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It is particularly difficult to pick out the most idiotic comments made by President Donald Trump over the past week as there is so much to choose from. There were the memorable doodle-headed speeches before the Israeli Knesset and the so-called Peace gathering in Sharm el-Sheikh Egypt and the threats against Hamas over the failure to come up with the bodies of Israeli hostages that were killed by American government provided bombs dropped by Israel and are now buried beneath piles of rubble. And then there is the Insurrection Act, cited nearly every day by Trump or one of his cabinet, which, if it is successfully called for and passes through judicial review, will truly turn the United States into a police state ruled by a leader that clearly is mentally incompetent as well as providing all the signs that he is a narcissistic psychopath whose goal in holding the presidency is to be surrounded by folks who tell him constantly how great he is! And let’s not forget the bloviation regarding the “Triumphal” Arch being planned for the Arlington National Cemetery end of Memorial Bridge leading to the Lincoln Memorial in Washington.

What the often-garrulous if incoherent Trump never said in the context of conflict in the Middle East was that a “GENOCIDE conducted by Israel is taking place in Gaza” as that is a word that is strictly verboten in the circle that surrounds him even though nearly all of the rest of the world sees it otherwise. He nevertheless frequently expressed his pain at the thought of 20 Israeli “hostages” with little to spare for an estimated 20,000 dead Palestinian children. To mention Gazan suffering would presumably would cut off the $100 million plus loose change that comes his way from donors like Israeli Las Vegas casino multi-billionaire Miriam Adelson, who flew with Trump on Air Force One and grinned when he announced publicly how she was worth $60 billion and posited how she is more loyal to Israel than she is to the United States. It was what some might regard as a genuine national security issue that did not seem to bother the president in the least. The Knesset audience cheered however, particularly when Trump related how Israeli annexation of the Syrian Golan Heights had been secured through a bribe he had received from the Adelsons during his first term in office.

Beyond all that entertainment, however, as a former intelligence officer, my favorite Trump bit of chatter last week was his somewhat odd revelation that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is now operating in Venezuela. That is in addition to the deployment of eight warships, a nuclear-powered submarine, B-52 bombers and fighter jets to the region as part of what the Administration has described as an operation to combat drug smuggling and illegal migration into the United States. There are reportedly a total of about 10,000 US military personnel, as a possible sea-air-and ground invasion force, assembled in the Caribbean area either on ships or in US territory on Puerto Rico. The recent resignation of the SOUTHCOM commanding Navy Admiral Alvin Holsey, who may have had reservations about the legality of what was afoot, is not expected to slow the troop build- up.

On Tuesday, Trump said that the Navy had struck another small boat off the coast of Venezuela, killing six people. It was the fifth such strike in the Caribbean, where the Trump administration has asserted its presumed authority to treat alleged drug traffickers as unlawful combatants who may be attacked with military force. At least 27 people have been killed in the five strikes, according to figures released by the administration, and a sixth strike on Thursday reportedly was the first to result in “survivors” who apparently have been picked up by a US warship. There are also reports about a “drug submarine” which was intercepted and destroyed by the US Navy.

Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office on Wednesday alongside FBI Director Kash Patel and Attorney General Pam Bondi, Trump was questioned about the reported Justice Department opinion which forms the basis of the administration’s ramped up campaign against Latin American drug cartels. It includes expanded authorities for the CIA to conduct lethal targeting and carry out covert action in the region. President Donald Trump reportedly had updated CIA’s authorities when he also signed a secret directive ordering the military to begin hitting Latin American drug cartels earlier in the summer.

Before that, in April, the CIA had begun reviewing its existing authorities to use lethal force against Latin American drug cartels, as the Trump administration made confronting the cartels a major priority for the intelligence agency. At that time, the CIA was already flying surveillance drones that are capable of being armed over Mexico to begin to take out the Mexican cartels if ordered to do so by the White House.

Interestingly, there already exists a presidential directive, known as a “finding,” for CIA covert action related to the counternarcotics mission that dated back to the 1980s. The Trump administration has been working to update that finding to provide further clarity to CIA on the specific actions the agency is allowed to take in the Latin American region. The basic problem is that Latin America is in America’s backyard. The expansion of CIA’s authorities has included lethal targeting against cartel actors, an authority that is fraught with risk as in Latin America, there are, comparatively, many US-born citizens and green card holders — people who might have the legal standing to sue the US government if they are somehow targeted or harmed.

President Donald Trump explained on Wednesday that he had indeed authorized the CIA to operate inside Venezuela to clamp down on illegal flows of migrants and drugs from the South American nation, but stopped short of saying it would have authority to remove current Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro which clearly is also a major policy objective. Trump explained how “We have a lot of drugs coming in from Venezuela, and a lot of the Venezuelan drugs come in through the sea, so you get to see that, but we’re going to stop them by land also. I think Venezuela is feeling heat. But I think a lot of other countries are feeling heat too. We’re not going to let this country, our country, be ruined because other people want to drop, as you say, their worst,” he also said, referring to his questionable claim that countries emptied their prisons and mental institutions to dump such illegal and marginal people in the United States.

Trump’s statement was remarkable because presidents don’t normally acknowledge directives, the “findings,” that allow spies to accomplish a secret mission. The whole idea of having a CIA is to allow the United States to operate in the shadows and conduct “deniable” operations, which is the key feature of “covert action,” i.e. that it should remain covert. Trump, always capable of acting impulsively, might, on the contrary, have been sending a message to the Venezuelan government about his seriousness over the drug and migrant issues. Phony warnings about boats allegedly filled with “narcoterrorists” might be considered psychological warfare, with Trump hoping to scare Maduro into resigning office and going into exile. The fact is that Venezuela plays a relatively minor role in the region’s drug trade, with Colombia and Ecuador being the prime suppliers. The president would not respond to questions regarding whether the CIA’s goal was to topple Maduro, for whom the US has offered a $50 million bounty. “Wouldn’t it be a ridiculous question for me to answer?” he said.

Another issue raised by Trump’s exposure of what should not have been exposed is the endangering of CIA officers operating in Venezuela. What have they been doing there? Well, this is just speculation, but they might have been funding and advising anti-government politicians like the woman who just won the Nobel Peace Prize Maria Corina Machado. She is reportedly a great fan of Trump and MAGA and also of the Israeli government, both of which she has called on to bring about regime change in her own country!

Real vulnerability for running such operations comes because CIA officers generally have two types of “cover” when they operate overseas. One is official, which would be working out of a US Embassy or Military Assistance office, but, thanks to Trump’s interference in the Venezuelan election in 2019 which preceded the breaking off of diplomatic and other relations, “official” does not exist in Venezuela which means there is no official or diplomatic protection. That means that officers must operate under “non official cover” (NOCs) which is normally as a businessman or student, or even using a forged passport, as an unalarming national of a country friendly to Caracas. In none of those cases will the officer have any protection if he or she is caught and you can bet that due to Trump’s overt and one might say lethal pressure the Venezuelan counterintelligence and police services are now looking very hard for American spies. Which contributes to the raising of the obvious question of whether what is being proposed for Venezuela is in any way due to an actual threat or desirable relative to what might be gained. Based on the evidence provided by the White House up until now, the answer would have to be “No!”

Reprinted with permission from Unz Review.

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For more than thirty years, I’d occasionally come across harsh attacks against a British historian named John Charmley for writing a highly-critical biography of Winston Churchill, the famed British leader, and that was about the only thing I knew of that author. I’d always vaguely wondered exactly what he’d said about Churchill that had infuriated so many others, and whether his criticism had been warranted, but never had enough of an interest in the topic to investigate it.

Then a year or two ago, I finally got around to ordering Churchill: The End of Glory from Amazon, with a mint copy of his original hardcover edition offered at an extremely attractive price, less than half that of the subsequent paperback version. Unfortunately, the doorstop-sized 750 page tome hardly struck me as casual reading, so it just ended up in a pile of my other books, where it quietly sat for the next eighteen months.

But with those book-piles growing disturbingly high, I finally decided to whittle them down a bit, and a book as thick as Charmley’s seemed like a good contribution to that effort. So I finally got around to reading it a few days ago, along with more than a dozen of the reviews and other articles it had generated, all of which helped refresh my memory of the half-forgotten controversy provoked by its 1993 release.

As Charmley explained on the first page of his text, he devoted 15 years to the book and since he was only 37 when it was released, he must have embarked upon that the massive research project near the very beginning of his scholarly career, although he also published four other academic books on related subjects along the way.

The bulk of the massive text was a very detailed and solid presentation of Churchill’s political career prior to his 1940 elevation to Number 10 Downing Street, and I found its material quite informative in that regard though sometimes a bit dull.

I’d certainly known that in 1915 Churchill had been driven from the British Cabinet for the terrible Gallipoli disaster that he’d engineered, but I’d had the mistaken impression that his political career had been blighted during the many years that followed. Instead, I discovered that he’d soon returned to office in 1917, and then spent nearly all of the next dozen years in government, holding a variety of highly important positions, many of them near the very top of the political ladder, though his record in these posts was often regarded as less than successful.

Ironically enough, it was instead Prime Minister David Lloyd George—Britain’s victorious leader of the First World War—who was forced out in 1922 and never once regained a government position during the remaining two decades of his life.

The reason for Lloyd George’s political eclipse was the complete collapse of his British Liberal Party, reduced to a mere shadow of its previous standing. Its place on the political spectrum was largely usurped by Britain’s newly risen socialists of the Labour Party, which held power alone or in coalition during most of the 1920s.

The key factor behind the replacement of the Liberals had been the massive expansion of the British franchise in early 1918, removing property qualifications for voting and therefore tripling the size of the electorate, allowing the large working-class to finally play a central role in elections. Much of that working-class voted Labour, and the Liberals disappeared as a result.

Another important factor was the severe political backlash against the horrific human losses that Britain had suffered during the war, with most of the electorate now considering Britain’s involvement to have been a disatrous mistake that they blamed upon the Liberals who had governed during those years. It’s certainly more than coincidental that some of the most important early Labour leaders such as E.D. Morel had been ardent anti-war activists, even suffering years of harsh wartime imprisonment for their views. As a Cabinet member, Churchill had been notorious for his bellicosity, and in the 1922 elections he lost his parliamentary seat to Morel, with Churchill forced to spend the next couple of years out of politics.

