure, the only guarantee of its future prosperity.

The post The True Cost of War appeared first on LewRockwell.

On Friday night we took a Northern Lights Tour out of Fairbanks, Alaska, from 10 pm to 5 am, in a white Ford panel van on a snowy road into the wilderness. The Northern Lights were amazing, but didn’t really get started till 1 am. All of the five women on the tour went with someone. Three of the four men on the tour went solo.

I have noticed also, when I take my regular daily hill walk in North Seattle, that almost all the women I encounter are out walking with a woman friend.

I’m sure that women do this not because they are afraid but because there is something deep inside that prompts them to be with someone when out in the world.

SF writer Sarah Hoyt is on a parallel track when she talks about “Coming to Ourselves” waking from the dream of the long 20th century. She references a Substack piece “American Strong Gods, Trump and the end of the Long Twentieth Century” by N.S. Lyons. For the last century, the world has been “tied up in a regulatory, credential enforcing, bureaucratic state.” World War II was the excuse.

To prevent the resurgence of war, we were told we needed to do away with nationalism and religion and — really ultimately — the family and all natural connections.

And yet, women still like to go about in pairs when outside the house. And lower-class people still identify with their ethnic group, and the middle class still identifies with their nation, and the educated class identifies with the whole planet.

Meanwhile in the developed world, from the U.S. to China to South Korea, women aren’t having babies. Tech head Elon Musk does the math for South Korea: it’s scary. Our educated class leaders and their followers are all worried about defending illegal immigration, abortion, transgenders, defunding the police, and releasing criminal suspects on no-cash bail. Meanwhile women aren’t having babies.

What is going on, in this Houston We Have a Problem moment, when our best and brightest are all wound up in cult-like obsessions? It couldn’t be, could it, that cult leaders are typically so overwhelmed that they compensate with drugs? That’s what notorious “Holocaust revisionist” Darryl Cooper discussed on Joe Rogan last week: hello Jim Jones and Adolf Hitler:

Amphetamines when you get up barbiturates to go to sleep… I read a fair amount about the effects of long-term amphetamine use, the paranoia and mayhem that… can result.

By the way, Cooper told Rogan that he’s not a historian. “I’m a storyteller who uses historical stories to try to tell my stories.” But when he told Tucker Carlson that at dinner the night before doing the show, Tucker told him that he would call Cooper a historian.

You can understand the outrage in the higher circles. Back in the day, only the tippy-tops got to set the Narrative. Now the Tucker Carlsons and Megyn Kellys have broken free, and nobodies like Darryl Cooper are digging through the history books and doing podcasts without permission.

And Joe Rogan! How dare that foul-mouthed nobody interview the Elon Musks and the Marc Andreessens without the proper curation of regime philosophers like Margaret Brennan.

So I understand Cathy Young’s outrage about MAGA going off-message on Ukraine, or Matthew Omolesky’s outrage about the Trump Train trying to do a Nixon and divide Russia and China. Everything the noble Elves were taught at foreign policy school is blowing up, and unqualified Hobbits are daring to enter the conversation. Why, the guide on my Northern Lights tour dared to discuss the balance of power issue in the decision of Tsarist Russia to sell Alaska to the U.S. in 1867 rather than the global hegemon at the time, the British Empire. Who the heck does he think he is, talking about “balance of power” a hundred miles from Fairbanks in the middle of an Alaskan winter night?

As I review my pieces at American Thinker over the past months, there is really only one theme. What is happening and why, and what can we do about it. Is this really the end of the age of liberal hegemony? Can Trump and the ordinary middle class really go to battle against the educated class and win? Is the switch of the tech lords from Dems to GOP strategic or merely tactical, for the moment? Is the decline of mass media and the rise of independent media really the revolution we think it is? Will the woke world go quietly or will it return to send us all off to reeducation camp — or worse? Is the administrative and regulatory state really on death watch, or will it return to dominance?

We don’t know. But I think that it behooves us to wonder about little things like why women go out in pairs. Because little things often provide a clue to bigger things.

The post Maybe the Little Things and Little People Matter appeared first on LewRockwell.

For those of us who provide advice to those considering internationalisation, I would say that the sentiment that we most often encounter in those we offer to assist is, “I don’t want to go!”

