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The yield on the 30-year US Treasury bond just crossed the 5.0% mark for the first time in 17 years. So it might be useful to revisit where we have been lo these many decades.

We are referring to the long bond’s utterly fabricated 54 year journey since the Camp David event in August 1971. By our reckoning, the latter provides proof positive that the Donald’s blunderbuss attack on the Fed is fully warranted and that his negative characterization of its competence is absolutely correct.

To wit, Jay Powell and the whole parade of Keynesian central bankers who came before him—save for William McChesney Martin and Tall Paul Volcker—were neither competent nor deserving of the Fed’s vaunted “independence”. Indeed, you could have gotten a better result from a posse of random names snatched out of the Cleveland phone book—which is to say, from the nation’s vast private markets in interest rates, stock, bonds, derivatives and other financial assets.

The real import of the Donald’s current attack on Powell, therefore, is not actually about his cockamamie judgement that the Fed funds rate should be 300 basis points lower at this particular point in time. The real gravamen of Trump’s complaint is that the Fed should not even be fiddling with the rate on overnight money or the level and shape of the entire debt market yield curve in the first place.

In fact, neither the 12 men/women on the FOMC, nor the one man or woman who is temporarily domiciled in the Oval Office each four years nor the clown car battalions on Capitol Hill who mostly spend a lifetime there, are competent to set interest rates. That’s a job for free, flexible, dynamic, competitive, information-rich private markets, not an agency of the state. Full stop.

The evidence for that proposition is that the Fed has been dead wrong about the long-term interest rates for at least the five decades since Nixon manhandled Chairman Arthur Burns into cranking up the Fed’s printing presses in behalf of his 1972 reelection campaign. In short order that brought the demise of the Breton Woods gold exchange system, which was already on its death bed owing to Fed financing during the prior decade of LBJ’s “guns and butter” fiscal extravaganza.

Thereafter, of course, the world entered the era of fiat central bank money, dirty (government manipulated) floats in foreign exchange markets and the financial rule of a few fallible monetary apparatchiks. The latter claimed, of course, to be in the high-minded business of delivering the greater good for all the people as opposed to market-based traders, investors, businesses and other economic players with skin in the game merely attempting to pursue their own selfish good.

Indeed, the dispositive proof of the generic incompetence of monetary central planners (aka central bankers) is the four decade’s march of the long bond relentlessly down the yield hill as depicted in the graph below. It shows that from the peak of 15.2% in September 1981, to the bottom at 1.20% in March 2022, the long-bond’s yield traversed 1400 basis points of nearly continuous decline. Yet nothing remotely like this 49-year one-way journey could have occurred on the free market operating under a regime of sound money.

To wit, sound money rates would never have been this high in the first place, nor would they have tumbled this low eventually. And that’s to say nothing of a one-way direction of travel the whole time in between. To the contrary, the graph has “central bankers at work” written all over it because the price of bonds (i.e. yields) on the free market would have continuously zigged and zagged in a narrow but directionless range for the entire half century running.

30-Year US Treasury Bond Yield, 1981 to 2025

That the above anomalous path was the handiwork of the Fed and its foreign central bank accomplices is further reinforced by the graph below, which extracts CPI inflation on a Y/Y basis from the nominal yield. And on this “real yield” basis, the range is even more stupendously unmarket-like, ranging from a +940 basis points high in June 1983 to a -610 basis points low in March 2022.

Again, that’s 1550 basis points of range variation. Yet baring some unimaginable catastrophe even far worse than the Great Depression of the 1930s, there is simply no scenario—-no imaginable imbalance of supply and demand in the bond pits—so extreme as to generate real yield outcomes this variant.

After all, the real yield is the return needed to cover taxes and the opportunity cost of locking up money (via duration risk) for one-third of a century. There is nothing in the history or logic of finance that suggests that the real interest rate in its natural state would even remotely vary by such extreme magnitudes, and most especially that it would plunge into negative real yield territory at the durations and depths depicted in the graph.

Nevertheless, under the tutelage of the Fed and its fellow-traveling central banks, the pattern below did actually happen. This means, in turn, that current financial investor and trader mindsets and the market’s very internal memory muscles have been profoundly mis-shaped by the 40-year yield slide depicted in the graphs.

Accordingly, we would suggest that the debt markets are just beginning a new price discovery process that incepted in March 2022. That’s when for the first time in a half century the central banks of the world were compelled to shut down their printing presses simultaneously because under the conceit of the “Great Moderation” mantra promulgated by Bernanke in February 2004 the nearly double-digit inflation that peaked in the summer of 2022 was never supposed to happen. So they central bankers panicked and lurched into an anti-inflation mode almost on a dime.

As is also evident in the graph, real yields have consequently sprung-higher by 860 basis points from the March 2022 bottom to a current level of about +2.5%. That’s just 38 months on a new path that is diametrically opposite to that of the prior 40 years.

Undoubtedly, traders trained in the central bank printing press era of the last four decades are expecting only a temporary reversal like all the other minor upward blips shown in the graph. Indeed, their trading charts are geared to issuing “buy signals” at exactly those expected points.

But if the central banks do not restart their printing presses soon, and we believe they will not owing to excess embedded inflation, trading models will issue no buy signals. And, at length, markets will become sorely disappointed, meaning that bond selling will commence at scale as traders and algos pivot to selling that which the central banks are not buying, as opposed to front-running the continuously expanding central bank balance sheets, as they have been doing for decades.

Inflation-Adjusted 30-Year US Treasury Bond Yield, 1981 to 2025

Needless to say, front-running of the central banks by global traders and algos has been a massive, market-driving force in recent decades because the central banks have literally been buying US government issued and guaranteed debt securities hand over fist. In the case of the Fed alone, its balance sheet of mostly US Treasury paper has exploded from $80 billion in June 1971 to the money-printing high of $9.0 trillion in March 2022.

That’s a gain of 113X for anyone keeping score, which, in turn compared to a national income or GDP gain of just 21X during the same 51 year period.

Yet and yet. That’s really not the half of it when you consider the fellow-traveling central banks of the world, which for better or worse responded to the Fed’s flood of dollar liabilities by massive, continuous currency market interventions and “dirty floats”. In turn, these Treasury bond-buying sprees by foriegn central banks were designed to thwart the free market logic of Uncle Milton Friedman and thereby prevent the natural and substantial appreciation of their own exchange rates which would have occurred on an honest free market.

Accordingly, the tiny $15 billion holdings of US Treasury debt by the combined central banks of the world outside of the US in June 1971 soared to $1 trillion by the turn of the century and to a peak of $4.4 trillion by the 2022 top of the central bank money-printing era. In total, therefore, once the central banks were freed from the discipline of fixed exchange rates and gold convertibility in August 1971 it truly was a world of Katie-bar-the-door.

As it happened, US Treasury paper held by the ECB (or its predecessors), the Bank of Japan, the People’s Bank of China, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Petro-States, South Korea and the other East Asian exporters plus the rest of the world amounted to only 0.5% of world GDP in June 1971.

That is to say, during the shaky final days of the Breton Woods gold standard there was no reason for foreign central banks to own material amounts of the so-called dollar reserve currency. By the time Greenspan got to the Fed in 1987, however, the dirty float game had already developed a goodly head of steam. At that point, the foreign central banks held $500 billion of US Treasury paper, amounting to 3.3% of global GDP.

Thereafter, of course, it was off to the races as Greenspan’s Keynesian Fed cranked up the printing presses, even as foreign banks sopped up a rising share of the increasingly unwanted dollars earned in trade. By the eve of the Great Financial Crisis, therefore, foreign central banks held $1.5 trillion of US government debt, which figure climbed steadily higher thereafter in response to the massive outpouring of dollar liabilities from the Fed and the swelling US trade deficits which resulted from it.

Alas, by the money-printing peak of March 2022, foreign central banks owned $4.4 trillion of US government debt, amounting to 4.7% of global GDP, which had reached nearly $96 trillion.

As is evident from the chart, by 2024 the ECB, Bank of Japan and People’s Bank of China alone held $3.73 trillion of US Treasury debt. It is not surprising, therefore, that in 2024 combined US imports from these three major trading partners totaled $1.256 trillion compared to exports to these countries of just $596 billion, yielding a yawning trade deficit of $600 billion per year.

In short, the debt and inflation-saturated US economy after five decades of money-printing leadership at the Fed is essentially in the business of buying foreign goods and selling Uncle Sam’s debt paper to cover the shortfall.

Needless to say, during the same period the Fed’s balance sheet, which is comprised mainly of US government debt and guaranteed agency paper on the asset side, also soared skyward. The Fed’s holding of $80 billion of US Treasury paper in June 1971 had multiplied by a factor of 111X to the aforementioned $9.0 trillion by the March 2022 peak. Relative to national income, the Fed’s balance sheet went from an already bloated (by historic standards) 6.9% of GDP in Q2 1971 to 36% of US GDP by the peak in March 2022.

There should be no mystery, therefore, as to how the inflation bloated yield of 15.2% on the 30-year Treasury Bond in July 1982 marched relentlessly downhill to just 1.2% in March 2022: Namely, the combined central banks of the world had their big fat thumbs on the supply and demand scales in the bond pits of the world like never before imagined.

That is to say, the holdings of the Fed plus the central banks of the world depicted in the table above amounted to just $95 billion in June 1971 and roughly 3.2% of global GDP. By contrast, at the money-printing apotheosis in March 2022, the Fed and its fellow-traveling central banks around the planet held $13.4 trillion of US Treasury debt, which amounted to 14% of global GDP.

In short, the U.S. dollar has not been a “reserve currency” in the classic sense since August 1971. That’s when the world stumbled into purely fiat moneys traded via dirty floats on the world’s exchange markets by central banks eager to counter-act the massive monetary inflation of the Federal Reserve.

That is, foreign central bank holdings of dollar securities were not substitutes for gold as were sterling reserves in the 1920s and dollar reserves under Breton Woods. They were simply the accumulated coin of dirty floats designed to counter the flood of the Fed’s inflationary dollars in the foreign exchange markets.

To be sure, the trick of dirty floats and dollar hoards worked for several decades…..until suddenly it didn’t, doesn’t and won’t for as far as the eye can see in the world ahead. In turn, how the end of global central bank monetization of Uncle Sam’s debt is likely to play out in the years ahead will be the subject of Part 3.

Reprinted with permission from David Stockman’s Contra Corner.

The post ‘Reserve Currency’ My Eye! appeared first on LewRockwell.

As Syria descends into full-scale civil war, with more than a thousand people killed in just the last few days, it may be a good time to remember the phrase, “Assad must go.” That was the slogan the regime-changers rolled out some 14 years ago during the “Arab Spring” that was supposed to usher liberal democracies into power throughout the region.

From Tunisia to Egypt to Libya and on to Syria, the plan was to remake the Middle East according to the will of Washington’s “master planners.” The State Department, the media, the Pentagon, and the think tanks fed by the military-industrial complex were all enthusiastically on-board the program because making war and overthrowing governments is their bread and butter.

If the United States pursued a foreign policy of non-interventionism as laid out by our Founders the massive “national security state” would cease to exist. We would return to being a republic and they would have to return to honest work.

Instead, a determined effort that took nearly 14 years finally produced the “regime change” in Syria last December that the neocons wanted. Assad did finally go – to exile in Russia – but as is always the case with US-directed regime change, his replacement was even worse. Imagine all those years fighting the “war on terror” and then cheering when a branch of al-Qaeda takes power in Syria. Yet that’s exactly what happened, with President Trump going so far as to praise Syria’s self-appointed president as, “a tough guy, a fighter, with a very strong background.”

Assad, like Libya’s Gaddafi and the others targeted for “regime change,” was no saint. But as with Libya, we are seeing the chaos unleashed by US intervention in Syria is making the country far worse than before. Libya has remained in chaos and civil war for the past decade, with no future for its people. That seems to be what is in store for Syria as well. The new, unelected regime has slaughtered Alawites and Christians from nearly day one, and last week turned its guns on the Druze minority. A country of many different faiths and ethnic groups has been ripped apart, probably for good.

