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When I first got my driver’s license years ago, they asked if I wanted to be an organ donor. Having learned to be skeptical of institutions and having heard some concerning stories, I said no. But I felt conflicted about it—I believe in treating others as you’d want to be treated, and if I needed a transplant someday, I’d desperately want someone willing to help save my life.

Since then, I’ve discovered much more disturbing information about organ transplantation that completely shifted my perspective. Recently, RFK Jr. did something I never expected—he formally announced that there were widespread failures in our organ donation system’s ethical safeguards. This opened the floodgates for others to start discussing the grim reality that organs were being taken from people who were still alive.

The Value of Organs

Over time, medicine transformed our cultural relationship with death—from an accepted, intimate companion to a feared, medicalized enemy to be defeated (e.g., one author traces this shift through six historical stages, arguing that medicalization stripped individuals of autonomy and commodified death itself).

Medicine fueled this transformation by performing modern “miracles,” such as reviving the dead through cardiac resuscitation and transplanting organs—crossing what was once an absolute boundary between life and death. In doing so, it gained immense public trust and the ability to justify exorbitant costs.

This cultivated the myth that medicine can conquer death. Over time, it became seen not just as a means of survival, but as something to be continuously consumed in the name of “health”—transforming it into a highly profitable industry that now accounts for over 17.6% of all U.S. spending.

Because viable donor organs (a central crux of medicine’s dominion over death) are so limited, transplants quickly became incredibly valuable—costs range from $446,800 to $1,918,700 depending on the organ. Given how desperate people are for organs and how much money is involved, it hence seemed reasonable to assume some illegal harvesting would occur.

Over the years, as demand for organs continues to increase, I’ve continually found disturbing evidence that this was happening. This includes:

•Individuals being tricked into selling a kidney (e.g., in 2011, a viral story discussed a Chinese teenager who did so for an iPhone 4—approximately 0.0125% of the black market rate for a kidney, after which he became septic and his other kidney failed leaving him permanently bedridden, and in 2023, a wealthy Nigerian politician being convicted for trying to trick someone into donating a kidney for a transplant at an English hospital).

•A 2009 and 2014 Newsweek investigation and a 2025 paper highlighted the extensive illegal organ trade, estimating that 5% of global organ transplants involve black market purchases (totaling $600 million to $1.7 billion annually), with kidneys comprising 75% of these due to high demand for kidney failure treatments and the possibility of surviving with one kidney (though this greatly reduces your vitality). Approximately 10-20% of kidney transplants from living donors are illegal, with British buyers paying $50,000–$60,000, while desperate impoverished donors (e.g., from refugee camps or countries like Pakistan, India, China, and Africa) receive minimal payment and are abandoned when medical complications arise, despite promises of care. To quote the 2009 article:

Diflo became an outspoken advocate for reform several years ago, when he discovered that, rather than risk dying on the U.S. wait list, many of his wealthier dialysis patients had their transplants done in China. There, they could purchase the kidneys of executed prisoners. In India, Lawrence Cohen, another UC Berkeley anthropologist, found that women were being forced by their husbands to sell organs to foreign buyers to contribute to the family’s income, or to provide for the dowry of a daughter. But while the WHO estimates that organ-trafficking networks are widespread and growing, it says that reliable data are almost impossible to come by.

Note: these reports also highlighted that these surgeries operate on the periphery of the medical system and involve complicit medical professionals who typically claim ignorance of its illegality (e.g., a good case was made that a few US hospitals, like Cedars Sinai were complicit in the trade).

• A 2004 court case where a South African hospital pleaded guilty to illegally transplanting kidneys from poorer recipients (who received $6,000–$20,000) to wealthy recipients (who paid up to $120,000).1 2

• Many reports of organ harvesting by the Chinese government against specific political prisoners.1,2,3,4,5 This evidence is quite compelling, particularly since until 2006, China admitted organs were sourced from death row prisoners (with data suggesting the practice has not stopped).
Note: harvesting organs from death row prisoners represents one of the most reliable ways to get healthy organs immediately at the time of death (which is one of the greatest challenges in transplant medicine).

• I’ve read reports of organ harvesting occurring in Middle East conflict zones, by ISIS and in the Kosovo conflict, and with drug cartels.

Note: many other disturbing cases of illicit organ harvesting are discussed in more detail here. Likewise, many other valuable tissues (e.g., tendons and corneas) can be harvested from dead bodies. Significant controversy also exists with the ethics of how these are collected (e.g., this investigation highlights that the industry is highly profit focused and gives minimal respect to the bodies).

When Consciousness Gets Trapped

Different parts of the brain control various aspects of our being, so people who are still conscious can sometimes completely lose control of their bodies or their ability to communicate—known as Locked-in syndrome.

The most famous case involves Martin, a 12-year-old who fell ill with meningitis and entered a vegetative state. He was sent home to die, but stayed alive. At 16, he began regaining consciousness, became fully aware by 19, and at 26, a caregiver finally realized he was conscious and got him a communication computer. He eventually married.

Jahi McMath, a thirteen-year-old declared brain dead after tonsillectomy complications, was kept on life support by her family despite court orders. Nine months later, she had regained brainwaves and blood flow to the brain, and moved in response to verbal commands.

Similar cases include Lewis Roberts (began breathing hours before organ harvesting), Ryan Marlow (diagnosis reversed after wife’s insistence), Colleen Burns (awoke on the operating table and was later found by HHS to have been repeatedly misdiagnosed), and Trenton McKinley (13-year-old who recovered before scheduled donation). There were also cases like Steven Thorpe (declared brain dead by four doctors, parents refused organ donation, and he awoke two weeks later), and Gloria Cruz (husband refused to allow withdrawal of care, and she recovered).

Note: A recent study found that over 30% of brain-injured patients deemed unrecoverable would have partially or fully recovered had life support not been withdrawn.

Read the Whole Article

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GDP is like collecting data on passenger satisfaction with the dessert cart on the Titanic and declaring everyone is delighted as the great “unsinkable” ship settles into the icy waters of the Atlantic.

That Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is an outdated and misleading metric of the economy is widely accepted. The problem isn’t an abstraction, as we manage what we measure and so policymakers and citizens alike make decisions on what’s being measured. If what’s being measured is misleading, then we’re flying blind.

Economist Joseph Stiglitz has long advocated for an overhaul for what we measure economically, focusing on well-being rather than adding up transactions. A new book The Measure of Progress: Counting What Really Matters, explains the difficulty of the overhaul. A recent article on the topic addressed the urgency of the task (Foreign Affairs, May/June 2025, paywalled):

“For Americans, these are tumultuous times. Inequality in income and wealth is at historically high levels. Artificial intelligence is reshaping society at an unprecedented pace, prompting layoffs and putting entire professions at risk. According to an estimate by the Brookings Institution, up to 85 percent of current workers in the U.S. labor force could see their jobs affected by today’s generative AI technology. In the future, that percentage could climb even higher.

At moments of danger and uncertainty, it is usually the task of governments to protect people and help them navigate change–to step in when markets cannot. Yet Americans seem to have little belief in Washington’s capabilities. Over the past two decades, public trust in the U.S. government has plummeted by 40 percent. Some Americans believe the federal government has been absent. Others believe it has failed to meet pressing challenges, including the rising cost of living, and the potential disruptions of AI. Either way, Washington has its work cut out for it as the government tries to regain Americans’ trust.

So where can it start? The Measure of Progress, meanwhile, takes aim at the economic data that states use. According to Coyle, analysts evaluate the economy using outdated, limited metrics, causing policymakers to misunderstand the challenges citizens face.

Coyle’s book is focused on understanding the economy as it exists today. But her argument–that analysts and governments have failed to properly measure peoples’ well-being–is equally essential. The metrics that economists use, Coyle insists, are inherently flawed and do not sufficiently represent the reality of economic activity and value. That poses an immense problem for policymakers and analysts, distorting their view of the world and potentially leading them to faulty conclusions and ineffective policies.”

The problem is multi-faceted. GDP and other metrics were institutionalized in the industrial age, where agriculture and factory production were easy to measure. As these sectors’ share of the economy has slipped, the “hard-to-measure” parts of the economy are now dominant–81.5% by one estimate.

There are many other critical wrinkles in measuring the economy as it is. The book raises the issue of unpaid work, such as families caring for elderly parents and the unpaid “shadow work” that we’re required to do now to keep all of our technology functioning. All this activity occurs outside the traditional market.

Since our metrics don’t put a price tag on clean air and functional ecosystems, these are left out of the calculations, as if they don’t exist. Not only do they exist, they’re critical to our well-being. The book discusses natural capital accounting as an alternative, but alternative measures like this are inherently more challenging than toting up transactions.

What if we decided to measure the economy by the quality of life of the citizenry? While there are endless possibilities of what goes into quality of life, we can start with these basics:

1. Our physical and mental health.

2. The health of our social order–our social contract, social trust, communities and trust in our key institutions

3. The security and stability of our livelihoods and financial future.

Defining health isn’t that difficult. A healthy person doesn’t need any medications because, well, they’re healthy, so there’s no need for any interventions. A healthy person has an HDL / triglyceride ratio (calculated by dividing your triglyceride level by your HDL cholesterol level) well under 2, can walk a mile without even noticing, can stand on each foot for an extended time, and so on.

As for mental health, numerous studies have found that social connections are critical to our overall health, along with what we might call sufficiency–enough financial resources to secure the basics of life, and enough opportunities to fulfill one’s potential.

Read the Whole Article

The post If We Measured the Economy by Quality-of-Life Instead of GDP, We’d Be in a Depression appeared first on LewRockwell.

In October 2024 a Lebanese writer named Lina Mounzer wrote, “ask any Arab what the most painful realization of the last year has been and it is this: that we have discovered the extent of our dehumanization to such a degree that it’s impossible to function in the world in the same way.”

I’ve thought about that line a lot over the last year.

I thought about it as Israel hammered Lebanon with at least 20 airstrikes during a supposed “ceasefire”.

I thought about it during the Gaza ceasefire negotiations when the western political/media class kept calling the Israelis held by Hamas “hostages” while calling the innocent Palestinians held captive by Israel “prisoners”.

I think about it as the IDF continues to murder Palestinian civilians every day during the Gaza “ceasefire” when they are deemed to be traveling into forbidden areas, because Palestinians are so dehumanized that Israel sees bullets as a perfectly legitimate means of directing civilian foot traffic.

I think about it as these daily ceasefire violations and acts of military slaughter barely make a blip in the western news media, while any time anything happens that makes western Jews feel anxious or upset it dominates headlines for days.

I thought about it while the western political/media class solemnly commemorated the second anniversary of the October 7 attack, even as the daily death toll from the Gaza holocaust ticked along with its victims unnamed and unacknowledged by those same institutions.

I thought about it when all of western politics and media stopped dead in its tracks and stood transfixed for days on the assassination of Charlie Kirk while ignoring the genocide he had spent the last two years of his life actively manufacturing consent for.

Day after day after day we see glaring, inexcusable discrepancies between the amount of attention that is given to the violent death of an Arab and the attention that is given to the violent death of an Israeli, a western Jew, or any westerner.

These last two years have been a time of unprecedented unmasking in all sorts of ways, but I think that’s the one that’s going to stick with me the most. The way western civilization came right out into the cold harsh light to admit, day after day after day, that they don’t truly view Arabs as human beings.

Ours is a profoundly sick society.

One of the main arguments you’ll hear from rightists about why the west needs to support Israel is that Israel is helping to defend the west from the savage Muslim hoards — a sentiment that Israeli pundits and politicians have been all too happy to feed into of late. It’s revealing because it’s just coming right out and saying that slaughtering Muslims is a virtue in and of itself, so anyone who kills Muslims is an ally of the west.

But any time I come across this argument all I can think is, why would anyone want to defend the west if this is what the west has become?

Even if we pretend these delusions that Arabs and Islam pose some kind of threat to western civilization are valid, why would it even matter? This civilization does not deserve to be saved. Not if we’re going to be living like this.

If we’ve become so detached from our own humanity that we can’t even see innocent children as fully human just because they live somewhere else and have a different religion, then we are the monsters. We are the villains. We are everything the craziest Zionist pretends the Arabs are.

These last two years have shown us that western civilization doesn’t need protection, it needs redemption. It needs to save its soul.

__________________

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The post The West’s Dehumanization of Arabs Is Completely Unforgivable appeared first on LewRockwell.

U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin appear to be back on good terms — at least for now.

Trump announced Thursday afternoon that he had a very “productive” call with the Russian head of state, who congratulated him for the “great accomplishment” of “peace in the Middle East.” The Russian leader also passed on niceties to the First Lady for her involvement with children.

The two leaders discussed potential business between the United States and Russia after “the War with Ukraine is over,” according to Trump’s version of the call.  The Russians confirmed the call, which they announced as it was happening.

Before hanging up, they agreed to a meeting of high-level advisors next week, to be followed up by an in-person meeting in Budapest, Hungary, where they’ll discuss ending the “inglorious” war between Russia and Ukraine.

The president ended his Truth Social announcement on a high note. “I believe great progress was made with today’s telephone conversation,” he said.

Good News

The news was undoubtedly welcomed by sensible Americans who realize there is nothing to gain and too much at risk by egging on a war between two very corrupt nations on the other side of the planet, neither of which pose a serious threat to the U.S. homeland so long as we stay out of their business. Former Trump National Security Adviser General Michael Flynn was among them. “This is what we voted for,” he announced on social media. Flynn previously alleged that a group of warmongers were exerting undue influence on the president.

Those who’ve been keeping up with the TMZ-style drama between these two strongheaded world leaders and are cheering for de-escalation are, like Flynn, happy to hear this news — but there is also some trepidation. This is about the fifth rerun of this episode. The script goes something like this: The two talk, Putin flatters and reassures, and Trump emerges smitten, only to become disillusioned just weeks later. Nevertheless, this is better than how the saga had been tracking as of late.

Escalatory Rhetoric

Just Wednesday, U.S. War Secretary Pete Hegseth implied he would wage war against Russia if it did not wind down its war against Ukraine. “If there is no path to peace in the short term then the United States, along with our allies, will take steps necessary to impose costs on Russia for its continued aggression,” Hegseth said Wednesday. “If we must take this step, the U.S. War Department stands ready to do our part in ways that only the United States can do.”

Hegseth said this during a meeting focused on Ukraine at the NATO headquarters. He apparently did not elaborate on whether he meant to say what it sounded like he said.

Before that, Trump was publicly mulling over the idea of sending the Ukrainians Tomahawks, long-range missiles with the capability to strike any major Russian city. The big idea was that doing this would cripple the Kremlin’s major source of revenue, its energy sector. On Sunday, Trump told reporters he was thinking of speaking to Russia to ask them if “they want to have Tomahawks going in their direction?” Maybe he did.

Russia had previously responded to the threat with its own warning, pointing out that sending that kind of power would directly implicate the United States. Somewhere in that melee of threats and bluster, Trump even called Russia a “paper tiger.”

Just Bluffing?

