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The post Kamikaze politics appeared first on LewRockwell.

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(Versione audio della traduzione disponibile qui: https://open.substack.com/pub/fsimoncelli/p/rosso-bianco-e-bitcoin)

Bitcoin può sembrare futuristico, ma una volta rimossa la sua patina digitale, è solo l'ultimo capitolo di una lunga storia di 2.600 anni fatta di valore, fiducia e ingegno umano. Dopo aver raggiunto livelli record, Bitcoin ha fatto notizia mentre le nazioni dichiaravano di avere riserve strategiche e le aziende americane abbracciavano questa nuova classe di asset. Perché proprio ora?

La risposta risiede in un modello antico quanto la civiltà stessa: quando gli stati corrompono una valuta, le persone cercano di innovare per ottenere qualcosa di meglio.

Come dice il proverbio: “La storia non si ripete, ma spesso fa rima”. Quando la prima moneta apparve nel 600 a.C., non era semplicemente una lega d'oro e d'argento con impresso il volto del re lidio. Fu una rivoluzione finanziaria. Per la prima volta le persone potevano superare le inefficienze del baratto e utilizzare invece un mezzo di scambio per commerciare, ma questo valore non risiedeva nel luccichio bensì nella consapevolezza collettiva degli individui che queste monete avevano valore.

L'integrità di quel sistema ha avuto alti e bassi nel corso dei millenni successivi, tipicamente a causa delle politiche di spesa governative. I denari romani con il dorso in argento permisero all'impero di prosperare, ma quando i successivi imperatori ne diluirono il valore – riducendo il contenuto d'argento per finanziare guerre e costruire grandi palazzi – i cittadini persero fiducia nella loro moneta. Quando l'imperatore Nerone ridusse il contenuto d'argento dal 98% all'83% nel 64 d.C., i Romani iniziarono ad accumulare vecchie monete e a rifiutare quelle nuove. Nel 260 d.C. il denario conteneva solo il 5% d'argento. L'inflazione aumentò vertiginosamente e il commercio crollò, contribuendo alla caduta finale dell'impero.

Gli Stati Uniti hanno combattuto crisi monetarie fin dalla nascita della nazione, ma a differenza di Roma, l'America ha costantemente innovato e trovato soluzioni lungo il percorso. Dopo aver dichiarato l'indipendenza dalla Gran Bretagna, il Congresso Continentale stampò la prima moneta cartacea della nazione. Chiamata “Continental”, non era coperta né da oro né da argento, solo dalla fiducia nel suo valore. Mentre l'oro e l'argento sono metalli relativamente scarsi con l'offerta limitata, la carta può essere stampata ed è esattamente ciò che fece il primo governo degli Stati Uniti.

Nel disperato tentativo di pagare le truppe e acquistare i rifornimenti necessari per combattere la Guerra d'Indipendenza, il Congresso si dedicò alla produzione di altre banconote. Esse inondarono il mercato, facendone crollare il valore, mentre gli americani si chiedevano se la nuova nazione avrebbe potuto mantenere le sue promesse. Nel 1777 un patriota si lamentò con suo padre dell'aumento dell'inflazione stimato al 200%, scrivendo: “L'America ha molto più da temere dagli effetti di grandi quantità di cartamoneta che dalle operazioni dei generali britannici”.

I prezzi salirono così rapidamente che lo stesso George Washington finì per rifiutare i Continental come pagamento. Divenne infatti comune descrivere qualcosa di scarso valore come “non degno di un Continental”. La valuta divenne così ridicola che i marinai la cucivano sui vestiti e sfilavano per la città per schernirla. Ma anziché crollare come l'Impero Romano, gli Stati Uniti innovarono: questa crisi monetaria fu la forza trainante che spinse i Padri Fondatori ad abolire il governo americano con gli Articoli della Confederazione e a redigere l'attuale Costituzione.

Questo cambiamento rappresentò più di una semplice riforma politica: fu un progresso monetario, con il passaggio da una moneta discrezionale a una basata su regole. Il nuovo governo degli Stati Uniti adottò un sistema bimetallico nel 1792, che legava il valore del dollaro sia all'oro che all'argento. Il Paese alla fine semplificò il suo approccio passando di fatto a un gold standard nel 1834, il quale durò fino al 1971, quando il presidente Nixon lo abbandonò a favore della moneta fiat. Come i Paesi continentali prima di esso, il dollaro è stato da allora coperto dalla fiducia nel suo valore: “full faith and credit” del governo degli Stati Uniti.

E poi arrivò la crisi finanziaria del 2008. Lehman Brothers crollò, le banche vacillarono... e la popolazione? Cominciò a chiedersi: “Cos'è il denaro?” Fu allora, dalle ombre digitali, che una figura anonima – Satoshi Nakamoto – lasciò cadere un white paper come un patriota che lancia un volantino alla vigilia della Guerra d'Indipendenza: Bitcoin, un sistema di moneta elettronica peer-to-peer. Niente imperatori, niente banche; solo matematica, crittografia e un record indistruttibile chiamato blockchain. Nacque un nuovo tipo di fiducia: non in un sovrano, ma in un codice informatico.

Quella che inizialmente era considerata un'interessante idea è stata rapidamente messa in pratica nel mondo reale. Gli utenti generano altri utenti, la fiducia cresce, gli imprenditori sognano. È una vera e propria saga storica che si svolge in tempo reale.

Bitcoin si è distinto dalle altre crittovalute che ha ispirato, in gran parte grazie alla sua scarsità: un imperatore non potrebbe più aggiungere rame a basso costo a monete d'argento, o il Congresso stampare altra carta, perché è codificato che esisteranno solo 21 milioni di bitcoin. Inoltre tutte le transazioni Bitcoin sono verificate da una rete decentralizzata di circa 20.000 computer in tutto il mondo che si controllano a vicenda al di là del volere dei politici. In un'epoca di spesa pubblica incontrollata, gli investitori si sono rivolti a Bitcoin che nessun governo può diluire. Un sistema decentralizzato che protegge i cittadini dal dominio dello stato: quanto è americano!

Non è un caso che il Bitcoin sia schizzato a una valutazione di $2.000 miliardi proprio mentre il debito pubblico degli Stati Uniti ha raggiunto livelli record. I ricercatori dibattono sulla durata media delle valute fiat nel corso della storia, con alcuni che collocano il momento della loro morte tra i 27 e i 35 anni. Poiché gli Stati Uniti sono fuori dal gold standard da oltre 50 anni, la storia suggerisce che il dollaro è destinato alla sostituzione.

Le persone si pongono l'annosa domanda: cos'è davvero il denaro? Mentre la fiducia nella moneta cartacea viene scossa dall'inflazione e dall'aumento della spesa federale, molti si stanno rivolgendo all'innovazione. Persino le nazioni stesse hanno iniziato a costituire riserve strategiche. Di fatto gli Stati Uniti sono il maggiore detentore di Bitcoin, posizionando ancora una volta l'America all'avanguardia nell'evoluzione monetaria.

Come consigliò John Adams nel 1787: “Tutte le perplessità, la confusione e l'angoscia in America non derivano dai difetti della Costituzione, né dalla mancanza di onore o virtù, quanto piuttosto dalla totale ignoranza della natura della moneta, del credito e della loro circolazione”. È dovere degli americani armarsi di conoscenza e impegnarsi nell'antica tradizione americana di sfidare i sistemi corrotti con idee migliori nel perseguimento della libertà.

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

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Neither Europe nor the U.S. seemingly possesses the mettle for real war. And certainly, neither do their publics.

Creeping, thunderous changes are underway in the West. A new political doctrine has taken root: Western Conservative (and younger) populist thinking is being rebuilt as something rougher, meaner, and far less sentimental, or tolerant.

It aspires to emerge too, as ‘dominant’, deliberately coercive, and radical. Throwing components of the exiting order into the air to see if they can be landed in a beneficial way (i.e. greater rent revenues) for the U.S.

The so-called Rules-Based Order blueprint (if it ever truly existed beyond narrative) has been ripped up. Today it is war without limits – without rules; without law; and in complete disdain for the UN Charter. Ethical boundaries, more particularly, are dismissed in parts of the West as ‘weak’ ‘moral relativism’. The point is to leave opponents stunned and frozen stick figures.

In parallel, something profound has re-shaped Israeli and U.S. foreign policy: Ignoring rules purposively to shock. Moving fast and breaking things. Over recent months, Israel has struck with military force in the West Bank, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, Qatar and Tunisia – besides Gaza. In June, these two nuclear states bombed the nuclear facilities of a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty under IAEA protection – Iran.

This ‘moving fast; breaking things’ phenomenon was clearly evident when Israel, with U.S. support, launched its sneak attack on Iran on 12 June. It was also evident secondly, in the bureaucratic speed which took many by surprise, as the ‘European 3’ members of the JCPOA – effected the ‘Snapback’ of all JCPOA-mandated sanctions on Iran. Iranian attempts at diplomacy were swept aside remorselessly.

The invocation of sanctions Snapback was clearly rushed through to pre-empt the imminent ‘sunset’ of the entire JCPOA framework on 18 October – after which the JCPOA will be ‘no more’.

Whilst Russia and China view the U.S.-orchestrated snapback ploy as illegal, procedurally flawed and, in their perspective, an ‘act’ that legally never took place – the reality is chilling. It funnels Iran inexorably toward an U.S.-Israeli ultimatum that it either capitulates fully to the U.S., or faces an overwhelming military onslaught.

