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Gail Appel wrote:

Hi Lew,

Carl Sagan was once iconic, particularly among liberals . A brilliant American.

Add Sagan to the wise men whose warning fell upon deaf ears.

Huxley,Orwell,Welch,McLuhan,Serling,Asimov, Vonnegut… they tried.They were right and the liberals are no longer liberal. They’ve become what we were warned of.

See this.

The post Carl Sagan’s Final Warning on the Importance of Scientific Skepticism appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, Andy Thomas.

From David Patrick Harry’s podcast (Eastern Orthodox).

The post Fake Christianity: Paula White and Christian Zionism appeared first on LewRockwell.

Gail Appel wrote:

It was Agenda 21 before renamed Agenda 2030- Remapping the U.S., British Columbia and a portion of Mexico  into “ Mega-Region Smart City States”. This was drawn up in 2013.

See this.

The post Ready to have your mind blown? appeared first on LewRockwell.

Gail Appel wrote:

Meaning the child did not have measles, but tested positive after receiving the live virus MMR vaccine.

See this.

The post Measles Death By Pneumonia By Measles Vaccine appeared first on LewRockwell.

Writes Jackie:

Lew,

Another key point seldom discussed is that if the CIA were to come clean with full disclosure, they would have to open up to various degrees about how they fed some of their own people and incidental associates into the death mill.  Not only Oswald, but David Sanchez Morales and George de Mohrenschildt and even by extension Ramblin Rose Cheramie as other obvious examples.  And today they probably do not want to make a living example of squealing on Ruth Paine either.  If today’s agents and accessory employees found out how expendable they are, and how any time the wind changes their status can evaporate to cannon fodder or less than nothing, such disclosures wouldn’t be good for morale or recruitment or retention.  Or at least that is the argument they can use to scare and tame any random president.  Something like the South African reconciliation efforts of thirty years ago might have a glimmer of a chance, but that would require the devil to develop some scant bits of morality.  From a world where there is no bottom.

The post CIA Recalcitrance About JFK Disclosure appeared first on LewRockwell.

Kemosaby wrote:

Are you aware of  http://www.maebrussell.com  ?  Listening to her on her weekly JFK radio show out of Carmel Ca. back in the 70s was the main catapult that brought me to the realization of the criminality of our government. It enabled me to reject all the government lies about Vietnam and all the lies since then, 9-11, Covid, you know. At first I thought she was crazy but as she went into detail after detail about JFK I realized the reality of our government was quite different from our mass programing. She ended up with numerous file cabinets documenting everything she said. On the site is the story of how she went to the Monterey airport to warn RFK’s mother that he was slated for assassination two weeks before it happened.  She was amazing, just wanted to make sure you are aware of her.

Thanks for all!

The post JFK and the Unspekable appeared first on LewRockwell.

____________________________________________________________________________________

di Drieu Godefridi

(Versione audio della traduzione disponibile qui: https://open.substack.com/pub/fsimoncelli/p/chi-e-che-sta-davvero-distruggendo)

L'idea fondante dell'Unione Europea era quella di costruire, attraverso la prosperità condivisa, una solidarietà e un senso di destino comune tra le nazioni d'Europa. Ecco perché sono state formate tre comunità: l'economia, il carbone e l'acciaio e l'energia nucleare. Fino al 2000 circa, in termini di crescita e innovazione, l'economia europea, anno dopo anno, era alla pari con quella americana.

Di quanto accadeva allora non rimane nulla. Nessuno degli attuali leader dell'UE si preoccupa del benessere finanziario degli europei. Il carbone è considerato il combustibile del diavolo e l'energia nucleare è aborrita dalle élite europee, le quali affermano di preferire le inefficienti e irregolari turbine eoliche. Dal 2000 l'economia europea è impantanata nella stagnazione, che è peggiorata dal 2008 e minaccia di raggiungere il suo apice nei prossimi anni, concludendosi con la distruzione dell'Europa.

Green deal

L'UE è una rete di istituzioni con cui un americano non troverebbe nulla di familiare, quindi diciamo solo che questa rete è dominata da un'istituzione: la Commissione europea. È una specie di “governo” europeo con il monopolio sulle iniziative legislative. Nulla viene votato nell'UE senza il consenso della Commissione.

Essa non nasconde il fatto che la sua priorità assoluta è il cosiddetto Green Deal: trasformare l'Europa in una “società a zero emissioni di anidride carbonica” entro il 2050. Ciò significa raggiungere un equilibrio tra le emissioni di gas serra prodotte e quelle assorbite in modo naturale o tecnologico. Le strategie chiave dell'UE per raggiungere questo equilibrio includono la riduzione delle emissioni aumentando l'uso di fonti di “energia rinnovabile” come solare, eolico, idroelettrico e biomassa, migliorando l'efficienza energetica di edifici, veicoli e industrie, oltre a spostarsi verso processi industriali a basse o zero emissioni, in particolare in settori come quello dell'acciaio, del cemento e dei prodotti chimici. Mirano anche a sviluppare tecnologie di cattura e stoccaggio dell'anidride carbonica (CCS) per assorbire e immagazzinare la CO₂ da fonti di combustione o dall'aria. L'anidride carbonica catturata viene solitamente immagazzinata in formazioni geologiche come giacimenti di gas naturale esauriti o vecchie miniere di carbone. In Europa, il fondale marino del Mare del Nord funge da luogo ideale per lo stoccaggio.

Il problema è che queste tecnologie sono estremamente costose. Imporle nel modo che richiede zero emissioni implica costi aggiuntivi impossibili da digerire per qualsiasi economia sviluppata. Questo è probabilmente il motivo per cui queste tecnologie CCS svolgono un ruolo marginale in Europa. La verità è che la riduzione delle emissioni di CO₂ in Europa è dovuta quasi esclusivamente all'industria che abbandona l'Europa. Questo è il piccolo sporco segreto del Green Deal: l'Europa sta riducendo le sue emissioni di CO₂ nella misura e in proporzione alla distruzione della sua industria.

L'industria devastata in Europa, tuttavia, rinasce immediatamente altrove nel mondo: in Asia orientale, in Sud America e, naturalmente, negli Stati Uniti. Ciò significa che le emissioni di CO₂ distrutte in Europa ricompaiono come per magia da qualche altra parte, prima che i prodotti di quella particolare industria vengano riesportati in Europa. Nella maggior parte dei casi, poiché trasportare qualsiasi cosa emette CO₂, il bilancio in termini di questo gioco di prestigio europeo nel ridurre le emissioni globali di CO₂ è negativo.

Il motivo dichiarato e la ragion d'essere del Green Deal è salvare il clima, che nei circoli europei è spesso scritto con la C maiuscola, il che la dice lunga sulla religiosità dell'intero approccio. Per “salvare il pianeta”, ci viene detto, dobbiamo ridurre le emissioni di CO₂.

L'unico modo tecnologico che conosciamo finora per ridurre le emissioni di CO₂ è l'energia nucleare. Le “élite” dell'UE, tuttavia, odiano l'energia nucleare: il loro vero obiettivo non è mitigare il cambiamento climatico e “salvare il pianeta”, ma forzare un'uscita dal capitalismo e tornare all'economia di sussistenza che è sempre stata l'ambizione, il sogno e l'orizzonte degli ambientalisti, molto prima che si parlasse di riscaldamento globale. “Il capitalismo sta uccidendo il pianeta”, viene scritto sul The Guardian.

Libertà di parola

Se c'è una realtà che i leader il cui potere è fondato sui miti detestano, è la trasparenza. Mentre nel 2020 il potere dei media generalisti americani consentiva ancora di far credere alla gente che il laptop di Hunter Biden fosse un'operazione di disinformazione russa, negli ultimi anni questo potere è stato ridotto a brandelli. Lo stesso cambiamento sta avvenendo in Europa, sotto l'influenza non dei social network europei, perché non esistono, ma di quelli americani, come X. L'élite dell'UE ha perso il controllo della narrazione. Gli europei si stanno allontanando in massa dalle bugie e dai miti del Green Deal.

Questo è qualcosa che l'UE non può tollerare. Con l'adozione del Digital Services Act (DSA), l'UE ha voluto darsi uno strumento con cui sottomettere le piattaforme americane, ed è obbligata a finanziare orde di censori per dare la caccia ai contenuti che non sono d'accordo con i dettami della Commissione Europea. L'UE ha richiesto una multa del 6% dei ricavi mondiali ai social media, cosa che ucciderebbe inevitabilmente tali piattaforme.

Questi censori senza volto, che non devono rendere conto a nessuno, dovrebbero rimuovere tutti i contenuti che incitano all'odio, alla discriminazione o alla transfobia. Nessuno di questi termini vaghi può essere definito rigorosamente. Data l'assenza di definizioni precise, i censori fanno quello che vogliono. L'arbitrarietà è totale. In pratica, essi reprimono i cosiddetti contenuti “di destra”, lasciando stare invece tutto ciò che è antisemita, islamista e marxista.

Questo, a quanto pare, è il punto. La sinistra europea, come quella americana, dedica un antagonismo illimitato a tutto ciò che non pensa faccia il suo vantaggio, non parla come essa, non sogna, non mangia o non lavora come essa.

Con l'introduzione di una legislazione come il DSA, l'Europa si sta affermando come un attore importante nel campo della censura, seguendo l'esempio di Cina, Iran, Russia e Paesi islamici, oltre a contribuire all'involuzione della civilizzazione del continente europeo. Dopo tutto, la libertà non è forse la definizione, la ragion d'essere e l'unico criterio distintivo della civiltà occidentale?

Confini aperti

Non passa settimana in Europa senza che un immigrato clandestino, un migrante recente, un richiedente asilo, o un afghano che si trovi nel continente europeo senza che nessuno sappia in quale veste, falcia deliberatamente pedoni, accoltella giovani donne, o massacra neonati e bambini piccoli. L'Europa sta vivendo la peggiore crisi migratoria dai tempi delle invasioni normanne e islamiche dell'Alto Medioevo.

Questa situazione senza freni non è una calamità naturale: è il risultato di una serie di decisioni politiche, condivise tra l'UE, la Corte europea dei diritti dell'uomo e gli stati membri. L'UE in particolare, essendo un mercato senza confini, ha creato e sviluppato un servizio di guardia di frontiera esterna, FRONTEX. Il problema è che, allo stato attuale del diritto europeo (UE + CEDU), queste guardie di frontiera forniscono un servizio di traghetto gratuito tra l'Africa e l'Europa. Il diritto europeo proibisce loro di respingere gli immigrati clandestini quando vengono intercettati. Sono obbligati a portarli nell'Unione europea in modo che possano esercitare tutti i loro “diritti”.

In Europa, ancora più che negli USA, una volta che un immigrato clandestino è nel continente, nella stragrande maggioranza dei casi, ci rimane: milioni di loro. Gli europei guardano con stupore le loro orgogliose città (Parigi, Berlino, Bruxelles, Roma, Londra) subire metamorfosi demografiche in tempo reale, mentre folle piene di odio marciano per le loro strade gridando slogan antisemiti e altre maledizioni prese in prestito dalla loro cultura nativa.

L'UE può essere salvata?

Una delle ragioni per cui la democrazia esiste è consentire un pacifico cambio di leadership e politica. Nelle ultime elezioni del Parlamento europeo, gli europei hanno votato in massa a destra, in reazione e rabbia contro le politiche della Commissione europea presieduta da Ursula von der Leyen. Ciò che ha fatto infuriare gli elettori è il Green Deal, che rende l'energia inaccessibile, e il caos migratorio, ora pesantemente tinto di islamismo e odio per gli ebrei.

Cosa è uscito da quelle elezioni? Una nuova Commissione von der Leyen! Con un programma diverso? No, con un programma ancora più radicale, ambientalista e censorio della prima Commissione von der Leyen. È come se gli americani avessero votato repubblicano al 60% e il presidente nominato fosse un socialista. Com'è possibile, quando l'Europa afferma di giurare di agire in base a “principi democratici”?