All of that talk, however, may have been nothing more than bluffing designed to keep the Russians off balance and convince them to get serious about winding down the war. And maybe it worked.

Or maybe Hegseth’s rhetoric was the result of Trump waking up in an especially crabby mood on account of being edged out of the Nobel Peace Prize and ordering his War Sec to throw caution to the wind since they won’t award him with the accolade he badly wants, anyway. It’s hard to tell. As we’ve said before, there’s a good chance that when it comes to dealing with the mess in Eastern Europe, Trump’s so good at keeping everyone guessing that even he doesn’t know what he’ll do.

That’s probably why some European leaders, as much as they want Trump to get and stay tough with Putin, were reluctant to celebrate Hegseth’s comments. German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius told reporters, “I would read into that a kind of change of perspective and approach, but not more for the moment. I can’t interpret, really, what he did mean.”

Unleash the Tomahawks

It’s telling that the folks at the Defense and Security Department at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) were ecstatic about the possibility that the United States would give the Ukrainians Tomahawks. “As with Hamas and the fighting in Gaza, bringing the Ukraine war to an end requires speaking the only language that Moscow understands: force,” wrote Seth G. Jones and Tom Karako in a Wall Street Journal op-ed. More from Jones and Karako:

Without Tomahawks or a system with a similar payload and range, Ukraine can’t put real pressure on Russian supply lines, military production or long-range launchers into Ukrainian territory. Ukraine can use Tomahawks to target rear support areas sustaining Russian front-line operations, including weapons and fuel depots, tank-production facilities, and air bases used by Russian fighters and bombers.

It’s true that Putin might interpret America’s friendly negotiation approach as weak and naïve. But it’s also true that the CSIS is a profoundly hawkish outfit funded by defense contractors and staffed by people with strong ties to defense and intelligence agencies. They’re the hand guiding the only tool the know of, the hammer, to the nail. Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, and Boeing are among the CISIS’s financial backers. But that’s three of many more. As the Quincy Institute noted in 2023, when CSIS was complaining that the Pentagon wasn’t spending enough, 20 different defense contractors were funding the CISIS. Moreover, Jones, the president of CSIS, is a former Department of Defense senior official and has worked with the CIA in advisory roles.

Uncertain Outcome

Trump has been trying to mediate peace between these two sibling nations before he even moved back in the Oval Office. And despite what some think, it’s hard to interpret his behavior, words, and efforts as a façade covering a hidden motive to start World War III. A more likely explanation is that Trump’s erratic personality and allergy to details is what’s prompting the vacillating, chaotic foreign policy of the U.S. government.

Putin and Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky have more in common than they may care to admit. Both are accused of being dictators. Both lead governments believed to have persecuted, even killed, dissident journalists. And both have an alleged track record of silencing government critics.

On Friday, Zelensky will be back in the White House, hat in hand. He’ll likely have a bigger hat than the one he passes out in Europe because he’ll be asking for Tomahawks. He’ll likely try to convince Trump that, just like all the previous times, Putin’s reassurances will come to naught and that the right thing to do is give Ukraine more firepower.

The question is, what will Trump do?

This article was originally published on The New American.

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Yesterday I saw in report in the Telegraph headlined Britain and France are at the end stage of ‘centrist dad’ collapse and found the following paragraph about Starmer and Macron especially memorable.

Wrong on almost everything, hated by voters, incapable of truth-telling, driven by a messianic belief in environmentalism and global technocracy, unable to confront reality, gripped by suicidal empathy and addicted to virtue-signalling, Starmer and Macron have ended up as unlikely brothers in arms, despite their seemingly incompatible styles.

The report resonated with me, as I had, just the day before, had a long telephone conversation with former British MP, Andrew Bridgen, about the current state of affairs in England. He perceives them to be very grim.

In the summer of 2014, on the 100th anniversary of the First World War, I found myself visiting Leipzig, Germany, where I wandered into a book store near the St. Thomas Church, where J.S. Bach had served as the music director from 1723 to 1750. The store was stocked with books by authors all trying to answer the question: Why did the great nations of Europe essentially commit suicide in 1914-18?

The answer, it seems to me, is the marked tendency of any society’s political class to be captured by interests and ideologies that have little to do with the interests of the people they govern. Apart from bankers and arms manufacturers, the Great War of 1914-18 served no one who lived in the warring countries. On the contrary, it sent millions of their young men—including their most educated young men—to be machine gunned and gassed in the trenches.

While some elements of the state are necessary for providing basic security, maintaining critical infrastructure, and adjudicating conflict, the state invariably becomes way too big and parasitic, and ultimately cancerous.

I fear that Britain, France, and Germany are currently suffering from Stage 4 Cancer that originated in the bosom of their bizarre governments run by total weirdos who in no way represent the interests of the people they govern.

This article was originally published on Courageous Discourse.

The post The End of Britain, France, and Germany appeared first on LewRockwell.

Gilbert Doctorow and I share the belief that unless Putin responds more firmly than he has been inclined to do to the West’s provocations, war is inevitable.

Hungary, led by the only intelligent leader in Europe, has arranged a meeting in Budapest between Trump and Putin.  I suspect that this is the last chance to avoid war.  Its success turns on whether Trump can abandon his bully role, understand that the solution requires a NATO pullback from Russia’s borders and a mutual security agreement between Russia and the West, and declare in a press conference that Washington’s support (incitement really) of Ukraine is at an end.

For Putin, I suspect the meeting in Hungary is Putin’s last test of Trump.  If Trump fails the test, chances are high that delivery of Tomahawks to Ukraine will result in a Russian declaration of war against Ukraine and quick destruction by conventional means of Ukraine’s ability to continue the conflict.  Putin will have reversed his strategy of non-response to provocations and put the West on notice, something he should have done years ago.  The likelihood is the Russian Foreign Ministry’s effort to dismiss the Tomahawk threat as terrorism rather than an act of war will fail.

Unless Trump comes to his senses, a brutal demonstration of Russian force is all that can stop the momentum toward a real war.  See this and this.

The post The Trump-Putin Meeting in Hungary Is the Last Chance for Peace appeared first on LewRockwell.

There are a number of indicators which lets one predict that the Trump administration, during the next election, will use government forces to severely attack and disrupt all opposition to it.

Trump has send the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents into the cities to harass and arrest alleged illegal immigrants. Due cause is disregarded and the methods used by the agents are brutal.

Trump has also sent National Guard troops into cities where, he claimed, riots were taking place. There were no riots or ‘terrorist incidents’ but the presence of troops is used to create a militarized atmosphere.

A new National Security Presidential Memorandum, NSPM-7 issued by Trump has defined new classes of internal enemies:

With the mainstream media distracted by the made-for-TV drama of James Comey’s indictment, Trump has signed a little-noticed national security directive identifying “anti-Christian” and “anti-American” views as indicators of radical left violence.
…
In NSPM-7, “Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence,” President Trump directs the Justice Department, the FBI, and other national security agencies and departments to fight his version of political violence in America, retooling a network of Joint Terrorism Task Forces to focus on “leftist” political violence in America. This vast counterterrorism army, made up of federal, state, and local agents would, as Trump aide Stephen Miller said, form “the central hub of that effort.”
…
The Trump administration isn’t only targeting organizations or groups but even individuals and “entities” whom NSPM-7 says can be identified by any of the following “indicia” (indicators) of violence:
anti-Americanism,

• • anti-capitalism,
  • anti-Christianity,
  • support for the overthrow of the United States Government,
  • extremism on migration,
  • extremism on race,
  • extremism on gender,
  • hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family,
  • hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on religion, and
  • hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on morality.

“The United States requires a national strategy to investigate and disrupt networks, entities, and organizations that foment political violence so that law enforcement can intervene in criminal conspiracies before they result in violent political acts,” the directive states (emphasis mine).

That all may sound laughable but these are unfortunately serious policies .  The target list includes organizations which do not exist:

The FBI and the homeland security department are actively investigating “Antifa” individuals and organizations that the Trump administration has branded domestic terrorists. Actions so far include collecting intelligence on Antifa “affinity” groups, canvassing the FBI’s vast informant network for tips about Antifa, and scrutinizing financial records, two sources involved in the investigations tell me.

There are no ‘antifa’ organizations. ‘Antifa’ is the idea of fighting indications of fascism. From time to time local interest groups may claim to do so for this or that reason. This category ‘antifa’ was likely chosen because it can be applied to any group that opposes government policies.

Today Yves Smith reports of another enforcement agency that Trump will use to destroy opposition to him:

The war against Trump’s perceived political enemies keeps escalating. The Wall Street Journal provides new detail on how the Trump Administration intends to use an IRS criminal unit, whose members bear arms, as part of his campaign against “left-leaning” organizations. This fallows a Reuters account describing how the Trump Administration intends to use the Department of Justice and DHS to pursue “left wing” groups that allegedly fomented violence.
…
Now to the press accounts. Key sections from the Journal’s report:

The Trump administration is preparing sweeping changes at the Internal Revenue Service that would allow the agency to pursue criminal inquiries of left-leaning groups more easily, according to people familiar with the matter.

A senior IRS official involved in the effort has drawn up a list of potential targets that includes major Democratic donors, some of the people said.

The undertaking aims to install allies of President Trump at the IRS criminal-investigative division, or IRS-CI, to exert firmer control over the unit and weaken the involvement of IRS lawyers in criminal investigations, officials said. The proposed changes could open the door to politically motivated probes…

Among those on the list are the billionaire Democratic donor George Soros and his affiliated groups…

Many on the left will not mind any attack on George Soros as his organization is well know for financing foreign color revolutions against legitimate leftist rulers. We can however be assured that Trump wont stop with them:

The list includes Soros’ Open Society Foundations; ActBlue, the funding arm of the Democratic Party; Indivisible, a grassroots coalition opposed to Trump policies and the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, a Los Angeles-based group.
…
Other groups on the list include two Jewish nonprofits that oppose Israel’s war in Gaza – IfNotNow and Jewish Voice for Peace.

There is unfortunately little institutional or political opposition that can restrain Trump:

The push against domestic groups and their donors comes amid Trump’s attacks on law firms, universities and the media, and his deployment of National Guard troops to some Democratic-run cities.
…
Timothy Naftali, a presidential historian and former director of the Richard Nixon presidential library, said Trump and Nixon were similar in their desire to punish political enemies and silence critics, but a pliant Republican-controlled Congress and a cabinet packed with loyalists are enabling Trump to go further.

“That’s why this particular moment is more dangerous for the rule of law in the United States than the 1970s were,” Naftali said.

All these are ominous signs that Trumps war on the political opposition will escalate further. Seymour Hersh’s sources are warning of this:

What’s happening now may be a trial run for the use of those forces to interfere on the behalf of the president and the Republican Party in states where the Democratic Party has a chance to win crucial seats in next fall’s Congressional elections. I’ve been told by someone with inside knowledge that planning for such action is now under way in the White House.

The ‘coerced dominance’ that has marked Trump’s brutal approach to foreign policy will now being applied to domestic issues and legitimate opposition.

Russell Vought, Trumps’s Director of the Office of Management and Budget, and Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff for policy, are the men behind this.

The scary thing is that there is, so far, little or any opposition to these plans and only few warnings about their consequences.

Reprinted with permission from Moon of Alabama.

The post Trump’s War Against ‘Left-leaning’ Groups Extends Further appeared first on LewRockwell.

Whether he has done so wittingly or unwittingly, President Trump has backed himself into a corner with respect to Venezuela. After amassing a formidable armada of military forces in the Caribbean off Venezuelan shores and having killed some 24 suspected U.S. drug-law violators on the high seas, Trump has now effectively committed himself to initiating a regime-change war against Venezuela. Everyone should now brace himself for what is coming — another in a long line of foreign regime-change undeclared wars of aggression in violation of the U.S. Constitution and the principles set forth at Nuremberg.

After all, Trump knows that if he backs down now and orders a withdrawal of that armada of warships, war planes (including B-52s), and tens of thousands of troops, Venezuela’s socialist president Nicolás Maduro will crow about how he forced the all-powerful ruler of the United States to back down and return his military forces to the United States. There is no way that Trump can now permit himself to go down that road. From his own personal perspective, he cannot be seen as being “weak.” He has placed himself in a position where he has to show courage and fortitude by initiating a war against Venezuela, one that leaves Maduro dead or captured.

No doubt that Trump is hoping that this massive military buildup will pressure Maduro into abdicating and fleeing the country, in which case Trump knows that he (Trump) will be hailed as a hero for saving the country from an unelected socialist dictator. Will Maduro do so? It’s possible, and he’d be smart to do so. But if he doesn’t, Trump has placed himself in a position of having to launch an illegal regime-change war against Venezuela, one that will leave at least some innocent people dead.

But consider the benefits of such a war from the standpoint of Trump. First and foremost, a war against Venezuela will put to rest the Jeffrey Epstein rebellion within Trump’s MAGA movement. With the massive military buildup in the Caribbean and the killing of unarmed suspected drug-law violators at the hands of the military, the Epstein rebellion has already dissipated. It will fizzle out with the first bombs or missiles fired into Venezuelan territory.

I pointed out this phenomenon back on July 22, before Trump had begun to send warships to Venezuela. My article was entitled, “Get Ready for a Big Foreign Crisis.” No, I don’t profess to be Nostradamus. My reasoning was simply based on the insightful words of James Madison: “The means of defense against foreign danger have been always the instruments of tyranny at home. Among the Romans it was a standing maxim to excite a war, whenever a revolt was apprehended.”

There was a boiling revolt among Trump’s MAGA supporters over Trump’s failure to order the release of the Epstein files. What better way to suppress that revolt than to excite a war against Venezuela? When the bombing of Venezuela begins, I will guarantee you that the Trump’s MAGA supporters will completely forget Jeffrey Epstein and will hop to, click their heels, recite the Pledge of Allegiance (which was written by a socialist), sing the Start Spangled Banner, thank the troops for their “service” in defending our “freedom,” and bask in their vicarious courage. The Epstein rebellion will be all but dead.

Moreover, Trump knows that many Venezuelan citizens will hail him as the greatest liberator since Simón Bolívar for having saved the country from a socialist dictator who clearly lost the last presidential election.

There is also a huge benefit for the national-security branch of the federal government. Consider its 20-year deadly and destructive military fiasco in Afghanistan, one in which American soldiers were sacrificed for nothing, just like they were in Vietnam. The American people never even had time to reflect on the Afghanistan disaster because the Pentagon, using its old Cold War dinosaur NATO, quickly maneuvered America into another war — this one against Russia by using Ukraine as its proxy. As everyone knows, that war isn’t going so well either.

And don’t forget Iraq, where U.S. officials used their bogus WMD scare to justify an undeclared regime-change war of aggression, one that left thousands of Iraqis and Americans dead, destroyed the entire country, and installed a regime that was aligned with Iran, which is considered to be an official enemy of the United States.

