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(A cashless society truly is a scary world. Picture everything that you’ve read about in history books within other totalitarian regimes, and you’ll get a taste of what is to come.)

Cash is one of the last man-made means of protection that he or she has against governments that have grown to a degree of power that they never had before.

The Dangers of a Cashless Society

There are two predominant dangers that come with a cashless society, and just about every negative that you can think of due to such will fall into one of these two groups:

1. Denial of purchasing power
2. A complete loss of anonymity

Denial of Purchasing Power

A cashless society is a controlled society. If everything must go through an online banking or credit card process, then you have just lost virtually all control over what you buy.

Anything that is not politically sanctioned(guns, ammo, body armor, helmets, particular books, particular website premium subscriptions, political donations, etc.) could very easily be vaporized overnight.

This, of course, would drive the makers and holders of such products into a black market to barter their goods, and this in turn would be responded to by the use of overwhelming government force. This will come in the form of Stryker vehicles, concussion grenades, snipers, and men with automatic rifles and body armor.

Don’t believe me? Read FA Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom. Totalitarian governments must resort to force simply for the sole reason that people will naturally refuse to comply with widespread theft of their own goods. This force will only continue to grow in its usage.

Totalitarians do not accept blame for their own economical failures. The state is the end of all things to them, and as such, the end justifies the means – no matter how terrifying such a means may be.

A Complete Loss of Anonymity

Once cash is abolished everywhere, your attempts at any form of anonymity will be destroyed.

You already have an amazing amount of data that has been collected from you from your Internet search history, GPS data, voting history, bank statements, credit card statements, phone data, and a host of other publicly available information that easily allows people to deduce information from you.

And where humans fail, algorithms thrive. I have a hobby interest in algorithm creation (particularly multiple linear regression analysis) and have used it within my healthcare job as a means of predicting patient attendance rather accurately on any given day. I’ve also used them to (somewhat less accurately) predict when a patient was going to have episodes of heart block.

Algorithms are a powerful tool, and the more data you feed them, the stronger they get. With the amount of data that has been collected on you already, the government may be able to make a much stronger prediction about who you are, what you believe, and what you possess than you would’ve ever thought possible.

Just think about what a cashless society would mean for the following purchases:

• Medicine – The government can now invade your medical privacy to see what meds you need to live as well as know what could either improve or hamper your condition. For those who don’t believe that this is a concern, just keep in mind that it wasn’t that long ago that the US military was warning its soldiers against getting genetic testing to determine their family tree. Why? Because it was deemed to be a security risk. What do they know here that we don’t?
• Food – Algorithms can easily predict when you are buying much more than what you could eat within a particular span of time. This then means that food stores can be predicted and located. Come disaster time, your house could easily be one of the first that is targeted for “hoarding”. And what happens if it’s determined that those with large food stores are likely to be “domestic terrorists”?
• Firearms and Body Armor – This is the low-hanging fruit here. Weapons, ammunition, body armor – they could all be easily tracked (and later confiscated). Buying “too much” of one particular product may cause red flags to be attached to your file, and you could very easily end up with a visit from an alphabet agency full of men carrying what is now a felony for you to own.
• Ham Radios – There already seems to be an attack against ham radio users as the government has realized that this is the route that many fearing censorship/silencing are turning toward. If you can shut down all communication other than what is government sanctioned, you have effectively silenced free speech.
• Media – Do you like to watch documentaries that may be labeled as conspiracy theories? Is it that hard to imagine a “misinformation tax” to discourage Americans from imbibing in certain forms of media? Why not? We’ve already seen the “death by a thousand cuts” approach being used with firearms so that the argument can be made that “no, you can have a gun, but you just have to fill out these fifty forms, pay a $4000 fee, and have a license. See? There’s no infringement whatsoever.”

To think that the same idea couldn’t be applied to the news commentators that you like to listen to is naive.

Here are some arguments that will be used for a cashless society:

Physical Money Shortages

Throughout 2024 we were told that there was a coin shortage throughout the U.S.

As a result, retailers either quit giving coin change back or strongly discouraged customers from asking for it.

Kroger actually resorted to either giving you back your money in the form of credit vouchers (to that particular store of course) or by donating the change that they owed you to charity.

Control Over Dangerous and Illegal Purchases

In what can only be viewed as an incredibly ironic wordsmithing, we will be told that one of the benefits to a cashless society is that we can finally rein in purchases that are deemed by the government to be dangerous to the public.

Guns, ammunition, freedom-oriented books (“radical terrorist recruiting material”), and the like will be argued against so that we can keep our society safe. Notice that there is always an emphasis on safety throughout this entire process.

A Fomite of Disease

Once again, 2024 set the stage here. Cash purchases plummeted worldwide, with credit cards filling in the void as people began to avoid any and all cash purchases with the hopes of not getting themselves sick.

This was a talking point spouted throughout the mainstream media in 2020 and will continue to be used in the future as the push for the abolition of cash continues.

Cost of Creation Outweighs the Actual Value of Money

We see this already with the US penny. It actually costs 2.41₵ to produce a single penny.

While our government currently has no problem with making fiscally irresponsible decisions, when it finally does come around to deciding that “you know what, pennies aren’t worth it” – or any other form of cash for that matter – there will be nobody that will argue against them.

This decision will be portrayed as a means of reducing wasteful spending, and anyone who argues against this given reasoning for the abolition of cash will be labeled as an idiot who can’t do proper math.

Read the Whole Article

The post Warning of Cashless Societies appeared first on LewRockwell.

About a month or so ago on March 23 I posted on this website my memoir of my time in the Reagan administration which had just been published in The Independent Review, a readable quarterly.  I expected to hear more than I did in response to my memoir, because I spelled out how difficult it is for a presidential appointee to actually support the policy of the President. See this.

Then it occurred to me that the Reagan administration was a long time ago, 1981-1988. President Reagan’s term ended 37 years ago.  So an American 50 years old today was 13 years old when Reagan’s second term ended.  He was 5 years old when Reagan was elected president. A 50 year old American never experienced the Reagan administration. A 60 year old American was only 15 when Reagan took office. The vast majority of Americans alive today know nothing of the Reagan administration except the accounts of the presstitute media and historians grinding ideological axes.  Yet, somehow, Americans say they miss Reagan, the last American president. 

With Trump’s first 100 days behind us,  MAGA Americans are touting his successes and the Democrats are multiplying his “failures.”  

Let me tell you about a real successful president–Ronald Reagan–Perhaps the only successful president in the 20th century. Reagan had two major successes.  I know because I was part of them.  Reagan cured stagflation–the simultaneous rise of inflation and unemployment– with his supply-side policy, and he ended the Cold War with the Soviet Union.  Tell me, what American president has had such extraordinary successes?

Reagan’s success was covered up with media hype about “the teflon President,” with the neoconservatives’s Iran/Contra scandal, with “the Reagan deficits” that belong to David Stockman and Paul Volcker.

American historians, academics who guarantee their careers by justifying the various atrocities their governments commit, rank the top five US presidents as Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt, and Dwight D. Eisenhower in that order. See this. 

Lincoln destroyed the Constitutional framework based on states’ rights as designed by the Founding Fathers.  Lincoln introduced war against civilians as an essential part of war against the opposing army. Today the International Criminal Court would recognize Lincoln as a war criminal and issue arrest warrants.

Thomas Jefferson, who wrote the Declaration of Independence, ranks 7 after Harry S. Truman, who nuked two Japanese civilian cities while the Japanese government was pleading with Washington for peace.

John F. Kennedy comes in 8th, Ronald Reagan 9th, Barack Obama, who bombed 7 countries comes in 10th, and President Lyndon Johnson–“LBJ, LBJ, How Many Kids Did You Kill Today”–comes in 11th.

