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With the initial, unprecedented, landmark investigations and damning revelations of massive systemic and all-pervasive criminality, culpability, and corruption within the various federal departments and administrative agencies uncovered since the beginning of President Donald Trump’s second term in office in January, it is important to once again review and fully comprehend the factual record below.

Famed attorney Robert Barnes recently provided an exceptional in-depth retrospective history of FBI deep state corruption, politicalization, and weaponization from its inception to the present. This is an outstanding, must-see presentation before the Hillsdale College National Leadership Seminar.

End the FBI, by Ryan McMaken

And lastly an Establishment apologia or defense of the conventional narrative on Hoover and the FBI from an implanted deep state adjunct. Mark Tooley is president of the Institute on Religion and Democracy and editor of IRD’s foreign policy and national security journal, Providence: A Journal of Christianity & American Foreign Policy. He worked eight years for the Central Intelligence Agency and is a graduate of Georgetown University. In 1994 he joined IRD to found its United Methodist project (UMAction) and became IRD President in 2009.

The post The “Legacy” of J. Edgar Hoover and the Systemic Corruption of the Federal Bureau of Investigation – The Case for Abolition appeared first on LewRockwell.

 

di Francesco Simoncelli

(Versione audio dell'articolo disponibile qui: https://open.substack.com/pub/fsimoncelli/p/cio-che-leurodollaro-ha-dato-leurodollaro-b23)

Ultimo saggio di questa serie che ci ha visto affrontare un viaggio alquanto complesso e che ha permesso ai lettori di entrare in una sequenza di temi ostici da trattare per la loro difficoltà, ma che sono stati asciugati il più possibile affinché potessero essere compresi anche dai non addetti ai lavori. Fino al 2022 era giusto criticare gli Stati Uniti per la loro posizione lassista in ambito monetario e fiscale, l'ho fatto anche io. Dal lancio del SOFR è cambiato radicalmente tutto, un'inversione di 180° rispetto al passato. L'importanza epocale di questo cambiamento è accuratamente descritta nel mio ultimo libro, Il Grande Default, è sufficiente dire qui che ciò permetterà di abbandonare il cosiddetto tasso di riferimento della FED e decentralizzare il potere della stessa nelle 12 FED regionali, tornando a un assetto che esisteva prima degli anni '30 quando la Grande Depressione aprì la porta all'escalation di interventismo economico il cui culmine è stato raggiunto nel 2020. È questo a cui porterà l'audit della FED.

Tale risultato, però, non sarebbe stato possibile realizzarlo senza che gli USA si sganciassero dal LIBOR e mettessero un freno alla creazione di dollari all'estero, come descritto nella Prima parte di questa serie. Infatti l'anamnesi dell'eurodollaro ci ha permesso di capire, poi, nella Seconda parte, che il cuore della creazione artificiale di dollari ombra è la City di Londra e nel tempo questo artificio è stato usato per consumare la ricchezza reale americana a vantaggio di tutti quei player esteri che usavano l'hub londinese per attingere indirettamente dalla stampante americana e salvaguardare i propri interessi. L'estremo dimenarsi degli inglesi in ambito geopolitico e politico da quando Trump è entrato in carica è dovuto al fatto che tutte le micce finanziarie conducono a Londra. Infatti la FED ha operato in territorio ostile fino alle scorse elezioni, barcamenandosi come meglio poteva per restringere la politica monetaria interna e operare un “damage control” nei confronti del Dipartimento del Tesoro a cui capo c'era la Yellen.

La cosiddetta “onda rossa” post-elezioni era propedeutica affinché si potesse restringere senza intoppi anche la politica fiscale del Paese, la quale, durante le precedenti amministrazioni, era stata usata per gonfiare, in particolare sin dal 1971, l'offerta degli eurodollari. La chiusura della USAID è stato il simbolo di questa necessità, dato che l'obiettivo adesso è ricostruire la credibilità e l'affidabilità degli USA; e possono farlo perché essi rimangono il Paese con il gradiente e la capacità di “autarchismo” più grande di tutti nel mondo, da punto di vista energetico, militare e industriale.

Remarkable admission from Bank of America (the first of its kind from a major bank): DOGE is desperately needed as the alternative is catastrophe.

"The global handoff from big government to the free market may prove slippery, but it seems necessary given large deficits and… https://t.co/55Xq9ORTTE

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) March 14, 2025

Inoltre la sua resilienza economica a fronte di un ambiente economico con tassi alti è superiore a quella europea, dove la BCE la settimana scorsa ha platealmente ammesso che il baraccone europeo non riesce a resistere nemmeno a un 3% dei tassi di riferimento. Se ci fosse stato ancora il LIBOR questa debolezza avrebbe infettato anche la FED e gli USA. La catalizzazione delle attenzioni nell'ultima settimana è stata principalmente per il pair EURUSD. Vi basta vedere la candela settimanale per capire che puzza lontano un miglio di manipolazione... e qual è il maggiore centro di intermediazione del Forex? In secondo luogo, poi, le attenzioni sono state accuratamente pilotate verso il selloff del marcato azionario statunitense. Del selloff del comparto obbligazionario europeo, invece, poco o niente... e qual è il maggiore centro di giornalismo finanziario?

Al di là dell'euforia per le dichiarazioni riguardanti il piano “faraonico” di spesa militare, cari investitori retail, qual è il piano per tirare su TUTTI gli €800 miliardi? La fiducia? La speranza? Oppure qualche altro vertice europeo? Tra l'altro, è questo il collateral su cui state puntando quando vi lasciate imbonire dalle pubblicità in TV sui BTP “patriottici”: le chiacchiere alle riunioni europee. Questa settimana ce ne sarà un'altra e vedrete che la risposta alle domande qui sopra non ci sarà. Se ne sentono di ogni su Trump ormai sulla stampa, proprio perché non sanno come attaccarlo/ricattarlo. Lui ha una visione. Perché? Perché è un leader. Putin ha una visione, perché è un leader. Xi ha una visione, perché è un leader. E questo mi porta a concludere che ci sarà una Yalta 2.0 dove questi tre leader troveranno un accordo sul commercio e sposteranno le relative attenzioni sul Pacifico. Gli investitori devono ficcarsi in testa che il mondo della “consensus policy” non esiste più; è tornato quella della “power policy”, dimostrato anche ieri con la retromarcia, coda tra le gambe, del Canada. E non è un caso che Europa, Canada e Inghilterra siano i player che si dimenano di più, visto che non hanno leadership (e questo era qualcosa che avevate letto in tempi non sospetti tramite la penna di Gary North). Come si farebbe, altrimenti, a perseguire un'unione politica, fiscale e obbligazionaria dell'UE se ci fossero leader carismatici in ogni stato membro? Ecco perché gente come Orban o Fico sono osteggiati. Una parvenza di leader, ma nondimeno una spina nel fianco per la classe dirigente europea.

Obbligazioni SURE, il veicolo finanziario Savings and Investments Union, l'euro digitale: sono il canto del cigno di una struttura di potere che si rifiuta di riconoscere la propria obsolescenza. Quando Trump ha detto a quell'imbecille di Zelensky che “non ha le carte”, si rivolgeva indirettamente a coloro che stanno dietro di lui. Le “carte” in questo frangente storico sono le commodity e l'Europa ne è carente per sostenere il grado di complessità socioeconomico a cui è abituata la popolazione media. Anche qui: come si faranno a sfornare tanti bei giocattolini militari senza materie prime? E anche se si dovessero trovare, come faranno gli altri settori industriali a operare correttamente e in accordo con prezzi reali di mercato in presenza di una domanda artificiale pompata ad hoc?

Il caos alimentato da Bruxelles e dalla City di Londra rappresenta l'ultimo strumento in mano alla cricca di Davos per non presentarsi al tavolo delle trattative a mani vuote. È per loro che sta suonando la proverbiale “campana del default”. La più recente riconquista di Kursk premette a Putin di presentarsi al tavolo delle trattative dicendo che se ieri voleva “A+B”, adesso può permettersi di chiedere “A+B+C”. È così che agiscono i leader. Se Trump può permettersi di dire che applicherà dazi del 200% sul vino francese e italiano, può farlo perché senza la leva dell'eurodollaro queste nazioni sono state svuotate della capacità di tenere in piedi la complessità raggiunta in ambito socioeconomico. Non è una questione di export, è una questione che i propri “vizi” (militari e diritti sociali) sono stati appaltati alla stampante monetaria ombra degli USA. Ora che quei rubinetti sono chiusi, Trump può fare leva su quel lassismo per raggiungere i propri obiettivi. È così che agiscono i leader. Ed ecco perché ha ripetuto che “l'UE è nata per fregarci”.

Infine, nella Terza parte, abbiamo visto come anche la BoJ è stata usata, durante l'era della ZIRP e del “consenso del sistema bancario centrale del mondo”, come ulteriore strumento di leva del mercato degli eurodollari e come la fine del carry tade sullo yen ha inciso sulla contrazione dell'offerta di dollari ombra. Più ho scavato, più ho portato alla luce una cruda verità: il potere di monopsonio dell'Europa si basava tutto su un'illusione, alimentata dal suo continuo attingere al mercato degli eurodollari a scapito del resto del mondo. Il colonialismo europeo e inglese non è mai scomparso, ha solo cambiato forma. E nel momento in cui questa illusione è scomparsa, il panico risultate ha iniziato a far salire il prezzo dell'oro come forma di assicurazione contro la volatilità dei mercati e, soprattutto, come metro di giudizio in attesa di un ritorno a una ponderazione dei rischi in sintonia con forze di mercato genuine. La conseguenza più importante è la corsa agli sportelli della LBMA. Non solo, ma ci sono altre tegole per la City di Londra.

Un'altra tegola per la City di Londra. Il LIBOR ormai è andato, una grossa fetta delle assicurazioni se l'è mangiata l'India e, sulla scia della seguente notizia, il prossimo tassello che perderà è il mercato del Forex.https://t.co/Pjko8OMbpV

— Francesco Simoncelli (@Freedonia85) March 11, 2025

Ed ecco, quindi, perché Bruxelles e City di Londra desiderano ardentemente che la guerra continui a tutti i costi.

Oggi vedremo che la salita del prezzo dell'oro è la più grande margin call della storia moderna ed è nei confronti dell'euro e della sterlina, non del dollaro. Quest'ultimo finalmente trarrà vantaggio dal Dilemma di Triffin, poiché è stato risolto nel momento in cui Bitcoin è entrato a far parte della strategia economica statunitense.

IL FRAPPÈ MONETARIO

I primi segni di stress del sistema monetario mondiale sono eruttati nel 2022, circa 9 mesi dopo l'entrata in scena del SOFR negli Stati Uniti e il loro sganciamento (definitivo) dal treno mondiale del coordinamento delle politiche monetarie. Da allora gli USA hanno dimostrato che era sostanzialmente il LIBOR, e quindi il dolore economico altrui, a trascinare in crisi il Paese e a forzare la mano della FED anche quando non ce n'era bisogno internamente. L'ulteriore prova di ciò è stato il fallimento di un trittico di banche di San Francisco senza maggiori danni all'economia statunitense. Invece c'è chi ha mostrato i suoi limiti senza supporto estero e ha iniziato a frammentarsi: l'Inghilterra. Il 28 settembre del 2022 la Banca d'Inghilterra è intervenuta per stabilizzare i mercati obbligazionari britannici, annunciando che avrebbe acquistato tutto il debito pubblico necessario per ristabilire l'ordine sulla scia di una crisi finanziaria innescata dai piani di riduzione delle tasse dell'allora Primo Ministro, Liz Truss. Dopo che gli interventi verbali erano falliti nei due giorni precedenti, la banca centrale ha avviato un programma di emergenza per acquistare “Gilt” e impedire che il caos si intensificasse.

Non solo, ma l'Inghilterra ha dovuto iniziare a fare incetta di titoli di stato americani affinché potesse usarli come garanzia per accedere al mercato pronti contro termine statunitense, il più liquido al mondo per i prestiti overnight e che dopo il 2019 accettava solo titoli obbligazionari americani, in modo da attenuare la crisi incalzante dei finanziamenti. Il venditore principale era la Cina: li vendeva per sostenere il cambio CNY/USD. Per fare concorrenza agli inglesi è sceso in campo il Giappone, ricoprendo il ruolo di succursale della FED in oriente. Infatti a supporto della Gran Bretagna sono intervenuti anche tutti gli altri suoi “satelliti” che vedete nel grafico qui sotto, nel tentativo di tamponare il sanguinamento di tutte quelle nazioni che hanno sofferto per la chiusura dei rubinetti dell'eurodollaro e di conseguenza la loro improvvisa incapacità di influenzare le linee di politica statunitensi. E da qui si capisce perché la Yellen ha fatto una sorta di QE tramite il Dipartimento del Tesoro e la politica fiscale degli USA è stata estremamente lassista, quello che Powell stava cercando di contrastare attraverso il ciclo di rialzo dei tassi d'interesse. Ovviamente quello che lui poteva “controllare” era la politica monetaria e il front-end della curva dei rendimenti, c'era quindi bisogno che arrivasse qualcuno alla Casa Bianca per mettere ordine anche da questo punto di vista e porre un ulteriore freno al flusso di dollari che finivano all'estero e venivano sottoposti a leva per gonfiare la loro offerta ombra.

Find more statistics at Statista

Le pressioni sul mercato inglese hanno costretto i fondi pensione a vendere titoli di stato per soddisfare le richieste di garanzia su posizioni derivate sommerse, o per ridurre l'esposizione dovuta all'incapacità di soddisfare le richieste di rimborso. La Banca d'Inghilterra agì per salvaguardare i fondi pensione, i principali detentori di titoli di stato a lunga scadenza e affermò che i suoi acquisti miravano a ripristinare l'ordine e sarebbe stato fatto “tutto il necessario” per raggiungere tale obiettivo. Il 23 settembre 2022 i rendimenti dei titoli di stato a cinque anni fecero registrare un aumento di oltre 50 punti base, il più grande salto giornaliero dal 1991; il 25 settembre i rendimenti dei titoli di stato a due anni salirono di 40 punti base, un'impennata paragonabile solo alle fluttuazioni osservate durante la crisi del 1992. La deviazione standard delle variazioni giornaliere dei tassi era di soli 5 punti base, quindi queste variazioni equivalevano a una tendenza che normalmente avrebbe richiesto mesi mentre allora ebbe luogo in un solo giorno. Le misure di emergenza continuarono per tutto ottobre e persino l'euro sprofondò rompendo la parità con il dollaro nello stesso mese.

Gli eventi di quel periodo possono essere ricondotti all'ennesimo esempio della cosiddetta “Teoria del frappè” postulata da Brent Johnson: un quadro di riferimento per comprendere come potrebbe verificarsi un default del debito sovrano, con oro, dollaro e azioni in ascesa mentre gli investitori si affannano per trovare sicurezza e liquidità. Il paradosso è la forza del dollaro in mezzo al caos finanziario, alimentato dal suo status di riserva mondiale. Mentre le altre valute si sgonfiano, così come le relative economie, il dollaro invece si gonfia. L'oro infatti ha raggiunto il massimo storico di $3.000 l'oncia come copertura contro l'incertezza, il dollaro rimane forte e le azioni stanno tenendo duro nonostante le turbolenze finanziarie.... e il frappè è servito anche nel 2025.

Per comprendere appieno le sfumature, dobbiamo ricostruire la storia del dollaro aggiungendo tutto quello che abbiamo appreso finora. Dopo la Seconda guerra mondiale il sistema di Bretton Woods rese il dollaro la star dello spettacolo: le nazioni europee spedirono il loro oro negli USA durante la guerra ed essi, alla fine delle ostilità, si ritrovarono a essere un punto di riferimento mondiale quindi l'oro rimase agganciato esclusivamente al dollaro (a $35 l'oncia) mentre altre valute del mondo si agganciarono a quest'ultimo. Parallelamente a questo sistema si sviluppò anche quello dell'eurodollaro, le cui prime tracce documentate apparvero negli anni '50: una innovazione finanziaria partorita dalla Midland Bank nel Regno Unito, la quale capitalizzò l'elevato costo del capitale nella Gran Bretagna del secondo dopoguerra. La capacità della Midland di prestare in dollari le diede un vantaggio competitivo, consentendole di partecipare al mercato forward prestando dollari e investendo in titoli di stato con rendimenti più elevati e intascare la differenza. Questa pratica creò le premesse per la crescita esplosiva di questo mercato dagli anni '50 agli anni '70, espandendosi al punto che oggi, nove dollari su dieci in tutto il mondo sono eurodollari. Stiamo parlando di una delle parti più opache e complesse del sistema finanziario moderno.

