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Whenever Pope Francis holds an interview on a plane, Catholics have learned to buckle up for turbulence. But on his way back from Singapore last Friday, after a lengthy trip to Southeast Asia and Oceania, the Holy Father answered a question pertaining to American politics with uncharacteristic and refreshing clarity—though not without a touch of his off-the-cuffism, which often seems to cover more ground than orthodoxy does.

Francis shot straight in telling Catholic America it has a choice between two evils this election, for both candidates hold an evil position regarding human life. This is absolutely the case with Kamala Harris and not necessarily the case with Donald Trump—but the pope has spoken truly regarding the American culture of death and the Catholic political attitude.

The pope’s rough critique of Trump and Harris has really made the rounds in the news platforms with a swirling that we haven’t seen since “Who am I to judge?” And it is strange, since what Francis said directly contradicts the prevalent messaging on abortion. But what he also said about migration, second only to abortion, may have been enough to further the Left’s narrative, and hence their strategy, to secure the White House.

Included here is the entire exchange between Anna Matranga of CBS News and Pope Francis, as most sources are simply quoting it in fragments throughout their columns:

AM: Your Holiness, you have always spoken in defense of the dignity of life. In Timor-Leste, which has a high birth rate, you said you felt life pulsing and exploding with so many children. In Singapore, you defended migrant workers. With the US elections coming up, what advice would you give a Catholic voter faced with a candidate who supports ending a pregnancy and another who wants to deport 11 million migrants?

PF: Both are against life: the one that throws out migrants and the one that kills children. Both are against life. I can’t decide; I’m not American and won’t go to vote there. But let it be clear: denying migrants the ability to work and receive hospitality is a sin, a grave sin. The Old Testament speaks repeatedly of the orphan, the widow, and the stranger—migrants. These are the three that Israel must care for. Failing to care for migrants is a sin, a sin against life and humanity.

I celebrated Mass at the border, near the diocese of El Paso. There were many shoes from migrants, who ended poorly there. Today, there is a flow of migration within Central America, and many times they are treated like slaves because people take advantage of the situation. Migration is a right, and it was already present in Sacred Scripture and in the Old Testament. The stranger, the orphan, and the widow—do not forget this.

Then, abortion. Science says that at one month after conception, all the organs of a human being are present. Everything. Having an abortion is killing a human being. Whether you like the word or not, it’s murder. The Church is not closed-minded because it forbids abortion; the Church forbids abortion because it kills. It is murder; it is murder!

And we need to be clear about this: sending migrants away, not allowing them to grow, not letting them have life is something wrong, it is cruelty. Sending a child away from the womb of the mother is murder because there is life. And we must speak clearly about these things. “No, but however…” No “but however.” Both things are clear. The orphan, the stranger, and the widow—do not forget this.

AM: In your opinion, Your Holiness, are there circumstances in which it is morally permissible to vote for a candidate who is in favor of abortion?

PF: In political morality, it is generally said that not voting is ugly, it’s not good. One must vote. And one must choose the lesser evil. Which is the lesser evil? That lady or that gentleman? I don’t know; each person must think and decide according to their own conscience.

Contrary to what some Catholics are arguing on social media, the pope gives solid answers here, and all Catholic Americans should take note as this regards the moral choice between our more-or-less evil presidential candidates. A strong adjective there—to be clear, the choice involves evil, which is not to say that Donald Trump and Kamala Harris are necessarily evil people (that is for the Lord to judge), but evil lurks on their tickets.

Pope Francis called that spade a spade, with advice according to the Church’s long-standing position. When faced with two political candidates who are not aligned with Catholic fundamentals, it is permissible to cast a vote against the candidate who would do the most harm. Pope Francis is reminding us of our religious and civic duty, therefore, to act against the greater evil by choosing the lesser.

Thankfully, our pope has spoken unconditionally and forcefully about the abortion crisis. You don’t hear people call abortion murder every day, and it is invigorating to hear it from the pope. His stance on immigration is also largely correct, though he may go too far suggesting the position of the Trump campaign is gravely sinful. Context is obviously important in weighing immigration cases and situations. While abortion is always evil, immigration laws can be good.

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The post Picking Our Poison With Pope Francis appeared first on LewRockwell.

Editor’s note: The following statement has been taken from an X post by Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò originally published on September 13, 2024.

“I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.” (John 14:6)

Bergoglio, with his ungodly statements addressed to young people in Singapore that “all religions are a path to God,” offends the Majesty of God, betrays Divine Revelation, tramples on the principal Mysteries of our Faith and nullifies the redeeming Sacrifice of the Son of God, Our Lord Jesus Christ.

NEW: #PopeFrancis on inter-religious dialogue:
“Every religion is a way to arrive at God. There are different languages to arrive at God but God is God for all.
But my God is more important than your god, is that true?
There is only 1 God & each of has a language to arrive at… pic.twitter.com/TMHRDjEuJ9

— Michael Haynes (@MLJHaynes) September 13, 2024

His lying words are particularly insidious because they are addressed to the new generations, whom Bergoglio deceives into believing that it is possible to be saved without recognizing that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, the Only Savior, and that His Church is the only ark of salvation. I am the door (Jn. 10:9) said Our Lord of Himself. To deny this truth is to apostatize from the Faith and to trample on the Cross. To do so from the highest Threshold is a scandal of unprecedented gravity, surpassed only by the fearful or complicit silence of the majority of the Episcopate.

The “passio Ecclesiæ” is accomplished in the betrayal of a usurped authority, of a new Sanhedrin equally apostate.

This originally appeared on Lifesite News.

The post Bergoglio Saying ‘All Religions Are a Path to God’ Is Apostasy appeared first on LewRockwell.

On Sunday, September 15, a casual afternoon round of golf turned into a chaotic scene, when  a man was spotted with a rifle near where former president Donald Trump was golfing.

Authorities now believe the suspect, Ryan Wesley Routh, was planning to assassinate Trump –  just over two months after another assassination attempt on the former president, in Pennsylvania.

Routh’s numerous online statements are at times indecipherable; at others, he sounds like a virulent Washington D.C. neocon – a man who prioritizes radical, ideologically-motivated military interventionism in foreign conflicts at the expense of traditional diplomacy.

“Routh seems to embody the feverish insanity of the Neocons and their intelligence apparatus allies, their revulsion for diplomacy and their preference for violence-assassination and war- as the instruments for US global hegemony,” said Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Once Routh’s location in bushes near the golf course became known, he fled by foot before driving off in a black Nissan SUV.  Local police apprehended the suspect from his vehicle and took him into custody without a struggle. Law enforcement later confirmed that Routh was armed with an AK-47 style weapon and scope. He was also in possession of a GoPro camera, which suggests he planned to document his crime.

Unlike the suspect in the first attempted assassination of Trump, who on July 13 fired shots at the former president during a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, Routh did not fire any shots, according to multiple news agencies. He is a 58 year old with a criminal record, whereas the Pennsylvania shooter, Thomas Matthew Crooks, was 20 years old. Routh was carrying an AK-47 style rifle; Crooks fired from an AR-15.

Through his writings and actions, Routh made his motive abundantly clear. The suspect sought to take Donald Trump’s life because of his policy to bring a peaceful settlement to the Russia-Ukraine war. He was passionately pro-Ukraine, traveling there to, as The Epoch Times reports, “assist in the conflict” by recruiting volunteers for the International Legion.

Routh’s beliefs about the war in Ukraine, and other conflicts, not only puts him at odds with Trump but also with Kennedy, who shares the former president’s desire to end the Ukraine war.

The shooter, then, can be  linked to the neocon project, supported most prominently by former Republican vice president Dick Cheney.

Cheney recently endorsed Kamala Harris and the majority of Democrats have welcomed that endorsement. The united neocon front in Washington is now a political bulwark intent on turning up the temperature on foreign conflicts.

Was Routh the Democrats’ patsy?

During his time in Ukraine, Routh was interviewed by Newsweek and The New York Times. He opened up about his grievances against Trump due to the former president’s promise to bring an end to the Ukraine-Russia conflict.

In 2023, Routh self-published a book about how Ukraine needs a more aggressive military posture vis-a-vis Russia. In the book, he also advocates for Iran to assassinate Trump. Routh’s advocacy for Iran to do harm to Trump is both disturbing and seemingly out of place, given Routh’s fanatically anti-Russian sentiments.

Routh also openly bragged about trying to recruit Afghan fighters to join Ukraine’s forces and more bizarrely attempted to recruit Afghans to join the police force of Haiti, according to a 2023 post on X.

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The post The Second Assassination Attempt on Trump: Profile of a Neocon Terrorist appeared first on LewRockwell.

It feels so, so good to be back. And, as usually happens upon returning from a brief internet break, there is no end of things to write about.

The main thing is the second assassination attempt against Donald Trump, just nine weeks after the first. A very strange man named Ryan Wesley Routh allegedly hid in the bushes with a rifle while the forty-fifth President was playing golf in West Palm Beach yesterday afternoon. He got off several shots before the Secret Service returned fire. He later fled and was arrested. There will obviously be much more to say about this in the coming days.

A secondary, more amusing matter, is the resignation of that enormously irritating EU Commissioner Thierry Breton. This is the man best known for the threats he sent to Elon Musk last month, after Musk dared to organise a Twitter space with Trump. As I noted earlier, Breton has long been loathed even within the Eurocracy as an egotistical self-promoter. His resignation comes after Ursula von der Leyen asked Emmanuel Macron to nominate somebody else for his post. The most hilarious thing is that Breton posted his resignation directly to Twitter – the website that he believes is a grave threat to European democracy, but from which he cannot disentangle himself, because it is also such a great source of attention for mediocre losers like him.

There are other matters too, but before I can get to any of them, I must get this piece on the changing politics of mass migration in Germany off my chest. This is the most important issue facing Europe right now – more important than the folly of the energy transition, more crucial even than the fading memory of pandemic repression.

For nearly ten years, migration has felt like one of the most intractable problems in our entire political system. However crazy the policies, however contradictory and irrational, there was always only the towering mute wall of establishment indifference. It felt like the borders would be open forever, that we would have to sing vapid rainbow hymns to the virtues of diversity and inclusivity for the rest of our lives.

Suddenly, it no longer feels like that. Over the past weeks, a perfect storm of escalating migrant violence and electoral upsets in East Germany have changed the discourse utterly.

The cynical among you will say that none of this matters, that the migrants are still coming, that our borders are still open, and of course that’s true – as far as it goes. But it’s also true that there’s an order of operations here. A lot of things have to happen before we can turn return to a regime of normal border security, and I suspect they have to happen in a specific sequence: 1) Migrationist political parties have to feel electoral pressure and taste defeat at the ballot box first of all. 2) Then, as the establishment realises they are up against the limits of their ability to manipulate public opinion, the discourse around mass migration will have to shift, to deprive opposition parties of Alternative für Deutschland of their political advantage. Specifically, the lunatic oblivious press must begin to question the wisdom of allowing millions of unidentified foreigners to take up residence in our countries. This will then open the way for 3) the judiciary to revise their understanding of asylum policies and begin to interpret our laws in more rational, sustainable ways.

In Thüringen and Saxony, we have already had the electoral defeat of 1), and we will soon have more of it in Brandenburg. As a consequence of 1), we are now seeing some powerful glimmerings of 2). This is very important, because as the press expands the realm of acceptable discourse, a great many heretofore tabu thoughts and opinions are becoming irreversibly and indelibly conceivable.

Ten years ago, diversity was our strength, infinity refugees were our moral obligation and there were no limits to how many asylees we could absorb. Since August, not only Alternative für Deutschland but also that offshoot from the Left Party known as the Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht, the centre-right Christian Democrats, a substantial centrist faction of the Social Democrats, and many others beyond whatever “the extreme right” is supposed to be, agree that migration is in fact an enormous problem. They also agree that our moral obligations to the world’s poor and disadvantaged are finite, and that there are indeed clear limits to the number of asylees Germany can support. What is more, they are saying all of these things in the open.

—

To understand what is happening and what is at stake, we must review the dynamics of mass migration to Europe. They go something like this:

First, the European Union cannot effectively stop migrants from the developing world at its own borders. The reasons – whether the Eurocrats can’t, or they won’t, or they don’t care, or they don’t know how, or they haven’t been sufficiently incentivised – don’t really matter.

What does matter, is the fact that the failure of of the Eurocracy to limit migration is gradually undermining the credibility of the EU itself. This is because nation states are much better at border security than international bureaucratic behemoths. Should a major EU member state decide that it has had enough of mass migration and elect to close its borders, the migrant pressure on other EU states would increase.

These other states would then have a powerful motivation to take a similarly hard line, and there would be a chain reaction – a race to the bottom, in which EU nations strive to outcompete each other in disincentivising migration and sealing their borders against asylees. A sufficiently fierce reaction could substantially undermine the authority of the EU itself, and would certainly spell the end of the Schengen Arrangement.

