Aggregatore di feed

According to America’s Whore Media, yesterday the No Kings Protests Drew 7 Million Americans at 2,700 separate rallies

The No Kings protest is a form of insurrection.  The aim is to stop the functioning of democracy in the name of democracy by branding the reduction of DEI, closing of borders, and deportation of illegal aliens, for which Americans voted, as King Trump’s personal policy,  The two Jews who organized the No Kings protests, Ezra Levin and Leah Greenberg, said “Today, millions of Americans stood together to reject authoritarianism and remind the world that our democracy belongs to the people, not to one man’s ambition.” What Levin and Greenberg mean is that America belongs to the Democrat far left.

Ask yourselves, who financed this enormous undertaking?  George Soros?  Israel?  The Democrat National Committee?  

If Trump is really against war, he can stop funding wars.  Ukraine is financed by Washington.  The Israeli genocide of Palestine is financed by Washington.  The armed intervention against Venezuela, being prepared under false pretenses just as was the “war on terror,” is a Trump project.  The same for the pressure on Iran that is leading to war.

Trump could easily stop the wars.  So why is he causing wars?

Instead, he should address the war against America that is being unleashed by Ezra Levin and Leah Greenberg and their financiers, by Democrat mayors, city councils, and governors who defy federal law and protect illegal aliens from their crime of illegal entry as if they are American citizens, by the anti-American media that ruthlessly attacks traditional Americans and every politician who attempts to serve Americans’ interest, and by the leftwing ideologues that anti-American Democrats with the complicity of insouciant Republicans have institutionalized in the judiciary, especially at the District Court level.

Dear President Trump:  Our main enemies are at home.  Our only foreign enemy is Israel.  Please defend OUR COUNTRY.  Why are you working so hard to create more foreign enemies for America?

Don Lemon Designates Illegal Aliens “Citizens” and calls on People of Color to Arm Themselves Against Federal Agents

“Take up arms,” urges Lemon.  This is an act of insurrection.  Why isn’t Lemon arrested?

The post The No Kings Protest Is Insurrection appeared first on LewRockwell.

Today the Ukrainian former president Vladimir Zelenski will be in Washington to convince U.S. President Donald Trump to further turn the screws on Russia.

A call yesterday between President Vladimir Putin of Russia and Trump was initiated by the Russians to preempt any concessions from Trump to Ukraine.

A major headache for the Russians was the potential introduction of U.S. Tomahawk cruise missiles onto the battlefield. While these weapons are old, and can easily be defended against, they are, in principle, nuclear capable. They are also complex and can not be fired without the input from U.S. satellites, U.S. intelligence analysis and specialized software.

Tomahawks are naval missiles. There are less than a handful of ground launchers which were only recently introduced to the U.S. military. Any launch of a Tomahawk from Ukrainian ground would thus have to be done by the U.S. military. Any U.S. firing of a potentially nuclear armed missile towards Moscow would have to have serious consequences.

Russia would HAVE to respond to such an attack with a direct attack on major U.S. assets. Otherwise its means of (nuclear) deterrence would lose of all of their values.

Putin wanted to avoid that situation and the decisions that would have followed from it. Thus his call to Donald Trump.

So far that part of the call of seems to have been successful:

In recent days, Mr Trump had shown an openness to selling Ukraine long-range Tomahawk cruise missiles, even as Mr Putin warned that such a move would further strain the US-Russian relationship.

But following Thursday’s call with Mr Putin, Mr Trump appeared to downplay the prospects of Ukraine getting the missiles, which have a range of about 995 miles (1,600km).

“We need Tomahawks for the United States of America too,” Mr Trump said.

“We have a lot of them, but we need them. I mean, we can’t deplete our country.”

After the call Trump announced that there would soon be a new summit between him and President Putin:

President Putin and I will then meet in an agreed upon location, Budapest, Hungary, to see if we can bring this “inglorious” War, between Russia and Ukraine, to an end.

It is notable that The Russian readout was much less committed:

In this context, it is worthy of note that the presidents discussed the possibility of holding another personal meeting. This is indeed a very significant development. It was agreed that representatives of both countries would immediately begin preparations for the summit, which could potentially be organised in Budapest, for instance.

It is doubtful that any new meeting would lead to results.

Trump wants to stop the war in Ukraine because the U.S./NATO proxy force in form the Ukrainian army gets currently beaten to pulp. A multiyear pause is needed to refresh the Ukrainian army, to make and deliver more weapons for it and to prepare for another attempt to defeat Russia.

Russia will not commit to that. It wants to resolve the root cause of the war, the steady NATO march towards Russia’s border, once and for all. Any pause or ceasefire would defeat that purpose.

The difference between those positions is the reason why the August summit in Alaska had ended badly. Despite both sides lauding the outcome it was obvious that the summit had been cut short. It had ended without a common readout or press conference. After the summit President Trump also extended his support for the Ukrainian side of the conflict by allowing U.S. intelligence to be used in attacks on Russian oil infrastructure.

A new Financial Times piece on the previous summit has some background information on this (archived):

With just a handful of advisers present, Putin rejected the US offer of sanctions relief for a ceasefire, insisting the war would end only if Ukraine capitulated and ceded more territory in the Donbas.

The Russian president then delivered a rambling historical discursion spanning medieval princes such as Rurik of Novgorod and Yaroslav the Wise, along with the 17th century Cossack chieftain Bohdan Khmelnytsky — figures he often cites to support his claim Ukraine and Russia are one nation.

Taken aback, Trump raised his voice several times and at one point threatened to walk out, the people said. He ultimately cut the meeting short and cancelled a planned lunch where broader delegations were due to discuss economic ties and co-operation.

Bohdan Khmelnytsky was the Cossack hetman who in 1654 voluntarily subordinate his people to the Russian Tsar:

After a series of negotiations, it was agreed that the Cossacks would accept overlordship by the Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich. To finalize the treaty, a Russian embassy led by boyar Vasily Buturlin came to Pereiaslav, where, on 18 January 1654, the Cossack Rada was called and the treaty concluded. [..] The treaty legitimized Russian claims to the capital of Kievan Rus’ and strengthened the tsar’s influence in the region. Khmelnytsky needed the treaty to gain a legitimate monarch’s protection and support from a friendly Orthodox power.

I see no reason for hope that a new summit would change the positions of the parties or the outcome. Putin’s position towards the U.S. has only hardened:

“Whatever they want, they do. But what they are doing now in Ukraine is not thousands of miles away from our national borders; it is on our doorstep. And they must realize that we simply have nowhere else to retreat to.”

The promise of the new summit is still positive as it stretches the time to an eventual further escalation. More time is of advantage to the Russian side. It allows for the current campaign to de-energize Ukraine to have impact on the mood in the country and on the willingness of its government to agree to serious concessions.

Reprinted with permission from Moon of Alabama.

The post A Preemptive Putin-Trump Call and the Prospects of a New Summit appeared first on LewRockwell.

According to- discoveryalert.com.au: The push for a cashless society represents more than just technological evolution—it’s a coordinated effort occurring at multiple levels of government, financial institutions, and corporations worldwide. This transition is reshaping how we interact with money and raising significant questions about financial freedom and privacy.

The cashless society is a necessary step in preparation for the mark of the beast.

The mark of the beast, btw, is a concept based on a couple of short passages from The Revelation (end of chapter 13 and start of chapter 14), which say that there will eventually be a one world government just before Jesus returns, and the spiritual leader of that government will cause people everywhere to get a mark put in their right hand or in their forehead, without which they will not be able to buy or sell.

What we have used for centuries for buying and selling is cash (or checks). We have also progressed to credit cards.

So all of these would need to be replaced with the mark, in order for the prophecy to come true.

Is cashless society in World a bad step?

Cashless Means Automatic

If money is easy to spend, it is also easy to take. Convenience can easily become tyranny. Automatic payments that come directly from your bank account illustrate the point.)

Below Is First 9 Major Risks of a Cashless Society:

1.Risk of Confiscation

The convenience of digital money that allows you to spend your money more easily, also makes it easier for banks, governments and thieves to take it.The message to depositors is clear- when you put money in a bank you are a creditor of the bank and if it goes bust you are at the bottom of the list of creditors. Your money** will be seized as part of any approved plan, perhaps even before the broke bank files for bankruptcy.

Your bank account can be raided by government authorities, like the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) without notice or reason given. If the IRS believes your bank account deposit and/or withdrawals activity is suspicious and/or may involve a pattern designed to avoid reporting requirements, they may seize your account.

Think your money is safe in the bank? Think again.

2. Risk of Theft

Digital cash a bit of Trap-it can be stolen.Think digital money is safer than cash and can’t be stolen?

3. Crime is Easier

Some actually believe that in a cashless society that crime will go down and drug dealers will go out of business. Think again.

In a cashless society, theft will occur on line and in far larger amounts than cash heists. An online thief never has to confront his victim, commit violence, crack a safe, get past an alarm system, dog or armed guards and carry away his loot. Rather, in a cashless society, the cyber thief merely has to hack the systems where the ‘money” is. The online heist involves no risk of death or threat to the thief’s personal safety and can be done from anywhere in the world.

