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Stephen Mack wrote:

I read Dr. Ron Paul’s essay about President Trump’s proposal to rename the Department of Defense, the Department of War:

https://ronpaulinstitute.org/department-of-war/

His article includes this observation that supports the change:

“With that in mind, returning the Department of Defense to the Department of War, which is how it started, may not be such a bad idea after all – as long as we can be honest about the rest of the terms around our warmaking.”

That sentence is also an invitation to revisit the bracing essay, A Plan of a Peace-Office for the United States, written by Dr. Benjamin Rush, the brilliant Founding Father, Physician and great Christian Humanist.

https://artandtheology.org/2017/06/14/essay-a-plan-of-a-peace-office-for-the-united-states-by-benjamin-rush/

Dr. Rush argues trenchantly for the creation of a Peace Office as a counter to the Department of War.  His essay describes the governing philosophy of a Peace Office.  He follows that with the recommendation that a sign be placed over the door of the War Office with this comparative inscription:

1. An office for butchering the human species.
2. A Widow and Orphan making office.
3. A broken bone making office.
4. A wooden leg making office.
5. An office for the creating of public and private vices.
6. An office for creating a public debt.
7. An office for creating speculators, stock jobbers, and bankrupts.
8. An office for creating famine.
9. An office for creating pestilential diseases.
10. An office for creating poverty, and the destruction of liberty and national happiness.

In the lobby of this office let there be painted representations of all the common military instruments of death, also human skulls, broken bones, unburied and putrefying dead bodies, hospitals crowded with sick and wounded soldiers, villages on fire, mothers in besieged towns eating the flesh of their children, ships sinking in the ocean, rivers dyed with blood, and extensive plains without a tree or fence or any object but the ruins of deserted farm houses.

Above this group of woeful figures, let the following words be inserted, in red characters to represent human blood:

NATIONAL GLORY

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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.

____________________________________________________________________________________

da Bitcoin Magazine

(Versione audio della traduzione disponibile qui: https://open.substack.com/pub/fsimoncelli/p/in-che-modo-lfmi-impedisce-ladozione)

Negli ultimi anni l'FMI ha:

• Ha esercitato pressioni su El Salvador affinché abbandonasse Bitcoin come moneta a corso legale e annullasse altre linee di politica su di esso;

• Ha esercitato pressioni affinché nel 2023 la Repubblica Centrafricana censurasse Bitcoin attraverso gli enti bancari regionali;

• È stato responsabile della mancanza di seguito da parte di Milei riguardo la campagna su Bitcoin in Argentina;

• Ha citato “serie preoccupazioni” riguardo ai piani su Bitcoin in Pakistan;

• Ha costantemente inquadrato le crittovalute come un “rischio” nelle negoziazioni sui prestiti.

Ecco un riassunto:

Come possiamo vedere, le uniche nazioni che sono riuscite a resistere alle pressioni dell'FMI sono state El Salvador, prima di ottenere un prestito dallo stesso, e il Bhutan, che non ha prestiti da questa istituzione.

Ogni Paese che ha ricevuto un prestito dall'FMI e che ha adottato, o tentato di adottare, Bitcoin a livello ufficiale è stato ostacolato.

Com'è possibile che l'FMI sia riuscito a impedire così tanto l'adozione da parte di stati a livello globale, fatta eccezione per il Bhutan, e perché si muove in modo aggressivo per impedirlo?

In questa relazione analizzeremo in dettaglio ciascuna delle tre nazioni in cui l'FMI è riuscito a contrastare con successo l'adozione di Bitcoin e i segnali che indicano che è probabile che riesca a ottenere lo stesso risultato con il Pakistan.

Nell'ultima sezione esamineremo i cinque motivi per cui l'FMI teme Bitcoin e come esso stia ancora prosperando a livello locale nonostante l'abbandono, totale o parziale, da parte di vari stati.

1. Repubblica Centrafricana: quando il denaro coloniale incontra la speranza digitale 

La Repubblica Centrafricana utilizza il franco CFA. Esso non è solo una valuta: è una catena geopolitica, sostenuta dalla Francia e governata dalla Banca degli Stati dell'Africa centrale. Dei suoi 14 Paesi membri, i 6 dell'Africa centrale (inclusa la Repubblica Centrafricana) devono comunque depositare il 50% delle riserve valutarie a Parigi.

Questo controllo sulle riserve favorisce la dipendenza economica, creando al contempo mercati di esportazione per i prodotti francesi a condizioni favorevoli. Nel 1994, ad esempio, il CFA fu svalutato della metà, una linea di politica influenzata dalle pressioni occidentali, in particolare dell'FMI. Ciò causò un aumento vertiginoso del costo delle importazioni, consentendo agli esportatori (principalmente con sede nell'UE) di procurarsi risorse dai Paesi CFA a un costo dimezzato. A livello locale, l'impatto fu devastante, con conseguenti congelamenti salariali, licenziamenti e diffuse tensioni sociali.

Quando la Repubblica Centrafricana annunciò nel 2022 l'adozione di Bitcoin come moneta a corso legale, la Banca degli Stati dell'Africa centrale e il suo organo di regolamentazione COBAC annullarono immediatamente la legge, citando violazioni del Trattato CEMAC, il trattato che istituiva la comunità economica e monetaria dell'Africa centrale. Non si trattava di burocrazia, ma di un avvertimento da parte dei guardiani monetari della Francia.

Perché era importante: ancora oggi l'economia della Repubblica Centrafricana dipende in larga misura dai salvataggi dell'FMI. Con $1,7 miliardi di debito estero (il 61% del PIL), sfidare la Banca degli Stati dell'Africa centrale significava rischiare l'isolamento finanziario.

La campagna silenziosa dell'FMI 

L'FMI si è mosso rapidamente. Nel giro di due settimane (4 maggio 2022) ha condannato pubblicamente il “rischioso esperimento” della Repubblica Centrafricana, citando contraddizioni legali con il divieto alle crittovalute imposto dalla CEMAC. La mossa ha sollevato “importanti sfide legali, di trasparenza e di politica economica”, ha affermato l'FMI, simili alle preoccupazioni in merito all'adozione di Bitcoin da parte di El Salvador: rischi per la stabilità finanziaria, la tutela dei consumatori e le passività fiscali (per contestualizzare, nessuno di questi rischi si è materializzato in El Salvador).

Ma la loro vera arma era la leva finanziaria. In qualità di maggiore creditore della Repubblica Centrafricana, l'FMI ha vincolato la sua nuova Extended Credit Facility (ECF) –  un'ancora di salvezza da $191 milioni – al rispetto delle sue linee di politica.

La linea temporale che racconta tutto 

Questa tabella ripercorre la campagna ombra dell'FMI:

La chiave per affossare le ambizioni Bitcoin della Repubblica Centrafricana è stata assicurarsi che il progetto Sango, un'iniziativa di hub blockchain per vendere “certificati di residenza elettronici” e cittadinanza per $60.000 in bitcoin, non andasse avanti.

 

Il progetto Sango: coincidenza o collusione? 

Nel luglio 2022 la Repubblica Centrafricana ha inaugurato il Progetto Sango, con l'obiettivo di raccogliere $2,5 miliardi (il 100% del PIL).

Il fallimento è stato catastrofico. A gennaio 2023 erano stati raccolti solo $2 milioni (lo 0,2% dell'obiettivo). Mentre i rapporti dell'FMI citano “ostacoli tecnici con una penetrazione di Internet del 10%” come causa del fallimento, la nostra analisi mostra un quadro diverso. Due fattori hanno affondato il progetto.

1. Fuga degli investitori;
2. Una sentenza della Corte Suprema della Repubblica Centrafricana ha bloccato il progetto.

Tuttavia, a un esame più attento, entrambi questi fattori suggeriscono un coinvolgimento dell'FMI.

Diamo un'occhiata più da vicino alle prove.

Fuga degli investitori 

Il ruolo dell'FMI in questa fuga degli investitori è circostanziale, ma convincente. Il 4 maggio 2022 l'FMI ha espresso preoccupazione per l'adozione di Bitcoin da parte della Repubblica Centrafricana, affermando che sollevava importanti sfide legali, di trasparenza e di politica economica. Questa dichiarazione, rilasciata prima del lancio del Progetto Sango, ha evidenziato i rischi per la stabilità finanziaria e l'integrazione economica regionale, potenzialmente scoraggianti per gli investitori. Inoltre, nel luglio 2022, durante una revisione del Programma Monitorato dal Personale (SMP), l'FMI ha rilevato “pericoli di recessione economica dovuti all'aumento dei prezzi di generi alimentari e carburante”, i quali avrebbero dovuto accrescere la cautela degli investitori. I rapporti menzionano anche che l'FMI e il COBAC hanno messo in guardia dai rischi intrinseci nell'adozione di crittovalute da parte della Repubblica Centrafricana, accrescendo lo scetticismo.

La tempistica di queste dichiarazioni dell'FMI coincide con la fuga degli investitori osservata, suggerendo che la loro posizione cautelativa potrebbe averne influenzato le percezioni. Sebbene circostanziale, la sequenza degli eventi suggerisce che l'influenza dell'FMI, in quanto istituzione finanziaria rispettata nella comunità degli investitori, abbia giocato un ruolo chiave nella fuga degli investitori.

Sentenza della Corte Suprema 

In superficie, la sentenza della Corte Suprema sembra un evento indipendente, finché non scaviamo più a fondo e troviamo grandi punti interrogativi sull'indipendenza della magistratura della Repubblica Centrafricana, un Paese che si classifica al 149° posto su 180 nel suo indice di percezione della corruzione (estremamente basso).

Come accennato, una settimana dopo che la Repubblica Centrafricana ha annunciato la sua strategia su Bitcoin, l'FMI ha segnalato delle “preoccupazioni”, tra cui rischi per la stabilità finanziaria, la trasparenza, gli sforzi antiriciclaggio e le sfide nella gestione delle politiche macroeconomiche dovute alla volatilità (Bloomberg, 4 maggio 2022).

Il 29 agosto 2022, 117 giorni dopo, la Corte Suprema della Repubblica Centrafricana ha stabilito che il progetto Sango era illegale. Per contestualizzare, la Corte Suprema, che fa parte del sistema giudiziario della Repubblica Centrafricana, è descritta da organismi internazionali per la trasparenza, come il Gan Integrity, come una delle istituzioni più corrotte del Paese, con prove che indicano inefficienza, interferenze politiche e probabile influenza da tangenti o pressioni politiche.

Il crollo del progetto Sango è diventato la prova regina dell'FMI: “La prova che Bitcoin non può funzionare in economie fragili”. Ma la realtà è che la costante espressione di “preoccupazioni” da parte sua ha creato le condizioni affinché il progetto venisse strutturalmente indebolito in anticipo, rendendo inevitabile questa conclusione.

A 8.300 chilometri di distanza, nella piccola nazione del Bhutan, vediamo il netto contrasto con il successo di Bitcoin, reso possibile senza il “coinvolgimento” dell'FMI.

La conclusione non detta: la resilienza di Bitcoin oltre i confini

L'inversione di tendenza della Repubblica Centrafricana non riguardava la sostenibilità di Bitcoin, bensì la forza bruta. L'FMI ha trasformato in armi le unioni bancarie regionali (CEMAC), ha privato la Repubblica Centrafricana di capitali e ha fatto leva su un prestito da $191 milioni per estinguere la minaccia alla sovranità finanziaria. Quando il Progetto Sango ha avuto difficoltà, la trappola si è chiusa.

Eppure questa sconfitta rivela il potere duraturo di Bitcoin. Notate cosa l'FMI non ha distrutto:

• Le rimesse in bitcoin della Nigeria continuano a bypassare i corridoi del dollaro, consentendo di risparmiare milioni di dollari in commissioni;

• Il commercio basato sul BTC in Kenya prospera senza l’approvazione dell'FMI;

• El Salvador continua ad accumulare BTC nonostante 221 menzioni dello stesso nelle condizioni di prestito.

Lo schema è chiaro: dove l'adozione dal basso mette radici, Bitcoin sopravvive. Ma per i Paesi che hanno annunciato manifesti Bitcoin dall'alto e che hanno ricevuto ingenti prestiti dall'FMI, tutti e quattro hanno incontrato livelli di resistenza schiaccianti... El Salvador, Repubblica Centrafricana, Argentina e ora Pakistan.

Il saldo residuo di $115,1 milioni dei prestiti FMI alla Repubblica Centrafricana la rendeva vulnerabile alle sue forti pressioni. In nazioni senza prestiti FMI, come il Bhutan, Bitcoin sfugge alla morsa del Fondo Monetario Internazionale. Ogni pagamento peer-to-peer, ogni transazione su Lightning Network, erode le fondamenta del vecchio sistema.

L'FMI ha vinto la battaglia nella Repubblica Centrafricana, ma la guerra per la sovranità finanziaria è appena iniziata.

2. L'ostacolo da $45 miliardi all'adozione di Bitcoin in Argentina

Se la Repubblica Centrafricana è stata ostacolata nei suoi piani per Bitcoin, l'Argentina non è mai arrivata al traguardo. La retorica pre-elettorale del presidente Milei suggeriva che grandi cose fossero in serbo per Bitcoin... eppure nulla si è materializzato. Si è trattato solo di una retorica politica svanita dopo le elezioni, o c'era qualcos'altro in gioco? Questa sezione svela cos'è realmente accaduto alle aspirazioni abortite dell'Argentina su Bitcoin.

Capire come sta procedendo l'adozione di Bitcoin è come valutare se un razzo raggiungerà la velocità di fuga: dobbiamo considerare sia i fattori di spinta che quelli di resistenza.

Sono ottimista: credo che Bitcoin vincerà, è chiaramente una soluzione migliore al sistema monetario ormai in rovina che abbiamo attualmente. Ma sono anche realista: credo che la maggior parte delle persone sottovaluti le forze radicate che si oppongono a Bitcoin.

Quando gestivo la mia azienda tecnologica, ci siamo imbattuti nella stessa situazione. La nostra tecnologia era 10 volte migliore, più veloce e più conveniente rispetto al sistema legacy che alla fine abbiamo sostituito. Ma non hanno rinunciato facilmente al loro monopolio!

Cosa è successo in Argentina?

Quando il libertario Javier Milei è stato eletto presidente dell'Argentina nel novembre 2023, molti sostenitori di Bitcoin hanno esultato. Un leader che ha definito i banchieri centrali “truffatori”, aveva giurato di abolire la banca centrale argentina (BCRA) e lodava Bitcoin come “la reazione naturale contro i truffatori delle banche centrali”. Il suo caso è diventato una cartina di tornasole per verificare se Bitcoin potesse ottenere l'accettazione da parte del grande pubblico attraverso l'adozione da parte di un governo piuttosto che attraverso la crescita dal basso.

Eppure, a diciotto mesi dalla sua presidenza, la visione di Milei su Bitcoin rimane incompiuta. Il motivo? Un guinzaglio da $45 miliardi tirato dal Fondo Monetario Internazionale.

Il veto dell'FMI su Bitcoin in Argentina

I vincoli erano già stati introdotti al momento dell'elezione di Milei. Il 3 marzo 2022 il precedente governo argentino aveva firmato un accordo di salvataggio da $45 miliardi con l'FMI. Nelle settimane successive sarebbero emersi dettagli secondo cui l'accordo conteneva una clausola insolita: l'obbligo di “scoraggiare l'uso delle crittovalute”. Non si trattava di un suggerimento, bensì di una condizione del prestito documentata nella Lettera d'Intenti dell'FMI, la quale citava preoccupazioni sulla “disintermediazione finanziaria”.

L'effetto immediato:

• La banca centrale argentina ha vietato alle istituzioni finanziarie le transazioni in crittovalute (Comunicazione BCRA A 7506, maggio 2022);

• La linea di politica rimane applicata sotto Milei, nonostante la sua retorica pro-Bitcoin.

L'inversione di marcia di Milei 

Dopo aver assunto l'incarico, Milei ha:

✔ Ridotto l'inflazione dal 25% mensile a meno del 5% (maggio 2024);

✔ Eliminato i controlli valutari (aprile 2025);

✔ Ottenuto un nuovo accordo da $20 miliardi con l'FMI (aprile 2025).

Ma le proposte principali del suo manifesto – l'adozione di Bitcoin e l'abolizione della BCRA (Banca Centrale Argentina) – sono palesemente assenti. I calcoli spiegano il perché: l'Argentina deve all'FMI più di qualsiasi altra nazione, il che conferisce a quest'ultimo una leva finanziaria senza pari.

Ciononostante c'è dell'ironia nel caso dell'Argentina: mentre l'FMI blocca l'adozione ufficiale di Bitcoin, gli argentini lo stanno comunque abbracciando. La proprietà di crittovalute è cresciuta del 116,5% tra il 2023 e il 2024 in Sud America.

Nella regione l'Argentina ha i tassi di proprietà più elevati, pari al 18,9%, una cifra quasi 3 volte superiore alla media mondiale, aumentata poiché i cittadini si proteggono dall'elevata inflazione annuale del 47,3% (aprile 2025), una ribellione silenziosa che l'FMI non riesce a controllare.

Cosa succederà dopo? 

