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Thanks, Gail Appel.

Aish.com

 

The post Calling Charles Schumer a Traitor appeared first on LewRockwell.

Gail Appel wrote:

Spot on!

 

The post Col Douglas Macgregor Response to Joe Biden. SOU Speech Is Profoundly Accurate and Important appeared first on LewRockwell.

Gail Appel wrote:

It’s a very real , long time in the making plan.

The Post-1984 Brave New World

 

The post It’s Not a Conspiracy Theory appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, John Frahm. 

Technocracy News

 

The post REAL ID: Ron Paul Gets Authoritarianism, Misses Technocracy appeared first on LewRockwell.

David Martin wrote:

James Forrestal, was president of Dillon, Read & Co. Inc. who later became the first Secretary of Defense under Harry Truman. He was assassinated by his enemies.

Fitts, as Burris notes, also worked for Dillon, Read. 

Book Review: The Assassination of James Forrestal by David Martin | Solari Report

Tucker Carlson – Catherine Fitts: Bankers vs. the West, Secret Underground Bases, and the Oncoming Extinction Event

The post Charles Burris on Catherine Austin Fitts Expose of Deep State Machinations appeared first on LewRockwell.

Click Here:

Eugyppius

 

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Thanks, Jesse Trentadue.

Headline USA

 

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Thanks, John Smith. 

The Grayzone

 

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Thanks, John Smith. 

Palestine Chronicle

 

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Thanks, John Smith. 

The New Arab

 

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The post Bankruptcy: House Republicans MASSIVELY Increase Military Spending Bill appeared first on LewRockwell.

The post “Demoralize the Enemy From Within by Surprise, Terror, Sabotage, Assassination. This is the War of the Future.” Adolf Hitler appeared first on LewRockwell.

La retorica anti-dazi è di matrice inglese, fondamentalmente perché a questi ultimi piace controllare i Paesi attraverso l'arbitraggio tramite la valuta. Sono stati i primi nella storia a capire come fare. Sebbene gli olandesi abbiano creato il prototipo di sistema bancario centrale, gli inglesi l'hanno perfezionato e ci hanno costruito sopra un impero coloniale navale. Oggi la City di Londra copre circa il 30% dell'intermediazione del Forex. Su questo punto c'è una certo panico dato che... cosa succede quando viene digitalizzato il Forex? Che sia tramite Ripple o altro, nel momento in cui si possono scambiare valute con commissioni dello 0.05%, cos'altro rimane alla City di Londra? Il mercato delle assicurazioni ormai è andato. Tutte queste cose sono legate a un solo e singolo fatto: continuare a esercitare controllo sulle finanze americane da Londra. Ci saranno ancora turbolenze sui mercati, perché l'unica arma che rimane alla classe dirigente europea/inglese è rappresentata dalle cosiddette bombe nucleari finanziarie (es. “basis trade”). Quindi non lo ripeterò mai abbastanza, se c'è uno slogan che davvero deve prendere piede, più di quello “End the FED”, è “End the BoE”.

____________________________________________________________________________________

da America First Legal

(Versione audio della traduzione disponibile qui: https://open.substack.com/pub/fsimoncelli/p/smascherato-il-piano-di-censura-della)

America First Legal (AFL) ha pubblicato nuovi documenti ottenuti attraverso il contenzioso in corso contro il Global Engagement Center (GEC) del Dipartimento di Stato americano, i quali smascherano una vasta operazione di censura sostenuta dal governo federale per mettere a tacere gli americani con il pretesto della “disinformazione” e “malinformazione”. I documenti rivelano un'inquietante alleanza tra il Global Engagement Center, l'Agenzia statunitense per lo sviluppo internazionale (USAID), il Ministero degli Esteri, del Commonwealth e dello Sviluppo britannico (FCDO) e le organizzazioni di censura nei media, tutte impegnate a collaborare per manipolare il dibattito pubblico, controllare le narrazioni e sopprimere la libertà di parola.

Il Global Engagement Center, costretto a chiudere nel dicembre 2024, era stato progettato per “combattere la disinformazione all'estero”. Tuttavia, attraverso le richieste di Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), America First Legal ha scoperto che il Global Engagement Center era impegnato in propaganda sponsorizzata dallo stato, avvalendosi ripetutamente di persone provenienti da organizzazioni mediatiche private. Inoltre la causa intentata da America First Legal contro il Global Engagement Center ha rivelato che la USAID aveva creato un “Manuale sulla disinformazione” il quale elogiava esplicitamente le strategie di censura implementate dal settore privato e raccomandava ulteriori tattiche di censura.

I nuovi documenti pubblicati da America First Legal mostrano:

• Il Global Engagement Center e la USAID hanno coordinato gli sforzi per censurare la “disinformazione sul COVID-19” e contrastare la “propaganda sul COVID-19”.

• Il Global Engagement Center ha collaborato con i funzionari del Ministero degli Esteri, del Commonwealth e dello Sviluppo britannico nelle attività di disinformazione.

• Il Global Engagement Center ha collaborato con i mass media, tra cui Poynter e NewsGuard, che hanno fornito campioni del loro strumento di intelligenza artificiale chiamato Misinformation Fingerprints, progettato per identificare e classificare i siti web in base alla loro “disinformazione” percepita.

I. Il Global Engagement Center e la USAID si sono coordinati per contrastare la “propaganda e la disinformazione sul COVID-19”

In un'email alla USAID, il “Liaison Planner to USAID” del Global Engagement Center affermava che quest'ultimo avrebbe dovuto “sostenere il dialogo e la connettività in questi tempi senza precedenti” per aiutare a contrastare la “disinformazione” che circondava il COVID-19, nonostante la missione autodefinita della USAID fosse “quella di estendere l'assistenza ai Paesi che si stanno riprendendo da un disastro, che cercano di uscire dalla povertà e che si impegnano in riforme democratiche”.

I documenti dimostrano che il Global Engagement Center ha comunicato con diverse divisioni della USAID, tra cui “TF 2020-COVID 19”, “Sviluppo digitale”, “Asia Bureau ES Taskers”, “Asia Outreach”, “Conflict Prevention and Stabilization (CPS) Policy” e “CPS Africa”.

Inoltre Global Engagement Center e USAID hanno collaborato su progetti di “contropropaganda” e “prodotti di disinformazione e relativi al COVID-19”, i quali spaziavano da una dimostrazione del “KHARON” (programma di analisi del rischio) al monitoraggio delle narrazioni di “disinformazione” sulle elezioni presidenziali del 2020 in Moldavia.

II. Coordinamento con i censori di Internet: NewsGuard e Poynter

Due giorni dopo le elezioni presidenziali statunitensi del 2020, il direttore generale di NewsGuard Technologies, Matt Skibinski, ha avviato una catena di email per promuovere i servizi di NewsGuard. Tra queste figuravano:

• L'allora direttrice di Park Advisors, Christina Nemr, un'ex-studentessa del Dipartimento di Stato dell'amministrazione Obama. Secondo il suo profilo LinkedIn, Park Advisors “ha progettato e guidato iniziative pubblico-private multimilionarie per affrontare le minacce alla sicurezza nell'ambiente informatico, colmando il divario tra le tecnologie emergenti e le esigenze operative del mondo reale. Ha costruito e gestito una piattaforma globale che ha valutato e collegato strumenti con sfide mission-critical, supportandone l'adozione da parte dei governi”.

• La Commissione per le piccole imprese della Camera ha scoperto che Park Advisors ha ricevuto un accordo di cooperazione da parte del Global Engagement Center per un valore di oltre $6 milioni. Park Advisors ha poi distribuito subappalti a diverse aziende, tra cui NewsGuard, l'Atlantic Council e il Global Disinformation Index, un progetto finanziato da George Soros che ha generato elenchi di siti web conservatori ed esortato le aziende pubblicitarie a boicottarli. Insieme, questi gruppi, non soggetti a restrizioni internazionali come lo era il Global Engagement Center, hanno testato prodotti di disinformazione, i quali hanno poi portato alla creazione del “Disinfo Cloud”, una piattaforma non classificata e utilizzata dal governo federale degli Stati Uniti, dall'Unione Europea, dal governo del Regno Unito, dal governo australiano e dal governo estone “per contrastare la propaganda avversaria e la disinformazione”.

• Dipendenti governativi del Dipartimento di Stato, della National Security Agency (NSA) e pezzi del Dipartimento della Difesa, tra cui il National Security Innovation Network (NSIN), lo US Cyber ​​Command e lo US Army European Command.

Skibinski mostrava esempi del nuovo programma pilota Global Engagement Center/US Cybercommand Testbed (Misinformation Fingerprints). Questo programma utilizzava l'intelligenza artificiale e l'apprendimento automatico per monitorare la “disinformazione”. La relazione della Commissione per le Piccole Imprese della Camera dei Rappresentanti spiega che “non esisteva alcuna protezione per garantire che le risorse federali non venissero utilizzate per sviluppare e promuovere tecnologie che avrebbero avuto un impatto a livello nazionale”.