4. Risk of System Failure

Without cash, the value of currency would have no independent value outside a functioning banking system to which you have access. Your money wouldn ‘work’ without a functioning banking system. If the banking system is down due to a power outage, solar flare, financial crisis, Internet failure, hack or network crash, your money is unavailable and potentially lost. If back up files are lost how do you prove you had $15,000 in your account?

5. Risk of Being Exiled From the System

Even if the digital banking system was 100% fool proof, you may end up being shut out of the system for wrong doing (actual or alleged), bad credit or failure to pay banking fees. Or you may be the victim of identity theft and as a “precaution” your account may be closed. Without access to the banking system, how will you pay your bills and buy items you need?

6. Results in a Loss of Freedom

While going cashless may be convenient when you choose to buy something, but if a purchase is thrust officiously upon you by government order, your money can be removed from your account to pay for it, conveniently of course. This type of forced convenience results in a removal of freedom of choice of how you may wish to spend your money.

7. Loss of property rights

Property rights are the foundation of a free society. If you don’t have control, ready access or the ability to spend your money when and as you please, you do not really own it.Rather, you are a co-owner with the currency issuer (the bank) who has veto rights over your use of the currency.

8. Loss of Privacy

In a cashless society there is the loss of privacy. Digital money offers the convenience of allowing you to track and budget your money online. Such a system, however, also leaves a permanent digital foot print of where you spent your money, accesible to just about anyone who has access to your account. (crimminal hackers and government agencies). A common objection to this privacy invasion is that “If you have nothing to hide you have nothing to worry about”.

9. Loss of Understanding Value & Responsiblity

Without cash, consumers are no longer market participants that evaluate tangible value based on how much cash they have in their wallets, but mindless spenders without a sense of the value of the items they are purchasing or a sense of understanding of their actual cost after incurring bank and credit card interest fees. (still sky high even after years of zero interest rate policies across the globe).

In a society that uses cash, acts like making change and giving tips provide market participants with a tangible sense of economic value. Children that grow up saving money in piggy banks and counting their pennies, nickels and dimes learn the value of money through the tactil experience of handling money.

A cashless society turns money and value into digital abstractions as defined and controlled by the banks and central planners.

This article was originally published on Preppgroup.

The post First Major Risks of a Cashless Society appeared first on LewRockwell.

“No Kings” may be the first time I can recall clapping for a bunch of entitled, Starbuck’s drinking, middle-aged lefties and global communist money launderers.  Is our national conversation getting closer to real anti-authoritarianism, even anti-statism?

If we rely on the No Kings crowd as an indicator, the answer is no.  They demand more government, modern monetary theory at home and abroad, and the replacement of Trump with a President who won’t challenge the other two branches to do their jobs.  Most are content to ignore the Constitution, not exercise it. The selected color for this “revolution” is yellow for optimism; the “color of democracy.”  There’s a lot of black as well, begging the question of whether they are really just Proud Boys in ladysuits. The expert troll himself jumped in, with his bright yellow tie just a few days before the No Kings rally.

Any protest against authoritarianism and the state must be welcomed, in the mode of Thomas Paine.  Radical, brave, and with only his life to lose, he valued independence of self and mind, always chose reason over the stupid crowd, believed that blind faith in the state could be corrected by facts and logic. He boldly welcomed trouble in his time, so the next generation might have peace.

We all have a little Tom Paine in us, and no doubt we are blessed with a multitude of modern crises in which to nurture that bold seed of sheer contempt for the criminal state. Those of us who quell our Tom Paine urges and sensibilities will indeed lose badly.  Beyond remaining slaves and dying as slaves, we will condemn our children to both slavery and war.  On the other hand, what better time than now to exult and celebrate the man who understood that “…taxes are not raised to carry on wars, but that wars are raised to carry on taxes.”

We might assume, from the Declaration of Independence, and from the fundamentals of the Philadelphia trick, that the supreme cause for which man forms a “government” is liberty, and from liberty, man garners peace and prosperity.  Paine wrote, “Society in every state is a blessing, but Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one: for when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries BY A GOVERNMENT, which we might expect in a country WITHOUT GOVERNMENT, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer.”

I suspect most Americans – far beyond the mostly urban and purely political “No Kings” celebrants – would agree with Tom Paine that it adds insult to injury that we are forced to pay in full, and obey unconditionally, the very criminal and obscene government that oppresses us and much of the world.

This unifying concern is gaining momentum, creating passion, and catching fire.  The humanitarians and justice seekers among us rage that our dollars go to murder unarmed people, individually and en masse, by our gleeful leaders in Congress and the White House.  American nationalists seek decentralization and redirection of federal tax receipts from overseas and the counties around DC into the small towns, roads, bridges, and domestic quality of life, and even – most radically – back into the people’s pockets.

“Small government conservatives” while largely extinct, sought a government so tiny and weak it could be drowned in a bathtub. This sentiment, credited to Americans for Tax Reform Grover Norquist, was perhaps articulated only decades before its time.  The No Kings movement is certainly ready to conduct a small suffocation or two in DC, and who would oppose it?

It is still too much for most Americans to look into the abyss of state evil.  Our lived fairy tales of state assassination of leaders, journalists, and Presidents, of spying and mass surveillance, of mass murder at home and abroad – frighten more than enrage.   The federal war on the very natural rights it was chartered to protect, so acutely observed today, is a cause for only a semblance of revolt, a shadow of discontent.  In too many ways, state actions and its agendas are working as intended – fueling latent fears, promoting a certain kind of self-censorship, encouraging a wide-eyed hunkering down rather than a steely-eyed standing up.

Thomas Paine differentiated between summer soldiers and sunshine patriots, and those who stand fast in a hard fight for liberty, against the odds.  Today, soldiers and patriots alike need to hear the advice of Whitney Webb, where she explains the active state engineering of desperation and the cause it serves.

Perhaps we can learn from the recent resignations of our so-called “warrior” class, like SOUTHCOM’s Admiral Holsey and SOCOM’s General Fenton, and Marine Colonel Doug Krugman who retired with a public letter explaining that the Constitution, the law, is his commander, not politicians.  I think Paine would appreciate the sentiment. Thus far, there is no sign that these retirements, or the many that will follow, are evidence of anything other than the summer soldier and sunshine patriot.  But we shall see.

There was a recent moment in social science where a mental disease was created, mainly for children and teenagers, called “opposition(al) defiant disorder.”  In true Brave New World fashion, it is cured pharmacologically, and its warning signs may be increasingly familiar to many of us long past childhood.

A mass American movement against the state is rising, but it is not yet clear if this rise will be coherent, or incoherent, inchoate or completed and perfected.  Uncertainty is a natural part of the crisis in which we find ourselves, with limited information, despite having the whole of human knowledge and history at our fingertips.  But nothing can stop us today from closely watching our enemy, the state, and noting that it is growing financially precarious, representationally and ethically unbalanced, and increasingly frantic and increasingly evil.

Thomas Paine would see great opportunities today for real liberty to be regained, and as he wrote in Common Sense, he would recognize both the inevitability of change and the danger of waiting by the sidelines.  His 1776 question, “Should we neglect the present favorable and inviting period…?” must be answered by each of us, and increasingly, it is being answered by our actions more than our words.  What a time to be alive!

The post Will We See a New Era of Truly Popular Anti-Statism? appeared first on LewRockwell.

While American businesses and consumers are bearing the burden of higher costs from tariffs and inflation, the United States is providing a $20 billion bailout to Argentina’s Milei regime.  This bailout is separate from the $20 billion bailout given by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to Argentina earlier this year. Argentina is by far the largest debtor to the IMF.

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the US has reached a $20 billion currency swap agreement with Argentina’s central bank, allowing it to exchange Argentine pesos for the US dollar. CNN reported that the US also bought, “an undisclosed amount of Argentine pesos.”

The bailout would greatly benefit Rob Citrone, a billionaire hedge fund manager with substantial investments in Argentina. “Bessent’s personal and professional relationship with Citrone has spanned decades,” according to journalist Judd Legum.

“It’s unclear why the Trump administration is providing a de facto bailout of the Argentinian peso when there is no significant financial or economic relationship between the two economies,” said Joseph Brusuelas, chief economist at the audit and consulting firm, RSM.

Furthermore, we should question whether the US bailout of Argentina is motivated by the Milei regime’s enthusiastic support of the US and Israel’s genocide in Gaza. We should acknowledge that President Trump is a puppet of political donor Miriam Adelson and Israeli Prime Minister (and de-facto US President) Benjamin Netanyahu.

Ordinary people suffer the consequences of the reckless economic policies of their politicians. The Argentinian people should demand the immediate removal of the incompetent Milei regime and the American people should demand the immediate removal of the treasonous Netanyahu-Trump regime.

The post Milei Bailout appeared first on LewRockwell.

We are all familiar with the wonderful descriptive term, “the welfare-warfare state.” Ron Paul frequently uses it, as does Lew Rockwell, the late Justin Raimondo, Tom Woods, Thomas DiLorenzo, and myself. Murray Rothbard coined it in his brilliant essay, “The Great Society: A Libertarian Critique,” in Marvin E. Gettleman & David Mermelstein, ed., The Great Society Reader: The Failure of American Liberalism, 1967. This is one of three crucial articles by Rothbard which defines and outlines this important concept describing our society today and how it became that way. The other two articles are: “Origins of the Welfare State in America,” and “World War I as Fulfillment: Power and the Intellectuals.” 