Those pushing regime change all these years called us “Assad apologists” when we cautioned against intervention. We should not expect an apology now that their regime change has achieved the opposite of what they promised.

The failed Soviet Union demonstrated that central planning never works. Centrally-planned economies produce luxury for the elites and poverty for everyone else. Yet the US foreign policy establishment believes it can centrally plan the government, economy, and even religion of countries thousands of miles away and about which it knows nothing. Once again we can see how wrong they are and what destruction their actions cause.

Syria’s descent into mayhem and violence is another tragic reminder that Washington’s neocons are very good at undermining and overthrowing governments abroad that refuse to “play ball” according to DC rules, but when it comes to actually bringing anything of value from the chaos they create they are hopelessly incompetent. In Syria the damage is done, and future generations will continue to suffer from the cruel folly of those convinced they know how to run everyone else’s lives.

The post America’s Syrian Civil War appeared first on LewRockwell.

This is the greatest, and most insightful and profound episode of this wonderful podcast. Absolutely incredible!

The historical analysis is minutely detailed and brilliant, showing what has been really going on in regard to politics, demographics, shifts in culture, socioeconomic trends impacting America over decades.

Make this go viral. Send or post copies to family, friends, colleagues, and people you love and deeply respect who you believe must know this crucial information.

The post Barnes and Baris Episode 93: What Are the Odds? The NEW swing voter Republicans MUST get to vote in the midterms, and beyond. appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, Johnny Kramer. 

How Much Are the OTHERS Losing?!

The post Stephen Colbert Reportedly LOST $40M per Year for CBS appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, Maureen McKerracher.

See here.

The post Batch EM0477 appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, Johnny Kramer . 

Heather Mac Donald

The post Every Society Had Slavery. The West Got Rid of It. appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, John Frahm.

CNBC News

The post Treasury Secretary Bessent calls for a review of ‘the entire’ Federal Reserve appeared first on LewRockwell.

President Trump wants the Fed to drastically lower interest rates. This means more Fed counterfeiting and more inflation. With government spending, deficits, and debts continuing their march higher (and tariffs on top) … Are you excited for higher prices?

The post President Trump’s Policies Are Destined To Increase Inflation appeared first on LewRockwell.

Click Here:

Global Research

The post Sectarian Slaughters in “New Syria”. Mark Taliano appeared first on LewRockwell.

____________________________________________________________________________________

da Zerohedge

(Versione audio della traduzione disponibile qui: https://open.substack.com/pub/fsimoncelli/p/in-che-modo-loro-puo-arrivare-a-10000)

Lo scorso aprile il mercato dell'oro ha continuato la sua impennata senza precedenti di consegne fisiche dalle borse a termine, segnalando un cambiamento significativo nelle dinamiche finanziarie globali. Il COMEX ha registrato la consegna di 64.514 contratti sull'oro, equivalenti a circa 6,45 milioni di once o $21,3 miliardi in valore, segnando il secondo volume di consegne più alto mai registrato.

Il CME Comex è un mercato chiave per la negoziazione a termine su oro, argento e altre materie prime, dove i contratti possono anche essere convertiti in metallo fisico tramite consegna.

In genere i contratti aperti diminuiscono drasticamente prima dell'inizio della consegna, ma questa volta le posizioni sono aumentate inaspettatamente e sono state in gran parte liquidate in contanti anziché consegnate, alimentando speculazioni su potenziali carenze latenti e forti incentivi per la liquidazione in contanti. Ciononostante la domanda di consegna immediata è rimasta forte, con oltre 10.000 nuovi contratti aperti, la seconda cifra più alta mai registrata.

Contemporaneamente le scorte di oro sono diminuite dall'inizio di aprile, probabilmente a causa di questi accordi insoliti e dei successivi prelievi fisici. Nonostante le previsioni secondo cui le modifiche ai dazi ridurrebbero l'arbitraggio e rallenteranno i flussi di oro da Londra agli Stati Uniti, la domanda di futures e consegne fisiche rimane robusta con l'avvicinarsi di maggio.

Questo straordinario movimento ha suscitato speculazioni sulle cause sottostanti. Le tensioni geopolitiche, come i conflitti in corso tra Russia e Ucraina, Iran e Israele, e le complesse dinamiche tra India e Pakistan, hanno indubbiamente contribuito a un aumento della domanda di beni rifugio come l'oro. Inoltre l'intensificarsi delle controversie commerciali tra le principali economie ha ulteriormente alimentato l'incertezza, rendendo l'oro un'opzione interessante per preservare la ricchezza.

Tuttavia, al di là di questi fattori immediati, si cela una trasformazione più profonda nel sistema finanziario globale. Dal 2008 circa Paesi come Russia e Cina hanno attivamente ridotto la loro dipendenza dal dollaro statunitense. Questa tendenza è stata accelerata da recenti sviluppi, tra cui la decisione dell'Arabia Saudita di regolare le transazioni petrolifere in valute diverse dal dollaro. Tali iniziative indicano un passaggio collettivo verso un quadro monetario più diversificato.

In una recente intervista Luke Gromen sostiene che l'attuale sistema incentrato sul dollaro è insostenibile a causa dei crescenti deficit e livelli di debito negli Stati Uniti e suggerisce che la transizione all'oro come asset di riserva neutrale potrebbe facilitare una struttura economica globale più equilibrata. Questo approccio consentirebbe di quotare le materie prime in più valute, riducendo la dipendenza dalle politiche economiche di ogni singola nazione.

Gromen osserva inoltre che il conflitto in Ucraina ha messo in luce i limiti delle strategie militari convenzionali, sottolineando la necessità di strumenti economici per affermare la propria influenza. Adottando l'oro come risorsa di riserva, le nazioni possono affrontare le sfide geopolitiche senza ricorrere allo scontro militare diretto, sempre più insostenibile in un mondo con capacità nucleari ed economie profondamente interconnesse.

Le implicazioni di un simile cambiamento sono profonde. La rivalutazione dell'oro a livelli di $7.500 e persino $10.000 l'oncia potrebbe consentire al Dipartimento del Tesoro statunitense di rafforzare significativamente la propria posizione finanziaria, qualora si verificasse un cambiamento. Adeguando il prezzo ufficiale delle sue riserve auree, il Dipartimento del Tesoro potrebbe generare un valore compreso tra i $2.000 e i $3.000 miliardi, fornendo una consistente iniezione nel Conto Generale del Tesoro senza aumentare il debito.

In questo contesto le massicce consegne di oro osservate ad aprile potrebbero non essere una coincidenza, osserva Gromen. Potrebbero rappresentare mosse strategiche da parte di attori statali, inclusi gli stessi Stati Uniti, per prepararsi a una ridefinizione del panorama monetario.

La portata di queste transazioni suggerisce un coinvolgimento ai massimi livelli, poiché movimenti così significativi normalmente attirerebbero l'attenzione degli enti regolatori se non fossero effettuati da entità dotate di autorità sovrana.

Sta iniziando a sembrare chiaro che, mentre l'economia globale si trova sull'orlo di un potenziale reset monetario, il ruolo dell'oro viene rivalutato. Non posso fare a meno di pensare che dovrei continuare a monitorare attentamente questi sviluppi, poiché potrebbero annunciare una nuova era nell'architettura della finanza globale.

Potrebbe esserci qualcosa di grosso in cantiere...

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

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

What is the conspiracy theory of history? Is it true? In this week’s column, I’m going to discuss the great Murray Rothbard’s analysis of the subject. As always, he is our best guide. Then, I’ll give examples of what Murray calls “good” conspiracy theories.

Murray begins his analysis by noting that the Establishment attacks the conspiracy theory: “Anytime that a hard-nosed analysis is put forth of who our rulers are, of how their political and economic interests interlock, it is invariably denounced by Establishment liberals and conservatives (and even by many libertarians) as a ‘conspiracy theory of history,’ ‘paranoid,’ ‘economic determinist,’ and even ‘Marxist.’ These smear labels are applied across the board, even though such realistic analyses can be, and have been, made from any and all parts of the economic spectrum, from the John Birch Society to the Communist Party. The most common label is ‘conspiracy theorist,’ almost always leveled as a hostile epithet rather than adopted by the ‘conspiracy theorist’ himself.”

Murray next points out that it is natural that the Establishment attack the conspiracy theory because it has an interest in saying that that the Deep State isn’t a plot to hold power but an inevitable development that it is futile to resist: “It is no wonder that usually these realistic analyses are spelled out by various ‘extremists’ who are outside the Establishment consensus. For it is vital to the continued rule of the State apparatus that it have legitimacy and even sanctity in the eyes of the public, and it is vital to that sanctity that our politicians and bureaucrats be deemed to be disembodied spirits solely devoted to the ‘public good.’ Once let the cat out of the bag that these spirits are all too often grounded in the solid earth of advancing a set of economic interests through use of the State, and the basic mystique of government begins to collapse.”

Murray was a great teacher, and he gives us some simple example to show how to use conspiracy theories: “Let us take an easy example. Suppose we find that Congress has passed a law raising the steel tariff or imposing import quotas on steel? Surely only a moron will fail to realize that the tariff or quota was passed at the behest of lobbyists from the domestic steel industry, anxious to keep out efficient foreign competitors. No one would level a charge of ‘conspiracy theorist’ against such a conclusion. But what the conspiracy theorist is doing is simply to extend his analysis to more complex measures of government: say, to public works projects, the establishment of the ICC, the creation of the Federal Reserve System, or the entry of the United States into a war. In each of these cases, the conspiracy theorist asks himself the question cui bono? Who benefits from this measure? If he finds that Measure A benefits X and Y, his next step is to investigate the hypothesis: did X and Y in fact lobby or exert pressure for the passage of Measure A? In short, did X and Y realize that they would benefit and act accordingly?”

It’s a basic principle of Austrian economics that human beings act for a purpose, Rothbard says, and conspiracy theorists apply this principle: “Far from being a paranoid or a determinist, the conspiracy analyst is a praxeologist; that is, he believes that people act purposively, that they make conscious choices to employ means in order to arrive at goals. Hence, if a steel tariff is passed, he assumes that the steel industry lobbied for it; if a public works project is created, he hypothesizes that it was promoted by an alliance of construction firms and unions who enjoyed public works contracts, and bureaucrats who expanded their jobs and incomes. It is the opponents of ‘conspiracy’ analysis who profess to believe that all events—at least in government—are random and unplanned, and that therefore people do not engage in purposive choice and planning.”

It doesn’t follow that all conspiracy theories are right. Murray warns us against two fallacies: First, showing that someone benefits from a measure isn’t enough to show that he is behind the measure. That is a hypothesis that has to be investigated. Second, there isn’t One Big Conspiracy theory that explains all of history: “There are, of course, good conspiracy analysts and bad conspiracy analysts, just as there are good and bad historians or practitioners of any discipline. The bad conspiracy analyst tends to make two kinds of mistakes, which indeed leave him open to the Establishment charge of ‘paranoia’ First, he stops with the cui bono; if measure A benefits X and Y, he simply concludes that therefore X and Y were responsible. He fails to realize that this is just a hypothesis and must be verified by finding out whether or not X and Y really did so. (Perhaps the wackiest example of this was the British journalist Douglas Reed who, seeing that the result of Hitler’s policies was the destruction of Germany, concluded, without further evidence, that therefore Hitler was a conscious agent of external forces who deliberately set out to ruin Germany.) Secondly, the bad conspiracy analyst seems to have a compulsion to wrap up all the conspiracies, all the bad guy power blocs, into one giant conspiracy. Instead of seeing that there are several power blocs trying to gain control of government, sometimes in conflict and sometimes in alliance, he has to assume—again without evidence—that a small group of men controls them all and only seems to send them into conflict.”

Now that we have our basic framework for understanding the conspiracy theory. I’d like to give two examples of “good” conspiracy theories.