Germany, despite all its recent crises and setbacks, is still the dominant industrial nation of the EU, and also its most populous state. By keeping its borders open and enticing migrants with generous benefits, Germany hopes to reduce migrant pressure on its neighbours and prevent the anti-migration chain reaction from getting off the ground. This is why German politicians are so quick to equate any flavour of migration restrictionism with hostility to the EU. Smaller countries like Denmark and Hungary can shut their doors to migrants, because the added pressure on the rest of Europe is minimal. Germany, however, is different; the structural integrity of the entire system depends on German borders remaining open.

The problem is that the snake has begun to eat its own tail. The energy crisis and the lunatic anti-nuclear and anti-carbon radicalism of the Greens have taken a huge bite out of German prosperity. Open borders have lost their appeal, Alternative für Deutschland are pounding at the door, and no amount of staged public freakouts about “the extreme right” can restore the balance.

Look at the polls: Fully 82% of West Germans and 84% of East Germans believe the state should limit migration. A majority across almost every major party, including 55% of Green voters, agree that migration must be restricted.1 Huge majorities of East and West Germans support deporting criminal migrants, reducing the benefits of asylees whose applications have been rejected, weakening family reunification provisions and cutting down the potential pool of asylees by increasing the number of those nations designated as secure countries of origin. On many of these issues you see a general convergence of opinion, with West Germans gradually adopting the anti-migration views of their supposedly backward and anti-democratic East German counterparts, who in this area as in many others are simply less prosperous, less insulated from geopolitical trends and therefore more likely to be at the forward edge of political opinion.

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The post In the Face of Escalating Migrant Crime and Dimming Electoral Prospects appeared first on LewRockwell.

Yesterday the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahoo threatened to fire his Defense Minister Yoav Gallant:

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was set to oust Defense Minister Yoav Gallant from his position, a senior political official said on Monday. Netanyahu planned to add Gideon Saar’s New Hope party to the coalition adding four seats to his Knesset majority.

The move raised concern among the families of hostages currently held in Gaza because of Saar’s position opposing a deal with Hamas that would see hostages freed. Stocks fell and gas prices spiked amid expectations of the government reshuffle.

The rift between Netanyahu and Gallant has widened in recent months after the defense minister opposed the prime minister’s refusal to agree to a deal that would free hostages. The position of the Defense Ministry, the IDF, Shin Bet and Mossad is that Israel can deal with the security risks that would emerge from such a deal and that the release of hostages must be a priority.

Gallant, despite being as radical as Netanyahoo, is the only asset the U.S. government still has in the cabinet:

U.S. officials are concerned over the possible Gallant ousting, claiming he is the ‘only adult in the room’ in Netanyahu’s government after the relations between the prime minister and U.S. President Joe Biden have again soured …

Gallant is opposed to several of Netanyahoo’s policies:

• He wants a ceasefire deal in Gaza that would allow the hostages to be freed. Netanyahoo rejects a ceasefire.
• He wants to prevent a law that would exempt Haredi men from military service. The Ultraorthodox members of the cabinet press Netanyahoo to pass the exemption.
• He is skeptical about an attack on Hezbollah in Lebanon. Other parts of the coalition are pressing for it.

After being threatened to be fired Gallant conceded on the last point:

In the shadow of the attempts to remove him and replace him with the chairman of the New Hope Party Gideon Sa’ar, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant changed his tone Monday and in a closed security discussion \ with Netanyahu he said: “I kept talking about escalation or negotiating an agreement [with Hizbullah], but there is no possibility of reaching an agreement. There is only one option: to go full force and use all our military power in order to bring the residents of the north home.”

Since October 8, a day after the Hamas operation to snatch more hostages, Hezbollah has been firing missiles towards Israeli settlements along the Lebanese border. Following that the Israeli government evacuated at least 60,000 people from the border zone.

It was the first time that Israel conceded something like a buffer zone within its borders.

After 11 months the 60,000+ people have become a burden for the economy. Away from their homes and places of work the people are unproductive. On top of that the state has to cover the costs of their food and lodging.

After last nights meetings the Israeli government declared that the return of the settlers to north would now be a major war aim. This makes an imminent war with Hizbullah much more likely:

Right now is the closest Israel has been to a full war with Hezbollah since October 7.
…
The Jerusalem Post has received indications behind the scenes, at both the political and military levels, from sources who, although beforehand were pouring cold water on the public statements, are now signaling that these statements are serious.

Their reasons highlight how realities have changed a lot over the course of the war.

Throughout, the main reason not to enter into war with Hezbollah was to avoid distractions that might handicap the IDF from its goal of taking apart all 24 of Hamas’s battalions in Gaza.

Gallant declared Hamas’s last battalion in Rafah defeated on August 21, nearly a month ago.

In reality neither has Hamas been defeated nor has the killing of Gazans by Israeli forces stopped. The genocide continues as to daily losses on the Israeli side of the war.

But Hizbullah is a more and more pressing issues. Soon bad winter weather will set in which will disallow the full use of drones and air force assets on which Israeli forces depend.

It is either now or after waiting another four months.

Netanyahoo and his cabinet seems to be under the illusion that a war with Hizbullah is winnable. Despite all Israeli trickery with booby trapped pagers it is not. Hizbullahs well protected missile arsenal is likely to overcome all Israeli defenses. Israel is likely to end up on the losing side of any such conflagration.

A war could easily be avoided. Hizbullah has promised to end the current strife as soon as a durable ceasefire is signed between Israel and Gaza.

Netanyahoo’s rejection of any permanent ceasefire in Gaza makes an Israel attack on Lebanon, and the following losses, an inevitable consequence.

Reprinted with permission from Moon of Alabama.

The post Israel’s Threat To Wage War on Hizbullah Is Getting More Serious appeared first on LewRockwell.

Ned Ryun has written a new book, American Leviathan, and I was fortunate to get my hands on an advance copy.

If you don’t know Ned, he’s the founder of American Majority and Voter Gravity, grassroots organizations that specialize in fighting the culture war at the local level and electing America First conservatives.  On cable news channels and in his writing, he’s an eloquent defender of the Constitution, limited government, and the American Republic as the Founding Fathers intended.  I highly recommend that you read American Leviathan and share it with friends — especially friends who struggle to see clearly the stakes of the ideological war now raging.

How did we get to this point in time, when American leaders broadly repudiate the principles behind the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution, and an unaccountable, unconstitutional bureaucracy rules over the American people?  How is it that both major political parties routinely ignore the will of voters and seem beholden to the administrative state?  Why do prominent politicians — from Dick Cheney and Mitt Romney to Kamala Harris and Barack Obama — express an almost religious devotion to expansive government when our country was founded upon an inherent distrust of government power and a commitment to see such power forever chained?  Why have the most prestigious news organs rejected free speech, embraced censorship, and become little more than propagandistic parrots for the State?  It’s a long story, but it’s a story that must be understood in order for the American people to see with clear eyes what they’re actually fighting.

In American Leviathan, Ryun succeeds by making what is complicated quite comprehensible.  He takes a century and a half of mostly forgotten history and political debate and boils down all the sordidness into a digestible, if unpleasant, meal.  He traces the origin of the administrative state to a group of American intellectuals who were fascinated with Hegel’s philosophical defense of authoritarianism and the absolute power of the Prussian king.  He pinpoints the rise of the Uniparty in the overlapping policy preferences of leading Republicans, Democrats, and socialists at the beginning of the twentieth century.  He recounts how progressive Republicans, such as Robert La Follette and Teddy Roosevelt, advocated for radical expansion of government and rejection of long-respected constitutional constraints that mirrored many of the wishes of progressive Democrats, such as Woodrow Wilson and The New Republic founder Herbert Croly.  Together, these various thought leaders (at times hostile to one another as they advanced similar goals) initiated what Ryun calls a “Progressive Statist movement” demanding a fundamental transformation of the American system of government and the elevation of the State at the expense of Americans’ individual liberties.

Ryun defines the administrative state, the national security state, and the Deep State as distinct entities reflecting varying degrees of power, privilege, secretiveness, and incompetence, but he recognizes all of these unelected factions as parts of the same beast: the Leviathan.  With that appellation, he refers to the political treatise Leviathan, from seventeenth-century philosopher Thomas Hobbes, whose inclination toward a strong, centralized government emerged during the chaos of the English Civil Wars.  In the Old Testament, Leviathan is a sea serpent and demon associated with the sin of envy.  The monster eats the souls of those who are damned because they remain too attached to the material world to reach God’s realm and receive His grace.  Although the biblical Leviathan epitomizes chaos, Hobbes used the idea of a terrifying creature composed of myriad souls as a metaphor for an all-powerful State constantly shaping citizens and feeding from their individual energies.  The frontispiece to Hobbes’s Leviathan shows a monarch clutching the symbols of earthly power in one hand and spiritual power in the other.  The monarch’s body is formed from hundreds of faceless individuals who, through their actions to support the king, embody the State.  At the top of the illustration is a Latin quote describing Leviathan from the Book of Job: “There is no power on earth to be compared to him.”  It is in this sense that Ryun describes the American Leviathan.

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The post Slaying Leviathan appeared first on LewRockwell.

di Thorsten Polleit

Nel 1818 la scrittrice inglese, Mary W. Shelley (1797-1851), pubblicò il suo raccapricciante romanzo Frankenstein: The Modern Prometheus che divenne famoso in tutto il mondo. Nella storia lo scienziato Victor Frankenstein assembla, nel suo laboratorio, una creatura simile all'uomo da parti di cadaveri e riesce a dare vita al suo corpo. Ma Frankenstein vorrebbe immediatamente eliminare il mostro che ha creato, lo vede come un demone definendolo un “mostro disgustoso”, un “Satana maledetto”. Il mostro si rende immediatamente conto di essere escluso, emarginato dalla società umana; è risentito e diventa vendicativo, portando grande sfortuna, morte e distruzione.

Il Frankenstein della Shelley ha subito molte interpretazioni nel corso degli anni. Una è che la trasgressione dei confini, come l'impulso empio di Frankenstein di voler creare la vita come Dio, finisce in un disastro. Collegato a questo tema, l'elevazione dell'essere umano al di sopra di ciò che gli è assegnato, la sua arroganza, l'incontrollabilità della creazione umana contraria alla natura, finiscono in un brutto finale.

Se ci si sofferma un attimo a riflettere e a guardare al passato recente, il libro della Shelley ci ricorda in qualche modo l'euro, la moneta unica sovranazionale “uscita dal laboratorio” il 1° gennaio 1999.

L'euro è stato creato artificialmente dichiarando i tassi di cambio precedentemente fissi delle valute partecipanti irrevocabili tra loro e nei confronti dell'“euro” come unità artificiale, e poi fondendoli in esso. Le valute nazionali, come il marco tedesco, il franco francese, lo scellino austriaco, ecc., sono state assorbite nell'euro ed è stato ricomposto da esse, per così dire.

Le valute nazionali stesse erano tutte valute fiat, rappresentavano denaro monopolizzato dallo stato letteralmente creato dal nulla. Tutte erano innaturali, o contrarie alla natura, soprattutto nel senso che non erano nate attraverso una cooperazione volontaria. Infatti erano imposte dall'alto verso il basso, dal monopolio dello stato. E i difetti economici ed etici delle valute fiat sono ora inerenti all'euro, il conglomerato delle valute fiat sottostanti.

È vero che i creatori dell'euro hanno fatto ogni genere di promesse e hanno elaborato regole e leggi per far credere alla popolazione che la loro creatura sarebbe stata una moneta affidabile. Ad esempio, il Trattato di Maastricht ha stabilito che la Banca centrale europea (BCE), che da quel momento in poi avrebbe monopolizzato la massa monetaria, avrebbe dovuto essere politicamente indipendente. Inoltre si diceva che la BCE avrebbe dovuto garantire la “stabilità dei prezzi” (un eufemismo per “bassa inflazione dei prezzi”) e che non avrebbe dovuto finanziare i deficit di bilancio dei Paesi partecipanti.

Gli stati membri dell'area Euro dovevano anche indossare una sorta di “camicia di forza fiscale”: non era loro consentito di contrarre nuovo debito oltre il 3% del PIL all'anno ed esso non poteva superare il 60% del PIL. Ma tutte le “cose buone” che i creatori dell'euro avevano promesso alla popolazione non si sono materializzate; al contrario, la loro creatura ha causato un problema dopo l'altro, portando a una miseria economica diffusa. Ad esempio, la crescita economica nei Paesi che hanno adottato l'euro fin dall'inizio è stata molto più bassa in media rispetto al periodo precedente.

Inoltre gli stati membri dell'area Euro non hanno rispettato le regole del debito. Al contrario, i loro livelli di debito hanno continuato a crescere negli ultimi 25 anni. I contribuenti nei Paesi che sono ancora relativamente più ricchi devono pagare per la cattiva gestione dei Paesi meno prosperi economicamente. È stata realizzata una mutualizzazione del debito. Ad esempio, il cosiddetto Meccanismo europeo di stabilità (MES) è stato istituito nel 2013 e il suo scopo è quello di rendere i contribuenti responsabili ostaggi di quegli stati membri finanziariamente irresponsabili. La BCE sta ora adattando la sua linea di politica sui tassi d'interesse alle esigenze delle finanze statali in difficoltà, ovvero sta finanziando le emissioni di debito degli stati membri attraverso programmi di acquisto di titoli di stato.

