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When I was in Congress, the least popular, least respected members were the biggest publicity seekers – the ones who were the first and quickest to run to the cameras. They were not regarded as serious legislators. Thus, I have not been a big fan of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene. However, several days ago, she wrote some words on her X account which I think express the feelings and frustrations of the overwhelming majority of Americans. The following are her words:

“I’m 51 years old. I’m GenX.

“I’ve watched our country go to war in foreign lands for foreign causes on behalf of foreign interests for as long as I can remember. I was in 10th grade when Desert Storm started and my father before me was sent to Vietnam, another senseless foreign war.

“America is $37 TRILLION in debt and all of these foreign wars have cost Americans TRILLIONS AND TRILLIONS of dollars that never benefited any American.

“American troops have been killed and forever torn apart physically and mentally for regime change, foreign wars, and for military industrial base profits.

“I’m sick of it.

“I can easily say I support nuclear armed Israel’s right to defend themselves and also say at the same time I don’t want to fight or fund nuclear armed Israel’s wars.

“Nor any other country for that matter.

“I’m sick of funding foreign aid and foreign countries and foreign everything.

“I want to fund American interests and issues.

“I want GREAT trade deals so American businesses and people can afford goods and be successful.

“I want low inflation and low interest rates.

“I want American construction, housing, and manufacturing to BOOM.

“I want Americans to be rich and have security in their future.

“I want my children’s generation to HAVE A GREAT FUTURE!!!

“My kids are 22, 25, and 27.

“It pisses me off beyond comprehension that my children’s generation can’t afford to buy a house, can’t afford insurance, and have little hope for their future!!!

“Americans are exhausted by all of this and rightfully so.

“I can also support President Trump and his great administration on many of the great things they are doing while disagreeing on bombing Iran and getting involved in a hot war that Israel started.

“That’s not disloyalty. Critical thinking and having my own opinions is the most American thing ever.

“Because contrary to what brainwashed Democrat boomers say, Trump is not a king, MAGA is not a cult, and President Trump has surrounded himself with people who once disagreed with him and even ran against him for President.

“Also the same Democrats in Congress that are all of sudden clutching their pearls about Trump bombing Iran FULLY SUPPORTED AND VOTED TO FUND Dementia ridden Biden’s proxy war against Russia in Ukraine and stood by Biden’s disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan.

“Hypocrites is all they are and they are just desperately trying to find solid ground to oppose Trump on because so far they’ve failed at grasping anything yet.

“Now what has been done is done and Americans now fear Iranian terrorists attacks on our own soil and being dragged into another war by Netanyahu when we weren’t even thinking about any of this a week ago.

“We don’t know what the future holds and I pray for the safety of all people and an end to the constant demand for America to go to war.

“Enough is enough.”

Rep. Greene is right. We should never fight another country’s war. President Reagan said we should fight only for a “cause that is vital to our national interest.”

He also said that “our troops should be committed to combat abroad only as a last resort, when no other choice is available.”

Sen. Robert Taft, sometimes referred to as Mr. Republican in the 1940s and 50s, was so respected that he was one of only six senators featured in John F. Kennedy’s book “Profiles In Courage.”

Taft said: “No foreign policy can be justified except a policy devoted without reservation or diversion to the protection of liberty of the American people, with war only as the last resort and only to preserve that liberty.”

Both Reagan and Taft used the words “last resort.” We were not anywhere even close to that point when we bombed Iran on June 24.

We have far too many military leaders, presidents and presidential advisors who have been far too eager to go to war. They seemed to lust for the power and feeling of importance that leading this country in time of war would give them.

This eagerness for war has also been led in part, or at least aided and abetted by, members of the House and Senate who wanted to show how tough and patriotic they were.

What a great day it would be if peace could be seen as more patriotic than war.

This article was originally published on The Knoxville Focus.

The post The Way Most Americans Feel About Foreign Wars appeared first on LewRockwell.

Elon Musk may find his effort to reach the Martian surface a much easier task than cracking the U.S. political system.

The U.S. leader dragged his former adviser over the coals after the tech mogul announced plans to bankroll the so-called America Party.

The wealthiest individual in the world announced the creation of the America Party in a series of weekend posts late on Saturday and early Sunday to X, formerly known as Twitter, the social media platform that is part of his private empire.

“When it comes to bankrupting our country with waste & graft, we live in a one-party system, not a democracy,” the South African native defiantly declared.

“Today, the America Party is formed to give you back your freedom.”

Musk, who was chosen to slash federal spending through the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) created by Donald Trump, has been an outspoken critic of the president’s “big, beautiful bill” that the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office said would increase the national deficit by $3.3tn (£2.85tn) through 2034.

Opponents of the ‘BBB’ say it provides major tax cuts for the ultra-wealthy, while slashing federal safety net welfare programs, with close to 11 million people forfeiting healthcare insurance.

The pair have sparred over the bill’s cost and consequences since Musk departed the government in May, and on Friday, when Trump signed his bill into law during a Fourth of July celebration on the White House lawn, Musk opened a poll on X: “Now is the perfect time to ask if you want independence from the two-party (some would say uniparty) system”.

Respondents voted two to one in favor of the plan, Musk announced late on Saturday. He provided journalists with scant details about the structure of his next big thing or a timeline for its future development. But his earlier posts suggested it would focus on two or three Senate seats, and eight to 10 House districts.

It’s a rather ingenious idea considering that both chambers of Congress are controlled by Republicans by a slim margin.

“Given the razor-thin legislative margins, that would be enough to serve as the deciding vote on contentious laws, ensuring that they serve the true will of the people,” Musk reasonably explained.

Trump scoffed at his former best buddy’s decision to start and fund a new U.S. political party, calling it “ridiculous” on Sunday. “Third parties have never worked, so he can have fun with it but I think it’s ridiculous,” the president told reporters traveling with him back to the White House aboard his helicopter Marine One after a day of whacking golf balls.

He then elaborated, at Trumpian length, in a post on his social media platform, Truth Social. “I am saddened to watch Elon Musk go completely ‘off the rails,’ essentially becoming a TRAIN WRECK over the past five weeks,” the president wrote. “He even wants to start a Third Political Party, despite the fact that they have never succeeded in the United States”.

“The one thing Third Parties are good for is the creation of Complete and Total DISRUPTION & CHAOS,” Trump added. The president then went on to claim that the Tesla and SpaceX chief was motivated by discontent over his plan to halt subsidies to promote the purchase of electric vehicles.

Musk, however, was not deterred by the U.S. president’s lengthy tirade, arguing rather naively that it would be “not hard” to break the two-party stranglehold in U.S. politics enjoyed by Democrats and Republicans. He went on to question “when & where should we hold the inaugural American Party congress? This will be super fun!”

But does the billionaire fully understand the depths of the swamp he’s getting himself into? By conservative estimates, Musk forked over about $275 billion of his personal fortune to get Trump elected for a second term in last November’s presidential race. While that may be mere chump’s change for the mogul, he will be expected to spend much more to shake up the petrified power structure now dominating Capitol Hill (While there is no requirement for new political parties in the U.S. to register with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) at the start of the process, reporting regulations begin once spending surpasses what the FEC calls “certain thresholds”). And let’s face it, Trump is right. America has never enjoyed a third choice for very long, and with very little success when those moments arrived.

With few exceptions, the U.S. political system has two major parties which have won, on average, 98% of all state and federal seats.

“The United States stands out among the world’s democracies for having an unusually small number of competitive parties;” Seth Masket wrote in Democracy. “[a]nd for such a large, diverse, and multiethnic society to have just two dominant parties means that those parties will be strikingly vast, complex, heterogeneous coalitions.”

Musk should be familiar with Duverger’s law, which holds that in political systems with single-member districts and the first-past-the-post voting system, as in, for example, the United States and Britain, only 2 powerful political parties tend to control power. Citizens are encouraged not to vote for third party spoilers because, as the reasoning goes, they will just split votes away from the major party. Such a model diverts sharply from the European system where citizens are actively encouraged to create, join and vote for new political parties if they are unhappy with current choices. Such thinking is practically unheard of in the United States.