Tutti gli occhi sono puntati sulle elezioni di medio termine dell'ottobre 2025. Se Milei otterrà il sostegno legislativo, potrebbe mettere alla prova le linee rosse dell'FMI. Ma per ora la lezione è chiara: quando le nazioni prendono in prestito dall'FMI, la loro sovranità monetaria ha delle condizioni.

Punti chiave: 

• Il prestito dell'FMI del 2022 ha legato il salvataggio dell'Argentina a linee di politica anti-crittovalute;

• Milei ha dato priorità alla stabilizzazione economica rispetto alla promozione di Bitcoin, per mantenere il sostegno dell'FMI;

• Esistono parallelismi in El Salvador, Repubblica Centrafricana e ora Pakistan che rivelano una strategia coerente dell'FMI;

• Gli argentini aggirano le restrizioni adottando Bitcoin a livello popolare.

3. El Salvador: una vittoria parziale dell'FMI

Quando El Salvador ha reso Bitcoin moneta a corso legale nel 2021, non si è limitato ad adottare una crittovaluta: ha dichiarato la propria indipendenza finanziaria. Il presidente Nayib Bukele l'ha definita una ribellione contro il predominio del dollaro e un'ancora di salvezza per chi non ha accesso ai servizi bancari. Tre anni dopo quella ribellione si è scontrata con un ostacolo da $1,4 miliardi: l'FMI.

Il prezzo del salvataggio 

Per garantire il prestito del 2024, El Salvador ha accettato di smantellare i pilastri fondamentali della sua politica su Bitcoin. Le condizioni rivelano un allentamento sistematico:

• Solo accettazione volontaria: le aziende non sono più tenute ad accettare Bitcoin (mandato del 2021 abrogato);

• Divieto per il settore pubblico: enti governativi a cui è vietato effettuare transazioni in Bitcoin o emettere debito, ciò include il divieto di strumenti tokenizzati legati a Bitcoin;

• Blocco dell'accumulo di bitcoin: tutti gli acquisti governativi sono stati sospesi (oltre 6.000 BTC di riserva ora congelati), revisione completa delle partecipazioni (wallet Chivo, Bitcoin Office) entro marzo 2025;

• Liquidazione del fondo fiduciario: fidebitcoin (fondo di conversione) da sciogliere con trasparenza verificata;

• Chiusura graduale del wallet Chivo: il programma di incentivi da $30 si conclude dopo che i sondaggi hanno mostrato che la maggior parte degli utenti ha scambiato BTC con USD;

• Rollback del pagamento delle tasse: USD diventa l'unica opzione per le tasse, eliminando l'utilità di Bitcoin come pagamento sovrano.

La ritirata calcolata di Bukele 

La conformità di El Salvador ha senso dal punto di vista fiscale:

• Il prestito stabilizza il debito (84% del PIL) in vista del pagamento delle obbligazioni;

• La dollarizzazione rimane intatta (il dollaro statunitense resta la valuta principale).

Eppure la marcia indietro è impressionante, considerando la retorica di Bukele del 2021. La scarsa diffusione del wallet Chivo ha probabilmente reso più facili le concessioni.

Cosa resta dell'esperimento? 

L'FMI non ha ucciso Bitcoin in El Salvador, ma solo l'adozione ufficiale. L'uso popolare persiste:

• Bitcoin Beach (economia circolare locale) è ancora in funzione, anzi prospera;

• Il turismo attrae un numero sempre maggiore di appassionati di Bitcoin.

Ma senza il sostegno dello stato, il ruolo di Bitcoin rischia di ridursi a uno strumento di nicchia piuttosto che a una rivoluzione monetaria, almeno nel breve termine.

La strada da percorrere 

Si delineano due scenari:

1. Lento declino: Bitcoin diventa una curiosità turistica mentre le condizioni dell'FMI entrano in vigore;
2. Revival in sordina: il settore privato resta in vita nonostante il ritiro del governo salvadoregno.

Una cosa è chiara: quando l'FMI emette gli assegni, stabilisce anche le regole.

Punti chiave:

• Il prestito dell'FMI ha costretto El Salvador a revocare 6 politiche chiave su Bitcoin;

• Un precedente per le altre nazioni che cercano il sostegno dell'FMI;

• L'uso popolare di Bitcoin potrebbe sopravvivere all'intervento del governo.

El Salvador ha fatto molte concessioni in Bitcoin. Sebbene questo non abbia danneggiato molto la nazione, invia un messaggio forte ad altre nazioni latinoamericane come Ecuador e Guatemala, che stavano osservando El Salvador e pensavano di copiarne le strategie (finché non hanno verificato l'entità del prestito dell'FMI che aveva ricevuto). Quindi, in termini netti, si è trattato di una vittoria parziale dell'FMI e di una vittoria parziale di El Salvador.

4. Bhutan: la storia di successo senza FMI 

Sono ormai trascorsi due anni dall'inizio dell'esperimento Bitcoin in Bhutan.

Ciò significa che ora disponiamo di dati attendibili su come ha influito sull'economia.

L'FMI ha avvertito che l'adozione di Bitcoin da parte delle nazioni avrebbe destabilizzato la loro economia, sarebbero state meno efficaci nell'attrarre investimenti diretti esteri e avrebbero messo a repentaglio le proprie iniziative di decarbonizzazione e tutela ambientale. Ha espresso in particolare preoccupazione per la “mancanza di trasparenza” del Bhutan nell'adozione delle crittovalute.

Cosa dicono i dati? 

1. Le riserve di bitcoin hanno risposto direttamente a urgenti esigenze fiscali. “Nel giugno 2023 il Bhutan ha stanziato $72 milioni dalle sue riserve per finanziare un aumento del 50% degli stipendi dei dipendenti pubblici”;


2. Il Bhutan è stato in grado di “utilizzare le riserve di bitcoin per evitare una crisi mentre le riserve di valuta estera si riducevano a $689 milioni”;


3. Il primo ministro Tshering Tobgay in un'intervista ha affermato che Bitcoin “supporta anche progetti sanitari e ambientali gratuiti”;


4. Tobgay ha anche affermato che le sue riserve di bitcoin hanno contribuito a “stabilizzare l'economia [della nazione] da $3,5 miliardi”;


5. Analisti indipendenti hanno ora affermato che “questo modello potrebbe attrarre investimenti esteri, in particolare per le nazioni con risorse rinnovabili inutilizzate”.

Considerando che l'analisi dell'FMI non solo era sbagliata, ma era anche lontana dall'obiettivo, sorge spontanea la domanda: le sue previsioni si sono mai basate sui dati?

5. Cinque motivi per cui l'FMI potrebbe temere Bitcoin 

E se la paura più grande dell'FMI non fosse l'inflazione... ma Bitcoin, e se Bitcoin riuscisse a spezzare la morsa del debito dell'FMI/Banca Mondiale?

Durante la mia recente conversazione con John Perkins, qualcosa è scattato. Alex Gladstein aveva precedentemente denunciato come gli “aggiustamenti strutturali” dell'FMI non abbiano eliminato la povertà, ma di fatto arricchito le nazioni creditrici. Perkins ha integrato questo concetto con i suoi resoconti personali.

Perkins mi ha messo a nudo come il Sud del mondo sia intrappolato in un ciclo di debito, progettato per mantenere il flusso di ricchezza verso Occidente. Ma ecco il colpo di scena: Bitcoin sta già smantellando questo copione in cinque modi chiave.

Ridurre i costi delle rimesse per allentare il cappio del debito 

Le rimesse, ovvero il denaro inviato in patria dai lavoratori migranti, rappresentano spesso una parte significativa del PIL dei Paesi in via di sviluppo. Intermediari tradizionali come Western Union applicano commissioni che possono arrivare fino al 5-10%. Ciò agisce come una tassa nascosta che prosciuga le riserve valutarie. Per Paesi come El Salvador o la Nigeria, ogni dollaro di rimessa che non affluisce nel Paese è un dollaro che la banca centrale deve immagazzinare per stabilizzare le proprie valute. Spesso questa riserva di dollari è fornita dall'FMI.

Bitcoin cambia le regole del gioco 

Con Lightning Network, le commissioni scendono quasi a zero e le transazioni vengono liquidate in pochi secondi. Nel 2021 il presidente di El Salvador, Bukele, aveva previsto (con un certo ottimismo) che Bitcoin avrebbe potuto far risparmiare $400 milioni in rimesse. In realtà ci sono poche prove che abbiano raggiunto anche solo lontanamente quella soglia, tuttavia il potenziale è chiaro: più rimesse in bitcoin portano a maggiori riserve in dollari, il che si traduce in una minore necessità di prestiti dell'FMI.

Non c'è da stupirsi che quest'ultimo abbia menzionato Bitcoin 221 volte nelle condizioni di prestito per El Salvador nel 2025. Inutile dire che vorrebbe rimanere un creditore rilevante.

Bitcoin non è solo più economico per le rimesse, ma aggira completamente il sistema del dollaro. In Nigeria, dove la naira è in difficoltà, le famiglie ora detengono BTC come un asset più prezioso della valuta locale. Non c'è bisogno che le banche centrali brucino le riserve in dollari; nessun salvataggio disperato da parte dell'FMI.

I numeri parlano da soli:

• Il Pakistan perde $1,8 miliardi all'anno in commissioni per le rimesse: Bitcoin potrebbe far risparmiare la maggior parte di questa cifra;

• El Salvador risparmia già oltre $4 milioni all'anno con solo l'1,1% di adozione delle rimesse in bitcoin.

L'adozione non è ancora universale: solo il 12% dei salvadoregni usa Bitcoin regolarmente, mentre oltre il 5% delle rimesse in Nigeria avviene tramite crittovalute. Ma la tendenza è chiara: ogni trasferimento in Bitcoin indebolisce il ciclo di dipendenza dal debito.

L'FMI vede la minaccia. La domanda è: quanto velocemente si diffonderà questa rivoluzione silenziosa?

Le rimesse ammontavano a quasi $21 miliardi nel 2024, rappresentando oltre il 4% del PIL della Nigeria

Elusione delle sanzioni e delle barriere commerciali

L'Iran, il Venezuela e la Russia, Paesi ricchi di petrolio, hanno avuto un accesso limitato al dollaro a causa delle sanzioni statunitensi rispettivamente nel 1979, nel 2017 e nel 2022, con conseguente esportazione di una quantità di barili di petrolio al giorno notevolmente inferiore in ciascun caso.

Che si condividano o meno le ideologie di queste nazioni, Bitcoin interrompe questo circolo vizioso. L'Iran elude già le sanzioni usando Bitcoin come mezzo per “esportare petrolio”, mentre il Venezuela ha  usato Bitcoin per pagare le importazioni, eludendo le sanzioni.

L'Iran è anche in grado di aggirare le sanzioni monetizzando le sue esportazioni di energia attraverso il mining. Questo evita gli ultimatum dell'FMI, “riforme in cambio di denaro”, e, al contempo, mantiene l'economia in funzione.

La presa del petrodollaro si indebolisce, mentre Russia e Iran aprono la strada agli accordi sul petrolio in Bitcoin.

Un'altra nazione che l'ha utilizzato per evitare le difficoltà economiche causate dalle sanzioni è l'Afghanistan, dove gli aiuti umanitari transitano attraverso Bitcoin. ONG come Code to Inspire hanno aggirato il blocco bancario imposto dai talebani e il Digital Citizen Fund ha utilizzato Bitcoin per distribuire aiuti dopo la presa del potere da parte dei talebani, impedendo alle famiglie di morire di fame.

Sebbene la quota di Bitcoin nel commercio sanzionato sia ridotta (meno del 2% per le esportazioni di petrolio di Iran e Venezuela), la tendenza è in crescita.

Le sanzioni sono uno strumento fondamentale per la leva geopolitica, spesso sostenuto dall'FMI e dalla Banca Mondiale attraverso il loro allineamento con le principali economie come gli Stati Uniti. Le nazioni sanzionate che utilizzano Bitcoin riducono il controllo dell'FMI sui flussi finanziari, minacciando allo stesso tempo il predominio del dollaro.

Usare Bitcoin come scudo contro l'inflazione

Quando nazioni come l'Argentina affrontano l'iperinflazione, prendono in prestito dollari dall'FMI per rafforzare le riserve valutarie e stabilizzare la propria valuta, per poi ritrovarsi ad affrontare misure di austerità o la vendita forzata di asset strategici a basso prezzo quando i rimborsi vanno a rilento. Bitcoin offre una via d'uscita, agendo come una valuta globale e non inflazionabile che opera indipendentemente dalla supervisione governativa e il cui valore aumenta.

L'esperimento di El Salvador dimostra come Bitcoin possa ridurre la dipendenza dal dollaro. Detenendo BTC, le nazioni possono tutelarsi dal crollo della valuta senza dover ricorrere ai prestiti dell'FMI. Se l'Argentina avesse destinato solo l'1% delle sue riserve a Bitcoin nel 2018, avrebbe potuto compensare la svalutazione del peso di oltre il 90% di quell'anno, evitando un salvataggio dell'FMI. La neutralità di Bitcoin significa anche che nessuna singola entità può imporre condizioni, a differenza dei prestiti dell'FMI che richiedono privatizzazioni o riforme impopolari.

Bitcoin non ha un debito pubblico, né una lunga storia su cui basarsi per incoraggiarne l'adozione. Tuttavia, grazie all'Effetto Lindy, ogni anno che passa Bitcoin diventa un'alternativa più praticabile. 

Effetto Lindy: più a lungo qualcosa ha avuto successo, più è probabile che continui ad averlo. La longevità di Bitcoin rafforza il suo potenziale di successo.

Mining di Bitcoin: trasformare l'energia in ricchezza senza debiti

Molti Paesi in via di sviluppo sono ricchi di energia ma poveri per i debiti, intrappolati dai prestiti dell'FMI per infrastrutture come dighe o centrali elettriche. Questi prestiti richiedono esportazioni di energia a basso costo o concessioni di risorse in caso di insolvenza. Il mining di Bitcoin capovolge questo scenario trasformando l'energia inutilizzata – come il gas bruciato o l'idroelettrico in eccesso – in ricchezza liquida senza intermediari o costi di trasporto.

Il Paraguay guadagna $50 milioni all'anno dall'attività di mining tramite l'idroelettrico, coprendo il 5% del suo deficit commerciale. L'Etiopia ha guadagnato $55 milioni in 10 mesi. Il Bhutan si distingue: con $1,1 miliardi in bitcoin (il 36% del suo PIL da $3,02 miliardi), la sua attività di mining tramite l'idroelettrico potrebbe produrre $1,25 miliardi all'anno entro la metà del 2025, saldando i suoi debiti da $403 milioni con la Banca Mondiale e $527 milioni con la Asian Development Bank senza austerità o privatizzazioni. A differenza dei prestiti dell'FMI, i bitcoin minati aumentano di valore e possono essere utilizzati come garanzia per prestiti non FMI. Questo modello – monetizzare l'energia senza cedere asset – spaventa l'FMI, poiché riduce la sua influenza sul settore energetico.

Economie Bitcoin: potere dal basso

Bitcoin non è solo per le nazioni, è per le comunità. In luoghi come Bitcoin Beach a El Salvador o Bitcoin Ekasi in Sudafrica, la gente del posto usa già BTC per transazioni quotidiane, risparmi e progetti comunitari come scuole o cliniche. Queste economie circolari, spesso innescate dalla filantropia, mirano all'autosufficienza. In Argentina, dove l'inflazione supera spesso il 100%, nel 2021 il 21% delle persone ha utilizzato le crittovalute per proteggere la propria ricchezza. Se ampliati, questi modelli potrebbero ridurre la dipendenza dai programmi finanziati dal debito nazionale, che è ovviamente l'ultima cosa che l'FMI desidera.

Conclusione

Promuovendo la resilienza locale, Bitcoin indebolisce la “leva delle crisi” dell'FMI. Le comunità fiorenti non hanno bisogno di salvataggi, quindi quest'ultimo non può chiedere la privatizzazione in cambio di prestiti. In Africa, progetti come Gridless Energy – che ha già fatto uscire 28.000 africani dalla povertà energetica utilizzando microreti rinnovabili legate al mining di Bitcoin – riducono la necessità di megaprogetti sostenuti dall'FMI. Se migliaia di città adottassero questa strategia, la carenza di dollari diventerebbe meno importante e gli scambi commerciali potrebbero bypassare i sistemi basati sul dollaro.

Mentre l'FMI si impegna a diffondere disinformazione sul consumo energetico e sull'impatto ambientale di Bitcoin come un modo per ostacolarne l'adozione, il suo strumento preferito e molto più potente è quello di utilizzare la leva finanziaria che ha sulle nazioni indebitate per “incoraggiare fortemente” l'adesione alla sua visione di un futuro senza Bitcoin.

L'FMI ha combattuto l'adozione di Bitcoin in El Salvador, Repubblica Centrafricana e Argentina. Ora sta contrastando l'intenzione del Pakistan di minare Bitcoin. L'aumento di questi sforzi dal basso probabilmente costringerà l'FMI a intervenire in modo sempre più marcato.

Le economie basate su Bitcoin, dal basso, consentono alle comunità di prosperare senza i salvataggi dell'FMI. E c'è bisogno del potere delle persone per trovare modi nuovi e innovativi per contrastare il contrattacco di questa istituzione. 