L'unione monetaria dell'euro è ora profondamente divisa, come dimostrano gli aumentati saldi TARGET2, i quali documentano una ridistribuzione mozzafiato della ricchezza: i Paesi in deficit sono finanziati a spese dei cittadini produttivi di quei Paesi in surplus. L'inibizione ad accendere la stampante monetaria si è sempre più ridotta; se necessario, la BCE fornisce di fatto quantità illimitate di credito a tassi d'interesse favorevoli, in particolare agli stati in difficoltà finanziarie e alle banche commerciali.

Nel corso dei lockdown imposti tra il 2020 e il 2022, la BCE ha ampliato drasticamente la massa monetaria nelle mani della popolazione, provocando un'inflazione dei prezzi molto elevata che ha svalutato il potere d'acquisto e i risparmi delle persone.

In sintesi, l'euro, quasi subito dopo essere uscito dal laboratorio, ha causato gravi problemi, persino un disastro economico. Ha assunto una vita propria e incontrollata, proprio come il mostro di Frankenstein. La moneta unica crea una crisi dopo l'altra perché, sempre come il mostro di Frankenstein, è letteralmente innaturale.

L'euro è moneta fiat ed essa è nota per avere evidenti difetti economici ed etici: è inflazionistica, socialmente ingiusta, causa crisi finanziarie ed economiche, spinge le economie verso un indebitamento eccessivo e consente allo stato di crescere senza controllo a spese delle libertà dei cittadini e degli imprenditori. Si può persino dire che l'euro ha notevolmente esacerbato i difetti insiti in qualsiasi moneta fiat.

La teoria economica, se fosse stata consultata, avrebbe potuto diagnosticare questa malattia fin dall'inizio: non si può creare denaro migliore, affidabile ed eticamente valido unendo singole parti di monete fiat. Al contrario, unendole si crea qualcosa di ben peggiore e il tentativo di preservare la creatura a tutti i costi non fa che renderla ancora più malvagia. Il danno che causa rovinerà la popolazione dell'Eurozona.

Il mostro del dottor Victor Frankenstein è nato da un'aberrazione che lo stesso dottore riconobbe immediatamente poco dopo il suo atto. Tuttavia non riuscì a disfare la sua opera; i creatori dell'euro, a differenza del dottor Frankenstein, non mostrano segni di pentimento. Questo perché non lo riconoscono per quello che è: denaro cattivo che sta gradualmente distruggendo l'economia e la società libera (o ciò che ne resta). Anzi sono piuttosto soddisfatti delle conseguenze dell'euro e non lo vedono come una mostruosità, non lo riconoscono come un disastro e non lo ritengono responsabile dei danni che causa.

Alla fine Mary Shelley fa morire il mostro di Frankenstein in Antartide e lo fa andare a fuoco. Frankenstein stesso muore poco dopo, dopo aver tramandato la sua storia ai posteri. Da questo non si può dedurre la fine della creatura dell'euro, ma da un punto di vista economico è chiaro: non avrà un lieto fine.

Ora potreste dire: l'euro non è una creatura simile all'essere umano come lo era il mostro di Frankenstein, quindi non dovremmo associarlo alla storia di Mary Shelley. In risposta a questa obiezione, si può dire che il paragone non è sbagliato se ci si rende conto che entrambi i casi riguardano in ultima analisi atteggiamenti umani, idee umane. Sono alla base delle azioni “non autorizzate”, come l'arroganza di voler creare qualcosa di innaturale, o forse portare qualcosa di disastroso nel mondo con il pretesto del bene.

Vista sotto questa luce, la radice del male è rappresentata dalle cattive idee e il mostro di Frankenstein e l'euro sono solo i rispettivi sintomi che produce l'azione umana istigata da cattive idee. Per porre fine alla creatura dell'euro, le persone devono cambiare il loro modo di pensare rendendosi conto che una moneta fiat uniforme, politicizzata e centralizzata non è una buona idea, ma piuttosto che le persone devono avere libertà illimitata nella loro scelta di cosa usare come denaro. Quindi ha senso collegare il mostro di Frankenstein e la creatura dell'euro, affinché chi legge possa avere un altro punto di vista che rifiuta di accettare.

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

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One of the few areas where liberty made gains in the COVID lockdown era was the increase in homeschooling. Many parents started homeschooling out of frustration with the failure of “virtual learning” to provide children with a quality education.

Other parents withdrew their children from government schools when virtual learning allowed them to discover how teachers and administrators were prioritizing political indoctrination over education.

According to the John Hopkins University’s Homeschool Hub, 5.8 percent of American children were homeschooled in the 2022-2023 school year. While this is a decline from the COVID-era high of 11.1 percent, it is still an almost 50 percent increase over 2019 when 2.8 percent of American school-aged children were homeschooled.

More proof of homeschooling’s continued popularity is provided by the Census Bureau ‘s Household Pulse Survey. According to this survey, the number of homeschooled children increased from 3.6 million in the 2022-2023 school year to 4 million this year.

As more parents become aware of how government schools short-change education in favor of indoctrination by incorporating “woke” subjects like critical race theory, transgenderism, and “green new deal” propaganda disguised as “climate science” into the curriculum, more parents will turn to homeschooling. The conservative counter to “woke” education is the mandating of “patriotic” education, which is code for promoting the neoconservative line that all of America’s wars were justified and America has a right and duty to use its military might to spread democracy. This may cause even more parents to abandon government schools.

The decision of some schools to allow biological boys to play girls sports and use girls’ locker and restrooms is also causing many parents to flee government schools, especially since some schools do not even inform parents the school is “honoring” their child’s request to be identified as transgendered.

As Colin Hroncich, education policy analyst at the CATO institute, put it, “When parents can choose where and how their children will be educated, they’re no longer at the mercy of politicians and bureaucrats. That means they don’t have to rely on political battles when it comes to education.”

Another reason homeschooling is popular is the increasing number of resources and opportunities available to homeschooling parents and children. Homeschooling families have access to a variety of extracurricular activities and educational resources designed to help homeschooling children get the most out of the homeschooling experience.

Parents looking for a homeschooling curriculum that provides their children with a well-rounded education that incorporates the ideas of liberty should consider my online curriculum. Instead of indoctrinating students with critical race theory, transgenderism, or neoconservatism, my curriculum provides students with a solid education in history, literature, mathematics, and the sciences. It also gives students the opportunity to create their own websites and internet-based businesses. This provides students with “real world” entrepreneurial experience that will be useful to them no matter what career path they choose.

The curriculum is designed to be self-taught, with students helping and learning from each other via online forums.

Starting in fourth grade, students are required to write at least one essay a week. Students are required to post their essays on their blogs. Students also take a course in public speaking.

The curriculum does emphasize the history, philosophy, and economics of liberty, but it never substitutes indoctrination for education. The goal is to produce students with superior critical thinking skills.

If you think my curriculum may meet the needs of your child, please visit www.RonPaulCurriculum.com for more information.

The post Homeschooling Is Still Gaining Popularity…Thanks To Woke ‘Educators’ appeared first on LewRockwell.

The presidential “debate” last week had two outcomes – a thousand new cat memes, and Springfield, Ohio as a new political ground zero. Not exactly what the Harris/Walz front hoped for, hence a second assassination attempt on Trump?  Who will throw the blob a life preserver?

The deep state, neoconservatives of both parties for 40 years, is betting on the least bad choice for continued unconstitutional war profiteering and oligarch-imperialism – and they see a financial clock ticking, if not a nuclear one.  The despicable Cheneys have emerged to endorse this least bad choice, in their deep-state wisdom.  As Tulsi Gabbard explains to Democrats who haven’t figured it out yet, a vote for Harris is a vote for Dick Cheney.  Are there no self-respecting Democrats left in the US?

Is Dick Cheney endorsing continued war, with joy, or simply the joy of continued war? Either way, it is a sign that the blob is internally disintegrating, not solidifying.

With the paired atrocities of the Federal Reserve and explosive government overspending, people cannot get what they want and need with the fiat they have.  Dreams are delayed and abandoned – whether a reliable income that will support three hots and a cot, or raising children, or building a business, or buying a home or seeing that their kids get an education – starting with government kindergarten and its absurd premises. In none of these areas is the federal government “helping” anyone but bureaucrats and the blob.  The American dream is denied because of federal confiscation of nearly 40% of the GDP, every day, much of it spent on reducing your lifespan and liberty, and the lifespan and liberty of billions of people around the world.

The flailing has begun. This election season is running out of time for a successful assassination, or a successful steal in the five or six important counties that matter to “our democracy.”  We have the DC war on any contra with an X or Telegram account saying, filming, or writing anything that counters one of their increasingly rushed and irrational state narratives.

The lies repeatedly told from the White House are legion – and some of them are kind of fun, like no cats have ever been harmed by the deep state’s immigration policy.  A more serious lie is that what’s going on in Gaza for the last 11 months is “NOT A GENOCIDE.”  Anyone with a smart phone on the planet can take a look at the US Legal Code that defines “genocide.”  Even if your only news comes from CNN or MSNBC, facts reveal the White House is not only lying, but violating of its own binding law with billions in aid to Israel fueling and funding this genocide. Whether you want to kill Gazans or not, whether you agree or not with US policy – no one who can read the law can deny the USG is lying to you.

It’s that simple.

DC cannot tell the truth about US-Israel pari-mutuel parasitism, or any other foreign policy it pursues. The pro-war brain worm has infected the blob, and destroyed its collective cerebral cortex.  War addicts, like all addicts, lie.

It is not a crime to point out the nature of the DC parasitism, to comment on the deep state brain worm, and to discuss and publicize the lack of higher order thinking in Washington.  It is not a crime to share the reality of US domestic and foreign policy, and connect the dots. But instead of defending its position, the blob has instead criminalized free speech and banned critical thinking.  Washington, instead of putting in the hard work of manufacturing consent has lazily decided it will simply force us to comply.

To silence, to arrest, to ban, and to attack – with words or bullets – is the choice of a weak, and a very panicked deep state.  While Americans are just now starting to wonder who is running their country, the rest of the world distinctly sees a hollowed-out empire run by a politically incestuous, self-appointed “team” of increasingly substandard intellect, bereft of recognizable ethics.  All of this offers us a fresh look at Jefferson’s “Tree of Liberty” letter.

DC fears a coming loss of resources, legal prosecution for known and suspected crimes.  More than loss of control, they fear the sheer unpredictability of a second Trump presidency. Trump’s public resistance to being told what to do by people he believes to be driving the country into the dirt, in conjunction with a global ability for everyone, including the populist and liberty movements to rapidly share images and analysis with their allies, is a real danger to any authoritarian construct.  Thus we see a whack-a-mole approach to silencing state critics, be it by imprisoning Julian Assange or Ross Ulbricht, or charging and trying to arrest Pavel Duran and RT/Sputnik and its directors, and calling for suit and sanction of Elon Musk, for both his social media platform and his global satellite system.

Our dying authoritarian regime is battling national and global fire teams, squads, platoons and companies – to use US Marine terminology.  These “units,” like real Marines, seek to “overcome, improvise and adapt” and they can operate independently, or in concert.  They constantly build on their skill sets, and importantly, are honed and shaped by the real world in which they practice and operate.

A good example of this phenomenon has occurred in the Red Sea. In the last 11 months, the Houthi have caused the US Navy to expend nearly $1 Billion in missiles alone, plus destroying eight MQ-9 Reaper drones.  Despite this cost and effort by Washington, freight traffic there remains collapsed and vulnerable.  Yet, even as the US strategy has expensively failed, the deep state has no alternative strategy, no way to save face.

Information “warfare” against authoritarian states operates the same way.  It launches volleys of factual information, blowing holes in the hull of the prevailing state narrative. It never quits. DC believes that loudly complaining about the damage to the hull by information terrorists, and arresting and prosecuting and kicking down the doors, stealing the livelihoods and liberty of those they see as “information enemies” will somehow address the problem.

Two decorative impeachments, innumerable kangaroo court cases, and two assassination attempts have been conducted to stop Donald Trump from returning to the White House.  More efforts will be made – not because his stated second-term intentions will save or sink the country, but because he channels an enormous and often amorphous public curiosity about blob itself. Asking a good question, whether it is answered or not, is always a crime in a state such as ours.

When Jefferson talked about the Tree of Liberty, just over two centuries ago, he saw that truth – widely shared, debated, and eventually understood by a whole country – is the only remedy that can heal the relationship between people and government. He noted, “What country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? [italics added]”

Instead of reactionary obedience to the state, we must challenge it, expose it, and at times, laugh at it.  The alternative to free and bold criticism today is the spilling of the blood of patriots tomorrow – something our so-called “leaders” in deep state extremis are most certainly considering.

The post Has the Blob Reached a Tipping Point? appeared first on LewRockwell.

