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While diplomats labored to produce the Dayton Accords in 1995, then-Secretary of Defense Bill Perry advised, “No agreement is better than a bad agreement.” Given that Washington’s allies in London, Paris, Berlin and Warsaw are opposed to any outcome that might end the war in Ukraine, no agreement may be preferable. But for President Trump, there is no point in equating the illusion of peace in Ukraine with a meaningless ceasefire that settles nothing.

Today, Ukraine is mired in corruption, starting at the very highest levels of the administration in Kyiv. Sending $175 billion of borrowed money there “for however long it takes” has turned out to be worse than reckless. The U.S. national sovereign debt is surging to nearly $38 trillion and rising by $425 billion with each passing month. President Trump needs to turn his attention away from funding Joe Biden’s wars and instead focus on the faltering American economy.

President Trump should make it clear that the Biden administration’s determination to help build a Ukrainian military establishment designed to wage offensive war against Russia rather than engage in the diplomacy necessary to avoid it before 2022 was a serious strategic error. Washington’s European allies are fundamentally wrong when they insist that Moscow had no right to challenge an existential threat from NATO on its border. Without the decades-long project of transferring technology, advice and cash to Ukraine, the threat to Russia in Ukraine might not have emerged.

President Trump’s recent decision to reexamine the wisdom of shipping Tomahawk missiles for use in Ukraine is a step in the right direction. Just as Washington has legitimate interests in Mexico and the Caribbean Basin, it is time for Washington to recognize Moscow’s legitimate national security interests in regards to Ukraine and NATO member states in its own backyard. It is also time for Europe and the U.S. to realize that stability in the region is of everyone’s interest, and that means not encouraging, through endless war, a failed state in Ukraine.

Hopefully, President Trump was finally briefed on America’s missile inventory. His reticence to send Tomahawks that cannot operate without American mission planning and execution suggests that he and his staff may have also asked for the status of more vital missile systems such as the family of Standard Missiles. The exact numbers for the American missile inventory are unknown, but President Trump should demand detailed answers.

It’s also vital for him to understand that regardless of how much pressure he exerts on America’s defense industrial base to increase production, timelines for delivery will not change much. Wars are fought with precision strike weapons. The side with the most missiles on hand at the outset stands an excellent chance of prevailing. The side with too few will lose.

American military power is in a state of decline that will require a decade or more to reverse. In pursuit of true military strength, President Trump should not conflate the eagerness of his senior military leaders to comply with his policies or ideas as evidence of loyalty, professionalism or agreement. In Washington, DC, there is never a shortage of sycophantic, blowhard generals and admirals whose own experience with real war is at best at a cocktail level of familiarity.

General Christopher Donahue, commander of U.S. Army Europe and Africa, achieved notoriety when he stated in June of this year that U.S. and NATO Forces could capture Russia’s heavily fortified Kaliningrad region “in a timeframe that is unheard of.” Perhaps, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth or President Trump welcomed these statements. Emotions often play a larger role in national decision-making than they should. However, generals who publicly broadcast claims of military supremacy should be treated with skepticism. It has happened before.

After the outbreak of the Korean War, Major General (MG) Dean, the 24th Infantry Division Commander, insisted that his men “had merely to make an appearance on the battlefield and the North Korean People’s Army would melt into the hills.” According to the historian Max Hastings, when the North Koreans attacked Dean’s division, the resulting rout “resembled the collapse of the French Army in 1940 and the British at Singapore in 1942.”

General Paul Harkins, the American Commander of Military Assistance Command Vietnam, confidently predicted victory for the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) in its war with the Viet Cong by Christmas 1963. Described as an “American General with a swagger stick and cigarette holder,” General Harkins simply reported the defeat of South Vietnamese forces in the Battle of Ap Bac during January 1963 as a victory. Harkins understood the message Washington wanted to receive and he delivered it.

Read the Whole Article

The post On Ukraine and Venezuela, Trump Needs To Dump the Sycophants appeared first on LewRockwell.

Reports that critical race theory is over have been greatly exaggerated. CRT is very much still around, although it has been so discredited since some states took measures to ban it that few social justice activists, if any, will now admit to being critical race theorists. They know that describing themselves as critical race theorists will not be favorably regarded, and so they will often deny that there is even such a thing as CRT. This makes them even more dangerous, because they continue promoting the destructive tenets of CRT disguised as social justice. It may therefore be helpful to consider in more detail what is meant when an argument is described as CRT.

A helpful analysis is offered by Jeffrey J. Pyle in his article “Race, Equality and the Rule of Law: Critical Race Theory’s Attack on the Promises of Liberalism,” published in the Boston College Law Review. For context, as readers might expect from a Boston law review, the author is broadly sympathetic with the aims of CRT but believes it has failed because, instead of aligning itself with the principles of liberalism, it attacks the foundations of liberalism. Pyle believes the “race-crits,” as he calls them, have erred by being so irrational that even their sympathetic liberal friends are reluctant to help them. He complains that the excesses of the race-crits “alienate potentially helpful whites.” He adds that “my disagreement with race-crits has less to do with their long-term goals than with their diagnoses and solutions.” If they would only avoid these errors, they might have more white allies. Thus, as reflected in the title, his main aim is to defend liberalism from the CRT attack:

“Critique,” however, never built anything, and liberalism, for all its shortcomings, is at least constructive. It provides broadly-accepted, reasonably well-defined principles to which political advocates may appeal in ways that transcend sheer power, with at least some hope of incremental success. Critical race theory would “deconstruct” this imperfect tradition, but offers nothing in its place.

Keeping that context in mind, Pyle’s analysis is nevertheless very helpful for purposes of identifying CRT. To be clear, the aim here, in drawing upon his analysis, is not to “debunk” or “debate” CRT but to outline its main attributes for purposes of identifying a race-crit when you encounter one in the wild.

Racial Subordination

First, CRT is always concerned with some form of “racial subordination.” The main blame for subordination is not placed on anyone in particular, but on what are often described as institutions, systems, or structures.

CRT does not attribute racism to white people as individuals or even to entire groups of people. Simply put, critical race theory states that U.S. social institutions (e.g., the criminal justice system, education system, labor market, housing market, and healthcare system) are laced with racism embedded in laws, regulations, rules, and procedures that lead to differential outcomes by race.

As Pyle explains, race-crits believe racism “lies at the very heart of American – and Western – culture.” Racism is pervasive and immutable, and “everyone is either an ‘outsider’ or an ‘insider,’ a ‘victim’ or a ‘perpetrator’” of racism—not necessarily through anything they have thought, said, or done, but based on the status they occupy in the system. Race-crits “view American society as a zero-sum conflict between powerful white males and powerless minorities.” How do the race-crits know this? Well, knowledge is “socially constructed,” so they know this by having constructed a theory that explains it. As their knowledge is derived from their theory and not from empirical observation, the truth of their tenets is not dependent on any objective evidence or proof. They believe all knowledge is “inherently subjective, contingent and immune to objective evaluation.” Further, all knowledge derived from the application of this theory is “autobiographical and group-based.” Race-crits see “objective evaluation” as merely the subjective preference of white people or—if performed by black people—the subjective preference of the black face of white supremacy as reflected in the infamous “Uncle Tom.” For example, Clarence Thomas is described by Derrick Bell in his article “Racial Realism” as follows:

The addition of Judge Clarence Thomas to that Court, as the replacement for Justice Thurgood Marshall, is likely to add deep insult to the continuing injury inflicted on civil rights advocates. The cut is particularly unkind because the choice of a black like Clarence Thomas replicates the slave masters’ practice of elevating to overseer and other positions of quasi-power those slaves willing to mimic the masters’ views, carry out orders, and by their presence provide a perverse legitimacy to the oppression they aided and approved.

If there is no such thing as objective analysis, what happens when one person’s subjective knowledge meets that of another? In that case the role of the adjudicator is simply to identify who represents the “perpetrator” group. Since all knowledge is identity-based, if someone from an oppressor group (or an Uncle Tom) challenges any argument put forward by an “oppressed” person, that amounts to an attack on the identity of the oppressed. As Pyle explains, “Questioning the race-crits’ grip on reality, then, is not just disrespectful, it is oppressive.” Disagreeing with race-crits is always “deeply racist.”

White Supremacy

The second key indicator of CRT is the role played by “white supremacy” in explaining all political, social, and economic problems. As Lew Rockwell has observed, the Marxist theory “of the substructure, or base, and the superstructures of society” has been loosely incorporated into critical race theory to explain the role of white supremacy in racial oppression:

The critical race theory about the “white supremacy inherent in culture” is much the same. The base for the theorists is race relations. These theorists believe that the oppressive white class has constructed society to necessarily maintain a power dynamic over the nonwhite classes. Political achievements, no matter how much they may benefit racial minorities, belong as part of the superstructure, and thus they must be some protective shell over the true social dynamics.

Pyle points out that even Martin Luther King “colorblindness” is deemed in CRT to be “racist” because it forms part of the powerful “white supremacy” superstructure. CRT, being an explicitly collectivist theory which holds that “we can achieve real freedom only collectively, through group self-determination,” understands freedom and justice as the dismantling of white supremacy. Similarly, CRT approaches the regulation of free speech as a matter of constraining white supremacy. The speech of oppressors “is not speech, but ‘conduct’ which ‘constructs the social reality that constrains the liberty of non-whites because of their race.” Merit, likewise, is “just another culturally- and racially-contingent means by which whites replicate their own hegemony.” Black racism is benign because it is “not tied to the structural domination of another group” and, therefore, absolute free speech applies to black people. When black people speak, all speech is free speech. When white people speak, that is white supremacy which is “harmful conduct.” Nor can race-crits be accused of hypocrisy or double standards—as they see it, the standards applied to black and white are not meant to be the same in the first place. Indeed, the idea that law should vary based on racial identity is central to CRT. We are now at an impasse in which rational debate is impossible, because rationality itself is “white supremacy.”

How is this impasse to be resolved? Pyle explains that race-crits believe the problem cannot be resolved: “Racism, to race-crits, is all-pervasive and all-controlling; nothing can be done.” In any case, racism is often unconscious and invisible, being embedded as it is in the prevailing systems and structures, and what cannot be seen cannot be resolved. All that can be done is to get perpetrators to pay a penalty to their victims for causing them harm: “Accordingly, judges should not question whether the perpetrator had racist motives, but should focus only on the harm done to the alleged victim.” As moral guilt and responsibility are collective, the odd individual member of an oppressed group who might dissent from this outcome is irrelevant in determining the group interest. Given the emphasis in CRT on being “critical” and insisting that there are no solutions to racism, CRT is above all a destructive ideology—all it seeks to do is “critique” the system, point out harms to the races it favors, and dismantle Western civilization.

The post How To Recognize Critical Race Theory appeared first on LewRockwell.

You can bet the 12 purported geniuses on the FOMC have never looked at the graph below.

It shows that for all their wild-ass money printing in recent years, the US index of manufacturing output stands at 101.39, which is nearly 5% below the level reached on the eve of the financial crisis in December 2007.

That’s right. The US manufacturing economy has been shrinking in real physical terms for the past 18 years, notwithstanding the fact that during that interval the Fed has printed nearly $6 trillion in brand, spanking new money that it snatched from thin air.

So something big and bad happened after the Fed went all in on money-printing in response to the stock market meltdown in the fall of 2008. After all, during the 28 years between 1972 and 2000 the very opposite occurred. Manufacturing output in the US rose by nearly 150%, which translates to a 3.3% growth rate per annum.

Yet there is no mystery as to why manufacturing output abruptly went flatter than a board after the Financial Crisis. To wit, the mad money-printers in the Eccles Building simply inflated the bejesus out of the US economy at a time when what was urgently needed was a stern deflation of an already inflation-bloated industrial sector.

Here’s the thing: the price of a Pilates studio session or dentist visit is mainly driven by supply and demand balances in local markets, but with today’s shipping and communications technology, the manufacture of durable goods is subject to ferocious global competition.

Indeed, when you look at the current fully loaded (for fringes and benefits) wage rates among major foreign suppliers, it is no wonder that the output of US-manufactured goods has flatlined.

Average Fully Loaded Manufacturing Wages Per Hour in 2024:

• Vietnam: $3.50
• India: $4.50
• Mexico: $5.00
• China: $6.00
• S. Korea: $20.50
• Canada: $22.00
• Japan: $28.00
• UK: $30.00
• EU-27: $32.50
• USA: $44.25

Well, for crying out loud! What’s the mystery?

The USA has priced itself out of the global manufacturing market, which is exactly why America has been running chronic and massive trade deficits that reached the staggering annual level of $1.2 trillion in 2024. Indeed, the collapse of America’s trade balance has been relentless over the last 30 years, with the deficit rising by 10X, from $10 billion to $100 billion. Per month!

And, no, POTUS, foreign trading partners did not suddenly turn into ever-worsening unfair trade cheats in the last three decades. The cause of the plunging line below is domiciled on the banks of the Potomac, not in foreign capitals.

The vast gap between US manufacturing wages and those of our major trading partners has been building relentlessly since the early 1990s, when Greenspan put the Fed in the monetary central planning business. Back then, the fully loaded US manufacturing wage was about $18.50 per hour, meaning that it has risen in nominal terms by 2.4X since then.

However, owing to the Fed’s relentless pro-inflation policies, the CPI index has risen by 124%, meaning that in 2024 dollars, the 1992 fully loaded manufacturing wage was $41.10 per hour.

Accordingly, workers who managed to keep their jobs gained barely 7% over one-third of a century from all of the Fed’s pro-inflation money printing, even as the ever-rising level of nominal US wages made blue-collar workers a sitting duck in global markets.

Again, for want of doubt, see the gaping fully loaded international manufacturing wage levels in US dollars shown above.