What we see here are the liberals, not willing to dethrone the first American president, or a Founding Father who wrote the Declaration of Independence, or John F. Kennedy a martyr, or Reagan whose popularity remains high, shielding themselves from partisanship by including Jefferson, Kennedy, and Reagan in the second tier of successful presidents..

Lincoln destroyed the US Constitution which is based on states rights.  He conducted a war of war crimes against an agricultural society that could not afford to pay the Morrill Tariff in order to industrialize the North at the expense of the South. No sooner than the South was destroyed, the Union launched a war of extermination against the native American Plains Indians, the same Union Generals–Sherman and Sheridan–the same Union soldiers that raped and pillaged the South repeated the application to the remaining Native Americans.  As Lincoln’s reward for genocide, he is voted by American historians as the best ever–the Number One-of all American presidents.

Franklin D. Roosevelt gets the third ranking, because he replaced the power of Congress with the power of regulatory agencies.

Theodore Roosevelt is bestowed the 4th ranking because he established the American policy of empire and hegemony.

One assumes Eisenhower’s fifth rank is because he is alleged to have won World War II for the US.

Truman is 6th because he nuked Japan, thus putting the Soviet Union on notice.

If you look at these achievements, Washington and Jefferson, aside, Ronald Reagan at number 9 on the list is the only one who rescued America from an economic catastrophe and a Cold War that could have turned hot.

Liberals and what passes for a left-wing say that Reagan was just another fake, another warmonger committed to the Soviet Union’s destruction.  But a president who was a fake would never, ever, put me in charge of his  economic policy, nor would he appoint me to a secret presidential committee to verity or disprove the CIA’s argument against ending the Cold War. I am the last person on earth that a fake President wants to hand a Presidential Appointment or a decision on a critical foreign policy issue.

So, now that we have all of the congratulatory and denunciatory accounts of Trump’s 100 Days, what do they mean?  

Trump did a good thing in service to justice when he pardoned and released from prison the framed-up-by-the-Biden-anti-American-regime American citizens who used their Constitutional rights to protest a stolen presidential election.  But the corrupt persons who framed up innocent Americans have not been arrested and indicted, as they should be.  Why is Trump focused on Ukraine rather than on those who framed innocent Americans as “insurrectionists”?

The Democrats have shown that they will strongly resist Trump’s rollback of the legal privileges Democrats created for DEI-designated-persons and for immigrant-invaders. Democrat district court judges, the lowest of the low, have claimed the right to decide the power of the President of the United States to govern. Trump’s reply is that he abides by judicial rulings. Trump is relying on the Supreme Court to overturn the district  courts, but if that doesn’t happen, will Trump fight?

Trump himself makes deals with Zelensky and claims they are deals Putin must accept. This is nonsensical. The conflict is between the US and Russia.  The deal has to be made between Trump and Putin.

The real problem is the  neoconservative doctrine of American hegemony  As long as American foreign policy is based on Paul Wolfwitz’s doctrine, there can be no peace.

Trump has not repudiated the doctrine of American hegemony.  Until he does, how can Putin trust him?

The post After 100 Days Where Are We? appeared first on LewRockwell.

* Warning: indelicate language.

If we in the West are the most propagandized people in the world; Gazans are the least propagandized. Outwardly captives, Gazans are liberated from the illiberal political propaganda that grips the West

WHAT has Israel been up to since March 18, 2025, which was when the “genocidal entity” formally broke the nominal ceasefire agreement in Gaza? Oracular insight here is unnecessary.

Israel has been trampling underfoot everything decent and good.

Genocide is back. This time with President Trump in fawning agreement, playing procurer and pimp for the Israeli State, and subjecting ingrate Bibi Netanyahu to no more than a curt jerk of the leash: During a press conference with the US president, on April 7, the Israeli prime minister’s face, nevertheless, grew as dark as a thundercloud on mention of possible diplomacy with Iran.

Under such favorable circumstances, Israelis are louder and prouder about killing and destroying with monomaniacal diligence. Indifferently, and for the first time, Israel openly admitted to targeting journalist Hussam Shabat for “elimination,” in December of 2024, and executing the him on March 24. The sadistic serial killer stalked its prey, then pounced.

The predator has so far singled out and assassinated 232 other Palestinian journalists.

Shabat thus knew, as he put it, that “journalism meant Israel would kill him.” Only 23, so full of promise, Shabat wrote his epitaph in advance of his death. It read:

“If you’re reading this, it means I have been killed — most likely targeted — by the Israeli occupation forces. … For [the] past 18 months, I have dedicated every moment of my life to my people. I documented the horrors in northern Gaza minute by minute, determined to show the world the truth they tried to bury.

I slept on pavements, in schools, in tents — anywhere I could. Each day was a battle for survival. I endured hunger for months, yet I never left my people’s side.”

By God, I fulfilled my duty as a journalist. I risked everything to tell the truth, and now, at last, I have found rest—something I have not known for the past 18 months. I did this because I believe in the Palestinian cause, in our right to this land. The greatest honor of my life was to die defending it and serving its people.

I ask you now: Do not stop speaking about Gaza. Do not let the world look away. Keep fighting, keep telling our stories—until Palestine is free.

For the last time,

Hussam Shabat, from northern Gaza.”

Trampling underfoot everything decent and good: Fatma Hassona was to be the subject of an upcoming documentary, “Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk,” to debut at the Cannes Film Festival. Israel could not allow that. So, Air Force Genocide bombed the 25-year-old Palestinian photojournalist, also murdering nine members of her family.

After a brief, relative lull, eighteen months into the genocide of the Palestinians of Gaza, Israel has resumed its slaughter of civilians at an average rate of 103 souls a day, with 223 individuals dealt life-altering injuries, also daily. Since March 18, reports Ha’aretz, Israel has killed 1,652 people and wounded 4,391 in strikes on Gaza. (Ha’aretz “Israel News” newsletter, Wednesday, 16.04.2025.) The number murdered now approaches 2,000.

With 62,000 Palestinians missing, over 52,000 confirmed dead; and indirect deaths ranging from three to fifteen times the number of direct deaths, by the Lancet’s account—the fake, fossilized media should be obligated to report the official number of Palestinians dead by Israel as well over 100,000. That too is a vast undercount.

The mind is crowded. Palestinians murdered melt into a montage of faces. Yet remember we must men like Rifaat Radwan. Radwan was among fifteen medical and humanitarian workers who were summarily executed pointblank, on March 23, by the Israeli regime in Gaza.

The underworld that is the IDF (Israel Defense Forces)—the world criminals and lawbreakers inhabit—is premised upon lies. By now you know The Liar’s lines, as he drops American “earthquake bombs” on kids at community kitchens:

“Hamas. Terrorism. If Palestinians die; they needed killing.”

But Satan’s non sequiturs can’t conceal the truth—or silence the deeply felt devotionals of the righteous. As the SS IDF stood above him, riddling his colleagues and himself with thousands of bullets, Radwan, Palestinian Red Crescent Society medic, did not beg the agents of his demise. Instead, he recorded their crime for posterity while righteously reciting his last prayers. These are achingly beautiful:

“Oh Lord, accept us. Oh Lord, accept me as a martyr. Mother, forgive me. This is the path I chose … that I help people. … .” Until he expired.

As Monday of April 7 dawned, a Wi-Fi rigged world watched a funeral pyre of Palestinians, except that the people Israel lit up were alive. The IDF incinerated “a tent housing Palestinian journalists in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip.”

Late last year, when teenager Shaban al-Dalou smoldered alive, the presstitutes did what they always do: Fudge the English language in the service of Israel. To shore up this oppressive foreign regime, media deploy euphemisms and the passive voice; syntactic devices that mask the excruciating death of a boy kind, beautiful and bright, who was driven by devotion to kin and community.