One of the most interesting commentators on the legal-political scene is the attorney Robert Barnes. Whenever Barnes discusses economic analysis and predictions he relies on Jeff Snyder, who in turn bases his reasoning on investigation of the Euro-dollar international system of exchange. In this video Snyder explains what the Euro-dollar system is. My takeaway from Snyder’s video is that the Euro-dollar system is a fractional reserve banking system based on Euro-dollars not backed (controlled) by the Federal Reserve. Thus, they are not Federal Reserve notes; i.e., US dollars. Snyder believes that Euro-dollars are the real worldwide currency (a good thing) that allow international movement of capital and goods.

Screen shot from Snyder’s video.

In this video Tom Woods and Bob Murphy discuss inflation predictions and the relative lack of inflation after the Federal Reserve’s injection of money into the banking system after the 2008 financial crisis. Murphy explains that many Austrian economists, himself included, predicted more price inflation than actually occurred. I also expected more inflation. My post hoc analysis attributes the lower posted official inflation statistic to an understanding of the statistic itself. That is, the measure did not include the particular assets which were bid up by the created money, not in basic products for people because they didn’t get any of the new money, but to stocks and other speculations, parked in the banks, and of relevance here, the money went overseas.

Thus, in understanding the current economy and international geopolitics the Euro-dollar system might be a key element that most analysts miss. However, when listening to Snyder, or Barnes following Snyder, several questions arise that are critical to assess the true impact of this system. I hope these questions might be addressed by Snyder, Barnes, or anyone else who might come across this article.

My questions:

• Am I correct that Euro-dollars are not the same as US dollars (Federal Reserve notes)?
• If the Federal Reserve does not back the Euro-dollar system who does? That is, a fractional reserve system is sure to fail eventually without a government fiat backstop.
• Can Euro-dollars be used equivalent to Federal Reserve notes in the USA?
• Are Euro-dollars considered to be equivalent with Federal reserve note dollars in exchange for goods on the international market, in effect making the FRN dollars worth less in terms of real goods?
• Can the US government control Euro-dollar international exchanges through the SWIFT system?
• Are Euro-dollars included in any of the common money supply measures used for the US economy? (For example, see this classic article by Dr. Salerno.)
• If Euro-dollars are FRN dollars, what is their percentage of total dollars?

The post My Euro-Dollar Questions appeared first on LewRockwell.

From the Tom Woods Letter:

It’s hard to know exactly what the most bizarre or disturbing aspect of the second attempt on Donald Trump’s life in a matter of two months is, but certainly in the running are the blasé responses of Kamala Harris and Tim Walz.

Bear in mind that this is the second time Trump has been shot at. (I might add that had Harris been the intended victim, we’d still be hearing about how “white supremacy” and “racism” had created the conditions for such a thing. But when it’s Trump? Meh.)

Here’s Harris:

“I have been briefed on reports of gunshots fired near former President Trump and his property in Florida, and I am glad he is safe. Violence has no place in America.”

Here’s Walz:

“Gwen and I are glad to hear that Donald Trump is safe. Violence has no place in our country. It’s not who we are as a nation.”

Guys, the man has been shot at twice in two months. This has never happened to any political candidate in American history. And all you can summon are these anodyne remarks about violence being bad?

You’d almost think two assassination attempts in two months wasn’t all that unusual. Hey, sorry you were shot at again! Just one of those things, I guess. See you on the campaign trail!

The would-be assassin, Ryan Routh, appears to be a deranged Ukraine partisan. That’s an issue in itself.

To be sure, it’s hard for them to reconcile their Trump-is-Hitler rhetoric with “I’m sorry someone tried to shoot him.”

(If Trump were Hitler, I think we would have noticed during his first term — but when he left office the fundamentals of the federal regime were pretty much unchanged.)

Things are escalating, folks, and nobody knows where they’ll go. I am very much the stay-and-fight type. Any other approach goes against every fiber of my being.

But I’m also the protect-my-family type, which means I have been thinking lately about a Plan B.

My wife and kids can tell you: despite my love for travel, I am at heart a homebody. I like to try new things, yes, but at the end I’m refreshed by coming back to what’s familiar: familiar food, familiar sights, familiar faces.

But now I feel like: if I’m just one election away from the regime targeting people like me, maybe I get my Plan B in place before such a thing happens.

So I recommend the Expat Money Summit, which is free, and which features top experts on relocation as well as measures short of relocation: second passports, financial diversification, international real estate, etc.

It’s hosted by my longtime friend and expat expert Mikkel Thorup, a man whom I myself have turned to with my own questions. And I’m also presenting at the Summit.

It’s entirely online, so you can watch from your home.

Time to think about serious things, folks. Get your complimentary ticket here:

https://www.ExpatMoneySummit.com

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Some days it seems as if the dark forces have won.

A friend sent me a document from the Department of Defense website that reveals a full-spectrum propaganda/information management program, aimed at…us. I don’t understand how our little boats of truth can survive the resources and personnel directed against us.

A loved one has kidney damage. A loved one has heart damage. A loved one is going for surgery. An elder’s heart simply burst. An elder fell. An elder now walks with two sticks.

I pray for everyone continually and I remember the days when we rolled around in health, heedlessly, barely noticing, as if we were pressing grapes without measure into an endless vat of wine.

Now that past is past.

Loved ones who are young look pallid, with a yellowish glaze across their cheekbones. I look, hoping they will not notice, for evidence of living capillaries, for the blush of life.

They have grey-blue shadows, under their eyes, that that never go away. Their cheeks are hollow.

I pray all the time. Now that I believe a great harvesting of human life is underway, a great shaking-out of the human project, I have no more excuses. I feel that our current conditions have been brought about so that we are in an X-ray moment spiritually, in which we cannot be lukewarm or equivocal.

We must choose this day whom to serve.

Joshua 24:14: 14 “Now therefore fear the Lord and serve him in sincerity and in faithfulness. Put away the gods that your fathers served beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the Lord. 15 And if it is evil in your eyes to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your fathers served in the region beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”

I have to write what I have longed not to write; what both good Christians and good Jews have advised me never to write.

I have to write it now because what happened to me, that I do not discuss, has comforted me and instructed me and guided me in this terrible time.

Who knows; this story may comfort you as well.

####

Some years ago, I was writing a book about female sexual and reproductive health. I was scared to complete and publish it, since that would mean that I would have to speak publicly about female sexual biology and physical desire, which were at that time still somewhat taboo subjects. The theme of my book was that the sexuality of women, and their gift of fertility, were sacred treasures, and that these should be treated by society (and by women themselves) with great respect, and not degraded or debased.

I was afraid I would be attacked for bringing these issues into daylight and speaking about them frankly (I know that my former fears about this in today’s much more brazen time now sound quaint). But I was so very fearful that for the first time in my life, I suffered a writer’s block.

I was immobilized.

I happened to be in Portland, Oregon. I was wandering along a charming shopping area, 23rd Street, downtown. It was a cool, wet day. That vibrant Northwestern drizzle, green and misty, was a fragrant veil against my face.

Victorian houses lined both sidewalks. Stores offered handmade chocolates and tie-dyed cotton skirts. Cafes with fresh-ground coffee, gift shops with scented soaps, all beckoned.

On the basement level of one of the Victorians, a wooden sign read: “Counseling”.

Having nothing better to do, and thinking that a random chat with a stranger might ease my inability to write, or at least that it could not hurt, I walked down the steps.

I was in an unmemorable hallway: standard-issue chairs and beige carpeting. I sat in a chair and waited. The door opened; an unremarkable woman gestured me into her office. I found myself in a space as bland as the waiting area had been.

The counselor was about forty. She looked like a mom who had gone back to work. She wore an Oregon-standard suburban-lady outfit: leather clogs, khaki slacks, a bright cotton sweater. Her shoulder-length light-brown hair showed a feathering of grey at the temples. Her pleasant, open face was bare of makeup.

She gestured me to sit on a little grey couch. I glanced at the credentials framed on her wall: an MSW license. There were cozy pillows, the splash of color in a Mexican rug, and — that was it. There was nothing else suggestive or unusual there. I don’t even remember her name.

I explained to her my writer’s block, and she responded that her method used hypnotherapy. I was comfortable with this, as my mother is a sought-after past-life regression therapist. While I am agnostic (as is my mother) about whether what her clients experience are actual “past lives” or simply the immense narrative power of the subconscious mind, I knew that various people had used that methodology to get to the heart of their concerns quickly.

Certainly, as a writer, I recognize that the subconscious mind is nothing to belittle. It holds both terrors and riches. I also knew enough about phobias (writer’s block is a phobia) to know that my subconscious mind could indeed hold the key to why I was unable to face the blank page, and that it could possibly show me what I needed to do to move past that immobilization.

The counselor explained that she would put me into a light meditative state. I was comfortable with that as well.

I closed my eyes.

“Ten, nine, eight…” She counted, in a quiet, soothing voice. She had explained that I was to walk down a staircase and count with her, silently, with each step. “Seven, six, five…” I was to count with her until I reached the bottom of the staircase.

I did so.

I was surprised to find myself descending rough golden-white stone steps, hewn as if by coarse chipping. The flat risers of the stairs blended in curves, not in squared edges, into the stone walls that flanked them, as do the Herodian and other ancient steps unearthed by archaeologists. The steps were exactly like the ones I had walked down in the Old City in Jerusalem, where I had lived for a couple of years as a child, and then as a teenager.

“…Four, three, two, one.”

I was at the bottom of the stairs. Her voice, now distant, explained that I would see a door in front of me.

I faced a rough-hewn wooden door, held together not with nails but with leather cords.

“Now open the door and tell me what you see.”

I opened the door.

#####

Before me a man in his early thirties, sitting on a rough wooden bench.

I was now in the room with him.

The two of us were in a crude, stone-walled workshop, like the simple, ancient workshops in the Old City that are still in use, half hewn out of the hillsides’ golden rock. Deep shadows pooled in the corners.

The man was seated at a worktable. I saw that it was held together by wooden dowels, not by metal nails. The man wore a simple robe, made of light brown fabric closer in texture to hemp cloth or to burlap than to modern woven cloth. The edges were uneven, unhemmed. He was barefoot; the floor was made of packed dirt — the golden sandstone dirt of Jerusalem; and I saw that his feet were dusty. The soles of his feet rested on the golden dirt of the floor. The frayed edging of his robe, his feet, the table’s surface, were all dusty. It was the dust of premodern poverty. He was obviously poor.

I understood glancingly that I now was in a meditative, or hypnotically relaxed, state. It was as if I had left my conscious awareness far above, and had dropped to a much deeper level, below normal cognition; it was as if I had reached a deep well of awareness inside my being, full of still water.

I gazed at this being in astonishment. I knew exactly who this being was.

I knew that he was Jesus.

What I saw was incredible.

But it was also terrifying and upsetting.

My reactions were completely split. My awareness was torn in two.

My subliminal mind, where I was mostly present, was overjoyed. I had never been happier in my life. I was in the presence of my best friend, whom I did not consciously know, but whom, subconsciously, I thought I had lost forever.

Hot tears welled from under my closed lids, and spilled down my cheeks. I was crying as if I had waited my whole life to cry like this; as if these tears had been in me, dormant, forever.

But even as my subconscious mind was rejoicing, I could far above me feel my conscious mind — my personality, my biographical self, my ego — freaking out; appalled; twisting about like a hooked fish, in a desperate effort to escape.

My conscious mind was horrified.

I am a Jewish lady.

This was the wrong person.

This was not whom I had wanted to see.

Read the Whole Article

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“Donald Trump is looking increasingly likely to be the winner of the presidential race. I have long held that the globalists will wrap up an economic collapse or a world war and throw it in Trump’s lap.” — Brandon Smith

This time, the shooter lives to do some ‘splainin’. Do you wonder if he might get around to ‘splainin’ his role with the shady non-governmental orgs (NGOs) supported by the CIA who enabled his travels to Ukraine and his efforts there recruiting global mutts to fight for the Nazi-ish Azov Battalion? Perhaps he might rat-out actual government officials who assisted him in his colorful misadventures? As Ed Snowden remarked on “X”, wannabe Trump assassin Ryan Routh has “something of an Oswald vibe” — meaning, well-groomed by the intel boys, to be used as required.

Perhaps we’ll find out — if nothing fatal happens to befall Mr. Routh while in custody — how exactly he learned Mr. Trump would be on the links that afternoon? The candidate’s round of golf that day was supposedly a snap decision known only amongst his innermost circle. Or how did Mr. Routh figure out the most advantageous fairway to lay at for a clear shot? The FBI is on the case, you may be reassured to know.

Things political are speeding up with the autumnal quickening. The blob is truly and deeply a’fright. So many blobsters will be liable to pay for their multitudinous crimes against the people of this country if Mr. Trump squeaks back into power that such a future is unthinkable to them. And yet, nothing has worked to deactivate this. . . this golden golem stalking the land. Nothing to show for the immense catalog of lawfare cases concocted to drain his wealth and stuff him into a prison cell — and astounding how amateurish they all were! Engoron and Merchan, two boobies hatched out of Judicial Error Central. Fani Willis, a walking-talking banana peel! Merrick Garland, saving democracy one abuse of power at a time!