The Charmley biography was tremendously rich in detail, and if I’d read it a decade ago, I surely would have missed many of its most telling and almost hidden elements, items that seemed to similarly escape the notice of all the many distinguished reviewers.

For example, on p. 383 the author devoted two half-sentences to a somewhat cryptic reference to what was almost certainly the central turning point of World War II. But since that story has suffered near-total suppression for 85 years by virtually all Western historians, I doubt if even one reader in a hundred picked up on that item:

At the Supreme War Council on 28 March…Chamberlain had put forward a number of plans for offensive operations. These included a scheme of Churchill’s…and a plan for attacking the Baku oilfields in Russia from which Germany obtained much of her oil…attacking the Baku fields, although a more attractive prospect, involved the risk of war with Russia.

That extremely brief mention refers to the very serious plans that the Allies—the British and French—made during the early months of 1940 to launch a massive attack against Stalin’s Soviet Union. Code named “Operation Pike,” they intended to use their Middle Eastern airbases to unleash the largest strategic bombing offensive in the history of the world against the Soviet oil fields of Baku, while they also made diplomatic efforts to enlist the Turks and perhaps the Iranians into joining the Allied attack against the USSR.

As the declassified documents eventually showed, the Allies mistakenly regarded the Soviets as Hitler’s weak and vulnerable ally, constituting the “soft underbelly” of the powerful German war machine. They incorrectly believed that several weeks of aerial bombardment would be sufficient to totally destroy the Soviet oil facilities, thereby cutting Germany off from its main supply of that vital commodity. Furthermore, the heavily mechanized nature of Soviet agriculture would mean that the loss of those oil supplies might well produce a huge Soviet famine, perhaps leading to the political collapse of Stalin’s regime.

However, all these supposed facts were entirely wrong. Little if any of Germany’s oil came from the USSR, and as the world would quickly discover the following year, Soviet military might was enormously strong and resilient rather than feeble. Moreover, vastly larger and more advanced strategic bombing attacks against oil fields later in the war eventually demonstrated that those facilities were far less fragile and easily destroyed than the Allied leaders had originally believed.

But wartime military decisions are taken based upon existing beliefs rather than produced in 20-20 hindsight. Not only would an all-out Allied attack against the USSR during the first few months of 1940 have certainly failed, but it would have had catastrophic strategic consequences, bringing the Soviets directly into the war as Hitler’s outright military ally and thereby almost certainly ensuring a rapid Allied defeat.

By the end of this preparatory period, unmarked Allied spotter-planes were regularly violating Soviet airspace, drawing up the last-minute list of targets for the bombing offensive that was about to be unleashed, while the attack was only canceled after Hitler’s panzer divisions swept through France in May 1940 and knocked that country out of the war. Thus, as I explained in a 2019 article, Hitler’s attack had inadvertently saved the Allies from a monumental strategic disaster.

Once the victorious Germans occupied the Paris area, they were fortunate enough to capture all the secret documents, and achieved a major propaganda coup by publishing these in facsimile and translation, so that all knowledgeable individuals soon knew that the Allies had been on the very verge of attacking the Soviets. This crucial fact, omitted from virtually all subsequent Western histories, also helps to explain why Stalin remained so distrustful of Churchill’s diplomatic efforts the following year in the months preceding Hitler’s Operation Barbarossa.

Furthermore, some of the most far-reaching political consequences of a 1940 Allied attack upon the Soviet Union would have been totally unknown to the British and French leaders then planning it. Although they were certainly aware of the powerful Soviet-aligned Communist movements present in their own countries, only many years later did it become clear that the top leadership of the Roosevelt Administration was honeycombed by numerous agents fully loyal to Stalin, with the final proof awaiting the release of the Venona Decrypts in the 1990s. So if the Allies had suddenly gone to war against the Soviets, the fierce opposition of those influential individuals would have greatly reduced any future prospects of substantial American military assistance, let alone eventual intervention in the European conflict on the Allied side.

By any measure, the notion of a 1940 Allied attack against the neutral USSR would have been such a monumental blunder that it probably represented the single most embarrassing element of World War II, and a near-absolute blanket of silence quickly descended upon those facts, excluding them from virtually all subsequent Western histories. The first detailed coverage of that pivotal wartime turning point came in 2000 when historian Patrick Osborn published Operation Pike, an academic monograph based upon declassified government archives that appeared in a respected military history series.

Prior to that, I think the most extensive coverage in any Western book had been found in the 1955 wartime memoirs of prominent Anglo-French journalist Sisley Huddleston, which had causally mentioned the story in a couple of pages, whence I happened to discover it. The whole notion that the Allies had planned to attack the USSR in 1940 and that historical facts of such astonishing importance could have remained totally concealed for generations struck me as so implausible that I assumed the elderly Huddleston was merely delusional until I carefully investigated the issue and confirmed the reality of his remarkable claims.

Charmley only devoted about fifty words to this important topic, but I think that is fifty words more than the vast majority of other Western historians have allocated during the last eighty years, and his extremely brief mention convinced me of a couple of things. First, he was obviously aware of Operation Pike and its importance, but deliberately chose to completely downplay it, seeking to avoid academic controversy. And by absurdly stating that a massive Allied bombing offensive against the USSR “involved the risk of war with Russia” he seemed equally confident that virtually none of his readers were aware of the true facts, or would criticize such a ridiculous characterization of the situation.

Read the Whole Article

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Of all the many dark centuries in the history of Christendom, there is no denying that the 20th century was one of the darkest. It was also the deadliest. In terms of the sheer body count, the last century, with its wars of irreligion, fought with industrialized weapons of mass destruction, was the most murderous in human history—and among the most tyrannous. New secular fundamentalist ideologies, such as communism and Nazism, ushered in a culture of death in which millions perished on the altar of “political correctness.”

Having celebrated the heroic witness of Anna Abrikosova (Mother Catherine of Siena) against communist tyranny, let’s now celebrate women who bore witness to the culture of life in the midst of the death culture of the Nazis.

When we think of Catholics who were martyred by the Nazis, our minds will turn immediately to St. Maximilian Kolbe and St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein), both of whom were murdered in the infamous Auschwitz death camp. The former was deprived of food and water for two weeks and was then killed with a lethal injection of carbolic acid; the latter was exterminated in the concentration camp’s infamous gas chamber. Both were canonized by St. John Paul II.

Edith Stein is not, however, the only woman to be honored by the Church for resisting the tyranny of the Nazis. Eleven Polish nuns of the Sisters of the Holy Family of Nazareth were murdered by machine gun fire by the Nazis in August 1943 and have been beatified by the Church. Another Polish woman, Blessed Marianna Biernacka, was shot by German soldiers after she asked to be killed in the place of her pregnant daughter, unborn grandchild, and son-in-law.

A Hungarian woman, Blessed Sára Salkaházi, was murdered by Nazi collaborators in December 1944 for her leadership of the Catholic Women’s Association, which helped to hide hundreds of Jews in Budapest. A young devout Italian woman, Blessed Teresa of Savona, was strangled and shot to death in August 1944 for resisting a German soldier who was trying to rape her, emulating the example of the better-known St. Maria Goretti, who had been stabbed to death for resisting an attempted rape in 1902.

Blessed Maria Antonina Kratochwil, a religious sister imprisoned by the Nazis in occupied Poland, was brutally attacked by a member of the Gestapo after she had tried to protect Jewish women from being abused by the Nazis. She died from her injuries in October 1942. Another religious sister, Blessed Maria Restituta Kafka, was a Franciscan who worked as a surgical nurse in Austria. In defiance of the Nazi authorities, she maintained overt Christian practices in her hospital, including the displaying of crucifixes on the walls. She was arrested for her anti-Nazi stance and was guillotined in March 1943. Prior to her execution, she wrote the following:

It does not matter how far we are separated from everything, no matter what is taken from us: the faith that we carry in our hearts is something no one can take from us. In this way we build an altar in our own hearts.         

Among the heroic women warriors who fought the Nazis, some were destined to survive the war, outliving Hitler’s self-proclaimed “Thousand-Year Reich” which was destroyed after only 12 ignominious years. Blessed Enrichetta Alfieri, an Italian Sister of Charity, worked for the resistance in Milan, and Zofia Kossak-Szczucka, was active in the resistance in Poland, editing an underground newspaper and founding the Front for the Rebirth of Poland, an anti-Nazi Catholic organization.

Kossak-Szczucka was a famous writer and had been elected to the Polish Academy of Literature on the eve of the war. She was arrested for helping Jews escape the clutches of the Nazis and was sentenced to death, a fate she escaped, thanks to the Polish underground, during the Warsaw Uprising. Having survived the war, she continued to resist tyranny as a dissident voice against the new totalitarian regime of the communists. She died in 1968, at the age of 78.

We will conclude by returning to Auschwitz concentration camp and to the prolife witness of Stanisława Leszczyńska, a wife and mother who had worked for many years as a midwife prior to the Nazi invasion of Poland in 1939. With her husband and children, she began to assist local Jews by delivering food and false documents. In February 1943, she was arrested and interrogated by the Gestapo, along with her daughter and two of her sons. Her husband escaped. She would never see him again because he would subsequently be killed fighting in the Warsaw Uprising. The two sons were sent as slave laborers to the stone quarries of the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp.

Leszczyńska and her 24-year-old daughter Sylwia were transported to Auschwitz in April 1943. Due to her experience as a midwife, she was assigned to work in the women’s camp infirmary along with her daughter, who had been a medical student prior to the war. She was under the supervision of the notorious Dr. Josef Mengele, later dubbed the “Angel of Death” for his medical experiments on prisoners, who ordered her to write reports about birth defects and problems associated with childbirth.

Leszczyńska’s experience at Auschwitz would be recorded in The Report of a Midwife from Auschwitz (Raport położnej z Oświęcimia). Of the 3,000 babies that she delivered, approximately 2,500 perished, many through cold-blooded murder. Horrifically, she described how the newborn children were snatched away and taken to another room to be drowned in a barrel by someone whom she named as “Sister Klara,” who had apparently been imprisoned at Auschwitz for infanticide. Others, who were lucky enough to be born with blue eyes, were sent away to become Germanized. Only about 30 infants survived in the care of their mothers. Heartbreakingly, many expectant mothers had no idea what was going to happen to their babies and traded their meager food rations for fabric to be used for diapers.

