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Americans were taught about Paul Revere’s ride in school. He was said to have ridden from his home in the North End of Boston, to Lexington and Concord, to warn the people there that Federal troops had landed in Boston Harbour and would soon reach the townships.Of course, the story was tarted up a bit for the history books. First, it’s unlikely that he shouted, “The British are coming,” since, at the time of the ride, in 1775, he was in fact British – a British colonial – and would have regarded himself as British, as would the townspeople.

It’s also unlikely that he galloped through the towns shouting, “To arms! To arms!” since a major portion of the British colonists, particular those who were older and had a lot to lose, were loyalists, and taking up arms would be treasonous. (At that time, treason was one of only two capital crimes.)

So, what did he shout on his ride… or did he in fact shout anything? It’s more likely that he simply went to the back doors of select sympathisers and asked them to spread the word that the Federal troops were on the way. But, of course, that would have made for a far less colourful story.

It is likely, though, that the ride itself did actually take place and that he did succeed in rousing the townspeople. Amongst them were the minutemen, who later did quite a good job of picking off the Federal troops.

At that time, this practice was looked upon by armies as cowardly. It was considered honourable for columns of troops to march toward each other and fire. Those with the most troops to sacrifice usually won. The colonists could not have prevailed, had they followed this method of battle.

But the colonists’ cause was a laudable one, even if they were far outnumbered and not as well-trained or well-armed as the Federals. Under the circumstances, they succeeded because they swallowed their pride, used their wits and, fighting guerilla style, prevailed against a greater opponent.

In creating the United States, the founding fathers of the US endorsed the concept of a republic – a conglomerate of states in which the individual right was tantamount. They were deeply suspicious of sliding into becoming a democracy. As Thomas Jefferson said,

“Democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where 51 percent of the people may take away the rights of the other 49.”

Quite so. And yet, from the very first presidential cabinet, Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton pushed for a move away from a republic toward a stronger federal government. (In 1789, he formed the Federalist Party and the contest began.)

Since that time, the US has moved away from being a republic and has become more of a federalist state.

This progression continued fairly steadily until 1913, at which time two major changes occurred. The banking interests in the US had become powerful enough to push through two bills that would serve to enrich them for generations. The source of that wealth would be the American taxpayer.

First, income tax (which had been attempted previously, but never gained full acceptance) was introduced. Second, to add insult to injury, the Federal Reserve was created. It was neither a federal body, nor was it a reserve. However, in addition to having the power to create all currency for the US, it had the power to set interest rates.

Through this control, it was possible to create steady annual inflation (defined as an increase in the currency in circulation). This had the effect of diminishing the purchasing power of the dollar by slow measures, effectively robbing the population incrementally through inflation.

Had Paul Revere been around in 1913, he might well have wished to get on his horse to warn the people that the Federals were coming. Only this time, it wasn’t the Federal troops, it was the Federal Reserve.

The Fed’s power made it possible to create large amounts of money out of thin air, to be loaned by banks. With this easy money, investors could borrow heavily and buy into the stock market a level previously regarded as impossible. This cornucopia was so forthcoming that, by 1929, a level of debt was reached that was unsustainable. If even a small increase in the interest rate was advanced, a stock market crash would occur, as debtors, who were up to their teeth in debt, would be underwater overnight.

What’s interesting here is that the very body that had taken over the economy in 1913 – the Federal Reserve – had created the artificially low interest rates, supplied the money, created the bubble, then, by raising interest rates in 1929, provided the pin to prick the bubble.

Not very sporting.

Today, the value of the dollar has been eroded by over 97% of its 1913 purchasing power and is due for replacement. If the owners of the Federal Reserve are to continue to regularly scalp the hoi polloi, the best approach would be to engineer a second major buildup of debt, trigger a crash, then introduce a new currency to “save the economy.”

This, they will most assuredly do. The debt has already been created. A crash can be triggered in many ways, including the tried-and-true method of raising interest rates.

And, after the predictable crash, the public will most assuredly cry out for those in power to “do something.” The warning signs have been in view for some time that that “something” will be digital currency – a currency that will make it necessary for virtually all economic transactions to pass through the hands of banks. Person-to-person transactions will virtually end, except for the possibility of barter, which would be likely to flourish as soon as the public have realized that they’ve been hoodwinked.

Unfortunately, our friend Paul Revere is nowhere to be seen on the horizon, but the Federals are indeed coming and the American people, in the not-too-distant future, will need to learn to survive the onslaught from the digital currency system that will take the place of the bullets of the late eighteenth century.

Once again, Americans will need to understand, as did their late eighteenth century forebears, that their only hope against a more powerful opponent is to use their wits – to adopt the minuteman approach and implement the economic equivalent of guerilla warfare.

Reprinted with permission from International Man.

The post ‘The Federals Are Coming!’ appeared first on LewRockwell.

Do you know how to survive a gun fight?

Here’s the situation: some people want your stuff, or they just plain out want to kill you. Whatever the cause of the escalation might be, all you’ve got is a gun lying on the ground next to you. What shooting techniques and tactics would you use and how would you survive a gun fight?

So first, you’ve picked up the gun, pulled out the magazine and checked how many rounds you’ve got spare. This is all while rounds are flying over your head and bouncing off things around you. But they’re not hitting you because you’ve already ducked behind cover to figure out your tactics right?

Let’s just say that if there were a group of people firing at me, my first thought would be to get out of there as quickly as possible, regroup with some gun-savvy would-be John Wick volunteers and come back. One big tip that might help, in a gunfight, 3 on 1 is better than 1 on 3. So work with those odds and round up some friends who would be worthy of a gun fight and are up to scratch with these 14 things to remember to survive a shootout.

1. Have yourself a merry little sidearm pistol

Weapon fires weapon stops. This is a thing they teach to soldiers in initial weapons training. They teach this because guns are not like a weapon in Call of Duty, in a real gun battle they stop. You could fire one shot and the weapon might not automatically reload because you have a chunky piece of metal 5.56 jacket jammed in your ejection port.

Now while any good shooter might pull out the magazine, cock the weapon and give the gun a right old nudge and shake just to free up the jam, you’re not going to do that. In an immediate jam, you are going to sling that weapon (everyone should have a good adjustable sling) and whip out your pistol to keep firing.

You might have seen John Wick make his way through a soiree of larger weapons before working his way down to his pistol range, that’s because when you’re in the heat of a shootout, using your next loaded weapon is quicker than fixing a jammed gun, or doing a magazine change.

That pistol is your merry little backup present when the first one wasn’t good enough. It is loaded and ready to dump out the 15-30 rounds you might be carrying in your glock magazine.

In this case, you’d probably use this secondary weapon to work your way through a pistol fight while you find cover and get your boomstick back into the game.

For a demonstration on the quick sling of the primary to secondary weapon, we can look no further than to the training given to Keanu Reaves to become John Wick by Taran Tactical for this one:

This phrase is something that is regularly repeated in initial combat training for a lot of the world’s forces. It is taught for the reason which is to keep you alive. But this will fail you if you don’t adhere to the next part, which is once you are down, move for an extra few meters. Why? Next point.

6. Don’t be a rabbit

Ever seen a rabbit in the grass? It bends down to eat, pops its head back up and bends down again. You give your friend a nudge in the arm and say “check out two meters left of that tree, there’s a rabbit”. And before you know it, the rabbit has popped his little head up in the exact same spot. Boom, if you were the rabbit you would be dead. The same will happen in a real gun fight.

In a shootout, if you see someone running you are going to aim at their last seen place and wait until they pop out to shoot them. So with the principle mentioned before, once you leave the visibility of your enemy whether it be behind a car, wall… or whatever, move and crawl a few meters before popping up to shoot. Make sure that movement is lateral to the enemy. Think of it as getting out of the X.

In an urban environment, this can only work so well as you might be behind a car or a single-spaced object with very little crawl distance. Make do with what you can but remember the idea of the rabbit popping up in the same place.