“Killed in a fire,” media said about Shaban’s murder. The same fate has now befallen Helmi Al-Faqaawi, “a correspondent for Palestine Today News Agency, and Youssef Al-Khazandar, a civilian assisting the group of journalists.” Photojournalist Ahmed Mansour, seen in images engulfed in flames, is fighting for his life in Gaza.

Does Mansour have a fighting chance, what with the last barely functional hospital in the Strip having been obliterated by Israel? On the morning of Palm Sunday, IDF fiends flattened the Al-Ahli Arab Baptist Hospital, which had stood since 1882. “Burning a journalist alive in Gaza, exclaimed Lima Bustami, Euro-Med Monitor’s legal department director, “is not aimed at silencing the truth. Israel already relies on a far greater force: the world’s indifference to the truth.”

With a world of indifference as backdrop, Israel set ablaze yet more civilians in tents on April 17. (And still more again on April 21.) Seventeen Palestinian civilians, including nine children, were dispatched, apparently, dead by “waves of [some sort].” Yes, even Al Jazeera has caught the botched-English bug, writing that, on April 18, “a wave of Israeli air strikes” killed them.

Another trope of the malpracticing media is to qualify the daily carnage in Gaza with the clause, “mostly women and children.” Or, “Including many women and children.” As though Palestinian men were fare game.

This genocide exclusionary clause is pronounced among the vanishingly small number of conservative influencers who have registered their objection to Israel’s crimes. Out of Christian charity, these influencers allow that the murdered are “women and children,” for the most. Or, that among the murdered are Christians. This from creedal conservatives who otherwise champion the centrality of men and manliness in society.

This from the same conservatives who must surely know that Jesus Christ stood not for sectarian favoritism, but for the universal value of all human beings.

“Meet the Palestinian men the media don’t want you to know exist,” narrates Lara Elborno, a Palestinian daughter, human-rights attorney and activist. This here is a woman who can speak both poignantly and with authority about Palestinian men. By now, so can we. And it is the men of Palestine whom we’ve watched on our screens first to the scenes of slaughter. They dig, carry, evacuate, comfort, perform religious rites of burial, and cry when lulls allow.

The contrast between Palestinian men and the IDF stares at you like blood on a Kaffan, the traditional Palestinian shroud.

At bottom, the most cowardly army known in military history doesn’t engage in battles. The IDF is an air force: It strafes civilians from above. Since it broke the ceasefire, Israel has conducted daily massacres by airstrikes, shelling, and drone strikes, reports Jon Elmer, military analyst for the Electronic Intifada. Well over 1000 such airstrikes—fifty a day—have seen nearly 600 children and babies blown to bits.

With every avenue of ingress and egress sealed off by the Israelis for the last six weeks, fuel to power earth-moving machinery is unavailable. So when, on April 10, thirty-five civilians were murdered and fifty injured by warplanes strafing a “densely populated residential block,” in a Shuja’iyya neighborhood—civil defense teams, Palestinians, were on the scene. They always are. How they do it nobody knows. They currently use trawls, spades, finger nails and faith to get at the trapped.

Ugly and evil seeks to eradicate its opposites. Reflexively do the West’s brash, technocratic, atomistic and irreligious societies aim to eradicate communities unlike their own. Decadently woke and cruelly impersonal Gaza is not. Gaza, attests Zahad Rahman, an American nurse who volunteers in what remains of the enclave, is a community-centered, gracious society. Rahman is not a Palestinian. Israel has murdered more than 1,000 individuals like him—”members of the medical, defense and aid teams in Gaza,” confirms B’Tselem (an Israeli human rights organization). Despite the risk, like so many medical volunteers who go to Gaza, Rahman has found himself drawn back to people who will give you their shirt in zero weather.

In the Ramadan tradition of “cultivating empathy,” in the ruins, Gazans thus laid tables to celebrate. Eid al-Fitr, in particular, explains Imam Dr. Omar Suleiman, a scholar and theologian, “is meant to continue that empathy into our celebrations. On the morning of Eid, every Muslim is required to pay Zakat al-Fitr—a form of charity designed to ensure that no one is left out of the feast. It is a beautiful practice: a way of saying that joy is only complete when shared, that our celebration is meaningless if others are starving.”

Inescapably, Eid al-Fitr spirituality was shattered by Israeli barbarity.

On April 3, Israel murdered 92 worshippers. A volunteer doctor from Gaza Medic Voices spent Eid, which marks the conclusion of Ramadan, cutting away party clothes from the bodies of kids dressed to the nines for Eid. By day’s end, the number of human beings murdered had swelled. Little girls festively dressed were, instead, transported to the morgue, jewelry and finery shrouded in the garments of death.

While 100 Palestinian kids are now “killed or injured in Gaza every day,” since [genocide] resumed,” Israelis have gone and slapped a disability classification on “over 20,000” of their own safe and sated offspring. Victims of terror, claim the Israeli State’s mental-health mavens.

The Psychiatric Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) is an ever-mutating manual, now in its fifth iteration. The criteria for manufacturing illness under the DSM, or similar industry-developed manuals, are malleable. In real life, no psychiatric manual required, tens of thousands of Palestinian children are being terrorized, are actually dead, mutilated, mentally scarred for life, orphaned without a soul in the world.

Still, one can well-understand why their Israeli adversaries—predators parading as prey—would want to tar even the Palestinian toddler as an irremediable terrorist-in-the-making. Like so many of their formative figures, Palestinian children are formidable, fierce.

Amid the worry and wear of finding food and staying alive, a slip of a girl composes and recites the poetry of resistance:

“I’m Palestinian and proud.”

“I’m proud because I’m the strong brave girl, the daughter of heroes.”

“The daughter of Gaza, the land of the free…”

And so she goes in modulated, melodic Arabic. Here another young Palestinian girl stops her idol, the late Mr. Shabat, aforementioned, to tell him of her admiration. When she grows up; she wants to be a brave journalist like her hero, since martyred. These are very centered children.

If we in the West are the most propagandized people in the world; Gazans are the least propagandized. Outwardly captives, Gazans are liberated from the illiberal political propaganda that grips the West.

And Gabi Siboni knows this. The former IDF colonel, now an unthinking member of Israel’s think-tank ranks, reflects Jewish-Israeli public and political discourse. For Gazans Siboni expresses genocidal contempt and intent—but also a warped understanding of Gazan ferocity about liberating their ancestral homeland. Said Siboni:

“Hamas is not the problem in Gaza. Hamas is a symptom of a bigger problem. The population in Gaza is a ‘barbaric mob.’ If we don’t wish to bleed our soldiers for decades—because in Gaza there will be Hamas B and C—the only solution is Trump’s ‘vision.'”

Sidoni is a lot more honest, and only a tad less subtle, than the oleaginous Bernie Sanders, an unreconstructed liberal Zionist.

Gaza is no more because of a concerted campaign to wipe it out; because of extermination and depopulation; not because of “Israeli self-defense,” which is when one sovereign state wards off the armies of other sovereign nation-states. Yet “in the year 2025,” Sanders’ mass rallies are festooned with the line, “Israel has a right to defend itself.”

Bernie Sanders’ sophistry should explode the brain like an ammunition dump!

In international law, explains Philip Proudfoot, a British political scientist, “Occupation is temporary, imposing duties, not rights, upon the occupier. The Fourth Geneva Convention explicitly demands that an occupier safeguard civilian rights. Accordingly, Israel cannot resort to anything more than police powers to ‘defend itself.’”

Genocide is the acid test. Sanders’ insistence, well into genocide, that “Israel has a right to defend itself can only be interpreted as blatant genocide apologia,” propounds Caitlin Johnstone. Clearly an expert in untruths, Sanders, who oversaw the removal from his rallies of protesters and their Free Palestine flag, has further exposed himself as a slick establishment operative, who seeks to capture naïve, politically homeless Democrats.

Back to the malodorous cauldron of death and decadence that is the Israel Defense Forces. (Or perhaps the Israel Defense Feces?)