Of course, Iran is the country whose democratic system was destroyed by the CIA in yet another instance of U.S. foreign interventionism, which led to the U.S.-supported tyranny of the Shah, which led to the Iranian revolution, which led to Iran being declared a permanent official enemy of the United States.

One year after the 1953 Iranian escapade came the CIA’s regime-change operation in Guatemala, which led to a decade-long civil war that killed more than a million people. Oh well, at least they weren’t Americans.

Clearly, the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA could use a lift. A war with Venezuela will easily give them such a lift. Despite Madura’s bluster, there is no way that the Venezuelan military can oppose the most powerful military in the world. After all, look at how quickly U.S. forces have dispatched and destroyed those suspected drug-smuggling boats in the Caribbean. They have been able to easily win those battles and, as the Pentagon points out, without any loss of American life.

Moreover, Venezuela has been the victim of socialism and U.S. sanctions for decades. Its military is so weak it couldn’t defeat Grenada. Upon the first sight of U.S. Marines, Venezuelan forces and Maduro’s civilian “militia” will quickly surrender. They are not about to sacrifice their lives for Maduro, who will be assassinated, executed, or captured and brought back to the United States in chains.

Trump and his MAGA supporters as well as the national-security establishment will be exultant over this gigantic difficult military victory. They will sing about how proud they are to be Americans because their difficult undeclared, unconstitutional, illegal war against Venezuela will have brought “freedom” to Venezuela and protected America from the dangers of socialism, the Tren de Aragua gang, illegal-immigrant invaders, and “narco-terrorism.”

Never mind that the destruction of freedom in America through militarized and para-militarized omnipotent government will continue apace, with many shell-shocked American citizens passively letting it happen or even supporting what James Madison called “the instruments of tyranny at home.” At the same time, the irrational mass killings, the soaring suicide rates among young people and veterans, the hopeless dependency on government largess, and the out-of-control federal spending and debt that threaten national bankruptcy will continue to afflict America’s statist society — all coincidentally of course.

Reprinted with permission from The Future of Freedom Foundation.

The post Another Regime-Change War Is Coming appeared first on LewRockwell.

The Apostolic Exhortation Dilexi Te limits its discussion of “migrants” to three paragraphs: 73–75. Paragraph 73 claims that “The experience of migration accompanies the history of the People of God,” citing Abraham, Moses, and the Flight into Egypt. Paragraph 74 focuses on two 19th-century Church figures involved in the care of migrants in the Americas: St. Frances Xavier Cabrini and Bishop Giovanni Battista Scalabrini. Paragraph 75 cites contemporary examples of work with “migrants,” quoting Pope Francis’ line that “our response to the challenges posed by contemporary migration can be summed up in four verbs: welcome, protect, promote, and integrate.” It further reminds us that every person is a child of God, made in the divine image and likeness, and insists that “proclamation of the Gospel is credible only when it is translated into gestures of closeness and welcome,” concluding that “in every rejected migrant, it is Christ himself who knocks at the door of the community.”

Before these claims even reach the level of theology, standard logic would challenge them. The first question arises from what Dilexi Te does not ask: the legal status of a “migrant.” The Exhortation simply ignores the issue. There are only “migrants.”

What are we to conclude from that omission? That the legal status of a migrant is irrelevant? That would surprise nearly every state in the world, each of which not only distinguishes between legal and illegal immigrants but among legal categories themselves: temporary workers on nonimmigrant visas, refugees, asylum seekers, parolees, or permanent residents. The legal status of a migrant determines that person’s rights, obligations, and future in the host country. Would the Holy See tell  states to abandon such distinctions? If not, why does Dilexi Te fail even to acknowledge them?

Or is the Exhortation suggesting that Catholics should disregard the legality question altogether? If so, that would represent a radical shift in Catholic teaching about the obligations of citizens toward the state. If this is now doctrine, when and where was it promulgated? If it is not, then what is the nature of Dilexi Te’s statements on migration? Are they opinion, advice, or fervorino? Catholics have a right to know what binds conscience and what does not. A clear line has always separated authoritative teaching from pastoral commentary, the latter not enjoying magisterial weight.

These distinctions matter. What should a Catholic who works for ICE in field enforcement think? Or a CBP officer at a border checkpoint? Or a USCIS employee adjudicating claims for status change? Does a Catholic immigration officer act in bad faith by enforcing his country’s immigration laws?

Dilexi Te also plays loosely with history. Migration patterns in the ancient world differed radically from the modern era. Israel lay along the Fertile Crescent, between Egypt’s Nile and Babylon’s Tigris and Euphrates. Movement along that route was normal—but not unregulated. Those who use Exodus 23:9 (“you were aliens in the land of Egypt”) as a proof text for open borders forget that even St. Thomas Aquinas noted that Old Testament norms for foreigners were nuanced and conditional.

Moreover, to use ancient migration as a model for modern policy ignores the Westphalian system of sovereign states that emerged after 1648. Modern theology praises “historical development,” yet Dilexi Te seems blind to the historical development of political order itself. If doctrine may “develop,” why can’t history? Does anyone in Rome seriously believe the Westphalian state can—or should—be erased?

The discussion of Cabrini and Scalabrini likewise sidesteps the legality issue. When Mother Cabrini tended an orphan, she did not ask his legal status, but she lived in an era of lawful, regulated migration. The late 19th century was marked by large-scale, legally sanctioned immigration to the United States and Canada. Her ministry, and that of Bishop Scalabrini, did not conflict with the legal order of the countries they served. Indeed, the Catholic bishops of the United States then worked hard to reinforce the idea that “good Catholic” meant “good American.” It is difficult to imagine John Ireland or “Dagger John” Hughes endorsing or abetting large-scale illegal entry into the United States.

Invoking historical precedents from a different time and legal order to justify contemporary mass illegal immigration stretches analogy beyond reason. Only by ignoring both history and law can one claim—on Francis’ word—that the verbs governing migration can only be “welcome, protect, promote, and integrate.”

Does “welcoming” mean disregarding national immigration law? Nothing in Catholic teaching defines immigration restrictions as intrinsically unjust. On what basis does the Church think it may ignore—de jure or de facto—legitimate state law in this area?  Under the banner of “protecting” migrants? When violations of those laws occur on a massive scale, does the Church’s practical disregard for them amount to material cooperation with lawbreaking? Or does it evade that charge by saying it merely “promotes” the cause of migrants, regardless of legal status?

If immigration controls are a legitimate act of sovereignty, then when the Church “integrates” migrants sociologically without corresponding legal integration, it risks trespassing on rights that belong to Caesar. By fostering sociological integration absent legal status, the Church effectively pressures the state to create legal pathways, even though determining such status is a civil competence. Caesar has rights in justice too—including not to have his hand forced by faits accomplis.

These are not just questions of “standing with the poor.” They concern the relationship between Church and state and the Church’s role in telling states how to adjudicate legal presence, residence, and citizenship. Their implications reach far beyond charity. To omit the core issue—legal status—is to discuss migration as if the modern political order did not exist.

When Jesus was asked about paying taxes to Rome, He did not merely dodge a trap; He recognized that while God’s primacy is absolute, Caesar has real, subordinate rights. Vatican II called this the “autonomy of created things.” Those “created things,” after 1648, include the sovereign state. No honest discussion of migration can ignore that fact.

In the end, Dilexi Te’s treatment of migration leaves Catholics with serious unanswered questions. The Church may and must remind believers of the moral dignity of every person. But she cannot call Catholics to actions that imply contempt for lawful authority, nor can she treat the existence of sovereign states as a regrettable accident of history. If Rome wishes to speak credibly about migration, it must do so in full awareness that the world of Abraham and Moses is not the world of passports, borders, and visas—and that Catholics, while bound by charity, are also citizens. Between God and Caesar, the Exhortation seems to have forgotten that both still have legitimate claims upon us.

This article was originally published on Crisis Magazine.

The post When ‘Welcome’ Collides With Caesar: Dilexi Te and the Missing Question appeared first on LewRockwell.

One day we’re in a “trade war with China,” and the next day we’re not. One day, there are threats of “100% tariffs,” on Chinese goods and the next day there aren’t. World leaders need to do nothing but sit back and watch. Meanwhile, the American people are taken on an emotional roller-coaster of threats that (ironically) would harm the American people more than anyone else. What’s going on here?

The post Trump “Trade War” Chaos with China — Who Benefits? appeared first on LewRockwell.

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

Il manoscritto fornisce un grimaldello al lettore, una chiave di lettura semplificata, del mondo finanziario e non che sembra essere andato fuori controllo negli ultimi quattro anni in particolare. Questa 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 la storia di un coyote, che quando non riesce a sfamarsi all'esterno ricorre all'autofagocitazione. Lo stesso accaduto ai membri del G7, dove i sei membri restanti hanno iniziato a fagocitare il settimo: gli Stati Uniti.

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di Joshua Stylman

(Versione audio della traduzione disponibile qui: https://open.substack.com/pub/fsimoncelli/p/spazio-simboli-e-sospetti)

Di recente mi sono imbattuto nella stimolante serie di articoli di Fadi Lama intitolata, Mass Psychology in Geopolitics, in particolare nella sua analisi sull'allunaggio del 1969 e del suo legame con i cambiamenti geopolitici. L'introduzione di Meryl Nass al lavoro di Lama ha evidenziato diverse questioni chiave sull'allunaggio che hanno trovato riscontro nella mia ricerca. Mi ero reso conto che Fadi aveva già commentato il mio Substack in precedenza, sempre con domande e idee provocatorie. Questo mi ha ispirato a rivisitare una storia che avevo condiviso su Instagram circa un anno fa e a raccogliere i dati in un'analisi più completa della NASA e delle sue attività.

Il seguente saggio trae spunto da quegli appunti, ora ampliati con ulteriore contesto tratto dal lavoro di Lama. Sebbene il saggio di quest'ultimo sia in linea con gran parte di ciò che ho ricercato in modo indipendente, le mie osservazioni sono nate da una discussione online in cui mi sono imbattuto sulla regressione nei sistemi complessi. Qualcuno si è chiesto: “La NASA potrebbe far atterrare di nuovo gli astronauti sulla Luna in sicurezza?” L'ipotesi era che forse evitasse di provarci perché un potenziale fallimento potrebbe rivelare quanto la scienza e le agenzie governative siano regredite in cinque decenni.

Questa prospettiva, pur stimolante, scalfisce solo la superficie. Quando iniziamo a esaminare le origini e le peculiarità che circondano la NASA, emerge un quadro diverso, che suggerisce che la nostra comprensione dell'esplorazione spaziale potrebbe essere costruita su una narrazione attentamente costruita.

Le origini nazi-Disney

Pochi immaginerebbero che il celebre programma spaziale americano sia stato fondato da quello che sembra l'improbabile cast di un thriller storico: un ex-ingegnere missilistico delle SS naziste, un occultista che si definiva l'Anticristo e l'amato creatore di Topolino. Eppure sono proprio queste le figure intrecciate alle fondamenta della NASA. Werner von Braun, uno scienziato nazista giunto negli Stati Uniti tramite l'Operazione Paperclip subito dopo il processo di Norimberga, ebbe un ruolo determinante nella fondazione della NASA. Ancora più curioso, von Braun lavorò a stretto contatto con Walt Disney per contribuire a ottenere il sostegno pubblico per la neonata agenzia spaziale, come dimostrano le loro documentate collaborazioni e apparizioni televisive.

La NASA non fu solo fondata da von Braun, ma fu guidata da altri ufficiali nazisti delle SS, come Kurt Debus, che supervisionò i lanci di razzi dal Kennedy Space Center dopo aver sfruttato il lavoro forzato nella Germania nazista. Questa concentrazione di ex-scienziati nazisti e funzionari ai massimi livelli del programma spaziale americano solleva seri interrogativi sui suoi veri obiettivi e sulla sua lealtà.

Un'altra figura chiave in questa storia è Jack Parsons, un influente scienziato missilistico che ebbe un forte impatto sul lavoro di von Braun. Parsons, che contribuì a fondare il Jet Propulsion Laboratory, era anche noto per essere un devoto occultista e discepolo di Aleister Crowley. Molti credono che il personaggio della Marvel, Tony Stark, tragga ispirazione dal genio eccentrico di Parsons. Come Crowley, egli si concentrò sull'introduzione dell'“Eone di Horus” o dell'“Era dell'Acquario” – concetti occulti che sembrano fuori luogo nel contesto di un programma spaziale governativo.

Parsons non era solo interessato all'occulto: ne era profondamente immerso. Diresse la Loggia Agape, la branca californiana dell'Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO) di Crowley, e quest'ultimo lo nominò personalmente a capo di essa. Nel 1946 Parsons e L. Ron Hubbard (che in seguito fondò Scientology) condussero una serie di rituali noti come “Operazione Babalon”, i quali incorporavano la magia sessuale nel tentativo di manifestare un “Figlio della Luna”, un'incarnazione della dea thelemica Babalon. Parsons si dichiarò persino l'Anticristo nei suoi scritti: “Io, Anticristo Belarion, nell'anno 1949 del dominio della Fratellanza Nera chiamata Cristianesimo, dichiaro la mia fedeltà all'Amato Padre Lucifero”. L'FBI indagò su Parsons per queste attività, contribuendo infine alla sua perdita dell'autorizzazione di sicurezza, il tutto mentre stava sviluppando una tecnologia che sarebbe diventata fondamentale per il programma spaziale della NASA.

Queste insolite intersezioni tra scienziati nazisti, l'impero dell'intrattenimento Disney e pratiche occulte alla nascita del nostro programma spaziale sollevano interrogativi sulla vera natura e sullo scopo della NASA.

La questione del firmamento

È interessante notare che la lapide di Werner von Braun reca l'iscrizione del Salmo 19:1: “I cieli narrano la gloria di Dio e il firmamento annuncia l'opera delle sue mani”.

Il concetto di firmamento – una barriera cosmica che separa le acque celesti dalla Terra – compare in numerose culture antiche.

Mentre la scienza moderna rifiuta ufficialmente questa nozione, alcuni organi di informazione generalisti come Fox News hanno riportato la scoperta di uno “scudo invisibile terrestre in stile Star Trek” e pubblicazioni scientifiche hanno fatto riferimento a “barriere protettive invisibili che circondano la Terra”, facendo paragoni con i campi di forza della fantascienza.

La Reuters e altri fact-checker hanno negato categoricamente l'esistenza di una cupola o di un firmamento che copra la Terra. Ho sviluppato un'utile euristica negli ultimi anni: quando i fact-checker diventano particolarmente insistenti su qualcosa, di solito è un segnale che è necessario approfondire. Sebbene nulla sia conclusivo, queste operazioni tendono a essere messe in atto dalle stesse strutture di potere che affermano di voler esaminare i fatti, rendendo le loro presunte confutazioni ancora più interessanti.