A differenza dei prestiti nazionali che possono essere influenzati dalle linee di politica delle banche centrali, i prestiti in eurodollari non possono essere gonfiati dai creditori. Questa struttura crea una domanda sostenuta di dollari al di fuori degli Stati Uniti, i cui numeri adesso si stima che superino i $400.000 miliardi ed eclissano i $36.000 miliardi di debito nazionale americano. Quando Lehman Brothers crollò il 15 settembre 2008, scatenò onde d'urto nel mercato offshore del dollaro ed esplose il differenziale tra i tassi onshore (OIS a 3 mesi) e offshore (LIBOR a 3 mesi), con questi ultimi che schizzarono alle stelle. Bernanke e Paulson dovettero darsi da fare per predisporre programmi di emergenza e impedire che il sistema implodesse. Arrivarono massicci salvataggi che sostennero l'intero sistema dei fondi del mercato monetario. I tassi furono tagliati in modo aggressivo e la FED raddoppiò la disponibilità di dollari tramite linee di swap. La rete di swap globale trasformò la FED nella banca centrale mondiale. 

Il 13 ottobre 2008 la FED andò oltre, annunciando linee di swap illimitate con tutte le principali banche centrali occidentali. Finì per prestare la sbalorditiva cifra di $3.300 miliardi in fondi di emergenza, con una bella fetta destinata a banche straniere e grandi aziende come Barclays, RBS e persino Toyota. Sebbene questi interventi stabilizzarono (temporaneamente) l'economia globale, non avvenne senza conseguenze: la FED era giocoforza diventata il prestatore di ultima istanza del mondo intero. La “Teoria del frappè” di Brent Johnson prevede che, man mano che la bolla del debito sovrano si sgonfia, la domanda di dollari si gonfia, facendolo rafforzare rispetto alle altre valute. Questo effetto di rafforzamento attrae capitali verso asset denominati in dollari, anche se i livelli di inflazione e debito mettono a dura prova le economie globali. La teoria suggerisce che, mentre molti asset potrebbero calare in questo contesto, il dollaro salirà, insieme all'oro, poiché gli investitori cercheranno rifugi sicuri dall'instabilità del debito sovrano.

Un gigantesco frullato di liquidità è stato creato dalle banche centrali globali con il dollaro come ingrediente chiave, ma se il dollaro sale di valore, questo frullato verrà risucchiato negli Stati Uniti, creando una spirale che potrebbe rapidamente destabilizzare i mercati finanziari. Il dollaro è il fondamento del sistema finanziario mondiale. Lubrifica le ruote del commercio e degli scambi globali: la disponibilità di dollari, il costo e il livello del dollaro stesso possono avere un impatto sproporzionato sulle economie e sulle opportunità di investimento.

Ma più importante del livello assoluto, o della disponibilità di dollari, è il suo tasso di variazione del livello: se si muove troppo rapidamente, allora i problemi iniziano a spuntare ovunque (i Paesi stranieri iniziano ad andare in default). Oggi molte persone sono convinte che sia il ruolo del dollaro sia il livello stia scendendo. Le persone pensano che gli Stati Uniti stiano stampando così tanti dollari che il mondo sarà inondato dai biglietti verdi, causandone la caduta del valore.

Sebbene sia vero che gli USA stanno stampando molti dollari, anche altri Paesi lo stanno facendo, quindi in teoria dovrebbe pareggiare in termini di valore. Ma il problema nascosto è la differenza nella domanda: ricordate che il sistema finanziario globale è costruito sul dollaro, il che significa che anche se non li vogliono, tutti ne hanno comunque bisogno e se avete bisogno di qualcosa non avete molta scelta.

Stiamo parlando di un'estensione del Dilemma di Triffin: esportare la valuta di riferimento globale a scapito della ricchezza reale del proprio Paese. Johnson evidenzia un futuro in cui la forza del dollaro e il valore dell'oro aumentano parallelamente, spinti dal crollo dei sistemi gravati dal debito e dallo spostamento verso asset stabili. Il motivo per cui questi due asset saliranno insieme è un sintomo del sistema eurodollaro basato sul debito in cui il mondo si ritrova intrappolato. Mentre i mercati del debito globale si frammentano, i debitori si precipitano alla ricerca di liquidità e ciò significa vendere asset rischiosi (es. obbligazioni e azioni) e correre verso porti sicuri (es. oro e dollari). L'ironia di questo sistema, come spiega Johnson, è che man mano che vengono prestati sempre più eurodollari, il carico di debito complessivo sull'economia globale aumenta, il che fa aumentare la domanda di dollari e assicura che la prossima correzione sarà ancor più severa. Nessuno sa quali sono le cifre precise quando si parla di eurodollari, o del debito denominato in eurodollari: queste metriche sono state considerate troppo difficili da misurare e la segnalazione è stata eliminata gradualmente a metà degli anni 2000. L'offerta di denaro M3, ad esempio, che includeva alcune misure in eurodollari, è stata eliminata nel 2006.

Una crisi del “frappè monetario” si presenta come segue:

Ma il vero rischio emerge quando altre economie iniziano a rallentare o quando gli Stati Uniti iniziano a crescere rispetto alle altre economie. Se c'è meno attività economica altrove nel mondo, allora ci sono meno dollari in circolazione globale che altri possono usare nelle loro attività quotidiane e, naturalmente, se ce ne sono meno in circolazione, il prezzo sale perché le persone inseguono quella fonte di dollari in calo. Il che è terribile per i Paesi che stanno rallentando, perché proprio quando stanno soffrendo economicamente, devono pagare molti beni in dollari e devono onorare i loro debiti che sono spesso anch'essi denominati in dollari.

Quindi inizia il vortice, o come mi piace chiamarlo il frullato del dollaro: man mano che il valore del dollaro aumenta, il resto del mondo ha bisogno di stampare sempre più valuta per poi convertirla in dollari in modo da pagare i beni e onorare il suo debito in dollari. Ciò significa che il dollaro continua a salire e in risposta molti Paesi saranno costretti a svalutare le proprie valute, quindi il dollaro salirà di nuovo e questo metterà a dura prova il sistema globale.

Come accennato in precedenza, nell'autunno del 2022 il valore del dollaro s'è impennato, cosa che ha iniziato a causare enormi problemi nel sistema finanziario globale. Un avvenimento, questo, alimentato dal ciclo di rialzo dei tassi da parte della FED annunciato a marzo di quell'anno, il più rapido della sua storia e che ha persino superato lo shock di Volcker dei primi anni '80. Il rialzo dei tassi è arrivato quando il resto del mondo era ancora sotto lo zero, soprattutto in Europa. Infatti il tasso di riferimento della BCE era di ben 100 punti base inferiore a quello degli Stati Uniti e, a un certo punto, il differenziale tra i tassi giapponesi e quelli americani aveva superato i 500 punti base. Ciò alimentò diversi carry trade: prendere in prestito in euro o yen e prestare in dollari, di fatto vendendo allo scoperto queste valute più deboli. Nel tempo queste pressioni si sono accumulate fino al punto che entrambe le valute hanno sostanzialmente iniziato un crollo al rallentatore e il “frullatore” è stato acceso.

Rialzare i tassi alla pari con gli Stati Uniti ha significato default diffusi, poiché sia l'Europa che l'Inghilterra sono fortemente indebitati, anche se in misura diversa, ovviamente. Non c'è opzione e nessuna soluzione fiat: nessun'altra valuta può usurpare l'Onnipotente dollaro. E questo Powell e i NY Boys lo sapevano: dopo aver brancolato nel buio per decenni riguardo le cause delle crisi negli Stati Uniti, finalmente avevano individuato nell'eurodollaro il colpevole principale. Potremmo definirlo un “super ciclo economico”, uno internazionale, che letteralmente ha posto sull'altare sacrificale della dissolutezza fiscale e monetaria la ricchezza reale degli USA. Un sistema, quello dell'eurodollaro, che per quanto abbia reso, all'apparenza, gli Stati Uniti e la loro relativa valuta i punti di riferimento mondiale, ciò ha significato altresì la socializzazione mondiale dei frutti della loro prosperità. Come ho spiegato anche nel mio ultimo libro, Il Grande Default, l'impostazione del LIBOR avveniva a Londra e questo significa che se emergevano criticità in quella giurisdizione, esse si ripercuotevano anche negli Stati Uniti... anche se questi ultimi avrebbero potuto sopportarle e superarle più agilmente.

Gli abusi del sistema dell'eurodollaro sono diventati talmente di ampia portata che il 2008 ne ha segnato la rottura definitiva. Troppa confusione, troppa ponderazione del rischio sbilanciata e troppo intorbidimento dei segnali di prezzo. La portata dei quantitative easing sin da allora ha cercato di rincorrere l'offerta di dollari ombra fino a quel momento creata e tamponare i buchi che apparivano qua e là nelle varie economie del mondo, incapaci però di sistemare davvero le cose. Un palliativo, non una cura definitiva. In quel frangente la Federal Reserve è diventata la banca centrale del mondo a tutti gli effetti, il cui unico scopo non era più il doppio mandato cui è sottoposta, bensì tenere quanto più liquido possibile il mercato degli eurodollari sia dal punto di vista monetario che fiscale... a scapito dell'economia interna. Ed è qui che fa acqua da tutte le parti la “teoria del dominio americano” tramite il dollaro e l'Impero militare: autodistruggersi non è lungimirante, né fisiologico, per la sopravvivenza sia della propria divisa che del proprio (presunto) Impero.

Attenzione, la mia tesi non è che gli USA fossero completamente eterodiretti a Londra e quindi scagionarli da tutte le colpe, ma che quest'ultima riusciva a influenzare (tramite infiltrati) aspetti importanti delle linee di politica americane affinché l'impero inglese potesse sopravvivere. Così come quello colonialista europeo, perché per quanto i colonialisti possano perdere il pelo non perdono il vizio. L'eurodollaro s'è dimostrato il guinzaglio perfetto, dal punto di vista economico, per usare un proxy e impostare/favorire un'agenda che veniva decisa oltreoceano. La narrativa che per anni è stata spacciata sulla stampa era una in cui l'Inghilterra appariva come una reliquia del passato in quanto a egemonia mondiale, mentre Washington era l'egemone di quest'epoca storica. Inutile dire che gli inglesi sono sempre stati maestri a sviare le attenzioni da loro: forniscono una corretta analisi dei problemi, ma poi si svincolano dalle relative cause scatenanti.

Ora è tornato il “frappè monetario del dollaro”, ma dopo l'entrata in scena del SOFR e lo sganciamento dal LIBOR, gli USA adesso hanno davvero il potere del dollaro nelle loro mani. Solo dal 2022 hanno ripreso il controllo sul proprio destino monetario e solo da allora hanno potuto avviare il ciclo di rialzo dei tassi più repentino della storia economica moderna senza preoccuparsi delle conseguenze. Perché? Perché i veri malati economici si trovano altrove: a Londra e a Bruxelles. Se l'economia mondiale la immaginassimo come un cesto della biancheria sporca, Washington sarebbe la camicia meno sporca di tutte. Ad esempio, la caduta delle varie banche commerciali a San Francisco non ha avuto alcun effetto sulle controparti newyorkesi; il selloff recente sui mercati azionari americani verrà compensato dalla diminuzione del deficit pubblico cosa che libererà risorse economiche affinché possano essere usate dal settore privato; le turbolenze commerciali verranno compensate dall'onshoring industriale e dalla rilocazione delle industrie europee; ecc. Sebbene il DXY abbia subito una breve flessione nell'ultimo mese (pensate poi dove viene intermediato il mercato dei cambi mondiale...), ciò è avvenuto dopo un anno record per il dollaro, in cui ha guadagnato quasi il 7% rispetto alle principali valute. La rupia indiana, ad esempio, è scesa a un minimo storico; lo yuan è stato svalutato progressivamente senza effetti concreti; ecc.

I problemi stanno emergendo anche dall'altra parte dell'Atlantico, poiché il Regno Unito è ora alle prese con un mix tossico di rendimenti dei titoli di stato in forte ascesa e una sterlina in rovina, una combinazione solitamente riservata ai mercati emergenti, non alla sesta economia più grande del mondo. I rendimenti dei titoli di stato sono saliti ai massimi livelli dal 1998, una triste pietra miliare che sottolinea lo stato precario delle finanze della Gran Bretagna. Questi stessi livelli di tensione finanziaria hanno costretto Liz Truss a lasciare l'incarico nel 2022. Gli hedge fund si stanno posizionando per un ulteriore calo della sterlina, segnalando un profondo sentimento ribassista e una mancanza di fiducia nelle prospettive economiche del Regno Unito. La sterlina è diventata un sacco da boxe per i mercati globali, trascinata verso il basso da passi falsi fiscali e dall'implacabile ascesa del dollaro. A nord l'economia canadese non se la passa tanto meglio. Il dollaro canadese si è deprezzato di quasi l'8% rispetto al dollaro statunitense nell'ultimo anno e i rendimenti obbligazionari sono in aumento. Il crescente divario dei tassi d'interesse tra Canada e Stati Uniti è un fattore chiave. Mentre la Federal Reserve statunitense li ha mantenuti alti, la Banca del Canada li ha tagliati sin da giugno dello scorso anno nel tentativo di sostenere un'economia in indebolimento. L'instabilità politica ha solo aggiunto benzina sul fuoco. Le recenti dimissioni del primo ministro Trudeau hanno momentaneamente dato respiro al dollaro canadese, ma l'incertezza sulla futura leadership canadese ha rapidamente invertito la tendenza. Questa combinazione di indebolimento della valuta, aumento dei rendimenti obbligazionari, incertezza politica e minacce commerciali da parte di Trump stanno creando un contesto difficile per l'economia canadese.

Tutto questo senza nemmeno menzionare l'elefante nella stanza: l'euro. La valuta si è indebolita notevolmente nell'ultimo anno e si sta avvicinando alla parità con il dollaro. L'Eurozona sta affrontando una serie di problemi, tra cui l'indebolimento della crescita economica, una crisi dell'immigrazione, alti tassi d'interesse e una crescente inflazione. A dicembre 2024 l'inflazione dell'Eurozona ha raggiunto il massimo di cinque mesi al 2,4%, alimentata dall'aumento dei costi dei servizi. La BCE ha tagliato i tassi d'interesse per sostenere l'economia nell'ultimo anno, dal 4% al 2,5%.

Ma ci rendiamo conto che questi saltimbanchi hanno concluso un vertice decidendo solo che “bisogna fare in fretta” e sono soddisfatti di tale risultato? Ma qui altro che parità tra euro e dollaro, la moneta europea sprofonderà ben al di sotto. Come si fa a non ridere quando dice che a fronte della nuova baldoria di spese, poi, però, bisogna tornare sulla via della rettitudine fiscale tenendo sotto controllo i conti pubblici? Ma davvero crede che le persone abbiano l'anello al naso e che l'etichetta “off-budget” possa far sembrare domani meno ingombranti gli squilibri fiscali? Quale percorso di sostenibilità del debito si può avere se quanto già fatto ha avuto i risultati devastanti attuali?

Questi sono spaventati a morte dal dollaro e della sua versione digitale di mercato, Tether. È un'alternativa credibile e affidabile affinché i risparmiatori possano sfuggire ai controlli dei capitali. Sono come le blatte nelle stamberghe che quando uno accende la luce nella stanza scatta un fuggi-fuggi generale. Forse non hanno capito che Tether è già sviluppato e funziona, mentre l'euro digitale deve ancora essere inaugurato. Non solo, ma ciò che li fa impazzire di più è che le aziende americane che operano sul suolo europeo possano usarlo per bypassare tutte quelle normative idiote (es. DSA, DMA, GDPR, Mica, ecc.) che servono solo a estorcere loro denaro tramite le multe. Ma questi sono morti (economici) che camminano. L'UE non esiste, è già morta.

In ogni caso, il “frappè monetario” teorizzato da Brent Johnson è vivo e vegeto: il DXY sale perché ciò che viene contratta è l'offerta di dollari ombra, dato che le varie nazioni del mondo non sono più capaci di usare a leva il mercato degli eurodollari. Senza il LIBOR per tenere sotto scacco la Federal Reserve, e quindi costringerla a stampare denaro in base alle necessità estere, e senza una politica fiscale espansiva che usava proxy come la USAID per mandare dollari all'estero, ci troviamo infine di fronte a una domanda genuina di dollari che seguirà le metriche interne dell'offerta di denaro. Certo, gli eurodollari ancora circoleranno, ma i rischi adesso saranno tutti di coloro che commetteranno azzardo morale e non più spalmati sull'economia americana. Ora il resto dei Paesi del mondo o guardano saltare in aria le loro valute, o intervengono utilizzando miliardi di dollari in riserve. Ciò si traduce in un dollaro più forte e in maggiori afflussi di capitali negli Stati Uniti.