Of course, the Fed’s fanboys on Wall Street say not to worry—productivity gains will offset the nominal wage gains. That was partially true for a few years during the technology-driven productivity boom of the 1990s, but no more. Since 2007 unit labor costs in US manufacturing have soared by +53%, which exactly coincides with the deep plunge in the US trade deficit in goods after the turn of the century.

In short, what America really needed from the early 1990s onward, as the China export machine and its worldwide supply chain came to life, was zero inflation at worst and ideally a spell of price, wage, and cost deflation to offset the vast ballooning of US production costs after Tricky Dick Nixon severed the dollar’s link to gold in August 1971.

Between that date and mid-1992, the general price level in the US rose by 250%, and now stands at 700% above its June 1971 level. Is there any wonder, then, that the US has priced itself out of the global manufacturing market?

Of course, this sheer monetary insanity is justified by the Fed on the grounds that inflation is good for prosperity, at least to the extent of 2.00% annually, year in and year out.

Except there is not a shred of historical evidence or sound economic logic to justify the Fed’s sacred 2.00% target. It’s just a handy excuse for running the printing presses at rates which please the gamblers on Wall Street and the Spenders in Washington.

Industrial production is the heart of the modern economy and the main source of sustainable gains in real output and living standards. Even a half-assed assessment of the world in 1990 would have told any honest and capable monetary central planner that wringing out some of the 250% increase in the domestic cost and price level that had accumulated since Camp David was imperative if the US was to remain competitive in global markets.

Alas, the Keynesian fools who took over the nation’s central bank under Greenspan’s leadership cooked up a closed bathtub style model of the US economy, and conferred upon themselves the Keynesian mission of keeping “aggregate demand” full to the brim via low interest rates and massive injections of fiat credits into the nation’s financial markets.

That was a drastic error from the get-go, but the money-printing gospel is of such convenience to both ends of the Acela Corridor that this cardinal pro-inflation error rolls forward unquestioned by both wings of the UniParty.

Accordingly, with inflation stalled at more than 3.0%, when it should be zero or negative, the Fed has again sung the Einstein Chorus. That is to say, these “insane” apparatchiks seem to believe that doing the same thing over and over again—even after 700% inflation—will finally generate a positive outcome.

Reprinted with permission from David Stockman’s Contra Corner.

The post How the Fed’s Money Printing Broke American Industry—and What Comes Next appeared first on LewRockwell.

In the global chessboard, Beijing will keep stressing the power of the “multilateral trading system.” As in the absolute opposite of Trump 2.0.

Four days in Beijing. The fourth plenum of the 20th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China was really something to behold.

Methodology matters. What happened these four days is that delegates debated and then adopted “recommendations” leading to China’s 15th Five-Year Plan. A communique then laid out the basic vectors to be tackled. The full plan will only be known in detail next March, when it will be approved by the notorious Two Sessions in Beijing.

So let’s get straight to the point: this is how China works, meticulously planning everything in advance, with clear targets and meritocratic supervision. The – metaphorical – terminology does allow some leeway: everyone is aware of the “high winds, rough waves and raging storms” ahead – domestically and internationally. But “strategic resolve” won’t waver.

Key vectors for the Beijing leadership include “strengthening agriculture”, “benefiting farmers”, and “achieving rural prosperity” – side by side with progress with “people-centered new urbanization.”

In the global chessboard, Beijing will keep stressing the power of  the “multilateral trading system.” As in the absolute opposite of Trump 2.0.

Major targets for the 15th Five-Year Plan are quite clear. Among them: “advancements in high-quality development”; improving  “scientific and technological self-reliance”; a quite Confucianist “notable cultural and ethical progress across society”; and “strengthening the national security shield.”

In a nutshell: the Chinese leadership’s top priority is to build “a modernized industrial system”. As in a productive – not speculative – mixed economic system driving rural, urban and tech development.

Towards an ultra-high-tech “unified national market”

There have been so many practical, graphic examples across China of what has been achieved so far. Last month, I was privileged to see first-hand the socialism with Chinese characteristics surge in terms of sustainable development of Xinjiang . Xinjiang is now an IT hub and a leader in clean energy – exporting to the rest of China.

Then there’s the tech accomplishments of Made in China 2025, launched 10 years ago, and already placing China as tech leader in at least 8 of 10 scientific fields. Plus key programs that many Chinese themselves don’t know about, with particualr emphasis on the 973 Program and Project 985.

The 973 Program, launched way back in 1997, is the National Basic Research Program aiming to get a tech/strategic edge in several scientific fields – especially the development of the rare earth minerals industry. The program definitely elevated China to the top in terms of global science competitiviness.

Project 985 was launched in 1998 to develop a select group of top-tier universities to world-class level. Hence the emergence of Tsinghua, Peking, Zhejiang, Fudan and Harbin Institute of Technology, among others, as world leaders in engineering, computer science, robotics, aerospace, including key breakthroughs in AI, quantum computing and green energy. Ivy League and Oxbridge? Forget it: the real deal is Chinese universities.

Another key project is the G60 Science and Innovation Corridor,  connecting nine cities in China’s Yangtze River Delta. These cities contributed nearly 2.2% of global (italics mine) manufacturing value-added only last year. That’s China’s strategic economic planning driving tech progress – in effect.

At a press conference, Central Committee officials pointed to some basics obviously totally ignored by the fragmente West, but not by large sectors of the Global South. Especially the fact that Five-Year Plans are regarded as one of China’s key political advantages.

The formulation of the next plan, as usual in China, includes suggestions from all echelons of society. Market drivers from now on necessarily include computing infrastructure, intelligent driving and smart manufacturing. And predictably, up to 2035, there will be special emphasis on quantum tech, biomanufacturing, hydrogen, nuclear fusion, brain-computer interfaces, embodied intelligence and 6G, not to mention AI.

Conceptually, China will focus on its immense domestic market: what is defined as the “unified national market”.

A key emphasis was made on Beijing’s drive to combat “involution”: that is the intra-industry competition that has caused problems to several Chinese sectors.

On thorny US-China relations, Central Committee officials were adamant: the focus will be on “dialogue and cooperation” rather than “decoupling and fragmentation”. Well, both sides are meeting in Malaysia as we speak, on the sidelines of the ASEAN summit. Prospects for a wide-raing trade deal though are slim.

How to understand the evolution of the Chinese political system

The key takeaway: the 15th Five-Year Plan will concern the 2026-2030 period. Beijing wants to reinforce everything that was accomplished so far, with a crystal clear long-term focus: achieve what is defined as “socialist modernization” by 2035.

Based on what I personally saw in Xinjiang last month, compared to my previous visits (the last one had been over a decade ago), there is no shadow of a doubt they will do it.

It’s crucial to examine how two top Chinese academics explain the evolution of the Chinese political system. Relevant sections are worth quoting at length:

“While the traditional system was not immune to change, the goal of these changes was to maintain the status quo, preventing ‘revolutionary’ change. After the Han Dynasty, the policy of ‘abolishing all schools of thought and upholding Confucianism alone’ ideologically suppressed any factors that could catalyze major political change. Confucianism became the sole ruling philosophy, and its core purpose was to maintain rule. The modern German philosopher Hegel argued that ‘China has no history.’ Indeed, for thousands of years, from the Qin Shihuang Emperor to the late Qing Dynasty, China experienced only a succession of dynasties, not a change in fundamental institutions. Marx’s concept of the ‘Asiatic mode of production’ aligns with Hegel’s ideas. Chinese scholars such as Jin Guantao also have this in mind when they use the term ‘superstable structure.’ One can argue that this reflects the vitality of the traditional political system, or that China lacked structural change for thousands of years.”

“The current political system is quite different, primarily because the Enlightenment firmly established the concept of progress: that society can progress, and that progress is endless. From Sun Yat-sen’s revolution to Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist Party and then to the Communist Party, generations of Chinese people have pursued change, sharing the same goal: to transform China and achieve progress. During the modern Enlightenment, the Confucian individual ethic that sustained the old system was subjected to the most radical criticism and attack. However, while the old ethic is no longer viable, various political factions lack a consensus on what the future holds. What kind of change does China need? How should it be pursued? What is the purpose of change? Various political forces hold divergent views.”

What the Chinese Communist Party has done, the two scholars  argue, is in fact quite revolutionary, going for radical change: “This is the socialist revolution it has pursued since its founding, using revolution to overthrow the old regime, thoroughly transform society, and establish an entirely new system. Naturally, this also leads to the various contradictions facing China today, most notably the conflict between traditional Confucian philosophy and Marxism-Leninism. The former is focused on maintaining the status quo or adapting itself for survival, while the latter pursues endless change.”

“Since the mid-1990s, the Chinese Communist Party has accelerated its transformation from a revolutionary party to a ruling party (…) One thing is clear: if a political party governs simply for the sake of governing, it will inevitably decline. This is evident in the history of communist rule in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, as well as in the historical and current experience of Western political parties that calculate their legitimacy based on votes.”

“After reform and opening up, the Chinese Communist Party redefined its modernity, aiming to achieve the original revolutionary goal of resolving the problem of ‘universal impoverishment.’ However, while redefining modernity, the Party also strived to preserve the ‘revolutionary nature’ of the ruling party (…)  In terms of economic development, GDP-oriented economics played an invaluable role, transforming China’s ‘poverty socialism’ situation in just a few decades. By the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China in 2012, China had become the world’s second-largest economy and the largest trading nation, with per capita GDP soaring from less than $300 in the early 1980s to $6,000. More importantly, China lifted nearly 700 million people out of absolute poverty.”

The conclusion though is inescapable, and it is ineherent to the way Beijing is framing its political evolution now: “The Chinese Communist Party needs to redefine its modernity by reaffirming its mission, emphasizing its original aspirations, and reviving its revolutionary nature.”

After all, as the two scholars note, “in China, political parties are the subject of political action, and this action is not simply about survival and development, but about leading national development in all aspects (…) The ruling party must proactively define its own modernity through action, pursuing and achieving its own modernity. By constantly renewing and defining its modernity, the ruling party can maintain its sense of mission in leading social development while constantly renewing itself.”

There could hardly be a sharper summary of why socialism with Chinese characteristics is in a class by itself when it comes to translating political decisions into sustainable development targets. Complement it with Hong Kong billionaire’s Ronnie Chan’s succint analysis on the inevitability of the rise – again – of China.

The counterpoint is China ceasing to be the Pentagon’s key priority. Circus Ringmaster is essentially being forced to concede the global strategic competition to China. Forget about “winning” a tech/trade war on China – especially after the rare earth Sun Tzu move.

Meanwhile, the containment dogs bark while the Chinese Five-Year caravan strolls on.

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

The post And the Chinese Five-Year Caravan Strolls on appeared first on LewRockwell.

One never know how serious Trump’s ‘leaked’ plans are. Their purpose often seem to be solely to increase pressure on opponents, to move things into a direction he likes. If that does not work the plans may just be discarded. Or may, just may, be carried out.

Trump considering plans to target cocaine facilities inside Venezuela, officials say – Politico

President Donald Trump is considering plans to target cocaine facilities and drug trafficking routes inside Venezuela, though he has not yet made a decision on whether to move forward with them, three US officials told CNN.

Outward signs on Friday pointed toward a major potential military escalation, with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordering the Navy’s most advanced aircraft carrier strike group currently stationed in Europe to the Caribbean region amid a massive buildup of US forces there. Trump has also authorized the CIA to conduct covert operations in Venezuela.

The president has not ruled out taking a diplomatic approach with Venezuela to stem the flow of drugs into the US, two officials said, even after the administration cut off active talks with Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in recent weeks.

Venzuela is, as Politico points out, not known for drug trafficking. It does not have ‘cocaine facilities’. But it does have the largest oil reserves in the world. That has always made it a target for a U.S. regime-change operations.

But Venezuela is also a huge country double the size of Iraq with a mountainous and often densely wooded countryside. The U.S. military is unable to invade, occupy and control it.

But what the U.S. might want to try in Venezuela is a variant of the Israeli plan for Iran.

A decapitation strike killing President Maduro and the military leadership accompanied by a bombing campaign to take out air defenses and primary defense units. Meanwhile the CIA and special forces will have to work on the ground in Caracas to organize local thugs for an assault on the main government sites and radio/TV buildings.

As soon as those are captured the U.S. selected regime-change puppet, as identified by the Nobel Peace Prize committee, can declare herself president.

The rest is just media work. Unless – and that is a big question – there will be some real resistance.

The Venezuelan Bolvarian movement can motivate its youth to resist the U.S. coup even a well planned operation may end up like the Bay of Pigs.

Reprinted with permission from Moon of Alabama.

The post Trump Targets Venezuela appeared first on LewRockwell.

At some point capitalism lost the ability to give us new things that we need and started giving us new things we don’t need, and now it’s giving us new things we never needed and don’t even really want.

Nobody needs all this generative AI crap. We were doing fine with online search functions and the ability to write and make art for ourselves. Only the most shallow and vapid of individuals find any appeal in the idea of talking to a chatbot like a companion, consuming “art” generated by a computer program, or letting the technology of some plutocratic megacorporation do their thinking, researching and expressing for them.

The economy is now balancing on a giant bubble of a fledgeling industry that is already underperforming expectations and hitting points of diminishing returns on multiple fronts, all while being really bad for the environment. And it doesn’t improve anyone’s life in any meaningful way.

Nobody asked for this.

And it’s not like people aren’t asking for things; capitalism just doesn’t have the ability to give them the things they are asking for. World peace. Affordable housing. Good health. Fast and efficient public transportation systems. Solutions to the various environmental catastrophes that status quo human behavior is driving us toward. The ability to have our needs met without spending all our time at work. Care for the needful. General human thriving. These are not demands that a system driven by the pursuit of profit for its own sake can supply.

When capitalism first showed up it delivered plenty of new things which people had a need and a desire for that weren’t available under previous systems like feudalism. The greatly increased material abundance and explosions of scientific and technological innovation ushered in with the dawn of capitalism caused human quality of life to improve by leaps and bounds.