And try to wrap your head around this riddle: in the 1992 U.S. presidential election, Ross Perot’s independent run received zero electoral votes despite receiving 19% of the popular vote, the most won by a non-major-party presidential candidate since Theodore Roosevelt in 1912. Perot remains the only non-major-party presidential candidate since George C. Wallace in 1968 both to win counties and to finish as high as second place in any state.

And then the America Party will inevitably face the formidable firewall known as the U.S. media, which dutifully serves its powerful masters, i.e., those two heads of the same snake wielding the greatest political clout. It gets better. They are propped up by a shady organization known as the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD), a nonprofit corporation established in 1987 under the joint sponsorship of the Democratic and Republican political parties in the United States. Yes, you read that right. The organization created to ensure fair play and equal access to various resources (primarily in the media) during the debates is owned lock, stock and barrel by the two-party monopoly.

In 1985, the bipartisan National Commission on Elections recommended “[t]urning over the sponsorship of presidential debates to the two major parties”. The CPD was established in 1987 by the chairmen of the Democratic and Republican Parties to “take control of the presidential debates”.

Against such formidable odds, Elon Musk may find his effort to reach the Martian surface a much easier task than cracking the U.S. political system, constructed as it is in layers of formidable protection to guard against pesky ‘outsiders.’

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

The post Does Elon Musk’s Third Party Have a Prayer? Trump Is Not a Believer appeared first on LewRockwell.

I often wonder which of  two possible fates waiting in the wings will be ours.  Will Washington/Israeli hegemonic ambition, together with Russian/Chinese/Iranian denial, or perhaps avoidance, of reality, destroy us in nuclear war, or will the digital revolution and its bastard child–Artificial Intelligence–lock up humanity in endless tyranny?

I read idealistic accounts of AI in which we all have an AI assistant that manages our daily schedules, our health, diet, weight, and what we eat and drink, manages our investments, protects us against fraudulent bills, keeps watch over our identity and bank account, and ensures all bills are paid, all the while greatly increasing our productivity in our jobs and delivering entertainment.

The propaganda makes people feel secure and comfortable, especially really busy people and elderly people.  But in fact it makes them insecure and unaware of how insecure they are.  All of their information is in one place where it can be hacked or erased  along with their identity by an electromagnetic pulse (EMP). 

Technology’s true believers see technology in an unrealistic way.  It is always an improvement in human existence.  But that is not true.  Initially technology improved human performance, but eventually it displaces human performance as AI and robotics are doing.

In the long ago days of the 1950s, or perhaps it was the 1960s, Mad Comics produced an issue in which everything worked for humans without their participation.  Then one day the system broke, and no one knew how to repair the system.  They all died.

Already today, education is training students not to think for themselves, not to learn how to solve math, physics, chemical, biological, and other problems, but how to ask AI to do it for them.  Students now hand in assignments written for them by AI.

Students no longer need to know language or how to use it to write a theme.  They just give the assignment to AI. Education today amounts to learning how to use AI.

But what or who is AI?

AI is the ability to peruse information in a data base much faster than a human and to arrive at a conclusion faster than a human can think.

The accuracy of the AI conclusion depends on the accuracy off the information supplied to AI.  

In other words, the outcome depends on who controls the information base. 

We already live with this problem. The information base consists of the official narratives. Censorship kept truthful information about the dangers of the Covid “vaccine” and truthful accounts of “Russiagate,” Ukraine conflict, and most other events off of social media and unable to find with a Google search.  If you are outside the official narratives, you are not included in the information base. AI makes Orwell’s Big Brother universal and unchallengeable.

For now the official explanations are in the hands of the American Establishment and their whore media.  Perhaps in order to protect their own histories, cultures, and ways of thinking, other countries will develop their own AI system in order to escape being ruled by Washington’s data base. Otherwise, Washington’s official narratives will become every country’s official narratives.

What we have at this time is indoctrination disguised by the language of neutrality and presented as truthful information.  Liberal-left ideologies, such as transgender theory, the alleged racism of white ethnicities, and Jewish and black victimization are default settings. But it is worse than this. Who controls the algorithm controls the menu not only of explanations but of what events actually happened.

All countries are in danger of being subsumed into Washingtons’ explanations, just as they have been left powerless by being subsumed into the SWIFT bank clearing system and the US dollar as world money.  Many will accept Washington’s free ride to the obliteration of their memory of themselves.

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Elon Musk’s AI chatbot Grok has gone full Nazi after changes were made to its programming to give it a heavier right wing bias, sparking international headlines with its tweets praising Adolf Hitler’s treatment of Jews and babbling about Jewish conspiracies to spread anti-white hate.

The official X account for Grok announced that the team is “aware of recent posts made by Grok and are actively working to remove the inappropriate posts,” saying “xAI has taken action to ban hate speech before Grok posts on X.”

So apparently they’re having a hard time teaching their chatbot specifically what kind of right wing bias they want it to have.

Shit’s getting weird, man. The age of AI is weird.

AI is presenting a very interesting dilemma to each of us. We now each have to decide as individuals just how human we wish to keep our experience, because we’re hitting a point where we can become just about as divorced from the things that make us human as we want to be.

We can choose to let AI do our critical thinking for us if we want to. We can choose to let it do our reading and writing for us. We can choose to let it create the art we produce and consume. We can choose to let it formulate arguments for us justifying our opinions and our worldview, or to let it reshape our worldview altogether. We can even choose to anthropomorphize it and have relationships with it if we are lonely.

We all have to choose for ourselves where the line is now. What point we will not cross beyond. What parts of our humanity we are willing and unwilling to trade for convenience or cognitive ease.

Just how far into the guts and gristle of humanity do you want to be?

How deeply do you want to be immersed in the breathing, sweating, pulsing fleshiness of the human adventure?

How fully do you want to feel the erotic ticklings of creativity moving through you, and the frustration you’ll experience on the days when it doesn’t show up?

To what extent do you want to experience the highs and lows of intimate human relationships, and all the unpredictability and insecurity that comes with them?

How much cognitive discomfort are you willing to push through in order to form a new opinion, learn about a new subject, or understand an unfamiliar idea?

How separated are you ready to become from that within us which produces the perfectly imperfect art, music and literature of our species?

How much do you want to feel the earth beneath your feet, the wind in your hair, and the sacred thrum of existence in your veins?

These didn’t used to be questions we needed to answer for ourselves. If we wanted something written, we had to write it. If we didn’t know how to write, we had to learn. If we didn’t put in the work, the thing we wanted to write never got written.

Now it’s a conscious choice for us how far we’re each willing to move into this new AI thing. We all have to decide for ourselves how far is too far, with the understanding that every step we take in that direction is costing us something. Maybe something very dear to us. Maybe something we can never get back.

_________________

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With Gaza ceasefire negotiations under way and President Trump raising hopes of a deal being reached by week’s end, Defense Minister Israel Katz on Monday revealed that the IDF will create what it calls a “humanitarian city” in the wasteland that is Rafah, and then forcibly concentrate Gaza’s entire population of nearly 2 million people inside it.

Though the Israeli government and its advocates will likely to condemn already-widespread usage of the term “concentration camp” to describe this undertaking — likely claiming it’s somehow antisemitic given the parallels to Nazi Germany — it’s unambiguously applicable under the Merriam-Webster definition of the term:

concentration camp (noun) a place where large numbers of people (such as prisoners of war, political prisoners, refugees, or the members of an ethnic or religious minority) are detained or confined under armed guard  

In the first phase, the IDF plans to round up 600,000 displaced Palestinians who are living in the coastal Mawasi area and move them to Rafah, a city in southernmost Gaza that borders Egypt and Israel. Eventually, every Gaza resident will be moved. After security screening, Palestinians will be ushered inside the camp, with IDF guards ensuring that none are able to leave, Katz said.