Gli Stati Uniti possono adesso bere questo “frullato” a cuor leggero, senza doversi più preoccupare del Dilemma di Triffin.

LA FINE DEL DEFICIT STATUNITENSE DELLA BILANCIA COMMERCIALE

Il Dilemma di Triffin è risultato il difetto fatale del sistema di Bretton Woods: un paradosso che alla fine distrugge ogni valuta di riserva. Ma se fosse possibile risolverlo?

Il sistema di Bretton Woods fu istituito nel 1944 come sistema monetario internazionale progettato per fornire stabilità all'economia mondiale dopo le devastazioni della seconda guerra mondiale. Il dollaro statunitense era agganciato all'oro e le altre valute principali erano agganciate a esso. Il dollaro divenne la principale valuta di riserva mondiale e i Paesi membri accettarono di mantenere i tassi di cambio entro bande specifiche intervenendo sul mercato dei cambi. Anche il Fondo monetario internazionale e la Banca mondiale furono creati come parte del quadro di Bretton Woods per facilitare la cooperazione e lo sviluppo economico internazionale.

L'emergere di un sistema oro-dollaro fu guidato da una crescita insufficiente nell'offerta globale di oro per supportare l'espansione del commercio mondiale e della produzione: la scelta delle parità tra valute nel dopoguerra, che mantenevano basso il prezzo reale dell'oro e ne limitavano la produzione, contribuì a questa carenza. Inoltre l'URSS e il Sudafrica, principali fornitori di oro, furono considerati inaffidabili. Per colmare il divario tra domanda e offerta di riserve globali, i dollari divennero sempre più importanti, generati attraverso l'accumulo di crediti ufficiali a breve termine sugli Stati Uniti a partire dai primi anni '50. Ciò significava che gli Stati Uniti registravano costantemente deficit della bilancia dei pagamenti negli accordi ufficiali, accumulando passività verso funzionari stranieri senza un corrispondente aumento di attivi come l'oro. In sintesi, esportavano più dollari di quanti ne importassero. Questi dollari in eccesso erano registrati nel sistema globale in una moltitudine di modi: come depositi bancari in eurodollari, in linee di swap e come riserve in eccesso presso banche centrali straniere. Le aziende e i governi che accumulavano questi surplus avevano liquidità a disposizione che prontamente reinvestivano nel sistema finanziario nazionale, principalmente sotto forma di titoli del Tesoro USA.

Nel 1960 un economista belga di nome Robert Triffin tenne una presentazione di fronte al Congresso su quello che considerava un difetto fatale nel sistema monetario globale di Bretton Woods. Quel difetto divenne noto come il Dilemma di Triffin, o il Paradosso di Triffin, e, a suo dire, avrebbe distrutto Bretton Woods. Aveva anche previsto che questa contrazione delle riserve globali avrebbe portato a una crisi deflazionistica mondiale, che non si verificò, manifestandosi invece come un'ondata di inflazione che si abbatté sugli Stati Uniti e su gran parte delle economie mondiali.

Il dollaro è la valuta di riserva mondiale, ciò significa che sarebbe stato utilizzato nel commercio internazionale come riserva delle banche centrali per regolare le transazioni finanziarie e per prendere in prestito/prestare in dollari offshore (Eurodollaro). Tuttavia il resto del mondo mancava di un fattore cruciale: la capacità di generare dollari. Tutti hanno bisogno di commerciare, indebitarsi e risparmiare in una valuta CHE NON POSSONO STAMPARE (a meno che, come abbiamo visto, non si forza la mano della Federal Reserve indirettamente).

L'America si sarebbe trovata di fronte a un dilemma: soddisfare questa domanda o no? Se non avessero stampato, sarebbe emersa un'insufficienza di riserve globali, il commercio avrebbe iniziato a bloccarsi, le banche centrali non sarebbero riuscite a difendere la propria valuta sul mercato dei cambi e le banche non sarebbero riuscite a gestire i prestiti in dollari. Ciò avrebbe potuto causare inadempienze a livello di sistema e una crisi deflazionistica che si sarebbe diffusa da una nazione all'altra. Per evitare ciò gli Stati Uniti hanno avuto deficit persistenti delle partite correnti, inviando più dollari al sistema globale di quanti ne ricevessero indietro, per finanziare tutte queste necessità. A lungo termine ciò significa che gli Stati Uniti avrebbero stampato più dollari di quanto altrimenti giustificato dal rapporto di riserva rispetto all'oro. Questo rapporto sarebbe sceso sempre di più, finché non ci sarebbe stato un tale eccesso di dollari da innescare una corsa globale agli sportelli del dollaro stesso.

Ecco in sostanza cosa è successo. Mentre il mondo iniziava a globalizzarsi e la crescita del PIL nominale al di fuori degli Stati Uniti iniziava ad accelerare, sempre più dollari si accumulavano al di fuori del sistema finanziario nazionale. Nel 1965 il presidente francese Charles de Gaulle fece i calcoli e si rese conto che gli Stati Uniti avevano emesso molti più dollari di quanti fossero giustificati dal coefficiente di riserva di $35/oncia e iniziò a riscattare dollari in oro, come aveva diritto in base a Bretton Woods. Non era il solo, altre nazioni seguirono presto l'esempio. Iniziò una corsa alle riserve auree americane quando migliaia di tonnellate metriche di oro iniziarono a fuoriuscire dagli Stati Uniti.

De Gaulle stava facendo manifestare le conseguenze del Dilemma di Triffin, chiedendo persino il ripristino del gold standard. Così facendo, stava mettendo in evidenza quello che il suo ministro delle finanze, Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, aveva chiamato “il privilegio esorbitante”, la capacità degli USA di gestire deficit della bilancia dei pagamenti e deficit fiscali e costringere il sistema globale ad assorbirne le ricadute. Le altre nazioni dovevano rimanere responsabili dal punto di vista fiscale e monetario e mantenere la loro valuta agganciata al dollaro entro il tasso di cambio ristretto, ma gli USA non avevano bisogno di farlo: ricevevano beni reali per una valuta che potevano stampare, alimentando la affamata macchina imperiale statunitense. Col senno di poi abbiamo scoperto quali appetiti stava sfamando questo meccanismo, ovvero quelli della City di Londra e del suo colonialismo sotto mentite spoglie, e probabilmente non è stato un caso che allora fu proprio la Francia a chiamare il bluff sull'oro...

Gli USA avevano avviato il sistema con un'enorme riserva di oro: circa il 50% di tutte le riserve auree estratte erano detenute dagli americani. La corsa agli sportelli del dollaro iniziò a prosciugarle fino a quando quella percentuale non si ridusse di oltre la metà. La crisi raggiunse il culmine nell'agosto del 1971, quando Nixon decise di chiudere la finestra dell'oro, congelando la capacità delle banche centrali e dei governi stranieri di convertire i dollari in oro. Così facendo, tagliò l'ultimo legame tra il dollaro cartaceo e la moneta reale sottostante: la capacità dei cittadini di chiedere oro in cambio di dollari era già stata vietata nel 1933 da Roosevelt. Naturalmente Nixon aveva promesso che questa rottura con il gold standard sarebbe stata temporanea e che una volta trovata una soluzione sarebbero tornati a una moneta sana/onesta. Tuttavia, ciò non accadde mai. Da allora fu adottato il sistema di cambio fiat e la situazione non ha fatto che peggiorare. Quella fu la prima vera crisi dell'eurodollaro e il cambio di paradigma fu necessario affinché lo schema Ponzi potesse essere traslato a un livello superiore, così come l'azzardo morale conseguente. Infatti il nuovo asset di riserva sarebbero diventati i titoli del Tesoro americani.

L'attuale consenso tra i macroeconomisti è la dottrina TINA: non c'è alternativa al dollaro. La Russia è un esportatore di materie prime e ha un surplus delle partite correnti, il quale dovrebbe essere trasformato in deficit per essere una valuta di riserva; la Cina ha un mercato dei capitali chiuso; l'India non ha un mercato obbligazionario sufficientemente profondo; il Sudafrica è politicamente instabile. Senza contare che nessuno dei BRICS ha uno stato di diritto sufficientemente buono. Come sottolinea anche Brent Johnson, gli Stati Uniti hanno mercati obbligazionari profondi e liquidi, stato di diritto, un sofisticato sistema finanziario e monetario e un esercito gigantesco per far rispettare il sistema del dollaro, fondamentalmente tutto ciò che si potrebbe desiderare.

L'elenco dei requisiti per una valuta di riserva è il seguente: 

1. stabile
2. sicura
3. riserva di valore
4. mezzo di scambio
5. ampiamente accettata
6. fidata
7. mercati profondi e liquidi

Bitcoin è ancora nella sua fase iniziale di crescita come valuta. Nel 2023 la capitalizzazione di mercato era di circa $720 miliardi e BTC veniva scambiato a $36.800. La volatilità è ancora elevata poiché le dimensioni del mercato implicano che quantità di denaro relativamente piccole possono spostare l'azione dei prezzi in modo sproporzionato rispetto ad altri mercati. Il test della “stabilità” lo fallisce... per ora.

Bitcoin è sicuro? È sicuro quanto la vostra capacità di conservare le chiavi private! Se possedete Bitcoin e tenete al sicuro il vostro seed, allora è sicuro. Probabilmente molto di più rispetto a quasi qualsiasi altra cosa: simile all'oro fisico, è un bene al portatore e una vera merce digitale. Non può essere rubato facilmente o censurato. Gli asset denominati in valute fiat, come abbiamo visto con il divieto per la Russia di usare la rete SWIFT, possono essere congelati o sequestrati; le transazioni possono essere inserite in una blacklist; si può essere censurati.

Bitcoin è la migliore riserva di valore mai inventata, persino superiore all'oro. Il metallo giallo aumenta la sua offerta di circa il 2% all'anno e nessuno conosce la vera quantità di oro esistente. BTC ha invece un programma di emissione determinato matematicamente e imposto dalla struttura della rete (consenso dei nodi e dei miner), garantendo che 21 milioni sia la quantità massima di bitcoin che può essere minata.

Per quanto riguarda il mezzo di scambio, svolge anche questo ruolo in quanto è molto facile da trasferire e la conferma delle transazioni richiede circa 10 minuti, ma è molto più veloce su Lightning Network, la soluzione di scalabilità di cui BTC ha bisogno per essere un mezzo di scambio per la vita quotidiana in una moderna economia digitale.

Per quanto riguarda la fiducia, Bitcoin ha successo anche qui, poiché utilizza crittografia di livello militare e dispendio energetico dei miner per proteggere la sua blockchain. Una forma inversa del Dilemma del prigioniero assicura che nessun singolo miner, o nodo, abbia un incentivo a mentire sulla validità delle transazioni, poiché creare falsi blocchi e transazioni richiede di essere esponenzialmente più fortunati con il passare del tempo e di spendere energia (e denaro) per farlo. Per molte ragioni, complesse e tecniche, attaccare la rete non è fattibile.

Mercati profondi e liquidi: anche qui ancora non ci siamo, ma man mano che BTC guadagna adozione globale, profondità e liquidità seguiranno, smorzando la volatilità e portando sempre più capitale nell'ecosistema. Simile all'effetto volano con le aziende di software, sempre più utenti (e stati) che adottano Bitcoin significano che il prezzo sale, la volatilità si smorza e l'adozione accelera in cicli di feedback positivi.

Bitcoin risolve il Dilemma di Triffin. Non lo evita, non lo mitiga: LO RISOLVE.

Il Paradosso si basa su diversi punti fondamentali, il principale dei quali è un attore centrale che emette la valuta di riferimento. Bitcoin NON è emesso centralmente. Non esistono confini per Bitcoin, nessun singolo nodo di emissione. Qualsiasi miner nell'intera rete può essere scelto per la prossima ricompensa di blocco. Una valuta di riserva neutrale, non emessa centralmente, libera di fluttuare, orientata alla privacy, è stato lo standard per secoli prima del sistema fiat. Lo stesso Triffin immaginò una soluzione al problema: la sua idea era quella dei DSP (diritti speciali di prelievo), un'unità di riserva emessa dall'FMI che si basava su un paniere di altre valute. I DSP non fanno nulla per mitigare i problemi di inflazione e svalutazione; inoltre sarebbero incredibilmente difficili da gestire. Immaginate di riscattare i DSP per le valute sottostanti e di dover andare in ogni Paese per riscuotere il denaro.

Con una valuta di riserva neutrale, i deficit o i surplus delle partite correnti delle singole nazioni sarebbero sempre in equilibrio (dinamico). Se un Paese spende più di quanto guadagna, alla fine è costretto a ricominciare a guadagnare (produrre). E se si verifica l'inverso, il surplus può essere utilizzati per il consumo. Bitcoin, quindi, risolverebbe anche tutti gli altri dubbi che i macroeconomisti hanno su di esso: si svilupperebbero mercati liquidi e profondi, il prezzo salirebbe esponenzialmente, l'adozione si diffonderebbe poiché le nazioni lo adotterebbero e inizierebbero a usarlo e a richiederlo nel commercio e nella finanza internazionale.

La riserva strategica statunitense ha come obiettivo finale quello di rendere Bitcoin l'hard asset per eccellenza che permetta di disintermediare definitivamente la nazione dal circuito dell'eurodollaro. Non accadrà dall'oggi al domani, saranno necessari passaggi intermedi obbligati. Innanzitutto il dollaro, così come il Paese stesso, dovrà riguadagnare credibilità e affidabilità. La sua forza è propedeutica a tal proposito: un dollaro forte all'estero e un dollaro debole in patria. A coadiuvare tale assetto c'è l'oro che viene sottratto alla LBMA e questo sarà l'anno del metallo giallo dato che rappresenta ancora l'hard asset storico che nei momenti di incertezza ha funto da rifugio sicuro; oltre a essere un barometro appropriato per un ritorno a una ponderazione del rischio reale e genuina. Diciamo che in una fase tumultuosa e incerta, la certezza storica dell'oro, pronta e disponibile, è una garanzia. Nel frattempo si permette che la capitalizzazione di mercato di Tether cresca organicamente. La digitalizzazione del dollaro, infatti, sta passando dall'ascesa di Tether come compratore di ultima istanza dei titoli del Tesoro USA; praticamente sta stabilendo una nuova consuetudine per prendere il posto della Federal Reserve, la quale verrà ri-regionalizzata nelle sue 12 branche regionali e verrà smantellato quell'apparato burocratico che è stato costruito su di essa da Roosevelt in poi. Ripple, invece, sta ottenendo attenzioni perché può essere strumentalizzato contro l'intermediazione del mercato dei cambi a Londra e sostituire il sistema SWIFT. Il momento di Bitcoin arriverà solo dopo che Tether avrà consolidato la sua presenza sui mercati come nuovo colosso, comprare titoli sovrani americani serve anche a sottrarli a quei player esteri che li usano per prolungare la vita al mercato degli eurodollari (es. Inghilterra, Canada, Europa). Ecco perché l'azienda di Ardoino sta diversificando anche in altri asset e molto probabilmente arriverà a essere un attore dello stesso peso di una JP Morgan, ad esempio.

Tra i suoi attivi, però, c'è anche Bitcoin e questo significa non solo digitalizzaione del dollaro ma anche una copertura fatta da un hard asset in quella che rappresenterà un'unione fondamentale per superare il sistema dell'eurodollaro, offrire un mezzo di scambio sano/onesto, un ambiente di mercato in cui domanda/offerta si incontrano genuinamente, un settore privato in grado di prosperare e resistere alle ondate di inflazione, la capacità di abbattere debito, deficit e spesa pubblica.

CONCLUSIONE

Quando ho pubblicato il mio ultimo libro, Il Grande Default, uno degli obiettivi era quello di documentare come gli USA stessero erigendo barriere intorno al dollaro per difenderlo dagli attacchi esterni tramite gli eurodollari. Il rinsavimento a livello di politica monetaria e fiscale serve a minimizzare questo rischio, non l'ha eliminato. Per quanto i player esteri adesso debbano interfacciarsi direttamente con la FED se vogliono dollari, esistono ancora scappatoie. Una di queste era il tentativo di intermediare i titoli di stato americani a Londra e scongiurato da Bessent lo scorso gennaio. Adesso se ne presenta un'altra tramite la Banca del Canada e l'emissione di titoli canadesi denominati però in dollari americani (siete sorpresi che sia arrivato sulla scia dell'elezione ad interim di Carney?).