Read the Whole Article

The post How To Win a Gun Fight: 14 Military Gun Fight Tactics appeared first on LewRockwell.

Under the guise of efficiency, the Trump administration is taking a sledgehammer to essential programs and agencies that are the backbone of America’s civilian government. The virtual elimination of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and plans to shut down the Department of Education are just the most visible examples of a campaign that includes layoffs of budget experts, public health officials, scientists, and other critical personnel whose work undergirds the daily operations of government and provides the basic services needed by businesses, families, and individuals alike. Many of those services can make the difference between solvency and poverty, health and illness, or even, in some cases, life and death for vulnerable populations.

The speed with which civilian programs and agencies are being slashed in the second Trump era gives away the true purpose of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). In the context of the Musk-Trump regime, “efficiency” is a cover story for a greed-driven ideological campaign to radically reduce the size of government without regard for the human consequences.

So far, the only agency that seems to have escaped the ire of the DOGE is — don’t be shocked! — the Pentagon. After misleading headlines suggested that its topline would be cut by as much as 8% annually for the next five years as part of that supposed efficiency campaign, the real plan was revealed — finding savings in some parts of the Pentagon only to invest whatever money might be saved in — yes! — other military programs without any actual reductions in the department’s overall budget. Then, during a White House meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on April 7th, Trump announced that “we’re going to be approving a budget, and I’m proud to say, actually, the biggest one we’ve ever done for the military . . . $1 trillion. Nobody has seen anything like it.”

So far, cuts to make room for new kinds of military investments have been limited to the firing of civilian Pentagon employees and the dismantling of a number of internal strategy and research departments. Activities that funnel revenue to weapons contractors have barely been touched — hardly surprising given that Musk himself presides over a significant Pentagon contractor, SpaceX.

The legitimacy of his role should, of course, be subject to question. After all, he’s an unelected billionaire with major government contracts who, in recent months, seemed to have garnered more power than the entire cabinet combined. But cabinet members are subject to Senate confirmation, as well as financial disclosure and conflict-of-interest rules. Not Musk, though. Not only hasn’t he been vetted by Congress, but he’s been allowed to maintain his role in SpaceX.

A Hollow Government?

The Trump and Musk hollowing out of the civilian government, while keeping the Pentagon budget at enormously high levels of funding, means the United States is well on its way to becoming the very “garrison state” that President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned against in the early years of the Cold War. And mind you, all of that’s true before Republican hawks in Congress like Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Roger Wicker (R-MS), who is seeking $100 billion more in Pentagon spending than its officials have asked for, even act.

What’s at stake, however, goes well beyond how the government spends its money. After all, such decisions are being accompanied by an assault on basic constitutional rights like freedom of speech and a campaign of mass deportations that already includes people with the legal right to remain in the United States. And that’s not to mention the bullying and financial blackmailing of universities, law firms, and major media outlets in an attempt to force them to bow down to the administration’s political preferences.

In fact, the first two months of the Trump/Musk administration undoubtedly represent the most blatant power grab by the executive branch in the history of this republic, a move that undermines our ability to preserve, no less expand, the fundamental rights that are supposed to be the guiding lights of American democracy. Those rights have, of course, been violated to one degree or another throughout this country’s history, but never like this. The current crackdown threatens to erase the hard-won victories of the civil rights, women’s rights, labor rights, immigrant rights, and LGBTQ rights movements that had brought this country closer to living up to its professed commitments to freedom, tolerance, and equality.

Back in 2019, right-wing populist and Trump buddy Steve Bannon told PBS Frontline that the key to a future victory was to increase the “muzzle velocity” of extremist policy changes, so that opponents of the MAGA movement wouldn’t even know what hit them. “All we have to do,” he said then, “is flood the zone. Every day we hit them with three things. They’ll bite on one, and we’ll get all of our stuff done. Bang, bang, bang. These guys will never — will never be able to recover. But we’ve got to start with muzzle velocity.”

The Trump/Musk administration is now implementing just such a strategy in a staggering fashion.

Sparing the Pentagon

Despite a certain amount of noise about DOGE-driven efficiencies at the Pentagon, the department has indeed been spared the fate of civilian outfits like the Agency for International Development and the Department of Education, which have been either decimated or are slated for elimination altogether.

A proposal to lay off 60,000 civilian employees at the Pentagon will have harsh consequences for those expecting to lose their jobs, but it is only 5% of the department’s workforce of 700,000 government employees and another more than half a million individuals under contract. By contrast, the workforce of USAID, which offered a peaceful helping hand to countries around the world, was rapidly reduced from 10,000 to less than 300.

In addition, the layoffs of research scientists and public-health experts may prove to have disastrous consequences down the road by reducing the government’s ability to prevent or respond to infectious diseases and possible pandemics like new variants of Covid or the bird flu. To compound the problem, the administration has ordered the firing of one in five employees at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and is now pressing that agency to terminate more than one-third of its outside contracts.

In addition, the almost instant firing of independent government inspectors general, who were charged with overseeing government waste, fraud, and abuse, at the start of Trump’s second term in office bodes anything but well for policing an administration already awash in conflicts of interest. Worse yet, the freezing of actions by the civil rights division of the Justice Department will allow racial injustice to flourish without the slightest meaningful legal pushback.

Then there are the plans of both the Trump administration and House Republicans to slash programs from Medicaid to Social Security to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program that serve tens of millions of Americans. In addition, there have already been staff cuts at the Social Security Administration, as well as steps taken to make it harder to apply for benefits there, and that’s undoubtedly just the beginning. In the future, there could be devastating direct benefit cuts to a program that serves more than 70 million Americans. And such crucial programs may, in their own fashion, end up on the chopping block, in part to make way for a planned multi-trillion-dollar tax cut geared mainly — you undoubtedly won’t be surprised to learn — to helping individuals at the high end of the income scale.

In short, the goal is to Make America Unequal Again with an expansive program that could leave current levels of inequality, which already exceed those reached during the “Gilded Age” of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, in the proverbial dust.

The Pentagon Exception

While most government agencies are either under siege or fear that they will be so in relatively short order, one agency has largely escaped the budget cutter’s knife: the Pentagon. In 2024, that agency (including nuclear warhead work done at the Department of Energy) already received an astonishing $915 billion, accounting for more than half of the federal government’s discretionary budget that year.

Meanwhile, as a New York Times analysis recently showed, the revenues of major weapons contractors have barely been touched. So far, General Dynamics (with a loss of less than 1%) and Leidos (with a loss of 7%) are the only firms among the top 10 weapons contractors to experience any kind of reduction in revenues from DOGE’s efforts.

One possible tradeoff within the Pentagon could be a move away from big platforms like aircraft carriers and piloted combat aircraft toward faster, nimbler, more easily produced systems based on applications of artificial intelligence, including swarms of drones. Elon Musk is already a longtime critic of Lockheed Martin’s F-35 fighter jet, which he’s slammed as “the worst military value for money” in the history of Pentagon procurement. His solution, however, is ever more advanced drones, presumably produced by his Silicon Valley allies.

But there is another possibility: the Pentagon might further boost its budget so that it can fund systems large and small, simultaneously feeding both the big contractors and the emerging military tech firms. After all, despite Musk’s critique, the president only recently announced that Boeing will produce a new plane, the F-47 (that “47” being — you guessed it! — in honor of America’s 47th president).

If there is a move toward tradeoffs between existing systems and new tech, both sides will have ample lobbying clout at their disposal. After all, the Silicon Valley crowd is literally embedded in the Trump administration from Musk to Vice President J.D. Vance, a protégé of Peter Thiel, the founder of the military-tech firm Palantir. Shortly after graduating from Yale Law School, Vance took a job at Mithril, a venture capital firm owned by Thiel. When Vance left that firm in 2019 to run for the Senate in Ohio, he did so with $15 million in backing from Thiel.