Leszczyńska remained the camp’s midwife until Auschwitz was liberated in January 1945. Continuing to work as a midwife after the war, she prayed over every newborn baby that she delivered in remembrance of those who had died in the death camp. In January 1970, on the 25th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, Leszczyńska met the women prisoners of Auschwitz and their grown-up children who had been born in the camp and whom she had helped to deliver.

Eighteen months earlier, Pope Paul VI had issued the encyclical Humanae Vitae, in defense of human life in the wake of the new culture of death emerging after the so-called sexual revolution had led to demands for the legalization of infanticide. As the fight against the death-culture continues, it is right and just that we should remember these women warriors of the culture of life.

This article was originally published on Crisis Magazine.

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I’ve long believed that public relations (propaganda) is one of the most powerful but invisible forces in our society. Again and again, I’ve watched professional PR firms create narratives that most of the country believes, regardless of how much it goes against their self-interests. What’s most remarkable is that despite the exact same tactics being used repeatedly on the public, most people simply can’t see it. When you try to point out exactly how they’re being bamboozled by yet another PR campaign, they often can’t recognize it—instead insisting you’re paranoid or delusional.

That’s why one of my major goals in this publication has been to expose this industry. Once you understand their playbook—having “independent” experts push sculpted language that media outlets then repeat—it becomes very easy to spot, and saves you from falling into the traps most people do. The COVID-19 vaccines, for instance, were facilitated by the largest PR campaign of our lifetime.

One of the least appreciated consequences of this industry is that many of our cultural beliefs ultimately originate from PR campaigns. This explains why so many widely believed things are “wrong”—if a belief were actually true, it wouldn’t require a massive PR investment to instill in society. Due to PR’s power, the viewpoints it instills tend to crowd out other cultural beliefs.

In this article, we’ll take a deeper look at what’s behind one of those implanted beliefs: “vaccines don’t cause autism.”

The Frequency of Vaccine Injuries

When vaccinated and unvaccinated children are compared, chronic illnesses are 3-7X as common in the vaccinated individuals. Because of this, there is a longstanding embargo on ever conducting this type of research (allowing the status quo to remain that “no evidence exists” between the vaccine and the injury).

Recently, Senator Ron Johnson revealed that a robust study comparing vaccinated children to unvaccinated had been conducted at a premier medical institution in 2020, but due to the results it showed, despite previously committing to publishing the paper, its authors chose not to, due to how much it violated the medical orthodoxy.

It’s important to note that beyond these results being earth-shattering, they are also entirely in line with every other long-term comparative study that has ever been done on vaccines—all of which I synopsized here (along with the characteristic signs that allow one to identify the frightfully frequent vaccine-injured children).

Erasing Encephalitis

A key theme of George Orwell’s book 1984 is that language defines a culture. If ideas aren’t present in language, the populace can’t conceive of them (which is why 1984’s ruling party eliminated words like ‘freedom’, ‘rebellion’, and ‘justice’ from the new language).

Another way language controls the public consciousness is through the use of ambiguous term which are not clearly defined, so that depending on the needs of the situation, the audience can be steered towards the desired interpretation of it, even if those interpretations sometimes overtly contradict each other (effectively allowing the PR firm’s client to “have their cake and eat it).

For example, Fauci was a master of using slippery language to constantly get whatever he wanted with no accountability through implying but never explicitly stating his desired conclusion (which the media would then run with). A classic example is having everyone in lockstep assert vaccines are “safe and effective” without ever defining what that actually means, thereby allowing that meaningless statement to be treated as “vaccines are 100% safe and effective,” yet simultaneously, having no accountability for lying as those who repeat it never actually said that. This was best demonstrated when Fauci (who continually told us the vaccine would definitely prevent us from getting COVID) was grilled at a recent Congressional hearing, where in response to:

But we knew from the trials that people who got vaccinated still were subject to getting COVID, so was the COVID-19 vaccine 100% effective?

Fauci stated:

I don’t believe any vaccine is 100% effective.

Note: in a recent article I also highlighted how the ambiguous phrase “brain death” was created to make people believe unresponsive individuals were in fact dead, thereby both removing the societal cost of perpetually caring for them and securing a reliable supply of donor organs.

One of the most widely recognized side effects of vaccination is neurological damage (particularly to the cranial nerves and brain). Prior to the censorship which took over our medical journals, reports of vaccine brain and nerve injuries (e.g., encephalitis) were extensively reported throughout the medical literature—including many identical to what are seen in modern-day autism.

Furthermore, it used to be widely recognized that vaccines could make you “mentally retarded” or “severely retarded.”

Given the taboo around “retarded” that exists now, it quite noteworthy how nonchalantly it was used there. This shift resulted from disability groups in the late 1990s and early 2000’s campaigning against “retarded,” an extensive 2008 campaign (ending the “r-word”) and in 2010, Obama signing a law which effectively outlawed the term by removing “mentally retarded” from all federal laws and statutes and replacing it with “intellectual disability” (something which has never been done with any other word).

As such, the vaccine brain injuries, which made children mentally retarded were re-labeled as “autism,” while in tandem, autism was given an extremely broad and vague definition that swept over all the concurrently occurring neurological injuries.

Because of this, the stark and unmistakable impression of a severe vaccine brain injury (e.g., “you know Sue’s son became severely retarded after their 2 month vaccines”) was displaced with a much more amorphous term that was easy to write off because it was too complex and vague to think about—hence providing easy mental escapes from this uncomfortable topic, thereby making it easy to write off and close one’s mind to.
Note: the mechanisms through which vaccines cause autism are explained here. Recently, I saw one of the most compelling proofs of this theory—where triplets who all regressed within hours of receiving a hot pneumococcal vaccine lot—and immediately prior to the regression, all had a total loss of cranial reflexes, demonstrating the vaccine-induced microstrokes indeed cause autism (along with many other forms of brain damage).

Mild Autism

Anytime something injures human beings (unless it’s highly lethal), less severe reactions will be much more common than severe injuries (e.g., far more were disabled than killed by the COVID vaccines).5

As such, individuals with minor neurological injuries from vaccination have changes that lightly overlap with those seen in severe injuries.

Because of this, “autism exists on a spectrum” with many of its characteristic changes being seen to lesser extents in individuals who are not severely disabled (e.g., Elon Musk has characteristic autistic traits and has admitted as such).

Yet, rather than recognizing that the rise in autistic-like traits signals something is profoundly changing in the population — and that a smaller group may be developing severe brain damage and more extreme versions of these traits — the prevailing narrative claims the autism surge is simply due to people who were otherwise basically normal (aside from a few “autistic quirks”) being re-diagnosed as autistic.

As such, the autism epidemic is dismissed as an illusion, attributed to “selective data interpretation by anti-vaxxers” — a convenient explanation that allows many to avoid grappling with an uncomfortable possibility.

Likewise, whenever “autism” is equated to brain damage, a large chorus of people can be relied upon to denounce them by saying their (highly functional) autistic child is not brain damaged, thereby silencing and ending the actual debate (e.g., Elizabeth Warren has repeatedly done this to RFK). Similarly, once the societal conception of vaccine brain injuries was shifted from “mentally retarded” or “autism,” a push began to normalize autism (e.g., with terms like neurodiversity), thereby making it even more taboo to criticize the complications of this illness.

Fortunately, independent voices are beginning to sound the alarm over this issue. Gavin DeBecker (a longtime advocate for vaccine safety), in an excellent newly released book points out that:

1. There is no clear definition for autism or a definitive way to diagnose much of it.

2. The same people who whitewashed the link between autism and vaccines by claiming there is “no evidence” also did the same for many other controversies, such as:
•Agent Orange being safe—when in reality (due to faulty production by Monsanto) it was extremely dangerous
•Vaccines causing SIDS (something there actually is a century of evidence for)
•Vaccines causing Gulf War Syndrome (a devastating military illness Congress’s GAO admitted was likely due to a poorly manufactured anthrax vaccine).

The book has many poignant quotes like this one:

Promoting their work on vaccine safety, an IOM spokesperson said, “We looked very hard and found very little evidence of serious adverse harms from vaccines. The message I would want parents to have is one of reassurance.”

Since that’s the same “very little evidence” the Government found with Agent Orange, burn pits, the anthrax vaccine, Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, breast implants, and Gulf War Syndrome, I’m not sure how reassuring it ought to be to parents.

Likewise, in his book, DeBecker highlights that thanks to a leaker, we learned that the IOM decided at the start their report would not acknowledge vaccines caused autism (or any other injury) and bent over backwards to find wording which implied this without explicitly stating it a patent lie. All of that in turn is exposed within an excellent interview Del Bigtree did with DeBecker.

Note: at this point, one of the primary obstacles we are facing in ending detrimental vaccine mandates is not a lack of data, but rather finding a way to reach people who are resistant to the idea that vaccines could be harmful. Debecker’s book (Forbidden Facts) was specifically written to provide the rhetorical tools that could bring about this shift.

Autism Data

Given all of this, there are two critical, but almost never discussed data points to consider.

First, one of the primary studies cited to support the argument that the rise in autism actually is due to diagnostic reclassification is a 2009 study from California (conducted when the word retarded was being banned). Rather than show minor traits were being relabeled as autism, it showed 26.4% of children who had previously been diagnosed as “mentally retarded” became “autistic” (as did another commonly cited study).

Second, while the general public has been conditioned to believe in the amorphous autism label, since this is untenable for those actually working with severely disabled children (vs. those on the spectrum), within the autism field, the two are differentiated by the terms “profound autism” and the far less severe “non-profound” autism. CDC data in turn, shows that roughly 26.7% of autistic children have “profound autism,” and that it is continually increasing (although at a much slower rate than non-profound autism):

However, since clarifying what autism is defeats the purpose of the label (having it be an ambiguous term that ultimately sweeps everything under the rug), this distinction is rarely if ever mentioned, and folks outside the autism community are seldom even aware of the term “profound autism” — they simply know “vaccines do not cause autism.”

Read the Whole Article

The post How Vaccine Brain Injuries Were Rebranded and Erased From Memory appeared first on LewRockwell.

“What do you expect when you sue the president?” Hearing that comment, some people may guess the comment was made by someone addressing one of President Trump’s political opponents who has been targeted for federal prosecution. That quote, though, is much older. It is from an IRS agent addressing officials of a conservative organization that was being audited during Bill Clinton’s presidency. This illustrates that the use of federal agencies to punish presidents’ enemies did not start with President Trump.