The Butler, PA, head-shot op came awfully close to eliminating their, uh, problem, but no cigar. The Palm Beach golf course ambush had a Peter Sellers vibe, wouldn’t you agree? With the rifle muzzle poking through the shrubbery behind a fence. What next? A pizza with pepperoni, mushrooms, and cyanide? Maybe try to drop an anvil on Mr. Trump’s head from a passing airplane? (Beep-beep. . . woosh!)

Somebody do something!!! The blob is shrieking to its minions from the sub-basement bunkers at Langley to the salons of Georgetown, to the US Embassy in Ukraine. Well, there’s always World War Three! And it looks like just such a romp is about to be instigated. You may have seen the photo last week of “Joe Biden” meeting with UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer at a big conference table, talking-up a plan to give Ukraine the green light to rain long-range missiles deep into Russia. Meaning, let NATO technicians work the targeting console to send US or British made rockets any old place over there? Like, Red Square? Or the Winter Palace, St. Petersburg? Find an actual Ukrainian to push the launch button.

How is that not a direct attack on Russia by NATO? Well, of course it is exactly that. Russia’s chief executive, Mr. Putin, clarified it for the Globalist Neocon cohort infesting NATO that such an action would bring. . . “consequences.” That is a word the Neocons are no longer acquainted with; it has been such a long time since they’ve crossed its path, like its boon companion, “truth,” also missing-in-action these days. And, to be fair, Mr. Putin did not specify what the consequences might be, not even a simple metaphor like a mushroom cloud, or an ashtray.

How did they even get “Joe Biden” off the beach for that photo op? It is understood by everyone over ten-years-old in America that “JB” is not available for duty anymore. The “out-to-lunch” sign hangs permanently on the doorknob of the Oval Office now. The USA does not have a functioning chief-of-state for the first time in 235 years. After 2021, some sort of unelected, informal Politburu that self-assembled in the White House, like a clot from a Covid Vaccine shot, is running our affairs. Maybe Kamala Harris has a clue who is in that outfit. Or somebody in the news median could ask her (if she ever gets around to holding an actual news conference, where the questions are not previewed or scripted.) Anyone dare ask?

Kamala Harris is strangely missing from the front page of The New York Times this morning. Is that a little ominous? The debate is behind her. There will not be another, apparently. There is nothing about her schedule on the official campaign website. Has she entered fade-away mode? Is it all over now except for the ballot harvesting and the, uh, little adjustments to the Dominion vote-counting machines? Has the drinking started again?

Reprinted with permission from JamesHowardKunstler.com.

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My America no longer exists. What has taken its place?

Judges, prosecutors, and law professors who define justice in terms of ideological agendas and who are hostile to the US Constitution because it gets in the way of their agendas.

Jurors so brainwashed, indoctrinated, and compliant with authorities that only 3% of defendants will risk a jury trial. It is safer to self-incriminate. No one trusts a trial by their peers, who in fact are operatives for the authorities.

A population so insouciant that it has no idea that nuclear war could break out at any moment and no idea that “their government” is pushing for such an outcome.

Public schools, financed by parents, that are determined to take away the parents’ children. In effect the parents are financing their own causes of grief, such as their kids being taught transgenderism and critical race theory.

Public officials, House, Senate, President, Governors, regulators, state legislators, city councils that are so compromised by campaign contributions that they cannot represent the people and the public interest, only the interests of the political campaign contributors. A US Supreme Court legalized the purchase of the US government by private interests.

An establishment attack with universities, media, and Hollywood involved on American heroes, such as Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and Robert E. Lee as “racists.”

A country in which students must be protected from the literature and art of their civilization because it is “racist.” Today in America it is possible to have a handful of Ph.D. degrees and to know nothing of your country’s past except that it is racist, evil, and exploitative. Shakespeare is demonized as racist and anti-semitic. No one dare read him and learn from his use of the English language, another racist creation.

A formerly merit-based society is being reconstructed because it prevents “equity.” Kurt Vonnegut predicted that it would be 2081 before we were all made equal by imposed implements to suppress above average capabilities, but this result has already been achieved by law. All whites are weighted down by their skin color in competition for university admission, employment, and promotion including the military, where they have been sidelined while “equity” is pursued. https://genius.com/Kurt-vonnegut-harrison-bergeron-annotated

Christian evangelicals who reject Christ, worship Israel, and support Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians.

The feminist destruction of the relations between men and women. Husbands can no longer trust wives who have been trained by feminists to see men as questionable.

The chastity of women has given way to women boasting of their 150 sexual partners and confessing that their 12 year old daughters are on birth control pills.

The inability to express truth because truth is “offensive.”

The inability to see Satan’s grasp because they are too sophisticated to believe in good and evil.

Readers can add to this list on their own.

The obvious conclusion is that there is nothing left of America. As Western civilization has been exterminated, I wonder why I continue to defend what no longer exists.

It only takes one more dumbshit decision from Washington, and none of us will exist.

And in Superpower America there is no awareness of this danger.

The post America Today, Compared to the America I Grew Up in appeared first on LewRockwell.

Colonization … is the best affair of business in which the capital of an old and wealthy country can engage … the same rules of international morality do not apply … between civilized nations and barbarians.

– John Stuart Mill, quoted by Eileen Sullivan in “Liberalism and Imperialism: JS Mill’s Defense of the British Empire,” Journal of the History of Ideas, vol. 44, 1983.

The events of 11 September 2001 were intended to impose and enshrine a new Exceptionalist paradigm on the young 21st century. History, though, ruled otherwise.

Cast as an attack on the US Homeland, 11 September 2001, immediately generated the Global War on Terror (GWOT), launched at 11 pm on the same day. Initially christened “The Long War” by the Pentagon, the term was later sanitized by the administration of Barack Obama as “Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO).”

The US-manufactured War on Terror spent a notoriously un-trackable eight trillion dollars defeating a phantom enemy, killed over half a million people – overwhelmingly Muslims – and branched out into illegal wars against seven Muslim-majority states. All of this was relentlessly justified on “humanitarian grounds” and allegedly supported by the “international community” – before that term, too, was renamed as the “rules-based international order.”

Cui Bono? (who stands to gain) remains the paramount question related to all matters related to 11 September 2001. A tight network of fervently Israel-first neocons strategically positioned across the defense and national security establishments by Vice President Dick Cheney – who had served as secretary of defense in the administration of George W Bush’s father – sprang into action to impose the long-planned agenda of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC). That far-reaching agenda had waited in the wings for the right trigger – a “new Pearl Harbor” – to justify a slew of regime-change operations and wars across much of West Asia and other Muslim states, reshaping global geopolitics for the benefit of Israel.

US General Wesley Clark’s notorious revelation of a secret Cheney regime plot to destroy seven major Islamic countries over five years, from Iraq, Syria, and Libya all the way to Iran, showed us that the planning had already been done in advance. These targeted nations had one thing in common: they were resolute enemies of the occupation state and firm supporters of Palestinian rights.

The sweet deal, from Tel Aviv’s perspective, was that the War on Terror would have the US and its western allies fighting all these serial Israeli-profiting wars on behalf of “civilization” and against the “barbarians.” The Israelis couldn’t have been more happy or smug about the direction this was going.

It’s no wonder that 7 October 2023 is a mirror image of 11 September 2001. The occupation state itself advertised this as Israel’s own “11 September.” Parallels abound in more ways than one, but certainly not in the way Israel-firsters and the cabal of extremists leading Tel Aviv expected.

Syria: the turning point

The western Hegemon excels in constructing narratives and is currently wallowing in the Russophobia, Iranophobia, and Sinophobia swamps of its own creation. Discrediting official, immutable narratives, such as the one about 11 September, remains the ultimate taboo.

But a false narrative construct cannot hold out forever. Three years ago, on the 20th anniversary of the Twin Towers collapsing and the onset of the War on Terror, we witnessed a great unraveling in the intersection of Central and South Asia: the Taliban were back in power, celebrating their victory over the Hegemon in a discombobulated Forever War.

By then, the “seven countries in five years” obsession – aiming to forge a “New Middle East” – was being derailed across the spectrum. Syria was the turning point, though some would argue that the tea leaves were already cast when the Lebanese resistance defeated Israel in 2000, then again in 2006.

But smashing independent Syria would have paved the way for the Hegemon – and Israel’s – Holy Grail: regime change in Iran.

US occupation forces entered Syria in late 2014 under the pretext of fighting “terror.” That was Obama’s OCO in action. In reality, though, Washington was using two key terror outfits – Daesh, aka ISIL, aka ISIS, and Al Qaeda, aka Jabhat al-Nusra, aka Hayat Tahrir al-Sham – to try to destroy Damascus.

That was conclusively proved by a declassified 2012 US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) document, later confirmed by General Michael Flynn, the DIA’s chief when the assessment was written: “I think it was a willful decision [by the Obama administration]” when it comes to helping, not fighting, terror.

ISIS was conceived to fight both the Iraqi and Syrian armies. The terror group was an offspring of Al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), then renamed Islamic State in Iraq (ISI), then rebranded as ISIL, and finally ISIS, after it crossed the Syrian border in 2012.

The crucial point is that both ISIS and Nusra Front (later Hayat Tahrir al-Sham) were hardcore Salafi-jihadi Al-Qaeda offshoots.

Russia entering the Syrian theater at Damascus’ invitation in September 2015 was the real game-changer. Russian President Vladimir Putin decided to actually engage in a real war on terror in Syrian territory before that terror reached the Russian Federation’s borders. This was captured by the standard formulation in Moscow at the time: the distance from Aleppo to Grozny is only 900 kilometers.

The Russians, after all, had already been subjected to the same brand and modus operandi of terror in Chechnya in the 1990s. Afterward, many Chechen jihadis escaped, only to end up joining dodgy outfits in Syria financed by the Saudis.

The late, great Lebanese analyst Anis Naqqash later confirmed that it was the legendary Iranian Quds Force Commander Qassem Soleimani who convinced Putin, in person, to enter the Syrian theater of war and help defeat the terrorism. This strategic masterplan, it transpires, was to fatally debilitate the US in West Asia.

The US security establishment, of course, would never forgive Putin, and especially Soleimani, for defeating their handy jihadist foot soldiers. On the orders of President Donald Trump, the anti-ISIS Iranian general was assassinated in Baghdad in January 2020, alongside Abu Mahdi al-Mohandes, deputy leader of Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Units (PMUs), a broad spectrum of Iraqi fighters who had coalesced to defeat ISIS in Iraq.

Burying the legacy of 11 September

Soleimani’s strategic tour de force of setting up and coordinating the Axis of Resistance against Israel and the US was years in the making. In Iraq, for instance, the PMUs were propelled to the forefront of the resistance because the Iraqi military – US-trained and US-controlled – simply could not fight ISIS.

The PMUs were created after a fatwa by Grand Ayatollah Sistani in June 2014 – when ISIS began its Iraqi rampage – by imploring “all Iraqi citizens” to “defend the country, its people, the honor of its citizens and its sacred sites.”

Several PMUs were backed by Soleimani’s Quds Force – who, ironically, for the rest of the decade would be invariably branded by Washington as a master “terrorist.” In parallel, crucially, the Iraqi government hosted an anti-ISIS intel center in Baghdad, led by Russia.

The credit for defeating ISIS in Iraq went mostly to the PMUs, complemented by its help to Damascus via the integration of PMU units into the Syrian Arab Army. That was what a real war on terror was all about, not that misnomered American construct called the “War on Terror.”

Best yet, the indigenously West Asian response to terror was and remains non-sectarian. Tehran supports secular, pluralist Syria and Sunni Palestine; Lebanon features a Hezbollah–Christian alliance; Iraq’s PMUs feature a Sunni–Shia–Christian alliance. Divide and Rule simply do not apply in a homegrown anti-terror strategy.

Then, what happened on 7 October 2023 propelled the regional resistance forces’ ethos to a whole new level.

In one swift move, it destroyed the myth of Israeli military invincibility and its much-lauded surveillance and intelligence primacy. Even as the horrifying genocide across Gaza proceeds unabated (with possibly as many as 200,000 civilian deaths, according to The Lancet), the Israeli economy is being eviscerated.

Yemen’s strategic blockade of the Bab al-Mandeb and the Red Sea to any Israel-linked or destined shipping vessel is a masterstroke of efficiency and simplicity. Not only has it already bankrupted Israel’s strategic Eilat Port, but also, as a bonus, has offered a spectacular humiliation of the thalassocratic Hegemon, with the Yemenis de facto defeating the US Navy.

In less than a year, the concerted strategies of the Axis of Resistance have essentially buried six feet under the fake War on Terror and its multi-trillion-dollar gravy train.

As much as Israel profited from events after 11 September, Tel Aviv’s actions after 7 October rapidly accelerated its unraveling. Today, amidst massive Global Majority condemnation of Israel’s Gaza genocide, the occupation state stands as a pariah – tainting its allies and exposing the Hegemon’s hypocrisy with each passing day.