Di norma il differenziale tra il tasso di riferimento della FED e quello della Banca del Canada è sempre stato di circa 50 punti base; oggi è di 150 punti base. L'obiettivo è quello di mettere in moto un carry trade tra il dollaro canadese e quello americano: riciclare il surplus commerciale canadese (capite adesso anche la narrativa di Trump sui dazi?) per pagare i coupon di quelle obbligazioni. Ma perché comprare questi titoli che rendono il 3% quando gli omologhi americani rendono di più? Perché possono essere posti come garanzia nel mercato pronti contro termine americano e quindi avere una via secondaria con cui accedere ai dollari. Un attacco diretto al SOFR. Inutile dire che il Canada ha la capacità di emettere questi asset perché, grazie la QE del Dipartimento del Tesoro quando c'era la Yellen, ha comprato una vagonata di titoli di stato americani che può usare come garanzia alla base di operazioni finanziarie del genere.

Carney, che sa come mettere in piedi facility del genere grazie alla sua esperienza nella Banca d'Inghilterra, e il Canada stanno diventando il proxy attraverso cui la City di Londra e Bruxelles possono avere un canale indiretto attraverso cui tornare ad accedere facilmente ai dollari, influenzare la politica monetaria della FED, avere un surrogato del LIBOR e finanziare le loro cattedrali nel deserto.

Gli USA non possono essere emendati da eventuali colpe per aver alimentato le mire espansionistiche inglesi, ciononostante sono questi ultimi coloro che hanno sempre avuto (dal punto di vista storico) il dente avvelenato contro la Russia e hanno impedito che essa avviasse una partnership con gli USA stessi. Ora gli inglesi possono finalmente essere tagliati fuori sia geopoliticamente che commercialmente, visto che il Mediterraneo perderà man mano la sua importanza a vantaggio invece del circolo polare artico (soprattutto ora che Suez è ancora inagibile). Chi ha molto da perdere qui è Londra, per tutti i motivi elencati in questa serie. Alla luce di tutto ciò, l'ironia più grande è se fosse la Russia a essere messa a guardia dell'Europa in un futuro non tanto lontano. Ma la cricca di Davos non cederà facilmente le armi e, in base alle ultime notizie provenienti dal Canada, sta creando la sua nuova base d'attacco da quelle parti. Cercheranno di resuscitare il mercato degli eurodollari perché hanno disperatamente bisogno di finanziamenti a buon mercato per tenere in piedi gli Stati sociali ipertrofici e non cadere sotto il peso delle enormi promesse fatte in precedenza. Nel frattempo cercheranno di impostare il campo di gioco per i cosiddetti perpetual bond, già una parziale realtà tra la Savings and Investments Union e le obbligazioni SURE che dovrà finanziare.

E voi, cari lettori, ricordate che la prima linea di difesa individuale è sempre la conoscenza e la consapevolezza per acquisire un vantaggio competitivo.

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

???? Qui il link alla Prima Parte: https://www.francescosimoncelli.com/2025/02/cio-che-leurodollaro-ha-dato.html

???? Qui il link alla Seconda Parte: https://www.francescosimoncelli.com/2025/02/cio-che-leurodollaro-ha-dato_01881802337.html

???? Qui il link alla Terza Parte: https://www.francescosimoncelli.com/2025/03/cio-che-leurodollaro-ha-dato.html

Thanks, Johnny Kramer .

To protest Trump Rosie O’Donnell moved to a country that:
Is 95% White.
Has an official language.
Requires an ID to vote.
Is 75% Christian.
Illegals are not entitled to vote or social services.
Limits abortion to 12 weeks.
Has 12.5% corporate tax rate. pic.twitter.com/83pm9dXoTQ

— Eagle Wings (@CRRJA5) March 17, 2025

 

The post Rosie O’Donnell appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, John Smith. 

By Victor Gilinsky, Roger J. Mattson

 

The post Did Israel steal bomb-grade uranium from the United States? appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, John Smith. 

The Israel Lobby Archive

 

The post NUMEC- Zalman Shapiro – Uranium diversion to Israel, FBI, CIA files appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, Gail Appel.

See here.

 

The post The Ties That Bind Corrupt Activist Judges appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, John Frahm.

The Wall Street Journal

 

The post Florida Explores Ditching Property Tax as Home Prices Soar appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, John Smith. 

Common Dreams

 

The post ‘Nothing Short of Genocide’: Israel Kills 200 Children appeared first on LewRockwell.

Writes Ginny Garner:

Lew,

The 1944 quote is:

“The worst evils which mankind has ever had to endure were inflicted by bad governments” – Ludwig von Mises

Another abuse of your taxpayer money has ended https://t.co/D26iPwwstG

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 20, 2025

 

The post Elon Musk Reposts Ludwig von Mises Quote appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, Ginny Garner.

ISRAEL KILLED JFK?!

The newly released JFK assassination files have revealed some chilling details, and Israel’s fingerprints are ALL over them…

Let’s break it down:

1/5 pic.twitter.com/LP9fezXaOH

— The Saviour (@stairwayto3dom) March 19, 2025

The post Another View on JFK Files: Israel’s Fingerprints Are All Over Assassination. appeared first on LewRockwell.

Ginny Garner wrote:

Lew,

This is an X post by attorney Tom Renz.

Do you want to know why people are distrustful of chem trails? Well here’s the intel community from the JFK files – way back then – talking about releasing biological and chemical agents that would poison crops but that looked natural.

Ask yourself this: is it really impossible… pic.twitter.com/p6hQnS5FfO

— Tom Renz (@RenzTom) March 19, 2025

The post JFK Files Mentions Geoengineering (Chemtrails) appeared first on LewRockwell.

Most Americans have absolutely no idea how we got into the mess that we are in today.  The reason why the U.S. government is 36 trillion dollars in debt and our society as a whole is 102 trillion dollars in debt is because the system is performing exactly as it was designed.  We have a system that was literally designed to create colossal amounts of debt.  But if you ask most Americans about this, they cannot tell you what the Federal Reserve is or why it is at the heart of our economic problems.  When Americans get into discussions about the economy, most of them still blame either the Democrats or the Republicans for our rapidly growing economic problems.  But the truth is that the institution with the most power over our economic system is the Federal Reserve.  So exactly what is the Federal Reserve?  Most people would say that it is an agency of the federal government.  But that is not entirely accurate.  In fact, the Federal Reserve itself has argued in court that it is not an agency of the federal government.   The truth is that the Federal Reserve is a privately-owned banking cartel that has been given a perpetual monopoly over our monetary system by the U.S. Congress.  This privately-owned central bank has been destroying the value of the U.S. dollar for decades, it has run our economy into the ground, and it has driven the U.S. government to the brink of bankruptcy.  The Federal Reserve operates in great secrecy  and it acts as if it is not accountable to the American people.  Yet the decisions that the Federal Reserve makes have a dramatic impact on the lives of every single American citizen.

If you really want to understand what is causing our economic problems, it is absolutely crucial that you understand exactly what the Federal Reserve is and how it is systematically destroying our economy.  Once you understand the truth about the Federal Reserve, you will view economic issues a whole lot differently.

—

The following are 19 reasons why the Federal Reserve is at the heart of our economic problems…

#1 The Federal Reserve is the central pillar of our debt-based financial system.

The way our system is designed, normally no money comes into existence without more debt being created.

But this creates a huge problem, because when a new dollar is created, the interest that will be owed on that new borrowed dollar is not also created at the same time.

Therefore, the amount money that is created is not equal to the larger amount of debt that is also created.

This is a Ponzi scheme that is designed to drain wealth from the American people and transfer it to the elite.

Today, the amount of debt in our economic system is far, far, far greater than the total amount of money.

The only way to keep the game going is to create even more money which creates even more debt.

#2 The Federal Reserve and the bankers have a monopoly on the creation of this debt-based money.

—

In the United States today, the only people that can create money are the bankers.

You cannot create money.

You would go to jail if you tried.

Even the U.S. government is not permitted to create money.

Although the U.S. Constitution specifically gives Congress the power to create money, the U.S. Congress has relinquished that power to the Federal Reserve.

This gives the Federal Reserve an enormous amount of power.

If you pull out a dollar bill, you will notice that it says “Federal Reserve Note” right at the top.

In the financial world, a “note” is an instrument of debt.

According to Investopedia, a “note” is “a debt security obligating repayment of a loan, at a predetermined interest rate, within a defined time frame”.

So is a “Federal Reserve Note” actually a “debt security”?  Investopedia says that it is…

Technically, yes, a federal reserve note is a promissory note that does not pay any interest. It is defined as such because it states that “this note is legal tender for all debts, public and private,” indicating a promise for the government and private citizens to accept and honor the note as legal tender.

Our financial system is nothing but a giant pile of debt.

Ultimately, the entire system is designed to drain our wealth and put it into the hands of the bankers.

—

#3 The power of money creation and debt creation is in the hands of private banks – not the government.

The Federal Reserve has claimed that it is an “entity within the government, having both public purposes and private aspects”.

That sounds so reasonable, but the truth is that the Federal Reserve is a legalized banking cartel that is privately-owned.

In fact, the Federal Reserve is about as “federal” as Federal Express is.

In defending itself against a Bloomberg request for information under the Freedom of Information Act, the Federal Reserve objected by declaring that it is “not an agency” of the U.S. government and therefore it is not subject to the Freedom of Information Act.

So if it is not a government agency, who owns the Federal Reserve?

On the official website of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, we learn that the Federal Reserve Banks “are not a part of the federal government” and that private banks “hold stock in the Federal Reserve Banks and earn dividends”…

The Federal Reserve Banks are not a part of the federal government, but they exist because of an act of Congress. Their purpose is to serve the public. So is the Fed private or public?

The answer is both. While the Board of Governors is an independent government agency, the Federal Reserve Banks are set up like private corporations. Member banks hold stock in the Federal Reserve Banks and earn dividends.

#4 The Federal Reserve itself is not a profit-making institution.  Rather, it is a tool that enables others to make obscene amounts of money.

—

There are many that think of the Federal Reserve as an evil profit-making machine.  But the truth is that the Fed itself wasn’t designed to make money.  Rather, the system was set up so that others could make an obscene amount of money from all of the debt that the system creates.

If the U.S. government had been issuing debt-free money all this time, the U.S. government would likely not be spending one penny on interest payments.  Instead, the U.S. government will spend over a trillion dollars just on interest on the national debt in 2025.  This is money that belongs to U.S. taxpayers that is transferred to the U.S. government which in turn is transferred to wealthy international bankers and other foreign governments.

This is the magic of the Federal Reserve system.  It is about getting the U.S. government enslaved to debt and using that debt to transfer trillions of dollars of our wealth into the hands of others.

As interest rates go up, this transfer of wealth is going to become even more brutal.

As you fill out your tax return this year, just keep in mind that vast quantities of our money is going to pay interest on debt that the U.S. government never needed to take on.

There are some very happy people out there that are becoming fabulously wealthy at our expense.

What a system, eh?

#5 The Federal Reserve is a perpetual debt machine.

As mentioned above, the U.S. government is enslaved to debt.

So how did it get enslaved?

Well, instead of printing up and spending the money that it needs, the U.S. government borrows it through the Federal Reserve system at interest.

In fact, as noted above, the U.S. government cannot create a single new dollar without borrowing it.

But each new dollar that the U.S. government borrows creates more than a dollar of new debt.

As a result, the government eventually has to collect more in taxes than what it has borrowed.

This phenomenon creates an endless debt spiral.

Is that not what we have in the United States today?  In fact, you see this in almost every nation on Earth where a similar central banking system has been established.

Did you know that the U.S. national debt is more than 10,000 times larger than it was 100 years ago?

Back in 1910, prior to the passage of the Federal Reserve Act, the national debt was only about $2.6 billion.

Now we are more than 36 trillion dollars in debt.

The only way that the U.S. government can inject more money into the economy is by going into more debt.  But when new government debt is created, the amount of money to pay the interest on that debt is not also created.  In this way, it was intended by the international bankers that U.S. government debt would expand indefinitely and the U.S. money supply would also expand indefinitely.  In the process, the international bankers would become insanely wealthy by lending money to the U.S. government.

However, things did not have to turn out this way.

If the Federal Reserve had never been created, and the U.S. government had been issuing debt-free currency all this time, it is entirely conceivable that we would have absolutely no federal government debt at this point.

Unfortunately, we are now trapped in a debt-based system.

The U.S. national debt simply cannot ever be paid off.  U.S. government debt has been mathematically designed to expand forever, and it has become a trap from which there is no escape.

#6 The Federal Reserve system is designed to cause inflation.

As U.S. government debt expands at an exponential pace, it inevitably causes inflation.

Most Americans believe that inflation is a fact of life, but the truth is that the United States has only had a major, ongoing problem with inflation since the Federal Reserve was created back in 1913.

Sadly, the U.S. dollar has lost about 99 percent of its value since the Federal Reserve was created.

If the Federal Reserve did not exist, it is theoretically conceivable that we could have an economy with little or no inflation.  Of course that would greatly depend on the discipline of our government officials (which is not very great at this point), but the sad truth is that our current system is always going to produce inflation.

Federal Reserve officials try to keep the official rate of inflation in single digit territory, but they are not always successful.

#7 The Federal Reserve has decided to play bizarre games with our money supply.

In a desperate attempt to revive the dying U.S. economy, the Federal Reserve has resorted to chucking gigantic quantities of money into the financial system.

Remember how earlier I explained that normally whenever new money is created that more debt is created?

Well, in recent years the Fed has been resorting to a trick called “quantitative easing”.  What “quantitative easing” means is that the Federal Reserve zaps massive amounts of money into existence out of thin air and injects it into the financial system.  This has primarily been done by purchasing large quantities of U.S. Treasuries.

But isn’t that “monetizing the debt”?

Of course it is, and it is a blatant Ponzi scheme.

However, what is even more alarming is what this is doing to our money supply.

Just look at what has happened to our monetary base since the later stages of 2008….

It was inevitable that this rapid expansion of our monetary base was going to cause horrifying inflation.

Anyone that thought otherwise was just being delusional.

Now we are in a cost of living crisis that has no end in sight, and most Americans still do not understand who is responsible.

#8 The Federal Reserve is undemocratic.

What makes the central economic planning that the Federal Reserve does different from the central economic planning that communist China does?

Sadly, there really isn’t much of a difference.

Only in our case, the central planners don’t have to answer to anyone.

President Trump cannot order the Federal Reserve to do anything.

The Federal Reserve does not have to answer to Congress either.

It has been called “our fourth branch of government”, and it is totally out of control.

#9 The Federal Reserve runs the U.S. economy.

Most Americans want to blame Joe Biden or Donald Trump or the U.S. Congress for the state of our economy.

But the truth is that it is the Federal Reserve that sets interest rates, it is the Federal Reserve that determines the size of the money supply, it is the Federal Reserve that sets the “target rate” of inflation, it is the Federal Reserve that determines if unemployment is too high or too low, and it is the Federal Reserve that watches over all of our banks.

Yes, the politicians in Washington all have things to answer for as well.

But the politicians in Washington do not have the direct power over the economy that the Federal Reserve does.

#10 The Federal Reserve favors the big banks.

Not all financial institutions are treated equally by the Fed.

The truth is that the big banks (particularly those in New York) are treated with great favor by the Federal Reserve.

During the global financial crisis, the Federal Reserve made over $9 trillion in overnight loans to major banks and large financial institutions.

Wouldn’t you like to be able to zap trillions of dollars into existence and loan it out to your friends at very favorable terms?

Sadly, most of the “help” from the Federal Reserve always seems to go to the big boys.

When “small enough to fail” banks need assistance, they are usually told to go sell themselves to one of the big banks.

#11 The worse the debt problems caused by the Federal Reserve become, the more money the IRS needs to collect from the rest of us.

If the U.S. government could issue debt-free money, it is conceivable that we would not even need the IRS.  You doubt this?  Well, the truth is that the United States did just fine for well over a hundred years without a national income tax.  But in the same year the Federal Reserve was created, a national income tax was instituted as well.  The whole idea was that the wealth of the American people would be transferred to the U.S. government by force and then transferred into the hands of the ultra-wealthy in the form of interest payments.