The concept has its origin with Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, who united Germany under his doctrine of “Blood and Iron,” at the same time his American counterpart was waging his own war of coercive national unification. Bismarck, in creating the ideological justification for what became “the welfare-warfare state,” gave birth to the paradigm which continues to invigorate and mold the American political landscape of today.

Because of the tremendous number of key American intellectuals who studied in Germany during the time of Bismarck in preparation for their doctorate degrees (or in post-doctoral studies), and who returned emboldened and willing to use the state to transform society, the Progressive Movement was born. Although not household names today, these highly influential men included Richard Ely, Albion Woodbury Small, W. E. B. DuBois, Franz Boas, Walter Weyl, Nicholas Murray Butler, Edmund J. James, Walter Rauschenbusch, E. R. A. Seligman, Henry C. Adams, John W. Burgess, William James, George Santayana, Henry Farnam, George Herbert Mead, Frank Taussig, Simon Patten, John Bates Clark, Herbert Baxter Adams, Arthur T. Hadley. Each of them has had a long lasting impact on American society through their ideas and the subsequent generations these ideas shaped.

Ideas do not exist in a sterile vacuum but are often intertwined and serendipitously related to each other. Such is the case of various statist doctrines that came to fruition in the 19th century, and which still dramatically affect our world today. “Scientific racism,” “social Darwinism,” eugenics, Comtean positivism, imperialism, and “social imperialism,” were pseudoscientific rationales for the expansionary and invasive welfare-warfare state at home and abroad.

As Princeton’s Thomas C. Leonard noted in his seminal article, “Eugenics and Economics in the Progressive Era:”

Progressive opposition to laissez faire was motivated by a set of deep intellectual commitments regarding the relationship between social science, social scientific expertise and right governance. The progressives were committed to 1) the explanatory power of scientific (especially statistical) social inquiry to get at the root causes of social and economic problems; 2) the legitimacy of social control, which derives from a holist conception of society as prior to and greater than the sum of its constituent individuals; 3) the efficacy of social control via expert management of public administration; where 4) expertise is both sufficient and necessary for the task of wise public administration.

The post Roots of the Welfare-Warfare State appeared first on LewRockwell.

Earlier this week my wife Dawn and I had the joyous opportunity to meet up with Drs Sam and Mark Bailey in Salt Lake City, Utah where they’d come to be the Keynote Speakers at the Weston A Price Foundation’s Wise Traditions Conference.

And now you can attend their Live-Stream Presentations, October 18, 19 & 20th, 2025 – along with many other amazing presenters.

Plus, you can get a CD or USB record of the entire conference, HERE.

Here’s the schedule:

Friday, October 18, 7.30-9.30pm (MDT)

Dr Samantha Bailey: SECRETS OF A STAGED PANDEMIC

Saturday, October 19

11.00am-12.15pm (MDT)

Dr Samantha Bailey: THE TRUTH ABOUT LYME DISEASE

6:30–9:30pm (MDT)

Dr Mark Bailey: AWARDS BANQUET AND KEYNOTE: VIROLOGY’S FINAL DAYS

Sunday, October 20

10.45am-12pm Dr Mark Bailey: A LOGICAL END TO VIROLOGY

1:30–2:45pm (MDT)

Drs Mark Bailey, Samantha Bailey, Tom Cowan, Andrew Kaufman “Virus Deniers Unite Panel”

Don’t miss this rare event!

IMPORTANT!

If you miss this event please go to their website where you can watch their MANY videos and read their Paradigm Changing papers, HERE.

Highly Recommended

The post Meet Drs Sam & Mark Bailey appeared first on LewRockwell.

The Yankee Problem in America, by Clyde Wilson

Fanatical Yankee Utopians, by Thomas DiLorenzo

Blame the Beechers and That Fanatic Finney, by Charles Burris

Just War, by Murray N. Rothbard

The Damn Yankees and Their War, by Charles Burris

Causes of the American Civil War, by Charles Burris

In the midst of the vicious and violent assault by willfully ignorant street mobs on American historical memory prior to Year Zero (formerly known as 2009 when Obama took office), here is vital authoritative, factual, historical information you need to know.

There are two seminal issues to consider when examining the War of 1861-1865: They are the defense of revolutionary Southern self-determination or secession, and abolitionism.

Why did the Southern states want to leave the Union?

Why did the Northern states refuse to let them go?

The War was both the culmination and repudiation of the American Revolution.

The War marked the decisive turning point in the inexorable growth of government and coercive authority, and most accurately should be described as the War for Coercive National Unification. The same situation was going on in Europe at the same time under Otto von Bismarck and his wars to unify and create the nation-state of Germany.

Slavery and secession are two separate issues.

Secession was a revolutionary right of free peoples to determine their destiny.

Slavery was a gross violation of inalienable human rights.

Even if slavery explains why the Southern states left the Union, it does not necessarily explain or justify the general government under Lincoln refusal to recognize their independence and launch an unconstitutional invasion of the South.

Slavery still fails to explain why the Northern states resorted to force or coercion; letting the lower South go in peace was a viable, antislavery option refused by Lincoln.

Most militant abolitionists believed there was no contradiction between condemning slavery and advocating secession (in particular, see the essays by the Boston abolitionist Lysander Spooner below).

The War was a tragic, needless conflict. It was all about power and control, the imposition upon or domination of one geographic section of people by another without their consent.

The Real History of Slavery, by Thomas Sowell

Why The War Was Not About Slavery, by Clyde Wilson

Lysander Spooner was a Boston abolitionist who wrote The Unconstitutionality of Slavery (a favorite, much cited book by Robert Barnes). He also authored the three powerful articles below in his No Treason series:

No Treason #1

No Treason #2: The Constitution

No Treason #6: The Constitution of No Authority

Northern Opposition to Mr. Lincoln’s War

“Northern Opposition to Mr. Lincoln’s War” is a book, edited by D. Jonathan White, that challenges the common narrative that Northerners were united against secession from the start. The book argues that there was significant and enduring opposition to the war in the North, which is often overlooked in favor of the story of a unified, righteous effort to suppress the rebellion. Opposition groups, such as the Copperheads, favored immediate peace and resisted the draft, while other opponents argued the war was unnecessary and costly, prompting Lincoln to take measures like suspending habeas corpus.

The post The Damn Yankees and Their War appeared first on LewRockwell.

LewRockwell.com readers are supporting LRC and shopping at the same time. It’s easy and does not cost you a penny more than it would if you didn’t go through the LRC link. Just click on the Amazon link on LewRockwell.com’s homepage and add your items to your cart. It’s that easy!

If you can’t live without your daily dose of LewRockwell.com in 2025, please remember to DONATE TODAY!

1. Rational Fasting: Official Ehret Society Edition 
2. Forbidden Facts: Government Deceit & Suppression About Brain Damage from Childhood Vaccines
3. Peak Human: What We Can Learn From History’s Greatest Civilizations
4. Understanding Terrain Theory: Rethinking Disease, Uncovering Its True Causes, and Reclaiming Health Naturally 
   
5. A History of Fascism, 1914–1945
6. The Covenantal Structure of Christian Economics: A Primer on Economics from a Biblical Worldview
7. The Self-Care Toolkit (4 books in 1): Self-Therapy, Freedom From Anxiety, Transform Your Self-Talk, Control Your Thoughts, & Stop Overthinking
8. The COVID-19 VACCINES & Beyond …: What the Medical Industrial Complex is NOT Telling Us
9. David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants
10. Anti-Inflammatory Eating Made Easy: 75 Recipes with Meal Plans for Beginners
    
11. Cicero: The Life and Times of Rome’s Greatest Politician
12. Is the Newtonian Astronomy True?
13. The Gnostic Gospels
14. Over the Counter Natural Cures, Expanded Edition: Take Charge of Your Health in 30 Days with 10 Lifesaving Supplements for under $10
    
15. Jerusalem Besieged: From Ancient Canaan to Modern Israel
16. Future Shock
17. The Yankee Problem: An American Dilemma (The Wilson Files)
18. The Present Age: Progress and Anarchy in Modern America
19. Conspirators’ Hierarchy: The Story of the Committee of 300 
20. The Time of the Signs: A Chronology of Earth’s Final Events

The post Top 20 Books That LRC Fans Are Reading This Week appeared first on LewRockwell.

It all started on March 5, 2014: a US sponsored fascist coalition government under the disguise of democracy was installed in Ukraine.

With historical foresight pertaining to the dangers of a Third World War, this article by Felicity Arbuthnot was first published more than eleven years ago on March 15, 2014 in the immediate wake of the US sponsored EuroMaidan Coup d’état. 

***

On March 5, Ukraine’s Putsch “Prime Minister” Arseniy Yatsenyuk, arbitrarily sacked three senior Defence Ministry politicians, Deputy Defense Minister Alexander Oleynik, with Deputy Defense Ministers Vladimir Mozharovskiy and Arturo Francisco Babenko.

According to Itar-Tass (6th March 2014) they had drawn Yatsenyuk’s ire by expressing:

“sharp criticism over giving the Right Sector militants the status of regular military units.”