This new power doctrine has emerged from a West in financial crisis – but being born of desperation, it may well fail. The wider western crisis of opposition to the establishment, however, is not as many Progressives or bureaucratic Technocrats think – simply resulting from an upsurge of regrettable ‘white’ pushback.

As Giuliano da Empoli has written in the FT:

“Until recently economic elites, financiers, entrepreneurs and managers of large companies relied on a political class of technocrats — or aspiring technocrats — from the right and left, moderate, reasonable, more or less indistinguishable from each other … who governed their countries on the basis of liberal democratic principles, in accordance with market rules, sometimes tempered by social considerations. That was the Davos consensus”.

The collapse of global liberalism and its illusions, together with its technocratic structure of governance, has – in the eyes of the new élites – simply confirmed that the technocratic ‘expert’ sphere was neither competent, nor grounded in reality.

So the ‘umbrella strategy’ of the Rules-Based International Order is over. The new era is one of coerced dominance – whether by Israel or the U.S. This doctrine is centred on Israeli ‘dominance’ – to which others logically must ‘submit’. This is to be achieved either by financial or military pressure. And is symbolised in the shift of nomenclature in the U.S. from Department of Defence to the ‘Department of War’.

“The new American technological élites, the Musks, the Zuckerbergs and Sam Altmans of this world, have nothing in common with the technocrats of Davos. Their philosophy of life is not based on the competent management of the existing order but, on the contrary, on an irrepressible desire to throw everything up in the air. Order, prudence and respect for the rules – are anathema to those who have made a name for themselves by moving fast and breaking things”, da Empoli elaborates.

By their very nature and background, the Tech overlords are more akin to nationalist-populist leaders (the Trumps, the Netanyahus, the Ben Gavirs and Smotrichs), and in a different way to the Evangelical faction (from which Charlie Kirk emerged), rather than to the moderate political classes of Davos whom they (collectively) despise.

Kirk believed that his calling from God was to be a fighter, a combatant in the culture wars. “Some people are called to heal the sick,” he once said. “Some people are called to mend broken marriages.” Kirk declared that his call was “to fight evil and proclaim truth. That’s it”. One commentator called it the politicisation of Evangelism to secure the domination of Jesus.

Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff, has said that “the day that Charlie died, the angels wept, but those tears have been turned into fire in our hearts. And that fire burns with a righteous fury that our enemies cannot comprehend or understand”.

What is the common vision to these seemingly disparate western factions now embracing this rougher, meaner, and far less sentimental, or consensual political doctrine?

What is the aim of tossing all the Middle East pieces up into the air with such brutalised effect, as is evident to the world from Gaza? Israeli regional hegemony and U.S. control over the region’s energy resources. Is that the aim? Certainly – yet it is more than that —

The new doctrine of Team Trump, the Israeli Right, and the Jewish billionaires supporting him, nevertheless have an overriding ‘war aim’. This is not just about Israeli ‘dominance’ and others having to ‘submit’, as U.S. Envoy Tom Barrack insists. It means “getting Iran under control” too – hence the Snapback is preparation for the ‘big war’ to subjugate Iran.

One U.S. Jewish billionaire, speaking earlier at a Zionists of America conference, was picturing a wider war extending to inside America: Rober Shillman’s said his ample funding of ZoA was intended for “confronting enemies of Israel and the Jewish people [wherever] – defending against Islamists who wish to destroy Israel – and radical Leftist Jew-haters who wish to destroy the Jewish people”.

Does this maelstrom across the Middle East nevertheless tie in with Trump’s apparently separate and distinct bellicosity towards Venezuela (and the coincidental sweetheart deal with Argentina)? Yes—the point is to bring the shale fields of Argentina and the huge oil reserves of Venezuela under U.S. control – to give U.S. global energy dominance with which to mitigate the threat from growing U.S. deficits overwhelming the U.S. government.

The Venezuela standoff connects to the Middle East project through being another aspect of a wider hegemonic project – consolidating the western hemisphere into America’s domain of interest, alongside the Middle East.

How did the West reach this bellicose, dominance-seeking point? The key underlying metaphysics of the shift towards anarchic radicalism (seemingly) owes to a period of American thinking about greed, fairness, liberty, and dominance. As Evan Osnos argues in The Haves and Have Yachts, over the past five decades, the Oligarchs and Tech overlords have increasingly rejected constraints on their ability to accrue wealth, disavowing the notion that their great resources entail any special responsibility towards their fellow citizens.

They have embraced a libertarian ethos which casts them simply as private individuals, responsible for their own fate, and entitled to enjoy their riches as they see fit. More significantly, they have not, however, forgone the prerogative of using their money to shape government and society to their techno-autarkic vision. The resulting pattern, traced in Osnos’ book, has been a “simple arithmetic — of money making money”.

The lesson the Tech overlords have assimilated is: when a state or any other entity becomes incompetent, the only historical cure for such political sclerosis is not dialogue, nor compromise; It is what the Romans called proscriptio – a formalized purge. Sulla knew this. Caesar perfected it. Augustus institutionalized it. Take the élite interests, deny them resources, strip them of property, and compel obedience … or else!

The Trumpian and Tech élites of today are enamoured by the ancient notion of ‘greatness’ – individual greatness – and the contribution that greatness can ‘offer’ to civilization. Typically, in this concept there is always a strong element of the ‘outsider’ being some kind of anarchic transgressor, who brings a new measure of energy into play which ‘expert’ insiders just cannot provide.

We all think ‘Trump’ as we read those words. There is clearly a not-so-secret affinity between today’s populist conservatism and anarchic radicalism. Which begs the question: Wild policy swings, constant uncertainty, erratic posts on Truth Social – is this in fact desperation as U.S. greatness visibly ebbs? Or are we being prepped for something yet more contrarian, more radical still – some attempt at a global financial makeover?

“From this moment forward, the only mission of the newly-restored Department of War is this: War fighting; preparing for war and preparing to win – unrelenting – and uncompromising – in that pursuit”, the U.S. Secretary of War told his gathering of Generals in Washington on Tuesday.

The world is on fire, and fear is being ramped up in Europe to high volume. It is ‘Russia, Russia’ everywhere, ‘under every bed’. Are we being truly ‘prepped’, or is this simply European scare brinkmanship intent on enlisting the U.S. in a project to weaken and dissolve Russia into distinct parts?

The collapse of the Soviet Union gave ‘old’ Europe – the great European nations – the huge markets of Eastern Europe, the Balkans, and of the former USSR – and also gave Europe resources and cheap energy too. The EU project per se, effectively was bought with the smell of money – the enticement of easy affluence.

As that affluence pops (and Trump just markedly accelerated the bust), and without Russia’s market dismemberment, what price France, Germany or Italy retaining their former political clout or global influence? More to the point, European leaders are asking, ‘however can I get re-elected now’.

The Russia ‘threat’ brinkmanship is being pushed into the ‘red zone’ by Europe. But neither Europe nor the U.S. seemingly possesses the mettle for real war. And certainly, neither do their publics.

This article was originally published on Strategic Culture.

The post ‘Moving Fast; Breaking Things’: A New Doctrine Takes Root; a New Era of Coerced Dominance appeared first on LewRockwell.

As I often note, making Plans B and C is free.

The stock market is always looking past “bad news” to front-run “good news.” Once it became clear that the Titanic was indeed going to sink, the stock market would rally on the prospect of sharp growth in lifeboat shares. In other words, never mind the bad news, let’s look beyond that and find some reason to rally.

This is a pattern that’s easily visible in the past two decades. When it became clear that Covid was becoming a global pandemic, the US stock market rallied for weeks, something that struck sober analysts as completely disconnected from reality. Eventually reality intruded and the market crashed.

The same dynamic was also apparent in the run-up to the 2000 dot-com implosion–stocks rallied right up to March 6, 2000, before starting a two-year long controlled demolition–and the 2008-09 stock market crash, when shares of visible doomed General Motors and Fannie Mae both maintained lofty valuations that were completely disconnected from a painfully visible reality. (Fannie Mae shares went to near-zero in the subsequent crash.)

And so here we are again. The stock market is rallying despite overwhelming evidence that the US economy and global economy are heading for a deep recession. The justifications are either 1) the AI boom is changing everything or 2) the Federal Reserve will continue lowering interest rates and flood the market with liquidity, i.e. “The Fed Put” will save the stock market, just as its done for the past 25 years.

This assumption is completely detached from the painfully visible reality that the Fed and other central banks have finally awakened to the perverse consequences of “The Fed Put” (i.e. the policy of unleashing trillions in financial stimulus whenever the stock market swoons) and they are now responding to rallies based on front-running the (now viewed as guaranteed) Fed “save” of the stock market by reiterating their new policy which is to keep interest rates (bond yields) higher for longer. In other words, they are explicitly stating that they won’t “save” the stock market because of 1) inflation and 2) the need to destroy the moral hazard created by “The Fed Put.”

In the heady front-running rally prior to the crash, all seems well. Employment is strong, consumers are spending, etc.

The problem with this euphoric confidence is there are lag times between sharp increases in the cost of capital and goods and services and employment and spending. Notice how credit card balances have exploded higher. In previous recessions, reliance on credit cards to juice spending soared right up until the stock market began its free-fall. Then spending fell sharply.

The lag time is also visible in yield-curve inversions–long counted as a surefire precursor to recession. (When the 2-year Treasury bonds pays a higher yield than the long-term 30-year bond, this inverts the normal market in which longer-term bonds pay higher yields than short-term bonds.)