The administration of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt used tax investigations against political opponents. Targeted individuals included publishers of newspapers that were highly critical of Roosevelt’s domestic and foreign policies.

President John F. Kennedy used the IRS and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to drive his conservative critics off the radio. President Lyndon Johnson also used the IRS and the FCC to silence conservative critics. One tool that was used to silence conservatives was to accuse broadcasters of violating the “fairness doctrine” by favoring conservative commentators.

President Richard Nixon used the IRS to target political enemies. The Nixon administration also threatened television and radio companies with revocation of their broadcast licenses unless they provided favorable coverage of the administration.

During the Clinton administration, the IRS not only targeted conservative and libertarian organizations it audited Paula Jones after she sued President Clinton for sexual harassment.

During the George W. Bush years, the IRS targeted organizations critical of the Iraq War. When Barack Obama assumed the presidency, the tax agency turned its attention back to conservative and libertarian groups, with a focus on organizations associated with the Tea Party. The Department of Homeland Security also issued a warning that those with pro-liberty bumper stickers — including supporting the Libertarian Party or my presidential campaign — might be violent extremists.

During the Biden administration, many Americans received harsh sentences for being present at the Capitol on January 6 even if they did not commit any violent acts.

Federal agencies can also target presidents’ political enemies without a presidential order to do so being issued. Some ambitious and unscrupulous individuals will target a president’s enemies believing that this is an effective way to curry favor with the president or high-level administration officials. Others will use the power of the government against the president’s political enemies or those involved with political movements seeking to change the direction of the government out of a belief that these people or groups constitute a threat to the federal government that justifies violating constitutional rights.

This history suggests that abuse of power is an inevitable feature of the modern welfare-warfare-regulatory state. Therefore, instead of focusing just on electing the “right” president, we should focus on shrinking the size and scope of the federal government to its constitutional limitations. This will ensure that Americans can exercise their right to criticize the government without fear of reprisal. As Thomas Jefferson said, “in questions of power then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the constitution.”

The post It Didn’t Start With Trump appeared first on LewRockwell.

While we focus on AI and finance, society is crumbling beneath our feet.

According to both the mainstream media and social media, the forces that will shape the future are:

1) AI (i.e. technology’s impact on jobs and growth),

2) geopolitical competition for AI dominance, energy, resources, trade, military and financial power,

3) finance, which includes cryptocurrencies, stablecoins, Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), federal deficits, hyperinflation / currency devaluation and precious metals –all of which boil down to “what can I do to ensure that my wealth will remain intact whatever happens.”

The key issues are technology, finance and market forces–the core drivers of the global economy. Society isn’t on the menu other than as a quickly dismissed source of dutiful hand-wringing.

While all these will be influential, no one seems to see the domestic crisis hidden in plain sight or the revolution it makes inevitable. In my analysis, these will be the dominant forces shaping the coming decade.

As I have documented in recent posts– If We Measured the Economy by Quality-of-Life Instead of GDP, We’d Be In a Depression, For Many, This Recession Will Feel Like a Depression and Crunch Time for Cities, Counties and States—the system has reached its limits and is coming apart.

What is the crisis? There are three self-reinforcing dynamics in play.

The first is the imbalance of the economy and society: the economy now dominates society, and historically this leads to disorder. Everyone looking at technology and finance as the solutions has it backwards: technology and finance are the problems, not the solutions, as they are the primary drivers of the imbalance between society and the economy.

As I explain in my new book’s Introduction (free), society and the market forces that drive the economy have different timelines, tasks and priorities.

Market forces are focused on expanding new markets, heedless of consequences beyond profit and market share; the future consequences fall on society, which must take the long view and absorb the impacts on the workforce, social stability and the nation’s commons, i.e. the environment.

The second is that inequality–of wealth, income, opportunity and power–has reached extremes that can be visualized as a pendulum: pushed to an extreme, the pendulum will swing to the opposite extreme.

It’s not just inequality that’s reached an extreme–so has exploitation, artifice and moral decay.

The average income of the bottom 60% households is $38,000 annually, while to qualify as a top 10% household requires about $250,000 annually.

As I have documented here, insecurity can’t be measured solely by income–the other dynamic is precarity: the income of many households is variable, and unexpected expenses such as auto repairs or health emergencies (both of which have reached insane heights) can throw the household into a financial hole.

Those ignoring society to focus on the economy assume the bottom 60% of Americans–200 million people, 80 million households who own so little of the nation’s financial wealth that their share is a rounding error–will just uncomplainingly accept their accelerating impoverishment as prices for essential soar and wages don’t keep pace.

The problem with this assumption is this cohort is making too little money (even with increases in minimum wages) to afford the essentials of shelter, food, healthcare, childcare and transport.

Inflation is not dead; it’s already changed the landscape permanently. Lower-cost alternatives have dried up: even old cars and apartments in seedy neighborhoods cost a fortune now.

Those between the bottom 60% and the top 10%–the 30% who self-identify as “middle class”— may feel immune to precarity, but much of their financial stability rests on sands that will collapse in a recession / asset-bubble pop.

Their financial stability is fragile because it now rests on three fragile economic structures:

1) credit-asset bubbles that have increased “wealth” without increasing use-value;

2) the transfer of risk from corporations and the government to households,

3) the “trickledown economy” where the wealthiest 10% now collect virtually all the non-wage income from income-producing assets and account for 50% of all spending–wealth and income that’s supposed to “trickle down” to the bottom 90%.

Once the asset bubbles pop and even the top 10% start experiencing job losses and declining income, the layoffs in the bottom 90% will cascade as spending dries up and stock portfolios and home values return to Earth.

Only those 62 and older were in the workforce in a “real recession,” i.e. one that can’t be reversed by the Federal Reserve lowering short-term interest rates and the federal government borrowing and spending more to “spend our way out of recession.” The last real recession was 43 years ago, 1981-82.

There is also a demographic dynamic in play globally: Gen Z is no longer accepting that massive inequality between generations is “the way it has to be.”

The second dynamic is the buffers that enabled people to hang on through recessions have all thinned: where debt was a modest percentage of GDP in the 1970s and 1980s recessions, now it’s at historic highs. Households have already tapped credit cards and so borrowing more money to get by is not an option.

So when push comes to shove–when hours are cut or a job is lost–the only choice is what not to pay: student loan, car payment, rent, as food and utilities take precedence.

The buffers are already thinned and we haven’t even slipped into recession yet.

The third dynamic is the least recognized: the moral decay that has pushed exploitation, profiteering and artifice to extremes, undermining the foundations of the economy and society.

Read the Whole Article

The post The Crisis and Revolution Hidden in Plain Sight appeared first on LewRockwell.

It’s so silly how American politics is just nonstop fake revolutions now.

Millions flooded the US streets for the “No Kings” protests over the weekend to oppose a monarchy which does not exist without making a single tangible demand. Power was not challenged in any meaningful way. The status quo wasn’t disrupted in the slightest. People held up some signs saying the president is orange and that if Kamala were president they would be at brunch, and then went home.

The whole thing was just one big pep rally for the Democratic Party, designed to accomplish nothing beyond getting American liberals excited about the prospect of someday voting for Gavin Newsom. A bunch of boomers showed up to dance around and hold signs and feel as though they are fighting the power in their feely bits, while drumming up support for the same status quo which gave rise to Trump in the first place.

Liberals are openly telling you how they don’t care about the issues American people face so they can go back to brunch.

Demand better opposition than Orange man bad. https://t.co/bZOuSG2rge

— Modern Rome in Freefall (@ljmontello) October 18, 2025

You see the same fake revolutionary astroturf zeitgeist on the Republican side. American rightists are constantly pretending they’re fighting some kind of populist rebellion against an oppressive establishment even while their party controls every branch of the US government. They act like Trump is ending the wars and fighting the Deep State even as he stomps out free speech on behalf of Israel, rolls out a Palantir surveillance system, pours weapons into facilitating Israel’s genocidal atrocities, bombs Iran and Yemen, ramps up for war with Venezuela, and perpetuates the horrific proxy war in Ukraine.

It’s two plutocrat-owned warmongering imperialist parties whipping their respective bases into the mass delusion that they are participating in a heroic act of revolutionary defiance by voting Democrat or Republican. They get everyone fighting a fake revolution so that nobody thinks about fighting a real one.

It didn’t used to be this way, for the record. The US has been a murderous and tyrannical oligarchic bloodbath for its entire existence as a nation, but up until fairly recently its politics looked more or less like the politics of other western nations. Politicians had campaigns where they’d try to argue that they have the best policies, there’d be an election, and then they’d spend their time in office philandering and pretending to make themselves useful. There wasn’t this constant LARPing about how voting for one of the two mainstream parties is participating some kind of a courageous insurgency against monarchy or communism or the Deep State or whatever.

#NoKings pic.twitter.com/biroZ9oyLE

— George Conway (@gtconway3d) October 18, 2025

That’s changing because public discontent with the status quo is soaring to all-time highs as Americans get poorer and everything gets shittier. The establishment order is no longer accepted and people are starting to push for real change, so their outrage needs to be harnessed and corralled into politically safe directions.

Donald Trump’s entire political career has been all about this. He introduced a new WWE-style kayfabe theatrics into American politics where both Democrats and Republicans feel as though they are fighting the power in a very important and relevant way — Republicans because they believe Trump is a populist rebel and Democrats because they believe Trump is an unprecedented threat to freedom and democracy. Really his whole thing is about protecting the status quo of the US empire, but both mainstream factions are duped into seeing the exact opposite.

Now you’ve got the two main strands of American political thought falling all over themselves to be the first in line to support the establishment, all while being told that they are fighting the power. They remain mollified because they think they are doing something, and the powerful get to keep everything they’ve stolen.

It’s truly a brilliant scam. Evil, destructive and tyrannical, to be sure, but you’ve got to admire the skill with which this psyop has been pulled off.

______________

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The post US Politics Is Just Nonstop Fake Revolutions Now appeared first on LewRockwell.

“The American pioneer spirit [was] characterized by a relentless pursuit of new opportunities, a willingness to face challenges, and a commitment to building a better future.”  This spirit was propounded in “Manifest Destiny, in U.S. history, the supposed inevitability of the continued territorial expansion of the boundaries of the United States westward to the Pacific and beyond.” This sense of  inevitability could be applied at any time and anywhere a resilient, ambitious, and even desperate and ruthless  people come to a relatively sparsely populated region where the inhabitants do not have the wherewithal to resist their military, economic and cultural power. A corollary to this inevitability is the likely ethnic cleansing and/or genocide of the natives.