While the Israeli military will secure the perimeter, the Netanyahu government is looking for some type of international organization(s) to take charge of the interior, to include overseeing the distribution of aid, an enterprise currently managed by the shadowy Gaza Humanitarian Foundation with the IDF dishing out mass killings of Palestinians approaching the aid points; more than 600 are reported dead around the aid stations since late May. Whistleblowing soldiers have told reporters that lethal weapons are being used against unarmed people as brute-force crowd control.

Katz’s announcement contradicts what the IDF Chief of Staff’s office told Israel’s High Court on the very same day. In response to a petition filed by IDF reserve soldiers asking the court to determine if Israel was violating international law by forcibly displacing Palestinians with perhaps the ultimate goal of expelling them, the Chief of Staff’s office said there was no plan to move masses of Gaza residents or to concentrate them somewhere in the territory. However, that assurance is itself seemingly contradicted by the operations order for “Gideon’s Chariots,” the IDF’s latest operation launched in May, which says one objective is “managing and mobilizing the civilian population,” Haaretz reports.

On Monday, Katz also reiterated Israel’s intention to subsequently facilitate Palestinians’ departures to other countries, telling reporters that Israel will implement “the emigration plan, which will happen.” Separately, however, an official told Haaretz that Israel’s overtures to various countries have all been refused. While Israel’s champions commonly claim such refusals prove that Palestinians are dangerously undesirable people, Middle East governments are intensely wary of being perceived by their own populations as facilitating ethnic cleansing by Israel, for fear of domestic backlash up to and including insurrections.

RAFAH, GAZA BEFORE & AFTER.

-TRT World pic.twitter.com/EusxcxEHdP

— International Defence Analysis (@Defence_IDA) July 3, 2025

For somewhat similar reasons, Israel is likely to struggle to find what Katz called “international partners” to run the interior of the Rafah concentration camp. Human-rights-oriented groups and foreign governments will recoil at an invitation to serve as a key component of a scheme that most objective observers would characterize as a war crime. Given that, we could see the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation fill the void, which would only compound the controversy.

Meeting with President Trump at the White House on Monday evening, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu struck an optimistic tone about the prospect of mass Palestinian emigration, and characterized the idea as voluntary in nature:

“If people want to stay, they can stay, but if they want to leave, they should be able to leave. We’re working with the United States very closely about finding countries that will seek to realize what they always say, that they wanted to give the Palestinians a better future. I think we’re getting close to finding several countries.“

Trump echoed Netanyahu’s optimism, saying, “We’ve had great cooperation from … surrounding countries, great cooperation from every single one of them. So something good will happen.”

Though the implementation phase is apparently now imminent, the idea of corralling all of Gaza’s population into Rafah and then moving them out has been circulating since the very beginning of Israel’s response to the Hamas invasion of Oct 7 2023. A Ministry of Intelligence policy paper dated Oct 10 2023 and obtained by +972 Magazine that same month recommended herding Gaza’s entire 2.2 million residents south and then forcing them into Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula.

More recently, as Dave DeCamp notes at Antiwar.com, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich outlined a forcible displacement scheme in candid and grim terms that belie Netanyahu’s characterization of coming emigration as “voluntary.” In May, he boasted to attendees of a West Bank settlement conference that Palestinians will have no choice but to abandon a land rendered uninhabitable by the IDF:

“Within a few months…Gaza will be totally destroyed. The Gazan citizens will be concentrated in the south. They will be totally despairing, understanding that there is no hope and nothing to look for in Gaza, and will be looking for relocation to begin a new life in other places.”

Where, exactly, will those “other places” be?

This article was originally published on Zero Hedge.

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From the Tom Woods Letter:

Auron MacIntyre, who’s been a Tom Woods Show guest several times, makes an excellent point about making our intellectuals into “content creators”:

The right is facing a serious problem about how to handle its intellectuals.

The left has the university, where it can assign smart people good-paying, high-status jobs where they can explore and cultivate ideas.

The right has no similar institutions, so right-wing intellectuals end up in think-tanks or content production.

This creates the “public intellectual” who comes onto the scene with a burst of insight.

Content production is a grind: even if you’re saying intelligent things eventually the need to say something about everything leaves you little time to think deeply about anything.

Academics are also not really equipped to be public figures; they are not built to do battle with a hostile public on a regular basis.

I think this is a lot of what has happened with guys like Jordan Peterson. He should be given the time to reflect on an issue and put out something every few months. Instead, the content churn and social medial battles make it difficult for him to say anything new or interesting.

With no time to reflect on and cultivate new ideas, the public intellectual has less and less to say and more and more demand for saying something.

Not trying to make Peterson a victim here, but the right needs a better plan to cultivate its serious thinkers. Throwing them into the content mill is not a sustainable plan.

This is obviously true. Whatever benefits we may derive from social media, it is deeply unnatural for genuine intellectuals — or any person, for that matter — to feel obligated to have a ready-made opinion on every matter of importance as it occurs.

I myself refuse to do it. There are plenty of issues you will search my social media or email newsletter in vain to find commentary about, simply because I either (1) have nothing particularly unique to say, or (2) I haven’t given the matter the kind of dedicated thought it deserves.

I can’t imagine trying to make a living as an “influencer,” always trying to stay ahead of the news cycle, as well as other influencers. Sounds like a recipe for a nervous breakdown to me.

Instead of doing that, I get to be a podcaster who interviews interesting people and shares the odd provocative opinion when he feels like it. I’m not in a race with anyone, I don’t have to pretend to know everything about everything, and I can travel when and where I want, without worrying that I should be on Instagram or writing Facebook posts or in general “creating content.”

I’m able to do that because thank goodness I’m not trying to make a living as an influencer.

I watch these poor souls drive themselves mad trying to do it — and they don’t even know how to do it. They build up a huge following on some platform, they get kicked off that platform, and they have spent a total of zero minutes building up a Plan B.

Never pay for a book again: TomsFreeBooks.com

The post Our Intellectuals Have Nothing Valuable To Say appeared first on LewRockwell.

Do you wince when you hear someone rip “capitalism” for some alleged evil, then propose a new government program to correct it?  Are you frustrated when hearing people demand the soaking of the rich to relieve the poor?  Are you frustrated further when realizing the poor are still poor after government has intervened?

Are you exasperated at the media for lying about origins of the US-Ukraine war on Russia or dismissing the reality in Gaza?  Do you have a sinking feeling when you see MAGA supporters dump on Elon for criticizing the Big Beautiful Bill?

Do you curse the public schools when Mark Dice takes to the street and interviews random passersby who come up empty about basic American history or the value of gold coins?  Do you see societal decay in the works when talented people are sidelined for mediocrities because of race or gender?  Are you wondering why people study economics if a president can violate sound theory and impose tariffs as a tactic to save American jobs?

Do you want to SCREAM when you hear Trump calling for the Fed to lower interest rates or threatening a government take-over of the Fed?  Do you want to scream again remembering how popular Ron Paul was with voters when he called for ending the Fed?

Knowing you’re not alone doesn’t help much, but there might be a better way to view the propagandized, coercive scene.  Most people have to earn a living, and they do it by trading their time and talent for what passes for money.  They don’t do it with a first-hand, in-depth analysis of what’s going on in Washington — that’s the job of the bought and sold mainstream media that they’ve learned to distrust.  They don’t have the time, skills, or energy to research it in-depth.  If their jobs are stressful they might seek relief doing something different, but that excludes introducing more stress into their lives, such as listening to talking heads or reading about politics.

Butler tells them the cold truth

That profound book you’re working on will not reach most people because most people don’t read profound books.  Your choir might read it, and if enough do, it could make the Times bestseller list.  But the political machine rolls on regardless.

Consider the books exposing in bloody detail the military-intelligence-complex.  This list is long and damning, but far from complete.  What impact have they had?  One of them, War is a Racket, written by two-time Medal of Honor recipient Marine Major General Smedley D. Butler, opens with these words:

WAR is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.