Il concetto di Terra come sfera ha origini antiche, risalenti ai filosofi greci del VI-III secolo a.C. Pitagora e i suoi seguaci, che formarono una confraternita filosofica segreta con insegnamenti mistici, furono tra i primi sostenitori di una Terra sferica. Sebbene Pitagora non fosse un massone (poiché la Massoneria emerse millenni dopo), le moderne tradizioni massoniche onorano esplicitamente lui e altri antichi filosofi greci. I massoni sono stati storicamente determinanti nella diffusione della conoscenza scientifica, compresi i concetti astronomici. Questa relazione tra antiche società segrete e la Massoneria moderna ha portato alcuni ricercatori a individuare conoscenze riservate sulle verità cosmologiche.

Il rapporto tra la NASA e la Disney si estendeva oltre la mera pubblicità. Il “Club 33” di Walt Disney a Disneyland – l'unico luogo del parco in cui si servono alcolici – avrebbe ospitato von Braun e altri funzionari della NASA come ospiti abituali. Questo club esclusivo, con i suoi presunti legami massonici, offriva un luogo discreto in cui queste figure si incontravano, mentre Tomorrowland della Disney veniva progettato in collaborazione con la NASA, forse come una forma di programmazione predittiva per i concetti di viaggio spaziale.

In una coincidenza particolarmente strana, von Braun scrisse Project Mars: A Technical Tale, un libro del 1949 sulla colonizzazione di Marte da parte di un leader chiamato “Elon”.

Questo è un dettaglio singolare considerando che l'attuale imprenditore dello spazio condivide questo nome e sembra favorire approcci tecnocratici, allineandosi con suo nonno, una figura chiave del partito della Tecnocrazia in Canada quasi un secolo fa. La sua difesa delle tasse sull'anidride carbonica e l'idea di una “Tecnocrazia di Marte” alludono a un filo conduttore ideologico persistente, sollevando interrogativi sull'influenza della filosofia tecnocratica sugli sforzi di colonizzazione spaziale.

In alcune culture Marte era chiamato “Horus dell'Orizzonte” o “Horus il Rosso”, collegandolo alla divinità egizia associata al cielo e alla guerra, aggiungendo un ulteriore strato di significato mitologico alla nostra narrativa sull'esplorazione spaziale.

La coincidenza della CGI

Anche la tempistica della fondazione della NASA desta perplessità. L'agenzia fu fondata nel 1958, lo stesso anno in cui le immagini generate al computer (CGI) apparvero per la prima volta sullo schermo in La donna che visse due volte di Hitchcock, quando Alfred Hitchcock assunse il pioniere dell'animazione al computer John Whitney per creare la sequenza iniziale. Questo parallelismo tecnologico continua ancora oggi, con la NASA che riconosce apertamente che molte immagini che vediamo dallo spazio sono create o migliorate utilizzando strumenti digitali.

Robert Simmon, noto come “Mr. Blue Marble” alla NASA, ha spiegato pubblicamente sul sito web ufficiale della NASA cosa comporta il suo ruolo: “Trasformo i dati in immagini. Cerco nuovi e interessanti eventi che i satelliti della NASA hanno visto o che sono nascosti nei dati più recenti”. Questa ammissione non è solo suggestiva: è un riconoscimento esplicito che ciò che percepiamo come fotografie dallo spazio sono in realtà visualizzazioni di dati. La NASA ha persino affermato di affidarsi a “ingegneri e scienziati per produrre i dati”, sollevando seri dubbi sull'autenticità di ciò che stiamo vedendo. Perché avrebbero bisogno di “trasformare i dati in immagini” se hanno delle fotografie vere e proprie?

In un altro curioso sviluppo, l'anno scorso la NASA ha firmato un accordo con Nikon per sviluppare la fotocamera Lunar Artemis. Stranamente il giorno successivo all'annuncio di questa partnership, Nikon ha ritirato dal mercato la sua unica fotocamera con mega-zoom, portando alcuni a mettere in discussione i tempi e lo scopo di questo accordo.

Le domande sul Challenger

Forse l'aspetto più sconcertante della storia della NASA riguarda il disastro del Challenger e quella che è una straordinaria anomalia statistica. Non la presento come una conclusione, ma come un vero e proprio enigma che merita seria considerazione. Ciò che segue è una prova che mi ha lasciato sinceramente confuso e alla ricerca di spiegazioni che possano conciliare queste osservazioni con la comprensione convenzionale.

I ricercatori hanno documentato uno schema straordinario: sette astronauti che sarebbero morti sul Challenger avevano dei sosia di età simile con lo stesso nome, un'improbabilità statistica che sfida ogni spiegazione. Il comandante Francis Richard Scobee era identico all'amministratore delegato Richard Scobee di Cows in Trees, Ltd.; la specialista di missione Judith Resnik aveva una sorprendente somiglianza con la professoressa Judith Resnik della Yale Law School; la somiglianza di Sharon Christa McAuliffe con la professoressa di giurisprudenza di Syracuse Sharon A. McAuliffe era meno pronunciata rispetto alle altre (è interessante notare che era l'insegnante che la maggior parte degli americani ricorda dalla missione); lo specialista di missione Ronald McNair sembrava un gemello di Carl McNair (identificato come “fratello di Ronald McNair”); persino lo specialista del carico utile Ellison Onizuka aveva una controparte quasi identica in Claude Onizuka (anch'esso dichiarato fratello); lo specialista di missione Michael J. Smith aveva un sosia con lo stesso nome che lavorava come professore.

Sebbene queste affermazioni rimangano indimostrate, le straordinarie somiglianze facciali e di nome tra gli astronauti del Challenger e i loro presunti sosia mettono in discussione ogni probabilità di base. Anche se liquidiamo le somiglianze facciali come soggettive, dobbiamo comunque affrontare una straordinaria questione statistica: quali sono le probabilità che più astronauti del Challenger avessero dei sosia con gli stessi identici nomi, in posizioni di influenza, ancora in vita decenni dopo? Se si trattasse semplicemente di persone che per caso assomigliavano agli astronauti del Challenger, le probabilità che condividessero anche nomi identici sarebbero infinitesimali.

Non presento queste prove per dimostrare una teoria specifica, piuttosto le offro come una sincera sfida intellettuale: quale spiegazione rende meglio conto di queste notevoli somiglianze, pur rimanendo coerente con la nostra comprensione della probabilità e del comportamento umano? L'improbabilità statistica sembra richiedere una qualche forma di spiegazione che vada oltre la mera coincidenza.

Coloro che sono inclini a mettere in discussione i resoconti ufficiali – i critici potrebbero chiamarli “complottisti”, anche se io preferisco “ricercatori della verità” – potrebbero chiedersi: il disastro del Challenger potrebbe aver contribuito a far apparire i viaggi spaziali pericolosi agli occhi della popolazione? Un simile spettacolo potrebbe spiegare perché la NASA non abbia potuto continuare le missioni lunari o consentire l'osservazione civile dello spazio, chiudendo di fatto la porta al controllo pubblico delle proprie attività.

Avendo assistito personalmente all'esplosione del Challenger da bambino in televisione, ho riflettuto su come questo evento abbia creato un trauma collettivo per un'intera generazione di studenti. Se considerato insieme ad altri eventi traumatici nazionali come l'assassinio di JFK, l'11 settembre e la pandemia di COVID-19, emerge un modello di impatti psicologici a livello sociale che rimodella la coscienza e le priorità pubbliche. In ogni caso il trauma collettivo apre a importanti cambiamenti nelle politiche, nelle strutture di potere e nell'accettazione pubblica di cambiamenti precedentemente impensabili, il tutto verso un maggiore controllo e una minore trasparenza.

Queste sorprendenti somiglianze sono state presentate in una convincente testimonianza pubblica presso il tribunale della contea di Brevard (sede di Cape Canaveral) da Justin Harvey, che ha esposto metodicamente le prove con notevole chiarezza e coraggio. La sua presentazione è stata così approfondita e ben documentata che la reazione della corte è stata significativa: l'hanno subito interrotta, sostenendo di non avere giurisdizione sulla questione. Consiglio vivamente di guardare l'intera testimonianza di sei minuti, poiché presenta le prove in modo molto più convincente di quanto possa riassumere qui.

Il frettoloso silenziamento di questa linea di indagine la dice lunga: se gli ultimi anni mi hanno insegnato qualcosa, è di prestare molta attenzione alle persone censurate. Per chi fosse interessato ad approfondire questa ricerca, Harvey ha elaborato in dettaglio le sue scoperte durante un'apparizione al podcast di Sam Tripoli, dove presenta ulteriori prove e collega queste osservazioni a modelli più ampi.

Quando le è stata contestata la sua somiglianza e il suo identico nome con l'astronauta del Challenger alla Yale University, Judith Resnik è andata nel panico ed è scappata via dalle telecamere (guardate il segmento che inizia da questo minutaggio). Questa reazione è molto più rivelatrice di una semplice negazione, sollevando ulteriori interrogativi su cosa ci fosse esattamente da nascondere.

A peggiorare i sospetti, Robert F. Overmyer, il capo investigatore dell'esplosione del Challenger, morì in un incidente aereo il 22 marzo 1996, una data associata alla misteriosa società Skull and Bones. Che sia una coincidenza o meno, questi schemi di silenzio e morti inaspettate hanno alimentato ulteriori speculazioni su cosa sia realmente accaduto al Challenger e al suo equipaggio.

Le peculiarità dell'allunaggio

L'allunaggio, il massimo successo della NASA, porta con sé una serie di curiosità. Buzz Aldrin, il secondo uomo sulla Luna, ha un background insolito: il cognome da nubile di sua madre era Marion Moon, la quale si tolse tragicamente la vita un anno prima che Buzz camminasse sulla superficie lunare. Suo padre era un dirigente della Standard Oil e, sorprendentemente, vendette tutte le sue azioni appena due mesi prima del crollo di Wall Street del 1929.

Ancora più significativo, il padre di Buzz Aldrin, Edwin Eugene “Gene” Aldrin Sr., fondò la scuola di ingegneria a McCook Field, Ohio, che in seguito divenne l'Air Force Institute of Technology (AFIT) presso la base aeronautica di Wright-Patterson. Ciò crea un legame familiare diretto con una delle installazioni militari più segrete d'America: la base aerea di Wright-Patterson fu il sito principale degli scienziati dell'Operazione Paperclip, del Progetto Bluebird (precursore degli esperimenti di controllo mentale MK Ultra) e di un'ampia ricerca sugli UFO (che le valse il soprannome di “vera Area 51” tra i ricercatori). La base ospitò anche Winfried Otto Schumann, il fisico che scoprì la risonanza di Schumann, la frequenza elettromagnetica terrestre spesso associata agli studi sulla coscienza e alle tecnologie avanzate. In uno strano colpo di scena che esemplifica le bizzarre direzioni di ricerca della base, il Laboratorio Wright (precursore del centro di ricerca di Wright-Patterson) propose persino un'arma chimica, la “bomba gay”, nel 1994, che avrebbe suscitato l'attrazione sessuale tra le truppe nemiche. Questo legame diretto tra la famiglia di Buzz Aldrin e il fulcro dell'integrazione scientifica nazista e della ricerca non convenzionale aggiunge un'ulteriore dimensione alla storia della NASA.

Aldrin è un massone del 33° Rito Scozzese e uno Shriner. Portò una bandiera massonica sulla Luna e la Gran Loggia del Texas gli consegnò un diploma ufficiale che lo dichiarava “il primo Massone sulla Luna” e rivendicava la giurisdizione territoriale massonica sulla Luna.

Questa affiliazione massonica non era esclusiva di Aldrin: un numero sproporzionato di primi astronauti della NASA, in particolare quelli coinvolti nei programmi Mercury, Gemini e Apollo, erano Massoni di alto rango. John Glenn, Gordon Cooper, James Irwin, Thomas Stafford e molti altri erano tutti Massoni confermati, spesso provenienti da logge importanti.

Molti astronauti sono stati fotografati mentre facevano distintivi segni massonici con le mani e diversi altri hanno celebrato rituali massonici durante le missioni spaziali. L'astronauta e Massone di 33° grado, Leroy Gordon Cooper, portò persino una bandiera massonica nello spazio durante la missione Gemini 5, percorrendo una distanza stimata di 3.300.000 miglia – il numero 33 appare ripetutamente nella numerologia della NASA.

Perché così tanti astronauti che presumibilmente sono stati “nello spazio” erano massoni? Perché hanno piantato una bandiera massonica sulla Luna? E perché Buzz Aldrin ha un diploma massonico che lo dichiara “il primo massone sulla Luna”? Queste non sono solo strane coincidenze: suggeriscono un modello che collega l'esplorazione spaziale a questa società segreta.

Se l'allunaggio è stato un risultato puramente scientifico per tutta l'umanità, come ha affermato la NASA, perché è stato commemorato con rituali e simboli massonici invece che con onorificenze puramente scientifiche, nazionali, o umanitarie? L'importanza del simbolismo massonico suggerisce che la missione sulla Luna aveva un significato diverso per gli iniziati rispetto al grande pubblico. Questo solleva una domanda scomoda: il programma Apollo serviva contemporaneamente a due narrazioni diverse: una scientifica rivolta al pubblico e una esoterica compresa solo da chi apparteneva a certi ambienti?

Buzz ha rilasciato diverse dichiarazioni sconcertanti sullo sbarco sulla Luna che sollevano seri interrogativi. In un'intervista con una bambina che gli chiedeva perché non fossimo tornati sulla Luna, ha risposto: “Non ci siamo andati [...]. È successo e non è successo”.

In un'altra intervista, quando gli è stato chiesto del momento più spaventoso del suo viaggio sulla Luna, Buzz ha stranamente risposto: “Non è successo. Avrebbe potuto essere spaventoso”. Questo schema di strane risposte sulla missione lunare appare costantemente in tutte le sue apparizioni pubbliche.

Forse l'ammissione più sorprendente proviene da un ingegnere della NASA che ha dichiarato in un'intervista: “Avevamo la tecnologia per andare sulla Luna, ma l'abbiamo distrutta, ed è un processo complesso ricostruirla”.

Quando mai l'umanità ha “dimenticato” una tecnologia di questa portata? Sappiamo ancora come costruire acquedotti romani, cattedrali gotiche e macchine a vapore. Persino tecnologie antiche come il fuoco greco, o l'acciaio di Damasco, sebbene difficili da replicare perfettamente, hanno lasciato tracce sufficienti per comprenderne i principi di base. Immaginate se gli ingegneri di oggi affermassero di aver “perso” la tecnologia per costruire grattacieli, o aerei di linea, e di dover ricominciare da zero. L'idea che la NASA abbia in qualche modo perso i mezzi per ricreare il suo più grande trionfo è più improbabile che mettere in discussione aspetti dell'allunaggio stesso. Nessun'altra civiltà ha mai raggiunto un apice tecnologico solo per poi perdere completamente quella conoscenza, tranne, a quanto pare, in questa occasione.

Quando è apparso nel programma di Conan O'Brien, Buzz ha fatto un altro commento interessante sulle persone che guardavano “ l'animazione” dell'allunaggio piuttosto che il filmato vero e proprio. Per usare le sue parole: “Avete guardato l'animazione [...] avete associato ciò che avete visto a [...]”.

