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International Man: There’s little doubt the self-anointed elite are hostile to the middle class, which is on its way to extinction thanks to soaring inflation and taxation.

It seems they would like to implement a kinder and gentler version of feudalism.

What is really going on here, and what is the end game?

Doug Casey: The middle class, the bourgeoisie, emerged with the death of feudalism, the inception of the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and finally, the Industrial Revolution.

“Middle class” has been given a bad connotation in recent times. Leftists want everybody to believe that the bourgeoisie is full of consumerist faults. They’re mocked for being concerned with material well-being and improving their status. The elites feel threatened by them. Unlike the lower class plebs, grunt workers who don’t expect more from life.

Bourgeoisie simply means city dweller. Starting in the late Middle Ages, city dwellers were independent, with their own trades and businesses. Living in towns got them out from under the control of the feudal warrior elites.

Cities became intellectual centers, where the growing wealth of the bourgeoisie—the middle class—gave them the leisure needed to develop science, technology, engineering, literature, and medicine. Universities expanded the idea of education beyond the realm of theology. Commerce and personal freedom attracted the best of the peasants, who rose to the middle class. Cities ended feudalism, a system whereby everyone was born into a class and occupation, and was expected to stay there for life, obligated to pay taxes—protection money—to his “betters”. The rise of the bourgeoisie didn’t suit the ruling classes, who liked dominating society.

Capitalism developed as the bourgeoisie became wealthy. The rest is well-known history, but the point must be made that the creation of the middle class, capitalism, and bourgeois values elevated peasants from poverty and created today’s world.

But, then and now, a certain percentage of the population wants to control everyone else. The types who go to Bilderberg, the World Economic Forum, CFR, and the like see themselves as elite new aristocrats who should dominate the others. Even though most of them came from the middle class, now that they’ve “made it,” they like to pull the ladder up. And if not eliminate, at least neuter or defang the remaining bourgeoisie.

So what’s the end game?

I think it might look something like the movie Rollerball. Keep the plebs entertained while the elite, in the form of a corporate aristocracy, controls society.

International Man: Yuval Harari is a prominent World Economic Forum (WEF) member.

He suggested that the elite should use a universal basic income, drugs, and video games to keep the “useless class” docile and occupied.

What is your take on these comments in the context of Feudalism 2.0?

Doug Casey: A nasty little fellow, Harari is what might be termed a court intellectual for the World Economic Forum. He’s there to provide an intellectual patina for the power members, who are basically the businessmen, politicos, and media personalities. They’re not thinkers or interested in ideas but philistines concerned with money and power. Harari gives them an intellectual framework to justify their actions and plans.

As far as his books are concerned, they amount to a lot of generic truisms, obvious observations, justifications of current trends, and a projection of how the world will evolve. As an author and thinker, he’s knowledgeable and intelligent but grossly overrated. He owes his success to promotion from the new wannabe aristocracy and their hangers on. He illustrates the advantages of being hooked up with power people.

Harari has gone from being just another college professor, living with his husband in Israel, to being an internationally famous multi-millionaire pundit.

He expects the “useless eaters” will be maintained on a subsistence basis until they die out. I’m not sure how much the Covid hysteria, followed by the vaccine, has to do with that. It’s becoming quite clear that Covid itself was an artificially constructed flu variant, mainly affecting the very old, very sick, and very overweight. The vaccine is useless in preventing Covid but has caused significant increases in morbidity and mortality among healthy recipients. Was it a trial run to cleanse the world of useless eaters?

I don’t know. But, based on what people like Stalin, Hitler, Mao, and Pol Pot—among many others—have done in recent years, I don’t think it’s out of the question. No doubt, the new aristocracy wants to cement themselves in place. They certainly don’t like rubbing shoulders with the hoi polloi when they visit Venice, Machu Pichu, and the like.

International Man: How does the WEF’s vision of “you will own nothing and be happy” compare to the previous feudal system of medieval Europe?

Doug Casey: Serfs, unlike slaves, had some rights; they owned tools and huts. But their position in society was fixed, they couldn’t easily move—rather like a medieval version of today’s 15-minute city. They had to recognize their betters, and not say anything challenging—like today’s increasingly draconian limits on free speech.

I expect that the gigantic amount of debt in society today will be the means of turning middle-class Americans into serfs. The lower classes are already welfare recipients who produce very little; they’ll soon be replaced by robots.

The better educated ones are buried under their college debts. But everybody is buried under growing credit card debt, auto debt, mortgage debt, and sometimes even tax debt.

If someone makes a lucky capital gain in the stock market or by selling his house, he might spend that money only to find that the government wants 20%, 30%, or 40% of the gain. So the gain, instead of a blessing, becomes a disaster in disguise.

Many people today are burdened by debt, living paycheck to paycheck. They’re barely getting by, under immense pressure to cover food and rent. They’d probably be quite willing to take a deal offering essentially “three hots and a cot,” a tiny apartment, internet, and some extra money to hang around Starbucks.

International Man: How do you see Feudalism 2.0 developing over the coming months and years?

What can be done to resist this agenda?

Doug Casey: Trends in motion tend to stay in motion until they reach some type of a crisis—when anything can happen. Let’s look at some economic systems, as spelled out by Karl Marx.

In Communism, the Marxist ideal, the State owns both the means of production (factories, farms, and such) as well as consumer goods (houses, cars, and theoretically, even your clothes). Mao’s China is as close as anyone’s come.

Socialism is a way station to Communism. The State owns the means of production, but individuals can still own consumer goods. There are lots of countries with socialist ideals, but no real socialist countries. Cuba probably comes closest.

Fascism is an economic system where both the means of production and consumer goods are privately owned, but they’re both 100% State-controlled. Most of the world’s countries are fascist. The word was coined by Mussolini; he meant it to describe the melding of the State, corporations, and unions.

Few people know that Marx coined the word “capitalism”. It’s a system where everything is both privately owned and privately controlled. There are no purely capitalist countries.

In feudalism, a lord owns everything but grants fiefs to subordinates. An aristocracy is supported by the plebs through taxation. Feudalism is based on the plebs providing service and taxes to the lord in exchange for “protection” from other lords.

Now for some pure speculation on my part.

Most of the world’s governments, including that of the US, are terminally bankrupt. They’ll prove unable to meet their obligations. Meanwhile, the prospect of wars, secessions, and crime is growing. I suspect wealthy corporations and individuals will wind up supplanting most traditional governments.

The result could be called neo-feudalism.

The average person is looking for someone or something to save him, to kiss everything and make it better, when times get tough. With governments bankrupt and dysfunctional, solvent and powerful individuals and corporations could take their place.

Harari and his pals want to see the plebs given a guaranteed annual income, a place to live, and entertainment until the useless eaters fade away. But it won’t be as neat as Harari’s wet dreams imagine. The world will be chaotic. We may be on our way to an idiocracy as well, where the populace is dumbed down so they don’t get dangerous ideas.

No matter how things sort out, I think we’re looking at a chaotic and dangerous situation in the near term.

I don’t see voting as a solution. Notwithstanding the differences between Harris and Trump, it just amounts to choosing the lesser of two evils, which in this case would certainly be Trump. But even if you elected Mises, Hayek, Ron Paul, or Harry Browne, I’m afraid the tide of history would wash them away.

In any event, your vote doesn’t really count. Or perhaps I should say it counts about as much as a grain of sand on a beach with hundreds of millions of grains of sand. And even then, as Stalin said, it’s not who votes that counts. It’s who counts the votes.

What can you do to resist the shape of things to come?

It’s an uphill fight because if you’re liberty-oriented, you’re part of a tiny minority at odds with the views of most of your fellow citizens, who’ve been indoctrinated by years of schooling, media, and entertainment. Collectivist memes are cemented in their minds. And when they talk to their contemporaries, they tend to mutually reinforce their beliefs.

When you’re in a group, it can be dangerous to have different beliefs, in much the same way that it’s dangerous for a chicken in a flock to have a feather out of place. The other chickens will peck it to death. Reigning ideas tend to be brutally enforced.

What can you do about this?

Other than trying to maintain your personal integrity, there’s not much you can do to roll back the tsunami. There wasn’t much that a freedom-loving Russian could do in 1917, a freedom-loving German could do in 1933, or a freedom-loving Cuban could do in 1959. Or a freedom-loving Venezuelan today.

The best you can do is to try to save yourself, your family, and your like-minded friends. Changing society for the better is a long shot. Although I hope Milei in Argentina proves me wrong.

International Man: What do you suggest individuals do to ensure they don’t become modern serfs if Feudalism 2.0 emerges?

Doug Casey: There are two types of freedom: physical and financial.

From a physical point of view, it’s important not to be tied down the way a serf might be. You don’t want all your possessions to be in one place where they’re easily controlled by the powers that be. Don’t act like a plant. Staying rooted in one place is not an optimum survival strategy for a human in tough times.

The powers that be are interested in controlling other people. It’s best to be a moving target, which makes you much harder to hit.

This is a problem for those of us who think that the US is still the land of the free. It’s not. It’s been devolving for decades. My guess is that over the next few years, perhaps starting with this election, the US will evermore closely resemble the other 200 nation-states that cover the face of the globe like a skin disease.

The single most important thing you can do is internationalize and make sure that all your assets aren’t in one bailiwick, under the control of one government.

From a financial point of view, it gives you the freedom to travel and move, especially with the coming FX controls and CBDCs. Use gold and Bitcoin. You should already have a good stash of both. If you don’t, it’s not too late to start accumulating and transferring assets into them.

Reprinted with permission from International Man.

The post Global Elites’ Plan for Feudalism 2.0—and How You Can Resist appeared first on LewRockwell.

In tyrannical societies, the state uses its monopoly of violence to dictate what citizens are permitted to say, activities they are permitted to engage in, and cultural symbols they are permitted to celebrate or display. Anyone who violates such edicts can be arrested and imprisoned. Given the tendency of states to become increasingly dictatorial and to trample on their citizens’ liberties with impunity, Murray Rothbard argued that the state itself, by its very nature, is a threat to liberty. In The Anatomy of the State, he argues that the state is a predator: “The State provides a legal, orderly, systematic channel for the predation of private property” including predation of all the liberties that emanate from self-ownership.

Even for those who support the minimal state, they would support state power only on the basis that the state’s monopoly of force will be limited to protecting and defending the rights of citizens, by designating violations of rights as crimes and taking the steps necessary to punish criminals. For example, in his book Restoring The Lost Constitution: The Presumption Of Liberty, Randy Barnett argues that the state has power to enact laws that are “both necessary to protect the rights of others and proper insofar as they do not violate the rights of the persons whose freedom they restrict.”

Western democracies have strayed far from these ideals of liberty. In many countries the state has conferred upon itself the power to tell citizens which heritage symbols they are permitted to display, and to punish them for celebrating any heritage that the state deems to be “hate.”

Anti-Hate Laws

Fueled by critical race theories and the concept of “antiracism,” many once-free jurisdictions are now trending rapidly towards tyranny, expanding their prohibitions of what they refer to in the relevant legislation as “hate.” This takes the form of laws prohibiting hate speech, hate crimes and hate symbols.

In the case of New York, the city has established an office for the prevention of hate crimes. Under “local laws on hate crimes” that office has power to designate hate crimes including the duty to:

Create and implement a coordinated system for the city’s response to hate crimes. Such system shall, in conjunction with the New York city commission on human rights’ bias response teams, the police department, and any relevant agency or office, coordinate responses to hate crime allegations.

The office for prevention of hate crimes designates certain symbols as “hate symbols.” Under Senate Bill S8298B this includes the Confederate battle flag.

Another example of a legally-designated “hate symbol” is the old South African flag. In support of an application to ban the flag, the South African Human Rights Commission argued that displays of that flag are analogous to displays of the Confederate battle flag:

Arguing in support of the ban, the South African Human Rights Commission referred to the case of Dylann Roof, the white man convicted and sentenced to death for the 2015 racist killings of nine Black church members in Charleston, South Carolina, as an example of how the apartheid-era flag retained clear connections to violent white supremacists. Roof once appeared in a photograph wearing a jacket with the flag on it.

On that basis, the South African Equality Court banned public displays of the flag. It was only by a narrow margin (following an appeal by the civil rights organization AfriForum) that South Africans avoided having private displays of the flag also being banned.

The ADL, an enthusiastic proponent of designating other people’s cultural icons as “hate,” also added the old South African flag to its hate list. The fact that this flag predates the apartheid era—having been adopted in 1928, two decades before the Afrikaner Nationalist government came to power—is deemed by these self-appointed hate-finders to be irrelevant. Also irrelevant is the fact that South African troops in WWII marched under the old flag to defend the allied cause.

How State Power Destroys Individual Liberty

While many have argued that the prohibition of hate symbols is within reasonable bounds as it only applies to selling or displaying such symbols on public property, the threat to individual liberty readily becomes apparent when it is recalled that the scope of “public property” has vastly expanded in recent decades. State power to regulate cultural displays on public property covers not just city offices, police stations, and fire stations, but also any location where publicly-funded activities may take place such as public schools or even street parades, parks, and fairgrounds. With the involvement of the state in so many aspects of daily life, it is increasingly difficult for citizens to avoid having any interactions that would be classified as falling within the public remit over which the state claims jurisdiction.

The important point in the context of defending individual liberty is that the edicts against hate symbols are not just people’s opinions on what amounts to “hate”—if they were mere opinions they could be challenged, dismissed, or simply ignored. But they are mandates backed by state force, accompanied by legal penalties. Thus, the issue in this context is not whether those symbols are indeed hate symbols, but whether the state should have power to ban such symbols and enforce their bans with legal penalties.

Organizations like ADL and SPLC also keep similar lists of “hate symbols,” and they may feel that they have good reasons for viewing those symbols as hateful, but these organizations are not backed by state force so they are at liberty to make lists of whatever they may love or hate. But it is one thing for left wing organizations to keep lists of “hate symbols” which, in their opinion as self-appointed hate-finders, have failed to uphold “our shared values”—by which they mean their own socialist and egalitarian values. It is a different matter altogether for the state to designate flags and cultural icons as “hate symbols.” Prohibiting “hate symbols” becomes a threat to liberty when it is enshrined in legislation and backed by state force.