If the Federal Reserve was shut down, it is entirely possible that we would be able to shut down the IRS as well.

But the only way that the current system works is if massive amounts of wealth continue to be drained from the American people.

#12 The Federal Reserve creates artificial financial bubbles.

When you look back over the last several decades, you will find financial bubble after financial bubble.

So who created all of those bubbles?

It was the Federal Reserve.

The ridiculous policies of the Fed have wrought disaster after disaster and yet most of our politicians still will not even consider major changes to the Federal Reserve.

#13 The Federal Reserve is anti-free market.

In a true free market system, the marketplace would determine what interest rates are.

In a true free market system, the marketplace would determine which financial institutions survive.

In a true free market system, artificial financial bubbles would be far less likely.

But we don’t have a true free market system.

#14 The Federal Reserve tells the rest of the our banks what to do.

Most Americans don’t understand just how much power the Federal Reserve actually has over our local banks.

The Fed is the chief regulator of the banking system, and that is extremely unfortunate.  The following comes from the Fed’s official website…

The Federal Reserve’s supervision activities include examinations and inspections to ensure that financial institutions operate in a safe and sound manner and comply with laws and regulations. These include an assessment of a financial institution’s risk-management systems, financial conditions, and compliance.

That paragraph makes it all sound so benign.

But the truth is that the Fed can be quite tyrannical.

For example, Fed officials once walked into one bank in Oklahoma and demanded that they take down all of the Bible verses and all of the Christmas buttons that the bank had been displaying.

#15 The people currently running the Federal Reserve pretty much have no idea what they are doing.

You may have noticed that Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell has a very long track record of incompetence.  Nearly every major judgment that he has made since taking over that position has been dead wrong.

If one of us could go down the street and appoint the manager of the local Dairy Queen as the Chair of the Federal Reserve, it is very doubtful that person would do a worse job than Powell has done.

#16 Even though the Federal Reserve has such extraordinary power over the financial system, the American people are not permitted to examine their books.

The Federal Reserve claims that it is regularly audited, but when some members of Congress attempted to push through a true comprehensive audit Federal Reserve officials threw a hissy fit.

The truth is that the Federal Reserve has never undergone a true comprehensive audit since it was created back in 1913.

Whenever the subject of an audit comes up, the Fed keeps repeating the mantra of how important “the independence of the Federal Reserve” is.

Sadly, Ron Paul’s proposal to audit the Federal Reserve when he was still a member of Congress ultimately failed.

Instead, a very limited examination of Fed transactions that occurred during the global financial crisis was approved.

So what did that limited examination reveal?

Well, the Federal Reserve was forced to reveal the details of 21,000 transactions stretching from December 2007 to July 2010.  It turns out that the Federal Reserve was just handing out gigantic piles of nearly interest-free cash to their friends at the largest banks, financial institutions and corporations all over the globe.

Many members of Congress were absolutely stunned by these revelations.

So what would a more comprehensive audit reveal?

#17 The Federal Reserve has way too much power.

If the Federal Reserve did not exist, we would not have an unelected, unaccountable “fourth branch of government” running around that has gotten completely and totally out of control.

Today, global financial markets react instantly whenever a Fed official makes a public statement.

And when the Fed hikes interest rates or monkeys around with the money supply it has a dramatic impact on all of us.

Ron Paul once told MSNBC that he is convinced that the Federal Reserve has actually become more powerful than Congress…

“The regulations should be on the Federal Reserve. We should have transparency of the Federal Reserve. They can create trillions of dollars to bail out their friends, and we don’t even have any transparency of this. They’re more powerful than the Congress.”

#18 The Federal Reserve is dominated by Wall Street and the New York banks.

The New York representative is the only permanent member of the Federal Open Market Committee, while representatives from the other regional banks rotate.  The truth is that the Federal Reserve Bank of New York has always been the most important of the regional Fed banks by a very wide margin, and in turn the Federal Reserve Bank of New York has always been heavily influenced by Wall Street and the major New York banks.

#19 The Federal Reserve has brought us to the brink of economic collapse.

If the Federal Reserve had never been created, the American people would not be so enslaved to debt.

Nobody can deny that debt is at the very core of our economic problems.  U.S. consumers are drowning in debt, state and local governments are facing horrific debt problems from coast to coast, and our federal government has piled up the biggest mountain of debt in the history of the world.

We are living in an absolutely massive debt bubble, and when it bursts the world is going to experience financial chaos like it has never seen before.

Things did not have to turn out this way.

We did not have to adopt a debt-based financial system, and we did not have to allow the bankers to enslave us with debt.

But that is what happened.

Sadly, most Americans and the vast majority of our politicians are still clueless about these issues.

In 1922, Henry Ford wrote the following…

“The people must be helped to think naturally about money. They must be told what it is, and what makes it money, and what are the possible tricks of the present system which put nations and peoples under control of the few.”

Hopefully this article will help people understand our debt-based financial system a little bit better.

Until we fundamentally change our system, many of the economic and financial problems that we are currently experiencing will never go away.

The borrower is the servant of the lender, and by allowing ourselves to become enslaved to debt we have become the servants of the international banking system.

Not only that, we have also sold our children and our grandchildren into perpetual debt slavery.

Thomas Jefferson tried to warn us about this.

He believed that when the government borrows money in one generation which must be paid back by future generations it is equivalent to stealing…

And I sincerely believe, with you, that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies; and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.

In fact, Thomas Jefferson said that if he could add one more amendment to the U.S. Constitution it would be a ban on all government borrowing…

I wish it were possible to obtain a single amendment to our Constitution. I would be willing to depend on that alone for the reduction of the administration of our government to the genuine principles of its Constitution; I mean an additional article, taking from the federal government the power of borrowing.

Where would we be today if we had chosen to listen to Thomas Jefferson?

The amount of government debt that we have racked up is a great evil.  We have stolen the future away from our children and our grandchildren.  We have put them in a position where they will spend the rest of their lives paying off our debts to the bankers.

We owe it to future generations to fix the problems that we have created.

That is why so many of us believe that it is time for the U.S. Congress to shut down the Federal Reserve.  Our current financial system is a complete and utter failure and we need to start over.

Reprinted with permission from The Economic Collapse.

The post 19 Reasons Why the Federal Reserve Is at the Heart of Our Economic Problems appeared first on LewRockwell.

From the Tom Woods Letter:

It was bound to happen, but it’s manifesting itself sooner than many people expected:

There’s a war brewing inside Trump circles on foreign policy.

It was obvious that some Trump allies had been uncomfortable about all the antiwar talk, because they do have wars they’d like to wage if given the chance, and because it’s inconsistent with their propagandistic yammering about “American leadership around the world.”

“American leadership around the world,” in case you haven’t been paying attention, means blowing trillions of dollars, destabilizing countries for no good reason, and then, when even worse regimes take power in those places, claiming to be shocked at this outcome, but of course refusing to accept blame because “nobody could have known” such an outcome would occur.

In fact, of course, any damn fool knew those outcomes would occur, which is why people oppose these interventions in the first place.

Just last week, Lt. Col. Daniel Davis, a sound and informed foreign-policy realist, who had been about to take his place as a deputy director of national intelligence — and who, unlike so many of his predecessors, wouldn’t have treated his fellow Americans like they were nine years old and could be spoken to only in bumpersticker slogans — was dropped from consideration.

This came after certifiable nutcases Mark Levin (the man who vociferously defended Barack Obama’s right to attack Libya unilaterally) and Laura Loomer hysterically attacked him on X.

Davis had been critical of Israel’s handling of the situation in Gaza (only one opinion is allowed on that matter, citizen), and had been skeptical of the long neocon list of American enemies — are they really enemies, Davis wonders, and/or do they need to be?

It’s about time we got someone willing to reexamine the tired assumptions that have governed bipartisan foreign-policy thinking for several decades. These haven’t exactly been three decades filled with great strategic victories for the United States, to put it very kindly, so we should all welcome some fresh thinking.

Levin professes to be a free thinker when it comes to domestic policy, but whatever free thinking he does stops there. On foreign policy, dissidents are to be dismissed as cranks and anti-Semites and extremists.

Over at Jacobin, Branko Marcetic summarizes Daniel Davis’ views, none of which seem particularly crazy (unless our baseline for sanity is conformity with the bipartisan foreign-policy consensus):

While backing US military aid to Ukraine, he was also one of the first and loudest voices to prophetically argue that battlefield realities didn’t favor the country and that a negotiated settlement was in its best interests, even if it meant ceding some territory. He has criticized former president Joe Biden for taking steps in the conflict that risk a direct US-Russia war and even nuclear exchange, is a critic of NATO expansion and its role in sparking the war, and has urged against offering membership in the alliance to Ukraine.

On the matter of China and Taiwan, he has argued against fighting a war over the island nation and for a policy of building up US defense to deter a future Chinese attack on US soil instead. He has been in favor of negotiations with North Korea, of pulling US troops out of Africa and Syria, and backed Trump’s controversial pick of Tulsi Gabbard as DNI. He has also backed a cease-fire deal in Gaza that would end Israel’s war there and foster broader peace and stability in the Middle East.

All of these are positions that Trump himself has come around to voicing at various points.

Marcetic identifies “a genuine rift among pro-Trump figures on foreign policy,” and finds that “the more hawkish side has repeatedly used their less hawkish opponents’ skepticism of US policy on Israel — and now, in Davis’s case, even resorting to thinly veiled accusations of antisemitism — as a way to have them blocked or fired, in the hopes of tilting the administration’s foreign policy in a more pro-war direction in all theaters, not just the Middle East.”

This rift is able to develop in the first place because it’s not entirely clear what the Trump “America First” foreign policy really means. It seems to mean something different in Russia/Ukraine than it means in the Middle East, and something again still in Latin America.

I sure hope the good guys win here, or otherwise we’ll be dealing with my least favorite of Woods’s Laws: No matter whom you vote for, you always end up with John McCain.

The post Civil War Inside the White House appeared first on LewRockwell.

I love women. There is nothing more heartwarming than a kind word or touch from a real lady. Or a sincere smile emanating from a beautiful face. What used to be called “the feminine virtues” are timeless qualities that fueled human civilization. Someone needed to tame the brutish nature of males. Females were very adept at that.

In my lifetime, traditional feminine traits have been figuratively drone bombed out of existence. Even something as time honored as cooking. Find the last television show or movie that depicted a female character who loved to cook. On the contrary, on television and in films, it is often the male who cooks, if anyone does. It’s somehow demeaning for a woman to do it. I really don’t like people serving me, but even as a young teenager, there was something special about a pretty girl fixing me even a soda, and handing it to me with a smile. I love the smiles and laughter of females. They are vastly superior to males in this regard. Whenever I was trying to woo a girl, I would try my best to make her laugh. I always considered that “winning.” However, if I were to try to amuse some fine young lass today, I think it would be a much harder task. Females have become what Rodney Dangerfield called a “tough crowd.”

I don’t know when things really began to change. When I was dating, in the mid to late 1970s, some girls had already discarded bras, whether or not they went to the trouble of burning them. Most of them still at least cooked, though it might have been reluctantly. Their willingness to engage in casual sex, unlike previous generations of women, showed that they were undeniably interested in men. Few of them heeded the toxic feminist message of “a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle.” They were nearly all fixated on starting relationships. Few of them put career concerns ahead of that. While many girls of my generation used profanity occasionally, they didn’t drop the F bomb into every other sentence, as they seemingly all do now. If a girl said “shit” too many times, it just turned me off. I never met one, but if any female in the 1970s had said “motherfucker,” that would have been a deal breaker.

I was no prude. I really enjoyed seeing girls in tight jeans. I much preferred that to old fashioned, Mamie Eisenhower-style 1950s dresses. Men of my era generally believed in equal rights for women, but we also undeniably objectified them. That’s surely part of my problem, as a begrudgingly senior citizen, in assessing the females who are considerably younger than me. I don’t understand the fashions. They started wearing these very male-themed dress slacks, complete with skinny belt, that served as some kind of sex repellant I guess, for any young males that haven’t been completely drained of testosterone. Now I see them wearing very loose, MC Hammer style pants. It just isn’t the same seeing a group of them dressed like that, strolling around a mall. That is if you can even find a mall that’s still open in America 2.0. One of the great joys of young manhood- gone forever. Not that anybody cares about young manhood.

But it’s the resting bitch faces that really get me. You know, the look that actress Kristen Stewart honed to perfection, before she went completely insane and began unofficially “transitioning” to a man. Think a prettier version of Ellen Page. Excuse me, I mean Elliott Page. Ellen Page never existed. Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia. Add it to my endless list of Thought Crimes. Now, the resting bitch face is hard enough to stomach when the resting bitch has a very pretty face. As you are still apt to find among the actresses in Hollywood. But it’s the ones on the streets- the common riff raff who still identify as women- that are truly frightening. Their faces aren’t pretty. But they are really, really bitchy looking. And the voices. Is any female soft spoken now? Dare I say demure, if that isn’t a forbidden word at this point? Modern females are loud and proud. Excuse me, I’m talking!

So when I refer to “Karens,” I’m not just talking about the irrational, wide-eyed women we see regularly on viral videos. The ones who insert themselves into every situation, kind of like the Gladys Kravitz character once did on Betwitched. Many readers probably don’t remember her, or even the television show. It happened long ago, on the long forgotten film sets of America 1.0. But Gladys didn’t dye her hair pink or purple. She didn’t have a nose ring. Not a single tattoo. And wasn’t really overweight. Very few of the revered females who shined in the days of yesteryear were. The stereotypical “Karen” is overtly maniacal, from the moment she starts her act. It is often unclear exactly what her intentions are, other than to very vocally virtue signal over some issue she’s seen discussed by other unbalanced women on television. Or perhaps in some ridiculous “primal screaming” therapy group.

With the appearance of “Karens” all over the country, in no real natural habitat (they can exist and even prosper anywhere), we are seeing the final eradication of traditional femininity. One cannot imagine a warm smile- or really any smile- coming from their bitch faces, which don’t seem to get much rest. Anything can trigger them. I was watching one of those videos recently, where a conservative YouTuber infiltrates a Leftist rally. That’s always entertaining in a twisted way. In this one, it was a “women’s” rally, and one middle-aged lunatic just kept shrieking “my body, my choice” at the top of her lungs, right in the face of the hapless YouTuber filming it. There is never any attempt to engage in “dialogue.” Often these women literally will not utter a word. They even will make bizarre buzzing or screeching sounds. It must be a real turn-on for those few males left with enough testosterone to care.

The second election of Trump really brought out the madness. There was a multitude of TikTok videos, starring unknown females, advertising their special acting chops. They were oddly fixated on their hair, with several mind boggling videos consisting of angry women shaving their heads. To piss off men. They also vowed never to have sex again, or at least as long as the Giant Orange Man was in the White House. They all encouraged this lunacy in each other. I can’t imagine being a single man today, and trying to approach women like this. It’s like getting in a cage with a tiger. Mental instability is terrifying. Every one of these chicks (now that’s a nice “sexist” name from my era) is a “Karen,” even though they’re not technically calling the cops on a neighbor or trying to get some sap who offended them fired. They are filled with a hatred that can’t be measured. I can’t picture them being good company.

We must face the fact that a shocking percentage of the female population in America has lost their sanity. I don’t know what that percentage would be, but I think a conservative estimate might be one third. No wonder birth rates are plummeting, and many young people aren’t even trying to start relationships. Yes, there has been a large increase in males who are insane as well, but it’s the females who really stand out. The proof of this is in voting patterns, and public opinion polls. Yes, I know, all elections, and all polls, are certainly suspect. But there is something to the claim that females are supporting the diabolical anti-White, transgender agenda of the “Woke” Left in vastly higher number than males. Recently, stories appeared about a startling “ideology gap” between Gen-Z males and females. Gen-Z females are now in excess of 30 percentage points more liberal than Gen-Z males are. Lovely. Pass the saltpeter.

A recent video online, which may or may not have been totally staged, featured a young bride jilting her hapless groom at the altar. Her reason? He didn’t have an opinion on Black Lives Matter. We didn’t have to hear her pontificate to know what her opinion on the subject was. She also felt he wasn’t committed to LGBTQ+ rights, like she was. Of course she was. What other view of transgenderism could a Gen-Z woman be expected to hold? Even if scripted, it focused on the reality that the transgender madness could not have made any inroads whatsoever without the enthusiastic support of millions of females. Not enough males buy into this nonsense. The same goes for the Great Replacement. Without White females- who comprise the largest segment of the population- such insanity would not be taken seriously. Not enough White males want Whites to go extinct. Too many White females do.