But now we’re at a point where that just isn’t happening anymore. Things have stagnated, and we’re starting to backslide. People are getting dumber, sicker, lonelier, and more and more miserable. And the profit-driven systems we live under have no answers, besides throwing increasingly shitbrained technology at us so we can distract ourselves from how fucked up everything has gotten.

We are being driven into dystopia and annihilation by systems of our own making. We’re meant to be the smartest species on earth, but we locked ourselves in our invention — a self-reinforcing labor camp that makes us miserable — and then we get all huffy when people dare to question if it’s the only way of doing things. Literally every other species is smarter than us. Amoebas are having a better time of it.

This will change when humanity replaces capitalism with something better, in the same way we replaced feudalism with the superior system of capitalism. I don’t know what that system is going to look like, but it’s going to have to involve a move from a model that is driven by competition to one that is driven by collaboration. That’s the only way humanity will be able to channel all its brilliance toward the immense project of overcoming all the obstacles we now face as a species, along with all terrestrial organisms.

Until then, all we can do is try to help awaken as many of our fellow humans as possible to the reality of our circumstances. Use every means at our disposal to teach people how dire our plight is, how deceived we’ve been by the propaganda and indoctrination of the empire we live under, how sorely change is needed, and that a better world is possible. Once we get enough eyes open, we’ll have the numbers to force things to change.

_______________

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The post Capitalism Is Shoving AI Down Our Throats Because It Can’t Give Us What We Actually Want appeared first on LewRockwell.

Sizing  Up Trump

Approaching a year since Trump’s third election as president, how do we sum him up?

He has done good things.  He has closed the border.  He is attempting to deport some of the many millions of illegal immigrants that the Democrats brought into our country.  He freed the January 6 protesters framed by a totally corrupt Biden regime “Justice” Department and a whore media.  He is attempting to dislodge the DEI that has replaced merit throughout US society including the military.  He has taken steps to reduce the anti-Americanism of the enormous federal bureaucracy and to stop the weaponization of law against Americans who have traditional American values.  These are enormous achievements, none of which would have been delivered by a Democrat regime.

In light of these achievements, it is frustrating that in other important areas Trump is failing disastrously.  He has supported a genocide with American money, weapons, and diplomatic cover.  He committed an act of war against Iran at the urging of Netanyahu. He has relied on orders to the President of Russia in place of diplomacy.  When his orders are not obeyed, he imposes punishments. The current order is for a cease fire in Ukraine without addressing the underlying cause of the conflict.  The punishment is orders to India and China to stop purchasing Russian oil. In other words, as Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said of President George W. Bush, “he speaks as if he owns the world.” Trump’s sovereignty-denying behavior is the opposite of a peace-maker.  He assaults the environment, thus insuring the hostility of much of America’s educated class who regard Trump’s opening of the pristine Alaska wildlife refuge to oil and gas drilling as a travesty.  Clearly, the area cannot be both a refuge and an area of oil and gas exploitation. Environmentalists wonder how long before a bankrupt US government sells the national forests to timber companies.  In his attack on Venezuela, Trump uses the claim of a war against drugs as a cover for a war to overthrow a country and resume US exploitation of its resources, just as George W. Bush used “the war on terror” to overthrow Arab states for Israel.  What is the evidence that small craft in Venezuelan and international waters are loaded with drugs on the way to the US?  How can any evidence be found when the boats are blown up and destroyed instead of boarded and inspected.  What authority does the US have for boarding boats in Venezuelan and international waters?  Trump’s policy is to destroy the craft and the people on them on suspicion alone without evidence or authority.  If US police acted this way in the US they would be arrested for murder.  A government cannot legally execute people without conviction for a capital crime. If there are Venezuelan drug runners, what is the evidence that they are connected to the government? How likely is it that Venezuela, which has been on Washington’s target list for years, would provide Washington with a drug excuse to overthrow the government and install a regime of its own?

The likelihood is that Trump is going to have America at war with Russia, Iran, Venezuela, China, and all who refuse to obey his orders.  

As much as Americans needed Trump’s accomplishments, his failures are a large price to pay. America needs a strong president, because leadership requires strength.  Leadership also requires moral and mutually acceptable solutions, not orders imposed by coercion.  Trump does not own the world, and he cannot impose dictates on Russia, Iran, India, and China.  Something is amiss that the Trump regime cannot see that this is an unsuccessful and dangerous policy.

Sizing Up Putin

Among Western foreign policy commentators there seems to be confusion about Putin and Peskov’s insistence that Russia remains committed to the Alaska agreement.  What Putin and Peskov understand the Alaska meeting to have accomplished is obtaining Trump’s agreement that ending the conflict in Ukraine has to begin with resolving the conflict the West has chosen to have with Russia.  What Putin means by the root cause of the conflict is the hostile attitude in the West toward Russia. It is this hostile attitude that brought NATO with US missile bases to Russia’s border, overthrew the Russian friendly Ukraine government, attacked the Russian population of Donbas and forced Russia’s military intervention.  Most Western commentators continue to lie between their teeth that Russia is responsible for starting the conflict in Ukraine when it is clear that the West forced the Russian intervention. To force Russian intervention was the entire purpose of the Maidan Revolution in 2014 and subsequent deception of Russia with the Minsk Agreement, which turned out not to be an agreement.

In the Alaska meeting Putin concluded that Trump agreed that the root cause is the absence of a mutual security agreement denied to Putin by the Biden Regime, NATO, and the EU in January 2022, thus provoking the Russian intervention in Ukraine. First the root cause was to be addressed and then the cease fire.  Putin was not agreeable to a cease fire that would result in Ukrainian forces being rebuilt while negotiations went nowhere.

As John Helmer and I pointed out, the Alaska understanding is inconsistent with Washington’s foreign policy goal of hegemony and with the expectation of billions of dollars in commissions to Western political figures from the sales to Europe of American weapons to continue the war in Ukraine.  With Trump’s success in getting Europe to increase defense budgets to 5% of GDP,  commission payouts gleam in the eyes of Western government officials.

The controlling interests in the West is for the conflict to continue.  Trump’s “advisors” got this through to him, and Trump suddenly cancelled his meeting with Putin and changed his tune yet again.  Now his tune is again that the killing has to stop first with a cease fire, and then the negotiations can begin.  This, of course, serves no Russian interests except those of Putin’s “advisor,” Kirill Dmitriev, a spokesman for Russian business interests whose connections are in the West and not with BRICS.  Dmitriev wants Putin to give up, as does Putin’s central bank director, so that American-Russian business interests can be mended and the profitable connections of Russian businesses with the West can be restored.

Why Putin relies on self-interested Kirill Dmitriev and pro-American central bank director Elvira Nabiullina, who set up $300 billion in Russian assets to be frozen and now possibly used to fund Ukraine’s continuation of the war for another three years, I do not know.  It strikes me as the worst possible judgement by a leader who is trying to avoid WW 3.

Why Trump relies on Witcoff and Kellogg is equally puzzling.  It is extraordinary that the two leaders who, we hope, are working to avoid  WW 3, are relying on “advisors” who are working against them.  

My  conclusion is that money and US hegemony are more important than avoiding war.  So it is likely we will get war.

Like John Helmer and myself, Gilbert Doctorow is outside the box of the official narrative.  This means that the three of us are subjected to name-calling instead of engagement with our analysis.  It is OK with me if I can be shown to be wrong–indeed, I would be glad of it as my conclusion is depressing–and I assume Helmer and Doctorow feel the same.  Those few of us who are outside the box cannot afford to have thin skin.

Doctorow has raised the issue of how much longer Putin can hold to his hopes that Trump will flip back to the Alaska agreement between the two world leaders and perhaps this time stay there.  Resolving the conflict is a far better solution than a major war certain to turn nuclear.  To be clear, Doctorow, Helmer, and I admire Putin for his effort to avoid war.  He is clearly a moral and humane person, unlike the money-grabbers in the West who put their profits ahead of the survival of humanity. When Doctorow says Putin shows cowardice, perhaps he means  that this is the way Putin appears to the US, UK, and Europe.  In other words, Putin’s good intentions are working against him.

Doctorow, who watches the state controlled Russian TV programs on which the war and foreign policy are discussed and who is currently in Moscow looking into the evolving attitude toward the war as best as he can, has noticed a growing impatience with the way Putin has been  conducting the war for nearly four years.  In foreign policy circles, if not within Putin’s own circle, the futility of attempting to negotiate with the West and Washington is recognized.  Among Russian populations, their life is increasingly disrupted by long-range drone attacks that disrupt GPS service, airline flights, internet service, and prevent businesses from completing sales transactions, and there are the occasional civilian deaths far from the battlefield.

The rising criticism of Putin’s conduct of the war in foreign policy circles and the public reached a new level, Doctorow reports, when the main TV news analysis program’s host said that negotiations had failed and it was time to “destroy Ukraine” and quickly end the war.  The deputy Russian foreign minister agreed as did, it seems, Lavrov, both of whom were contradicted by Kremlin spokesman Peskov. The program’s host is a protege of the director of Russian state TV.  Neither he nor the deputy prime minister would have risked taking such positions unless there was much support behind them.

Why the contradiction by Peskov as the TV host and deputy foreign minister are obviously correct?  The answer, it seems, is that Putin is holding on to hopes too long.  A conflict that should have had a victorious conclusion for Russia within a matter of weeks is now almost 4 years long.  The four long years are marred with endless undefended red lines that have convinced the West that Putin can be knuckled under.  Consequently, the war has ever widened. Putin’s misjudgment is turning a limited conflict into a world war.  

Here I will state the root cause of the problem as clearly as it can be stated for both Americans and policy-makers in Washington and Europe and for Russians and the Kremlin.  War is profitable for the Western military-security complex.  Ending conflict hurts those who profit from it, as President Eisenhower warned Americans in 1961.  The doctrine of US hegemony expressed by the Wolfowitz Doctrine when the Soviet Union collapsed, thus removing the only constraint on US hegemony, is still operative.  This doctrine allied with money interests is the basis for Washington’s hostility toward Russia.  The Wolfowitz Doctrine and the profits of war are the obstacles to ending the root cause of the conflict.

US Decides Selling Weapons More Important Than Peace

MOSCOW (Sputnik) – The United States supports the use by the European Union of Russia’s frozen assets to buy US-made weapons for Ukraine, Reuters reported on Saturday, citing US officials.

US officials have reportedly informed their European counterparts that Washington supports the EU using Russian assets to purchase weapons for Ukraine.

The Trump administration has also held internal conversations about leveraging Russian state assets that remain blocked in US bank accounts to back Ukraine’s military campaign, Reuters reported. See this.

Another Reason Why Russia Doesn’t Want a Cease Fire

France is ready to send troops as early as next year as part of security guarantees proposed by Ukraine’s Western backers if a ceasefire is reached in the conflict with Russia, Army Chief of Staff Pierre Schill has said.

The post Sizing Up Trump and Putin appeared first on LewRockwell.

Across the Western world, men are facing a crisis few dare to name aloud. The facts are undeniable: fathers torn from their children, men ruined by divorce courts, and masculine identity hollowed out by a culture intent on rewriting gender itself. Beneath the surface of everyday life, an unspoken war is being fought — not on poverty or crime, but on men.

I never set out to write about men’s struggles. But through my own experience, I realized it isn’t only celebrities like Mel Gibson or Johnny Depp who are dragged through the grinder. Ordinary men everywhere are fighting the same battle — often in silence.

When Mel Gibson’s breakup with Oksana Grigorieva exploded into scandal, custody wars, and financial ruin, it showed that no man, no matter his wealth or fame, is safe from the machinery of the modern divorce system.

We saw the same script play out with Johnny Depp and Amber Heard. Years of accusations, media bias, and legal warfare turned Depp’s private life into a public spectacle — a global case study in what happens when a man is presumed guilty from the start. If even a Hollywood star must fight tooth and nail to clear his name, what chance does the average man have in court, facing bias and weaponized accusation without Hollywood wealth to shield him?

This isn’t an exception — it’s a symptom of a much deeper problem, the very war on men that my book exposes.

Like many men, I was simply a man who thought he was in love. She was beautiful, charming, full of “I love you’s.” To the outside world, we looked like the perfect couple. But behind the façade of romance, I found a darker truth.

The woman I loved — shaped, like so many today, by modern ideas about men and relationships — expected my time, my energy, and my money. Her affection felt increasingly transactional. When I finally ended it, I was hit with accusations and financial pressure that seemed to appear from nowhere. For the first time, I saw how easily the system itself could be used against me — even without evidence.

That was my red pill moment. The mask slipped. I saw that the problem wasn’t just one relationship — it was the machinery behind it. The system rewards exploitation and punishes men who refuse to play along.

That realization led me to write The War on Men: How the New Gender Politics Is Undermining Western Civilization. Not out of anger, but out of clarity. My story is not unique. It’s part of a much larger pattern — a silent war waged against men everywhere.

Many men sense this truth but can’t put it into words: the very systems once meant to protect family and fairness have become weapons against them. This is not hyperbole. It is lived reality for millions. And it begins, all too often, with the institution of marriage.

The Marriage Contract: A Trap in Disguise

Most men step into marriage full of hope — believing it’s a covenant built on love, trust, and shared purpose. But as The War on Men reveals, the legal reality is very different.

Signing a state marriage license isn’t just pledging yourself to a spouse. It’s entering a three-way contract where the state is the senior partner. The husband and wife become secondary parties, while the state claims ultimate jurisdiction over the union, the home, and even the children born within it.

What was once a covenant between husband, wife, and God has been reduced to a civil business arrangement — a contract of adhesion, unequal by design. The state offers its “consideration” in the form of a license; the couple unknowingly surrenders authority. From that moment, the state holds the upper hand.