Many other indicators repeat the same message: we’re at the cusp of a recession and market decline.

Many commentators note how tightening financial conditions take months to work through the economy, eventually affecting consumer spending, commercial borrowing, housing valuations, tax receipts, etc.

Globally, the forces pushing costs higher (i.e. inflation) cannot be reversed. Consider this chart of labor costs in China. As labor costs skyrocket, higher costs must be passed on to consumers.

There are also less easily measured trends at work. One factor that is not tracked and therefore poorly understood is how close to the edge many small businesses are. Those that survived the Covid lockdown have had to raise prices just to cover the sharp increases in their own costs. Small business isn’t making big margins; rather, they’re absorbing costs to keep the doors open. As some costs decline, they won’t drop prices, as they need to finally make a profit.

Many owners are hovering on the edge of burnout, having compensated for higher costs by working longer hours themselves.

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The post The 9/11 Files: They Could Have Stopped It- Ep 3 appeared first on LewRockwell.

The purpose of this article is not to freak you out, although that may be unavoidable. I’m going to touch on potential disasters and then zero in on how to survive an EMP attack, the mother of all disasters.

Dr. Peter Pry (Executive Director of the Task Force on National and Homeland Security) warns that the consequences – of not being prepared for this event – are much more severe than one may think:

“within a year of an EMP event at least 2 thirds or the us population will perish from starvation, disease and social collapse”

Former CIA double agent (Reza Kahlili) who spent time in the Iranian Army confirmed that the Iranian have conducted missile tests of ships in the Caspian See that are consistent with an EMP attack:

“They are going to get to the Gulf of Mexico with ballistic missiles and they can launch one at a moment’s notice and they wouldn’t care about the repercussions”

Mostly because they can sink the vessel leaving no traces and because the US won’t be able to retaliate!

What if you woke up one morning and nothing worked? What if there was no electricity? What if all transportation came to a halt?

An EMP event would instantly destroy any means of telecommunication, bank account would disappear, planes would fall from the skies, nuclear plants would not be able to cool down the reactors, we would have no running water (water pumps) and every piece of electronics we use from pacemakers to phones to gasoline pumps would stop!

Your refrigerator will stop working and all your food will spoil in a matter of days! If you and your family are not together, you won’t be able to contact or see them.

This is a catastrophic threat and North Korea, China, Russia and even ISIS… they all understand it and they are all working on it. And if they’ll ever wage war on us, they would be stupid not to strike America’s Achilles heel!

If one of the nuclear powers blasts a nuclear weapon 275 miles above the US it will produce an EMP that will basically send us, the Canadian and the Mexicans back to the Dark Ages.Will we be able to fight back in case of a nuclear war?

I don’t think so! Probably most of our ICBM’s will turn into a pile of junk (although some are EMP hardened). The communication lines and mobiles will become useless. And on top of that, I don’t think that our ballistic missile defense (BMD) system will work at all after a powerful HEMP.

I have something you need to watch. It’s much better than I am at explaining the threat. Watch it and learn what you should fear most, what an EMP effects and how you can protect your electronics, car, mobile phones, etc.

Years ago the US Army indeed straightened some military equipment against an EMP attack. The congressional study EMP Report (back in 2004) indicated potential casualty rates of 90%. The result: the commission was disband! What the US does to prevent an EMP attack right now? NOTHING!

So here are some useful things to protect yourself from an EMP:

1. Build a Faraday Cage

A Faraday cage is a sealed enclosure that has an electrically conductive outer layer and a non-conductive inner layer. The purpose of this box is to protect any electronics inside it in case of an EMP. There are basically two simple ways of building a Faraday cage:

• by wrapping a non-conductive box (such as cardboard or wood) in a conductive material (such as aluminum foil)
• by using a conductive box (like an ammo can) and isolate the inner walls of the box with foam (polystyrene) or a cheap Yoga mat or maybe window insulating foam

2. Store in your Faraday Cage the most important survival electronics like:

• A radio (for communication and gathering information);
• An old laptop computer with downloads of ebooks and stored personal information or at least a manual on how to make a generator using materials you can find in your home;
• A set of walkie-talkies that run on rechargeable batteries;
• A small generator;
• A manually rechargeable flashlight (most flashlights have electronics in them so they will also fry);
• Electronic parts for cars;
• Any electronic equipment you don’t use on a regular basis buy may need when SHTF like: night vision and other electronic optics, solar battery chargers, drills;

3. Store fuel

This does not mean you have to store tons of fuel. You won’t want to be seen driving around. Just a few gallons in a small tank that will allow you to conduct a few basic unpredictable operations like: bringing your family home safe or an emergency getaway car in case things get really bad in your town. (That only if you manage to protect your car against the EMP)

4. Save your car!

Basically you have 3 good options:

• Place in the Faraday cage the vital electronics your car needs (doubles) and replace them after the EMP (PCM – Powertrain Control Module, Electronic Fuel Injection, Electronic Ignition and possibly even other parts depending on the vehicle)
• Buy a cheap old back-up car that does not have vital electronic parts (like a 1984 Toyota Hilux 4×4 – around $1200).
• Harden your car against EMP’s and park it in a sheet metal shed or steel building. You can also buy EMP shielding devices that zip or wrap around your car’s wiring.

5. Plan on living self-sustained

This means fulfilling all our 3 basic needs: water, food and shelter**!**

Have in mind a place where to procure water when there will be no running water. Have in mind a place where you can plant and harvest crops. Buying at least one acre in the countryside would give you at least something to plan with.

One of the best ways to do that is by building a system totally independent from the environment. I have something you need to watch. It’s much better than I am at explaining the threat.

6. Stockpile essentials like:

• Food – for at least 5 months (winter plus two more months) – if you have a plan to go “self-sustained” and a 12 months if you don’t plan to do that. Remember that there will be no refrigeration.
• Water – This is actually the most important event for which you need to store water! Even in case of droughts people don’t die because of the lack of water. But this is not the case. In case of an EMP there will be no running water, and if you are not close to a river or a fountain you may die. You need to know your location and set in your mind a walking route to a local fountain or a nearby river. If it is 3 days away (walking) it is not good. Store water for at least 10 days and head to the water source to get more water reserves starting day one.
• Tools like an axe, a knife first aid kit and antibiotics **(**you won’t be able to call 911)

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The post The Effects of World Wide EMP Type Event Causing Functioning Society Transforming Into a Apocalypses of Kill or Be Killed appeared first on LewRockwell.

As-of 6 October 2025, 14 of the world’s richest 15 people are Americans, and, all together, they own $2.844T, which is 94% of the $3.025T that all 15 of the world’s richest own.

This is according to the published figures from Bloomberg, which hide the wealth of the world’s richest individuals. But it does make clear that America is leading the world in the production and/or importation of billionaires. However, neither Bloomberg nor Forbes list the wealth of heads-of-state. At least one of these is the King of Saudi Arabia, who is worth more than $1.6 trillion, which is around four times as rich as the current ‘wealthiest’ person in the world, Elon Musk, owns. According to Saudi Aramco’s latest, 9 June 2024, official public statement, “Other shareholdings, including the Government of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (the “Government”), comprise [own] approximately 97.62% of issued shares.” Those “Other shareholdings” are owned by Saudi-Government-controlled entities; so that the Saudi Government (which is owned by the King) controls the entire 97.62% of Aramco. As-of 6 October 2025, the market capitalization of Aramco was $1.602T, so that he owns $1.564T in Aramco stock. In addition, he owns much of the rest of Saudi Arabia: he is an “absolute monarch,” which means that he has control over everything in his country. On 16 October 2015, I had reported that,

The richest person in the world isn’t anyone in the Forbes list, which excludes calculations for any heads-of-state, but is instead King Salman of Saudi Arabia, whose net worth is in the trillions of dollars. He virtually owns the Saudi Government, which owns the world’s largest oil company, Aramco, among other assets. Aramco alone is worth “anywhere between US$1.25 trillion[7] and US$7 trillion,[8] making it the world’s most valuable company.”

Afterward, there was a public offering of Aramco’s stock on 2 June 2024, and the corporation’s value became publicly known; and, as-of, at least, June 2024, the King controls 97.62% of it. The CIA-edited and written Wikipedia (which blacklists — blocks from linking to — sites that aren’t CIA-approved) article “Salman of Saudi Arabia” says “He has a reported personal wealth of at least $18 billion” but provides no documentation of that cunning lie, since Aramco’s value is now publicly known, and that man owns 97.62% of it.

Furthermore, the Saudi Government is loaded with U.S. Treasury bonds (from their sales of oil to the U.S. after President Nixon replaced gold by oil as the dollar’s backing), and on 15 April 2016, the New York Times headlined “Saudi Arabia Warns of Economic Fallout if Congress Passes 9/11 Bill”, and opened:

Saudi Arabia has told the Obama administration and members of Congress that it will sell off hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of American assets held by the kingdom if Congress passes a bill that would allow the Saudi government to be held responsible in American courts for any role in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

The Obama administration has lobbied Congress to block the bill’s passage, according to administration officials and congressional aides from both parties, and the Saudi threats have been the subject of intense discussions in recent weeks between lawmakers and officials from the State Department and the Pentagon. The officials have warned senators of diplomatic and economic fallout from the legislation.

Adel al-Jubeir, the Saudi foreign minister, delivered the kingdom’s message personally last month during a trip to Washington, telling lawmakers that Saudi Arabia would be forced to sell up to $750 billion in treasury securities and other assets in the United States before they could be in danger of being frozen by American courts.