Sebbene NewsGuard affermi di essere un giusto arbitro della veridicità, una ricerca della Foundation For Freedom Online rivela come gestisca il braccio esecutivo dell'industria della censura, classificando i siti web in base alla quantità di “disinformazione” che ciascuno di essi pubblica.

Inoltre il 4 febbraio 2021 Vonda Wolcott, Senior Program Manager presso l'Institute for War and Peace Reporting, ha messo in contatto l'esperto di Monitoraggio e Valutazione del Global Engagement Center con Baybars Orsek di Poynter. America First Legal ha dimostrato come Poynter finanziasse un'operazione globale sotto falsa bandiera di “fact-checker” internazionali che si dichiaravano indipendenti ma che in realtà erano una fitta rete finanziata da Poynter e dal Global Engagement Center.

Questa email dimostra quanto Global Engagement Center e Poynter abbiano collaborato strettamente con l'esperto offerto dal primo per “illustrare [a Poynter] il nuovo manuale Monitoraggio e Valutazione del Global Engagement Center”.

III. Funzionari del Dipartimento di Stato degli Stati Uniti hanno condiviso informazioni con un governo straniero

Un'email dell'8 gennaio 2021 mostra la distribuzione di presunte “informazioni false” provenienti da email del Dipartimento di Stato americano a funzionari ufficiali del governo britannico presso il Ministero degli Esteri, del Commonwealth e dello Sviluppo britannico. America First Legal aveva precedentemente denunciato un coordinamento tra altre organizzazioni pro-censura e i governi degli Stati Uniti e del Regno Unito per censurare le opinioni dei cittadini americani.

Questi documenti dimostrano ulteriormente gli sforzi del Global Engagement Center, ora defunto, per sopprimere la cosiddetta “disinformazione”, spesso attraverso la collaborazione con agenzie governative, governi stranieri, ONG e mass media per mettere a tacere le voci dissidenti.

America First Legal continuerà a lottare per denunciare la censura e difenderà sempre il Primo Emendamento.

Dichiarazione di Andrew Block, consulente legale senior di America First Legal:

La partnership tra USAID e il Global Engagement Center è una cattiva notizia per il popolo americano. Se si aggiunge il fatto che si stavano coordinando con i responsabili della censura online, NewsGuard e Poynter, si può iniziare a capire quanto questa alleanza innaturale fosse pericolosa per la libertà di parola e di espressione. Per fortuna il Global Engagement Center è stato chiuso e la USAID sta venendo smantellata, ma i legislatori dovrebbero prendere atto di questo esempio quando prendono in considerazione misure legislative volte a garantire che il governo federale serva i principi e gli interessi americani.

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

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Donald Trump’s War on America’s $5.4 trillion of two-way trade with the rest of the planet is surely one of the most senseless acts of state aggression in modern times, if ever. That’s because its predicate—that America’s giant, unsustainable trade deficits are owing to unfair trade—is dead wrong.

And we do mean wrong—as in completely, unequivocally and with no if, ands or buts. Indeed, Trump thinks large trade deficits are prima facie evidence of cheating by our trading partners, yet the evidence debunks that primitive axiom with such alacrity as to literally shutdown the argument.

For instance, the Donald never stops bragging about his negotiating the USMCA in late 2018, which he claims was a vast improvement upon the existing three-way free trade arrangement between the US, Mexico and Canada known as NAFTA. In truth, of course, it was mainly a name change with some sops to the UAW and other American unions, which provided more stringent wage standards in Mexico. But the core feature—zero tariff trade between the three countries—was maintained.

Here’s the thing, however. During 2017—before the Donald’s new and improved USMCA— the US trade deficit with Mexico and Canada was -$65 billion, representing a modest 5.0% of total two-way trade of $1.298 trillion between the US and its two NAFTA partners. Self-evidently, that deficit was not caused by tariff barriers because, by definition, there weren’t any.

2017 NAFTA Trade:

• US Exports To NAFTA: $616 billion.
• US Imports From NAFTA: $681 billion.
• Trade Deficit With NAFTA: -$65 billion.
• Total Two-Way Trade: $1,298 billion.
• NAFTA deficit as % Of Two-Way Trade: 0%.

Fast forward to 2024 and you will see that the US combined deficit with Mexico and Canada has soared to $235 billion, and actually represented 14.6% of two-way trade which totaled $1.6 trillion with the two USMCA partners. So in a structural sense, the US trade deficit with its partners to the north and south significantly deteriorated.

That’s right. The Donald’s new and improved USMCA deal extended the zero-tariff approach of NAFTA and also added some additional features designed to remove so-called NTBs (nontariff barriers) by ensuring that Mexico’s labor and environmental standards didn’t give it any unfair trade advantages. In the case of wages, in fact, the USMCA’s Annex 23-A required Mexico to eliminate company controlled unions and raise wages by $4 to $6/hour by 2024.

Still, what happened on a completely level playing field over that seven year period is that US exports to the USMCA partners rose by 11% but imports soared by 35%, causing the trade deficit to expand by nearly four-fold. So either the Donald scored an own goal or this huge deficit with Mexico and Canada was caused by factors other than trade barriers and cheating partners.

2024 USMCA Trade:

• US Exports: $683 billion.
• US Imports: $919 billion.
• Trade Deficit With USMCA: –$235 billion.
• Total Two-Way Trade: $1,602 billion.
• USMCA Deficit as % of Total Trade: 6%.

What didn’t remain level, of course, was the wage gap—especially as between US and Mexican manufacturing wages. Not surprisingly, the US trade deficit with Mexico alone rose from -$63 billion in 2016 to -$172 billion in 2024.

As shown in the table below, in fact, average hourly US manufacturing wages including payroll taxes, health care, pension funding and other fringes rose from $27.50 per hour in 2016 to $37.32 per hour in 2024. In turn, the wage gap with far lower hourly pay levels in Mexico increased from $23.90 in 2016 t0 $29.91.

So there is now a $30 per hour wage difference on either side of the Rio Grande. Accordingly, the Fed should have been deflating the US economy in recent years, attempting to wring out decades of cumulative inflation that was making US industry increasingly uncompetitive in global markets. The Donald was having none of that, however, given that he spent most of his first term berating the Fed for being too tight, and then demanded that it unleash the inflationary cyclone that hit the economy after he shut it down and then pumped households full of trillions of free stuff in 2020.

As it happened, therefore, the Fed’s dunderheaded pro-inflation policies caused average fully loaded manufacturing wages in the US to rise by nearly +36% during that eight year period, albeit to hardly any advantage at all to US factory workers. When adjusted for the rise in the CPI, average 2024 manufacturing wages of $24.55 per hour in base pay plus $12.77 per hour in payroll taxes and fringe benefits or $37.32 per hour total were only 4% higher than they had been in 2016.

Fully Loaded Manufacturing Hourly Wage Table (2016–2024)

Needless to say, the USMCA story is not an aberration or exception; it’s actually the rule. Take the case of South Korea, which entered into a bilateral free trade agreement with the US in 2012 requiring the phase out of all industrial and agricultural tariffs over the next eight years. By 2020, therefore, tw0-way trade with South Korea was tariff-free with upwards of $200 billion of trade now crossing the borders of both sides without any import duties.

Yet in 2023, the US trade deficit with South Korea was huge, amounting to 27% of the total bilateral volume of imports and exports.

US/South Korea Trade In 2023:

• US Exports to South Korea: $66.6 billion.
• US Imports from South Korea: $116.0 billion.
• US Balance with Korea: -$49.4 billion.
• Trade Deficit as % of Two-Way Volume: 27.1%.

Again, the explanation for the huge US trade deficit is production costs, not tariffs or other trade barriers. During that 12 year interval fully loaded US hourly wages rose by 46%, while those for South Korea rose by nearly the same ratio, ticking higher by 45%. But it terms of dollars and cents on the cost sheet, the wage gap widened from $6.23 per hour when the South Korean free trade deal was signed in 2012 to $7.21 per hour when it became fully effective in 2020 to $9.21 per hour in 2024.

The Donald is always berating his predecessors for allegedly making bad trade deals, claiming that they have stupidly sent money and jobs abroad. Yet here is a solid free trade deal that produced one of the largest US bilateral trade deficits because all the while the Fed was inflating wages and costs in the US economy to increasingly uncompetitive levels.

Again, the Fed pro-inflation stance did precious little for the purchasing power of the workers’ paychecks. The 2024 US wage cost in inflation-adjusted dollars was up by only 3.4% from 2012 levels.

And that’s not the half of it. It turns out that nearly all of the real US labor cost gain during that period was due to payroll taxes and fringe benefit cost. The base hourly wage rate in worker pay envelopes, in fact, was $24.45 per hour in 2012 (2024 $) and $24.55 per hour in 2024. So the average US manufacturing worker gained just one thin dime per hour in real purchasing power over more than a decade!

Table: Fully Loaded Manufacturing Wage Costs (U.S. and South Korea)

To complete the story, the table below shows 2023 results for America’s Big Five Asian trading partners—China, South Korea, Taiwan, India and Vietnam— which account for the preponderant share of the America’s global trade deficit, and which bilateral balances are all heavily tilted in favor of imports.