The extensions of state power to the criminalization of historic flags and symbols misunderstands the meaning of liberty. Liberty includes people’s right to say things we might not want to hear, to wave flags we might not want to see, and to commemorate a history we might wish had unfolded in a different way. The state in a free society should not have power to crush individual liberty based on what they might consider to be “hate.” That many tolerate such encroachments on liberty is a sign that we no longer live in free states. As argued by the British journalist and politician David Frost:

At the root of all this, I fear, is a fundamental downgrading of freedom as a value… Yet you can’t long remain a free society if you don’t believe in freedom. And it’s no good just saying you believe in it: you have to live it. Sometimes that means politicians deciding “we would rather live with this injustice or this social problem than expand the state to deal with it.”

This means that while we might think people should not behave in certain ways or hold certain opinions that others might consider to be offensive, we should not expand the state to create offices with a bureaucratic mandate to eradicate “hate.” The dangers of bureaucratic excess are well known: if an office of the state is given power and money to wage war against “hate,” it has a perverse incentive to find hate wherever it looks.

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

The post ‘Hate Symbols’ and the Meaning of Liberty appeared first on LewRockwell.

Recently, Israel killed some more “terrorists.” I guess it was more than usual, but I don’t pay much attention to what’s happening in other countries. I prefer to concentrate on domestic issues, considering how every major politician continues to neglect them. That’s how we became the World’s Wealthiest Banana Republic.

We are told that our government’s favorite little nation recently used pagers and walkie talkies to blow up what Israel claims were “senior leaders” of Hezbolah. Well, what else are you going to do with a “senior leader” of Hezbolah? I’m reminded of the excellent South Park episode on the Homeless, where after an autopsy on one of them, a maniacal doctor exclaims, “My God! They’re almost human!” I must admit I’m disappointed; all that money to the world’s smallest “democracy,” and they are forced to use pagers to “defend themselves?” That is so 1990s. But Israel wasn’t just blowing up “terrorists” with antiquated devices. They also were busy killing hundreds of women, children, and paramedics in Lebanon. To be fair, they had pretty much ignored the Lebanese since 2006. We must never forget; the Israelis are perpetually permitted to “defend themselves.” From Lebanon. Syria. Iran. Homeless Palestinians.

Who knew that “terrorist” leaders were hiding in Lebanon since 2006? And all this time, I thought it was Iran that was the “state sponsor of terrorism.” Maybe they can find some old exploding 8-track players to use on “senior leaders” in Iran. But what outfit would they belong to? It’s so hard to keep track of these “terrorist” organizations. Long ago, there was the PLO. And Ringo Starr’s lost brother Yasser Arafat. Then I guess it was Al-Qaeda. As I noted in Hidden History, Al-Qaeda roughly translates to “the toilet” in Arabic. That’s a really demeaning name to select for your group. Especially for violent, raving, Arab “terrorists.” Unless you want to offend them. Inside jokes, inside jobs. Maybe Alex Jones was right when he used to call them “Al-CIAeda.” At any rate, what happened to good old Al-Qadea? Did they find out what their name really meant? That would infuriate most non-terrorists.

There are so many other outfits we’ve heard bandied about by all the various Middle East “experts.” Isis. Isil. The Taliban. Isn’t the Taliban running Afghanistan now, after we senselessly spent all those years there? We’re we on the side of the Taliban in Syria, or am I confused? There is, of course, precedent for this. The beloved Franklin D. Roosevelt utilized Mafia kingpins like Frank Costello against the Axis powers in World War II. I wonder why Hitler and the Nazis are never called “terrorists?” I guess they are in their own special category, still inspiring Hollywood almost a century later. We are told that former CIA asset Osama Bin Laden was the founder and first “general emir” of Al-Qaeda. That’s an impressive sounding title. Kind of a combination of George Washington and Benedict Arnold. From his secretive Batcave, deep in the heart of Afghanistan, we are told that he orchestrated the 9/11 attacks.

Isis was allegedly a Jordanian group that eventually merged with Bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda. Bin Laden was a former CIA operative, and the group has been spoofed as “Al-CIAda.” Kind of a logical connection. At any rate, Bin Laden was also supposedly the world’s tallest Arab. Or at least one of the tallest. Certainly he was the tallest “terrorist.” So how could all those crazed Arabs not listen to him? Height makes a difference in how people are viewed; look at all the leadership studies. Isil was a variant to Isis, although I can’t comprehend the distinction. There is also the blanket term “Jihadist,” which is used to describe all of these groups. I think the conservative think tank people just like saying the word. Almost as much as they like saying Hezbolah, with an accent on the last syllable. I suppose that’s the proper way to pronounce it. If only they could pronounce “Iran” correctly. It’s E-ron.

Frankly, I start nodding off when I hear too much talk about the “threat of terrorism.” The terminology seems out of a fractured bedtime story. Rockabye baby, in the Hamas. Speaking of Hamas, how come none of their “senior leaders” were blown up with pagers and walkie-talkies? I thought the reason why the IDF has been killing so many innocent civilians in Gaza was because of that dirty, sneaky, rotten, Pearl Harbor like attack at a concert last October. By Hamas. Not Hezbolah. Seems kind of unfair for “senior leaders” of Hezbolah to be blown up by pagers, over something “senior leaders” of Hamas did. Kind of like going after Saddam Hussein when he wasn’t a part of the official 9/11 lie. Hamas, we are told, is a Sunni outfit that is loyal to the Muslim Brotherhood. “Sunni” and “Shiite” are two more words that make me very, very sleepy. And “Muslim Brotherhood” is just used interchangeably with all the others. I’m convinced they just pick these keywords at random. No one cares.

Although it is a violation of the new Antisemitism Awareness Act to mention it, we need to look again at the birth of Israel. You know, how we deposited a bunch of foreigners in the middle of someone else’s land. Think Haitians in Springfield, Ohio. Although I haven’t heard any credible reports of Israelis eating cats or dogs, it was a disastrous idea to just plant them there, and expect all the residents to welcome them with open arms. Especially when the U.S. taxpayers provided them with weapons the residents couldn’t hope to match. Thanks to all of our involuntarily withheld taxes, Israel- about the size of Rhode Island- has the third most powerful military in the world. We don’t have much to be proud of these days, so maybe there’s some twisted pride in that. We built that, to paraphrase the beloved Barack Obama, the “Muslim” president who killed more Muslims than anyone ever had.

Who remembers the Irgun Gang? And a young, future Israeli leader named Menachem Begin? As leader of this group, which some referred to as “terrorist,” and others as “freedom fighters,” he coordinated the bombing of the King David Hotel, which killed nearly a hundred people. Who were all “almost human,” to quote South Park again. One underreported but important historical figure is Ze’ev Vladimir Jabotinsky. He helped found the Irgun’s precursors the Haganah, and Betar. It seems that the Zionists had a thing for these names as much as the “terrorists” later would. Now, some have suggested that these were all “terrorist” groups, and that Jabotinsky was the father of Jewish terrorism. Then there was the competing group the Stern Gang. It was run by some Stern who was not related to the self-proclaimed “King of all Media,” who has become a deranged proponent of the deadly COVID vaccine.

Read the Whole Article

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Yesterday a massive barrage of Iranian ballistic missiles hit Israel. It came after months of serious Iranian efforts (vid) to achieve better relations with the U.S. had failed. Israel had managed to sabotage those efforts to the detriment of its U.S. ally.

To understand what has happened – and, more importantly, why this attack was launched today – we need to look back.

On May 20 2024 then President of Iran, Ebrahim Raisi, died in a helicopter accident.

New elections were held in Iran and, to the astonishment of many, Masoud Pezeshkian, a moderate, won with a decent majority. Pezeshkian is a specialist in cardiac surgery with no experience in foreign policy. He had campaigned on reconnecting with the ‘West’, the lifting of sanctions on Iran and a generally more liberal policy.

On July 30:

Ismail Haniyeh, the political leader of Hamas, was assassinated along with his personal bodyguard in the Iranian capital Tehran by an apparent Israeli attack. Haniyeh was killed in his accommodation in a military-run guesthouse after attending the inauguration ceremony for Iranian president Masoud Pezeshkian.

The assassination of Haniyeh was a major offense against the sovereignty of the the Islamic Republic of Iran. It also was a personal offense against Masoud Pezeshkian’s presidency.

The Supreme Leader of Iran Ayatollah Khomeini and the leadership of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corp (IRGC) wooed to retaliate for the strike. But the new president still argued to not retaliate but to seek accommodation through negotiations. He, at that time, still hoped that the U.S. would arrange for a ceasefire in Gaza and wanted to avoid that Iran would be blamed for a failure of those negotiations.

President Pezeshkian continued his moderate course. On September 23, during a his participation in the UN General Assembly in New York, he again put out feelers towards a new accommodation with the U.S. over Iran’s nuclear program:

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian on Monday emphasized his openness to a new international agreement over his country’s nuclear program — a subject that has fueled global tensions for years, risking potentially catastrophic warfare between Iran and the U.S.
…
Asked about restoring nuclear negotiations, Pezeshkian said through a translator: “I do hope we can … reach an agreement.”
…
He said Iran upheld its end of the nuclear deal unlike the U.S. — an assessment most outside experts share, though there are some long-standing concerns about Iranian compliance — and pointed to American diplomats saying time and again that a cease-fire deal in Gaza that can boost stability across the Middle East is just a week away.

Within Iran the moderated course was seen with suspicion:

The lack of trust specifically affects the calculus of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, he continued, in a tacit acknowledgment that the unelected Khamenei has the final say on Iran’s policies.

“His Eminence says, ’They say one thing, do another,” Pezeshkian said. The president promoted engagement with the outside world as he sought votes from Iranians, noting that easing sanctions could boost the economy amid popular unrest in the country, and in August, Khamenei gave him a cautious green light to bargain with the U.S. Another power center in the country — the elite Revolutionary Guard — is extremely leery of such talks.

Four days later Israeli air-strikes killed Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hizbullah and a major architect of the Iran led Axis of Resistance. Several other Hizbullah leaders as well as the deputy commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), General Abbas Nilforoushan, were also killed in the strike.

Pezeshkian noted rather bitterly that the order by the Israeli Prime Minister Natanyahoo to kill Nasrallah had been given from New York:

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian says the international community will not forget that the order for Israel’s terrorist act to assassinate Secretary General of the Lebanese Hezbollah resistance movement Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah was issued from New York.
…
In a message of condolences on Saturday, Pezeshkian said the United States cannot absolve itself of complicity with the Zionists in the terror attack against the Hezbollah chief.

The assassination of Nasrallah demonstrated that Pezeshkian’s politics of moderation had failed.

After arriving back in Tehran Pezeshkian’s tone had changed:

President Masoud Pezeshkian of Iran says the world should know that the blood of Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah and his companions will continue to boil and turn into a bulwark against tyranny and oppression.
…
Addressing a cabinet session on Sunday, Pezeshkian said it is imperative for Tehran to give a “decisive” response to the criminal Israeli regime.

Iran’s plans for retaliating against Israel required coordination with its allies. On Monday, September 30, Russia’s Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin happened to be in Tehran for long planned talks about economic cooperation:

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian says the implementation of critical projects between Iran and Russia will produce a huge capacity to counter cruel Western sanctions against the two countries.
…
in his remarks, the Iranian president warned that Israel is intensifying tensions with the direct support of the United States in order to prepare the ground for increasing the presence of the United States in the region.

This poses a “common threat to the interests of the regional countries and nations,” he said.
…
The Russian premier expressed concern over the escalation of tensions in the region and said the US supports mounting conflicts in different parts of the world with the purpose of securing its own interests.

Therefore, he emphasized, independent countries like Iran and Russia, should accelerate cooperation to counter such measures.

Moscow was thereby likely informed of upcoming strikes against Israel. China was likewise assured and informed:

President Masoud Pezeshkian of Iran says the traditional friendship between the Iranian and Chinese nations has evolved into “deep, stable, and strategic” relations.

“I express my desire to work alongside Your Excellency to further develop comprehensive relations between Iran and China,” President Pezeshkian stated in his message to President Xi Jinping, written on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China (PRC).

A few hours later, after Mishustin had left, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps launched a volley of some 250 ballistic missiles towards Israel:

Chief of Staff of Iran’s Armed Forces:

Among our targets were Israel’s 3 main airbases, Mossad’s terror HQ, Radar sites, and gathering sites of armoured vehicles around the Gaza Strip, responsible for the genocide in Gaza.

Israel’s ‘Iron Dome’ missile defense was unable to interdict a significant number of Iran’s missiles.

Elijah J. Magnier @ejmalrai – 17:06 UTC · Oct 1, 2024

Over 250 Iranian ballistic hit #Israel. Many buildings in Israel are damaged. The possibility of a regional war is growing. Israelis expected to retaliate and Iran will retaliate to the retaliation. …

Verified videos show dozens of impacts of Iranian missiles against targets in Israel. Several strikes hit near the Mossad headquarter in Tel Aviv. Allegedly a gas platform of the coast of Ashkelon was also hit. Video shows that it is engulfed in fire.

Other targets were likewise destroyed:

A massive Iranian ballistic missile strike on targets in Israel launched on October 1 has targeted Nevatim Air Base, among other key targets in the country. The facility hosts both of the Israeli Air Force’s F-35 fifth generation fighter squadrons, and was previously intended to host a third squadron of the fighters after they were delivered. Iranian media sources have reported that the facility was “completely destroyed” in the attack. Footage from Israel has confirmed the impact of dozens of ballistic missiles which Israel’s air defence network failed to shoot down, with targets impacted including the headquarters of the intelligence agency Mossad, located in Tel Aviv which was levelled by the attack.

Remarkably there are no reports of any civilian casualties.

Israel and Iran have now issued threats and counter-threats of further escalation.

But most importantly will be the stand the U.S. government is going to take.

Joining Israel an open war against Iran, which Netanyahoo has wanted to achieve for some time, would bog down the U.S. in another unwinnable war in the Middle East that would hurt its interests for years to come.

It would give time to China and Russia to expand their multilateral coalition to the further detriment of U.S. supremacy.

Reprinted with permission from Moon of Alabama.

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When Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took the podium at the U.N. General Assembly last week, dozens of governments walked out of the chamber. The global opprobrium of Netanyahu and his government is due to Israel’s depraved violence against its Arab neighbors. Netanyahu purveys a fundamentalist ideology that has turned Israel into the most violent nation in the world.

Israel’s fundamentalist credo holds that Palestinians have no right whatsoever to their own nation. The Israeli Knesset recently passed a declaration rejecting a Palestinian State in what the Knesset calls The Land of Israel, meaning the land west of the Jordan River.