Several outside economists are skeptical that the Saudis will follow through, saying that such a sell-off would be difficult to execute and would end up crippling the kingdom’s economy.

The bill, proposed legislation allowing “the kingdom” [King Saud and his aides especially Prince Bandar bin Sultan al-Saud] to be held liable in US courts for funding the September 11 terrorist attacks, did become law (overriding President Obama’s veto), allowing civil but not criminal suits by 9/11 victim families. Still, it allowed no criminal liability. And, as for even the civil liability, every President so far has prevented that. So, plea deals were proposed as a way to get maybe something. On September 11th of 2025, NPR headlined “Bound by loss, split on justice: 9/11 families reflect 24 years late”, and interviewed members of the suing victim-families. One said:

“When folks ask me, ‘How do you feel about plea agreements? [with prisoners who are being held at Guantanamo],’ well, I can’t give you an honest answer, because nobody in our government is willing to share what the details of them are, and it’s just another example of how our government has treated us year after year.” he said. “The reason these plea deals exist is because Liz’s father and my father were brutally murdered on live TV. You would think that we would be involved in the process. We should have answers to our questions, and no one’s been able to provide those answers.”

As-of today, Saudi Arabia holds only $131.7 billion of U.S. Treasuries. They are now the 18th-biggest holder. As-of December 2015, Saudi Arabia had $119.1B of U.S.Treasuries, and were then the 12th-largest holder. The 6 biggest Treasury holders today are Japan ($1,151.4B), UK ($899.3B), China ($730.7B), Caymans ($438.7B), Belgium ($428.2B), and Luxembourg ($405.0B). Whether the Sauds ever had “up to $750 billion in treasury securities and other assets” to sell is doubtful. But whether the U.S. Government really cares about the 9/11 victims’ families is not. The answer to that is obvious.

Anyone who doesn’t yet know that the U.S. Government represents only billionaires and trillionaires, not the American people (as is documented at that link) has been deceived. In other words: America’s Government is totally corrupt. (It has been so ever since 25 July 1945, when U.S. President Truman started the Cold War and military-industrial complex, the permanent-war America, aiming for global empire, which has been extremely profitable for billionaires, especially after the Soviet Union ended in 1991; and, so, on 24 February 1990, President GHW Bush made the decision that there must be no “peace dividend” and the warfare-state will continue — which did secretly happen on the American side, though it had ceased on the Russian side.) The U.S. Government is a scamming organization to benefit billionaires at everyone else’s expense, and not only at the expense of the countries that the U.S. Government targets for takeover (adding it to its empire). As-of the latest report, on 30 September 2024, the U.S. Government’s Assets are +$5.662 trillion, and Liabilities are -$45.546 trillion, so that its net worth is -$39.889T, which for each of the 340,000,000 Americans is -$117,320, so that for the average U.S. household of 2.5 people, it is $293,300 owed to this Government’s creditors, who are mainly foreign billionaires, who have sold goods and services to mainly U.S. billionaires (their corporations) (and been paid in dollars, which then buy U.S. Treasury bonds), thus producing this debt, which consequently became the U.S. Government’s foreign liabilities that are owed by the U.S. Treasury Department. As-of November 2023, “the middle, median U.S. household wealth is $162,350”. So: the typical American household (or family) has a net worth of $162,350, but owes to the U.S. Government’s creditors $293,300. That’s a net net worth of -$130,950. And that’s the reality, in this nation that has 14 of the 15 allegedly richest people in the world.

Anyway, America’s net worth is declining (as the Government’s net worth becomes increasingly negative while the typical American increasingly owes more than he/she owns), at the same time that its stock markets are reaching record highs; and this increasing wealth-inequality means that while America’s billionaires are so rich so that they now constitute 14 of the 15 publicly known world’s richest, America’s poorer 90% are consequently becoming poorer instead of richer. And it’s that poorer 90% of Americans who will be left holding the bag of debt to pay when the U.S. economy’s Ponzi scheme ultimately collapses entirely. It truly is “socialism for the rich and capitalism for the poor”: fascism. On 4 October 2025, I documented that “U.S. discretionary income has been declining since 2011.” This means that, even more than before, “only America’s richest (the people who have loads of discretionary income to gamble in the stock markets), have been substantially rising, and of America’s super-richest (who predominantly have been buying stocks in America’s ‘defense’ contractors, the profiteers from wars) have been soaring.” Not only is this phenomenon continuing; it is increasing. And the profiteers from wars are the investors in the by-far-fastest-rising sector of the U.S. stock markets — the contractors to the U.S. Government, U.S. armaments-makers, the mega-corporations whose market is the U.S. Government and the Governments that it controls. These companies sell to U.S. taxpayers, who, each year, pay hundreds of billions of dollars for their weapons. Each and every year they pay to these extremely profitable corporations more than the Russian Government spends on its entire military budget — which INCLUDES all of Russia’s armaments. America’s Government is far more corrupt than those of the main nations it aims to take over, such as Russia and China.

President Trump and the members of Congress care far more about those 14 U.S. mega-billionaires than about the 340 million other Americans. This nation is an aristocracy, not a democracy. You can’t say this in any mainstream U.S.-empire (U.S. and its colonies) ‘news’-medium. The U.S. Government’s international ‘legitimacy’ is based upon the proven lie that this country is a democracy instead of a dictatorship (by its super-rich). That’s now just a liberal figleaf covering for U.S.-style fascism. As Warren Buffett (nominally the world’s 10th-richest person) said in 2006, “There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.” And that is even more the case now than it was when he said it 19 years ago.

Few of the commentators who have called attention to these problems have recommended solutions to any of them, but they all are really ONE problem; and the proposed partial solutions have therefore been doomed to fail. On September 23d, I proposed the only comprehensive and systematic solution, one that would stand a reasonable chance of establishing an enduring democracy; but, thus far, no one has been interested in it.

This article was originally published on Eric’s Substack.

The post 14 of the World’s 15 Richest Individuals Are Americans. appeared first on LewRockwell.

Throughout history, there have been tyrannies that have been imposed on the citizenry through non-democratic means. Monarchies have been one example. Another example have been communist regimes in the Soviet Union, China, North Korea, and Cuba. Still other examples have been U.S.-supported national-security-state coups in Iran, Guatemala, and Chile.

What many Americans fail to realize, however, is that it is entirely possible to have tyranny with a democratically elected system. The common mindset is that if people are free to democratically elect their officials, then that means automatically that people are living in a free society. The common refrain becomes, “If you don’t like what’s happening, be sure to vote in the next election.”

But the fact is that a democratically elected regime can be just as tyrannical as a regime that has taken power in contravention of democratic processes. It all depends on the powers that the regime is wielding and exercising and the control that the regime is imposing on the citizenry.

Central to a democratic tyranny is securing the approval of a vast majority of the citizenry. After all, the regime knows that if it alienates the citizenry, voters might decide to cut short the regime at the next election — assuming that the democratically elected tyrannical regime continues to permit elections.

Thus, what democratically elected regimes do is adopt measures that are designed to secure the approval of the citizenry to being subjected to tyranny at the hands of their own government. That’s how tyranny often comes with democratic systems — with the citizenry cheering and supporting the demise of their own freedom.

One way to do that is through fear. Keep the citizenry afraid all the time. The best way to do that is to come up with all sorts of scary official enemies. During the Cold War, for example, Americans were inculcated with the fear of communists and communism. The Russians are coming! Americans were more than willing to trade away their freedom in exchange for “safety” and “security” from the Reds, who were supposedly everywhere and coming to get Americans.

Today, U.S. officials have done a masterful job in creating a new array of scary official enemies to replace the Reds in the hearts and minds of the American people. There are the illegal immigrant “invaders” who are coming to get us. There are the Muslims who are hell-bent on fulfilling their centuries-old dream of an American caliphate with sharia law. There are also the foreign murderers, rapists, robbers, and burglars who are coming to do us harm. There are the terrorists and the drug dealers, who are now being conflated into “narco-terrorists.”

Moreover, many of the “narco-terrorists” are also part of the illegal-immigrant “invaders.” Imagine — all three official scary enemies — drug dealers, terrorists, and invaders — combined into one official very scary official enemy!

Oh, and don’t forget those scary members of that gang in Venezuela called the Tren de Aragua. Why, never mind that Americans had never even heard about that gang a couple of years ago. If our federal officials have decided that those scary gang members about 1000 miles away from the United  States are coming to get us too, that’s good enough for many Americans.

This is where the state’s system of public schooling meets the drug war, the war on terrorism, and the war on immigrants. Public (i.e., government) schooling molds children’s minds to be deeply fearful of whatever scary creatures that state designates to be scary official enemies. Moreover, such mindsets have been molded to automatically defer to the judgment of U.S. officials, especially when it comes to protecting “national security.”

It is not difficult for libertarians, who have broken free of state indoctrination, to see where all these rackets — the Cold War racket, the drug-war racket, the war-on-terrorism racket, the war-on-immigrants racket, the foreign-gang racket, and the national-security-state racket  —are taking our country (along with the welfare-state/income tax, IRS/paper-money, Federal Reserve, and regulated-economy rackets). They are all taking us down the road to a full-fledged tyrannical system — one that is based on total federal control over the lives, privacy, and fortunes of the American people, all enforced by the IRS, ICE, the Pentagon, the CIA, the NSA, the DEA, and all the other federal bureaucracies — for our own good, of course.