A quanto pare per due fattori. Il primo: il gruppo più numeroso nel Parlamento europeo è il Partito Popolare Europeo (PPE) di centro-destra. Questo gruppo è numericamente dominato da CDU/CSU tedesca, il partito dell'ex-cancelliera Angela Merkel. Il suo partito, tuttavia, è più a sinistra del Partito Democratico statunitense sulla maggior parte delle questioni politiche. Il suo sostegno all'ambientalismo più ottuso, e in particolare al Green Deal, è totale, pertanto quando si è trattato di imporre un nuovo presidente della Commissione europea dopo le elezioni di giugno 2024, CDU/CSU hanno scelto qualcuno tra i suoi ranghi che avesse forti convinzioni ambientaliste: Ursula von der Leyen.

Il secondo e più importante fattore è che l'UE è, in realtà, una democrazia Potemkin. Sembra all'apparenza una democrazia, ma in realtà è una burocrazia autoritaria. Non c'è alcuna elezione da parte dei cittadini di un parlamento degno di questo nome, nessuna trasparenza, nessun ricorso e, a quanto pare, nessun modo di eliminare l'organizzazione o una qualsiasi sua parte. I cittadini europei possono votare come vogliono, ma è un'élite auto-nominata all'interno delle istituzioni europee che decide il futuro dell'Europa. Queste “élite” faranno di tutto per mantenere sé stesse e la loro ideologia al potere. La scorsa settimana il quotidiano olandese De Telegraaf ha rivelato che la prima Commissione von der Leyen aveva finanziato ONG ambientaliste per fare pressione sui membri del Parlamento europeo — lunga vita alla separazione dei poteri! — e sui cittadini a favore del Green Deal.

Inoltre il Qatar si è infiltrato nel Parlamento europeo, comprando parlamentari per promuovere i propri interessi e la propria visione islamista del mondo. Che le persone votino a sinistra o a destra, non fa differenza: la Von der Leyen e il suo programma ambientalista di estrema sinistra sono ancora al potere. Si può misurare il senso di alienazione che devono provare gli europei, costretti a finanziare una burocrazia corrotta che lavora contro i loro interessi?

Quando si tratta di migrazione, economia, libertà di parola e democrazia, l'UE non è la soluzione a nessun problema. L'UE è il problema.

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

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Why should we care today about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963? That fateful day in Dallas is, after all, a long time ago: those of us, like me, who can remember the day are at least in their sixties. The short answer is that it reveals something essential for us to know about the American government and the Deep State that runs it.

Kennedy had become deeply suspicious of the CIA and other American intelligence agencies. They had given him bad advice about Cuba, which almost got us into a nuclear confrontation with Soviet Russia. Also, he planned to stop escalating the war in Vietnam, which made him profoundly abhorrent to the warmongers running the Pentagon.

Because of these, the Deep State decided to kill Kennedy. The best book on this subject is JFK and the Unspeakable by Jim Douglass, whom I interviewed a number of years ago. Here is what Jim Douglass told me:

“Now, Jim, you were close to Thomas Merton, influenced by Thomas Merton, and part of this title comes from Merton. Would you explain DOUGLASS: Yes, Lew. Thomas Merton wrote a book called Raids on the Unspeakable, a series of essays. He talked about the unspeakable as a kind of power and a kind of reality that went almost beyond the power of speech. It was suggested for him by the nuclear arms race, by the Vietnam War, and by the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Malcolm and Martin and RFK. It was a kind of evil where we don’t want to go. That might be one way of coming up with what he meant by the unspeakable.

ROCKWELL: Well, Jim Douglass, thank goodness you have gone where maybe others have feared to go. And all the people that I’ve talked to – and I’ve read, myself, a good amount of Kennedy revisionism, but I was extremely impressed by all you’ve done. And the people I’ve talked to who are the real experts tell me this is the best book and the most important book ever written on the Kennedy assassination. So not only do you go over why, clearly, this was a conspiracy, it just wasn’t a typical lone nut who appears from time to time in American history and is of great use to the power elite, but you show us why he was killed, why this is so important, and why we should all be concerned about it, not simply a historical event we can forget about, but why it continues to have impact on the nature of American society, of the wars that the government fights, what’s happening in terms of the police state here at home, and why it affects every person here today listening to this show.

DOUGLASS: Yes, I really appreciate your emphasizing the whys, because all I hoped to do was to tell the story of the why. I, of course, included the plot, but the only reason I did that was to fill in the picture. My point is not, and I did not write an analysis of the Kennedy assassination. It was to tell the story of JFK, and of all of us, for that matter. It was representing everyone in this country and, because of the nature of the conflict, in some sense, everybody in the world. We’re talking about weapons that could destroy the world. And that story, and of his turning – I use that word advisedly. It comes from the Hebrew Scriptures – his turning away from that kind of destructive power, towards peace, that’s the ‘why’ of his assassination.

ROCKWELL: You know, we hear, for example, about his speech where he said he was going to undo the CIA as an organization. Was that part of it, I mean, in terms of what the CIA did then, what it does today, what the Pentagon does, the Military-Industrial Complex?

DOUGLASS: He underwent a break with the CIA relatively early in his administration at the Bay of Pigs because he understood – he was not a stupid man. He was a very shrewd person. (Laughing) And he understood that he was being manipulated and set up at the Bay of Pigs so that he would have to call in the U.S. troops to win against Castro, and the CIA lied to him to set him up, they lied about the conditions of the uprisings that they told him were going to occur in Cuba and all this kind of thing. And the whole Bay of Pigs invasion had been organized during the Eisenhower administration. But when Kennedy realized afterwards the extent to which he had been lied and set up, he said, I want to splinter the CIA in a thousand pieces and scatter it to the wind. And he very deliberately did take steps to impair the CIA from doing that in the future. He fired the man in charge, Allen Dulles, who had been the cold warrior up to that point, and fired his main subordinates who had set him up in the Bay of Pigs. And then, of course, after his assassination, who does Lyndon Johnson, his successor, appoint for the so-called Warren Commission as the major influence within it, but Allen Dulles. He should have been considered, rightly, as the main suspect in the assassination rather than appointed to investigate it. That’s the fox investigating the murder in the hen house.

ROCKWELL: Can you look at the Kennedy assassination as a coup d’etat?

DOUGLASS: Yes. But it’s a very subtle coup d’etat in that the propaganda is so enormous and the transition is done so fluidly into an administration under Lyndon Johnson, that is reversing all of Kennedy’s main decisions. That happens with so little disruption. I mean, Kennedy’s main advisors don’t all surrender and say this is a coup d’etat or anything like that. Everybody sort of surrenders. This is Cold War thinking. This is the mission to the Powers That Be, if you want to put it in biblical terms. And so, although it is, in fact, a coup d’etat in terms of the power – and the way Kennedy was moving, he had become so isolated, and even his closest – well, most of his closest advisers were so subordinate to the Powers That Be that it was not seen as anything like that.”

Because of what the CIA did, it is vital that we get all of the documents from the CIA and FBI about the assassination. And I do mean all of them. President Trump promised to release all these files, but he hasn’t done it. Jacob Hornberger, a long-time libertarian researcher on the Kennedy association, tells the story: “It has now been two months since Donald Trump assumed the presidency. The question naturally arises: Where are those long-secret JFK Records that he repeatedly promised to release to the American people? Or to be more precise, why are those long-secret JFK records still secret? What’s up with the delay, President Trump?

After all, it takes about one minute to write and sign an executive order that states as follows: ‘I, President Donald Trump, hereby order the CIA, the FBI, the Pentagon, the National Archives, the Secret Service, and all other federal entities to immediately disclose all records, files, documents, films, and other matters relating to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, including, but not limited to, the disclosure of all files and records relating to CIA official George Joannides, as well as the elimination of all redactions in JFK-related documents.’

It’s not as if Trump doesn’t know how to issue and sign an executive order. He’s issued more than 53 since he took office this time around. The first time he was president he issued 220 executive orders.

It’s worth pointing out that Trump did issue one executive order relating to those long-secret JFK records. On January 23, he ordered his Director of National Intelligence and his Attorney General to present Trump with a plan for the full and complete release of those long-secret JFK records.

A ‘plan’? Why a ‘plan’? Calling for a plan for disclosure and release is not exactly the same thing as ordering disclosure. What next? A committee to study the plan and make recommendations on modifying the plan? Why not just order disclosure? Why order a plan for disclosure?

As it turns out, that plan for releasing those long-secret JFK records was submitted to Trump on February 7, more than a month ago.

What did the plan say? We don’t know! The reason we don’t know is that Trump, for some unknown reason, has chosen to keep the plan secret from the American people.

What? A secret plan under the Trump administration for releasing those long-secret JFK records? Does that even make any sense? We now have secrecy piled onto secrecy under Trump! Trump hasn’t even explained why the plan has to be kept secret, but my hunch is that it has something to do with protecting ‘national security,’ the two most important (and meaningless) words in the American political lexicon.

What’s really going on here? My hunch is what I’ve been saying the whole time about those long-secret JFK records, which is that the CIA simply will not permit Trump to release those long-secret records. The CIA has succeeded in keeping those long-secret records secret for more than 60 years.

Let’s not forget that during Trump’s first term as president, he proudly announced that he was going to release those long-secret records. He repeatedly made that announcement up to the week of the statutory deadline. Then the CIA stepped in and had a conversation with Trump. After that conversation, Trump buckled and acceded to the CIA’s demand that those long-secret records continue to be kept secret.

My hunch is that this time around, the CIA has again informed Trump that it will not permit him to release those long-secret JFK records. That includes the records that were ordered to be released by the JFK Records Act back in 1992 and it also includes the CIA’s files relating to its officer George Joannides. My hunch is that Trump is too embarrassed to let people know that it is the national-security establishment (e.g., the CIA), not the president, that is ultimately in charge of running the federal government. But how long can Trump remain paralyzed over what to do before more people begin asking him about what he intends to do about those long-secret JFK assassination-related records?”

Reprinted with permission from Future of Freedom Foundation.

Let’s do everything we can to get all the CIA documents released, as Trump as promised. We have a right to know the truth.

The post Kennedy Assassination Mysteries appeared first on LewRockwell.

I suppose I should be writing this in the Journal of Linguistics or the International Journal of Lexicography, but I have a feeling those outlets are not as widely read as this one, so I’m making my case for reformed word usage here, and I trust your indulgence.

My concern is for the word “suck” and how it is being used, frequently in all forms of discourse, in a derogatory sense to means something bad, distasteful, or ugly—or something simply not to the user’s taste.  My concern, of course, is that the use of the word this way should be considered vulgar, pejorative, and offensive, since it derives in fairly recent history from the phrase “cocksucker” and its pejorative use as in “he sucks.”  It was an insult to homosexuals from the beginning, and I know nothing about it except its contemporary overuse that diminishes this denigration and belittlement.

The OED argues that the sense of “suck” as in oral sex is first used in 1928 in a lexicography book, but other sources say it can be found much earlier as in “suck below thy waste” in a 1631 play by Englishman James Shirley.  And it was in common use by the end of the end of the 19th century, where it was used repeatedly in a pornographic magazine in 1879 and 1880.

The use of the word in a nonsexual derogatorial sense in regular discourse is said to have started in the 1970s, as in a June 1971 issue of the International Times saying “Polaroid sucks.” I remember hearing it, and blushing, in that decade, though in speech, not in any writing I read then.  I thought the rise of the gay rights movement after the Stonewall riots in 1969 (down the street from where I was then living) would quickly put an end to that use, but it was never publicly addressed as far as I know and the word kept cropping up.  It even got to television, on a Saturday Night Live broadcast in 1977.