I was triggered (in a purely intellectual sense, not emotionally) to contemplate the European experience in America in comparison with Israel today by one of my favorite podcasters when he described Hamas, and I think more generally the Palestinians, as “savages.”

Europeans arrived in North America to a relatively sparsely populated continent full of potential. The Zionist Jews arrived in Palestine to a relatively sparsely populated territory that was a part of the sickly Ottoman Empire. By the 19th century the Manifest Destiny to control the continent from ocean to ocean was fixed in culture and was official policy. “The term “Greater Israel“ has been a contentious and debated concept related to the State of Israel and its territorial boundaries.” The concept of Greater Israel is certainly in their culture and seems to drive many policy decisions.

Relations with the indigenous peoples were mixed in North America. But there is no doubt that the native Americans were often very savage. Many tribes lived in constant warfare, committing murder and torture while making slaves of their victims, especially women and children. The European Americans could be vicious in turn. Perhaps the capstone event of Manifest Destiny and the ethnic cleansing that went with it was the Wounded Knee Massacre in 1890. While 90 Indian braves were killed, the killing of about 200 women and children made this a massacre. The following quote found at the Wikipedia page is illuminating of the mindset in the 19th century American west and, I think, the mindset today in Israel.

“In an editorial response to the event, the young newspaper editor L. Frank Baum, later the author of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, wrote in The Aberdeen Saturday Pioneer on January 3, 1891:”

“The Pioneer has before declared that our only safety depends upon the total extermination of the Indians. Having wronged them for centuries, we had better, in order to protect our civilization, follow it up by one more wrong and wipe these untamed and untamable creatures from the face of the earth. In this lies future safety for our settlers and the soldiers who are under incompetent commands. Otherwise, we may expect future years to be as full of trouble with the redskins as those have been in the past.”

I will never think of the Wizard of Oz in the same way. But Baum is insightful enough to recognize the tragedy inherent in his conclusion. I believe similar comments are commonly expressed by Israelis (for example).

This post is not a moral judgement, but an exercise in empathy for both Israelis and Palestinians. We Americans, especially young people, might say “we would never destroy Gaza like Israel has done,” and would be neglecting the fact that we have already done so to native Americans.

In the real world, might makes right. Furthermore, who are indigenous peoples itself is a complex topic as elucidated recently by Ryan McMaken, Are Any Peoples Truly Indigenous?. This is especially true in Palestine where there is an unarguable connection between Jewish people and this territory. But I wonder, in 100 years will most Israelis be ashamed of their ferocious ancestors’ actions as most Americans are today of our own?

The similarity between the history of the American West and Israel today breaks down in at least one important way. As Europeans swept the continent of Native Americans there were no similar relatives to sustain and support them. Thus their end did become inevitable. However, as Israel sweeps Arab Muslims out of Greater Israel there are hundreds of millions more Arabs and Muslims that could support them and eventually take revenge. Thus there is a different historical analogy to consider.

Crusader states – Wikipedia

“The Crusader states, or Outremer, were four Christian states established in the Levant region and southeastern Anatolia from 1098 to 1291. Following the principles of feudalism, the foundation for these polities was laid by the First Crusade, which was proclaimed by the Latin Church in 1095 in order to reclaim the Holy Land after it was lost to the 7th-century Muslim conquest. From north to south, they were: the County of Edessa (1098–1150), the Principality of Antioch (1098–1268), the County of Tripoli (1102–1289), and the Kingdom of Jerusalem (1099–1291).”

For me this is the more probable outcome for Israel if they continue on their current path of military conquest, a 200 year blip in history. If Israelis would understand this historical example perhaps they would explore peaceful solutions with their neighbors instead of a victory in total war.

The post Israeli Manifest Destiny appeared first on LewRockwell.

It has been one month and 10 days since Charlie Kirk’s assassination, and we still know nothing factual about it.  

The information or disinformation that has come out is nonsensical.  Andrew Kolvet, a spokesman for Turning Point USA and executive producer of The Charlie Kirk Show, said the doctor who examined Kirk told him that there was no exit wound.  Yet, we are told that the bullet was fired from a 30-06 rifle used by the suspect Tyler Robinson.  This is an impossibility. A 30-06 would have left little of Kirk’s neck or head.  It is ammunition used for grizzly bear and moose.

There is no evidence that any media or FBI questioned the attending doctor concerning his report of no exit wound as reported by Kolvet.

An internet search reports that no bullet has been found. A suggestion is offered that perhaps it has been recovered but the news is being withheld “possibly due to ongoing forensic processing or investigative sensitivity.” After 40 days they are still examining a bullet? The only possible thing that could be sensitive about the bullet, if they have it, is it is not 30-06 caliber.

The bullet that blew out the back of President Kennedy’s skull and managed to continue its magical path and cause three more wounds was allegedly found intact on the floor of President Kennedy’s limousine. It was a less powerful caliber than the alleged 30-06 used to murder Kirk. The explanation handed to us dumbshit insouciant Americans is that Kirk was so strong that the bullet fragmented and does not exist.

So what evidence do they have on which to try the suspect, Tyler Robinson?  Theories of a fragmented  bullet from a likely planted rifle with no evidence that the bullet that killed Kirk was ever fired from the rifle? Anyone can put an empty case in the receiver of a rifle or fire into the air or ground and not eject the case.

Other reports said the doctor attending to Kirk said that he found the bullet under Kirk’s neck skin.  This cannot be correct if the bullet was a powerful 30-06.  As far as available information goes, no one in the media or FBI has asked the doctor for the bullet or even inquired if he found it.

Among these astonishing investigatory failures, no one, not the FBI, not the media, has tracked down and questioned the clearly indicated man in brown whose movements and behavior suggest he might have been the murderer and who, according to an available video assuming it is not an AI creation, supervised the loading of Kirk’s body into a private vehicle and departed with it.

The media customarily dismisses any departure from the official narrative as a conspiracy theory and ignores it.  Therefore, those who intend to deceive us have a free hand.

Kash Patel, on whom so many Americans rested their hopes for a return of a truthful and honest FBI, owes us explanations.  He needs to tell us whether they have the bullet and if not why not.  He needs to tell us if there is an exit wound and if not, why not. He needs to tell us who the man in brown is and whether he has been questioned and whether the video evidence of him directing Kirk’s body into a private vehicle and driving off with it is valid.  He needs to tell us how Tyler Robinson hid the murder weapon in the nearby woods when he jumped down from the roof with no rifle in his possession.  

Many have concluded that the man in brown was an Israeli agent who killed Kirk because Kirk had begun leading the rising American generation to question, rather than to worship, Israel.  The absence of a professional investigation and objective reporting of Kirk’s assassination supports the belief that the Trump regime is covering up Israel’s murder of Charlie Kirk.

The post Who Buried the Investigation of Charlie Kirk’s Murder? appeared first on LewRockwell.

On October 18th, the Republican Party propaganda news site Zero Hedge headlined “‘Fueled By Billionaires’: No Kings Prepares Color-Revolution-Style Mobilization Against Trump” and reported:

The Democratic Party’s dark-money NGO network, bankrolled by left-wing billionaires, is reportedly preparing to activate a coordinated, color-revolution-style mobilization across the U.S. this weekend – a replay of failed agitation attempts seen earlier this year targeting President Trump and Elon Musk. The operation, marketed under the “No Kings” banner and portrayed publicly as a grassroots movement, in reality functions as a professionalized protest-industrial complex. Its composition includes a blend of paid activists, white boomers suffering from Stage 4 Trump Derangement Syndrome, and a smaller contingent of organic, unhinged leftists who recite MSNBC talking points by heart.

Little do these white boomers know, the “No Kings” movement, supposedly against “kings and billionaires”, is, in reality, funded by leftist billionaire kings themselves. In truth, No Kings is bankrolled by far-left foundations backed by the same billionaire class that has been waging a political war against President Trump since his first term. Essentially, one faction of billionaires hates another, so their woke non-profit soldiers create a front group, brand it “No Kings,” and bankroll an army of paid protesters and unhinged left-wing activists. This is America in 2025: the permanent protest-industrial complex of hate and chaos, financed by the left.

Drilling down into the dark-money network funding No Kings are investigative researchers Peter Schweizer and Seamus Bruner of the Government Accountability Institute. Their new bombshell report exposes how the protest-industrial complex, dubbed “Riot, Inc.,” is, in their words, “FUELED BY BILLIONAIRES.”

“We traced $294,487,641 to the official No Kings 2.0 partners & organizers…all funneled through the same “Riot Inc.” dark-money networks: Arabella network $79.7M+ Soros network $72.1M+ Ford network $51.7M+, Tides $45.5M+, Rockefeller $28.6M+, and Buffett $16.6M+,” Bruner wrote on X.

Soros’s Open Society network directly contributed $72 million+ to official No Kings 2.0 organizers & partners. Soros is a primary architect of the “Riot Inc.” political protest model and a master of “color revolutions.”

Zuck orgs funneled $50 million+ into the Riot Inc. dark-

money network through Arabella- and Tides-linked foundations. His money helps underwrite the same protest infrastructure now powering “No Kings 2.0.”

Billionaire #3: HANSJÖRG WYSS

The Swiss-born mega-donor is the largest foreign financier of the U.S. protest complex. GAI traced $245 million+ from Wyss to the Arabella network — the operational hub behind “No Kings 2.0.”

Billionaire #4: BILL GATES

Gates Foundation pumped $100 million+ into the same Arabella–Tides–Ford infrastructure funding this weekend’s global protests.

Billionaire #5: MARC BENIOFF: Salesforce billionaire funds added $20 million+ to the mix. Together: $294.4 million from billionaire-backed networks fueling the “No Billionaires” protests.

OBVIOUSLY “No Kings 2.0” isn’t grassroots. This level of coordination requires serious funds. The protestors should just own it! Instead they hold up anti-billionaire signs funded by…billionaires. Are they being dishonest or ignorant?

Recall that Bruner and Schweizer penned a note (read here) in mid-June that revealed more than $100 million was plowed into No Kings and partners via the Arabella dark money network. …

We’ve been studying “No Kings” for months and have written a detailed report based on the social media activity of its organizers – the group 50501.