The Knesset of Israel firmly opposes the establishment of a Palestinian state west of Jordan. The establishment of a Palestinian state in the heart of the Land of Israel will pose an existential danger to the State of Israel and its citizens, perpetuate the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and destabilize the region.

To call the land west of the Jordan the “heart of the Land of Israel” is breathtaking. Israel is one part of the land west of the Jordan, not the entire land. The International Court of Justice has recently ruled that Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian lands (those outside of Israel’s borders as of June 4, 1967, before the June 1967 war) is plainly illegal. The U.N. General Assembly has recently voted overwhelmingly to back the ICJ ruling and called on Israel to withdraw from Palestinian territories within one year.

There are many sources of this Israeli brazenness, the most important being the backing of Israel by U.S. military power.

It is worth recalling that when the British empire promised a Jewish homeland in Ottoman Palestine in 1917, the Palestinian Arabs constituted around 90% of the population. At the time of the 1947 U.N. partition plan, the Palestinian Arab population was approximately 67% of the population, though the partition plan proposed to give the Arabs only 44% of the land. Now Israel asserts the claim to 100% of the land.

There are many sources of this Israeli brazenness, the most important being the backing of Israel by U.S. military power. Without the U.S. military backing, Israel could not possibly rule over an Apartheid regime in which Palestinian Arabs constitute nearly one half of the population yet hold none of the political power. Future generations will look back in amazement at the success of the Israel Lobby in manipulating the U.S. military to the severe detriment of U.S. national security and global peace.

Yet in addition to the U.S. military, there is another source of Israel’s profound injustice to the Palestinian people, and that is the religious fundamentalism purveyed fanatics such as the self-proclaimed fascist Bezalel Smotrich, Israel’s Minister of Finance, and Minister of National Defense Itamar Ben-Gvir. These fanatics hold fast to the biblical Book of Joshua, according to which God promised the Israelites the land “from the Negev wilderness in the south to the Lebanon mountains in the north, from the Euphrates River in the east to the Mediterranean Sea in the west.” (Joshua 1:4).

At the U.N. last week, Netanyahu once again staked Israel’s claim to the land on Biblical grounds: “When I spoke here last year, I said we face the same timeless choice that Moses put before the people of Israel thousands of years ago, as we were about to enter the Promised Land. Moses told us that our actions would determine whether we bequeath to future generations a blessing or a curse.”

What Netanyahu did not tell his fellow leaders (most of whom had in any event vacated the hall), was that Moses laid out a genocidal path to the Promised Land (Deuteronomy 31):

[The LORD] will destroy these nations before you, and you shall dispossess them. Joshua is the one who will cross ahead of you, just as the LORD has spoken. “The LORD will do to them just as He did to Sihon and Og, the kings of the Amorites, and to their land, when He destroyed them. “The LORD will deliver them up before you, and you shall do to them according to all the commandments which I have commanded you.”

Israel’s violent extremists believe that Israel has the Biblical license, indeed a religious mandate, to destroy the Palestinian people. Their Biblical hero is Joshua, the Israelite commander who succeeded Moses, and who led the Israelites’ genocidal conquests. (Netanyahu has also referred to the Amalekites, another case of a God-ordained genocide of foes of the Israelites, in a clear “dog-whistle” to his fundamentalist followers.) Here is the Biblical account of Joshua’s conquest of Hebron (Joshua 10):

Then Joshua and all Israel with him went up from Eglon to Hebron, and they fought against it. They captured it and struck it and its king and all its cities and all the persons who were in it with the edge of the sword. He left no survivor, according to all that he had done to Eglon. And he utterly destroyed it and every person who was in it.

There is a deep irony to this genocidal account. It almost surely is not historically accurate. There is no evidence that the Jewish kingdoms arose from genocides. Most likely they arose from local Canaanite communities adopting early forms of Judaism. Jewish fundamentalists adhere to a 6th century BCE text that is most likely a mythical reconstruction of purported events several centuries earlier, and a form of political bravado that was common in ancient Near Eastern politics. The problem is 21st century Israeli politicians, illegal settlers, and other fundamentalists who propose to live by—and kill by—6th century BCE political propaganda.

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Welcome back, boys and girls and non-binaries, to Uncle B’s GeezerMedia 101 seminar! Let’s discuss how we warp minds, create fear and squelch opposition, so our Glorious Message can ring out unsullied to the eagerly awaiting masses!

Our topic today is our Patron Saint Joseph Goebbels, and how we are resurrecting his Perspicuous Principles of Propaganda, advancing our cause and beliefs throughout the world. Can I get an AMEN!

Maybe it’s because I have a degree in mass media, or I worked for years for the major networks, or because I’ve studied Leni Riefenstahl’s films frame-by-frame, but I am getting some serious Goebbelvibes these days.

Slogans like “Diversity, Equity, Inclusion” reek of “Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer”. Campaign tag lines like Hope, Change and Joy are dripping with Goebbel’s simple, clear and emotive methods, repeated to the point of nausea. Goebbels understood mass media, and he pioneered its use as a mass brainwashing tool.

I should note an obvious marketing technique at this point: Kamala Harris’ cackle is seen as a negative in focus groups, kind of like the Joker in Batman, so you take the negative feature and make it a virtue with the slogan “Joy!” Viola! Spin Job 101. Consider that a bonus fun fact.

Back to the topic at hand. Let’s summarize Goebbels’ innovations and see if we can’t find analogies in our current media environment. Here are the primary features of his propaganda machine:

• Control of Media:
  • Goebbels sought to control every aspect of media, including newspapers, radio, films, theatre, and literature. The Party ensured that all forms of communication were used to promote their ideology and suppress dissenting voices. Any opposition was heavily censored, and the media was saturated with Party messages.
  • Radios were especially important. The Volksempfänger, a cheap and widely available radio, was distributed across the country to ensure that the public could listen to Party broadcasts, including the Leader’s speeches and Party-approved entertainment.
• Use of Mass Rallies and Spectacles:
  • Massive rallies like the annual Nuremberg Rallies were central to Party propaganda. These grand, theatrical displays, with carefully choreographed parades, symbols, and speeches, created a sense of unity and invincibility around the regime. The rallies were broadcast nationwide, enhancing their impact.
  • Film was used to mythologize Party leaders, with Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will (1935) being one of the most famous examples. This documentary glorified the Leader and the movement, portraying them as unstoppable forces.
• Scapegoating and Dehumanization:
  • The propaganda relentlessly targeted groups that the Party considered enemies, particularly Jews, Communists, Roma (gypsies), homosexuals, and others. The dehumanization of these groups through films like Der Ewige Jude (The Eternal Jew) (1940) and constant references to them as parasites or enemies of the state fueled widespread fear and distrust.
  • Party propaganda portrayed these groups as threats to the Aryan race, which was glorified as the supreme race. This created a common enemy, uniting the population under the Party banner.

Simplified Messages and Repetition:

• One of Goebbels’ famous principles was that propaganda should be simple and repetitive. Complex or intellectual engagements were seen as less effective. Instead, Goebbels pushed for emotionally charged slogans and messages that would be easy to remember and difficult to refute.
• Party propaganda was built around strong visual symbols, such as the swastika, and slogans that emphasized nationalism, often repeated until they became ingrained in the public’s consciousness.

Goebbels understood the power of fear, repetition, and emotional appeals. By constantly creating a narrative of external and internal threats, he instilled fear in the population, making them more reliant on the regime for security, by triggering the instinctive threat response of “circling the wagons” in the masses.

The Party controlled all media and cultural outlets, ensuring that only the Party viewpoint was ever presented. Opposition voices were systematically silenced, creating a media landscape with no alternatives to the Party narrative.

The propaganda machine effectively exploited and amplified existing racial and ethnic prejudices. It resonated with historical stereotypes and fears, making it easier to accept the Party portrayal of targeted groups.

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Such were the words of the controversial, and at times provocative, German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, who warned that in fighting evil one risks becoming the very evil he is fighting. This is something the United States of America stands accused of for its unconditional support for the State of Israel, including the latter’s past human rights abuses and the casualties in the Gaza Strip caused by the latter that have reached a genocidal level. As evident, the modern State of Israel’s political prowess, based on the illusion “that the return of Jews to their ancestral homeland is part of a messianic fulfilment,” has gone beyond the observance of the rule of law as established by the international community.

This summer, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that Israel was in breach of international law with its occupation of the Palestinian Territories in Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem. The ICJ ordered the Israelis to both bring this to an end and make reparations for damage they created. In like manner, the U.N. General Assembly, in September, overwhelmingly voted—124 nations in favor, 14 against, and 43 abstentions—that Israel should withdraw from its illegal occupation. The U.S., as a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council, vetoed the measure, thus rendering it null.

Indeed, even fellow Israelis have called out Israel’s crimes. For example, according to B’tselem, an Israeli human rights organization, under Itamar Ben-Gvir, the incumbent Israeli Minister of National Security, Palestinian detainees have been subjected to “systematic, institutional policy of unrelenting physical and psychological violence,” which is on par with the escalation in Christian persecution in the Holy Land. Also, this past May,  a self-proclaimed soldier from Israel’s infamous Netzah Yehuda battalion gloated of his unit’s killing of a 78-year-old Palestinian-American and likewise flaunted his genocidal views. After announcing plans to sanction the battalion, the Biden administration inexplicably pulled back.

And just this past month, multiple videos showed  personnel of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) kicking and pushing four Palestinian bodies off a roof of a building during a military raid in the occupied West Bank town of Qabatiya. With all likelihood, just as with Shireen Abu Akleh, a Catholic Palestinian journalist who was shot dead by an Israeli sniper while covering a military operation in the West Bank, there will be no accountability.

One then inquires why U.S. presidents and lawmakers are reticent to criticize Israel when its own citizens have been saliently critical of its present policies, like the hundreds of thousands who protested last year against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s judicial reform. Or, his inability to both end the war in Gaza and liberate the hostages that are still being held captive by Hamas.

A rationale for Washington’s unequivocal support is that it argues Israel has a “shared-democracy” surrounded by hostile dictatorships, which must be safeguarded at all costs—interesting, since the U.S. has both overthrown democratic governments and supported dictators in the past. In other words, Washington parallels Israel’s governmental structure to American liberal democracy, where people of any race, religion, or ethnicity are supposed to enjoy equal rights. This is spurious because the State of Israel was explicitly established as a Jewish state and citizenship is based on the principle of blood kinship. As a result, Israel denies Palestinians who marry Israeli citizens from becoming citizens themselves, and consequently, it does not grant such spouses the right to live in Israel.

The aforementioned B’tselem called this restriction “a racist law that determines who can live here according to racist criteria.” Such laws may be understandable given Israel’s founding principles, but they are inconsistent with America’s image of democracy.

Like any other nation, Israel has the right to defend itself against threats from its enemies, including the terrorist organization of Hamas. But as France’s President Emmanuel Macron has said: ‘The fight against terrorism does not justify the sacrifice of civilians.”

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The post America’s Unconditional Support for Israel: A Flawed Policy appeared first on LewRockwell.

Iran and the Axis of Resistance are facing an existential threat. A whole new strategic thinking is needed.

Former British spy chief John Sawers thinks that the Axis of Resistance is facing its final chapter as Israel takes on its regional foes with devastating lethal force – and seeming impunity.

Writing an opinion article in the Financial Times this week, the former director of Britain’s foreign intelligence agency, MI6, relished the view that Israel is on a winning roll against Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis in Yemen, Syria, Iraq, and ultimately Iran, the leader of the resistance axis.

The bravado thinking of the former MI6 boss reflects the arrogance and similar miscalculation among Israeli and U.S. leaders.

Now Iran has hit back after a long delay. On Tuesday night, up to 200 ballistic missiles struck Israel. Video footage appears to show most of them hitting their targets. A major blow was extensive damage at Israel’s Nevatim airbase.

The wave of Iranian attacks mirrors the earlier barrage in April. Israel and the United States are threatening retaliation. It seems the gates of war have opened.

But is the Iranian response too little and too late? The long delay has only emboldened the U.S.-backed Israeli regime to keep escalating.

The delay in Iran’s legitimate defensive actions has been interpreted as weakness, and hence, the Israeli regime and its Western backers have miscalculated.

Why the cockiness from Israel and its Western backers?

There are several reasons. First, Israel knows it has the back of the United States, with all the firepower that entails. Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli leader, knows he can get away with mass murder because Washington is reliant on Israel as its imperial enforcer in a vital geo-strategic region. Israel has a license to kill and genocide, authorized by US imperialism.

The genocide of over 41,000 people in Gaza over the past year has resulted in feeble rhetoric about ceasefires and “restraint” from the Biden administration while, at the same time, endless supplies of military aid to conduct this genocide. Netanyahu and the fanatics in his cabinet know that they can dismiss American admonitions about “ceasefires” and “restraint” as meaningless duplicity.

As Israel now steps up its aggression on Lebanon with a ground invasion following the massive bombing of civilian centers in Beirut, the U.S. is sending more combat forces to the region to “defend Israel.” What more evidence is needed that Washington is not just complicit in the Israeli hostility but actively endorsing it?

Second, Israel has a nuclear arsenal and is crazy enough to use it. There is little doubt that the amoral and unscrupulous Israeli regime would not balk at launching nuclear missiles on its enemies. The ruthless crossing of all red lines by the Israeli regime shows that it has no regard for international law or rules of war. The sense of entitlement is compounded by the knowledge that it has America’s nuclear arsenal also in support if its warmongering should go awry.

But also up there fueling these psychopathic tendencies is the impunity that the Israeli regime has been afforded.

Its mass murder of Palestinians over the past year has gone on unchecked in full view of the world. Infuriatingly, Israeli politicians stand in front of the UN and shred the UN Charter. The contempt for international law is astounding.

Yes, there have been rockets fired from Lebanon by Hezbollah and missiles from Yemen by the Houthis, and on two occasions by Iran. But by and large, these attacks have been pinpricks in the scale of suffering inflicted on Gaza.

The Arab and Islamic nations have done nothing to defend Palestinians from the barbaric U.S.-backed Israeli genocide. Indeed, some of these Arab states, like Jordan and Saudi Arabia, are facilitating the U.S. defense of Israel.

Not even Iran has responded adequately – despite its righteous rhetoric about revenge and justice.

When Israel bombed the Iranian embassy in Damascus on April 1, killing a top Iranian commander, Mohammad Reza Zahedi, along with several other military personnel, the response from Iran was ultimately one of reluctance.