A contact of the publication stated that one of the three had also:

“told Yatsenyuk that actions of today’s Kiev authorities in overtures with radical nationalist organizations would destroy national unity” and that it was simply: “harmful to involve the state military agency in such dangerous games.”

Their stand resulted in “management reshuffles” – in the country in which Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland has stated that the US has invested $5 Billion: “in the development of democratic institutions and skills in promoting civil society and a good

So far US multi-billion democracy-building via the man of whom Nuland opined to the US Ambassador to the Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt: “I think Yats is the guy …”(2) has all the hallmarks of becoming a mirror of the historic tragedies in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and being plotted via further humanitarian horrors committed by their proxies in Syria.

Additionally the Nobel Peace Laureate American President appears to have reignited the Cold War, laid to rest with such joy across the world as the Berlin Wall fell just over twenty four years ago, on the 9th November 1989.

However, if the US Administration’s choice as a democratic Prime Minister is scarily woeful, the man who would be President, Dmitry Yarosh, is nothing short of astonishing. As Julie Levesque has written in a meticulous, jaw dropping article: “Dmitry Yarosh, leader of the Maidan Brown Shirts (is) on an international wanted list and charged with inciting terrorism.

“Under the new government, Yarosh is leader of the Neo-Nazi Right Sector delegation to the Ukraine Parliament. His close friend and political partner Andriy Parubiy co-founder of the Neo-Nazi Social-National Party of Ukraine (subsequently renamed Svoboda) was appointed by the new government to the position of Secretary of the National Security and National Defense Committee (RNBOU), a key position which overseas the Ministry of Defense, the Armed Forces, Law Enforcement, National Security and Intelligence. Right Sektor leaders Yarosh was appointed to the number two position at RNBOU.”

Levesque asks: “Have the Neo-Nazis cornered Ukraine’s National Security agenda?”.

The answer would appear to be a rapidly accelerating affirmative, with Robert Parry stating that Neo-Nazis are now in charge of four Ministries and:

“some ten ‘oligarchs’ mostly run the show in shifting alliances, buying up media outlets and politicians, while the vast majority of the population faces a bleak future, which now includes more European-demanded ‘austerity’ …”(4)

Meanwhile the stand-off over the Crimea continues. Train tickets between Kiev and Crimea have been suspended by the latest government shoehorned in to the latest “new democracy.”

In neighbouring Russia, as the Sochi Paralympics opened with a spectacular ceremony, President Obama, Prime Minister Cameron, Chancellor Angela Merkel and their parties hurled their collective toys from their prams and failed to attend. Another chance to make peace not war in what should be the Olympic spirit, also willfully thrown away.

The opening theme was “Breaking The Ice,” and “the importance of breaking down barriers and stereotypes …” a popular 1990’s Russian song called “Good-bye America” played as the Russian team closed the parade.

However for all the US posturing, Gallop shows President Putin’s popularity rating at a consistent 67.8% an endorsement of which his American counterpart could only dream, fluctuating between 38% to 42%.

As this ends news comes through that the US is to send fighter jets and personnel to Poland and Lithuania by Thursday, the US Navy destroyer, the USS Truxton, one of the largest destroyers ever built for the US Navy, has crossed in to the Black Sea for “exercises” with the Bulgarian and Romanian navies (5) there are mass protests in the south and east of Ukraine about the “self proclaimed” government in Kiev and America has unleashed a possible World War Three.

Somebody in the Nobel Peace Prize Committee, please demand the return of that ill awarded Peace Prize.

Notes

1. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article37599.htm

2. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-26079957

3.http://www.globalresearch.ca/democratization-and-anti-semitism-in-ukraine-neo-nazi-symbols-become-the-new-normal/5371919

4. http://consortiumnews.com/2014/03/09/crimeas-case-for-leaving-ukraine/

5. http://rt.com/news/us-fighter-jets-poland-830/

The original source of this article is Global Research.

The post Ukraine: US Launches a Neo-Nazi Government, and World War Three? appeared first on LewRockwell.

What is going around now is another cover up, another denial of what a lot of people on both sides call “the second Nakba,” the sin atop the original sin.

Headline in the Sunday editions of The New York Times: “A New Test for Israel: Can It Repair Its Ties to Americans?”

What a question. Let us set aside our indignation and think about this.

The piece below this head is by David Halbfinger, whose trade over the years has been to appear balanced when covering the Zionist state while glossing its past, which is wall-to-wall condemnable, and faithfully apologizing for its present, which — need this be said — is also wall-to-wall condemnable.

David Halbfinger, who has just begun his second tour as the Times’ Jerusalem bureau chief, in action:

“The war in Gaza may finally be ending, after two years of bloodshed and destruction. But among the damage that has been done is a series of devastating blows to Israel’s relationship with the citizens of its most important and most stalwart ally, the United States.

Israel’s reputation in the United States is in tatters, and not only on college campuses or among progressives….

The question is whether those younger Americans will be lost to Israel long- term — and what Israel’s advocates will do to try to reverse that.”

Halbfinger proceeds to quote none of “those younger Americans,” or anyone else of any age who stands forthrightly against “the Jewish state” in response to the campaign of terror, murder and starvation it has conducted against the civilian population of Gaza these past two years.

No, his sources are professors, think-tank inhabitants and, of course, Israeli Zionists, American Zionists and in two cases Israeli–American Zionists — the good old divided-loyalties crowd.

Halbfinger quotes Shibley Telhami, an Arab–Israeli scholar with safe harbors at The Brookings Institution and the University of Maryland, to this effect:

“We now have a paradigmatic Gaza generation like we had a Vietnam generation and a Pearl Harbor generation. There’s this growing sense among people that what they’re witnessing is genocide in real time, amplified by new media, which we didn’t have in Vietnam. It’s a new generation where Israel is seen as a villain. And I don’t think that’s likely to go away.”

This is an astute bit of historical context, I find — worthy of further exploration. And I am with Telhami: There is no persuading Americans — a majority, to go by recent polls — that the atrocities of the past two years are to be forgiven and forgotten. The thought is ridiculous.

But Halbfinger takes Telhami’s interesting observation no further. It stands only as what we can call “the problem.” He, Halbfinger, devotes the rest of his report to the thoughts of those trying to figure out how to make the Zionist regime look good again — or rid it of “a bad odor,” as one of these people puts it.

One of Halbfinger’s sources — Halie Soifer, chief exec at the Jewish Democratic Council of America, which supports Democratic political candidates “who share our core values” — is looking for “a bit of a reset in the way Israel is viewed.” Dahlia Scheindlin, an Israeli–American scholar, thinks “there is room for a bounce-back.”

Professor Scheindlin elaborates:

“People tend to overestimate how bad the damage has been. Just stopping the slaughter will allow some people to go back to their comfort zone of being supportive.”

Jeez, if I may invoke one of history’s most famous Jews. Bouncing back to the comfort zone, is it?

You see what is going on here, I trust.

I have anticipated for many months — no great insight in this — that when something like the end of Israel’s terror in Gaza comes there will be no thought among its allies in the West, and certainly none among its Zionist supporters, of any kind of reckoning in the name of justice.

No, a “war” will be over, not a racist campaign of annihilation, and certainly not a genocide. The highly honorable Cost of War Project at Brown University put out a paper on Oct. 7 reckoning total casualties in Gaza (killed and injured) at 236,505, “more than 10% of the pre-war population.” These are responsibly researched facts.

We know these facts. “It doesn’t take rocket science to grasp the picture,” Norman Finkelstein said in a lecture delivered at the University of Massachusetts five days before the Netanyahu–Trump “peace plan” was announced.

He said: “Everyone at this point knows the picture — unless you have a material stake in lying to yourself and lying to others.”

Read the Whole Article

The post Let Us Now Bury the Truth (Again) appeared first on LewRockwell.

When I first got my driver’s license years ago, they asked if I wanted to be an organ donor. Having learned to be skeptical of institutions and having heard some concerning stories, I said no. But I felt conflicted about it—I believe in treating others as you’d want to be treated, and if I needed a transplant someday, I’d desperately want someone willing to help save my life.

Since then, I’ve discovered much more disturbing information about organ transplantation that completely shifted my perspective. Recently, RFK Jr. did something I never expected—he formally announced that there were widespread failures in our organ donation system’s ethical safeguards. This opened the floodgates for others to start discussing the grim reality that organs were being taken from people who were still alive.

The Value of Organs

Over time, medicine transformed our cultural relationship with death—from an accepted, intimate companion to a feared, medicalized enemy to be defeated (e.g., one author traces this shift through six historical stages, arguing that medicalization stripped individuals of autonomy and commodified death itself).

Medicine fueled this transformation by performing modern “miracles,” such as reviving the dead through cardiac resuscitation and transplanting organs—crossing what was once an absolute boundary between life and death. In doing so, it gained immense public trust and the ability to justify exorbitant costs.

This cultivated the myth that medicine can conquer death. Over time, it became seen not just as a means of survival, but as something to be continuously consumed in the name of “health”—transforming it into a highly profitable industry that now accounts for over 17.6% of all U.S. spending.

Because viable donor organs (a central crux of medicine’s dominion over death) are so limited, transplants quickly became incredibly valuable—costs range from $446,800 to $1,918,700 depending on the organ. Given how desperate people are for organs and how much money is involved, it hence seemed reasonable to assume some illegal harvesting would occur.

