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In the aftermath of any headline event, like the trans-killer-who-shall-remain-nameless church killing last week, it is always instructive for me to read the liberal commentary solving it all by taking guns away from far-right literally-fascist racist-sexist-homophobes gun nuts — or transphobes, as the case may be.

My “living truth” is that everything is the fault of the educated class, because it is our educated liberals that sit on the commanding heights of both politics and religion, the locus of power in our society. They created today’s world with their secular religious faith that with the right politics they would create heaven on Earth. So if anything is anyone’s fault, it is the fault of our ruling-class liberals. Period, full stop.

For instance, it is coming into focus right now that SSRIs — “a class of antidepressants that work by increasing the levels of serotonin in the brain” — are being prescribed all over the place and some people react in crazy ways when drugged up on SSRIs. I know: why didn’t the experts tell us? Could it be that lots of experts have NGO grants to research the benefits of SSRIs? More research is needed.

But I noticed a couple of articles blaming “nihilism.” Nihilism? That means Nietzsche, and I have been a Nietzsche-aholic ever since I caught a North London luvvie calling Nietzsche “the Nazis’ favorite intellectual.”

As I wrote a while back,

Nietzsche argued that for moderns, God had Died, and this meant a brutal process of decadence — the dying off of the old order — followed by nihilism, the terror of the eternal recurrence, as in the movie Groundhog Day, and finally the birth of a new god with the revaluation of all values.

Do you not see, dear liberal friends, that we are in a period of “nihilism” because your old gods are dead, and you killed them, one Blank Slate at a time, and the new gods are still awaiting an Übermensch to summon them out of the vasty deep.

I may sound like I am being trite here, but really, I am deadly serious. I believe in Nicholas Wade’s idea that

That quote comes from The Faith Instinct in which Wade tells how, in hunter-gatherer societies, religion played a vital role in reducing the need for force.

What? You mean that religion reduces the need for politics? So what happens when you combine politics and secular religion? I wonder.

Today, all across the world, the liberal gods — of equality, of the welfare state, of anti-racism, of climate change, of helpless victims, of administrative government and experts — are dead. They are dead because they were false gods all along, merely puppets dressed up as gods that liberals invented to give themselves political and moral power. And now liberals are reduced to yelling “pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.”

So now, per Fritzi, we are in a period of decadence, the dying off of the old order, and the nihilism and eternal recurrence of living the same day over and over again, just like Phil in Groundhog Day. Next up is the revaluation of all values and the appearance of the Übermensch, or, for you Joseph Campbell followers, the Sacrificial Hero. You tell me. Was Phil the weatherman an Übermensch, a Sacrificial Hero, or just a Mensch that helped little old ladies change a tire?

Oh no! Could it be that Don the TV Star is our Übermensch, appearing out of nowhere to run for President in 2016? And then descend into the underworld of lawfare, just like the heroes in the great myths, in order to travel the Hero’s Journey through death and rebirth and, through God’s Grace, to return to the land of the living to Make America Great Again?

I don’t think our liberal friends thought about what would happen if Trump actually survived his journey through the underworld of lawfare, because, in my experience, Margaret, our liberal friends are not that smart.

For instance, is it possible that by contesting everything Trump does in federal court our liberal friends will prod the Supreme Court into destroying the legal basis of the administrative state and its underground river of jobs and grants and status for educated liberals? And if all those educated liberal twentysomething Mamdani voters in New York City can’t look forward, one fine day, to jobs and grants and status, what would the robin do then, poor thing?

What will the new world look like, when we wake up one morning at 6:00 with Andie MacDowell in the bed with us? Is it possible to have a world with less government and more voluntary social cooperation, where people work together because we are good people and not because a politician is prodding us to fight the enemy or a priest is guilt-tripping us into being good?

Time will tell.

This article was originally published on American Thinker.

The post Nihilism? Look in the Mirror, Liberals appeared first on LewRockwell.

There is reason why the name of the President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen is often mangled into von der Lying.

She is notoriously negligent with facts. Here she is caught outright lying to spread fake anti-Russian propaganda.

When I read the headline below, first published by the Financial Times, I immediately thought that something was very wrong with it.

Ursula von der Leyen’s plane hit by suspected Russian GPS interference (archived) – FT, Sep 1 2025

A suspected Russian interference attack targeting Ursula von der Leyen disabled GPS navigation services at a Bulgarian airport and forced the European Commission president’s plane to land using paper maps.

A jet carrying von der Leyen to Plovdiv on Sunday afternoon was deprived of electronic navigational aids while on approach to the city’s airport, in what three officials briefed on the incident said was being treated as a Russian interference operation.

GPS navigation is based on receiving radio signals from satellites. There is no way to selectively block or disturb these for just a single receiver. If someone would have manipulated GPS in that area it would effected every GPS receiver in the same geography. But I could not find any reports from Bulgaria that taxi drivers or other people using GPS navigation had any trouble with it. There was not a single tweet on X complaining about it.

“The whole airport area GPS went dark,” said one of the officials. After circling the airport for an hour, the plane’s pilot took the decision to land the plane manually using analogue maps, they added. “It was undeniable interference.”

The Bulgarian Air Traffic Services Authority confirmed the incident in a statement to the Financial Times. “Since February 2022, there has been a notable increase in [GPS] jamming and recently spoofing occurrences,” it said. “These interferences disrupt the accurate reception of [GPS] signals, leading to various operational challenges for aircraft and ground systems.”

The three anonymous “officials” the FT is quoting (which likely include von der Leyen) are lying. The statement by the Bulgarian Air Traffic Services Authority is just a general one. It does not say anything about the alleged incident.

GPS failure does not mean that one has to use “paper maps”. (There are by the way no longer any “paper maps” on professional airliners. Maps are stored digitally.) Modern planes do not depend on GPS. They mainly use their Inertial Reference System. They can also navigate by following ground radar signals. Airports for regular landing of jets have Instrument Landing Systems installed. Short range radio signals from the ground will guide the plane onto the runway. There is no need to wait “for an hour”.

As Simple Flying summarizes:

• The IRS, or Inertial Reference System, is the main navigational system in aircraft, independent of outside signals or input.
• GPS is crucial for navigation in modern aircraft, with other aids like VOR and NDB used for backup.
• Aircraft navigational systems are highly independent, with [Flight Management Systems] processing multiple positional data for precise navigation.

The claims of “paper maps” and “an hour” on hold, just like the whole story, did not make any sense to me.

It has now been confirmed that the story is wrong. It is a lie, made up out of whole cloth.

Flightradar24 is ..:

.. a Swedish Internet-based service that shows real-time aircraft flight tracking information on a map. It includes flight tracking information, origins and destinations, flight numbers, aircraft types, positions, altitudes, headings and speeds. It can also show time-lapse replays of previous tracks and historical flight data by airline, aircraft, aircraft type, area, or airport. It aggregates data from multiple sources, but, outside of the United States, mostly from crowdsourced information gathered by volunteers with ADS-B receivers and from satellite-based ADS-B receivers.

Here is what Flightradar was seeing at that time:

Flightradar24 @flightradar24 – 17:16 UTC · Sep 1, 2025

We are seeing media reports of GPS interference affecting the plane carrying Ursula von der Leyen to Plovdiv, Bulgaria. Some reports claim that the aircraft was in a holding pattern for 1 hour.

This is what we can deduce from our data.

* The flight was scheduled to take 1 hour and 48 minutes. It took 1 hour and 57 minutes.
* The aircraft’s transponder reported good GPS signal quality from take-off to landing.

bigger

Flightradar24 @flightradar24 – 17:50 UTC · Sep 1, 2025

The transponder signal transmitted by the aircraft contains a NIC value.
The NIC value encodes the quality and consistency of navigational data received by the aircraft.
Flightradar24 is using these NIC values to create the GPS jamming map at https://flightradar24.com/data/gps-jamming

The flight with Ursula von der Leyen on board transmitted a good NIC value from take-off to landing.

—

Āris Cēders @arisceders – 1:14 UTC · Sep 2, 2025

Still, they radioed about the “GPS issue” and requested ILS approach which is significantly less convenient in this particular case.
Sound file attached

—

Flightradar24 @flightradar24 –

“Issue with GPS” can be any technical issue unrelated to GPS jamming. The aircraft was reporting a perfect signal. For sure they were not holding for 1h so the whole story just doesn’t make any sense.

The aim of the whole story, which is BASED ON LIES, is to denounce Russia.

The FT piece continues:

The European Commission later confirmed the incident. “There was GPS jamming but the plane landed safely in Bulgaria,” a spokesperson said.

“We have received info from the Bulgarian authorities that they suspect that this was due to blatant interference by Russia.

“We are of course aware and used to the threats and intimidation that are a regular component of Russia’s hostile behaviour,” the spokesperson added.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told the FT that “your information is incorrect”.

Other aircraft in the area appear to have been able to ascertain and report their positions without issue, according to online flight trackers, giving weight to the suspicion that the jamming of von der Leyen’s aircraft was a narrowly focused effort.

Again – there is no way to selectively disturb the receiving of GPS signals for a single airplane. Any such disturbance would have effected everyone in the area.

So-called GPS jamming and spoofing, which distorts or prevents access to the satellite-based navigation system, was traditionally deployed by military and intelligence services to defend sensitive sites but has increasingly been used by countries such as Russia as a means of disrupting civilian life.

EU governments have warned that rising GPS jamming blamed on Russia risks causing an air disaster by essentially blinding commercial aircraft mid-journey.

Russia has been using GPS jamming in Kaliningrad, St.Peterburg, Moscow and elsewhere to prevent Ukrainian drones from navigating by GPS to their targets. There were many complains by taxi drivers and others in those cities when their navigation systems were failing.

Russia did not and does not do this to “disrupt civilian life”. It is a protective measure necessitated by being under fire from GPS guided NATO drones. It is unfortunately not a selective measure.

Von der Lying is a liar. A propagandist who wants to push Europe into further hostilities against Russia:

Von der Leyen was flying from Warsaw to the central Bulgarian city of Plovdiv to meet the country’s prime minister, Rosen Zhelyazkov, and tour an ammunition factory when the incident took place.

She was on a tour of the EU’s frontline states to discuss efforts to improve the bloc’s defence readiness in response to Russia’s war against Ukraine.

“[Russian president Vladimir] Putin has not changed, and he will not change,” von der Leyen told reporters while on the ground in Bulgaria on Sunday. “He is a predator. He can only be kept in check through strong deterrence.”

I’ll let you judge who is predating on whom with this.

Reprinted with permission from Moon of Alabama.

The post Von der Leyen Is Lying About Russian GPS Interference appeared first on LewRockwell.

And no marvel; for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light. Therefore it is no great thing if his ministers also be transformed as the ministers of righteousness; whose end shall be according to their works.

2 Corinthians 11:14-15

It would be easy to dismiss the following narrative with the conclusion that it is written from a position of hatred and racism.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  This narrative is not directed against all the people claiming to be Jewish, for as later stated the top-level enemies conducting the war against Christians are not really Jews.  They are an organized band of evil liars, Khazarian Ashkenazi pretenders, calling themselves Zionists, claiming Hebrew lineage and heritage.  They hold no belief in our God, who is established and laid out in the Bible’s Old Testament.  Instead, they are strongly bonded to a Talmudic belief in their gods, of self, and of Satan.  As the war these people have waged against Christianity has played out on the stages of our lifetimes, those of us with a few gray hairs have noticed that many of the tools of war used by the evil villains have seemingly made no sense.  A few modern nonsensical examples are the Vietnam War, the policy of “Globalism,” the never ending “War on Drugs,” the obviously stupid and ineffective policies of “No Child Left Behind,” the policy of political correctness, the policy of multiculturalism, and now, the never-ending “War on Terror.”  Close inspection of these examples by a thoughtful person begins to reveal that they are nothing more than carefully manipulated tricks to destroy America’s once proud sovereignty and culture.

It is true that greed has played its part, and along the way some of these evil wrongdoers and their paid puppets have enriched their pocketbooks, but the primary thrust of the war has been destruction of America’s sovereignty and culture.  Sovereignty is the framework that enables liberty and freedom, and culture is the glue that holds sovereignty together.  Without these two bulwarks of our once strong country, liberty, and freedom, the foundations of our Christian culture, begin to vanish.  This war is not country versus country, race versus race, or poor versus rich.  This is the war of light versus darkness, good versus evil, and the truth versus the lie.  It is the War Against the Kingship of Christ.

The world has swallowed up our Christian children with decadence and moral decay. It is particularly galling to consider that this might have been no accident, and that it was the plan all along. Franklin Roosevelt once said, “In government and politics nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way.” So, if we are willing to consider that it might have been a plan for the US, then who are these evil, satanic perpetrators in the world, who are dead set on America’s moral destruction? To consider such a question, we must get outside the little comfort boxes of our lives. Sun Tzu, in his timeless book, The Art of War, stated that the first rule of war is to ‘know your enemy’. To discover that enemy who is intentionally camouflaged in the bustle of our busy schedules, we must brush off the distractions of trivia, divisive social issues, and false enemies that are planned for us by the media and get to ‘the head of the dog’, where the real power lies to determine world decisions. That power originates from the ownership of the financial system. These are the guys who hold the true keys of world power because of their authority to create money. We must dig deep to uncover the vital importance and identity of the financial system owners, because it is never mentioned or discussed by the media, our personal mind control machines.

Ownership of the financial system is like the head of a giant squid with many tentacles. The most important of these tentacles is the ownership of all mainstream media sources and Hollywood, who influence the minds of the masses with trivia, deceptions, omissions, and immorality, and can keep the truth concealed and unreported. Another tentacle of near equal importance is ownership of the politicians, who then control the next important tentacle– the appointments of the judiciary system. Control of the financial system also enables the power to appoint unelected foreign policy advisors, who adopt foreign policies that define our enemies and determine our war strategies.