The first of these is the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941. There is massive evidence that Franklin Roosevelt provoked the Japanese attack in order to get America into World War II. The great historian Robert Higgs summarizes the evidence: “A short comment is no place to settle the controversies that have raged ever since the attack about what Roosevelt and his chief subordinates knew in advance, but one thing has been known for a long time: however ‘dastardly’ the attack might have been, it was anything but ‘unprovoked.’ Indeed, even admirers and defenders of Roosevelt, such as Robert B. Stinnett and George Victor, have documented provocations aplenty. (See the former’s Day of Deceit: The Truth About Roosevelt and Pearl Harbor and the latter’s The Pearl Harbor Myth: Rethinking the Unthinkable.)  On December 8, the same day that Roosevelt asked Congress for a declaration of war against Japan, former president Herbert Hoover wrote a private letter in which he remarked, ‘You and I know that this continuous putting pins in rattlesnakes finally got this country bitten.’”

Higgs presents his conclusion about what this evidence shows: “On the basis of facts accumulated over the past seven decades and available to anyone who cares to examine them, we are justified in saying that Hoover’s characterization of the war’s provocation was entirely accurate – both with regard to the Japanese imperial government as ‘rattlesnakes’ and with regard to the U.S. government’s ‘putting pins in.’ Indeed, we now have a much firmer basis for that characterization than Hoover could have had on December 8, 1941. Countless lies have been told, massive cover-ups have been staged, propaganda has flowed like a river, yet in this one regard, at least, the truth has undeniably been brought out.”

Higgs points out that some pro-Roosevelt historians praise him for his deception and make clear his own attitude toward this: “Most American historians, of course, no longer bother to deny this truth. They simply take it in stride, presuming that the Japanese attack, by giving Roosevelt the public support he needed to bring the United States into the war against Germany through the  ‘the back door’ was a good thing for this country and for the world at large. Indeed, some actually shower the president with approbation for his mendacious maneuvering to wrench the American people away from their unsophisticated devotion to ‘isolationism.’ In no small part, Roosevelt’s unrelenting dishonesty with the American people (Stanford University  historian David M. Kennedy tactfully  refers to the president’s ‘frequently cagey misrepresentations’) in 1940 and 1941 – plain enough if one reads nothing more than his pre-Pearl Harbor correspondence with Winston Churchill – is counted among his principal qualifications for ‘greatness’ and for his (to my mind, incomprehensible) status as an American demigod.”

I’d like to turn to another “good” conspiracy theory: the string of political assassinations in the 1960s. Once more, let’s turn to Murray Rothbard; “John F. Kennedy; Malcolm X; Martin Luther King; Robert F. Kennedy; and now George Corley Wallace: the litany of political assassinations and attempts in the last decade rolls on. In each of these atrocities, we are fed with a line of cant from the liberals and from the Establishment media. In the first place, every one of these assassinations is supposed to have been performed, must have been performed, by ‘one lone nut’ – to which we can add the one lone nut who murdered Lee Harvey Oswald in the prison basement. One loner, a twisted psycho, whose motives are therefore of course puzzling and obscure, and who never, never acted in concert with anyone. (The only exception is the murder of Malcolm, where the evident conspiracy was foisted upon a few lowly members of the Black Muslims.) Even in the case of James Earl Ray, who was mysteriously showered with money, false passports, and double identities, and who vainly tried to claim that he was part of a conspiracy before he was shouted down by the judge and his own lawyer – even there the lone nut theory is stubbornly upheld. It is not enough that our intelligence is systematically insulted with me lone nut theory; we also have to be bombarded with the inevitable liberal hobby horses: a plea for gun control, Jeremiads about our ‘sick society’ and our ‘climate of violence’, and, a new gimmick, blaming the war in Vietnam for this climate and therefore for the assault on George Wallace. Without going into the myriad details of Assassination Revisionism, doesn’t anyone see a pattern in our litany of murdered and wounded, a pattern that should leap out at anyone willing to believe his eyes? For all of the victims have had one thing in common: all were, to a greater or lesser extent, important anti-Establishment figures, and, what is more were men with the charismatic capacity to mobilize large sections of the populace against our rulers. All therefore constituted ‘populist’ threats against the ruling elite, especially if we focus on the mainstream ‘right-center’ wing of the ruling classes. Even as Establishmenty a figure as John F, Kennedy, the first of the victims, had the capacity to mobilize large segments of the public against the center-right Establishment.”

Let’s do everything we can to promote “good” conspiracy theories, following the path of the great Murray Rothbard!

The post The Conspiracy Theory of History appeared first on LewRockwell.

Sometimes I think it’s astonishing how aggressively Israel’s supporters work to stomp out criticism of Israel. Then I remember that these people also support mass murdering children; trying to take away my speech rights is one of their less evil goals. It shouldn’t shock me.

I saw someone talking online about how crazy it is that music groups who speak out against Israel’s atrocities are starting to form alliances with each other in an effort to counteract the campaign to silence them and destroy their careers, saying it shouldn’t be necessary to form an alliance in order to oppose an ongoing genocide. And that’s true, it shouldn’t be necessary. But it also shouldn’t surprise us that people who think bombing hospitals is fine would try to cancel musicians for criticizing Israel.

One mistake westerners keep making is thinking of Israel’s supporters as normal people with normal moral standards just because we happen to know them and interact with them in our communities. They look like us, speak like us, dress like us and act like us, so we assume they must think and feel a lot like us as well.

But they don’t. If you’re still supporting Israel in the year 2025, there’s something seriously wrong with you as a person. You do not have a normal, healthy sense of empathy and morality.

It’s 2025. Israeli soldiers are telling the Israeli press that they’re being ordered to massacre starving civilians trying to obtain food from aid centers. Countless doctors have been telling the world that Israeli snipers are routinely, deliberately shooting children in the head and chest throughout the Gaza Strip. Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and all the leading genocide experts and human rights authorities are saying that a genocide is being perpetrated in Gaza. The New York fucking Times just published an op-ed by a Zionist genocide scholar who’s finally admitting that it’s a genocide.

There’s no way to deny what this is anymore. If you still support Israel in the year 2025, it’s not because you don’t believe Israel is committing horrific atrocities. It’s because you believe those horrific atrocities are good, and you want to see more of them.

Most Israel supporters will deny that this is the case, because they lie. They lie constantly. They have no moral problem with lying. They have no moral problem with burning children alive, so of course they have no problem with lying.

That’s where people go wrong. They assume Israel supporters can’t possibly be lying about their concerns about “antisemitism” in order to promote the information interests of Israel, because nobody could be that evil. But Israel supporters think it’s fine to intentionally starve babies by blockading baby formula from entering Gaza. Of course they are that evil.

People assume Israel’s supporters wouldn’t deliberately stage fake antisemitic incidents or artificially inflate antisemitism figures in their own countries so that their governments will implement authoritarian measures to stomp out criticism of Israel in the name of fighting antisemitism, because they assume nobody could be that depraved. But these people think it’s fine for the IDF to systematically assassinate Palestinian journalists to stop them from telling the truth. Of course they are that depraved.

Of course they’d try to silence our speech. Of course they’d try to send our kids off to war with Iran. Of course they’d work to manipulate our government. Of course they’d pollute the information ecosystem with mountains of lies. They support a live-streamed genocide. They’re bad people.

Supporting Israel and its actions is not some political opinion like your position on property taxes or marijuana legalization. It’s not just some people having a point of view we need to respect and treat as equal to our own view on the matter. They’re working to make it possible to conduct an extermination campaign of unfathomable horror. That’s as political as a gang rape, and just as worthy of respect.

There’s not really anything you can put past Israel’s supporters at this point. They will lie. They will manipulate. They will pretend to believe things they do not believe. They will pretend to feel things they do not feel. And they will do these things to facilitate some of the worst atrocities you can possibly imagine.

This is who Israel’s supporters are. They’re showing you who they are every single day. See here.

Comment by PCR:  It is shameful how weak, cowardly, and corrupt people are.  They will support genocide rather than to criticize Israel.

The post The Total Unaccountability of Israel Demonstrates the Moral Failure of the Western World appeared first on LewRockwell.

In a culture where every contour of the public life assists in communicating the message of Jesus Christ, the first citizen of the realm will be the Church, she who is both Bride and Body of Christ, the beloved one whom God Himself has chosen and designated to be Mother of all who have been redeemed in Christ. Followed by the Church is the family which, by hallowed and repeated usage, forms the domestic Church, whose actions are meant to model the life of the Holy Family. And, finally, there is the individual.

But this is not the isolated individual, uprooted from the sources that nourish and give life. If it is to be a culture of life, one whose lineaments have been shaped by the event of Jesus Christ, then it will not impede the actions of the true self, averse to all that is best for it; but only the atomized self, the self-determined self, living apart from others in a state of enmity and opposition to anything that tries to thwart its appetites and desires.

Here, then, are the two contrasting styles which currently contend for mastery in the public life, each refusing to settle for anything less than a complete sweep of the culture, however fiercely at variance their views of ultimate reality may be. On the one hand, there is the solipsist, the one who lives for himself alone, whose appetite for pleasure must not be trifled with by appeals to altruism or the common good. While, on the other hand, there is the selfless man, who lives entirely for God and neighbor and whose highest civic ambition is to assist in the creation of a genuinely Christian culture. Now, to be sure, the adherents of each remain rooted in a finite world, anchored therefore to the same contingent state we must all endure, which means neither one can possibly lay claim to being the cause of its own existence.

By that plain and ineluctable fact, therefore, each necessarily stands in relation to an Infinite and Absolute Other. But whereas the solipsist aims to absolutize himself, standing in majestic isolation from God, in defiance of God, while constantly disdaining the company of others, the genuinely selfless man is content to bow down before the true and everlasting Absolute and, thus, to serve others because they bear His image. It is he who, in accepting his creaturely status, his radical dependency upon Another, is free to give himself away and thus find and fulfill himself in doing so. He alone understands that before God or neighbor, the same truth applies: that in order to be at all, one must remain always in relation to another.

The Mexican poet Octavio Paz put it well when he said, “In the North American ethic, the center is the individual; in Hispanic morals, on the other hand, the true protagonist is the family.” Or, to give it a more acerbic spin, there is this from the writer Richard Rodriguez, who writes that while in Mexico “life is tragic and everyone is Catholic and cheerful, in the United States, which is Protestant and optimistic, everyone is depressed.” A variation perhaps on the same paradox might be the comment made by Frank Sheed, the famous Catholic apologist, who would often opine, “I find absolutely no grounds for optimism, and I have every reason for hope.”

Apart from God, then, on what basis will such hope be found? Only a God who is Himself a Holy Family, and thus the ultimate ground and model for a culture rooted in the family—where membership is precisely defined by the relations that both distinguish and define them, to recall the celebrated definition offered by Boethius: “Substance comprehends unity. Relation multiplies Trinity.” Chesterton was able to say the same thing, of course, only more simply: “It is not well for God to be alone.”

Surely this is what accounts for the fact that both the idea and the institution of a Confessional Order—where the Triune God is first, followed by the family of the Church, along with her countless progeny configured to God’s own inner life—emerged not out of the Northern European and Protestant countries but out of Catholic Spain, whose very identity as a nation and a people was forged in the Faith of the Catholic Thing.

And what, finally, is the Confessional State? It is not a juridical theory, although much ink has been spilled by scholars who have often theorized about it. It is, rather, an act and expression of love, in which one gives to one’s neighbor and the society in which they both live the very best thing that one has: namely, the truth about Jesus Christ, and the way of life He has come among us to establish.

Christopher Dawson, the eminent Catholic historian and sociologist, who has left us dozens of books on the subject of religion and culture, insisting that nothing is more natural than that men should seek to integrate the two, called it, quite simply, Christendom, which he defined as “a political society whose principle of unity is the public profession of the Christian faith.” This is not unlike St. Augustine’s description, incidentally, which he set down in the early fifth century in his great work The City of God: “A gathering of reasonable men united by the things for which they have a shared love.”

One could perhaps put it in more epigrammatic form by quoting the last heir to the Roman Catholic Empire of Europe, Archduke Otto von Habsburg, who, speaking of the future of Europe, remarked pithily, “The Cross does not need Europe; Europe needs the Cross.”