To give you some idea of its prevalence today, here are some samples at random from Reddit, the worldwide social media network that is a perfect reflection of the tastes of the time:  “Recent Pokemon Games suck” (2018), “Why do Steam sales suck?” (2021), “Adobe products suck” (2022), “The recent patches suck (2023).  There is no suggestion that any of the users means any connection with a sex act or anything special beyond the declaration that something is in some way bad.

Slate magazine argued in a 2006 article that the word was perfectly good to use these days and “suck-haters are living in the past.”  But—because I know where the word comes from and can’t unknow it—I still find the word offensive and think it should not be used in normal polite discourse. I am not a homosexual, so there is nothing personal in filing this complaint.  It’s simply an urge to make our language precise and useful as possible.

Thesaurus.com lists 35 different synonyms for “bad,” and it doesn’t include “suck.”  We ought to be able to agree to use one of them.

The post Excuse Me, But I Have a Touchy Subject to Bring Up appeared first on LewRockwell.

Later this month a conference promising to lead Catholics from “diabolical deception to [the] restoration of truth” will be held in Wisconsin. The headline speaker is Fr. Chad Ripperger, predictably leading Where Peter Is founder Mike Lewis to pen another unhinged rant against Fr. Ripperger, this time calling him “wildly heterodox, superstitious, and conspiratorial.” Last week we published an excellent article by Michael Hitchborn demolishing a previous Lewis article attacking the well-known priest.

Though it always feels right to disagree with Lewis, I do have serious reservations about this “Restore Truth Conference.” Other speakers at the conference include Hugh Owen, director of the Kolbe Center for the Study of Creation, and Robert Sungenis, longtime Catholic apologist. The Kolbe Center advocates for a “traditional doctrine of creation”, by which it means it supports the “young earth” hypothesis (i.e., the earth was created only around 6,000 years ago), and Sungenis is a vocal proponent of geocentrism. (Owen and many people associated with the Kolbe Center also support geocentrism, although not as dogmatically as Sungenis does.) This conference, then, promises to push both young earth and geocentrism points of view as Catholic truth. This is as pseudo-scientific as many of the atheist attempts to use scientific findings to push a purely materialistic outlook. But more importantly, it opposes the actual traditional approach of the Church to scientific discoveries.

The conference’s promotional materials promise it will take aim at two evils: Darwinian evolution1 and “alien deception.” I agree that Catholics should have deep concerns about both. Darwinian evolution, specifically biological macroevolution in both its original and its later “neo-Darwinian” forms, has been used for the past 150 years to advance a fundamentally anti-Catholic worldview, one that rejects the role of God in our universe. And as it is popularly understood and taught, Darwinian evolution has little actual scientific evidence to support it.

Likewise, the modern UFO movement has deceived many. Recently on the Crisis Point podcast I spoke with Teresa Yanaros, who was actively involved in this movement before returning to her Catholic Faith. As a result of her firsthand experience, she believes there’s no question that most purported alien encounters are actually encounters with demonic forces.

If the Restore Truth Conference was simply warning against the dangers of Darwinian evolution and the UFO movement, I wouldn’t voice my reservations. But having Owen and Sungenis as speakers tells me that the solution being proposed—teaching that a young earth (Owen) and geocentrism (Sungenis) is “Catholic teaching,” as both Owen and Sungenis do—will also lead people astray, just in a different direction. A faithful Catholic can reject Darwinian evolution while also realizing that both a young earth and geocentrism are not scientifically viable alternatives.

In this article I can’t detail all the arguments that Owen and Sungenis present to expound their views (see Owen’s Kolbe Center and Sungenis’s Catholic Apologetics International for details), but both follow the same basic outline, which contains two main points: first that their view is the only one consistent with a literal interpretation of Sacred Scripture; and second, that their view matches the “consensus of the Church Fathers.” Starting from these two points, they then try to find purportedly “scientific” evidence to support their views. To disagree with them means, apparently, going against both Scripture and the Fathers, which no good Catholic wants to do.

This line of argumentation is particularly attractive to traditional Catholics, because we sincerely lament the jettisoning of both Scripture and the Fathers in recent decades in favor of modern fads. So anyone who argues that the young earth and geocentric views fell at the hands of the same movement that swept away so many traditional teachings finds a receptive audience. There’s just this little problem, however: Owen’s and Sungenis’s arguments aren’t traditional at all. The Church decided centuries ago that their way of approaching Scripture and the Fathers is a faulty methodology.

A recent book reveals this clearly: The Case of Galileo and the Church by Walter Cardinal Brandmüller. In this book Brandmüller details the history of the geocentrism/heliocentrism debate in the Church from its origins in the 16th century to its resolution in the early 19th century. Cardinal Brandmüller is perhaps most known now as one of the four “dubia Cardinals,” who sent questions to Pope Francis about Amoris laetitia that went unanswered. Needless to say, his orthodoxy and love for the Church are unassailable. Beyond the fascinating historical account of the famous Galileo affair, Brandmüller’s book provides a further service: it details how Catholics should approach new scientific discoveries. And spoiler: it’s not how Owen and Sungenis approach them.

As is well known, before the 16th century, the dominant cosmological theory was that of Ptolemy, the 2nd century mathematician who argued that the earth was motionless and that the sun revolved around it. Numerous Scriptural verses reference a motionless earth, and so early Christians, like everyone else, accepted Ptolemy’s geocentric system. It was, in other words, in keeping with a literal interpretation of the Bible and the “consensus of the Fathers.”

In the 16th century, however, the Catholic cleric Nicolaus Copernicus proposed an alternative theory: the earth circles the sun, i.e., heliocentrism. While modern mythology suggests that the immediate reaction of the Church was to reject this theory and burn anyone at the stake who might advance it, the reality is that many Catholics, including members of the hierarchy, were open to it.2 What concerned Church officials was the encroachment of this scientific idea into theological waters, in which an (at that time) unproven scientific theory would be used to contradict a long-held interpretation of Sacred Scripture.

In the early 17th century, Catholic scientist Galileo Galilei ran into trouble with the Church when he promoted the Copernican system, and, most importantly, argued that previous interpretations of Scripture were wrong. In response, the Congregation of the Index in 1616 declared that the new teaching about the movement of the earth was “altogether opposed to Sacred Scripture” and demanded that Galileo stop publicly advocating for it as a proven theory. In 1633 Galileo went on trial before the Holy Office, which condemned him and declared that the theory that “the sun is the center of the earth’s orbit and does not move from east to west, and the earth moves and is not the center of the universe [is]…false and contrary to the divine and Holy Scriptures.” Galileo’s book, along with some other books advocating for heliocentrism, were put on the Index.

While this famous trial provided fodder for anti-Catholics for centuries, what is less well-known is its eventual resolution in 1820, a resolution that Cardinal Brandmüller details and which helps modern Catholics approach scientific discoveries with a proper, and dare I say traditional, Catholic outlook.

It’s important to note that the Church’s position in Galileo’s time was sound and was advocated by St. Robert Bellarmine: without real proof, we will stick with what Scripture appears to say and what all the Church Fathers believed. But also note that Bellarmine admitted that if science should prove it otherwise, the Church will need to rethink the common Scriptural interpretation. This is what happened: between Galileo’s trial and the early 19th century, scientific consensus coalesced around a heliocentric cosmology. Even most Catholic scholars accepted it, because, unlike in Galileo’s time, there were now sufficient proofs for it.

So, in 1820, the stage was set for the Church to officially review the Galileo affair and reconsider the geocentric interpretation of Scripture. The spark was a book to be published by Catholic scientist Giuseppe Settele that accepted the Copernican cosmology as proven. Since the middle of the 18th century the ban on such books had been relaxed, but no one had asked for an official imprimatur from Rome for such a book. Settele did. Even though most Catholics at this time accepted heliocentrism, the man in charge of giving out the imprimatur, Fr. Filippo Anfossi, did not. Anfossi still believed that heliocentrism went against a literal interpretation of Scripture and opposed the consensus of the fathers. He didn’t care about any scientific proofs; all that mattered to him was whether he thought it was consistent with Scripture and the Fathers. He refused the imprimatur. Settele challenged this decision with the Holy Office, thus initiating an ecclesial battle that included many high-ranking officials including Pope Pius VII and would eventually resolve the issue definitively.

The case became a media sensation, for even non-Catholics understood its importance in determining how Catholics would approach new scientific discoveries going forward. Would the Church refuse to accept what was now scientifically proven, or would she be willing to recognize that the situation was now different than it was in Galileo’s time? Most bishops and priests involved in the case were on the side of Settele and felt that Anfossi’s refusal was embarrassing for the Church. Since heliocentrism was accepted by almost everyone at this time—and most importantly, had been proven definitively since Galileo’s time—they wanted a way for the Church to leave the Galileo affair behind. After a good deal of back-and-forth (Anfossi was a formidable defender of his beliefs), the Church granted the imprimatur and soon afterwards took all pro-heliocentric books off the Index. Everybody understood this as the Church’s formal acceptance of the heliocentric view as consistent with Sacred Scripture, in spite of her long history of interpreting it geocentrically.

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Ever since the NATO-backed terrorist takeover of Syria, the situation in the country has been a total disaster. The Islamic radicals have been conducting extremist policies that strip minorities of virtually any rights. Many analysts (myself included) have predicted that the real Syrian Civil War is only starting and that the previous one was a crawling NATO aggression against sovereign Syria. With the fall of Assad, the country was turned into a (neo)colony of NATO and its allies in the region. Any semblance of a civilized society came crashing down as various foreign-backed terrorist groups took power.

It wouldn’t be long before they started a genocidal campaign against minorities, particularly the native Christians and Alawites. These groups were treated well under Assad (himself being an Alawite) and were loyal to his government. This makes them top priority targets under the Islamic terrorist regime.

In the last several days, the war crimes committed by these radicals came under the spotlight as they published videos of gruesome atrocities against civilians (including women, children and the elderly). The footage of these monstrous massacres is not for the faint of heart (here, here, here, here and here). Minorities in western Syria have taken up arms to defend their homes and families, as the terrorist al-Sharaa regime keeps sending its forces to eradicate Christians and Alawites.

Now, you’d expect there at least wouldn’t be open support for the Islamic radicals, but that’s precisely what’s happening now. Namely, despite being faced with numerous issues at home the pathetically impotent European Union somehow found the time to “strongly condemn the recent attacks, reportedly by pro-Assad elements, on interim government forces in the coastal areas of Syria and all violence against civilians”.

Yes, you read that right. Brussels is criticizing Christians and Alawites for defending themselves while supporting the barbaric actions of the terrorist regime. Despite being fully aware of what’s going on, the EU also called for “civilians to be protected in all circumstances in full respect of international humanitarian law. The rest of the statement reads that “the EU also calls on all external actors to fully respect the sovereignty, unity, and territorial integrity of Syria” and “condemns any attempts to undermine stability and the prospects for a lasting peaceful transition, inclusive and respectful of all Syrians in their diversity”.

This sounds like the troubled bloc is laughing in the face of the victims, not to mention the “respect for the sovereignty, unity, and territorial integrity of Syria” that has been regularly violated precisely by the EU/NATO that has kept the country under siege for nearly a decade and a half.

All this is happening while the Islamic radicals are publicly bragging about their war crimes and posting images and videos on social media. In the meantime, the Russian military is doing everything it can to save as many civilians as possible. Namely, the Khmeimim airbase took in thousands of civilians fleeing from near-certain death (reportedly at least 7,000 people). Prominent journalists such as Tucker Carlson have been warning about the NATO-backed terrorists for years, pointing out that the Assad government was protecting ancient Christian communities in the country for decades.

Expectedly, he was regularly denigrated as an “Assad apologist” because of this, but his concerns for the safety of minorities in Syria after the terrorist takeover turned out to be completely valid. On the other hand, the mainstream propaganda machine is still trying its best to whitewash these NATO-backed Islamic radicals.