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

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

Part 1

If the Donald wishes to clear the purportedly hallowed precincts of the Federal Reserve of mortgage fraudsters, the facts of the case tell us he has a much bigger challenge than issuing Fed governor Lisa Cook her walking papers via a White House press release. That’s because her sin of obtaining a 15-year mortgage on an Ann Arbor, Michigan residence at 2.5% on June 18, 2021 and a 30-year mortgage on an Atlanta condo at 3.25% on July 2, 2021, while claiming both as a “primary” residence, wasn’t the half of it.

The real crime is that not only a Fed governor but any resident of America could get a long-term mortgage this cheap in 2021. After all, during 2021 the Y/Y inflation rate per our trusty 16% trimmed mean CPI posted at 3.17%. That means Cook’s Ann Arbor mortgage was written at -0.67% on an inflation-adjusted basis and the Atlanta loan at +0.08%.

Both rates are economically absurd and were available to Lisa Cook or anyone else in America only because the monetary fraudsters on the FOMC had their big fat thumbs on the scales in the bond pits. And we do mean fraud: The Fed’s balance sheet rose by $1.2 trillion or 17% during the 12-month period ending on July 7, 2021, and at a time, as we will amplify below, when the Fed’s balance sheet should have actually grown by essentially zero.

That is to say, the FOMC was buying government debt and GSE paper hand-0ver-fist with fiat credits snatched from thin digital air, thereby starkly falsifying yields and prices in the bond pits. There is not a chance in the hot place that tax-paying, real money savers left to their own devices would accept such niggardly real yields.

For want of doubt on this matter, here is the Fed’s march of shame/fraud during the 35 years after Greenspan embarked upon Keynesian monetary central planning until the Fed’s pivot to inflation-fighting in 2022. During that period the real yield on the 30-year mortgage went from +6.4% to -1.2%, thereby representing a 760 basis point swing in a single, relentless direction over 35 years.

Needless to say, the odds of that happening on an honest free market in money and debt are 0.000%! In fact, this relentless march downhill to these absurdly low bond and mortgage yields pales Lisa Cook’s alleged fraud into insignificance. The pattern in this chart amounts to wanton monetary fraud on an epic scale.

Inflation-Adjusted Yield on 30-Year Mortgages, 1977 to 2022

Again, for want of further doubt on this matter, here is the Fed’s balance sheet over the same 35-year period.

For crying out loud! It expanded by 35X during a period in which the nominal GDP rose by only 5.2Xand real GDP by just 2.4X. That is to say, the Fed pumped fraudulent credit into the financial markets at a 11% per annum rate for 35 years running. So doing it resembled nothing so much as an end-stage alcoholic self-medicating on an endless bender.

Absent this $8.5 trillion flood of central bank credit authorized by Alan Greenspan and his heirs and assigns, of course, there is no chance whatsoever that the march of monetary shame depicted in the graph above would have occurred; and also that Lisa Cook and millions of other Americans would have gotten 30-year mortgages at just 3% in June/July 2021.

35X Rise In Fed Balance Sheet, Q2 1987 to Q1 2022

Needless to say, there is a devastating irony embedded in the near $9 trillion peak of the Fed’s balance sheet displayed above. To wit, in March 2020 the Fed in its capacity as lead bank regulator finally abolished the archaic requirement that banks maintain cash reserves against deposits at the Fed equal to stated fractions of these balances. In the period immediately before their long overdue abolition, the reserve requirements were 3% for large deposit levels (above $17 million) and 10% for very large deposit levels over $128 million.

At the same time, the Congress and the Fed substituted a more sensible balance sheet based regime that consisted of liquidity coverage ratios (LCR) and equity and other capital ratios against adjusted balance sheet assets. What this meant as a practical matter, of course, is that thereafter banks did not really need the Fed in order to remain appropriately liquid or to fund and grow their balance sheets, thereby supplying an adequate credit supply to the main street economy.

Specifically, the Liquidity Coverage ratio could be met by holding US treasury paper, traditional cash reserves at the Fed or other high quality short term paper, while lending growth and asset expansion could be accommodated by raising equity capital through retained earnings or market offerings. That is to say, the new post-Dodd-Frank liquity and capital ratios superseded the traditional central bank function of reserve provision to the banking system in order to mitigate bank runs or smoothly enable growth of bank credit and deposits.

In effect, the regulatory policy action culminating in the March 2020 abolition of required reserves took both the “banking” and the “reserve” functions out of the Fed’s remit, leaving it buck naked as the pure monetary central planning agency that it had gradually become since the time of Alan Greenspan. The only possible residual “banking” function now possessed by the Fed is that of a funding source of last resort for banks that for some reason may be unable to acquire sufficient deposits in the private money markets to fund their balance sheets.

Alas, with a proper “mobilized discount rate” at the Fed’s discount windows that function would be nearly vestigial, as well. Going way back to 1913 and the “real bills” doctrine on which Carter Glass founded the Fed, the discount window would charge the market interest rate plus a stiff penalty spread in order to discourage use except for very rare circumstances. That is to say, there is nothing wrong with the free markets in money that says private funding will not be available at market clearing rates.

Indeed, if at some point in time market clearing rates on deposits should prove to be “too high” because yields on a given banks’ assets were lower, the solution would be insolvency and liquidation of the institution in question. And in a market with more than $105 trillion of debt instruments outstanding, it is easy enough to see that a few periodic bank bankruptcies among badly managed institutions that got in over their ski’s would actually be a good thing—a purging mechanism to keep banking markets disciplined and solvent.

In any event, the Fed’s current $6.5 trillion QT (quantitative tightening) balance sheet is far, far too big for any residual function as a funds supplier of last resort at market rates. Indeed, the Fed’s balance sheet got to such brobdignagian girth purely owing to the dysfunctional pursuit of its Greenspanian monetary central planning model.

Alas, the latter is based on the dubious proposition that main street prosperity is everywhere and always retarded by the free market’s alleged inability to set interest rates and financial asset prices correctly. And that it therefore needs a monetary Sherpa to guide financial asset pricing, and the prosperity that flows from savings and capital investment.

But today’s histrionics tells you all you need to know about that misguided proposition. Main Street needs only a free market in capital and money—not Jay Powell nor Donald Trump—- to price stocks, bonds, loans, money or real estate. And not the 11 additional geniuses on the Open Market Committee, either.

So if the Donald really wants to bring back a golden age of prosperity he needs only continue his brutal attacks on individual members of the monetary politburo until the public finally sees that the entire central banking emperor is naked.

In this context, it can be well and truly said that the Fed put itself out of its historic central banking business in March 2020. What’s left, of course, is its mission creep based monetary central planning operation, which has been a disaster and nonstarter from the get go.

As it happens, the Donald has a way of stumbling into good outcomes–like the impending peace deal in Ukraine and the dismantlement of the unnecessary American Empire that can follow in its wake—even if he doesn’t know exactly why.

So in the case of the other great dysfunctional institution on the banks of the Potomac, let’s hope that the sacking of Lisa Cook is just the opening salvo. What really needs to happen is a mercy-killing of the entire FOMC and 95% of what today constitutes the massive rogue monetary central planning agency domiciled in the Eccles Building. The latter is truly a clear and present danger to American prosperity.

Part 2

If we are lucky the firing of Lisa Cook may turn out to be the straw that finally breaks the camels back. To wit, both Wall Street speculators and Washington spenders have been out in force screeching in behalf of the sacred “independence” of the Fed. But maybe people will begin to wonder how in the world a society based on free market governance of economic life and constitutional and democratic arrangement of political life came to place such massive, unaccountable power in the hands of just 12 bureaucrats (FOMC).

Indeed, we’d say bring on the Fed “independence” debate because in the present day and age there is no compelling reason at all to invest such massive financial power in an institution that is both unaccountable to the electorate and self-evidently in the tank for the gamblers, spenders and war-mongers who thrive on its largesse.

So let’s just start with a contra-factual. Assume that the entire FOMC is fired and not replaced; that the current Fed practice of buying and selling government debt paper and other securities via the FOMC is banned; that US Treasuries are made ineligible collateral for loans from the Fed’s discount windows; and that the Fed is forbidden from paying interest on bank reserves or their money market equivalent such as overnight repos.

Of course, the same crew of howlers for Fed independence–ranging from Wall Streeter’s to Senator Elizabeth Warren to huffy MSM financial journalists at CNBC and The Economist—will say that upon activation of the contra-factual summarized above all economic hell would break-out on Wall Street and main street alike.

Actually, we’d beg to differ by going straight to the core of the argument for an all-powerful state-enabled financial Sherpa. The claim is that this ensures financial stability and enhanced economic growth, while the absence of a powerful central bank would send the hapless free market economy spiraling into a paroxysm of financial crises, recessions and sub-par economic growth.

As it happens, there is not a shred of empirical evidence to support those contentions and plenty of reason to believe that the vaunted macro-economic management functions of the Fed are simply the fruits of Mission Creep over many decades. The latter being capped off by the sharp turn toward out and out monetary central planning when Alan Greenspan took the helm in August 1987.

In that context, let us start with a simple performance test based on key macro-economic outcomes as between the two book-end periods:

• the two decades after the so-called Treasury Accord in March 1951 and Nixon’s deep-sixing of the gold standard at Camp David in August 1971.
• the 18 years between the Greenspan housing bubble peak in Q4 2007 and Q2 2025.

Needless to say, we have not chosen these intervals randomly. In fact, the first period represents mainly the “light touch” monetary policy era of William McChesney Martin. The latter was actually the Truman Administration’s Treasury Department official who negotiated the deal which freed the Fed from its WW II subservience to the financing needs of Uncle Sam. Crucially, Martin also had matured financially in the household of a Fed governor in the roaring 1920s and as president of the New York Stock Exchange during the crash of the 1930s. That is to say, he had experienced first hand the dangers of Fed fueled financial bubbles and their destructive aftermath, too.

By contrast, the post Q4 2007 period involved full-on monetary central planning from the Eccles Building led by Keynesian academics and Washington apparatchiks. During this interval the Fed’s massive daily presence in the canyons of Wall Street was continuous, heavy-handed and predicated upon the false contention that financial stability and sustained economic growth and full-employment were unobtainable absent massive infusions of Fed credit into the bond and stock trading pits and continuous micro-management of money market rates and the yield curve. And the latter was to be accomplished via deft buying and selling (that is, overwhelmingly “buying”) of treasury debt and other securities as instructed daily by the FOMC.

To be sure, this isn’t a perfect test but if you are not totally bamboozled by the recency bias, it is evident that there was a night and day difference in the modality of central bank operations as between the two periods. For want of doubt, consider William McChesney Martin’s famous aphorism that the job of the Fed “is to take away the punch bowl just as the party is getting started”. Yet as to the 2007-2025 period, find us any even vaguely similar utterances from Bernanke, Yellen and Powell or, for that matter, any member of the FOMC, and we will be literally shocked.

Needless to say, you won’t find one because the whole mentality of the FOMC has changed drastically since the 1950s and 1960s. The Martin Fed actually respected the free market, and sought keep its impact on financial markets and asset prices as absolutely minimal as possible. By contrast, the Fed under Bernanke et. al. since the Great Financial crisis, especially, has mistaken itself for the Little Dutch Boy with his finger in the dike.

That’s right. The FOMC actually thinks its ministrations constitute the difference between national economic prosperity and crisis-ridden economic dysfunction. And that, in turn, its ability to steer the economy toward prosperity rather than collapse is owing to the fact that the 12-person FOMC has far better insight as to the correct interest rates, yield curve and stock index level at any point in time than would a genuine free market in financial instruments that is unenlightened by the wisdom possessed at the FOMC.

Well, we not only think not. We know not!

You can’t get any better contrast on the matters of macro-economic stability and the trend level of economic growth and employment than is depicted in the table below.

As to the growth/full employment metric, the comparison speaks for itself. The two decade CAGR for real growth in the Martin era was 4.24% per annum or more than double the 1.95% per annum gain during the heavy-duty monetary central planning era originally spawned by Greenspan and then executed by Bernanke, Yellen and Powell after Q4 2007.

Indeed, the table compares long-term trends—two decades way back then compared to the two most recent decades—so there is nothing to debate about timing or short-term aberrations. The heavy-handed interventionist Fed of recent times has drastically retarded economic growth, not enhanced it.

At the same time, the modern interventionist Fed, as depicted in the second column, has caused a sharp increase in macro-economic volatility and instability compared to what prevailed during the “light touch” Martin Era when the business cycle was largely operating on its own natural steam and forces. We reach that conclusion by comparing the standard deviation for both nominal and real growth as between the two periods, and, even more crucially, the so-called coefficients of variation.

The latter tells you everything you need to know. Given that the mean growth trend was sharply lower over Q4 2007 to Q2 2025 while the standard deviation was much higher, you got a compounding effect in this bottom line metric. To wit, the coefficient of variation with respect to nominal GDP during the last 18 years was more than double its level during the Martin Era, while the coefficient of variation since 2007 with respect to real GDP was triple that which prevailed during the 1950s and 1960s.

In short, contrary to Ben Bernanke’s humbug about the “Great Moderation” in recent times—allegedly due to the superior performance of the FOMC—-the truth is very simple: Greenspanian monetary central planning has caused a sharp and unmistakable increase in economic volatility and instability.

To be sure, there should be no mystery as to why monetary central planning results in less growth and more instability. It’s actually inherent in the beast because despite all its pretensions to arcane “monetary science” the Fed’s mindset and tools alike are about as primitive as it gets: Namely, the entirety of monetary central planning is based on the proposition that debt can never be cheap enough, and that more and more of the latter is the elixir that fuels enhanced economic growth and rising prosperity.

Actually, however, not at all. Excessive and artificial debt levels due to central bank induced mispricing causes financial bubbles and diversion of capital and economic resources to unproductive speculation and malinvestment. They also generate boom and bust stock market and credit cycles, which raise the volatility and instability of the main street economy.

For want of doubt here is the national leverage ratio since 1951, which is measured as total public and private debt divided by nominal GDP. Self-evidently, during the high growth/low GDP volatility period of the Martin era, the national leverage ratio hugged closely to its historical level at about 150% of GDP. However, after the Fed was cut loose from the gold standard anchor of Breton Woods in August 1971 it was off to the races.

During the entirety of the post-2007 period, the national leverage ratio stood in the range of 350% to 400% of GDP. In turn, those two extra turns of debt now amount to $60 trillion of incremental debt being lugged around by the US economy.

In short, the massively excessive debt of the recent period of Keynesian monetary central planning was a growth retardant, not an elixir; and it also saturated the financial system with excessive credit and liquidity, which fostered boom and bust financial bubbles and subsequent violent collapses and liquidations.

National Leverage Ratio (Debt-to-GDP), 1951 to 2025

Finally, there is another crucial aspect of the Martin era that militates in favor of firing the entire FOMC and abolishing any further buying and selling of debt and other securities in the open market by the Fed. To wit, the overwhelmingly favored policy tool during the Martin era was the Fed’sdiscount rate, which is inherently a tool of old-fashioned central banking, not modern day monetary central planning.

In the first place, the Discount Window is passive. It is not meant to steer the financial markets or macro-manage the main street GDP. Instead, it was conceived by Carter Glass and the Fed founders as a back-up source of required reserves, enabling banks to meet unusual depositor demands for cash without shrinking their credit and deposit books; and to thereby steady the main street economy and enable a more continuous process of investment expansion and economic growth than had prevailed during the latter part of the 19th century.

Yet, heaven forfend, there were no implicit or explicit targets for GDP growth, employment rates, housing starts, CapEx or any of the other “incoming data” indicators tracked to the week and second decimal point by today’s monetary central planners. Thus, during the entirely of the Martin Era there was not a single Fed proclamation about its Federal funds targets, nor any frenzied financial market speculation about 25, 50 or even 100 basis point increases/decreases in interest rates in the run-up to each Fed meeting. Those key movements were left to the wisdom of the money markets.

Accordingly, during the 228 months of William McChesney Martin’s tenure as Fed chairman, the Fed took interest rate action via the passive Discount Rate just 30 times, representing hardly 13% of the monthly meetings. By contrast, 100% of Fed monthly meetings are now effectively “live”, even as the FOMC’s open market desk is busy buying or selling securities virtually every week, day and hour that the financial markets are open for business.

Fed Discount Rate Levels And Changes During The Martin Era, 1951 to 1970

At the end of the day, there is plenty of historical evidence for the proposition that the entire FOMC should be fired, followed by the abolition of the FOMC entirely. As we will amplify further in Part 3, the American economy needs neither an “independent” Fed nor a super-interventionist FOMC to prosper. The US economy would do just fine with free markets in money, debt, stocks and derivatives, and at most a mobilized rate at the Discount window to provide high cost liquidity in extremis.

Part 3

The screeching in behalf of an “independent” Fed versus one purportedly stacked and dominated by the Donald has continued unabated. Lately, it seems that the talking heads on CNBC can’t gum about much else.

Alas, this barrage of self-interested humbug from Wall Street and Washington alike amounts to obsessing about the wrong question. As we have suggested in Parts 1 & 2, the question is not whether Jay Powell and the FOMC should be setting interest rates versus Donald Trump and his minions. To the contrary, the real issue is why anyone in the Eccles Building should be setting interest rates at all.

To wit, what in the hell is wrong with the free market? And by that we mean the tens of thousands, if not millions, of traders and investors with skin in the game who would otherwise set interest rates by bid and ask without any guidance and pegging from what amounts to a monetary politburo—even as the latter is pleased to be known by the utterly false and antiseptic title as the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC).