The linked thread covers key findings

The report is here: https://static.itsyourgov.org/No-Kings-Report.pdf…

It’s good research but it ignores that the same is true for Republican Party ‘grassroots’ organizations such as Charlie Kirk’s was (his Turning Point USA, funded mainly by evangelical Protestant billionaires — very pro-Israel); and the example here will not be Kirk’s organization (such as I wrote about here) but instead an even more successful such Republican-Party billionaires’ organization that is led by the equally young but far more secretive Jessica Anderson, whom, apparently, only insiders know of.

On 31 May 2025, the major Republican billionaires’ Foundation, the Heritage Fundation, which had produced for the incoming second Trump Administration Trump’s policy-positions, in its report “Project 25”, headlined “Heritage Foundation Announces New Era for The Oversight Project”, and reported that, “The Heritage Foundation announced today that The Oversight Project will become its own entity with the strong support, partnership, and backing of The Heritage Foundation. Since its establishment in 2022, The Oversight Project has unearthed massive amounts of fraud, corruption, and abuse within our federal government. The Oversight Project has filed over 100,000 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, and nearly 100 lawsuits. . …”

The Ballotpedia article about “Jessica Anderson (Washington, D.C.)” opened:

Jessica Anderson is the president of the Sentinel Action Fund super PAC. She previously worked as the executive director of Heritage Action for America.

Biography

Anderson graduated from the University of Florida.[1] Anderson previously worked for the Civitas Institute, a think tank based in North Carolina.[2] While there, she was in charge of their get-out-the-vote (GOTV) campaign.[3] Anderson joined Heritage Action for America in 2011.[3] Heritage Action for America’s website says their “mission is to fight for conservative policies in Washington, D.C. and in state capitals across the country. We turn ideas into bills and bills into law.”[4]

Anderson was named Heritage Action for America’s executive director in 2020.[5] She also worked as associate director of intergovernmental affairs and strategic initiatives at the Office of Management and Budget in President Donald Trump‘s (R) first administration.[6]

Anderson became president of the Sentinel Action Fund, a super PAC, in 2022.[7] The organization’s website describes itself as “the only conservative Super PAC with a year-round ground game committed to turning out absentee, early vote, and ‘day of’ voters.”[8]

Work and activities

Sentinel Action Fund

Anderson launched the Sentinel Action Fund in 2022 as a super PAC for Heritage Action for America.[9] In 2023, Anderson left Heritage Action for America to focus on the Sentinel Action Fund, which, according to the Washington Examiner, relaunched and was “completely and legally separate from the Heritage Foundation and Heritage Action.”[10]

In an interview with the Washington Examiner, she said the Sentinel Action Fund “will harness all of this work by the grassroots, do the things the party’s not doing, the RNC is not doing nearly enough for, and actually make grassroots political work and win.”[10] She said the organization intended to get voters to return their ballots early: “We are going to do things that no other super PAC is doing, and that is actually build out true voter absentee chase balloting, coordinating ballot collections by neighborhood.”[10] …

The top donors to Sentinel Action Fund have been top donors to Trump, such as Timothy Mellon, Elon Musk, Kenneth Griffin, Paul Singer, and Heritage Action for America.

Heritage Action is a branch of the Heritage Foundation. The Ballotpedia article mentions that “A June 2023 press release [which I find was removed from The Web but is archived here] from Heritage Action for America, noting Anderson’s departure from the organization, said the following about her work: “Anderson has been in various, critical roles at Heritage Action since its 2010 inception, building the grassroots program to be the largest and most influential on Capitol Hill.“ (I note, again, that that article is now mysteriously absent from the allegedly complete Heritage Action archive.) Even Kirk’s far-more-publicized Turning Point USA wasn’t that (what the missing 12 June 2023 Heritage Action Press Release which headlined “Heritage Action Executive Director Announces Leave of Absence for Full-Time Sentinel Action Fund Work” alleged had been the phenomenal effectiveness of Jessica Anderson).

She is, in any case, a meta-bundler (a bundler of bundlers) of billionaires for Republican candidates and ‘news’-propaganda media that are owned by those billionaires, and which billionaires also advertise their products and services in the media that are owned by other Republican billionaires, and so they fund those propaganda-media in both ways. Whereas Republican voters’ views are shaped by those billionaires, Democratic voters’ vews are shaped by Democratic billionaires. America’s voters get to choose which of the two herds to belong to.

The scientific studies all prove that anyone who isn’t at least a billionaire has no effect upon and is not represented by any of the elected national-Government officials in the United States; ONLY billionaires determine whom will have any real chance to become elected into public office at that level, the national Government, because on all of the most important U.S.-Government policy-issues, either Party represents only one of the two groups of billionaires, not the public. It’s always just a battle between the billionaires.

There is nothing unique about the Zero Hedge article, and it isn’t directly lying, but its inference that the Republican Party isn’t as much controlled by its billionaires as the Democratic Party is controlled by its billionaires, is an IMPLIED lie. And that is the way propaganda normally functions — by IMPLIED lies. This is how they control the minds of the public.

This article was originally published on Eric’s Substack.

The post Only Billionaires Determine Who Can Win National Government Offices in the U.S. appeared first on LewRockwell.

Mon dieu! La France has run out of politicians. The Republic of this great democracy has hundreds of professional politicians. In fact, 577 in its National Assembly. Yet it can’t seem to find a prime minister who can hold this difficult job.

So, citizens, aux armes. Form your battalions. Tyranny threatens the Republic.

The problem is simple, yet complex. The French welfare state costs too much to run. French voters are spoiled and coddled. The machinery of state works very well but too many citizens are enjoying the good life while too few are paying the bills through taxes. All western democracies suffer from similar problems, but few suffer as much or as loudly.

The French hate taxes. The French Revolution of 1789 was primarily ignited by increases in taxation caused by the need to cover the large costs of financing the American Revolution. French governments never seem to have balanced the books since then.

France’s excellent educational system – which in comparison makes the US equivalent look third world – is filled with leftist pedagogues. The French Socialist and Communist Parties totally infiltrated the educational system and institutionalised its leftist, anti-capitalist, statist thinking. The essence of this ideology is a nanny state, socialist economics, powerful labor unions, rich state subsidies and promoting government run industries. While the thrifty Germans were pinching their pfennigs, France was spending like a drunken sailor. Too many powerful political elements ensured that special interests would always benefit from the government gravy train.

France built an excellent medical, transportation and educational system but had to short change its military. A rueful general once told me France’s total military budget was smaller than the US Navy’s annual spending. Even so, France has sought to remain a world-class strategic power on a skimpy budget.

Ever since the 19th Century, France has been locked in political and social warfare between the Left and Right. Each Socialist or other leftist government has made matters worse. Even moderate governments have been unable to resist popular demands for ever more welfare spending.

The chief culprit has been France’s crazy retirement laws that allow the French to retire at only 62 years old. I’ve seen how the French countryside is filled by bored, retired men who had to quit their jobs far too early. This featherbedding hurts the national economy, undermines productivity and saps national morale.

Most recently, centrist President Emmanuel Macron proposed a sensible new law increasing the retirement age from 62 to 64.

A furore erupted across France. I was having dinner in the northwestern fortress city of Metz when mobs of rampaging youth attacked our restaurant, parked cars and shops. These were 20-something youngsters who wouldn’t be eligible for pensions for another 40 years. But French love riots and demos even more than vin rouge and football.

Macron had to back down over this pension reform. Three of his choices for prime minister resigned or were ousted because of their inability to resolve France’s endemic financial crises. Today the budget deficit has hit 114% of gross domestic product, putting France in financial disrepute with bad boys Italy and Greece.

What to do? Cut runaway spendings or raise taxes? No one knows how to do this. Meanwhile, Trump is demanding higher military spending. Most Europeans are against bigger armies and higher taxes.

Macron’s latest nominee for premier, Sebastien Lecornu (meaning `horned one’ – a big insult in Italy) previously resigned but now says he will stay on. To do what? Sell the Eifel Tower to Trump? But if Lecornu does not find an answer, the powerful right-wing opposition led by Marine LePen is poised to take power. That will bring a new mess and crisis. How can ‘The Great Nation” be in such a cornichon? As in the past, France would do well to allow Swiss Bankers take over and run finances.

The post S.O.S France appeared first on LewRockwell.

Please watch this 90 second clip BELOW: 

.

MM Comment: Let me propose one thing: The Medical System is NOT a Health System.

Please consider what other doctors have said for many years, as reported by Dr Sam Bailey – who tells how she and her husband, Mark, left the Allopathic Medical System to pursue better health:

Please watch her video, HERE above, before you next have to enter their Healthcare … er… their Drug-Cut-Burn System.

This video will help you chose…and then please read Drs Sam and Mark’s book, Terrain Therapy, HERE.

Highly Recommended.

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Click here:

Global Research

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Click here:

John Leake

The post Trump Should Tell Europe’s Leaders to Shut Up and Cease Fantasizing About War With Russia appeared first on LewRockwell.

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Click here:

Eugyppius

The post The firewall is making AfD the strongest party in Germany… appeared first on LewRockwell.

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(Versione audio della traduzione disponibile qui: https://open.substack.com/pub/fsimoncelli/p/lalleanza-tra-washington-e-nuova)

Mentre gli scambi commerciali tra Cina e Stati Uniti continuano a diminuire, Pechino è ansiosa di stabilizzare le relazioni commerciali con Washington, e lo ha fatto, almeno per un po'. Ma quanto durerà un accordo commerciale se il regime cinese continua a violarlo?

La dura realtà è che il Partito Comunista Cinese (PCC) è consapevole della sua posizione precaria. Da un lato la Cina ha un disperato bisogno di stabilizzare le sue relazioni commerciali con gli Stati Uniti; dall'altro non può rispettare gli accordi perché è costretta a barare sulle condizioni commerciali, poiché  le debolezze strutturali prevalgono e spingono l'economia al ribasso. Di conseguenza il livello di fiducia tra Washington e Pechino è basso.

La mancanza di fiducia non è ovviamente l'unico fattore che sfavorisce la Cina. L'antipatia dell'amministrazione Trump nei confronti del regime cinese come rivale strategico è ben nota e difficilmente cambierà. Inoltre gli investimenti esteri diretti stanno diminuendo e le aziende straniere stanno abbandonando la Cina il più rapidamente possibile.