Now, it should be said that those seeking our counsel rarely voice this comment, but it is often pervasive in their comments and questions. In spite of the fact that they may actively be pursuing internationalisation, they almost invariably reveal through their manner and their phrasing of questions that, consciously or otherwise, they are inwardly resisting the change in their lives that they are pursuing. Indeed, some are clearly hoping that they will be talked out of internationalising.

As someone who regularly provides advice to those pursuing internationalisation, it might be assumed that my reaction to this reluctance would be to say (at least inwardly), “O thou fool.” Not so. In fact, to me, such reluctance is understandable. It stems from two sources: 1) sensible caution when considering significant change, and 2) fear. I believe that most people experience both at the same time.

Sensible Caution

For most people, particularly those from larger countries, internationalisation represents a major change from what they are accustomed to, and this should not be taken lightly. The individual is considering the planting of flags in countries that he may have limited knowledge of. At the very least, there will be an unaccustomed difference in the legal structure and a difference in culture.

Much of what he presently knows about his own system may not be applicable. If he is to entrust other jurisdictions to provide him with changes in banking, residency, citizenship, employment, etc., he may be looking at an entirely different set of rules. Consequently, he would be a fool if he did not exercise caution.

This is not to say that he should shy away from internationalisation; rather, it is to say that he should do as much research as possible prior to making a commitment in the planting of any one of his flags in a new jurisdiction.

Fear

Another negative reaction to change is fear. Fear is a necessary instinct that exists in all the higher forms of animal life. It serves as a warning that something is out of the ordinary and, therefore, a possible threat to life and limb. Fear is what makes the antelope bound away long before the lion has reached striking distance. However, fear tends to obliterate reason like no other emotion can.

In regard to human action, it frequently acts as a deterrent to any sort of change. Our innate fear of change does not concern itself with whether the change being considered is actually for the better. Fear ignores reason and, at times, trumps it. With regard to internationalisation, this may mean the difference between an individual making a very positive move toward diversifying his life and, instead, scurrying back to the pen with the other sheep, where he will be available to his government at shearing time.

Whilst it may seem a cheap shot for those of us who are not caught in the sights of any particular government to take this view of those who are, the observation is not meant to be smug, but is offered in order to call attention to the price that is paid by caving in to fear.

To be sure, looking down the rabbit hole of internationalisation is a bit daunting. It may be dark, and, more to the point, it represents the unknown. However, internationalisation offers very definite rewards. Each country offers a different set of opportunities and stumbling blocks. The trick is to identify and take advantage of the opportunities, whilst avoiding the stumbling blocks. Hence the reason for planting several flags, in multiple jurisdictions.

The Erosion of Liberty

Political leaders, over time, have a rather nasty habit of steadily increasing taxation and regulations, eventually to the point that the individual becomes a serf in his own country. It is true that today’s serfdom contains cell phones and flat screen televisions, but the citizens of most of the more prominent countries have become serfs nevertheless.

This is nothing new. The erosion of liberty is a process that exists in all countries in all ages. As early as the 6th century BC, Lao Tzu stated,

The more artificial taboos and restrictions there are in the world, the more the people are impoverished… The more that laws and regulations are given prominence, the more thieves and robbers there will be.

Governments tend to continue the erosion of liberty until the very point of collapse of the society in question. Whilst this has been true throughout history, the upside is that not all nations are in sync as to where they are in the process. At any given time, some countries will be blossoming, just as others are at their midpoint and yet others are nearing their collapse.

At one time, Europe was a collection of countries that were in healthy competition with each other. But, today, under the ever-more socialistic EU, the entire continent is facing collapse. At the present time, therefore, Europe is not the best place to be fully invested.

Uruguay, on the other hand, was under an oppressive military dictatorship in the 1970s and was certainly not a desirable place for the planting of flags. In the late ‘80s, however, the collapse had taken place and the recovery had begun. The dust has now settled, and Uruguay is now quite a desirable place to be.

Cuba, for many years, has been under dictatorship, but at some point, that progression, too, will end. When it does (Ten years? Twenty years?), Cuba may be an ideal location for the planting of one or more flags.

However, recognising the above developments and possibilities requires that we look down the rabbit hole, that we go out of our way to investigate and anticipate where along the progression each country around us may be at present and where it will be in the future.