So, who owns the financial system that many now call the Anglo Rothschild Banking System. And who either owns or controls all mainstream media and Hollywood? –all Zionist owned and controlled. And who are the predominant bribers of politicians? –the representatives and lobbyists of the Zionists. And who dictates the ‘suggested’ names of judicial appointees? And who now has four voices on the Supreme Court that almost always vote as a block to dethrone Christian morality? And who creates foreign policy, and chooses our enemies and wars? All the current power and money systems of the Western world are now locked down and controlled by the Zionists. With the media thinking for us, be it Facebook, Fox, CNN, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, or the movies, and continually diverting our minds with cultural and historical revisions, divisive social issues and meaningless smut, we have conveniently forgotten how to think for ourselves.

And why would someone want to do such a thing—destroy America’s Christian culture and morality? To begin to understand the answer to that question we must travel back into the non-revised pages of history and remember that non-revised historical pages can be extremely difficult to find. Consider that the Jews have been persecuted and run out of almost every country or place that they have inhabited in the past 2,500 years, some countries and places more than once. An introspective person might ask if there were reasons for the repetitive persecutions. Nevertheless, the power that allowed those countries and places to evict the Jews was based on the sovereign powers and unique cultures of the countries and places that did the evicting. So, if you were the Zionist leaders of the persecuted Jewish tribe, and you wanted to ensure that these persecutions were unable to reoccur, what better and shrewder way than to create a plan for a ‘new one world order’, with you in control? Over many generations, the plan would be to destroy the sovereignties and cultures of all nations (the power to persecute), and replace them with the State, where there is no sovereignty and cultural loyalty, except to the State, and you own the State? When Statism (whose next step is Totalitarianism) is finally accomplished, and the goals of ‘all’ one color, ‘all’ one education level, ‘all’ one economic level and ‘all’ sharing common desires are reached for ‘all’ but the elite rulers, then the masses of humanity will be much easier to control, and to shove in the desired direction. ‘Freedoms’ and ‘liberties’ will be a historical footnote. We don’t have to get too far outside our little comfort boxes of the present to notice that we are living out this plan.

Many of the already achieved sovereignty and cultural destructions have been easier than others. In places like Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan, sovereignty and culture were destroyed by military force. Some countries fell simply with the replacement of sovereignty by the trap of globalism, through the introduction of global bribes and global laws. Others, such as the UK, traded sovereignty and culture for the lures of Socialism. In Europe, sovereignty and culture were destroyed first by Socialism, and then using economic power, through the establishment of the European Union. The US has been a different and more difficult matter though. As G. Edward Griffin stated in his book, The Creature from Jekyll Island, the Statist plan for world domination has been slowed by the US, ‘the last rogue elephant’ in the room, with a Christian heritage, and a long and colored history of liberties and freedoms based on free markets and the rule of law.

With all this in mind, how would you begin to achieve the destruction of sovereignty and culture in the US? Ayn Rand said in her classic book, Atlas Shrugged, “Whenever destroyers appear among men, they always start by destroying money, for money is man’s protection, and the basis of a moral existence”. (For proof of the truth of Ms. Rand’s axiom, consider that it has been recently reported that the US Government operates an elite team inside our Treasury Department for the specific purpose of destroying the currencies of countries that we deem to be our enemies). In the US, this money destruction has been the linchpin used to bring our own sovereignty and culture to its knees.

To destroy money, the US financial system had to first be totally owned and controlled—a process enabled by the Rothschild family’s plan of monetary control, first put in place over 200 years ago. In modern times, remnants of the Rothschild Zionists still exercise control of world money through their ownership of the banking system; a process made easier by the US position as holder of the world’s reserve currency. This lockdown of financial system ownership had already been in progress for several generations, but it accelerated rapidly in the 1970s. In 1971 the US dollar was cut loose from any backing, other than a promise by the State to pay the paper obligations. Prior to the 1970s, the US market system was primarily industrial based, with a much smaller contribution from the financial base. But with the final untethering of the dollar from gold (sound money), the financial based part of the US market system was cut loose and zoomed forward on steroids. As of 2015, after a parabolic rise in both public and private credit market debt, the US is now officially $18 Trillion in debt, and the unofficial number is much higher. Were it not for the world’s most powerful military, the financial system, based on this insane, unpayable promise to pay, would have already crumbled.

In the era preceding the 1980s, the names of the US Fed Chairmen and Treasury Secretaries, were Burns, Martin, Fowler, Kennedy, Miller, McCabe and Connally—for the most part intellectual gentiles and Christians. In the 1980s an overwhelming majority of those money power names began to be replaced with names such as, Simon, Blumenthal, Greenspan, Rubin, Summers, Paulson, Bernanke, Geithner, Lew and Yellen—all direct Hebrew lineage, or in Paulson and Geithner’s case, of distant lineage, but still controlled. This financial system ownership has gone hand in hand with the clever use of the mind controlling media, that is totally owned or controlled by the Hebrews. So, with no money protection, as Ayn Rand stated above, and with no hope of truthful or ethical reporting from the propaganda spewing media, the ‘moral existence’ of our country has been intentionally torn apart. The US is nearing completion as a global, homogenized, bankrupt, non-culture. With our remaining sovereignty under constant attack, and our financial system intentionally weakened, we now stand ready to welcome in that ‘new one world order’. We are just one good financial crisis away from getting on our knees and begging for it. The only question remaining is what will be the ‘event’ that causes it?

Many still expect representation and support for our Christian culture and value system from the political and judicial system. Sadly, this expectation is a bad joke, for we cannot expect support from these fronts. Almost all politicians are not representatives of ‘we the people’; they are liars, and owned whores of the financial system. The judicial appointees that these political liars and whores appoint are all ‘suggested’ to them by their financial system owners. Because of the all-encompassing power of the money system, our carefully planned defenses of checks and balances provided for us in our Constitution have been checkmated. This checkmate mechanism has been aptly described by some informed sources as ‘the quiet coup’.

And what about America’s foreign policy, whose leaders are chosen and determined by those politicians who answer to their owners, the financial system? These unelected advisors and Pentagon chiefs are vitally important, because they determine our enemies and choose our wars. Beginning in the 1970s, with Zionists such as Kissinger and Brzezinski, and continuing into modern times with think tanks such as Project for the New American Century (PNAC) and its successor, the Foreign Policy Initiative, America’s foreign policy leadership names have been predominantly Zionists. Kagan, Perle, Feith, Friedberg, Abrams, Cohen, Wolfowitz, Zakheim, Chertoff and Kristol—these are the names who have narrowed the definition of America’s enemies to read; ‘anyone who stands against the Zionist banking system’, and its measure of counting—the ‘dollar’. For cover, the Zionists have conveniently labeled these dissenting countries as renegade, animalistic murderers, who are not democratic. In their uncontrolled wisdom, they have decided that ‘we’ need to impose America’s idea of democracy on the rebellious dissenters. For any countries who have dared to stand against ‘America’s idea of democracy’, the impending response has been a quick and ghastly program of genocide, and a scorched earth policy, leaving behind what Tacitus described as ‘a wasteland of peace’. Many who have studied this process have surmised that the American military pursues banker’s wars and operates as the Jew mule. Remember that the global Zionist Henry Kissinger once observed, “Military men are just dumb, stupid animals to be used as pawns in foreign policy”.

If you are Christian and still believe that this Zionist leadership of America is accidentally happening, I pray that you might give these facts and dot connections appropriate consideration. When what is happening now does not make sense, no bribed status quo representative will willingly step forward to report the true plan for you. Those who have dared to venture into the waters of truth have been marginalized, relegated to the lost world of an ‘outsider’, deemed a ‘conspiracy theorist’, or in extreme cases, given a ‘dirt nap’. Unfortunately, all we are left with is a smokescreen of planned deception, and with a situation of connecting facts and dots, in an attempt to clarify the true picture. We must leave laziness and comfort behind, in this world of personal thought and investigation. The little boxes of our lives hold our comfort zones, and the mainstream media frantically continues to feed those boxes a steady stream of comfort food of distractions. It is painfully difficult and lonely to abandon those boxes. While praying and considering these thoughts, you might want to remember that in the last, long running ‘new one world order’ established in 1917 by the Jews in the Soviet Union (Trotsky, Marx and Lenin were Jews), and financed by their world financial ownership, Christianity was not allowed, and twenty million Russian Christians paid the price, and were annihilated.

Today, most people respond to thought provoking Jewish discussion and criticism with either anti-Semitic accusations, pre–Jesus Old Testament quotes, or reports that they have wonderful and lovely Jewish acquaintances and caring Jewish professional servants. It is true that the great majority of Jews are not at the top of the Zionist movement and are not aware or part of the cruel and evil plan being executed from the ‘Synagogue of Satan’. But it is also true that most Jews are along for the ride and will happily anticipate participation in this new kingdom of Zion.

A major misconception by almost everyone is a belief that these few top Zionist leaders who control the financial system, the media, our politicians, our judges, determine US foreign policy, and consequently run the world, are practicing Jews who have a shared belief in the same God that we Christians worship. These top Zionists hate our idea of God, and they particularly hate our Jesus. They are modern day Sadducees and Pharisees, and they are practicing an evil and satanic world control plan in which Christianity, its principles, and its followers, are the primary enemy. Jesus told the top Jewish leaders of His day in John 8:42 that they ‘wanted to do the desires of their father, Satan’. What makes you think anything has changed? That hatred of Jesus and all His disciples is still alive inside Zionism (the current day Sadducees and Pharisees).

If you don’t believe it, read the 2015 article in Newsweek about the stupidity and ignorance of Christians and Christianity, written by the twenty-six-year veteran New York Times editor of Jewish lineage, Kurt Eichenwald. The hatred literally drips off the page.

The evil Zionist’s loose ties to Judaism involve a belief in an elite culture, and a desire to protect and continue a perceived superior ‘gene pool’ of intellect, manifested in their lineage. For those who can see the perfection of the plan’s execution, this gene pool of superior intellect is real and awe inspiring.

Unbelievably, spokesmen such as Mike Huckabee and John Hagee are currently promoting and leading Zionist love ins, and from their positions of power, are misleading large crowds of Christians. Supposed conservative Christian politicians, such as Ted Cruz, currently continue to beat the drums of ‘a strong Israel in partnership with the US’. It is unclear whether these men are ignorant actors, or more likely paid puppets (owned whores)—you can decide for yourself. Regardless, they are extremely effective diversionaries, with the large audiences that they command and the scripts from which they read.

The primary historical culture of the US nation was originally based on Christianity and a Christian ethical system. For those who doubt this, read the Bible, the basis of our Christian culture, and compare it to our Constitution and Bill of Rights. The destruction of this culture, that has accelerated with warp speed in the past fifteen years, has been blatant, and ‘in your face’. As Sun Tzu stated above, our only hope against such powerful forces is awareness of our enemy. So far, this awareness has not yet left the gate and consequently has gained no traction. With the ‘war on the kingship of Christ’ now winding down, and with the winners gloating over the death of the US Christian culture, an intuitive person must stand in awe at the shrewdness, cleverness and successful execution of the multigenerational plan.

“Give me control of a nation’s money, and I care not who makes the laws.”

Mayer Amschel Rothschild

“To learn who rules over you simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize.”

Voltaire

What is cognitive dissonance? —A system of comfy and cozy pens constructed in our mind by we sheep and cattle who are fueled by our pride. And the fences surrounding our pens, that need to be jumped, are highly electrified. And beyond those electrified fences is the terrifying unknown.

The post The War Against the Kingship of Christ appeared first on LewRockwell.

There’s a certain fellow from the Babylon Bee who has become one of these irritating policemen of the right: you can’t say X or question Y or talk to Z.

I’m a free American, as Dave Smith would say, so you know what? I just might say X or question Y or talk to Z, regardless of what the police think about it.

I have been known to push back against this particular fellow because the whole thing is so dull and tiresome. Platitudes from 1987 are not going to solve our problems, and as we survey the wreckage of our society and try to figure out precisely what went wrong, we may need to ask some big questions, even if (gasp!) those questions aren’t allowed by the New York Times.

We have all enjoyed and appreciated much of the content from the Babylon Bee, which is part of what makes the present situation so regrettable, and such an unforced error on their part.

It all started with this particular fellow warning that what he calls “the post-liberal Right,” because it doesn’t believe in equality as the central organizing principle of the American republic, is

fundamentally opposed [to] a core tenet of the American founding. It wants a different country than the founders established. But they can’t come out and say that openly because their movement would die. That’s why so many of them lie, obfuscate, and gravitate toward Machiavellian tactics. I’m all for the debate, but debate only works if both sides are honestly representing their own views.

Thus, knowing nothing about the movement he seeks to police, he alleges that people are too afraid to debate his desired topic. I had to break it to him:

M.E. Bradford had famously argued, “Equality as a moral or political imperative, pursued as an end in itself — Equality, with the capital ‘E’ — is the antonym of every legitimate conservative principle.”

Bradford warned that once we decide that we are a nation “dedicated to a proposition,” then the federal government is bound to become a gigantic equality enforcement machine, and you have no right to be surprised or upset when this giant oaf begins to define “equality” in a way that is different and far more invasive from how you do.

Before you know it, every nook and cranny of your society has been turned upside down in the service of this unquenchable “proposition.”

Our Babylon Bee guy, so ready to expel people from the movement, is unfamiliar with this debate, and thinks we’ve been shrinking from it.

No, it’s that Conservatism, Inc., in its present form is too degraded to have a serious discussion of it.

After some more back and forth, I concluded with this:

As for your point that history matters less than scripture and your principles, my point is that the onus is on you, the one who is attacking others, to know that even Ronald Reagan, hardly an extreme right-winger, nominated as NEH director someone (the erudite Bradford) with the very opinions on equality that have you in your customary smear mode.