What did he mean by that? He meant that for Europe to recover her soul, the meaning and purpose of her existence as a people, she would need to first rediscover her roots in the Christian religion, which is to say, the Roman Catholic Church. It is in Christ’s Church alone that we trace the origins and development of Western Culture, she having both created and sustained the patrimony inherited from Israel, Greece, and Rome, catalyzing so great and far reaching an explosion of mind and spirit that, even now, we continue to draw inspiration from its source.

Read the Whole Article

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[This article was first published by Global Research. You may read it here.]

The article below was first published on July 8, 2016.

America’s preemptive nuclear doctrine was firmly entrenched prior to Donald Trump’s accession to the White House. The use of nukes against North Korea has been on the drawing board of the Pentagon for more than half a century.

In June 2016 under the Obama administration, top military brass together with the CEOs of the weapons industry debated the deployment of nuclear weapons against Russia, China, Iran and North Korea.

The event was intended to sensitize senior decision makers. The focus was on building a consensus (within the Armed Forces, the science labs, the nuclear industry, etc) in favor of preemptive nuclear war.

It was a form of “internal propaganda” intended for senior decision makers (top officials) within the military as well as the weapons industry. The emphasis was on “building peace” and “global security” through the “preemptive” deployment of nukes (air, land and sea) against four designated “rogue” countries, which allegedly are threatening the Western world.

One of the keynote speakers at the Doomsday Forum, USAF Chief of Staff for Nuclear Integration, Gen. Robin Rand, is presently involved under the helm of Secretary of Defense General Mattis in coordinating the deployment of strike capabilities to East Asia. Gen. Robin Rand heads the Air Force’s nuclear forces and bombers. His responsibility consists in “moving ahead with plans to deploy its most advanced weapons to the [East Asian] region…” Recent reports confirm an unfolding consensus within the military establishment:

“Military leaders regularly, and since the change of administration, have listed China, Russia, North Korea, Iran, and ISIS as the major areas of concern for the future. From a security standpoint, tensions with North Korea continue to escalate, with reverberations throughout the region. In response to Pyongyang’s nuclear missile program, … the U.S. sped up the deployment of THAAD anti-missile interceptors to South Korea. This may reassure Seoul, and to a lesser extent Tokyo, but it has incensed Beijing.” (Defense One, March 17, 2017)

The DPRK is a a buffer state, a “stepping stone.” The unspoken truth is that the THAAD missiles stationed in South Korea are not intended for the DPRK, they are also slated to be used against China and Russia.

—Michel Chossudovsky, 6 August 2022

On June 21, 2017, 250 top military brass, military planners, corporate military-industrial “defense” contractors, top officials and scientists from the nuclear weapons laboratories as well as prominent academics gathered at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Albuquerque, New Mexico to discuss, debate and promote the Pentagon’s One Trillion Dollar Nuclear Weapons program.

Russia is allegedly “threatening the Western world.” The objective is to develop the preemptive use of nuclear weapons (i.e., nuclear war as a means of self-defense).

The event organized by “The Strategic Deterrent Coalition” (a non profit organization) was funded by Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Orbital ATK, BAE Systems among other generous donors.

Among the main speakers (see program here) were Adm. Cecil Haney, Commander of the US Strategic Command (STRATCOM), Lt. Gen. Jack Weinstein, Dep. USAF Chief of Staff for Nuclear Integration, Gen. Robin Rand, Commander, Air Force Global Strike Command, Gen. (ret.) Frank Klotz, Administrator, National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), as well senior officials from America’s top weapons labs including Sandia, Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore. Representatives from the UK, Canada, Denmark and the Republic of Korea (ROK) were also in attendance.

According to STRATCOM Commander Adm. Cecil D. Haney, (image below)

“America is quickly running out of time to ensure the viability of its nuclear deterrence and must invest the funds to upgrade not only its nuclear weapons stockpile, but the missiles, submarines and bombers capable of delivering a strike we hope we never have to make.” (Albuquerque Journal, June 22, 2016)

Adm. Haney refers to “deterrence,” a Cold War concept which was officially scrapped in 2002 (under the 2001 Nuclear Posture Review). What is contemplated under America’s nuclear doctrine is the first strike preemptive use of nuclear weapons against both nuclear as well as non-nuclear states.

The enemies of America were clearly identified. The aggressor nations against which the “preemptive” use (for self-defense) of advanced nuclear weapons is contemplated were explicitly mentioned:

Haney presented an overview of the world’s “strategic environment” which he said may be at its most precarious point in history – in large part because of the actions of Russia, China, North Korea, Iran and extremist groups such as the Islamic State and al-Qaida.

Russia poses a threat just by virtue of the size of its nuclear arsenal, which it continues to modernize, but it’s also improving its conventional military forces, maintaining a significant quantity of non-strategic nuclear weapons and aggressively pursuing new war-fighting technologies, he said. (Albuquerque Journal, June 22, 2016)

The event sponsored by the Strategic Deterrent Coalition (SDC) was geared towards the “education of decision-makers on the importance of a “valid nuclear triad” – strategic bombers, land-launched missiles and submarine-launched missiles – according to its board president, Sherman McCorkle.” The notion of Triad “relates to the fact that U.S. strategic nuclear weapons are based in the water, on land and in the air.”

Propaganda: Sensitizing “Top Officials”

The SDC’s “educational endeavor” largely consists in building a consensus in favor of preemptive nuclear war (within the Armed Forces, the science labs, the nuclear industry, etc). It is a form of “internal propaganda” intended for senior decision makers (top officials) within the military as well as the weapons industry. The emphasis is “building peace” and “global security” through the “preemptive” deployment of nukes (air, land and sea) against four designated “rogue” countries, which allegedly are threatening the Western world.

The debate was coupled with veiled threats pointing to the possible use of nuclear warheads on a first strike basis against Russia, North Korea and Iran:

Coupled with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s rhetoric and “destabilizing actions in Syria and Ukraine,” Haney cautioned that “Russia must understand that it would be a serious miscalculation to consider nuclear escalation as a viable option.”

North Korea continues to undermine regional stability by conducting nuclear tests and advancing its ballistic missile technology, Haney said.

Iran’s continued involvement in Middle East conflicts and development of ballistic missile programs and cyberspace capabilities require vigilance, particularly if there are any shifts in Iran’s nuclear ambitions, he said. (Albuquerque Journal, June 22, 2016)

Theater of the absurd: the US is intent upon using nuclear weapons as a means of self defense against Al Qaeda and ISIS under the Administration’s counter-terrorism initiative:

And the United States is part of an international campaign against violent extremist organizations groups “seeking to destroy our democratic way of life.”

To effectively keep adversaries and potential adversaries in check, America must maintain “a safe, secure, effective and ready nuclear deterrent.”

Lest we forget, Al Qaeda was created by the CIA and the ISIS is supported and funded by two of America’s staunchest allies: Turkey and Saudi Arabia.

The One Trillion Dollar Question: “Blow up the Planet”, “Bankrupt the Country”

“Blowing up the Planet” through the use of “peace-making nuclear bombs” is a money-making undertaking, a corporate bonanza for what Eisenhower called “the military industrial complex”:

“All three legs of the “nuclear triad” must receive considerable investments to ensure their long-term viability.” (Adm. Haney, op cit)

The expenditure is for a 30-year program to “modernize” the US nuclear arsenal and production facilities. … This plan, which has received almost no attention by the mass media, includes redesigned nuclear warheads, as well as new nuclear bombers, submarines, land-based missiles, weapons labs and production plants. The estimated cost? $1,000,000,000,000.00 — or, for those readers unfamiliar with such lofty figures, $1 trillion.

Critics charge that the expenditure of this staggering sum will either bankrupt the country or, at the least, require massive cutbacks in funding for other federal government programs. (Prof. Lawrence S. Wittner, The History News Network)

Hillary Clinton –whose election campaign is also supported by Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman et al.— favors the first strike use of nuclear weapons:

… “the nuclear option should not at all be taken off the table. That has been my position consistently.” (ABC News, December 15, 2015)

“I want the Iranians to know that if I’m president, we will attack Iran. In the next 10 years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them.” (ABC “Good Morning America.”, quoted by Reuters, April 22, 2008 during 2008 presidential election campaign)

The world is at a dangerous crossroads. A new arms race has been launched. Its planning horizon is 30 years. The money allocated by the US federal government to the development of America’s preemptive nuclear war arsenal is of the order of one trillion dollars, that is the preliminary estimate, an astronomical amount (which could be increased):

“Today, our stockpile is the oldest it’s ever been, with the average age of a (nuclear) warhead at 27 years and growing,” he said.

The nation’s national security labs – like Sandia, Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore – are key to ensuring the viability of the nuclear arsenal.

Despite the challenges, Haney said, “U.S. Strategic Command is a ready force capable of delivering comprehensive war-fighting solutions.”

In response to this venue, the Los Alamos Study Group (LASG) organized a counter-event symposium on June 20-21. The LASG referred to the Strategic Deterrent Coalition’s Symposium as the “Doomsday Forum”.

According to Los Alamos Study Group (LASG) director Greg Mello:

“This Symposium comes at a time when ambitious US nuclear weapons plans, expected to cost $1 trillion over the next 30 years, are coming under withering criticism from recent US senior military and civilian defense officials, independent analysts, members of Congress, and diplomats”.

The nuclear weapons plan constitutes a multibillion dollar bonanza, ironically, for the military industrial contractors which generously financed the Symposium:

“…Air Force nuclear weapons replacements and upgrades are expected to cost hundreds of billions of dollars. Much of that money would go to the sponsors of this symposium.“

This important event –which consists in building a consensus in favor of a possible first strike preemptive US nuclear attack against Russia, China, Iran and North Korea– has barely been covered by the mainstream media.

Oops….The organizers must have got their countries mixed up: North Korea was on the list of invitees. Canada was not mentioned. (See below)

This article was originally published on MichelChossudovsky.substack.com.

The post The Doomsday Forum appeared first on LewRockwell.

People often project their values onto others. But cultural frameworks can be profoundly alien. What passes for virtue in one society may be incomprehensible—or nonexistent—in another. Predictably, well-meaning interventions from the outside often fail to achieve their intended goals. Without grasping the moral foundation of a culture, outsider solutions rarely reach the root and usually exacerbate the rot.

What looks like righteous indignation in Indians—especially to Western observers shaped by the Ten Commandments—is often just fury at being out-scammed, deprived, or physically harmed. Virtue-signaling comes easily to those who lack inner values or original thought. Indian moral posturing is mostly for Western eyes, where it can yield material or reputational gain. Within India, moral appeals carry no weight and instead invite ridicule. Conscience is not a private compass but a public costume—worn only when it might be seen.

The Indian mind, in its unaltered state—untouched by Western ideas—shuns moral reflection. For those who believe they’ve “arrived,” nothing is more gratifying than testing power and watching others suffer. Sadism becomes self-affirmation. It is not enough to cause pain; prolonging another’s suffering becomes a performance of superiority. The ultimate thrill is not justice or truth, but the sight of others on their knees, begging.

The powerless imitate this in another register. During highly charged spectacles—such as when a girl publicly claims victimhood—crowds gather not to uphold justice but to revel in the drama. Disinterested in evidence, they perform “chivalry” through mob energy: blind to their cowardice, drunk on shared chaos. It is not solidarity, but the thrill of spectacle—a counterfeit belonging forged in hatred.

In such frenzied states, individuals dissolve into the mob, feeling momentarily invincible, as if even the impossible lies within reach. But sooner or later, they collide with reality and collapse under its weight, as evidenced by India’s wretchedness, dysfunction, and lawlessness. Yet in that moment, the illusion of power is intoxicating and cathartic, numbing them to their own pain and humiliating existence.