Over the years, as demand for organs continues to increase, I’ve continually found disturbing evidence that this was happening. This includes:

•Individuals being tricked into selling a kidney (e.g., in 2011, a viral story discussed a Chinese teenager who did so for an iPhone 4—approximately 0.0125% of the black market rate for a kidney, after which he became septic and his other kidney failed leaving him permanently bedridden, and in 2023, a wealthy Nigerian politician being convicted for trying to trick someone into donating a kidney for a transplant at an English hospital).

•A 2009 and 2014 Newsweek investigation and a 2025 paper highlighted the extensive illegal organ trade, estimating that 5% of global organ transplants involve black market purchases (totaling $600 million to $1.7 billion annually), with kidneys comprising 75% of these due to high demand for kidney failure treatments and the possibility of surviving with one kidney (though this greatly reduces your vitality). Approximately 10-20% of kidney transplants from living donors are illegal, with British buyers paying $50,000–$60,000, while desperate impoverished donors (e.g., from refugee camps or countries like Pakistan, India, China, and Africa) receive minimal payment and are abandoned when medical complications arise, despite promises of care. To quote the 2009 article:

Diflo became an outspoken advocate for reform several years ago, when he discovered that, rather than risk dying on the U.S. wait list, many of his wealthier dialysis patients had their transplants done in China. There, they could purchase the kidneys of executed prisoners. In India, Lawrence Cohen, another UC Berkeley anthropologist, found that women were being forced by their husbands to sell organs to foreign buyers to contribute to the family’s income, or to provide for the dowry of a daughter. But while the WHO estimates that organ-trafficking networks are widespread and growing, it says that reliable data are almost impossible to come by.

Note: these reports also highlighted that these surgeries operate on the periphery of the medical system and involve complicit medical professionals who typically claim ignorance of its illegality (e.g., a good case was made that a few US hospitals, like Cedars Sinai were complicit in the trade).

• A 2004 court case where a South African hospital pleaded guilty to illegally transplanting kidneys from poorer recipients (who received $6,000–$20,000) to wealthy recipients (who paid up to $120,000).1 2

• Many reports of organ harvesting by the Chinese government against specific political prisoners.1,2,3,4,5 This evidence is quite compelling, particularly since until 2006, China admitted organs were sourced from death row prisoners (with data suggesting the practice has not stopped).
Note: harvesting organs from death row prisoners represents one of the most reliable ways to get healthy organs immediately at the time of death (which is one of the greatest challenges in transplant medicine).

• I’ve read reports of organ harvesting occurring in Middle East conflict zones, by ISIS and in the Kosovo conflict, and with drug cartels.

Note: many other disturbing cases of illicit organ harvesting are discussed in more detail here. Likewise, many other valuable tissues (e.g., tendons and corneas) can be harvested from dead bodies. Significant controversy also exists with the ethics of how these are collected (e.g., this investigation highlights that the industry is highly profit focused and gives minimal respect to the bodies).

When Consciousness Gets Trapped

Different parts of the brain control various aspects of our being, so people who are still conscious can sometimes completely lose control of their bodies or their ability to communicate—known as Locked-in syndrome.

The most famous case involves Martin, a 12-year-old who fell ill with meningitis and entered a vegetative state. He was sent home to die, but stayed alive. At 16, he began regaining consciousness, became fully aware by 19, and at 26, a caregiver finally realized he was conscious and got him a communication computer. He eventually married.

Jahi McMath, a thirteen-year-old declared brain dead after tonsillectomy complications, was kept on life support by her family despite court orders. Nine months later, she had regained brainwaves and blood flow to the brain, and moved in response to verbal commands.

Similar cases include Lewis Roberts (began breathing hours before organ harvesting), Ryan Marlow (diagnosis reversed after wife’s insistence), Colleen Burns (awoke on the operating table and was later found by HHS to have been repeatedly misdiagnosed), and Trenton McKinley (13-year-old who recovered before scheduled donation). There were also cases like Steven Thorpe (declared brain dead by four doctors, parents refused organ donation, and he awoke two weeks later), and Gloria Cruz (husband refused to allow withdrawal of care, and she recovered).

Note: A recent study found that over 30% of brain-injured patients deemed unrecoverable would have partially or fully recovered had life support not been withdrawn.

Read the Whole Article

The post The Hidden Crisis in Organ Transplantation appeared first on LewRockwell.

GDP is like collecting data on passenger satisfaction with the dessert cart on the Titanic and declaring everyone is delighted as the great “unsinkable” ship settles into the icy waters of the Atlantic.

That Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is an outdated and misleading metric of the economy is widely accepted. The problem isn’t an abstraction, as we manage what we measure and so policymakers and citizens alike make decisions on what’s being measured. If what’s being measured is misleading, then we’re flying blind.

Economist Joseph Stiglitz has long advocated for an overhaul for what we measure economically, focusing on well-being rather than adding up transactions. A new book The Measure of Progress: Counting What Really Matters, explains the difficulty of the overhaul. A recent article on the topic addressed the urgency of the task (Foreign Affairs, May/June 2025, paywalled):

“For Americans, these are tumultuous times. Inequality in income and wealth is at historically high levels. Artificial intelligence is reshaping society at an unprecedented pace, prompting layoffs and putting entire professions at risk. According to an estimate by the Brookings Institution, up to 85 percent of current workers in the U.S. labor force could see their jobs affected by today’s generative AI technology. In the future, that percentage could climb even higher.

At moments of danger and uncertainty, it is usually the task of governments to protect people and help them navigate change–to step in when markets cannot. Yet Americans seem to have little belief in Washington’s capabilities. Over the past two decades, public trust in the U.S. government has plummeted by 40 percent. Some Americans believe the federal government has been absent. Others believe it has failed to meet pressing challenges, including the rising cost of living, and the potential disruptions of AI. Either way, Washington has its work cut out for it as the government tries to regain Americans’ trust.

So where can it start? The Measure of Progress, meanwhile, takes aim at the economic data that states use. According to Coyle, analysts evaluate the economy using outdated, limited metrics, causing policymakers to misunderstand the challenges citizens face.

Coyle’s book is focused on understanding the economy as it exists today. But her argument–that analysts and governments have failed to properly measure peoples’ well-being–is equally essential. The metrics that economists use, Coyle insists, are inherently flawed and do not sufficiently represent the reality of economic activity and value. That poses an immense problem for policymakers and analysts, distorting their view of the world and potentially leading them to faulty conclusions and ineffective policies.”

The problem is multi-faceted. GDP and other metrics were institutionalized in the industrial age, where agriculture and factory production were easy to measure. As these sectors’ share of the economy has slipped, the “hard-to-measure” parts of the economy are now dominant–81.5% by one estimate.

There are many other critical wrinkles in measuring the economy as it is. The book raises the issue of unpaid work, such as families caring for elderly parents and the unpaid “shadow work” that we’re required to do now to keep all of our technology functioning. All this activity occurs outside the traditional market.

Since our metrics don’t put a price tag on clean air and functional ecosystems, these are left out of the calculations, as if they don’t exist. Not only do they exist, they’re critical to our well-being. The book discusses natural capital accounting as an alternative, but alternative measures like this are inherently more challenging than toting up transactions.

What if we decided to measure the economy by the quality of life of the citizenry? While there are endless possibilities of what goes into quality of life, we can start with these basics:

1. Our physical and mental health.

2. The health of our social order–our social contract, social trust, communities and trust in our key institutions

3. The security and stability of our livelihoods and financial future.

Defining health isn’t that difficult. A healthy person doesn’t need any medications because, well, they’re healthy, so there’s no need for any interventions. A healthy person has an HDL / triglyceride ratio (calculated by dividing your triglyceride level by your HDL cholesterol level) well under 2, can walk a mile without even noticing, can stand on each foot for an extended time, and so on.

As for mental health, numerous studies have found that social connections are critical to our overall health, along with what we might call sufficiency–enough financial resources to secure the basics of life, and enough opportunities to fulfill one’s potential.

Read the Whole Article

The post If We Measured the Economy by Quality-of-Life Instead of GDP, We’d Be in a Depression appeared first on LewRockwell.

In October 2024 a Lebanese writer named Lina Mounzer wrote, “ask any Arab what the most painful realization of the last year has been and it is this: that we have discovered the extent of our dehumanization to such a degree that it’s impossible to function in the world in the same way.”

I’ve thought about that line a lot over the last year.

I thought about it as Israel hammered Lebanon with at least 20 airstrikes during a supposed “ceasefire”.

I thought about it during the Gaza ceasefire negotiations when the western political/media class kept calling the Israelis held by Hamas “hostages” while calling the innocent Palestinians held captive by Israel “prisoners”.

I think about it as the IDF continues to murder Palestinian civilians every day during the Gaza “ceasefire” when they are deemed to be traveling into forbidden areas, because Palestinians are so dehumanized that Israel sees bullets as a perfectly legitimate means of directing civilian foot traffic.

I think about it as these daily ceasefire violations and acts of military slaughter barely make a blip in the western news media, while any time anything happens that makes western Jews feel anxious or upset it dominates headlines for days.