Quando ho condiviso la clip non modificata sui social media l'anno scorso, è stata rapidamente segnalata e rimossa come “disinformazione”, nonostante non contenesse alcun mio commento, solo le parole inalterate di Buzz. A quanto pare far sentire alla gente ciò che un astronauta ha effettivamente detto senza un'interpretazione ufficiale in sovraimpressione costituisce “disinformazione”. Pensate alle implicazioni: le dichiarazioni di un astronauta sull'allunaggio sono ora considerate troppo pericolose per essere lette dal pubblico. Se non c'è nulla da nascondere, perché è necessario un controllo così aggressivo? Questo non è fact-checking, è controllo del pensiero.

Quando un giornalista gli chiese di giurare sulla Bibbia di aver camminato sulla Luna, Buzz reagì in modo decisamente difensivo. In un'altra occasione, quando un altro giornalista insistette con domande simili, Buzz gli diede un pugno in faccia: una reazione estrema per qualcuno che si supponeva sicuro dei suoi successi storici.

Neil Armstrong, il primo uomo sulla Luna, mostrò un disagio simile quando gli venne posta la stessa domanda. In una rara intervista, quando gli fu chiesto della sopraccitata esperienza, Armstrong apparve visibilmente a disagio, evitando il contatto visivo e dando risposte vaghe e incerte, stranamente disconnesse da quello che avrebbe dovuto essere il coronamento della sua vita. Il suo linguaggio del corpo durante le apparizioni pubbliche dopo l'allunaggio contrastava nettamente con il pilota sicuro e composto che era noto per essere prima della missione Apollo.

La dimensione cinematografica

Il rapporto tra la NASA e Hollywood merita un'analisi approfondita. Fin dalla sua nascita la NASA ha collaborato a stretto contatto con l'industria dell'intrattenimento, radicandosi nell'immaginario collettivo attraverso film, televisione e parchi a tema. Questo va ben oltre le tipiche relazioni pubbliche: rappresenta un'integrazione sistematica dei concetti spaziali nei media di intrattenimento. Gli astronauti dell'Apollo 11 hanno una stella sulla Hollywood Walk of Fame, un onore insolito per gli esploratori scientifici piuttosto che per gli artisti. Questo ci spinge a porre una domanda chiave: la NASA ha plasmato le nostre convinzioni sullo spazio attraverso la narrazione e le immagini tanto quanto attraverso la scienza? Questo spiegherebbe i continui e stretti rapporti della NASA con i registi e perché l'intrattenimento a tema spaziale rafforza costantemente narrazioni specifiche sulle nostre capacità e limitazioni cosmiche.

Una delle prove più strane proviene dalla conferenza stampa post-allunaggio. Al loro ritorno sulla Terra gli astronauti dell'Apollo 11 – Armstrong, Aldrin e Collins – parteciparono a quella che avrebbe dovuto essere una celebrazione trionfale del più grande successo esplorativo dell'umanità. Eppure il loro comportamento racconta una storia diversa. Gli astronauti appaiono stranamente cupi, quasi abbattuti, senza mostrare la naturale euforia che ci si aspetterebbe da uomini che hanno appena compiuto l'impossibile. Siedono rigidi, rispondendo alle domande con parole esitanti e attentamente misurate, spesso evitando il contatto visivo.

Questo comportamento diventa ancora più sorprendente se confrontato con quello di altri esploratori storici. Si pensi a Sir Edmund Hillary e Tenzing Norgay dopo la loro storica scalata dell'Everest. Nonostante la stanchezza fisica, i loro volti irradiano autentico orgoglio e gioia. Gli astronauti dell'Apollo, al contrario, si comportano come se fossero a un funerale piuttosto che a una celebrazione, sollevando interrogativi su quale peso psicologico potessero portare.

Alcuni ipotizzano che Stanley Kubrick abbia diretto le riprese dell'allunaggio. Il suo film, Shining, contiene numerosi e presunti riferimenti al programma Apollo, tra cui il ragazzino che indossa un maglione dell'Apollo 11, motivi dei tappeti che richiamano la disposizione della rampa di lancio dell'Apollo e le gemelle che rappresentano il programma spaziale Gemini.

Questa teoria sul coinvolgimento di Kubrick non è solo una speculazione su internet. In quella che pare proprio la testimonianza di un informatore, una fonte interna spiega con notevole nonchalance: “Stanley e gli altri hanno creato un filmato di backup dello sbarco sulla Luna, nel caso in cui avessimo fallito; così avremmo potuto dimostrare di esserci arrivati e di esserci riusciti”. La fonte prosegue riconoscendo che “molte delle immagini del nostro atterraggio sono state realizzate in studio” e che “abbiamo molte immagini false”. Forse la cosa più significativa è il riferimento al documentario Room 237, il quale analizza il film di Kubrick, Shining, come la sua confessione in codice sulle riprese dell'allunaggio, osservando che “le prove sono pressoché innegabili sul coinvolgimento di Kubrick”.

Il rapporto tra Kubrick e le immagini spaziali è più profondo di una semplice speculazione. Il suo capolavoro del 1968, 2001: Odissea nello spazio, ampiamente considerato la rappresentazione più realistica dei viaggi spaziali dell'epoca, è stato sviluppato con un ampio contributo di esperti aerospaziali e affiliati alla NASA. Solo un anno dopo, nel 1969, il mondo assistette all'allunaggio dell'Apollo 11, con immagini che alcuni osservatori hanno ritenuto sorprendentemente simili alle tecniche cinematografiche di Kubrick. Questa tempistica è particolarmente interessante se si considera che l'ultimo film di Kubrick, Eyes Wide Shut – un'opera che smaschera le società segrete d'élite – uscì il 16 luglio 1999, esattamente 30 anni dopo il lancio dell'Apollo 11. Kubrick morì improvvisamente prima dell'uscita del film, il che ha alimentato speculazioni sul fatto che la sua morte potesse essere collegata all'eccessiva rivelazione di interessi potenti attraverso la sua narrazione simbolica.

In particolare, il 16 luglio 1999 fu anche il giorno della morte di JFK Jr. – un'altra strana coincidenza che collega l'esplorazione spaziale, l'eredità presidenziale e le morti inaspettate.

Altri film hanno fatto esplicito riferimento alle cospirazioni sugli allunaggi, come il film di James Bond, Una cascata di diamanti, dove c'è una scena in cui Bond corre attraverso quello che sembra essere un set di allunaggio.

Più di recente Hollywood ha prodotto film sulla creazione di falsi allunaggi, suggerendo una forma di “soft disclosure” su ciò che è realmente accaduto. Il film del 2023, Fly Me to the Moon, con Scarlett Johansson e Channing Tatum, mostra la NASA che assume un direttore di marketing per inscenare un finto allunaggio come piano di riserva. La cosa notevole è che questa premessa fittizia si allinea perfettamente con le reali testimonianze di informatori provenienti dalla NASA, i quali hanno affermato di aver ricevuto istruzioni di creare filmati di riserva “nel caso in cui avessimo fallito” o “non fossimo mai andati sulla Luna”. Ancora una volta, Hollywood confeziona la verità come intrattenimento, permettendo al pubblico di digerire vere cospirazioni sotto la confortante etichetta di finzione.

Persino il personaggio per bambini, Buzz Lightyear, nel film Toy Story, sembra contenere un messaggio segreto. La battuta ricorrente secondo cui Buzz non è un vero space ranger, non sa volare e non è mai stato nello spazio assume un nuovo significato se vista attraverso la lente della cosiddetta “rivelazione del metodo”, un concetto che suggerisce che le verità nascoste vengono rivelate attraverso l'intrattenimento. L'immagine di Buzz Aldrin in persona con in mano un giocattolo di Buzz Lightyear aggiunge un ulteriore livello a questa rivelazione simbolica.

Anche le domande tecniche persistono: chi ha filmato i primi passi degli astronauti sulla Luna dall'esterno del modulo lunare? Come ha fatto una foglia d'acero ad apparire così vicina alla Luna?

Come ha potuto Richard Nixon chiamare gli astronauti da un telefono fisso nel 1969, quando ancora oggi perdiamo il segnale cellulare nelle aree remote?

Curiosità linguistiche

A volte il linguaggio offre spunti inaspettati. Cercando etimologia e significati in diverse lingue, ho scoperto che la parola ebraica “nasa” (נָשָׂא - Strong's Hebrew 5377) significa “ingannare” o “sviare”. La definizione completa tratta dal Lessico Ebraico di Strong recita: “Una radice primitiva; sviare, cioè ingannare (mentalmente), o sedurre (moralmente): ingannare, sedurre”. Si potrebbe liquidare questa affermazione come una coincidenza, ma il parallelismo linguistico è sorprendente.

Allo stesso modo il mio amico che cerca schemi nelle parole ha sottolineato che “NASA” contiene le stesse lettere di “Satan” meno la “T”, il che è reso ancora più intrigante dal fatto che la NASA abbia coniato il termine “T-meno” per i conti alla rovescia. Come prevedibile, i fact-checker si sono affrettati a smentire questa osservazione, insistendo sul fatto che non ci sia alcuna relazione – una risposta che, date le mie precedenti osservazioni sull'affidabilità dei fact-checker, non fa che stuzzicare ulteriormente la mia curiosità. Sebbene non affermi che questo gioco di parole dimostri qualcosa di definitivo, date le associazioni occulte già stabilite con i personaggi fondatori della NASA, questi parallelismi linguistici assumono un significato potenziale che va oltre la mera coincidenza.

Al di là di parole e simboli, dovremmo esaminare le prove visive effettive che la NASA ha presentato nel corso della sua storia. Si consideri, ad esempio, il filmato presumibilmente proveniente dallo “spazio” trasmesso al telegiornale della sera nel 1966. Per gli standard odierni, è comicamente poco convincente – sembra più qualcosa che uno studente di cinema potrebbe creare per un film di serie B con un budget di $50. Se la NASA presentasse lo stesso filmato oggi, la maggior parte degli spettatori lo deriderebbe ed etichetterebbe come un falso palese. La qualità primitiva e l'aspetto chiaramente inscenato sollevano una domanda che fa riflettere: se oggi possiamo facilmente riconoscere che tutto ciò è discutibile, cosa suggerisce questo riguardo al filmato che accettavamo senza riserve allora? E cosa potremmo accettare acriticamente oggi che le generazioni future troveranno altrettanto assurdo?

Sebbene le prove visive sollevino interrogativi su ciò che stessimo vedendo, la tempistica di quelle conquiste spaziali suggerisce che dovremmo anche considerare il motivo per cui le stavamo vedendo e a quali obiettivi più ampi potevano servire.

La correlazione con il denaro fiat

La tempistica dell'allunaggio assume un nuovo significato se vista attraverso la lente della politica monetaria. Solo due anni dopo la missione Apollo 11, nel 1971, gli Stati Uniti abbandonarono completamente il gold standard, inaugurando l'era della moneta fiat. Come sottolinea ICE-9 (a cui Lama attribuisce il merito del suo lavoro), questa transizione richiese un'operazione psicologica senza precedenti: “Se l'America può fare l'impossibile, allora tutti possono accettare denaro garantito dalla ‘piena fiducia e credito’ nell'America”.

Esaminando più da vicino questa cronologia, emerge una sequenza strategica di eventi:

• 1958: la NASA viene fondata, lo stesso anno in cui la CGI appare per la prima volta nei film;

• 1961: il Presidente Kennedy annuncia l'obiettivo di raggiungere la Luna;

• 1968: l'Apollo 8 testa con successo il razzo Saturn V (che Lama nota essere essenzialmente un sistema di lancio di un carico nucleare intercontinentale);

• Luglio 1969: l'allunaggio dell'Apollo 11 crea un impatto psicologico mondiale;

• Agosto 1971: il Presidente Nixon pone fine alla convertibilità del dollaro in oro.

Questa sequenza suggerisce una transizione attentamente orchestrata. Come osserva ICE-9 in una ricerca a cui Lama fa riferimento: “Mai nella storia umana il denaro è stato privo di valore intrinseco o non convertibile in denaro di valore intrinseco: un'impresa che fino a quel momento era considerata impossibile nella storia umana”. L'allunaggio ha fornito quella base psicologica, rendendo la popolazione ricettiva a un sistema economico che altrimenti sarebbe sembrato inverosimile.

Le conseguenze di questo cambiamento sarebbero state profonde: globalizzazione, finanziarizzazione dell'economia, inflazione e quello che Lama descrive come “impoverimento delle masse e guerre senza fine”. La possibilità di stampare moneta senza il vincolo della copertura in oro permise una spesa pubblica senza precedenti, in particolare per le operazioni militari, dando origine al moderno panorama geopolitico.

L'impatto psicologico dell'allunaggio potrebbe essere stato deliberatamente calcolato per affermare la supremazia tecnologica americana e, per estensione, giustificare la fiducia nel suo sistema finanziario, proprio mentre quel sistema subiva una trasformazione radicale che sarebbe stata altrimenti difficile da accettare per la popolazione.

Meryl Nass pone domande pertinenti: come hanno potuto i funzionari della NASA affermare di aver perso i piani per raggiungere la Luna? Perché gli astronauti erano così visibilmente a disagio durante la conferenza stampa? Perché non si vedevano stelle nelle fotografie? Queste domande evidenziano potenziali incongruenze che meritano una seria considerazione.

Conclusione

Come scrisse Shakespeare: “Tutto il mondo è un palcoscenico, e tutti gli uomini e le donne sono solo attori”. Se si considerino queste osservazioni come prove convincenti, o semplici coincidenze, dipende in gran parte dalla propria disponibilità a mettere in discussione le narrazioni consolidate.

I Beatles (con il direttore d'orchestra immaginario Billy Shears della Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, che ammicca scherzosamente al Bardo stesso) forse lo hanno espresso meglio: “Vivere è facile ad occhi chiusi, fraintendendo tutto ciò che si vede”. Nell'esplorare queste domande, non pretendo di fornire risposte definitive, ma invito gli altri a esaminare le prove disponibili e a trarre le proprie conclusioni.

Per coloro che sono inclini a respingere queste osservazioni in toto, chiedo solo questo: cosa potremmo imparare se fossimo aperti a mettere in discussione anche le nostre convinzioni più care su scienza, spazio e conquiste umane? Come suggerisce la ricerca di Lama, le implicazioni si estendono ben oltre l'esplorazione spaziale, influenzando il nostro sistema economico, le strutture di potere globali e la realtà collettiva.

Se queste affermazioni vi sembrano eccessive, vi incoraggio a esaminare personalmente le immagini e i filmati. Ho raccolto le prove in un unico luogo non per convincervi di una particolare prospettiva, ma per invitarvi a mettere in discussione quella che vi è stata fornita. La vera domanda non è se la NASA occasionalmente inganni la popolazione, ma se la nostra intera concezione dell'esplorazione spaziale sia stata costruita su un fondamento di deliberato inganno.