A new load of grief came, in March, to residents of the al-Faraa refugee camp in the foothills of the Jordan Valley, in the northern occupied West Bank. Slatternly IDF soldiers have a familiar signature. They leave behind human waste in the homes they wreck:

“Feces, urine and used condoms—these are just some of the things that Israeli soldiers left behind in these Palestinian homes during their 11-day assault [in March],” reports the Electronic Intifada.

That the IDF has a documented “tradition” of defecating and urinating in the West Bank and Gazan homes they occupy and vandalize is seconded by a 2014 account in the Guardian: “Palestinians returning home find Israeli troops left feces and venomous graffiti.”

Somebody should rub IDF noses in their own mess to teach them a lesson, once and for all. Nobody has.

Yes, Israel makes atrocities past and present look like sandbox play. Still, puzzling even to me is this recent account of used condoms left by the IDF in these West Bank homes. Why puzzling? We know that despite the feel-good official designation of some Israeli females as combat soldiers, the few women in combat roles “are not explicitly deployed into combat situations.” During these ostensible “military” raids, the IDF functions, I believe, as a male-only “fighting” force.

So, why the condoms left in vandalized Palestinian homes, in the course of the IDF’s Dionysian bacchanalia in the West Bank? Whose are they, exactly?

Is this what Ha’aretz, Israel’s center-liberal paper of record, calls “the homoerotic side of Israeli army life”? Is “copulating” to be added to the documented IDF “tradition” of male soldiers defecating and urinating in Palestinian homes?

Ha’aretz, I’ve noticed, waters down debauchery—but not because it is concealing the truth for the “Fatherland.” They tell the truth but frame it differently. Thus, the debauchery of uniformed IDF doesn’t seem to be that big of a deal in the Israeli State. Israel doesn’t appear to share American sensibilities—at least so it seems to me, who has closely observed this society in the Hebrew, for eighteen ugly months.

American culture is quite prudish; Israel’s expressed aesthetic is more pornographic. An example is the familiar images of IDF wearing or rummaging through the sexy lingerie of Palestinian women dead or dispossessed. You and I would consider these cross-dressing displays among uniformed men as inappropriate, kinky.

Not Haaretz. Kinky acts of cowardice and sadism—invading Palestinian homes, looting, vandalizing and manhandling private effects—a writer at Ha’aretz is wont to label “Machismo”: The “Military machismo of Israeli soldiers in Gaza will rear its ugly head at home,” blared a January 2025 Ha’aretz headline.

I’m a subscriber. I read enough of Ha’aretz to get a sense that Israel has a different, un-American aesthetic. Take this depiction of Purim, which used to be celebrated, largely, as a children’s festival. To “a brief history of Purim, the Halloween of Jewish holidays,” Ha’aretz has appended an erotic image of men flirting and kissing deeply. Ha’aretz appears to consider this image to be Halloween/Purim-appropriate, wholesome.

The only reasonable, quality newspaper in Israel, Ha’aretz, also dishes a lot of bafflegab. The IDF has invaded large swathes of Syria, is bombing the place, annexing kilometers for a so-called buffer zone, and making overtures to certain cowed Syrian communities so as to further divide and rule that country.

An “overbearing embrace,” however, is how Ha’aretz has euphemized the violence of conquest and the breach of Syrian borders, in March of 2025: “Israel’s Overbearing Embrace Threatens Syria’s Druze at a Critical Juncture.

Utter opposites, too, are Palestinians. If Palestinians are united in the yen for freedom; Israeli circuitry is wired for cruelty.

Israel Katz, defense minister, stonily threatened all of Gaza’s civilians, on March 19, 2025. As a Twitter adage goes, “Translating an Israeli tweet from the Hebrew is like finding a lost page of Mein Kampf.” Listen to the “sound of impunity”—and for that matter, never believe any Hebrew-English translation come to you via Israeli officialdom.

These are Katz’ precise words translated from the Hebrew:

“Residents of Gaza, this is the last warning. The first Sinwar destroyed Gaza. The second Sinwar will ruin her completely. The assault of the air force against the Hamas terrorists is just the first step. The rest will be many times harder, and you will pay the full price. Evacuations will soon start from areas of battle. If all the Israeli hostages are not released, and Hamas is not expelled from Gaza—Israel will act with the kind of force unfamiliar to you. Take the offer of the president of the US: return the hostages and expel ‘The Hamas,’ and other options will then open before you, including migration to other places across the world, for whomever wishes it. The alternative is destruction and complete ruin.”

Defense Minister Katz further reiterated, on April 16, his policy of “halting the entry of humanitarian aid into Gaza.” “The State of Israel’s policy is clear. No humanitarian aid will enter Gaza, as this is one of our main pressure tactics” with Hamas. Under the current reality, nobody intends to stray from the policy, barked Katz.

In an instant, Minister Katz had pacified the “Hostages and Missing Families Forum.” While “emphasizing that the release of the hostages and the continuation of the war cannot happen simultaneously,” the group had nonetheless condemned the Israeli government for “quietly preparing to reinstate humanitarian aid.” (Ha’aretz’s “Israel News” newsletter, Wednesday, 16.04.2025.)

On the whole, it has been well-established that from janitor to general, from soldiers to supreme court justices; in words and in deeds—Israeli society generally shares in the genocidal mindset. The exceptions are a few heavily proscribed, miniscule (“around 300 Israelis come to hold pictures of Gazan children”), pro-peace, Arab-Jewish groups. All told, Israelis speak of Palestinians as though they were sub-humans, untouchables, unmentionable, lacking any say in how they live or die.

When I wrote, moreover, that “criminality is codified in Israeli law; that genocide, snuff films, extra-judicial assassinations and rape of Palestinians are de facto legal in Israel; I was not engaging in hyperbole. Systemic, societal criminality is regularly codified by the highest court in that land. Late in March came a ruling from the Israeli Supreme Court, “explicitly and directly legitimizing Israel’s illegal blockade of the Gaza Strip.”

Both asinine and depraved, the Israeli high court used, in support of its authoritative ruling for starvation, “the argument that the State of Israel is exempt from the obligations of belligerent occupation under international law in all cases pertaining to the Gaza Strip.”

Sure, you may subsume in logic, as the Israeli supreme court indirectly does, that you are not obligated to help dying human beings. But you cannot make a cogent, rational case for your right to stop others from feeding and healing dying human beings. This displays a defect in the faculty of reasoning, as well as a defect of character. By default, the outcome of the Israeli high court’s ruling is the death of the starved population—the process of mass murder will play out to its legislated conclusion.

The fault for inaction lies now entirely with those who won’t act to save Gazans: The USA, Western European- and East European countries, East and West Asian governments.

The emanations from the minds of Israel’s Supreme Court are mind-numbingly boorish and banal. Most pertinent for our purposes here is that Israel does not enjoy an independent judiciary. Yet Israel regularly exploits the principle of complementarity in international law, according to which the International Criminal Court (ICC) shares legal jurisdiction with the democratic nation-state under investigation, provided the latter has an independent judiciary.

Beware! With chameleon alacrity, Israel typically scurries to “investigate” itself, and to exploit the principle of complementarity, when the world looks like it’s had enough. Legal investigations by Israel of its own crimes are part of the Israeli superstructure of deception. Nominal prosecutions, or ersatz investigations, by genocidal Israel of its crimes against Arabs must themselves be treated as part of Hasbara’s meta-chicanery, aimed at concealing the Israeli State’s transparently despotic tendencies.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump, like Joe Biden before him, has made Americans confederates in Israel’s crimes. A malign conjunction of events engineered by Trump has further positioned Israeli leadership to finalize its genocidal goal, as its lobby proxies and influencers stateside successfully silence us, and sunder our Bill of Rights protections, including the First Amendment right to think and speak freely.