This is particularly true for the likes of rabidly pro-terrorist media such as Al Jazeera. Meanwhile, the terrorist al-Sharaa regime realized that posting videos of these massacres is “bad PR”, so they now advise their Islamic radicals to “refrain from posting such footage”. On the other hand, the reaction of some other countries to all this is quite unexpected. Namely, the US, one of the principal backers of numerous terrorist and extremist groups around the world, actually condemned the atrocities by these NATO-backed Islamic radicals.

In an official statement, State Secretary Marco Rubio said that America “condemns the radical Islamist terrorists, including foreign jihadis, that murdered people in western Syria in recent days” and “stands with Syria’s religious and ethnic minorities, including its Christian, Druze, Alawite, and Kurdish communities, and offers its condolences to the victims and their families”.

What’s more, Moscow and Washington DC called for a UN Security Council meeting regarding the situation in terrorist-infested Syria. The meeting is scheduled for today and will see Russia and the US virtually “on the same side”, which is an unprecedented development that nobody would’ve imagined just days ago due to America’s usually unquestionable support for the Islamic radicals. Normally, Washington DC shouldn’t be trusted, but in this case, it’s not impossible that it could play a relatively constructive role.

For years, Trump has been saying that he thinks Assad is “a better alternative” to terrorists, which could explain a shift in the policies of his administration. On the other hand, it should also be noted that Trump attacked Assad directly during his first term, so the Kremlin will most likely be quite reserved and vigilant when it comes to US actions, even when they superficially match its own.

This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

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Not the least of the many astonishing things to be said about Augustine is the fact that it should have taken him nine years before he finally broke free of the Manichean chains that bound him. No less astonishing, of course, is the fact that it took less than a minute after hearing the singsong voice of the little child telling him to “Take it and read, take it and read” to turn his life completely around for the sake of Christ and His Church. That so much wonderment should flow from both ends of a life is the stuff of high drama. In fact, so replete are The Confessions with intense, riveting drama that it may take an accountant to keep track of all the examples. The reader, meanwhile, is given a bird’s-eye view to witness the whole story as it unfolds frame by thrilling frame.

There can be little doubt that of the nine books set down to describe Augustine’s life, Book VIII is everyone’s favorite. It is the centerpiece of the story, the necessary hinge on which all the action turns.

How does it begin? Not with bells and whistles, although there will be time for fireworks in a bit. It begins with Augustine’s simple acknowledgment that a) it was God who unshackled him from sin and error; b) that in return for saving his life he will make a sacrifice of praise to God; and c) that by telling his story he hopes others will be moved to do the same.

What other story is there to tell when an author, stricken by a life of sin, sits down to write a book titled Confessions? In a moving little piece by the late Msgr. Lorenzo Albacete called “Secrets of the Confessional,” he nails it beautifully. “Confession,” he writes, “is not therapy, nor is it moral accounting. At its best, it is the affirmation that the ultimate truth of our interior life is our absolute poverty, our radical dependence, our unquenchable thirst, our desperate need to be loved.”

As St. Augustine knew so well, confession is ultimately about praise. 

In the opening chapter, Augustine tells God that it was not certainty of proof he sought but, rather, a steadfast heart completely wedded to Him. Meanwhile, everything had gone wrong. “In my worldly life all was confusion. My heart had still to be rid of the leaven which remained over,” he confesses, quoting 1 Corinthians 5:7. “I should have been glad to follow the right road, to follow our Savior himself, but still I could not make up my mind to venture along the narrow path.”

Seeing Augustine thus caught in the vise of a near fatal vacillation, what does God do? Straightaway, He sends him to an old and trusted Christian by the name of Simplicianus, who is Spiritual Father to Ambrose. Just tell him everything, the message seems to be. Who, by way of encouragement, will tell Augustine the story of the famous Victorinus, an old man of redoubtable reputation whom Simplicianus had known in Rome.

So esteemed was Victorinus among the pagans that there was even a statue of him in the forum. Long accustomed to the worship of the false gods, he nevertheless converted, “seized by the fear that Christ,” whom he had come at least privately to profess, “might deny him before the holy angels if he was too faint-hearted to acknowledge Christ before men.” And so, screwing up his courage, he tells his friend, “Let us go to the church. I want to be made a Christian…and soon afterwards, to the wonder of Rome and the joy of the Church, he gave in his name to be reborn through baptism.”

Augustine is deeply shaken by the story, especially having himself hung fire for so long, owing to a life of sin he cannot quite bring himself to abandon.

I was held fast, not in fetters clamped upon by another, but by my own will, which had the strength of iron chains. For my will was perverse and lust had grown from it, and when I gave in to lust habit was born, and when I did not resist the habit it became a necessity… 

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There should be little doubt in anyone’s mind that the “wag the dog” relationship between the United States and Israel has done terrible damage to American institutions and constitutional liberties. The US bipartisan unconditional support of the ongoing Israeli genocide of the Palestinian people has not gone unnoticed by the rest of the world which now despises America’s corrupt political system and its increasing bizarre and out of touch leadership. There were even reports this past week that Washington and Tel Aviv have been discussing shipping upwards of two million Palestinians to Sudan and Somalia, two of the most violent places on earth, to permit the development of Trump Gaza resort and the annexation of the rest of historic Palestine by Israel.

To be sure, the cancer at the heart of the Israel-US relationship, if one might even call it that, has been in place for a long time as American politicians scrambled to get their share of Jewish billionaire money in exchange for a carte blanche when it comes to Israeli misbehavior. I recall how in May 2023, the newly appointed Speaker of the House of Representatives Kevin McCarthy, spoke before the Israeli Knesset. McCarthy made it a point to flatter his Israeli hosts by emphasizing that traveling to Israel was his first foreign trip as speaker, underlining the value of the relationship.

McCarthy was accompanied by the usual cast of congressional toadies who flock to Israel during every recess. The group was bipartisan and included the loathsome Steny Hoyer of Maryland who has made and even led the groveling entourage more than twenty times. The ambition-driven McCarthy, who has never been accused of having a great deal of brain power, delivered a predictable speech that produced the pro forma standing ovations from the audience, but I would call attention to one part of it in particular where he said the following: “This is the foundation of our special relationship: We are the only two countries in history that were conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that we are all equal. Our values are your values. Our heritage is your heritage. Our dreams are your dreams. America is grateful for our friendship with Israel. We are a better nation because of it. And we must never shy away from defending it… As long as I am speaker, America will continue to support fully funding for security assistance in Israel.”

Nearly every line in this part of the McCarthy speech is basically either an out-and-out lie or a twisting of reality to such an extent that it is incomprehensible, but it has served as the congressional framework for the fleecing of the American people while also stripping them of their liberties. In roughly the same time frame, the US based Israel Lobby was separately working assiduously to criminalize any criticism of Jewish collective behavior and/or of the state of Israel. Nobody worked harder at the task than hyper-ambitious Florida Governor and presidential aspirant whose groveling performance in bowing to Jewish power and money during his own trip to Israel culminated in his signing a new state law that inter alia exploits the “hate” mechanism to criminalize nearly all criticism or even skepticism regarding Israeli apartheid, of the co-called holocaust narrative, or of the behavior of Jewish groups and individuals. At the signing, DeSantis boasted how the legislation was very clearly about protecting Israel, arguing that rejecting “Israel’s right to exist is antisemitism,” which is the line that prevails among both Democratic and Republican politicians currently and which has also been copied by many other state legislatures. Thirty-six other states in addition to Florida have penalized anyone seeking to either boycott Israel or accept doing so, sometimes to include denial of government jobs or benefits.

As it happens, during the past two weeks Donald Trump and his band of Zionist stooges have finally hit rock bottom with their arrest and threatened deportation of a student who had admittedly helped organize nonviolent campus demonstrations against the Israeli slaughter of the Gazans. This was followed by threats directed by Trump against a highly respected congressman who has been critical of a number of issues involving both the administration’s foreign policy and congress. At heart, both were and are First Amendment free speech issues and both rely on a White House presumption that because it names someone as a “threat” it has to provide no evidence that that is actually the case. And there in the Israel exception rule in place that allows the Jewish state to avoid any consequences for its actions. Any and all “free speech” which is critical of or offensive to the foreign nation to which most American politicians and much of the fawning mainstream American media owe their primary allegiance clearly is considered outside the pale of acceptable behavior, even when supportive of every value and principle to which US governments have hypocritically claimed to adhere.

Simultaneously, the government is pressuring America’s colleges and universities to stamp down hard on anyone who demonstrates in defense of the Palestinians, using the DeSantis formulation that they are both antisemites and terrorism supporters. Columbia University is being particularly hit hard and has had $400 million in federal research funds blocked. The Trump administration has demanded that Columbia make dramatic changes in student discipline and admissions before it just might discuss lifting the cancellation of the money and has also said the ultimatum was necessary because of what it described as Columbia’s failure to protect Jewish students from harassment. The Trump Administration has demanded that the university formalize its definition of antisemitism to include criticism of Israel and to place the school’s Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies Department under “academic receivership,” the equivalent of constant monitoring by the government. The university has rolled over, responding by cutting lose a number of students involved in the nonviolent demonstrations after suspending them and in some cases expelling them. Interestingly, Jewish counter demonstrators who were responsible for most of the violence faced no punishment or sanctions because, so the argument goes, it is all about antisemitism. Indeed, to demonstrate its seriousness, the Department of Justice has dispatched a Task Force to four American cities (New York, Chicago, Boston, Los Angeles) to investigate the problem of antisemitism and Palestinian protests.

The student who was arrested graduated with a Masters Degree from Columbia in December of last year. He is Mahmoud Khalil a Palestinian man married to an American woman who is reportedly eight months pregnant. Khalil has legal permanent resident status in the US, the so called “green card.” The Trump administration, without citing any precedents or history of criminal behavior, has insisted that it can hold Khalil without charging him and can do whatever it wants with him, even though the only issue relating to him is that he was exercising his free speech, guaranteed by the First Amendment to the US Constitution.

Last Monday, President Trump confirmed that “Khalil’s arrest and attempted deportation are part of his administration’s effort to crack down on ‘students at Columbia and other Universities across the Country who have engaged in pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American activity’… This is the first arrest of many to come.” Khalil has been shipped off to a federal prison in Louisiana one thousand miles from his home in Manhattan, presumably to distance him from supporters in New York, even though the government cannot produce any evidence that he threatened anyone or committed a crime. On Wednesday, the Department of Homeland Security released a document citing an alleged provision in immigration law that gives the government authority to deport anyone if “The Secretary of State has determined that [his/her] presence or activities in the United States would have serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.” What those “consequences” might be in the case of Khalil was not described and should be considered challengeable by the defense lawyers.

The congressman who is being pressured is Tom Massie from Kentucky. He is considering running for the state’s soon to be vacated Senate seat, but Trump has called for him to “primaried” by the Republican Party so he will not even receive the nomination. Also, the Republican Jewish Coalition has pledged “unlimited spending to block Massie” if he decides to run. Massie is among the most consistent opponents of legislation to support Israel and to criminalize so-called antisemitism in the House, so the prospect of his running “is already generating fierce opposition from the local and national Jewish community.” Massie is best known in some circles for maintaining during an interview on Tucker Carlson’s program that he is the only Congressman who doesn’t have “an AIPAC guy” on his staff that serves as an Israel Lobby “babysitter.” Massie also opposes having members of Congress who are secret “dual nationals,” which would presumably would impact most on Jewish American legislators who also hold Israeli citizenship. Massie is highly respected in both conservative and libertarian circles and is consistently antiwar and also a critic of corruption and overspending on the part of the federal government. That is what passes for malevolent behavior these days.

If the Trump Administration, working hand-in-hand with the Israeli government and the US Israel Lobby, can get away with the trashing of the US Constitution’s most fundamental freedom that of free speech, there will be “hell to pay,” to employ Donald’s favorite metaphor. Once the principle is established that the head of state can do no wrong even when what is being done is visibly suicidal, the United States that we Americans now living once knew will be gone forever. And the tragedy is compounded as it will have largely come about in unnecessary service to a tiny racist nation that is manifestly and quite openly the most evil place on earth.