Siamo stati addestrati a classificare determinati argomenti come “scienza consolidata” e “storia consolidata”, escludendoli dall'ambito della legittima indagine. Ma se la NASA, una delle nostre istituzioni più affidabili, è stata fondata da nazisti, occultisti e Walt Disney, ha falsificato il suo massimo successo e continua a fabbricare ad hoc immagini dello spazio, allora quali altre questioni “risolte” meritano un nuovo esame?

Questo schema di costruzione della realtà, in cui le narrazioni sostituiscono le verità osservabili, si estende ben oltre la NASA. Come ho documentato nella serie, Ingegnerizzare la realtà, gli stessi meccanismi che possono inventare un allunaggio possono manipolare le nostre percezioni in scienza, medicina, economia e storia.

Forse è ora di riaprire libri che pensavamo chiusi, riesaminare verità che credevamo consolidate e riconsiderare possibilità che ci erano state dette impossibili. Dopotutto, come ci ricorda la lapide di Werner von Braun, “i cieli” potrebbero essere più di quanto ci è stato fatto credere.

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

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The colorful fabric of the United States is beginning to tear apart as Democrats and Republicans attempt to address the immigration crisis in their own separate and very different ways.

Los Angeles has declared an emergency in response to federal immigration raids, a move traditionally reserved for natural disasters or other circumstances beyond the control of local authorities.

The legislation stated that the tactics used by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other entities have “created a climate of fear, leading to widespread disruption in daily life and adverse impacts to our regional economy.”

Meanwhile, the White House is of the opinion that the raids are lawful and designed to remove immigrants in the United States illegally from the country after the Biden administration opened America’s southern border with Mexico.

Due to its proximity to the Mexican border, Los Angeles has been at the epicenter of Trump’s efforts to deport illegals. In June, he sent the National Guard and Marines into the metropolis to guard federal buildings and protect ICE agents as they carried out raids. These actions prompted widespread protests across the city and nation at large.

“We will not stand by while fear and chaos spread throughout our neighborhoods,” said Republican LA lawmaker Lindsey Horvath. “When our neighbors are targeted, our country feels it in the workplaces, in our schools and in our homes.”

“Let’s give the ICE agents… the support they deserve.”

County officials revealed that the immigration raids would contribute to the loss of $275 million in gross domestic product in the state of California, pointing to a study by the Bay Area Council Economic Institute in partnership with the University of California, Merced, MSN reported.

Meanwhile, residents in the town of El Paso, Texas are in uproar after reports emerged that an agent with the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) participated in a “use of force incident” where a family dog was unjustifiably shot and killed.

KFOX14 spoke with a distressed family who claimed to have been the victims of this incident said agents forcibly entered the home where they shot and killed their rottweiler.

On the other side of the country, in Chicago, residents have begun to organize volunteer watch groups to monitor their neighborhoods for federal immigration agents. Some blow whistles or honk their car horns when agents are spotted in the vicinity.

This week, ICE agents, together with military units, deployed tear gas on Chicago residents, the largest clash in the nation’s third-largest city as the White House has carried out its controversial immigration crackdown.

“This incident is not isolated and reflects a growing and dangerous trend of illegal aliens violently resisting arrest and agitators and criminals ramming cars into our law enforcement officer, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said in a statement. The statement went on to say that federal agents resorted to “crowd control measures” after a crowd had gathered and turned violent.

It was just one of multiple hostile episodes to erupt on the streets of Chicago in recent days. ICE agent and the BCP have roamed the vast metropolis and suburbs conducting arrests, often stopping people on the streets and asking for identification. Many times, people are seen running away when approached by marked vehicles.

“The actions being taken by these Trump agents are a clear violation of our democratic rights,” said one female passerby who gave the name Maria. “My family and I traveled hundreds of miles to reach the U.S. border only to be treated as criminals.”
When asked if she was in the United States legally, the woman said the situation in her native country of Ecuador had become too dangerous so her only option was to flee as soon as possible.

“I hope to acquire amnesty,” she said.

Trump mobilized thousands of National Guard troops to L.A. amid anti-Immigrations and Customs Enforcements (ICE) protests in Los Angeles without the request or consent of city and state officials. California Governor Gavin Newsom has remained harshly critical of the American president, reprimanding Trump for inciting chaos, using valuable resources, and militarizing urban areas.

This month, National Guard troops and federal officers on horseback descended on MacArthur Park, where children at a summer day camp were reportedly present.

“They’re sitting there on horses with American flags, running through soccer fields, scaring kids in the middle of the day at a summer camp. For what? Just toughness,” Newsom said on The Shawn Ryan Show. “It’s a weakness masquerading as strength.”

Trump criticized Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass for their apparent mishandling of violent riots in response to the ICE raids that rounded up over 100 illegal immigrants — including gang bangers and drug traffickers — this past week.

“We have an incompetent Governor (Newscum) and Mayor (Bass) who were, as usual (just look at how they handled the fires, and now their VERY SLOW PERMITTING disaster. Federal permitting is complete!), unable to handle the task,” Trump wrote on TruthSocial Sunday morning.

One thing is becoming increasingly certain: the colorful fabric of the United States is beginning to tear apart as Democrats and Republicans attempt to address the immigration crisis in their own separate and very different ways. Whether this great struggle destroys the United States from within remains to be seen.

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

The post America Is at War Against Itself Over Illegal Immigration appeared first on LewRockwell.

When hundreds of America’s admirals and generals gathered at a military base in Virginia on September 30th, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth instructed them to “prepare for war”.  Unfortunately, he was not exaggerating.  We are on the brink of war with Venezuela, President Trump is threatening to take military action if Hamas does not disarm, our relations with China are rapidly deteriorating, and if we give Tomahawk cruise missiles to Ukraine that will put us just one step away from a nuclear war with Russia.  I am entirely convinced that the months ahead will be extremely dramatic.  Let us hope that global leaders make wise decisions during this time, because a single miscalculation could lead to the unthinkable.

On Monday, it was being reported that three B-52 bombers have been “hovering near Venezuelan airspace”…

Massive U.S. B-52H Stratofortress bombers have been spotted flying sorties over the southern Caribbean, hovering near Venezuelan airspace in a clear demonstration of military might.

Three aircraft—call signs BUNNY01, BUNNY02, and BUNNY03—were observed on extended flight patterns from Louisiana’s Barksdale Air Force Base in a striking show of force aimed at Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro.

This comes as the Trump administration has stepped up military operations in the region, including a series of recent strikes on vessels off Venezuela’s coast that the U.S. linked to narcotics trafficking. The strikes, which have resulted in multiple fatalities, have drawn condemnation from Caracas and heightened concerns about escalating tensions between the two countries.

Many pundits believe that threatening Venezuela with B-52 bombers is essentially a “final warning” to the regime of Nicolas Maduro.

Trump wants Maduro to step down peacefully, but that isn’t going to happen.

Meanwhile, we continue to bomb Venezuelan ships that are trafficking drugs…

The US military conducted yet another strike on a boat alleged to be trafficking drugs off the coast of Venezuela, killing six people on board, President Donald Trump announced Tuesday.

Trump said that the vessel was “affiliated with a Designated Terrorist Organization” but did not name any organization or provide evidence to back up the assertion.

“Intelligence confirmed the vessel was trafficking narcotics, was associated with illicit narcoterrorist networks, and was transiting along a known DTO route,” Trump said on his Truth Social platform. “The strike was conducted in International Waters, and six male narcoterrorists aboard the vessel were killed in the strike. No U.S. Forces were harmed.”

Bombing ships that are carrying narcotics is one thing.

Bombing Venezuelan territory would be an entirely different thing altogether.

Maduro is extremely concerned about what is coming, and so he is mobilizing his forces…

In a message on the Telegram social network, Maduro said he was mobilizing the military, police and a civilian militia to defend Venezuela’s “mountains, coasts, schools, hospitals, factories and markets.”

State television showed images of armored vehicles deploying in the sprawling low-income Caracas suburb of Petare, a traditional stronghold of socialist support.

Military exercises will also take place in Miranda state, which neighbors Caracas.

If the U.S. goes to war with Venezuela, our relations with other South American nations such as Colombia will be destroyed.

Hopefully Trump will back down while there is still time to do so.

In the Middle East, the situation is very tense.

We are being told that the ceasefire deal in Gaza “hangs by a thread”, and Trump is publicly threatening to “make them disarm” if Hamas does not disarm willingly…

Donald Trump has threatened to forcibly disarm Hamas if they refuse to give up their weapons as the Gaza ceasefire deal hangs by a thread.

‘They will disarm — and if they don’t I’m gonna make them disarm,’ the president told reporters at the White House on Tuesday. ‘They know what I mean.’

Trump warned that America stood ready to bring about Hamas’s disarmament ‘quickly and perhaps violently.’

Hamas is not going to hand over all of their weapons.

That simply is not going to happen.

So how would Trump make Hamas disarm?

Would he send in U.S. troops?

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is also suggesting that the second phase of Trump’s peace plan may not be accomplished peacefully…

He noted that the conditions of Mr. Trump’s 20-point peace plan “are very clear — it’s not only that we get the hostages out without getting our military out, but that we would subsequently have both demilitarization and disarmament. They’re not the same thing. First Hamas has to give up its arms. And second, you want to make sure that there are no weapons factories inside Gaza. There’s no smuggling of weapons into Gaza.

“We also agreed: Okay, let’s get the first part done. Now let’s give a chance to do the second part peacefully, which is my hope.”

We’ll see what happens.

Hamas officials have already stated that they will never hand over all of their weapons, and so the clock is ticking.

In addition, there is another factor would could potentially cause the peace deal to collapse.

Many in Israel are calling for the peace deal to be suspended “until all of the hostages’ remains are returned by Hamas”…

Both the Israeli Hostages and Missing Families Forum, the group which represents the hostage families, and Israel’s defense minister have said the entire peace deal should be shelved until all of the hostages’ remains are returned by Hamas.

The Israel Defense Forces, in multiple statements about the return of hostages since Friday, has said only that “Hamas is required to make all necessary efforts to return the deceased hostages.”

My personal opinion is that Hamas will never be able to locate many of those bodies.

So it will be impossible for all of the remains to be returned, and that may turn out to be a major issue.

I will be watching the Middle East very, very closely during the weeks ahead.

Sooner or later, more war is coming to the region.

Elsewhere, the conflict in Ukraine has escalated to a very dangerous level.

It is being reported that the United States “has for months been helping Ukraine mount long-range strikes on Russian energy facilities”…

Fresh reporting in the Financial Times offers more confirmation that the Trump administration has been escalating the proxy war in Ukraine against Russia, in hopes of forcing Moscow to the negotiating table.

The Sunday report makes clear that “The US has for months been helping Ukraine mount long-range strikes on Russian energy facilities, in what officials say is a coordinated effort to weaken Vladimir Putin’s economy and force him to the negotiating table.”

“American intelligence shared with Kyiv has enabled strikes on important Russian energy assets including oil refineries far beyond the frontline, according to multiple Ukrainian and US officials familiar with the campaign,” it adds.

When we participate in such strikes, we are actively making ourselves a part of the conflict.

In other words, we are already essentially in a state of war with Russia.

We should be very thankful that the Russians have shown a tremendous amount of restraint, but now we are rapidly approaching a point of no return.

On Sunday, Trump made it clear that he is very close to sending Tomahawk cruise missiles to Ukraine…

President Trump, speaking aboard Air Force One on Sunday, outlined the idea as part of negotiation tactics. He said: “I might say ‘Look: if this war is not going to get settled, I’m going to send them Tomahawks.’”

And I don’t think that it is a coincidence that key Ukrainian leaders just met with representatives of the company that manufactures Tomahawks…

Senior Ukrainian officials visiting the U.S. have met with major U.S. defense companies, including the manufacturer of the Tomahawk missile that Kyiv has repeatedly requested.

Ukraine’s prime minister, Yulia Svyrydenko, Rustem Umerov—formerly Ukraine’s defense minister, now the head of the country’s national security and defense council—as well as Ukrainian Ambassador to the U.S. Olga Stefanishyna met with representatives from Raytheon and Lockheed Martin, said Andriy Yermak, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s chief of staff.

Giving Tomahawk cruise missiles to Ukraine would be an exceedingly foolish thing to do.

Tomahawks were originally designed to be able to carry nuclear warheads.

And as Dmitry Medvedev has correctly pointed out, “it’s impossible to distinguish a nuclear Tomahawk missile from a conventional one in flight”…

Medvedev’s chilling response on Monday spelled out that this “could end badly for everyone … most of all, for Trump himself,” according to a translation of his Telegram post.

“It’s been said a hundred times, in a manner understandable even to the star-spangled man, that it’s impossible to distinguish a nuclear Tomahawk missile from a conventional one in flight,” Medvedev, who serves as the Russian Security Council Deputy Chair, further noted.

Medvedev here is alluding to Russian strategic doctrine. In a scenario where Moscow leaders believed or suspected a nuclear payload had been launched at Russia, its military would have the right to respond in kind, with nukes.

If Tomahawk cruise missiles are fired toward major Russian cities, will the Russians wait to see what happens when they strike their targets or will they fire back while the Tomahawks are still in the air?

If cruise missiles that are capable of carrying nuclear warheads were fired at Washington D.C. or New York City, what would we do?

You might want to think about that.

The Russians are not bluffing when they warn that we are getting dangerously close to nuclear war.

If we push them too far, they will take action.

Kremlin mouthpiece Vladimir Solovyov just issued an extremely ominous warning…

Apparently referencing nuclear war between Russia and the West, he continued: “You will be destroyed, it’s clear and precise. You don’t have to listen to us, to love us or to giggle… I will tell you once again: We do not need your love, we need your fear. Animal-like horror. It will get to this, it certainly will.”

Threatening the Russians will not work.

If we continue to threaten the Russians, it will backfire severely.

This is not a game.

There are approximately 8 billion people living on our planet today, and their fates are hanging in the balance.

So let us hope for peace, but let us also prepare for war, because I believe that a lot more war is coming.

Reprinted with permission from The Economic Collapse.

The post ‘Prepare For War’: B-52s Circle Near Venezuela, Trump Threatens Hamas, and Ukraine Is Very Close To Getting Tomahawk Cruise Missiles appeared first on LewRockwell.

“Brother, I am American. You are twisting my arm.”— Man shouts “I am American” while ICE agents detain him

Masked gunmen. Tasers. Tear gas. Pepper spray. Unmarked vehicles. Intimidation tactics. Brutality. Racial profiling. Children traumatized. Families terrorized. Journalists targeted. Citizens detained. Disabled individuals, minors, the elderly, pregnant women, military veterans—snatched off the streets. Private property destroyed.

This is not a war zone. This is America.

This is what now passes for law-and-order policing by ICE agents in Trump’s America—and it is not making America safer or greater.

What began as an agency tasked with enforcing immigration law has metastasized into a domestic terror force.

From coast to coast, ICE goon squads—incognito, thuggish, fueled by profit-driven incentives and outlandish quotas, and empowered by the Trump administration to act as if they are untouchable—are prowling neighborhoods, churches, courthouses, hospitals, bus stops, and worksites, anywhere “suspected” migrants might be present, snatching people first and asking questions later.