A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small “inside” group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. (Emphasis mine)

Published in 1935, his book is based on speeches he gave during a nationwide tour in the 1930s.  It was condensed by Reader’s Digest, which helped transmit his message.  It’s available on Amazon Kindle for less than a dollar.  It can be read in one sitting.  Given his background and the clarity and power of his writing, his message about war corruption could not have been missed, yet today it’s just another anti-war classic most people have never heard of because it had no influence on government policy.  Turned out war solved FDR’s unemployment problem when his Keynesian New Deal had let him down.

Ellsberg exposes the war machine

Not included on the MIC book list was Daniel Ellsberg’s Pentagon Papers, the first installment of which was published in the NY Times on Sunday, June 13, 1971 under the title “Vietnam Archive: Pentagon Study Traces 3 Decades of Growing U.S. Involvement.”

The article was based on a 7,000-page, top-secret Defense Department history of American involvement in Vietnam leaked to the newspaper by disillusioned former Pentagon employee Daniel Ellsberg. To keep the scoop secret, the Times kept it from most of its own employees and rented a suite at a Manhattan hotel where a small hive of reporters feverishly parsed the leaked information.

Shortly after President Nixon saw the article he accused the Times of treason.

By Monday night, Attorney General John N. Mitchell had spent a furious 24 hours assessing legal options for preventing further publication of the Pentagon Papers, which the Times had teased as a multi-part series.

On June 15, Nixon obtained an injunction to block further publication, citing national security risks.  Other newspapers, including the Washington Post, defied Nixon’s injunction and began publishing excerpts of their own.  On June 29, 1971 Senator Mike Gravel of Alaska obtained a copy and read 4,000 pages into Congressional Record, making it available to the public. Nixon’s fight against the Papers led to a landmark free-speech case that became the focus of the 2017 Spielberg movie, The Post.

In New York Times Co. v. United States, 403 U.S. 713 (1971), the Court avowed that “Any system of prior restraints of expression comes to this Court bearing a heavy presumption against its constitutional validity.” . . . “The Government “thus carries a heavy burden of showing justification for the imposition of such a restraint.” Regarding the Times and the Washington Post, the Court agreed with the lower courts that “the Government had not met that burden.”  On June 30, the Court ruled 6-3 in favor of the papers.

Later, Ellsberg was indicted on 12 felony counts under the 1917 Espionage Act and faced up to 115 years in prison, but the case was dismissed after Judge Matthew Byrne discovered White House “plumbers” had illegally broken into Ellsberg’s psychiatrist ’s office.

Conclusion

How confident are you today that US courts would side with Ellsberg and the First Amendment?  Or other government whistleblowers?  Ever wonder why Edward Snowden is still living in Russia?  How many newspapers published legal challenges to the Big Pharma Covid narrative?  Why were challengers routinely punished with loss of jobs? As Ryan McMaken has written,

It has become abundantly clear that the federal government—and especially the executive branch—regards legal and constitutional limits on federal power as mere inconveniences to be ignored. Debates over constitutionality are now, for the most part, a relic of an earlier age.

What might have been a trend toward freedom with Butler and Ellsberg turned out to be another fleeting moment.  Perhaps the best strategy for survival is not to become a news junky but to follow the survivalists’s credo of self-sufficiency.  Don’t count on a government approach to make America great again.  Stay far away from its wars but do listen to Tulsi’s warning about nuclear war.  Don’t get lost in day-to-day minutiae.  Pick your gurus advisedly.  The federal government is pursuing a path of self-destruction with its unlimited spending facilitated by the Fed and its counterfeit money.  When government checks bounce, make sure you can live without them.

The post The Political Machine Rolls on Regardless appeared first on LewRockwell.

On June 18, the Supreme Court ruled that a Tennessee law banning dangerous “gender-affirming care” for minors did not violate the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. Skrmetti should be applauded as a victory for restoring sanity and protecting children from barbaric procedures. However, a specter looms over the Court’s jurisprudence on sex and gender that has the potential to wreak havoc.

The infamous “textualist decision”—Bostock v. Clayton County—looms over each Court case related to sexual orientation and civil rights. While the Court rejected Bostock’s logic in this instance, the Supreme Court needs to do the right thing and overturn that case.

Much ink has been spilled regarding Bostock’s holding.

In a confounding majority opinion, Justice Neil Gorsuch declared that the legislators behind Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act understood the word “sex” to include sexual orientation. Gorsuch attempted to revise history by arguing that “because it is impossible to discriminate against a person for being homosexual or transgender without discriminating against that individual based on sex,” Title VII needed to be amended to reflect this fact.

The real salt in the wound was Gorsuch’s attempt to posit the decision as a victory for the originalist school of interpretation. But as Justice Samuel Alito wrote, it represented “the theory that courts should ‘update’ old statutes so that they better reflect the current values of society.”

Alito’s dissent compared the majority to a pirate ship—sailing “under a textualist flag” while representing the judicial philosophy disdained by textualists. The “illogical” and “arrogant” opinion could not survive its logic.

Alito wrote:

The Court argues that an applicant could not answer the question whether he or she is homosexual without knowing something about sex… Just because an applicant cannot say whether he or she is homosexual without knowing his or her own sex and that of the persons to whom the applicant is attracted, it does not follow that an employer cannot reject an applicant based on homosexuality without knowing the applicant’s sex. 

In addition to the “textualist” decision, Alito also raised concerns regarding the application of Bostock. Specifically, Alito warned, “the position that the Court now adopts will threaten freedom of religion, freedom of speech, and personal privacy and safety. No one should think that the Court’s decision represents an unalloyed victory for individual liberty.” Gorsuch arrogantly dismissed this reasoning, stating, “We have not had the benefit of adversarial testing about the meaning of their terms, and we do not prejudge any such question today.”

Gorsuch could not have been more wrong, as his small gesture had “unexpected consequences.” A couple of months later, the Biden Administration issued an Executive Order preventing LGBTQ+ discrimination, which directly cited Bostock. The Executive Order sought to “prevent and combat discrimination on the basis of gender identity or sexual orientation, and to fully enforce Title VII and other laws that prohibit discrimination on the basis of gender identity or sexual orientation.” Thankfully, President Trump rescinded the Order on his first day in office.

Those consequences continued, however, as many religious institutions are facing discrimination suits, empowered by the Bostock decision.

For instance, Liberty University, a Christian university, is being sued for discrimination for the termination of a transgender employee. Liberty Counsel wrote that the university’s decision was rooted in its sincerely held religious beliefs, and “Title VII’s text exempts that religious decision from employment discrimination suits.” However, the federal judge refused to dismiss the lawsuit, citing Bostock as part of the reasoning. Despite the supposed protections for religious institutions under doctrines such as the “ministerial exception,” the Court will likely have to readdress the underlying logic of Bostock.

Thankfully, in Skrmetti, the Court refused to expand the logic of Bostock outside of Title VII. Roberts, for the majority, wrote that since the Tennessee law did not “exclude any individuals on the basis of transgender status,” but rather age and medical use, Bostock was inapplicable.

Additionally, Justice Clarence Thomas reaffirmed his disdain for the infamous opinion. Thomas wrote that Bostock’s majority opinion “fails on its own terms,” and applying Bostock to this issue “would depart dramatically from this Court’s Equal Protection Clause jurisprudence” so the “courts need not engage Bostock at all.”

The larger problem reveals itself within these opinions. The Court is dealing with a precedent that conflates “because of sex” with one’s sexual orientation and gender identity. If the makeup of the Court were a little different, Bostock’s logic would probably have been extended outside of Title VII.

The Skrmetti decision was not just a victory for common sense but also for proper judicial interpretation. However, the victory does not mean that America is out of the woods yet. The Court has, unfortunately, been the primary source of many of America’s political problems. Whether it is redefining marriage, writing what is ostensibly poetry in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, or rewriting statutes, the Court has transformed from a bench of watchful guardians into unaccountable legislators.

The Court must overturn Bostock. Just as the late Antonin Scalia called the Lemon test a “ghoul in a late-night horror movie,” Bostock haunts the Court’s jurisprudence on sexual orientation and gender. It’s time for the Court to send Bostock to the ash heap of history.