But here’s the thing. In 2023, the average tariff on US exports to these five countries was 6.2%, while US tariffs on imports from the five averaged 10.6%, including 19.3% on goods purchased from China per the Donald first term tariffs. In dollar term, these five trading partners collected a modest $19 billion in duties from US shippers, while Washington collected $88 billion in tariffs on goods arriving from them at US ports.

In short, when it comes to monetary trade barriers Washington was the culprit, levying far more onerous duties on its partners than they levied on US exports. And yet and yet: The US trade deficit with these five leading Asian exporters was massive. The combined deficit of $522 billion in 2023 amounted to nearly 46% of the $1.143 trillion of two-way trade with these countries.

US Trade With Big Five Asian Exporters in 2023:

• US Exports: $311 billion.
• US Imports: $833 billion.
• Trade Deficit: -$522 billion.
• Total two-way volume: $1.143 trillion.
• Trade deficit % of two-way trade: 7%.

Next, consider the US trade balance with the EU-27 versus that for the UK. As it happens, tariff levels on both sides of the equation are low and essentially close enough to even for government work . In the case of the EU-27, the latter’s weighted average tariff on US exports is 2.7% while the US tariff on imports from the EU-27 is 2.0%. Likewise, the UK tariff on American exports is 3.8% versus the US average tariff of 2.0% on imports from the UK.

Then again, the trade balance outcomes are wholly dissimilar. In 2023, the US had a modest $3.3 billion surplus on combined two-way trade of $138 billion with the UK, whereas it ran a huge $221 billion deficit with the EU-27 on $931 billion of two-way trade. That is to say, when similar tariff policies are correlated with drastically opposite results on the Donald’s winners and losers scoreboard, the validity of the entire deficits-prove-unfair-trade axiom is surely called into question.

Needless to say, even when you include the EU-27 and the USMCA countries and all other significant trading partners from Brazil to Pakistan, Indonesia, Singapore and Saudi Arabia, the story is consistently the same. There are no tariff barriers to US trade that explain the massive deficits which now materialize year after year.

Below is the aggregated data for the 51 top US trading partners in 2023, which accounts for more than 90% of US global volume. But again, the average US tariff of 3.9% was considerably higher than the 2.1% average tariff levied by these 51 partners on US exports. For want of doubt, in fact, it might be noted that the US collected $112 billion in tariff revenue for these 51 nations compared to just $40 billion of duties levied on US exports to their markets.

Alas, America’s higher tariffs did not deliver a “win” on the Donald’s trade scoreboard. Far from it. The combined trade deficit with the top 51 US trading partners was a staggering $1.145 trillion!

You read that right. America’s $2.862 trillion of imports from these countries was 66% larger than its $1.717 trillion of exports to them. That is to say, the combined deficit was equal to fully 25% of two-way volume with countries that account for the preponderant share of world trade.

US Trade With Top 51 Global Trading Partners In 2023:

• US Exports:$1.717 trillion.
• US Imports: $2.862 trillion.
• Trade Balance: -$1.145 trillion.
• Total Two-Way Volume: $4.579 trillion.
• Deficit % Of Two-Way Volume: 0%.

Accordingly, tariff barriers have absolutely nothing to do with America’s giant trade deficits. And as we have indicated in previous posts, the claim that massive US deficits are actually due to non-monetary trade barriers and related cheating, or what are known as NTBs, is equally bogus. But, again, for want of doubt we went straight to the mother load of the NTB (nontariff barrier) case—-the claim that China’s red capitalists are the world champion NTB trade cheats.

To be clear, we eliminate from this analysis the whining from Wall Street and the Fortune 500 about allegedly onerous Chinese treatment of their direct investments and operations on the territory of the Red Ponzi itself. We are referring to items like forced partnerships with local Chinese companies involving technology sharing arrangements or sharp limitations on repatriation of profits.

Actually, there is a very simple answer to that complaint that does not require a global trade war or imposing hundreds of billions of tariff-taxes on domestic consumers and importers. To wit, don’t invest in China!

All of these supposedly onerous conditions for doing business in China are by no means secret or surprises after the fact. To the contrary, US companies invest in China because the think they can make money or that its serves larger global strategies.

Either way, Washington should not function as their concierge. Or, as the man famously said, capital should go where it is appreciated. And, besides, these issues have virtually nothing to do with the giant trade deficits that the Donald claims to be attempting to eliminate.

Instead, the claim is that one way or another foreign economies are rigged in favor of exports and local producers—to the detriment of US based competitors. The implication is that domestic macroeconomic policies are inherently unfair and are the real reason why expedients like the Donald’s Reciprocal Tariffs are needed to level the playing field.

In this respect, Treasury Secretary Bessent was loudly making this case during the past week. At at recent international forum he claimed effectively that China produces too much and consumes too little. That is to say, its core macroeconomic policies allegedly violate the maxim of Professor J.M Keynes that governments everywhere and always need to be stimulating consumption and spending because otherwise people will save their way into depression and poverty!

To be sure, we thought way back in 1981 that the Reagan Revolution had purged Keynes’ demand side fixation from at least the economic policy lexicon on the GOP side of the aisle. But, no, this latest wet-behind-the-ears Wall Streeter to stumble into the Treasury

Building is not missing a beat in championing the Keynesian gospel that is resident in its permanent bureaucracy.

“China’s current economic model is built on exporting its way out of its economic troubles. It’s an unsustainable model that is not only harming China, but the entire world. China needs to change. The country knows it needs to change.”

In fact, this is just plain malarkey—the same thing Ben Bernanke was peddling two decades ago when he bailed out Wall Street. It only has an air of faint plausibility because the standard national income and product accounts (NIPA) imply that China has a savings rate which dwarfs that of the US, and that somehow this communistic practice of saving too much accounts for the massive US trade deficits with China.

The real cause, of course, is the inflated production costs and wage levels in the US versus the dollar equivalent in China. As we demonstrated last week, since 1992 when Mr. Deng declared it glorious to be rich the US price level has risen by 131%. Not surprisingly, the American market soon became flooded with labor-intensive Chinese shirts, shoes, sheets, toys and furniture at first; and then electronics, iPads, iPhones and computers in an even greater flood as time went on and Chinese manufacturing moved up the value chain.

As we also indicated previously, the nominal wage gap in USD was already large in 1992, but has steadily expanded ever since. In fact, in nominal USD terms the US/China manufacturing wage gap of $16.50 per hour in 1992 has more than doubled to $34.25. The figures below for both countries were supplied by Grok 3 and include both hourly pay plus full-loaded benefits absorbed by employers.

Hourly Wages: US-China=Labor Gap:

• 1992: $16.80-$0.33=$16.50.
• 2007: $29.81-$1.36=$28.45.
• 2024: $43.46-9.35=$34.14

In short, the Fed has inflated its way into a flood of imports from China due to the $34/hour wage gap, not trade barriers or intellectual property theft or Secretary Bessent’s risible claim that 18-year old Chinese girls working their fingers to the bone in a Foxconn iPhone plant save too much!

For avoidance of doubt, we have enlisted Grok 3 in the dis-aggregation of the standard NIPA accounts for both countries. While these NIPA accounts have an inherent Keynesian bias, we have been able to separate the statistical wheat from the chaff in a way that clarifies exactly where China’s great big “savings rate” comes from, and that it has virtually no bearing on the bilateral trade deficit with the US.

The latter is a matter of the vast wage and cost gap shown above. Pure and simple. End of story.

To summarize Grok 3’s prodigious digging and sorting, we can say that 90% of the savings gap shown at the bottom of the table—savings of 6.4% of GDP for the US and 26.9% of GDP for China—is owing to factors that have virtually no bearing on trade. These include the following items in terms of basis points relative to the total 2,050 basis point difference in the aggregate savings rates of the two countries indicated at the bottom of the chart:

• Bigger US fiscal deficits: 200 basis points in favor of China because the commie government doesn’t borrow enough.
• More China central bank money printing: 550 basis points owing to the Keynesian delusion that central bank fiat credit amounts to “savings”.
• China’s current account surplus versus US deficit: 330 basis point owing to the fact that Bessent et. al. implicitly claim the cause and the effect are one and the same.
• Shadow savings in the form of illegal off-shoring of China business profits: 300 basis points owing to Chinese entrepreneurs attempting to stealthily protect their wealth from the long arm of Beijing.
• Apple Inc etc. repatriation of profits: 40 basis points of savings when Apple Inc. brings its sweatshop profits home.
• Phantom economic growth in China thru government fiddling with GDP data: 160 basis points.
• Higher errors and omissions in China NIPA accounts: 270 basis points or the equivalent of 42% of the US savings rate is attributable to the admitted errors and omissions in the China NIPA accounts.
• Subtotal, all of above items: 1,850 basis points.
• % of Total Savings Gap: 90%

In order to further debunk the myth that 18-year olds working 12 hour shifts in Apple’s Foxconn factories save too much, we also dis-aggregated the data on the household sector per se. The latter is always waived around by protectionist who suggest that Chinese workers are both underpaid and then forced to put all of their meager earnings into a saving accounts.