I thought about it while the western political/media class solemnly commemorated the second anniversary of the October 7 attack, even as the daily death toll from the Gaza holocaust ticked along with its victims unnamed and unacknowledged by those same institutions.

I thought about it when all of western politics and media stopped dead in its tracks and stood transfixed for days on the assassination of Charlie Kirk while ignoring the genocide he had spent the last two years of his life actively manufacturing consent for.

Day after day after day we see glaring, inexcusable discrepancies between the amount of attention that is given to the violent death of an Arab and the attention that is given to the violent death of an Israeli, a western Jew, or any westerner.

These last two years have been a time of unprecedented unmasking in all sorts of ways, but I think that’s the one that’s going to stick with me the most. The way western civilization came right out into the cold harsh light to admit, day after day after day, that they don’t truly view Arabs as human beings.

Ours is a profoundly sick society.

One of the main arguments you’ll hear from rightists about why the west needs to support Israel is that Israel is helping to defend the west from the savage Muslim hoards — a sentiment that Israeli pundits and politicians have been all too happy to feed into of late. It’s revealing because it’s just coming right out and saying that slaughtering Muslims is a virtue in and of itself, so anyone who kills Muslims is an ally of the west.

But any time I come across this argument all I can think is, why would anyone want to defend the west if this is what the west has become?

Even if we pretend these delusions that Arabs and Islam pose some kind of threat to western civilization are valid, why would it even matter? This civilization does not deserve to be saved. Not if we’re going to be living like this.

If we’ve become so detached from our own humanity that we can’t even see innocent children as fully human just because they live somewhere else and have a different religion, then we are the monsters. We are the villains. We are everything the craziest Zionist pretends the Arabs are.

These last two years have shown us that western civilization doesn’t need protection, it needs redemption. It needs to save its soul.

__________________

The best way to make sure you see everything I write is to get on my free mailing list. My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you want to. Click here for links for my social media, books, merch, and audio/video versions of each article. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.

The post The West’s Dehumanization of Arabs Is Completely Unforgivable appeared first on LewRockwell.

U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin appear to be back on good terms — at least for now.

Trump announced Thursday afternoon that he had a very “productive” call with the Russian head of state, who congratulated him for the “great accomplishment” of “peace in the Middle East.” The Russian leader also passed on niceties to the First Lady for her involvement with children.

The two leaders discussed potential business between the United States and Russia after “the War with Ukraine is over,” according to Trump’s version of the call.  The Russians confirmed the call, which they announced as it was happening.

Before hanging up, they agreed to a meeting of high-level advisors next week, to be followed up by an in-person meeting in Budapest, Hungary, where they’ll discuss ending the “inglorious” war between Russia and Ukraine.

The president ended his Truth Social announcement on a high note. “I believe great progress was made with today’s telephone conversation,” he said.

Good News

The news was undoubtedly welcomed by sensible Americans who realize there is nothing to gain and too much at risk by egging on a war between two very corrupt nations on the other side of the planet, neither of which pose a serious threat to the U.S. homeland so long as we stay out of their business. Former Trump National Security Adviser General Michael Flynn was among them. “This is what we voted for,” he announced on social media. Flynn previously alleged that a group of warmongers were exerting undue influence on the president.

Those who’ve been keeping up with the TMZ-style drama between these two strongheaded world leaders and are cheering for de-escalation are, like Flynn, happy to hear this news — but there is also some trepidation. This is about the fifth rerun of this episode. The script goes something like this: The two talk, Putin flatters and reassures, and Trump emerges smitten, only to become disillusioned just weeks later. Nevertheless, this is better than how the saga had been tracking as of late.

Escalatory Rhetoric

Just Wednesday, U.S. War Secretary Pete Hegseth implied he would wage war against Russia if it did not wind down its war against Ukraine. “If there is no path to peace in the short term then the United States, along with our allies, will take steps necessary to impose costs on Russia for its continued aggression,” Hegseth said Wednesday. “If we must take this step, the U.S. War Department stands ready to do our part in ways that only the United States can do.”

Hegseth said this during a meeting focused on Ukraine at the NATO headquarters. He apparently did not elaborate on whether he meant to say what it sounded like he said.

Before that, Trump was publicly mulling over the idea of sending the Ukrainians Tomahawks, long-range missiles with the capability to strike any major Russian city. The big idea was that doing this would cripple the Kremlin’s major source of revenue, its energy sector. On Sunday, Trump told reporters he was thinking of speaking to Russia to ask them if “they want to have Tomahawks going in their direction?” Maybe he did.

Russia had previously responded to the threat with its own warning, pointing out that sending that kind of power would directly implicate the United States. Somewhere in that melee of threats and bluster, Trump even called Russia a “paper tiger.”

Just Bluffing?

All of that talk, however, may have been nothing more than bluffing designed to keep the Russians off balance and convince them to get serious about winding down the war. And maybe it worked.

Or maybe Hegseth’s rhetoric was the result of Trump waking up in an especially crabby mood on account of being edged out of the Nobel Peace Prize and ordering his War Sec to throw caution to the wind since they won’t award him with the accolade he badly wants, anyway. It’s hard to tell. As we’ve said before, there’s a good chance that when it comes to dealing with the mess in Eastern Europe, Trump’s so good at keeping everyone guessing that even he doesn’t know what he’ll do.

That’s probably why some European leaders, as much as they want Trump to get and stay tough with Putin, were reluctant to celebrate Hegseth’s comments. German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius told reporters, “I would read into that a kind of change of perspective and approach, but not more for the moment. I can’t interpret, really, what he did mean.”

Unleash the Tomahawks

It’s telling that the folks at the Defense and Security Department at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) were ecstatic about the possibility that the United States would give the Ukrainians Tomahawks. “As with Hamas and the fighting in Gaza, bringing the Ukraine war to an end requires speaking the only language that Moscow understands: force,” wrote Seth G. Jones and Tom Karako in a Wall Street Journal op-ed. More from Jones and Karako:

Without Tomahawks or a system with a similar payload and range, Ukraine can’t put real pressure on Russian supply lines, military production or long-range launchers into Ukrainian territory. Ukraine can use Tomahawks to target rear support areas sustaining Russian front-line operations, including weapons and fuel depots, tank-production facilities, and air bases used by Russian fighters and bombers.

It’s true that Putin might interpret America’s friendly negotiation approach as weak and naïve. But it’s also true that the CSIS is a profoundly hawkish outfit funded by defense contractors and staffed by people with strong ties to defense and intelligence agencies. They’re the hand guiding the only tool the know of, the hammer, to the nail. Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, and Boeing are among the CISIS’s financial backers. But that’s three of many more. As the Quincy Institute noted in 2023, when CSIS was complaining that the Pentagon wasn’t spending enough, 20 different defense contractors were funding the CISIS. Moreover, Jones, the president of CSIS, is a former Department of Defense senior official and has worked with the CIA in advisory roles.

Uncertain Outcome

Trump has been trying to mediate peace between these two sibling nations before he even moved back in the Oval Office. And despite what some think, it’s hard to interpret his behavior, words, and efforts as a façade covering a hidden motive to start World War III. A more likely explanation is that Trump’s erratic personality and allergy to details is what’s prompting the vacillating, chaotic foreign policy of the U.S. government.

Putin and Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky have more in common than they may care to admit. Both are accused of being dictators. Both lead governments believed to have persecuted, even killed, dissident journalists. And both have an alleged track record of silencing government critics.

On Friday, Zelensky will be back in the White House, hat in hand. He’ll likely have a bigger hat than the one he passes out in Europe because he’ll be asking for Tomahawks. He’ll likely try to convince Trump that, just like all the previous times, Putin’s reassurances will come to naught and that the right thing to do is give Ukraine more firepower.

The question is, what will Trump do?

This article was originally published on The New American.

The post Trump and Putin Patch Things Up, Plan Budapest Meeting appeared first on LewRockwell.

Yesterday I saw in report in the Telegraph headlined Britain and France are at the end stage of ‘centrist dad’ collapse and found the following paragraph about Starmer and Macron especially memorable.

Wrong on almost everything, hated by voters, incapable of truth-telling, driven by a messianic belief in environmentalism and global technocracy, unable to confront reality, gripped by suicidal empathy and addicted to virtue-signalling, Starmer and Macron have ended up as unlikely brothers in arms, despite their seemingly incompatible styles.

The report resonated with me, as I had, just the day before, had a long telephone conversation with former British MP, Andrew Bridgen, about the current state of affairs in England. He perceives them to be very grim.

In the summer of 2014, on the 100th anniversary of the First World War, I found myself visiting Leipzig, Germany, where I wandered into a book store near the St. Thomas Church, where J.S. Bach had served as the music director from 1723 to 1750. The store was stocked with books by authors all trying to answer the question: Why did the great nations of Europe essentially commit suicide in 1914-18?

The answer, it seems to me, is the marked tendency of any society’s political class to be captured by interests and ideologies that have little to do with the interests of the people they govern. Apart from bankers and arms manufacturers, the Great War of 1914-18 served no one who lived in the warring countries. On the contrary, it sent millions of their young men—including their most educated young men—to be machine gunned and gassed in the trenches.

While some elements of the state are necessary for providing basic security, maintaining critical infrastructure, and adjudicating conflict, the state invariably becomes way too big and parasitic, and ultimately cancerous.