The most important part of all this tyranny is that American schoolchildren continue to be inculcated with the belief that all this is “freedom.” American adults who received their education in the state’s educational system are characterized by the effusive thanks and praise they heap on federal officials, especially the troops, for their “service” in protecting our “freedom.” Modern-day state-educated Americans exemplify perfectly the words of Johann von Goethe: “None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.” That’s what enables the tyranny to get worse and worse. That’s how freedom is brought to an end in a democratic society — to the cheers and with the enthusiastic support of the citizenry.

Reprinted with permission from The Future of Freedom Foundation.

The post America’s Democratic Tyranny appeared first on LewRockwell.

The “race of logistics” between Russia and NATO, which is presently unfolding in the context of their proxy war in Ukraine, will continue even after the conflict ends.

Britain, France, Germany, and Poland are usually the first countries to come to mind among those who discuss NATO’s containment of Russia, but the Netherlands and Belgium are quickly becoming important too. Rotterdam Port’s chief executive told the Financial Times in mid-summer that space will be reserved for ships carrying military supplies at NATO’s request and that one or more ships “would be docked at the quay for several weeks, four or five times a year.” This will also be coordinated with Antwerp Port.

Rotterdam and Antwerp are Europe’s two largest ports so this isn’t an insignificant move. Moreover, the Netherlands is a founding member of the “military Schengen” that was agreed to with Germany and Poland in early 2024 for facilitating the movement of troops and equipment. Therefore, these moves are very clearly meant to facilitate the movement of US troops and equipment to Russia’s borders in the event of a crisis, thus leading to the Netherlands and Belgium playing crucial roles in containing it.

It was assessed in early July that “Peace In Ukraine Won’t End The West’s Hybrid War On Russia”, with one of the three cited reasons being that the earlier mentioned four European countries are carving out spheres of influence along its borders as part of the US’ “Lead From Behind” containment efforts. Their armed forces, as well as the experience and overall quality thereof, are dwarfed by the US’ though so that’s why they’d still need US aid in the event of a crisis with Russia, let alone a hot conflict with it.

Seeing as how the US won’t hang Europe out to dry and cede the continent to Russia, it accordingly makes sense that plans are now underway for incorporating Rotterdam and Antwerp Ports into the “military Schengen” for facilitating the movement of US troops and equipment in such scenarios. The aforesaid can only realistically be sent to Europe at scale through naval means, thus explaining why those two ports are so important. The US couldn’t reliably contain and “deter” Russia without them.

In terms of the bigger picture, the associated countries – the UK, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Poland, and likely also France – are naturally expected to more closely coordinate their military policies, thus leading to a US-led and fiercely anti-Russian “coalition of the willing” within NATO. Poland, the Baltic States, and Finland are correspondingly predicted to host more of the bloc’s troops and supplies while the rest will play supplementary logistical and financial roles in this containment policy.

The only exception is Turkiye, whose newfound rapid expansion of influence eastward could lead to NATO containing Russia along its entire southern periphery if successful as explained here, but infamously independent Erdogan won’t subordinate his country to the US like the others will. It’s for this reason that the abovementioned collection of countries can be described as US proxies for containing Russia while Turkiye should instead be seen as a semi-equal US partner, not a proxy, in this scheme.

The takeaway from this news about Rotterdam and Antwerp Ports is that the “race of logistics” between Russia and NATO, which is presently unfolding in the context of their proxy war in Ukraine, will continue even after the conflict ends and lead to a more robust US-led containment of Russia. This doesn’t automatically mean that they’ll gain an edge over Russia, just that tensions will persist even after their proxy hostilities cease, and this will in turn keep the European front of the New Cold War active.

This article was originally published on Andrew Korybko’s Newsletter.

The post The Netherlands & Belgium Will Play Crucial Roles In Containing Russia appeared first on LewRockwell.

The Ukrainian news-outlet Ukrainska Pravda has a new report about the state of the Ukrainian forces at the frontline. The Russian forces are winning the war bit by bit while the Ukrainian army is in constant retreat. The report is discussing several issues which prevent the Ukrainians from holding the line.

While most of UP’s pieces are published in Russian/Ukrainian and English this one has yet to receive a translation. Below   summaries and excerpts of it (edited machine translation):

The holes between the infantry positions are getting bigger and bigger.
What prevents the Ukrainian army from deterring the Russians – Ukrainska Pravda, Oct 6 2025

The most urgent need directly on the front line remains infantry. At the current stage of the war, when the work of heavy equipment is maximally complicated, the role of soldiers in the trenches increases significantly. When they are not enough, it is not easy to organize a defense.

Due to the lack of people, many units cannot hold their positions, fully repel Russian attacks, adequately rest and conduct the necessary rotation. As a result, field commanders are forced to choose priority areas, leaving other sectors less protected.

In consequence there is no longer a real frontline. The lack of infantry leads to gaps through which Russian forces can slip into the rear of the Ukrainian forces. Ukrainian mortar troops and drone pilots who are nominally stationed five kilometer behind the frontline suddenly find themselves in direct contact with enemy troops:

A consequence of the problem described above is that infantry positions are increasingly literally deserted. Therefore, the distance between neighboring positions can be 200-300 –, 500-700 –meters, and sometimes even a kilometer.
…
The formation of a huge number of holes between Ukrainian infantry positions and the penetration of these holes by the Russians deep into our defenses has formed another trend of the current stage of the war – the lack of a stable line of engagement.
…
Due to the lack of fighters on the first line, drone and mortar operators, who stand 3-5 kilometers from the front edge, are forced to become infantry.
…
In the worst cases, which UP is also aware of, the Russians even reach artillery positions. These are 10-15 kilometers from the contact line.

Over the last six month the Ukrainian army has changed its structure. Previously various brigades were attached to temporary operational commands (TUS,Tgrs) with each responsible for large parts of the frontline. The new model is based on a corp structure with several brigades assigned to a corp to serve under one permanent command. While the restructuring is officially finished most troops have yet to find their new home:

The key advantage of the transition of the Defense Forces to the corps system was called by supporters of the reform the emergence of stable management bodies. But this is exactly what has not happened so far, because there are still temporary TUS, Tgrs, etc. on the ground in one form or another.

Moreover, there are also questions about the transition to the implementation of tasks by corps exclusively in the designated areas of responsibility. In many sectors of the front, a full-fledged transition did not take place, while the General Staff already has plans to create even new structures, such as assault troops and troops of unmanned air defense systems as part of the air force.

In the context of a general shortage of personnel with the incomplete transition to the corps system, finding resources for new military formations will be quite problematic.

Despite having the just introduced a corp structure the newly created assault battalions were put under direct command of the Ukrainian commander-in-chief,  General Syrski.  Events in Ukraine recently took a look at those:

Undeterred by the total collapse of the Kursk operation in the spring of 2025,  Syrsky remains fixated on the need for new offensives.

Now, the head of the army has created his own personal guard, totally willing to implement all his orders – the assault forces. The western-funded nationalist press has attacked Syrsky’s new project as ‘catastrophic’, claiming that the units involved have taken massive losses in the urge to demonstrate their loyalty to the commander-in-chief.

For whatever reason, these highly critical articles on the assault forces from the likes of BBC Ukraine and texty.org haven’t been translated to English.

Today we’ll take a look at what exactly these new assault forces are. It turns out that they are largely composed of units commanded by the fascist ‘Right Sector’. Syrsky chose these units because they unflinchingly took part in his Kursk adventure – in contrast to other commanders, who criticized Syrsky’s folly and were sacked as a result. …

The best general the Russians have, as Syrski is called by his critics, is also accused of micromanaging the fight at the frontline (edited machine translation):

In June 2025, Ukrayinska Pravda was the first to write about how Commander-in-Chief Alexander Syrsky resorted to manual control of the front. Independently selects, and already removes, the corps commanders, decides which brigade and how much replenishment is being made, sets tasks for battalions, when they should be assigned by the brigade commander, and so on.

During these three months, the situation with the dependence of the front on the instructions of one person, according to the observations of Ukrayinska Pravda and the UP’s interlocutors in the Defense Forces, has only become more complicated.

At first, Syrsky began to regularly visit and “taxi” the actions of units on the Dobropolsky ledge, which is now being “cut off” by the defense forces. According to public references of the commander-in-chief himself, over the past 3.5 months, he went to meetings and meetings with local commanders as many as eight times.

The introduction of long range First-Person-View drones by Russia has cleared the typical rear of the frontline. Command and logistics had to move back further which makes their work more costly and ineffective:

Due to the activity of Russian aircraft and drones from about the end of spring – and early summer of this year, the support units of the Ukrainian army began to move away from the line-of-contact.
…
According to the decision of the Supreme Chief, all support units had to move 40-50 kilometers away from the contact line.

For logistics commanders, this decision means that with already limited resources – especially fuel-the logistics arm becomes longer and more complex.

“I used to spend 40 liters and a couple of hours to get a few tons of fuel. Now – 300 liters and almost a day,” – shares with UP one of the commanders of support.

The UP authors are pessimistic about possible changes:

[T]he military command at various levels turns a blind eye to fairly obvious problems within the Ukrainian army, and the presidential office, without which no solution in this country is complete, does not risk its ratings [..]

Meanwhile, the gaps between the infantry positions are getting bigger.

This article was originally published on Moon of Alabama.

The post Ukrainian Media About Gaps in the Frontline and Other Failures appeared first on LewRockwell.