The “retaliatory” missile strikes on Israel by Iran two weeks later on April 13 were conducted with a choreography that emphasized to Israel and the United States that Tehran did not want escalation. Some commentators extolled the Iranian strikes as “masterful” tactics, but is it masterful to permit an aggressor to get away with murder?

In a column at the time, this author argued that the lame Iranian response would only incite further Israeli aggression and criminality.

Five months on, the death toll in Gaza has continued to mount, the genocidal siege continues, and Israel is now repeating the same genocidal aggression against Lebanon.

Not only that, the Israeli regime has truculently embarked on an assassination spree of Hamas and Hezbollah leaders. The elimination of Hassan Nasrallah and Hezbollah’s leadership on September 27 with U.S. bunker-buster bombs dropped on its Beirut HQ surely raises the question: has Iran and its Axis of Resistance been outplayed?

Iran has unleashed its existential enemy owing to perceived weakness.

Not responding to the bombing of its embassy in Damascus was one thing. The killing of several of its top commanders was another. The assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran on July 31 – attending the inauguration of Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian – was another flashing red line. Tehran did nothing then to avenge Haniyeh’s death despite the act of war on its capital – until this week. Two months on, but what took so long?

Indeed, President Pezeshkian reportedly said that retaliation for Haniyeh’s killing was not taken earlier because the U.S. vowed it would work on a ceasefire deal for Gaza. That ceasefire deal is a fraud, and one wonders if Iran knew all along that it was an empty promise. But by going along with it, the Israelis could deduce that Iran was acting weakly.

The brutal killing of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in Beirut last week was arguably a result of Iran’s fatal delay.

Israel’s deranged leaders believe they can act with impunity because they have so far. The regime can reach and kill anywhere, as Netanyahu boasted to the United Nations just before ordering the assassination of Nasrallah in a phone call from New York.

The Israeli rogue state sees itself as above the law to carry out genocide and assassinations because it has an American military machine and malleable American leaders at its disposal. Its monstrous threat to use nuclear weapons is not idle and Israel’s enemies know that.

But most of all, as the British spy chief arrogantly remarked in his Financial Times article referenced above, Israel can “smell Iran’s weakness”.

Iran’s leaders have repeatedly said they do not want a regional war. The sentiments against war are understandable and magnanimous. But virtue has no value when dealing with psychopaths and war criminals.

Iran and the Axis of Resistance are facing an existential threat. A whole new strategic thinking is needed.

It’s not clear what Iran and its allies can do. But they can’t go on as it is. They’re effectively being held hostage by the U.S.-backed Israeli regime and methodically being killed. To do nothing in the face of aggression is fatal.

In a speech just before his death last week, Hassan Nasrallah said as much: the right thing should be done, and so be it.

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

The post The Final Chapter for the Axis of Resistance, or the U.S.-Backed Zionist Regime? appeared first on LewRockwell.

“You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.”—Bob Dylan

A water main breaks every two minutes somewhere in the U.S., resulting in contaminated drinking supplies and boil water notices.

One out of three bridges in the U.S. needs repair, endangering hundreds of millions of commuters. More than 42,000 bridges across the country, carrying about 167 million vehicles each day, are in disrepair.

It is estimated that 300 million people could face power outages across the United States between 2024 and 2028, due in large part to widespread power grid failures.

No wonder U.S. infrastructure received a C- on the Infrastructure Report Card.

America is falling apart.

Collapsing bridges, buckling roads, overheated railways, deteriorating power lines, contaminated water lines, outdated public transportation, overtaxed power grids, aging ports and waterways, unsafe tunnels and highways, and spotty or insufficient telecommunications assets are all becoming frequent hallmarks of the American way of life.

If the nation is woefully unprepared to deal with climate disasters such as floods, hurricanes, wildfires, and droughts, despite the hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars that have been pledged to shore up the nation’s infrastructure problems, it is because politicians across the political spectrum have failed us.

The devastation wrought by Hurricane Helene makes this failure by the government to put the needs of the American people first painfully evident. Entire towns are under water. Roadways have collapsed or are otherwise impassable. Potable water is scarce. More than 1.5 million households are still without power.

Clearly, our national priorities need to be re-examined.

While the politicians play partisan games with our tax dollars, the nation’s critical infrastructure—both the physical foundations of the nation and the figurative foundations of our freedoms—continues to be neglected and deprioritized in favor of grandstanding, bloated military budgets on endless wars abroad, foreign aid to shore up the infrastructure and military defenses of international allies, and all manner of graft and pork barrel spending.

When all is said and done, the bread-and-circus distractions and sleight-of-hand political theater being trotted out in order to keep Americans distracted, deluded, amused, and insulated from the government’s steady encroachments on our freedoms adds nothing of real value to the lives of the average American.

It’s time to fix what’s broken in this country.

For starters, we need an overhaul of the nation’s infrastructure.

According to Time magazine, “Throughout the country, millions of Americans don’t have access to or can’t afford broadband internet service. In excess of 2 million people live without running water or basic plumbing. For too long, the American public has had to carry on while these deficiencies have gone unattended. The political will has been weak or inattentive, the rewards too far removed from electoral advantage.”

In other words, the politicians who dance to the tune of the oligarchic elite aren’t motivated to do anything about our failing infrastructure because they get nothing out of it: no votes, no money, no power.

This isn’t about whether the Republicans or Democrats have better policies.

Indeed, both parties’ priorities are disconcertingly alike: both parties support endless war, engage in out-of-control spending, ignore the citizenry’s basic rights, have no respect for the rule of law, are bought and paid for by Big Business, care most about their own power, and have a long record of expanding government and shrinking liberty.

This is about the plight of the American people who continue to be treated like a permanent underclass.

Anyone who believes that this presidential election will bring about any real change in how the American government does business is either incredibly naive, woefully out-of-touch, or oblivious to the fact that as an in-depth Princeton University study shows, we now live in an oligarchy that is “of the rich, by the rich and for the rich.”

When a country spends close to $10 billion to select what is, for all intents and purposes, a glorified homecoming king or queen to occupy the White House, while 38 million of its people live in poverty, and nearly 7 million Americans are out of work, and more than 600,000 Americans are homeless, that’s a country whose priorities are out of step with the needs of its people.

Overhauling the nation’s infrastructure will take a significant amount of money, which won’t happen as long as the U.S. government continues to fund the military industry complex and its voracious appetite for endless wars.

James Madison was right: “No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.” As Madison explained, “Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes… known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few.”

We are seeing this play out before our eyes.

The government is destabilizing the economy, destroying the national infrastructure through neglect and a lack of resources, and turning taxpayer dollars into blood money with its endless wars, drone strikes and mounting death tolls.

The American Empire is approaching a breaking point.

This is exactly the scenario President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned against when he cautioned the citizenry not to let the profit-driven war machine endanger our liberties or democratic processes. Eisenhower, who served as Supreme Commander of the Allied forces in Europe during World War II, was alarmed by the rise of the profit-driven war machine that, in order to perpetuate itself, would have to keep waging war.

Yet as Eisenhower recognized, the consequences of allowing the military-industrial complex to wage war, exhaust our resources and dictate our national priorities are beyond grave:

“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some 50 miles of concrete highway. We pay for a single fighter with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. This, I repeat, is the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking. This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.”

We failed to heed Eisenhower’s warning.

The illicit merger of the armaments industry and the government that Eisenhower warned against has come to represent perhaps the greatest threat to the nation today.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, this is how tyranny rises and freedom falls.

If we are to have any hope of restoring both the structural and freedom foundations of this nation, we’ll need to start by getting our priorities in order, and that means focusing on what really matters: shoring up our battered Bill of Rights and investing in the American homeland.

This originally appeared on The Rutherford Institute.

The post America Is Falling Apart: Our National Priorities Are in Dire Need of Restructuring appeared first on LewRockwell.

All that can be assessed thus far in the absence of any Israeli retaliation at the time of writing is that both sides are very concerned about their reputations.

Iran launched several hundred ballistic missiles against Israel on the evening of 1 October in retaliation for the self-professed Jewish State’s assassination of top Resistance Axis figures and its latest war in Lebanon. Both sides are spinning this to their advantage: Iran claims that “True Promise II” destroyed several of its enemy’s military bases while Israel insists that it was a mostly harmless demonstration. Even so, Israel still promised to retaliate at a time and place of its choosing, keeping the world on edge.

The timing of Iran’s retaliation coincides with the start of the latest Israeli-Lebanese War’s ground phase and might thus have been partially meant to deter a large-scale operation that could lead to Gaza-like levels of destruction. It also followed some of its supporters angrily speculating that Hezbollah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah’s assassination last week might not have happened had Iran decisively responded to the assassination of Hamas’ political chief Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran over the summer.

These factors suggest that Iran aimed to advance military, reputational, and strategic goals: deter a Gaza-like war in Lebanon; “save face” before its supporters; and ideally restore deterrence. The Resistance loudly cheered Iran’s delayed retaliation so its reputational goal was indisputably met, but it’s premature to conclude that its corresponding military and strategic ones were achieved. After all, Israel promised to retaliate, so everyone will have to wait till that happens to judge whether or not Iran’s strikes succeeded.

If Israel doesn’t do so soon, then speculation will swirl that it might have suffered devastating military damage exactly as Iran claimed, plus it would appear that Israel might be too afraid of Iran’s promise to retaliate even more fiercely than ever if Israel attacks it after that. An alternative explanation for this scenario could be that Israel couldn’t secure US support for its own retaliation, after which it either called it off or delayed it in order to revise its original plans. In any case, deterrence would be restored.

It would also be restored if Israel’s retaliation is limited and could thus be spun by the Resistance as a mostly harmless demonstration exactly as Israel is spinning Iran’s latest strikes. Most observers would probably perceive any retaliation in this way if it doesn’t involve Israel hitting targets inside of Iran. The abovementioned insight about Israeli-American differences, which readers can learn more about here, could be a factor behind any restrained retaliation that ultimately results in restoring deterrence.

And finally, the third scenario is that Israel retaliates against Iran by hitting its air defenses and/or energy infrastructure like Axios reported on Tuesday might be in the cards for later this week, in which case a dangerous cycle of strikes could follow since Iran would then feel pressured to retaliate to “save face”.  That could easily spiral out of control since each side might try to outdo the other, thus quickly putting the assumption of “Mutually Assured Destruction” (MAD) between them to the test.

All that can be assessed thus far in the absence of any Israeli retaliation at the time of writing is that both sides are very concerned about their reputations. Neither wants to look weak in the other’s eyes since they fear that this could encourage more attacks, including against their partners, but they’ve also thus far been careful not to risk a wider war either. That calculation is the most important, but hawks on both sides already believe that theirs is stronger than the other, hence their eagerness to escalate up to MAD.

This article was originally published on the author’s Substack, Andrew Korybko’s Newsletter.

The post ‘True Promise II’: Did Iran Restore Deterrence After Its Latest Strikes Against Israel? appeared first on LewRockwell.

The Democrats Are Doing Every Possible Thing to Enable Immigrant-invaders to vote.

Democrats are passing laws to make sure that a non-citizen who just walked across the border has a vote equal to a United States native-born citizen. Immigrant-invaders are given federal IDs which entitle them to drivers’ licenses. Many jurisdictions automatically enroll driver license recipients on the voting list.

Two days ago California’s Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom signed a bill preventing local governments from requiring voters to present identification at the polls. The Democrat California government has made it a felony to prevent election fraud.

The Democrats call it Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. DEI is not for us racist white supremacy citizens, the American majority. It is for the immigrant-invaders who just walked across the border. The Democrats are the party of the immigrant-invaders, and tens of millions of dum….t white Americans will vote for the party of immigrant-invaders.

It is even worse than that. The Biden/Kamala Regime are using our taxpayers dollars to finance NGOs to recruit from 150 countries immigrant invaders and to provide them with transportation, to Latin America and with food, water, medical care, and sleeping quarters as they march to our border. When Washington’s recruits of immigrant-invaders reach the border, federal and local authorities are required to let them in.

Nothing is being done about it. The Republican House and Senate Democrats have not cut off the funding that is flooding America with crime and people unable to support themselves. How do uneducated people who do not speak the language become a work force? How do tens of millions of people who do not speak the language and do not have a first world education become a work force in a first world country?

Why is this happening?

Why is discussion of the dissolution of the United States into a Tower of Babel blocked by the media and authorities with police power to silence.

Why does the Democrat Party describe native-born Americans who are opposed to their country being overrun by immigrant-invaders as white supremacists, while Democrats focus on saving Ukraine’s borders? Why are Ukraine’s borders more important than America’s?

Is there a Democrat anywhere who cares about America’s borders? Apparently not.

Is there any politician, other than Donald Trump, who speaks for Americans?

Yesterday the Democrats in Minneapolis made a non-citizen a police officer. So now the Democrats have made it possible for a non-citizen to arrest an American citizen. The Democrats call this “inclusion.” Do you look forward to being arrested by a non-citizen? This is your consequence for being so totally stupid that you voted Democrat. The dum…..t American voters have destroyed themselves and all of their prospects.

The Democrats have established a regime in which American citizens have lost their Constitutional protections and are considered to be evil racists and enemies of democracy who must be replaced by third world immigrant-invaders. This is happening before our eyes. If it hasn’t happened to your community yet, it won’t be long.

It is the same throughout the Western world. The European Council on Foreign Relations published a report a few days ago on September 25 by Pawel Zerka, obviously not a Western European name. The report published by the European Council concluded that Europe is too white and too European. So here we have Europeans turning Europe’s fate over to someone who intends to bring upon them the Camp of the Saints. Perhaps people this stupid deserve their destruction.

To underline the point, Marine Le Pen, the leader of the largest French political party that is kept out of political office by conspiracy of the ruling elite, has been placed on trial. The false charges are that she and her party embezzled EU funds. This is such a nonsensical charge as to be mind blowing. The EU is not going to give any funds to a French NATIONALIST political party. And even if it mysteriously happened, Le Pen is not sufficiently stupid, having target written all over her, to embezzle them.

But in the Western world today truth is of zero consequence. Law is nothing else but a weapon to destroy those in the way of the Woke Agenda.

White people are history. They have placed their fate in the hands of their enemies. Perhaps a few will be kept in zoos.

The post How Can Trump Win When Democrats Have 30 Million Immigrant-Invaders To Vote Against Him? appeared first on LewRockwell.