I think the reason you find yourself dealing with so many exasperated people on this platform is not that you are so wise and they so uneducable, but that the routine of pointing and shouting at people who are taking our present situation with grave seriousness, and who fear the old platitudes may be inadequate to present challenges, is not being done in good faith, but is rather being done in the manner of the left: that is to say, by denouncing heretics and calling names rather than making any real effort to address the arguments themselves.

The fact that you stumbled so badly when a podcast host simply asked whether you thought the Founding Fathers were “racist” shows you remain in the grip of the left to some extent.

We are inviting you to let the scales fall from your eyes, to see the world as it really is, and to reject the left and its works entirely, never again allowing yourself to feel confused or defensive. Then your work will be so much more valuable, because you will at last have understood the nature of the enemy.

This is not a fight between people who believe in “equality of opportunity” versus people who believe in “equality of outcomes”; nor is it a battle between “individual rights” and those who champion “group rights.” These are superficialities.

Every aspect of the revolutionary spirit needs to be uprooted from your mind if you are going to be the advocate for civilization and the good that your talents make it possible for you to be.

The people who understand this point are not evil. We are not the monsters of your imagination. We weep over what the left has done, all over the world. Our hearts burn for the West. We intend to do much more than weep, however, and step one in that process is to emancipate ourselves from the mental prisons in which our torturers have sought to confine us.

Never pay for a book again: TomsFreeBooks.com

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Labor Day originated as a celebration of the American worker and the gains organized labor won for him, most preeminently the fixed, 40-hour workweek. But not every “pro-labor” government mandate is actually what workers want.

Public intellectual Oren Cass summed up a just concluded Wall Street Journal series about where the money of today’s new parents goes—and, therefore, why young people are reticent about parenthood—as “the big math problem.” The finances of three families with young children in which both parents work revealed:

• For family 1, 75% of new, child-related expenses were the cost of a nanny.
• For family 2, 100% of those expenses were daycare.
• For family 3—where one parent decided to stay home with the child—no new costs but a major income loss because the stay-at-home parent was dad.

Cue Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and AOC announcing the government must expand subsidies for daycare to alleviate the costs for working parents. But surveys by Oren Cass’ think tank, American Compass, suggest that “solution” is actually backward. What many parents want is not daycare subsidies so they can work; they want a system where a parent can remain at home with young children during their formative years.

Why is the subsidies solution backward? Because two groups are looking at the problem in two very different ways. Most Americans look at the problem within the context of what Cass calls “Middle-Class Security”: What does it take to live a reasonably modest but comfortable, secure life? What the policy wonks look at is “how to solve the daycare costs problem.” It’s a difference between macro- and micro-visions.

What Cass calls “middle-class security” is what the average American once expected a provider’s honest, hard work should be able to provide: a house; affordable health care insurance you can use to stay healthy; being able to save toward kids’ college; retirement security. Note I wrote “a provider’s honest hard work.” Singular. One pay. One provider. In other words, what Pope Leo XIII described, more than a century ago, as “a living wage.”

As Cass sums it up:

most families don’t want subsidized childcare so that both ‘parents are freed up to work,’ they want to have a parent at home with young children. The problem is the paradoxical economic model in the United States that depends upon two incomes to obtain middle-class security, even though families rightly recognize that middle-class security requires being able to support themselves on one income.

Labor Day originated to honor a political decision about what constitutes an ethical economy—i.e., that an individual’s and nation’s prosperity should be achievable in an economy that demanded no more than 40 hours of work per week. That’s roughly one-quarter of a man’s life each week, one-third of his working days. Given he spends the other third sleeping, having one-third of his life for all his other obligations and rights outside of economic activity seems fair.

In other words, just as Labor Day was born in connection with taming the amount of time a job can take out of a worker’s week, the question for Labor Day today seems to be taming an economic model in terms of the time it can claim, as the price of middle-class prosperity, out of people’s lives. That means recognizing that other things—most preeminently families—may and should govern, even trump, that model.

Stable families in which good parenting is recognized as contributing at least as much to a commonwealth’s prosperity as the GDP makes political and economic—as well as moral—sense. Perhaps it doesn’t make sense to the economist guided by next-quarter earnings, but the work of creating good, solid, reliable, and prosperous future workers, businessmen, and consumers starts with long-term investments in families. That reality is overlooked by the Scylla of economic laissez-faireists who dismiss it as a purely “private” concern and the Charybdis of government interventionists who proffer expanded daycare as the solution to the “problem” of kids getting in the way of work. Consciously or not, the latter form common cause with the former because both reduce humans to homo economicus, refusing to see the problem may not be the kids but what Claudia Goldin called “greedy work.”

Labor Day was born of the conviction that a man’s prosperity should not consume his whole life. Forty hours was a moral boundary, not just an economic bargain: one-third of his week to work, one-third to rest, and one-third to family, faith, and civic duty. Today, the great question is not only how much time work demands but whose time. An economic model that requires two full-time incomes to secure middle-class stability has already failed the family, even if GDP rises. The measure of prosperity is not quarterly earnings but whether parents can give the gift of presence to their children.

The “labor” question in 2025 is: Should the “living wage” due for work require consuming the time of two parents to ensure familial economic security? Because, especially in the case of mothers, woman does not live by or on work alone.

This article was originally published on Crisis Magazine.

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I have spent the bulk of my career — on and off since the late Carter Administration — following the money that drives war and repression. What I have finally learned after so many decades of doing research on the war machine is that while research is critical, it must be in the service of a smart strategy backed by a lot of hard work by organizers from all walks of life.

My interest in using research to promote social change was sparked by my years at Columbia University in the 1970s, when I was a researcher and advocate in the divestment movement targeting the apartheid regime of South Africa and a participant in other social justice movements like the boycott in support of the United Farmworkers Union and the opposition to the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile.

Henry Kissinger’s justification for the U.S.-backed coup in Chile that put Augusto Pinochet in power still sticks in my mind: “I don’t see why we need to stand by and watch a country go Communist due to the irresponsibility of its own people.”

So much for the land of the free and the beacon of global democracy.

The U.S. role in the coup was eventually recounted by many media outlets, but for me the first and most important was the North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA), which devoted several issues of its magazine, then called The Latin America and Empire Report, to the origins of the coup, including the role of U.S. corporations. I was so impressed with their research and commitment that I applied to work at NACLA after graduating from Columbia in January 1978. They wisely demurred, since my background on Latin America was largely limited to what I had read in their own reports. Still, their skill in deploying detailed research to debunk the official lies that surrounded the coup stuck with me.

Research Against Apartheid

My real schooling in research, however, came in the anti-apartheid movement, starting with the divestment campaign at Columbia and expanding into my work with national anti-apartheid organizations like the American Committee on Africa (ACOA). Again, research was front and center. In order to make effective demands for divestment, we needed to know which companies were supporting the apartheid regime, and which of those companies our universities held stock in. ACOA was of great help in this, including through Richard Knight, who worked in a back room of their offices at 198 Broadway and had what may well have been the messiest desk in the history of progressive politics. But if my memory serves me correctly, he seemed to be able to remember exactly where he put a given document in one of the many piles of paper that obscured his desktop. The work he did, along with colleagues at ACOA, helped fuel the student divestment movement, along with research by students on campuses around the country.

Another key group at that time was Corporate Data Exchange (CDE). Tina Simcich, who worked at CDE and was also part of the New York Committee to Oppose Bank Loans to South Africa (COBLSA), did the definitive research on which banks were lending to the apartheid regime.

At Columbia, we made an interesting discovery that put the lie to the university’s position on divestment. In response to demands to divest from firms involved with the apartheid regime, university leaders argued that, if there were objections to the actions of companies they were invested in, they felt it would be more productive to support shareholder resolutions seeking to change their conduct than to divest from those companies’ stocks.

But after digging around in past Columbia University documents, we found a memo from a prior year in which the university had responded to a request to support a shareholder resolution on behalf of trade unionists in Chile, some of whom had been murdered by the Pinochet regime. The university’s position then proved to be precisely the opposite of what it said just a few years later when asked to divest from companies involved in South Africa: they didn’t think it was productive to engage in shareholder resolutions. If there was an ethical issue with one of their holdings, their preference was to divest from the stock of that company.

Although it was a small instance of hypocrisy, it was nonetheless revealing. At that point, the university had been determined to do absolutely nothing to hold companies that were complicit in repression accountable. Our divestment campaign of the mid-1970s did not succeed, but in 1985, another cohort of student activists did finally persuade Columbia to divest. The next year, in 1986, Congress passed comprehensive sanctions on South Africa, overriding a veto attempt by President Ronald Reagan.

Obviously, research was only partly responsible for our success. It was research in the service of organizing and sound strategy that won the day. The fact that the liberation movements in South Africa, including the African National Congress and the Black Consciousness Movement, were calling for divestment greatly strengthened our case. And inspiring organizers and speakers like the incomparable Prexy Nesbitt and the late Dumisani Kumalo, a South African exile who went on to be liberated South Africa’s first representative to the United Nations, played a huge role, as did thousands of campus activists, religious leaders, trade unionists, state and local officials, and heads of pension funds.

Eight years later, in 1994, Nelson Mandela was sworn in as the first president of a free South Africa. The vast bulk of the credit for that historic change goes to the people of South Africa, but the divestment campaign and the larger global boycott of the apartheid regime played an important supporting role, a role much appreciated by activists in South Africa.

As for me, my work in the anti-apartheid movement shaped my career. I worked for a while as part of the collective that put out Southern Africa magazine, an independent journal that supported the anti-apartheid movement and the liberation movements in Southern Africa. The original editor was Jennifer Davis, the brilliant exiled South African economist who went on to direct ACOA. I wrote articles about the divestment campaign, violations of the arms embargo on South Africa, and the role of U.S. firms in propping up the apartheid regime. The skills and values I learned there were far more important to my career than my philosophy degree from Columbia, an institution whose leaders have now covered themselves in shame by cracking down on students speaking out against U.S.-financed Israeli genocide in Gaza.

The Impact of ‘68

Our work against apartheid was inspired in part by the generation of 1968, whose research exposed the role of companies fueling the war in Vietnam, including Dow Chemical, which produced napalm that was used to kill and maim untold numbers of people. We were also influenced by publications like “Who Rules Columbia,” as well as a handy publication on how to research the corporate ties of one’s university, published by the ever-relevant and crucial NACLA. And groups like National Action Research on the Military-Industrial Complex (NARMIC) were invaluable for peace activists from the anti-Vietnam War period onward.

Other influences on me from that generation of researchers and analysts included Michael Klare, whose reports and books like Supplying Repression, War Without End: American Planning for the Next Vietnams, and Rogue States and Nuclear Outlaws: America’s Search for a New Foreign Policy were foundational in forming my understanding of U.S. military spending and strategy. And my perspective on the domestic factors driving Pentagon spending began with The Iron Triangle, written by my friend and mentor Gordon Adams (now Abby Ross).

The Corporate Role in Fueling Genocide in Gaza

Activists pushing universities to divest from companies profiting from Israel’s war in Gaza have made connections with the earlier generation of researchers described above, from webinars with members of NARMIC to essays that link to documents like “Who Rules Columbia?”

A key organization in the middle of current efforts is Little Sis — a powerful research organization whose name is based on the idea that they are the opposite of Big Brother. They facilitate research and make connections on a wide range of issues, but at this moment one of their most important products is a webinar they did with Dissenters, a youth anti-militarism group based in Chicago, on how to research the corporate ties of universities. It’s a tutorial on researching university ties to war profiteers, going well beyond the issue of stock holdings in arms makers to look at the connections of trustees, financial institutions, and other relevant ties to weapons makers.

Groups of dedicated students within the ceasefire and anti-genocide movements on U.S campuses have done excellent work in researching the corporate ties of their own universities. I appeared on Santita Jackson’s radio show in February 2025 and connected with Bryce Greene, a student at the University of Indiana involved in the ceasefire/Gaza movement there. He and his fellow students were researching the military ties of the university and they wanted me to review their research to see if they were missing anything. As it happened, they had dug up far more information than I would have, in part because of local connections. Their biggest find was related to the university’s ties to the Naval Surface Warfare Center (NSWC), Crane Division, which provides technical support for everything from missile defense systems to Special Operations Forces. University professors had gone back and forth between Crane and campus, and Crane had a direct presence at the school. Students then started a “keep Crane off campus” campaign.

Researchers focused specifically on Israel/Gaza include the American Friends Service Committee, which has a web page on “Companies Profiting from the Gaza Genocide,” and No Tech for Apartheid, which, among other things, reaches out to workers at Google and Amazon to encourage them to take a stand against technology from tech firms going to support the Israeli war effort. One of the most valuable current resources is the United Nations report, “From the Economy of Occupation to the Economy of Genocide,” produced under the supervision of Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese, which describes its purpose this way:

“This report investigates the corporate machinery sustaining Israel’s settler-colonial project of displacement and replacement of the Palestinians in the occupied territory. While political leaders and governments shirk their obligations, far too many corporate entities have profited from Israel’s economy of illegal occupation, apartheid and now, genocide. The complicity exposed by this report is just the tip of the iceberg; ending it will not happen without holding the private sector accountable, including its executives.”

Models of Research and Strategy

The most effective current model for using data to shape the debate on security issues is the Costs of War Project at Brown University. Their work on the costs of America’s post-9/11 wars ($8 trillion and counting), the number of overseas U.S. counter-terror missions, the cost of U.S. military aid and military operations in support of Israel (over $22 billion in the first year of the war in Gaza) is routinely cited in the press and by political leaders, and provides fuel for activists in their writing and public education efforts.

The best current example of merging research, organizing, and strategy is the new Poor People’s Campaign, co-chaired by Reverend William Barber of Repairers of the Breach and Reverend Liz Theoharis of the Kairos Center. Their campaign was inspired by the effort of the same name announced by Martin Luther King Jr. in November 1967. King was assassinated before his campaign came to fruition, but the National Welfare Rights Organization (NWRO) and other groups picked up the work of making its signature event, The Poor People’s March on Washington, happen.