And Thiel is just one of the tech moguls backing Vance. An analysis by CBS News found that:

“Vance, a relative newcomer to national politics, has assiduously courted billionaires and Silicon Valley titans to bankroll his unlikely rise from bestselling memoirist of despair, drugs and generational poverty in Appalachia to a ticket that could seat him a heartbeat away from the presidency.”

The conservative New York Post summarized the state of play in an article headline in July 2024: “Silicon Valley Cheers Vance Pick as More Tech Billionaires Back Trump.” And keep in mind that Musk and Vance are not the only advocates for the military-tech sector embedded in the Trump administration. Stephen Feinberg, second-in-charge at the Pentagon, worked for Cerberus Capital, an investment firm that has a history of investing in the handgun and defense industries. And Michael Obadal, a senior director at Anduril, has been selected to serve as the deputy secretary of the Army. A recent analysis by Bloomberg, in fact, found that “more than a dozen people with ties to Thiel — including current and former employees of his companies, as well as people who have helped manage his fortune or benefited from his investments and charitable giving — have been folded into the Trump administration.”

For their part, the Big Five arms contractors, led by Lockheed Martin, still have a firm foothold in Congress, having made millions in campaign contributions, employed hundreds of lobbyists serving on commissions that influence military spending and strategy, and placed their facilities in a majority of the states and districts in the country. Even if some in the Pentagon tried to phase out the F-35, Congress might well add funds to that institution’s budget request to save the program.

Recent procurement decisions suggest that there may be a desire in both Congress and the Trump administration to finance traditional contractors and emerging tech firms alike. The two largest recent program announcements — Boeing’s selection as the prime contractor for that F-47 next generation combat aircraft and President Trump’s commitment to a “Golden Dome” defense system supposedly geared to protecting the entire United States from incoming missiles — will offer ample opportunities to both traditional arms firms and emerging military tech companies. The procurement phase of the F-47 program could cost up to $20 billion, but as Dan Grazier of the Stimson Center has noted, that $20 billion will be “just seed money. The total costs coming down the road will be hundreds of billions of dollars.” Meanwhile, General Atomics and Anduril are competing to build drone “wingmen” that would work in coordination with those future F-47s in battle situations.

At this point, President Trump’s Golden Dome isn’t a fully fleshed out concept, but count on one thing: attempting to meet his goal of a comprehensive, leakproof defense against missiles would require building large numbers of interceptors and new military satellites woven together with advanced communications and targeting systems, at a potential cost over time of hundreds of billions of dollars. And while the big weapons firms may have an inside track on building the hardware for the Golden Dome, emerging tech firms are better positioned to produce the software, targeting, surveillance, and communications components of the system.

Golden Dome is poised to go forward despite the fact that, as Laura Grego of the Union of Concerned Scientists has asserted, “It has been long understood that defending against a sophisticated nuclear arsenal is technically and economically unfeasible.” But that reality won’t stem the flow of massive quantities of tax dollars into the project, no matter how unrealistic it may be, since profits from producing it will be all too realistic.

Resistance Rising?

There are signs of growing resistance to the Musk/Trump agenda from lawsuits, to rallies against the oligarchy led by Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), to a boycott of Musk’s Tesla automobiles. Such efforts will need to be supplemented by the involvement of millions more people, including Trump supporters hurt by his cuts to essential programs that had helped them stay above water financially. The outcome of all this may be uncertain, but the stakes simply couldn’t be higher.

Reprinted with permission from TomDispatch.com.

The post The Ever-Expanding War Machine appeared first on LewRockwell.

A few months ago I asked my spiritual father the following question. This is a questioned that has burned in me for years since I took over the editorship of OnePeterFive. It is a question that has troubled by conscience and caused me to lose a great deal of sleep. Here’s the question:

How do I criticise Pope Francis and not fall into the sin of pride? How do I tell the truth without provoking anyone to harden their hearts against our Holy Father?

My spiritual father responded with this wisdom:

In order to avoid the sin of pride, we must imagine that Pope Francis will one day die a Christian death and attain a higher place in heaven than you.

And so, as an act of humility and love for the Holy Father let us imagine a fictional scene:

—

It was Easter Sunday at 9:00pm, Rome time. The Holy Father was sleeping in his bed with his doctor at his side. The Pope’s confessor was present, with Cardinals Parolin and Farrell.

The doctor stood up from his bed and looked at them. He shook his head, then paused.

“There’s no way he’ll live to the morning.”

Everyone in the room was silent at this grave news. Some looked up to the heavens, praying for his soul. Others looked down to the floor, thinking about the next conclave.

Suddenly a cry tore through the silence: “MAAARRY!!” Everyone turned to see Pope Francis bolt upright in his bed with hands raised to the statue of the Madonna at the end of the room.

“Mary….” He said again, softly.

Tears were streaming down his face. After a pregnant pause, everyone in the room rushed to his bedside. The Pope buried his face in his hands as copious tears filled them. He kept repeating the Holy Name of Mary then suddenly turned forcefully to his confessor: “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned…”

Everyone was stunned for a moment, and began to back away, realizing what he was asking for. “Stop!” the Pope almost shouted. “Let he who has an ear to hear….” He sighed. “Let him hear.”

Then he turned pleadingly to his confessor, who stood there, dumbfounded. The confessor stammered, “Uh…” and looked at the others, who shrugged at him. The priest composed himself and said the words: “In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti, amen. The Lord be in your heart and mind that you may worthily confessor your sins.”

“It has been one month since my last confession…”

Everyone gasped suddenly, but the Holy Father continued, naming this sin and that sin, conceding a great deal to his critics, forgiving his enemies, repenting for personal sins that no one knew about, with tears streaming down his face the whole time [here let the reader imagine the Holy Father confessing all the sins that you accuse him of, and then some].

When he had finished, his tears finally stopped. Everyone was silent. The Holy Father finally opened his eyes and looked to his confessor. The old priest took a deep breath and gave him his penance. The Holy Father made his act of contrition and began to pray, and the priest continued until the Last Rites were completed.

After this the Pope fell asleep. Nurses attended him throughout the night. At 7:30am his heart stopped beating. The nurse called the doctor who confirmed the time of death and informed Cardinal Farrell.

—

What are you doing, Flanders? Canonising Pope Francis?

No. I’m trying to avoid my own sin, which is hardening my heart against my father, or provoking others to do the same. This will help me to try my best to deal piously and mercifully with the death of Pope Francis. I’m trying to follow my own spiritual father’s direction for my own sake, and perhaps it might help someone else too.

I remember the wisdom from the desert fathers, which is similar in this case:

Look around you at all the people and say: “All of these people will inherit the kingdom of heaven, and I alone will not. Remember me, O Lord, in Thy Kingdom.”

I think it is wise to consider this in the case of the Holy Father.

There are many more things to say and discuss in the coming weeks, but this is the most important thing: let us give Pope Francis the spiritual work of mercy and pray for his soul, and let us do all we can to respect the dead and act with charity, truth and humility.

Through the prayers of all Holy Pontiffs, may the Risen Lord grant to Pope Francis and all the faithful His bountiful mercy.

All shall be well, and all shall be well and all manner of things will be well.

This originally appeared on OnePeterFive.

The post Pope Francis Is Dead: a Traditionalist Response appeared first on LewRockwell.

I must have dreamed a thousand dreams
Been haunted by a million screams
But I can hear the marching feet
They’re moving into the street

Now, did you read the news today?
They say the danger has gone away
But I can see the fire’s still alight
They’re burning into the night

There’s too many men, too many people
Making too many problems
And there’s not much love to go around
Can’t you see this is the land of confusion?