To do so unquestionably brings out our fear. However, if we can succeed in replacing that fear with sensible caution and continue our investigations, we may find that the effort to internationalise is less daunting than we had anticipated. Further, if our home jurisdiction is one of those that are approaching the final throes of deterioration, our efforts at internationalisation may actually be revealed as the light at the end of the tunnel. This is particularly true for those who have children whom they do not wish to abandon to live out their lives in a decaying jurisdiction, but seek for them a long and prosperous future.

Above all, it is wise to remember that such investigation does take time (if we are to get it right) and that, therefore, the time to begin the pursuit is as soon as possible.

Again, to quote Lao Tzu, “Act before things exist. Manage them before there is disorder.”

The old guy had it right. For many people today, the jurisdiction that they call home has reached the point that its effects on them are more negative than positive. When this tipping point has been reached, the rabbit hole, dark though it may appear at first glance, represents the promise of a more equitable future.

Reprinted with permission from International Man.

The post The Quest for Alice’s Rabbit Hole appeared first on LewRockwell.

‘A ceasefire is when the Israelis fire and we cease.’ ~ Refaat Al-Areer, RIP

The median elapsed time between an American official opposing anything Israel and then dropping out of history is getting shorter. ~ilana 

“We’re the United States. We’re not an agent of Israel. We have specific interests at play.” So said Trump Special Envoy for Hostage Affairs Adam Boehler to Zionist enforcer Jake Tapper, on CNN.

Boehler had been deputized by President Donald Trump to bypass Bibi Netanyahu and negotiate directly with Hamas. More to the point, Boehler had described Hamas, whom by now very many around the world consider resistance fighters, as holding points of view that merit a hearing. He even suggested, as Jewish Insider reported, that—lo—! “they’re actually pretty nice guys.” Hamas, that is.

Whatever was he thinking! Boehler was off his leash. Israeli officials were scurrying about in an attempt to get him back on it.

Talking to Hamas? Now Trump was talking!

Unlike the president’s Gaza Rivera plan to evict Palestinian survivors from Gaza; negotiations with Hamas do indeed constitute “out-of-the-box thinking,” if not original thinking. Unoriginal, because diplomacy, namely talking to adversaries, is standard statecraft. At least it ought to be.

Excerpted but barely in the Washington Examiner, the testy Boehler-Tapper televised exchange took time to propagate to the Internet. You see, US Deep Tech, Google included, generally cover for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), which is also business partner to American tech. These multinationals are not about to throw sand in the IDF’s military bearings.

Tech multinationals (or Deep Tech, as I call them) have, after all, supplied the IDF with the killer infrastructure required to “build artificial intelligence (AI) programs designed to produce human targets with little human oversight.” (The other reasonable conclusion is that these multinationals are undisturbed by genocide.)

Talking to Hamas would certainly have been inconceivable under Joe Biden, alias Genocide Joe, remarks commentator extraordinaire Mouin Rabbani, a Palestinian. And while Trump has prioritized negotiations over American dual-national captives; his bold move broadcasts some salient facts about the situation:

Israel is an obstacle to an accord; to closing out the genocide. It is especially eager to avoid phase II of the January 17, 2025 ceasefire agreement. Not that the media system had noticed, but Israel never quite quit the killing.

By March 13, Israel had violated the ceasefire agreement upwards of one thousand times, in the estimation of Jon Elmer, military analyst at the Electronic Intifada. Staggering, perhaps, but utterly predictable historically. “Israel,” reminds a dejected Chris Hedges—he is a famed war correspondent—“has assassinated more people than any other people in the Western World.”

In the hours right after the ceasefire deal was announced; Israeli forces killed at least 87 Palestinians, 23 of them children. Quipped the late Refaat Al-Areer: “A ceasefire is when the Israelis fire and we cease.” As in “expire.” A mild-mannered, bookish Palestinian scholar, Dr. Al-Areer was murdered in his Gaza residence, in December of 2023.

Indeed, the low-grade killing across the coastal strip had continued throughout phase I of the “ceasefire.” To be exact, Israel had started up the killing fifteen minutes into the ceasefire’s implementation. Since January 15, 2025, Israel has murdered an average of three people every 24 hours—150 Palestinians since the start of the ceasefire on 19 January 2025.