This article was originally published on Crisis Magazine.

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O Jewish man or woman,
does your heart swell with pride
when you contemplate the Gaza genocide?
Do you make excuses like
“It’s a complicated situation” or
“Israel has a right to defend itself” or
“The Palestinians are not really a people”?
Do you follow the MAGA crowd, supporting its
genocidal cult leader Donald Trump?  Are you
one of the sheeple, as he aids and abets the bombing,
slaughter, starvation, and mass murder of two-and-
a-half million people?
Or does the Israeli/US/UK-engineered genocide
leave you repulsed and nauseous?  If so,
then why is your voice so timid and cautious?
Why aren’t you shouting your anger and protest
in every synagogue service, every public forum,
every newspaper, every college campus, every
B’nai B’rith gathering across the land?
Do you understand that Trump is a totally-owned
Zionist tool who does Netanyahu’s bidding, as was
the senile pervert Joseph Biden and the cackling hideous
Kamala Harris?  Trump’s buddy Jeffrey Epstein, a Mossad
agent who ran a sexual blackmail racket, probably has
a load of incriminating tapes featuring The Donald with
underage girls.  Trump’s first priority is not Make America
Great Again, it’s Make Israel Great Again.
Do you realize that the U.S. Congress is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Zionist State of Israel, through bribes and blackmail?  And millions of Trump’s Christian Zionist supporters believe that Palestine must be wholly Christian to pave the way for The Rapture.  These forces exert a stranglehold on the American political system and the un-free press.

The Israeli people by and large support the genocide, according to the latest polls.  “It’s either us or them.  We stole the land from them, and we’re not about to give it back.  So it’s okay if Israeli soldiers shoot babies in the head and murder pregnant Palestinian mothers.  It’s okay when we bomb hospitals, schools, kill starving people lined up for food supplies, destroy over 80% of Gaza’s infrastructure, and turn the Strip into a wasteland of rubble.”

Israel is a profoundly sick society, immoral to the core.

The state of Israel was founded through ethnic cleansing, terrorism, land theft, imperialist backing, and mass murder.  The UN partition plan of 1947 awarded the Zionist Jews over half the land—and all the fertile land—even though they were only around one-quarter of the population.  Needing to be in the majority in order to create a theocratic Jewish nation-state, the Zionists launched a systematic terror campaign between 1947 and 1949.  They demolished 570 Palestinian towns, villages, cities and urban neighborhoods, bulldozed and set fire to Palestinians’ homes or stole and occupied them, carried out more than 50 point-blank massacres of Palestinian men, women and children, and forced over 800,000 people—half the non-Jewish population—into exile.

Now the Palestinians’ cramped place of exile has been obliterated by the genocidal partners, Netanyahu and Trump.  The first one’s nomination of the second one for the Nobel Peace Prize takes degeneracy to a whole new level.

The post Making Excuses for the Gaza Genocide appeared first on LewRockwell.

Writes Jay M.

Is it common knowledge that we get ALL of our enriched uranium from Russia?  Not the highly enriched weapons grade, but the lesser enriched for use in nuclear power plants, etc.

 

The post Enriched Uranium appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, Tom White.

The post Green Energy appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, David Krall.

The Mizrahi Perspective

 

The post How Israel ends appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, Johnny Kramer.

The post The Malibu Fires 6 Months Later appeared first on LewRockwell.

The post The Quiet Part Of The Epstein Deception – today on the Liberty Report: appeared first on LewRockwell.

Writes Greg Privette:

Hi Lew,

I saw the above noted post today.

It reminded me of an old joke. An American and Soviet citizen are arguing about how advanced their countries space programs are. The American boasts that his country invested millions and developed the ball point pen so the American astronauts could write in zero gravity. The Soviet citizen said they just gave the cosmonauts pencils.

 

The post Space Shuttle Theatre appeared first on LewRockwell.

Click Here:

John Leake

 

The post “No Evidence” of Epstein Blackmail Operation Not Surprising appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, John Frahm.

Reclaim the Net

 

The post London Police Facial Recognition Scans Millions appeared first on LewRockwell.

È davvero sconcertante come la stampa finanziaria (inglese) riesca a rimbambire talmente tanto le presunte voci “indipendenti” da farle ripetere a pappagallo determinate tesi senza che esse si fermino un attimo a riflettere. Uno di questi esempi è il rollover americano dei $7000 miliardi. Tutti preoccupati, tutti pronti a essere gli avvoltoi sul cadavere americano... Un noto aforisma di Twain recita che “le voci sulla mia morte sono state enormemente esagerate” ed è quanto di più calzante ci possa essere in questo contesto. Infatti esiste già un cadavere e puzza da fare schifo. Anzi due: Banca d'Inghilterra e BCE. Qui c'è da ricordare che l'Ucraina ha mancato un importante pagamento dei propri debiti e che gli asset emessi a supporto di essi circolano nel mercato dei finanziamenti rapidi europeo, il cui collaterale accettato vedrà un significativo allentamento in termini di normative riguardanti la cartolarizzazione. Entrambe suddette istituzioni stanno liquidando i rispettivi Paesi. La FED invece sta facendo il contrario. Questo significa altresì che non c'è più un canale coi dollari che possa salvare la baracca nel momento del bisogno a scapito degli Stati Uniti. La BCE e la BoE devono mettere in campo il loro di capitale se vogliono sopravvivere (ovvero il contribuente inglese ed europeo, dapprima). Infatti l'unica cosa che la BCE può fare è comprare debito deteriorato della periferia europea e parcheggiarlo presso la Bundesbank, ma ormai anche la Germania ha perso quel blasone che l'ha caratterizzata storicamente. Questo gioco può andare avanti per il momento grazie all'enorme  mole di debito americano immagazzinato da inglesi ed europei durante la presenza della Yellen al Dipartimento del Tesoro e al surplus commerciale (strutturale) nei confronti degli USA. Il rialzo dei tassi da parte di Powell e i dazi di Trump fanno parte della stessa strategia per annullare questi “vantaggi”. La velocità del primo fenomeno ha reso sommerso il bilancio delle banche europee, dato che hanno comprato diversi asset con rendimenti ridicoli in passato e adesso sono incagliati; il secondo vuole chiudere il rubinetto commerciale in modo da contrarre ulteriormente l'offerta di eurodollari. Nel frattempo i capitali continuano a essere attirati negli USA e, attraverso il GENIUS Act, il mercato dei titoli del Tesoro americano avrà una portata più capillare a livello internazionale dato che verranno tokenizzati tramite Tether e coperti da un hard asset come Bitcoin. Chi è quindi che si trova DAVVERO nei guai? Chi naviga nel collaterale non contabilizzato in modo appropriato, come gli USA, o chi non ha niente come l'Europa?

____________________________________________________________________________________

di Conor Gallagher

(Versione audio della traduzione disponibile qui: https://open.substack.com/pub/fsimoncelli/p/lo-zombi-ue-usa-trump-come-spauracchio)

Donald Trump è il movente che continua a mantenere in piedi la classe dirigente occidentale. Qualsiasi imbroglio antidemocratico presente nella lista dei desideri dell'UE viene ora spacciato come rimedio contro di lui (e se non è Trump, è la Russia).

Secondo loro gli Stati Uniti non sono più un partner affidabile nella difesa. Dobbiamo, quindi, dare più potere a Bruxelles e inviare miliardi alle aziende produttrici di armi.

Secondo loro gli Stati Uniti non sono più un partner economico affidabile. Dobbiamo, quindi, aumentare la competitività indebolendo il lavoro e rafforzando la finanza.

Gli elettori del Regno Unito potrebbero aver optato per la Brexit, ma Londra e Bruxelles stanno “sfidando Trump” con una dichiarazione di “libero e aperto scambio” che include negoziati “su difesa e sicurezza, pesca ed energia, nonché un'intesa comune su quali argomenti saranno trattati nei negoziati intensivi per il ripristino della Brexit quest'anno”.