Sometimes “later” comes hours, days or even weeks afterwards.

No one is off limits—not even American citizens.

Make no mistake: this is not how a constitutional republic operates. It is how a dictatorship behaves when it decides the rule of law—in this case, the Bill of Rights—is optional.

Journalists are being shoved to the pavement, forced into chokeholds, teargassed, and brutalized—in violation of the First Amendment. U.S. citizens, including toddlers, are being snatched up and carted off—in violation of the Fourth Amendment. People with no criminal records who have lived, worked and paid taxes in this country for decades are being made to disappear—in violation of habeas corpus.

This is not public safety. It is domestic terrorism, carried out by masked, militarized, lawless bounty hunters.

In California, ICE agents stopped a U.S. citizen and military veteran on his way to work. According to George Retes, agents fired tear gas, broke his car window, and applied physical force, including kneeling on him. Retes spent three days in federal custody with no charges, no call to his family, no access to a judge or an attorney, no shower, and no explanation for ICE’s actions before being released.

In Portland, a U.S. citizen outside his workplace was detained by masked, plainclothes agents who refused to identify themselves, threatened him with a dog, handcuffed him, hauled away in an unmarked vehicle, and held for hours without justification.

In Chicago, a local TV journalist was violently knocked to the ground by masked agents, handcuffed, arrested, and hauled to a detention center—then released without charges.

In Los Angeles, ICE agents handcuffed and detained a 23-year-old, heavily pregnant woman for over eight hours with a chain around her belly, accusing the native-born American of being from Mexico. Bruised and in labor, she went straight to the hospital upon release.

Two sisters were stopped outside a school, surrounded by at least ten ICE agents, who broke into their locked vehicle, dragged them out, and pinned them to the ground. Both women were later released without explanation.

Each of these incidents is presented as routine immigration enforcement. Yet collectively they reveal a government agency that has abandoned the principles of restraint, accountability, and due process in favor of brute force.

Justifying extreme measures—martial law, mass surveillance, suspension of constitutional safeguards— as necessary for “national security” has always been the refuge of tyrants, and this American police state is no different.

Under Trump, however, things are so much worse.

The rationalizations have become bolder, the violence more normalized, and the lies more transparent.

The biggest lie of all is the Department of Homeland Security’s claim that its costly, ego-driven, and unnecessary military invasion of Chicago—Operation Midway Blitz—rounded up “the worst of the worst pedophiles, child abusers, kidnappers, gang members, and armed robbers.” In fact, DHS’ own data shows that out of more than 1,000 people rounded up, only 10 had criminal records.

As one Chicago resident remarked, “When Donald Trump campaigned, he said he was going after criminals, rapists and drug dealers. Now, they’re assaulting women, deporting children, mothers and fathers—not criminals. And if they’re criminals, he needs to prove it. We haven’t seen that evidence yet.”

Indeed, even the courts are finding the Trump administration’s so-called “evidence” of crime to be scant and/or unreliable.

Nationally, more than 70% of individuals rounded up by ICE nationally have no criminal convictions. Many have lived in the U.S. for decades, raised families, paid taxes, contributed to the economy, and worked the jobs most Americans refuse to do.

The blatantly false claim that immigrants are inherently violent criminals has also been repeatedly refuted by studies showing that immigrants—including undocumented ones—are less likely to commit crimes than Americans born in the U.S.

Even Trump’s insistence that certain states or cities are overrun with crime, thus necessitating his military invasions, collapses under scrutiny: crime remains at record lows nationwide.

The data simply does not support the rhetoric.

Violence rises and falls with social conditions, not partisan control. Yet, conveniently, only those states that have challenged the Trump administration’s abuses have been singled out for invasion by ICE and the National Guard.

Clearly, this is not about crime, safety, or jobs.

So what is really driving this campaign of terror?

What we are witnessing is the weaponization of fear.

A government that profits from panic and rewards blind obedience has turned immigration enforcement into a spectacle of domination—part deterrent, part distraction, and all political theater.

The timing is no coincidence.

The Trump administration has just announced its fifth military strike on a Venezuelan vessel it claims—without evidence—was engaged in illegal activity. The propaganda might scream about “foreign threats,” but these spectacles serve a different purpose: to divert public outrage away from falling poll numbers, a faltering economy, and growing unrest over the regime’s corruption and incompetence.

At home, ICE raids perform the same function as those boat strikes abroad—they keep the public frightened and the cameras fixed on the wrong enemy. Meanwhile, the scandals that should command national attention—the Epstein files implicating powerful allies, the graft, the insider enrichment—sink beneath the noise.

Each new show of force, each televised arrest or explosion, is meant to remind the populace who holds the power and how easily it can be turned inward.

This is not about border control or law enforcement. It is about control, period.

When a political regime begins to equate its own survival with the nation’s survival, every citizen becomes a potential suspect and every act of dissent a potential crime.

Against such a backdrop, ICE’s strategy is predatory and deliberate.

Lower court rulings have affirmed that ICE, DHS and the Trump Administration are willfully trampling the First, Fourth and Fifth Amendments.

When ICE agents hunt people the way one might hunt animals in the wild, they cease to be officers of the law and become roving packs of lawless predators.

Lawless, paid predators, that is.

Thanks to the vast sums of taxpayer money funneled into ICE under Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill,” financial incentives are turning ICE agents into bounty hunters.

In addition to recruiting ICE agents with $50,000 signing bonuses and $60,000 in student loan forgiveness, DHS is also promising to lavishly reward police agencies that allow their officers to operate as extensions of ICE with salary reimbursements, overtime pay and monthly bonuses.

Then there is the Trump administration’s directive to ICE to carry out a minimum of 3,000 arrests a day.

No wonder citizens, lawful residents and immigrants with no criminal history are getting swept up. There simply aren’t enough violent criminals to fill these quotas.

While some lower courts have attempted to rein in ICE’s abuses, the U.S. Supreme Court has largely empowered them.

In Noem v. Vasquez Perdomo, a 6–3 Supreme Court order paused a district court injunction that would have barred ICE from stopping people based on perceived race, accent, or workplace location—in effect greenlighting racial profiling and roving patrols.

The court ruled that ICE’s criteria for targeting individuals—judging people by race, language, or job—does not rise to the constitutional level of reasonable suspicion.

But for an administration that mistakes might for right, the law is whatever justifies the hunt. “Everything we’re doing is very lawful,” Trump declared. “What they’re doing is not lawful.”

Martin Luther King Jr. offered the clearest rebuttal to that logic more than sixty years ago.

In his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” written while jailed for participating in nonviolent demonstrations against segregation, King reminded the world “that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was ‘legal’ and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was ‘illegal.’”

King then went on to explain how to distinguish between just and unjust laws:

“I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that ‘an unjust law is no law at all.’ Now, what is the difference between the two? How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust.”

King’s message was not about politics but about principle. His words remind us that legality and morality are not always the same — and that a nation that abandons moral law will soon find itself without any law at all.

A government that chains pregnant women, assaults journalists, and detains citizens without cause has lost its moral authority to govern.

King warned that the gravest threat to justice is not the clamor of bad people but the appalling silence of good ones. The same holds true today: silence in the face of government brutality is itself a form of consent.

Even in the face of the Trump administration’s heavy-handed repression, citizens have stepped up to meet military intimidation with moral conscience.

In Portland and other cities, protesters have embraced creative, nonviolent acts of symbolic resistance—appearing unclothed to expose the government’s hypocrisy, donning costumes to mock its fear, and standing silently before armed agents as living reminders of what it means to resist tyranny without becoming it.

These creative gestures recall the kind of moral witness King described: the courage to confront injustice with peace and strip it of its disguise.

The bottom line, as always, rests with “we the people.”

ICE does not protect America—it terrorizes America. And until it is reined in, dismantled, or reformed to operate wholly within constitutional boundaries, it will remain a standing army on domestic soil: unaccountable, unconstitutional, and un-American.

Tyranny always cloaks itself in the language of welfare and safety. And constitutional abuse transcends party lines.

Every regime that seeks to entrench its power begins by promising to protect the people from chaos, crime, or foreign enemies—then proceeds to manufacture both.

The raids, the strikes, the distractions are all part of the same design: to condition obedience, erase accountability, and cement totalitarian rule under the pretense of “law and order.”

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, the Constitution is not a suggestion; it is the rule of law.

The Constitution is not a suggestion; it is the rule of law.

If ICE—and by extension, the DHS and the entire Trump regime—cannot operate within those limits, if it must hide behind masks and military might to exercise its power, then it has ceased to be lawful.

It has become exactly what the Framers of the Constitution feared: a government that wages war on its own people.

This article was originally published on The Rutherford Institute.

The post Police State Bounty Hunters: The Rise of ICE’s Unconstitutional War on America appeared first on LewRockwell.

The older I get, the more suspiciously I look at the causes of war.  This is natural.  Young people — especially young men — are incapable of properly evaluating risk.  Though they are rebellious, they also follow orders from authority figures.  There is a reason why eighteen-year-olds are sent over embankments to cross open fields on the frontlines: They can be convinced to pursue success and ignore mortality.  Courageous young men look right past danger.  Only years later do they ask themselves, “Why the hell did I do that?”

There is no question that we are being psychologically prepped for a great and terrible war.  Whether you are a civilian, veteran, or active service member, you surely have heard over the last ten years at least one commanding officer describe publicly the likelihood of a U.S.-China war or wider WWIII in the near future.

European politicians have been instructing their citizens to prepare for a full-on military conflict with Russian forces since the current war in Ukraine began.  Such civilian war preparations have not been limited to the Baltic states, Finland, or Poland.  France and the United Kingdom have spent the last several years conditioning citizens to expect bloodshed with the Russian Federation.

During the half-century Cold War, violence operated mainly in the shadows and through “proxies” so that the United States and the Soviet Union could at least pretend they were not directly fighting one another.  Such was the shared fear of nuclear weapons — and of mutually assured destruction — that even bitter enemies did what they could to limit runaway escalation.  The Moscow-Washington hotline — or what Hollywood mythologized as the doom-averting “red phone” — was established because both sides understood the stakes of WWIII.

Cold War warriors generally took to heart a quote attributed to Albert Einstein: “I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.”  With this warning lingering in the minds of men who could unleash global annihilation with the pressing of a few buttons, humanity has somehow avoided destroying itself in the eighty years since the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

In my estimation, the mood has radically changed over the last fifteen years.  A more cavalier attitude toward the use of nuclear weapons has replaced decades-long angst and circumspection.  Senators, generals, and even diplomats publicly make the case for the use of terrible weapons that could easily lead to mass slaughter on a scale never before witnessed.  Gone are the days of worrying about the end of life as we know it.  In their place, a new generation of military and political leaders seem to be not so quietly echoing a spine-chilling refrain: How will nuclear weapons deter our enemies if we are habitually afraid to use them?

Five years after mass hysteria concerning COVID convinced much of the world to shut down for no good reason, more people are familiar with the concept of “mass formation psychosis.”  Simply stated, this phenomenon exists when large numbers of people believe in something detached from reality.  I put COVID in the same category as man-made “climate change.”  I believe that a large percentage of the global population has been manipulated to believe that both are much more dangerous than they really are.

For hundreds of years, academic studies have shown how political leaders exploit the “madness of crowds” to their advantage.  In the early twentieth century, “propaganda” even had a positive connotation, as the “elites” of the day argued that “educated” people have a moral duty to corral the masses.  In Public Opinion, writer Walter Lippmann argues explicitly that “experts” should use a combination of propaganda and censorship to “manufacture” the consent of the “bewildered herd.”  If the “educated” class finds it useful to scare the dickens out of humanity with regard to coronaviruses and carbon dioxide, it will do so.

With this in mind, it is entirely possible that I am serving as a useful idiot when it comes to worries over WWIII.  Perhaps I am doing exactly what Lippmann’s disciples wish me to do by professing my genuine concerns regarding the devastating global conflict heading our way.  It still feels like yesterday, however, when I was reading of the likelihood of Islamic terror attacks on U.S. soil years before the murder of 3,000 Americans on September 11, 2001.  Now I read and hear similar predictions for a great war ahead, and I cannot help but be filled with terrible dread.

As with all matters involving mass communication and public opinion, the whole thing devolves into a “chicken or the egg” quandary rather fast.  Am I writing about WWIII because so many signs indicate that it will arrive within the decade?  Or am I inadvertently pushing what I wish to avoid by helping to convince society that it is imminent?  Putting the dilemma of causality aside, I will say that I learned long ago that the war machine first prepares the public for conflict in the information space before officially firing weapons on the battlefield.

As distasteful as it sounds, the military considers civilian minds part of the overall battlespace during war.  Before every conflict begins, the social consciousness is shaped to accept, expect, and engage in battle.  It feels as if we are being directed toward global war today.

Such an assertion might appear strange coming in the same week that President Trump is brokering peace in the Middle East.  Even casual students of war would expect that region of the world to be fully enflamed during any true global conflict.  Yet there are over fifty other conflicts raging around the world today, and over ninety countries are involved in battles beyond their territorial borders.  Although some Western societies can be hypnotized into believing that the world is enjoying relative peace, war is spreading faster today than it has since WWII.  Even with so much bloodshed, though, we have seen nothing that approaches the level of violence that will unfold should the Russia-Ukraine war transform into a U.S.-Russia war or simmering tensions between China and Taiwan transform into a direct showdown between the U.S. and China.

For the last decade, military academics have been predicting a global war by 2030.  Suspiciously, that is the date that the World Economic Forum, United Nations, and other globalist institutions have been highlighting as a universal “pivot” for humanity.  Artificial intelligence is evolving quickly.  Plans for mandatory digital identifications are taking hold across Europe.  Central banks are designing government-controlled digital currencies.  The European Union wants access to all private communications.  As president, Joe Biden constructed a “disinformation board” to filter public information and censor dissent.  The walls of a grand surveillance prison are being built all around us, while the same powers that be are preparing the public for economic hardship and prolonged war.

We may not like it.  We may not want it.  But it appears our “betters” expect us to take it in stride.

There is another option.  It is at least possible that billions of humans on this planet learn to push back.  Rather than permitting a handful of “elites” to dictate “public opinion,” the public might discover that it has some control over its opinions, too.  If enough people refuse to engage in senseless slaughter, perhaps the globalists who wish to lead us to war will discover that no-one is much interested in following.  Nothing so perfectly epitomizes the “madness of crowds,” after all, than millions of young people rushing carelessly into the madness of war.

For the sake of those who will otherwise lose their lives in the coming fights, I pray that wiser stewards of peace chart the course ahead.

This article was originally published on American Thinker.

The post Wars and Rumors of Wars appeared first on LewRockwell.

It’s actually never legitimate to withhold aid from starving civilians. It was never legitimate at any time.