Genesis – Land of Confusion

I think “Land of Confusion” is an accurate description of the world in 2025, even if the song was written in 1986 during the Reagan presidency. The three-month-old Trump presidency has been a whirlwind of executive orders, high profile deportations, mass firings of stay-at-home government drones who pretend to work, daily revelations from DOGE about massive waste, fraud, and corruption within the Federal government, defunding the democrat slush fund – USAID, release of JFK files showing the CIA was involved, defunding the Ukraine debacle, negotiating with Putin to end the war while the EU attempts to undermine those negotiations to start WW3, and now waging a global tariff war against China and every country who have taken advantage of our penchant for consuming while going into massive debt to do so.

The Wall Street cabal and foreign owners of our trillions in Treasury debt have attempted to derail Trump’s tariff war by throwing a hissy fit like they did after their $700 billion TARP bailout was initially voted down in 2008. They drove the stock market down 17% and drove the 10-Year Treasury up 50 basis points in a matter of days, before Trump yelled uncle, delayed most tariffs for 90 days and has been busy granting exceptions to favored industries who have his ear.

Despite running on a platform of ending the Ukraine war and the Israel Gaza conflict within weeks of taking office, the Ukraine war is not close to being resolved, and Trump has done nothing but pour gasoline on the Middle East fire. He has increased military aid to Israel so they can continue to bomb the rubble that is Gaza. He is spending billions bombing the Houthis, while risking our carrier groups, when we have no real strategic interest in doing so, other than doing Netanyahu’s bidding.

One day he threatens Iran with obliteration, and the next day he sends a negotiator to talk things over. Threaten and back-off seems to be Trump’s standard operating procedure. Xi knows this is Trump’s method of winning negotiations, so his response has been to match Trump’s threats with his own threats. Waiting for someone to blink.

Trump continues to de-fund and penalize the largest universities in the U.S. because a few thousand of their students protested on their campuses about Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. In my book, free speech means free speech, whether I like it or not. The antisemitism narrative being pushed by the Trump administration and their MSM cheerleaders at Fox seems excessive and overblown. Miriam Adleson’s $100 million campaign contribution seems to be paying off.

When you impartially step back and observe how Trump treats Netanyahu and how the vast majority in congress do whatever Israel instructs them to do, it’s undeniable our government is broadly controlled by another country that does not have our best interests at heart. AIPAC uses bribes and threats to keep our politicians in line. This fact is clearly revealed by how they treat Thomas Massie, the most principled freedom-loving person in congress. He has been declared Israel Enemy #1 by AIPAC and their Israel handlers for not kissing their ring.

Confusion reigns because the world is lost in a blizzard of lies and paralyzed in a boundless morass of uncertainty. The ability of corporations, small business owners, and average Americans to make decisions, based upon a reasonable understanding of the rules of the game and what the near-term future holds, has been obliterated because the rules change on a daily basis. I know Trump’s tariff bonanza is designed as a negotiating tactic to force foreign countries to lower their trade barriers and give American exporters a level playing field. As a negotiating tactic, it is a bold roll of the dice. If it works, as the biggest importer in the world, Americans will benefit from lower prices. China is the wildcard.

If Trump cannot negotiate a reasonable agreement with China and tariff increases remain in effect, an inflationary global recession will ensue. The debt saturated American economy cannot endure higher interest rates, higher inflation, higher deficits, rising unemployment, and interest on the national debt soaring above $1 trillion. It most certainly cannot fight simultaneous wars in Eastern Europe, the Middle East and the Far East.

We know when politicians, and even dictators, feel intolerable pressure because their economies are imploding and the natives are growing restless, angrier, and hungrier, they always follow the same playbook – distract the masses by giving them an foreign enemy, other than themselves. If these tariff wars do not de-intensify, global wars will begin and intensify until clear winners and losers are determined. That’s how it rolls in a Fourth Turning.

At the three month point of his presidency, Trump has purposefully created chaos as a tool to try and reverse decades of corruption, treason, and destruction. He has signed 130 executive orders, as the legislative branch of government has become inconsequential and toothless. Presidents now attempt to rule by dictate, bypassing Congress, unless forced to seek their permission. The left calls Trump a dictator, but they didn’t call Biden a dictator when he signed 160 executive orders, or Obama with 277 executive orders, or Clinton with 364 executive orders.

It’s the way the game is played, so every time the other party takes over, they reverse the executive orders of the previous administration. That is no way to run a country, but it is a way to run a banana republic circling the drain. While the bozos in congress are enriched for doing whatever they are instructed to do by whichever billionaires installed them, the judicial branch has now seized the most power of the three branches, under the guise of a legal system which no longer has a basis in the U.S. Constitution or Bill of Rights.

Treasonous judges (Boasberg) have been positioned by the Deep State and their billionaire puppet masters (Soros, Gates) to wage a lawfare war against anyone who defies the lucrative and corrupt status quo or attempts to reverse illegal actions taken by previous politician puppets (Biden, Obama) using executive orders and disregarding the Constitution. An entire establishment of corrupt district attorneys, judges, law firms, and fake NGOs are tasked with stopping everything Trump and his cabinet attempt to do which would benefit the average American, make the country safer, root out corruption, and enhance the financial condition of a country drowning in debt.

Judges blocking deportation of illegals, the firing of useless government drones, the defunding of left wing organizations within the government (USAID, NPR, PBS) pretending to be impartial, cutting off federal funds for the largest far left universities where 95% of the faculty vote Democrat, and essentially anything Trump was elected to do by the majority of Americans, must be defied and destroyed if necessary. Arrest the judges and let them rot in the putrid dungeon cells in D.C. without due process, like they inflicted upon grandmothers and other innocent J6 protestors.

“The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws.” ― Tacitus, The Annals of Imperial Rome

The American empire now exceeds the Roman empire when it comes to state corruption. And we all know how that ended. We started as a republic, decayed into a democracy, and we now live in a dystopian, delusional, debt fueled totalitarian oligarchy, being ushered into a techno-gulag while staring at our gadgets, addicted to toxic foodstuff, and oblivious to the propaganda and indoctrination being employed to control us. Pretending we can vote our way out of this is a fool’s game. They control all the levers (financial, political, legal, social, military, media). They have the money. They have the power. They have control.

They will not relinquish their wealth, power and control willingly, or non-violently. That’s a fact. I know there are varied opinions on whether Trump is actually playing a part in herding his followers into the techno-gulag, or whether he truly believes he can usher in a new golden age by defeating the deeply rooted Deep State quislings. I’m living through it, but I am treating it like I’m watching a TV drama, waiting to see how the next episode plays out.

Anyone with an ounce of critical thinking skills can discern all is not right in this world. The anger, vitriol, hate and violence being exhibited by the globalist loving left, fueled by Soros/Gates funding, is a precursor of the vicious conflicts which will mark the last five or so years of this Fourth Turning. To me, this Fourth Turning has delved into a battle between the globalist, totalitarian minded, new world order faction and a rag tag assemblage of libertarian minded, freedom loving, rational, decent, family oriented, frustrated, and heavily armed anarchists, who are being pushed towards their boiling point.

The pressure builds. The anger is welling up from the depths. Normal people, who just want to be left alone to live their lives, have been taxed into poverty at the point of a gun, raped by the relentless inflation purposely created by the oligarch banking cabal, forced to accept deviancy in public schools as normal, coerced into having a toxic gene therapy injected into their bodies in order to keep their jobs, and convinced by the media and their billionaire oligarch owners to become debt slaves in order to live the American dream.

The question is what action, event, or person will trigger the violent response, destined to occur in the foreseeable future. Two-hundred-and-fifty years ago this past week the British attempting to confiscate weapons from farmer patriots resulted in the battles of Lexington & Concord, triggering the American Revolution. One hundred and sixty-four years ago this past week Fort Sumter was attacked, triggering the Civil War. Eighty-six years ago, Hitler was preparing to invade Poland, triggering WW2.

The number of potential triggers domestically and internationally are vast. Internationally, Israel attacking Iran, the globalist tyrants in France, UK, and Germany provoking an expansion of the Ukraine war into WW3, or China responding to Trump’s tariff war by invading Taiwan, are all potential triggers for bloody conflict.