For crying out loud. There is nothing “open” or “market” about it. The FOMC is an all-powerful price control arm of the state, which derives its massive financial clout from a monopoly on the legal right to counterfeit dollars snatched from thin air.

Yet, why in the world at this late date are they still printing dollars? As we have shown repeatedly, there is no reason whatsoever for the Fed to pursue it original mission of supplying reserves to the commercial banking system. After all, the Fed itself abolished any and all reserve requirements more than five years ago!

Instead, the banking system is now regulated—for better or worse–by a balance sheet based regime including prescribed liquidity ratios based on qualifying assets such as US treasury bills, which exist in ever increasing abundance thanks to the Trumpified spenders and borrowers in Washington; and also equity capital at prescribed ratios to total bank assets, which equity capital, again, can be acquired nearly without limit via retained earnings or new equity issuance. So there would be no barrier to commercial banking expansion so long as balance sheets are managed prudently.

Similarly, money and credit is the lifeblood of modern capitalism, but why in the world is it held that an unaccountable monetary politburo of 12 appointed bureaucrats is required in order to create serviceable money and credit? Indeed, the free market everywhere and always is responsive to demands for every kind of good or service—including that of money for transactions, payments, safekeeping, lending and borrowing.

As to the latter, there is now $4 trillion of crypto currencies outstanding. That’s a hell of a lot of private money—and it’s really no different in the context of the digital age than private bank issued money was during the national banking era prior to Washington’s granting the Fed a monopoly on the printing press. That is to say, the free market had proven back then and is doing so again now that it can create serviceable money without any action or guarantee by the state.

To be sure, the “use case” has been somewhat slow developing for the innumerable cryptos now on offer, but the recent Genius Act passed by the not-so-geniuses in Washington actually turns Treasury bills into everyday money (stable coins), which can be transacted instantly over the blockchain by anyone who can buy, borrow or steal a computer or iPhone. Indeed, so-called “stable coins” are actually the equivalent of national bank notes issued during the National Banking era between 1863 and 1913, which were also backed 100% by US Treasury debt. In short, there is nothing new under the sun about non-state or private money at all.

Stated differently, a century ago private banks created hand-to-hand currency that was backed 100% by Treasury bonds but guaranteed only by the issuing bank. Today, the Genius Act enables private crypto banks to issue essentially the same kind of hand-to-keyboard transactional money, albeit usable even more conveniently on a computer-to-computer basis over the blockchain.

As for the necessity of a state run central bank to enable adequate credit supplies, fuhgeddaboudit! There is currently $104 trillion of debt of every shape, size and domination outstanding in the USA alone. Indeed, the problem is way too much credit owing to the Fed’s repression of interest rates and the resulting sub-economic yields that result. Still, at market rates people and corporations alike would be rewarded for saving, meaning that there would be plenty of honest savings-based funding at market clearing yields for the legitimate credit needs of the economy.

In short, the banking system no longer needs “reserves” supplied by the Fed, and the economy does not need a central banking monopoly to be adequately supplied with money and credit. Accordingly, we once again get to the true core of Federal Reserve operations, which is not really about reserves, money or credit.

To the contrary, the Fed today is a destructive state agency in the business of monetary central planning, predicted upon a simple but infinitely erroneous proposition: Namely, the claim that free financial markets cannot properly price interest rates for optimum growth and macro-economic stability. Alas, in Part 2 we proved that proposition is utter nonsense with respect to both growth and stability.

Of course, the prospect of free financial markets operating without an authoritarian financial Sherpa and interest rate pegger in the Eccles Building would generate coronaries among the speculators on Wall Street and the spenders in Washington. They would falsely shriek that somehow the financial system needs a liquidity supplier of last resort to prevent the ultra-low probability that a market-clearing interest rate would somehow fail to balance the supply of private savings with the demand for investible and loanable funds.

Fine. An ultimate liquidity backstop at market rates is a contradiction in terms because at some rate there will always be depositors and liquidity providers. But for those academics and socialists—yes, we do repeat ourselves—who think capitalism needs training wheels, then just revive the Discount Window and a mobilized discount rate.

Beyond that, shutdown everything else round and about the Eccles Building. That is, fire the current FOMC , abolish the open market desk and replace the Federal Reserve Board with citizens randomly drawn from the Brooklyn telephone book. The latter would operate not through a central planning oriented open market desk, but via a passive discount window based on free market interest rates plus a penalty spread. It would be a standing facility that would be virtually never used. But a warm financial blanket nonetheless.

Needless to say, a passive discount window would put the Wall Street gamblers out of business because the leveraged carry trades would no longer be profitable, and PE multiples would fall sharply based on market driven DCF calculations, not phony 10-year Treasury yields confected by the FOMC.

Even more decisively, it would also put the Washington spenders out of business, as well. Forced to pay soaring market clearing interest rates on the Uncle Sam’s massive public debt, the spenders would have absolutely no running room to spend another dime on America’s massively overdrawn credit card.

Finally, the question therefore recurs: In a free market financial system with the printing presses of the Fed set at or near idle on a permanent basis, would the stock market capitalization of the US have exploded from 40% of GDP in the era before Greenspan and his heirs and assigns to nearly 20o% at present?

As the man said on late night TV—not on your life!

US Stock Market Capitalization As a % of GDP, 1970 to 2022

Reprinted with permission from David Stockman’s Contra Corner.

The post Hey, POTUS, Fire The Real Mortgage Fraudsters—The Entire FOMC appeared first on LewRockwell.

Peace-loving people throughout the world breathed a sigh of relief when the Israeli-American war on Iran ended in June after 12 days, with President Trump racing to triumphantly declare US strikes had “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program.

While his rhetoric suggested he wanted Israel and the world to view the US bombing as a lasting resolution of accusations that Iran was pursuing nuclear weapons, Israel and its Western collaborators are already setting the stage for new aggression against Iran. Israeli strikes could be just days or weeks away, with Netanyahu hoping that, this time, the United States will be drawn into yet another protracted, bloody regime-change campaign to further the Israeli agenda.

On Thursday, France, Germany and the United Kingdom notified the UN Security Council that they were starting the process to reimpose UN sanctions on Iran via “snapback” provisions of the 2015 nuclear deal.

Under that agreement — the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) — Iran agreed to many additional safeguards to ensure its nuclear program remains peaceful. For example, Iran eliminated its inventory of medium-enriched uranium, cut its low-enriched uranium by 98%, capped future enrichment at 3.67%, and rendered its heavy-water reactor inoperable by filling it with concrete. In exchange, Iran was granted sanctions relief.

Despite Iran’s compliance with the JCPOA, President Trump spontaneously withdrew the United States from the deal in 2018 and reimposed US sanctions that his administration called “the toughest sanctions ever imposed” on Iran. Victimized by a new round of Israel-encouraged US economic warfare, and lacking any other leverage to nudge the United States back into the deal, Iran began enriching uranium well above the levels allowed under the JCPOA.

Parroting Israel, Trump has insisted that Iran must cease all nuclear enrichment, something Tehran has categorically ruled out for years, asserting that it’s Iran’s right, both as a sovereign state and — unlike nuclear-armed Israel — as a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Internal politics play a significant role in the impasse, with important Iranian segments opposed to bending to Western demands on a point of national pride for the scientifically-advanced country.

In something akin to Vito Corleone’s “offer that can’t be refused,” US-Israeli insistence on zero enrichment is — quite deliberately — a demand that won’t be accepted. To the benefit of the warmongers, this demand helps ensure perpetual tension and recurring US-Israeli military brinksmanship, all pursuant to Israel’s long-standing goal of maneuvering the United States into an all-out war on Iran, or at least a major drive to topple the regime via proxies. That’s consistent with Israel’s strategy, which centers on continuously shattering territories and countries throughout the region so none can serve as a potent rival. It’s a strategy that’s taken an unfathomable toll that falls heaviest on the people of the region, but also profoundly harms the United States.

If broader UN sanctions are indeed reimposed on Iran via the JCPOA snapback provisions 30 days from last week’s joint notification, Iran’s rulers will be under pressure to respond. In July, Iran’s deputy foreign minister threatened that Iran may do so by withdrawing from the NPT, which would mean an end to ongoing supervision of the Iranian nuclear program by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

Iran’s relationship with the IAEA is already badly strained. “Iran expelled IAEA inspectors in the wake of the US-Israeli war in response to the watchdog’s role in providing a pretext for the initial Israeli attack and for its failure to condemn the bombing of Iranian nuclear facilities,” explained Antiwar.com’s Dave DeCamp. Iran also says it suspects Israel obtained information from the IAEA that enabled the assassinations of more than a dozen Iranian scientists in June.

Iran allowed a team of inspectors to return last week, but it remains to be seen how much access they’ll be given. Among the largest questions looming over Iran’s bombed nuclear program: Where is the stockpile of 60%-enriched uranium that had been held deep under a mountain at Fordow? That enrichment facility was hammered by US bunker-buster bombs on June 22, but some reports have suggested Iran preemptively moved the uranium to another location before the Trump-ordered strike.

With both Israel and the United States threatening renewed warfare if Iran makes good on its promise to continue enriching uranium, Tehran will be justifiably reluctant to disclose the fate of its 60%-enriched uranium, or to give full access to its nuclear facilities, including those hit by Israel and the United States in June. After all, full transparency would certainly be exploited by military planners in Washington and Tel Aviv.

It’s a no-win situation for Iran. A withdrawal from the NPT will be portrayed by Israel and its Western allies as proof that Iran is building a nuclear bomb. The same narrative will be promoted if Iran continues to allow inspections, but fails to grant every request for access to sites around the country. It’s easy to purposefully trigger refusals — for example, by asking for access to sites that aren’t sincerely suspected of harboring nuclear assets, but are nonetheless sensitive from an Iranian national security standpoint.

Either way, Israel and its collaborators in Western governments can create a pretext for military intervention. Ironically, Israel may be pushing Iran into a corner that prompts Ayatollah Khamenei to withdraw his religious edict forbidding the development of nuclear weapons, turning a long-false accusation into reality.

Short of an all-out war or regime-change campaign, Israel — at the least — wants to impose a new, violent reality on Iran, says Trita Parsi, executive director of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. “What the Israelis wanted to achieve [in June], short of decapitation, was to make sure that they turn Iran into the next Lebanon or Syria, a country that Israel can bomb at will without American involvement and with complete impunity,” said Parsi on a recent appearance on the Scott Horton Show. “It’s part of the larger security strategy of the Israelis, which is security through complete military hegemony and domination. This is why they are very inclined to start a war again, and they want to do so before the political window in Washington closes.”

To preclude a new era in which Iran is routinely bombed by Israel, Parsi thinks Tehran will take a far more aggressive approach to retaliation than it did in June. “The Iranians will not show any of the restraint they showed in the last 12-day war. It’s very clear they were [planning] for a long confrontation, and as a result, they were not consuming everything they had at an early or a fast pace. But for the next war, they’re probably going to go all-in right away to completely dispel any notion in Israel that they can turn Iran into the next Syria.” Such a massive retaliation would seemingly amplify the risk of major US involvement.

Iran’s likely approach to the next round of warfare may be driving a sense of urgency in Israel to strike soon, given both countries are racing to replenish their arsenals. It’s not clear who’s best-positioned for that competition and the next exchange of fire.

Israel rapidly neutralized Iran’s air defenses in June, but, as the war progressed, Iran had increasing success of its own, bypassing Israeli air defenses and achieving some spectacular hypersonic ballistic-missile strikes on targets around the country. On the other hand, Iran’s offensive missile arsenal was depleted by use and degraded by Israeli attacks, and its missile and fuel production facilities were also hit.

IDF air defenses reportedly ran low on ammunition too, and the US arsenal was also weakened. In the most egregious example, to defend Israel from the consequences of its aggression, the US military burned through a quarter of its global inventory of high-end, THAAD missile interceptors, firing 150 of them at a staggering cost of some $2 billion. At the pace Lockheed Martin produces them, it will take more than a year to restore the THAAD inventory.

In addition to the ambiguous, multi-variable dynamics of the arms race, Israel’s eagerness to start the next round of warfare could also be driven by the shelf-life of whatever assets the Mossad still has inside Iran. Such assets played a major role in Israel’s surprise attack — reportedly deploying long-concealed drones, destroying anti-aircraft batteries, and facilitating the assassination of scientists and military commanders. Since the war, Iran has been sweeping the country for remaining Israeli assets, and rounding up suspected spies.

As Parsi indicated, US politics must also figure in Israel’s calculus. Americans’ support of Israel has been cratering as the IDF campaign in Gaza continues to produce images of suffering on an enormous scale, alongside a never-ending stream of credible testimonies about Israeli atrocities against civilians. The collapse in pro-Israel sentiment extends to what has long been the foremost cornerstone of Israeli support — the Republican Party. A spring Pew poll found that 50% of Republicans under 50 now have an unfavorable view of the Zionist state, and Trump’s decision to join Israel’s war on Iran in June sparked an uproar from his America-First base, led by influential figures like Steve Bannon.

Meanwhile, legislators from both sides of the aisle have been enduring disruptions at summer-recess town halls, with angry constituents condemning them for failing to block ongoing US facilitation of Israeli war crimes in Gaza. Add it all up, and Israel would likely want to make its next attempt at entangling Trump in a major war well before he’s highly sensitized to the potential impact on the 2025 midterms. Taking the longer view, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and others must be contemplating the possibility that the long era of unwavering US support of Israel could be at the beginning of its end — incentivizing them to cash in on every American dollar, missile, UN veto and misguided military intervention they can before the party’s over.

In the meantime, Israel and its collaborators throughout the West will continue doing all they can grease the skids for the next war, which includes propaganda campaigns to cultivate fear and loathing of Iran.

Decades into that undertaking, the anti-Iran material is dominated by tired old lines that just don’t hit like they used to, like warnings that Iran is “months away” from having a nuclear weapon — warnings we’ve been subjected to for decades, despite contradictory conclusions of the US intelligence community.

After launching his war on Iran in June, Netanyahu dusted off a propaganda line from the run-up to the 2003 Iraq invasion, claiming Israeli intelligence had just learned that, if Iran obtained nuclear weapons, it would hand them over to non-state proxies to inflict “nuclear terrorism on global scale.” The fact that Netanyahu quickly dropped that far-fetched claim from his wartime oratory speaks volumes.

Speaking of things that sound made up, last week Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said his security agencies determined Iran had directed arson attacks on a Jewish business and a synagogue in Australia in 2024. Western reporters dutifully quoted the claim, without adding their newfangled “without evidence” modifier they selectively apply to statements made by politicians they revile. Iran’s supposed motive? “To undermine social cohesion and sow discord in our community,” said Albanese with a straight face. Embedding a second dubious claim inside the first, Australia says its intelligence community reached its conclusion about Iranian government involvement in the arsons on its own.

After leveling the accusation, Australia expelled Iran’s ambassador — the first time it did so to any country’s ambassador since World War II — and designated Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist group. Aside from serving the broader propaganda campaign, the claim and related moves carried potential political benefits for Albanese — countering Netanyahu’s recent accusation that Albanese had failed to take “decisive action” against an “alarming rise of antisemitism in Australia.” Netanyahu even went so far as to assign the Australian prime minister a Sept 23, Rosh Hashanah deadline to “replace weakness with action, appeasement with resolve.”

You can expect many more accusations to be leveled against Iran in the coming days and weeks. Some may be true, but allow me to pass on a useful reminder from Aussie Caitlin Johnstone. With each new claim, bear in mind Hitchens’ Razor: “What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence.”

This article was originally published on Stark Realities.

The post Israel and the West Set the Stage for Next Round of Warfare on Iran appeared first on LewRockwell.

“The world will soon understand nothing can stop what is coming.”—President Trump

Donald Trump has always been a master of imagery.

From his red MAGA hats to his choreographed rallies, he understands the language of spectacle. Now he has discovered the perfect propaganda machine: AI-generated images.

AI allows the creation of endless variations of Trump-as-warrior, Trump-as-enforcer, Trump-as-savior. These images spread across social media, replicated, remixed, and shared until they become familiar, even normalized.

The latest AI-generated images of Trump, shared on his social media accounts, depict him in the militarized black uniform of a SWAT officer, or in police dress blues.

These memes are carefully crafted signals of how Trump envisions power in America.

These algorithmically perfected images, generated to flood the digital landscape and shape the subconscious of millions, are neither accidental nor new: they are psychological warfare—propaganda that is as old as time.

Propaganda does not persuade through logic. It persuades through familiarity. And Trump’s AI propaganda machine is doing its job: normalizing the sight of a president in a SWAT uniform.

Throughout history, despots have used martial imagery to elevate themselves above the people and justify power by force.

Mussolini wrapped himself in the black shirts of his paramilitaries to rally fascist Italy. Hitler’s carefully staged uniforms and parades signaled total control of the German nation. Stalin and Mao surrounded themselves with martial iconography to convey power over life, death, and law.

The message was always the same: I am not just your leader—I am your protector, your executioner, your law.

Today, Trump joins that lineage—not on a battlefield, but in digital space.