One of the bedrock principles of the current Poor People’s Campaign is that the people most impacted by poverty should lead the movement. But cultivating such leadership, especially among those who have been excluded from the halls of power and influence for so long, requires an ongoing process of research, education, and training. Theoharis, director of the Kairos Center and co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign, underscores this point in her new book on the history of poor people’s organizing, co-authored with Noam Sandweiss-Back:

“Without a continual process of learning, reflecting, and growing intellectually, our organizing is reduced to mobilizing, an exercise in moving bodies without supporting existing leaders and developing new ones . . . mobilizing people is important, but when it becomes our sole focus, we sacrifice long-term power for short-term action.”

As Theoharis notes, King made a similar point in Where Do We Go From Here?:

“Education without social action is a one-sided value because it has no true power potential. Social action without education is a weak expression of pure energy… Our policies should have the strength of deep analysis beneath them to be able to challenge the clever sophistries of our opponents.”

In the midst of the torrent of lies and repressive practices emanating from Washington, the use of research to guide strategy and support organizing is more important than ever. But as the Trump administration stops collecting some kinds of data and destroys other kinds altogether, the job of research will be ever more difficult. That can be partially compensated for by drawing on the collective knowledge of researchers, organizers, and community members alike, taking our lead from people who are on the front lines of dealing with repressive policies.

Occasionally, when I am giving a talk on how to reduce the influence of the war machine, I point out that, if there were not people organizing for change, my research would be little more than a peculiar hobby. That is only a slight exaggeration. We need to bring together researchers, organizers, and strategists, taking our lead from members of impacted communities, to work in partnership against the challenges we now face on a daily, at times hourly, basis.

This means the content of our work may take different forms. Rather than reports and briefings, we may need to rely on music, storytelling, art, and ritual to share insights on the political terrain and tales of resistance and revival in these times of escalating crisis. This may become even more to the point as traditional forms of protest continue to be criminalized.

We have a rich history to guide and inspire us, but the task is ours.

Reprinted with permission from TomDispatch.com.

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This article is a report or summation of recent news reports about Tina Peters, a Mesa County, Colorado clerk, who was sentenced to prison for nine years for looking at the evidence and reporting Democrat vote fraud in the 2020 presidential election.  

Her “crime” was looking at the evidence, which scum Democrats, whore media, corrupt Democrat prosecutors and Democrat judge labeled “breaching the system,” which means looking at the evidence.  Finding evidence of vote fraud and letting it out was her second offense. Democrats have made it illegal to reveal the truth about stolen elections if the truth implicates them.

A Democrat activist judge, Matthew Barrett, who seems to epitomize lawfare, sent Peters to prison for 9 years for blowing the whistle on the Democrats’ vote-stealing operation.  To be sure the entire country understood his ruling was based on nothing but political pay-back, Barrett denounced the truth-teller standing in his corrupt court for insisting that she acted in the public interest:  “I am convinced you would do it all over again if you could. You’re as defiant as any defendant this court has ever seen,” he continued. “You are no hero. You abused your position and you’re a charlatan.”

Barrett could not make it more clear:  Peters was expected to be loyal and protect a crime. By truthfully accusing Democrats, she made herself a charlatan by failing to realize that Democrats are more important than mere truth and the integrity of elections.  Stealing elections is absolutely the Democrats moral duty or the evil Republicans will gain office.  How is it that people like Barrett don’t get pushed in front of a truck?

The principal function of Democrats is to steal elections so that racist white supremacist fascist white America, with open borders, can become a DEI Tower of Babel in which all sexual perversion is legalized and redefined as normal. Some of the crazed Democrats actually want to criminalize heterosexuals and to pass a law against marriage between a white man and women, which perpetuates “aversive racism” by producing white aversive racists.

Evidence has been revealed that clears Tina Peters.  The evidence consists of correspondence between Jessi Romero in the Colorado Secretary of State’s office, and two employees of Dominion Voting Machines, machines that experts have said are easily hacked and, if my understanding is correct, can actually be set up to steal elections.

Sheriff Dar Leaf has referred the evidence for criminal investigation.  He made it clear that the evidence was withheld by the Democrats from Tina Peters’ attorney. Thus the prosecution discredited the trial and conviction.

So here we have a patriot American imprisoned on totally false charges by a corrupt Democrat prosecution and a corrupt Democrat judge.  President Trump cannot pardon her because she is imprisoned for a state crime.  

This tells us what it means to live in a blue state.  In every blue state to speak any truth that is unfavorable to Democrats is a de facto criminal offense. They will get you.

The Democrat Party is the Party for the Obliteration of Truth.

This fact is beyond the comprehension of the average insouciant American who can’t stop scrolling his/her cell phone long enough to participate in reality.

The inattentiveness and ignorance of the American population is the reason America is rapidly declining into tyranny, a process that the next Democrat regime will complete. See this.

The post No Justice for Truth-Tellers appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, Bruce McLane.

Zero Hedge

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Writes Tim McGraw:

An aircraft mechanic has to check, double-check, triple-check, and with me, I’d check my aviation work four times before signing off on it. I also kept a good track of my tools. My toolbox was organized. I knew if something was missing. 

I feel sorry for Chuck, the mechanic who did the engine change, but you have to at least double-check the work, no matter how much management wants the job done yesterday. Chuck would have found his hammer if he’d checked over the engine installation with a flashlight.

With my Jeep Grand Wagoneer, the mechanic at the shop left his hose clamp tool on top of the V-8’s intake manifold. This metal tool concentrated the heat from the engine on the left valve cover, causing the valve cover gasket to leak at high temperatures. I have new chrome, ooooh chrome, valve covers, and new gaskets, but haven’t replaced them. I only drive the Jeep a few miles a week. The gasket doesn’t leak until about 10 miles of driving. 

I mailed the hose clamp tool back to the mechanic. Told him what it did. The shop offered to fix the problem, but the shop always keeps my Jeep for 5 weeks for repairs. No thanks.

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Writes Tim McGraw:

There are no heroes in the Middle East. Ronald Reagan was right. Avoid the place at all costs. Instead, Trump and Congress are fully involved and supporting the Zionists in Israel. General Douglas MacArthur was right. Anyone who says America should be involved in a war in Asia is insane.

See this.

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E come ogni economia di guerra che si rispetti, la censura è un'arma che viene impiegata per imporre conformismo e serrare i ranghi. Ormai è difficile che non venga notato ovunque, soprattutto perché i costi di questa campagna continuano a lievitare e senza una fonte di denaro facile con cui finanziarla l'UE crollerà sotto il peso delle sue contraddizioni. Il Digital Markets Act (DMA) è diventato il fulcro della disputa transatlantica. Donald Trump insiste per avere voce in capitolo nell'interpretazione delle norme che, come il DSA, colpiscono principalmente le piattaforme di comunicazione statunitensi dominanti (es. X e Meta). In sostanza, Bruxelles mira a far rispettare le sue linee di politica di censura proprio su quelle piattaforme che stanno diventando sempre più importanti per il dibattito pubblico. Mascherato nella formula “incitamento all'odio”, lo spazio della comunicazione digitale deve essere sottoposto al controllo della censura pubblica. Bruxelles ha notato che le contro-narrazioni che prendono di mira l'eco-autoritarismo si stanno formando principalmente su queste piattaforme e mettono sempre più a nudo il funzionamento e gli obiettivi dell'apparato di potere dell'UE. Per garantire la propria politica di censura, Ursula von der Leyen e il suo apparato burocratico a Bruxelles accettano di buon grado che, alla fine, siano le aziende e i consumatori europei a pagare il prezzo della mania di controllo dell'UE attraverso dazi più elevati. Gli Stati Uniti manterranno l'attuale regime tariffario fino a quando non verrà raggiunto un accordo sulla gestione della politica di censura europea. La posizione intransigente di Washington fa sperare che Bruxelles subirà un duro colpo nel suo tentativo di instaurare una dittatura digitale.

______________________________________________________________________________________

da Zerohedge

(Versione audio della traduzione disponibile qui: https://open.substack.com/pub/fsimoncelli/p/la-nuova-economia-di-guerra-europea)

Mentre la pseudo-economia verde trascina l'economia in generale nel baratro, due terzi dei tedeschi si dichiarano soddisfatti delle energie rinnovabili o addirittura ne auspicano una più rapida espansione. Nel frattempo la costruzione di un'economia di guerra europea segna la fase successiva dell'attuale impoverimento dell'Europa.

La strategia economica più popolare e allo stesso tempo più distruttiva rimane l'interpretazione moderna del keynesismo. Con la sua visione semplicistica dell'attività economica, l'economista britannico John Maynard Keynes ha consegnato ai politici del dopoguerra una cassetta degli attrezzi che in seguito hanno distorto in una “soluzione” universale per ogni crisi economica. La versione condensata recita come segue: quasi ogni recessione deriva da un deficit di domanda da parte dei consumatori. Il compito dello stato, quindi, è quello di creare credito artificiale per colmare questo divario di domanda.

Ricetta per l'espansione burocratica

Tassi d'interesse più bassi, stampa di credito e, come dice la favoletta, l'economia decolla. In realtà ciò che rimane è una montagna di debito pubblico, una burocrazia in crescita, mercati finanziari distorti e una produttività in calo. Questi sono fatti economici, facilmente verificabili anche dai non economisti. La prosperità nasce da uno stock di capitale in crescita che soddisfa la domanda dei consumatori in modo efficiente e preciso con più beni e servizi.

La politica keynesiana si è rivelata disastrosa per l'Europa, perché offre ai politici una scusa permanente per espandere la propria influenza, costruire burocrazia e manipolare i mercati. Istituzioni politiche come la Commissione Europea, la maggior parte dei partiti europei e i governi degli stati membri operano quasi esclusivamente in questo modo.

Il Green Deal

È con questo spirito che è nato il Green Deal: una pseudo-economia mascherata da “trasformazione verde” e spacciata per un contributo alla salvezza del pianeta. In realtà si tratta di un congegno mostruoso, una risposta grottesca alla dipendenza energetica dell'Europa che ogni anno divora porzioni sempre più grandi dell'economia solo per mantenere in funzione la sua smisurata macchina dei sussidi.

Solo nel 2024 la Germania ha versato in questa macchina tra i €90 e i €100 miliardi. Il governo federale tedesco ha erogato €58 miliardi, mentre la Banca europea per gli investimenti ha aggiunto €8,6 miliardi in nuovi prestiti, il programma InvestEU €9,1 miliardi e i Fondi per l'innovazione e l'ambiente dell'UE circa €20 miliardi. Senza questo flusso costante di finanziamenti, l'economia zombie crollerebbe. A dimostrazione di ciò, il governo tedesco ha incanalato altri €100 miliardi di debito – mascherati da “fondo speciale” – nella macchina dei sussidi verdi, sempre più affamata.

Le pseudo-economie sopravvivono solo grazie a nuove iniezioni di capitale, andando continuamente contro la domanda del mercato. Le tensioni interne aumentano fino a rendere inevitabile il collasso. Il Green Deal ha intrappolato l'Europa proprio in questa spirale mortale.

Le ricadute

La Germania è ora al terzo anno di recessione e registra un numero record di fallimenti aziendali. Allo stesso tempo il governo ha creato mezzo milione di posti di lavoro nel settore pubblico in soli sei anni, mentre 1,2 milioni di posti di lavoro nel settore privato sono scomparsi. Combinato con l'immigrazione incontrollata, il risultato è una pressione estrema sul sistema di welfare tedesco.

La politica si è ritirata in una posizione puramente difensiva: lo Stato sociale funge da bacino di raccolta per centinaia di migliaia di persone che perdono i propri mezzi di sussistenza, mentre il settore privato crolla sotto il peso dei costi energetici e dei sussidi.

La diagnosi è chiara: il Green Deal è un vicolo cieco. Ogni euro speso esclude i mercati dei capitali privati, alloca male le risorse e incatena i lavoratori nei settori improduttivi. Il contrasto con l'Argentina è sorprendente: lì il presidente Milei ha tagliato la quota di PIL dello stato di sei punti percentuali e ha innescato un boom economico con una crescita del 7,7%.

La trasformazione richiede dolore

L'unica via d'uscita per l'Europa è accettare una dolorosa fase di trasformazione, ridimensionare lo stato e abbandonare le sue fantasie ecologiste. Una politica energetica razionale significa energia nucleare e reintegrazione delle forniture energetiche russe.

Eppure l'opinione pubblica racconta una storia diversa: il 64% dei tedeschi è soddisfatto delle energie rinnovabili, o ne vorrebbe di più. Anni di propaganda statale hanno cancellato il legame tra sussidi verdi e collasso economico. La narrazione del cambiamento climatico, moralizzata e trasformata in un'arma, si è radicata nella coscienza pubblica.

Le energie rinnovabili possono avere il loro posto, ma solo in mercati liberi, senza coercizioni o imposizioni. L'economia verde zombi non è mai riuscita a rilanciare la crescita dell'Europa. È tempo di affrontare la realtà e abbattere questa struttura prima che si possa costruire qualcosa di nuovo.

Il prossimo tentativo

Ma l'Europa non mostra segni di cambiamento di rotta. La burocrazia è diventata troppo grande per smantellarsi da sola. Da Berlino a Bruxelles, i leader trattano l'esodo industriale come una serie di sfortunati incidenti piuttosto che come il risultato diretto delle loro linee di politica. L'accogliente tavola rotonda “Made for Germany” tra Friedrich Merz e gli amministratori delegati del DAX ha confermato il sospetto di collusione tra aziende e statalismo.

Dopo aver fallito con il Green Deal, i politici europei stanno ora sperimentando una nuova pseudo-economia: un complesso militare-industriale alimentato dal debito. Secondo uno studio di Ernst & Young, le aziende tedesche del DAX hanno tagliato 30.000 posti di lavoro nella prima metà del 2025, ad eccezione delle aziende appaltatrici della difesa Rheinmetall e MTU Aero Engines, che hanno aumentato l'organico rispettivamente del 17% e del 7%.