While most of my attention is drawn to the new breed of White female lunatics, as they are certainly much greater in number, women all over the world have gone crazy. In South Korea, the Gen-Z females are 50 percentage points more liberal than the poor male South Korean Gen-Zers. I suppose this is no surprise; after all, the South Korean women started the insidious “4B” movement, which advocated the boycott of sex, dating, marriage, and giving birth. Lots of White women eagerly applauded that. And Black women? Well, there has to be another derogatory term to describe their arrogance and self-delusion. Something way stronger than “Karen.” What else can you say when they are proudly wearing tee-shirts that proclaim, “Shut up- a Black woman is talking.” Consider what a seldom bathed, tobacco spitting gunslinger from the Wild West would think. Remember “women should be seen and not heard?”

I want to make it clear that I am not a misogynist. I usually prefer the company of females. I love the fairer sex when they are fairer. Their protective maternal instincts and admirable morality. A “Karen” is the antithesis of a traditional woman. No trace of adorable frailty. No tenderness or empathy. A desire to be have things done for her, instead of doing things for the man she loves. Imagine if a Tammy Wynette teleported in from another dimension and sang “Stand by Your Man” today? She’d be doxed. The song might be considered “hate speech.” In America 2.0, it’s men who are seen and not heard, standing behind their strident, outspoken women with a suitably goofy, cucky grin on their chubby faces. “Women’s Lib” was one thing. Women were second- class citizens for far too long. Just because some of us love their home cooking, and appreciate their housework, doesn’t mean that we want them to be doing nothing else.

We have a society now filled with literally millions of mental patients, without a facility to house them. “Karenism” is a mental disorder, much like TDS. If you’re yelling some political slogan at the top of your lungs, with a suitably angry bitch face, then you’re not being rational. Or sane. Wearing a “pussy hat” and screeching like a banshee, in an incomprehensible fashion, is lunacy. I don’t know what they burned alleged “witches” for in Salem, but I doubt any of them were acting like that. I certainly don’t want to burn “Karens” at the stake. But I’d like to get them help. Because they’ve been utterly brainwashed by the diabolical programming our corrupt elite has been cranking out all my life, they would need to be deprogrammed. Like was done with vulnerable members of cults, to restore them to sanity. Most “Karens” seem to have embraced their insanity. They don’t need a man to deprogram them.

Read the Whole Article

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As a New York investor, Trump is probably familiar with the concept of a golem. A golem is a little model made of clay or wood, that somehow godlike, you breathe life into. Your golem is to be your obedient and profitable little servant, and yet it often becomes an uncontrollable nightmare, for you and everyone else.

Golem fables remind us that when imperfect humans play God, things happen.  Sometimes these things are hilarious, as in the tale of The Gingerbread Man, or horrifying and deadly as in the more dark Russian version, The Clay Boy.

If you clicked to watch Paul Gobey’s rendition of the The Clay Boy, your first thought might be, “Why, this is a story about Volodymyr Zelensky!”  Note to Trump:  The little goat who freed the people of this scourge was honored by having his horns painted a lovely golden color.

The current US president is not a wise goat who saves the village – even if that was his campaign promise in a nutshell. The golems that plague us today grew from not-yet-post-colonial Europe, from a yearning for yesteryear by a monstrosity of bureaucratic parasites, by pride and greed. They are also American-made clay boys, made to serve Washington, to enrich Washington by extending US military power, and more specifically to subsidize the growing US military sector, which today is responsible for 43% of the global weapons market.   How else can NATO circa 2025 be explained?

How else can the European Union’s depressing productivity since its formation in 1993 be understood?  The chart at this link is shown in current US dollars, which has lost 55% of its value since 1993.  It appears as if our golems have eaten everything they can, and are still hungry.

The Ukraine problem and Zelensky et al are symptoms of European golems created by men decades ago. NATO was always a servant to war, not peace.  War and the threat of war energizes and feeds the state, against the wishes and interests of those designated to be sacrificed to it.

Once life was breathed into these man-made models, they grew powerful, insatiable, while retaining all of their original stupidity, animality and immorality.  Their robotic, anti-human nature is persistent and predictable.

Golems, especially the monstrous ones, are featured in much of our modern entertainment – what scares, and entertains, us is often the robotic, the amoral, animalistic, and supernatural enemy. Horror novels, TV and movies may all contain a hero, and people may get rescued, and the golem may be conquered, broken into a thousand pieces, freeing the innocent.  The darker theme – but more likely in real life – is when our golems dominate, act without restraint, and destroy the Earth.

From my protected rural perch, far from the costs of war and the threats of evil men holding the reins of power, I can speak freely about the dangers of our existing government golems, of greed, of armies filled not with natural patriotism but of hatred and contempt.  I can speak freely of the Zelenskys, the Netanyahus and Smotrichs, the warmongering beneficiaries of political power in Washington, DC.  I can criticize their actions as immoral, mechanistic, animalistic creations of men, not of God.

We can have no doubt that the history of the Ukraine conflict, even starting at 2014, is man-made, or woman-made, if we consider the irrelevant gender of Victoria Nuland.  Over the decade, we see the appetite for war expand from civil to international, much like the Clay Boy, devouring flesh and emptying pantries across the land. Unstoppable, without a brain, driven by base desires and beyond human logic, the golem was stopped by a single barnyard animal – in a single well-orchestrated blow.  I suspect this is exactly what Trump hoped to achieve two months ago. Yet, instead of following up on his good initiative, to stop arming and fueling and sharing intelligence with Zelensky as he works directly with Russia to end the war, Trump reverses course.

Does Trump misunderstand the nature of the golem the US and NATO created in Ukraine?  We know many in the Congress, and the European bureaucrats, still cheer for war, claiming that the end of it is just too difficult, let us fight on and wait for more destruction and more death, to feed the beast.  John F. Kennedy’s famous speech in June of 1963, is instructive for the Trump presidency, as Mr. Trump was clearly elected to end war and promote peace. Kennedy reminds us that “Our problems are manmade. Therefore, they can be solved by man.”

What a simple and profound reality this is.  How dare we blame God for the evil that men have done, both consciously and though neglect?  We indeed are empowered to fix what we – and our governments – have done, and what they have created.

Americans have many national examples of evil being prosecuted by some golem the US government created, promoted as good and useful, and then was unable to control. To recall a related fairy tale, Washington enjoys conjuring the genie, and is later unwilling and unable to put the genie back in the bottle.  Vietnam, Central America, Yugoslavia, Iraq I and II, Afghanistan, and Ukraine – in every case Americans woke up to the fact their government lied, created the problem, never had a plan to resolve the problem, and continued to feed the golem our blood and treasure, waiting apparently for some independent entity to act.  Eventually, these clay boys all ran into the horned goat of popular opinion, civil disobedience, economic and demographic reality, and abandonment of popular faith in the state.  It’s happening again, with or without Trump’s help.

It’s happening now for Israel.  Since its modern political creation, the Israeli state found itself hungry for living space, driven to destruction of everything that surrounds it.  Israel’s inhumanity and narcissism is nurtured within its borders, and lied about and hidden from its primary source of sustenance, the United States. We are told God created it, and nothing trumps the command of God; but in fact, Zionism was created by very human, mostly secular, wholly immoral, and politically- not spiritually-driven people. It dumbly follows the 19th century colonial project, of divide (its creation of the PA, and later Hamas) and conquer (Gaza, the West Bank, Egypt, Lebanon and Syria for years).  For Zionists, the enemy is everywhere; they struggle daily for life amidst mindless, animalistic, subhuman goyim.

More accurately, the West, for political convenience then and now, subsidizes, arms, funds and covers for Israel, a dangerous golem of their own creation. Despite the origin story of brave Zionists who took their “rightful land”  in 1948, in fact it was created to serve the West, in several ways, and has been fed and fueled consistently by its creators ever since.  We own the golem, and we are culpable for its grievous and murderous acts.

Perhaps Trump will “win” in Ukraine by ending military support, leaving NATO, and restoring trade relations with Russia in the dawn of great power pragmatism.  God willing, he can then use that experience to end the uncontrolled, inhumane and lawless rampage of the Israeli state, a golem that has run its course and is long overdue for a meetup with a goat with golden horns.

The post Can Trump Control the Golems? appeared first on LewRockwell.

Well, the Trumpian box of chocolates continues to yield its surprises. Just as Forest Grump once averred.

We are referring to the news that Donald Trump may acknowledge the obvious in his peace negotiations with Putin. To wit, that the Russian-speaking, Russian-settled, centuries-long Russian territory of Crimea does not have to be returned to the Ukrainian interlopers as a condition of peace after all—the loud insistence since the Maidan coup of February 2014 by Zelensky, the Bidenestas and the neocon blob in Washington, London, Brussels and Berlin to the contrary notwithstanding.

The Trump administration is considering recognizing Ukraine’s Crimea region as Russian territory as part of any future agreement to end Moscow’s war on Kyiv, according to two people familiar with the matter.

Administration officials have also discussed the possibility of having the US urge the United Nations to do the same, according to both people. Such a request would align the Trump administration with the position of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has long seen Crimea as his nation’s territory.

The administration’s previously unreported openness to those options comes as Trump prepares for a Tuesday call with Putin, with a potential 30-day ceasefire deal on the table. Trump told reporters Sunday evening aboard Air Force One that negotiators had already discussed “dividing up certain assets.”

So we are now finally getting to the meat of the matter. The thin fig-leaf justification for the Washington/NATO intervention in Ukraine all along has been some vague nonsense about the “sanctity of borders”.

The latter, of course, is a sacred virtue except when NATO determines otherwise. For instance, when it bombed Serbia to smithereens in 1999 that was presumably to help its leader better understand that borders were not at all sacrosanct: Not when the thugs wh0 had seized power in its breakaway province of Kosov0 had promised NATO land to establish the fine military base depicted below upon the achievement of its “independence” from Belgrade.

NATO Camp Bondsteel In Kosovo

As it happened, Ukraine was apparently next in line to house a similarly swell NATO installation, but Putin issued a “not on my border you don’t” demarche early on at the Munich Security conference in 2007. Shortly thereafter even the hard-pressed, post-communist Ukrainian electorate fairly and squarely chose a Russian-friendly president in 2010, who got a better deal for his people from Moscow in late 2013.

At that point, of course, the sanctity of borders and sovereignty got another hall pass from the Washington keepers of the Empire led by the detestable duo of Senator John McCain and Victoria Nuland—along with their phalanx of imperial gendarmes at the CIA, State Department, NED, USAID, Agency for Global Media and more. The fact is, the Maidan coup of 2014 was instigated, funded, championed and peremptorily recognized by Washington with blatant disregard for every semblance of the “rules-based international order” that they bray about when it’s convenient.

All that has transpired since then is fictionalized narrative, plain and simple. Most especially an unhinged demonization of Putin that bears no relationship whatsoever to the true facts on the ground. Indeed, the endless whining about the Ruuskies and Putin is just plain pathetic because—-

• Russia bears no hallmarks of an expansionist imperial power.
• The Russia-Ukraine conflict is none of Washington’s business—since it’s essentially a territorial and civil war within the borders of historic czarist and communist Russia.
• If EU officialdom was really concerned about the purported Russian threat it would have taken up arms long ago and would have proceeded to spend far more than the current pittance of GDP on defense.

Instead, the Europeans just talk gibberish and urge Washington to keep footing the butchers’ bill. For instance, here is the reprehensible Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, former German defense minister and full-throated war-hawk, talking absolute nonsense:

Russian President Vladimir Putin wants to see empires and autocracies back in Europe, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen told the European Economic Congress in Katowice.

Speaking alongside Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, von der Leyen insisted that she stands for a European Union that is ready to do whatever it takes to protect Europe, and especially Ukraine.

“Putin’s war is about redrawing the map of Europe, but it is also a war on our Union and on the entire global rules-based system,” she said.

Well, that’s rubbish if there ever was such. The only time the borders of Ukraine have been redrawn at the barrel of a gun is when Lenin, Stalin and Khrushchev did so between 1922 and 1954. That’s right, this EU half-wit wanted to embroil the world in WWIII in order to enforce borders drawn by a trio if history’s most blood-thirsty tyrants.

As explained below, there never was a country even remotely resembling modern Ukraine until the Soviet communists decreed its existence. Before that, the pieces and parts of the country’s history go back to the 1650s when one of the more powerful and brutal rulers of the Cossack Hetmanate, which occupied a small part of today’s central Ukraine, abandoned his tribe’s historic fealty to the Polish kings and switched his loyalty to the Russians. After that, the “borderlands” (i.e.”Ukraine” in Russian) were all about vassalage in the Russian Empire and the Soviet one which followed.

During that 375 year span the borders shifted all over the lot and back, as the Mongol, Turkish and Polish-Lithuanian empires arrived and receded, even as the Russian and communist ones in the end expanded. So what’s so sacrosanct about the very last version of the map—one that hosted both the murderous regime of Stalin and Hitler’s Wehrmacht, too?

Indeed, Europe is rife with borders redrawn again and again. While von der Leyen was in Poland preaching for border wars in Ukraine, in fact, it might well be asked, which sacrosanct Polish borders did she have in mind?

For 700 years “Poland” has cavorted around the rivers, plains, mountains and forests of central Europe like a traveling minstrel show. This includes its disappearance entirely at the hands of the Prussians, Russians, Hapsburgs and other long-gone lesser powers during the later years of the 18th century and the entirety of the 19th century.

Only in 1919 was it resurrected—in part upon German lands seconded to it at Versailles. And that planking for German revanchism, Hitler and WWII happened for the not so noble reason of American electioneering. That is, Wilson was keen on obtaining the millions of votes to be had among the fair part of the Polish nation which had migrated to Chicago and the industrial Midwest.

At length, of course, Hitler and Stalin redrew Poland’s borders yet again under the infamous Molotov-Ribbentrop pact of 1938, cancelling Wilson handwork and returning the German Danzig Corridor to its previous owner. And then, seven years later, Poland’s borders were redrawn still another time by a new set of victors, who realigned the borders for “Poland” at the Yalta Conference in a way that satisfied Stalin’s aim to recover eastern lands the Soviets lost in the post-1918 civil war.

So all along someone should have told the Washington and NATO warmongers to take a long jump off a short pier. That is to say, the picture below reminds not only how the latest borders of “Poland” were drawn, but how over the last several centuries of history most of Europe’s present borders came to be. They were not drawn by God’s deputies on earth or even the statesman of the day—but by the victors of the most recent wars.

The Border Men of 1945

Moreover, even a glance at today’s map reminds that the border-drawing work of victorious generals and politicians, and occasionally statesman, has always been subject to revision without necessarily making a war about it. And that kind of revisionist work–negotiation of a Ukrainian partition—is exactly what is on the table before Trump and Putin now.

Indeed, they might well take inspiration from the several major European boundary adjustments of recent times that remind that the shibboleth of sacrosanct borders has no roots in actual history.

Thus, the statesman at Versailles decreed the existence of Czechoslovakia in 1919 as a potpourri of nations including a lot of Slovaks, Czechs, Hungarians, Romani people, Silesians, Ruthenians, Ukrainians, Poles, Jews and most especially millions of Germans. So it was subsequently—-

• Dismembered by Hitler to bring the Sudetenland Germans home.
• Re-assembled by the Yalta winners to provide a security buffer for Stalin.
• Divided between Slovakia and the Czech Republic on peaceable terms in 1993 to allow mismatched peoples to go their own ways.

Or take the case of the meandering borders of the six autonomous republics of the vanished state of Yugoslavia and particularly its anchor in Serbia. Wikipedia explains the border-making process there as well as can be done:

(Serbia) achieved de facto independence in 1867 and gained full recognition by the Great Powers in the Berlin Congress of 1878. As a victor in the Balkan Wars of 1912– 1913, Serbia regained Vardar Macedonia, Kosovo and Metohija and Raška (Old Serbia). In late 1918, with the defeat of the Austro-Hungarian empire, Serbia was expanded to include regions of the former Serbian Vojvodina. Serbia was united with other Austro-Hungarian provinces into a pan-Slavic State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs; the Kingdom of Serbia joined the union on 1 December 1918 and the country was named the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes.

Serbia achieved its current borders at the end of World War II, when it became a federal unit within the Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia (proclaimed in November 1945). After the dissolution of Yugoslavia in a series of wars in the 1990s, Serbia once again became an independent state on 5 June 2006, following the breakup of a short-lived union with Montenegro.

Albeit this also brings us to the aforementioned former Serbian province of Kosovo. Washington and its NATO retainers decreed the latter’s independence after 75 days of persuasion with the Serbs.