The implications are staggering. Children are treated as the “fruit” of that contract, belonging first to the state — which is why child protective services can seize them with alarming ease. This isn’t conspiracy; it’s codified law, rooted in Roman civil code and embedded in modern family statutes.

Most men think marriage is the reward for love. Few realize it’s the point at which the system quietly claims their freedom.

Marriage is the only major decision in life where men are told to ignore risk. In every other area — business, career, finance — prudence is praised. In marriage, you’re told to close your eyes, follow your heart, and sign on the dotted line.

Love, we’re told, makes it all safe. But it doesn’t. The truth is brutal: a bad marriage, or even a cohabitation gone wrong, can destroy more than your bank account. It can take your home, your children, and the best years of your life.

That’s why I wrote The War on Men — the book I wish I had read before learning firsthand how modern relationships and courts are stacked against men. If marriage feels like a gamble where the odds are against you, this book explains why — and how to protect yourself.

Divorce Court: The Battlefield Where Men Lose Everything

Divorce court is where the imbalance of modern marriage reveals itself in full. When the vows collapse, the man discovers he isn’t an equal party but the least protected, least privileged actor in the drama.

Under “no-fault” divorce, a woman may leave for any reason — or none — while the man is left begging for fairness. Judges wield almost unlimited discretion, and outcomes depend not on justice or constitution but on civil statute.

The results are devastating:

• Men lose half their income, forced into support payments that leave them barely surviving.
  Custody laws defaulted to mothers.
• Fathers are denied real time with their children, reduced to visitors.
• Even stepchildren, not biologically his, can become his financial burden under expanding court powers.

This system wasn’t built to protect men — it was built to exploit them. The state profits through enforcement revenues, while social engineers advance an agenda that weakens fathers and strengthens bureaucratic control.

The man who once saw himself as provider and protector is recast as debtor and defendant, trapped in a system designed to break him.

Governments panic over falling marriage and birth rates, yet never ask the obvious question: why would men risk marriage when the system punishes them for it? Men aren’t rejecting commitment — they’re rejecting a rigged game. Until that changes, both marriage and civilization will continue to crumble.

Social Engineering and the Feminist Trap

How did we get here? Not by chance or cultural drift — but by design. The modern marriage contract and family court system are the products of deliberate social engineering.

The rise of feminism coincided with the expansion of state power into private life. From the late 19th century onward, the traditional covenant of marriage was replaced with state licensing. At the same time, feminist activism pushed for legal reforms that tilted marriage and divorce law heavily toward women.

Each new “advance” brought greater power to the courts:

• No-fault divorce erased accountability.
• Custody laws defaulted to mothers.
• Support formulas guaranteed lifelong payments from men — regardless of fairness or survival.

This wasn’t reform; it was re-engineering. The objective was clear: weaken men, weaken families, and strengthen the state. Strong men are difficult to control. Broken men are not.

As filmmaker Aaron Russo once testified, the Rockefeller banking dynasty helped finance early feminist movements — not to liberate women, but to tax the other half of the population and transfer child-rearing from family to state. Once both parents worked, the state could shape children’s minds through institutional education.

I explore this dynamic further in Climate CO₂ Hoax, showing how environmentalism has been used as another vehicle for central planning and ideological control. The UN’s so-called Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) advance the same agenda — presented as benevolence, but rooted in control.

Modern feminism, like environmentalism, cloaks power in moral language. Yet one question exposes the lie: What legal right do men have that women don’t? None. Men have no rights denied to women — and in many cases, fewer.

Despite this, the myth of “systemic male privilege” still dominates politics, media, and academia. This distortion fuels laws and attitudes that strip men of rights in family courts, workplaces, and public life — turning equality into an ideological weapon.

The Human Cost

Behind the legalese and political agendas are real men, flesh and blood. The stories echo in every town and city:

• A father bankrupted, unable to keep a roof over his head while forced to support two households.
• A man driven to despair, stripped of his children and identity by a court that sees him as expendable.
• Sons growing up without fathers, learning that men are secondary, that masculinity itself is suspect.

The toll shows up in numbers: suicide, homelessness, addiction, disconnection. But statistics can’t capture the wound. For countless men, the betrayal is not just financial — it’s existential. They did everything asked of them: worked, provided, sacrificed. And in return, they were treated as disposable.

Why The War on Men Matters

The War on Men is more than a book — it’s a lifeline. It tells the truth men need to hear — not to sow bitterness, but to open eyes. Inside, readers will find:

• The Divorce Machine — how courts profit while fathers are punished.
• The Feminist Trap — hidden dangers in marriage contracts.
• The Silent Epidemic — men betrayed by false accusations and bias.
• The Path Forward — how to reclaim power, purpose, and peace.

This is’nt about hating women. It is about rejecting illusion. It is about seeing through the lies — that marriage is safe, that the courts are fair, that men are privileged. It is about reclaiming the masculine strength needed to stand tall in a world that would rather see men bowed.

The Path Forward: Awareness, Strength, Clarity, Freedom

What, then, can men do?

• Wake up. Marriage today isn’t the covenant it once was. It’s a civil contract stacked against men — approach it with eyes wide open.
• Reclaim purpose. Masculinity isn’t toxic; it’s essential. The strength to build, protect, and lead are virtues — and when they’re lost, society collapses.
• Break the silence. The war on men thrives on isolation. When men tell their stories and refuse to accept the lie that they’re expendable, the tide begins to turn.
• Choose freedom. Any contract with the state — from marriage licenses to other legal traps — carries a cost. A man who retains his independence retains his power.

This is a time for strength, clarity, and courage — to reclaim the dignity of masculinity. For the sake of your children, your future, and your soul, you cannot afford to ignore the truth. Read The War on Men — and see what they don’t want you to see.

The post The Silent Struggle: How Divorce Courts and Social Engineering Wage War on Men appeared first on LewRockwell.

Only the wealthy will benefit from ZIRP, and the benefits of “the wealth effect” and “trickle down” have not just diminished–they’re now negative. Welcome to the era of ZAP.

Correspondent Scott suggested I consider the possibility that the powers that be will respond to a weakening of the economy by pushing interest rates toward zero, reinstating ZIRP–Zero Interest Rate Policy. The purpose of ZIRP is to reduce the costs of borrowing money as the means of goosing borrowing-and-spending and inflating another credit-asset bubble, a.k.a. “the wealth effect,” the Federal Reserve’s tried-and-true means of goosing the spending of the top 10% by making them wealthier–not by becoming more productive, but by jacking up the market valuation of the assets they own.

Here is my paraphrasing of Scott’s summary of this dynamic:

Here’s the logic of ZIRP: near zero interest rates 2008-2020 were beloved by the already rich, hedge funds and private equity (all of whom have enormous political influence). So they borrowed tens of billions of dollars to buy up every asset that wasn’t nailed down: stocks & bonds (both touching all time highs), houses (few now available for a decent price), businesses (half the NYSE was bought up by competitors), mobile home parks (desperate people pay their rent), apartment buildings, retirement homes, etc.

The Lords and Ladies of the estate are back! The new feudalism.

Thank you, Scott. As long-time readers know, I’ve often documented these very dynamics: the top 10% already own roughly 90% of all stocks and the majority of other income-producing assets (bonds, rental housing, business equity). The top 0.1% collect the majority of unearned income (i.e. income from assets).

I’ve also described how lumping all households into one bucket makes everything look rosy by masking the widening divide in wealth and income between the top 10% and the bottom 90%. I’ve often posted charts showing the bottom 50% of US households own such a thin slice of the nation’s financial wealth that it’s mere signal noise.

In other words, ZIRP works great if we define “great” as increasing wealth-income inequality and increasing consumption by making the already-rich even richer. Spending by the top 10% is about half of all consumption, meaning the wealthy are propping up the economy based on the enormous bubble in the assets they own.

Wealthy Americans Are Spending. People With Less Are Struggling. Data show a resilient economy. But that largely reflects spending by the rich, while others pull back amid high prices and a weakening labor market.

In other words, thanks to the Fed’s “stimulus” and ZIRP, globalization and financialization, ours is a fully neofeudal economy and society. I lay this out in my new book Investing In Revolution.

But here’s the thing: the Fed may try ZIRP, but end up with ZAP– Zero Adaptive Policy, a policy that no longer works as it did in the past because conditions have changed. In other words, ZIRP will not longer be a solution, it will be the problem.

What’s changed? Many things. We can start with these:

1. China is no longer providing a deflationary impulse in the global economy that offsets the sources of higher prices (inflation). Now systemic inflationary forces have the upper hand.

2. Risk pushes costs higher throughout the economy. Risks are obviously rising systemically, and so the risk premium is increasing. This pushes up the cost of everything.

3. The Fed’s “wealth effect” and “trickle-down” policy–the spending of the wealthy will “trickle down” to the bottom 90%–have pushed wealth-income inequality to extremes that trigger social disorder. Doing more of what worked post-2009 will not generate “growth”–it will generate instability.

4. Bubbles are teleological: they get bigger and more systemically corrosive with each iteration. There is no guarantee that Fed stimulus and ZIRP will reinflate the ruins left after the Everything / AI bubble deflates.

Read the Whole Article

The post ZIRP or ZAP? Will the Fed’s ‘Zero-Interest Rate Policy’ Return, and Will It Work? appeared first on LewRockwell.

We are nine months into the Donald Trump presidency and the road ahead seems pretty clear. There is an unsustainable one trillion dollar Pentagon budget supporting a newly renamed Department of War and Washington is engaged in conflicts that could escalate in Europe, Asia, South America and Africa. If it were possible to stage a bellicose incident near or in Antarctica that would also no doubt become a target, just as the Arctic region is currently playing into fantasies involving Greenland and Canada. Trump has even stopped talking to friendly neighbor Canada about trade relations over an ad that he did not like and no doubt will be discussing invasion soon. And let’s not forget the conflict here at home where Trump is citing the Insurrection Act regularly, signaling his intention to expand the already existing use of the military to carry out law enforcement functions in America’s states and cities, something that is of questionable legality under the Posse Comitatus Act.

The supreme irony is that all of the conflicts have been unnecessary, involving as they do countries and entire geographic regions that in no way threaten either the United States or what were once referred to as its vital interests except insofar as those interests have been grossly and one might suggest criminally misrepresented. That is what we are witnessing right now as what appears to be fishermen are being murdered by US forces positioned in the international waters of the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean. In the latest incident involving sinking a Colombian vessel and killing two crewmen in the Pacific, Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro denounced the crime and was in turn called a “thug” by Trump, who once again has demonstrated his skill at diplomacy. Trump has also warned that the war on “narco-terrorists” might well shift from the sea to “on land” in the countries being targeted, meaning that they will be invaded with the intention of regime change.

Russia, which is now on-again to being regarded as an opponent, is having its energy companies sanctioned, yet again, even though it has respectable and clearly defined national security interests that Trump has failed to comprehend. And there are also reports possibly linked to Trump’s ongoing feud with the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) on Wednesday, when he blasted the paper for a “FAKE NEWS” report that the Trump Administration had lifted “a key restriction” on Ukraine, allowing it to use long-range Tomahawk missiles against Russia. WSJ reported the green light from Trump would empower Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who is of course Jewish and is also strongly supported by Israel to such an extent that Zelensky has said “that when the Ukraine War is over, Ukraine will be a “big Israel.” The new missiles provided by Washington, if the repot is accurate, will be used to “step up attacks on targets inside Russia” and put added pressure on Russian dictator Vladimir Putin to agree to the ceasefire demanded by the White House. The missiles were reportedly given to Ukraine by its “Western allies.” As the US would have to play a part in targeting and launching the missiles, the move would bring the US directly into the war.

Iran, meanwhile, has never threatened the US and currently Venezuela and Colombia are not enemies except in the demented minds of Mr Trump and his cabinet. The US has no authority to “obliterate” the Palestinians in Gaza as Trump has recently threatened if Hamas does not comply with his orders, a threat that is particularly loathsome as it is being suggested as a “gift” to the most evil country in the world, Israel. During a visit to Israel on Tuesday, Vice President JD Vance repeated the warning that Hamas would be “obliterated” if it did not cooperate with the ceasefire — taking off from a similar threat from Trump, who earlier also promised “fast, furious and brutal force.”

Instead, the wars that are being ginned-up reflect the desire of America’s supreme leader to appear to be a tough guy who claims that the United States by right ought to dominate the world, all in spite of his own personal history as a draft dodger when it was his turn to fight for his country in an admittedly bad cause during the Vietnam War. Apparently shaking one’s tiny fist in the air while grimacing threateningly and punishing critics using the power and resources of the federal government is now regarded by some as what the American public expects in a president. At least that is the way that Donald Trump and his cast of clowns see it since they seem to be completely lacking any sense of the dignity expected of the American presidency. Oh, and along the way, the fawning claque is required to regularly heap praise on the Sovereign Leader, who now self-proclaims as arguably the third greatest president this country has ever had after Washington and Lincoln, by telling him what a genius and great man he is.

Those of us who are skeptical of the outpouring of homage to the Great Chief see a man who cannot even articulate a sentence properly. And in staff meetings in the White House he often cannot remember the name of whoever is sitting or standing next to him, but no matter, when you are set on destroying entire countries the details don’t really matter. As Trump is in reality a totally owned and operated subsidiary of the Jewish State Israel and his Jewish billionaire donors, which amount to the same thing, the rat line from Tel Aviv/Jerusalem, which also increasingly owns the US media, will cover up the inconsistencies. It will also deep-six the stories that would diminish the grandeur of the Trump White House, complete with the under- construction status of a magnificent ball room that will accommodate up to 1,000 worshippers. Too bad about the destruction of the White House East Wing, which will also be offset by the proposed “Trump-ful” memorial arch just down the Potomac from the Trump Center for the Performing Arts. There is also a bill in Congress to fund adding the sculpture of Trump’s magnificent head and stern visage to the Mount Rushmore Memorial in South Dakota, alongside George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt.