Reprinted with permission from Unz Review.

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In Human Action, Ludwig von Mises highlights the importance of human cooperation as a prerequisite for the division of labor and free exchange. Without this, humanity remains mired in poverty:

The “state of nature” that the reformers and utopians depicted as paradisiac was in fact a state of extreme poverty and distress. “Poverty,” says Bentham, “is not the work of the laws, it is the primitive condition of the human race.” Even those at the base of the social pyramid are much better off than they would have been in the absence of social cooperation. They too are benefited by the operation of the market economy and participate in the advantages of civilized society.

Mises emphasizes that free exchange does not merely benefit specific groups but benefits everyone in society. He argues that “everybody is interested in the preservation of the social division of labor, the system that multiplies the productivity of human efforts.” He calls this “the theorem of the harmony of the rightly understood interests of all members of the market society,” because all members of society benefit from free market exchange. He debunks the theory propagated by Marxists that capitalism is about “class affiliation” and their claim that economics is about promoting the “class interests” of the bourgeoisie at the expense of the proletariat. In what are often described as “Neo-Marxist” theories, class interests are now seen by many people as analogous to race interests, so they depict economics as an attempt to promote the interests of one race at the expense of another. They claim that “oppressor” races represent a threat to the economic interests of “oppressed” races. Failing to understand the social and economic benefits of free exchange, they cling to the false notion that economic development is a zero-sum game, in which anyone who gains can only do so at the expense of others who must lose—the fallacy that some are rich because others are poor.

This is one of the fundamental errors made by race-hustlers who claim that black people are poor because white people are rich. They view market exchange as just another platform for racial conflict, in which different races compete against each other for a fixed amount of wealth. They promote racial hostility and treat peaceful cooperation with disdain. They wage all types of wars—real and metaphorical—such as the “war on hate” and the “war on racism,” which assign blame for social and economic problems along racial lines. For example, an article published by the Economic Policy Institute claims that the economic model of the American South is deliberately racist and aims “to extract the labor of black and brown Southerners as cheaply as possible.”

Although slavery in the United States was abolished in 1865, these economists claim that “the Southern economic development model ensures that businesses continue to have access to cheap Black labor even after the abolition of slavery.” They are champions of the twisted Orwellian notion that “war is peace” as they attempt, in vain, to bring about economic progress, not through peaceful cooperation and exchange, but instead through fomenting racial conflict. Yet this racial rhetoric—far from inspiring economic progress—leads only to persistent hostility and resentment, which, in turn, yields more poverty and destitution.

Punished with Poverty

In their book, Punished with Poverty, Ronald and Donald Kennedy reject such insistence on viewing the economy of the South through the prism of race. The Kennedys point out that after the war of 1861-1865, policies of subjugation and poverty were deliberately pursued to the detriment of the entire South. They argue that this was harmful to all races—and the poorest suffered the most. The view was widespread at the time that subjecting the South to poverty was no more than a people who lost a war should expect. The Kennedys illustrate this with the example of Horace Greeley, who in May 1861 said that:

When the rebellious traitors are overwhelmed in the field, and scattered like leaves before an angry wind, it must not be to return to peaceful and contented homes. They must find poverty at their firesides, and see privation in the anxious eyes of mothers and the rags of children.

While Greeley’s views, like those of many others, may have evolved as the war unfolded, the view he expressed in 1861 was once again featured during the Reconstruction era, in an article published in 1872 by The New York Times. It is clear that the economic policy of Reconstruction was not designed to rebuild the South, but to “punish it with poverty” as the Kennedys put it. In a similar vein, Tom DiLorenzo observes that:

The main purpose (and effect) of the 1865–1877 “Reconstruction” policies was to centralize and consolidate state power and to establish Republican Party political hegemony. It was not to “heal the nation’s wounds” or economically revitalize the South. Indeed, Reconstruction created new wounds and economically destroyed the South. Its purpose was to continue the economic plundering of the Southern states for as long as possible, and to establish a national Republican Party political monopoly.

Therefore, the Kennedys argue that the economic interests of the South during Reconstruction should not be understood purely by reference to race, but instead ought to be seen as the common interest of the South. They point out that, “The Northern desire to put Southern children in ‘rags’ was not directed just at white Southerners but it was directed at all Southerners, both white and black.” Contemporary economic challenges, then, cannot be understood as pertaining to specific races. Thus, the Kennedys argue that:

…the South’s impoverishment will not be corrected by improving one part (black or white) of the South’s population while leaving the other in poverty… The propagandists for the Federal Empire have done a masterful job in convincing black Southerners that if the white South gains then the black South will lose. This false Yankee narrative began during the War and Reconstruction and continues today.

This narrative of the Radical Republicans, which claimed that white Southerners were against economic progress for blacks, was countered by both black and white speakers at an event organized by a black group, the Pole-Bearers’ Association, in July 1875. A speech given at this event by Gideon Pillow emphasized that “the two races have a common interest in each other and in each others’ welfare…the interests of the white and colored races in the south are inseparably intermingled, and are dependent on each other. What advances the interests of the one advances the interest of the other.” Pillow was echoing the words of Nathan Bedford Forrest who in his address at this event said: “I have an opportunity of saying what I have always felt—that I am your friend, for my interests are your interests, and your interests are my interests. We were born on the same soil, breathe the same air, and live on the same land. Why, then, can we not live as brothers?”

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Putin will never sacrifice Russia’s “indivisibility of security” demands posed to Washington in December 2021 – and met with a no-response response.

The “ceasefire” announced with trademark bombast by Team Trump 2.0 should be seen as a tawdry kabuki inside a cheap matryoshka.

As we peel off the successive masks, the last one standing inside the matryoshka is a woke transvestite tiny dancer: a Minsk 3 in drag.

Now cue to a “ceasefire” redux: President Putin in uniform only for the second time since the start of the SMO, dead serious, visiting the frontline in Kursk.

Finally, cue to the actual peel off operation: Putin’s press conference after his meeting with Lukashenko in Moscow.

Ceasefire? Of course. We support it. And then, methodically, diplomatically, the Russian President pulled a Caravaggio, and went all-out chiaroscuro on every geopolitical and military detail of the American gambit. A consumate artful deconstruction.

End result: the ball is now back in Donald Trump’s court. Incidentally the leader of the revamping-in-progress Empire of Chaos who does not (italics mine) have the cards.

The art of diplomatic nuance

That’s how diplomacy at the highest level works – something out of reach of American bumpkins of the Rubio variety.

Putin was gracious enough to thank “the President of the United States, Mr. Trump, for paying so much attention to resolving the conflict.”

After all the Americans also seem to be involved in “achieving a noble mission, a mission to stop hostilities and the loss of human lives.”

Then he went for the kill: “This ceasefire should lead to a long-term peace and eliminate the initial causes of this crisis.”

As in all Russian key imperatives – widely known since at least June 2024 – will have to be satisfied. After all, it’s Russia that’s winning the war in the battlefield, not the U.S., the – already fragmented – NATO, and much less Ukraine.

Putin was adamant on the ceasefire: “We are for it.”

But there are nuances; once again, it’s called diplomacy. Starting with verification – arguably the crux of Putin’s reasoning:

“These 30 days — how will they be used? To continue forced mobilization in Ukraine? To receive more arms supplies? To train newly mobilized units? Or will none of this happen?

How will the issues of control and verification be resolved? How can we be guaranteed that nothing like this will happen? How will the control be organized?

I hope that everyone understands this at the level of common sense. These are all serious issues.”

No: the collective EUrocracy, mired in demented Russophobia, does not understand “common sense”.

Once again Putin deferred, diplomatically, to the “need to work with our American partners. Maybe I will speak to President Trump.”

So there will be another phone call soon.

Trump, for his part, perennially floating on the clouds of bombast, already applied “leverage” on the negotiations – even before Putin’s detailed answer to the ceasefire kabuki.

He ramped up sanctions on Russia’s oil, gas and banking, allowing the waiver on Russian oil sales to expire this week.

That means in practice that the EUro-vassals and other assorted “allies” cannot buy Russian oil anymore without evading U.S. sanctions.

Even before that elements from Kiev criminal gang were begging for more sanctions on Russia as part of a “peace” plan. Trump obviously agreed by bypassing basic diplomacy once again. Only those with an IQ of less than zero can possibly believe that Moscow will support a ceasefire/’peace process” where it is sanctioned for attempting to end a war that it is actually winning in the battlefield – from Donbass to Kursk.

Sanctions will have to be at the heart of the possible U.S.-Russia negotiations. At least some of those thousands will have to go right from the start. Same for the $300 billion or so in Russian assets “seized” – as in stolen –, most of it parked in Brussels.

I annex, therefore I am

Putin’s Caravaggio ceasefire painting reveals that he has absolutely no interest in antagonizing the notoriously volcanic Trump, or to put in peril the possibility of a U.S.-Russia détente in the making.

As for Kiev and the EUro-chihuahuas, they remain on the menu, and not on the table.

Predictably, Western MSM, as a wave of toxic detritus hitting a pristine shore, is spinning that Putin said “Nyet” to the ceasefire gambit as a prelude to scotching any negotiations about it.

These specimens would not understand the meaning of “diplomacy” even if it was a comet piercing the skies.

As for the spin on the Brits “helping” the Americans and the Ukrainians to concoct the ceasefire gambit, that does not even qualify as a crappy Monty Python sketch.

The Brit ruling classes, MI6, their media and think tanks, simply abhor any negotiations. They are at direct, frontal war with Russia, and their plan A – no plan B – remains the same: inflict a “strategic defeat” on Moscow, as the SVR knows inside out.

The heart of the matter is the Black Sea. Vladimir Karasev’s analysis, as explained to TASS, is spot on: “The British have already entered the city of Odessa, which they view as a key location. Their special services are heavily involved there. The British do not conceal their desire to establish a naval base in Odessa.”

Odessa is part of the extensive menu of Ukraine’s resources already, in thesis, handed over to the Brits under the shady – and completely illegal – 100-year agreement signed between Starmer and the sweaty sweatshirt in Kiev.

According to the dodgy deal and its made in the shade footnotes, Zelensky already gave away to the Brits all sorts of control over minerals, nuclear power plants, underground gas storage facilities, key ports (including Odessa), and hydroelectric power plants.

On the ongoing minerals/rare earth saga in 404 – or what will be left of it – the Brits are in vicious, direct competition with the Americans. The CIA is obviously in the know. This whole thing will turn very ugly in no time.

A serious discussion running across informed circles in Moscow is that Putin by all means will never sacrifice Russia’s “indivisibility of security” demands posed to Washington in December 2021 – and met with a no-response response. NATO of course will never agree to it. The final decision will have to come from POTU.S..

And that brings us to the ultimately pathetic role of NATO, graphically illustrated by POTU.S., in the Oval Office, gleefully expanding on his drive to annex both Canada and Greenland – both part of NATO – right in front of the sorry Dutch patsy Tutti Frutti o-Rutti, NATO’s Secretary General.

That amorphous slab of stale Dutch gouda cheese not only did not emit a peep about the annexations: he was gleaming like a baby in front of Trump.

That was NATO stripped bare: His Master’s Voice rules the way he wants it, and whatever he decides, even the “security” and territorial integrity of member states may be in peril. So go back to playing in your sandbox. Onwards to the next Putin-Trump phone call.

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

The post Putin Peels Off the Masks of the Ceasefire Kabuki appeared first on LewRockwell.

The U.S., Germany, UK, Israel, and South Africa, are now beyond the point at which the spiraling downward into chaos can’t be stopped, and will therefore, in the most optimistic scenario, end in a successful democratic revolution (if that is even possible there). (The depressing alternative would be as failed states.) In all five societies, political and financial leadership have become so corrupt and so psychopathic that whatever constitutional democracy had formerly existed there, is now essentially gone and replaced by a “Deep State,” or network of a thousand-or-so extremely wealthy and interconnected individuals, who control not ONLY the Government but ALSO the nation’s economy, leaving the entire rest of the population as their mental slaves whom the billionaires mentally control through the media (where Republicans blame Democrats and Democrats blame Republicans), and through the nation’s ‘non-partisan’ ‘educational’ (actually indoctrinational) institutions.