For the Hegemon, it gets even more alarming. Recall the 1997 warning of Dr Zbigniew “Grand Chessboard” Brzezinski: “It is imperative that no Eurasian challenger emerges capable of dominating Eurasia and thus of also challenging America.”

In the end, all the combined sound and fury of 11 September, the War on Terror, Long War, Operation This-And-That over two decades, metastasized into exactly what “Zbig” feared. Not only has a mere “challenger” emerged, but a full-fledged Russia–China strategic partnership that is setting a new tone for Eurasia.

Suddenly, Washington has forgotten all about terrorism. This is the real “enemy” – now considered the top two US “strategic threats.” Not Al-Qaeda and its many incarnations, a flimsy figment of the CIA’s imagination, rehabilitated and sanitized in the previous decade as those mythical “moderate rebels” in Syria.

What’s even more eerie is that the conceptually nonsensical War on Terror forged by the neocons immediately after 11 September is now morphing into a war of terror (italics mine), embodying the desperate Hail Mary pass by the CIA and MI6 to “confront Russian aggression” in Ukraine.

And that’s bound to be metastasized into the Sinophobia swamp because those same western intelligence agencies consider the rise of China to be “the greatest geopolitical and intelligence challenge” of the 21st century.

The War on Terror has been debunked; it is now dead. But get ready for serial wars of terror by a Hegemon unaccustomed to not owning the narrative, the seas, and the ground.

The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of The Cradle.

The post From 11 September to 7 October: The Fake ‘War on Terror’ Collapses appeared first on LewRockwell.

While we often hear that middle-aged southern white men pose a grave threat to American democracy and public safety, Ryan Wesley Routh—a former roofer from North Carolina who looks and sounds like a dumb cracker —has, in recent years, been a model of anti-Trump and anti-Putin sentiment. Also notable is the fact that in 2002, he was charged with the felony possession of a fully automatic firearm.

The following is a collection of statements he has made to various MSM outlets over the last couple of years.

FT News: 

“It’s a pretty big yard, but the front bank is completely full,” Ryan Routh, an American volunteer who started the memorial last year, said. “There may be 10,000 at this point. ‘Flags of the fallen’ is what I’ve been calling it.” 

Routh, a former construction worker who lives in Hawaii, is one of the thousands of foreigners who, after seeing news reports about the invasion, travelled into Ukraine in early 2022 to volunteer as fighters or medics.

Semafor:

“Most of the Ukrainian authorities do not want these soldiers,” said Ryan Routh, head of the International Volunteer Center in Ukraine, a private organization which helps foreigners seeking to assist the war effort connect with military units and aid groups. “I have had partners meeting with [Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense] every week and still have not been able to get them to agree to issue one single visa.”

Azerbaycan24

The New York Times article backs up the Russian Defense Ministry’s information regarding the countries which are actively trying to recruit mercenaries to join the fight in Ukraine. It wrote about Ryan Routh, a former construction worker from North Carolina who spent several months in Ukraine last year and is now seeking recruits among Afghan soldiers who fled the Taliban. He plans to move them to Ukraine from Pakistan and Iran – in some cases, illegally. Nevertheless, dozens of people have apparently expressed an interest.

NYTimes

With Legion growth stalling, Ryan Routh, a former construction worker from Greensboro, N.C., is seeking recruits from among Afghan soldiers who fled the Taliban. Mr. Routh, who spent several months in Ukraine last year, said he planned to move them, in some cases illegally, from Pakistan and Iran to Ukraine. He said dozens had expressed interest. “We can probably purchase some passports through Pakistan, since it’s such a corrupt country,” he said in an interview from Washington.

Taiwan News 

The man behind the wall of banners, Ryan Routh, told CNA that he posted the flags to pay tribute to the nations that have citizens fighting in Ukraine’s foreign legion, the International Legion of Territorial Defense of Ukraine. Routh said there have been no protests about the presence of the Taiwan flag so far, but even if China is dissatisfied, “I can order another 1,000, they can’t touch my flags.”

Routh, 56, originally hails from Hawaii, but most recently worked in the construction industry in North Carolina and has no military background. He came to Kyiv more than two months ago to show his support for Ukraine and wanted to join the foreign legion.

However, due to his age, he was unable to do so, and he is instead currently assisting the legion in recruiting volunteers for the Alpha, Bravo, and Charlie units in Kharkiv. Thus far, Routh has assisted in recruiting 70 volunteers to join the fight against Russia.

Routh began posting flags on the wall of a sandbagged monument in Kyiv’s Independence Square. He told the news agency that he included Taiwan’s flag because he had met at least five Taiwanese volunteers serving in the legion over the past two months and learned about Taiwan’s contribution to Ukraine’s war effort.

According to Routh, he has yet to receive any protests from China about the presence of the Taiwan flag. He said that any pressure that would come from China would be “nothing” compared to the daily assault by Russian forces on every soldier who supports Ukraine.

He said that he will continue to stay in Kyiv and encourage more people to fight against Russia. European countries deliver truckloads of food, medical supplies, and military equipment, but Ukraine may need three to four times more support, estimated Routh.

The volunteer pointed out that there are only 50 national flags on the stone wall, meaning that there are over 100 countries that do not have a single soldier that has volunteered to fight for Ukraine, “This is unacceptable.” He emphasized the war between Russia and Ukraine is a battle of good versus evil.

Routh asserted that at this critical moment, all countries should give their soldiers unpaid leave and provide air tickets to fly to Ukraine to participate in the war to prevent Russia from starting another war. “We should be united and share success and failure, which is what these flags stand for,” said Routh.

Suspected shootər Ryan Routh talking about the war in Ukraine pic.twitter.com/1cUvDF4BRb

— TaraBull (@TaraBull808) September 15, 2024

Thus, Routh has become a seemingly improbable face and voice of prevailing Democrat Party sentiment and foreign policy orthodoxy.

This originally appeared on Courageous Discourse.

The post Would Be Assassin Is a Media Darling appeared first on LewRockwell.

At the start of the Special Military Operation in February 2022 I warned of the blowback that, I asserted, would likely come if the West continued to pamper Nazi groups in Ukraine:

The U.S. aim is to create an insurgency in the Ukraine.

The Coming Ukrainian Insurgency – Foreign Affairs
Russia’s Invasion Could Unleash Forces the Kremlin Can’t Control

Since 2015 the CIA has trained Ukrainian groups for exactly that purpose.

CIA-trained Ukrainian paramilitaries may take central role if Russia invades – Yahoo

CIA support for Ukrainian Nazis has a long history.

Op-Ed: The CIA has backed Ukrainian insurgents before. Let’s learn from those mistakes – LA Times

A new Nazi insurgency in eastern Europe is an exceptionally bad idea. Fascist groups from everywhere would join in. A few years from now it may well lead to Nazi terror in many European countries. Have we learned really nothing from the war on Syria and the ISIS campaign?

Me and Ivan Katchanovski were probably the only ones who had warned of this:

Katchanovski adds that, “This is also going to have a dangerous effect on Ukraine and potentially other countries because now, basically, Nazis in Ukraine are made into national heroes.” He also noted that Azov (as well as Western governments) has consistently pressured Zelensky — including with threats, and even before Russia invaded — not to seek a peace deal with Russia or withdraw forces from the Donbas region. In February, Azov branded Zelensky a “servant of the Russian people” after he suggested that he might negotiate with Moscow.

Katchanovski said that the valorization of the Azov Regiment is comparable to how the West initially supported the predecessors of the Taliban in their fight against the Soviet Union’s intervention in the war in Afghanistan in the 1980s, and also risks inspiring yet more far-right activists from other countries to join the conflict in Ukraine in order to gain military experience, potentially causing a blowback effect if they make it home.

Yesterday one avid U.S. supporter of the fascists in Ukraine tried to assassinate the Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump:

Jack Poso @JackPosobiec – 1:39 UTC · Sep 16, 2024

EXCLUSIVE: Attempted Trump assassin Ryan Routh appeared in a propaganda video for the AZOV BATTALLION in May 2022
Embedded video

Routh, himself being too old to fight, had tried to hire foreign mercenaries to fight on the fascist side in Ukraine. He obviously targeted Trump because he had promised to dictate an end to the war in Ukraine.

Was Routh more than a lone wolf in this?

Edward Snowden @Snowden – 23:27 UTC · Sep 15, 2024

We know little so far, but w alleged Trump shooter’s personal and public participation in military activity in Ukraine, it is hard to imagine this White House’s agencies can claim zero contact—”clean hands.” Something of an Oswald vibe, here. Congress should get answers.
Images

As more people start to think about potential ways to end the war in Ukraine the far-right in Ukraine is threatening to use violence to prevent that:

SIMPLICIUS Ѱ @simpatico771 – 18:13 UTC · Sep 15, 2024

Ukraine’s most feared drone warlord threatens Zelensky:

A serviceman of the Armed Forces of Ukraine with the call sign “Madyar” openly and “without drama” threatens the Ukrainian government.

According to him, if someone negotiates with the Russian Federation “not in the interests of the Ukrainian people”, then a million fighters will return from the front and overthrow such a government.
Embedded video

The Washington Post tries to explain the issue:

‘Sprinkled with our blood’: Why so many Ukrainians resist land for peace
Ukraine is under pressure to cut a deal to end the war, especially if Trump wins, but there is likely to be fierce opposition from some soldiers and their families in the east.

It turns out that the ‘so many’ Ukrainians are not so many but a small radical minority that is willing to use force against politicians who want to take the necessary steps to make peace:

Polling, however, shows that Ukrainians are not ready to give up their land, especially among those soldiers in Donbas who have been fighting for it for the past 10 years.
…
[W]hile only 7 percent said they would join an armed protest in case of territorial concessions, that number more than doubled among soldiers and veterans — including those who have been fighting for the past decade, who have seen Russian forces raze the Ukrainian cities they capture to the ground, and who are now grappling with the prospect of losing their long-contested homeland.

The Post cites only few named sources in support of its thesis:

Vitaliy Barabash, the head of Avdiivka’s military administration, has been fighting Russia since 2014. The city was finally captured by Russia this winter after a decade of fighting.
…
He does not believe that Zelensky would sign a peace deal that would “abandon” Donbas — and said that it would be a “stupid mistake” to reason with Moscow. “Most people are hopefully that we will return to Avdiivka. They are ready to live in tents and rebuild this city.”

The report does not mention that Vitaliy Barabash, who is Jewish, was one of those who fought, and lost, with the fascist Azov battalion in Mariupol:

A Jewish Ukrainian soldier in the besieged Azovstal plant in Mariupol called on Israel on Wednesday night to intervene to save the garrison.

In a Facebook video posted by Jewish Kyiv-based entrepreneur and activist Ilgam Gasanov, Vitaliy Barabash said in Ukrainian, “It’s hard for me to speak, so my speech for me will be said by my brother, on behalf of all Ukrainian Jews who are together with me here.”

Barabash, also known as Benya, held a Ukrainian flag up to the camera as his friend read his statement, a Star of David tattoo clearly visible on Barabash’s hand.

Members of Azov and other ‘nationalist’ groupings in Ukraine are now experienced fighters. The have the means to fight as there are lots of Ukrainian weapons in unaccountable hands (machine translation):

Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion of Russia in Ukraine, more than 270,945 weapons have disappeared or been stolen.
…
In less than 2024, more weapons were stolen or lost than in the whole of last year – 78,217 units. At the same time, it is 4 times more than before the start of a full-scale war.

These weapons can be easily smuggled into Europe to target any politician who dares to pressure Ukraine into accepting an end of the war.

The attempted assassination of Trump is only one of the first of such incidents. (The motives for the assassination attempt against the Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico are still unknown.)

Many such incidents, predominantly in Europe, are likely to follow.

Reprinted with permission from Moon of Alabama.

The post West Experiences Blowback From Fostering Fascists In Ukraine appeared first on LewRockwell.

Another Trump assassination attempt has been foiled by the Secret Service, this time with the would-be assassin alive and in police custody. His name is Ryan Routh.

Unlike the last aspiring assassin, this one didn’t get off a shot, and has a much more public profile. The Grayzone has a report out documenting Routh’s extensive involvement in efforts to recruit volunteers to fight in the war in Ukraine, a cause he has been highly ideologically dedicated to.

Just like last time Trump’s political opponents who’ve been melodramatically claiming Trump is going to end American democracy and install himself as a dictator for life are condemning political violence and expressing relief that he’s okay. Kamala Harris, Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries and Bernie Sanders have all tweeted statements to this effect.

I have been briefed on reports of gunshots fired near former President Trump and his property in Florida, and I am glad he is safe. Violence has no place in America.

— Vice President Kamala Harris (@VP) September 15, 2024

As soon as shit gets even a tiny bit real all the performers set aside their vitriolic rhetoric about Trump and start talking about how relieved they are that their fellow performer is okay, the same as you would see if someone took a shot at one of the performers in a pro wrestling match. It’s all a kayfabe performance.

Trump supporters are again touting this foiled assassination plot as evidence that the Deep State is after their man, but right now I’m not buying it. I kinda think if the real power players wanted him dead he’d be dead. According to Trump supporters the Deep State is simultaneously (A) a supremely powerful entity capable of enslaving the world in a neo-Marxist bug-eating vaccine mandate woke dystopia and (B) somehow incapable of successfully assassinating one 78 year-old man despite multiple attempts.