Trump’s total engagement with Israel and his complete subjugation at the hands of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whom he describes as a great war hero, just like himself, means that there is little that comes out of the White House that does not obtain the seal of approval from Tel Aviv. There are certainly bizarre anecdotes that one might share nearly every time Trump opens his mouth, but the tales of government by idiots are sometimes difficult to comprehend due to their sheer inanity. If there remains some hope that the United States is somehow a sinking ship that might some day right itself, it is perhaps best just to assume that the real criminal behavior comes out of Israel, like the fraudulent “Trump Peace Plan” for Gaza currently being floated to serve the Israeli interest in creating a Palestine free of Palestinians. Trump’s two top negotiators, real estate tycoons Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner, pretend to be impartial but they are both ardent Zionists who have declared that there has been no genocide going on in Gaza, a judgment which ninety per cent of the world would disagree with. The two would, not coincidentally perhaps, be likely to earn billions from the reconstruction of Gaza and turning it into the Trump Riviera resort. No Palestinians allowed, of course and the latest word coming from the “Peace Planners” is that Gaza reconstruction will only take place in the part of the Strip occupied by the Israeli Army.

But one of my favorite tales relates to the Nobel Peace Prize, which is a curious tale that involves both Donald Trump and Israel. The surprise winner of the prize Maria Machado, is an opponent of the current government headed by Nicolas Maduro, whom the US (and Trump personally) has opposed since a failed coup in May 2020, which Washington’s Drug Enforcement Administration may have organized and supported. As a consequence of the pressure from Washington, Maduro has broken off diplomatic relations with the US. He also is an outspoken critic of Israel’s behavior in Gaza. Machado has discerned an opportunity to obtain substantial foreign support, so she has praised Trump and has called on both the United States and Israel to intervene in her country and overthrow the government, replacing it, presumably, with her. So is the impending war with Venezuela, which will presumably kill lots of people, in some way linked to Trump and Israel? You betcha!

Even better than Machado is the recent Trumpean nonsense regarding Argentina which will cost tons of US taxpayer money and which actually has American ranchers crying out about how their livelihoods are being ruined. How the Israel control mechanism works is well exemplified by Trump’s interaction with Argentine President Javier Milei. Milei has expressed his deep admiration for Trump and for the state of Israel, which is a prerequisite for robbing the American taxpayer, a sleight of hand that Israel and its Tribe are particularly good at. Best of all, the wholesale theft is carried out under the protective aegis of the Congressional Antisemitism Awareness Act, which declares that criticism of Israel is motivated by “antisemitism” and therefore a “hate crime.”

Milei has been in the news lately because Trump has given him a $20 billion “swap line” bailout as a loan with Argentina’s central bank, where the US Treasury will exchange dollars for pesos to support the peso and the country’s credit market. Trump has also called for the importation of 80,000 tons of cheap Argentine beef to bring down prices in the US, a move objected to by American farmers who are reported to be struggling due to the bad economy and soaring prices.

Milei comes from an Italian family and was raised Roman Catholic, but he has nurtured a relationship with the large Argentine Jewish community and also with the state of Israel, which he has officially visited, praying at the Wailing Wall and moving his embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. He has also met with Benjamin Netanyahu and has reportedly stated his desire to convert to Judaism, but by one account he deferred that possibility when he was elected to the presidency due to the need to be engaged in office on the Jewish sabbath, on which no work could be performed. Nevertheless, his relationship with Jews and Israel is regarded as extremely strong and he boasts that his country is Israel’s best friend in Latin America. It is a position that is somewhat unusual for Latin America and something that Donald Trump, who may himself have converted to Judaism and has a daughter who has done so, greatly respects. So Milei gets the cash from the United States!

It is interesting to note how nearly every time one looks at an aspect of US foreign policy, to include Donald Trump’s penchant to resort to threats of violence which periodically turn into wars, the state of Israel comes up. Polls indicate that the American public is becoming increasingly aware of Israeli dominance of the White House whether it is inhabited by a Joe Biden or a Donald Trump. It is past time for a thorough cleaning at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue beyond the building of a new gilded ballroom to restore the People’s House to the People and to throw the Zionist Israel-First crooks out never to return. Let us hope that the revolution to restore the Constitution and Bill of Rights and to end both the wars and the Israel connection comes soon before it is too late!

Reprinted with permission from Unz Review.

The post A Nation At War appeared first on LewRockwell.

Writes Tim McGraw:

I thought this was an interesting video. The Beatles song “Taxman” mentions both “Mr. Wilson” and “Mr. Heath.” Heath and Nixon both made a lot of mistakes in 1974. Income and price controls never work. They just make things worse. 

The post 1974 Explained: The Year that Almost Crushed Britain appeared first on LewRockwell.

David Martin  wrote

Corrupt crony capitalism at its worst.

See also this.

The post The REAL Reason We’re Giving $40 Billion To Argentina Is UNBELIEVABLE! appeared first on LewRockwell.

The Progressive Era, by Murray N. Rothbard

EDITED BY
PATRICK NEWMAN

FOREWORD BY
JUDGE ANDREW P. NAPOLITANO

In the last decades of Murray Rothbard’s life, he developed an important interpretative framework in understanding American history. This was prodded on by his careful study of the emerging “new political history” which was reinterpreting the dynamics of the ebb and flow of ethnocultural and ethnoreligious groups. This bold synthesis became the central focus of some of his greatest scholarly endeavors, particularly when it came to understanding progressivism as a secularized version of this postmillennial religious zeal.

In his brilliant book, The Progressive Era, (which I believe to be his greatest work) Rothbard provided the Rosetta Stone to understanding the origins of the welfare/warfare state in America: the role of postmillennial Protestant pietistic intellectuals and activists born in the crucial decade surrounding the Civil War who, because of the seductive allure and influence of the evolutionary naturalism of Darwinism, came of age increasingly secularized, but who did not forsake their faith in statism and elitist social control.

In particular, read the wonderful foreword to this book by Judge Andrew Napolitano. His experience studying the Progressive Era at Princeton amazingly mirrors that of myself at the University of Tulsa.

Each week, Future of Freedom Foundation president Jacob Hornberger and Misean economist Richard M. Ebeling discuss the hot topics of the day.

In the video below Jacob and Richard discussed the disaster of progressivism. I cannot stress enough the importance of this dialog. This concise 30 minute conversation encapsulates the most brilliant and enlightening synthesis of ideas and history concerning the origins and roots of this pernicious intellectual movement, both at home and abroad.

Ebeling concisely traces these concepts from their 19th century Marxian notions of the dynamic class struggle of history, that history, according to Karl Marx, inevitably moved in a “progressive” direction from primitive pre-industrial societies, to a feudal order, to industrial capitalism, will move onward towards socialism (and the dictatorship of the proletariat), finally to the ultimate stage of history, communism. Any movement away from this cyclical direction was “reactionary” or regressive.

In perhaps the highlight of his remarks, he builds upon the pioneering insights of Murray Rothbard and others in focusing upon the crucial development of the welfare-warfare state in Germany under chancellor Otto von Bismarck, and Bismarck’s co-opting of the collectivist program of the Marxian Social Democrats into a Bismarxian hybrid to enhance state power and control.

Again, as Rothbard elucidated, generations of key American graduate students attended German universities during this period, returning to the US transformed by these statist ideas they had absorbed. These persons, such as Richard T. Ely of the University of Wisconsin, became the first generation of progressive intellectuals and cogs within the state apparatus that moved America away from a classical liberal (libertarian) direction towards this collectivist hybrid known as progressivism.

Hornberger cogently points out the key role of the judiciary in the erosion of the constitutional safeguards against interventionism, and the pivotal model of Woodrow Wilson in establishing the matrix for all that followed. Wilson was a student of Richard Ely at Johns Hopkins.

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Click here:

DrPaulMarik

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Greg Privette wrote:

Hi Lew,

I saw the article by Joachim Hagopian. From that article:

In record time Trump has shown America his true colors as a dictator. Barely a month into his second term presidency, a PRRI (Public Religion Research Institute) poll taken between February 28 and March 20 found that 52% of the 5,025 Americans polled agreed with the following statement:

[Trump is a] dangerous dictator whose power should be limited before he destroys American democracy

True to form the opposition completely misses the real issue due to their fetish for “democracy”. This is due to their desire to use democracy to regain the levers of power for themselves. If the opposition really wants to save the American people, rather than the American state, why not try this statement instead:

[Trump is a] dangerous dictator whose power should be limited before he destroys American Liberty (at least what’s left of it)

That would be a statement I think we could all get behind.

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“Somebody decided Charlie Kirk was a danger to the status quo. The battle runs deep.” – Col. Douglas Macgregor

“Charlie Kirk was evolving to have serious concerns about Israel. His murder silences that evolution and makes him a valuable martyr to serve the very anti-Christian forces that executed him.” – Dr. Shiva Ayyadurai

I’ve spent a lot of time (I stopped counting after 250 hours) investigating the tragic Charlie Kirk assassination at Utah Valley University and have come to a few conclusions. These are my opinions based on researching information from my own sources to hundreds of sources ranging from the most prominent  – Tucker Carlson with his 16 million followers on X and Candace Owens with her 7 million X followers – to citizen reporters who have fewer than 5,000 followers to former military, snipers, hunters, and ballistics and digital imaging experts. I mainly focused on X (Twitter) information sources but much more independent reporting on the murder is available on YouTube, Rumble, Bitchute, Instagram, Facebook, Tik Tok (although new owner Larry Ellison may have something to say about it) and other social media sites. A massive number of independent journalists have written excellent articles on this traumatic and historically significant assassination with The Grayzone’s Max Blumenthal setting off an avalanche of investigative reporting focusing on a possible Zionist connection.

Many lesser known investigators have conducted thoughtful video and podcast analyses including Redacted, Ryan Matta, Chris Martenson, Sam Parker, Ian Carroll, Zeb Boykin, Diligent Denizen, Project Constitution, the IntelSCIF and Jason Goodman. If someone has figured out the complete explanation of what happened on September 10, I am not aware of it. This subject has so many angles and complexities I won’t elaborate on here – for instance, a nexus between Mormonism, Zionism and Masonry – it’s enough to fill a book – but I will attempt to address a few key points.

My conclusions thus far: The official FBI narrative is preposterous and has been thoroughly debunked by many independent investigative reporters. A few of many specifics: snipers, veterans, gun enthusiasts and hunters agree the magic 30-06 bullet would have blown the back of Charlie’s head off. Despite the claims of Laura Loomer and Jack Posobiec and other influencers that we all saw a leftist shoot Charlie (we didn’t), no video of Tyler Robinson shooting the rifle has been released. Why is that? And why was the crime scene destroyed?) Robinson may indeed be the man seen running across the roof, but despite the 2024 installation of 1,000+ state of the art cameras on UVU grounds, the video released to the public was too far away to actually identify who was running.

After the assassination, attendees were allowed to roam around the campus grounds for at least 20 minutes before police ordered them to leave. Decoys (George Zinn and possibly Phil Lyman, although the wonderful podcaster Kate Dalley who lives in Utah knows Lyman and says he’s a good guy) and distractions (spotters planted in the crowd) were used and the crime scene was destroyed – literally paved over.

I believe the assassination was a complex military operation involving Israeli and US intelligence using advanced technology. Security was irresponsibly lax: Six policemen, no metal detectors and no surveillance officers to catch rooftop snipers. Attendees, while required to register by submitting personal information which can be used for data collection purposes, weren’t even asked for their tickets. An Army HADES jet lowered its altitude and dropped off ISR (intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance) drones that disrupted authorized recordings and broadcasts. However, at least 35 videos were still captured and stored in an online archive. This includes Adam Bartholomew’s more than an hour long video of Kirk’s campus debate he managed to record by hard wiring his camera equipment, thereby bypassing this Bluetooth exploit event.

The scenario that seems the most plausible to me is there were two events. Video and photo analysis and audio forensics indicate perhaps a subsonic projectile shot and what has been dubbed the “exploding microphone” theory promoted by Jon Bray in his highly technical analytical videos and explanations on X. I dismissed this hypothesis weeks ago but revisited it when additional facts were uncovered. Charlie’s black microphone clasp seen on his white t-shirt was connected to a RODE battery beneath his shirt that contained a shaped charge – a plastic explosive, metal cone and pellet. The device was remotely detonated by someone in the audience, possibly the security guard wearing the beige plaid shirt standing directly in front of Charlie when he touched his arm at the exact moment Kirk was hit. The magnetic clasp/mic was propelled into his neck and then fell out of his neck making the entry point also the exit wound. A video can be seen of this object entering and exiting his neck, although it is possible the video was altered. Many dismiss this theory because no burn marks were left on his shirt, however, the residue could have been crystals which would eliminate any scorching. This scenario would involve high-tech, perhaps even classified technology. According to UFO and assassinations expert Daniel Liszt, known as Dark Journalist, advanced technology is always used in assassinations. This theory is the only one that explains the extreme billowing of Charlie’s shirt in front and back. Additionally, it was discovered that a company in Tennessee, Accurate Energetic Systems, received a contract from May-August 2025 to manufacture “miniaturized demolition charges anti-personnel to support special purpose missions.” AES delivered the product and then the factory was totally demolished in September prior to the murder. A shot may have occurred simultaneously from a low velocity gun or rifle as a decoy to cover for the high tech explosion but perhaps also for redundancy purposes.

After Charlie’s security detail (Rockhouse Integrity Group or Integrity Security Solutions?) engaged in what looked like military signaling, the team rushed immediately in lock-step motion to Kirk after the shot/explosion, as if they had rehearsed their roles. They didn’t bother to take their sunglasses off to see better, didn’t appear to be engaging in any lifesaving measure, had no blood on their hands, and looked like they were handing off items to each other. The sinister thought that these guys were actually finishing Charlie off has crossed the mind of more than a few who have closely studied the videos. And Kirk’s right arm could be seen with his fingers moving, indicating he didn’t die instantaneously as was previously claimed.