I fear that Britain, France, and Germany are currently suffering from Stage 4 Cancer that originated in the bosom of their bizarre governments run by total weirdos who in no way represent the interests of the people they govern.

This article was originally published on Courageous Discourse.

The post The End of Britain, France, and Germany appeared first on LewRockwell.

Gilbert Doctorow and I share the belief that unless Putin responds more firmly than he has been inclined to do to the West’s provocations, war is inevitable.

Hungary, led by the only intelligent leader in Europe, has arranged a meeting in Budapest between Trump and Putin.  I suspect that this is the last chance to avoid war.  Its success turns on whether Trump can abandon his bully role, understand that the solution requires a NATO pullback from Russia’s borders and a mutual security agreement between Russia and the West, and declare in a press conference that Washington’s support (incitement really) of Ukraine is at an end.

For Putin, I suspect the meeting in Hungary is Putin’s last test of Trump.  If Trump fails the test, chances are high that delivery of Tomahawks to Ukraine will result in a Russian declaration of war against Ukraine and quick destruction by conventional means of Ukraine’s ability to continue the conflict.  Putin will have reversed his strategy of non-response to provocations and put the West on notice, something he should have done years ago.  The likelihood is the Russian Foreign Ministry’s effort to dismiss the Tomahawk threat as terrorism rather than an act of war will fail.

Unless Trump comes to his senses, a brutal demonstration of Russian force is all that can stop the momentum toward a real war.  See this and this.

The post The Trump-Putin Meeting in Hungary Is the Last Chance for Peace appeared first on LewRockwell.

There are a number of indicators which lets one predict that the Trump administration, during the next election, will use government forces to severely attack and disrupt all opposition to it.

Trump has send the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents into the cities to harass and arrest alleged illegal immigrants. Due cause is disregarded and the methods used by the agents are brutal.

Trump has also sent National Guard troops into cities where, he claimed, riots were taking place. There were no riots or ‘terrorist incidents’ but the presence of troops is used to create a militarized atmosphere.

A new National Security Presidential Memorandum, NSPM-7 issued by Trump has defined new classes of internal enemies:

With the mainstream media distracted by the made-for-TV drama of James Comey’s indictment, Trump has signed a little-noticed national security directive identifying “anti-Christian” and “anti-American” views as indicators of radical left violence.
…
In NSPM-7, “Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence,” President Trump directs the Justice Department, the FBI, and other national security agencies and departments to fight his version of political violence in America, retooling a network of Joint Terrorism Task Forces to focus on “leftist” political violence in America. This vast counterterrorism army, made up of federal, state, and local agents would, as Trump aide Stephen Miller said, form “the central hub of that effort.”
…
The Trump administration isn’t only targeting organizations or groups but even individuals and “entities” whom NSPM-7 says can be identified by any of the following “indicia” (indicators) of violence:
anti-Americanism,

• • anti-capitalism,
  • anti-Christianity,
  • support for the overthrow of the United States Government,
  • extremism on migration,
  • extremism on race,
  • extremism on gender,
  • hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family,
  • hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on religion, and
  • hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on morality.

“The United States requires a national strategy to investigate and disrupt networks, entities, and organizations that foment political violence so that law enforcement can intervene in criminal conspiracies before they result in violent political acts,” the directive states (emphasis mine).

That all may sound laughable but these are unfortunately serious policies .  The target list includes organizations which do not exist:

The FBI and the homeland security department are actively investigating “Antifa” individuals and organizations that the Trump administration has branded domestic terrorists. Actions so far include collecting intelligence on Antifa “affinity” groups, canvassing the FBI’s vast informant network for tips about Antifa, and scrutinizing financial records, two sources involved in the investigations tell me.

There are no ‘antifa’ organizations. ‘Antifa’ is the idea of fighting indications of fascism. From time to time local interest groups may claim to do so for this or that reason. This category ‘antifa’ was likely chosen because it can be applied to any group that opposes government policies.

Today Yves Smith reports of another enforcement agency that Trump will use to destroy opposition to him:

The war against Trump’s perceived political enemies keeps escalating. The Wall Street Journal provides new detail on how the Trump Administration intends to use an IRS criminal unit, whose members bear arms, as part of his campaign against “left-leaning” organizations. This fallows a Reuters account describing how the Trump Administration intends to use the Department of Justice and DHS to pursue “left wing” groups that allegedly fomented violence.
…
Now to the press accounts. Key sections from the Journal’s report:

The Trump administration is preparing sweeping changes at the Internal Revenue Service that would allow the agency to pursue criminal inquiries of left-leaning groups more easily, according to people familiar with the matter.

A senior IRS official involved in the effort has drawn up a list of potential targets that includes major Democratic donors, some of the people said.

The undertaking aims to install allies of President Trump at the IRS criminal-investigative division, or IRS-CI, to exert firmer control over the unit and weaken the involvement of IRS lawyers in criminal investigations, officials said. The proposed changes could open the door to politically motivated probes…

Among those on the list are the billionaire Democratic donor George Soros and his affiliated groups…

Many on the left will not mind any attack on George Soros as his organization is well know for financing foreign color revolutions against legitimate leftist rulers. We can however be assured that Trump wont stop with them:

The list includes Soros’ Open Society Foundations; ActBlue, the funding arm of the Democratic Party; Indivisible, a grassroots coalition opposed to Trump policies and the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, a Los Angeles-based group.
…
Other groups on the list include two Jewish nonprofits that oppose Israel’s war in Gaza – IfNotNow and Jewish Voice for Peace.

There is unfortunately little institutional or political opposition that can restrain Trump:

The push against domestic groups and their donors comes amid Trump’s attacks on law firms, universities and the media, and his deployment of National Guard troops to some Democratic-run cities.
…
Timothy Naftali, a presidential historian and former director of the Richard Nixon presidential library, said Trump and Nixon were similar in their desire to punish political enemies and silence critics, but a pliant Republican-controlled Congress and a cabinet packed with loyalists are enabling Trump to go further.

“That’s why this particular moment is more dangerous for the rule of law in the United States than the 1970s were,” Naftali said.

All these are ominous signs that Trumps war on the political opposition will escalate further. Seymour Hersh’s sources are warning of this:

What’s happening now may be a trial run for the use of those forces to interfere on the behalf of the president and the Republican Party in states where the Democratic Party has a chance to win crucial seats in next fall’s Congressional elections. I’ve been told by someone with inside knowledge that planning for such action is now under way in the White House.

The ‘coerced dominance’ that has marked Trump’s brutal approach to foreign policy will now being applied to domestic issues and legitimate opposition.

Russell Vought, Trumps’s Director of the Office of Management and Budget, and Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff for policy, are the men behind this.

The scary thing is that there is, so far, little or any opposition to these plans and only few warnings about their consequences.

Reprinted with permission from Moon of Alabama.

The post Trump’s War Against ‘Left-leaning’ Groups Extends Further appeared first on LewRockwell.

Whether he has done so wittingly or unwittingly, President Trump has backed himself into a corner with respect to Venezuela. After amassing a formidable armada of military forces in the Caribbean off Venezuelan shores and having killed some 24 suspected U.S. drug-law violators on the high seas, Trump has now effectively committed himself to initiating a regime-change war against Venezuela. Everyone should now brace himself for what is coming — another in a long line of foreign regime-change undeclared wars of aggression in violation of the U.S. Constitution and the principles set forth at Nuremberg.

After all, Trump knows that if he backs down now and orders a withdrawal of that armada of warships, war planes (including B-52s), and tens of thousands of troops, Venezuela’s socialist president Nicolás Maduro will crow about how he forced the all-powerful ruler of the United States to back down and return his military forces to the United States. There is no way that Trump can now permit himself to go down that road. From his own personal perspective, he cannot be seen as being “weak.” He has placed himself in a position where he has to show courage and fortitude by initiating a war against Venezuela, one that leaves Maduro dead or captured.

No doubt that Trump is hoping that this massive military buildup will pressure Maduro into abdicating and fleeing the country, in which case Trump knows that he (Trump) will be hailed as a hero for saving the country from an unelected socialist dictator. Will Maduro do so? It’s possible, and he’d be smart to do so. But if he doesn’t, Trump has placed himself in a position of having to launch an illegal regime-change war against Venezuela, one that will leave at least some innocent people dead.

But consider the benefits of such a war from the standpoint of Trump. First and foremost, a war against Venezuela will put to rest the Jeffrey Epstein rebellion within Trump’s MAGA movement. With the massive military buildup in the Caribbean and the killing of unarmed suspected drug-law violators at the hands of the military, the Epstein rebellion has already dissipated. It will fizzle out with the first bombs or missiles fired into Venezuelan territory.

I pointed out this phenomenon back on July 22, before Trump had begun to send warships to Venezuela. My article was entitled, “Get Ready for a Big Foreign Crisis.” No, I don’t profess to be Nostradamus. My reasoning was simply based on the insightful words of James Madison: “The means of defense against foreign danger have been always the instruments of tyranny at home. Among the Romans it was a standing maxim to excite a war, whenever a revolt was apprehended.”