I wouldn’t care if Trump got assassinated, but for the record nothing would be accomplished by eliminating him because he’ll only be replaced by an ideological clone of himself just like Biden was. The powers that be benefit too much from having a Trump; if it’s not him it’ll be another.

Trump supporters say Trump is anti-establishment, when in reality he’s done more to advance the interests of the establishment than any individual Democrat ever has. In addition to all the longstanding agendas of the US war machine he advanced while president, he also moves US politics in the exact direction the powerful want it to move.

Because of Trump, conversations about universal healthcare and a living wage have been completely killed off and replaced with conversations about the threat of fascism and the death of American democracy.

Because of Trump, Democrats moved from mocking the cold warrior Russiabaiting of Mitt Romney and saying “the 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back,” to now demanding more and more nuclear brinkmanship against Russia.

Because of Trump, the Democratic Party has been able to completely ignore all the demands of their progressive base, trusting that they will still be scaremongered into voting Democrat in November despite the fact that this is the same as voting Republican in 2008.

None of this would have been possible without Donald Trump or someone just like him. No other living person has done more to benefit the imperial status quo more than this man who has successfully transformed US politics into a fight between two Republican Parties with no voice left for ordinary Americans and their basic human needs.

I will of course be reassessing my position as more information comes in, but for right now I just think Trump is far too useful to the powerful for me to bother putting my conspiratorial thinking cap on for this one.

_____________

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The post Musings on the Second Trump Assassination Attempt appeared first on LewRockwell.

di Philipp Bagus & Bernardo Ferrero

Mentre la maggior parte dei libertari ha guardato con favore all'ingresso di Milei in politica e alle sue scelte da presidente, questa visione non è stata abbracciata da tutti. Oscar Grau, ad esempio, ha scritto alcuni articoli critici che analizzano le politiche interne ed estere di Milei. Per quanto riguarda le prime, Grau sostiene che l'approccio di Milei è interventista, cosa che stritola il settore privato sotto l'egida di un'adesione solo retorica alla libertà e al libero mercato; per quanto riguarda le seconde, Grau conclude che il presidente argentino è solo l'ennesimo neocon, politico dell'establishment. Considerando quanto sopra, Grau dice che Milei è un “imbroglione”, “statalista”, “neocon” e accusa i suoi seguaci di essere dei traditori opportunisti.

L'importanza della storia congetturale e della verstehen

Pur concordando con Grau su alcune delle sue critiche, la sua line generale non riesce a tenere conto di una serie di questioni essenziali e la sua conclusione, secondo cui i libertari dovrebbero dissociarsi da Milei, è ingiustificata. Bisogna tenere a mente quattro domande: qual era la situazione prima che Milei salisse al potere? Qual era l'alternativa in Argentina? Cosa ha realizzato finora? Dove mira il suo programma?

La contestualizzazione è essenziale per comprendere l'ambiente in cui Milei è stato costretto a operare. I vincoli, tanto quanto le opportunità, sono pregni di contesto, stabilendo i confini entro i quali, in ogni momento, l'attore di mercato forma le sue aspettative e i suoi giudizi su benefici e costi marginali dei corsi d'azione alternativi. Inoltre non si può evitare quella che Montesquieu chiamava “storia congetturale” e quindi applicare la comprensione interpretativa (quella che Weber chiamava Verstehen) quando si prende in considerazione la rilevanza del “fenomeno Milei” e la misura in cui sta spingendo il suo Paese nella giusta direzione.

I disastri del kirchnerismo

La prima cosa che Grau sottovaluta è la situazione e le difficoltà che Milei ha incontrato una volta salito al potere. A parte alcuni commenti sull'andamento inflazionistico del peso, Grau dedica poca attenzione alle politiche disastrose che sono state perseguite in Argentina dalla fine della convertibilità (1992-2001), da Nestor Kirchner (2003-2007) e poi continuando con Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (2007-2015), Mauricio Macri (2015-2019) e, soprattutto, Alberto Fernández (2019-2023). Il disastro di questo socialismo argentino del XXI secolo si è riflesso negli squilibri fiscali e monetari che Milei si è trovato ad affrontare quando è entrato nella Casa Rosada. Con un debito pubblico di oltre $400 miliardi e quasi $60 miliardi di debiti commerciali in scadenza, lo stato argentino era sull'orlo del default, il suo decimo default dall'indipendenza (1816). In questo lasso di tempo la banca centrale argentina ha fatto registrare riserve negative in dollari nel suo bilancio.

La responsabilità di questi squilibri era tutta nelle mani della classe politica. Per quanto riguarda la carenza di dollari è stata la decisione di bloccare il peso a un tasso sopravvalutato rispetto al cambio estero a creare gli effetti tipici di tutti i controlli sui prezzi. Mentre le persone si precipitavano a sbarazzarsi dei loro pesos, ciò che ne è seguito è stata una corsa al dollaro, una carenza di valuta estera e un deficit della bilancia dei pagamenti che ha prosciugato la produzione interna. Invece di risolvere il problema consentendo al tasso di cambio di adeguarsi ai livelli di compensazione del mercato, limitando la spesa pubblica e frenando la stampa di denaro, i kirchneristi hanno contrastato questi movimenti con ulteriori interventi monetari sotto forma di controlli sui capitali e sui cambi (cepo e control de cambios). Costretti a separarsi dai loro guadagni in dollari a tassi inferiori a quelli di mercato, gli esportatori sono stati espropriati. Allo stesso tempo gli importatori privilegiati sono stati sovvenzionati e l'accesso del Paese ai mercati finanziari internazionali è stato limitato. Quando Milei ha assunto la carica, c'erano 18 diversi tassi del dollaro. Questo scenario ha incentivato favoritismi politici, ha esacerbato il rischio del tasso di cambio e ha diffuso il caos nei calcoli imprenditoriali.

La causa fondamentale di questi squilibri era il livello insostenibile di spesa pubblica. Mossi dal motto di Evita Peron, “Dove c'è il bisogno nasce un diritto”, i programmi sociali sono stati moltiplicati e la portata del settore pubblico è aumentata drasticamente: livelli oppressivi di tassazione, una legislazione gravosa sul mondo del lavoro e restrizioni commerciali labirintiche. La ricchezza è iniziata letteralmente a essere privatizzata, concentrandosi solo in un piccolo gruppo di eletti non integrati nella divisione del lavoro e specializzati nello spendere surrettiziamente le risorse altrui senza riparazione. Il rovescio della medaglia è stata la socializzazione della miseria. A novembre 2023 il tasso di povertà era salito al 55%, mentre il livello degli indigenti aveva raggiunto il 17,5%.

La crisi monetaria e fiscale

Incapace sia di spremere il settore privato attraverso ulteriori imposte senza perdere entrate, sia di collocare i propri obblighi nei mercati del credito internazionali, la banca centrale ha monetizzato i deficit fiscali. Dal 2002 i politici argentini hanno utilizzato l'inflazione come mezzo per finanziare i consumi pubblici e la prodigalità in eccesso rispetto alle imposte previste dalla legge, esternalizzando i costi sui risparmiatori, sui creditori, sui percettori di reddito fisso e sui lavoratori a basso reddito. Oltre a ciò, le élite hanno emesso ulteriori pesos per finanziare il cosiddetto deficit quasi fiscale, corrispondente agli interessi mensili e giornalieri pagati alle banche commerciali per “parcheggiare” parte dei pesos in eccesso presso la banca centrale. Poiché il tasso d'interesse effettivo annuo è aumentato in linea con l'andamento geometrico dell'inflazione dei prezzi, raggiungendo il 253% a novembre 2023, questi pagamenti hanno costituito una fonte di creazione di denaro pari al 10% del PIL. Ciò che è iniziato come una misura per limitare l'offerta di denaro si è trasformato in una delle fonti più problematiche di inflazione incontrollata. Tra il 2011 e il 2023 la base monetaria più ampia, che comprende sia le passività non remunerate (base monetaria) sia quelle remunerate della banca centrale (Leliqs e Pases), è aumentata di un multiplo di 116, con l'aumento più significativo verificatosi durante l'ultima presidenza. In quattro anni, sotto la presidenza di Alberto Fernandez, la banca centrale ha ampliato la quantità di base monetaria dell'equivalente del 32% del PIL, con il 13% emesso solo in quell'ultimo anno.

Quando Milei ha assunto la carica, l'Argentina languiva in una crisi economica, monetaria e fiscale. Le conseguenze perniciose di lassismo monetario e fiscale si sono scatenate tutte insieme: un tasso di inflazione dell'1% al giorno (e annuo al 3700%), deficit fiscale duplice del 15% del PIL (5% Tesoro argentino e 10% banca centrale) e un periodo di stagnazione lungo 12 anni. Dato che l'Argentina aveva vissuto in un'anomia istituzionale per gli ultimi due decenni, Milei si è ritrovato molte strade precluse davanti a sé.

La doppia strategia del politico libertario

Come presidente dell'Argentina, Milei ha capito che, indipendentemente dalle sue credenziali accademiche, era ormai diventato un politico. E un politico, anche libertario, deve tenere conto delle circostanze specifiche di tempo e luogo se vuole riuscire a mantenere ed espandere il sostegno degli elettori. Il politico libertario a volte deve scendere a compromessi, senza mai andare nella direzione sbagliata. Secondo Jesús Huerta de Soto, il politico libertario dovrebbe usare una duplice strategia: studiare i principi teorici del libertarismo e istruire il pubblico in generale su questi principi e le sue implicazioni, impegnandosi in un lavoro di divulgazione delle idee libertarie. A tal fine non saranno accettati compromessi.

Essendo consapevole dei suoi obiettivi a lungo termine, il politico libertario cercherà anche possibili piani di transizione verso quell'ideale che non violi i principi libertari. Se è impossibile eludere un compromesso a breve termine, può concederlo purché si muova nella giusta direzione. In nessun caso un insieme di misure si allontanerà da una società più libertaria. Le restrizioni che i politici e l'apparato burocratico (o lo stato profondo) apportano sono sconosciute al grande pubblico; il politico libertario deve fare uso della sua conoscenza specifica del tempo e dello spazio, valutando le restrizioni effettive che la vita politica reale offre, e realizzare in ogni momento storico il massimo di quell'ideale che le circostanze consentono.

Solo utilizzando questa duplice strategia si possono evitare quei due estremi che Murray Rothbard considerava dannosi per il progresso della libertà: “l’opportunismo di destra” e il “settarismo di sinistra”. Se il primo è una “linea di politica senza principi”, incapace di dare un fondamento non arbitrario all’azione politica, il secondo è un “principio senza linea di politica”, che inibisce il perseguimento concreto del miglior bene possibile.

Milei come politico libertario

Milei ha seguito la descrizione di un politico libertario. Anche se Grau lo dipinge come un semplice neoclassico, Milei ha studiato a fondo le idee libertarie e Austriache. Oltre ad essere stato “convertito” alla teoria Austriaca nel 2014 dopo aver letto il capitolo 10 di Man, Economy and State di Rothbard, ha letto Human Action tre volte e ha familiarizzato con le opere di Hayek, Hazlitt, Kirzner e molti altri. Sebbe si porti dietro ancora residui monetaristi, definirlo un economista matematico e neoclassico è quantomeno impreciso. Nessun monetarista ha mai sostenuto, come fa continuamente Milei, l'eliminazione della banca centrale, la denazionalizzazione del denaro e la deflazione dei prezzi. Inoltre ha scritto libri che criticano le opinioni neoclassiche/di Chicago su monopolio, fallimenti del mercato e antitrust.

Inoltre rende popolari queste idee ogni volta che può. Non è stato solo facendo appello alla retorica del “popolo contro élite”, ma anche illuminando le persone sulla superiorità morale, economica e persino estetica di un ordine sociale basato sul mercato che Milei è stato in grado di fondersi con il 56% del sostegno degli elettori. Solo per fare un esempio tra i tanti, nel 2021, poco dopo la sua vittoria alle primarie, Milei ha iniziato una serie di sei lezioni all'aperto sull'economia Austriaca nelle piazze di Buenos Aires, al termine delle quali regalava copie di Economics in One Lesson di Henry Hazlitt. I suoi noti interventi pubblici a Davos (World Economic Forum), Roma (Quarta Repubblica - Mediaset), Washington (CPAC), Madrid (Vox - Viva24) sono una dimostrazione che ha continuato a rendere popolari queste idee dopo aver assunto l'incarico.

Inflazione, deficit e qualità del denaro

Per quanto riguarda la seconda parte della strategia duale, si applica un ragionamento simile. Durante la campagna elettorale Milei si è candidato con una piattaforma di austerità, promettendo tagli alla spesa pubblica e un abbassamento generale delle tasse e delle normative. La sua priorità era porre fine all'inflazione, un tema che ha sviluppato in dettaglio in uno dei suoi ultimi libri che porta esattamente quel titolo: El fin de la Inflacion. Il suo piano di dollarizzazione più che un invito a unirsi a un sistema finanziario dominato dalla FED era mosso dal desiderio di allontanare la stampante monetria dalla casta argentina e consentire alle classi produttive di scambiare, risparmiare, pianificare e calcolare liberamente con l'unità monetaria che, alla luce della sua stabilità e indipendenza, preferivano di più. Inutile dire che si trattava del dollaro statunitense.