It is irresponsible for anyone to state Tyler Robinson is the assassin because even though the governor of Utah claimed, “We got him!” 33 hours after the shooting, and Kash Patel assured us the FBI has the guilty man, under our Constitution Robinson is innocent until proven guilty. He hasn’t had a fair trial yet nor convicted of any crime. It is also irresponsible to state someone in his security detail or in the audience or a particular cameraman killed Kirk or that “Israel did it.” This is all conjecture. There may be a lot of circumstantial evidence to give someone a sneaking suspicion of what happened, but this remains an opinion and not actual proof.

In spite of the time I’ve spent looking into the murder, there is still much I don’t know. The judge in the case has issued a gag order on all 3,000 in attendance at the Utah Valley University TPUSA event, friends and colleagues. This is no doubt a desperate attempt to silence the conspiracy theories that have emerged from truth seekers motivated to do their own research because they do not trust the FBI. However, attempts to censor and shame voices questioning the official narrative (“You’re disrespecting the family!”) are hallmarks of a psychological operation.

Kirk’s murder is sadly the most significant political assassination of a globally known peace activist and opponent of US wars since John Lennon, and before him MLK, Malcolm X, RFK and JFK. Watching the powerful new documentary “RFK: Legacy” where Oliver Stone questions RFK Jr. as directed by executive producer Oliver’s son Sean Stone, was a vivid reminder of how RFK’s and JFK’s opposition to the Vietnam War and advocacy for peace placed a bull’s eye on both of them.

Charlie became a follower of Christ as a child. As a teenager, Kirk began attending rallies of the Tea Party, the grassroots political movement that drew intellectual and ideological inspiration from the 2008 presidential campaign of Ron Paul. One tenet of Paul’s platform was a non-interventionist US foreign policy, a position to which Kirk in the last two years of his life Kirk was making a complete shift. His transformation was based in part to his listening to the views of his millions of TPUSA followers. He was aware of  the despair his Generation Z supporters felt about their future prospects to get job or buy a house or get married and have a family and he had empathy about their dim future prospects. These 30 year-olds and younger did not support the US funding the weapons and bombs Israel uses to bomb Gaza and other countries nor did they want any wars.

Charlie was also learning due to his own research, spiritual changes within himself, and influence from his colleagues and friends Carlson, Owens, Megyn Kelly and Dave Smith. Kirk had an open mind and heart to change his views and to courageously speak truth to power and take corresponding action. Kirk was undergoing a spiritual conversion from Christian Zionist evangelism toward Catholicism, praying the rosary and attending mass. His timeline on X the last month of his life reveals pro-Catholic posts including his interview with a priest on the topic of demons. Matt Bracken reports Charlie was wearing a St. Michael’s pendant as a Catholic bishop prayed over Kirk’s body.

Charlie had already proven his effectiveness and success in challenging and attaining political power. He was the leader of the most powerful youth movement of our time in America with chapters around the world. At the memorial service whose grand production resembled a Trump rally or TPUSA event, RFK Jr. acknowledged it was Charlie who convinced him to endorse Trump for president which counted for about 2 ½ million votes for Trump. The DNC wasn’t too happy about that. RFK credited Kirk more than anyone else with leading the effort to restore free speech in America. RFK Jr. said he and Kirk had received many death threats but both believed seeing their children live in slavery and losing their Constitutional rights was worse than dying. RFK Jr. said Kirk succeeded JFK, RFK and MLK as one of the greatest political minds and activists in history. As noted by Ben Shapiro, who announced he was ready to pick up Charlie’s blood-stained microphone, under Charlie’s leadership TPUSA had become more powerful than the RNC in terms of fundraising, organization and strategy. That didn’t make the RNC very happy.

Before Kirk’s murder, I hadn’t paid much attention to him which I regret. I say that because I realize now his views were evolving over the past two years and that he was sincere and while he knew his speaking truth to power put his life in jeopardy, he took the risk and continued to speak out knowing his life would likely be taken. I was aware his radio show followed Bannon’s War Room on Real America’s Voice but never listened to it and I knew his TPUSA conducted conferences featuring high profile voices on the populist right such as Carlson and Bannon. I had been turned off by Kirk’s support of all the wars and was particularly disgusted by the way he treated a student who asked him a question about Israel’s 1967 unprovoked and deliberate attack on the USS Liberty that killed 34 and wounded 174 American servicemen, an intended false flag the US government covered up. Using a tone of voice far from his typical conciliatory inflection, he angrily accused the student of spreading a conspiracy theory which would not be tolerated.

After Kirk was killed, I listened to many of his interviews, radio shows, and campus Q&A debates with students, and was impressed by his preaching the gospel, his willingness to debate college students, and his ability to give common sense advice to these young people. I was very surprised to learn Kirk had changed from an unquestioning devotee of Israel who visited the Holy Land many times to a critic who questioned if Israel stood down on October 7  on Patrick Bet David’s October 13, 2023 podcast. This may have been the first time Charlie publicly indicated he was veering away from his unquestioning support of Israel. He told PBT as a 30 year old millennial he was tired of no win Middle East wars started by “bloodthirsty neocons.” Kirk later insisted on the release of the Epstein files despite Trump’s dropping the issue after it had been a campaign promise; criticized bullying and bribing Jewish donors; opposed legislation to outlaw anti-Semitic speech; and named secular Jews as the force behind open US borders, Marxism and the anti-white agenda. Kirk went to the White House to convince President Trump to keep the US out of Israel’s long desired war with Iran but the Commander-in-Chief reportedly rebuffed him. Charlie opposed the war in Ukraine and started to question the IDF’s atrocities against Palestinians in Gaza. Two days before he was killed, he texted “Jewish donors play into all the stereotypes. I cannot and will not be bullied like this. Leaving me no choice but to abandon the pro-Israel cause.”

Many believe the assassination of Kirk was a professional hit by the Mossad (or to be nit-picky about it possibly a rogue group representing Zionist interests). Since even Steve Bannon now publicly acknowledges what he has undoubtedly known for many years, that Mossad controls the CIA, then by extension the Agency was also involved in planning and carrying out the public execution. The circumstantial evidence behind this theory is monumental and has been widely reported by many independent investigative journalists. Michael Yon, former Green Beret, war correspondent, military strategist and voracious reader, reasons Zionists had the motivation, means and resources to carry out the deadly deed. Charlie wouldn’t take the silver (reportedly $150 million from Netanyahu as well as a visit to Israel) so they gave him the lead. However, if a tranny lone gunman happened by coincidence to take out and silence the spiritual, political, and cultural leader of 30 year-old and younger Americans, how convenient for Bibi Netanyahu who was losing the support of Kirk and millions of his followers.

At the Turning the Tide: 9-11 Justice in 2025 conference in Washington, DC on the day after Kirk was killed, I approached a podcaster I recognized. We chatted and she told me she was a friend of Charlie’s. I shared my theory of what led to his assassination: he had wandered off the Zionist plantation and was therefore considered a liability rather than an asset to their interests. The podcaster responded with agreement, adding all of Charlie’s friends she knew reached the same conclusion. America Journal host Harrison Smith posted on X Charlie was afraid Israel would kill him if he continued to speak out against their interests. As discovered by YouTuber Baron Coleman using Google Trends and James Li using a Google tool, IP addresses in Israel and Washington, DC were searching for many places (like the hospital and university) and people (like the medical examiner and judges) related to the assassination and its aftermath months before the murder, indicating foreknowledge. And it is odd Charlie’s tent was placed on UVU courtyard landscaping that from an aerial view resembles a Hanukkah menorah.

As for widowed wife Erika, I am aware of the criticism and even cruel comments about her and her parents. All or some of it may be true, but I am not comfortable exploring any of this at this time. I will say I picked up on the fact that when she dramatically raised her head heavenward during her speech at the pyrotechnic laden memorial production proclaiming, “That young man….I forgive him!” she was telling the world she accepted the official narrative that Tyler Robinson was her husband’s murderer. In the days following the assassination I found it off putting to receive texts and emails with Erika’s name attached soliciting for money. Also, I found the video ostensibly of Charlie in his casket with Erika’s prominently ringed fingers touching his rubber looking hands and her burying her head into his chest, bizarre. If you expect anyone to believe this, you might as well show his face. And I was puzzled how she could smile backstage with Trump at the memorial extravaganza and seamlessly accept the role as TPUSA CEO and co-host of Charlie’s radio show. I realize people grieve in different ways, but if my husband had been brutally murdered in the presence of me, my children, on camera and in front of the entire world, I would be a basket case for at least six months and would spend my time nurturing our children.

As for the many theories about how and who killed Charlie, I will dismiss the most amusing one contending a hologram was used. A hologram can look realistic if you are facing the stage, but the shocking sight of blood gushing out of Charlie’s neck was observed by eyewitnesses and captured on video from both sides of the tent. And CGI works on video but not in person. Admittedly, the outpouring of blood looked very much like the way blood reacts when a squib is used, and the small pool of blood on the corner of the table on which Charlie’s chair was placed to elevate him, and the absence of blood from the tent to the SUV lend itself to the use of a squib. Nevertheless, I reject the nonsensical theory that Charlie used a squib, he isn’t dead, he escaped via a trap door, and he’s living in Valhalla under a witness protection program. That one gave me a much needed laugh while immersing myself into this dire topic. Another theory that induced a chuckle was from a YouTuber whose 15-part series plot speculated how Charlie planned to fake his death to take the heat off Trump’s refusal to release the Epstein files but Mossad double-crossed him and deployed their own team who really did do him in.

TPUSA’s finances have been called into question and possible fraud has been suspected. Charlie sent a memo informing his executive team he was going to conduct a DOGE-like audit of the non-profit’s financials. Investment advisor Charles Ortel, an admirer of Kirk’s who has exposed the Clinton Foundation’s corruption, uncovered suspicious endowments to TPUSA and disturbing details of affiliated companies with multiple offices in locations such as shopping malls. Ortel said he could not find documentation reconciling how entities share expenses and revenues and that board members handling finances do not appear to be very financially astute. TPUSA has not questioned any aspect of the FBI investigation and is awaiting developments from the trial set to start on October 30. Meanwhile, it’s business as usual as TPUSA executives continue to host episodes of The Charlie Kirk Show and conduct campus visits.

There are many unanswered questions. A few: Why was there no ambulance at UVU? Was there an autopsy? There is a claim one was leaked but no report has officially been released. Why was Charlie taken to a hospital farther away than the one that was closer? Why is there no footage from the hospital? How was his body in the coffin less than 40 hours after he was killed? Was he cremated? Where is his body buried?

The good news is that the shocking and traumatizing murder of Kirk, the recognition of his living his Christian faith and all he accomplished are bringing many around the world to Jesus. Charlie was bringing souls to Christ and trying to save Western Civilization and “the lost boys of the West” as one speaker at the memorial service phrased it. Charlie Kirk deserves nothing less than the revealing of the whole truth and nothing but the truth as to who, how and why his life was taken from him.

The post Unraveling the Mystery of Who Assassinated Charlie Kirk and Why appeared first on LewRockwell.

Donald Trump is more than a bad president; he is a very bad man (to use Trump’s lingo). America has had several presidents with loose morals, but we’ve never had one (well, except for perhaps Abraham Lincoln and Lyndon Johnson) who had NO morals.

It’s really difficult to realize, much less articulate, just how much toxic damage Trump has wrought in the hearts and minds of the people on the political and religious right. Of course, they themselves are unable to recognize it, but devotion and loyalty to Trump have cost them their moral conscience, their mental capacity to reason and, yes, the forfeiture of their humanity. The unconscionable conduct, egregious crimes and attacks on civility committed by Trump on a daily (even hourly) basis that conservatives are willing to excuse and even laud stagger the imagination.

This is especially true for people calling themselves Christians.

Donald Trump has made a mockery of the office of president. He treats the Oval Office like a lavatory. His brain registers zero respect or reverence for the office. He degrades and humiliates the office day in and day out. There has never been a man in the White House who publicly profanes the name of God and insults the conscience of America’s polite society with more vulgarity and profanity than Donald J. Trump (and those around him).

If a Democrat president behaved this way, Christians would howl their displeasure. But when Trump does it, they sit passive and compliant—even turn around and try to tell us how great Christians the Trumps are. To hear them talk, Abraham, Moses, Peter and Paul are carnal degenerates compared to the spirituality of the Trumps.

Evangelicals point to the two attempted assassinations on Donald Trump as proof that Trump has some sort of divine anointing. They have forgotten that Adolf Hitler had at least forty assassination attempts on his life.

When Trump survived the assassination attempt in Pennsylvania, Trump said that God saved his life. Yes, indeed. God did just that. God has saved the life of each person reading this column—probably more than once. Every breath, every heartbeat is a gift of God.

But now, in typical emperor-speak, the Trumps have changed “God saved Trump” to “Trump saved God.”

Eric Trump on Tuesday claimed that President Donald Trump and the MAGA movement are “saving God” during an interview with conservative political commentator Benny Johnson.

“We’re saving Christianity. We’re saving God,” he told Johnson. “We’re saving the family unit. We’re saving this nation.”

(Source)

Where are you, Pastor Robert Jeffress? Where are you, Rev. Franklin Graham?

Eric Trump just boldly, brazenly and matter-of-factly publicly blasphemed Almighty God in a way never heard before by a member of an American first family, and evangelical preachers sit mute and dumb.

Can one imagine the outcry had Joe Biden’s son Hunter publicly said such a thing? I guess blasphemy is only a sin if Democrats commit it.

But it is Trump’s slavish pandering to Israel that really stinks to the heavens. Disgusting and nauseating do not begin to describe Trump’s sheer, supine subjection to the Jewish billionaire class.