 

 

di Finn Andreen

In questi tempi politicamente turbolenti “l’illusione della democrazia sta svanendo in tutto il mondo”, così ha scritto di recente un esperto. In Occidente c’è una crescente sensazione che la “democrazia” non stia funzionando bene, ma non c’è ancora pieno e chiaro apprezzamento di questo fatto. Michel Maffesoli, professore onorario alla Sorbona di Parigi, afferma da diversi anni che “la fine dell’ideale democratico è ormai sotto gli occhi di tutti”. Segnali di ciò possono essere visti nelle elezioni problematiche che hanno avuto luogo in Francia e in altri Paesi occidentali.

L'“ideale” o “illusione” della democrazia deriva da idee sbagliate diffuse su questo sistema politico, nonostante i chiari dubbi dei più illustri pensatori politici del passato. Le idee sbagliate più importanti sulla democrazia: i rappresentanti eletti sono in genere leali e disinteressati, e l'elettorato è in genere informato e razionale per quanto riguarda la politica.

David Hume scrisse nei suoi celebri Saggi (1777) che la democrazia non può essere “rappresentativa”, perché tutte le società sono “governate da pochi”. Il sociologo Robert Michels, nel suo lavoro pionieristico sui partiti politici (1911), definì la “legge ferrea dell’oligarchia”, mostrando metodicamente che tutte le organizzazioni mature, senza eccezioni, diventano oligarchiche (cioè governate da minoranze).

Per i primi movimenti democratici del XIX secolo, la democrazia rappresentativa non era l'obiettivo, bensì il modello ateniese. Come ha osservato Robert Michels, è stato solo quando le impossibilità pratiche della democrazia diretta su larga scala sono diventate evidenti che il concetto di rappresentanza politica ha acquisito legittimità. Nel tempo questo concetto è diventato sinonimo di “democrazia”.

Montesquieu, in The Spirit of the Laws (1739), scriveva che la principale giustificazione del sistema rappresentativo non è solo che la persona media non ha il tempo o l'interesse per impegnarsi nella vita politica, ma che è incompetente per farlo. Tocqueville, in Democracy in America (1835), scriveva che una delle potenziali minacce alla democrazia è che le persone possono finire talmente assorbite dalla ricerca di opportunità economiche da perdere interesse per la politica.

Infatti la maggioranza non ha né l'interesse, né la motivazione per impegnarsi profondamente nella politica. Gli elettori capiscono implicitamente che il loro voto è solo una piccola goccia in un oceano di schede e che, di per sé, non farà alcuna differenza nell'esito delle elezioni. Alcuni hanno anche sostenuto che non solo gli elettori mancano di interesse e motivazione, ma mancano anche del tempo e della capacità di pensare razionalmente alla politica, come riassunto dl teorico politico James Burnham nella sua opera The Machiavellians (1943):

L'incapacità delle masse di agire scientificamente in politica si basa principalmente sui seguenti fattori: l'enorme dimensione della massa che la rende troppo poco maneggevole per l'uso di tecniche scientifiche; l'ignoranza, da parte delle masse, dei metodi di amministrazione e di governo; la necessità, per le masse, di spendere la maggior parte delle loro energie nel mero guadagnarsi da vivere, il che ne lascia poche per acquisire maggiori conoscenze sulla politica o per svolgere compiti politici pratici; la mancanza, nella maggior parte delle persone, di un grado sufficiente di quelle qualità psicologiche (ambizione, spietatezza e così via) che sono prerequisiti per una vita politica attiva.

Sebbene queste intuizioni sulla rappresentanza politica siano note da tempo, sono state soppresse per mantenere l'illusione del governo della maggioranza. “Democrazia” ha una connotazione talmente positiva nel sistema dei valori occidentali che la maggior parte delle persone accetta di non dover “governare”. Questa realtà è difficile da comprendere poiché alcune linee di politica della minoranza al potere prendono in considerazione, e persino devono, l'opinione della maggioranza... almeno in una certa misura. Se pressata, la maggior parte delle persone ammetterebbe comunque che, sebbene abbiano eletto “rappresentanti”, in realtà non hanno voce in capitolo su diverse aree (ad esempio, politica estera, monetaria e commerciale), anche se queste hanno un impatto notevole sulle loro vite.

L'instabilità intrinseca di tutti i sistemi politici

Sebbene l'illusione della democrazia stia lentamente svanendo in Occidente, non è tanto per la presa di coscienza delle verità presentate sopra, ma è perché la democrazia rappresentativa, come tutti i sistemi politici, è intrinsecamente instabile. È noto da tempo che le condizioni cambiano costantemente, tanto per parafrasare Eraclito, ma non è ampiamente compreso che i sistemi politici siano inadatti a questa realtà di base. Sebbene la democrazia possa a volte sembrare funzionare bene, gli infiniti cambiamenti economici, sociali, demografici e tecnici della società rendono tali impressioni di breve durata.

Indipendentemente dal sistema politico, l'equilibrio di potere in un dato momento tra stato e società, e tra la minoranza dominante e la maggioranza governata, è costantemente interrotto da suddette condizioni mutevoli. L'aumento inesorabile dell'interventismo statale ha un impatto negativo sulla creazione di ricchezza e sulla proprietà privata, forzando la socializzazione e portando a un aumento delle tensioni politiche. Quando lo stato diventa più burocratico, non riesce a tenere il passo con una società in cambiamento, e quindi destabilizza l'equilibrio di potere. Inoltre le tensioni politiche sorgono anche se la minoranza dominante spinge un certo programma politico che ignora o addirittura si oppone alla maggioranza.

La democrazia, in particolare, è soggetta a oscillazioni costanti a causa della sua intrinseca mancanza di equità: la parte perdente di un'elezione (più della metà nei sistemi pluralistici) non è rappresentata. Come scrisse Gustave de Molinari, la democrazia “insiste sul fatto che le decisioni della maggioranza debbano diventare legge e che la minoranza sia obbligata a sottomettersi a essa, anche se è contraria alle sue convinzioni più radicate e lede i suoi interessi più preziosi”. Fenomeni di voto come la legge di Duverger e il paradosso di Arrow tendono ad ammorbidire la cruda descrizione di Molinari ma, distorcendo i risultati elettorali, difficilmente li rendono più rappresentativi o più equi.

Quando le dimensioni e il potere dello stato sono limitati (ad esempio quando l'interventismo statalista nella società è debole), il ruolo di difensore dei diritti di proprietà sarebbe considerato più importante del fatto che la maggioranza sia o meno rappresentata democraticamente. Al contrario quando il potere dello stato è esteso (ad esempio esso è fortemente interventista), sia a livello nazionale che sovranazionale, la maggioranza si aspetta tanto dalla democrazia poiché la direzione della società dipende dalle decisioni dei suoi rami esecutivo e legislativo.

Una  riduzione necessaria del potere dello stato

È possibile quindi concludere che una limitazione del potere statale è necessaria per ridurre le tensioni politiche nella società e per introdurre la tanto agognata stabilità, indipendentemente dal fatto che il sistema politico sia considerato “democratico” o meno. Ciò richiede una decentralizzazione del processo decisionale e una riduzione del ruolo dello stato, rafforzando il libero mercato e i diritti individuali. Il risultato sarebbe una società più libera, in grado di adattarsi in modo più naturale e armonioso alle condizioni mutevoli. Ciò di cui c'è bisogno è “più libertà” piuttosto che “più democrazia”.

Sfortunatamente l'illusione della democrazia ha portato le maggioranze in Occidente a confonderla con la libertà. Questo è un errore madornale perché la democrazia non è una garanzia di libertà, anche se fosse possibile il governo della maggioranza. Al contrario, quando sono state fatte concessioni alla maggioranza, come la spesa sociale attraverso la ridistribuzione fiscale, queste hanno avuto effetti deleteri sulla società e hanno ridotto la libertà economica. Come disse Tocqueville: “Amo profondamente la libertà e il rispetto dei diritti, ma non la democrazia”.

Considerati i concetti errati sulla rappresentanza politica che sono stati qui presentati, è giunto il momento di smascherare una volta per tutte l'illusione della democrazia in Occidente e sostituirla con la libertà, facendo di questa missione l'obiettivo politico più alto da raggiungere e proteggere.

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

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di Jeffrey Tucker

Da quando ho iniziato a scrivere di statistiche economiche ufficiali sono stato inondato da una serie di lettere divertenti da parte di contabili in attività e in pensione. Sono entusiasti che io abbia affrontato l'argomento e abbia aggiunto vari spunti di riflessione. Uno di loro mi ha presentato un altro aspetto, uno a cui non avevo ancora pensato, e riguarda l'incapacità di calcolo degli stessi dipendenti: mancano dell'intuizione di base per vedere dove i loro numeri non hanno senso.

Il mio corrispondente incolpa la tecnologia: quando matematici e studenti usavano i regoli calcolatori, dovevano mantenere la calma, dedurre i numeri più grandi dalle cifre più piccole e avere la capacità di manipolare i punti decimali in modo da mantenerli coerenti. Un senso dei numeri era sempre presente per testare i risultati rispetto alla razionalità di base.

Tutto questo è finito da quando è arrivata la calcolatrice e il cervello umano non ha dovuto più fare questo lavoro, distruggendo l'abilità intuitiva che era necessaria in passato. Avendo vissuto questa transizione, so esattamente cosa intende. Un giorno le persone capivano la logica dei numeri; il giorno dopo questa abilità non era più richiesta.

Poi è arrivato il computer e non c'è stata più partita. Ora le persone si limitano a usare gli strumenti senza pensare e non hanno idea di cosa fare se si ritrovano per le mani le risposte sbagliate, soprattutto se l'operatore se ne accorge. Il mio corrispondente presume che la maggior parte dei raccoglitori di dati nell'apparato statale ora svolga lavori di routine, proprio come coloro che segnalano i dati.

Tutti operano all'interno di un sistema ed esso stesso potrebbe essere considerato rotto, ma nessuno ha l'incentivo di ripararlo. Continua ad andare avanti così com'è perché nessuno in particolare è ritenuto responsabile. Ecco perché le cifre del prodotto interno lordo (PIL) non sono fissate per azzerare la spesa pubblica, anche se ci siamo resi conto molto tempo fa che la spesa pubblica non apporta alcun contributo netto alla produzione. Ed è lo stesso con molte caratteristiche dell'indice di inflazione dei prezzi e dei dati sull'occupazione. Tutti sanno della sottostima e della sovrastima, ma nessuno è incaricato di risolvere il problema quindi non viene mai risolto.

Non è certo un problema nuovo. Questa questione ha tormentato la raccolta dati ufficiali per molto tempo.

Una breve storia su un economista pioniere: si chiamava G. Warren Nutter delle Università di Chicago e Virginia. Aveva la sensazione che i dati economici dell'Unione Sovietica fossero sospetti, così fece un'analisi approfondita. All'epoca, negli anni '50 e '60, la maggior parte degli economisti prevedeva che il PIL sovietico avrebbe presto superato quello degli Stati Uniti. Trassero questa conclusione sulla base di dati e regole di crescita esistenti, usando un righello per vedere dove sarebbero andate le cose in cinque o dieci anni.

Nutter aveva seri dubbi e offrì cifre riviste, concludendo che ci fu una crescita reale e sbalorditiva dal 1925 alla seconda guerra mondiale, dove risorse umane e naturali vennero impiegate in massa, poi iniziarono i problemi. L'economia non si riprese mai e l'inganno sui dati iniziò a sostituire la verità e l'onestà. Il sistema iniziò a generare numeri falsi. Concluse che gli Stati Uniti erano molto più avanti nella crescita economica e che i sovietici stavano andando nella direzione sbagliata.

Stiamo parlando del 1962. La maggior parte degli economisti respinse il suo pensiero, ma si dimostrò corretto dopo la fine della Guerra Fredda. Invece di poderosi crolli industriali, ciò che vedevamo era un'illusione decrepita dove tutto era rotto e arrugginito, un posto dove niente funzionava, una terra di privazioni, mercati neri, bugie e rovina economica generale. La realtà era persino peggiore di qualsiasi cosa Nutter avrebbe potuto immaginare.

Tenete presente che era un outsider. Le previsioni secondo cui l'Unione Sovietica avrebbe superato gli Stati Uniti erano presenti in ogni libro di testo mainstream (lo ricordo da quello che ho usato per la prima volta) e questo pensiero è rimasto dominante fino al 1988 o giù di lì. Per questo motivo l'economia mainstream ha sminuito il lavoro di Nutter, senza mai prenderlo sul serio e liquidandolo come opera di un eccentrico.

Dimostrò di avere ragione su ogni punto, ma ovviamente non gli viene ancora dato alcun merito.

Ci ho pensato spesso, perché mi sono chiesto fino a che punto gli Stati Uniti oggi potrebbero essere soggetti ad alcune forze simili. In fin dei conti è il lavoro delle burocrazie: generare la risposta che i politici vogliono. E più il sistema è complesso, meno controlli ci sono, cosa che genera risultati di cui nessuno in particolare è responsabile.

Se è potuto accadere lì, perché non qui? Così ho tirato fuori il vecchio libro di Nutter e l'ho riletto. Non sono rimasto deluso. Ecco un passaggio da condividere:

Si possono trovare difetti nelle statistiche economiche di ogni Paese. Esse rappresentano un piccolo campione del volume illimitato di dati che potrebbero essere registrati. Sono state raccolte con obiettivi specifici in mente e saranno quindi di una certa utilità a seconda degli scopi per cui sono destinate. Contengono errori introdotti in diverse fasi di osservazione e assemblaggio. Dipenderanno dallo stato di alfabetizzazione statistica tra i raccoglitori e i fornitori di dati, dallo sforzo profuso nella tenuta dei registri e dal grado di competizione nella raccolta e nell'analisi dei dati. Sono, infine, soggette a manipolazione e distorsione da parte delle parti interessate, controllate solo nella misura in cui vi siano ricercatori indipendenti con interessi concorrenti. Nessuno stato o altra agenzia statistica può considerarsi immune alla tentazione di estendere le cifre a proprio vantaggio se ritiene di poterla fare franca.

Quest'ultima frase mi ha molto colpito. Ovviamente l'amministrazione Biden ha avuto un incentivo estremamente forte a generare dati di bell'aspetto. Sappiamo da tempo che i risultati contraddicono tutte le fonti alternative: possiamo vedere i prezzi dei generi alimentari e sappiamo per certo che sono aumentati di oltre il 20% in quattro anni, e lo stesso vale per l'edilizia abitativa, l'assicurazione e le prestazioni sanitarie. In molti casi il settore privato sta generando risultati che sono il doppio di quelli riportati.