But unlike his predecessors, Trump does not need mass rallies or parades to craft this imagery. Algorithms now do the work of propaganda ministries. And unlike past dictators who required massive propaganda apparatuses, Trump needs only an internet connection and an AI tool to clothe himself in the trappings of authoritarianism.

This may be political theater, but it is also authoritarian propaganda that sends a message that Trump sees himself not as the servant of the people—bound by the Constitution—but as the nation’s chief cop, judge, and executioner.

Under a police state presidency, there are no checks and balances, no due process, no Bill of Rights that should stand in his way. By collapsing the distinction between civil government and militarized force, the president, self-styled as a SWAT chief, suggests that dissent will not be debated—it will be policed.

When Trump dons a SWAT uniform—even digitally—he is telling Americans: this is how I see power. Not as persuasion, not as consent of the governed, but as force delivered at gunpoint.

The SWAT image is the visual embodiment of a police state presidency:

• It signals raids on the homeless, as Trump’s July 2025 executive order mandated when it directed federal agencies to clear encampments nationwide.
• It signals mass arrests of immigrants and families rounded up in early morning ICE sweeps.
• It signals military deployments to American cities, e.g., when Trump sent the National Guard to Los Angeles, a move a federal court recently ruled a violation of the Posse Comitatus Act.
• It signals treating dissent as criminality, and opposition as insurgency.

For decades, Americans have watched the rise of SWAT teams transform America—and domestic policing—into a militarized state: battering rams breaking down doors, no-knock raids in the dead of night, armored vehicles patrolling suburban streets, flashbang grenades tossed into homes.

SWAT was originally conceived for rare, high-risk emergencies like hostage situations. Today, it has become the default face of the American police state.

The numbers tell the story.

In 1980, there were roughly 3,000 SWAT raids per year in the United States. By the 2000s, that number had skyrocketed to 80,000 annually.

What was once a rare tactic reserved for hostage situations or heavily armed standoffs is now routine police work. The result has been predictably tragic. Children injured by flash-bang grenades. Elderly homeowners killed when they mistook armed agents for intruders. Family dogs shot in the chaos of mistaken raids.

SWAT culture has normalized the use of military tactics against civilians. It has conditioned Americans to accept armored vehicles on Main Street, black-clad officers in ski masks battering down doors, and neighborhoods transformed into war zones.

The courts have long warned against this drift into militarized policing. Yet what good are limits when the president himself imagines donning the uniform of those who kick down doors?

A Constitution that is ignored in practice, even if acknowledged on paper, is no safeguard at all.

Trump’s AI propaganda takes this dangerous normalization a step further: it places the president himself at the head of the raid—the enforcer-in-chief—rendering him the law, the enforcer, and the judge. This is the very definition of dictatorship.

The Constitution was written precisely to prevent such concentration of power. It was written to prevent the rise of a lawless ruler who would make himself enforcer as well as lawgiver.

That is why the Bill of Rights exists—to put clear, inviolable limits on government power. The Fourth Amendment protects against unreasonable searches and seizures. The First protects dissenters and protesters. The Fifth guarantees due process before life, liberty, or property can be taken.

But in the American police state that is rapidly unfolding, citizens are not sovereign individuals but potential suspects. Dissent is not free expression but insurgency. And the citizenry are not seen as equal participants in a social contract but as a populace to be subdued.

This is not merely unconstitutional. It is anti-constitutional.

What makes Trump’s propaganda even more dangerous is how well it aligns with America’s existing drift toward militarization.

• Police departments nationwide already deploy surplus military equipment: tanks, drones, battlefield weapons.
• Federal agencies like Homeland Security and ICE conduct raids that look indistinguishable from military operations.
• Surveillance technology powered by Palantir and other private firms tracks the movements of ordinary citizens.
• Protests are met with riot gear, tear gas, and mass arrests.
• The carceral prison state is rapidly expanding. Congressional funding for Trump’s $170 billion prison expansion threatens to make incarceration the government’s default solution to social problems.
• Military forces are being used for domestic policing. The federalization of the National Guard to suppress immigration protests in Los Angeles, already struck down as unlawful, is a warning of how military power is being recast as domestic policing.

It must be said: Trump did not create this police state reality. But his presidency gleefully amplifies it, recasting America as a nation where “law and order” means rule at gunpoint.

This shift matters because it changes how people imagine power. A president who wears a SWAT uniform—even in AI fantasy—is telling the public: I am not one of you. I am over you.

The most insidious part of this propaganda is not its shock value but its normalizing function, part of a deliberate strategy to acclimate Americans to authoritarian rule.

Images once seen as dystopian now appear as campaign memes. The president as militarized enforcer becomes a shareable joke, a collectible, a digital poster for the faithful.

But every meme conditions the public to accept what would once have been unthinkable. Today it is a picture. Tomorrow it is policy.

This is how authoritarianism advances—not always through tanks in the streets, but through the slow, steady normalization of force as governance.

Every authoritarian regime has used uniforms and slogans to rebrand tyranny as order. The Nazis had their SS uniforms, the Soviets their red star, the Chinese Communists their Mao suits. Symbols matter because they carry meaning deeper than words.

Trump’s SWAT imagery is America’s warning sign. It is the uniform of repression, masquerading as protection. It is the costume of a ruler who governs by intimidation, not law.

We ignore this at our peril.

If we fail to see the danger, if we laugh it off as mere fantasy, we will wake up one day to find the fantasy has become reality.

The Constitution does not permit presidents to be SWAT chiefs. It does not allow them to enforce laws by decree, to jail dissenters at will, or to treat citizens as insurgents. It insists that the president is a public servant, bound by law and accountable to the people.

But that system only survives if “we the people” demand it.

“Nothing can stop what is coming,” declares Trump? On the contrary: tyranny can always be stopped—if liberty lies in the hearts of the people.

The choice before us is clear: do we accept the imagery of the president as SWAT chief, or do we reaffirm the vision of the founders that no man is above the law?

The time to decide is now. The Constitution will not defend itself.

Trump’s AI propaganda declares that law is whatever the president enforces. It declares that rights are privileges, granted or withdrawn by armored men. It declares that nothing—not law, not courts, not people—can stop what is coming.

But as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, that is not the American way.

In a constitutional republic, nothing—not presidents, not uniforms, not threats at gunpoint, not tyranny—should ever be unstoppable.

Americans must decide: will we be governed by the Constitution, or will we be policed by the image of a SWAT-clad ruler who tells us resistance is futile?

The Founders knew the answer. So should we.

This article was originally published on The Rutherford Institute.

The post A Police State Presidency: When ‘Rule of Law’ Becomes ‘Rule by Gunpoint’ appeared first on LewRockwell.

Americans who don’t spend time in Europe might not fully appreciate what a powder keg the Old World has become.  However bad social relations in the United States now are, they are at least an order of magnitude worse on the other side of the Atlantic.  European self-hatred is dissolving traditional cultural bonds.  Mass immigration is compounding age-old rivalries.  Europe is one spark away from exploding.

Europe is a perennial battlefield.  Many of our ancestors, after all, left the old country to escape religious, economic, and cultural conflicts that had endured for centuries.  Those historic grievances — always simmering in times of peace before boiling over into outright violence — are passed from one generation to the next.  Modern European nations are the product of two thousand years of shifting borders and alliances, and native Europeans trace their family lineages back to regional tribes whose ancient territories do not fit neatly within the politically drawn maps of today.

If you think geographical accents in America make it tricky for a Mississippian or Minnesotan to communicate effectively with an English-speaker from the Bronx, consider that Europe is home to nearly three hundred native tongues.  Switzerland has four national languages — including Romansch, which derives from the spoken Latin of the Roman Empire.  The cornucopia of indigenous languages, dialects, vocabularies, and accents makes it possible for local residents of small towns to recognize “outsiders” immediately.  Even more impressively, they can usually tell — just by listening — which towns a stranger’s grandparents once called home.

Two world wars — both ignited in Europe and responsible for immense European destruction — propelled a mid-twentieth-century political movement calling for the eradication of national borders.  The European intelligentsia who became the founding members of the continent’s fledgling transnational bureaucracy blamed national pride for Europe’s carnage and effectively turned “nationalism” into a dirty word.

Oddly, this was also a time when crumbling empires, such as France and the United Kingdom, were at least tepidly supporting the national independence of former colonies.  Likewise, it was the beginning of a half-century U.S.-led campaign to encourage national revolutions in European countries stuck behind the Soviet Union’s Iron Curtain.  So Western power brokers framed nationalism as a kind of intolerable ethos on par with Mussolini’s fascism and Hitler’s national socialism while encouraging former nations or proto-nations in Central Europe, Africa, and Asia to break away from the respective empires that controlled them.  While Western leaders pushed for the integration of distinct European nations into a single “Union,” they also promoted national independence movements under the rationale that all humans possess a natural right to self-determination.

In the eighty years since the project for European integration began in earnest, those latent contradictions have transformed Europe into a tinderbox with even greater potential energy for self-destruction than existed before WWI and II.  While the bureaucratic ruling class has actively repressed the historic identities of native Europeans, it has flooded the continent with foreigners who are encouraged to retain their own cultural identities.  In this way, a Hungarian or Pole or Dane who celebrates his country’s unique heritage is denounced as a “far-right nationalist,” while a Frenchman who insists that African and Middle Eastern immigrants assimilate to the European way of life is denounced as a “racist” and “bigot.”

This anti-European monstrosity was created deliberately.  Simultaneous suppression of Europeans’ national identities and protections for foreign nationals create a kind of “multiculturalism dynamo” that converts Europeans into something alien.  Stripped of their native religion, culture, and historic customs and forced to praise foreign religions, cultures, and customs taking hold in the West’s civilizational void, Europeans are effectively assimilated within their own lands.  Europeans are taught to despise their own civilization and to bow down before those who seek to replicate a foreign civilization inside Europe.  Europe’s bureaucratic ruling class uses foreigners to beat the Europeanness out of Europeans.

Perhaps because a critical mass of Europeans finally realizes what Europe’s unelected bureaucrats have done, a “Great Awakening” is spreading across the continent.  After decades of submitting to cultural erasure, a patriotic fervor is taking root once again.  As many now see it, if globalism’s war on nationalism means that only nations outside Europe will survive, then European peace is not worth the cost.

Many Americans will dismiss this resurgence of European nationalism as “too little, too late,” but I would strike a more optimistic chord.  Sometimes we must be pushed to the edge of the cliff before we find our footing and forcefully fight back.  When surrender means falling into the sea and survival requires moving in the opposite direction, the right choice is also the only one.

In the United Kingdom, a grassroots movement of ordinary Brits has initiated “Operation: Raise the Colors.”  The strategy is simple: British citizens are encouraged to prominently display and wave the Cross of St. George and Union Jack flags.

What could possibly be offensive or dangerous about raising the flags of England and the United Kingdom?  Nothing.  Yet the globalist Establishment is losing its collective mind.  Leftists insist that the flags should be replaced with something more “multicultural” and that only “far-right racists” would stoop so low as to patriotically raise the country’s flags.  Open-borders politicians are calling the flag-waving “extremist,” “hate-filled,” and “white supremacist.”  In other words, the British people have forced Britain’s “elites” to acknowledge that they have no loyalty to and only antipathy for the United Kingdom.

This rather anodyne form of political speech is proving remarkably effective at exposing globalism’s suicidal contagion.  In London, it is perfectly normal to see so-called “gay pride” flags, “Palestinian” flags, Pakistani flags, Iranian flags, and the flags of almost every third-world nation now offloading its citizens onto the shores of the U.K.  If a British citizen were to express outrage over the fact that a panoply of foreign flags is flown brazenly throughout the capital, constables would intimidate the outspoken “offender” into silence by threatening him with prosecution for imaginary “hate speech.”  Revealingly, however, these same petty tyrants throw hissy fits when native Brits dare “raise the colors” of their own nation’s historic flags.

Similar movements are picking up steam.  Ten years ago, it was more common to see such patriotic displays on the streets of Balkan nations or amid independence parades in the Basque region or other areas of Europe seeking national recognition.  Today it is easy to stumble into a sea of Dutch, Danish, German, Italian, Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish, Hungarian, Polish, Czech, or Greek flags when crossing borders.  Eighty years after the European Union began constructing its continental empire, the “colonies” appear eager to reclaim their right to self-determination.

I think it’s fair to say that ordinary Europeans are no longer willing to remain quiet as the bureaucratic ruling class kills what’s left of Europe and hands the carcass to foreign conquerors.  As an American with absolute fidelity to the millennia-long promises of Western civilization, I find these patriotic revivals timely rebuttals to a globalist Establishment that prefers our death.

I cannot tell you how many times I have come across the words of Welsh poet Dylan Thomas translated into one of Europe’s many native languages.  “Do not go gentle into that good night” and “Rage, rage against the dying of the light” show up on message boards like faint heartbeats on an EKG machine.  Many in Europe don’t want to die.  To live, they’ll have to fight.

This article was originally published on American Thinker.

The post Europe Is a Powder Keg appeared first on LewRockwell.

The International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS) has determined that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. This is the world’s largest association of genocide scholars, with around 500 experts on the subject including many Holocaust scholars. The consensus was reached by an overwhelming supermajority of the experts — 86 percent, to be exact.

Everyone needs to understand that “there is no genocide in Gaza” is not a claim that can be taken seriously in the year 2025. Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, UN human rights experts, Israeli human rights groups like B’Tselem, and the overwhelming majority of genocide scholars all agree it’s a genocide. The debate is over. The hasbarists lost.

Israel’s Foreign Ministry is of course claiming that the IAGS assessment is “entirely based on Hamas’s campaign of lies.” That’s right folks, the genocide scholars are Hamas.

They’re just so unbelievably evil. Nobody who’s not a cartoon or CGI supervillain has any business being this evil. If you’re going to be this insanely evil you should be animated and cackling while twisting your curly mustache all the time.

Possibly the single dumbest thing we are asked to believe about Palestine is that every major human rights institution on earth is part of a secret antisemitic blood libel conspiracy. This genocide is one nonstop insult to our intelligence.

❖

Israel is reportedly planning to cut off the small amount of aid it has been allowing in to northern Gaza. This comes after both UN-backed and US-funded hunger monitor groups determined that Israel is causing a famine in Gaza, which was preceded by weeks of Israel furiously denying that it was starving Gaza, which was preceded by Israeli officials openly announcing that they intended to starve Gaza.

❖

The western press have been dutifully parroting the US and Israeli government line that Trump’s plan for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza will be “voluntary” in their headlines.

“Gaza postwar plan envisions ‘voluntary’ relocation of entire population,” reads a headline from The Washington Post.

“U.S.-run ‘Gaza Riviera’: Post-war redevelopment plan sees ‘voluntary relocation’ of millions,” says CNBC.

“Trump’s Gaza plan involves ‘voluntary’ relocation of Palestinians — and giving them $5,000 each,” says The Independent.

“Gaza post-war plan proposes ‘voluntary’ relocation, ‘tokens’ in exchange for land,” says France 24.

We’re going to be hearing this “voluntary” relocation slogan a lot going forward, and everyone should understand that it’s a lie. There is nothing “voluntary” about leaving an area that is being deliberately made uninhabitable by someone with power over you. It’s exactly the same as forcing people out at gunpoint.

It is propaganda and journalistic malpractice for the western media to be pushing this slogan.

❖

I saw a tweet from liberal influencer Steven Bonnell AKA Destiny saying “Palestine is just fashion for leftists.”

Bidenists say this all the time, and it reveals so much about their worldview. They cannot fathom the concept of someone opposing a genocide because genocide is bad; it can only be some kind of trendy fashion statement because it happens to be what’s popular right now.

These are people who are not motivated by morality, facts and logic, but solely by selfish and cynical impulses which they then project onto everyone else. They can’t imagine anyone doing something because it’s the right thing to do, so they have to make up some reason why there must be something in it for them in order for their actions to make sense.

But it is good that even through their own narcissistic, egocentric lens they are beginning to understand that supporting an active genocide has widely become viewed as unacceptable, and that abandoning that insane position is the only way to gain acceptance in mainstream society. Those who can’t be brought into line through appeal to compassion and reason can be brought into line through peer pressure and social stigma.

❖

When you see the way pro-genocide Jews attack vocally anti-genocide Jews, you understand why there aren’t more vocally anti-genocide Jews. This isn’t to excuse anyone from their moral obligation to oppose an active genocide, only to point out one of the control mechanisms.

I’ve watched Zionists constantly try to convince Israeli American academic Shaiel Ben-Ephraim to start drinking again after he switched from defending the genocide to opposing it (he’s open about being a recovering alcoholic). I catch flak from Israel supporters 24/7, but I’ve never had to deal with that level of vitriolic, high-octane hatred. Non-Jews like myself who oppose the Gaza holocaust just don’t have to deal with that degree of venom. And that’s just what’s visible to me online.

Again, this doesn’t excuse the moral obligation that Jews and non-Jews alike have to oppose Israel’s genocidal atrocities. I’m just pointing out one of the many abusive dynamics used to maintain the status quo.

_________________

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The post ‘It’s Not a Genocide’ Is Not a Defensible Claim in the Year 2025 appeared first on LewRockwell.

In his 1961 Farewell Address, President Eisenhower warned not only about the “undue influence” of the Military-Industrial Complex. He also warned about a new “scientific-technological elite” that could gain unwarranted influence over public policy, potentially guiding the nation based on specialized knowledge rather than democratic principles.