Actually, the household data is heavily distorted by the US Welfare State, which provides a population of 335 million about $4 trillion per year in transfer payments, ranging from social security to foods stamps and subsidized housing. This compares to just $1.7 trillion provided to a population of 1.41 billion by the Chicoms in Beijing. In per capita terms, the comparison is $12,000 in the US versus $1,200 per capita in China.

Communist China’s more impecunious approach to welfare, of course, is a matter of government policy and can hardly be said to be a sinister plot to cheat on trade with the US. But it does tend to distort the household savings statistics because transfer payment recipients in both countries tend to live hand-t0-mouth and do not have the luxury to “save”.

The same distortion results from the inclusion of “imputed rent” in the income and spending statistics. The convention is that homeowners pay rent to themselves—with the payment charged to PCE (personal consumption expenditure) and the rental income allocated to interest income of households. However, since the two figures are a wash, the implicit savings rate is zero on what amounts to $1.8 trillion of US household “income” per year. By contrast, this phantom housing expense and income in the China NIPA statistics is only $200 billion per year.

In any event to get to an apples-to-apples comparison, we took the zero savings income and expense pairs for both transfer payments and imputed housing rent out of the data. That’s because they wash to zero anyway—even though in the case of the US household income statistics these two items total $5.8 trillion of “income”, which by definition can’t be saved because it is 100% off-set by expense.

The bottom line is clear: The true comparison of the household savings rate between the US and China is 7.3% of GDP for the former versus 11.9% for the latter per the first line of the table below. That 460 basis point difference is both minor in the great scheme of a $30 trillion versus $18 trillion economy, but is readily explained by the fact capitalist America has a prodigious Welfare State and Communist China does not.

So households save modestly more in China because they know the government isn’t doing it for them with a massive social insurance Ponzi Scheme like America’s soon to be bankrupt Social Security system. And yet, Secy Bessent says that its China that is cheating?!

In short, the “excess savings” canard is just beltway bullshit. It’s the go-to excuse of protectionists, and the hoary myth invented by Bubbles Ben Bernanke himself to obfuscate the trade disaster that the Fed has brought down upon America’s industrial economy.

And now the Donald and his clueless Treasury Secretary have apparently embraced this nonsense hook, line and sinker. Then again, when the entire case for “big beautiful tariffs” is 100% bogus, it’s not surprising that its advocates have become a fount of pure humbug.

Breakdown of US Versus China Savings Rate In 2023 By Major Component:

Table Notes:

US.:

• Household savings: $2.05T (7.3%), excludes transfers ($3.99T) and imputed housing ($1.8T), aligning with cash-flow focus.
• Residual: $168B (0.6%), includes informal economy ($28B), small due to BEA transparency.

China:

• Household savings: $2.179T (11.9%), excludes transfers ($1.7T) and imputed housing ($0.2T), closer to Rhodium’s ~14% discretionary savings.
• Residual: $615B (3.3%, errors $300B, untracked $315B), reduced by $300B phantom growth bias (1.6%, GDP/investment overstatement).

Reprinted with permission from David Stockton’s Contra Corner.

The post American Capitalism’s Worst Nightmare appeared first on LewRockwell.

Governments regularly claim that they favour tax reform. When this claim has been repeated so many times that virtually no one believes them anymore, they announce a tax reform, to show that they really mean it. They then reshuffle the existing taxes to give the appearance that taxation will actually be lowered.

When it becomes apparent that the reform is a sham, they often pull a rabbit out of a hat in the form of a “temporary” tax, that’s pre-legislated to end sometime in the future.

Sounds promising.

So, let’s have a look at one such temporary tax and see how things worked out.

The US government introduced the War Revenue Act of 1898—a tax on telephone use—under the claim that it was necessary to pay for the Spanish American War.

In what way does telephone use pertain to a government invading another country? Well, actually, one has nothing to do with the other. But, let’s leave that discussion for another day and see how this temporary tax played out.

The Act was repealed in 1902 but was reinstated, this time as the Emergency Internal Revenue Tax Act of 1914. The justification then given was that another war was on the way and increased taxation to pay for it couldn’t begin too soon. Telephone users needed to cough up.

It was decided by both parties to increase the tax on telephones and the War Revenue Act of 1917 was created. It hadn’t passed the debate stage until the war was over, but they decided that they’d implement it anyway, as the work had already been done. In the bargain, they introduced not only increased rates, but graduated rates.

This act was also repealed, in 1924, but was reinstated with the Revenue Act of 1932. Since that date, it has been reauthorised 29 times.

In 1941, an increase was put in place to pay for (you guessed it) another war—World War II. This was increased again in 1943, but people complained and the new law contained a provision that the increased rates would end six months after “the date of termination of hostilities in the present war.” However, the Excise Tax Act of 1947 was passed to assure that the tax would continue indefinitely.

Over the subsequent years, periodic changes were made. Although the rates went up and down like a bride’s nightie, most, not surprisingly, were upward.

As further (undeclared) wars came and went, taxation on telephone calls repeatedly needed to be increased and, regardless of the party in power, increases continued.

At long last, on 14 September, 2000, the House of Representatives took up legislation which included the repeal of the telephone excise tax. This measure passed both houses, but the fix was in. President Clinton vetoed the repeal. (The legislative branch and the executive branch have to take turns playing the bad cop, but the outcome is the same: increased taxation.)

Then, in 2006, a case was made (in the words of the Treasury Secretary), to amend the Internal Revenue Code “of an outdated, antiquated tax that has survived a century beyond its original purpose, and by now should have been ancient history.”

Finally, American citizens could wash their hands of a one-hundred-year theft of their earnings that, even at the start, was based upon a ludicrous concept.

Unfortunately… it didn’t happen.

The repeal was never enacted and Americans continue to pay for the Spanish American War today.

So, what’s the takeaway here?

Well, first off, this little history serves as a reminder that there’s nothing so permanent as a temporary government measure.

Second, although not a month goes by without one politician or another, from one party or the other, rising up in righteous indignation that a new tax or an expanded tax is absolutely necessary to continue the welfare of the American people, there is, in truth, no sincerity in their claim. They simply want more money.

Third, no amount of money is ever enough. Even if Washington, D.C., is the only part of the US that is enjoying prosperity, even if no congressman leaves office without more zeroes behind his net worth than when he went in, virtually every legislator will vote for increases in taxation.

And, fourth, there’s no such thing as tax reform. From time to time, legislators will need to trot out the idea of tax reform, and be seen to be arguing over the details, but will ultimately always do the same: the deck will be reshuffled, but somehow, taxes will rise once again.

But the overall lesson to be learned is that Government is, and has always been, a shell game. Its purpose is not to serve the electorate; it is to separate them from the fruits of their labours.

Full stop.

As former US Chief Justice John Marshall stated,

The power to tax involves the power to destroy.

More recently, Ron Holland offered the following:

Since the beginning of recorded history, the business of government has been wealth confiscation.

However, both these individuals were conservatives, and it would only be fair to ask for commentary from the liberal side. One such liberal political leader is none other than Vladimir Lenin, who stated,

The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation.

Of course, the reader may wish to consider relocating to a jurisdiction where the taxation is far lower, but if he chooses to remain in the US, EU, Canada, or other jurisdiction where the tax level is already oppressive, his plans should include temporary taxes that are unlikely to end in his lifetime.

Reprinted with permission from International Man.

The post The Endlessness of a Temporary Tax appeared first on LewRockwell.

“This is one of the most important days in American history. It’s our declaration of economic independence. Jobs and factories will come roaring back into our country, and you see it happening already. We will supercharge our domestic industrial base.”

President Donald Trump announces unilateral tariffs on 180 countries despite warnings of inflation, recession and supply chain disruptions, April 2, 2025

This is probably the worst economic policy I’ve ever seen…. There is no way that this policy will bring manufacturing back to the United States and “make America wealthy again”… if anything, it’ll make us much poorer. Many are saying that this tariff policy is the “end of globalization”. I don’t think so….. This is the end of America’s participation in globalization….

Molson Hart@Molson_Hart, Founder and CEO of Viahart, a consumer products company

The purpose of President Trump’s tariff policy is not what he says it is. If the goal of the tariffs was to reindustrialize the country and create more jobs in manufacturing, the announcement would have been accompanied by an industrial policy that would outline a coordinated government effort to rebuild America’s critical industries. It would have provided details on tax incentives, infrastructure investment, workforce training, government subsidies and R&D funding; all aimed at achieving Trump’s stated objectives. By now—late April—Trump would have made numerous public appearances with important banking and business leaders who would have expressed their support for this ambitious project of rebuilding the country into a manufacturing powerhouse. Trump also would have presented an overview of the many public-private agreements that had been made with wealthy capitalists who supported the idea and wanted to participate in its implementation.