Sappiamo per certo che i dati sui posti di lavoro non tornano, e così via.

Chi ha l'incentivo a correggere la segnalazione dei dati? Nessuno. Chi ha l'incentivo a modificare la raccolta, assemblaggio e distribuzione in modi che facciano apparire i risultati migliori di quanto non siano? Il governo in carica. Sappiamo per certo che questa consuetudine è andata avanti per molti decenni nell'Unione Sovietica; sappiamo che succede in Cina ora, semmai riuscissimo a ottenere dati da lì; e sappiamo che succede in ogni Paese latinoamericano, più la Corea del Nord e probabilmente la Russia in questo momento.

Perché non gli Stati Uniti? Ovviamente succede anche qui e probabilmente va avanti da molto tempo. Sono abbastanza certo a questo punto che una contabilità realistica degli ultimi quattro anni non mostrerà alcuna ripresa in termini reali da marzo 2020 a oggi. Ma quando arriveranno le revisioni? Molto probabilmente mai.

Come recita quel vecchio adagio? I dati possono essere torturati finché non confessano. So per esperienza personale che questo accade in ogni scienza all'interno del mondo accademico, ogni giorno, tutto nell'interesse di riempire i curricula. Perché non dovrebbe accadere nelle agenzie governative? Ovviamente accade. Con il grande G. Warren Nutter come nostra guida, facciamo bene a essere scettici, non importa quanto sia ufficiale o apparentemente credibile la fonte.

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

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L'articolo di oggi, per quanto prenda in considerazione un esempio a livello micro, è didattico alla luce della deriva totalitaria che sta avvenendo in Europa. Mi riferisco in particolar modo al piano Draghi per permettere all'UE di sopravvivere alle sfide che sta ponendo il presente e porrà il futuro. Visto che questo Paese non ha affatto una stampa che fa il suo lavoro, dato che dovrebbe inchiodare questo personaggio alle menzogne che ha diffuso durante il suo anno di carica in veste di primo ministro italiano (soprattutto dal punto di vista sanitario), tocca a spazi come quelli del sottoscritto fare le pulci a dichiarazioni e relazioni prodotte da gente del genere. Come imprenditore di sé stesso, Draghi ha avuto enorme successo; la bolla della sua infallibilità è stata gonfiata attraverso il “capitale servile” che impiegato eseguendo gli ordini che provenivano dall'alto. In questo senso è un asset accademico che verrà sfruttato fino in fondo dai tecnocrati europei. Non sorprende, quindi, che quando i nodi vengono al pettine e cadono le maschere, ciò che si vede è il vero volto sia dell'Europa che di questi personaggi alfieri del “liberismo”: promulgatori della libertà a chiacchiere, fautori del socialismo nei fatti. La proposta di un ingigantimento della spesa pubblica comune, come si legge nel link di sopra, è la classica pistola fumante a supporto della mia tesi. Le maschere di libertà di commercio, libertà di circolazione, sobrietà fiscale e tutte le altre bugie che hanno creato il mostro totalitario dell'Unione Europea sono infine cadute. Diversamente dallo spirito americano di libertà d'impresa e libertà individuale a sostegno di una crescita economica sostenibile e duratura, ancora flebilmente presente, lo spirito europeo è marcio fino al midollo e non ha mai avuto intenzione di trasformare in realtà le illusioni di libertà sagacemente spacciate a livello di narrativa ufficiale. Una facciata putrida che adesso deve trovare il modo di ritardare il più possibile il suo inevitabile sfacelo.

____________________________________________________________________________________

di Maggie Miller

Nel cuore di Riviera Beach, Florida, un'azienda chiamata K12 Print sta ridefinendo il significato di fare impresa in America. Non si tratta solo di profitti e produttività per John DiDonato, amministratore delegato e fondatore. Sebbene il successo finanziario faccia parte dell'equazione, la sua missione è quella di aiutare a far rivivere un pilastro fondamentale dell'economia americana: la manifattura. La visione di DiDonato per K12 Print è radicata nella convinzione che la manifattura possa essere un catalizzatore per il cambiamento, non solo per l'azienda, ma per il Paese e le sue comunità.

C'è un dibattito in corso sul cosiddetto onshoring, specialmente in seguito alla crisi sanitaria, da quando la supply chain globale è stata interrotta. Le aziende lo stanno prendendo in considerazione, ma non vedono la strada da seguire; K12 Print la conosce e la segue investendo nel capitale umano.

“Non si dovrebbe trascurare una zona imprenditoriale”, consiglia DiDonato, “per i benefici fiscali che si potrebbero trovare, ma soprattutto per la comunità, una affamata di opportunità”.

Aprire un'attività in una zona industriale non è stata solo una decisione aziendale per DiDonato, è stata una mossa strategica per dare nuova vita alla produzione americana e, per estensione, alla comunità locale di Riviera Beach. Ha visto il potenziale nell'istituire una base manifatturiera dove era più necessaria, offrendo lavoro e formazione ai residenti e rivitalizzando l'economia locale.

“Pensavo che, crescendo, l'azienda avrebbe potuto cambiare la città”.

Per DiDonato il declino della produzione manifatturiera americana non è solo un problema economico, è un problema sociale. Crede che la delocalizzazione dei lavori manifatturieri abbia eroso le fondamenta della classe media americana e limitato le opportunità per molti giovani, in particolare quelli nei centri urbani. Secondo DiDonato la produzione manifatturiera è fondamentale per creare ricchezza e mantenere un'economia sana.

“La produzione manifatturiera è l'unica cosa che crea ricchezza. Per avere un'economia sana, c'è bisogno di una solida base manifatturiera. Abbiamo esternalizzato talmente tanto la nostra che sta influenzando l'economia in generale e le opportunità disponibili per i giovani, specialmente nei centri urbani”.

DiDonato indica Paesi come la Cina che si sono concentrati molto sulle competenze manifatturiere e commerciali, con conseguente rapida crescita economica e opportunità di lavoro. Gli Stati Uniti, d'altro canto, hanno assistito a un declino nel loro settore manifatturiero. Secondo l'US Joint Economic Committee da gennaio 2000 gli Stati Uniti hanno perso oltre un quarto di tutti i posti di lavoro manifatturieri nazionali, un calo di oltre 4,7 milioni. DiDonato ritiene che questo sia un fattore importante nelle sfide economiche affrontate da molte comunità americane oggi.

“Quando ero giovane ho imparato a fare le cose realizzandole. Non è qualcosa che si può insegnare in classe. Se continuiamo a delocalizzare la nostra produzione, non solo i posti di lavoro se ne vanno, ma anche la tecnologia e l'innovazione. Dobbiamo riportare la produzione in America in modo che i nostri figli possano essere in prima linea nel creare e costruire cose nuove”.

La filosofia aziendale di K12 Print è radicata nella passione per la redenzione e nella consapevolezza che gli errori fanno parte della vita. Il comproprietario di DiDonato, Jim Wahlberg, ha sentito su di sé gli effetti della redenzione e cerca modi per offrire la stessa esperienza agli altri: “Siamo tutti soggetti alla redenzione. Ci vogliono amore, misericordia e determinazione per fare tutto il necessario e continuare ad andare avanti”.

“Ci sono circostanze negative, ma non ci sono cattivi. La maggior parte dei nostri figli in America ha solo bisogno di un'opportunità”, ha detto DiDonato.

Ritiene inoltre che ci sia un posto prezioso per le competenze pratiche nell'economia moderna. Mentre le aziende in tutto il Paese hanno lottato per riempire i posti vacanti, K12 Print ha trovato il successo pensando fuori dagli schemi: la chiave sta nell'offrire una formazione pratica che prepari i dipendenti alle esigenze del lavoro manifatturiero, indipendentemente dal loro background educativo.

Questo approccio si estende anche a quelle persone con precedenti penali. DiDonato crede nel dare alle persone che hanno scontato la loro pena una seconda possibilità e ricostruire le loro vite. Non crede che le conseguenze degli errori passati debbano perseguitare qualcuno per sempre, a patto che sia disposto a lavorare sodo e a cogliere le opportunità che gli vengono date.

Angel Peña, dipendente di lunga data di K12 Print, è una testimonianza di questa filosofia. Per Peña, K12 Print è stato più di un semplice lavoro: è stata una seconda possibilità di vita. “Ero un ragazzino testardo, sono cresciuto nel sistema di affidamento e ho preso decisioni sbagliate. Molte persone mi hanno chiuso le porte, perché ero un criminale. K12 Print invece mi ha guardato come si guarda una persona qualsiasi, non solo come il mio passato. Mi hanno dato speranza e un futuro”.

Ci sono molti modi per investire nella comunità e K12 Print ritiene che l'investimento debba andare oltre l'attuale forza lavoro. Si impegna a rompere il ciclo della povertà investendo nei giovani svantaggiati. DiDonato prende una parte dei profitti dell'azienda e li reindirizza in iniziative locali, come il Boys and Girls Club, fornendo risorse di trasporto e tecnologia per aiutare i giovani della comunità. Questo investimento fa parte della sua strategia più ampia per creare un ambiente più inclusivo e di supporto per le generazioni future.

“Investendo nuovamente nella comunità, non stiamo solo aiutando le singole persone; stiamo aiutando a costruire una società più pacifica e di maggior successo. Se riusciamo a raggiungere più dirigenti che arrivano a pensarla come noi, allora potremo davvero fare la differenza. È importante che i nostri leader capiscano che i giovani, specialmente quelli nei centri urbani, non sono cattivi, hanno solo bisogno di opportunità e di persone a cui importa di loro”.

La visione di DiDonato per K12 Print è di speranza e azione pratica. Avviando la sua attività a Riviera Beach e concentrandosi sui talenti locali, non sta solo facendo funzionare le cose in America, ma le sta rendendo importanti. Questo è ciò che significa Made in America.

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

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

These days, supporters of President Trump and others on the right are often smeared as “fascists,” and what is meant by this is that they support the Nazis. For example, the historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat says: “To get people to lose their aversion to violence, savvy authoritarians also dehumanize their enemies. That’s what Trump is doing. Hitler used this ploy from the very start, calling Jews the ‘black parasites of the nation’ in a 1920 speech. By the time Hitler got into power in 1933 and translated dehumanizing rhetoric into repressive policies, Germans had heard these messages for over a decade.

As a historian of autocracy with a specialization in Italian Fascism, the use of the ‘vermin’ image got my attention. Mussolini used similar language in his 1927 Ascension Day speech which laid out Fascism’s intention to subject leftists and others to ‘prophylaxis’ measures ‘to defend the Italian state and society from their nefarious influences.’ But nothing could be further from the truth. The Nazis, as their name, National Socialists, suggests, were supporters of a centrally planned economy. Although Trump supports tariffs and deficit spending, he isn’t an opponent of the free market and favors measures such as tax cuts that help free enterprise.

As the great economist Ludwig von Mises points out, there are two kinds of socialism. One features overt ownership of industry by the government: the centrally planned economy of the former Soviet Union is an example. In the other, private ownership of business is preserved, but the government tells the ostensible owners what to produce and what prices to charge. Mises says in Omnipotent Government: “The German and the Russian systems of socialism have in common the fact that the government has full control of the means of production. It decides what shall be produced and how. It allots to each individual a share of consumer’s goods for his consumption…. The German pattern differs from the Russian one in that it (seemingly and nominally) maintains private ownership of the means of production and keeps the appearance of ordinary prices, wages, and markets. There are, however, no longer entrepreneurs but only shop managers (Betriebsführer)…. The government, not the consumers, directs production. This is socialism in the outward guise of capitalism. Some labels of capitalistic market economy are retained but they mean something entirely different from what they mean in a genuine market economy.”

Later research has supported Mises’s account of the Nazi economy. One of the most comprehensive accounts of the Nazi economy is in the book by Adam Tooze, The Wages of Destruction, and Tooze confirms that the German industrialists had to follow the Nazis’ direction. Tooze especially draws attention to the importance of Herman Goering’s Four-Year Plan: “Businesses who were reluctant to follow the plans of the New Order had to be forced into line. One law allowed the government to impose compulsory cartels. By 1936, the Four-Year Plan, headed by Hermann Goering, changed the nature of the German economy.

On 18 October [1936] Goering was given Hitler’s formal authorization as general plenipotentiary for the Four-Year Plan. On the following days he presented decrees empowering him to take responsibility for virtually every aspect of economic policy, including control of the business media.”

Moreover, Hitler admired the Soviet economy, and the Nazis hoped to transform their kind of socialism into full-fledged central planning after the war. The Nazis did not reveal their intentions publicly, because during the war they needed the cooperation of business, but Hitler and other leading Nazis made their intentions clear in private. As Rainer Zitelmann, the foremost authority on the Nazis’ economic ideology, notes: “The National Socialists intended to expand the planned economy for the period after the war, as we know from many of Hitler’s remarks. As already mentioned, Hitler increasingly admired the Soviet economic system. And this did not fail to affect his views on the question of private property. ‘If Stalin had continued to work for another ten to fifteen years’, Hitler said in a monologue in the Führer headquarters in August 1942,

‘Soviet Russia would have become the most powerful nation on earth, 150, 200, 300 years may go by, that is such a unique phenomenon! That the general standard of living rose, there can be no doubt. The people did not suffer from hunger. Taking everything together we have to say: They built factories here where two years ago there was nothing but forgotten villages, factories which are as big as the Hermann Göring Works.’

On several occasions the dictator mentioned to his closest associates that it was necessary to nationalise the large joint-stock companies, the energy industry and all other branches of the economy that produced ‘essential raw materials’ (e.g. the iron industry). Of course, the war was not the right environment in which to implement such radical nationalisations. Hitler and the National Socialists were well aware of this.”

In his early years, Hitler was skeptical about the viability of Soviet-style central planning, but he changed his mind during the war. According to Wilhelm Scheidt, an aide who had access to Hitler’s private remarks: “Hitler’s admiration for the Soviet system is also confirmed in the notes of Wilhelm Scheidt, who, as adjutant to Hitler’s ‘representative for military history’ Walther Scherff and a member of the Führer Headquarters group, had close contact with Hitler and sometimes even took part in the ‘briefings’. In his post-war notes Scheidt observes that Hitler underwent a ‘conversion to Bolshevism’. From Hitler’s remarks, he says, the following reactions could be derived: ‘Firstly, Hitler was enough of a materialist to be the first to recognize the enormous armament achievements of the USSR in the context of her strong, generous and all-encompassing economic organization.’