This “scientific-technological elite” could not only gain access to vast federal funding that is not available to solitary scholars and inventors, it could also assume a position of “official scientific authority” that could insulate it from the critical questioning of the citizenry.

To understand the sort of “official scientific authority” that Eisenhower was concerned about, one need only consider the example of Dr. Anthony Fauci, who infamously declared in a press interview, “Attacks on me, quite frankly, are attacks on science.”

Good scientists, acting with care and conscientiousness, should be a part of any deliberation about public health policy. Unfortunately, so many of our so-called “scientific experts” have been captured by commercial interests that have also captured U.S. federal agencies.

The result is what Eisenhower warned about in 1961—namely, We the People are constantly asked to believe representations of reality propagated by a “scientific-technological elite” that has a documented history of intentionally manipulating or withholding compelling information about vital matters of public health.

People often ask me why I, a true crime author, decided to investigate the U.S. government’s COVID-19 pandemic response. My interest in the story began with my perception that the pandemic response was riddled with fraud and concealment. Years of investigating complex true crime stories primed me to recognize the same conduct committed by our Bio-Pharmaceutical Complex and its captured friends in government.

In the same spirit, the world-renowned security expert and investigator, Gavin de Becker, has written a book titled Forbidden Facts: Childhood Vaccines & Brain Damage. For decades, de Becker has studied how to detect the threats that humans pose to other humans, and how to prevent these threats from being carried out to inflict harm and death. This has taken him deep into the realms of criminal psychology and all the different methods of subterfuge.

For those who are unfamiliar with Mr. de Becker, his author bio presents a succinct snapshot of his distinguished career.

Gavin de Becker is a three-time presidential appointee whose pioneering work has changed the way our government evaluates threats to our nation’s highest officials. His firm advises many of the world’s most prominent media figures, corporations, and law enforcement agencies on predicting violence, and it also serves regular citizens who are victims of domestic abuse and stalking. De Becker has advised the prosecution on major cases, including the O.J. Simpson murder trial. He has testified before many legislative bodies and has successfully proposed new laws to help manage violence.

Mr. de Becker has written a new book titled Forbidden Facts: Childhood Vaccines & Brain Damage, in which he presents evidence that many cases of what is diagnosed as “Profound Autism” are likely the result of brain damage caused by vaccines.

The most compelling evidence is the credible witness testimony of their parents such as the following (presented in Chapter Four).

A. is profoundly autistic. She is non-verbal, has major behavioral issues, is self-injurious… she cannot be left alone ever. A. was a beautiful baby, who was developing normally, but who had obvious reactions to her first two DPT vaccines. One left her leg swollen and red, and she developed a high fever and screamed after the other. But the doctors did not hesitate to give A. her third DPT shot when she was 5 months old, and she went over the edge. She had the shot at 4:00 p.m., and by 6:00 p.m. she had a fever of 105 to 106 degrees… After that day, she was gone.

The prevailing dogma (endorsed by U.S. government agencies) is that one cannot conclude causation in an individual case (such as that of “A.”) unless strict criteria for determining causation in individual cases are met. When it comes to doing this, immense rigor and diligence is demanded.

However, when it comes to offering an alternative explanation for the child’s regression (apart from the battery of shots the child just received), the response is conspicuously vague and lacking rigor. We are told that the child’s symptoms—often appearing just a few hours after receiving the shots—could be caused by a lot of other things.

Here it is useful to consider how we evaluate evidence that a suspect has committed a crime. When a prime suspect is identified, it is legitimate for defense counsel to identify an alternative suspect for the crime. However, the jury won’t find the defender persuasive if he says, “I have no idea who committed the crime; I just know it wasn’t my client.”

A defense attorney who makes this claim would be ridiculed and soon have no clients. However, in the realm of public health, we often hear mainstream media pundits such as CNN’s chief medical correspondent Sanjay Gupta say, “We don’t know what causes autism, but we do know it’s not caused by vaccines.”

Mr. de Becker takes pains to demonstrate that the U.S. government has a long history of intentionally manipulating or withholding information about the adverse health effects associated with exposure to certain substances. These include Agent Orange and Anthrax Vaccines for U.S. service personnel, to name just two. This history of government deceit lies at the heart of his thesis—namely, that when it comes to investigating what is causing the autism epidemic, we cannot trust the assurances of U.S. government agencies.

This lamentable state of affairs seems to be changing under the stewardship of HHS Secretary Kennedy, though he is contending with a very large den of snakes, and it remains to be seen just how much he can send the serpents packing.

De Becker’s clear and punchy prose is a pleasure to read and it starkly contrasts with the gobbledygook of government experts who use impenetrably opaque and meaningless language (several preposterous examples quoted in the book) to obfuscate the reality of this disaster. Links to the author’s original source material are immediately accessible by QR codes printed at the foot of almost every page.

I believe the publication of Forbidden Facts: Childhood Vaccines & Brain Damage should be viewed as a major event in U.S. history. For decades, many members of America’s political, media, and cultural elite have relied on Mr. de Becker’s judgement and analysis to keep them safe. These same elites should—along with the rest of us—read his book and consider the evidence he presents that many children are being terribly damaged by childhood vaccines.

Please click on the link below to preorder your copy of Forbidden Facts: Childhood Vaccines & Brain Damage, which will be published on September 9.

This article was originally published on Courageous Discourse.

The post ‘Forbidden Facts: Childhood Vaccines & Brain Damage’ appeared first on LewRockwell.

We live in absurd times.  We are surrounded by violence, both real and virtual–the Israeli slaughter of Palestinians, the deaths in Ukraine, the violent movies and video games, the violence on the streets in America’s blue cities–but the presstitutes attach warnings to news reports of much smaller incidences of violence. We are supposed to be horrified by the beating that one individual receives but not by the genocide of the Palestinian people.  American universities have banned protests in support of the Palestinian people, and in England you can be arrested.

We are supposed to be horrified by the “sexual abuse” of a male propositioning a female, but not by men’s access to women’s spaces and women’s sports, or by the plethora of young women’s porn sites or by their competitions to see who can have sex with the most men in a 24 hour time period.

As for Epstein, readers inform me that the Jews who operate the porn industry, are preparing the legality of adult sex with children. The Democrat school boards in the US are helping the advancement of pedophilia by teaching pre-puberty kids how to copulate and have oral sex.  Pedophilia is today euphemized  in the term “minor-directed persons.” Apparently, AI is an enabler of the legitimization of pedophilia, along with the grooming of young children by Democrat school boards. AI creates images of sex between adults and females with children’s faces and bodies that present young females as lascivious persons.  As the images are not real people, they apparently escape the restrictions on child porn.

The American media has never been an honest, truthful one.  But the large number of independent organizations meant that at least on occasion the truth found its way out.  No more.  Thanks to President Clinton, six mega-corporations owned or controlled by Jews control 90% of the American media.  You hear what Israel wants you to hear.

You, dear superpower indispensable American are nothing but an Israeli puppet, indoctrinated and brainwashed to serve Jewish interests, or so say those who are not totally insouciant.

The plethora of virtual violence has numbed us to the real thing.  American generals speak of winning nuclear war with only  30,000,000 American casualties, and the Zionist neoconservatives together with Netanyahu push for war with Iran, a war that would likely involve Russia and China.

Unless you are extremely dense, you can see where this is going to lead.

The post Exactly How Does One Survive Absurdity appeared first on LewRockwell.

One area I’ve yet to cover in my numerous “early spread” articles is the question of whether Covid is/was really a “novel” virus.

Today, I’d like to expound on the reasons I believe a novel coronavirus – almost certainly produced in a lab – was “spreading” in the world and was, almost certainly, making people sick months before the experts say was possible.

In today’s article, I briefly address the theory – now increasingly common among growing numbers of “Covid Contrarians” – that viruses don’t exist … or, if they do, viruses are not “contagious” and do not cause other people to become sick.

In my opinion, the theory that viruses either don’t exist – or, if they do, they aren’t “contagious – is certainly a fair question for intellectual and scientific inquiry.

For my part, I believe viruses (that can and do produce symptomatic illnesses) have been infecting humans since man first inhabited the earth.

However, I also believe 99.9 percent of humans survive even if they are infected with a respiratory virus. That is, unlike many chroniclers of Covid, I don’t subscribe to the view that posits a novel virus would have to be unusually “deadly.”

These views shared, I do think “mad scientists” manipulating viruses in a lab probably could create a virus that was more “contagious” than naturally-occurring viruses. Per my belief, this is exactly what happened in 2019.

Part 1 of this 2-part in-depth treatment summarizes the evidence that far more Americans were becoming sick in the six-plus months before “official Covid.” To me, this evidence jibes with the theory that “mad scientists” could have indeed created a more-contagious virus.

Today’s dispatch presents compelling statistics showing that far more flu tests were given in the 2019-2020 flu season than any other flu season in history.

I also expound (again) on the significance of the (ignored) fact that an unprecedented number of U.S. schools closed “due to illness” in the months before official Covid, which is not a “trivial” piece of information and probably not just a “coincidence.”

Towards the bottom of this story, I point out that Anthony Fauci and his colleagues went to great lengths to promote the “natural origins” theory. Given that almost everything significant Fauci says is a lie, this, in my opinion, could be construed as further evidence of a lab-made, novel virus.

I also highlight the indispensable and criminal role the PCR test played in convincing people a terrible pandemic was occurring (long after tens of millions of people had experienced Covid symptoms).

As this is another of my “deep-dive” pieces, this article is lengthy. I’ve added sub-headlines and boldfaced text I think is particularly significant for readers who prefer to skim longer articles.

Now on to the reasons I think a contagious novel virus was circulating in the world at least by the fall of 2019 if not even earlier …

Far more people than normal got sick in the fall and winter of 2019-2020

Based on my extensive research, I know far more people than usual become “sick” in the weeks and months before “official Covid” began. In my opinion, this is an undeniable statement of fact.

Weekly Influenza Like Illness (ILI) Surveillance Reports produced by the CDC and state health agencies in at least 49 U.S. states support the view that the “flu season” of 2019-2020 was “severe,” flu activity was “widespread” (and at the highest levels in at least 49 states at different points in the flu season) … began earlier than normal and lasted longer than any other recent flu season. (ILI percentages above the “expected baseline” persisted for approximately 25 consecutive weeks, an “all-time record.”)

Even Anthony Fauci was quoted in early January 2020 as saying this flu season was going to be bad.

“The initial indicators indicate this is not going to be a good season – this is going to be a bad season,” Fauci told a CNN journalist.

I include this quote to highlight a very important point – namely, every public health expert must have been well aware of the copious evidence of potential “early spread.”

Later in this document, I present summaries of evidence of the huge increase in the number of flu tests given and the massive increase in school closings – two more data points that must have been known to all half-way competent public health officials.

In my opinion, the fact this obvious evidence of possible early spread was dismissed, ignored or concealed from the pubic constitutes legitimate grounds to charge certain public health officials with professional malfeasance if not various crimes dealing with fraud and conspiracies.

Headline: ‘The U.S. winter flu season is off to its earliest start in more than 15 years.’

Key excerpts:

“Louisiana was the first state to really get hit hard, with doctors there saying they began seeing large numbers of flu-like illnesses in October.

“Children’s Hospital New Orleans has already seen more flu cases this fall than it saw all of last winter, said Dr. Toni Gross, the hospital’s chief of emergency medicine. Last month was the busiest ever at the hospital’s emergency department. Officials had to set up a triage system and add extra shifts, Gross said.

The same article also noted that “the most intense patient traffic” had been occurring in Louisiana’s six Deep South neighbors spanning from Texas east to Georgia (home of the CDC!)

According to the same article, by the end of November 2019, “flu was widespread in 16 states.”

To me, “early spread” is yet another indicator of a potentially “novel” spreading virus. (

The all-important PCR test …

It’s always struck me as bizarre (as well as “sneaky” or duplicitous) that, with Covid, the key metric for identifying a rapidly-spreading novel coronavirus was based entirely on results produced by a new, instantly-produced and approved PCR test.

While unknown even today, it’s very possible the majority of “Covid cases” were either asymptomatic (citizens who experienced no symptoms) or people who experienced symptoms so mild they did not affect their ability to perform normal daily tasks.

As myself and other skeptics have noted, officials intentionally changed the definition of a “medical case” – a massive departure from how flu or ILI cases had always been identified or “diagnosed.”

Regarding my “Early Spread” hypothesis, I remain gobsmacked that “symptoms identical to Covid” was, apparently, never a metric of interest to public health officials – a metric, one (incorrectly) assumes, might have been of great interest to officials seeking to gauge possible early prevalence of a novel virus.

Instead, the only metric or “case identifier” that mattered to officials was whether someone tested positive on a PCR test.

The CDC and other public health agencies do use symptoms (instead of a highly-dubious PCR test) to determine national and state ILI percentages, figures public health agencies report every week in updated “flu surveillance” reports.

Expressed simply, “more sick patients visiting doctor’s offices” = “a worse flu season.”

Prior to official Covid, the number of Americans who became sick with ILI symptoms was the key metric used to determine the severity of a respiratory virus in a given “flu season.” After Covid (which officials state is a respiratory virus), this traditional criteria was deemed to be insignificant or moot. All that mattered was a positive test on a PCR test.

Not enough people think about this …

The problem with CDC’s reliance on a PCR test to hype a once-in-a-century pandemic is that virtually no American could get a PCR test before March 2020.

As it turned out, the CDC had produced only a tiny number of PCR “test kits” by early March 2020.

It was also the CDC that created the “testing protocols” which mandated that only citizens who’d recently been to China should be given such tests. Furthermore, with perhaps a few exceptions, the tests could be administered or analyzed only by the CDC at its Atlanta labs.

One reason I believe a novel virus (probably created in a lab) was circulating widely in America (and the world) prior to March 2020 is that the CDC and other public health “virus sleuths” clearly made a concerted effort to avoid testing tens of millions of American citizens who likely or possibly could have been infected by a “novel” virus in earlier months.

This “dog-that-didn’t-bark” evidence (things that should have happened but didn’t happen) suggests a conspiracy to conceal evidence of early spread.

For myself, this aversion to identifying possible earlier cases suggests a cover-up.

As I can think of no reason why public health officials might seek to cover-up evidence of a naturally-occurring virus, the counter-theory is that officials were probably trying to cover-up evidence of a novel virus that was made in a lab – perhaps a lab in China, but, also, perhaps a lab in the United States.

Expressed as three equations:

“Lab-created virus” = “Massive scandal.”

“Naturally-occurring virus” = “Nobody’s fault.”

Also, a third equation has always resonated with me:

“No serious or credible early-spread investigation” = “No ‘confirmation’ of early spread.”

Press reports of major flu outbreaks were omnipresent …

I had no problem finding scores or hundreds of contemporaneous news reports from newspapers, magazines, TV stations and Internet sites that document that the winter of 2019-2020 was an unusually severe flu season. Practically every weekly ILI Surveillance Report published by the CDC and state health agencies document the same thing.

To further emphasize a point central to my hypothesis … if far more people than normal became sick in the weeks and months before official Covid, this should not be viewed as a trivial or insignificant epidemiological observation.

While skeptics of my hypothesis might proclaim, “this was simply a coincidence,” such Covid scholars should at least acknowledge it is a very interesting or odd coincidence.

FWIW, I do not think conspicuously-larger numbers of American becoming sick in the weeks and months just before official Covid is/was an irrelevant coincidence. Indeed, I think this is exactly the type of evidence someone who was looking for evidence of early spread of a novel virus would expect to find.

Two other metrics ….

Two other key metrics also support the hypothesis that a very contagious novel virus could have been spreading in America in the weeks and months before the lockdowns. These metrics are “school closings due to illness” and “flu tests given.”

In my opinion, the number of “flu tests administered” in a given year might be the best metric to gauge if the 2019-2020 flu season produced more people with symptoms of Covid or ILI.

Far more flu tests were given in 2019-2020 …

Thanks to the eye-opening research compiled at two citizen-journalist websites (Hail to You and Health Freedom Defense Fund), I found data that compared the number of flu tests given in the same weeks of eight flu seasons. The primary sources are from the “Flu View” Surveillance Network and “CDC Weekly Surveillance Reports.”

Note: Working from three sources, I was able to tally and compare “flu-tests-administered” data from Weeks 5 to 14 of eight consecutive flu seasons and also, from another source, data that compared Weeks 40 through 14 for the three flu seasons before “official Covid.” (Unfortunately, the source document for the longer-period analysis is no longer available. However, I did save this data, which I have used in parts of this section.)

As these summaries show, 34 percent more sick patients were given flu tests in 2019-2020 than the prior year.

Also, the number of flu tests administered in 2019-2020 was at least 13.4 percent higher than the Flu Season of 2017-2018 – which was often described as the worst or most severe flu season in “40 years.”)

Note:

For this analysis, I wasn’t particularly interested in the percentage of flu tests that were “positive” for Influenza A or B in given flu seasons, but the number of flu tests that were administered to sick patients who visited a medical clinic.

(Per my research, the percentages of “positive” flu tests are fairly constant in given flu seasons, ranging from 5 to 30 percent depending on the week reviewed. Significantly, this means 95 to 70 percent of flu tests are negative. Still these “flu-negative” citizens must have been sick from “something” or else they wouldn’t have gone to the doctor and been given a flu test.