Molte di loro si stanno trasferendo in India. L'elenco delle aziende che scelgono l'India rispetto alla Cina è significativo e in costante crescita, anche prima che il presidente degli Stati Uniti, Donald Trump, ottenesse un secondo mandato. Nel 2024 decine di grandi aziende, tra cui Dell, HP, Intel, Samsung, LG Electronics, Nike, Hasbro, Blizzard Entertainment, Stanley, Black & Decker e molte altre, hanno già trasferito i loro stabilimenti in India o prevedono di farlo nel prossimo futuro.

Anche questa tendenza non sembra destinata a cambiare. Secondo un sondaggio del 2024 della Camera di Commercio Americana in Cina, il 45% delle aziende statunitensi in Cina ha avviato piani per diversificare i propri fornitori al di fuori della Cina, mentre il 38% sta prendendo in considerazione questa possibilità. La proverbiale scritta sul muro è sulla Grande Muraglia cinese: il divario commerciale si sta ampliando, non riducendosi. I suoi giorni da leader mondiale nel settore manifatturiero e il peso strategico che ne deriva stanno per finire.

La grande opportunità dell'India con gli Stati Uniti

Nel frattempo, con grande preoccupazione di Pechino, l'India sta strategicamente cambiando rotta per colmare questo divario, espandendo le sue relazioni commerciali con gli Stati Uniti. Questi ultimi sono altrettanto decisi a deviare gli scambi commerciali dalla Cina verso l'India.

Le intenzioni dell'India sono allineate a quelle degli Stati Uniti. Ad aprile di quest'anno il vicepresidente statunitense, J. D. Vance, ha visitato l'India per stabilire un accordo commerciale bilaterale tra i due Paesi. L'obiettivo è aumentare l'attuale volume di scambi commerciali da $190 miliardi a $500 miliardi entro il 2030.

La crescente relazione tra Stati Uniti e India va oltre il commercio. Prima della visita di Vance, la direttrice dell'intelligence nazionale statunitense, Tulsi Gabbard, era in India per una conferenza geopolitica. Ancora più significativo è il fatto che il primo ministro indiano, Narendra Modi, sia stato tra i primi leader mondiali a incontrare Trump dopo il suo ritorno alla Casa Bianca. All'epoca Modi menzionò una “mega partnership” con gli Stati Uniti e avviò negoziati per affrontare i dazi imposti da Trump sui prodotti indiani.

In particolare, Modi aveva già ridotto i dazi su alcuni beni statunitensi prima di incontrare Trump. Questo potrebbe spiegare perché i funzionari indiani abbiano descritto i negoziati commerciali come “molto attivi” e “intensi”, avvalorando la percezione di un accordo commerciale in fase di elaborazione tra Stati Uniti e India.

Gli effetti strategici a catena

La Cina potrebbe non essere a conoscenza di questi sviluppi e può già vedere diversi effetti a catena in atto. Come notato, gli Stati Uniti sono interessati al “friend-shoring” o alla ristrutturazione delle catene di approvvigionamento globali dalla Cina all'India. Un ulteriore impatto potrebbe essere la riduzione della capacità di Pechino di supportare la Russia nella sua guerra contro l'Ucraina.

Sebbene tra Washington e Pechino sembri esserci una sorta di riorganizzazione degli scambi commerciali, la tendenza delle aziende ad abbandonare in massa la Cina rimane innegabile. Apple ha annunciato che trasferirà fino al 25% della sua produzione di iPhone dalla Cina all'India entro il 2025, e anche una parte significativa della sua produzione di telefoni negli Stati Uniti verrà trasferita fuori dalla Cina.

Ma si stanno verificando anche altri effetti.

Una questione strettamente correlata è il predominio della Cina sul mercato delle terre rare. Come gli Stati Uniti, l'India dipende dal monopolio cinese sulle terre rare. Uno dei cambiamenti politici di Modi è quello di concentrarsi sul potenziale dell'India di aumentare la sua capacità produttiva di terre rare e diventare un fornitore chiave per gli Stati Uniti. Ciò rappresenterebbe un duro colpo per la Cina e una grande vittoria sia per l'India che per gli Stati Uniti.

Un altro aspetto significativo è il crescente coinvolgimento dell'India nella pianificazione della difesa statunitense nella regione. L'India svolgerà un ruolo sempre più importante negli accordi di sicurezza statunitensi nella regione indo-pacifica.

La risposta a doppio taglio di Pechino

In risposta a questi sviluppi, il PCC sta diventando creativo. Ad esempio, in contrasto con le barriere commerciali erette dopo l'incidente di Galwan che ha coinvolto scambi militari, i media statali cinesi hanno lanciato l'idea di ridurre le restrizioni commerciali e incoraggiare l'interazione tra Cina e India. Questo è un risultato diretto della crescente visibilità dell'India nella regione e del dialogo con gli Stati Uniti.

Forse ancora più importante, l'ambasciatore cinese in India si è impegnato a fermare il dumping di prodotti cinesi nei mercati indiani, ad alleviare i deficit commerciali e persino a rimuovere le barriere tariffarie e non tariffarie sulle importazioni indiane. Questo annuncio si accompagna alla ripresa del dialogo diplomatico, al coinvolgimento ad alto livello, ai voli diretti e persino alla possibilità di un migliore accesso alle terre rare per l'India.

Nel tentativo di contrastare la tendenza al friend-shoring, però, la Cina sta limitando le esportazioni di macchinari e i trasferimenti di attrezzature verso l'India, al fine di ridurre al minimo la propria capacità di gestire la domanda manifatturiera in entrata. Pechino sta inoltre avvertendo Nuova Delhi che il suo impegno con Washington – sia nel commercio che in alleanze strategiche come il Quad, nonché la cooperazione nell'evoluzione delle posizioni di difesa a guida statunitense – potrebbero minacciare i suoi rapporti cordiali con la Cina.

Un'altra carta da giocare per il PCC sarebbe quella di aumentare il sostegno al Pakistan, il rivale regionale dell'India dotato di armi nucleari. Si tratta di una minaccia velata, ma improbabile che funzioni perché sia ​​il Pakistan che l'India sono nazioni dotate di armi nucleari. Il sostegno di Pechino non altera sostanzialmente lo status quo.

Una o tutte queste potenziali contromisure di Pechino saranno sufficienti a distogliere Nuova Delhi dalla sua inclinazione verso Washington? Il regime cinese riuscirà a ostacolare l'ascesa dell'India, nonostante il continuo collasso della sua economia?

Improbabile.

La Cina sta affrontando una tempesta su più fronti, principalmente provocata da essa stessa attraverso le politiche del PCC, e questa tempesta non fa che peggiorare. Per usare la metafora conosciuta da tutti, è una tempesta perfetta contro la Cina e a favore dell'India.

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

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Last week we celebrated Columbus Day. Some states don’t recognize the holiday under this name. Instead, they call it “Indigenous People’s Day” or “Native Americans’ Day”. For example, here is the proclamation by radical left-wing “Governor” Gavin Newsom of California: “Governor Newsom proclaims Indigenous Peoples’ Day 2024

SACRAMENTO – Governor Gavin Newsom today issued a proclamation declaring October 14, 2024, as “Indigenous Peoples’ Day.”

PROCLAMATION

For the sixth year in a row, California proclaims today as Indigenous Peoples’ Day. In doing so, we reflect on the vibrant cultural diversity, and tenacity, of the Indigenous peoples who now call California home – including those who originate from and maintain deep relationships with these lands and waters, those who were relocated here from their sacred homelands by federal policies and those who have crossed oceans and borders with hope in the ability to find economic stability, community and safety in these lands of opportunity.

In recent years, we have experienced a global effort to disentangle the harmful legacies of historical violence and extraction and restore the beneficial legacies of Indigenous balance, sustainability and reciprocity. This includes a growing understanding of how the doctrine of discovery was called on historically to justify the expropriation of Indigenous lands and subjugation of Indigenous peoples, a legacy that has also been linked to the worsening of climate change and other environmental harms.

Increasingly, we are turning to Indigenous peoples in the existential imperative to restore balance, weather climate impacts and preserve biodiversity. This year alone, California followed the charge of the Klamath Basin tribes to complete the largest dam removal project in American history; welcomed native beaver, wolf and condor populations home; and enacted historic land access, return and stewardship mechanisms for Indigenous peoples. Later this month, California, along with leaders from across the globe, will meet to discuss the need to respect, preserve and maintain the knowledge, innovations and practices of Indigenous peoples in the race to halt and reverse biodiversity loss.

As we look toward a future in which we continue to support these practices while also bolstering Indigenous language learning and revitalization, uplifting Indigenous sports in mainstream spaces, spotlighting Indigenous arts and infusing governance with Indigenous values, we are excited for the chance to demonstrate this work on the world stage at the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles. Los Angeles boasts not only a rich community of the first people of those lands and waters, but also one of the largest populations of Native American people and diverse Indigenous immigrants alike. Further, for the first time in over 100 years, the games will include the Indigenous sport of lacrosse, offering an opportunity to showcase the Haudenosaunee athletes whose ancestors invented the game.

Today, as we are reminded of the forces of violence, displacement and oppression that tried and failed to eradicate Indigenous communities, I call on all Californians to find meaningful opportunities to uplift, validate and engage with Indigenous peoples and cultures on a global scale.

NOW THEREFORE I, GAVIN NEWSOM, Governor of the State of California, do hereby proclaim October 14, 2024, as “Indigenous Peoples’ Day.”

IN WITNESS WHEREOF I have hereunto set my hand and caused the Great Seal of the State of California to be affixed this 14th day of October 2024.

GAVIN NEWSOM

Governor of California

ATTEST:

SHIRLEY N. WEBER, Ph.D.

Secretary of State

Murray Rothbard didn’t agree. Writing in 1992, he said: “What was the Old Right’s position on culture? There was no particular position, because everyone was imbued with, and loved, the old culture. Culture was not an object of debate, either on the Old Right or, for that matter, anywhere else. Of course, they would have been horrified and incredulous at the accredited victimology that has rapidly taken over our culture. Anyone who would have suggested to an Old Rightist of 1950, for example, that in 40 years, the federal courts would be redrawing election districts all over the country so that Hispanics would be elected according to their quota in the population, would have been considered a fit candidate for the loony bin. As well he might. And while I’m on this topic, this is the year 1992, so I am tempted to say, repeat after me: COLUMBUS DISCOVERED AMERICA! Even though a fan of diversity, the only revisionism I will permit on this topic is whether Columbus discovered America, or whether it was Amerigo Vespucci. Poor Italian-Americans! They have never been able to make it to accredited victim status. The only thing they ever got was Columbus Day. And now, they’re trying to take it away!”