But none of these things have happened, because there is no industrial policy; just as there is no expectation that the imposition of onerous duties on foreign imports will magically “bring jobs back to America”. It’s all a pipedream aimed at hoodwinking the public. So, what is the tariffs business really all about? Here’s how the WSWS answers that question:

The real purpose of Trump’s tariffs (in the words of socialist Tom Hall) is “to prepare supply chains for world war, especially against China.” (The administration) “is promoting a policy which recalls the darkest period of the 20th century under the Nazis, where trade war preceded the outbreak of World War II in September 1939.” World Socialist Web Site

We find this analysis compelling, but not particularly believable. True, Trump has failed to back his tariff edicts with any solid proposals for rebuilding America’s anemic industrial base. But that doesn’t mean he’s gearing up for a war with China. That seems like a bit of a stretch. Even so, it’s worth putting the question to Grok to see if the historical analogy is accurate.

Question—Did Hitler use the trade war to strengthen supply lines to Germany before the war?

Grok—Yes, Hitler exploited the global trade war and economic turmoil of the 1930s to strengthen Germany’s supply lines and prepare for war. The Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act and subsequent retaliatory tariffs by other nations disrupted global trade, creating opportunities for Germany to pursue autarky (economic self-sufficiency) and secure strategic resources through bilateral agreements. Here’s how:

Hitler’s regime aimed to reduce reliance on imports by boosting domestic production, particularly in agriculture and synthetic materials (e.g., fuel, rubber). The Nazi “Four-Year Plan” (1936) prioritized rearmament and self-sufficiency to insulate Germany from trade disruptions.

Bilateral Trade Agreements: With global trade hampered, Germany negotiated barter deals with smaller nations, especially in Eastern Europe and the Balkans….

Exploiting Weakened Economies: The trade war weakened economies globally, making countries more willing to trade with Germany on favorable terms….

Control of Neighboring Economies: Germany’s economic influence over Austria and Czechoslovakia before their annexation (1938-1939) ensured access to their resources and industries, further strengthening supply lines….

While the trade war wasn’t the sole factor, it created a fragmented global economy that Hitler manipulated to bolster Germany’s war machine. By 1939, these efforts gave Germany a robust, though not complete, supply network for the early stages of World War II. (Grok)

So, a case could be made that Trump is thinking along the same lines as Hitler, trying to make the US more self-sufficient in the event of a military confrontation with China. That might explain why he is patching up relations with Putin (so he can shift his attention to China). It might also explain his sudden interest in Greenland which would provide the US with easy access to precious metals, rare earth, and oil and gas reserves in case war breaks out in the Asia-Pacific. The de facto seizure of the Panama Canal could fit within this same paradigm as it relates to the control of critical sea lanes and maritime passageways. These are all actions you would expect the government to take if they were planning a long-term conflict with a peer competitor located halfway around the world.

But we’re still not convinced that this is the opening volley in a war with China. We think it’s the Shock-and-Awe phase of an aggressive containment strategy that seeks to isolate and encircle China without actually veering into a shooting war. Even so, it should be fairly obvious by now that the Liberation Day extravaganza was merely a way to conceal Trump’s real motive, which was to formally launch a trade war on China. That’s what’s really going on behind the scattershot tariffs that have been haphazardly aimed at friend and foe alike. The real bullseye is on China, the greatest emergent threat the US has ever faced.

The embargo on Chinese goods suggests that Washington is finally making its definitive pivot to Asia. Ukraine is being handed over to the NATO allies while the US shifts its attention to the Far East. The administration is already committed to strengthening its military presence in the region, building support for an anti-China coalition, inciting incidents in the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea and now, imposing a complete embargo on China without any prior notice and without the slightest provocation. The new tariffs fit seamlessly with Washington’s broader strategy of containing the one rival that is most likely to become the undisputed regional hegemon.

But whatever Trump’s intentions may have been, there is no doubt that the plan was poorly thought-out and is not having the impact he had hoped for. For example, Trump thought his gigantic tariffs would send Chinese Premier Xi Jinping racing for the phone to see what concessions he could make to placate strongman Trump. But so far, that hasn’t happened, and it doesn’t look like it will. Instead, China’s Foreign Minister has repeatedly stated that “all unilateral tariffs must be removed” before China will even talk to Trump. In short, China has left Trump with no choice but to capitulate now or watch as the US economy goes into cardiac arrest. Check out this shortlist of recession predictions by some of the bigger names in finance:

Goldman Sachs: Prediction: Raised U.S. recession odds to 45% for 2025… If reciprocal tariffs proceed, they expect a recession, albeit mild, similar to 2001’s dot-com bust….

JPMorgan Chase: Prediction: Sees a 60% chance of a global recession by year-end 2025 CEO Jamie Dimon predicts tariffs will slow growth and boost inflation...

TD Securities: Prediction: Raised U.S. recession odds to 50% due to “blunter than expected” tariffs.

Moody’s Analytics: Prediction: Chief Economist Mark Zandi raised recession odds to 40% calling tariffs “fodder for an economic downturn”....

Deutsche Bank: Prediction: Sees a “meaningful increase in recession risk,”… Tariffs raise core PCE inflation by 1–1.5 points and reduce growth via higher costs and reduced competitiveness. Uncertainty and retaliation amplify downturn risks.

Morningstar, Prediction: Calls tariffs a “self-inflicted economic catastrophe,” predicting a recession with reduced GDP growth for 2025–2026…Reasoning: Tariffs raise effective rates to 20–25%, the highest since the 1930s Smoot-Hawley Act, increasing inflation and reducing consumer demand. Supply chain disruptions and retaliation worsen outcomes.

So, while no one can predict a recession with 100 percent accuracy, there’s a mounting consensus that tariffs are going to impact spending, inflation and growth. The anticipated outcomes are simply ‘baked in the cake.’

So, what should Trump do?

Well, the data’s clear that he has made a serious blunder that requires immediate action. He needs to acknowledge his mistake and make a course correction before the supply chain disruptions deteriorate and the hole he’s dug for himself gets even bigger. He needs to remove the tariffs, comply with WTO rules and regulations, and replace the members of his economics advisory team who concocted this madcap idea. We have to assume that it wasn’t Trump who thought tariffs could be used to counter China’s so-called “unfair practices” that “hollowed out U.S. manufacturing.” No, it was likely Robert Lighthizer (who is a key architect of Trump’s first-term trade war) and Peter Navarro, a former Trump trade advisor who co-authored Death by China (2011) and who influenced Trump’s tariff policy during his first term. These are the brainiacs responsible for the current debacle. Trump is merely the unwitting accomplice implementing the destructive views of loony ideologues. We are reminded of a quote by John Maynard Keynes, in his seminal work The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1936), who made the following observation about the influence of deceased economists:

The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed, the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist.

While neither Lighthizer or Navarro are yet “defunct”, it’s clear that Trump is in the grip of their misguided ideas.

Here’s a short sketch of both men:

Robert Lighthizer—who is a key architect of Trump’s first-term trade war and likely influenced the current tariff strategy—is a trusted Trump advisor whose protectionist views jibe with the majority of the other Trump appointees. “Lighthizer views China as an economic adversary exploiting globalization to undermine U.S. manufacturing. He advocates high tariffs, export controls, and decoupling to protect American industries and reduce trade deficits ($295 billion with China in 2024). His approach prioritizes economic nationalism over military or ideological confrontation… Lighthizer’s ideas directly inform Trump’s 2025 tariff hikes(125%–245% on China) justified as countering China’s “lack of respect”…

Lighthizer’s protectionism mirrors Smoot-Hawley’s intent to shield U.S. industries but ignores how such measures can deepen global economic strife… Robert Lighthizer remains an informal advisor in 2025, shaping Trump’s tariff strategy through his protégés like Jamieson Greer. (Grok)

Then, there’s Peter Navarro, who views China as a predatory economic power, stealing U.S. jobs through unfair trade practices. He advocates aggressive tariffs, export bans, and reshoring manufacturing to counter China’s $640 billion trade advantage…. Navarro’s ideas reinforce Trump’s 2025 tariff hikes and decoupling goals… Navarro’s tariff-heavy approach echoes Smoot-Hawley’s protectionism, which backfired by deepening the Great Depression…. Navarro’s policies under Trump may disrupt global markets without a robust U.S. industrial policy. (Grok)

Finally, we have Stephen Miran, Chairman, Council of Economic Advisers (CEA):

Miran is a chief architect of Trump’s tariff strategy, proposing a “Mar-a-Lago Accord” to restructure global trade, using tariffs to force countries to “pay tribute” for U.S. military and financial dominance (Geopolitical Economy Report, April 10, 2025). In an April 7, 2025, speech, he called China “our biggest adversary” and argued tariffs could win a trade war by leveraging U.S. consumer market power. He defended tariffs as historically successful, stating, “American economic history has seen periods of high tariff rates coincide with extraordinary economic success”

(Note—Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Kevin Hassett, Director, National Economic Council (NEC) appear to be only minor players in the tariff’s fiasco.)

These are the men whose ideas are driving the current tariffs policy. The unfolding economic crisis can be traced back to them and their deluded views.

Reprinted with permission from The Unz Review.