Il piano dell'UE: entro il 2035, metà di tutti i beni di difesa europei – dall'artiglieria alla difesa informatica alle munizioni di precisione – saranno prodotti all'interno dell'Unione, creando fino a 660.000 posti di lavoro. Tutto ciò sarà finanziato non solo dall'aumento dei bilanci nazionali per la difesa, ma anche da programmi UE come ReARM Europe e SAFE, che genereranno centinaia di miliardi di nuovo debito.

Occhi ben chiusi

Bruxelles prevede di mobilitare ulteriori €800 miliardi in spese per la difesa entro il 2030. Eppure nessun settore è più lontano dalla domanda reale dei consumatori dell'industria bellica. Questa è la pseudo-economia keynesiana nella sua forma più estrema: guadagnare tempo con il debito, affamando al contempo i mercati dei capitali privati.

L'ascesa della lobby della difesa come nuova beniamina di Bruxelles alimenterà la corruzione, acuirà il divario tra le strutture parassitarie dell'UE e le forze produttive in contrazione, e consoliderà il clientelismo corporativo come sistema operativo dell'UE. Lo scandalo degli SMS con Pfizer della von der Leyen rimane il simbolo più calzante di questa macchina orrenda di Bruxelles.

In definitiva, l'economia europea non ha né le risorse né la tecnologia per realizzare il sogno di un'UE militarizzata. È una tragica replica del Green Deal: alimentata dalla propaganda, alimentata dal debito e destinata al collasso.

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

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The fact is, the European elites do not care that the vital interests of European citizens are being destroyed by the Americans or the puppet regime in Kiev.

The EU-backed Ukrainian regime’s blowing up of a major pipeline delivering vital oil supply to Europe is an astounding signal of self-destruction. It demonstrates how insane the European Union’s leadership has become in its obsession with defeating Russia, no matter the cost. The insanity means that the interests of EU member states and European citizens are willingly sacrificed. Russophobic Eurocrats who have shunned all diplomatic engagement with Moscow are in effect funding the destruction of Europe.

In another development, as Russian airstrikes on Kiev this week hit European Union and British government sites in the Ukrainian capital, EU and British politicians were outraged, condemning Russia for “barbaric attacks” on their delegations. Yet it is these same European and British politicians who are pushing conflict to the brink of no return as they insist on arming a NeoNazi regime to continue striking Russian civilian targets and refuse to listen to Russia’s historic grievances about how this conflict evolved.

The Ukrainian regime, bankrolled by EU taxpayers, launched multiple drone and missile attacks on the Druzhba pipeline, which supplies EU member states Hungary and Slovakia. The pipeline supplies those states with about 50 percent of their oil imports. The attacks knocked out pipeline infrastructure in Russian territory. Hungary and Slovakia were cut off from crude oil supplies for several days. Budapest and Bratislava angrily protested to the European Union leadership that the sabotage was an unacceptable assault on the sovereign, vital interests.

However, the European Commission in Brussels responded with remarkable indifference, noting that Hungary and Slovakia’s 90-day emergency stockpiles of oil were sufficient to carry the countries over the interruption in supply. The complacency of the EU leadership is extraordinary. So, a non-EU state cuts off the energy supply of EU members, and there is no reprimand for the sabotage. The insouciance is tantamount to giving the Ukrainian regime a green light to carry out more such attacks.

The background is even more sinister. Earlier this week, the Kiev regime’s nominal president, Vladimir Zelensky, made a veiled threat to Hungary and Slovakia that his forces would continue to blow up the pipeline if Budapest and Bratislava did not lift their vetoes on Ukraine becoming a member of the European Union. To their credit, Hungary and Slovakia have both consistently opposed Ukraine joining the bloc, warning that such a move will exacerbate the conflict with Russia and destabilize internal markets from cheap Ukrainian imports. They have also opposed doling out more EU taxpayer funds for military weapons and prolonging a slaughter.

In other words, Hungary and Slovakia have become an obstacle to the proxy war against Russia. That is not merely annoying to the Kyiv cabal and its war racket; it also, more importantly, frustrates the Eurocrat elites’ desire to expand the war, with the Russophobic obsession of defeating Russia.

The Kiev regime has for a long time been haranguing Hungary and Slovakia to terminate all oil imports from Russia, and get in line with the rest of the EU. Ukraine accuses Hungarian and Slovakian leaders of buying Russian oil with blood money and fueling the war. This is similar to the United States castigating India for continuing to purchase Russian oil, with Trump aide Peter Navarro this week absurdly calling the Ukraine conflict “Modi’s war” in a snide reference to the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Hungary, Slovakia, India, and others retort that it is their national prerogative to buy oil from Russia. They say it is not up to the Kiev regime or the United States to determine from whom they obtain their vital energy supplies. The Kiev regime and Washington are acting like bandits and mafia. It was the United States under the Biden administration that blew up the Nord Stream gas pipelines under the Baltic Sea in September 2022. That act of terrorism cut off Germany from Russia’s natural gas supply and led to the destruction of the German economy.

The Kiev regime shut down unilaterally the Brotherhood natural gas pipeline to the rest of Europe at the end of 2024 because it decided not to renew a decades-old transit contract with Russia. Later, the Kiev regime attacked the Turk Stream gas pipelines linking Russian gas to southern Europe. Now the regime is bombing that last oil pipeline into Europe from Russia. And all this banditry holding Europe hostage is countenanced by the Eurocrat leadership.

Where is European sovereignty here? Where is European leadership insisting that the basic rule of law must be respected and vital civilian infrastructure must not be interfered with, especially when that interference amounts to blatant acts of terrorism? Incredibly, the European Commission and the governments of Germany and Denmark, among others, continue to ignore the Nord Stream terror attacks by their American ally as if those crimes never happened. Every so often, the EU authorities find some ridiculous scapegoat to blame, like low-level Ukrainian saboteurs.

The fact is, the European elites do not care that the vital interests of European citizens are being destroyed by the Americans or the puppet regime in Kiev.

Hungary’s Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó correctly suggests that European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and other elites, like German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, no doubt knew and gave their approval to the Kiev regime to deliver on its threats to blow up the Hungarian and Slovakian oil supplies. For these elites, some of whom have Nazi Third Reich heritage in their veins, their obsession with defeating Russia is all that matters, Über alles!

Of course, they will support a fascist regime in Kiev before the democratic needs of European citizens. The same mentality has led Europe to self-destruction in two world wars. Here we go again, if they have their way.

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

The post Blowing up Europe… Druzhba Pipeline Sabotage Showcases EU Self-Destruction appeared first on LewRockwell.

The news that the Reconciliation Monument will be restored to the Arlington National Cemetery should be welcomed as an opportunity to reiterate the importance of peace, and to set aside historical grievances. The monument signifies steps towards reconciliation between North and South that were taken at the turn of the twentieth century, when both sides set out to move beyond the previous era of sectional hatred and fratricidal war. It explicitly invokes peace in the words of Isaiah inscribed upon it: “They shall beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks.” It was intended, after a troubled and violent Reconstruction Era, to embrace the new spirit of fraternity that was reflected in the “reunions of the Blue and the Grey.” Writing in 1948, Major C. A. Phillips, of the US Marine Corps describes the location of the memorial, and the poetic words of a Confederate chaplain—the Reverend Randolph Harrison McKim—which pay tribute to the fallen:

Still inside the wall, the visitor continues through the well kept grounds to Jackson Circle where stands the magnificent bronze monument erected by the United Daughters of the Confederacy. Surrounded by the headstones of nearly five hundred graves of Confederate veterans as well as some of their wives, the inscription on the base of the monument attests the simple creed of soldier dead everywhere:

Not for fame or reward,

Not for place or rank,

Not lured by ambition or goaded by necessity, But in simple obedience to duty,

As they understood it,

These men suffered all,

Sacrificed all,

Dared all—and died.

The point of reconciliation is not to relitigate the war or attempt to glorify it, but to look ahead to peace. As Charles Adams has pointed out in his book When in the Course of Human Events, the seeds of war are often sown in the ashes of previous wars. If people fail to learn from history and instead double down on the same claims and counterclaims that previously led to deadly conflict, or if they seek to humiliate and mock the once-vanquished—taunting them and destroying their war memorials—that leads, not to peace, but to what Adams calls “a cold war of bitterness.” Adams argues that, “Wars have seldom been justified, and as the years and centuries pass, war looks increasingly foolish.” Reconciliation is the commonsense approach—to let bygones be bygones, and to settle disagreement by diplomacy, not by denunciation and diatribe.

It is therefore disconcerting to see some liberals now dismissing the importance of reconciliation. Having removed the Reconciliation Monument from Arlington in 2023, they are now furious that it is to be restored. They reject the idea of reconciliation altogether. Preoccupied as they are with virtue-signaling about the perceived evils of centuries past, they fulminate about the causes of the war using the vitriolic language of nineteenth century Radical Republicans. They glorify the military triumph of North over South, and even celebrate the burning of the South and the suffering of Southern civilians. Britannica reports:

After seizing Atlanta, Union Maj. Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman embarked on a scorched-earth campaign intended to cripple the South’s war-making capacity and wound the Confederate psyche… Sherman’s 37-day campaign is remembered as one of the most successful examples of “total war,” and its psychological effects persisted in the postbellum South.

Far from regretting incidents of war crimes or acknowledging post-war reconciliation, Sherman’s admirers argue that more should have been done to punish the “traitors” who had the temerity to secede from the Union. One hundred sixty years after the war, they are still angry that Confederates were not, in their opinion, sufficiently punished. An opinion piece in the New York Times laments the fact that Confederate leaders died as free men. The writer seems to be unaware that the causes of this war are contested by historians, and relies entirely on the partisan interpretation advanced by the Marxist historian Eric Foner, whom he cites with approval,

Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederacy and the commander in chief of forces that killed more than 360,000 American troops, died a free man. Robert E. Lee, the commander of the Army of Northern Virginia, died a free man as well. Alexander Stephens, the Confederate vice president, whose “cornerstone” speech defined the secessionist cause, served five terms in Congress after the war and also died a free man. Nor was this trio an exception. Other, less prominent Confederates were also able to escape any real punishment. Most of the leaders of the deadliest insurrection in American history died free men…

The writer contrasts the war to the alleged “insurrection” of January 6, suggesting that contemporary politics can be understood by analogy to the war. He describes President Trump as getting away with insurrection “unchastened and unrestrained,” just like the Confederate leaders. But there is nothing to be gained by interminably perpetuating the hostilities of the nineteenth century in this way, especially since many of those who are most determined to invoke the conflict in contemporary political debate seem to know very little about the war and simply use it as a proxy for grievances relating to what they call “systemic racism.” It is almost as if the war merely supplies them with convenient ammunition for their political arguments about the need for government interventions designed to crush “white supremacy” by vesting more money and power in the race hustlers. Republicans, too, often invoke the war as a way of criticizing their political opponents, frequently comparing today’s communist Democrats to the conservative Southern Democrats of the nineteenth century.

As Ludwig von Mises emphasizes in Liberalism: The Classical Tradition, peace is not just a matter of convenience or an optional extra—it is essential to civilization and to human flourishing. This does not mean that war memorials should be torn down and everyone should try to forget that the war ever happened. On the contrary, erasing history only makes future hostilities more likely as people forget the lessons of the past. Further, the memory of ties that bind people together matters. Mises observes that, “Heroic deeds performed in such a war by those fighting for their freedom and their lives are entirely praiseworthy, and one rightly extols the manliness and courage of such fighters.” We remember the fallen. not in order to endorse the waging of war—with all the attendant loss of life and human suffering—but to remember the courage and sacrifice of those who stood in defense of a just cause. A just war, as Murray Rothbard defined it, is one fought in defense. He regarded both the Revolutionary War and the War for Southern Independence as just wars,

My own view of war can be put simply: a just war exists when a people tries to ward off the threat of coercive domination by another people, or to overthrow an already-existing domination… There have been only two wars in American history that were, in my view, assuredly and unquestionably proper and just; not only that, the opposing side waged a war that was clearly and notably unjust. Why? Because we did not have to question whether a threat against our liberty and property was clear or present; in both of these wars, Americans were trying to rid themselves of an unwanted domination by another people. And in both cases, the other side ferociously tried to maintain their coercive rule over Americans. In each case, one side — “our side” if you will — was notably just, the other side — “their side” — unjust.

Honoring memorials to the fallen is part of history, and history should not be erased. But this does not justify harking back to old wars as a framework for contemporary political discourse. Reconciliation and peace should be the standard.

The post The Significance of the Arlington Reconciliation Monument appeared first on LewRockwell.

Edmund Burke’s England was indeed lovely, and his wisdom about our capacity for love of country seems cruelly prophetic today. When the Anglo-Irish statesman penned Reflections on the Revolution in France, he understood that a nation’s character—its “distinct system of manners” —must undergird any lasting affection for the homeland. Yet here we stand, citizens of a republic whose vast beauty cannot disguise its withered soul.

The modern American condition is most clearly revealed in our degraded political vocabulary. When every political disagreement becomes “fascist,” for example, we witness not merely semantic inflation but the collapse of serious discourse itself.

Consider the scholarly consensus: Stanley Payne, the foremost authority on European fascism, observed in his seminal 1980 work, Fascism: Comparison and Definition, that “fascism is probably the vaguest of contemporary political terms”. Ernst Nolte developed his “fascist minimum” —antimarxism, antiliberalism, anticonservatism, the leadership principle, a party army, and totalitarian aims.

Paul Gottfried, editor of Chronicles, notes that fascism “now stands for a host of iniquities that progressives, multiculturists, and libertarians all oppose, even if they offer no single, coherent account of what they’re condemning.”

The absurdity reaches its apex when Hollywood scribes have baseball strikeouts declared “fascist,” like Crash Davis did in Bull Durham.