Charlie Kirk’s wife says she is going to continue Charlie’s work.  I hope she can.  The trouble is that within a few days of Charlie’s death, Israel had taken over Charlie’s organization.  At the 12:22 mark Nima shows a video of Charlie’s successors: 

Israel is the most likely candidate to be responsible for Kirk’s assassination. Kirk was leading the younger American generation away from the typical American response that everything Israel does is justified.

Kirk was being funded by the Jews, but when they lost control of him, they cancelled their funding:  “Charlie Kirk leaked text confirms he was livid about bullying Jewish donors: I am leaving pro-Israel cause.” Tucker Carlson reports that Kirk’s turn away from being an apologist for Israel resulted from Kirk’s realization that the United States was being used to fight wars on behalf of Israel.  With Kirk’s assassination, Israel has now again taken control of Turning Point.  

The man in brown shown in this video.  The original video attributed Kirk’s death to a low caliber palm pistol.  A subsequent interpretation concluded that the man in brown was detonating an Israeli microphone on Charlie’s shirt, and that Charlie was killed with the technology that Israel used to wipe out the leadership of Hezbollah, an Arab militia in the way of Israel’s expansion into south Lebanon.

What is clear is that as the man in brown jumped over the railing and involved himself with Kirk’s corpse, there were no police securing the crime scene.  A subsequent video shows the man in brown overseeing Kirk’s corpse being placed in a civilian vehicle and carried off.  Who is the man in brown?  Why is the FBI uninterested?

How is it possible that no police security was imposed on a crime scene?  No police control over the corpse of the murdered victim?  Charlie’s corpse carried off in a private vehicle?  Who has this power over police protocol other than Israel, the CIA, and the FBI?

The whore American media is completely silent.  The video of the man in brown is said by “fact checkers,” who are whores who lie for money–Yahoo, Google, and the rest of the misinformers–is said to never have existed.  If the URL was not in an article on my website, I would not have been able to find it. That should tell you a lot.

My question is:  When, if ever, will real Americans, not the liberal-left filth, wake up to their danger and realize that they also, along with Russia, Iran, and China are destined for the trash bin of history?  Russia, Iran, China are our allies, not our enemies. Our enemies are in Washington and Israel.

 Americans, indeed all Western peoples and those who wish to remain independent, have very little time left to fight for the survival of their existence as  sovereign ethnicities.  Thanks to Blumrosen at the EEOC, white heterosexual American males have been without equal protection of the law for sixty years.

In my interaction with Americans, you can discuss their college’s football chances, their golf scores, the expense of their wives’ remodeling of their kitchens and bathrooms, their knee and hip operations, but you cannot get one word out of them about our disastrous foreign policy other that “all those enemies out there that Trump is dealing with.”

Americans are not a people that can easily survive. They haven’t the education, the intelligence, the interest to know.  They let CNN and “Christian Zionist” preachers tell them.  Having lived a protected life as a hegemon unaccountable to law or fact, they are unaware of their vulnerability. 

Putin also, and Iran, and China, and India, and Venezuela are unaware of their vulnerability  They seem to lack the ability to understand American foreign policy, the principle mission of which is stated by the Wolfowitz Doctrine that the principal goal of American foreign policy is to prevent the rise of any country that can constraint American hegemony.

This American claim remains un-repudiated by the Trump regime and is a formula for war that is close to unfolding.

The post Can War Be Evaded? appeared first on LewRockwell.

This article was written by Brandon Smith and originally published at Birch Gold Group

The US economy has been experiencing what I would call a form of “stasis” for the last year; it’s floating in the deep ocean, waiting for a catalyst. Either it finds dry land soon, or another anchor is added and it sinks into the abyss.

In my article “Trump’s Return: Get Ready For Chaos To Be Unleashed And Blamed On You”, published in July of 2024, I predicted that Biden would step out of the presidential race and that Trump would win the election. I noted that:

“It was perhaps one of the biggest blunders the globalists have ever faced. The WEF’s Klaus Schwab, Dr. Evil himself, has faded into the background and retired as executive chairman. The big play for medical tyranny bombed. Now what to do?

Is it a mistake that the establishment has continued to stick with Biden despite his delirium? Or, did they send Biden into that first debate knowing exactly how bad it was going to go? Is this a ploy designed to complete the Herbert Hoover scenario?

This year, Trump hinted in an interview with Fox Business that he “does not want to become the next Herbert Hoover” inheriting a time bomb economy from Biden. Biden argued in response that Trump was ALREADY like Herbert Hoover because of the jobs lost during covid.

This is, of course, a false claim. But the narrative is everywhere: “Trump will oversee a crash in America similar to 1929…”

There were two ways to interpret the election outcome:

1) The globalists put all their eggs in the Biden basket (and the covid basket) and made a detrimental error. Leaving the White House open to be taken by conservatives even with possible election manipulation.

2) The globalists accept that they failed to turn the pandemic into the permanent medical tyranny they wanted, but they’ve moved on to Plan B. They are now setting up conservatives and populists to take the fall for an economic crisis they have been brewing in the background for years.

When it comes to the second scenario, it’s important to understand that it is impossible to reform the current economic system without triggering a rapidly escalating crisis. Libertarians have been chanting the motto “End The Fed” for decades, but I don’t think many of them grasp what this would actually entail. Any change in the status of the Federal Reserve means financial chaos.

The globalist system is set up to self destruct if it is tampered with. This is an unavoidable fact.

We are already seeing the consequences of this with Trump’s closing of USAID and his implementation of tariffs. The effects are not as visible in America, but around the globe the throttling of US funding to foreign markets is causing a panic. It’s astonishing to see just how dependent the rest of the world has been on US taxpayer dollars and the steady fiat created by the Federal Reserve.

Europe, for example, is scrambling to fill their security void with proclamations of increased military spending. Europeans often criticize Americans for not supporting socialist welfare programs like universal healthcare. What they don’t mention (or are too ignorant to realize) is that THEIR socialist programs have been entirely dependent on US defense spending.

We make NATO possible with hundreds of billions of dollars in military support so that Europeans can have their free healthcare while they sneer at us. Canadian officials across the border have admitted that if they increase their NATO spending to just 2% of GDP as they are supposed to do, their social welfare programs might take a hit.

This is only one example of the kind of instability that occurs when the US stops paying for the rest of the planet. We have seen numerous third world governments show up (like South Africa), demanding continued handouts from the US. They don’t ask, they EXPECT. They have been enjoying our money for so long they now feel entitled to it. That is the globalist system we are currently living in.

So, you can imagine what might happen if all that America cash is cut off at the source due to a government shutdown. Generally, a government shutdown affects foreign aid by halting new obligations and disbursements of funds .

While some aid can continue, the impact depends on several factors, including the type of program, existing contracts, and the administration’s policies. We have no idea at this stage how long the shutdown will last, but foreign governments and outside contracts must be sweating bullets. Trump has even argued that he can use the shutdown to cut programs and make changes he would not be able to accomplish otherwise (Senate Republicans have already used a new rule to confirm over 100 Trump nominees while the Dems are throwing their shutdown tantrum).

This isn’t a terrible idea. In fact, I applaud him for it. Most of Trump’s policies are exactly what we need to reverse our disastrous course, but is it too late?

I have to acknowledge the fact that the system won’t tolerate reform without negative feedback. Loss of dollar circulation is going to put pressure on foreign banks to look for alternatives. I’m not talking about a BRICS currency because the BRICS aren’t capable of replacing the dollar. What I’m talking about is globalist institutions like the IMF and BIS which have both been quietly working on a digital (CBDC) dollar alternative for a number of years.

Meanwhile, the dollars that don’t spread out overseas will come back to the US, and we are already experiencing persistent stagflationary conditions. Price increases have slowed since Biden was in office, but we certainly haven’t seen costs in necessities go down much.

I would point out that the housing market (a canary in the coal mine) has been dealing with a rapid decrease in sales since the pandemic. Yet, the insane prices refuse to decline to meet the falling market demand. We are also seeing this in groceries, gas prices, electricity, auto prices, etc. Demand is plunging, but prices will not adjust. Retail sales remain high, but only because Americans are spending a lot more money for a lot less stuff.

Gold and silver are also trying to tell us something. Despite growing stagnation, metals are skyrocketing in price. Silver prices have exploded by 50% since last year. Gold is over $4000 an ounce.

This is good news for those of us holding onto PMs, but it is also a signal that inflation is not going anywhere. One could argue that metals are merely catching up to where they should be in the face of suppression by banks, but I don’t think this explains it.

More likely, dollars are coming home to roost in the US and this is going to keep prices high even in the face of a deflationary event (recession). That’s not good in the short term. Like I said, globalism is designed to punish anyone that tampers with it.

And then there’s the central bank. Concerns are rising in the mainstream that Trump may use recent events as a means to “reimagine” the Federal Reserve, thus ending its much touted “independence”. The Fed is, of course, not independent – It answers to international banks, as noted by globalist insider Carroll Quigley in his book “Tragedy And Hope”. This is the structure that was put in place over a century ago to help finance the globalist edifice through fiat.

By interfering with the Fed, economic blowback is assured.

This is not to say that nothing should be done; the entire globalist empire must be erased eventually. But it’s naive to think that we can do it without a historic crisis. Even basic government spending cuts will trigger instability – Upending the Fed would be a disaster. And guess who gets the blame for that disaster? You, me, and anyone who backed the populist movement.