The post Waiting on Xi appeared first on LewRockwell.

Former Israeli ambassador to the United States Mike Herzog acknowledged on Israeli media on Sunday that the Biden administration never at any time pressured Israel for a ceasefire in Gaza.

“God did the State of Israel a favor that Biden was the president during this period, because it could have been much worse,” Herzog said. “We fought [in Gaza] for over a year and the administration never came to us and said, ‘ceasefire now.’ It never did.”

So everyone who said the Biden administration was working for a ceasefire lied. They lied that whole entire time. They committed genocide and lied about it, and then they said you were crazy and irresponsible if you didn’t support them.

People’s rage should shake heaven and earth.

❖

The US has committed another huge massacre of civilians in Yemen, this time bombing a detention center full of African migrants in Saada. Some 68 people have reportedly been killed, making this Trump’s worst massacre in Yemen since his terrorist attack on a Hodeida fuel port killed 80 people earlier this month.

Trump’s massacres of civilians in Saada and Hodeida are much more evil than anything he has done in the United States domestically, but they’ve received almost no attention from the media or from Democrats because in the eyes of the empire Yemenis don’t count as human beings and killing them is normal.

❖

The word “antisemite” has become so meaningless that whenever someone uses it you have to ask them “What kind? The Hitler-was-right kind or the stop-bombing-hospitals kind?”

❖

It’s absolutely bat shit insane that it’s increasingly illegal to voice any praise for groups like Hamas and Hezbollah in the UK and Australia just because the government deems them “terrorists”. What happens when the government is wrong and one of those groups is right?

This has always been the plan. It’s so freakish how the US and Israel keep acting like this is some fresh new idea they only just came up with. This entire thing has been about moving Palestinians out of Gaza, from the very beginning. https://t.co/m152KYq7cc

— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) April 29, 2025

❖

They’re seriously going to ethnically cleanse Gaza after a monstrous extermination campaign and then look us all dead in the eyes and tell us we need to hate China.

❖

It’s wild how the US and Israel just came right out and said “Yeah we’re working on permanently ethnically cleansing all Palestinians from the Gaza Strip,” and then the entire western political/media class went right back to pretending to believe this is about fighting Hamas.

❖

Calling the Gaza genocide a “war” is like seeing a man beating a toddler to death and calling it a “fight”.

So much evil hides behind calling this thing a war. If you accept that it’s a war then you have to take seriously arguments like “It’s a war, civilians die in war,” or “Hamas shouldn’t have started a war they can’t win.” If it’s a war then it has two sides who share comparable levels of responsibility for any bad things that happen during that time. If it’s a war then it’s taken as a given that Israel’s primary target is Hamas, and not the civilian population of Gaza in its entirety.

But it’s not a war, it’s a naked ethnic cleansing operation being carried out by a highly sophisticated military with the backing of the most powerful empire that has ever existed. It’s a globe-spanning power structure openly purging a Palestinian territory of Palestinian life using a full siege and the systematic destruction of all healthcare and civilian infrastructure, being resisted by a few thousand guys with homemade rockets and dwindling supplies. That’s not a “war”. It’s not even a “conflict”. It’s a slaughter. It’s a holocaust.

If the Gaza holocaust is a “war”, then shooting fish in a barrel is “hunting”. Beating up a quadriplegic is a “street brawl”. A SWAT team shooting an unarmed civilian is a “gun fight”. No conflicts are perfectly equal, but past a certain level of one-sidedness the language of conflict becomes absurd. The daily massacres we are seeing in Gaza are far beyond that point.

They are raining military explosives on top of a giant concentration camp packed full of children while deliberately starving the entire civilian population to death. They have complete control over the enclave, and they are using that control to eradicate the presence of Palestinians in Gaza. That is not war. That is genocide.

________________

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The post Biden Never Pushed for a Ceasefire in Gaza appeared first on LewRockwell.

Putin’s 3 day ceasefire, which begins in 8 days, is unrelated to the Ukrainian negotiations. The ceasefire is in memory of the 80th Anniversary of Russia’s defeat of Germany in World War II, a defeat in which the US, Britain, and France played a minor role as the casualty lists indicate. Russia bore the brunt of WW II. Had it not been for Russia, the Third Reich would still be ruling Germany.  Some think it actually is as Germany actively persecutes truth-tellers and critics of Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians. Indeed, in Germany you cannot even criticize the Covid “vaccine” without becoming a political prisoner like Reiner Fuellmich.

The whore Western media and the dumb Western “Russian experts” have failed to note that when Foreign Minister Lavrov declares Russia’s readiness for peace talks, he defines the purpose of the peace talks to be to “eliminate the root causes of the conflict.”

The root cause of the conflict is not Russia’s intervention. The root cause of the conflict is, as the New York Times article admits, Washington’s effort to initiate a conflict that would, or could, destabilize Russia.  

It was Washington, not Moscow, that overthrew the democratically elected Ukrainian government that was in a peaceful and mutually beneficial relationship with Russia while Putin sat on his hands.

It was Washington that armed and trained an Ukrainian army to retake the two breakaway Donbas republics, while using the Minsk Agreement to deceive Moscow that a solution, which did not require Russian intervention, had been achieved.  Both the President of France and the Chancellor of Germany have stated publicly that the Minsk Agreement was used to deceive Putin and leave Russia unprepared for the planned American led Ukrainian invasion of Donbas.

It was Putin and Lavrov who pleaded with US Secretary of State Blinken, NATO, and the EU during December 2021-February 2022 for a mutual security agreement.  The Russians were given the cold shoulder and were forced to intervene  in order to prevent the massacre of the Russian peoples, who had unanimously voted to rejoin Russia from which they had been torn by former Soviet rulers and by the US dismembering the Soviet Union.

Putin’s Ukraine conflict has gone on longer than it took Stalin’s Red Army to drive the highly disciplined Wehrmacht out of thousands of miles of Russia and Eastern Europe and to enter the streets of Berlin. I am not alone in being unable to understand why Putin proceeded with a conflict that was ever-widening, drawing in the US, NATO, the EU and ever more Western weapon systems that “would never to supplied to Ukraine,” culminating in Western supplied long range missiles that now strike deep into Russia.

A possible explanation is that Putin highly values, as does much of his constituency, peace with the West and inclusion in the West. The Russian heart is not really in BRICS.  Therefore, Putin has been using the intervention in Ukraine in the hopes  that a Great Power Agreement, a New Yalta, can come out of it.

What Putin’s hopes overlook is the hegemonic doctrine of American Foreign Policy.  This doctrine as stated by Undersecretary of Defense Wolfowitz in 1991 has never been repudiated by any American  president, including Trump.  The doctrine declares that the principle goal of US foreign policy is hegemony over the world. As this remains Washington’s policy, peace with Russia, China, and Iran,  can only be achieved by their surrender or their defeat.

Is Putin prepared to surrender?  Is China prepared to surrender?  Is Iran prepared to surrender?  Unless they are, war, not peace, is our future.

It is only after we hear Trump’s and Congress’ repudiation of American hegemony can we have any hope of peace.  

We await this repudiation of American hegemony. See this.

The post The ‘Peace Negotiations’ Are Just Another Deception Creating a Narrative for More War appeared first on LewRockwell.

In what can only be called one of the most ridiculous federal criminal prosecutions in U.S. history, the U.S. Department of Justice and, specifically, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Middle District of Florida, ended up with a massive amount of egg on its face. The case involved the criminal prosecution of Black rights activists affiliated with the African People’s Socialist Party and the Uhuru Movement, including the 82-year-old chairman of the Party, Omali Yeshitela, and some White allies, including a 78-year-old woman named Penny Hess.

The feds accused the defendants of serving as Russian agents. Needless to say, the prosecution reflected the deep anti-Russia paranoia that has come to characterize the federal government, especially the Justice Department. This federal mindset is simply an outgrowth of the old Cold War mentality in which federal officials were convinced that the Russians were coming to get us — along with the Cubans, North Koreans, Chinese, North Vietnamese, and other Reds. The “modern” anti-Russia mindset is that the Russians are influencing millions of presumably feeble-minded public-schooled American voters who will easily fall for Russian propaganda if not protected by their federal overlords.

What was the real crime that the defendants had committed? They have long criticized the militarism and foreign interventionism of the U.S. Empire, just as Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Mohammad Ali, and other Blacks have done for decades. The criticism is bad enough from the standpoint of “patriotism,” but the fact that such criticism comes from Blacks obviously makes it significantly worse. The fact that the criticisms matched criticisms of the Russian government sealed the fate of the accused. In the minds of federal officials, it had to be — it just had to be — that the defendants were serving as unregistered agents of the Russian government. As such, they had to be punished severely and, it was hoped, be put away in a federal penitentiary for many years, which would not only silence them but also send a message to other Black activists to shut up and become loyal supporters of the U.S. Empire.

The technical charges against the defendants that ended up going to the jury were (1) failing to register with the U.S. government as Russian agents; and (2) conspiracy to fail to register as Russian agents.