Domestically, there are also a myriad of potential triggers which could unleash a torrent of blood across the land. I know most normies and those ignorant of history believe that level of violence is impossible in this “age of reason and civility”. Assassination, firebombing, and swatting are now perfectly acceptable forms of “protest’ by the demented fiends constituting the left. If Trump was to be assassinated, that would most certainly trigger a violent response by his MAGA army of heavily armed adherents.

Trump’s frustration with the never ending lawfare tactics being used by his enemies and their captured politicized judges, is bound to boil over and lead him in the direction of martial law and the arrest of these judges and their puppet masters.

With the Supreme Court occupied by three moronic women with IQs below room temperature, and two supposed right leaning judges who clearly have been compromised by the Surveillance State, the courts can no longer be expected to make rulings in accordance with the Constitution. Therefore, a real Constitutional crisis is a certainty. When the rule of law has been annihilated and exiled to the annals of history, good men are forced to do bad things in order for future generations to stand a chance.

When the USD loses 11% of its value versus the DXY, and 39% versus gold over the course of 3 months, and the stock market plunges by 1,000 points on a regular basis, down 17% from its recent high, something is amiss. When gold goes up by 30% in four and a half months ($760 an ounce), it is a huge warning sign the system is coming unglued. Panic is setting in. The foreign countries Trump has been threatening are selling the USD.

Attempting to bully the world when you are the biggest debtor nation in history may not be a well thought out strategy. We are truly in a land of confusion. Is the Wall Street cabal tanking the markets to force Trump to back off on the tariffs? As average working stiffs see their 401ks vaporize for the third time this century, deal with the relentless inflation on the things they need to live (homes, rent, food, insurance, property taxes, medical), and observe no one being arrested for corruption, treason or being on Epstein’s list, their frustration, anger and impatience grows to the point where they are likely to blow.

I picture the opening scene of Falling Down, with Bill Foster, the average working schmuck, sweating, frustrated, and swinging wildly trying to kill a fly while trapped in a traffic jam. He snaps. Everyone has a breaking point. And I believe millions of normal peace-loving people will SOON reach their breaking point, pushed too far by their government, the media, bankers, and the billionaire globalist oligarchs pulling the strings. It will be up to people like you and me to make things right again. There will be no Superman or White Knight coming to save the day. We will see if we are up to the challenge. There are no guarantees this Fourth Turning has a happily ever after ending. Empires always fall.

Oh, Superman, where are you now?
When every thing’s gone wrong somehow?
Men of steel, these men of power
I’m losing control by the hour

I won’t be coming home tonight
My generation will put it right
We’re not just making promises
That we know we’ll never keep

Genesis – Land of Confusion

Reprinted with permission from The Burning Platform.

The post Defy, Deny, Defund, Deport, Destroy appeared first on LewRockwell.

CNN in a recent article has reported that:

The United States could end its efforts on ending the Ukrainian conflict within “days” if there are no signs of progress, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio warned Friday. 

‘If it is not possible to end the war in Ukraine, we need to move on,’ he told reporters before departing Paris, where he had held high-level talks with European and Ukrainian officials. ‘We need to determine very quickly now, and I’m talking about a matter of days, whether or not this is doable,’ he said. 

This is framed as if the US is serving as some sort of mediator between Russia and Ukraine. In reality, the US is one of two primary parties to the conflict – the other being Russia, with whom this war was provoked.

A US War on Russia Since the Cold War Ended… 

The US had since the end of the Cold War invested billions of dollars in political interference within Ukraine, including regime change operations attempted in 2004 and successful regime change finally taking place in 2014. From 2014 onward, Ukraine was transformed into a military proxy of the United States aimed specifically to threaten the Russian Federation, just as a politically captured Georgia in 2003 was used to attack Russian peacekeeping forces in 2008.

The growing security threat this posed to Moscow precipitated the launching of Russia’s February 2022 Special Military Operation (SMO) and the subsequent fighting that has continued ever since.

A series of articles from the Western media itself has revealed over recent years the degree to which the US had not only politically captured Ukraine, but also institutionally captured its military and intelligence agencies, reconfiguring them to operate as armed extensions of the US along Ukraine’s border with Russia, and even across it within Russia itself.

Among these admissions is the New York Times’ February 2024 article titled, “The Spy War: How the C.I.A. Secretly Helps Ukraine Fight Putin,” which admits to, “a C.I.A.-supported network of spy bases constructed in the past eight years that includes 12 secret locations along the Russian border.” 

The article would also admit:

Around 2016, the C.I.A. began training an elite Ukrainian commando force — known as Unit 2245 — which captured Russian drones and communications gear so that C.I.A. technicians could reverse-engineer them and crack Moscow’s encryption systems. (One officer in the unit was Kyrylo Budanov, now the general leading Ukraine’s military intelligence.) 

And the C.I.A. also helped train a new generation of Ukrainian spies who operated inside Russia, across Europe, and in Cuba and other places where the Russians have a large presence.

While the New York Times tries to insist the CIA did not help Ukrainians conduct offensive lethal operations, it later admits CIA-trained Unit 2245 not only conducted lethal operations, but did so within Russian territory, claiming:

At the time, the future head of Ukraine’s military intelligence agency, General Budanov, was a rising star in Unit 2245. He was known for daring operations behind enemy lines and had deep ties to the C.I.A. The agency had trained him and also taken the extraordinary step of sending him for rehabilitation to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Maryland after he was shot in the right arm during fighting in the Donbas. 

Disguised in Russian uniforms, then-Lt. Col. Budanov led commandos across a narrow gulf in inflatable speedboats, landing at night in Crimea. 

But an elite Russian commando unit was waiting for them. The Ukrainians fought back, killing several Russian fighters, including the son of a general, before retreating to the shoreline, plunging into the sea and swimming for hours to Ukrainian-controlled territory.

In other words, the US was training, equipping, arming, and directing deadly operations out of Ukraine into Russian-held territory before Russia launched its 2022 SMO.

The same article admitted that these CIA officers deployed to and overseeing operations in Ukraine began playing a central role after Russia launched its SMO in 2022.

The NYT would admit:

Within weeks, the C.I.A. had returned to Kyiv, and the agency sent in scores of new officers to help the Ukrainians. A senior U.S. official said of the C.I.A.’s sizable presence, “Are they pulling triggers? No. Are they helping with targeting? Absolutely.” 

Some of the C.I.A. officers were deployed to Ukrainian bases. They reviewed lists of potential Russian targets that the Ukrainians were preparing to strike, comparing the information that the Ukrainians had with U.S. intelligence to ensure that it was accurate.

Subsequent articles by the New York Times would expand upon just how deeply involved the US has been in the fighting – making the war for all intents and purposes an American war fought through the Ukrainians.

Washington’s War on Russia 

A March 2025 New York Times article titled, “The Partnership: The Secret History of the War in Ukraine,” would explain that not only has the US provided tens of billions of US dollars worth of military equipment, weapons, and ammunition, including, “a half-billion rounds of small-arms ammunition and grenades, 10,000 Javelin antiarmor weapons, 3,000 Stinger antiaircraft systems, 272 howitzers, 76 tanks, 40 High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, 20 Mi-17 helicopters and three Patriot air defense batteries,” but that the US military itself has been (and still is) playing a central role in picking and striking at targets on both sides of the Ukrainian-Russian border.

It admitted that it was US intelligence used to carry out many of Ukraine’s most successful attacks on Russian military headquarters including at the Crimean port of Sevastopol which had been under Russian control even before the 2014 US overthrow of Ukraine and Crimea’s subsequent reunification with Russia.

Much of Washington’s control over the conflict was coordinated through a mission command center established in Wiesbaden, Germany. While many of Ukraine’s military operations were attributed to Ukrainian planning, the New York Times has since revealed it was instead overseen by the US and other NATO members through Wiesbaden.