This reveals a deeper pathology: the mimicry of Western moral language without the culture of introspection that gave rise to it. Words like “justice,” “equality,” and “human rights” are wielded not as moral commitments but as tools of leverage. Had India never encountered the West, such hypocrisy might not exist. But mimicry without soul corrodes, not uplifts. Stripped of their roots and filtered through corrupt systems and unformed minds, these terms collapse into incoherence.

A real community requires discipline, goodwill, and moral clarity—virtues that cannot take root in minds addicted to noise, chaos, and spectacle. Civilization does not emerge from nature; it is forged over millennia through restraint, trust, and moral effort. It grows not in frenzy, but in the quiet labor of responsibility and mutual regard.

And so India drapes its primal urges in borrowed virtue—never confronting the abyss within, only decorating it. What remains is moral staleness and cultural decay. Tribes—never “noble savages” to begin with—have, in imitating a Western façade, devolved into slums fouled by sewage, plagued by disease, and ruled by opportunism and crime.

Western observers often mistake Indian gestures for evidence of shared values. But what they see is not empathy—it is simulation.

In the West, conscience was shaped through centuries of religious introspection, legal reasoning, and philosophical debate, yielding an inner moral law responsive to something higher than group identity or convenience. In India, by contrast, magical thinking and herd instinct prevail.

Western institutions emerged only after a critical mass of individuals began to think in moral and rational terms. The spark of conscience came first. Institutions were built to preserve and transmit those hard-won insights. At least in principle, they exist to cultivate independent judgment, moral reasoning, and accountability to something beyond blood, tribe, or caste. They orient the mind toward truth.

Legal institutions in India were not the fruit of moral or philosophical insight—colonial powers imposed them. Once handed over to Indian control, the spirit of justice, institutional restraint, and the rule of law were gutted and perverted. Bureaucrats extract bribes—and take sadistic pleasure in doing so.

Severed from any moral foundation, institutions lose meaning. In a culture where virtues are unrewarded and even punished, character is a liability. Survival depends not on principle, but on cunning.

Whether in the family, at school, in the temple, or in the state, Indian institutions exist primarily to control, entrench hierarchy, and enable predation. Teachers demand rote obedience. Religious leaders enforce hollow rituals, not reflection. The individual’s moral development is not merely neglected—it is systematically crushed.

It took me more than a year of living in the UK even to begin grasping what “truth” meant. Until then, truth was simply whatever worked in the moment, whatever was most expedient.

Until this fundamental divergence between the West and India is acknowledged, one side will continue to believe it is engaged in a shared moral conversation. At the same time, the other will merely calculate how best to exploit its terms.

Christian missionaries and British administrators tried to awaken a moral conscience in India. But after three centuries, their influence remained largely superficial. Whatever gains were made have since decayed into mimicry—gestures without conviction, language without inner transformation. Lacking deep roots, these borrowed ideals now obstruct real, bottom-up reform.

What is often mistaken for “honor” in India is, in truth, ego. When a daughter is raped, the family’s first instinct is not to seek justice, but to suppress the event. Were it true honor they wished to preserve, they would hunt down the perpetrator without pause. But it is not virtue they fear losing—it is face. What drives them is not moral outrage but social embarrassment.

What we call “honor killing” should, more truthfully, be called “ego killing.”

Without a moral or rational compass, expediency and material gratification become the only guides. Even the superficial shame imposed by colonial presence has long since faded. However, that shame was never internalized—it was merely a superficial layer, incapable of penetrating the deeper structure of Indian psychology.

Many marriage-age Indian girls fast weekly for Lord Shiva, hoping to secure “good husbands.” But in this cultural lexicon, what counts as “good”? Ask, and the answer almost always revolves around financial status and fair skin. Skin-lightening creams, including those marketed for intimate areas, dominate the cosmetics market. Parents openly inquire about the bribes a prospective groom receives.

In India, corruption carries no stigma; the corrupt are admired for their ability to extract and manipulate. Power—not character—is the highest virtue. This logic defines what matters to the bride, her family, and society as a whole.

Guilt and gratitude are hard to find.

I remember the arranged marriage of a female relative. Nearly a hundred people from the groom’s side traveled from a distant city. As hosts, my grandfather and father bore all expenses and provided the dowry. But after the ceremony—once the bride had moved to the groom’s hotel—the family made a fresh demand for a substantial additional dowry. They hinted at returning the bride if the payment wasn’t made—a threat they knew would never be acted upon, since the marriage had been consummated.

In a society where apathy is the norm, where relatives gossip about your pain or quietly savor it, there was no choice but to scramble for the money, whatever the cost, however deep the shame. This is life in a culture built on mistrust, where institutions are arbitrary and power overrides principle.

I remember the sinking feeling of that night—a familiar, formless dread I had grown up with, one that clung to me for decades, even after I left India. It was a floating abstraction, unmoored from anything objective. Born of arbitrariness, it defied resolution through simple introspection.

Despite years of inner work—deconstructing the mind and rebuilding it from the ground up—the scars remain, along with many unknown unknowns. I still catch myself hesitating over matters that, had my cognitive wiring been cleaner—fewer scars, more moral resoluteness—would feel instinctively clear.

The work was not just about managing anxiety, but about dismantling the very structure of thought and decision-making. Without a taught social conduct and mental skills rooted in reason and morality—a kind of civilizational hardwiring of the mind—the raw instincts of the flesh, and what might be called sins—envy, lust, covetousness—govern it. If such a mind is intelligent, it simply rationalizes its sinful nature.

This is the Catch-22: how does one use such a mind to resolve its own problems? Even someone who longs for change must spend decades—perhaps a lifetime—in a Sisyphean task. Which is precisely why almost no one dares to begin.

Amorality produces a social horror, leaving no one truly better off. Among the poor, life is governed by a poverty instinct—an unthinking surrender to impulse, a compulsive descent into short-term gratification. Worse, every decision seems to spiral downward, almost suicidally, as if their compass points toward the cesspool—one a rational observer might not even know existed, let alone imagine anyone would return to after being offered a way out. “The dog returns to its vomit, and the sow that was washed returns to her wallowing in the mud.” Offer them opportunities, extend help, and yet they slide back—effortlessly, almost mechanically—into the same wretchedness.

Among the powerful, things are no better. They are atomized and paranoid; the closer they are to someone, the less they trust them. Their days are consumed by scheming, extracting, and indulging the same base instincts. Even when they succeed financially, they remain anxious and joyless. Once their youth fades, their bodies and minds begin to decay. Their wealth—often built on the mindset of expropriation of public resources—leaves them in an ecology that is ugly, polluted, unsafe, and spiritually barren. Their children, raised without conscience or purpose, grow up self-absorbed, incapable of value creation—a liability, and often, their greatest threat. Intelligence without morality may be an engine, but it is a rudderless one.

Someone raised in a society grounded in morality and reason might assume that shedding magical thinking, creating a moral fabric, or escaping the anxiety bred by an arbitrary, Orwellian environment, is as easy as flipping a switch. But that is projection. He mistakes his own moral and cognitive framework for a universal baseline. Moral people struggle to grasp the nature of evil and depravity; intelligent people, the depth of stupidity.

I often wonder what the emotional inner world must look like for others, especially young girls from lower castes growing up in the slums. If one dared to psychoanalyze it honestly, one might not find agency or reflection at all, but something mechanical, almost unconscious—a mind shaped not by values, but by raw survival.

On the many occasions I’ve tried to help, I’ve rarely encountered righteous indignation. What I found instead was a readiness to barter dignity for crumbs. They were sheepish—unable or unwilling to assert themselves—and betrayed those trying to help, without guilt, without hesitation. There was no horizon of tomorrow—only the hunger and bargaining of now.

I once had a maid—a beautiful woman in her early thirties—with six or seven children, all of whom were daughters, except for the youngest. One day, she arrived with one side of her face so swollen that her eye had nearly vanished. She confided in me about her life.

As a young girl, she had been kidnapped by a man and locked away in a remote village, completely cut off from escape or help. In her world, a girl who had been raped was seen as public property. Her family would have disowned her, society would have shunned her, and no institution would offer protection or support—she knew instinctively that the very systems meant to guard the vulnerable preyed on them.

The man who had abducted her became, in time, the person I came to know as her husband.

Naive and idealistic, I encouraged her to report the incident to the police and enroll her daughters in school. Then one day, I noticed that her eldest, around thirteen years old, had been missing for several days. Calmly, almost casually, she told me she had sent the girl to someone unknown, far from Delhi. She had, in effect, sold her own daughter to sexual slavery.

It became clear she was not just a victim of her culture, but a vessel for perpetuating it. I gave up trying to change her world. These days, I observe events in India as I would a documentary—distant, unalterable, and morally inert. It is what it is. Indignation has no purchase in a society without moral architecture.

Many of society’s ills are intricately intertwined. Whether through fear, ignorance, or self-interest, whole communities become complicit. These abuses cannot be undone by law or policy alone—especially in a culture that lacks the will, the conscience, or the imagination to change.

Women being arrested and then raped at police stations is tragically common. When I was at university, a group of boys visited a prostitute. The police raided the brothel, took a bribe, and let the boys go. The woman was detained. I later learned she could barely walk the next day—raped by the very officers sworn to protect her. The judge showed no interest in her condition. Society believed she had gotten what she deserved.

Fairness and justice are alien concepts to Indians. Ask someone to be considerate, and they often laugh. Worse still, many take pleasure in cruelty.

When I first lived in the UK, I had very little money. I survived on rotten potatoes, boiled rice, baked beans, and peanut butter. Yet many who knew my situation helped me find work. Institutions supported me, though, in hindsight, it was not their duty to assist an international student who claimed he could support himself.

In India, the opposite holds true: the higher one rises, the more predatory and sadistic one becomes. Every institutional interaction is transactional. Favors are granted with condescension and always come at a price. Strangers constantly size you up. If you come from a lower-class family, you face open abuse, exploitation, and degradation.

Over time, media exposure and Western feminist influence produced a patchwork of pro-women laws. But these laws were built on sand. Without the philosophical foundations that guided British legal reform—principles such as individual rights, due process, and moral reasoning—these laws yielded unintended consequences, exacerbating the situation. Concepts such as individual rights, due process, and universal justice—born from centuries of legal evolution in the West—found no fertile soil in India. The result was not justice, but distortion.

Without a moral culture, institutions decay into tools of manipulation and control, perpetuating the very abuses they claim to prevent. The police continued to prey on the most vulnerable—poor women and orphaned boys—where sodomy was disturbingly common. Male victims who sought help at police stations were mocked, dismissed, or further victimized.

The new legal framework enabled imprisonment based solely on accusations of rape, without requiring evidence. A woman could live with a man for years and later accuse him of rape throughout the relationship. In a functioning system, such claims would warrant serious investigation. Instead, a toxic combination of cowardice, opportunism, stupidity, and corruption caused police to shirk their duties. They passed unexamined cases to the courts, focusing instead on extracting bribes.

Corrupt judges, eager to appear virtuous, accepted a woman’s word at face value—even when evidence suggested otherwise—condemning men to prison as cases dragged on for years or decades. More commonly, however, the judge took a hefty bribe on the first day and let the accused walk free.

Over time, many middle-class women came to believe they could act with impunity. Today, any legal dispute involving a woman is reflexively recast as sexual assault, regardless of evidence or facts. Meanwhile, most genuine cases of rape go unreported. It is not uncommon for a real victim who insists on pursuing justice against a powerful man to vanish with police complicity.

In a society steeped in cowardice, subservience, intellectual laziness—and indeed, cuckishness—people habitually believe a woman’s word over objective truth. Indian men exalt women publicly while surrendering moral authority within their own homes. Mothers wield near-total control over child-rearing, shaping the emotional and ethical worldview of the next generation. In practice, India is not a patriarchy but a matriarchy—one that rules through emotional blackmail, superstition, and passive domination rather than moral guidance or rational order.

This emotional matriarchy leaves a deep imprint on children. Boys grow up without a model of principled masculinity, facing only a choice between tyrannical fathers and emotionally manipulative mothers. Girls learn that power lies in passive aggression, guilt, and appearance. The result is a society where neither gender is equipped to think morally, act rationally, or take responsibility. Children are not taught to cultivate conscience or independent judgment; instead, they absorb a worldview shaped by superstition, shame, and emotional coercion—passed down uncritically from one generation to the next.