No sooner were the Israelis steered by Steven Witkoff, in January, to a ceasefire; than the urge to kill overcame them. Israeli newspapers were telling about the “salty” language Witkoff, U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy, had deployed with Netanyahu, instructing the Israeli prime minister’s aides, as follows (and I paraphrase), “I don’t care that today’s your Sabbath. Get down here and sign this [old] ceasefire on the dotted line.” I ad-libbed “old” in, because the January-15 accord was modeled after one Hamas had composed in May of 2024.

Did Witkoff remind Netanyahu that the Israeli army, the IDF, does not rest up on the Seventh Day from the slaughter of innocents, and that, surely its commander-in-chief could get off his duff to make peace on the holy Sabbath?! Probably not. Still, what transpired was refreshing, even delicious.

The March 2025 violations of the agreement have seen Israel halt the meager aid let into starving Gaza, and cut off the remaining supply of electricity to Gaza. Because the main desalination water-treatment plant is producing a fraction of its prior output, running as it is only on generators—only one-in-ten Gazans currently has access to safe drinking water.

From the start, Israel had failed to allow into Gaza the agreed-upon medicines, fuel, food, housing units (15 out of a promised 60,000), tents (20 percent of the requisite 200,000), heavy earth-moving machinery, spare parts, construction material, and alternative energy systems, like generators.

Still regionally omnipotent, still resistless—Israel has now put its exterminatory foot to the floor again. The Jewish State continues to bleed the region like a leech, seizing Lebanese and Syrian territory, including the Golan Heights. As I write, via the chyron scroll across the screen comes news that Israel has just extinguished nine lives in Northen Gaza, and two in southern Lebanon, where a ceasefire is in effect.

Unless it is killing things, Israel is just not happy. Flora and fauna, too. Israeli genociders, candid economists might say, have a high time-preference mindset. In such an uncivilized society, impulses (to kill) are privileged over contractual commitments (to quit killing). Not some of the livestock, but all of the livestock. As hard as it is to believe, but under decades of a medieval blockade, Gaza’s farmers had, before October 7, fed a third of their people. Croplands, irrigation systems, batteries of greenhouses, living things that produce flowers then give fruit: everything has gone the way of cattle, poultry and family pets: dead.

The term Carthaginian Peace has lost its meaning under Israel’s malign sway. The bad idea of “peace” through crippling the opponent Israel has replaced with the idea of “peace” through conquering and killing the opponent off. Conversion is complete. The structural violence that is the State of Israel the US duopoly has helped normalize. Genocidal violence, yes or no, saturation bombing of civilians, pros and cons, and forced mass expulsion of starving, subjugated people—if not de rigueur, these state crimes are now part of normal governance in the West.

On top of all that, there was never a ceasefire in the West Bank. The West Bank’s civilians, so closely clustered, have been strafed from the air. For the first time in 20 years, tanks travel all over what are urban neighborhoods.

The depopulation underway in this de facto annexed territory hardly even percolates through to the West’s press. Yet thousands of West Bank Palestinians are being plucked from their homes, some detained, mostly without charges, at times shot on the spot; always degraded, tortured, and sicced upon by fulminating Jewish settlers, who “work” cheek-by-jowl with Israeli soldiers.

A screen picture of any day in the life of a subject in the State of Satan seconds my description. Taken on February 15, the captured headlines via Ha’aretz tell of 30,000 Palestinians driven from Jenin, a so-called refugee camp in the West Bank. The number of people evicted and dispossessed from these “camps” has since ballooned to close on 50,000.  The West Bank’s Palestinians are denied access to their agricultural land, which means that soon it will lie fallow, and settlers will colonize it.

I call places like Jenin “so-called” camps because these were proper cities, not tent cities. As was noted in the Journal of Middle-East Studies (1992), these “camps are similar to any other urban neighborhoods,” into which they have evolved.

I’d been to Jenin. Our family had been invited as guests by generous residents. Childhood in Israel saw me visiting what I then knew as The Triangle: Tira, Tulkarem and Jenin. In the 1970s, these were not yet cities, but were definitely no nylon-dome encampments. My step-father, a doctor, headed healthcare clinics in what he called The Triangle. Daily, he’d return home laden with export-quality fresh produce. His patients were poor, yet so very generous. Upon the town’s doctor, a South African Jew who was appreciated in his role as a healthcare provider, they showered respect, affection and gifts.