The article would explain:

Side by side in Wiesbaden’s mission command center, American and Ukrainian officers planned Kyiv’s counteroffensives. A vast American intelligence-collection effort both guided big-picture battle strategy and funneled precise targeting information down to Ukrainian soldiers in the field.
One European intelligence chief recalled being taken aback to learn how deeply enmeshed his N.A.T.O. counterparts had become in Ukrainian operations. “They are part of the kill chain now,” he said.

The New York Times also admitted:

Military and C.I.A. officers in Wiesbaden helped plan and support a campaign of Ukrainian strikes in Russian-annexed Crimea. Finally, the military and then the C.I.A. received the green light to enable pinpoint strikes deep inside Russia itself.

The article admits that Western military officers – not Ukrainians – made the final decision regarding what targets would be hit and how.

This included the use of US-provided M777 howitzers and the HIMARS multiple launch rocket system.

The New York Times admitted:

Wiesbaden would oversee each HIMARS strike. [US] General Donahue and his aides would review the Ukrainians’ target lists and advise them on positioning their launchers and timing their strikes. The Ukrainians were supposed to only use coordinates the Americans provided. To fire a warhead, HIMARS operators needed a special electronic key card, which the Americans could deactivate anytime.

Every large-scale Ukrainian operation, including the 2022 Kherson and Kharkov offensives as well as the failed 2023 offensive, were planned, organized, and directed by US military officers from Wiesbaden. This also included the creation of new Ukrainian brigades, the New York Times admits was overseen by US Lieutenant General Antonio Aguto Jr.

It is also revealed that it wasn’t Ukraine who asked for longer range weapons like the Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS), it was US generals.

The New York Times admits:

Generals Cavoli and Aguto recommended the next quantum leap, giving the Ukrainians Army Tactical Missile Systems — missiles, known as ATACMS, that can travel up to 190 miles — to make it harder for Russian forces in Crimea to help defend Melitopol.

It was also revealed that Ukrainian commanders realized the US-planned and directed 2023 offensive was doomed during its earliest phase, yet US commanders demanded Ukraine “press on.” 

Various options were formulated to try to salvage the failed offensive, with the New York Times attributing its failure to a number of factors, including infighting among Ukrainian commanders and even tension between Ukrainian commanders and their US handlers. In reality, the offensive failed because of the realities of material limitations on Western military industrial production and their inability to fight the type of war of attrition Russia had prepared for years in advance and imposed on them.

Toward the end of the New York Times article, it admitted that, “the coalition simply couldn’t provide all the equipment for a major counteroffensive. Nor could the Ukrainians build an army big enough to mount one.”

Various operations were described throughout the article including US-British attempts to destroy the Kerch Bridge connecting Crimea to the rest of Russia, which all ended in failure.

While the article attempts to blame the gradual draw down of US support for Ukraine on the election of President Donald Trump and his desire for “peace,” it is clear the US simply exhausted the means to continue waging a proxy war against a Russian military much better able to replace its losses than Ukraine and its Western sponsors.

The New York Times essentially admits this was a US war waged against Russia, simply using Ukraine as intermediaries.

Every major military operation down to specific targets to be struck and which US-European-made and provided weapon system to use to strike it with was made by American – not Ukrainian generals.

Playing “Mediator” While Seeking to Freeze a Failed Proxy War 

Today, the US government is attempting to play the role of a frustrated mediator trying to broker peace between Ukraine and Russia, when in reality this was always a war between the US and Russia.

In reality, current US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, in a February 12, 2025 speech, discussed “European and non-European troops” being sent into Ukraine as a “security guarantee” which would in practice either freeze the conflict or precipitate direct hostilities between Russia and Europe.

Secretary Hegseth also instructed Europe the next steps regarding Ukraine would be “donating more ammunition and equipment” to Ukraine, as well as “expanding your defense industrial base.”

What Secretary Hegseth actually laid out was a directive not toward peace in Ukraine, but to once again freeze the conflict as the US and Europe did during the Minsk agreements, during which the US and Europe could expand their own military industrial bases to match or exceed Russian production and rearm and reorganize Ukrainian forces to resume hostilities again in the future when factors lean in Washington’s favor, not Moscow’s.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s predictable boredom with peace talks with Russia signals the US’ readiness to transfer responsibility for its proxy war fully onto Europe as it pivots toward a much more dangerous confrontation with Russia’s ally to the east – China.

The Trump administration and the Biden administration before it never had any intention of addressing the actual cause of the conflict in Ukraine – NATO’s expansion up to and all along Russia’s borders with every intention of inevitably absorbing Russia itself. Because of this, genuine peace was never possible regardless of the Trump administration’s public rhetoric and empty gestures toward Russia.

While the Trump administration has paid lip service to NATO expansion, its only decision regarding NATO specifically has been to demand NATO members more than double funding for NATO.

Russia, for its part, has left the door open for honest negotiations and has provided the United States ample exit ramps from both an unwinnable proxy war and indefinite confrontation with Russia into the future. The US is obviously not interested. Russia had, throughout “peace talks” with the US, continued its war of attrition against Ukrainian forces, continuing the process the New York Times describes as the central contributing factor for the proxy war’s current failure.

The real question that remains is whether or not Russia can continue this process at a faster and more effective rate than the US and Europe can continue “donating more ammunition and equipment” to Ukraine while attempting to expand their “defense industrial bases.” Only time will tell for sure.

As Syria has demonstrated, a proxy war the US has lost one moment can be frozen, revisited, and eventually won if it is able to overextend designated adversaries like Russia and Iran for long enough and extensively enough elsewhere. The US has already embarked upon armed conflict with Yemen and is threatening war with Iran – forcing Russia to once again make difficult decisions regarding where it invests finite military resources versus the seemingly infinite US capacity to create instability and conflict wordwide.

The survival and success of multipolarism depends on the multipolar world cooperating against US attempts to reassert American primacy – not only through direct and proxy war, but also through economic coercion and political interference – and to understand that a US war on Russia in Ukraine or a proxy war waged against Syria in the Middle East – is, in fact, a war against the rise of multipolarism altogether and the promise of peace and prosperity it offers.

The views of the authors do not necessarily coincide with the opinion of the editorial board.

Reprinted with permission from New Eastern Outlook.

The post US Plays ‘Mediator’ in Its Own War on Russia appeared first on LewRockwell.

On Palm Sunday (April 13), Israeli bombs destroyed the surgery and intensive care sections of the “last fully functional hospital in Gaza City,” according to a report by the British Broadcasting Corporation.

The hospital was run by the Episcopal Diocese of Jerusalem, part of the Anglican Church. The bombs also struck surrounding buildings, including St. Philip’s Church.

The Diocese said it was “appalled” at the bombing of the hospital and church “on the morning of Palm Sunday and the beginning of Holy Week.”

The Israeli government’s continued cruelty and hatred never cease to amaze, especially its starvation of little children.

Three days before the hospital bombing, the Reuters News Service told the story of Rehab Akhras, 64, who “used cardboard to light a fire and boil a can of beans. It is all they have left.”

“We’re a family of 13 people, what will one can of fava beans do for us?” she asked.

She added: “We have survived the war and we have survived the airstrikes as we wake up and go to sleep. But we can’t survive the hunger, neither us nor our children.”

The Reuters report said the last food was running out since Israel imposed a total blockade of food, water and medicine on Gaza following the end of the ceasefire six weeks earlier. The international organization, Human Rights Watch, has said Israel has been using starvation as a weapon of war, which is an international war crime.

Israel has expanded its killing to between 4,000 and 5,000 in Lebanon, and the U.S. is conducting “large scale naval and airstrikes” in Yemen on behalf of Israel, including bombing civilian residential areas.

The U.S. bombing and shelling is called Operation Rough Rider. Yemen had observed a ceasefire of its own, but when Israel ended its ceasefire in Gaza, Yemen began attacking some Israeli shipping.