Scheidt writes that in view of such impressions Hitler had recognised and expressed ‘the inner relationship of his system with the so heatedly opposed Bolshevism., whereby he had had to admit that ‘this system of the enemy was developed far more completely and straightforwardly. His enemy became his secret example’ The ‘experience of Communist Russia”, particularly the impression of the alleged superiority of the Soviet economic system, had produced a strong reaction in Hitler and the circle of his faithful: ‘The other economic systems appeared not to be competitive in comparison.’ About the impression of the rational organisation of farming in the USSR and the ‘gigantic industrial plants which gave eloquent testimony despite their destruction’, Hitler, says Scheidt, had been ‘enthusiastic’.”

In brief, National Socialism was socialism. Let’s do everything we can to protest against the way the lunatic left denounces decent Americans as “fascist.” It is brain-dead “President” Joe Biden and his gang of neo-con supporters, as well as his designated successor, “Cackling Kamala,” who are the real fascists.

The post National Socialism Was Socialist appeared first on LewRockwell.

Few people know that Lebanon was once part of Syria. It was detached from Syria by Imperial France and made into a nominally Maronite Christian nation. Sunni Muslims, Shia Muslims and Druzes were also encompassed in this newly engineered country of 6 million.

Then came 100,000 Palestinian refugees driven from their ancestral home in what is today Northern Israel. The admixture of these Palestinian refugees enflamed Lebanon’s traditional ferocious tribal rivalries. In 1975 they burst into major civil war between Maronite Christians and Muslims and Druzes, and clashes between Sunni and Shia militias. I arrived in Beirut in 1975, Day One of the civil war.

It was a horrible affaire, marked by hideous atrocities and massacres. France, the US, Syria and Israel openly mixed into Lebanon’s mayhem. I had never seen such raw hatred, sadism and barbarity. The conflict culminated into the massacres of thousands of Palestinian civilians – mostly women and children – at the Shatila and Sabra refugee camps by Christian militiamen aided by Israel.

After the civil war in 1990, Lebanon slumped into more tribal hostility and astounding corruption as this ancient Phoenicia nation fell apart. Nitrates carelessly stored in the port of Beirut blew up, killing hundreds. The national bank was looted.

Israel invaded in 1978, 1982 and 2006 in a failed effort to crush the Palestinian resistance, PLO. I was with the Israeli Army when it attacked southern Lebanon in 1982. Lebanese Sunni guerillas fought back, joined by fighters from a new Shia militia, Hezbollah.

Now the carnage has resumed with the Gaza bloodbath and Israel’s newly launched mass air attacks on southern Lebanon on 21-23 September that killed 558 civilians and wounded 1,835.

This massive attack followed Israel’s booby trapping of Hezbollah communications that killed and injured thousands of people, blinding many or blowing off their hands or genitals. This is pure Biblical ferocity.

Israel is relentlessly driving the Arab population from southern Lebanon. Ever since its founding in 1947-48, Israel’s right-wing has had its eyes on southern Lebanon. On its northern edge lies the Litani River, one of the last major water sources not in Israeli hands. Water is growing scarce everywhere in the Mideast. The Litani is a major prize, Israel has long coveted the two ancient seaports of Tyre and Sidon. Walking through them takes you back to the Bible. Some of Israel’s wilder right-wingers also claim southern Syria should be annexed by Israel. Why stop there? Others covet Iraq’s capitol, Baghdad, which had a large Jewish population before 1948.

Israel’s now ruling hardliners seem to have in mind a plan to drive Gaza’s Palestinians – themselves already refugees from Galilee and the Haifa region – into neighboring Jordan’s deserts. Up to 40% of Jordan’s people today are Palestinians driven from what became Israel.

With all this in mind, President Joe Biden’s UN speech last week was a symphony of hypocrisy. Biden and the US Congress provided Israel with well over $300 billion, with more coming as well as the latest US arms. The US supplies intelligence information and blocks efforts by the UN and many nations to force Israel to halt its destruction of Gaza. As Pat Buchanan said, ‘Congress has become Israeli-occupied territory.’

Israel’s usual salami tactics of grabbing small pieces of Arab land have worked very well. So, is Lebanon next? PM Benjamin Netanyahu will face court charges of bribery and malfeasance once this conflict ends, so he’s in no rush to bury the hatchet. The big powers who could make a difference have all been bought. Russia is at war. Only the powerful Israel could act to shut down this murderous conflict.

Reprinted with permission from EricMargolis.com.

The post Will Lebanon Be Next After Gaza? appeared first on LewRockwell.

Israel is neither a friend nor ally of the United States. Israel looks out for Israel 100 percent of the time and really doesn’t care what happens to anyone else. Americans have been brainwashed into believing that Israel is “our pit-bull in the Middle East” who keeps the natives in line. But this simply isn’t true. Israel’s activities in the region undermine US interests and inflict severe damage to America’s public image. Here’s how foreign policy expert John Mearsheimer summed it up:

Israel is a strategic albatross around our neck. It’s a liability. Let me just point out, the US doesn’t just give Israel lots of weapons and lots of money. It gives it unconditionally. This is truly remarkable. We don’t treat Israel like a normal country and help it because it’s to our benefit strategically. But that’s not what’s going on here. The US does what it does because of the Lobby. (AIPAC) The United States has a political system that’s set up in ways that allow interest groups to have great influence. Well, the Israel lobby is one of the most, if not, the most powerful lobby in the US. And the lobby goes to enormous lengths to make sure that American foreign policy supports Israel unconditionally. And, it is wildly successful. It’s truly impressive at how good the lobby is at getting US foreign policymakers to support Israel hook, line and sinker. PalMedia@PalBint

We don’t blame Israel for figuring out how to rig the system, so it works to their own advantage, after all, the US operates the same way in nations around the world via its media, its NGOs and its intelligence agents. So, it would be hypocritical for us to criticize Israel for behaving the same way that we do. But that doesn’t change the fact that Israel is a strategic liability, in fact, it just underscores the point. Consider, for example, the recent developments with a key strategic initiative (that you might not have even heard about)—upon which America’s future competitiveness depends. If we take the time to understand how critical this initiative is to America’s global power and prosperity and—at the same time—notice how cavalierly Israel has destroyed any prospect of the initiative succeeding, we can get some idea of the callous disregard Israel has for American interests.

What are we talking about?

On 10 September 2023, representatives from India, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, France, Germany, Italy, Jordan, the EU, and the United States signed a Memorandum of Understanding which committed their countries to a groundbreaking plan that would link production facilities in Asia with markets across the Middle East and Europe. The plan was called the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC) and it was concocted as an alternative to China’s expansive Belt and Road Initiative which has emerged as the Gold Standard of cross-continent infrastructure projects. The BRI includes more than 125 countries and reaches 65 percent of the world’s population. It is, by far, the biggest infrastructure and investment project in history and it is vastly lowering shipping costs, boosting productivity, and enhancing prosperity. The IMEC is Washington’s attempt create an alternate system of trade that duplicates many of the BRI’s features and which—according to the experts—will enhance America’s ability to compete with China in the new century. In other words, Washington is counting on the IMEC to preserve America’s preeminent place in the global order and to assist the US in its broader ambition to economically contain China.

Does that sound important?

You bet it does. Check out this excerpt from the Times of Israel:

US President Joe Biden and his allies on Saturday announced plans to build a rail and shipping corridor linking India with the Middle East and Europe, an ambitious project aimed at fostering economic growth and political cooperation.

“This is a big deal,” said Biden. “This is a really big deal.”

The corridor would help to boost trade, transport energy resources and improve digital connectivity. It would include India, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Israel and the European Union, said Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security adviser….

“We think that the project itself is bold and transformative, but the vision behind the project is equally bold and transformative, and we will see it replicated in other parts of the world as well,” Sullivan said….

Sullivan said the network reflected Biden’s vision for “far-reaching investments” that come from “effective American leadership” and a willingness to embrace other nations as partners. He said the enhanced infrastructure would boost economic growth, help bring countries in the Middle East together and establish that region as a hub for economic activity instead of as a “source of challenge, conflict or crisis” as it has been in recent history.
Biden unveils US-backed transport corridor to link India to EU via Mideast, Israel, Times of Israel

Biden is right. The plan for a massive rail and shipping corridor linking India with the Middle East and Europe, is a very big deal. And Washington has a lot riding on that deal, including its future prosperity and power. Regrettably, Israel can’t be bothered with such trivialities as America’s future, especially when it conflicts with their own fanatical ambition to conquer a minuscule stretch of barren ground in Gaza. In their mind, that’s all that counts.

Keep in mind, Washington has been working on the IMEC for a very long time. In fact, the so-called Abraham Accords are merely a subset of this broader economic integration strategy. The Accords were aimed at normalizing relations between Israel and its Arab neighbors so that traditional rivals would all agree to work collaboratively on the same integration project. But, of course, Israel’s 11 month-long rampage in Gaza has obliterated any hope of Arab leaders working with Israel regardless of pressure from the United States. Just last week, Saudi Arabia—which is a key node in the IMEC—announced that it was ‘calling it quits’ and would suspend all efforts to establish diplomatic relations with Israel. This is from an article at Responsible Statecraft:

In a televised speech today, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman stated that, “The [Saudi] kingdom will not stop its tireless work towards the establishment of an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital. We affirm that the kingdom will not establish diplomatic relations with Israel without that.”

With this statement, the Crown Prince appeared to dash the Biden’s administration’s lingering hopes of achieving a landmark normalization deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia, which would have also given Riyadh a U.S. defense agreement as well as a pledge to assist in the establishment of a civilian nuclear program.

Although the Biden administration had previously signaled that they might be willing to move forward with the U.S.-Saudi defense agreement even in the absence of normalization with Israel, MBS’ announcement appears to finally kill the possibility of the so-called “Grand Bargain” that Presidential advisors Brett McGurk, Jake Sullivan, and other senior Biden officials had hoped would offer a means of countering China, resolving the Gaza crisis, and topping Trump’s Abraham Accords all in one….

MBS’ clear statement of Saudi support for the establishment of a Palestinian state demonstrates the impact of the events of the past year. Israel’s devastating campaign against Gaza – cutting off water and electricity, dropping an average of 42 bombs every day, and blocking adequate food, health supplies, and other basic necessities from entering the territory – have provoked worldwide condemnation, which is strongest in the Middle East. MBS: No Saudi-Israel normalization until Palestinians get a state, Responsible Statecraft

No one is blaming Israel for responding to the attack on October 7. What Israel is blamed for is its 11-month-long bloodbath that has killed tens of thousands of civilians while reducing 80% of all the structures in Gaza to rubble. That’s not an acceptable response to terrorism. That is genocide.

Of course, if we are going to be honest, the Gaza genocide is just the tip of the iceberg. If we really want to appreciate how much of a burden Israel is, then look no further than the US State Department’s own website. Here’s what you’ll find:

The 75-year partnership (between the US and Israel) has been built on mutual interests and shared democratic values from its inception, with Israelis and Americans united by their commitment to democracy, economic prosperity, and regional security.

SECURITY ASSISTANCE AND COOPERATION

The abiding U.S. commitment to Israel’s security is buttressed by robust security assistance to Israel – including the 10-year, $38 billion MOU that was concluded in 2016. Consistent with the MOU, the United States provides $3.3 billion annually in Foreign Military Financing and an additional $500 million in missile defense funding. Missile defense funding supports several cooperative missile defense programs, including David’s Sling and Iron Dome, as well as Arrow, Arrow II, and Arrow III, whose life-saving capabilities have proved vital to Israel’s security. In 2022, the United States provided $1 billion in supplemental funding to replenish Israel’s stock of missile interceptors for the Iron Dome….

REGIONAL PEACE AND COOPERATION

The United States is committed to promoting a more integrated, prosperous, and secure Middle East that benefits all its people. We are dedicated to deepening and expanding normalization and integration between Israel and Arab and Muslim-majority states – as exemplified by the Abraham Accords, other normalization agreements… the United States – advances regional integration, cooperation, and development to augment peace, security, and economic prosperity for the wider region, including initiatives that could strengthen the Palestinian economy and improve Palestinians’ quality of life. The United States remains committed to advancing a comprehensive, negotiated two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict….

As part of our efforts to promote a two-state solution and regional peace, the United States is programming the first two years of a five-year funding plan (a $100 million tranche)… to strengthen people-to-people engagement between Israelis and Palestinians. US Relations with Israel, US State Department

It’s shocking, isn’t it? $3 billion here, $38 billion there. Pretty soon, you’re talking real money.

And you might notice that all the money is funneled in one direction: from Washington to Tel Aviv. Never the reverse. Why is that?

Notice, also, how the author boasts about the the Abraham Accords, and the “regional integration” projects (IMEC), and even the elusive “two-state solution”, all of which are of paramount importance to the United States but all of which have been deliberately sabotaged by our ‘good friend’ Israel.

I don’t know how any objective-minded person can review the facts and not draw the same conclusion as Mearsheimer, that Israel is a strategic liability and an albatross.

If we were smart, we’d close our embassy in Jerusalem and recall our ambassador immediately. Enough is enough.

Reprinted with permission from The Unz Review.

The post How Israel Torpedoed Washington’s Global Strategy appeared first on LewRockwell.

In case you missed it, global governance was instituted on 13 September 2024, through something called the Pact for the Future. Remember the Global Citizen Digital ID conspiracy theory? It’s in there. Remember the WHO pandemic treaty surrendering all national sovereignty in the event of a “health emergency”? It’s in there. Remember how the radical-right fringe wingnuts have been saying the schools are nothing but indoctrination centers? You ain’t seen nothing yet, and it’s in there, too. Here’s a list of highlighted topics in this “framework” for tyranny:

• Sustainable Development and Financing
• International Peace and Security
• Science, Technology, Innovation, and Digital Cooperation
• Youth and Future Generations
• Transforming Global Governance

The Pact for the Future is clearly a desperate, last-ditch blueprint concocted by cowardly world leaders scrambling to patch up the bleeding cracks of a crumbling planetary control system. The mewling “leaders” dream big here, spewing visions of a utopia by the curious alchemical date of 2045, where everyone holds hands and faces the apocalypse with climate action, peace, and sustainable development.

Enter the Global Digital Compact, the Bumbledicks’ wet dream of controlling the digital Wild West. They want you to believe this is all about inclusion and privacy, but read between the lines. It’s Big Brother 2.0, complete with shiny digital IDs and vaccine passports. Sure, it’s dressed up in techno-utopian nonsense, but don’t forget—they’re angling for power over the bytes and bits that define our 21st-century existence. Don’t think for a second this isn’t about corralling us in the name of global “health and safety”.