What about the black-clad urban vandals calling themselves “Antifa” torching American cities while claiming to fight fascism? These costumed revolutionaries, responsible for billions in property damage, have transformed anti-fascism into a performance of adolescent rebellion.

As former soccer star Alexi Lalas observed, this “strange self-loathing of country” manifests across cultural sectors—music, fashion, politics—wherever Americans have learned to despise the civilization that shelters them.

The weaponization of “fascist” as a political cudgel reached its nadir during the Dobbs decision, when returning abortion law to the states—the very essence of federalism—was branded authoritarian. Here we witness the inversion Burke warned against: legitimate constitutional processes become tyrannical while actual lawlessness masquerades as resistance.

This linguistic corruption serves a deeper purpose within what Michael Rechtenwald calls the “welfare-warfare state.” Writing in Chronicles, the former NYU professor and 2024 Libertarian presidential candidate identified the vicious cycle that sustains our national decline:

Social welfare only increases that which it putatively aims to eradicate: poverty, illness, homelessness, and so on. This is both logically deducible and empirically verifiable. Meanwhile, social welfare feeds state power and enables its warfare by placating those it disempowers, both the payers and the payees of the state’s pretended largesse.

The political class requires this manufactured crisis of language because it obscures their fundamental betrayal of the common good. When a failed presidential candidate branded half the electorate a “basket of deplorables” —calling them “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, and Islamophobic” —before labeling them “irredeemable” bigots, she revealed the contempt our ruling class holds for ordinary Americans.

This was no gaffe but calculated cruelty, repeated across multiple venues as a deliberate strategy to dehumanize political opposition.

The more profound tragedy lies not in the elite’s hatred—that was always predictable—but in the response it provokes. Too many Americans have internalized this contempt, becoming active participants in their own cultural demolition. They mistake submission to fashionable causes for moral sophistication, trading their birthright for the fleeting approval of those who despise them.

Yet Burke’s insight cuts both ways. If character corruption makes love of country impossible, then character restoration becomes the prerequisite for national renewal. This requires what Rechtenwald calls “principled opposition” —the courage to reject the welfare-warfare state’s seductions and reclaim the habits of self-governance that once made America lovely.

The path forward demands what previous generations called civic virtue: the willingness to shoulder responsibility for our communities rather than outsourcing our duties to distant bureaucracies. It means choosing the difficult work of local engagement over the easy pleasure of national outrage.

Most importantly, it requires recognizing that the corruption of our public language reflects the corruption of our private character—and that both can be restored by citizens willing to speak truth in their own neighborhoods.

Burke understood that civilizations die from within long before external enemies deliver the fatal blow. There is a stark choice remaining: restore the loveliness that merits love, or watch the country become unworthy of either affection or its children’s inheritance.

The hour grows late, but it is not yet midnight.

This article was originally published on The O’Leary Review.

The post When Language Dies, Nations Follow Soon After appeared first on LewRockwell.

In a political age that prizes charisma over conviction, Ron Paul’s career stands out as a long series of principled noes. The Texas physician–turned–congressman won his first seat in 1976, lost it a few months later, then returned repeatedly to the House, always as an outsider and always carrying the same simple message: the federal government must be bound by the Constitution, money must be sound, markets must be free, and peace is a moral imperative. As he turns ninety today, it is worth revisiting how a soft‑spoken obstetrician came to inspire a movement that outlived his political campaigns, and why he deserves to be counted among the most influential libertarians of the modern era.

Paul’s moral consistency is legendary. Born in Pittsburgh in 1935 and trained as a doctor, he served as a flight surgeon in the U.S. Air Force before establishing a medical practice in Texas. His early reading of Friedrich Hayek, Murray Rothbard, and Leonard Read convinced him that expansive government and fiat money were incompatible with liberty. When President Richard Nixon closed the gold window in 1971, Paul later wrote, he knew “the stage was set for the 1970s inflation and for the political chaos that would follow,” so he entered politics to champion sound money and limited government. Over more than two decades in Congress he would never vote for a tax increase, never vote for an unbalanced budget, and never vote to raise congressional pay.

Such obstinacy made him politically lonely, but it also gave him credibility. In his farewell address to Congress in 2012 he warned that Washington’s spending binge rested on a bipartisan bargain. “One side doesn’t give up one penny on military spending, the other side doesn’t give up one penny on welfare spending, while both sides support the bailouts and subsidies for the banking and corporate elite,” he told his colleagues. With typical understatement he added that his 1976 goals—“promote peace and prosperity by a strict adherence to the principles of individual liberty”—remained unchanged. That fidelity allows his admirers to call him the “Dr. No” of the House with affection rather than disdain.

Paul’s libertarianism begins with the text of the Constitution. In a 2011 speech titled “True Fidelity to the Constitution,” he argued that Congress has “justified every conceivable expansion of the Federal Government” by misinterpreting the General Welfare Clause, the Interstate Commerce Clause, and the Necessary‑and‑Proper Clause. Such distortions, he said, allow members to treat the Constitution as a “living document” they can bend to suit political expediency. The remedy, Paul insisted, is not civic cheerleading but an honest reassessment of policy: no more wars without an actual declaration from Congress; repeal the Federal Reserve Act; respect gold and silver as legal tender; abolish unconstitutional departments like Education, Commerce, and Homeland Security; repeal the PATRIOT Act; and restrain the Transportation Security Administration. He pointedly asked whether Americans possess the moral character to demand such changes and whether politicians have the courage to refuse special interests. Without love of liberty and respect for the rule of law, he warned, the Constitution is “a worthless piece of paper.”

To him, enumerated powers were not a rhetorical flourish but a bulwark against tyranny. When many conservatives argued that the general welfare clause authorizes vast spending, Paul reminded them that Article I lists only eighteen federal powers and leaves education, retirement, and health care to the states or the people. If fidelity to the Constitution is “cranky,” he mused, then so were James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, and George Washington.

Paul’s libertarianism also rests on a classical understanding of markets. In a column published after Hurricane Sandy in 2012, he defended so‑called “price gouging.” When the government imposed gasoline price caps, he observed, miles‑long lines formed and a black market flourished; had gas stations been allowed to raise prices, those most in need would have bought fuel and outside suppliers would have rushed in. “Prices perform an important role in providing information, coordinating supply and demand, and enabling economic calculation,” he wrote. Interfering with the price mechanism always leads to shortages, and no legislature can repeal the laws of supply and demand.

Paul extends the same logic to money itself. In End the Fed, he explains that crowds chanted “End the Fed” not because he incited them but because the Federal Reserve creates money out of thin air, depreciates the dollar, and has not prevented business cycles. He argues that the Fed wields “ominous power with no oversight” and that paper money is unconstitutional; only gold and silver are legal tender. Inflation, he warns, is regressive: it benefits bankers and government contractors while hurting savers, encourages protectionism, and finances wars. The solution, he believes, is to restore a free market in money, allow competing currencies, and gradually return to a gold standard. When central bankers and politicians have no ability to inflate, government must live within its means.

Paul applies his economic creed consistently. He opposed the bank bailouts of 2008 and 2020, argued against corporate subsidies, and denounced deficit spending regardless of the party in power. Even when asked to back popular price controls—for example on gasoline or pharmaceuticals—he refused, explaining that such interventions misallocate resources and harm the poor. Unlike some libertarians who see a role for targeted regulation, Paul seldom deviates. His critics label him dogmatic; his admirers call him principled.

No aspect of Paul’s philosophy has generated more controversy than his foreign policy. While most of his Republican colleagues embraced interventionism, Paul called for non‑intervention and invoked the Golden Rule. In the 2007 Republican primary debate, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani denounced Paul for suggesting that U.S. foreign policy contributed to the 9/11 attacks. Unfazed, Paul asked Americans to imagine how they would react if China crossed the ocean, demanded bases on U.S. soil, and tried to dictate American life: even if the Chinese had good intentions, he argued, “we would all be together and we’d be furious.” The exchange illustrated his belief in “blowback”—that military interventions create unforeseen and often violent repercussions.

Paul first articulated this thesis during the Cold War. In his 2002 House speech opposing the authorization for use of force in Iraq, he noted that Iraq posed no threat to national security and that preemptive war would set a dangerous precedent. He warned that war without an act of aggression and without exhausting diplomatic options violated the just war doctrine. Echoing Madison, he reminded Congress that the executive branch is predisposed to war. History vindicated his fears: the Iraq War cost trillions of dollars, destabilized the Middle East, and fuelled global anti‑American sentiment.

Paul’s anti‑war stance is inseparable from his defense of civil liberties. In a 2011 speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) he lambasted the PATRIOT Act as “the destruction of the Fourth Amendment.” He argued that fiscal conservatives should look critically at U.S. support for dictators; in Egypt alone, Washington spent $70 billion propping up Hosni Mubarak, only to see his regime toppled and the money siphoned into Swiss accounts. He described foreign aid bluntly as taking “money from the poor people of a rich country and giving it to the rich people of a poor country” and called for friendships and trade while avoiding “entangling alliances.” Paul lamented that the United States maintained troops in 135 countries and nine-hundred bases and insisted it was time to “bring troops home.”

Critics accuse Paul of isolationism, but he responds that non‑intervention is not isolation. Trade, travel, diplomacy, and cultural exchange flourish in peace. He notes that the Soviet Union collapsed because of economic failure, not because the United States fought a land war in Eastern Europe. Heavy military spending weakens the economy, fosters debt, and expands the state. As he told CPAC attendees, many conservatives will not cut a penny of military spending, “and the military is not equated to defense”; President Dwight Eisenhower himself warned of the “military–industrial complex.”

Paul’s messaging alienated many Republican voters. During the 2012 South Carolina debate he urged the audience to apply the Golden Rule—“treat other nations as we would want them to treat us”—and quipped that if Americans do not want others to ban U.S. oil imports, they should not ban Iran’s. He expressed puzzlement that the term “golden rule” elicited boos. The conservative electorate jeered, and Texas Governor Rick Perry joked that the moderator should cut off Paul with a gong. Yet the moment became an emblem of his courage: alone among the candidates, he dared to apply a moral principle to foreign policy.

But for his supporters, these exchanges are badges of honor. Paul stood on the same stage as frontrunners, refused to parrot applause lines about American exceptionalism, and quoted Jesus’ admonition from the Sermon on the Mount to treat others as we would wish to be treated. His critics called him naïve; his defenders noted that past presidents as diverse as John Quincy Adams and Dwight Eisenhower made similar points. That he was jeered by his own party speaks not to his wrongness but to the state of political discourse.

Paul’s critics like to portray him as doctrinaire, but his morality is rooted in empathy. He opposes war because it kills innocents and breeds resentment; he opposes the draft because it treats young people as property of the state; he opposes asset forfeiture because it strips citizens of property without due process; he opposes drug prohibition because it cages non‑violent offenders and fuels racial disparity. His stance against civil asset forfeiture, the drug war, and the draft is not pragmatic but principled—government should not coerce unless an individual violates another’s rights.

This defense of the powerless extends to financial policy. Paul notes that inflation, deficits, and bailouts are hidden forms of taxation that punish the poor. When Congress authorizes spending it cannot fund through taxes, the Federal Reserve monetizes the debt; the resulting price inflation reduces the purchasing power of wages and savings. By contrast, those close to the Federal Reserve—the banks and corporations receiving cheap credit—profit. Paul thus frames central banking as a form of class warfare.

Ron Paul is not a typical politician; he is a moral philosopher who happened to hold office. His critics mock his consistent voting record as cranky and quixotic, but the record testifies to a rare integrity. He opposed war when both parties cheered; he condemned the Federal Reserve when few understood it; he warned about surveillance long before Edward Snowden’s revelations; he criticized corporate welfare; and he rejected the false choice between safety and liberty. He treated opponents with civility even when dismantling their arguments. He inspired a movement without demanding a following. In an era of shifting positions and pragmatic compromises, he stands as a model of uncompromising ethical consistency. That is why, as he celebrates his ninetieth year, the libertarian movement he galvanized continues to grow.

This article was originally published on The Libertarian Institute.

The post Ron Paul: Defender of the Powerless, Critic of the Powerful appeared first on LewRockwell.

Newton’s first law of motion states that an object at rest tends to stay at rest.

Therefore, if a tablecloth is spread out on a table and an object, such as the fishbowl above, is placed on that tablecloth, the fishbowl will tend to “want” to remain right where it is.

If the tablecloth were to be yanked away quickly, the fishbowl would move very little. Inertia, having been overcome by the tablecloth, would then be overcome, but the fishbowl, already at rest, would tend to remain right where it had been before – on the table.

And the same is true of human nature. If a government or an economic system collapses, the populace will experience an immediate shock of change, but their tendency will be to adapt as quickly as possible to maintain their previous situation as much as can be accomplished.

Has the government collapsed? Create a new one, possibly on similar principles as the previous one (hopefully with revisions made, to prevent the next government from making the same self-destructive mistakes a second time.)

Has the economy collapsed? Throw together whatever new form of economy works best until a more solid one can be created. This could mean relying temporarily on barter, but might mean the establishment of a safer form of currency, such as precious metals. And, again, when a new currency is introduced, revisions might be made as to who controls it, in order to assure that the same mistake is not repeated.

But, these are natural calamities that happen from time to time in civilization and, as long as the people dealing with the re-establishment of the government or economy are motivated in the direction of the benefit of the populace, there’s every chance that a solution will be created that would be implemented quickly, might minimize damage and, hopefully, be better than the last version.

After all, if left to their own devices, people will come up with whatever system serves them well.

But, of course, we rarely witness the above scenario with regard to governments and economies. What we do see playing out, time after time, in one era or another, in one geographical location or another, is something quite different.

Historically, what we’ve seen is that government performs the political and/or economic equivalent of pulling the tablecloth away slowly.

And, of course, anyone who’s familiar with the old tablecloth trick understands what will happen. The fishbowl ends up smashed on the floor and the fish are left gasping for their last breaths.