These messages of persuasion were apparently written on the bombs dropped from a range of NATO aircraft that included about everything which could fly:

A large element of the operation was the air forces of NATO, relying heavily on the US Air Force and Navy using the F-16, F-15, F-117, F-14, F/A-18, EA-6B, B-52, KC-135, KC-10, AWACS, and JSTARS from bases throughout Europe and from aircraft carriers in the region.

The French Navy and Air Force operated the Super Etendard and the Mirage 2000. The Italian Air Force operated with 34 Tornado, 12 F-104, 12 AMX, 2 B-707, the Italian Navy operated with Harrier II. The UK’s Royal Air Force operated the Harrier GR7 and Tornado ground attack jets as well as an array of support aircraft. Belgian, Danish, Dutch, Norwegian, Portuguese and Turkish Air Forces operated F-16s. The Spanish Air Force deployed EF-18s and KC-130s. The Canadian Air Force deployed a total of 18 CF-18s, enabling them to be responsible for 10% of all bombs dropped in the operation.

The fighters were armed with both guided and unguided “dumb” munitions, including the Paveway series of laser-guided bombs.The bombing campaign marked the first time the German Air Force actively attacking targets since World War II.[142]

The US B-2 Spirit stealth bomber saw its first successful combat role in Operation Allied Force, striking from its home base in the contiguous United States.

At length, the Serbian borders were redrawn via the persuasive powers of NATO missiles, bombs and artillery!

In the process, its president was captured as a war criminal. When he died prior to his trial in a NATO prison from “natural causes” he undoubtedly did not view this particular NATO-sponsored border drawing incident as an exercise in the rule of law.

In any event, notwithstanding the historic fluidity of borders, there is no case whatsoever that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 was “unprovoked” and unrelated to NATO’s own provocations in the region. The details are arrayed below, but the larger issue needs be addressed first.

Namely, is there any reason to believe that Russia is an expansionist power looking to gobble up neighbors which were not integral parts of its own historic evolution, as is the case with Ukraine? After all, when President Trump does manage to strike a Ukraine peace and partition deal with Putin you can be sure that the neocons will come charging in with a false Munich appeasement analogy.

The answer, however, is a resounding no! And it’s based on what might be called the double-digit rule. To wit, the true expansionary hegemons of modern history have spent huge parts of their GDP on defense because that’s what it takes to support the military infrastructure and logistics required for invasion and occupation of foreign lands.

For instance, here are the figures for military spending by Nazi Germany from 1935–1944 expressed as a percent of GDP. This is what an aggressive hegemon looks like in the ramp-up to war and the actual conduct of military campaigns of invasion and occupation.

Not surprisingly, the same kind of claim on resources occurred when the United States took it upon itself to counter the aggression of Germany and Japan on a global basis. By 1944 defense spending was equal to 40% of America’s GDP, and would have totaled more than $2 trillion in present day dollars of purchasing power.

Military Spending As A Percent Of GDP In Nazi Germany

• 1935: 8%.
• 1936: 13%.
• 1937: 13%.
• 1938: 17%.
• 1939: 23%.
• 1940: 38%.
• 1941: 47%.
• 1942: 55%.
• 1943: 61%.
• 1944: 75%

By contrast, during the final year before the Ukraine proxy war broke out in 2022, the Russian military budget was $65 billion, which amounted to just 3.5% of its GDP. Moreover, the prior years showed no build-up of the kind that has always accompanied historic aggressors. For the period 1992 to 2022, for instance, the average military spending by Russia was 3.8% of GDP– with a minimum of 2.7% in 1998 and a maximum of 5.4% in 2016.

Historical Russian Military Spending As a Percent Of GDP

Needless to say, you don’t invade the Baltics or Poland—to say nothing of Germany, France, the Benelux and crossing the English Channel—on 3.5% of GDP. Since full scale war broke out in 2022 Russian military spending has increased significantly to 6% of GDP, but all of that is being consumed by the Demolition Derby in Ukraine—barely 100 miles from its own border. That is, even at 6% of GDP, Russia has not yet been able to subdue even its own historic borderlands. So if Russia does not have the economic and military capacity to conquer its non-Ukrainian neighbors, let alone Europe proper, what is the war really about?

In short, it is rooted in territorial disputes and civil strife in lands which have been vassals or integral parts of greater Russia for several centuries. Ukraine actually means “borderlands” in the Russian language. As we indicated, it now comprises a state that did not even exist until Lenin, Stalin and Khrushchev confected it by force of arms after 1920.

In fact, prior to the communist takeover of Russia, no country that even faintly resembled today’s Ukrainian borders had ever existed. So what NATO’s proxy war actually amounts to is an insensible attempt to enforce the dead hand of the Soviet presidium, as we amplify below.

For avoidance of doubt here are sequential maps that tell the story, and which make mincemeat of the Washington/NATO sanctity of borders malarkey. The first of these is a 220-year-old map from 1800, where the yellow area depicts the approximate territory of the four breakaway regions—Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhia plus Crimea—that are now allegedly under Russian “occupation”, but which in fact voted overwhelmingly during referendums in 2023 and 2014, respectively, to separate from Ukraine in favor of affiliation with Russia.

Collectively, the five regions were historically known as Novorossiya or “New Russia” and had been acquired by Russian rulers, including Catherine the Great between 1734 and 1791.

As is evident from the red markings on the map which designate the year of acquisition, the Russian Empire had gradually gained control over this vast area, signing peace treaties with the Cossack Hetmanate (1734) and with the Ottoman Empire at the conclusion of the various Russo-Turkish Wars of the 18th century.

Pursuant to this expansion drive – which included massive Russian investment and the in-migration of large Russian populations to the region – Russia established the

“Novorossiysk Governaorate” in 1764. The latter was originally to be named after the Empress Catherine, but she decreed that it should be called “New Russia” instead.

The Breakaway Provinces Of Ukraine Were Part Of Russia Before The US Constitution Was Even Written

Completing the assemblage of New Russia, Catherine forcefully liquidated its aforementioned century-long Cossack ally known as the Zaporizhian Sich (present day Zaporizhia) in 1775 and annexed its territory to Novorossiya, thus eliminating the independent rule of the Ukrainian Cossacks. Later in 1783 she acquired Crimea from the Turks, which was also added to Novorossiya, as shown in yellow area of the map above.

During this formative period, the infamous shadow ruler under Catherine, Prince Grigori Potemkin, directed the sweeping settlement and Russification of these lands. Effectively, Catherine had granted him the powers of an absolute ruler over the area from 1774 onward.

The spirit and importance of “New Russia” at this time is aptly captured by the historian Willard Sunderland,

The old steppe was Asian and stateless; the current one was state-determined and claimed for European-Russian civilization. The world of comparison was now even more obviously that of the Western empires. Consequently, it was all the more clear that the Russian empire merited its own New Russia to go along with everyone else’s New Spain, New France and New England. The adoption of the name of New Russia was in fact the most powerful statement imaginable of Russia’s national coming of age.

In fact, the passage of time solidified the borders of Novorossiya even more solidly. One century later the light-yellow area of the 1897 map below gave an unmistakable message: To wit, in the late Russian Empire there was no doubt as to the paternity of the lands adjacent to the Azov Sea and the Black Sea: they were now part of the 125 years-old “New Russia”.

Where’s Waldo Ukraine on This Map Circa 1900?

After the Russian Revolution, of course, the pieces and parts in this region of the old Czarist Empire were bundled-up into a convenient administrative entity by the new red rulers of Moscow, who christened it the “Ukrainian SSR” (Soviet Socialist Republic). In a like manner, they created similar administrative entities in Belorussia, Georgia, Moldavia, Turkmenistan etc.—ultimately confecting 15 such “republics”.

Here is how and when these brutal communist tyrants attached each piece of today’s Ukrainian map to the territories acquired or seized by the Russian Czars over 1654-1917 (yellow area):

• The old Novorossiya of the Donbas and Black Sea rim was added by Lenin in 1922 (purple area).
• The western territory around Lviv (blue area) that been known as Little Poland or Galicia were captured by Stalin in 1939 and thereafter, when he and Hitler carved up Poland.
• Upon the death of the bloody Stalin in 1954, Khrushchev made a deal with his Presidium allies to transfer Crimea (red area) from the Russian SSR to the Ukrainian SSR in return for their support in the battle for succession.

In a word, Ukraine was born in communist blood and iron. Yet now the Washington and the NATO warhawks have spent upwards of $300 billion to ensure that the handiwork of autocratic Czars and Commissars remains intact into the 21st century and presumably beyond.

It is ironic, therefore, that the historically illiterate Donald Trump has the good sense to dispense with one of the stupidest crusades that the War Machine on the Potomac has yet concocted. As he indicated, it is long past time to swap some assets.

Modern Ukraine: Born In Communist Blood and Iron

Of course, had the above-mentioned 20th century communist trio been benefactors of mankind, perhaps their subsequent map-making handiwork and reassignment of Novorossiya to Ukraine might have been justified. Under this benign counterfactual, they would have presumably combined peoples of like ethnic, linguistic, religious and politico-cultural history into a cohesive natural polity and state. That is, a nation worth perpetuating, defending and perhaps even dying for.

Alas, the very opposite was true. From 1922 to 1991 modern Ukraine was held together by the monopoly on violence of its brutally totalitarian rulers. And that became more than evident when the Kremlin temporarily lost control of Ukraine during the military battles of World War II. During that especially bloody interlude, the communist administrative entity called Ukraine came apart at the seams.

That is, local Ukrainian nationalists joined Hitler’s Wehrmacht in its depredations against Jews, Poles, Roma and Russians when it first swept through the country from the west on its way to Stalingrad; and then, in turn, the Russian populations from the Donbas and south campaigned with the Red Army during its vengeance-wreaking return from the east after winning the bloody 1943 battle that turned the course of WWII.

Not surprisingly, therefore, virtually from the minute it came out from under the communist yoke when the Soviet Union was swept into the dustbin of history in 1991, Ukraine has been engulfed in political and actual civil war. The elections which did occur were essentially 50/50 at the national level but reflected dueling 80/20 vote breakouts within the regions. That is, the Ukrainian nationalist candidates tended to get vote margins of 80% + in the West/Central areas, while Russian-sympathizing candidates got similar pluralities in the mainly Russian-speaking East/South.

This pattern transpired because once the iron-hand of totalitarian rule ended in 1991, the deep and historically rooted conflict between Ukrainian nationalism, language and politics of the central and western regions of the country and the Russian language and historical religious and political affinities of the Donbas and south came rushing to the surface.

Accordingly, so-called democracy barely survived these contests until February 2014 when one of Washington’s “color revolutions” finally “succeeded”. That is to say, the Washington fomented and financed nationalist-led coupe d état ended the fragile post-communist equilibrium.

That’s the true meaning of the Maidan coup. It ended the tenuous cohesion that kept the artificial state of Ukraine intact for barely two decades after the Soviet demise. So save for Washington’s destructive intervention, the partition of a communist-confected state that had never been built to last would have eventually materialized.

The evidence that the Maidan coup was the coup ‘d grace for the makeshift Ukrainian state is apparent in the maps below. These maps tell you all you need to know about why this is a civil war, not an invasion of one neighbor by another.

The first map is from the 2004 presidential election, which was won by the Ukrainian nationalist candidate, Yushchenko. The latter predominated in the orange areas of the map, over the pro-Russian Yanukovych, who swept the blue regions in the east and south.

2004 Ukraine Election Results—National Divorce In The Making

The second map is from the 2010 election, showing the same stark regional split, but this time the pro-Russian candidate, Yanukovych, won.

In the map below, the dark blue parts to the far east (Donbas) indicate an 80% or better vote for Viktor Yanukovych in the 2010 election. By contrast, the dark red areas in the west (Lviv) voted 80% or more for the Ukrainian nationalist, Yulie Tymoshenko. That is to say, the skew in the Ukrainian electorate was so extreme as to make America’s current red state/blue state divide seem hardly noteworthy by comparison.

As it happened, the sum of the pro-Yanukovych skews from the east and south (Donbas and Crimea) added up to 12.48 million votes and 48.95% of the total, while the sum of the extreme red skews in the center and west (the lands of old eastern Galicia and Poland) amounted to 11.59 million votes and 45.47% of the total.

Stated differently, it is hard to imagine an electorate more sharply divided on a regional/ethnic/language basis. Yet it was one which still produced a sufficient victory margin (3.6 percentage points) for Yanukovych – so as to be reluctantly accepted by all parties. That became especially clear when Tymoshenko, who was the incumbent prime minister, withdrew her election challenge a few weeks after the run-off in February 2010.

At that point, of course, Russia had no beef with the Kiev government at all because essentially Yanukovych’s “Regions Party” was based on the pro-Russian parts (blue areas) of the Ukrainian electorate. But when Washington essentially put the anti-Russian regions in charge of Ukraine’s government by orchestrating, funding and immediately recognizing the Maidan coup, everything changed on a dime. That was especially the case when the new, illegal government enshrined in its constitution a requirement to join NATO at the earliest possible opportunity.

In effect, Washington’s 2014 Maidan coup was the equivalent of Khrushchev’s emplacement of missiles in Cuba during 1962. Even had Putin been as erudite and civilized as JFK, rather than the ruffian he actually is, he would have had little choice except to insist that the prospective presence of NATO missiles 30 minutes from Moscow cannot stand.

201o Ukraine Presidential Election Vote Split

In a word, there has been no unprovoked “invasion” by Moscow of the transitory artifact known as the Ukrainian state. The latter effectively began and ended with the Soviet Union.

Moreover, with respect to the actual underlying reason for intervention in Ukraine—NATO’s proxy war against Russia– a simple question recurs: Besides restocking the NATO arsenals depleted by the demolition derby in what remains of Ukraine, what’s the reason for NATO’s war?

Alas, the question answers itself. The War Capital of the World on the Potomac insists upon it, and its vassals in Europe like Ursula von der Leyen have nodded, jawohl!

And yet and yet. Now has come a new sheriff to the White House who has gotten it in his head that he is more deserving of a Nobel Peace Prize than was Obama, and is now working hard and productively to win it.

It is said that the gods of history work in strange ways. And the Trump-Putin peace deal that is now days away is surely evidence of just that.

Reprinted with permission from David Stockton’s Contra Corner.

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Last weekend there was a ceremony held in a little park called Potager du Dauphin in my hometown Meudon. The ceremony marked the completion of the restoration of a small Russian orthodox chapel located in the park. I provide here a short background history of the park and the chapel before introducing you to a particularly interesting life associated with this site.

Consider the partial map of Meudon below. The Av. du Chateau leads up to the Terrace de L’Observatoire, the site of the Château de Meudon. Along the avenue is the Potager du Dauphin. The word dauphin translates to dolphin, but referred to the oldest son of the king during the time of The Sun King Louis XIV. A potager is a vegetable garden.

The physical relationship between the Avenue du Chateau, l’Observatoire, and the Potager du Dauphin. The avenue in early spring.

The Grand Dauphin

Louis, Dauphin of France (1 November 1661 – 14 April 1711), commonly known as le Grand Dauphin, was the eldest son and heir apparent of King Louis XIV and his spouse, Maria Theresa of Spain. He became known as the Grand Dauphin after the birth of his own son, Louis, Duke of Burgundy, the Petit Dauphin. He and his son died before his father and thus never became kings. Instead, his grandson became King Louis XV at the death of Louis XIV, and his second son inherited the Spanish throne as Philip V through his grandmother.

The Château de Meudon dates back to the 13th century. It was purchased by Louis XIV for his son; the Grand Dauphin, who lived at the chateau from 1695 until he died there in 1711. You can imagine that as the Grand Dauphin was heir to the throne for a relatively old king, Meudon was an important place; perhaps second only to Versailles. The extensive waterworks and garden were designed by the same landscape architect who planned those in Versailles, André Le Nôtre. In 1709 a new building designed by the renowned architect Jules Hardouin-Mansart was added adjacent to the old chateau called, without inspiration, the Château-Neuf (new chateau).

In the 18th century Madame de Pompadour was the officially designated chief mistress of Louis XV. Only in France could there be an official position of mistress to the king. He built for her the Château de Bellevue that was located along the line of the Ave. du Chateau (through the top of the map above, though virtually nothing remains of it today). Thus, I imagine there were many royal promenades between the chateaux.