And then, of course, there’s the obligatory call for a New Social Contract—a pile of mealy-mouthed garbage intent on replacing national constitutions with a global “framework” for standardized tyranny. They talk about justice, social protections, and healthcare, but these are just hollow terms etched on phosphors that can vanish with the tap of a button.

Meanwhile, the whole world’s burning from fake scarcity, war, and a collapsing economies, brought to us by the very same Bumbledicks. But hey, let’s hold out hope that somehow, through this noxious brew of diplomacy and mutual back-patting, they’ll build a resilient, sustainable, just world—and catapults make pigs fly.

All of this is the Hegelian Dialectic writ large. These slimy poltroons work ‘round the clock to create problems that don’t exist, so they can slide their precious “blueprints” across the table, which are little more than blatant looting of national treasuries to expand their carbon footprints on our faces and stuff their pockets with out sweat.

Meantime, their tarnished heralds in the GeezerMedia fuss and fret, telling us diligently the ubermenschen are laboring by gaslight to save us from vapors and phantasms, as the NPC-Normies wave it away like a cloud of gnats, their pale empty faces staring transfixed at their screens.

In the past quarter century, we have seen just about every conspiracy theory proved true, from the Warren Report lies to the New World Order, and yet the unwashed masses act as if they’ve known it all along. Perhaps it’s the water fluoridation, which was recently proved in court. What else would cause the rubes to accept as immutable truth today, what they angrily and vehemently rejected as lunatic ravings yesterday?

Thesis — Antithesis — Synthesis

So, as the peons slog and slouch toward the camps, heads bowed to their sacred screens, at least us wingnuts in the wilderness can rest assured that we were right all along. As Alex Jones’ Infowars empire gets auctioned off, us prescient prophets of perdition can take solace in the knowledge that everything we were persecuted for believing, is now the way things have always been.

Oceania is at war with East Asia. It has always been at war with East Asia.

What is so annoying about all this is the way the gaggle of Hindmosts that infest the UN General Assembly passed the Pact for the Future in the most craven manner — they allowed it to take effect by not voting on it. This is known as the Douglas Adams rule of law — if public notice is posted in a rusted-out filing cabinet in an out-of-order toilet behind a pile of broken office furnishings in an abandoned basement, and no one objects, then it must be law.

It suddenly occurs to me why the year 2050 is so prevalent in the Bumbledicks’ Grand Plan for Total Domination: by then, all of us perspicacious prognosticators will be dead and there won’t be anyone left to complain.

Read the Whole Article

The post It’s All True appeared first on LewRockwell.

I went to sleep early the evening of September 26 expecting a 130 mph hurricane Helene to pass directly over my home at about midnight. I woke up at 12:30 AM. Did not hear hurricane winds. I woke again at 3:30 AM. Too quiet. I fought off the thought that Helene had stalled just offshore and was working itself up into a 150-160 mph Category 5+, but managed to go back to sleep. My cats roused me at 6AM. A tiny bit of light from a morning that was trying to get underway, and no destruction. And no power. In my pre-coffee morning I tried to put them together: no destruction, no sign of any wind or rain, but no power.

With a gas burner I made coffee and ventured out looking for downed trees and shingles off the roof. A couple of large tree limbs but little else. I started to think I was still asleep having a good dream.

I located an old battery powered radio that miraculously worked and learned that at the last few minutes the eye which had experienced trouble maintaining itself had wobbled to the east about 55 miles east of me and south as it came ashore at Perry, Florida. Tallahassee, the state capital, was expecting devastation, but it was Perry to the southeast that took the hit.

The weather channel and the national TV networks are selling advertising. They play the hurricanes as if it is gladiators in the Roman colosseum fighting to the death against human opponents or lions. That Americans eat this up shows their enjoyment of violence. Increasingly, violence is America’s entertainment. Consider the extreme violence of American movies, the extreme violence of video games, the extreme violence of politics with law used as a weapon even against Donald Trump while he was in office, the extreme violence of the US and Israel against the Palestinians, the provocation of Russia into war.

Americans are entertained by violence. That is why there are no peace movements as the world awaits the West’s response to Putin’s statement that missiles fired into Russia means world war.

Back to the hurricane. Many people left the expected hurricane landing area because of the likely destruction. But not one word in the presstitute media of the destruction that would result from the White House’s decision to strike Russia with missiles.

As I am experiencing it, I can attest that it is an inconvenience not having access to water, power, and communication, but this inconvenience is nothing compared to the inconveniences that go with nuclear war. Nuclear war is the ultimate hell. It is identical to going to Hell. Everything should be done to avoid it. Instead the Satanists in Washington and Europe are encouraging it. The majority of the American people are more worried about their golf score, their college football team’s performance in the game against the main rival, and whether their teenage daughters are taking their birth control pills.

The first of the deep state’s assassination attempts on Trump was in Pennsylvania. The Democrat Pennsylvania government left the investigation in the hands of the FBI, which many believe was responsible for the attempt. The Secret Service is being blamed because of incompetence resulting from the Biden regime’s DEI policies. The Republicans are unwilling to go any further. They are satisfied with the conclusion that replacing merit with inclusiveness destroyed the capability of the US Secret Service.

Unlike Democrat Pennsylvania, Florida’s state government has asserted the right to investigate the second assassination attempt on Trump as it occurred in Florida. This concerns the FBI, which tried to block Florida’s investigation. Why? If the official FBI narrative is correct, an incompetent Secret Service is to blame. The incompetent element is meant to exonerate the deep state from suspicion.

Let’s look at a conspiracy theory as described by those who are paid to control the permissible narratives.

For many years the US Government has financed the HAARP investigations funded by the US Air Force, Navy, and DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects).

HAARP’s purpose is to investigate the potential for developing ionospheric enhancement technology that could be used to excite weather conditions in an area of the ionosphere. In other words, it is possibly a program to weaponize weather disguised as experiments to enhancement radio communications and surveillance, just as law and news “reporting” have been weaponized. Or the program could be what it is said to be.

As we have neither an honest media nor an honest government, we cannot know.

Suspicious people ask how official spokespersons knew in advance that Helene was heading for Tallahassee. No one knows where a hurricane is going or with what strength until 15 minutes before it hits. Helene is an example. In the last few minutes it hit far to the east.

Helene had trouble forming, and it had trouble holding together. Washington would have an interest in sending a storm DeSantis’ way. The Florida governor has gotten in Washington’s way before, and he is in the way again with a state investigation of the second attempt on Trump. Florida in chaos dependent on federal aid would be more compliant.

Meteorologists avoid these questions. Government scientists say we cannot influence local weather, but the same scientists say we are causing global warming, from which Bill Gates wants to save us by spraying particles into the atmosphere. Meanwhile “conspiracy theorists” continue to claim that the US government is filling the atmosphere with aluminum particles. People have been mucking around with weather for decades. I remember watching rockets being fired to seed the clouds to make it rain. The best way to dispose of conspiracy theories is to objectively examine them, not shout them down. Shouting them down implies that the evidence is on their side and must be suppressed.

Fact checkers, who know nothing about the topics that they “fact check” but who rely on CNN, NPR, NY Times, and the rest of the narrative protectors for their “facts,” describe unwelcome information and questions as “disinformation,” “fake news,” “Russian propaganda,” “racist,” “anti-semitic.” This is a way of disposing of questions, not addressing them.

Democracy fails when the choice of a president turns on which candidate elicits voters’ emotional response. A recent Rasmussen Poll found that emotions such as hatred will play a significant part in the choice of president with 28% of Democrats wishing for Trump’s assassination. Is a Rasmussen Poll disinformation? What does it mean when more that a quarter of Democrats are going to vote hatred?

Not everything labeled conspiracy theory is. The American people who the Founders relied upon to pay attention and to defend their rights have failed the Founders. A majority of Americans do not even know what the US Constitution says. They do not comprehend that the United States is the Constitution, and that the destruction by the liberal woke Democrats and university law schools of the US Constitution is the destruction of our country. We are living in a time of treason.

The US Congress has lost its authority to regulatory agencies. Congress no longer even has the power to make law. The regulatory agencies make law according to how they wish the law to be by how they write the regulations that define the law.

The executive branch ignores Congress and refuses to be held accountable.

The judiciary is collapsing as Democrats and George Soros put on the courts ideologues who intend to use law as a weapon against enemies.

Americans are an easy mark, because they are too insouciant and too gullible to believe that “their government” would behave in such ways. The First Amendment is being hacked down. Once Americans cannot speak, they are done for. They will wave the flag as they are marched to their doom.

The post Could Helene Have Been a DARPA Creation? appeared first on LewRockwell.

Like a river undisturbed while traversing a rocky wilderness, China silently flows away on its path to peaceful primacy.

Leading website Guancha has published the transcript of a first-class lecture at Renmin University on China-U.S. relations by Martin Jacques, author of When China Rules the World. Jacques is one of the very few Westerner scholars with on the ground experience who actually understands the Chinese psyche and way of life in contrast to the West.

A particularly intriguing section of the lecture concerns research by Danny Quah, the dean of the widely respected Lee Kuan Yew Institute in Singapore. This is the money quote:

“Between 1980 and 2020, Europe’s share of global GDP fell from 26% to 15%. In other words, it fell by 11 percentage points, a very large drop. Although the decline in the United States was smaller, it fell from 21% in the 1980s to less than 16% in 2020. From another perspective, Asia and East Asia are constantly rising. The share in 1980 was 11.5%, and it has risen to 25% in 2020. Among this 25%, China has made the largest contribution, accounting for 18% of the world.”

What this graphically illustrates is the acute swing in the world’s center of economic gravity – no matter the rhetorical tsunamis emanating from the Hegemon. In 1980 the economic center was Atlanticist. Quah though believes that the economic center will reach the Sino-Indian border only by 2050.

When we take China compounded with the 10 members of ASEAN, without even considering South Asia, it’s fair to argue that the economic center will already be in the East by 2030, and will be Sino-Indian before 2040.

Jacques is correct that by then “the ‘Asian Age’ will replace the ‘Western Age’, and since 1750, the world has always been in the Western Age.” On a personal note, after living and working in Asia for most of the past three decades, I qualify our century as “The Eurasian Century”.

And that, in a nutshell, is the reason why the Hegemon/Atlanticist elites are in Deep Panic mode. The free lunch – of exploiting the wealth of the Global South – is coming to an end.

Hong Kong back in the spotlight

China has already designed the masterplan of its development strategy all the way to 2035 and in many aspects all the way to 2049. The current juncture though is extremely tricky.

The People’s Bank of China is taking the necessary master tweaks of the economy very seriously. Earlier this week the PBoC announced cuts to the outstanding mortgage rate and the reserve requirement ratio: that’s the amount of cash commercial banks need to hold as reserves. The PBoC also cut the benchmark policy rate and boosted capital markets.

Then the Politburo, chaired by President Xi Jinping himself, intervened in full force, vowing to protect China’s private enterprises; finally stabilise the always wobbly property sector; and adopt the necessary fiscal expenditures.

That’s the domestic front. On the external front, China is on a roll. The top priority is the slowly but surely internationalization of the yuan. And that’s where the crucial role of Hong Kong comes in – as detailed in a report by Renmin University.

China is already de-dollarizing at nearly breakneck speed. The U.S. dollar’s share of bilateral trade has already fallen from 80% to less than 50%.

China is now trading with the world mostly in yuan – and the petroyuan is not even in full force. Since the start of the SMO by Russia in Ukraine in February 2022, the yuan is the de facto Asian reserve currency for Russia. In parallel, Beijing is accelerating currency swaps all across the spectrum and designating more clearing banks around the world.

Hong Kong is in a class by itself when it comes to state of the art financial institutions. Hence the connection is inevitable for global investors: all sorts of deals are open in China via Hong Kong, with the added bonus of avoiding Hegemon sanctions.

So from now on Hong Kong will be even more of a Holy Grail for all sorts of yuan-denominated transactions. Talk about a magnet for finance tech wizards.

Hong Kong is already the world’s top market for the offshore yuan – processing nearly 80% of all settlements. Three months ago, according to the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA),

the Special Administrative Region had $151.7 billion in offshore deposits.

A top HKMA executive not by accident attended the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok earlier this month. With high U.S. interest rates and low PBoC interest rates, offshore yuan bonds will be issued like there’s no tomorrow.

Nuclear destruction or an imperfect evolving new order

From Beijing to Hong Kong, Chinese politico-economic elites are quite comfortable with the fact that for the first time in History, the rise of a great power is not being conditioned by imperialism, war, slavery, looting and all of the above, but under what has been codified since the Little Helmsman Deng Xiaoping’s late 1970s reforms as “peaceful development.”

That is mirrored in several concepts such as win-win; mutual prosperity; equality; “community of shared future for mankind”; and as a master geoeconomic project, the interlocking connectivity corridors across the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

While China invests in infrastructure development around the world, the Hegemon imposes sanctions, engages in bombing, supports variations of the Forever Wars, finances and weaponizes color revolutions.

Hegemon “strategy” barely qualifying as utter mediocrity ranges from the U.S. government funding a $1.6 billion campaign to smear China to Republicans divided on whether regime change in Beijing is their ultimate goal and the Democrat ambassador in Beijing convinced that Washington’s China policy is not too hawkish.

Then there’s puny functionary and Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell – the man who invented the “pivot to Asia” during the first Obama administration – ordering the Europeans to go hawkish on China and defining Beijing in front of the House Foreign Affairs Committee as “the most significant challenge in our history”.

Very few IQs above room temperature across Asia pay attention to such clowns. In contrast, what is now emerging in informed discussions from South to Southeast Asia is that BRICS progress will not be steady enough if the emphasis remains on consensual decisions.

A daring proposition is emerging that Russia and China – the actual BRICS leaders – should announce at the summit in Kazan next month that they are backing a yuan/ruble/gold alliance: as in if the world needs to choose between NATOstan hegemony or a BRICS alternative, better start with sound (real) money.

Beyond the feasibility of such proposal, there’s a serious critique of Utopia; the Global Majority must be pushed to face the harsh reality it faces – nuclear destruction or an imperfect evolving new order – and make a stand, fast.

Meanwhile, like a river undisturbed while traversing a rocky wilderness, China silently flows away on its path to peaceful primacy.

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

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