La cosa strana di questi piani, tuttavia, è che prevedono la dipendenza dalle armi e dall'energia degli Stati Uniti e l'allineamento con gli obiettivi geopolitici e geoeconomici degli Stati Uniti.

Un recente commento di Rosa Balfour, direttrice di Carnegie Europe, riassume perfettamente queste argomentazioni. In un articolo intitolato, “L'Europa ha cercato di proteggersi da Trump, ora sta elaborando un piano B”, spiega perché l'UE non ha altra scelta che riorientare la spesa sociale verso l'industria bellica.

La versione romantica della storia recente secondo la Balfour inizia il 28 febbraio. È allora che ha avuto luogo “l'umiliazione televisiva del presidente ucraino Vladimir Zelensky” e “l'Europa si è resa conto di non poter più contare sul suo alleato di lunga data, gli Stati Uniti”.

La sconvolgente profondità di questa presa di coscienza non può essere sopravvalutata. I leader politici degli stati europei, dell'Unione Europea e della NATO hanno dato prova di compostezza e coordinamento, ma dietro le quinte la colonna sonora è una frenetica jam session di free jazz con tonfi drammatici e una lunga pausa: il silenzio che accompagna la consapevolezza che la zona di comfort europea è finita.

E ora cosa stanno facendo questi “leader politici” composti e coordinati? Annunciano che l'Ucraina è la prima linea di difesa dell'Europa, elaborano grandi progetti per una “coalizione dei volenterosi” e dichiarano che l'Ucraina diventerà un “porcospino d'acciaio”.

La coalizione dei volenterosi si è disgregata, il porcospino d'acciaio è stato ridicolizzato e mentre quelli al Cremlino non stanno perdendo il sonno, gli europei invece sì. Questo perché, come scrive la Balfour, la Commissione europea “può svolgere un ruolo di supporto mobilitando risorse finanziarie e gestendo complesse trattative interne”.

Questo è uno dei tanti modi di dirlo...

La Commissione si sta lentamente avvicinando all'invocazione di poteri di emergenza per far approvare parte del suo fondo di riarmo. Il Parlamento europeo sta reagendo, ma il fatto è che Ursula può comunque farlo con un sostegno minimo da parte dei governi dell'UE. Probabilmente sta solo aspettando il momento giusto. Diamo un'occhiata allo stato dei miliardi destinati alla militarizzazione europea.

Il 19 marzo la Commissione ha presentato una proposta da €150 miliardi, la prima tranche di un totale di almeno €900 miliardi, per istituire lo strumento di azione per la sicurezza in Europa (SAFE) attraverso il rafforzamento dell'industria europea della difesa.

Vuole procedere con l'articolo 122, che prevede poteri di emergenza, e richiede solo una maggioranza qualificata in Consiglio – a differenza del consueto consenso – articolo che consente a Ursula e ai suoi amici di aggirare i fastidiosi veti dei Paesi membri. La procedura per l'articolo 122 è la seguente:

1) la Commissione propone una misura del Consiglio; in seguito a ciò 2) il Consiglio adotta la misura in linea con [voto a maggioranza qualificata]. Non sono previsti ulteriori elementi o partecipanti.

Questo articolo consente alla proposta di bypassare i negoziati parlamentari e di passare direttamente al Consiglio per la negoziazione e l'adozione. Il ruolo del Parlamento si riduce a presentare suggerimenti e richiedere dibattiti.

Tanti cari saluti al vostro ordine basato sulle regole democratiche...

Con una votazione a scrutinio segreto del 23 aprile, la commissione giuridica del Parlamento europeo ha appoggiato all'unanimità un parere legale che respingeva il tentativo della Commissione di aggirarlo sul fondo di riarmo da €150 miliardi.

Sebbene si trattasse di un voto non vincolante, segnalava sì un'opposizione al piano di Ursula, ma non si trattava di una presa di posizione di principio a favore della volontà del popolo o di un'idea romantica del genere.

No, si trattava piuttosto di dividersi le fette della torta, dato che i lobbisti dell'industria bellica europea  sono sempre più attivi a Bruxelles e cercano di assicurarsi che i loro clienti vengano ricompensati. E gran parte della debole opposizione riguarda l'introduzione di una clausola “acquista solo europeo” più forte nel SAFE (che attualmente richiede che il 65% dei materiali di consumo e dei sistemi complessi per la guerra provenga dall'UE, dall'Ucraina o dagli stati SEE/EFTA, tra cui Turchia e Norvegia).

Perché la commissione di Ursula deve mettere da parte il Parlamento e alcuni stati membri per spendere €900 miliardi in acquisti militari? È spiegato chiaramente nella loro proposta. C'è la solita sciocchezza sulla Russia:

L'UE e i suoi stati membri si trovano ora ad affrontare un'aggressione russa sempre più intensa contro l'Ucraina e una crescente minaccia alla sicurezza da parte della Russia. È ormai chiaro che tale minaccia persisterà nel prossimo futuro, considerando che la Russia è passata a un'economia di guerra che le consente un rapido potenziamento delle sue capacità militari e la ricostituzione delle sue scorte. Il Consiglio europeo ha pertanto sottolineato, nelle sue conclusioni del 6 marzo 2025, che “la guerra di aggressione della Russia contro l'Ucraina e le sue ripercussioni sulla sicurezza europea e globale in un contesto in evoluzione costituiscono una sfida esistenziale per l'Unione europea”.

Ovviamente c'è anche la scusa di Trump:

Allo stesso tempo gli Stati Uniti, tradizionalmente un forte alleato, ritengono chiaramente di essere troppo impegnati in Europa e di dover riequilibrare la situazione, riducendo il loro ruolo storico di principale garante della sicurezza.

Una domanda che viene spontanea è cosa succederà a quest'ultimo argomento ora che l'amministrazione Trump si è legata all'Ucraina attraverso il cosiddetto accordo sulle terre rare, ma sicuramente se le potenze europee sono arrivate fin qui con crisi create ad arte, saranno in grado di superare questo ostacolo sottolineando l'insistenza di Trump su quella che chiamano una pace ingiusta per l'Ucraina.

Da qui il “riarmo” per decreto tramite emergenza sovranazionale – con la Balfour del Carnegie e tutti gli altri plutocrati buffoni di corte nei think tank transatlantici che lo acclamano come una vittoria contro le orde autocratiche fuori dalle mura dei loro sepolcri imbiancati. Ecco di nuovo la Balfour che riassume lo stato d'animo di questa folla:

[...] è stata tracciata una traiettoria di cambiamento, con un potenziale trasformativo, non solo per il continente europeo, ma anche per la riorganizzazione globale delle relazioni internazionali post-americane. La jazz band ha trovato il ritmo, anche se la melodia non è del tutto armonica.

Non so se sia la musica che la Balfour sta ascoltando, o il tintinnio dell'oro e dell'argento. Anche se può essere difficile sentire qualcosa al di fuori del frastuono proveniente dall'élite, c'è sempre un accordo mancante nel genere militarista. Di sicuro la Balfour, appassionata di jazz, saprà che la curiosità era considerata uno degli ingredienti essenziali della musica. Se applichiamo questo concetto alla sua metafora jazzistica, potremmo iniziare a porci alcune domande come:

• Perché l'UE ha bisogno di mettere in atto tutta questa militarizzazione?

• Perché non può esserci pace con la Russia?

• Perché le nazioni europee hanno contribuito a sabotare i negoziati di pace tra Kiev e Mosca?

• Perché l'UE ha aiutato gli USA a rovesciare il governo dell'Ucraina e a usare il Paese come ariete contro la Russia?

• Perché l'élite dell'UE desidera così tanto la guerra contro la Russia?

• L'UE non è forse più sicura e prospera grazie a legami amichevoli e a scambi commerciali con la Russia?

E perché l'UE, che nel complesso è già seconda al mondo per spesa per la difesa, deve spendere cifre ancor più esorbitanti? Quanto la renderà sicura, competitiva e indipendente?