You might ask “Why does any of this matter? Who cares what name we give to a state holiday?” But it in fact matters a great deal. There is a plot by the left, supported by some but not all “native Americans,” that the land on which we live was stolen from the “indigenous people” and they are the rightful owners of the land we now live on and all we have built on it. They don’t want to kick us off our property, but they demand compensation, which could cost billions. If we don’t accept that we live here on sufferance, what can we do.

Here is where Murray Rothbard comes to our rescue. In his view, “native Americans” (AKA Indians) do have property rights, but only when they can show that their ancestors clear title to individually acquired property. Vague claims of “tribal rights” or “grazing rights” and the like do not suffice to establish title. In Volume 2 of his monumental Conceived in Liberty, he says about Indian property in Pennsylvania, “It must be recognized, however, that the bulk of Indian-claimed land was not settled and transformed by the Indians, and that, therefore, the Scots were at least justified in ignoring vague, abstract claims, whether by government or by Indian tribes, to the lands they knew that they were settling. Many of the Ulster Scots were squatters on frontier land. Lacking money to pay the prices asked by the feudal proprietary, they reasoned that they were entitled to own virgin land that they themselves had cleared and tilled. They needed no acquaintance with John Locke to sense that such land was their rightful property.”

For Rothbard, possession by an actual individual is essential. As he says in The Ethics of Liberty, “It is true that existing property titles must be scrutinized, but the resolution of the problem is much simpler than the question assumes. For remember always the basic principle: that all resources, all goods, in a state of no-ownership belong properly to the first person who finds and transforms them into a useful good (the “homestead” principle). We have seen this above in the case of unused land and natural resources: the first to find and mix his labor with them, to possess and use them, ‘produces’ them and becomes their legitimate property owner. Now suppose that Mr. Jones has a watch; if we cannot clearly show that Jones or his ancestors to the property title in the watch were criminals, then we must say that since Mr. Jones has been possessing and using it, that he is truly the legitimate and just property owner.

“Or, to put the case another way: if we do not know if Jones’s title to any given property is criminally-derived, then we may assume that this property was, at least momentarily in a state of no-ownership (since we are not sure about the original title), and therefore that the proper title of ownership reverted instantaneously to Jones as its “first” (i.e., current) possessor and user. In short, where we are not sure about a title but it cannot be clearly identified as criminally derived, then the title properly and legitimately reverts to its current possessor.

“But now suppose that a title to property is clearly identifiable as criminal, does this necessarily mean that the current possessor must give it up? No, not necessarily. For that depends on two considerations: (a) whether the victim (the property owner originally aggressed against) or his heirs are clearly identifiable and can now be found; or (b) whether or not the current possessor is himself the criminal who stole the property. Suppose, for example, that Jones possesses a watch, and that we can clearly show that Jones’s title is originally criminal, either because (1) his ancestor stole it, or (2) because he or his ancestor purchased it from a thief (whether wittingly or unwittingly is immaterial here). Now, if we can identify and find the victim or his heir, then it is clear that Jones’s title to the watch is totally invalid, and that it must promptly revert to its true and legitimate owner. Thus, if Jones inherited or purchased the watch from a man who stole it from Smith, and if Smith or the heir to his estate can be found, then the title to the watch properly reverts immediately back to Smith or his descendants, without compensation to the existing possessor of the criminally derived “title.” Thus, if a current title to property is criminal in origin, and the victim or his heir can be found, then the title should immediately revert to the latter.”

The implications for the Indian question are straightforward.  Namely: In the extremely unlikely event that any particular Indian can show that he personally is the rightful heir of a particular Indian who was wrongfully dispossessed of a particular piece of property, the current occupants should hand him the keys to his birthright and vacate the premises.  Otherwise the current occupants have the morally strongest claim to their property, and the status quo should continue.  Anything more is just the doctrine of collective guilt masquerading as a defense of property rights.

Let’s do everything we can to defeat the left-wing claim that most of our land belongs to Indian tribes. As a good first step, let’s join Rothbard in celebrating Columbus Day. Let’s reject the Left’s tendentious substitute names.

The post Rothbard on Columbus Day appeared first on LewRockwell.

Individual liberty lies at the heart of the libertarian tradition. In this tradition, self-determination is understood as an emanation of individual liberty, rather than as a right vested in the “nation” or the “state” as a collective unit. In his book Liberalism, Ludwig von Mises explains,

To call this right of self-determination the “right of self-determination of nations” is to misunderstand it. It is not the right of self-determination of a delimited national unit, but the right of the inhabitants of every territory to decide on the state to which they belong.

It is in this context that the “rugged individualism” of the American frontiersmen, as they fought for independence in both the Revolutionary War and Lincoln’s War, should be understood—as a struggle by each individual for his own liberty and right to self-determination. In his book Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America, James Webb depicts the Scots-Irish frontiersman as a self-reliant individualist, quoting Vernon Louis Parrington:

They were desperately poor; the available lands near the coast were already preempted; so armed with axes, their seed potatoes, and the newly invented rifle, they plunged into the backwoods to become our great pioneering race… A vigorous breed, hardy, assertive, individualistic, thrifty, trained in the democracy of the Scottish kirk, they were the material out of which later Jacksonian democracy was to be fashioned, the creators of that western type which in politics and industry became ultimately the American type.

Webb describes the Scots-Irish as “radical individualists” who never exhibited the collective group-identity that dominates today’s socialistic identity politics, where people claim to have rights based on their race or sex. To the Scots-Irish individualists,

In their insistent individualism they are not likely to put an ethnic label on themselves when they debate social issues. Some of them don’t even know their ethnic label, and some who do don’t particularly care. They don’t go for group-identity politics any more than they like to join a union.

Webb explains how this understanding of the individual as independent from the group came to be regarded more broadly as the traditional hallmark of American individualism. He further observes that the Scots-Irish had “a culture of isolation, hard luck, and infinite stubbornness.” He adds that their independent spirit was such that they even “rejected” what they saw as “Virginia’s Tidewater ‘Cavalier’ aristocracy”—an attitude that was in keeping with their “defiance of authority.” Therefore, as political conflict escalated between the New England and Southern states in the years leading up to secession and war, it might seem surprising to modern observers that the these individualists, known for their “culture of isolation,” would rally to defend a Southern “nation” spurred by events in South Carolina and Virginia that were in many ways far removed from their own daily lives. Most of them were not wealthy planters, nor did they own any slaves that would cause them to have a personal stake in the abolitionist debates.

Webb describes his own Confederate great-great-grandfather who “owned no property and the value of his possessions totaled ten dollars, neither of which was unusual in these hills [of western Virginia].” Why, then, did they rally behind the Confederate banner? Webb explains that, far from being surprising, this response reflected the very same spirit of independence and defiance of authority: “In their eyes, an outside force was not only telling them how to live their lives, but also threatening to force solutions on them if they disagreed. They would solve their own problems, if problems there were.” This is the point that people fail to appreciate when they ask why the South seceded for independence—they ask, “Independence to do what?” and “States rights to do what?” The answer is, independence to solve their own problems, and liberty to determine their own destiny.

Webb’s book highlights an important aspect of individualism that merits more attention. The ideal of individual liberty has less to do with atomistic or self-regarding character traits, and more to do with independence from collective control. Individualism in the American tradition represents the conviction that each individual is the author of his own life and is not subject to the will or control of the government. Webb describes the Scots-Irish historical rootedness in “the first wild resolute angry beaten Celt who tromped into the hills rather than bend a knee to Rome two thousand years ago,” who had “a fierce resoluteness that found itself always in a pitch against death.”

He quotes Wilbur Cash, who also commented on “the most intense individualism” of the Confederate soldiers who, when federal troops invaded the South after the secession of South Carolina, enlisted to defend what they increasingly regarded as their Southern nation. Webb describes how these men “rose like a sudden wind out of the little towns and scattered farms of a still unconquered wilderness.” He focuses on the motivation of each individual who enlisted, asking,

How did all this confusion present itself inside the mind of a typical young man called into action to fight for the Confederacy? First, the odds are overwhelming that he did not own slaves at all. Was he then merely a pawn, a simple agent of those who did? These were loyal and uncomplicated people, but their history could never mark them as either stupid or passive.

He concludes:

It might seem odd in these modern times, but the Confederate soldier fought because, on the one hand, in his view he was provoked, intimidated, and ultimately invaded, and, on the other, his leaders had convinced him that this was a war of independence in the same sense as the Revolutionary War… The tendency to resist outside aggression was bred deeply into every heart – and still is today.

This attribute of individualism emphasizes freedom from state coercion. As the historian Walter Fleming observes, Southerners “were Democrats of the Jeffersonian school, believing in the largest possible liberty for the individual and in local management of local affairs.” Similar ideals are reflected in libertarian philosophy. For example, Ludwig von Mises depicts individual liberty as the ideal of living without state interference:

The distinctive principle of Western social philosophy is individualism. It aims at the creation of a sphere in which the individual is free to think, to choose, and to act without being restrained by the interference of the social apparatus of coercion and oppression, the State. All the spiritual and material achievements of Western civilization were the result of the operation of this idea of liberty.

In his book In Defense of Freedom: A Conservative Credo, Frank S. Meyer criticizes “New Conservatives,” for misunderstanding the ideal of “individualism.” Meyer argues that, far from being atomistic, each individual is a social animal who sees the value of his fellow man:

It is true, of course, that there would be no political or social institutions, nor any meaning to political inquiry, if men lived as single isolated individuals. To insist, as I do, that the individual is the criterion by which institutions and political theories should be judged is not to deny the immediate and obvious meaning of the phrase, “man is a social animal,” that is, that each man has a multifarious set of relationships with other men.

This is often overlooked by those who assume individualism to be a threat to cohesive society. They deem it to be a concept that encourages disregard for one’s fellow man or the self-worship of oneself as a self-reliant person who neither needs nor values nobody else. The individual does not stand apart and remote from society. On the contrary, as Friedrich von Hayek emphasized, society is the basis of interaction between individuals, and it is through the interaction of free men that free societies flourish. Mises understood this notion of individualism to be essential to liberty, explaining that, “The concept of freedom always refers to social relations between men.”

The post Individualism and Self-Determination in the American Tradition appeared first on LewRockwell.