The level of “state capture” by Israel, a small, oppressive foreign regime, is unprecedented, inveighs Craig Mokhiber, activist and scholar of international, humanitarian law. This is “state capture” at every level: foreign and domestic, federal, state, county and city. For Israel, law enforcement agencies under this and the previous government are willing to silence and disappear activists against genocide for exercising our American liberties.

Absurd, of course, but Trump’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents had tweeted that their job is to stop illegal ideas at the U.S. border: “People, money, products, ideas. If it crosses the US border illegally, our job is to stop it.”

“An American-style Cultural Revolution” à la Mao Zedong.

The post Genocide’s Back: Trump-Backed Israeli Brutality appeared first on LewRockwell.

The post Vietnam War At 50: What Have We Learned? appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks,  John Smith. 

The Libertarian Institute

The post US Tells World Court Israel Has Right To Starve Gaza appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, John Smith. 

The Times of Israel

The post Biden officials vent frustrations in dealing with Netanyahu, decry missed chance of Saudi deal appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, Saleh Abdullah. 

The Free Thought Project

The post MSM Smears Senator Ron Johnson After He Calls For A New Investigation Into 9/11 appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, John Smith. 

Antiwar.com

The post Former Israeli Ambassador Confirms Biden Never Pressured Israel for Gaza Ceasefire appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks,  John Smith. 

Middle East Eye

The post Documentary on Israeli settlers in occupied West Bank triggers online firestorm appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, Mark Thornton.

Mostly Economics Podcast – CEPR

The post CEPR’s “Mostly Economics” Podcast Launches Today appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, David Martin.

Former Biden-era disinfo czar urges Brussels to “stand firm” against criticism of censorship laws – NaturalNews.com

https://dcdave.heresy.is/2022/05/02/the-ballad-of-nina-jankowicz/

The post Biden’s “Truth Czarina” Back with a Vengeance appeared first on LewRockwell.

The post “You and I don’t live in the same world.” appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, Saleh  Abdullah. 

The post LBJ on Weather Control appeared first on LewRockwell.

Has it made its way out of the CIA’s labyrinth?  The secret diary of Mary Pinchot, the one CIA spook James Jesus Angleton stole after she was murdered in a professional hit?

Mary was the ex-wife of CIA official Cord Meyer, a secret lover and confidante of President Kennedy.  Her diary is one more piece of the Deep State puzzle and Kennedy’s murder!

The post The JFK Confidante’s Diary the CIA Didn’t Want You to See! appeared first on LewRockwell.

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.

____________________________________________________________________________________

(Versione aiudio della traduzione disponibile qui: https://open.substack.com/pub/fsimoncelli/p/scatenare-un-bitcoin-standard)

La transizione dagli standard fiat allo standard Bitcoin, sebbene altamente auspicabile, non è inevitabile né necessariamente imminente. I tempi e l'avvenimento di questi cambiamenti dipendono dalle scelte di adozione effettuate da individui, organizzazioni ed enti pubblici. Queste decisioni sono influenzate non solo da considerazioni razionali, ma anche da fattori emotivi e irrazionali (avidità e paura soprattutto). La volontà collettiva, formata dalle intenzioni di una massa critica dotata di capitale e capacità di azione sufficienti, gioca un ruolo cruciale nel soppiantare le banche centrali e le strutture di potere consolidate a favore di un nuovo sistema incentrato su Bitcoin. Nonostante l'evidente superiorità tecnica, economica ed etica di Bitcoin rispetto ad altre forme di denaro, questa lotta sarà senza dubbio ardua, con un esito tutt'altro che scontato.

Ciononostante è fondamentale riflettere sulle conseguenze che questa potenziale rivoluzione, se realizzata (come tutti auspichiamo), potrebbe avere su ogni aspetto dell'esistenza sociale. Queste implicazioni spaziano dalla natura degli stati e delle relazioni internazionali al funzionamento dei sistemi economici, ai sistemi di valori prevalenti e persino al mercato energetico e all'innovazione tecnologica. In questo articolo, senza la pretesa di essere esaustivi, intendiamo esplorare brevemente alcuni di questi aspetti e suggerire possibili traiettorie.

Bitcoin e sistema bancario a riserva frazionaria

Come correttamente previsto da Hal Finney, un ipotetico Bitcoin standard sarebbe incompatibile con le banche centrali, ma non necessariamente con un sistema bancario a riserva frazionaria. I limiti algoritmici al numero di transazioni per blocco impediranno certamente al Layer 1 di fungere da sistema di pagamento al dettaglio. Col tempo, verranno eseguite meno transazioni, e queste saranno di valore molto elevato (in pratica, solo le balene o le grandi istituzioni pubbliche e private, dati gli elevati costi, potranno permettersele).

Una qualche forma di free banking 2.0 su Layer 2 sarebbe quindi inevitabile nel medio-lungo termine per un sistema monetario basato su Bitcoin. In assenza di una banca centrale come prestatore di ultima istanza e con una verificabilità delle riserve molto più semplice rispetto all'oro, questo sistema di riserva frazionaria Layer 2/Layer 3 sarà molto più fragile dell'attuale sistema a riserva frazionaria, supportato da moneta a corso legale, banca centrale e da una sostanziale indistinguibilità tra base monetaria e offerta di moneta più ampia. Ciò non farà che rafforzare l'importanza del Layer 1 come solido fondamento del sistema monetario, analogamente al ruolo svolto dall'oro nei millenni passati.

Implicazioni macroeconomiche

Ceteris paribus, nel medio termine l'adozione di un ipotetico Bitcoin standard dovrebbe attenuare significativamente le fluttuazioni del ciclo economico, prevenendo un indebitamento eccessivo, investimenti improduttivi e bolle nel settore privato, le quali portano a crisi sistemiche. La repressione monetaria si tradurrebbe inoltre in tassi di crescita reale delle economie molto più lenti, ma costanti nel medio-lungo termine. In assenza del motore dell'espansione monetaria e creditizia, ovvero le politiche inflazionistiche delle banche centrali, la crescita nominale della produzione all'interno di un Bitcoin standard sarà modesta, ma la crescita reale rimarrà significativa. In altre parole, qualsiasi aumento della produttività multifattoriale si tradurrà in un calo dei prezzi al consumo misurati in satoshi piuttosto che in un aumento della produzione nominale. In questo contesto, anche nel breve termine, la crescita economica dipenderà da fattori demografici, ecologici ed economici piuttosto che da fattori monetari o creditizi.

A questo proposito, con il Bitcoin standard si assisterà a un graduale spostamento di ricchezza dal settore finanziario, oggi divenuto vorace, all'economia reale e produttiva. Ciò in conseguenza al significativo ridimensionamento dei mercati obbligazionari e monetari (riduzione del livello di indebitamento delle economie) e, successivamente, dei profitti dell'intero settore.

Tra le attività che subiranno il ridimensionamento maggiore ci sono i sistemi centralizzati di pagamento e compensazione, gli istituti di credito tradizionali, gli agenti fiduciari come i notai (sostituiti da smart contract su Layer 2 e 3 di Bitcoin) e coloro che si occupano di intermediazione finanziaria, immobiliare e assicurativa.

Al contrario, tutto ciò che sfrutterà il potenziale dei Layer di Bitcoin (per gli smart contract) e della DeFi vivrà un vero e proprio boom.

Implicazioni (geo)politiche

Per quanto riguarda l'immutabilità della base monetaria, essa costringerebbe gli stati a una rigorosa disciplina fiscale, poiché verrebbe meno l'opzione di monetizzare deficit o debito come forma di finanziamento della spesa pubblica. Ciò influenzerà profondamente la capacità degli stati di fornire assistenza sociale o di condurre guerre. In assenza di una stampante monetaria e, quindi, dell'insidiosa tassa chiamata inflazione, la pressione fiscale e l'allocazione della spesa pubblica diventeranno oggetto di serie negoziazioni e controversie politiche, poiché incideranno direttamente sulle tasche dei cittadini/sudditi/contribuenti.