So be ready for the international ire and be ready to fight, because they’re going to try to crucify us when the anti-conservative and anti-nationalist narrative drops. I have always said that Democrats would never allow a shutdown on their watch. They would only ever support a shutdown while conservatives are in power.

But maybe the shutdown will end quickly. The debate largely depends on the Democrat Party’s insistence that illegal immigrants in the US under pretenses of asylum are “documented”. This means they get access to ACA coverage (free healthcare). This is an indefensible position and they won’t be able to exploit it for long.

That said, the political left has proven over and over again that they want the country to burn, and if they can do it while Republicans take the blame, all the better. I worry that a budget agreement is not meant to happen and that a crisis is meant to fester. Is this the “inflection point” many of us in the alternative economic media have been expecting?

If so, then it is happening sooner that I thought it would. I figured we would have at least two years of Trump’s second term before the other shoe dropped. But the speed at which leftist groups and the globalists are accelerating their political violence suggests an economic reckoning is around the corner. Every major crash event in history tends to coincide with civil unrest and war, and the pattern appears to be repeating.

Reprinted with permission from Alt-Market.us.

The post Inflection Point: US Government Shutdown and Strange Economic Signals appeared first on LewRockwell.

Well, that didn’t take long. As we have expected, the King of Debt is fixing to throw in the towel on the Dem demands for $350 billion in higher ObamaCare spending over the next decade in return for re-opening the government, and he’s getting a surprising “ata boy” from MAGA stalwart Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene.

“I’d like to see a deal made for great health care,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Monday, responding to questions about Affordable Care Act subsidies set to expire at the end of the year.

Rep. Greene was even more explicit in her post on X:

But I’m going to go against everyone on this issue because when the tax credits expire this year my own adult children’s insurance premiums for 2026 are going to DOUBLE, along with all the wonderful families and hard-working people in my district.

For crying out loud. ObamaCare was a fiscal monster from the get-go, and it was made far worse by the pandemic era “enhanced” tax credits which were smuggled into law via “Joe Biden’s” American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) of March 2021. Yet rather than leveling with the American public about the massive, inequitable and unsustainable cost of ObamaCare— with or without the so-called “enhanced” subsidies—the fiscal chicken-hawks in the GOP are whining loudly about a largely phony issue: Namely, that the Dem alternative to their so-called “clean’ CR will give free health care to illegal immigrants.

That’s mostly a red herring, but the problem is that there are so many different categories of legal and illegal immigrants that the Dems will likely dicker with the White House deep into the statutory weeds, claiming that the ObamaCare problem is “fixed” because they closed some or even most of the actual loopholes now contained in their proffered language. Yet these loopholes for true illegal aliens amount to small change at best (i.e. emergency care under Medicaid), and their removal wouldn’t amount to a tinker’s damn compared to extension of the $350 billion cost of the “enhanced” tax credits for upwards of 21 million regular Americans.

That is, the Trumpified GOP will declare a “fair deal” has been reached and re-open the government even as they ignore the massive fiscal elephant in the room. To wit, the ObamaCare tax credits involve an insane amount of free stuff to middle class taxpayers mainly because the underlying reality is that the third-party paid medical insurance system—both private and government run—has inflated the bejesus out of the US health care system.

For want of doubt and relevant background, here is an index of median family income (red line) since 1980, which is up by 400%. Unfortunately, during the same period the CPI medical care index (blue line) is up by 650% or 1.6X more. In other words, the blue line in the graph below has been rising at nearly a 5.0% per annum rate for the past 44 years running—so there is no way that sustainable family incomes can catch-up under the status quo.

Index Of Median Family Income Versus CPI Medical Care, 1980 to 2024

The fundamental evil of ObamaCare enacted in 2010, of course, was that it injected massive new health care buying power into the system complements of the US taxpayers, but did absolutely nothing about the fundamental inflationary drivers already built into the nation’s medical payments system. That is, the third party payment mechanism which basically eliminates both consumer and provider incentives to control the cost and quantity of medical care delivered.

In fact, during the early years of the ObamaCare, health costs skyrocketed. The table below shows the premium cost for a so-called basic or “Silver Plan” under ObamaCare. The latter rose from $12,870 for a family plan in 2014 to $20,670 per year in 2019. That computes to 10.0% per annum increase at a time when median family income increased by only 5.0% per annum.

As a result, the full premium (before tax credit subsidies) for the Silver Plan rose from 24% of median family income in 2014 to 30.1% in 2019. Thereafter, premium cost growth slowed sharply, in part due to the perturbations in the health care system generated by the pandemic and related regulatory interventions. But much of the gain in nominal family income during the period was owing to the 40-year high inflation of 2021-2024, not real gains available to pay for sky-high insurance premiums.

Cost Of ObamaCare Silver Plan Premiums, Median Household Income and Premium % Cost, 2014-2024

Needless to say, the whole idea of ObamaCare was to shift the cost of these huge and rapidly rising premiums from middle class American households to their purportedly rich Uncle Sam. But that was a fiscal sink-hole from the beginning, as shown in the table below for the median income household. By 2014 when ObamaCare (ACA) had been fully phased-in, the tax credit for the median household with $53,657 of annual income was $9,020 or roughly 70% of the premium cost.

In turn, that reduced the out-of-pocket cost of the premium to $3,850 or about $321 per month, thereby lowering the premium from 24% of the median household income to just 7.2%, as shown in the final column.

Of course, here’s the thing: If the median income household was getting $9,020 of free stuff at the get go, who in the hell was going to pay the tab as premiums raced skyward? The so-called rich were already paying upwards of 75% of Federal income taxes. So what ObamaCare was really predicted upon was deficit-finance and the piling of crushing debt on future generations.

Moreover, as medical care costs continued to soar at the aforementioned 10% per annum rate through 2019, the cost of the ACA tax credit, as shown in the third column, rose by +62% to nearly $14,600 per household under the Silver Plan. Again, that kept out-of-pocket costs to $6,087 per year by 2019 and just 8.2% of median household income.

Stated differently, household income grew by 28% or $15,046 per year during 2014 to 2019, but the out-of-pocket expense to the median household rose by just $1,581or10%. So what was happening is that Washington was chasing its own fiscal tail. The massive additional demand funded through Medicaid and the ACA Exchanges under ObamaCare was driving up costs rapidly, but even the median income family barely felt it because tax credit subsidies were rising even faster.

Alas, that was hardly the end of it. Look at the comparison of 2019 with 2021 when the Biden “enhanced” subsidies under the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) kicked in. It doesn’t take much arithmetic to see that Uncle Sam got the short end of the stick. To wit, the two-year change between 2019 and 2021 was as follows:

• Silver Plan Premiums: -$1,038.
• Median Household Income: +$2,081.
• ACA credit: +$1,466.
• Out-of-Pocket: -$2,774.

Holy moly. Talk about a scam! The so-called pandemic became an excuse to cut relatively low out-of-pocket costs by $2,774 per year to median income households, and reduce out-of-pocket expense for ACA insurance from 8.9% of income in 2019 to just 4.8% during the last four years.

Still, another ill that resulted from the Donald’s foolish declaration of the Covid “state of emergency” in March 2020 was an unhinged political climate in Washington, which literally blew the Federal debt sky high. Not only did the three Covid relief bill, including the Biden ARPA, generate $6 trillion of added spending, but the later included an utterly unwarranted increase in the ACA tax credit that now threatens to become permanent. That is, another case of what President Reagan called the eternal life of “temporary” and “emergency” Federal programs.

For want of doubt, we show in the bottom panel of the table, what the ACA tax credits and out of pocket costs would have been during 2021 to 2025 had the ARPA not been enacted. To wit, the out-of pocket cost under the original ObamaCare formulas would have remained at about 8.6% of median household income through 2025!

In a word, the ACA premiums during 2021-2026 relative to income would have been exactly what the Dems authored in 2010 and what they preserved when Trump 1.0 tried to repeal the program in 2017, only to be saved by the war-mongering Senator John McCain.

So the question recurs, if a median income household with $68,703 of income could afford to pay $6,087 8.9% in out-of-pocket cost for their Obama Exchange medical insurance in 2019 why couldn’t they afford to pay $7,308 or 8.6% of income in 2025?

After all, the median income went up by nearly +24% to $85,000 during that six-year period, while the out-of-pocket premium under the original ObamaCare formula would have risen from $6,087 per year to just $7308 or by +20%. That is, the median household would have had $16,297 more income to pay just $1,221 more in out-of-pocket costs for their health insurance. Is that really all that onerous?

In truth, all the anguished complaints about out-of-pocket insurance premiums doubling ain’t that at all. Under the original ObamaCare formula, which will now snap-back into place—as promised back in 2022 when it was extended thru the current year—out-of pocket premiums would have risen by 3.1% per year over 2021 to 2026, while median income would have risen by 3.6% per year.

If the middle class can’t live with that, America will be bankrupt even sooner than suggested by the disastrous path we are already on.

ObamaCare Premiums, Median HH Income, ACA Tax Credits, Out-of-Pocket Costs and % of Income, 2014 to 2024, With And Without Enhanced Subsidies

And this gets us to the remedial math course implicated for MAGA stalwart, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has broken ranks with the GOP position on extending the ObamaCare free stuff under the enhanced tax credits of the ARPA. She says that her two adult daughters Taylor (26) and Lauren (28) will face a doubling of premiums on the Obama Exchanges if Joe Biden’s fiscal folly is not extended.