It is crucial to emphasize that the public exaltation of women in India is not rooted in respect because respect, as a virtue, requires both morality and reason. What masquerades as reverence is a projection of women’s perceived sexual power, mixed with a shallow substitute for intimacy and self-worth. But this idolization is unstable. Just as a powerful man is swiftly cut down when he loses status, a woman who appears vulnerable—especially before a faceless crowd of men—can quickly become a target. Without moral foundations, the same impulses that worship her can turn predatory in an instant.

Women should have gained awareness of their rights. However, the very idea of rights does not take root in a culture where moral introspection and rational thought have never been cultivated. Without that foundation, any privilege extended to women is quickly weaponized, stripped of principle, and bent to serve personal advantage. Such privileges are not even well-meaning to begin with; they are granted for the sake of demagoguery.

When I was growing up, profanity marked you as low-class. Boys and girls sat in separate rows, and girls dressed modestly, with legs and chests fully covered. Promiscuity was unheard of in small-town life, though rumors attributed it to remote villages untouched by Victorian shame. Divorce was virtually nonexistent. Even drinking was hidden: bars had curtained booths, and alcohol itself was a source of quiet disgrace.

Then came the internet. It opened up unprecedented communication channels with the West and flooded India with opportunity. As the country absorbed vast amounts of the West’s back-office work, many believed this exposure would educate, uplift, and civilize Indians. Closer connection with the West promised economic growth, cultural refinement, female empowerment, and perhaps even a moral renaissance.

Over time, it became clear that India had not absorbed the West’s highest values. It had latched onto the lowest. Divorce rates soared in major cities. Drinking became a sign of sophistication, while those who abstained were mocked. Promiscuity, once unthinkable, spread rapidly. Women began stepping out in short pajamas almost overnight. In a total inversion of what we once admired—refinement, self-restraint, manners—low-class behavior became aspirational.

Western feminism—once rooted in deep philosophical struggles for liberty, personhood, and dignity—was imported into India stripped of its moral foundation. It arrived as fashion, not philosophy. Empowerment was reduced to vulgarity, rebellion to posturing. Instead of cultivating strength through self-possession or inner clarity, Indian women were encouraged to mimic the most garish traits of the West’s cultural underclass: aggression without courage, sexuality without self-respect, and outrage without introspection. What should have sparked a moral awakening became a spectacle of borrowed rage, untethered from any inner struggle for truth.

Indian television began romanticizing the mythical past while promoting some of the worst modern vices—unhealthy relationships, casual sex, and substance abuse. Growing up, we were utterly unaware of drugs; now, their use is rampant. A few decades ago, Indian girls would never have used profanities. Today, vulgarity is a badge of sophistication. To appear “cool,” a girl must casually deploy the most grotesque language.

“Wokeness” has been imported wholesale into India. Those who don’t virtue-signal according to its dogmas are dismissed as backward. But virtue signaling provides the illusion of moral depth without the burden of thought. With no one to challenge it, the shallow appear enlightened, facing no cost for their hypocrisy. Even abroad, Indian women have mastered the optics of social justice, fluent in its vocabulary but detached from its roots.

In India, public performance and private conduct rarely align—a contradiction smoothed over by habitual hypocrisy. The irrational mind feels no dissonance.

The West’s values were earned through centuries of religious introspection, political struggle, and moral philosophy, driven not by convenience but by conscience—a relentless pursuit of truth. India has not Westernized—it has mimicked the West’s underclass and called it progress. Education is a badge, not discipline; ethics, mere imitation; enlightenment, a caricature absorbed without effort and wielded without understanding.

Schooled in Western phrases but untouched by Western thought, India’s elite wear borrowed language like a costume, invoking liberty, dignity, and secularism without grasping their meaning. For them, modernity is a lifestyle brand, not a moral evolution. They speak of freedom while enforcing conformity. For them, hypocrisy is not a flaw—it is the organizing principle of their lives. Institutions reward appearances over truth.

The failure of the Indian elite to develop a social and moral consciousness, and worse, that the higher they go, the more sadistic and exploitative they become, ensures that India continues to degrade.

Colonialism imposed laws, language, and institutions on India, but left its conscience untouched or hardened by resentment. Modernity became a public mask, discarded in private. True civilization demands painful inner transformation, not cosmetic change.

Real progress requires confronting the void within—a spiritual emptiness that has long been ignored. Awakening cannot come from slogans or mimicry; it must be suffered into existence.

Without a foundation in morality or reason, Indians mistook Western civilization’s fruits—prosperity, pleasure, ease—for its roots. They imported only what they recognized: the indulgences of America’s underclass. The deeper virtues—introspection, discipline, spiritual ambition—remained invisible. Western ideals were stripped of substance and repurposed to satisfy the most primitive appetites.

The post Corruption Is Deep-rooted appeared first on LewRockwell.

On Tuesday, the yield on the 10-year Treasury surged nearly 10 basis points in a few hours, rising above 4.49 percent. The rising yield came after the release of new price-inflation data showing that CPI growth had hit a five-month high and remained well above the Federal Reserve’s two-percent target for price inflation. Rising yields often indicate that bond investors believe price inflation will continue to grow, so it was probably no coincidence that bond yields—especially on longer-term bonds—jumped following the report’s release.

Whatever the reason behind the rising yield, this is bad news for those who were looking for a good reason to believe that mortgage rates will significantly fall again soon. Mortgages for single-family homes closely follow the 10-year yield, and, as the 10-year yield has risen in recent years, the average 30-year mortgage more than doubled. Ity rose from under three percent in mid 2021 to above seven percent by late 2023. It has remained above six percent ever since.

Meanwhile, home prices continued to rise well into mid 2025. This combination of rising home prices and rising mortgage rates has made housing unaffordable for a growing share of propsective homebuyers.

In response to this trend, The Trump administration’s FHFA Director, Bill Pulte—a scion and nepo baby from a wealthy family of homebuilders—has demanded that the central bank intervene to force down mortgage rates in order to stimulate residential home sales and home prices. Pulte claims that Fed chairman Jerome Powell’s lack of enthusiasm for lowering interest rates is “the main reason” that there is not more home-sales activity. Pulte concludes that Powell is “hurting the mortgage market” by “improperly keeping interest rates high.” Pulte apparently believes that more people would buy homes if only the Fed fixed the situation with lower interest rates.

When the Fed intervenes to lower interest rates, monetary inflation is required. To demand lower interest rate policy—as Pulte is doing—is to demand more inflation. At the core of this inflationist position is the misconception that rising home prices—and their negative effect on homeownership—can somehow be “fixed” or rendered irrelevant by lower interest rates. This is not how things work, however. Even if mortgage rates were to go down again, rising prices mean homeowners would still be stuck with higher costs and higher property taxes that result from rising prices. Moreover, Pulte is wrong to even assume that Fed intervention via the policy interest rate would somehow, magically, bring down 30-year mortgage rates.

Problems with Rising Home Prices 

Last week, we explored the many ways that the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy and asset purchases have fueled rising home prices. There is a close correlation between the central bank’s purchases of mortgage backed securities, the falling federal funds rate, and rising home prices. Falling interest rates have fueled rising home prices. This has led to historic lows in the affordability of homeownership, and a rising average age for home owners.

As home prices have risen, homes have become less affordable. Notably, the median home price has become much larger over time, when compared to the median household income. In 1985, for example, the median home price was 3.6 times the size of annual median household income. By 2023, the median home price was 5.3 times the median household income.

Source: US Census Bureau (MSPUS and MEHOINUSA646N)

Rather than address the larger issues of asset-price inflation fueled by easy money, advocates of central planning, like Pulte, insist that the best way to “solve” the problem is to have the central bank somehow force down mortgage rates.

Assuming that the central bank has the power to do this, would it make housing more affordable? In certain ways, yes. If the only measure of affordability is the size of the monthly mortgage payment, then lower mortgage rates, all else being equal, make home purchases more affordable. For example, a $500,000 loan at 3% for 30 years will require a monthly payment (on principle and interest) of about $2100. On the other hand, the same loan at 6% will require a monthly payment of nearly 3,000 per month.

But, monthly costs associated with a home purchase do not consist of only payments on a loan’s principal and interest. Homeowners must also pay property taxes and insurance. Home buyers must also come up with down payments which, of course, are proportional to the home price. Thus, home-price inflation leads to higher down payments while also driving up property taxes—which are also tied to the home price. The monetary inflation that underlies rising home prices also tends to inflate the price of services like homeowner’s insurance. Principal and interest may be fixed in a 30-year mortgage, but taxes and insurance—which increase with price inflation—are not fixed. Thus, these costs are certainly not made irrelevant by falling interest rates.

It is not surprising that, as home prices increased in the wake of the covid panic’s runaway monetary inflation, the Atlanta Fed’s affordability index plummeted to historic lows.

Source: Atlanta Federal Reserve Bank.

We can partly see why this happened if we compare prices and income over time. In 1985, for example, the median home price was about $81,000, but rose by 406 percent to about $426,000 in 2023. Obviously, any taxes, insurance, and down payments that are proportional to the home price were far lower in 1985 than they are now. Moreover, as home prices quintupled from 1985 to 2023, median household income only increased by 241 percent, rising from about $23,000 in 1985 to $84,000 in 2023.

Source: US Census Bureau (MSPUS and MEHOINUSA646N)

These rising prices took their toll on affordability, even as interest rates were falling. For example, from 2006 through 2021, the average mortgage rate fell consistently. Yet, during most of that period, the affordability index only moved sideways.

Moreover, this proved to be unsustainable. The problem with constantly falling interest rates is that, eventually, they get so low that there’s not room to move downward. In 2021, mortgage rates were at or near all-time lows. Yet, the very small uptick in average mortgage rates that occurred from 2021 to 2025—with rates still below historically normal levels—caused affordability to collapse.

So, Pulte is simply wrong if he’s claiming that the Fed would increase the affordability of homes if only Jerome Powell would intervene to force down mortgage rates.

Does the Fed Have the Power to Reduce Mortgage Rates?

Finally, we have to ask ourselves if the Fed even has the ability to somehow force down mortgage rates by lowering the Fed’s policy interest rate. It appears that this may be possible some of the time. For example, from 2008 to 2022—a period when bond investors showed little concern over deficits or price inflation—both long-term and short-term yields declined as the Fed cut the target policy interest rate.

Those days, however, appear to be over. For example, when the Fed cut the policy rate in September of last year, the average mortgage rate increased. In the wake of the Federal Reserve’s extreme monetary inflation of 2020-2021, and as federal deficits continue to mount bond yields are likely to increase if the Fed tries to embrace a new easy money stance pushing lower interest rates.

Source: Freddie Mac.

Not only is Pulte wrong that falling mortgage rates necessarily make homeownership more affordable, he is also probably wrong that the Fed can reduce those rates by targeting a lower policy rate. If Pulte really wanted to see homes become more affordable, he would push for less monetary inflation and for lower federal deficits. He would push for the Fed to reduce its balance sheet of mortgage backed securities. All that, however, would lead to falling home prices, and that would run afoul of the administration’s Wall Street allies who incessantly demand more asset price inflation.

The post It Will Take More Than Low Interest Rates To Make Houses Affordable appeared first on LewRockwell.

What goes on in Washington is underappreciated for those of us who like a bit of humor mixed in with our politics. This past week we have been treated to a whole series of malapropisms coming out of the mouth of President Donald Trump, including the questioning of the president of Liberia Joseph Boakai by Trump over how he speaks such excellent English. “Such good English,” Trump said. “Where did you learn to speak so beautifully? In Liberia? That’s very interesting. Where were you educated? Where? In Liberia? Well, that’s very interesting. It’s beautiful English. I have people at this table who can’t speak nearly as well.” Trump presumably was not briefed on the fact that Liberia was founded by the United States to give a home to freed African-American slaves in the early 1800s and became a nation in 1847. English is its official language.