Total flu tests administered (Weeks 40 thru 14):

2019-2020: 1,047,958*

2018-2019: 782,412

2017-2018: 924,205

As these numbers reveal, at least 265,546 more flu test (34 percent more tests) were administered in the 2019-2020 flu season compared to the prior flu season of 2018-2019.

*Note: I could not find data for Week 45 of 2019, which means the total for the 2019-2020 season is an undercount of approximately 21,266 (the average of “flu tests given” in Weeks 44 and 46).

Comparisons 2019-2020 vs. 2018-2019

According to several CDC “Flu Burden” articles, the 2018-2019 flu season was the longest flu season where ILI was “elevated” above an expected baseline since the CDC began compiling ILI statistics. However, the 2019-2020 flu season had elevated ILI percentages at least three weeks longer than this “record” season.

Compared to the 2018-2019 season, more flu tests were administered to sick patients for 26 consecutive weeks in the 2019-2020.

Read the Whole Article

The post The Government Did Create a Contagious Virus in a Lab appeared first on LewRockwell.

The United States Navy (USN) and Marine Corps (USMC) keep increasing their military presence in the Southern Caribbean, more specifically in the vicinity of Venezuela’s coast. The last days of August saw a significant uptick in their activity, including American warships in eastbound transit through the Panama Canal. Only a week prior, White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt stated that US President Donald Trump was “prepared to use every element of American power to stop drugs from flooding into [the country] and to bring those responsible to justice”, also insisting that “many Caribbean nations and many nations in the region” supposedly “applauded the administration’s counterdrug operations and efforts”.

Interestingly, Mrs. Leavitt never mentioned which specific countries support such actions, nor did she explain how exactly warships armed with medium-range cruise missiles can be used in the supposed “heightened counternarcotics efforts”. Worse yet, the increasingly belligerent Trump administration is openly accusing Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro of supposedly “heading a narco cartel”, using it as a pretext to escalate its crawling aggression on the South American nation. The US State Department website unequivocally says that President Maduro allegedly “helped manage and ultimately lead the Cartel of the Suns, comprised of high-ranking Venezuelan officials”. Expectedly, without verifiable evidence.

“As he gained power in Venezuela, Maduro participated in a corrupt and violent narco-terrorism conspiracy with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), a designated Foreign Terrorist Organization. Maduro negotiated multi-ton shipments of FARC-produced cocaine; directed the Cartel of the Suns to provide military-grade weapons to the FARC; coordinated with narcotics traffickers in Honduras and other countries to facilitate large-scale drug trafficking; and solicited assistance from FARC leadership in training an unsanctioned militia group that functioned, in essence, as an armed forces unit for the Cartel of the Suns”, the accusation reads.

“In March 2020, Maduro was charged in the Southern District of New York for narco-terrorism, conspiracy to import cocaine, possession of machine guns and destructive devices, and conspiracy to possess machine guns and destructive devices,” the website adds, also claiming: “After initially offering a reward offer of up to $15 million for information leading to the arrest and/or conviction of Maduro in 2020, the Department of State on January 10, 2025, increased the reward offer to up to $25 million. On August 7, 2025, the Department announced the further increase in the reward offer to up to $50 million after the Department of Treasury sanctioned Cartel of the Suns as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist on July 25, 2025.”

The US also brags that “Maduro, as leader of Cartel of the Suns, is the first target in the history of the Narcotics Rewards Program with a reward offer exceeding $25 million”. Once again, there’s zero evidence to support a single claim on President Maduro’s “corrupt and violent narco-terrorism conspiracy”. On the other hand, Washington DC has no qualms about backing actual narco-terrorist entities, such as the Albanian extremists currently based in NATO-occupied Serbian province of Kosovo and Metohia, to say nothing of well over half a century of CIA-run drug-related back ops in virtually every country south of the Rio Grande. However, despite decades of sanctions and other forms of pressure, Caracas refuses to budge.

During his first term, Trump was particularly aggressive toward both Venezuela and Iran. Back in 2017, he threatened that the US has “many options, including a possible military option, if necessary”. He made similar statements with regards to Tehran, although he never acted on either during his previous presidency. However, Trump is now far more belligerent and has attacked Iran. Although it largely failed (despite his insistence that it was a “total success”), this demonstrates his willingness to engage in direct armed aggression. American forces in the region are far too few to allow a full-blown invasion, but they’re enough to be used in limited long-range precision strikes, likely on critical infrastructure (particularly in coastal regions).

Washington DC certainly understands this would be nowhere near enough to defeat the Venezuelan military, but it’s possible that the Trump administration is hoping to destabilize Caracas politically. For instance, destroying or damaging the remaining oil refineries would disrupt normal economic activity and exacerbate the Latin American country’s troubles that stem from illegal US sanctions and constant pressure. In turn, Washington DC probably expects protests to erupt or even a full-blown rebellion. This approach is quite common whenever the US finds it more challenging to invade directly. And indeed, Venezuela’s complex geography effectively makes it a combination of Afghanistan and Vietnam, which is an absolute nightmare for any remotely sensible military planner.

Venezuela already deployed around 15,000 troops in the states of Zulia and Táchira (both bordering Colombia). These units are mostly comprised of special police and military personnel, indicating that Caracas is worried about cross-border raids and infiltration. Such measures are perfectly understandable given America’s propensity to use sabotage and terrorist attacks to undermine targeted countries. Back in 2020, the CIA launched the so-called “Operation Gideon” precisely from Colombia, with two boats carrying approximately 60 insurgents commanded by two former members of the US Army Special Forces (better known as “Green Berets”). Both were employed as mercenaries by Silvercorp USA, a Florida-based PMC.

Such private military enterprises are quite common in the US and are used by the Pentagon in order to maintain plausible deniability in case of failure. Precisely this happened to “Operation Gideon”, which was effectively some sort of Trump’s “mini-Bay of Pigs” moment. This failure was attributed to multiple factors, with several US intelligence services accusing one another of “major security breaches”. In fact, back in January, Jordan Goudreau, the head of Silvercorp (himself a former “Green Beret”), accused the CIA and FBI of “sabotaging the operation”. However, whether that’s true or not is irrelevant, as Venezuela needs to be prepared for any similar incursions, particularly now that such actions might serve as the vanguard of direct US aggression.

Source Infobrics.org

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A blast is heard from up the Bayou Teche, from the direction of Leonville, Cecilia, or Breaux Bridge. Then comes the ring of a far-off bell, barely heard through the cattails and wall of cicadas, crickets, and katydids. The tolling rolls down the waterway clear and rhythmic, like the echo of an evening train passing through a rural town.

It is August 15, and the Fête-Dieu du Teche has begun again. And just like the crushing weight of the Louisiana sun, countless Cajuns up and down the Teche will find themselves overcome. Hearts are about to break.

For many whose homes cling to banks of the bayou—rock-ribbed Louisiana Baptists, staunch anti-papists, nonbelievers, and the long-ago fallen away—the bell echoes in the backcountry like a rooster’s crow announcing the dawn of something forgotten or pushed away. Long-closed doors to the trace of a memory begin to open and set in motion first steps back to their centuries-old Nova Scotian roots.

And what a wonderful unfolding of grace this must be for Cajun-born Fr. Michael Champagne, the Religious Superior of the Community of Jesus Crucified, who, a decade ago, imagined how a Eucharistic procession down the heart of the bayou might move something deep in souls.

For readers unaware of the Fête-Dieu du Teche—Louisiana’s annual waterway procession on the Solemnity of the Assumption—the following is an image of its starting point: Canon fire pierces humid morning skies and sends a single boat, Vessel #1—the bell boat—down the serpentine waters that have flowed through these parts since before the birth of Christ. Thereafter, a phenomenon begins, where, over the past eleven years, Jesus Christ has floated back into the lives of fallen-away Catholics and Protestants, where an inner movement rises and begins to pull them back to the sacraments and faith of their martyred Acadian forebears.

The bell boat alerts families to something strange happening up the Teche. So they head to swinging porch doors that open into the ancient waterway; and before they are able to fuss about their privacy being trespassed upon, boat after boat begins to appear at a bend in the bayou.

Thereafter, a woody and warm scent overpowers the immovable loamy incense of the Teche; it is a pleasing smoke that moseys past the bank and floats like slow-motion sensory overload into backyards. Louisianans, some unmoored from the faith of their French-Canadian ancestors, feel the air becoming Catholic. Vessel #2 is the mist-covered thurible boat,purposed to burn and puff out incense that prepares the way for the Savior of the World in Vessel #3.

When Jesus, in the Eucharist, emerges in the haze, He is high-throned on an altar in a long-stemmed golden monstrance bordered by a few dozen sharp-edged rays. He is raised high but neatly protected beneath the shade of a canopy that all but grazes the tips of silvery-gray moss dripping from tree limbs like Louisiana tinsel. A young woman passenger glorifies Him by singing old Latin songs—“Panis Angelicus,” “Pange Lingua Gloriosi,” the “Ave Verum Corpus,” or any number of other hymns in a voice that carries up and down the Teche through a headset and a small microphone. The love songs to the King of Kings cut straight through the wall of swamp insects, and the tolling of the bell is forgotten.

Onlookers see that Vessel #3 seems to be a sacred place, sardine-packed with cassocked and habited men and women in veils who, for the next eight or so hours, will kneel to adore Jesus in the bow. They will interchangeably glorify and consider His Majesty through silent contemplation or pray from breviaries, rosaries, or from the hymnals by their sides.

Over the years, this vision of the Eucharist boat and its quiet adorers has caused many thousands of men and women to fall to their knees. Because the sensus fidei rises quickly in them, their eyes often begin to burn and well, where tears fall and mix with moistened faces. Even Protestants have admitted to a spark in the soul and different kind of feeling in their gut. They know Vessel #3 is the reason for the Fête-Dieu du Teche—so some of these converts-to-be find themselves whispering words of adoration, and, for the first time, they drop the long-guarded belief that God could not become a wafer in a host; they begin to vulnerably embrace Him as the Slaughtered Lamb hidden in True Bread.

Thereafter, most stick around for another quarter of an hour to watch the long and lazy fleet of trailing vessels. Boat after boat floats by, filled with folks they recognize from the Piggly Wiggly or bank and post office lines. Old high school teammates and childhood friends or a neighbor or co-worker wave, where he or she has become a public witness to the Body, Soul, Blood, and Divinity of Jesus Christ. These trailing folks make periodic pit stops to dock their boat and make thirty-minute visits to old riverside churches or shaded grassy areas, where they merge with hundreds of other Catholics unable to find room on a boat but who wanted to join the pilgrimage nonetheless to pray a Rosary and Benediction.

It should be no surprise that Fr. Champagne chose to pierce hearts on the bayou. He grew up on the banks of the 125-mile-long Teche. As a school boy, he was told stories of the Acadian heroes who survived unimaginable hardship as they traveled south and down the Teche after refusing to kiss the British king’s ring. The priest had always seen the river as an escape route—the primary means of transportation for his ancestors’ 18th-century exodus from Nova Scotia.

So, all these years later, Fr. Champagne knew how the waterway procession might become the floating torchlight that would guide secular and fallen-away Cajuns to the upheaval, when old family members were murdered by British soldiers or endured torture, persecution, and imprisonment for refusing to leave the Catholic Faith.

Read the Whole Article

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Fruitless discussions about ‘security guarantees’ for Ukraine continue. It will still take time until it is acknowledged that there is no way to implement them. Meanwhile other ideas are cropping in.

Some dimwits in Europe still think that they will be able to prevent Russia from taking care of its security interests:

On Thursday, French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer will co-host a meeting of the “coalition of the willing” comprised mostly of European allies. The discussions are expected to involve what potential security guarantees for Ukraine could look like and what type of peacekeeping force might be required.

The idea is to establish a setup that would prevent Russia from relaunching attacks on Ukrainian territory if a peace deal or cease-fire is established between the two countries.

President Donald Trump has signaled that the United States could play some kind of role in the effort, although he has ruled out putting American forces in Ukraine. [NATO Secretary-General Mark] Rutte on Wednesday also said the expectation was that the U.S would be involved in some form.

There will be no ceasefire in Ukraine. There will be a peace agreement in the form of a treaty. Ukraine and Russia sides will have to agree to its parameters. The Russian site will insist that Ukraine will be demilitarized and that no foreign forces will be stationed on its land.

European countries are unable to give any real ‘security guarantees’. What they could provide is a minuscule force of a few thousand men stationed somewhere in Ukraine. Such a force would be eradicated within minutes should, after a peace agreement, the conflict in Ukraine reignite.

The Ukrainian regime has come to understand that. It has moved away from requesting ‘security guarantees’ in form of foreign soldiers. It instead wants a huge amount of foreign money to buy and make new weapons.

As the New York Times wrote yesterday:

Ukraine Pursues a Weapons Buildup More Potent Than Any Security Guarantee (archived) – New York Times
Kyiv sees a well-equipped army as a stronger deterrent to Moscow than any Western pledges to defend it. It is working to attract billions to buy more arms.

Kyiv wants not only to sustain its army through the current war but also to make it the backbone of any postwar settlement, with the goal of deterring Russia from invading again. As Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president, recently put it: “Ukraine must become a steel porcupine, undigestible for potential invaders.”

At the center of these efforts is a new NATO-backed procurement system that will channel European funds into buying U.S. weapons for Ukraine. President Volodymyr Zelensky hopes the system will enable $1 billion in purchases each month, with a particular focus on acquiring U.S.-made Patriot air-defense systems to expand Kyiv’s limited arsenal.
…
Ukraine is focused on developing its own security guarantees that its much larger neighbor cannot undermine. Kyiv’s domestic weapon production and its acquisition of Western arms are areas where Moscow has little leverage.

“This is not something the Russians can really discuss,” said Alyona Getmanchuk, Ukraine’s new ambassador to NATO. “That’s our advantage.”
…

Ukraine does not only want to receive lots of weapons, paid for by Europe, but also wants to build a weapon industry with financing also coming from foreign sources:

[Maksym Skrypchenko, the president of the Transatlantic Dialogue Center, a research group in Kyiv,] said Ukraine was working to channel Western money not only into buying foreign weapons but also into its own defense industry, which has grown rapidly during the war but still lacks the funding needed to produce at scale.

That could allow Ukraine to produce the very missiles Western partners have been reluctant to supply — or have delivered under strict usage limits — for fear of escalation. The United States, Britain and France have provided small batches of ballistic and cruise missiles, but their use is restricted so that they cannot be used to strike major Russian cities like Moscow. Germany has long refused to transfer its long-range Taurus cruise missiles.

Fire Point, the Ukrainian defense firm behind the Flamingo missile, said it would welcome Western funding to speed up production. The company says it currently makes one missile per day, but plans to increase output sevenfold by this fall. Ukraine has also developed a short-range ballistic missile named Sapsan that recently entered production.

That this is a serious attempt by Ukraine to move the ‘security guarantee’ discussion towards a record financial transaction to Kiev is underlined by an op-ed by its former Foreign Minister  Dmytro Kulebain the Washington Post:

Ukraine doesn’t need a security guarantee (archived) – Dmytro Kuleba / Washington Post
Western boots on the ground won’t secure peace. Arming Ukraine and politically integrating it will.

[S]tationing foreign troops far behind the lines as “reassurance forces” (the option most often floated as an alternative to more robust peacekeeping) would also have limited effect. The Ukrainian people would almost certainly welcome such deployments. But reassurance forces would neither hasten the war’s end nor prevent hostilities from reigniting after any ceasefire. Moscow, meanwhile, has already rejected the idea, claiming it would be a pretense for putting a NATO presence on Ukrainian soil.

Instead of debating such dead ends, Ukraine’s partners should immediately move to provide a robust assistance package, coupled with firm commitments to Ukraine’s political integration in the West. Weapons need to be provided at an even larger scale — to be mass-produced in Western countries as well as in Western-financed factories inside Ukraine. Ensuring uninterrupted supply on a strict timeline is vital. The buildup of a European military-industrial complex needs to take place alongside Ukraine’s admission to the European Union as a full member on an accelerated (though still merit-based) schedule.

The attempt to get ‘security guarantees’ in the form of money for weapons and weapon fabrications is just as doomed as the idea of putting western troops on the ground.

From the NYT piece quoted above:

Europe has already outpaced the United States in military aid, providing roughly $95 billion to Washington’s $75 billion, according to the Kiel Institute for the World Economy.

Ukraine has already received weapons at a value of $170 billion. How much did they deter the Russian from fighting?

The Europeans have difficulties to grow their economies while facing higher interest rates and aging societies. It is ludicrous to expect that they will indefinitely continue to finance weapons for Ukraine.

The idea of building western-financed weapon factories in Ukraine can already be seen as a failure.

The NYT piece asserts:

Kyiv’s domestic weapon production and its acquisition of Western arms are areas where Moscow has little leverage. 

“This is not something the Russians can really discuss,” said Alyona Getmanchuk, Ukraine’s new ambassador to NATO. “That’s our advantage.”

The Russia Armed Forces disagree with that statement.

Germany allegedly provided the money and technology to develop the short-range ballistic missile named Sapsan which was to be produced in Ukraine.

By August 11 the Russia forces had ended that endeavor:

Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) claimed Thursday that it crippled Ukraine’s ability to launch strikes deep inside Russia after it carried out a special operation along with the Defense Ministry against Ukrainian missile production facilities.