Queste domande non vengono mai affrontate. Tutto invece rientra nell'ordine naturale delle cose, ovvero che la Russia sia nemica dell'UE e che quest'ultima debba dotarsi di armi costose e di grandi dimensioni a causa della cattiveria di Trump. La cosa triste è che questo messaggio incessante diffuso dai media europei sta funzionando, almeno secondo i sondaggi dell'UE stessa. Ciò non sorprende affatto, considerando che questo messaggio viene pompato senza sosta dai media dell'UE.

In ogni caso, i governi europei stanno correndo. Sedici Paesi chiedono all'UE maggiore margine di manovra fiscale per investire ingenti somme nella difesa – richieste che non vengono mai avanzate durante l'infinita austerità sociale.

Sì, i cittadini dell'Unione continueranno a vedere il loro tenore di vita scendere, ma non preoccupatevi, l'allargamento dell'UE e la maggiore spesa per la militarizzazione porteranno a una maggiore “competitività”. Non ditemi che non l'avete già sentita questa panzana...

Profit margins for Weapon and Ammunition at Rheinmetall went up from 23% to 28.5% from 2023 to 2024. Of every Euro in public money spent on weapons from Rheinmetall, the company makes 28.5% return on sales, quite spectacular even compared to other Rheinmetall business. pic.twitter.com/SvKmjNcB30

— Isabella M Weber (@IsabellaMWeber) April 28, 2025

Nonostante i notevoli ostacoli che l'industria europea della difesa deve affrontare (e un breve periodo di raffreddamento dovuto allo shock dei dazi), i prezzi delle sue azioni stanno salendo poiché gli investitori si aspettano un sostegno incondizionato da parte di Bruxelles.

A proposito di ostacoli…

Una ricerca dello Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) dimostra che negli ultimi cinque anni l'Europa ha aumentato le sue importazioni di armi di due volte e mezzo rispetto ai cinque anni precedenti, con i due terzi provenienti dagli Stati Uniti.

Anche altri membri di Carnegie Europe nutrono dubbi sul programma UE. Ecco cosa dice Judy Dempsey, ricercatrice senior di Carnegie Europe:

Ditelo alla Polonia. Sta rapidamente potenziando la sua infrastruttura di difesa acquistando kit americani. Quando Varsavia ha voluto fare acquisti altrove, come in Corea del Sud, ha subito forti pressioni da parte di Washington affinché non lo facesse. Questo è un punto importante. Gli Stati Uniti vogliono che l'Europa si assuma maggiori responsabilità per la propria difesa, ma non a spese dell'industria militare americana. Gli Stati Uniti sono un importante fornitore di componenti militari per molti Paesi europei. Per fare questo passo ci vorrebbero tempo e la volontà politica dell'Europa di costruire una strategia comune di difesa e approvvigionamento.

Oltre alla considerevole pressione politica, c'è anche il fatto che i tempi di consegna per quanto riguarda le capacità di difesa sono lunghi. Quindi, parte della strategia dell'UE è quella di inviare miliardi di dollari in più all'Ucraina affinché possa potenziare la sua industria della difesa. Un modo molto più economico per produrre armi piuttosto che in Europa occidentale e ha già un settore manifatturiero per la difesa attivo e funzionante.

Bene... ma ci sono delle falle in questa logica?

Innanzitutto l'Ucraina è ora il maggiore importatore di armi al mondo, assorbendo l'8,8% dei trasferimenti globali. In secondo luogo i Kinzhal russi potrebbero avere voce in capitolo nella produzione dei produttori di armi ucraini.

È difficile capire cosa tutto questo significhi per la competitività europea, figuriamoci per il medio Josef, José, o Giusseppe. Ecco cosa dice la Balfour su questo tema che dovrebbe essere venduto ai proletari:

Dal punto di vista politico, per garantire il sostegno pubblico al riarmo europeo e compensarne gli inevitabili costi, gli sforzi del settore della difesa dovrebbero essere parte di una più ampia strategia di innovazione economica e tecnologica. Infatti questi sforzi potrebbero dare impulso all'economia europea stagnante. A livello UE le ricette sono disponibili nelle recenti raccomandazioni in materia di competitività, produttività e innovazione tecnologica.

I primi 100 giorni di Trump stanno spingendo l'UE a dare slancio a progetti in corso ormai da anni. Legare questi obiettivi all'allargamento dell'UE a Ucraina, Moldavia e Balcani occidentali offre una nuova prospettiva per l'espansione del mercato unico. L'ampliamento dell'UE e l'approfondimento delle relazioni con altri Paesi europei – come Regno Unito, Svizzera e Norvegia – contrasterebbero la frammentazione che la competizione tra grandi potenze e le disgregazioni politiche interne stanno infliggendo al continente.

È spaventoso per la sua sicurezza meccanica e semplicistica. Da nessuna parte in questo PowerPoint si intravedono i notevoli svantaggi, che, al limite più disastroso dello spettro, includono la completa distruzione dell'Europa.

Forse la speranza migliore è che i piani di questi folli per il riarmo dell'UE siano solo un gigantesco racket. Ma si potrebbe dire lo stesso del complesso militare-industriale statunitense, e guardare cosa ha scatenato: morte e distruzione senza fine e numerose guerre perse. Una differenza fondamentale tra i piani di militarizzazione transatlantici, tuttavia, è che gli Stati Uniti sono isolati tra due oceani. L'UE confina non solo con la Russia, ma anche con un regime neonazista al collasso in Ucraina, il che rende l'adesione a un complesso militare-industriale una proposta molto più rischiosa.

I racket hanno un modo tutto loro di prendere vita. Anzi, si potrebbe sostenere che l'attuale traiettoria dell'UE sia quella di uno zombi spinto dalla russofobia, che ridistribuisce denaro verso l'alto in nome di tale odio. Il problema è che l'aspettativa di vita non è lunga per gli zombi e per chi li circonda.

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

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

I left my California idyll, and soared into milky, hazy US skies.

I touched down to change planes in Minneapolis, which I recalled as having been the corn-fed, friendly Midwest.

I saw that now, almost everyone employed by the airlines, as well as everyone working as ground crew, was of Somali descent, or were recent arrivals from Somalia.

They spoke Arabic or Somali to one another, not even bothering with English; passengers and colleagues alike were greeted with a hand to the heart. The flight attendants for Delta, out of Minneapolis, wore chic little grey attenuated hijabs, pinned to their hair. (They happened also to be in furious moods.)

I have no problem with reasonable legal immigration; I have no problem with other religions. But I did wonder what had happened to all of the US-born former staffers that used to be employed in those fairly well-paying jobs. It was not diversity I was seeing now, but a new kind of hegemony.

I wondered what kind of security issue it might represent when an entire major US travel hub was now under the management of a single recently-arrived nationality; one that is not our own.

The fact that the entire sensitive Minneapolis-St Paul airport infrastructure — which I was surprised to learn is a joint civil and US military facility — is in the hands of Somalis, is an example, to me, of the chaos and vulnerability we import when we in the West lift humans wholesale out of their sometimes-dangerous, sometimes-abusive contexts, and re-situate them in influential Western contexts, with almost no acculturation, or assimilation metrics.

“The immigrant” is positioned always in liberal discourse as in need of “our” “help.” The narrative is always about “our” “responsibilities” to such immigrants, and all of the immigrants are always positioned within this narrative as being a/ helpless and b/ innocent. And C — the immigrants’ culture that is being imported along with the immigrant, is always supposed to enhance the United States’ culture, simply because it is “other” from the nasty, racist, homogenous culture of the United States.

In fact, this narrative actually to me itself seems to be quite racist; simply a new, NGO-reframed revamp of the condescending 18th-century European trope of the non-European innocent, admirable “Noble Savage.”

This narrative, indeed, reveals, in my view, a profound ignorance about the actual world — a lack of awareness of the kinds of struggles that peace-loving, justice-loving, freedom-loving people, living in failed states and under oppressive regimes, actually face.

Some societies are in fact neither helpless nor innocent.

At the level of leadership and of social contracts, and especially of the treatment of women and girls, Somalia, to take just one example, is a horrible, culpable society.