But far better than that brief interlude has been the week-long battle over releasing the “client lists” and other documents and material ostensibly relating to the Jeffrey Epstein scandal. Epstein became an extremely wealthy man with luxury homes in New York City and Palm Beach as well as a ranch in New Mexico and the private Epstein Island in the US Virgin Islands, which can reached only by boat. All his other properties were connected by virtue of his private jetliner the “Lolita Express.” Insofar as can be determined, though not actually demonstrated given the lack of documentation, Epstein may have made his millions through exploitation of pedophilia, recruiting underage girls to submit to rape to sexually service his wealthy male clients, who might then have been blackmailed.

Compilations of some publicly available court records reveal that Epstein entertained at least twenty-one billionaires, as well as leading political figures like Bill Clinton and Tony Blair, and also four former Israeli prime ministers. Clinton allegedly flew on the “Lolita Express” twenty-six times. And there were many celebrities like Prince Andrew and Robert Kraft. There is also a surprising number of Silicon Valley personalities including Bill Gates and Sergey Brin. Epstein also was a great pal of Donald Trump during their younger days when Trump was at Mar a Lago and Epstein had a waterfront mansion in Palm Beach, with Trump describing Epstein as his “best friend.” Epstein was eventually arrested on sex trafficking of minors charges and died in a New York City jail in August 2019 in what has been described by police and the White House as a suicide but which many believe to have been murder by the government to silence him.

One of the great mysteries of Epstein is how he made his vast fortune. Was he blackmailing his “clients” while having sex with the underaged women using films made from concealed video cameras in his various residences? Or was there something more sinister, like an intelligence connection with the Israeli Mossad or the CIA? There were some clear connections with Israel with the four former Israeli prime ministers having visited him at his mansion in New York City. A number of his billionaire friends were Jews with close connections to the Israeli government and Epstein’s girlfriend (and procurer) was Ghislaine Maxwell, the daughter of a prominent Israeli spy, Robert Maxwell. But the suggestion of an intelligence connection would require answers to two questions: first, what kind of information could he have hoped to obtain from his clients? And two, who would be willing to pay large sums of money for whatever information he would acquire from old men sleeping with 13 year old girls?

Drawing of my own experiences as a CIA officer in Europe during the seventies and eighties, operations using women to entice prominent men were called “honeypots” or “honeytraps.” They were only used in certain geographic areas where there were foreign diplomats from countries that were considered not friendly and therefore targets for recruitment. As I recall Vienna was particularly favored as it had numerous Russians and Eastern Europeans resident in the city during the Cold War doing jobs that linked them to their respective governments. The objective was to draw them into an illicit relationship and eventually convince them, usually by offering them money, to share the information they had about the intentions of their governments lest they be exposed for their private behavior.

As it seems unlikely that Epstein was engaged in out-and-out blackmail, perhaps the answers to those questions about what he was up to are among the many records detailing Epstein’s associates and his contacts. Trump the presidential candidate promised to make public the thousands of documents, videos and photos that were found in a safe in his New York City. If the records are ever made public, they might confirm that Epstein was indeed working for Israel, which I believe to be the case, and that would have provided motive to silence him. Imagine, for example, if it were to be confirmed that Epstein and his contacts were part of some massive spying/influencing operation directed against the US government and the American people? That would not go down well, particularly as it is well known inside counterintelligence circles in Washington that Israel is undoubtedly the most active foreign government in spying on the US and interfering in American government policies, witness only for example what it taking place in the Middle East currently with Donald Trump dancing to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s tune. And there is a precedent in large scale spying by the Jewish state in the so-called “art students” selling cosmetics at American malls before 9/11.

In any event, Donald Trump became president based on his promises to end wars and challenge the deep state by exposing the documents and stories behind Epstein, JFK, RFK and 9/11. He has, unfortunately, reneged on those promises though he has now kicked the ball down the court by ordering his Attorney General Pam Bondi to go through the Epstein material and release whatever is “credible.” If, as I suspect, Trump is trying the suppress the material revealing his closeness to Epstein, she will be loyal to her boss, find little of interest and, in particular, nothing that is incriminating in terms of the president.

Nor is Pam Bondi likely to confirm evidence of Israel’s possible spying through creation of some kind of cooperative arrangement with a large group of elite Americans who have been blackmailed. One should take note that Trump indicated initially that he would not pursue the Epstein issue just after Benjamin Netanyahu had three meetings with him during a visit that was sought by the Israeli prime minister and there was uncharacteristically no press conference afterwards to describe what was discussed. Netanyahu is known to be in political trouble in Israel due to his corruption trial and a rift with the United States at this time would be far from welcome for his supporters back at home. By that thinking, Netanyahu may have appeared in Washington to add Israel’s voice to that of the ruling deep state that release of Epstein information is a no-no. If the Epstein files were to be released, then all the effort put into collecting blackmail capability over what might be regarded as the American ruling class would be wasted. If the files are released and the information is public, the possible blackmail information, if it exists, would be mostly useless. And, more importantly, the American public would learn that Israel is seeking to blackmail the American elite to serve Israel’s, not America’s, interest.

To conclude where this article began with the impulsive belligerency and tone deafness of the current administration, President Donald Trump doesn’t want the support of any MAGA members who demand the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files and he is prepared to tell them so to their faces. That is the message he sent out in a Wednesday morning social-media diatribe followed by comments made later at the White House. Trump condemned his “PAST” supporters of buying into “bullshit.” Then he broke with them completely, saying: “Let these weaklings continue forward and do the Democrats work, don’t even think about talking of our incredible and unprecedented success, because I don’t want their support anymore!” He doubled down later in the day, again referring to those demanding more information as “stupid people” doing the Democrats’ work, words that he might very well live to regret!

Reprinted with permission from Unz Review.

The post What’s Going on in the ‘Honeypot?’ appeared first on LewRockwell.

In most debates over what caused any historical event to occur, the disputants tend to emphasize what they consider to be the most important causal factor, and minimize the influence of factors they consider to be less important. It is not so much that they dispute the relevance of contested factors in understanding the event comprehensively, but more that there is no agreement on the degree of importance that ought to be attached to those factors. Often people will emphasize the factors that fall within their own field of expertise, where they consider themselves able to contribute meaningfully to the debate. This was a basic feature of scholarly discourse before academic institutions were taken over by political activists. There is no problem with approaching any contested issue from many different perspectives in the traditional academic way, as long as it is understood that each discipline will emphasize certain factors over others. The point about debate is that the participants attempt to defend a specific position or line of argument, otherwise it would not be called a “debate.”

In the case of war, there is rarely, if ever, universal consensus on a single explanation for the causes and conduct of any war. As the great historian Clyde Wilson observes in relation to Lincoln’s war:

What a war is about has many answers according to the varied perspectives of different participants and of those who come after. To limit so vast an event as that war to one cause is to show contempt for the complexities of history as a quest for the understanding of human action.

Those who argue that Lincoln’s war was “about slavery” hold the view that while there may well have been other factors at play, in their view, slavery was the most important issue. The same applies to those who highlight the reasons Lincoln gave for launching his attack, all of which, before the outbreak of war and until at least 1863, had to do with saving the Union, securing his tariffs, and punishing the states that had the temerity to break up his empire. They would argue that the most important issue was Lincoln’s desire to fulfill these political goals.

These debates illustrate the importance of free speech and open inquiry. The truth lies in understanding all the relevant facts and examining historical events from different angles. If certain facts are arbitrarily excluded from the scope of inquiry by the morality police who gatekeep the bounds of permissible debate, then there is no hope that the truth would ever be ascertained. We would be limited to debating only what falls within the bounds of socially acceptable propaganda. In relation to Lincoln’s War, those who promote the “about slavery” explanation often resort to the methods and strategies of cancel culture to silence their opponents, their aim being to ensure that theirs is the only explanation that will ever be heard.

This explains how the economic causes of the war came to be downplayed or even dismissed. Rather than doing the hard work of showing why (in their opinion) the economic causes were not important, they seek to close down debate by the simple expedient of accusing those who mention economic causes of promoting a “lost cause.” In “The Truth About Tariffs and the War” Philip Leigh explains:

During the past thirty years most historians claim that slavery was the dominant cause of the Civil War. They increasingly insist that the South’s opposition to protective tariffs was a minimal factor, even though such tariffs were specifically outlawed in the Confederate constitution. Historian Marc-William Palen, for example, writes: “One of the most egregious of the so-called Lost Cause narratives suggests that it was not slavery, but a protective tariff that sparked the Civil War.”

Those who dismiss the tariff issue as “a lost cause narrative” really just mean that they disagree concerning the importance attached to the tariff dispute. They seek to create a sham “consensus” in which “we all agree” as to the causes of the war, and to achieve this they deem it necessary to dismiss the economic arguments about the importance of the tariff issue so that everyone can “agree” that the war was caused by slavery. How else would they create their ideal world in which nobody dissents from their precious “scholarly consensus”? The point here is that on issues so deeply-contested that universal consensus will never be achieved, it becomes even more important to air different analytical perspectives. The quest for “consensus” is inimical to open and honest inquiry and debate.

In their book Tariffs, Blockades, and Inflation: the Economics of the Civil War, Mark Thornton and Robert E. Ekelund, Jr. make the case for acquiring a better understanding of the economic causes of the war:

These comments suggest that economics is necessary to understand the causes, course, and consequences of the Civil War. Indeed, economics is a means of explaining and understanding history and all history is written with some theoretical structure, whether good or bad, implicit or explicit.… The economic history of the factors leading to war—those pertaining to both its conduct and its aftermath—demonstrates the power of modern economic analysis to provide critical insights into this seminal US conflict.

Concerning the role played by slavery in precipitating war, they explain, “Economists, however, might refer to slavery as a necessary but not a sufficient cause because other factors were required to precipitate the war at the particular time when it began.” This is an important point, especially when it is recalled that all states in the Union recognized slavery as a legal institution when the Constitution was framed. The notion that slavery would be a sufficient cause for the states to wage war against each other is easily seen to be very thin indeed.

As the Northern states industrialized, they implemented gradual emancipation often through selling their slaves to the South or by redesignating the status of slaves as indentured servants for a term—25 years in many cases. Massachusetts—the first state to legislate slavery—did not legislate to abolish it, as the end of slavery in that state was achieved by decisions of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. Further, only seven slave states seceded, with six of them doing so to join South Carolina. If slavery was the sole or primary cause of this dispute, all fifteen slave states would logically have been expected to secede. This points to the need to cast the net wider in seeking to understand the causes of the war.

The economic causes of the war relate to the prevailing economic conditions in the years preceding the war. Understanding these events is not based on a claim that economic factors are morally “more important” than other factors. What is morally important is a value judgment, and economics properly understood is not concerned with evaluating people’s motives and judging them based on who had morally good or bad motives. Economics is a value-free science. In his essay explaining what is meant by value free economics, David Gordon quotes the following passage from Ludwig von Mises:

An economist investigates whether a measure a can bring about the result p for the attainment of which it is recommended, and finds that a does not result in p but in g, an effect which even the supporters of the measure a consider undesirable. If this economist states the outcome of his investigation by saying that a is a bad measure, he does not pronounce a judgment of value. He merely says that from the point of view of those aiming at the goal p, the measure a is inappropriate. In this sense the free-trade economists attacked protection. They demonstrated that protection does not, as its champions believe, increase but, on the contrary, decreases the total amount of products, and is therefore bad from the point of view of those who prefer an ampler supply of products to a smaller. It is in this sense that economists criticize policies from the point of view of the ends aimed at. If an economist calls minimum wage rates a bad policy, what he means is that its effects are contrary to the purpose of those who recommend their application.

In making the case for studying the economic causes of the war, the argument is not that the morality of slavery is irrelevant but, on the contrary, that the discipline of economics has important lessons in understanding the war. This is not a claim that morality is unimportant, but a claim that economics is a valuable discipline whose purpose is not to evaluate morality but to explain how certain economic factors may have contributed to the situation we seek to understand. As Thornton and Ekelund argue,

…the moral centrality of the slavery issue in bringing about the war is not in debate here because it is difficult for economists to ascribe motives that would lead to this war… The discovery of motives is the purview of in-depth historical research and historical biography.