On 31 October 2018, three political scientists documented that the wealthiest 1% of the wealthiest 1% of Americans — the wealthiest ten-thousandth of Americans — donate 57.16% of all the money that funds U.S. political campaigns. The “Top 400 Donors” (all of whom are multi-billionaires, not merely billionaires) donate 29.86%, or virtually 30%, of all political money, in the U.S. But, actually: only billionaires (and an occasional mere centi-millionaire) who are among the ten largest donors to U.S. politics in a Presidential-election year, have any real impact in determining whom America’s next President will be. Only those ten ultra-rich Americans do. And, from one Presidential ‘election’ to the next, many of those ten people will be the same both times. All of the other 332 million Americans are their subjects, not any country’s “citizens” (except, perhaps, on passports, etc.). But America isn’t a kingdom; it’s an aristocracy. (Of course, some kingdoms are representing their aristocracy and/or their theocracy, but, in any case, America is an aristocracy.)

Two prior studies, one in 2016, and the first one in 2014, had already demonstrated that, as I headlined about both of them in 2018, “America Is One-Dollar-One-Vote, Not Really One-Person-One Vote.” The breakthrough first study, in 2014, was brilliantly summarized and explained in a 6-minute video here. So: anyone who says that America’s Government is better than other Governments because it is a democracy is either a fool or else a liar. This myth has, by now, become buried so deep that only a second American revolution might be able to resurrect it to some sort of reality again.

As the liberal (Democratic Party) wing of America’s aristocracy said, in the person of its Warren Buffett, “There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.” (He told this to the conservative Ben Stein reporting in the aristocracy’s New York Times, under the headline “In Class Warfare, Guess Which Class Is Winning”, on 26 November 2006, but that newspaper won’t let readers access the article online, and instead prefer to charge anyone who seeks to see whether or not the quotation is authentic — it is. And the statement is true. However, the 31 March 2019 issue of Forbes headlined “Reimagining Capitalism: How The Greatest System Ever Conceived (And Its Billionaires) Need To Change”, and reported: “‘America works, and it works now better than it ever worked,’ Buffett says.” Better for himself and other billionaires, that is. But not for the bottom 90%, and it worked lousy for the bottom 50%, and still worse — economic decline — for the bottom 25%. But to the liberal Buffett, that’s still “better than it ever worked.”

Trump (like Biden and Obama and Bush before him) fulfills ONLY the secret private promises he made to his billionaires — NOT the promises he publicly made to his voters; and this has been normal for U.S. Presidents ever since AT LEAST 1980, according to the empirical scientific studies that have been done about the matter.

The authoritative study of how corrupt the U.S. now is, is the best-selling book by former Goldman Sachs Managing Director Nomi Prins, who had quit finance because of how hopelessly corrupt it has become (and when she finally decided she could no longer take it, she just quit the field entirely), and the book is titled Permanent Distortion: How the Financial Markets Abandoned the Real Economy Forever. Here are some of the reviews it has gotten — not only to show what experts in the field think of it, but especially because the revews I’m selecting here provide collectively a good summary of its contents:

“The timing of the release of Prins’ book could not be more appropriate as signs mount of how entrenched corruption has distorted the world in which we live to the point that it increasingly feels like a bad sci-fi movie…Prins brilliantly captures the insanity and mass hypnosis of regulators who have taken a hands-off approach to the Fed’s unlimited money spigot to the mega banks on Wall Street with indisputable facts and figures. She builds her case against the monetary policies of Bernanke and his successors (Janet Yellen and Jerome Powell) in the artful way that a master mason builds an exquisite rock wall—one carefully placed stone at a time.” ― Wall Street on Parade

“Readers curious about recent history and potential futures of the global economy will find much to capture their interest in Nomi Prins’s Permanent Distortion, which is expansively researched, clear-eyed and conversational in tone… This comprehensive recent history is an informative and valuable work of observation, research, analysis and warning to financial experts and novices alike–and all who care about the structures of economic power.” ― Shelf Awareness

“A hard-hitting survey of the forces . . . that fuel financial markets at the expense of destabilizing the real economy. . . . Nomi Prins effectively dismantles the machinery of financial markets and explains how they operate in a secret world of their own.” ― Kirkus

“This book shows how finance has separated from economics and only serves the banks not the people. Nomi Prins has done it again. She’s the best writer around offering original and deep research into the history of banking and the relationship between banks, the Federal Reserve and the real economy. The fact that the Fed serves the banks and the banks serve themselves is not new. Nomi has demonstrated that in her previous books. What Permanent Distortion adds is that the separation is now complete and irrevocable. The financial markets are detached from the economy and from the people who rely on the economy for jobs, growth, and their portfolios. A backlash is coming and Nomi Prins offers fair warning.” — James G. Rickards

Her book is really about the entire U.S. empire, because America’s colonies are wedded to this pshychopathic neoliberal (or ‘libertarian’) ideology that equates a person’s worth with the person’s net worth. (Consequently, for example, a billionaire is 1,000 times more worthy than a millionaire, and poor people are entirely insignificant except insofar as they can be exploited by the super-rich as being either employees or consumers — and so there is really no need for regulations to reign-in such abuses — that would ‘just get in the way of the free market’ and so should be eliminated as much as possible.

At the opposite end of this supremacist ideology stands a remarkably liberal version of it, in which the nation’s history has largely replaced wealth as the ethical standard and inserts instead ‘reverse-racism’ — how well-connected a person is among the dominant group, who are black: South Africa. Lawrence Thomas headlined about this at Palladium magazine on March 11th, “South Africa’s Racketeer Party State: South Africa’s spiral of corruption and decay is what happens when an extractive, revolutionary political elite takes charge of a fundamentally Western, liberal, and modern society.” It’s like America’s Old Dixie was, except with the colors reversed: the hyper-corrupt ways of the formerly elite group have penetrated to the core to shape the values of the previously exploited group, so that, just like before, the poorer 95% are systematically exploited by the richest 5%.

And, of course, America’s colonies, such as UK, Germany, and Israel, are hopelessly corrupt, and are similiarly ‘libertarian’ — meaning increased liberty for the super-rich, but all systematically at the expense of everybody else.

This originally appeared on Eric’s Substack.

The post Similar Grim Futures Loom for U.S., Germany, UK, Israel, and South Africa. appeared first on LewRockwell.

Cancer is one of the most challenging conditions to deal with in medicine, as two seemingly identical cancers can have very different causes. As a result, any standardized (holistic or conventional) protocol will inevitably fail some of the patients it is meant to treat.

Furthermore, since there is so much fear surrounding cancer (e.g., from what the primal fear brings up inside you, from how your social circle reacts to it and from how the medical system uses all of that to push cancer therapies) it is often very difficult to have a clear head about the ordeal or find the right source of advice.

Likewise, since so much money is involved (e.g. 65% of oncologist’s revenues comes from chemotherapy drugs and cancer drugs are by far the most profitable drug market), there is significant pushback (e.g. from medical boards or unhappy relatives) against anyone who attempts alternative cancer therapies making it very difficult to practice unconventional cancer care—particularly since no alternative treatment works all the time.
Note: in a recent article, I highlighted how urologists initially would not touch Lupron (which is now also used as a the puberty blocker) because of how unsafe and ineffective it was, but once they started being paid a lot of money to prescribe it for prostate cancer, it rapidly became their number one drug.

In contrast, while the conventional cancer therapies often have serious issues that make them far worse than any benefit they offer, some conventional cancer therapies are frequently the only available option which can save someone’s life (which has led to me at different times having fights with close friends or relatives either not to do chemotherapy or to get them to start it in cases where I felt it was absolutely necessary).

Given all of this, I presently believe that no “ideal” cancer treatment exists, but if it can be done (e.g., it’s effective for the cancer and feasible to implement), the most ideal to least ideal treatments are as follows:

•Identifying the root cause of a cancer, removing it, and having it quickly and permanently go away on its own (which is sometimes possible).

•Have enough time to rebalance the body so that its terrain no longer supports the cancer and the cancer can fade away on its own (which is often doable but a fairly involved process many have difficulty carrying out).

•Significantly enhance the function of the immune system so that it will eliminate the cancer.

•Find a treatment that is toxic to the cancer but relatively benign to the rest of the body.

•Find a treatment with an acceptable toxicity level and find ways to mitigate its side effects.

•Accept a moderately toxic treatment with significant side effects.

•Focus on living with the cancer rather than curing it and then finding ways to mitigate the symptoms you experience both from it and any existing treatment protocols.

•Use a costly conventional therapy that is unlikely to work and live with all the side effects until your life ends (which in more extreme treatment regimens can be quite severe).

If we take a step back, what’s truly remarkable about DMSO, depending on how it is used, is that it can effectively provide most of the benefits listed above with the least amount of collateral damage (e.g., side-effects, toxicity, etc.).

Dimethyl Sulfoxide (DMSO)

Exactly six months ago, I used this newsletter to bring the public’s attention to DMSO, a simple naturally occurring compound that has a number of immense therapeutic benefits and virtually no toxicity (detailed here). In turn, when it was discovered in the 1960s, it quickly became America’s most desired drug (as it cured many incurable ailments). A lot of the scientific community promptly got behind it and before long, thousands of papers had been published on every conceivable medical application for it.

As such, throughout this series, I’ve presented the wealth of evidence that DMSO effectively treats:

Strokes, paralysis, a wide range of neurological disorders (e.g., Down Syndrome and dementia), and many circulatory disorders (e.g., Raynaud’s, varicose veins, hemorrhoids), which I discussed here.

A wide range of tissue injuries, such as sprains, concussions, burns, surgical incisions, and spinal cord injuries (discussed here).

Chronic pain (e.g., from a bad disc, bursitis, arthritis, or complex regional pain syndrome), which I discussed here.

A wide range of autoimmune, protein, and contractile disorders such as scleroderma, amyloidosis, and interstitial cystitis (discussed here).

A variety of head conditions, such as tinnitus, vision loss, dental problems, and sinusitis (discussed here).

A wide range of internal organ diseases such as pancreatitis, infertility, liver cirrhosis, and endometriosis (discussed here).

A wide range of skin conditions such as burns, varicose veins, acne, hair loss, ulcers, skin cancer, and many autoimmune dermatologic diseases (discussed here).

Many challenging infectious conditions, including chronic bacterial infections, herpes, and shingles (discussed here).

In turn, when I published this series (because of both how effective and easily accessible DMSO is) it caught on like wildfire, this publication went from being the ninth to top ranked newsletter in the genre, there was a nationwide DMSO shortage, and I’ve received almost two thousand testimonials from people who benefitted from DMSO (and often had remarkable results—particularly for chronic pain).

That response was quite surprising and in my eyes, a testament not only to how well DMSO works, but more importantly, how effectively DMSO’s story was erased from history (e.g., many long-time enthusiasts of natural health shared that they were blown away they’d never heard of it). This sadly illustrates how effectively the medical industry can bury anything threatening its bottom line (e.g., the FDA—for rather petty reasons—used everything at their disposal to make sure DMSO was forgotten).

In turn, within the DMSO story, I believe one of the least appreciated (or even known) facets of it are the remarkable contributions DMSO makes to the treatment of cancer—which is even more remarkable given that far more research has been done with DMSO and cancer than all the other topics I just listed. Consequently, for months I’ve wanted to publish an article on this (particularly since one incredible natural cancer therapy utilizes DMSO), but simultaneously, it just wasn’t feasible to as there was so much literature to go through.