In his opening statement at trial, a federal prosecutor told the jury that the defendants had opposed U.S. genocide of Blacks here in the United States as well as U.S. policy in Ukraine by siding with Russia rather than Ukraine. The prosecutor stated that “the defendants acted at the direction of the Russian government to sow division right here in the U.S.” Imagine — such horrific offenses!

The prosecutors were hoping to send the defendants away for 15 years, which, of course, would have been a life sentence for Yeshitela and Hess. The prosecutors were also aiming to hit the defendants with a massive fine in the hopes of bankrupting them.

Alas, things did not work out well for the feds in this criminal prosecution — and rightly so. They ended up having to wipe lots of egg from their faces. The jury returned with a not guilty verdict on the failure to register charge and a guilty verdict on the conspiracy charge, which is obviously a nonsensical verdict.

But let’s first note the ludicrous nature of both of these charges in what is purportedly a free country. In a free country, a person has the right to work for any foreign government he wants. Oh, yes, I know that Russia is considered to be an “official enemy” or “rival” or “opponent” or “competitor” of the U.S. Empire. But that’s just an imperialist construct. The fact is that in a genuinely free society, people have the right to work for whomever they want.

People also have the right to oppose any policy of their government, including opposing the massive death toll and the mass incarceration of Blacks in the U.S. war on drugs and also opposing the U.S. Empire’s foreign policy of invasions, occupations, wars of aggression, state-sponsored assassinations, torture, indefinite detention, renditions to foreign regimes, coups, and provoking wars between other countries.

In fact, in the United States, it is perfectly legal to work for the Russian government or any other government. So, what’s the problem? The problem is that the U.S. government has enacted a law that requires people who work for foreign governments to register their names with the feds. So, one is free to work for the Russian government, but if one does so, he has to put his name on an official list of the U.S. government.

That is ludicrous. Why should anyone have to register with the federal government for any reason, including working for a foreign government? Where in the Constitution does it give the federal government the power to enact such a law? How can such a registration requirement be reconciled with the principles of a free society? It can’t be. In a genuinely free society, people have the right not only to work for foreign governments but also the freedom not to register their names with the federal government. It’s probably worth mentioning that Russia also has the same type of registration requirement.

In any event, much to the Justice Department’s chagrin, the jury acquitted the defendants of failing to register as Russian agents. That could only mean one thing — that the jury concluded that they weren’t working as agents for the Russian government.

Yet, the jury then convicted them of conspiring to fail to register as federal agents, which makes the case even more ludicrous. The jury verdict essentially said that while the defendants had not served as agents of the Russian government, they had entered into an agreement to not register as agents of the Russian government. The verdict only goes to show the nonsensical nature of the law of conspiracy.

In any event, the feds were still hoping that the judge would sentence the defendants to serve several years in a federal prison on the conspiracy conviction. It didn’t happen. Pointing out that the case revolved largely around the defendants’ exercise of free speech, the judge gave the defendants probation and 300 hours of community service.

While the mild sentence was clearly a rebuke of the federal prosecutors, what the judge should have done instead is throw out the conviction entirely. To their credit, the defendants are appealing their conviction notwithstanding the judge’s light sentence. Hopefully, the Court of Appeals will throw more egg on the faces of the federal prosecutors and throw out this ludicrous Russia-paranoia-based criminal conviction.

Reprinted with permission from The Future of Freedom Foundation.

The post The Uhuru Prosecution Brings Egg on the Face of the Justice Department appeared first on LewRockwell.

The general public is completely unaware of the real stakes in the negotiations between Washington and Tehran. This article presents a situation in which lies have been piling up over three decades, making any progress particularly difficult. Contrary to popular belief, the nuclear issue in Iran is not whether Tehran will acquire an atomic bomb, but whether it will be able to help Palestine without resorting to weapons.

A month and a half ago, I announced that even before concluding peace in Ukraine, President Donald Trump would open negotiations with Iran [1]. As usual, commentators steeped in Joe Biden’s ideology showered me with sarcasm, while my colleagues, specialists in international affairs, noted my observations [2].

The difference between the two lay in their understanding of the negotiations in Ukraine. For the former, it was Donald Trump’s revenge against Volodymyr Zelensky, or a genuflection before Vladimir Putin. For the latter, it was, on the contrary, a desire for peace with Russia in order to devote US resources to its economic recovery.

It follows that the two sides approach the Iranian issue differently. For the former, it is a matter of continuing the chaos that began during the first term with the withdrawal from the nuclear agreement (JCPOA). Conversely, for the latter, it is a desire for peace with Iran, given that it is the only regional power that supports the resistance to Israel.

In early March 2024, President Donald Trump sent a letter to the leader of the Revolution, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The existence of this document was mentioned by the author himself during his speech to Congress on March 4, and then debated in the press. According to Sky News Arabia, which read this document, Donald Trump called for negotiations, while specifying: “If you reject the outstretched hand and choose the path of escalation and support for terrorist organizations, I warn you of a swift and determined response […] I am writing this letter with the aim of opening new horizons for our relations, away from the years of conflict, misunderstandings and unnecessary confrontations that we have witnessed in recent decades […] The time has come to leave hostility behind and open a new page of cooperation and mutual respect.” A historic opportunity presents itself to us today […] We will not stand idly by in the face of your regime’s threats against our people or our allies […] If you are willing to negotiate, so are we. But if you continue to ignore the world’s demands, history will testify that you missed a great opportunity.”

Simultaneously, the United States and the United Kingdom launched several attacks against Ansar Allah in Yemen. Unlike previous attacks, these did not target hidden military targets, but rather political targets scattered among the civilian population. They therefore killed leaders of the movement and many other collateral victims, which constitutes war crimes.

It should be recalled that Ansar Allah, pejoratively referred to by Westerners as the “Houthi family gang” or “the Houthis,” attacks Israeli ships in the Red Sea in order to force Tel Aviv to agree to allow humanitarian aid to pass through to Gaza.

Washington and London, believing that this was hampering international trade, and having failed to obtain approval from the Security Council, resumed the war. They initially targeted military objectives and quickly realized that these, buried deep within the country, could not be significantly affected.

Donald Trump’s letter only arrived in Tehran on March 12, and the Iranian response was slow in coming. It is important to understand that while Tehran was flattered by Washington’s secret handwritten approach, it could not accept several aspects of its behavior.

• First, the United States, faithful to Trump’s Art of the Deal technique, threatened Iran while trying to placate it. International relations are not governed by the same rules as business. Giving in to threats is a sign of weakness that the Iranians could not accept in these negotiations. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei commented on March 28: “The enmity of the United States and Israel has always existed. They threaten to attack us, which we believe is not very likely, but if they commit a misdeed, they will certainly receive a strong blow in return.” If the enemies think they can instigate sedition in the country, the Iranian nation itself will respond to them.” President Donald Trump further emphasized this on March 30, telling NBC News: “If they don’t reach an agreement, there will be bombing. It will be bombing like they’ve never seen before.”

According to the United Nations Charter (Article 2, paragraph 4), “members of the Organization shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.”
The negotiations were therefore compromised before they even began.

• Moreover, massacring the leaders of Ansar Allah was a gratuitous war crime: General Qassem Soleimani, by reorganizing the “Axis of Resistance,” had given Iran’s former proxies their complete freedom. Tehran currently has no influence, other than ideological, over Ansar Allah. Ambassador Amir Saeid Iravani therefore raised these points at the United Nations [3].
• Finally, and most importantly, Donald Trump, by accumulating contradictory signals, did not allow the Iranians to assess his relations with Israel. Does he support the project of a binational state in Palestine (the one promoted by the United Nations)? Or of a Jewish state in Palestine (“Zionism”)? Or that of a “Greater Israel” (“Revisionist Zionism”)? No one knows for sure.

Ultimately, Iran sent a secret response to the secret letter from the United States, and negotiations were able to begin, but only indirectly. That is, the two delegations did not speak directly to each other, but only through a mediator. In this way, Tehran responded to the invitation, but expressed its disapproval of the manner in which it was convened.

Intervening directly, France and the United Kingdom convened a closed-door meeting of the Security Council. Paris and London wished to address several outstanding issues. As nothing has been leaked, it is unclear whether President Emmanuel Macron and Prime Minister Keir Starmer wanted to clarify what had caused all other attempts at negotiations to fail or, on the contrary, to obscure what could have been further obscured.

The following day, March 13, Mohammad Hassan-Nejad Pirkouhi, Director General for International Peace and Security at the Iranian Foreign Ministry, summoned the ambassadors of the United States, France, and the United Kingdom. He criticized them for an “irresponsible and provocative” meeting of the Security Council, which abused UN mechanisms. He emphasized that while Iran no longer respects its commitment not to enrich uranium above 3.67%, it is still respecting its JCPoA commitments to IAEA inspectors and fulfilling its obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

It should be recalled that, generally speaking, Iran, following the United States, withdrew from the JCPoA and the secret bilateral agreements of the time, yet it still observes its JCPoA commitments [4]. In contrast, France and the United Kingdom, while claiming to respect the JCPoA, have taken no measures to address the consequences of the US withdrawal, in violation of the spirit of the text. The United Kingdom immediately responded by stating that it was prepared to reinstate UN sanctions by October 18 (the deadline for this procedure) if Iran did not curb its uranium enrichment. The UN sanctions were, in fact, suspended, not repealed.