There was a boiling revolt among Trump’s MAGA supporters over Trump’s failure to order the release of the Epstein files. What better way to suppress that revolt than to excite a war against Venezuela? When the bombing of Venezuela begins, I will guarantee you that the Trump’s MAGA supporters will completely forget Jeffrey Epstein and will hop to, click their heels, recite the Pledge of Allegiance (which was written by a socialist), sing the Start Spangled Banner, thank the troops for their “service” in defending our “freedom,” and bask in their vicarious courage. The Epstein rebellion will be all but dead.

Moreover, Trump knows that many Venezuelan citizens will hail him as the greatest liberator since Simón Bolívar for having saved the country from a socialist dictator who clearly lost the last presidential election.

There is also a huge benefit for the national-security branch of the federal government. Consider its 20-year deadly and destructive military fiasco in Afghanistan, one in which American soldiers were sacrificed for nothing, just like they were in Vietnam. The American people never even had time to reflect on the Afghanistan disaster because the Pentagon, using its old Cold War dinosaur NATO, quickly maneuvered America into another war — this one against Russia by using Ukraine as its proxy. As everyone knows, that war isn’t going so well either.

And don’t forget Iraq, where U.S. officials used their bogus WMD scare to justify an undeclared regime-change war of aggression, one that left thousands of Iraqis and Americans dead, destroyed the entire country, and installed a regime that was aligned with Iran, which is considered to be an official enemy of the United States.

Of course, Iran is the country whose democratic system was destroyed by the CIA in yet another instance of U.S. foreign interventionism, which led to the U.S.-supported tyranny of the Shah, which led to the Iranian revolution, which led to Iran being declared a permanent official enemy of the United States.

One year after the 1953 Iranian escapade came the CIA’s regime-change operation in Guatemala, which led to a decade-long civil war that killed more than a million people. Oh well, at least they weren’t Americans.

Clearly, the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA could use a lift. A war with Venezuela will easily give them such a lift. Despite Madura’s bluster, there is no way that the Venezuelan military can oppose the most powerful military in the world. After all, look at how quickly U.S. forces have dispatched and destroyed those suspected drug-smuggling boats in the Caribbean. They have been able to easily win those battles and, as the Pentagon points out, without any loss of American life.

Moreover, Venezuela has been the victim of socialism and U.S. sanctions for decades. Its military is so weak it couldn’t defeat Grenada. Upon the first sight of U.S. Marines, Venezuelan forces and Maduro’s civilian “militia” will quickly surrender. They are not about to sacrifice their lives for Maduro, who will be assassinated, executed, or captured and brought back to the United States in chains.

Trump and his MAGA supporters as well as the national-security establishment will be exultant over this gigantic difficult military victory. They will sing about how proud they are to be Americans because their difficult undeclared, unconstitutional, illegal war against Venezuela will have brought “freedom” to Venezuela and protected America from the dangers of socialism, the Tren de Aragua gang, illegal-immigrant invaders, and “narco-terrorism.”

Never mind that the destruction of freedom in America through militarized and para-militarized omnipotent government will continue apace, with many shell-shocked American citizens passively letting it happen or even supporting what James Madison called “the instruments of tyranny at home.” At the same time, the irrational mass killings, the soaring suicide rates among young people and veterans, the hopeless dependency on government largess, and the out-of-control federal spending and debt that threaten national bankruptcy will continue to afflict America’s statist society — all coincidentally of course.

Reprinted with permission from The Future of Freedom Foundation.

The post Another Regime-Change War Is Coming appeared first on LewRockwell.

The Apostolic Exhortation Dilexi Te limits its discussion of “migrants” to three paragraphs: 73–75. Paragraph 73 claims that “The experience of migration accompanies the history of the People of God,” citing Abraham, Moses, and the Flight into Egypt. Paragraph 74 focuses on two 19th-century Church figures involved in the care of migrants in the Americas: St. Frances Xavier Cabrini and Bishop Giovanni Battista Scalabrini. Paragraph 75 cites contemporary examples of work with “migrants,” quoting Pope Francis’ line that “our response to the challenges posed by contemporary migration can be summed up in four verbs: welcome, protect, promote, and integrate.” It further reminds us that every person is a child of God, made in the divine image and likeness, and insists that “proclamation of the Gospel is credible only when it is translated into gestures of closeness and welcome,” concluding that “in every rejected migrant, it is Christ himself who knocks at the door of the community.”

Before these claims even reach the level of theology, standard logic would challenge them. The first question arises from what Dilexi Te does not ask: the legal status of a “migrant.” The Exhortation simply ignores the issue. There are only “migrants.”

What are we to conclude from that omission? That the legal status of a migrant is irrelevant? That would surprise nearly every state in the world, each of which not only distinguishes between legal and illegal immigrants but among legal categories themselves: temporary workers on nonimmigrant visas, refugees, asylum seekers, parolees, or permanent residents. The legal status of a migrant determines that person’s rights, obligations, and future in the host country. Would the Holy See tell  states to abandon such distinctions? If not, why does Dilexi Te fail even to acknowledge them?

Or is the Exhortation suggesting that Catholics should disregard the legality question altogether? If so, that would represent a radical shift in Catholic teaching about the obligations of citizens toward the state. If this is now doctrine, when and where was it promulgated? If it is not, then what is the nature of Dilexi Te’s statements on migration? Are they opinion, advice, or fervorino? Catholics have a right to know what binds conscience and what does not. A clear line has always separated authoritative teaching from pastoral commentary, the latter not enjoying magisterial weight.

These distinctions matter. What should a Catholic who works for ICE in field enforcement think? Or a CBP officer at a border checkpoint? Or a USCIS employee adjudicating claims for status change? Does a Catholic immigration officer act in bad faith by enforcing his country’s immigration laws?

Dilexi Te also plays loosely with history. Migration patterns in the ancient world differed radically from the modern era. Israel lay along the Fertile Crescent, between Egypt’s Nile and Babylon’s Tigris and Euphrates. Movement along that route was normal—but not unregulated. Those who use Exodus 23:9 (“you were aliens in the land of Egypt”) as a proof text for open borders forget that even St. Thomas Aquinas noted that Old Testament norms for foreigners were nuanced and conditional.

Moreover, to use ancient migration as a model for modern policy ignores the Westphalian system of sovereign states that emerged after 1648. Modern theology praises “historical development,” yet Dilexi Te seems blind to the historical development of political order itself. If doctrine may “develop,” why can’t history? Does anyone in Rome seriously believe the Westphalian state can—or should—be erased?

The discussion of Cabrini and Scalabrini likewise sidesteps the legality issue. When Mother Cabrini tended an orphan, she did not ask his legal status, but she lived in an era of lawful, regulated migration. The late 19th century was marked by large-scale, legally sanctioned immigration to the United States and Canada. Her ministry, and that of Bishop Scalabrini, did not conflict with the legal order of the countries they served. Indeed, the Catholic bishops of the United States then worked hard to reinforce the idea that “good Catholic” meant “good American.” It is difficult to imagine John Ireland or “Dagger John” Hughes endorsing or abetting large-scale illegal entry into the United States.

Invoking historical precedents from a different time and legal order to justify contemporary mass illegal immigration stretches analogy beyond reason. Only by ignoring both history and law can one claim—on Francis’ word—that the verbs governing migration can only be “welcome, protect, promote, and integrate.”

Does “welcoming” mean disregarding national immigration law? Nothing in Catholic teaching defines immigration restrictions as intrinsically unjust. On what basis does the Church think it may ignore—de jure or de facto—legitimate state law in this area?  Under the banner of “protecting” migrants? When violations of those laws occur on a massive scale, does the Church’s practical disregard for them amount to material cooperation with lawbreaking? Or does it evade that charge by saying it merely “promotes” the cause of migrants, regardless of legal status?

If immigration controls are a legitimate act of sovereignty, then when the Church “integrates” migrants sociologically without corresponding legal integration, it risks trespassing on rights that belong to Caesar. By fostering sociological integration absent legal status, the Church effectively pressures the state to create legal pathways, even though determining such status is a civil competence. Caesar has rights in justice too—including not to have his hand forced by faits accomplis.

These are not just questions of “standing with the poor.” They concern the relationship between Church and state and the Church’s role in telling states how to adjudicate legal presence, residence, and citizenship. Their implications reach far beyond charity. To omit the core issue—legal status—is to discuss migration as if the modern political order did not exist.

When Jesus was asked about paying taxes to Rome, He did not merely dodge a trap; He recognized that while God’s primacy is absolute, Caesar has real, subordinate rights. Vatican II called this the “autonomy of created things.” Those “created things,” after 1648, include the sovereign state. No honest discussion of migration can ignore that fact.

In the end, Dilexi Te’s treatment of migration leaves Catholics with serious unanswered questions. The Church may and must remind believers of the moral dignity of every person. But she cannot call Catholics to actions that imply contempt for lawful authority, nor can she treat the existence of sovereign states as a regrettable accident of history. If Rome wishes to speak credibly about migration, it must do so in full awareness that the world of Abraham and Moses is not the world of passports, borders, and visas—and that Catholics, while bound by charity, are also citizens. Between God and Caesar, the Exhortation seems to have forgotten that both still have legitimate claims upon us.

This article was originally published on Crisis Magazine.

The post When ‘Welcome’ Collides With Caesar: Dilexi Te and the Missing Question appeared first on LewRockwell.