This latter fact illustrates vividly why no one should ever pull away the tablecloth slowly.

And yet, in generation after generation, humankind is repeatedly suckered into a situation in which their government does exactly that.

The way it works is that the government first says, “It’s too troublesome for you to run your own lives; leave it to us and we’ll look after you. We’ll take care of all those pesky details of life that are nuisances for you now.”

First, they take control of “protection” in the form of a military, to protect the populace from threats from without and, later, create a police force to protect the populace from threats from within.

Then, clearly, the people need a central fire service. They also need roads and community buildings. And, of course, these all cost money, so taxes are implemented.

Then they are raised, as the costs of such services inevitably increase over time.

Then, an increasingly expansive list of other services is put forward – assistance for the poor, retirement funds, universal health benefits, etc. Soon, it becomes “necessary” to increase taxes to pay for the ever-expanding list of services the government controls.

Throughout this process, the populace nods as each new “benefit” is introduced. And, since the process is gradual, they almost invariably fail to worry that the tablecloth is in motion and that their fishbowl is closer to the edge of the table than it was before.

But, in the meantime, the political leaders are continuing to pull the tablecloth and are aware that the fishbowl is nearing the edge. At this point, if they were responsible people, they’d say, “Oh-oh, we’ve been a bit too greedy and we’ve put you folks in danger. But, at this point, it won’t do any good for us to tax you less and cut out the services that have been promised to you. At this point, we need to stop pulling entirely.”

And, of course, were they to do that, two things would occur. First, the populace would be up in arms at their entitlements being cut off.

Second, the political leaders would be out of a job.

With no more services to provide, taxation would cease to have validation. The political leaders would be in far greater danger from a cessation of movement than the people themselves.

What to do?

Well, most of us, as we become adults, recognize that, in order to live, we must become productive. That’s what turns us into responsible people. But, remember, political leaders never learn this lesson. They go straight from being parasitical as children to being parasitical as adults. When the jig is up and the fishbowl is nearing the edge, they act the way they’ve always acted – as parasites. Only now, they realise that it’s all about to end very soon. Therefore, it’s time to get a last squeeze of the lemon before it goes dry.

At that point, they ramp up the economy through the creation of debt. They also increase taxation dramatically, with the claim that benefits must be increased.

They then do their best to get themselves out of the way as the last pull of the tablecloth sends the fishbowl over the edge.

This, of course, is why it’s so overwhelmingly common for political leaders to take a hike just as their economies and/or governments are collapsing. Regardless of the era, regardless of the geographical locale, whether the leader be Kaiser Wilhelm II, the Shah of Iran, Fulgencio Batista or Idi Amin, those who caused the problem tend to have a well-funded exit plan in place and are rarely themselves trapped in the fishbowl.

Since this has been the nature of governments throughout history, we’d be wise to observe the situation objectively when assessing the country in which we live, and, we’d be wise to concurrently assess how things are going in other countries. If our home country is literally getting close to the edge, we might wish to make a move before the inevitable occurs.

Historically, in any era, there are always some countries that are getting near the edge and others that are not. The choice for anyone whose situation is reaching its expiry date might wish to vote with his feet, rather than to await the final pull of the tablecloth.

Reprinted with permission from International Man.

The post The Old Tablecloth Trick appeared first on LewRockwell.

“If human equality is to be forever averted—if the High, as we have called them, are to keep their places permanently—then the prevailing mental condition must be controlled insanity.” — George Orwell, 1984

“In contrast to all other thinkers, left, right, or in-between, the libertarian refuses to give the State the moral sanction to commit actions that almost everyone agrees would be immoral, illegal, and criminal if committed by any person or group in society.” — Murray Rothbard, For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto

The government, federal or otherwise, has no business model because it is not a business.  We know this at the outset because government does not compete on the market for people’s money, as every other business must do.  As a monopoly of violence it seizes the money it needs through taxes and monetary inflation.  As long as the government doesn’t get carried away by taxing and inflating too much, most people, some of whom call themselves libertarians, regard this setup as the best we can hope for.

In America Loves Paying Taxes Vanessa Williamson writes:

In national surveys, over 95 percent of Americans agree with the statement, “It is every American’s civic duty to pay their fair share of taxes,” and more than half see taxpaying as “very patriotic.” One man from Ohio called it a responsibility to “the Founding Fathers.” A former Marine said taxpaying is “the cost of being an American,” while a man from California said tax avoidance is the equivalent of “shorting the country.”

Comforting, isn’t it?

Every business, if it is to stay in business, must produce a profit.  It must make more money than it spends.  Competition will force companies to keep its prices as low as possible while still bringing in enough revenue to make a profit.  Without a sound business plan that adjusts to attacks from competition and changing consumer preferences, a firm’s existence will be short-lived.

Consider the once strong demand for MS DOS personal computer applications in the early 1980s (I had a side business writing them). When the Mac came along in 1984 with its Smalltalk-inspired UI Microsoft was caught flat-footed.  Users no longer had to type cryptic commands they couldn’t remember at a blinking cursor; they could do everything they wanted from pull-down menus and a mouse.  The Mac was the computer “for the rest of us.”  Bill Gates immediately ordered creation of a DOS shell he called Interface Manager, later changed to Windows.  It lacked the elegance of the Mac but it sustained the company’s leadership until they created a Windows OS from scratch.

Apple helped Gates by failing to include a killer business app with their radical offering.  Critics said the little Mac couldn’t do anything except paint pretty pictures.  And at a price of $2,495 ($7,760.75 in 2025) it sold poorly.  Later, when Steve Jobs returned to Apple after his dismissal by the company’s board, he decided to empower individual users instead of hidebound organizations and developed a successful marketing strategy with the lowercase “i” and colorful, more powerful home computers.  Apple’s Jony Ive-desgned iMac, introduced on May 6, 1998, reversed the company’s fortunes.

Two years, eight months, and four days later on April 19, 2001, Apple announced that it had shipped its five millionth iMac. That makes approximately 5,112 iMacs sold every day. It’s one iMac every 1.183 seconds.

Assuming he’s allowed to vote freely with his money, the consumer always benefits from innovation and competition.  Companies gathering the most votes stay around and possibly grow, but are always subject to the changing preferences of the ones putting their money down.

One of these things is absolutely different

One could argue that government does indeed have a business plan, and it is straightforward and unique.  Having far more guns than other organizations and virtually limitless latitude to use them it gravitates naturally toward force rather than persuasion.  When it needs more money it doesn’t innovate or economize, it plunders the public.  Resist and you could end up dead, and everyone understands this.  Judging it as we would a business organization it stands out starkly as criminal.

Apple, Microsoft and over 12,500,000 other companies would never get away with forcing people to deal with them at prices they dictate.  Don’t like iPhone’s price?  You don’t have to buy it.  Don’t like any pocket phone (as with my antiquated friend in the Ozarks)?  You’re free not to buy any.  But with government that relationship changes.

Should we wonder why our economy has become a house of cards, when we have a government-provided counterfeiter directing money matters?  Fiat money inflation is the heart and soul of government’s “business plan.”  It conjunction with the Fed it creates gargantuan mountains of debt it never worries about because it’s powerful enough to force taxpayers to pay the interest on it.

Do we need gangsters running our lives?

The argument that the kind of government we have — a monopoly of violence — is necessary is a flagrant violation of the Declaration’s self-evident truths.  How did it happen that government acquired this feature?  Where did it get that authority? Who voted for it?

Mises in Omnipotent Government writes:

With human nature as it is, the state is a necessary and indispensable institution. The state is, if properly administered, the foundation of society, of human coöperation and civilization. It is the most beneficial and most useful instrument in the endeavors of man to promote human happiness and welfare. But it is a tool and a means only, not the ultimate goal. It is not God. It is simply compulsion and coercion; it is the police power.  p142

Since we can’t recruit angels, “Human nature as it is” applies to those conducting state affairs too, which is why we’ve seen so few Ron Pauls and an onslaught of Joe Bidens.  No other entity in society possesses this power.  Does humanity depend on a society built on privileges?  And where is history’s “properly administered” state hiding?

Later in the same book Mises writes,

When the men in office and their methods no longer please the majority of the nation, they will—in the next election—be eliminated, and replaced by other men and another system.

Not surprisingly, the replacements have been disappointing.  Each administration, driven by an unelected cabal, takes government overreach as normal while enhancing the power and pelf of the elites.  If the majority love big government, and the country’s schools are promoting it, voting won’t fix anything.  And as we’ve seen recently voting has been a coup under cover of legitimacy.

The popular idea that the free market is subject to failure is a fallacy, while government failures constitute mankind’s history.  In A Critique of Interventionism Mises wrote that “Measures that are taken for the purpose of preserving and securing the private property order are not interventions in this sense.”  Mises was arguing against “the impracticability of anarchism,” a classical liberal position that acknowledges the state as a necessary evil.  It turns out the state is impracticable, at least for the welfare of the governed.

Rothbard’s 1973 For a New Liberty: A Libertarian Manifesto and other writings eliminated the “necessary evil” excuse and offered a consistent view of a stateless laissez-faire society in its place.

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The outcome now is indisputable. We, the U.S. and NATO, lost our proxy war in Ukraine, a war that will go down in history as one of our worst foreign policy disasters, even worse than our ignominious withdrawal from our 20-year war in Afghanistan. Hundreds of thousands of Russian and Ukrainian soldiers and civilians are dead, far more wounded and maimed. 1.72 million Ukrainian soldiers have been killed or declared missing in action since the war began. Ukraine’s energy and transportation infrastructure has been decimated. Cities and villages leveled. The U.S. and NATO fought to the last Ukrainian soldier, with no skin in the game. Sorrow blankets the land. Russia is substantially stronger politically, economically, and militarily with stronger ties to Iran, North Korea, and China.

The paucity of NATO’s military forces, capabilities, and industries has been exposed. Conservative political upheaval is growing across Europe. NATO’s viability and utility have been further diminished, having proved useless for deterring Russia for over a decade, its combat equipment decimated by Russian forces on the battlefield. Some $350 billion of U.S. taxpayer money given gratis to Ukraine—with no audit trail—proved a foolish investment, enriching the corrupt Zelensky regime, the U.S. defense industry, and served no purpose other than protracting the war and filling graveyards with brave men and women. Lest we forget, it was all borrowed money increasing U.S. annual deficits and the U.S. debt, which now exceeds $37 trillion.

Considering the immense scope of this avoidable human tragedy, the war demands a candid, unbiased examination of why this war started and why NATO, using Ukraine as its proxy, failed to achieve victory on the battlefield. Over the coming weeks, many explanations will undoubtedly emerge. It is unlikely that any will address the root cause of the war or elucidate the reasons for NATO and Ukraine’s military failure. This two-part essay aims to shed light on these critical issues, hoping that future generations of U.S. political and military leaders entrusted with the responsibility of committing our sons and daughters to war, have a clear understanding of the disastrous consequences of incompetence in both domains.

It Began with A Broken Promise

The path to Russia’s war against Ukraine began with a broken promise made by political leaders of the US and NATO over 30 years ago. On February 9, 1990, just three months after the end of the Cold War and demolition of the Berlin Wall, U.S. Secretary of State James Baker met with Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev and his aides to chart a way forward after the Cold War and establish a lasting peace between Europe and what became the Russian Federation. During discussions surrounding the reunification of Germany, Premier Gorbachev made it unmistakably clear that “NATO expansion is unacceptable”, and its eastward expansion beyond Germany would be perceived as an existential threat to Russia’s national security. Secretary Baker acknowledged Gorbachev’s concern and assured him that “neither the President [George H.W. Bush] nor I intend to extract any unilateral advantages from the processes that are taking place” and that the United States understood that “not only for the Soviet Union but for other European countries as well, it is important to have guarantees that if the United States keeps its presence in Germany within the framework of NATO, not an inch of NATO’s present military jurisdiction will spread in an eastern direction”. Not an inch.

Gorbachev made a grave mistake. He should have had Baker put that declaration in writing and amend the NATO charter accordingly.In less than a decade, U.S. and NATO political leaders reneged on this promise. In 1999, NATO extended membership to the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland pushing NATO further east towards the Russian Federation, formed eight years earlier. NATO political leaders ignored Russia’s warning that this expansion would be perceived as a direct threat to Russia’s national security. The lesson for Russia? You cannot trust the word of the United States nor its subservient NATO members.

In his article, Why NATO Expansion Explains Russian Actions in Ukraine, Tom Switzer described the inherent danger this expansion spawned. “During the 1990’s debate over whether Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic should become alliance members, many military and foreign-policy experts argued that NATO expansion would lead to big trouble with Russia. It would create the very danger it was supposed to prevent: Russian aggression in reaction to what Moscow would deem a provocative and threatening Western policy…The list of opponents to NATO enlargement from three decades ago reads like a who’s who of that generation’s wise men.”

One of these esteemed foreign policy experts was former U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union, George Kennan, the architect of American Cold War strategy of containment that led to the Soviet Union’s collapse. In 1997, he prophetically warned “Bluntly stated…expanding NATO would be the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-Cold War era. Such a decision may be expected to inflame the nationalistic, anti-Western and militaristic tendencies in Russian opinion; to have an adverse effect on the development of Russian democracy; to restore the atmosphere of the cold war to East-West relations, and to impel Russian foreign policy in directions decidedly not to our liking”. Kennan was right. His foresight was ignored. By 2020, eleven additional nations joined the NATO alliance pushing NATO and NATO’s military capabilities further east to Russia’s western border.

Withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty

Coupled with the eastward expansion of NATO, on June 13, 2002, the U.S. abruptly withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty it signed with the Soviet Union in 1972. The ABM Treaty between the United States and the Soviet Union (later the Russian Federation) barred both superpowers from deploying national defenses against long-range ballistic missiles and from building the foundation for such defenses. The treaty was based on the premise of mutual assured destruction, the belief that stability was ensured by each superpower having confidence in its ability to destroy the other, and the likelihood that if either power constructed a strategic defense, the other would build up its offensive nuclear forces to overwhelm it. The superpowers would therefore find themselves in a never-ending offensive-defensive arms race as each tried to assure the credibility of its offensive nuclear force. The treaty did, however, allow both sides to build defenses against short- and medium-range ballistic missiles. The ABM Treaty was negotiated and signed concurrently with the Interim Agreement on strategic offensive arms (commonly known as SALT I), the first in what became a series of U.S.-Soviet strategic arms control agreements that first capped, and later reduced, the strategic nuclear arsenals of the two superpowers. Both countries considered the treaty a cornerstone of strategic stability which it was for thirty years.

Two years later, the U.S. deployed its first anti-ballistic missile system to Ft. Greely, Alaska. Five years later, the U.S., on behalf of NATO, entered negotiations to place ten (10) additional anti-ballistic missile systems in Poland and an ABM missile radar system in Czechoslovakia expanding its ABM shield eastward towards Russia’s doorstep. Russia regarded this decision by the U.S. to deploy its global anti-missile defense system into Poland and Czechoslovakia as the most serious external threat to Russia’s security system since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Adding fuel to the fire, a year later, NATO began serious discussions aimed at admitting both Georgia and Ukraine into the military alliance. From Russia’s perspective, U.S. and NATO intentions were unambiguous.

NATO’s Change in Character

Meanwhile, while this expansion occurred, new reasons were forged by the political leaders of NATO member nations to justify and sustain NATO’s existence. Moreover, NATO morphed from a strictly defensive military alliance as it had been for forty years, into an offensive military alliance far removed from the purpose it was originally formed to achieve—and did achieve—deterring the Soviet Union from invading Western Europe after World War II. Yet, the treaty and its purpose were never changed.

The first evidence of this change in character emerged within a decade of the Soviet Union’s collapse. From March-June 1999, NATO launched an offensive air campaign attacking the armed forces of Serbia over a period of 78 days until Serbia agreed to withdraw from Kosovo and end its conflict with Kosovo Albanians. Political leaders of NATO nations, without the direct authorization of the United Nations Security Council, justified this war ostensibly to end and prevent egregious human rights abuses. Article 5 of the NATO treaty was not invoked. It was ignored. Not a single NATO country was attacked by Serbia.

Two years later, on September 11, 2001, a group of al-Queda terrorists commandeering four commercial airliners, attacked the U.S. killing over innocent citizens. Within days, NATO invoked Article 5, the first and only time in its history. A month later, U.S. forces invaded Afghanistan to achieve three objectives: find and kill Osama-bin-Laden, the al-Qaeda leader and mastermind of the attack, dismantle al-Qaeda, and overthrow the Taliban regime that had harbored al-Queda. Two years later, in August 2003, NATO assumed command and the mission of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan. This offensive military operation marked the first deployment of NATO forces outside Europe and North America.

By 2006, NATO forces were engaged in intensive combat to defeat Taliban insurgents across the entire nation. All thirty nations of NATO contributed forces to this effort in some capacity, fighting or supporting. ISAF continued combat operations to defeat the Taliban until December 2014 when the U.S. withdrew most of its forces. Thus ended eleven years of NATO-led combat operations—for naught. The Taliban were not destroyed. In August 2021, U.S. forces executed an incompetent, humiliating withdrawal from Afghanistan followed immediately by the unexpected and rapid collapse of the Afghan National Security Force, a force whose capability and will to fight had been grossly inflated and mis-represented by U.S. commanding generals for years. Taliban forces stormed across the nation and retook control of Afghanistan. 3,606 NATO soldiers were killed during operations from 2001-2021, thousands more were grievously wounded: 68% of the casualties from the U.S, 12% by the United Kingdom, 4.5% by Canada, and the remainder from other NATO nations. The cost of the war was almost $1 trillion dollars, the majority paid by U.S. taxpayers on borrowed money, and achieved nothing.

Given NATO’s history of unmet assurances, the U.S. unilateral withdrawal from the ABM Treaty, and NATO’s evolution from a defensive alliance to a more assertive military force, Russia had legitimate grounds for concern over NATO’s potential expansion into Ukraine.

Read the Whole Article

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For a Leviathan to function, it must remain rational and powerful, Alastair Crooke writes.

Israel’s strategy from past decades continues to rest on the hope of achieving some literal Chimeric transformative ‘de-radicalisation’ of both Palestinians and of the Region, writ large – a de-radicalisation that will make ‘Israel safe’. This has been the ‘holy grail’ objective for Zionists since Israel was first founded. The code word for this chimaera today is the ‘Abraham Accords’.

Ron Dermer, Netanyahu’s Strategic Affairs Minister, former Israeli Ambassador to Washington and key Trump ‘whisperer’ – writes Anna Barsky in Ma’ariv (Hebrew) on 24 August – “sees reality with cold political eyes. He is convinced that a real agreement [on Gaza] will never be concluded with Hamas, but [only] with the United States. What is needed, Dermer says, is the Americans’ adoption of Israel’s principles: the same five points that the Cabinet approved: disarmament of Hamas, return of all hostages, complete demilitarization of Gaza, Israeli security control in the Strip – and an alternative civilian government that is not Hamas and not the Palestinian Authority”.

From the perspective of Dermer, a partial hostage release deal – which Hamas has accepted – would be a political disaster. By contrast, were Washington to endorse the Dermer outcome – as an ‘American plan’ – Barsky infers Dermer suggesting: “we would have a situation in which everyone benefits”. Moreover, in Dermer’s logic, “the mere opening of a partial deal gives Hamas a window of two to three months, during which it can strengthen itself and even try to obtain a different ‘final scenario’ from that of the Americans – one that suits [Hamas] better”. “This, according to Dermer, is the truly dangerous scenario”, writes Barsky.

Dermer has for years insisted that Israel can have no peace without the prior ‘transformative de-radicalisation’ of all Palestinians. “If we do it right”, Ron Dermer says, “it will make Israel stronger – and the U.S. too!”

Some years earlier, when Dermer was asked what he saw to be the solution to the Palestinian conflict. He replied that both the West Bank and Gaza must be totally dis-armed. Yet, more important than disarmament however, was the absolute necessity that all Palestinians must be mutationally “de-radicalised”.

When asked to expand, Dermer pointed approvingly to the outcome of WW2: The Germans were defeated, but more significantly, the Japanese had been fully ‘de-radicalised’ and rendered docile by the war’s end:

“Japan had U.S. forces for 75 years. Germany — U.S. forces for 75 years. And if anyone thinks that was by agreement at the beginning they’re kidding themselves. It was imposed, then they understood it was good for them. And over time there was a mutual interest in keeping it”.

Trump is aware of Dermer’s thesis, but seemingly it is Netanyahu who instinctively dithers, so Barsky writes:

“A partial deal [with Hamas] will almost certainly lead to the resignation of Smotrich and Ben Gvir [from the government]… The government will fall apart … A partial deal means the end of the right-right government … Netanyahu knows this well, which is why his hesitation is so difficult. And yet, there is a limit to how long one can hold the rope at both ends”.

Trump seemingly accepts the ‘Dermer Thesis’: “I think they want to die, and it’s very, very bad”, Trump said of Hamas before leaving for his recent weekend trip to Scotland. “It got to a point where you’re [i.e. Israel] gonna have to finish the job”.

But Dermer’s notion about having the consciousness of adversaries seared by defeat was never just about Hamas alone. It extended to all Palestinians and the region as a whole – and, of course to Iran in particular.

Gideon Levy writes that we must thank the former head of the Military Intelligence, Aharon Haliva, for admitting on Channel 12:

“We need genocide every few years; the murder of the Palestinian people is a legitimate, even essential act”. This is how a “moderate” general in the IDF speaks … killing 50,000 people is “necessary”.

This ‘necessity’ is no longer ‘rational’. It has metamorphosed into bloodlust. Benny Barbash, an Israeli playwright, writes of the many Israelis he meets, including at the demonstrations in favour of a hostage-prisoner deal, who frankly admit:

“Listen, I’m really sorry to tell you this, but the children dying in Gaza really don’t bother me at all. Nor the hunger that’s there, or not. It really doesn’t interest me. I’ll tell you straight: As far as I’m concerned, they can all drop dead there”’

“Genocide as the IDF’s legacy, for the sake of future generations”; “For every one [Israeli] on 7 October, 50 Palestinians have to die. It doesn’t matter now, children. I’m not speaking out of revenge; it’s out of a message to future generations. There’s nothing to be done, they need a Nakba every now and then to feel the price”, Gideon Levy soberly quotes General Haliva saying (emphasis added).

This must be understood to represent a profound shift within the core of Zionist thinking (from Ben Gurion to Kahane). Yossi Klein writes (in Haaretz Hebrew) that:

“We are indeed in the stage of barbarism, but this is not the end of Zionism … [This barbarism] has not killed Zionism. On the contrary, it has made it relevant. Zionism has had various versions, but none resembled the new, updated, violent Zionism: the Zionism of Smotrich and Ben-Gvir …

“The old Zionism is no longer relevant. It established a state and revived its language. It has no more goals … If you ask a Zionist today what their Zionism is, they wouldn’t know how to answer. ‘Zionism’ has become an empty word … Until [that is] Meir Kahane came along. He came with an updated Zionism whose goals are clear: to expel Arabs and settle Jews. This is a Zionism that doesn’t hide behind pretty words. “Voluntary evacuation” makes it laugh. “Transfer” enchants it. It is proud of “apartheid” … To be a Zionist today is to be Ben-Gvir. To be non-Zionist is to be antisemitic. An antisemite [today] is someone who reads Haaretz …”.

Smotrich declared this week that the Jewish people are experiencing ‘physically’, “the process of redemption and the return of the divine presence to Zion – as they engage in the ‘conquest of the land’”.

It is this train of apocalyptic thought that is bleeding into the Trump Administration in its various formats: It is metamorphosing the Administration’s ethical posture towards one of ‘war is war and must be absolute’. Anything less must be seen as mere moral posturing. (This is the Talmudical understanding arising from the story of wiping out the Amalek (see Jonathan Muskat in Times of Israel)).

Thus we can see Washington’s new found thrall for de-capitation of intransigent leaderships (Yemen, Syria and Iran); the support for the political neutering of Hizbullah and the Shi’a in Lebanon; the normalisation of assassination for recalcitrant heads of state (as was mooted for Imam Kamenei); and for the toppling of state structures (i.e. as planned for Iran on 13 June).

The transformation of Israel to this Revisionist Zionism – and its hold over key factions of U.S. thinking – is precisely why war between Iran and Israel has come to be perceived as inevitable.

The Supreme Leader of Iran articulated his understanding of the implications explicitly in his public address earlier this week:

“This [American] hostility has persisted for 45 years, across different U.S. administrations, parties, and presidents. Always the same hostility, sanctions, and threats against the Islamic Republic and the Iranian people. The question is why?.

“In the past, they hid the real reason behind labels like terrorism, human rights, women’s rights, or democracy. If they did state it, they framed it more politely, saying: ‘We want Iran’s behaviour to change”.

“But the man in office today in America gave it away. He revealed the true objective: ‘Our conflict with Iran, with the Iranian people, is because Iran must obey America’. That is what we, the Iranian nation, must clearly understand. In other words: A power in the world expects that Iran—with all its history, dignity and its legacy as a great nation — should simply be submissive. That is the real reason for all the enmity”.

“Those who argue, “Why not negotiate directly with America to solve your problems?” are also looking only at the surface. That’s not the real issue. The real problem is that the U.S. wants Iran to be obedient to its commands. The Iranian people are deeply offended by such a great insult, and they will stand with all their strength against anyone who harbours such a false expectation of them … the U.S.’ real goal is Iran’s submission. Iranians will never accept this ‘great insult’”.

‘De-radicalisation’ in the Dermer thesis’ meaning means installing a Leviathan-esque “despotism that reduces the region to total powerlessness – including that of a spiritual, intellectual and moral powerlessness. The total Leviathan is a unique, absolute and unlimited power, spiritual and temporal, over other humans”, as Dr Henri Hude, former head of the Department of Ethics and Law at France’s prestigious Saint-Cyr Military Academy, has observed.

Former IDF Ombudsman Major General (Res). Itzhak Brik too has warned that Israel’s political leadership are “gambling with Israel’s very existence”:

“They want to accomplish everything through military pressure, but in the end, they won’t accomplish anything. They have put Israel on the brink of two impossible situations [–] the outbreak of a full-fledged war in the Middle East, [and, or, secondly] a continuing of the war of attrition. In either situation, Israel won’t be able to survive for long”.

Thus, as Zionism transforms to what Yossi Klein has defined as ‘late stage Barbarism’, the question arises, could ‘war without limits’ work, despite Hude’s and Brik’s deep scepticism? Could such Israeli ‘terror’ impose on the Middle East an unconditional surrender “that would allow it to change profoundly, militarily, politically and culturally, and to transform as Israeli satellites within an overall Pax Americana?”

The clear response that Dr Hude gives in his book Philosophie de la Guerre is that war without limits cannot be the solution, because it cannot deliver long-lasting ‘deterrence’ or de-radicalisation:

“On the contrary, it is the most certain cause of war. Ceasing to be rational, despising opponents who are more rational than it is, arousing opponents who are even less rational than it is, the Leviathan will fall; and even before its fall, no security is assured”.

Hude identifies too such extreme ‘will to power’ without limits as necessarily containing the psyche of self-destruction within it.

For a Leviathan to function, it must remain rational and powerful. Ceasing to be rational, despising opponents who are more rational, and angering opponents who are less rational than it is itself, the Leviathan then must – and will – fall.

This is precisely why Iran, even now, knows it must prepare for the Big War as Leviathan ‘arises’. And so too, must Russia – for it is one single war being prosecuted against recalcitrants to the American new order.

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

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