Per ottenere questi risultati Milei ha pensato a un piano di transizione composto da diverse fasi, rispettando in gran parte le sue promesse. Sapendo di non avere la maggioranza parlamentare per promuovere riforme strutturali, evitare una crisi iperinflazionistica e un altro default è diventata la sua preoccupazione principale. Milei ha affrontato queste questioni con un certo successo. Quando ha assunto la carica a dicembre, i prezzi all'ingrosso salivano a un ritmo del 25,5% al ​​mese, mentre le ultime misure dell'inflazione riportano un ritmo mensile del 4% a luglio di quest'anno. Secondo Grau l'abbassamento dell'inflazione è stato ottenuto da una mix di manovre stataliste volte a inibire la gente dal precipitarsi sul dollaro, aumentandone il prezzo. Di certo i controlli sui prezzi e sui cambi sono indifendibili, tuttavia erano già in atto quando Milei è arrivato, quindi non possono essere stati un fattore causale significativo. Ciò che Grau ignora è che l'inflazione dei prezzi è stata domata grazie a due fenomeni interconnessi: la lenta ma costante diminuzione dell'emissione monetaria e l'aumento della qualità del sistema monetario.

I cambiamenti nella qualità di quest'ultimo cambiano, ceteris paribus, la qualità del denaro, la domanda di denaro e, di conseguenza, il potere d'acquisto del denaro. Infatti Milei ha migliorato sostanzialmente il sistema monetario dell'Argentina ottenendo un surplus fiscale entro il primo mese di governo e dichiarando che l'eliminazione del deficit fiscale non era negoziabile. In questo modo ha stabilito un solido ancoraggio monetario: poiché è scomparsa la necessità di finanziare i deficit fiscali stampando denaro, le aspettative inflazionistiche sono state ridotte. Di recente il governo ha dichiarato che alla base monetaria non sarà più consentito di crescere (“emisión cero”), migliorando ulteriormente la qualità del sistema monetario. Come scrisse Rothbard, un importante fattore determinante della domanda di denaro in uno standard fiat è la fiducia della popolazione nelle “autorità che emettono denaro fiat”. Poiché una moneta fiat è emessa indirettamente dallo stato, la solvibilità di quest'ultimo diventa un fattore importante dietro il prezzo del denaro. Considerando che tale solvibilità è valutata scontando al presente i surplus fiscali futuri, le misure di austerità di Milei non solo hanno ancorato l'offerta di denaro futura, ma hanno anche aumentato rapidamente la domanda di denaro. Allo stesso modo la qualità del sistema monetario è stata migliorata ristrutturando il bilancio della banca centrale. Le passività remunerate sono state eliminate e una parte maggiore della base monetaria è stata sostenuta da riserve monetarie che sono passate da -$10,545 miliardi a $27,439 miliardi. Sebbene assenti nelle osservazioni di Grau, queste misure sono state responsabili della riduzione sia dell'inflazione dei prezzi che dei tassi d'interesse.

Un minor carico fiscale

Si potrebbe sostenere che un libertario dovrebbe guardare con ottimismo all'idea di default di uno stato. Da Thomas Jefferson a Murray Rothbard, la posizione libertaria ortodossa sulla finanza pubblica è stata, per ragioni sia normative che positive, inequivocabile: ripudiare il debito pubblico. Detto questo, bisogna anche prendere in considerazione i costi politici di farlo, i quali potrebbero risultare critici, specialmente in un Paese come l'Argentina che è andato in default talmente tanto spesso senza mai riprendersi per davvero.

Riflettendo su questi costi politici, Milei ha deciso di andare avanti con il piano di eliminare la spesa in deficit e accumulare surplus di bilancio. Seguendo Rothbard, ci sono tre modi in cui uno stato può realizzare una riorganizzazione dei suoi conti: aumentando le tasse, riducendo la spesa pubblica e privatizzando gli asset pubblici; o un mix di quanto sopra. Mentre il primo modo è sia dannoso che illegittimo, il secondo e il terzo sono strade sane e del tutto legittime. Mentre un libertario può giustamente criticare l'aumento di alcune tasse (impuesto pais, carburante e stipendi) approvato dal governo di Milei, la maggior parte dei surplus di bilancio è arrivata attraverso tagli alla spesa pubblica, la quale è diminuita di quasi il 35% in termini reali. Il governo Milei ha stabilito un nuovo record in Argentina, avendo licenziato il numero più alto di dipendenti pubblici nei primi sette mesi del suo mandato. Secondo l'ultima relazione pubblicata dall'Instituto Argentino de Analisis Fiscal, Milei ha licenziato 30.936 dipendenti pubblici durante il suo primo semestre.

Un altro ambito importante in cui Milei ha fatto importanti progressi fin dall'inizio è la deregolamentazione. A partire dal suo Decreto de Necesidad y Urgencia, Milei ha abrogato più di trecento regolamenti che soffocavano le attività commerciali sin dai tempi del dittatore Ongania (1966-70), dal controllo degli affitti alle leggi sulla moneta a corso legale. Omessa da Grau la parte più cruciale di questo decreto è stata la modifica dell'articolo 958 del Codice civile e commerciale, con cui il governo Milei ha relegato le norme legali a un piano inferiore rispetto alla volontà delle parti espressa nei contratti. Poiché l'inflazione e i regolamenti sono una tassa, e poiché entrambi consentono allo stato di ottenere un controllo sostanziale sull'uso delle risorse nella società, Miliei ha nell'effettivo ridotto l'onere fiscale complessivo.

Tagli alle tasse e liberalizzazioni all'orizzonte

Con il suo piano di riforma (Ley Bases) finalmente accettato da entrambe le camere, si profilano all'orizzonte alcune privatizzazioni. Ciò aumenterà la quota di surplus di bilancio attribuibile sia a modi legittimi che economizzatori di attuare l'austerità. Inoltre si prevedono ulteriori deregolamentazioni accompagnate da crescenti tagli fiscali e in un certo senso questo processo è già iniziato. All'inizio di agosto 2024 il governo Milei ha emanato il decreto 697/2024, eliminando le tasse su tutti i tagli di carne bovina e le ritenute all'esportazione di carne suina. Il decreto prevede anche una riduzione del 25% delle ritenute all'esportazione su tutte le proteine ​​animali e un'eliminazione permanente dei dazi all'esportazione sui prodotti lattiero-caseari, restituendo complessivamente circa $130 milioni nelle tasche dei produttori.

Nel frattempo il governo di Milei ha eliminato le ritenute alla fonte sull'IVA e sugli utili sulle vendite aziendali. Inoltre ha abbassato l'imposta sulle importazioni (impuesto pais) al 7,5% e ha annunciato che entro dicembre 2024 sarà abolita, alleviando significativamente la pressione sul commercio e sulle attività commerciali. Si può sostenere che una tale liberalizzazione non sia abbastanza rapida, ma non si può negare che si muova nella giusta direzione. E sì, Milei ha dovuto scendere a compromessi, soprattutto perché non detiene la maggioranza in parlamento. Libertad Avanza ha solo il 15% dei seggi alla Camera dei rappresentanti e al 10% nel Senato; la maggior parte dei membri del suo partito, inoltre, è rappresentata da semplici alleati politici senza una reale conoscenza dell'economia Austriaca e del libertarismo. Gli obiettivi di Milei, però, sono chiari e sono stati confermati a luglio con la firma del Pacto de Mayo tra il presidente e i governatori. Tra i dieci principi fondanti di questo patto c’erano “l’inviolabilità della proprietà privata”, “la riduzione della spesa pubblica al 25% del PIL” e l’attuazione di una riforma che “riduca il carico fiscale e semplifichi la vita degli argentini e promuova il commercio”.

Milei non è un neocon

Mentre Grau dedica grande attenzione alla politica estera, non si dovrebbe dare tanta importanza al posizionamento di Milei nella “politica internazionale”, poiché l’Argentina non influenza praticamente nulla a quel livello. Il cambio di blocco operato da Milei non implica alcun allontanamento dall’ideale rispetto alla situazione precedente. La sua posizione riguardo la politica estera è, ai fini pratici, puramente testimoniale. Inoltre in molti Paesi sudamericani la vera alternativa, ed è così che la cittadinanza percepisce la questione, è stare o con gli USA e i suoi alleati (Israele e Paesi dell’UE), o con i socialisti e i loro “amici” (Russia, Iran, Cina). I recenti eventi che hanno circondato la rielezione fraudolenta del dittatore socialista del Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro, approvata da Putin, Xi Jinping e gli ayatollah, lo confermano. Del resto dopo quasi due decenni di flirt costante dei kirchneristi con questo blocco e con evidenti casi di corruzione e cattiva gestione (si pensi, ad esempio, all’Operación Moscú voluta da A. Fernandez durante il Covid che ha permesso la distribuzione privilegiata del vaccino Sputnik V in Argentina) è comprensibile che Milei, come parte della sua reazione, possa guardare all’altro lato dello spettro.

Qualunque cosa si possa pensare della collocazione dell'Argentina negli affari internazionali, Milei non è un neocon nel senso tradizionale del termine. Nessun neocon ha dichiarato esplicitamente (né continua a dichiarare in ogni occasione e apparizione pubblica), come invece fa Milei, che lo stato (compreso quello di Israele e dell'Ucraina) è solamente un branco di imbroglioni. Nessun neocon “odia” lo stato. Inoltre essi difendono l'interventismo estero come parte di un sostegno generale allo stato assistenziale-bellico. William Buckley non era solo un militarista antisovietico, ma anche un sostenitore del movimento per i diritti civili degli anni '60. Irving Kristol sosteneva uno “stato assistenziale conservatore” che avrebbe instillato l'abnegazione e un comportamento virtuoso tra i cittadini. Milei invece è un ardente critico dell'intervento statale, delle politiche antidiscriminatorie, del paternalismo e dello stato assistenziale. Appartiene a un'altra lega. Come i liberali tradizionali e i libertari classici, da Montesquieu a Bastiat, da Cobden a Mises, Milei vede nel libero mercato il veicolo per relazioni internazionali più pacifiche e, qualora abbandonato, la premessa per la guerra.

Milei si impegna nella divulgazione di idee Austro-libertarie, diametralmente opposte allo statalismo e al neoconservatorismo. Ad esempio, cita continuamente e incoraggia la lettura di autori libertari, da Murray Rothbard a Hans-Hermann Hoppe. È ironico in questo senso che Grau denunci Milei come neocon e allo stesso tempo lo critichi per aver sostenuto ed essere un alleato di Trump, quando in politica estera quest'ultimo è stato il meno interventista di tutti i presidenti degli Stati Uniti negli ultimi due decenni. Infine se si vuole etichettare Milei come un neocon solo per le sue simpatie geopolitiche e la posizione pro-NATO, cosa si dovrebbe dire di Mises che guardando all'Europa del dopoguerra sosteneva l'istituzione di una “unione permanente e duratura” tra le democrazie occidentali e per “investire tutto il potere in una nuova autorità sovranazionale” al fine di evitare una volta per tutte la sottomissione al totalitarismo? Si potrebbe dire che le osservazioni di Mises furono fatte in un momento particolare della storia e che erano destinate ad applicarsi solo a quelle circostanze. È ragionevole. Ma allora perché la posizione e le dichiarazioni di Milei dovrebbero essere trattate in modo così diverso?

Conclusione

Il libertarismo richiede una strategia realistica. L'idea che ci si debba dissociare intellettualmente da una persona perché potrebbe non implementare appieno l'ideale libertario, non è solo in contrasto con il buon senso, ma è stata respinta come linea di politica sensata dallo stesso Murray Rothbard, il quale nel 1990 associò questo atteggiamento al “percorso disastroso e strampalato del randianismo ortodosso”. Mentre ci si potrebbe aspettare e desiderare che Milei faccia di più e lo faccia più velocemente, mentre si può criticarlo per questo o per quel compromesso, non si può non vedere che ha mosso l'Argentina nella giusta direzione e che il suo ingresso in politica ha implicato un cambiamento di paradigma per la diffusione e l'implementazione delle idee libertarie. Come ha scritto Jesús Huerta de Soto, grazie a Milei e ai suoi successi politici è comune vedere a Buenos Aires, e in altre città argentine e latinoamericane, persone che camminano in giro con Human Action sottobraccio. Uno dei sondaggi più recenti condotti da DC Consultores mostra che circa il 70% degli argentini ritiene che il peronismo sia morto con Alberto Fernandez e che con Milei sia iniziata una nuova era. Il cambio di paradigma, quindi, non è retorica ma una realtà storica che dovrebbe darci speranza per il futuro. Le idee muovono il mondo, non il contrario. Viva la Libertad carajo!

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

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