Their argument is that to ascertain the motives of the men making decisions in 1860, one would have to study those men closely—what they said, what they wrote, their background, their personality, their activities, and everything about their historical context that would shed light on their motives. This is the purview of history or historiography, not economics. Economics, unlike history, seeks not to evaluate moral or political values but only to give an explanation of means and ends—as Mises puts it, “whether a measure a can bring about the result p for which it is recommended” or whether it will instead “not result in p but in g.”

Note: The views expressed on Mises.org are not necessarily those of the Mises Institute.

The post Understanding the Causes of Lincoln’s War appeared first on LewRockwell.

In 50 days, Trump will have a serious amount of egg on his face when Russia’s defeat of the NATO proxy war becomes more evident.

What’s behind Trump’s angry ultimatum to Russia this week? The short answer: failure and frustration. Donald Trump promised American voters that he would end the Ukraine war in 24 hours upon his election in November 2024. Six months into his presidency, Trump has failed to deliver on his boastful promises.

This week, Trump flipped his pacemaker image by pledging billions of dollars worth of new American weaponry to Ukraine. He also issued a warning to Russia to call a ceasefire within 50 days or else face severe secondary tariffs on its oil and gas exports. The tariffs, quoted at 100 percent, will be applied to nations purchasing Russian exports, primarily Brazil, China, and India. The latter move indicates that the U.S.-led proxy war in Ukraine against Russia is really part of a bigger geopolitical confrontation to maintain American global hegemony.

In any case, Moscow dismissed Trump’s ultimatum. Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said that Moscow would not comply with pressure and that Russia would not back down from its strategic goals in Ukraine to counter NATO’s historic aggression.

It is clear that Trump and his administration have failed to understand Russia’s strategic position and the root causes of the conflict.

Trump’s supposed diplomacy is seen to operate on a superficial basis more akin to showbiz, with no substance. He wants a peace deal with Russia to show off his vaunted skills as a business negotiator and to grab the limelight, headlines, and adulation.

Resolving a conflict like Ukraine requires deep historical understanding and genuine commitment to due diligence. Moscow has repeatedly stated the need to address the root causes of the conflict: the expansion of NATO on its borders, the CIA-sponsored coup in Kiev in 2014, and the nature of the NATO-weaponized Neo-Nazi regime over the past decade.

Trump and his administration have failed to appreciate Russia’s viewpoint. Thus, expecting a peace deal based on nothing but rhetoric and vacuous claims about “ending the killing” is futile. It won’t happen.

This failure, based on unrealistic expectations, has led Trump to adopt an increasingly bitter attitude towards Russian President Vladimir Putin in recent weeks. Ironically, Trump has accused Putin of duplicity and procrastination when, in reality, it is Trump who has shown no serious commitment to resolving the conflict.

Now, with chagrin and bruised ego, Trump has reacted with frustration over what are his own failings by issuing ultimatums to Russia. Trump’s 50-day deadline for a Russian response to his demands has a similarity to the 60-day deadline he threatened Iran with, after which he carried out a massive bombing attack on that country. Trump’s aggression towards Iran has turned out to be a fiasco and failure. Threatening Russia is even more useless.

This proclivity for threatening other nations has the hallmark of a Mafiosa megalomaniac. It is also causing Trump to lose support among his voter base, who believed he was going to end “endless wars.” It’s shambolic. Biden’s war is becoming Trump’s war because, at the end of the day, it is the U.S. imperial deep state that rules.

Trump’s mercurial switch from professing peace in Ukraine to ramping up the promise of weapons shows that his previous aspirations were always hollow and contingent on other interests.

It seems that the 47th American president did not want peace after all. What was driving his apparent desire to end the conflict in Ukraine – what he deprecated as “Biden’s war” – was simply to cut American financial costs.

What has appealed to Trump is that the proposed new supplies of American weapons to Ukraine will be paid for by Europe. Money and profit are all that matter to him. It is significant that when Trump announced the new arms racket scheme, he was sitting beside NATO chief Mark Rutte in the Oval Office. Rutte has a knack for wheedling, previously referring to Trump as “daddy” and this week absurdly praising the U.S. as the world’s policeman for securing peace. It seems that the NATO and transatlantic ruling establishment have found a way to manipulate Trump. Tell him that the Europeans will henceforth directly subsidize the U.S. military-industrial complex.

The trouble for Trump and the NATO establishment is that it is all an unworkable bluff. For a start, the U.S. arsenal of Patriot missiles and other munitions has been depleted and destroyed by Russia over the past three years in Ukraine. There are no “wonder weapons” that can alter the battlefield dominance of Russia.

Secondly, the European economies are broke and can hardly sustain the proposed purchase of U.S. weapons for Ukraine, even if such supplies were feasible, which they are not. At least four European states, including France, the Czech Republic, Italy, and Hungary, have said they will not engage in any scheme of buying American weapons for Ukraine.

Thirdly, Trump’s threat of secondary sanctions against Brazil, China, India, and others for doing business with Russia is a blatant assault on the BRICS and Global South that will only garner international contempt. Trump’s bullying is neither viable nor credible. His earlier trade war against China has already failed and shown that the United States is an impotent giant whose power is a thing of the past. Trump had to climb down from his hobby horse towards China.

So, threatening to hit China and others with 100 percent tariffs for doing business with Russia is like a former prizefighter shaking a feeble fist while sitting in a wheelchair. He is liable to incur more self-harm.

Lastly, Russia is decisively winning the NATO-led proxy war in Ukraine. The Kiev regime’s air defenses are non-existent at this stage. Therefore, Russia can and will press its strategic terms to end the conflict because it is the military victor.

Trump’s ultimatum to Russia is nothing but bluster and bluff. He once mocked Ukraine’s puppet president Zelensky, that he had no cards to play. Trump, for all his bravado, has only a couple of deuces himself.

In 50 days, Trump will have a serious amount of egg on his face when Russia’s defeat of the NATO proxy war becomes more evident.

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

The post Trump’s Ultimatum to Russia Is Bluster and Bluff To Hide Proxy War Defeat appeared first on LewRockwell.

Dear Martian Central Bank: could you please send us some Grown-Ups?

Scott Galloway recently sketched out a common-sense set of tax reforms that would go a long way to reducing the widening federal deficit. There’s just one Catch, Catch-25: it requires Grown-Ups, and Grown-Ups are out of stock, and have been for a long time, as it seems they’re no longer being produced. The Grown Up Tax Bill.

I confess that to say this is to admit to being delusional, but Galloway’s suggested tax reforms seem self-evidently common-sense, which means there isn’t a snowball’s chance in Heck any of them could possibly be enacted. Common-sense has zero value in today’s cultural void; the only thing that has any value is what’s acceptable to those holding the levers of power and wealth.[amazon template=*lrc ad (right)&asin=1947644564]

If wearing our underwear on the outside of our clothing is acceptable to those holding the levers of power and wealth, then that is a slam-dunk to be enacted regardless of its impracticality and absurdity.

Those holding the levers of power and wealth all have luxury penthouses in FantasyLand, where they can peer down at all the little people doing whatever little people do–go to work, pay taxes, get takeout because they’re exhausted, watch the latest bingeable entertainment, and so on.

There are two core industries in FantasyLand. One is corruption and the other is borrowing or creating however many trillions of dollars it takes to keep FantasyLand looking tidy. Oh, wait–I guess there’s only one industry because borrowing or creating trillions of dollars to blow on keeping up appearances rather than on increasing efficiency and productivity is the ultimate form of corruption.

Here are thumbnails of Galloway’s requires Grown-Ups, oops, dang, we’re plumb out of Grown-Ups tax reforms:

1. Increase compliance with existing tax laws. Sounds fair, right, because us little people don’t have $500/hour experts to pore over the tens of thousands of tax-regulation pages to find loopholes. (Spoiler alert: there aren’t any for us little people.) But nope, increasing compliance via audits is out because rich people might have to pay the taxes they owe and that is a mortal sin against all that is sacred in the status quo.

So forget pressuring wealthy folks to pay the taxes they owe, that requires Grown-Ups, and there aren’t any in stock. We do have plenty of self-serving billionaires, will they do in a pinch? No? Well then, shucks, we can’t help you fellas.

2. Reverse the $30 million estate tax giveaway. I’m sure this helps all the little people who would suffer catastrophic declines in their family’s welfare if they could only pass along $5 million tax free. I mean, come on, that wouldn’t even cover the beachfront getaway bungalow on Hanalei Bay, never mind all the other nice things. To pay any estate tax is an affront to decency.

Imagine, forcing us to stash the wealth in do-good hidey-holes, a.k.a. philanthro-Capitalist Foundations. What is the world coming to?

3. Put some teeth back in the Alternative Minimum Tax for incomes above 5X median household income ($80,000), i.e. $400,000. The original motivation for the AMT was public outrage that wealthy taxpayers paid zero taxes while those of us earning a fraction of their incomes were paying through the nose.

Look, I get that $400,000 doesn’t go very far these days, but it is 5X median household income, and those collecting $400K in income should be able to pay at least what the household making $80K is paying.

Remember, the AMT isn’t an extra tax, it’s a means to collect some tax from people making a lot of money who would otherwise be paying little or nothing.

If you end up owing AMT, you did good. Pat yourself on the back. If you’d paid 40% of your income in taxes like us self-employed stiffs, you wouldn’t be paying any AMT.

4. Since corporations are “citizens,” then tax them like “citizens.” Yes, I know all the arguments that corporate taxes are “double taxes” because shareholders pay tax on dividends, and maybe there’s a common-sense way to deal with this, such as deducting dividends paid to shareholders. And I’ve often said here that I favor a low corporate flat tax rather than the convoluted unfair mess we have now.

But hey, if corporations have all the privileges of “citizens,” then shouldn’t they pay taxes like “citizens”?

5. OK, cup your hands and I’ll pour liquid iron into them. In other words, I’m going to brace myself and reprint Galloway’s last reform, means-testing Social Security payments as the common-sense way to avoid slashing the payments to all beneficiaries when the bogus “trust fund” (another FantasyLand invention) runs dry in a few years.

Galloway’s summary: “Phasing out benefits for those with more than $150,000 of non-Social Security income would save an estimated $600b to $700b over a decade.” I know, I know, I paid into the system all these years.

Yeah, so have I, so let’s set up a little Excel macro and run through every beneficiary’s SSA account and adjust each year’s SSA taxes paid for inflation so each years’ SSA taxes paid is in today’s dollars, then add the average short-term Treasury yield rate in each year to the running total, and then we’ll have a total of what each beneficiary paid in, with interest. Once we add the employer’s half, we have a grand total of all monies paid into SSA and the interest that would have accrued if it had actually been in a Trust Fund rather than a bogus make-believe flim-flam.

After these funds are paid out, the SSA payments stop: we paid back what you put in with interest, so we’re done paying you. Wouldn’t that be fair? Given that the SSA payroll tax percentage was a lot lower in the old days, many beneficiaries would discover that their contributions plus interest only lasted a few years.

So what’s common-sense? What’s fair? That’s open to discussion, but the money running out isn’t a matter of opinion: it’s the real world, and a deep recession will bring that date forward.

OK, I hear you: what about slashing and burning all that gummit waste? The biggest budget items just begging to be slashed and burned are 1) Medicare, 2) Medicaid, 3) the Pentagon and 4) interest paid on all the debt we’ve borrowed to put off having to act like Grown-Ups.

Rounding up a bit because rounding down simply isn’t common-sense, here are the big budget programs:

Social Security: $1.5 trillion
Medicare: $1.2 trillion
Medicaid: $1 trillion
Pentagon: $1 trillion
Interest paid: $1 trillion
TOTAL $5.7 trillion
total federal budget: $6.8 trillion
Everything else: $1.1 trillion

Read the Whole Article

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