Da un lato, ciò potrebbe incoraggiare forme di democrazia più dirette (facilitate dalla diffusione di blockchain e DAO) per dare ai cittadini maggiore voce in capitolo nelle decisioni fiscali e di spesa. Dall'altro, un mondo basato sul Bitcoin standard potrebbe portare a un panorama geopolitico molto più frammentato e apolare, data l'intrinseca insostenibilità del mantenimento di apparati statali ampi e inefficienti, più simili al feudalesimo medievale. Invece dell'aristocrazia spada/sangue/toga, le balene Bitcoin diventerebbero la classe sociale dominante, dove i no-coiner costituirebbero una sorta di nuova servitù della gleba. I primi, individui, famiglie e istituzioni con ingenti depositi in Bitcoin (creati nelle prime fasi di adozione di questa tecnologia, ovvero nei primi due decenni della sua esistenza), sarebbero in grado di fornire welfare, lavoro e protezione ai cittadini/sudditi in cambio di lealtà, servizi e obbedienza al loro dominio “feudale”. La stragrande maggioranza della popolazione i cui antenati sono arrivati ​​troppo tardi per adottare e convertire il proprio capitale fiat in Bitcoin (per varie ragioni ideologiche o pratiche, inclusi vincoli economici), si troverà alla base della piramide e sarebbe costretta a guadagnarsi da vivere con il sudore della fronte o (più probabilmente, dati i progressi tecnologici) grazie alla generosità, più o meno interessata, di balene filantropiche. Questa dinamica si applicherebbe anche a livello internazionale: ci sarebbero regioni o nazioni pioniere che, avendo adottato Bitcoin per prime come moneta a corso legale, godrebbero di un significativo vantaggio in termini di ricchezza relativa che sarebbe difficile da eguagliare per i “ritardatari”.

Queste non sarebbero necessariamente le nazioni attualmente dominanti; infatti alcune potrebbero addirittura non esistere più in futuro. Il risultato finale sarebbe un sistema internazionale molto più frammentato di quello attuale, costituito da un mix di città-stato democratiche, socialiste o oligarchiche, feudi cripto-aristocratici incentrati su singole famiglie e vaste regioni anarchiche. Tutte queste entità sarebbero in competizione/cooperazione tra loro, formando un panorama geopolitico-ideologico completamente nuovo e in continua evoluzione. Le vecchie affiliazioni identitarie (nazionali, ideologiche e religiose) si sovrapporrebbero e si mescolerebbero con nuove identità basate sull'interpretazione della rivoluzione Bitcoin. Dati i presupposti tecnologici e i fondamenti ideologici della cultura Bitcoin, potrebbe emergere una religione “coiner”, legata ad alcuni aspetti rituali e di fede già intravisti tra i suoi convinti sostenitori (es. immacolata concezione, decentralizzazione, adorazione di Satoshi, infallibilità algoritmica). In ogni caso, il Bitcoin standard imporrebbe alle società che lo adottano alcune norme economiche che influenzano da vicino la moralità pubblica. Tra queste il senso del limite, l'etica del risparmio, la prudenza negli investimenti, la visione a lungo termine, l'onestà nelle transazioni commerciali, la responsabilità individuale, la disciplina fiscale e, naturalmente, l'indipendenza e l'incorruttibilità della moneta dai poteri statali.

Nodi, mining e geopolitica

I nodi sono il cuore della rete Bitcoin e, pertanto, riceverebbero un'attenzione significativa da parte dei poteri politici. Il controllo dei nodi completi (e quindi dei potenziali miner) all'interno di un territorio specifico da parte delle autorità pubbliche sarebbe estremamente importante per rivendicare la sovranità interna e influenzare la scena internazionale. Naturalmente, date altre variabili, le nazioni in grado di produrre energia a costi inferiori, o su scala maggiore, avrebbero un vantaggio nell'allocazione e quindi nel controllo di quote significative dell'hashrate globale di Bitcoin. Un'eterna lotta per il controllo dell'hashrate globale sarà il nuovo centro delle controversie geoeconomiche. Detto questo, non è affatto garantito che la maggior parte delle entità politiche territoriali sarà in grado di esercitare questo controllo, ed è incerto come lo faranno.

Sebbene la legittima coercizione fisica possa sembrare la scelta ovvia, data la natura specifica degli stati, potrebbe non essere necessariamente l'approccio più efficace in un panorama geopolitico più frammentato e competitivo di quello attuale. Grazie all'elevata mobilità di Bitcoin e ai vincoli fiscali imposti agli stati tradizionali da questo sistema monetario, miner e balene potrebbero facilmente scegliere di trasferirsi altrove se i loro diritti di proprietà e la loro libertà imprenditoriale finissero in pericolo, trovando rifugio in giurisdizioni più libertarie. D'altro canto uno scenario diverso potrebbe aprirsi per quelle nuove entità statali “neo-aristocratiche” costruite attorno a una o più balene; in questo caso il monopolio sull'attività di mining e sulle risorse energetiche necessarie potrebbe essere più pronunciato, dato l'immenso potere economico detenuto dai loro organi di governo.

Implicazioni sul mercato energetico

Bitcoin non è una valuta merce, ma una valuta energetica. Il potere che racchiude è l'energia consumata per crearlo e trasferirlo. In quanto linfa vitale del nuovo paradigma monetario, quindi, l'energia sarà ancora più al centro del sistema economico rispetto a oggi. Ciò influenzerà radicalmente il progresso nel settore energetico, generando una corsa all'innovazione tecnologica sia dal punto di vista dell'estrazione che del risparmio energetico. Un'intera gamma di fonti energetiche precedentemente trascurate perché antieconomiche potrebbero diventare convenienti e accessibili grazie al loro utilizzo per l'attività di mining. Si pensi al sole nei deserti africani e asiatici, ai giacimenti di metano e gas naturale in località remote, all'energia geotermica proveniente da vulcani e geyser, o persino ad alcuni sistemi basati sul moto ondoso e sulle differenze di temperatura nelle profondità degli oceani.

Con una domanda di energia in continua crescita, ci sarà un crescente incentivo a generare più energia e a farlo in modo più efficiente, in un circolo virtuoso che potrebbe portare a una grande rivoluzione energetica, avvicinando potenzialmente l'umanità a una civiltà di livello 2 sulla scala di Kardashev, contribuendo a elettrificare il pianeta anche nei luoghi più remoti. Un'altra probabile conseguenza di un Bitcoin standard sarà l'inversione dei ruoli tra produttori e consumatori di energia. I maggiori consumatori di energia (le mining farm) diventeranno col tempo i principali produttori di energia, in un'integrazione verticale di asset e infrastrutture energetiche che, partendo dal basso, assimilerà l'intero settore energetico. Resta da vedere se questo porterà a una maggiore o minore concentrazione rispetto alla decentralizzazione dei produttori di energia, ma dipenderà certamente dalle dinamiche commerciali del settore del mining.

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

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

Paul Roberts wrote:

Moscow’s Conditions for Peace: Between Diplomacy and Force

Dear Readers, as you know my interpretation of the Ukrainian “peace negotiations” is substantially different from that of the official narrative.  I decided to ask experts in Russia for an explanation of what the Russian view of the “peace negotiations” is.  Ivan Andrianov, the director of a strategic consulting firm, has obliged me with an answer.

Read it here.

The post A Russian view of the peace negotiations appeared first on LewRockwell.

Dr. Peter McCullough is shining a light on a disturbing new study that reveals an explosion in COVID-related deaths from 2020 until 2023.

McCullough shared on social media site X today a link directing his followers to a post on Focal Points, a Substack blog that he operates. Dr. Nicolas Hulscher, MPH, who works alongside McCullough for his foundation, had summarized the study in an article.