As of this writing, Yemen had defended against the U.S. strikes by shooting down 19 drones valued at $30 million, or $570 million in total.

Now, finally, even many people in Israel are getting fed up. On April 4, 1,000 current and former Israeli Air Force Reservists signed a letter demanding an end to the war in Gaza.

The letter said, “The continuation of the war doesn’t advance any of the declared goals of the war and will bring about the deaths of the hostages, IDF Army soldiers, and innocent civilians.”

The letter also said the war is going on for “political and personal interests.” Signers included the former head of the Army, Dan Halutz.

In addition, 150 officers of the Israeli Navy signed a separate petition calling on Netanyahu to stop the war, according to a report in the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper.

Israel’s Channel 12 reported that “hundreds of fighters who served in the past and are still serving” in the Army and Navy “joined the Air Force protest and sent two additional letters calling for an end to the Gaza War…”

These protests occurred just days after Israeli soldiers killed 15 unarmed medics and ambulance workers in southern Gaza. The military first falsely claimed these were terrorists, but then a phone of one of the victims was found, which had recorded the horrific scene.

The Red Cross Secretary General said, “I am heartbroken. These dedicated ambulance workers were responding to wounded people. They were humanitarians. They wore emblems that should have protected them; their ambulances were clearly marked.”

One of the victims had these last words on his phone: “Forgive me, Mother. This is the path I chose to help people – to save lives.”

CNN reported that another victim, a young man of 21 who was filling in for a sick friend, called his father pleading for help. “Come to me, Dad, help me. We were targeted by the Israelis, and they are now shooting at us directly.”

Now, Netanyahu is pressuring us to go to war against Iran. America First or Israel First? We cannot do both.

This originally appeared on The Knoxville Focus.

The post Israel – Killing Ambulance Workers, Starving Little Children appeared first on LewRockwell.

Secretary of State Marko Rubio, presidential envoy Steve Witkoff, several foreign ministers from Europe and the Ukrainian President Zelenski were supposed to meet in London today.

The Trump administration had planned this to be a final meeting over a ceasefire in Ukraine. A U.S. proposal for the ceasefire were to be discussed and accepted.

But Zelenski bailed out and the proposed meeting fell apart. According to the Independent Zelenski had feared to be “ambushed”:

Actor turned statesman Volodymyr Zelensky may have only ever played a soldier, but as a war time leader he knows an ambush when he sees one.

Having been trapped in the Oval Office and eviscerated by Donald Trump and JD Vance, he has avoided an enfilade from a crack team of American diplomats in the London kill zone by not turning up at all.

Tipped off that his intended target was not going to wander into his sights, the US team leader, secretary of state Marco Rubio, called off the operation altogether and stayed in Washington along with Steve Witkoff, Trump’s envoy to Vladimir Putin.

Keith Kellog, Trump’s envoy to Ukraine, who was already in London, has been left to observe peering through the privet while foreign secretary David Lammy squires the Ukrainian foreign minister for much downgraded “talks”.

At least the British hosts were not saddled with what could have been an historic mess in which Zelensky was presented with a US-Russian ultimatum and then painted as a rejectionist war monger when he said “nemaye” (no).

Other media are vague about the reasons to downgrade the talks. There is generally no common line in the media reporting of the issue. Axios claims that Ukraine rejected to negotiate a longer term ceasefire and instead only offered a shorter term:

A U.S. official involved in the discussions said Rubio and Witkoff worked together “to develop a framework to get us closer to reaching an end to the war.”

• • However, the official said that over the last 24 hours there had been indications from the Ukrainians that they wanted to discuss a 30-day ceasefire during Wednesday’s meetings in London rather than Trump’s peace plan framework.

• • “The decision was made for the secretary to not travel to London. Instead, the U.S. delegation will continue to engage in conversations with U.K. and Ukrainian counterparts,” the official said.

The U.S. ceasefire plan includes several points which either the Ukrainians, the Europeans or the Russians were certain to reject.

The Telegraph seems to have the most complete list of its points:

A source with knowledge of the plan’s contents said that its points one and two cover an immediate ceasefire and direct talks between Ukraine and Russia, which Mr Zelensky has already accepted in principle.

Point three requires Ukraine to refrain from seeking membership of Nato, though the country would still be free to join the EU.

European countries could deploy an assurance force to deter Putin from invading again, but The Telegraph understands that the plan does not commit the US to guarantee the security of any such deployment.
…
Point four covers territory, with America offering de jure recognition of Russian sovereignty over Crimea, the region of Ukraine which Putin illegally annexed in 2014.
…
As well as some territory switching hands to Ukraine, the nuclear power station at Zaporizhzhia, the largest in Ukraine and currently held by Russian forces, would be transferred to American control.

Under point six, Ukraine would sign the minerals deal allowing US companies access to the country’s natural resources.

Point seven raises the possibility of a new relationship between America and Russia, saying that all US sanctions would be lifted and the two countries could begin to co-operate on energy.

Zelenski does not want to concede any territory. He also does not want to sign the mineral deal which would eliminate all sovereign decisions abut Ukraine’s resources. A longer war, during which billions of dollars and Euros keep flowing, is the best deal for him.

At least some Europeans still want to ‘win’ against Russia. They reject any lifting of sanctions. They want to insert ‘peacekeepers’ into Ukraine but only with U.S. backing.

Russia wants a bigger deal, not just a ceasefire in Ukraine, but a new European security architecture.

Claims by the Financial Times that Russia is willing to stop the war and to give up on its larger aims of demilitarizing and denazification of Ukraine have been rejected by Moscow. Russia will also not give up control of the nuclear power station in Zaporizhzhia.

The U.S. acceptance of Crimea as Russian territory is an interesting point but likely based on an ulterior motive. It would lift sanctions on Crimea and allow U.S. companies to take part in the exploitation of natural gas fields around it.

There is little the U.S. can do for now to press for a compromise. The best and most likely move is for Trump to wash his hands over Ukraine and walk away.

This would fits the larger plan of leaving the struggle with Russia to the Europeans while the U.S. will concentrate its forces in Asia for a potential conflict with China.

Reprinted with permission from Moon of Alabama.

The post Setback for U.S. ‘Ceasefire’ Deal in Ukraine appeared first on LewRockwell.

For a few days during the early weeks of the current Trump administration, it appeared that the Trump team might actually try to rein in the Federal Reserve. Trump and Elon Musk hinted that they would push for an audit of the Federal Reserve, and they even suggested that they would bring in Ron Paul to serve as an advisor on the matter. More recently, though, it seems that a meaningful critique of the Fed is going the way of that imaginary trillion dollars that the Department of Government Efficiency has already given up on cutting from the federal budget. In other words, the hinted-at Fed audit has disappeared from the Trump “to do” list.

Even worse, it now is becoming clear that if the Trump team is going to attack the Fed, it’s because Trump wants more inflation from the Fed, not less. Since he was sworn in, Trump has attacked the current Fed chairman Jerome Powell at least three times for not forcing down interest rates enough. He’s done this in spite of the fact that the Fed cut rates by 100 basis points over the past year. Specifically, last fall, the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) reduced the target rate three times, lowering it from 5.5 percent to 4.5 percent. This was a major reduction, especially since it occurred during a period when it was hardly clear that CPI inflation was falling sustainably.

In February, though, Trump railed against Powell (and, by extension, the FOMC) for not implementing any new cuts in the Fed’s target policy rate since December. Trump wrote on Truth Social “Interest Rates should be lowered, something which would go hand in hand with upcoming Tariffs!!! Lets Rock and Roll, America!!!” Apparently, The Fed’s recent cuts to the Fed’s target rate—which requires ongoing market intervention from the FOMC—was not enough for Trump.