In his speech before the Israeli Knesset, Donald Trump made a fool out of the people of the United States. He crawled before Benjamin Netanyahu and Miriam Adelson like a whipped little puppy dog. It was humiliating! It was horrible!

“I’m gonna get her {Miriam Adelson, Zionist billionaire and Mossad asset} in trouble with this one, but I actually asked her once, ‘So, Miriam, I know you love Israel. What do you love more? Israel. The United States or Israel?’ She refused to answer. That might mean Israel,” the president said.

Miriam’s late husband, Sheldon Adelson, was also a major contributor to Trump’s previous presidential campaigns, and Trump credited the couple for pro-Israel moves he made in his first administration, including recognizing the Israeli annexation of the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.

“Miriam and Sheldon would come into the office, they’d call me. I think they had more trips to the White House than anybody else I could think of. Look at her sitting there so innocently, she got $60 billion in the bank … and she loves Israel,” Trump said in his Knesset address, which Miriam attended.

“Her husband was a very aggressive man, but I loved him, very supportive of me. And he’d call up, ‘Can I come over and see you?’ I say, ‘Sheldon, I’m the president of the United States, it doesn’t work that way.’ He’d come in and do good, though. But they were very responsible for so much, including getting me thinking about Golan Heights,” Trump added.

Lest anyone forget, Trump in 2024 openly ran on handing our country over to Miriam Adelson and the Israel Lobby.

“You’re going to end up winning because you’re going to have the president, okay?” he told Adelson at an event for wealthy Jewish donors in August 2024.

(Source)

As I said in my message last Sunday entitled It Is Christian Zionists Who Will Be Left Behind:

If you saw Trump’s speech before the Israeli Knesset last week, you saw what a pandering, sycophantic lackey for Israel Donald Trump really is.

He confessed to the world that he is owned by Miriam Adelson, the Mossad and Netanyahu.

He confessed to the world that the Adelsons bribed him in his first term to move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

He confessed to the world that the Adelsons bribed him to “give” the Golan Heights to Israel.

He confessed to the world that Sheldon Adelson had unfettered access to the Oval Office.

He confessed to the world that his largest financial benefactor, Miriam Adelson, is more loyal to Israel than she is to the United States.

He confessed to the world that Netanyahu is guilty of accepting bribes.

And he further confessed to the world that he, Donald Trump, regards bribery as “no big deal,” because, of course, HE has been bribed by Israel all of his life.

I was pleasantly surprised to hear USMC Major and former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter say in an interview that even with the hundreds of millions of dollars that the Israel lobby has at its disposal with which to bribe America’s politicians, it would not be enough to succeed the way it does without the popular support of America’s evangelical Christian Zionists.

Hooray, Scott! I’ve been saying that for years.

Christian Zionism is the glue that holds the global Zionist Ponzi scheme together. And the one man that is most responsible for this gigantic global deception is Cyrus Scofield, author of the pro-Zionist notes in the Scofield Reference Bible.

I encourage everyone to read the single most exhaustive and thoroughly researched biography of C. I. Scofield entitled The Incredible Scofield and His Book by Joseph Canfield.

I’m proud to say that we are a distributor of this blockbuster book that unveils the truth about the real C. I. Scofield. Scofield was to religion what P. T. Barnum was to entertainment.

A Zionist-owned American presidency and U.S. Congress could have never happened without Scofield. The deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent lives in Palestine by the ethnic cleansing and genocide of Zionist Israel could have never happened without Scofield.

The genocide in Gaza, Israel-pandering politicians and blind, indifferent “Christians” are the legacy of C. I. Scofield. Read the book, and you will understand.

Now, on the home front, what is Trump doing? He’s declaring political war on the two best friends that conservatives and constitutionalists have in Congress: Congressman Thomas Massie and Senator Rand Paul.

This subject was recently discussed on Ron Paul’s Liberty Report podcast with Ron and co-host Daniel McAdams.

McAdams: This, honestly, Dr. Paul, this is not even a junior high-level rant on the part of President Trump. And it’s honestly hard to read this and believe (and I had to double check it) to believe that this person who wrote this is the president of the United States of America. Now, I’ll read it for you because it happens to be important, I think.  He said,

Donald Trump Truth Social Channel: Whatever happened to “Senator” Rand Paul? He was never great, but he went really BAD! I got him elected TWICE (in the great state of Kentucky!), but he just never votes positively for the Republican Party. He’s a nasty liddle’ guy [misspelled], much like “Congressman” Thomas Massie, aka Rand Paul Jr., also of Kentucky (which I won three times in massive landslides!), a sick Wacko, who refuses to vote for our great Republican Party, MAGA, or America First. It’s really weird!!!

There are a lot of things wrong with this, the first of which being that it’s absolutely untrue in every way. He did not get Senator Paul elected twice. In 2010, he had nothing to do with the first senatorial, as you know very well, Dr. Paul, because you are actually the one involved. You were the one involved. In 2010, he did nothing. You were involved in that. So, Trump had nothing to do with that. And in 2016, Trump was running for president. They were running against each other for president. Trump certainly didn’t help him then. So, an absolute bold-faced lie. Maybe he’s forgotten that he had nothing to do with Senator Paul’s election.

And, by the way, it should be pointed out through all of these constant attacks on Senator Paul and Massie, but certainly Senator Paul: When the chips were down, and President Trump was facing this Russiagate claims, a pack of lies, there was one person who steadfastly stood by President Trump, and that is Senator Rand Paul. And we remember this. He defended him against these charges that he’s simply Putin’s puppet. And he not only defended them, but Senator Paul defended President Trump even to the detriment of Senator Paul’s own reputation, because they said, “Oh, you must be Putin’s puppet too.” So, he basically took the body blows for President Trump when the chips were down. And this is how President Trump repays people. I think it’s disgusting.

The thing about the attack on Senator Paul and Congressman Massie is that there’s a punchline to this horrible, horrible, off-color joke. And that is, right when President Trump is attacking these two gentlemen, what does he decide to do? Well, he decides to have his first fundraiser for another candidate of the election cycle. And who does he support? So, “Rand and Massie are RINOs; they’re not real Republicans.”

Go to that Politico article. There we go. He’s going to go on stage for Lindsey Graham.

Politico Article: Trump’s first in-person fundraiser of the 2026 cycle will be for Lindsey Graham

His first in-person appearance of the 2026 midterm campaign cycle at a fundraiser next month to support the reelection bid of Sen. Lindsey Graham.

Trump, who has largely eschewed domestic travel this year, is scheduled to join the South Carolina Republican for a golf tournament in November, according to a person familiar with this.

So, Senator Paul, Congressman Massie are anathema, but Lindsey Graham is the one who he believes is the America first, MAGA. It’s unbelievable.

McAdams continues:

Well, as bad as it is attacking these two fine gentlemen and going to bat for Lindsey Graham, hold your breath, Dr. Paul, it gets even worse.

Now, you mentioned Trump was desperately trying to find a Republican to run against Massie in the primaries. He even got a bunch of out-of-state money, a couple million bucks, out-of-state money to put someone up against Massie, but they couldn’t find anyone. Well, it looks like he’s desperately trying to find one.

Tyler Durden Article: “Is This MAGA? Trump Wants Lindsey Graham Donor To Challenge ‘RINO’ Massie”

The guy’s name is Ed Gallrein, and Trump is desperately trying to get him to run against Massie. Go to the next clip.

Here’s what Trump wrote on Friday night.

Same Tyler Durden Article: Third Rate Congressman Thomas Massie, a Weak and Pathetic RINO from the Great Commonwealth of Kentucky, a place I love, and won big SIX TIMES [only six?], must be thrown out of office ASAP!

I hope Ed gets into the race against Massie. Unlike ‘lightweight’ Massie, a totally ineffective loser who has failed so badly, CAPTAIN ED GALLREIGN IS A WINNER WHO WILL NOT LET YOU DOWN. Should he decide to challenge Massie, Captain Ed Gallrein has my complete and total endorsement. RUN, ED, RUN.

I mean, Dr. Paul, reading this, does that look like it’s written by the president of the United States of America? It’s so weird.

It’s more than weird, Daniel; it’s evil.

Lindsey Graham is the biggest Neocon warmonger in the U.S. Congress. The blood of innocents drips from his hands and oozes from the pores of his skin.

You professing peace lovers in the GOP take note: Donald Trump is doing everything he can to re-elect your biggest enemy in Congress and to defeat your best friends in Congress. And you still give Donald Trump unyielding, total support.

What is wrong with you? You’ve allowed Trump to sully your soul. That’s what’s wrong with you.

Trump is more than a bad president; he is a very bad man. And people who blindly follow him are falling into the ditch of disaster into which he is leading them.

Reprinted with permission from Chuck Baldwin Live.

The post Trump’s God Complex, Slavish Pandering to Israel and War Against Thomas Massie and Rand Paul appeared first on LewRockwell.

The Shroud of Turin has fascinated believers and skeptics for centuries. This linen cloth bears the faint image of a man who appears to have been crucified – complete with wounds that match the Gospel accounts of Jesus Christ’s death. For some, it is the most sacred object in Christianity as it marks the exact moment that Jesus was resurrected. Others have insisted that the shroud is a medieval forgery. Until recently, there was no definitive evidence either way. That changed this year.

First a bit of history. In 1988, three laboratories in Oxford, Zurich, and Arizona used radiocarbon dating on a small strip from one corner of the shroud, and they concluded that the cloth dated to between AD 1260 and 1390. Western media immediately pounced on the story, eager to declare the Shroud a forgery.

But the science has not turned out to be quite as solid as they hoped, and recent work by Italian physicist Professor Liberato De Caro has thrown that medieval date out the window.

Cracks in the Carbon-14

The first problem with the 1988 test was its sample location: all the material came from a single corner, right next to a seam. This area had been handled frequently over the centuries and appeared to have been repaired with different threads after fire damage in 1532.

In 2013, statisticians Marco Riani and Anthony Atkinson re-examined the original Carbon-14 data and found that the dates varied along the strip in a way that suggested the dating of the corner was not a reliable estimate for the date of the entire cloth. In 2019, researcher Tristan Casabianca from the University of Hamburg obtained the raw lab data and confirmed these inconsistencies.

Historian, Jean-Christian Petitfils, who has studied the Shroud for more than 40 years, discussed the post-1988 findings in his new book, ‘The Shroud of Turin: The Definitive Investigation’. “Traces of fungus and calcium carbonate were found. The sample area corresponded to a sewn area: modern threads were inserted in the 16th century in order to repair this area that had been worn away.” He concluded “ The Carbon-14 experiment of 1988 is null and void.”

Trust The Science

Since Carbon-14 dating could not be relied upon to provide a valid date for the Shroud, Professor De Caro approached the dating problem differently. Instead of measuring radioactive carbon, he used wide-angle X-ray scattering (WAXS), which examines the microscopic structure of cellulose in linen fibers.

Over time, the crystalline regions in cellulose break down in predictable ways. By measuring this structural change and comparing it to samples of known age, WAXS can estimate very accurately how long the fibers have been aging since they were woven. Unlike carbon dating, this method is unaffected by surface contamination because it probes the fiber’s internal structure itself.

De Caro Findings

In 2022, De Caro’s team analyzed a fiber from the Shroud and compared it to linen samples from various periods, including cloth from Masada in Israel dated to the first century AD. When the fiber was analyzed by a powerful X-ray machine, the scientists were astounded at the result that emerged. The Shroud did not originate, as has long been thought, in the 13th century, but from the 1st century AD.

In age, it matched a similar shred of linen that came from the siege of Masada in 73 AD, when a band of Jews who had sought sanctuary on a sheer-sided outcrop in the desert were besieged by the Roman army. Rather than wait to be killed by the advancing legions, they took their own lives en masse. The scrap of cloth from Masada has been dated to 55–74 AD.

“There was a sense of joy, of shock,” says Prof De Caro. “Why? Because we had verified that it could be authentic. We know for sure that the sample from the fortress of Masada is 2,000 years old. The results from the Turin Shroud sample were almost identical. The direct comparison verified that the Turin Shroud sample is 2,000 years old.”

The Image That Science Can’t Explain

Even before De Caro’s work, the Shroud’s image posed a puzzle. In 1978, the Shroud of Turin Research Project (STURP) studied it directly and concluded:

• The image is not paint, dye, or scorch.
• Discoloration is confined to the outermost fibrils of each thread—less than a thousandth of a millimeter deep.
• The image lies above the bloodstains, meaning the blood was deposited before the image.
• The light-dark shading in the image encodes precise 3D information, unlike any known art technique.

Blood chemistry tests determined that the stains were Type AB human blood with hemoglobin breakdown products and high bilirubin which would be expected from an individual who had undergone severe trauma.

Above??

One of these findings is worth further comment. The researchers in 1978 determined that the image on the Shroud was formed above the blood stains, meaning that the image was formed ‘after’ the blood stains on the cloth had been deposited. This means that, for the Shroud to be considered a forgery, the forger would have had to apply human blood in over 700 locations across the Shroud first, and then later somehow fit the image of the body to the cloth in perfect correspondence with the of blood stains already applied, some of which were smaller than a millimeter in size.

Light on the Subject

So what did form the image of the body on the cloth? The hypothesis that best matches the findings of the 1978 study is that that the image was formed by a brief burst of high-energy radiation from the body onto the cloth. This would account for the fact that the image is only on the top surface of the fibers, not extending further into the cloth as paints or stains would have done. Physicist Paulo Delazo at ENEA Laboratories outside Rome spent five years attempting to duplicate the chemical changes seen in the Shroud on linen fibers using radiation. He concluded that a radiation burst of 34 billion watts of energy at 1/40 of a billionth of a second could create an image on linen similar to the one seen on the Shroud.

Other researchers noted that such a radiation event would also have altered the cloth’s carbon isotope ratio, further skewing the 1988 dating results.