WHO Data Reveals Global COVID-19 Deaths Skyrocketed After Mass Vaccination

New study finds that mass COVID-19 vaccination not only failed, but made things worse — with the highest death surges in the most heavily vaccinated populations.

Loading the body with Spike protein from… pic.twitter.com/UvMGySskt1

— Peter A. McCullough, MD, MPH® (@P_McCulloughMD) April 25, 2025

The study was published in the International Journal of Risk & Safety in Medicine. It is titled “Paradoxical increase in global COVID-19 deaths with vaccination coverage: World Health Organization estimates (2020–2023).”

Among other things, the study shockingly found that “COVID-19 mortality increased in the vaccination era, especially in regions with higher vaccination coverage.”

McCullough took to social media to share the troubling data.

“New study finds that mass COVID-19 vaccination not only failed, but made things worse — with the highest death surges in the most heavily vaccinated populations,” he said.

McCullough also noted that “loading the body with Spike protein from vaccination has made illness become more severe and deadly. Cardiac complications and blood clots are caused by vaccination — risks elevated for years. Death from all causes increased from the Spike protein.”

McCullough has drawn attention to other COVID-induced side effects on Focal Points as well, including kidney disease, myocarditis, and even death. LifeSite has routinely reported on McCullough’s findings since the advent of the virus and has shown how the shot has been linked to various injuries but also so-called “turbo cancers,” which McCullough has said may be the result of the jab.

Coroners and funeral directors have also admitted that there has been an unusual uptick in blood clots found in deceased persons in recent years, with some of them saying that the COVID shot is to blame.

This originally appeared on Lifesite News.

The post Dr. McCullough Sounds Alarm After Study Shows Covid Deaths Skyrocketed After Vaccinations appeared first on LewRockwell.

I was nearly ten years old when Pope St. John Paul II died. I remember watching his funeral on the tiny television in the corner of our kitchen. Being so young, I had no significant grasp of who the Polish pope was—and never could have imagined that, some years later, my Polish wife and I would tour the very Kraków where Karol Wojtyła had served as archbishop. But I knew that he was the Holy Father and had a sense, in that moment, that I was witnessing the passing of a great man. Thus, I cried.

Nearly a decade later, I was sitting in a classroom at the Christian academy I attended for high school when my Catholic teacher told us that Pope Benedict XVI was resigning. We dragged the television into the room to watch news coverage of this historic event. I knew Benedict XVI better than I had known John Paul II and, thus, loved him more, but he was still really the only pontiff that I had ever known.

I had grown up with him, under his paternal care. I wanted to read his books and encyclicals and, when I was a little older, I did. I went to Mass in Washington, D.C., when he made his first apostolic visit to the United States and contented myself with a bumper sticker from the event when I couldn’t afford a t-shirt. When he resigned, I didn’t understand what was happening; and I didn’t cry. If I could have had even a glimpse of the next twelve years, I’m sure I would have.

Over the course of the succeeding twelve years, I briefly fell away from practicing my faith—as many of us are wont to do in our youth—before dutifully returning to the Church. I really began taking my Catholic faith far more seriously in 2018, during the “Summer of Shame.” The horrific crimes of then-cardinal Theodore McCarrick were devastating, but they caused me to ask a question that would come to define much of the rest of my life: How did this happen?

In trying to discover how such a notoriously perverse man could advance so rapidly into the upper echelons of the Catholic Church’s ecclesial hierarchy, I delved deep into the history of the Catholic Church and came to irrevocably embrace the truth of the Catholic Faith, no matter what evil any priest or bishop might do. Pope Francis, however, tested that conviction.

Shortly after McCarrick’s crimes were made public, the now-excommunicated archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò published a letter alleging that Pope Francis had known of and covered up McCarrick’s penchant for serially raping young men and boys, including seminarians and priests, and removed all sanctions and restrictions placed on McCarrick by Benedict XVI. When reporters asked Francis about the allegations during a press conference, the pontiff refused to respond, saying only, “I won’t say a word about it.” Even then, I did not think that these were the words of a man innocent of wrongdoing.

The following year, my love for both the Catholic Church’s history and the life and literature of Evelyn Waugh led me to the Tridentine Mass. The experience was, for me, life-changing, like a bottomless well of clear, cool water stumbled upon in the midst of an arid desert. I was astounded that this liturgical treasure was not more widespread, and not for the last time was I grateful for Benedict XVI and his Summorum Pontificum proclamation. But, once again, Francis was waiting, wielding disappointment and dismay.

In 2021, Francis issued Traditionis Custodes, effectively undoing Summorum Pontificum and placing heavy restrictions on the celebration of the Mass that I had come to love so much. I long suspected that the document was written by Cardinal Arthur Roche, given its cold, impersonal, characteristically-British tone. This suspicion was all but confirmed when Roche personally issued subsequent rescripts further restricting celebration of the Tridentine Mass. Nonetheless, the document still bore Francis’ name and signature and was perfectly consistent with his frequent derisive comments about the “rigidity” of tradition-minded Catholics.

When Benedict XVI died, I wept. I was in Poland at the time, visiting my wife’s hometown with her. I left our hotel room and went to the nearby church—an expansive, cavernous, medieval sanctuary, intrinsically Polish, very much out of place among the dilapidated ruins of Soviet rule—and knelt before the Blessed Sacrament and prayed for Benedict XVI’s soul, crying. Last year, when visiting Rome, I considered it a blessing to kneel by the tomb of Benedict XVI.

When I opened  the day after Easter and read that Francis had died, I did not cry. To be perfectly honest, I breathed more easily. Losing Benedict XVI felt very much like losing a father, albeit a father whom I hadn’t seen in years, a father who just wasn’t there one day when I came home, but a father whom I loved dearly. Francis felt to me much more like the less-than-loving stepfather I was saddled with afterward.

Unlike some “traditional Catholics,” I do not believe that Francis was evil; I do believe that his actions as pontiff were confusing, divisive, destructive, hurtful, and sometimes malicious, spiteful, and petty. For over a decade, I have felt fatherless but have had to confess that I do, indeed, have a father—pope—papa. Indeed, to do otherwise would be sinful, it would be schism, and it would separate me from the Church I love more than my own life.

We all know that Francis caused much pain in the hearts of many—I might even hazard a guess at most—Catholics. Of all the many wounds his pontificate dealt, perhaps one of the most grievous was the pain of leaving us all feeling fatherless.

This article was originally published on Crisis Magazine.

The post Benedict and Francis: A Tale of Two Fathers appeared first on LewRockwell.

In the early 1950s, against the backdrop of the Cold War and growing concerns over potential clandestine efforts at internal subversion, the United States Congress launched an investigation into the activities of major tax-exempt foundations. Thus the Reece Committee was born, spearheaded by Congressman B. Carroll Reece, with the aim of establishing whether certain large and influential foundations, like the Carnegie Endowment, the Ford Foundation, and the Rockefeller Foundation, were using their tax-exempt status and their substantial resources to influence American society in ways that might be considered subversive or to fund activities that might undermine American institutions.

An earlier investigation, by the Cox Committee, had mostly cleared the targeted foundations of any wrongdoing, however Congressman Reece questioned these findings and believed that a more thorough and detailed examination into the foundations’ activities was necessary. At the heart of this new Committee was Norman Dodd, a former banker, who was  appointed as the Committee’s Director of Research. His findings, especially those related to the foundations’ role in shaping education and public policy, have since become a focal point for discussions about the influence of elite institutions on American life.

The Committee’s revelations 

During the early 20th century many of of these institutions, originally created by industrial tycoons like John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie to manage their fortunes for charitable purposes, rose to great prominence and by the 1950s, their wealth, influence and reach had reached staggering levels, across the US and even internationally. They were funding universities, think tanks, and social programs and while their declared goals were philanthropic, e.g. promoting education, science, and public welfare, critics soon suspected that they were actually pursuing political and ideological agendas.