We’d also be invited as a family to feasts held on the occasion of a wedding. The tables groaned with heavenly cuisine. Bestowed, this was a great honor, and these were grand affairs, an example of a culture in which hospitality and generosity are defining values. An invitation meant that you were never ignored. A lovely, if genteel, welcome awaited.

I do not know if the term Triangle deployed then denotes the same cluster of cities and villages. I do know that Jenin today is 70-percent levelled. Burdened by history like never before, I note, too, that Tira is no longer visible on the map.

Although the occupation army has pulled out of the Netzarim Corridor, which divides Gaza, it retains a presence in southern Rafah and the Philadelphi Corridor. The serial-killer state had hoped, with Trump’s backing, to renege entirely on the ceasefire agreement, and, in particular, on its Phase-II obligations to permanently end the offensive and “withdraw armed forces from the Gaza Strip completely.” In order to “surmount the obstacle” that is Israel, the Trump Administration had, therefore, chosen to speak directly with Hamas leaders.

Early in January of 2025, there was hope. Trump is an Alpha Male; Bibi Netanyahu is a kept man. How long can the ego-bound leader of a Super Power tolerate being bossed about by the leader of a “sh-thole country,” to use Trump’s old coinage?

Two months distant, and hope is fading. Trump chose to channel son-in-law Jared Kushner. Kushner, the nepotistic scion of a dodgy New York realtor, and an empty husk of a man, has had his eye on the waterfront property of a conquered and dying people. He had said as much about Gaza in 2024.

In essence, some of the world’s wealthiest men were coveting the property of the world’s poorest and most persecuted people.

Soon to follow was Trump’s Gaza plan, a gaudy vulgar production, replete with bearded belly dancers. “Trump Gaza,” the plan’s title, was not “out-of-the-box thinking,” as some in the president’s Westen coalition had dubbed it. Rather, it sits on a continuum of evil. It is an extension and completion of Joe Biden’s genocide.

Eager, it would seem, to write the Palestinian People’s obituary, Trump had vowed to assume control over Gaza, rebuild it and evict the survivors of a genocide committed by client state Israel.

By removing the pitiful exhibits from the scene of the crime; Donald Trump would be covering-up the crime of genocide. Next, he planned to conclude Biden’s genocide by scattering the survivors across the Middle East. Israel will have been rescued. Gazans will have ceased to exist as a nation. The forced displacement and mass murder of Gaza’s Palestinians would have been achieved, completed.

Who said crime doesn’t pay? When the Superpower inverts the moral order of the universe; the Crime of All Crimes pays—and then some.

As Trump told it, nobody quite knows how or why Gaza became a “demolition site.” Somehow, the soil got soaked through with the blood of tens-of-thousands of Palestinians, and a toxic mix of 50-million tons of building debris. Somehow, piles of bodies decay beneath the surface. Somehow, garbage is piled as high as the bodies, were they to be stacked. Open sewage runs through what remains of the streets, and the byproducts and contaminants of munitions, like unexploded ordnance, lie everywhere.

It’s all a big mystery.

The other thing nobody can quite determine is which of the two countries, America or Israel, is the Great Satan and which is the Little Satan.

Back to Boehler: Israel went barking mad when our ex-envoy failed to show monk-like devotion to Israel, asserting, instead, American foreign-policy independence. The Lobby was marshalled. Fervid assurances were soon provided. Soon enough, Adam Boehler was gone. After being “nominated for the Senate-confirmed position of Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs,” he was demoted to “special government employee,” reports Ha’aretz. Found deficient in Zionist solidarity, Boehler “withdrew his nomination.”

The median elapsed time between an American official opposing anything Israel and then dropping out of history is getting shorter.

Like Joe Biden did before him, president Trump followed the Israeli prime minister on a leash. On March 5, he bellowed on Truth Social:

“Release all of the Hostages now, not later, and immediately return all of the dead bodies of the people you murdered, or it is OVER for you.” Buoyed, at 2:00 AM today, March 18, Israel murdered over 400 Gazans. It is currently demanding that Hamas hand over hostages for nothing.

Will the Palestinians wronged and ruined get a reprieve? Will the mercurial Trump, who, to his credit, is ideologically unattached to Israel, cut Israel dead, as he ought to? These possibilities are looking remote.

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