Three rounds of indirect negotiations have already taken place. The US delegation was led by Steve Witkoff, President Donald Trump’s special envoy for the Middle East, and the Iranian delegation by Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi. The first and third meetings were held in Muscat and Oman, while the second was held at the Sultanate’s embassy in Rome, in the presence of the Director of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Rafel Grossi of Argentina. Sayyid Badr bin Hamad bin Hamood al-Busaidi, Omani Foreign Minister, acted as mediator at each opportunity, moving back and forth between the delegations.

Numerous statements were made by the US side, accumulating imprecisions and contradictions, both regarding previous rounds of negotiations and especially regarding Washington’s red lines. Each side therefore believes it understands what it wants. In Iran, too, the public debate is particularly obscure. However, we note that one current, drawing lessons from the Libyan and Korean affairs, maintains that if Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini were still alive, he would likely rescind his fatwa condemning weapons of mass destruction and, on the contrary, authorize the atomic bomb. Not because he would now find it moral from a Muslim perspective, but because it would protect Iran from the threats it faces. Indeed, Muammar Gaddafi’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, which was on the verge of acquiring such a bomb, voluntarily dismantled its facilities and received congratulations from Washington before being crushed by it. Meanwhile, Kim Jong-un’s Democratic People’s Republic of Korea still manages to resist the Pentagon because it possesses the bomb and boasts about it.

On April 22, in a lengthy interview with Time Magazine, President Donald Trump clarified his thinking. In it, he declared that he had withdrawn the United States from the JCPoA and ordered the assassination of General Qassem Soleimani in order to deprive Iran of its ability to fuel resistance against Israel; a precondition for regional peace. He had never explained this, and this helps us understand his intention during these negotiations. [5]

Meanwhile, Benjamin Netanyahu’s “revisionist Zionists” (not to be confused with simply “Zionists”), continuing three decades of lies, have increased pressure to sabotage the ongoing contacts [6]. In Washington, their chief leader, Elliott Abrams, published a memo [7] outlining what he calls “the seven deadly sins” of previous US administrations toward Iran. This document helps us understand the position of the warmongers.

According to this note, the JCPoA negotiated by the Obama administration would not have succeeded in curbing Iran’s nuclear ambitions and, by returning some blocked funds, would have given it the means to fight Israel. However, during the 5+1 talks in Lausanne and Geneva, all the actors (except the United States represented by Secretary of State John Kerry) had reached the conclusion that there had been no military nuclear program in Iran since 1988 and the fatwa of Imam Ruhollah Khomeini. This point, always contested by Israel, was just confirmed on March 24 by the Director of US Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, during her Senate hearing and in her annual report on threats against her country [8]. It is absolutely clear to Germany, China, France, the United Kingdom and Russia (and probably to many others) that the Israeli accusation is based on nothing; that it’s pure deception.

• 1) Based on this oft-repeated lie, the “revisionist Zionists” rely on the fact that Iran, in response to the United States’ withdrawal from the JCPoA and the secret agreements it signed with John Kerry, has continued its uranium enrichment to 60%, and demand that Tehran be banned from all uranium enrichment.
This demand must be clearly understood: it would prohibit Iran from any civilian program, including, for example, radiation treatments that are practiced by Western countries in all their hospitals.

This claim amounts to a desire to return Iran to underdevelopment. It corresponds to the way in which certain European states have banned their colonies from modern activities in order to maintain their domination.

2) The “revisionist Zionists” continue by demanding that the negotiations not be limited to the nuclear program, but also include the issue of missiles. For years, France and the United Kingdom have falsely claimed that Tehran’s development of ballistic and hypersonic missiles violates UN sanctions. To do so, they deliberately confuse the research and production of ballistic missiles with the nuclear warheads they could carry if Iran possessed them.

Russia and China have repeatedly intervened to remind the Security Council “that none of the existing international instruments and mechanisms, including the Missile Technology Control Regime or the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, explicitly or implicitly prohibits Iran from developing missile and space programs.” » [9]

During the Iranian bombing of Israel on October 1, 2024, it turned out that all Iranian missiles and drones missed their targets or were shot down in flight, with the exception of all hypersonic missiles, which all hit their targets. This issue, unrelated to nuclear matters, is therefore essential for Israel.

• 3) The “revisionist Zionists” also demand that monitoring be carried out on Western terms, not Iranian terms. However, for the time being, Iran is subject, with its own consent, to the strictest IAEA verification procedures ever enacted. Tehran complies scrupulously, and it is difficult to see why new ones should be imposed on it, unless one wants to create a problem where none exists.

• 4) The “revisionist Zionists” continue by asserting that the threat of US force must not be abandoned prematurely. Yet this is the only civilized way to proceed, as set out in the United Nations Charter (Article 2, paragraph 4) cited above.

Knowing that Israel lacks the means to attack Iran alone and that Tel Aviv continues to pressure Washington to draw it into a war against Tehran, it is easy to understand what this fourth point conceals.

• 5) Then, the revisionist Zionists oppose the easing of UN sanctions and unilateral coercive measures by the United States, the United Kingdom, and the European Union on the grounds that this would encourage Iran to finance terrorism. We are not talking here about the assassinations Tehran orders abroad, but about its support for Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, and the Resistance in Iraq, knowing that it no longer provides financial and military support to Ansar Allah. However, the conflicts in Palestine, Syria, and Iraq are all instances of popular resistance to Israeli military actions. They are legitimate under international law (which does not mean that all actions carried out in their name are legitimate).

This demand, therefore, aims exclusively to allow Israel to violate UN resolutions even longer, not to prevent their violation by Iran.

• 6 and 7) The “revisionist Zionists” conclude by demanding that Iran’s other “malign behaviors” not be ignored and that anti-terrorism sanctions not be eased to gain a nuclear advantage. However, Iran, like other states, does not engage in “malign behaviors” toward the United States. What we’re talking about here is Iranian support for the resistance to Zionism, which revisionist Zionists understandably fear will resume significant financial support.

This lengthy discussion has presented the substance of the negotiations between Washington and Tehran. It should be noted that Donald Trump’s team is riddled with figures convinced by the rhetoric of the revisionist Zionists. Many congressmen, both Democrats and Republicans, do not approach the Middle East through their own experience, but through the prism of their main donor, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Merav Ceren, who has just been appointed head of the Israel-Iran portfolio at the White House National Security Council, is a dual national, an officer in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) [10]. However, the head of the US delegation to Oman, Steve Witkoff, is a real estate developer working in several countries, not only in the United States, but also in Muslim states. He has already demonstrated his independence of mind by negotiating on the Ukrainian issue and listening to the arguments of both sides. There is no reason, and certainly not his Jewish faith, to suspect him of bias. Thus, he reacted positively when the Iranians reiterated their proposal to make the Middle East a nuclear-weapon-free zone like Latin America [11] ; a proposal… that includes Israel.

The fourth round of negotiations will be held on May 3. Both sides now realize that peace will depend on Donald Trump’s ability to break with the revisionist Zionists and make concrete progress on the fate of the Palestinians.

—

[1] “After Ukraine, Iran?”, by Thierry Meyssan, Translation Roger Lagassé, Voltaire Network, 20 March 2025.

[2] « La paix de Trump en Ukraine face à la “paix mondiale” de Poutine (avec la Chine), de Gaza à l’Iran », par Alfredo Jalife-Rahme , Traduction Maria Poumier, La Jornada (Mexique), Réseau Voltaire, 21 mars 2025.

[3] “Iran denounces US threats to peace”, by Amir Saeid Iravani , Voltaire Network, 31 March 2025.

[4] “Iran denies non-compliance with JCPoA and Resolution 2231”, by Amir Saeid Iravani , Voltaire Network, 9 December 2024.

[5] «Full Transcript of Donald Trump’s ‘100 Days’ Interview With Time», Eric Cortellessa and Sam Jacobs, Time Magazine, April 25, 2025.

[6] “Who’s afraid of Iran’s civilian nuclear programme?”, by Thierry Meyssan, Voltaire Network, 27 July 2010.

[7] «Avoiding the seven deadly sins of a bad iranian nuclear deal», March 24, 2025.

[8] «Annual Threat Assessment of the US Intelligence Community», Office of the Director of National Intelligence | March 2025.

[9] For instance : “Russia denounces Western accusations against Iran”, by Vasily Nebenzya , Voltaire Network, 8 June 2022.

[10] «Trump’s NSC Director for Israel and Iran Previously Worked for Israeli Ministry of Defense», Ryan Grim & Saagar Enjeti, Drop Site, April 21, 2025.

[11] “Negotiations between Iran and the United States are progressing in Oman; a nuclear Tlatelolco Treaty for the Middle East?”, by Alfredo Jalife-Rahme , La Jornada (Mexico) , Voltaire Network, 22 April 2025.

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