In 1795, during the revolutionary period, the old chateau burned to the ground though the cause is believed to be accidental. In 1870 Prussians took this ideal site for artillery to bombard Paris. The Château-Neuf was damaged in the battle. Demolition was considered, but most of it  was preserved and became an observatory with an astronomical telescope in 1878. Today the building itself sits unused but on this site is a center for astronomy in France and that is the reason it is called Terrace de l’Observatoire. Richard Wagner wrote the opera The Flying Dutchman while living on the Ave. du Château in 1841. A refugee from revolutionary Russia, the pianist and composer Nicolas Medtner, lived on the avenue for a time in the 1930s.

The Château-Neuf looks like it was designed to have a telescope.

Beautiful modern house with a view of Paris designed by Jerome Rol located on Ave du Château across from the Potager du Dauphin.

During the French Revolution, the Potager du Dauphin  was confiscated and sold into private hands.  The property was acquired in 1946 by the Society of Jesus, the Jesuits, which founded the Saint-Georges Boarding School to welcome young Russians (Orthodox Christians) in exile. Meudon had been a haven for Russian refugees from the time of the revolution in 1917, thus it was naturally a prime location for this kind of school. Their affiliation with the Russian Orthodox Church was respected, including in the celebration of worship. A Byzantine chapel was created in what was once a greenhouse. With the fall of the USSR and the end of religious persecution, the Saint-Georges boarding school gradually lost its appeal, as young Russians preferred to study directly in Russia rather than in Meudon. This is why the Jesuit Fathers sold this property in 2002 when it was acquired by the city of Meudon. I believe the weekend celebration for the restoration of the chapel and for Russian culture is praiseworthy in the current political environment in Europe.

This lovely 19th century house built by the private owners is now extensively used as a meeting place in Meudon. I received my French citizenship there in 2014.

Exterior and interior views of La Chapelle Saint-Georges.

This arched door within a door is magnificent. My daughter loved to play cache-cache, hide and seek, in and around the maze located in the park.

This story of Meudon so intimately intertwined with French history will now take a radical turn to the East, to German Silesia.  Egon Sendler was born in Malkwitz (now Małkowice in Poland). His father was the director of the village Catholic school and a member of the Catholic political party Zentrum. His father died of tuberculosis in 1938 so the family lost his income and their housing. They moved to Breslau (now Wrocław in Poland) where he became involved in a clandestine Catholic youth organization. When he completed high school in 1942 he was drafted into the army. Sendler was taken as a prisoner of war by the Soviet army on May 9, 1945; that is, when the war was officially over. He stated honestly to his Soviet capturers that in three years of war he had not killed anyone. He was taken to Russia where he was interred in work camps, essentially slave labor.

He spent several months in a northern region between Finland and Urals. He endured extreme hunger, cold, and difficult working conditions harvesting logs from the forest. In his short memoir he described a particular night (translation by Google and me, with my parenthetical comment).

Once, we had to stay in the forest to help cut the trees. Around three o’clock, when night fell, everyone dug a hole in the soil of the forest that was less frozen, covering the bottom with a good layer of branches; we expanded and covered ourselves with another layer. The snow covered everything and we spent a long night in the warmth. That night, our thoughts, our memories, our hopes came back to us. I’m imbued with the idea that all of this has to make sense. A great joy came over me when a certainty took me: I will come back to help these people (Russians) to find God. I was very surprised by this experience, because this was the first time I had felt this joy.

I find this astounding. He formulated his life’s work to help the people who had forced him to sleep in a hole in the ground in the freezing forest.

In 1948 he was released and went back to Germany where he began his studies for the priesthood with the Society of Jesus, the Jesuits. It is interesting to know that his studies included the history of Byzantine art. In fact, he was directed toward the Russian apostolate, for which he was ordained in the Byzantine rite. Among a group of companions, he now worked for the union of the Churches, especially rapprochement with Russian Orthodoxy.

Father Sendler was sent to Meudon in 1959 where he taught at the Jesuit College of Saint-Georges in Meudon for Russian immigrants, that you now know was the Potager du Dauphin. There, he first began to teach icon painting, as he had learned to paint as a child from his mother who was an amateur artist. And it was Sendler (known by his religious name Pére Igor) who painted the icons in the little chapel in the Potager du Dauphin. He became an international expert in the theory and practice of Orthodox icon painting. He wrote several books and maintained an atelier to teach the craft in Meudon until the site was acquired by the city, so then the atelier was moved to Versailles (though there are other art studios still located in Meudon). Part of his mission was to explain Orthodox icons to a western audience. He wrote, an icon is an “image of the invisible.” “The West sees it (icons) as a religious image; the Orthodox world, as a reflection of the liturgy.” “This is the fundamental difference between a Western image that produces depth of space and the icon that radiates towards the viewer.”

Following the phenomena of the Jordan Peterson series of lectures on the Genesis book of the Bible a Calvinist pastor in a rundown section of Sacramento made a YouTube video to express his astonishment that so many would pay to hear a sermon. Paul Vanderklay (PVK) was one of the many online creators I began to follow that became known among themselves as this little corner (TLC) of the internet. PVK’s gift is his pastoral presence, his ability for honest, sincere, interest and conversation about meaningful subjects with all manner of random individuals (his randos). He organized his gift with a friend into a protocol for meaningful conversation, thus the Estuary movement was born. His conversation partners have come from all Christian denominations, other religious and spiritual traditions and atheists. PVK has recently coined a new term, the metagelical (see here, here, and here).

I’m tremendously excited about the arrival, the serious arrival of orthodoxy in America now, because I think it has the potential of improving American Christianity. But the, and this is where I get back to this metagelical word, the platforms by which this is going to happen are in some ways similar to the kinds of things that we saw in the mid to late 20th century with respect to evangelicalism and Protestant, but now they’re happening with Catholics and Orthodox and even people at the fringes of Christianity.

My interpretation of his thought is that while ecumenism tended to bring interdenominational conversation to the lowest common denominator, the metalgelical conversation is a dialogos (see John Vervaeke), a recognition that at the highest level conversation can bring a better appreciation to all participants of their own traditions.

I think Egon Sendler, a Jesuit priest who was a great exponent of Orthodox culture, was the consummate metagelical.

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On February 5, three prominent biologists and presidents of major biological associations wrote a letter to President Trump and Congress opposing his January 2025 Executive Order 14168, titled “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government.” The letter alleges that scientific evidence contradicts the binary view of sex by emphasizing the complexity of sex determination involving chromosomes, hormones, and anatomy, and highlighting variations that suggest sex and gender are not strictly binary traits.

What Does the Evidence Really Say?

The biologists’ perspective conflates biological sex with gender identity. Biological sex is determined by the type of gametes produced: males produce sperm, and females produce eggs. This dichotomy is consistent across sexually reproducing species, underscoring the binary basis of sex. This is noted in a response letter written by some eminent biologists, such as neo-atheists Jerry Coyne and Luana Maroja, and also backed by the British zoologist Richard Dawkins, which addresses the misconceptions about definitions about biological sex: “The universal biological definition of sex is gamete size.”

The letter challenging Trump’s executive order asserts that “sex and gender result from the interplay of genetics and environment,” conflating gender—a social construct—with biological sex. Even though the assertion that sex exists on a spectrum has been propagated in some academic and political spheres, it is an unscientific perspective. As Coyne and Maroja state,

However, we do not see sex as a “construct” and we do not see other mentioned human-specific characteristics, such as “lived experiences” or “[phenotypic] variation along the continuum of male to female”, as having anything to do with the biological definition of sex. 

Some argue that intersex conditions challenge the binary nature of sex. However, conditions like Turner syndrome (XO), Klinefelter syndrome (XXY), and Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome are rare anomalies, not distinct sexes. As biologist Jerry Coyne notes in a letter to Nature, “In animals, which of course include humans, sex is as close to binary as you can come, with only 0.018% of individuals being neither male nor female, but intersex.” These rare exceptions do not redefine the biological framework but instead reaffirm that sex is binary with occasional anomalies.

Biological Sex as a Construct: How Did We Get Here?

To understand the shift in discourse on biological sex, we must examine how contemporary ideological movements, like the Frankfurt School, extended Marxist critiques into culture and identity politics, which has infected the natural sciences.

How have we reached the point where prominent scientists (Neil deGrasse Tyson is an example of this phenomenon) feel compelled to deny fundamental biological realities? Part of the answer lies in emotional appeals and the common fallacy of appeal to pity, which often drives academics to reject truth in favor of ideological conformity. Couple this with the appeal to authority fallacy as exemplified in the presidents’ letter and you have a combination of fallacies that run rampant throughout our educational, medical, legal, and media establishments.

These logical fallacies have influenced policy decisions without taking actual evidence and logic into consideration. This trend has been no more evident than in the Covid debacle (something I discuss in my book COVID-19: A Dystopian Delusion), climatology, and in this particular case, the gender and sex debate. The rise of biological denialism—the rejection of sex as a binary reality—can be traced to several modern philosophical movements, whether implicitly or explicitly.

Hegelian Dialectics

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s dialectics is a triadic process: 1) Thesis: a dominant view or existing reality; 2) Antithesis: an opposing idea that challenges the thesis (a contradiction or negation); and lastly, 3) Synthesis: integrating elements of the thesis and antithesis, formulating a new mode of thinking or paradigm. This triadic process fuels biological denialism in the following way: 1) Thesis: the traditional view that biological sex is either male or female and can’t change; 2) Antithesis: ideas that question biological essentialism in favor of non-binary views; and 3) Synthesis: The synthesis would transcend the opposition between binary and non-binary sex by proposing a gender spectrum or gender fluidity. This position argues that sex and gender exist along a continuum, acknowledging the diversity of human experiences.

Extending Marxism: The Frankfurt School

Unlike economic Marxism, which focuses on class struggle, the Frankfurt School expanded Marxist theory into cultural and ideological domains. The Frankfurt School, led by thinkers like Herbert Marcuse, Max Horkheimer, and Theodor Adorno, critiqued Enlightenment rationality and bourgeois society, laying the foundation for critical theory. These thinkers expanded Marxism beyond economics, focusing on culture and ideology. They incorporated psychoanalysis, studied mass media’s influence, and examined mass culture’s role in shaping society. Their goal was to challenge perceived power structures and embed Marxist theory into modern social discourse.

Consequently, they have attempted to dismantle sex as a biological category by using critical theory. The Frankfurt School’s thought has led to the reformulation of Marxism into Neo-Marxism (commonly known as cultural Marxism). This ideological shift has allowed critical theorists to argue that biological sex is merely a social construct, despite overwhelming scientific evidence to the contrary. James Lindsay and Helen Pluckrose’s book Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity―and Why This Harms Everybody is an excellent critique of critical theory in general and how it has heavily infiltrated the academy since the 1970s.

Postmodernism

Similarly, postmodern philosophy has also played a significant role, even though incoherent, in shaping the denial of objective truth and consequently many fundamental aspects of science. For instance, Jacques Derrida’s deconstructionismchallenges Western binary distinctions, including the male-female dichotomy, arguing that all categories, even biological ones, are unstable and fluid. Michel Foucault’s work on power and sexuality contends that sex itself is a product of discourse, not an objective truth, as he argues in The History of Sexuality.

Foucault disputes what is deemed to be “natural,” questioning the idea of the stability and uniformity of nature, while instead emphasizing the social and historical understanding of how humans relate to nature. In turn, he argues that sex is the result of historical and cultural conditioning, which in turn functions to challenge the truth of biological sex. Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity introduces the concept of “gender performativity,” where she argues that sex, like gender, is also a social construction that is fashioned by cultural norms and repeated behaviors rather than in the universality of the binary nature of biological sex.

Standpoint epistemology, developed by feminist theorists Nancy Hartsock and Sandra Harding, argues that marginalized groups possess a unique epistemic advantage due to their lived experiences (the presidents of the biological societies make reference to “lived experience”). Hartsock’s Money, Sex, and Power: Toward a Feminist Historical Materialismcombines Marxist historical materialism with feminist theory, asserting that women’s experiences in a patriarchal society provide a unique epistemological standpoint.

In The Science Question in Feminism, Harding went even further with this idea by saying that in order for science to be objective, it should include the views of oppressed groups in order to counter the biases of dominant discourses. Applied to biology, this framework challenges scientific objectivity by prioritizing subjective identity claims over empirical evidence. This perspective has influenced contemporary gender debates by asserting that biological sex is a construct shaped by social and historical contexts rather than an objective category. For a deeper discussion on gender ideology and its many dangers, see my book Making Sense of Nonsense: Navigating through the West’s Current Quagmire.

Read the Whole Article

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I am indebted to fellow Substack author, Jon Fleetwood, for drawing my attention to a deeply intriguing memo that was part of the JFK files that were just dumped. Fleetwood’s piece on the memo is linked below.

The CIA memo, dated 19th July 1967, opens with a long quotation from an article published in Ramparts, June 1967.

As Fleetwood points out, though the Ramparts piece was already public:

…the newly released CIA files are significant because they confirm the Agency was aware of Underhill’s allegations at the time and considered them serious enough to document in an internal intelligence report.

The Ramparts piece and the CIA memo relate to a man named J. Garrett Underhill.

“J. Garrett Underhill had been an intelligence agent during World War II and was a recognized authority on limited warfare and small arms.

A researcher and writer on military affairs, he was on a first-name basis with many of the top brass in the Pentagon.

He was also on intimate terms with a number of high-ranking CIA officials—he was one of the Agency’s ‘un-people’ who perform special assignments.”

What is intriguing about the subject is the following:

“The day after the assassination, Gary Underhill left Washington in a hurry. Late in the evening he showed up at the home of friends in New Jersey. He was very agitated.

A small clique within the CIA was responsible for the assassination, he confided, and he was afraid for his life and probably would have to leave the country.

Less than six months later Underhill was found shot to death in his Washington apartment. The coroner ruled it suicide.”

Ah, yes, the D.C. coroner ruled it a suicide. I recently wrote a book about homicides staged to look like suicides. It is likely that many murderers have gotten away with this trick.

The CIA memo continues quoting the Rampart’s article:

“The verdict of suicide in Underhill’s death is by no means convincing.”

His body was found by journalist Asher Brynes of The New Republic:

“He had been shot behind the left ear, and an automatic pistol was under his left side. Odd, says Brynes, because Underhill was right-handed.”

Brynes also stated:

“Brynes thinks the pistol was fitted with a silencer, and occupants of the apartment building could not recall hearing a shot. Underhill obviously had been dead several days.”

“The friends whom Underhill visited say he was sober but badly shook. They say he attributed the Kennedy murder to a CIA clique which was carrying on a lucrative racket in gun-running, narcotics and other contraband, and manipulating political intrigue to serve its own ends.”

Underhill believed:

“Kennedy supposedly got wind that something was going on and was killed before he could ‘blow the whistle on it.’”

The friends, despite knowing Underhill to be “perfectly rational and objective,” initially struggled to believe him. But as the memo records:

“I think the main reason was… that we couldn’t believe that the CIA could contain a corrupt element every bit as ruthless—and more efficient—as the mafia.”

The totality of circumstances—including the fact that the CIA insisted on keeping this memo top secret until now—suggests that Underhill knew what he was talking about and that his stated fear was well-founded.

To be sure, it’s possible that Underhill did not know—or chose not to disclose to his friends—the extent of the activity in which the “CIA Clique” was involved. It may have been more than just gun-running, narcotics, and other contraband.

Going pack to the Roman Praetorian Guard, the trouble with elite security services is that the secrecy they are granted almost inevitably tempts at least some of their members to engage in nefarious enterprises. Considering this, it strikes me as remarkable that the CIA hasn’t assassinated more than just one president.

A plausible reason for this is that, since Kennedy, the CIA has been able to intimidate and blackmail politicians into compliance instead of killing them. If my memory serves, CIA counterintelligence chief James Jesus Angleton once visited an independent-minded Senator in his office and nonchalantly repeated verbatim the Senator’s bedtime conversation with his wife the night before. Instead of having Angleton arrested, the Senator was frightened into compliance.

Here’s the first paragraph of the memo:

Note that the RYBAT marking meant that CIA employees were not allowed to photocopy it.

It also strikes me as notable that the author of the CIA memo does not write any sort of assessment of the validity of the story reported in Ramparts.

That Underhill was found shot to death in his Washington D.C. apartment suggests that someone whom he trusted had given him the impression that he was safe and did not need to flee abroad.

Readers who enjoy real-life cloak and dagger stories should check out the full MEMO, which contains many other intriguing elements.

See also Jon Fleetwood’s report on this memo: ‘Small Clique Within the CIA Was Responsible for the Assassination’: JFK Files

This originally appeared on Courageous Discourse.

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