The FSB said it had discovered the locations of buildings and air defense systems involved in the production and protection of Ukraine’s Sapsan ballistic missile system, also known by its export designation Hrim-2, in the Sumy and Dnipropetrovsk regions.
…
Russia’s Defense Ministry said […] the strikes were conducted throughout July, targeting Ukrainian design bureaus, rocket fuel production facilities and missile assembly plants in the Dnipropetrovsk and Sumy regions.

The Russian military also said it destroyed four launchers of the Western-supplied Patriot surface-to-air missile system and a U.S.-made target detection and guidance radar in the Dnipropetrovsk region alone.

The FSB claimed that Ukraine had developed the Sapsan/Hrim-2 with financial support from “specialists” of an unidentified Western European country.
…
Ukrainian media previously reported that the Sapsan missile completed combat testing in May after successfully striking a Russian military target at a range of almost 300 kilometers (186 miles).

Another deep strike hit the factory of a U.S. manufacturer of electronic circuit boards, Flex-tronic, in western Ukraine. Circuit boards are needed for Ukraine’s mass drone production. Six hundred employees, working the night shift to allegedly ‘build coffee makers’, had fled into the companies bunkers when several cruise missiles arrived. It took several days to expunge the fire.

A Turkish company had built and equipped a factory to make Bayraktar drones in Ukraine. The factory was supposed to open at the end of August. Days before the official opening Russian missiles arrived:

The factory where Turkish Bayraktar drones are assembled continues to burn near Kiev. The day before, several Russian missiles hit the workshops. The building was seriously damaged. The production process was disrupted.

The video of the fire is published today, August 29, by Channel Five.

Together those were at least three large strikes in just one month against western-financed weapon production sites in Ukraine. Any future weapon factory build with western finance in Ukraine will receive a similar treatment.

Such facilities are just too big and obvious to operate in total secret. The Russian security service will find them and mark them for destruction as soon as the most expensive machinery for them has been installed and is ready to go.

‘Security guarantees’ in form of western troops on the ground are just not going to happen.

‘Security guarantees’ in form of weapon deliveries or weapon production within Ukraine are not sustainable.

The only real ‘security guarantee’ Ukraine can get is through a piece agreement with Russia. This will require Ukraine  to give up on land, to commit to neutrality and to behave well.

President Alexander Stubb of Finland argues in the Economist that Ukraine should follow his country’s (previous) model:

What Finland could teach Ukraine about war and peace (archived) – Economist
President Alexander Stubb argues Ukraine can repeat Finland’s success

Finland’s experience has been cited from the start of the war in Ukraine—both as a model to avoid and one perhaps to follow. Mannerheim’s speech was circulated in President Volodymyr Zelensky’s office in the first months of the war, but was put to one side.

The peace that was imposed on Finland in 1944 was hardly just. But it could have been worse. Finland handed over 10% of its territory, including Karelia and half of Lake Ladoga. Its army was restricted, as was its ability to join NATO. It was forced to let Russia lease a naval base on Porkkala, a peninsula in the Gulf of Finland just 30km from the capital. And, because it had joined forces with Hitler, it was forced to pay reparations to the Soviet Union which had attacked it five years earlier.

To much of the world, this was a defeat. To Mr Stubb, whose father was born in the territory annexed by the Soviet Union, and whose summer house stands in Porkkala, back in Finnish hands since the 1950s, it looks different.

The simple secret of living peacefully next to a mighty neighbor, Finland had found, was to behave well:

Lacking any security guarantees from the West or anyone else, Finland exercised this independence not by turning anti-Russian—which would almost certainly have resulted in another invasion—but by building one of the most successful countries in Europe. “People didn’t wait for perfect conditions. They worked with what they had,” Risto Penttilä, a foreign-policy expert, explains.

In politics and in the media Finland carefully avoided anything that could anger Moscow. To most outsiders, what became known as “Finlandisation” was a servile form of appeasement. To Mr Stubb and most of his countrymen, “it was the definition of realpolitik at a time when we did not have a choice.” It allowed Finland to stick to its core values: universal education, social welfare and the rule of law.

The ‘Finlandization’ of Ukraine, if done seriously, would satisfy major Russian demands – neutrality, demilitarization and denazification. It is a realistic base for successful peace talks.

I am encourage that the Economist, as a major mainstream outlet, has picked up on this.

For the idea to ripen it will have to wait until the powers-that-be have recognized that all other variants of ‘security guarantees’, be they troops on the ground or weapon-fabrications, are rather pipe-dreams than serious plans.

Reprinted with permission from Moon of Alabama.

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It appears more and more people are challenging the United Nations narrative that CO2 emissions are causing disastrous climate change. Indeed, there are signs that the narrative is collapsing. The book Climate CO2 Hoax – How Bankers Hijacked the Environment Movement provides evidences and testimonies from renowned international climate scientists that contradict the UN assertion that climate change is caused by CO2 emissions or methane. (The 1992 UN Rio Earth summit involved the establishment of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) as an international environmental treaty to combat “dangerous human interference with the climate system” – a treaty signed by 154 states.)

In the book I refer to the conclusion of the Climate Intelligence Foundation (CLINTEL) that the climate changes naturally and slowly in its own cycle; and that CO2 emissions or methane from livestock, such as cows, are not the dominant factors in climate change. The number of signatories of the CLINTEL World Climate Declaration has now risen to 2,000. Coincidentally

The conclusions of the Climate Intelligence foundation include the following:

“There is no climate emergency. Therefore, there is no cause for panic and alarm. Natural as well as anthropogenic factors cause warming… Warming is far slower than predicted… Climate policy relies on inadequate models… CO2 is plant food, the basis of all life on Earth: CO2 is not a pollutant. It is essential to all life on Earth. Photosynthesis is a blessing. More CO2 is beneficial for nature, greening the Earth: additional CO2 in the air has promoted growth in global plant biomass. It is also good for agriculture, increasing the yields of crops worldwide.”

Patrick Moore, co-founder of Greenpeace, and President of Greenpeace in Canada for seven years, states:

“the whole climate crisis is not only fake news its fake science… of course climate change is real it’s been happening since the beginning of time, but it’s not dangerous and it’s not caused by people… Most of the scientists who are saying it’s a crisis are on perpetual government grants… you don’t have a plan to feed 8 billion people without fossils fuels or get the food into the cities…” – Patrick Moore, co-founder of Greenpeace

I also have experience in the field, including at United Nations Environment; at the UK Government Dept of Energy and Climate Change; and as a PhD researcher on the subject of sustainability. See also the books Climate CO2 Hoax and Transcending the Climate Change Deception Toward Real Sustainability.

The United Nations and the globalist Davos World Economic Forum declared the necessity of reaching a worldwide goal of “net zero carbon” by 2050. Massive transformations have been underway worldwide setting the stage for creation of what in the 1970’s was called the New International Economic Order. In reality it is a blueprint for worldwide technocratic totalitarian corporate-communism. The EU, a political project of globalists from its very inception, has been leading this agenda and plans to become the world’s first “carbon neutral” continent by 2050 and reduce its CO2 emissions by at least 55% by 2030.

With a virtual monopoly on mainstream media as well as social media, the ‘climate change is caused by CO2’ lobby brainwashed much of the world into believing that we should eliminate hydrocarbons including petroleum, natural gas, and coal. This bogus claim is cover for an ulterior agenda. CO2 is not carbon or soot, it is an invisible, odorless gas essential to plant photosynthesis and all life forms on earth, including us.

The myth of manmade climate change due to CO2 emissions has become so normalised amongst all political parties worldwide and in the general population, that at times it seems as if one is living in an entire society ‘blind to the truth’. Images of the apocalyptic movie and book ‘Day of the Triffids’ springs to mind. In this book almost the entire population of the Earth has become physically blinded. In 2023, it appears we are living through a society that has largely become ‘mentally blinded’ to the truth.

What can be done? The unfortunate reality is that the blind are leading the blind; and the politicians and leaders whatever their political colour, green or otherwise, will never rock the boat of the ‘institutional orthodoxy’ or relinquish their bloated government salaries, regardless of whether they are aware of the truth or not.

The current green energy/renewable technologies being promoted by the UN and WEF, are not a viable solution for the world’s energy supply.

Most ‘green policies’ are based on mathematical madness and in the above books I also describe that the current green energy/renewable technologies being promoted by the UN and WEF, are not a viable solution for the world’s energy supply. Although these technologies have some limited viability in certain locations and scenarios, the fact remains that the Energy Returned on Energy Invested is much too low – in essence the entire process is mathematically flawed.

This is evidenced by the work of scientists, including Professor David MacKay, former Regius Professor of Engineering at Cambridge University and former Chief Scientific Advisor at the UK Department of Energy and Climate Change in his book Sustainable Energy without Hot Air, see Endnote [i]. His analysis shows the mathematical absurdity of wind energy and that an area twice the size of the entire country of Wales would need to be completely covered with wind turbines to meet the energy demand in the U.K., based on average energy consumption per person. The creation of wind energy infrastructure is in most parts of the world a massive waste of existing fossil fuel resources.

Climate policy and green energy involve economic suicide – the example of Germany

Let us consider the example of Germany as detailed in an article by strategic risk consultant F. William Engdahl, see Endnote [ii]. In Germany, Angela Merkel and the German government as part of a 2001 government strategy to rely on solar and wind and other “renewables” aimed to make Germany the first industrial nation to be “carbon neutral.” F. William Engdahl described that:

• this strategy has been an economic catastrophe. Germany had one of the industrial world’s most stable low-cost and reliable electric generation grids, but today Germany has become the world’s most expensive electric generator.
• the energy inefficient wind and solar, today costs some 7 to 9 times more than gas. To reach targets by 2030 Deutsche Bank even admitted the state will need to create an “eco-dictatorship”, see Endnote [iii].
• by 2025 an estimated 25% of existing German windmills will need replacement and waste disposal is a colossal problem

Furthermore, a massive input of concrete and aluminum is needed to produce solar or wind farms, all of which requires cheap energy to produce; but solar and wind is not cheap it is very expensive. Consider also that the amount of added electricity needed for a ‘zero carbon’ EU by 2050 would be far more than today, as countless millions of battery chargers will need grid electricity with reliable power.

While the people of the world pay suffer large energy price increases many renewable energy corporations made massive windfalls via subsidies and profits via government led climate policy.  In its forced transition to renewables, while banning nuclear energy, Germany has paid a very high price in this ridiculous climate crusade of mathematical madness. Author Thomas Kolbe has described in a recent article that a group of German industrial labor representatives has broken ranks, and in an open letter to Chancellor Friedrich Merz, they fiercely criticize Berlin’s climate policy:

“A group of industrial works councils is calling on Chancellor Merz to halt the climate policy suicide run. Since COVID lockdowns, over 300,000 jobs in Germany’s industrial core have vanished. Energy-intensive production has become a fantasy—especially when competitors like the U.S. pay up to 75% less for electricity… These are not outliers—they’re survivors of Germany’s failed “green transformation.” ArcelorMittal recently scrapped its green steel plans—despite billions in offered subsidies. BASF is cutting 700 jobs in Ludwigshafen. The “green restructuring” of Germany’s economy now reads like an industrial obituary. Every day, another subsidized project collapses into the dustbin of central planning…

By issuing a public letter, they’re committing open defiance. They’re aiming straight at the Green Deal—the administrative metastasis that has paralyzed Europe’s economic lifeblood… After 35 years of subsidizing wind and solar, grid stability hasn’t improved—yet grid costs are in the hundreds of billions. The high energy prices aren’t just socially unjust; they’re an existential threat to prosperity and civil peace… This protest has grassroots power—it comes from people living the reality of failed climate economics, not from think tanks or talking heads…” – Thomas Kolbe, author and journalist

The so-called green economy is not green at all

The western world has become shackled by nonsensical policies that claim to be environmentally friendly; however, the green mask is slipping. In reality, we see that vast industrial processes to create a so-called green infrastructure have been offshored; and green industrialisation has been ramped up to produce vast numbers of electric vehicles, wind turbines, solar panels, etc; thus causing yet more ‘real pollution’ to land, air and water systems via industrial mining for rare earth metals etc, see this article.  Furthermore, after decades of subsidies, wind and solar still only produce around 5% of the world’s primary energy supply. The maths do not add up, the Energy Returned on Energy Invested in too low. The green economy is littered with an army of expensive toys that do not create value, for example electric vehicles. Meanwhile, the tax payer is forced to pay the bill via taxes and increased energy costs, while renewable energy corporations reap vast subsidies and ‘policy-led’ profits.

The bill to create a nonsensical and vast worldwide green energy infrastructure is so large it will never be paid. More government debt piled upon existing debt leaves the people impoverished via taxes that ultimately end up in the coffers of the world banking cartel. See also the book Demonic Economics and the Tricks of the Bankers.

Driving an electric car is fake environmentalism – Elon Musk debunked

Electric vehicle (EV) drivers are suckers for mega-corporate advertising, ignorantly proud of so-called low-carbon eco-cars. Apparently, unaware that the manufacture of millions of EV batteries, requires huge mining operations to acquire and refine large quantities of rare earth metals, such as lithium, rhodium and cobalt; that these metals have to be mined out of the ground using machinery which is powered by carbon-emitting vehicles powered by diesel or petrol; and importantly, that the mining and refining processes can cause significant and extensive pollution to land, air and water systems, for example in rural China and Mongolia, see Endnote [iv]. Unlike the fake climate agenda, these are real environmental problems.

Have the deluded green politicians considered what would be the environmental consequence of transitioning the entire world population to EVs, for example, for a population of 8 billion to be using about 2 billion EVs, at around 1 per family? The real pollution to land and water systems from the mining of rare earth metals, such as lithium, for EV batteries would be massive. For example see a picture of toxic lithium leach fields in Chile in this article.

Furthermore, the push to end gasoline or diesel transport by 2035 in favour of EVs is based on a lie as the lithium-ion battery-powered vehicles have a total “carbon footprint” when the effects of mining lithium and producing all parts are included, that is worse than diesel autos. The deluded greens are trying to get us all driving EVs, but EVS are still driven by electricity produced from fossil fuels and will most likely continue to be. Furthermore, EVs are not at all an efficient use of energy as the well to tank efficiency of this electrification process has been estimated at around only 37%.

There appears to be a growing realisation that electric transport is something of a ‘road to nowhere’.

Green politics is concerned with fitting in with a deceptive UN climate and sustainable development narrative

The majority of green policies, seemingly worldwide, are based on the misleading narrative that CO2 causes climate change. A generation of young people and deluded CO2 activists have been misled like sheep. This ‘group think’ and a need to be accepted by ones social or political peer group has turned many people into dumb animals – like sheep. Such concerns take away from the attainment of knowledge, truth, and deeper meaning.

The policies of international mega-banks and international institutions, such as the UN and the WEF, are driving environmentally destructive ‘globalisation painted green’. Green politics is fake environmentalism. The green political parties appear to be brainwashed by decades of UN-promoted propaganda; and appear to be unaware that the real environmental movement was essentially ‘hijacked’ by the Rothschild banking dynasty in 1992 at the UN Earth summit. This is detailed in the testimony of whistleblower George Hunt, see this video.

The green political parties founded in many countries in the early 1980s were often focused on policies for ecology, food security, local resilience, and local governance. The original founders of the green movement in the early 1980s, and the sustainability visionaries of the 1970s are better described as localists not globalists, for example the well-known E.F. Schumacher, author of the books Small is Beautiful  and This I Believe. However, nowadays this focus on local or regional sustainability appears to have been largely displaced by climate alarmism.

It should be noted that it is the world’s central bankers that are behind the decision to reduce CO2 emissions worldwide and are entirely funding and controlling the advancement of the worldwide project of combatting man-made climate-change. This project involves an attempt to de-carbonise the activities of the entire world population. In December 2015, the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) created the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosure (TCFD), which represents $118 trillion of assets globally, see Endnote  [v]. In essence this means that the financialization of the entire world economy is based on meeting nonsensical aims such as “net-zero greenhouse gas emissions”.

In addition, seemingly most political parties are championing the deceptive UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). I decode the deceptive SDGs in the above book.

[i] The book “Sustainable Energy without Hot Air” by Professor David MacKay, Regius Professor of Engineering at Cambridge University and former Chief Scientific Advisor to the UK’s Department of Energy and Climate Change, is available for free at: https://withouthotair.com/

[ii] Source: https://www.globalresearch.ca/great-zero-carbon-criminal-conspiracy/5736707

[iii] Source: https://www.dw.com/en/german-wind-energy-stalls-amid-public-resistance-and-regulatory-hurdles/a-50280676

[iv] Source: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/aug/07/china-rare-earth-village-pollution

[v] Source: https://data.parliament.uk/DepositedPapers/Files/DEP2019-0718/Green_Finance_Strategy.pdf

Same in the U.S. In my travels, I saw wasteland. thousands upon thousands of miles of nothing and every town desolate. All the money had been withdrawn. Thousands of small towns once lit by familied love and charity, gone. Not an accident of fate. It had been decided by the Malthusian technocrats who wanted to bunch the talking pigs in cities where they could be further degraded into arty punks, petty criminals and indentured labourers for the mega-corps and government. And best case, confused by their “sexuality”. Fighting over scraps, while the country was cleared to be taken.

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