That’s been weighing on me considerably (e.g. many readers have asked me to prioritize this article over everything else), so over the last three months (and particularly the last three weeks), I shifted my responsibilities to focus on the topic thoroughly. While it took a bit of a toll on me, the article is now done. As such, I greatly hope some of what’s in here can benefit you and I likewise thank each of you who has supported this newsletter and made it possible for me to spend so much time delving into these critical forgotten sides of medicine.

Cancer Differentiation

When life begins, the first cell has the potential to turn into anything. Then as it divides, its range of possibilities becomes more finite until each needed type of cell populates its assigned region of the body. This process is known as differentiation, and is a frequent interest in medicine as undifferentiated cells (e.g., stem cells) can replace lost cells by differentiating into them. Cancer is a disease of dedifferentiation where normal cells adopt an ancient survival program, lose their structure, order, and connection to the whole body, and instead voraciously divide through the body and consume it.

As such, an agent that could induce differentiation of cancer cells so they become normal could be immensely helpful in treating cancer. Unfortunately, only one “effective” agent has entered general medical practice, all-trans retinoic acid (a metabolite of vitamin A) for the treatment of promyelocytic leukemia (a relatively rare cancer).

There are now twelve tumor-cell types in the test tube in which DMSO tends to stimulate the tumor cell toward changing into a more normal cell, Dr. Jacob told me. — Morton Walker 1983

Sadly, to quote a 2023 review paper that compiled many studies where DMSO differentiated cancers:

Recently, DMSO has been included in biological cancer treatment and several FDA approved cancer immune therapeutic modalities such as CarT cell therapy and melanoma drug Mekinist (trametinib DMSO). However, besides its recognized biological role as a pharmaceutical solvent and cryoprotectant, there was no mention of DMSO’s possible ability to potentiate therapeutic activity as a component of these cancer treatments.

Note: while there is a general bias in medicine to avoid researching natural cancer therapies, DMSO has been extensively used in cancer research because it effectively facilitates many aspects of it (which had led to the truly curious scenario described above).

This saga began in 1971 when one of the nations top virologists accidentally discovered that if DMSO was given to leukemic cells (specifically erythroblasts—which cause a relatively rare type of cancer), at a 2% concentration, it caused most of them to differentiate back to normal cells (which took up to 5 days), at 3% it stopped their growth, and at 5% it killed them.

Additionally:

•Mice injected with the DMSO-treated cancer cells lived roughly twice as long as those injected with untreated cancer cells (suggesting DMSO made the cancer less aggressive).

•The cancer cells did not evolve resistance to DMSO (although subsequent research sometimes showed a small portion of cancer cells in a tumor were resistant to DMSO1,2). Additionally, for erythroleukemic cells that were resistant to DMSO inducing differentiation, butyrate did induce it (while butyrate and DMSO each antagonize the inducing action of the other).

Eight months later, she published another study that found that within five days, 2% DMSO caused 95% of erythroleukemic cells to differentiate. This was followed by studies that:
•Explored the mechanisms of differentiation, provided detailed descriptions of it, and showed it occurred in a consistent manner.
•Explored how certain steroids blocked (or supported) DMSO’s ability to induce erythroleukemic differentiation.
•Found increasing concentrations of DMSO caused increasing alterations of cancer DNA (which was an initial step in the differentiation process).
• Found the differentiation continued long after DMSO was no longer present and could be irreversible.
•Found the differentiation did not appear to be synchronized with the cell cycle.1,2

Following this, it became generally accepted that DMSO differentiates erythroleukemic cells, and decades of studies corroborated that.1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62

Note: DMSO’s ability to differentiate erythroleukemic cells was so well recognized that in 1992, it was selected for a microgravity experiment on the international space station.

Since erythroleukemia is closely related to the more common acute lymphoblastic leukemia (AML), decades of studies also showed DMSO differentiated AML.1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95

Additionally, DMSO was also shown to differentiate many other cancers.

Blood Cancers: acute promyelocytic leukemia,1,2 chronic myeloid leukemia,1,2,3 cutaneous erythromyeloleukemia,1 hairy cell leukemia,1 histiocytic lymphoma,1,2,3 non-Hodgkin lymphoma,1 T-cell leukemia,1 T-cell lymphoma1

Organ Cancers: bladder1, brain,1,2,3,4,5,6 breast,1 colon,1 esophageal,1,2 intestinal1,2 kidney,1,2 liver,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8 lung,1,2,3,4 prostate,1,2 rectal,1 ovarian,1,2 stomach1, thyroid1

Other Cancers: embryonic carcinoma (into heart cells),1,2,3,4,5,6 fibrosarcoma,1,2 melanoma,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11, nasopharyngeal,1 rhabdomyosarcomas1,2 tumors (in potatoes)1

Collectively, these studies showed:

•DMSO normally differentiated the cancer (it was rare for me to find studies where it did not) and did so in a dose-dependent fashion (e.g., 0.5-2% was often used). At higher concentrations (e.g. 1.5%), those changes were often permanent. However, in some cases, a minority of DMSO resistant cells did form, which then required another differentiating agent.

•Cancer growth, proliferation, and survival in tandem frequently decreased. In parallel, tumor suppressing genes (e.g., P21, PTEN, RB) increased, tumor promoting proteins were suppressed, and the cancer cells were weakened (e.g., with transient DNA strand breaks1,2) or induced into programmed cell death. Conversely, cancer triggers (e.g., C-myc1,2,3, C-myb, nucleolar antigen p145) were suppressed.

•Many metabolic pathways (e.g., JAK–STAT, ERK, NF-kB), histone H2A phosphorylation, and key cellular enzymes were increased during differentiation (e.g., Protein Kinase C,1,2,3 PI 3-kinase, TXA2, and TXB2 synthase, COX-21,2, 5-Lipoxygenase, phospholipase, CYP3A4, cytochrome b5 reductase and drug metabolism, acetylcholinesterase, carbonic anhydrase,1,2 disphosphase, and diaphorase).

•Other proteins and receptors were also increased (e.g., GPI-80, angiotensin II, Desmoplakins and Fibronectin) as were a variety of metabolites and signaling molecules (TNF-α, melanin, diacylglycerol inositol). Intercellular calcium was also increased1,2,3 as was the ion flux in and out of cells (except for potassium), the cellular transport of nucleosides. Finally, there were changes in G-protein signaling, and some cells were sensitive to staphylococcal leukocidin.

•Certain aspects of metabolism decreased (e.g., glucose transport, insulin receptor availability, general protein and transferrin synthesis, diacylglycerol synthesis, glycosaminoglycan synthesis and sulfate incorporation, heme oxygenase-1 activity,1,2) along with a decrease in histone expression and the association of Phosphatidylinositol-Transfer protein with the nucleus.

•Some things increased DMSO’s differentiation (e.g., TNF-α1,2,3, sphinganine, alpha-lipoic-acid, PP2, or suppressing PTEN) while others suppressed it (e.g., asbestos1,2, dexamethasone,1,2 hydrocortisone, hyperthermia, diacylglycerols and phospholipase C, blocking protein kinase C, lithium chloride, Mu IFN-Alpha1). Additionally, low frequency EMFs did not affect it.
Note: other agents also exist that can sometimes induce cell differentiation, but in many cases, DMSO works much better (e.g., oxytocin can turn certain cells into heart cells, but does not fully differentiate them if they are initially only one layer, whereas DMSO does).

•Vitamin D has been repeatedly found to synergistically enhance DMSO’s ability to differentiate AML1,2,3,4 (except in this study) and to commit AML to differentiate into macrophages1,2 while it counteracted DMSO differentiating erythroleukemia.1,2

•Retinoic acid (a vitamin A metabolite) has also shown promise for inducing cancer differentiation, works synergistically with DMSO1,2 and uses a different differentiating pathway than DMSO.1,2

In addition to these biochemical changes, some other effects of DMSO have been proposed to explain its differentiating activity (e.g., one study proposed that DMSO’s interactions with free radicals allowed it to induce differentiation).

Note: I have strong ethical objections to animal research and it is my sincere hope that since so much of it has already been done that it will not need to be redone to “prove” DMSO works.

Read the Whole Article

The post Hundreds of Studies Show DMSO Transforms the Treatment of Cancer appeared first on LewRockwell.

In continuing to unpack the ideologies of the oligarchs who are part of the new Trump administration, Iain Davis examines how their ideas are being translated into policy. He considers the consequent infrastructure rollout that is preparing the US and the world for an imminent Gov-corp Technate within a multipolar world.

In Part 1 of this series, we explored the political philosophies that have long been adopted and promoted by Elon Musk and Peter Thiel and considered the implications, given both men’s obvious influence on the Trump administration. Musk is a high-profile advocate of Technocracy, and Peter Thiel is an accelerationist neoreactionary who favours, in particular, the Dark Enlightenment. Before you read this article (Part 2), I urge you to familiarise yourself with the explanations of Technocracy and the NRx (the neoreactionary movement) provided in Part 1. Otherwise, many of the references here will lack context.

As we noted in Part 1, Thiel and Musk are part of the oligarchic class by virtue of being invited to join a network led by other oligarchs whose stratospheric wealth far surpasses that of the names published on the “richest people in the world” lists. Welcomed into their exclusive club, Thiel and Musk are made men. In Part 2, we will explore how the political philosophies and the associated economic theories of Thiel and Musk are shaping public policy. Keep in mind that these two men are far from alone in attempting to create an American gov-corp Technate.

Libertarian Technocrats?

Although they borrow some libertarian ideas, there is nothing truly “libertarian” about either technocrats or accelerationist neoreactionaries. Their convoluted theories, once applied, could not be more authoritarian, more anti-liberty. Just as it is an oxymoron to describe Musk as a “libertarian technocrat,” so is it absurd to think of Peter Thiel as an “anarcho-capitalist.” Yet propagandists persist in encouraging us to see them in these terms. Witness a 2014 article in The Atlantic titled “The Libertarian Capitalist’s Case for State Power and Making No Money.”

It is possible that people like Thiel and Musk self-identify as libertarians because they think “liberty” means freedom granted by — and to — the oligarchy.

In Part 1, we referenced the Venetian Republic. The Doge of Venice was the ruler of the banking, finance, and commercial empire of the Venetian Republic. That is to say, the Doge was given the liberty to rule by the oligarchs of the day. We might wonder if the naming of the Department of Government Efficiency (the DOGE) that Musk leads deliberately references the Venetian magistrate. Some say it does, while others suggest another possibility.

Created as a joke in 2013 by cryptographers Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer, the Dogecoin, a memecoin, has seen its price and market cap soar and fluctuate wildly thanks in no small measure to Elon Musk’s comments about it. Much of Musk’s talk about Dogecoin has been deliberately provocative. For example, in 2019 he declared himself the “former CEO of Dogecoin,” though that was never the case. His social media posts alone have provoked major changes in the price of Dogecoin. Musk has also aggressively hiked its value by, for instance, hinting it might become the basis of the proposed “X pay” payment system on his newly acquired ‘X’ platform — formerly Twitter.

Musk encouraged bullish investment in Dogecoin. Of course, just because someone encourages you to do something that doesn’t negate your personal responsibility to conduct due diligence. When some investors lost their shirts, as Dogecoin prices tumbled, they tried to sue Musk in 2022 with a potential $258 billion class action lawsuit. The case was dismissed last year. The judge ruled that Musk’s comments were just “aspirational and puffery, not factual and susceptible to being falsified.” Though it is worth noting the offhand comments of one man took the Dogecoin from a literal joke — a crypto parody — to achieving a market capitalisation of $14.5 billion in 2021.

If there is an in-joke to the naming of the DOGE, nominally led by Elon Musk, some argue it is Musk’s fondness for the Dogecoin that is reflected in the D.O.G.E acronym. Yet, the symbolism of “the Doge ”— one who is granted the liberty to rule by oligarchs — is perhaps more conspicuous. Just as with the term “Accelerator” — meaning high-impact investment to accelerate the growth of a startup — an obvious underpinning ideology is implied, even if rarely discussed.