That’s one of the annoying things about having to discuss Israel’s ridiculous claim that Hamas is hoarding hostage corpses in order to achieve some kind of goal, and therefore justifies reducing aid into Gaza as punishment: the conversation skates right over the fact that it has never been legitimate for Israel to withhold humanitarian aid into Gaza. Debating whether Israel is right or wrong to withhold aid under these specific circumstances tacitly assumes that it could ever be right to withhold aid under any circumstances.

Listening to Israel’s justifications for why it needs to inflict monstrous abuses upon the Palestinians has the effect of assuming that there are circumstances under which those monstrous abuses could be acceptable. And there just aren’t.

It has never been legitimate to intentionally deprive civilians of humanitarian aid that they need to survive. You have to give them aid.

It has never been legitimate to shoot noncombatants because you decided they crossed some sort of line into a forbidden zone. It has never been legitimate to shoot noncombatants at all.

It has never been legitimate to commit genocide. Israel just needs to stop the genocide.

The onus for stopping a genocide is on the party committing the genocide. The onus is not on the victims of the genocide to end it by meeting certain conditions. This should not even need to be said.

It’s so obnoxious how everyone’s getting sucked into these debates about whether or not Israel might need to resume the genocide because Hamas refused to disarm or they didn’t get their hostage corpses back or this or that ceasefire demand wasn’t met or blah blah whatever. Israel has never needed to commit genocide. It needs to stop committing genocide.

The world shouldn’t be bending over backwards to ensure that the state which is committing genocide is happy with the terms by which the genocide is ended. The world should be aggressively punishing the state that is committing genocide until it stops. That would be true peace. What we are seeing now is just a bad joke.

And of course this true peace is not emerging because the powerful western states who’ve been backing the genocide this whole time are perfectly fine with it. Their weapons industries get to profit from the genocide. Their empire managers get to enjoy the domination of a critical geostrategic region. They sleep like babies at night, because they do not view the victims of the genocide as human beings.

So we find ourselves doing this ridiculous dance where we go “Okay well maybe the genocide could stop if the victims of the genocide agree to terms X, Y and Z and don’t make too much of a fuss about being killed in smaller numbers every day.”

This is madness. It’s the craziest thing you could possibly imagine. We live in a dystopian madhouse.

_____________

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The post The Onus Is on Israel and Its Allies To End the Genocide, Not Their Victims appeared first on LewRockwell.

Because the U.S. government is apparently addicted to war, I often ponder a profound and eloquent reflection written by James Madison, author of the U.S. Constitution.

Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people. The same malignant aspect in republicanism may be traced in the inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war, and in the degeneracy of manners and of morals engendered by both. No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.

—James Madison, Political Observations, Apr. 20, 1795 in: Letters and Other Writings of James Madison, vol. 4, p. 491 (1865)

Partisanship in the United States is at least as old as the rivalry between Hamilton and Burr that resulted in Hamilton’s death in 1804. Partisan rivalry reached a fevered and ugly pitch in 1856, when Preston Brooks, Representative of South Carolina, beat Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner almost to death with a cane on the floor of the Senate.

However, since 2001, a war mentality has placed us in a state of hyper-vigilance and readiness to be angry and aggressive. This has engendered a steady “degeneracy of manners and morals” in the United States.

We see it whenever we watch news shows in which people who are supposed to be educated and civilized adults scream at the top of their lungs at other and use the most intemperate and ugly language in the entire English lexicon.

We see it in the frequent acts of violence perpetrated on streets, in subways, and even in schools.

We see it in the general lack of modesty and restraint in the way people carry themselves and speak in public.

We see it in U.S. Congressmen signing bombs to be shipped to Ukraine and used on young Russian soldiers who will be missed by their parents, wives, and friends when they are blown to smithereens by American munitions.

We see it in U.S. Representative Dan Crenshaw telling a British reporter, “If I ever meet him [Tucker Carlson] I’ll fuckin’ kill him,” adding “No seriously, I would kill him.”

Such “degeneracy of manners and of morals” is often blamed on the waning influence of Christianity in American public life, but I suspect that this is only one contributing factor.

The war mentality that germinated in 2001 fell on very fertile ground in the United States due to cultural and societal influences that had already been in play since the 1960s.

Nowadays when we hear the expression “good breeding,” we think of it as quaint, outmoded, effete, and even pretentious. Through a steady diet of popular culture and especially Hollywood films, we have been conditioned to believe that “authentic self-expression” is the admirable trait.

A man of “authentic emotions” is one who expresses his indignation, his anger, and even his rage. The classical Greek and Christian virtues of prudence and temperance have been supplanted by the vulgar notion that it is virtuous to give free rein to one’s emotions, no matter how intemperate they are.

In my lifetime, the cultural milestone that expressed the triumph of authentic degeneracy was the 1994 cinema release of Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction. Because the film was so stylish, with such sparkling dialogue, it enabled us to take gleeful delight in murder, torture, debasement, drug overdose, and sodomy-rape. We laughed out loud when one of the characters (played by John Travolta) accidentally blows the head off of a young black boy in a car, splattering his brains all over the interior.

I wrote a negative review of the film in the British Salisbury Review, and all of my friends thought I was a hopeless square for doing so. Maybe I was. However, as callow and awkward as I was, I believe that my perception was correct. In the undeniably brilliant work of cinema, I perceived the beginning of the end of American manners and morals. Thirty-one years later, I see little evidence that my perception was wrong.

This article was originally published on Courageous Discourse.

The post ‘The Degeneracy of Manners and Morals’ appeared first on LewRockwell.

Putin initiated the Russian policy of not acknowledging acts of war when he defined the attack on Russia’s strategic bomber force as an “act of terrorism” in order to evade his responsibility to respond.

Anticipating Washington’s delivery of nuclear-capable Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine, the Kremlin has defined their use against Russia as “terrorist attacks aimed at escalating the conflict.”  In other words, Putin has cancelled his warning that the use of Tomahawks against Russia means the supplier of the missiles and targeting information are cobelligerents subject to Russian military response. 

If non-enforcement of all of Russia’s “red lines” has not already convinced Washington that there would be no Russian response to the deployment of Tomahawks, the statement yesterday by the Russian Foreign Ministry will remove any hesitation in Washington by the the Foreign Ministry’s cancellation of the cobelligerent threat.  

As was completely obvious from the beginning, by attempting to limit the conflict and to make it seem non-threatening to the West, Putin’s never-ending war has greatly widened it, turning it into the war with the West that Putin did not want.  

Having permitted Washington to overthrow the Russian-friendly Ukrainian government in 2014, having clung to his delusion of the Minsk Agreement for 8 years while the West built and equipped a large Ukrainian army prepared to attack the Donbas breakaway republics, having been cold-shouldered in response to his plea for a mutual security agreement, Putin in February 2022 had waited far too long and had no alternative to intervening in Ukraine.  Unfortunately, Putin lacked the strategic judgment to quickly defeat Ukraine before the West could become a cobelligrent.  Now the war is on the verge of spiraling out of control with Trump talking about Ukraine going on the offensive.

There seems in Russia to be no understanding of the situation and of their enemy.  Consequently, war is inevitable.

The post Russia No Longer Acknowledges Acts of War appeared first on LewRockwell.

Political violence and political revenge have been around as long as…politics have. I grew up with it in Greece. As a 5-year-old, looking down across the street of a chic Athenian neighborhood, I remember seeing a chauffeur-driven car’s open door and a bald man bending down in order to enter it, then hearing one, two, three, and four shots, with dark red round holes forming on his scalp. The screams that followed were from his daughter watching his departure from a balcony above. The name of the victim was Kalyvas, and he was undersecretary of some Greek ministry during the German occupation. In other words, Kalyvas was deemed a collaborator, according to the Stalin-led Communists in Greece. Others felt differently, that unless responsible and patriotic Greeks accepted government posts, the Germans would be ruling outright with far worse results.

I was to see far worse during the civil war that followed liberation. The royal gardens next to where we lived and where I daily played were suddenly covered with stinking, rotting corpses. Both sides were taking revenge, and it wasn’t pretty. The good guys won, with a little help from the Americans, thank God. It took more than eighty years for old wounds to heal, and they only healed because people died and old hatreds died with them and new generations were not brought up to hate like those during the war years.

“Once in power, be magnanimous.”

Here in America, old hatreds between North and South have also died away. Some were still around when I attended The University, as the University of Virginia, founded by the great Thomas Jefferson, was and is referred to by some diehards like myself. Back then, boys from the South made fun of Yankees, but there was no hatred involved, none whatsoever. I was, of course, on the side of the Confederacy. Imagine what those nice folks of the left would invent about me if they knew it, especially if my name were Trump.

In the wake of James Comey’s indictment, Democrats and the so-called neutral media are issuing dark warnings about the end of democracy and so on. These lefties and their sidekicks were around on Joe Biden’s watch but failed to notice that Trump, an ex-president, faced four separate indictments with 88 criminal charges. Trump adviser Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro were jailed for contempt, and my buddy Roger Stone—a sharp London tailored womanizer—was arrested at dawn in an over-the-top SWAT raid. Worst of all was the case of Gen. Michael Flynn. A decent and patriotic Afghan veteran, General Flynn was charged with making false statements to the FBI. Comey had two FBI agents visit Flynn days after Trump took office the first time. Flynn was up for national security adviser, and he would have been a good one, but Comey nailed him on calls Flynn had made to Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak. Flynn had done nothing wrong but prepare to serve his country. Comey made the calls out to be illegal, which they were not. Flynn lost his house, his savings, and his reputation fighting the charges until Trump pardoned him. Comey should have been sent to jail for what he did to Flynn. Instead he bragged about it.

My friend Roger Stone had a similar experience over fake Russian collusion allegations. In a predawn darkness setting, heavily armed FBI SWAT teams descended on Roger’s house and arrested him. He and his wife were marched outside in their pajamas, something Comey should have been subjected to but was not, unfortunately.

And let’s not forget the brave charge of the light brigade of FBI agents on Mar-a-Lago, when they rifled through Melania’s underwear. This was worthy of Thermopylae, or something similar. Now it’s Biden’s turn, but he is not around for us to enjoy it. His awful son is making the usual noises, but my unsolicited advice for him is to go back to taking drugs; he’ll make less of a fool of himself than by playing the victim.

Needless to say, anti-Trump pundits—aren’t they all?—are screaming bloody murder. One named David French in the Times calls it a vindictive campaign by Trump to get revenge on his political enemies, “no matter the facts or the law.” For some strange reason I don’t remember him saying anything when a good soldier was indicted on made-up charges by the Comey gang. The Russian hoax ruined the first Trump presidency. It was a first for American politics.

I remember how Richard Nixon refused to question the Kennedy victory in 1960 despite real allegations of cheating in Illinois and West Virginia that gave JFK the victory. It simply was not done, and Nixon was first and foremost a patriot. Al Gore did not question the George W. victory after a dead heat. It would have hurt the country’s standing in the world. Not even Hillary dared to challenge and dispute the results, despite winning the popular vote in 2016. Only Biden’s brood and fellow leftists decided to punish Trump for winning in 2016. Now they’re squealing like pregnant penguins, but I for one hope Trump sticks it to them. If I sound vengeful, I am not. But I truly believe it might teach the left a lesson. Once in power, be magnanimous. Do not do a Biden, because things can change and come back to bite you. Revenge is a two-headed monster, and we never know which way it might go.

This article was originally published on Taki’s Magazine.

The post The Two-Headed Monster appeared first on LewRockwell.

Western authorities continue to spread anti-Russian rumors to justify their illegitimate war plans. Now, German intelligence claims that a Russian attack on Europe could happen at any moment, thus spreading panic among the local population to support the narrative that it is “necessary” to prepare the country and the EU for a direct armed conflict with Moscow. As a result, tensions on the European continent are likely to escalate even further, with no prospect of diplomatic dialogue between Russia and the EU.

German intelligence chief Martin Jager recently stated that the EU is in serious danger of war with Russia. He described the current situation of relations between Moscow and the EU as an “icy peace” that could become a “heated confrontation” in the near future. He warned European authorities to prepare as soon as possible for a direct war scenario, making it clear that he believes a Russian attack on one or more European countries is possible in the coming years.

According to Jager, Moscow seeks to destabilize “European democracies,” thus attempting to cause political and economic damage to the EU and NATO. He criticizes the fact that many European parliamentarians fail to recognize the supposed seriousness of the current crisis with Russia, urging the bloc’s politicians to act quickly to prepare for war. With this, he suggests that recent militarization efforts in several European countries, including Germany, such as conscription policies and increased defense spending, are insufficient in the face of the supposed “Russian threat.”

Germany’s top spy also stated that a Russian invasion of Europe could occur by 2029. He does not consider this period sufficient for Europe to prepare for a direct conflict scenario if defense investment levels remain at the status quo. Therefore, Jager desperately calls for awareness among all European authorities regarding the danger allegedly posed by Moscow.

“We must not sit back and assume that a possible Russian attack will not come until 2029 at the earliest (…) At best, there is an icy peace in Europe, which could turn into heated confrontation at any moment (…) To achieve this goal, Russia will not shy away from direct military confrontation with NATO, if necessary,” he said.

Jager’s words came at a particularly tense time in Europe. Although he suggests that European politicians are not doing enough to prepare for war, the EU has initiated several militarization efforts—always justifying them with the narrative of an “imminent Russian threat.”

It’s important to remember that in July, NATO member state leaders met in The Hague and decided to increase defense spending to 5% of GDP by 2035. In parallel, Europe has launched several defense programs, including ReArm Europe, which has already allocated approximately 800 billion euros (equivalent to 930 billion dollars) to a joint investment fund for militarization policies.

Apparently, even these numbers don’t seem sufficient for Jager and some other European “hawks”. There’s an atmosphere of paranoia among key EU figures, with an unjustifiable fear that war will break out on the continent soon. Indeed, the possibility of a conflict is real—but this is due not to a Russian threat or a Kremlin expansion plan, but to the political irresponsibility of European leaders themselves.

It is the EU that is creating the risk of armed conflict on the European continent. By initiating a wave of massive militarization, based on the unjustified lie that Russia wants to invade other countries, the European bloc is simply escalating tensions, undermining the possibilities for dialogue, and generating threats for Moscow—which is naturally obliged to respond by expanding its defense policies as well. The responsibility for the worsening European situation and for creating future war risks lies with the EU, which is acting increasingly irrationally and anti-strategically, motivated solely by Russophobic paranoia.

As Russian officials have repeatedly stated, there is no plan for Russian expansion in Europe. The special military operation in Ukraine itself was not initially intended to incorporate territories into the Russian Federation, with the reintegration of the New Regions being a consequence of both Ukrainian and Western intransigence and popular determination in the liberated areas. There are no parallels between the situation in Ukraine and that in EU countries, which is why the narrative of an “imminent war” is merely politically motivated hysteria.

Unfortunately, however, this hysteria could lead to real conflict if the Europeans continue to escalate their militarization measures and threaten Russia in the future. The best course of action is to halt their irresponsible pro-war policies and quickly resume diplomatic dialogue.

This article was originally published on Infobrics.org.

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