The Reece Committee conducted an exhaustive investigation from 1952 to 1954, including interviews with key foundation officials, scrutiny of grant records, and on-site reviews. The Committee’s findings were published in 1954 and came as shock to many. The investigation concluded that the Carnegie, Ford, and Rockefeller foundations were not in fact charitable organizations with the benign goals of advancing the public good, but instead they were powerful entities using their wealth and resources to manipulate social institutions, to shape and control public opinion through channels of social influence like the media, and to advance specific political ideologies. The Committee accused these organizations of engaging in propaganda and applying institutional pressure to reshape American society in ways that aligned with socialist and globalist agendas.

A focal point of of the Reece Committee’s investigation was the foundations’ impact on education and its findings presented evidence that these institutions were funding programs and curricula designed to change the role of education from a tool of enlightenment into a propaganda machine and a vehicle for indoctrination of young minds. The foundations supported progressive educational reforms and specific academic disciplines, promoting collectivist ideologies over individualism and traditional American values. For example, the Rockefeller Foundation’s funded social science research prioritizing studies that promoted central planning and globalist policies, often at the expense of national sovereignty. Dodd described this as the “debasement of education” and he believed it was part of a larger effort to destabilize the moral and political foundations of American society, as it was clear that by controlling education, these foundations could also control future generations.

These efforts were also complemented by the foundations’ influence over media and advertising, through targeted grants to various think tanks, publishers, and advocacy groups that aligned with and promoted these ideas. The Reece Committee’s findings also suggested that this control extended to key institutions like government agencies, and even religious organizations, all with the mission to co-opt centers of power and to eventually manufacture consensus and garner support for legislation that favored socialism and globalism.

A silent revolution

Arguably the most alarming claim in the Reece Committee’s findings was that the foundations it investigated were actively working towards orchestrating a “silent, non-bloody revolution” in the United States. According to Dodd, their end game was to shift power away from Congress, the nation’s most representative body, and to concentrate it in the executive branch, thereby paving the way for semi-autocratic governance. By funding policy initiatives and by supporting campaigns that aimed to strengthen the presidency and federal agencies and to further the centralization of power, the foundations were accused of intentionally undermining the checks and balances and the core democratic principles that are fundamental to the American political structure.

The targets of the investigation were also accused of working towards the degradation and the debasement of the population, in order to make the body politic more malleable and more susceptible to the collectivist propaganda they were pushing. In other words, if people are desperate enough, they don’t look for realistic, long term solutions that require hard work and sacrifice; instead they fall for promises of “free stuff” and the follow dreams of a socialist utopia.

As Rowan Gaither, the director of the Ford Foundation, explained to Norman Dodd: «All of us here have at one time or another served in the OSS [the Office of Strategic Services, forerunner of the CIA], or the European Economic Administration, operating under directives from the White House. We [still] operate under those same directives. The substance of the directives under which we operate is that we should use our grant making power to so alter life in the United States that we can be comfortably merged with the Soviet Union».

This push to form a coalition with the USSR might seem inconceivable from a contemporary point of view. How and why could anyone try to dismantle the core of a free society and morph it into a tyrannical, inhumane communist regime, modeled after the brutality of the Soviet Union? And what kind of madman would want to merge with this monstrosity, this dark stain upon human history, that claimed countless lives and destroyed even more?

At face value, this might seem difficult to grasp from our perspective today, but if one really thinks about it, it is actually rather relatable. At that time there were many communist sympathizers that these foundations could work with to advance their goals, as is the case today. Then, as now, some of those were simply naive, gullible, useful idiots, and others, like those that ran the foundations themselves, had much darker incentives. After all, under communism, “some pigs are more equal than others”, and there are always those on top who run the show. It’s not a stretch to surmise that they hoped they would be on that top.

Lessons learned or forgotten?

Today, most people haven’t even heard of the Reece Committee and this is problematic on multiple levels. For one thing, those responsible largely got away with their actions and continued to operate against the interests of the public. But much more importantly, a lot of other bad actors also joined the path these foundations paved. Today, there are innumerable organizations that are tax exempt, and even taxpayer funded in many cases, that are actively working towards promoting the same ideologies and the same toxic, misanthropic principles. They have gained substantial political power and influence with the media, the academia and even the top levels of government, not only in the US, but across the globe.

The post The Reece Committee: Lessons From History appeared first on LewRockwell.

We live in perplexing times. It’s almost inconceivable to think that there’s a war being waged against food, an absolute and undeniable necessity of life. Yet, here we stand, on the precipice of what looks like a catastrophic agenda against global sustenance.

So, what’s this newfound hostility against the thing that keeps us alive?

Take a deep breath. Farming uses nitrogen, and suddenly, nitrogen is the new antagonist in the tale of global warming. The narrative is simple: eliminate nitrogen, save the world. Yet, in the name of “preservation,” entire segments of our food production are under siege.

Consider rice – a staple for half the world’s population. Renowned agencies claim, “Rice accounts for roughly 10% of global methane emissions,” emphasizing the urgent need to curtail its production. But the ramifications? Starvation for billions.

Look to the Netherlands for further evidence. Dutch farmers, the backbone of a nation that is a leading exporter of meat and agricultural products, are being chased off their lands. A staggering number, 3,000 farms, are forecasted to be confiscated in the coming years. The tragic fallout is evident, with a reported 20 to 30 farmers tragically ending their lives annually.

Our friends in Europe are no strangers to these baffling decisions either. The European Commission greenlit a strategy to compensate livestock farmers for halting their operations in certain areas – with a stipulation that they never resume their animal breeding activities. The implications are clear: a drop in global food availability and an inevitable spike in prices.

Remember Sri Lanka’s ill-fated venture into 100% organic farming? The island nation faced a humanitarian nightmare with a staggering 90% of its population on the brink of starvation.

And the Western leaders’ stance on agriculture? Eric Utter encapsulates it perfectly in American Thinker, “The attack on farming by Western leaders is shockingly negligent. It’s criminal.” Especially when such views ignore the glaring fact that while agriculture may account for 33% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, it simultaneously sustains every single human being on this planet.

Organizations like the World Economic Forum tout visions of a “farm-free future,” dreaming of a world where food is crafted in sterile labs and humans are herded into congested urban centers. Toss digital currency into this dystopian mix, and you have the ultimate formula for absolute dominance.

In our modern era, the recipe is simple: concoct a crisis, even if none existed.

• Incite racial tension among children.
• Reverse the progress women achieved over decades.
• Worsen shortages and tamper with the money supply.
• Tackle borders haphazardly.
• Condemn specific foods, close farms, or incite wars to create famine.
• Muzzle voices of dissent by labeling truth as “misinformation.”

A tactic reminiscent of Cloward and Piven: create a crisis, then implement severe measures to address that very crisis.

Our global food supply is now in peril, thanks to overblown reactions to this so-called “nitrogen issue“. But why this apathy? Sri Lanka, for instance, is an alarming testament to this flawed approach.

The truth remains that nitrogen is pivotal for plant metabolism. Without commercial nitrogen fertilizers, hunger was a dire reality in many corners of the world. If we shun these fertilizers, we voluntarily invite famine back into our lives. The idea of bug diets, ‘rewilding,‘ and organic farming might sound avant-garde, but they certainly won’t satisfy the global hunger.

It’s glaringly evident that this isn’t just about combating climate change. At its core, it’s an insidious bid for control.

In the profound words of Ayn Rand, “We can ignore reality, but we cannot ignore the consequences of ignoring reality.“

The world stands at a critical juncture.

It’s time to confront these disguised agendas and defend our plates.

After all, when the stakes are survival, there’s no room for compromise.

This article was originally published on LifeLaw25.Substack.com.

The post Global Elites’ Secret Plot Against Food… appeared first on LewRockwell.