Threads of Time

Additional evidence further points to the authenticity of the shroud. The Shroud’s weave is a fine herringbone twill unknown in Medieval Europe. Textile expert Mechthild Flury-Lemberg, who oversaw a 2002 conservation project, noted that the seam along one edge is similar to first-century Jewish burial cloths from Masada near the Dead Sea in Israel. In addition, recent image-enhancement technology revealed that there were coins placed over the eyes of the subject on the Shroud that were identified as first-century Roman lepton coins, minted under Pontius Pilate between 29 and 32 AD.

An Emerging Picture

Put the evidence together and a consistent story begins to emerge:

• Dating – WAXS points to the first century; the 1988 carbon date is undermined by sampling flaws.
• Image formation – The properties of the image fit a high-energy event that cannot be duplicated, even with today’s technology.
• Textile details – Weave and seam construction match first-century examples.
• Pollen deposits – Pollen species from the Levant area of Israel that are not present in any part of Europe.

The only explanation that matches all the scientific and historical evidence is that the Shroud is, in fact, the burial cloth of Jesus Christ and that the image documents the very moment of his resurrection.

Not an Unfamiliar Concept

While the notion of Jesus’ body lighting up with high energy radiation may seem difficult for many to believe in this modern age, it is actually a familiar concept to Christians. A similar event is recorded in the Gospels:

Matthew 17:

1 After six days Jesus took with him Peter, James and John the brother of James, and led them up a high mountain by themselves.

2 There he was transfigured before them. His face shone like the sun, and his clothes became as white as the light.

3 Just then there appeared before them Moses and Elijah, talking with Jesus.

4 Peter said to Jesus, “Lord, it is good for us to be here. If you wish, I will put up three shelters—one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah.”

5 While he was still speaking, a bright cloud covered them, and a voice from the cloud said, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased. Listen to him!”

6 When the disciples heard this, they fell facedown to the ground, terrified.

7 But Jesus came and touched them. “Get up,” he said. “Don’t be afraid.”

8 When they looked up, they saw no one except Jesus.

The Meaning of The Shroud

The word ‘miracle’ is tossed about so commonly today that it has pretty much lost any meaning. To many, the Mets winning the 1969 World Series is still considered the most astonishing miracle of our time.

But the word does have a meaning. It is an event that is impossible according to the laws of physics but nevertheless does happen. Can any other artifact in history claim such a convincing right to this word after generations of scientific study and scrutiny?

Why Then?

During the ministry of Jesus his focus was on communicating the word of God to the Jews to whom Jesus had been sent. In order to demonstrate his credibility as a messenger of God, Jesus performed many miracles in front of the people. The miracles established his authority to speak for God as well as the validity of his message to the Jewish people. This is clearly expressed in John 14:11:

“Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; or at least believe on the evidence of the miracles themselves.”

Toward the end of his three year ministry, Jesus expressed astonishment that the Jews of his day did not respond to his teachings.

But a more fundamental question needs to be asked. Why was Jesus sent to the Jews at that particular time in their history? Stand back a bit, view the larger context, and the story becomes clear.

Following the crucifixion of Jesus (ca. 33 AD), Jews in Judea lived under increasingly harsh Roman rule. Tensions escalated as Roman authorities suppressed Jewish religious practices and imposed heavy taxes, while Jewish resistance movements grew. This culminated in the First Jewish–Roman War (66–70 AD), during which Jerusalem was besieged and the Second Temple destroyed in 70 AD. A later revolt, the Bar Kokhba Revolt (132–135 AD), was crushed with extraordinary brutality by Emperor Hadrian’s forces. Hundreds of thousands of Jews were killed, survivors enslaved, and Judea was renamed Syria Palaestina to erase its Jewish identity. Jews were banned from entering Jerusalem except on one day a year (Tisha B’Av), marking the effective expulsion and dispersion (Diaspora) of the Jewish people from their homeland.

When viewed within the context of history it becomes clear why God sent his son to the Jewish people at that moment in time. It was an attempt to save them from the horrific tragedy that God knew awaited them at the hands of the Romans. God saw what was in the future for the Jewish people and he sent his son to guide them toward a path that would have spared them from that tragic fate.

Would the Jews have been spared the wrath of the Romans had they accepted the message of Jesus? An entire book could be written (and probably has been) on that subject alone. But a central pillar of the teachings of Jesus was clearly his instruction that they should avoid confrontation, aggression, hatred, revenge, and violence, and express a willingness to pursue peace and forgiveness:

“If someone slaps you on one cheek, turn to them the other also. If someone takes your coat, do not withhold your shirt from them”. Luke 6:29.

If the Jews had responded to Roman aggression as Jesus taught, would they not have escaped the genocide that the Romans eventually inflicted on them?

This message is perfectly encapsulated in a well known passage in the Gospels:

But the chief priests and the elders persuaded the crowd to ask for Barabbas and to have Jesus executed. ‘Which of the two do you want me to release to you?’ asked the governor. ‘Barabbas,’ they answered. ‘What shall I do, then, with Jesus who is called the Messiah?’ Pilate asked. They all shouted, ‘Crucify him.’ Matthew 27:20–22

Who was Barabbas? Why was he a prisoner of Pilate? Barabbas was an insurrectionist fighting Roman rule. As such, there can be little doubt that when he was released by Pilate he went right back to his battle against the Romans. Barabbas would have certainly taken part in the Jewish resistance during the 33 years between the crucifixion and the first Jewish-Roman war of 66 AD.

Would there have been a Jewish-Roman war had Barabbas not been released? How large a part did Barabbas play in the Jewish resistance that led up to that war? No one will ever know. That information is lost to history.

So, what does any of this have to do with the Shroud of Turin?

Back up and examine the story from a broader perspective. God sent his Son to the Jewish people in an effort to save them from the catastrophe that awaited them. Since that time, no one has performed a single miracle on earth, at least not one that has been scientifically scrutinized and proven to be real. And yet today, this year, Jesus has given the world one more miracle in the form of scientific proof that the Shroud and the image on it are authentic.

Why now?

God is giving us this miracle today for the same reason he gave the Jews the miracles performed by Jesus long ago. Just as in the time of Jesus, the world today sits at the precipice of an apocalyptic catastrophe, worse than anything humanity has ever endured in its history. Nuclear war could break out at any moment, and if it did it would mean the end of the human race itself.

The message is clear for those who are willing to understand it. In a very real sense, God sent his son to us a second time. The message to us is, ‘Here, I gave you a miracle that you may believe. Now hear my words and follow them’.

The question is, will we listen this time?

This article was originally published on Trust The Science.

The post The Message of the Shroud appeared first on LewRockwell.

To understand how the Western world lost its confidence—how we became a civilization weakened and confused about morality, gender, and even reality itself—we must look back to one of modernity’s most influential and corrosive figures: Sigmund Freud.

Freud’s psychological doctrines reshaped how the West views desire, virtue, and identity. His ideas helped lay the groundwork for the sexual revolution and the new gender politics that now dominate our schools, media, and institutions. The result is a culture hyper-sexualized, guilt-ridden, and detached from the moral roots that once sustained Western civilization.

Freud: Prophet of Desire

Born in 1856, Freud presented himself as a scientist but operated more like a prophet of the flesh. His theories were built on personal obsession, not empirical truth. He admitted harboring sexual feelings toward his own mother and from that created his notorious Oedipus complex, claiming, without any proof whatsoever, that all men secretly desire their mothers and resent their fathers. It was an extraordinary act of projection—and a case study in how one man’s neuroses became a cultural epidemic.

For thousands of years, Western civilization taught that human beings are moral creatures capable of self-control, that desire must be disciplined by reason, and that virtue—not pleasure—is the mark of maturity. Freud turned this on its head. He recast repression as sickness and indulgence as health. Lust was no longer a temptation to be resisted but a psychological need to be fulfilled.

As critic Frederick Crews put it, “The entire system of classical psycho-analytical thought rests on nothing more substantial than Freud’s word that it is true.” Nobel laureate Sir Peter Medawar went further, calling psychoanalysis “a stupendous intellectual confidence trick.”

The Fraud Behind the Father of Psychology

Freud’s defenders like to portray him as a brave explorer of the mind. In reality, he was a deeply troubled man. Historians have documented his cocaine addiction, his self-diagnosed neuroses, and his ruthless treatment of patients—whom he reportedly called “rabble… only good for money-earning.”

His own granddaughter, Dr. Sophie Freud, dismissed his theories as “narcissistic indulgence.” Psychiatrist Edward R. Pinckney called psychoanalysis “the biggest hoax ever played on humanity.” Modern scholars have shown that his central claims were invented interpretations, never verified by real evidence.

Even Freud’s contemporaries noticed his hostility toward Christianity. Stanley Rothman described psychoanalysis as a secular substitute for religion—a way to dethrone the moral authority of faith and replace it with psychological relativism.

The Moral Inversion of the West

Freud’s legacy was not confined to the consulting room. His ideas filtered into education, the arts, and eventually politics. Behaviors once seen as moral choices—infidelity, promiscuity, homosexuality—were reclassified as psychological conditions or mere “lifestyle preferences.” As Dr. Tim LaHaye observed, Freud helped shift the West from moral judgment to moral neutrality.

This shift set the stage for the sexual revolution of the 1960s and the gender revolution of our own time. Once you accept Freud’s premise—that sexual expression is central to human health—it becomes easy to claim that any restraint is repressive and any boundary oppressive. Today’s ideology of gender fluidity is simply Freud’s obsession with sexuality carried to its logical extreme: the belief that identity itself is defined by desire.

Where original Christianity — and indeed many ancient cultures world-wide — taught mastery of the self through devotion to the divine, Freudianism taught that freedom means surrender to every indulgence and desire, no matter how misguided. In that reversal, the moral backbone of Western civilization began to dissolve.

The Cult of Liberation and the Cost of Chaos

Freud’s followers promoted the idea that sexual release was essential for health, a myth that fueled modern hedonism. Yet history and science suggest the opposite.

“Freud’s followers claimed sexual release was essential for health — a myth that fueled modern hedonism, though history and science suggest the opposite.”

Great thinkers—from Pythagoras and Plato to Newton and Tesla—understood that discipline and celibacy could heighten creativity and focus. Traditional faiths taught that chastity refines the spirit and strengthens the intellect.

Ancient scripture warns that indulgence weakens the soul: “Flee fornication… he that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body” (1 Corinthians 6:18). Saint Augustine wrote that those who misuse sex “use it bestially.” The great saints and sages across cultures—from Saint Francis to Srila Prabhupada—saw mastery of desire as the highest test of wisdom.

Freud dismissed all this as repression. Yet look around: the societies that embraced his creed of liberation now suffer record levels of loneliness, addiction, broken families, and mental illness. What Freud dismissed as “repression” was in truth restraint — the self-control and respect for God’s laws that form the very foundation of a just and enduring civilization.

From Psychoanalysis to Gender Ideology

Freud’s intellectual descendants extended his logic. If all desire is natural, then all distinctions—male and female, sacred and profane—must be artificial. The modern gender theorist simply continues Freud’s rebellion against moral order.

Today’s “gender-affirming” movement takes his premise to its final absurdity: the belief that biology can be rewritten by feelings. Where Freud dethroned morality, gender ideology dethrones reality itself.

In the post-Freudian West, traditional masculinity has been recast as a social disease, leaving countless men—especially straight white men—alienated in the very civilizations their fathers built. Where once patriarchy meant duty, protection, and order, today it is smeared as oppression—yet the absence of that structure has produced a generation adrift, confused about manhood, family, and purpose.

Both deny the existence of a higher order to which human beings are accountable. Both reduce the soul to the libido. And both have produced generations unmoored from truth, tradition, and meaning.

A Civilization of Self-Destruction

What began as speculative therapy has become a cultural operating system. The Freudian worldview teaches that the highest good is pleasure and the highest sin is guilt. Yet guilt is the conscience’s alarm bell—the signal that our actions matter. A society that silences that bell soon loses the ability to distinguish right from wrong.

Freud’s doctrines helped convert Western man from a moral agent into a psychological patient—an early victory for the managerial state and its army of ‘experts’ who claim to heal the soul while quietly governing it. The confessional was replaced by the therapist’s couch; repentance by self-expression. The result is what the philosopher Srila Prabhupada called “pig civilization”—a culture that mistakes appetite for happiness.

The consequences are visible everywhere: collapsing birth rates, epidemic loneliness, a generation medicated for despair. A civilization that worships desire cannot sustain duty; a nation that mocks virtue cannot defend freedom.

Recovering the Higher Path

In today’s Western cities, ideology hangs thick in the air — feminism elevated to dogma, masculinity treated as a crime, consumerism replacing character, and state-engineered mass immigration introducing cultures often at odds with the very values that built the West.

Everywhere the marks of decay are visible: families fragmented, men feminized, and citizens numbed by propaganda that preaches equality but breeds resentment and confusion. The farther a man steps from that chaos — into self-discipline, simplicity, and the awareness that sooner or later he must answer to God — the clearer he sees that strength and sanity endure only where tradition still holds.

To rebuild what was lost, the West must recover its ancient understanding of human nature—that we are not slaves to instinct but stewards of the soul. The answer is not repression but redirection: channeling passion into purpose and creativity.

The same energies that destroy can elevate. As Auguste Comte wrote, “To control the sexual impulse efficiently has always been and ever will be regarded as the highest test of human wisdom.” The men and women who built the West—saints, scholars, soldiers, and parents—understood this. They believed in duty before desire, honor before indulgence, and truth before comfort.

Freud promised liberation and the new gender politics promised compassion — both delivered confusion and bondage. The cure for both is the same timeless prescription: self-discipline, moral courage, and an understanding that we are all children of God, called to follow His instructions given for our good.

The West can recover its strength only when free men and women reject the false gospel of Freud and rebuild their lives on the virtues that once made civilization possible—faith, family, chastity, truth, and reverence for God above the state.

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