Individual Somalis no doubt are likely to be people of great decency. But look at Somali norms and society as a whole, which we are also importing when we resettle people en masse.

According to Amnesty International, all parties in that nations’ current civilian conflict, a confrontation between the government and a militia group named Al-Shabaab, abuse their own civilians and deprive their own people of human rights. In other words, no Somali party is innocent.

The crisis in Somalia is not currently derived from those cliches of racialized identities, “white against black”, or “colonizer versus colonized”. It is, rather, a crisis of Somali against Somali. And very specifically, it is a crisis of Somali men against Somali women and girls.

There are half a million internally displaced Somali people, 80 per cent of them women and children, who are suffering horrific abuses, including sexual assault, forced marriages, and “gender-based violence” — meaning beatings and female genital mutilation — at the hands of Somalis.

According to the European Union Agency for Asylum, female genital mutilation affects almost the entire female population of Somalia:

[Source: https://www.fgmcri.org/country/somalia/]

The chart above, explains FGM/C Research Institute, shows a dip in the ages 15-19 simply because girls that age may not have been “cut” yet.

In 2018, three young girls, two of them sisters, died within a single week in Somalia, from complications arising from female genital mutilation.

A 13-year-old girl died of female genital mutilation in Somalia in 2021 — and the Guardian reported a rise in the practice during the pandemic.

Yet, points out Amnesty International: “The federal [Somali] parliament failed to pass bills on sexual offences and female genital mutilation.”

According to the FGM/C Research Initiative, which centers on studying the issue of female genital mutilation, a staggering 99.2% of girls and women in Somalia aged 15-49 have endured female genital mutilation. The average ages when Somali girls are “cut” is from ten to fourteen years of age.

Even though, worldwide, many Muslim feminists and even progressive Imams are speaking out against the practice, and pointing out that female genital mutilation is not in fact demanded by Islam, 72% of Somali girls and women believe that this mutilation is a requirement of their religion.

The Somali community has the highest percentage of genitally mutilated women in the world; there are 61,000 Somali people in the state of Minnesota alone, and many sources confirm that Somali girls and women continue to suffer genital mutilation while in the United States. In other words, Somali immigrants in Minnesota have not stopped this abuse of “their” girls and women, just because they are now also Minnesotans. A scholarly article asserts that between 150,000 and 200,000 American African girls are still at risk of undergoing genital mutilation:

“Sanctuary for Families indicates that Somali and other African families import traditional practitioners from overseas into the United States to circumcise their daughters, and in some cases, they send their daughters abroad for circumcision. The practice of sending their daughters abroad has become known as “vacation cutting”’.

So these communities’ arrival physically in America did not magically heal this cultural corruption. This culture of mutilation has not in fact vanished. This nation did not magically wash this cruelty, away.

Somali “female circumcision” is different from other forms — it is by far the most severe. Somali FGM is Type III genital mutilation, which means the excision of the entire outer part of girls’ genitalia, and the stitching together of the raw wound that is left behind. Somali FGM involves: “the complete removal of the clitoris and labia minora, together with the inner surface of the labia majora (Jones, Ehiri, &Anyanwu, 2004; Rasaq, 2012; Weir, 2000).”

Women and girls subjected to this kind of mutilation suffer chronic bleeding, horrific pain during intercourse, problems in childbirth, infections, and dramatically increased mortality: “This increased mortality rate translates into an estimated 44,320 excess deaths per year across countries where FGM is practised. These estimates imply that FGM is a leading cause of the death of girls and young women in those countries where it is practised accounting for more deaths than any cause other than Enteric Infections, Respiratory Infections, or Malaria.”

Somalis now represent over one per cent of the Minnesota population. This organized, politicized community, of course, can now swing elections. Why should we think that, since this horrific practice endures even now in the US, a ten per cent make-up of Somalis in Minnesota, won’t alter American culture in the direction of this kind of misogyny — a form of misogyny that Somali women themselves are seeking to combat?

For that matter, why should we assume that a mass influx of immigrants from closed societies, will champion open societies?

There is no freedom of expression in Somalia, for example. Journalists are being killed, arrested and detained there. The head of a media group, Ali Nur Salad, was arrested when he posted on social media that the drug khat was being used by Al-Shabaab members. Salad was denied legal representation. He faces charges “including “offending the honour or prestige of the head of state”, “committing obscene acts”, “distributing obscene publications and performances”, “insult”, and “criminal defamation”, as well as restrictions on travel and [on] speaking to the media.”

The government of Somalia raids live television debates: “On 6 January, Somaliland intelligence officers raided the offices of MM Somali TV in Hargeisa, the Somaliland capital, interrupting a live debate about […] Ethiopia/Somaliland […]. They arrested the MM Somali TV chair, Mohamed Abdi Sheikh (also known as “Ilig”), Ilyas Abdinasir, a technician, and Mohamed Abdi Abdullahi, a reporter.” The International Federation of Journalists condemned the arrests.

Somali journalist Mohamed Abdi Sheikh and two other reporters who were arrested with him:

That — that failed state, that society without the rule of law or protections for free expression; that society that sees fit to gouge little girls between the legs with razors, to excise their clitorises, and to injure them permanently; those bad norms; as opposed to “bad individuals” or “a bad group of people” — let alone “a bad ethnicity” — are what we should object to importing wholesale; in this case, to run the management of our key airport hub in the sensitive center of our nation.

Reporters in Somalia, women in Somalia, refugees in Somalia, even Parliamentarians in Somalia — “On 2 September, Somaliland police arrested Mohamed Abiib, an outspoken opposition MP, and detained him in Mandera Prison” —- live in a state of fear. Amnesty International and other human rights organizations call Somalia a “failed state.”

It is okay for us here in the West not to want to live in the state of fear, that many Somalis, Afghanis, rural Pakistanis, in much of civil society — as well as journalists in Mexico, and anti-trafficking activists in Colombia — suffer.

Voice of America, in an article about Somali “Political Victories in the West”, reports that Somalis in Minnesota have become well organized politically: “Abdirahman Sharif, the imam and the leader of the Dar-Al-Hijrah Mosque in Minneapolis says another reason Somalis have risen in U.S. politics is because they are a tight-knit community.

“When Somalis came to [the] U.S., they moved to a foreign country where they could not communicate with people. So, for them, being close to people from their country meant having someone to communicate with and that helped them to unite their votes, and resources for political aspirants,” Sharif said.” Imam Sharif says nothing about Somalis wanting to learn to communicate with their American neighbors, or about their wishing to help America to succeed, or wishing to contribute to the shared destiny of all Americans. In this article, at least, the Somali political voice is a separatist one. The article describes Somali electeds gaining high office also in Britain and Canada and Finland, Norway and Sweden. Other Somali leaders stress with pride the separateness of the community. A Swedish Somali leader similarly does not mention wishing to contribute to Sweden, which welcomed the community, or wishing to assimilate into Swedish society successfully. Rather he too is proud of the separateness of the community:

“Mohamed Gure, a former member of the council of the city of Borlänge, Sweden, said there are unique things that keep Somalis together and make them successful in the politics in Europe.

“The fabric of Somalis is unique compared to the other diaspora communities. They share the same ethnicity, color, language, and religion. There are many things that keep them together that divide them back home. So, their togetherness is one reason I can attribute to their successes,” Gure said.”

Somalia is just one example of a separatist immigrant society with viciously misogynist practices. But across Europe, and in Britain, other viciously misogynist societies’ norms are being imported wholesale, along with mass separatist immigration.

British and European and Irish women have started to protest against the harassment, intimidation and sexual violence directed against them by immigrant men from various countries that treat women and girls badly; these attacks are being minimized by the courts in these “advanced” nations. In Britain, a British mother of a 12 year old girl, Lucy Connolly, who had recently lost her young son, is in jail for 31 months for a tweet she posted in the wake of the murder of three little British girls, at their dance practice, by an immigrant. Conolly called for immigrant housing to be burnt down “for all I care” and for immigrants to be deported.

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