In the introduction to his 2012 treatise, “The Dark Enlightenment,” political philosopher Nick Land highlighted the importance of an article written three years earlier by oligarch Thiel.

Land wrote:

One milestone was the April 2009 discussion hosted at Cato Unbound among libertarian thinkers (including Patri Friedman and Peter Thiel) in which disillusionment with the direction and possibilities of democratic politics was expressed with unusual forthrightness. Thiel summarized the trend bluntly: “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.”

In a related article Thiel penned, titled “The Education of a Libertarian,” he was describing himself, and yet the personal philosophy he outlined in it was pure accelerationist neoreactionism.

Thiel opined that “the prospects for a libertarian politics appear grim indeed,” given that the government’s response to every crisis was “more government.” He also claimed that the post-WWI deflationary depression in Western nations was the last “sharp but short” shock to have allowed the alleged advantages of Schumpeterian “creative destruction” to flourish. After that depression, he said, so-called “democratic” politics had stifled the opportunities to capitalise on crises. As a result, Thiel said he no longer believed “that politics encompasses all possible futures of our world.”

Asserting, in so many words, that democracies were useless, Thiel announced he had found a new life goal:

In our time, the great task for libertarians is to find an escape from politics in all its forms — from the totalitarian and fundamentalist catastrophes to the unthinking demos that guides so-called “social democracy.” The critical question then becomes one of means, of how to escape not via politics but beyond it.

For Thiel, the “unthinking demos” is us: the holders of the “neo-puritan faith” in progressive “social democracy” — the acolytes of the Cathedral (and the people whom Nick Land considers “inarticulate proles”). In Thiel’s view, we must embrace our “technoplastic” future, become intelligible, move beyond politics, and liberate capitalist innovation by swearing fealty to the gov-corp model.

To this end, Thiel identified three “technological frontiers” upon which he could construct his darkly enlightened aristocracy.

[1] Cyberspace was the first frontier he identified. There, Thiel focused on creating “a new world currency, free from all government control and dilution.” Cyberspace would enable “new modes of dissent and new ways to form communities not bounded by historical nation-states” — and would result in a new world that would “force change on the existing social and political order.”

[2] Outer space would be another Thiel frontier, where the “libertarian future of classic science fiction” could be built.

[3] Seasteading would be his interim frontier, where the unclaimed oceans could be settled by humans. He called seasteading “more tentative than the Internet, but much more realistic than space travel.” Seasteading would at least give us the time to develop the outer-space ideas on earth, prior to colonising the stars.

These frontiers are necessary, Thiel insisted, because “we are in a deadly race between politics and technology.” He concluded:

We do not know exactly how close this race is, but I suspect that it may be very close, even down to the wire. Unlike the world of politics, in the world of technology the choices of individuals may still be paramount. The fate of our world may depend on the effort of a single person [Trump?] who builds or propagates the machinery of freedom that makes the world safe for capitalism. [Emphasis added.]

Between 2006 and 2012, Thiel was instrumental in organising the Singularity Summits convened by the Machine Intelligence Research Institute — originally the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence (SIAI) — in partnership with Stanford University. Thiel provided much of the funding.

Thiel cannot be both an advocate of accelerationist neoreaction and simultaneously an anarcho-capitalist — a libertarian. The two philosophies are mutually exclusive.

In Part 1, we noted the technocrats’ rejection of the notion that “all men are created equal.” In a similar vein, Land, Yarvin, Fisher, and other accelerationists consider it essential to have a ruling entity, which can only be comprised of a few human beings exercising an unequal, additional right to rule. Both the technocrats and the accelerationists fundamentally misunderstand, or misinterpret, what the Preamble to The Declaration of Independence means. They completely ignore the second clause of the relevant declaration — namely, “that they [human beings] are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”

“Equality,” in real libertarian thinking, does not infer a held belief that everyone is the same — though that is certainly how technocrats interpret the word.

Libertarian “equality” doesn’t deny that people have relative strengths and weaknesses. It is not a rejection of either leadership or possible forms of meritocracy. It self-evidently means that every human being has an equal right to “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” These rights are unalienable — or inalienable. Our rights are not decided for us by others or limited by others, and no one on earth has any more or any fewer “equal rights” than anyone else.

This idea is not difficult to grasp. It is central to the political philosophy of anarcho-capitalism, as clearly enunciated by Murray Rothbard (1926–1995):

[N]o man or group of men may aggress against the person or property of anyone else. This may be called the “nonaggression axiom.” “Aggression” is defined as the initiation of the use or threat of physical violence against the person or property of anyone else.

Anarcho-capitalism wholeheartedly rejects the initiation of the use of force — the aggressive imposition of claimed authority — by the state to coerce individual persons or seize their property. An example is the threat of fining or imprisoning someone who hasn’t paid taxes to the “proper” authorities. Anarcho-capitalism resoundingly rejects the state and all its dictatorial demands.

By contrast, the proponents of Technocracy and the proponents of the Dark Enlightenment, such as Musk and Thiel, are not interested in restricting state power, though they may say otherwise. Instead they wish to move the state from the public to the private sector and expand its power once sufficiently privatized. True, they oppose “representative democracy” and characterise it as both a “democracy” (which it isn’t) and a bureaucratic system riddled with problems (which it is), but the solutions they offer, to all intents and purposes, magnify the power of the very state they supposedly condemn.

What the believers in Technocracy and the believers in the Dark Enlightenment both propose are compartmentalised, hierarchical sociopolitical power structures that couldn’t be more state-like or more authoritarian. They seek to expand and maximise the power of the state, though in slightly different ways. Calling their new model of the state either a Technate (as technocrats do) or a gov-corp (as accelerationist neoreactionaries do) doesn’t change the nature of the tyrannical statism they desire to foist on the rest of us.

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“Accomplished fingers begin to play./Their eyes mid many wrinkles, their eyes,/Their ancient, glittering eyes, are gay.”
– W. B. Yeats, Lapus Lazuli

The old man in the Irish cap sat on a chair on the sidewalk outside his house across from ours. I would usually see him on my way home from school. He would raise his shillelagh to greet me and sometimes played a tune on the penny whistle he kept on his lap. Often he was puffing on a pipe which I could smell even as I kept to my side of the street because he frightened me a bit, but when he played his fipple flute, the sounds of his playing enchanted my young ears. It struck some secret ancient chord in me.

One Saturday morning in spring when I came home wild with sweaty hot excitement from playing basketball in the schoolyard, I ran up our flight of twelve stone steps and froze on the landing before the wooden porch steps. To my shock, the Irishman was sitting on our porch, shaded by the canvas awning I had recently rolled down, a glittering one-eyed Cyclops to my young eyes. I ran into the house without giving him a nod.

My father was home and I told him the man from across the street was on the porch. He said it’s okay, he’s a friend, his name is Eamonn McGillicuddy, he was a good friend of my father’s and his brothers and sisters, your great uncles and aunts, and I’ve told him he can sit on the porch whenever he wants. “Come on,” he said, “I’ll introduce you to him.”

That was my introduction to the Irish rebel tradition, the man who taught me to never be bullied and to remember where our family came from and why. Something else as well – the power of music. And he taught me this while he showed me how to plant rows of potatoes, leeks, and peas in our back yard. I was eleven years old and our yard was quite barren except for a small beautiful Japanese maple tree my father had planted. Something soon blossomed in me and in the garden. To name it is to lose it.

Mr. McGillicuddy, as I always called him, had emigrated from western Cork, Ireland sometime in the 1920s, in the decade after the 1916 Easter Rising. Why he came I never learned. Much of what he told me had a vagueness to it, as if he were a man of many secrets. His brogue was still very strong, which, at first, made it a bit hard for me to understand him. After a while, in imitative young boy style, I too had a slight brogue as we became simpatico and he let me in on some of his secrets. Listening to his tales always reminded me of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Long John Silver from Treasure Island, talking to young Jim Hawkins, as if we were treasure seekers, soon to be digging down in the earth for something to lift us up to the heavens.

My grandfather, his parents, and his eight siblings – four boys, all brawlers, and five girls in all – had lived from the 1890s in a large house in our Bronx neighborhood. The house stood on a slope backed by the Williamsbridge Reservoir, which was actually a natural saucer-shaped lake that was eventually drained in the 1930s and made into a park – the Williamsbridge Oval Park – by the Works Progress Administration. The house had a large garden with numerous fruit trees. By the time I met McGillicuddy, my grandfather and all his family had died and the house and garden, while still standing, had become derelict, with an old low-lying building up the slope from the house having become a hangout for local teenager boys when I became one. It was a place where fights would take place before an audience of dozens. Bloody boy rituals that served as our local Colosseum.

My great grandparents had emigrated from Cork because of the potato famine. The stories that came down to me were of a bitter family hatred for the English colonizers of Ireland and a love for all the Irish rebels who stood up to them over the years.

Mr. McGillicuddy was slightly younger than my great aunts and uncles. He never told me why he came to the US in the 1920s, and when I asked him, he only smiled and played a few notes on his penny whistle while doing an old man’s little pathetic jig that made me laugh.

He told me a lot, however, and much of it while showing me how to plant the garden. With each potato piece we pushed down in the hills that we had prepared on a slant – he emphasized the necessity of the slant – he would laugh and say to me, “Eddy, my boy, I must askew always, always askew; it’s all about the slant and sláinte, never straight, always askew,” and he would laugh maniacally. I never got his joke until one day he said, “Suppose I askew you this question,” and then it clicked, redundancy and all. And when we planted each potato, he told me a different tale about the potato famine and why the English were bastards.

The next door neighbor’s son, Mikey Fraina, had a huge German Shepard named Rex who was often locked in their adjacent yard. The dog always frightened me. It would bark and try to jump the fence. McGillicuddy would tell me if I was afraid of a dog, that dogs will bully me to death, and just like the English dogs and colonizers everywhere, you had to find a way to subdue them. One day he asked me to watch, and when Rex was at the fence with his front paws up on it, growling and showing his huge teeth, the old thin man walked over and started to play some eerie tune on his penny whistle. The dog’s eyes rolled in its head and he fell on its back with all four paws reaching for the sky to just surrender.

For weeks after that, I couldn’t sleep well, thinking of the incident. I kept hearing the uncanny sound of McGillicuddy’s playing as the dog’s eyes rolled back like pitched marbles.

Maybe a month later he did something similar with a squirrel that I often fed out of my hand against my mother’s wishes. The squirrel jumped off the pantry roof into the yard while we were checking the garden, and McGillicuddy quickly started to play his penny whistle. This time the tune was jig-like and festive and the squirrel started to dance upright on his hind legs, moving his front paws in circles. My mother heard it and looked out the pantry window, laughing. She was so shocked that she called my father at work and told him. He told her that McGillicuddy was a magician who could mesmerize anyone; that is why he was sent to the States. My mother was confused. I was overwhelmed with delightful shock.

As the season stretched on, I remember the vegetables growing, the leeks standing tall, the peas greening, and potatoes leafing and growing stems. The garden was flourishing but something went missing.

Sometime that late summer, Mr.McGillicuddy vanished. No one, not even my father, knew what happened to him. Even the neighbors, who had gotten used to his presence high about the street on our porch, the sound of his playing, and the feeling that he cast a cold eye down on them from his perch, missed him. They asked us but we had no answer.

One day while I was doing one of my chores, sweeping off the front porch, I found his penny whistle under the cushion of the chair where he used to sit. It was wrapped in a piece of paper with the words – “Tell it always, Eddy, with a slant and a fine tune. Sláinte!  It’s all music.”

I never learned to play the penny whistle, but whenever I sit down to use my fingers to play with words, I remember Mr. McGillicuddy’s glittering eyes as he played his magic flute. He came and went like a young boy’s dream, not a tattered coat upon a stick, but a soul-clapping apparition that remains, even as I sail into the country of old men.

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Thanks, Johnny Kramer.

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