To be sure, both daughters were likely eligible under the ObamaCare strictures for child coverage thru age 26 under Rep Greene’s Federal Employee Health Benefit Plan (FEHBP) since she came to Congress in 2021. Indeed, the actuarial cost of the health plan for Rep. Greene, her spouse and two daughters would have been about $13,000 per year, but due to cushy Congressional compensation arrangements, her out-of-pocket share would have been a scant $2,700 for the entire family. So compared to the much high premiums on the ObamaCare exchanges, we get why Rep. Greene and her no longer grandfathered daughters are bitching.

But set aside Congressional privileged for a moment and look at the data assuming that both daughters had been earning the median household income since 2021 and had been purchasing the Silver family plan. Under the original ObamaCare formulas, their incomes would have been equal to 272% of the Federal Poverty Line (FPL), which would have put them in the 250% to 300% of FPL bracket. Under the original law the cap on out-of pocket costs for ACA premiums was 8.05% of income at 250% and 9.5% of income at 300%, yielding a blended average of 8.688%.

In turn, that would have amounted to a dollar cap of $7,385 or 8.4% of income on out-of-pocket payments toward a premium of $22,234 for 2025. The ACA tax credit, therefore, would have covered the difference or $14,926.

By contrast, here is how the much bigger dollop of free stuff under the “Joe Biden” ARPA would be calculated. At the same break points of 250% and 300% of FPL, the caps would be 4.0% and 6.0%, respectively, yielding a blended average of 4.88% or barely half of the pre-ARPA caps. In dollar terms, the resulting out-of-pocket limit for the median household income would be $4,148 per year after a much higher ACA tax credit of $18,o86. In short, for the median income household Sleepy Joe’s generosity is worth more than $3,160 annually at present. That even beats the $2,000 per person stimmy checks handed out during the pandemic!

Moreover, if you look at the five years covered by the ARPA (2021 to 2025), the cumulative cost of premiums under original ObamaCare would have been $83,304 for a family Silver Plan, which compares to only $68,848 under the ARPA. That is to say, the ballyhooed “enhanced subsidies” have amounted to $14,456 per family during the last five years.

In the hypothetical case where Rep. Greene’s daughters had been purchasing the family Silver Plan and had earned the median household income during the last five years, the Greene family would have netted a windfall of nearly $29,000. No wonder they are squawking about loosing the free stuff!

In any event, the ARPA was a drastic, costly mistake. Had the original ObamaCare formulas stayed in place, the Silver Plan’s out of pocket cost would have been $7,385 this year, or 8.4% of income, and would have risen by 7% to $7,817 in 2026 or 9.0% of income. Yes, a relatively stiff increase, but not the end of the world by any means.

Funny thing, moreover. This 9.0% of income out-of-pocket premium contribution projected by Grok 4 for 2026 is what median income households were paying in 2019, yet no one from the Dem side was shutting down the government in order to force payments down by more than $3,000 per year.

Nor was the Trumpified GOP of 2019 fixing to capitulate on ObamaCare subsidies, as MAGA stalwart Greene and her dear leader in the White House have already done.

Reprinted with permission from David Stockman’s Contra Corner.

The post Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene Needs Remedial Math on the Fiscal Monster Known as ObamaCare appeared first on LewRockwell.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Law enforcement has criminally charged a left-wing New Jersey man who brought 200 explosives outside of St. Matthew’s Cathedral on Sunday, possibly with a plan to kill Supreme Court justices. The man also expressed anti-Catholic and anti-Jewish sentiments, along with a hatred for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Louis Geri has been charged on eight counts, including the “manufactur[ing] or possession of a weapon of mass destruction in furtherance of a hate crime,” according to the Washington Post. He had several other charges already pending from a prior incident outside the Archdiocese of Washington church.

Geri reportedly planned to target the annual Red Mass, a Catholic tradition meant to celebrate lawyers and judges. The Supreme Court’s new term began this week, and several Supreme Court justices were expected to attend the Mass. “The Red Mass is offered each year on the Sunday before the first Monday in October to mark the opening of the Supreme Court’s term and to invoke God’s blessings on those responsible for the administration of justice as well as on all public officials,” the Archdiocese of Washington explained.

Because of the heightened security, law enforcement was clearing the area ahead of time early on Sunday morning when they saw Geri setting up a tent on the cathedral steps.

“During his arrest, Louis Geri threatened to ignite explosives and handed authorities pages of his notebook that, according to court records, expressed animosity toward the Catholic Church, Supreme Court justices, members of the Jewish faith and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement,” the Washington Post reported.

Geri and police engaged in a back and forth. At one point, an officer agreed to read what Geri had written.

The notebook “allegedly revealed Geri’s significant animosity towards the Catholic church, members of the Jewish faith, members of SCOTUS and ICE/ ICE facilities,” according to WUSA 9.

He was eventually detained while he stepped away from his tent to urinate, according to the Washington Post. Police seized hundreds of explosives.

As reported by the Washington Post:

Authorities determined some of the vials contained nitromethane – an explosive compound often used in improvised explosive devices, including the ones deployed in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, which killed 168 people. Geri described them to authorities as grenades that use rubber bands to secure the fuse, court records show. Others were modified bottle rockets with aluminum foil heads and treated in a pyrotechnic solution, records show. Authorities said in court documents that the devices appeared “fully functional.”

The planned attack comes amidst growing concerns about left-wing political violence, including the assassination of Turning Point USA co-founder Charlie Kirk.

Furthermore, the planned attack came just days after a judge sentenced Nicholas Roske to just eight years in prison for planning to kill Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Roske has begun claiming he is a woman, and his family has argued that he should receive a lighter sentence because of that. Other recent attacks have been linked to transgender ideology as well, including the Kirk assassination.

“I take into consideration the conditions of pre-trial confinement and the fact that she [he] is a transgender woman [gender-confused man] and will be sent to a male-only [Bureau of Prisons] facility,” U.S. District Judge Deborah Boardman stated during sentencing.

“The judge … said that a lower sentence was warranted because of an executive order issued by President Trump mandating that [gender-confused men] be held at male-only federal facilities, which [he] said could interfere with [his] continuing to receive gender transition [interventions],” the New York Times reported on October 3. As pointed out by Jonathan Van Maren, however, “Roske did not begin identifying as transgender until after his arrest, and if he adopted the identity to shorten his prison sentence, the ploy was successful.”

Roske targeted Kavanaugh at his home in 2022, along with hundreds of other left-wing activists who protested outside the private homes of Supreme Court justices, berating and intimidating them in an effort to get them to change their mind and not reverse Roe v. Wade. At the time, a leaked opinion suggested, correctly, that Roe would be reversed. The protests occurred with the backing of the Biden administration.

Federalist Editor-in-Chief Mollie Hemingway suggested there is a clear connection between the sentence and the “Red Mass” situation.

“After left-wing radical judge on Friday greenlit attacks on conservative justices with shockingly short sentence for Kavanaugh assassination attempt, another man appears to target the ‘Red Mass’ attended by judges and justices,” Hemingway wrote on X.

This article was originally published on Lifesite News.

The post Leftist Arrested With Explosives Outside DC Cathedral in Possible Plan To Kill SCOTUS Justices appeared first on LewRockwell.

Johnny Kramer wrote:

It’s funny that this should pop up on my feed tonight, because earlier tonight another video popped up of people shopping at Sears in 1982, and the old people in the comments who could remember that time were going on and on about how much better “everything” was back then and how they wish they could go back.

I saw microwaves for $399; I just looked and that’s about $1,340 today. I bought my current microwave a couple of years ago for $80 — less than 6% of that.

(As another, much more important example, I had no nausea during my chemo last year; some of the older nurses told me that as recently as the late 1990s, people were often puking DURING the treatment!

(And that protocol was only developed in 1974; if my condition happened to me before then, I wouldn’t even be here now to type this.)

Of course we still have plenty of problems today, and I hate almost everything about smartphones and the way people dress today compared to the past.

The post John Stossel: The myth of the good old days appeared first on LewRockwell.

Writes Bill Madden:

This organization, www.mises.org, promotes non-interventionist economic thought.  Because interventionist economics like Keynesian Economics allows our super-rich controllers to more easily loot the masses by having their minions, our politicians, intervene on their behalf in the economy, Keynesian Economics is taught in our universities and is used by the governments of most countries.

We have a managed economy which is subject to mismanagement for the benefit of our controllers.  They help the politicians become millionaires and the politicians help the controllers become billionaires. 

Our economy is predicated on waste and defense spending is very wasteful.  So we have many wars that we fight and/or bankroll for a proxy.  Because we don’t or won’t see the waste, we pay for it in dollars and blood.

See also This.

The post Hayek for the 21st Century: Get Your Free Copy Today! appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, John Frahm.

Reclaim the Net

The post Mexico Bill Proposes Prison for AI Memes Mocking Public Figures appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, Hans-Hermann Hoppe.

El Pais

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Writes Pluto9999:

Hi Lew

The faux libertarians supporting the unpredictable, expensive, war-inducing, and economy-destroying tariffs would do well to heed Von Mises insight:

“What generates war is the economic philosophy of nationalism: embargoes, trade and foreign exchange controls, monetary devaluation, etc. The philosophy of protectionism is a philosophy of war.”

Trump has been and will always be a war president.  He wouldn’t stop the bloodshed in Afghanistan, and will not work to stop the bloodshed in Ukraine, Gaza, Africa, and elsewhere where the USA military subsidies continue.  His tariffs are simply war on the citizens of the USA, and on citizens of the world.

The post Tariffs appeared first on LewRockwell.

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