Then, on April 17, Trump renewed his inflationist attack, complaining in another social media post that Powell is “always TOO LATE AND WRONG,” and he insisted the Fed chairman’s “termination cannot come fast enough!” This past Monday, Trump was at it again, demanding that Powell lower the target policy rate, posting on social media: “unless Mr. Too Late, a major loser, lowers interest rates, NOW.”

Trump’s word choice is telling. The refrain of “too late” has long been the battle cry of Wall Street corporate welfare queens who push for easy money while complaining that the Fed will engage in a “policy error” if it doesn’t slash rates “soon enough.” Trump is now apparently very much on that bandwagon. Of course, for people like Trump and other easy-money addicts, it’s almost always the “right time” to cut interest rates in order to “stimulate” the economy with more monetary inflation.

At this point it’s clear that any hopes that Trump was going to be a hard-money guy who would rein in monetary inflation was pure wishful thinking.  Trump’s preferred monetary policy is demonstrably no different from that of Biden, Obama, or George W. Bush. The “solution” for these politicians is always more easy money, in the form of lower interest rates.

Why Trump Needs More Easy Money

This should not surprise us, though, since Trump wants to lower interest rates for political reasons just as his predecessors did. For one, Trump’s profligate budget policies continue to run up large deficits, and there are no plans for any major cuts in deficit spending, in spite of the quickly unraveling promises made by the so-called Department of Government Efficiency.

So, in order to prevent interest rates on the federal debt from spiraling out of control, Trump is going to need the Fed to intervene to put some downward pressure on yields.

Secondly, Trump wants monetary stimulus to counteract the effects of his take hikes on imports-also known as “tariffs.”  Trump himself hinted at this with his February comment in which he said that lower interest rates “would go hand in hand with upcoming Tariffs!!!” From the perspective of economics, this sentence is essentially a non sequitur since there’s nothing about tariffs or low interest rates that suggests they go necessarily go “hand in hand.” Trump’s claim makes a lot of sense from a political perspective, however. Given that tariffs are just taxes, and taxes have an impoverishing effect on the economy, it seems Trump wants a more dovish Fed to create a “wealth effect” among voters. That is, low interest rates can be a political tool to paper over the real negative effects of higher tariffs—which are just taxes on Americans who want to buy imported goods.

What Trump Should be Doing 

The problem with the Fed is most certainly not that Jerome Powell isn’t forcing down interest rates enough. Rather, interest rates have been far too low for far too long, augmented by the FOMC’ usual open market operations and by repeated and huge asset purchases of Treasurys and mortgage-backed securities since 2008.

Contrary to Trump’s plans for more monetary inflation, the right path is to rein in the Fed by ending the Fed’s power to purchase assets of any kind, thus greatly curtailing the Fed’s ability to manipulate interest rates. (Naturally, the end goal should be to abolish the Fed entirely.)

Unfortunately, it’s increasingly apparent that Trump has no interest in fighting the monetary policies that give us 40-year highs in price inflation in 2022, and which continue to drive up prices in housing, food, and other essentials. If anything, Trump is doubling down on those failed policies and demanding that our activist, meddling central bank do even more. 

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

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There cannot be a peace deal when President Trump only proposes that Russia keep Crimea, which Russia did not take in war but in an unanimous vote of the population in Crimea to be reunited with Russia from which Crimea had been torn.

Trump has not included in the deal Russian Donbas, which also voted to be returned to Russia or the other Russian areas that Russian forces have liberated and have been reincorporated into Russia.

In other words, so far, other than Crimea, President Trump has offered President Putin none of the former Russian territory that is now again part of Russia herself.  Is the implication that Putin must hand back to Ukraine the territory from which Russian soldiers have driven out Ukrainian soldiers?  So Putin’s 3+ years of war was all for nothing?

Zelensky himself, treated by Trump as Ukraine’s leader despite the fact that Zelensky’s term has expired and he is no longer legally or constitutionally the president of Ukraine, states that he will not even discuss recognizing Crimea as Russian territory:  Crimea “is our territory, the territory of the people of Ukraine. We have nothing to talk about on this topic.” See here.

To understand how absurd Zelensky is, consider that Crimea is the home since the 1700s of the base of Russia’s Black Sea Navy, Russia’s access to the Mediterranean. 

As Zelensky appears to have a veto, even Trump’s partial concession to Russia has no chance.  

Trump threatens that he will walk away from the negotiations.  That w0uld be a good thing if he takes American weapons and money when he goes. 

Zelensky would be left to deal with Putin, perhaps an easy task as Putin and Lavrov continue to bleat for negotiations, neglecting their responsibility to win a war that has gone on for far too long drawing in the US and Europe.  It seems Zelensky is relying on Britain and France to send their troops to continue the fight against Russia. The French president is talking about extending France’s nuclear umbrella to include Ukraine.

Putin and Lavrov seem to prefer a negotiated deal to a military victory.  Would the Kremlin accept a deal that requires Russia to give up battlefield successes won at a large cost in Russian life, the life of young men lost and gone and unavailable to create needed Russian population?  Is it Putin’s hope for a Great Power Agreement that has prolonged the conflict?

A great power agreement happens only among great powers, but President Putin has convinced the West that Russia is irresolute, averse to using force, and only wants a negotiated settlement to the conflict with Ukraine, for which Putin will pay almost any price, no matter the humiliation.

Russia’s inability to bring a war with Ukraine to a victorious conclusion after more than three years of fighting negates any recognition of Russia as a great power as far as the West is concerned.  Even Britain and France feel confident to fight Russia. Several of the NATO countries are saying that they are preparing for war with Russia.  The Baltic states are even interdicting Russian shipping.

Putin’s conduct of the war has convinced the West that he is irresolute and averse to fighting.  The choice facing Putin is:  Surrender or win a victory and impose the peace.

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Il manoscritto fornisce un grimaldello al lettore, una chiave di lettura semplificata, del mondo finanziario e non che sembra essere andato "fuori controllo" negli ultimi quattro anni in particolare. Questa è una storia di cartelli, a livello sovrastatale e sovranazionale, la cui pianificazione centrale ha raggiunto un punto in cui deve essere riformata radicalmente e questa riforma radicale non può avvenire senza una dose di dolore economico che potrebbe mettere a repentaglio la loro autorità. Da qui la risposta al Grande Default attraverso il Grande Reset. Questa è la storia di un coyote, che quando non riesce a sfamarsi all'esterno ricorre all'autofagocitazione. Lo stesso è accaduto ai membri del G7, dove i sei membri restanti hanno iniziato a fagocitare il settimo: gli Stati Uniti.

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(Versione audio della traduzione disponibile qui: https://open.substack.com/pub/fsimoncelli/p/tokenizzazione-la-nuova-frontiera)

Il mondo delle criptovalute ha un valore enorme! La tokenizzazione digitale degli asset, resa possibile dalla struttura crypto-blockchain, può aumentare l'efficienza nei mercati dei capitali, oliando così gli ingranaggi che muovono l'economia.

Le nostre opinioni sulle criptovalute e sulle meme coin non sono cambiate, ma la tokenizzazione degli asset digitali è diversa e potrebbe ridisegnare radicalmente i mercati finanziari a vantaggio dei mercati dei capitali e dell'economia.

Che cos'è la tokenizzazione?

La tokenizzazione degli asset è l'atto di digitalizzare la proprietà di un asset. A un livello molto alto, non è poi così diverso dal modo in cui la vostra banca gestisce un conto corrente. Essa non ha un caveau pieno di contanti, invece ha un computer con una serie di 1 e 0 che rappresentano il vostro saldo di cassa. Le banche, in sostanza, digitalizzano il nostro denaro.

I token di asset digitali rappresentano asset del mondo reale, proprio come gli 1 e gli 0 delle banche rappresentano il vostro denaro. La gamma di asset che possono essere tokenizzati è illimitata. Prima di entrare nei dettagli della tokenizzazione degli asset, vale la pena condividere alcuni esempi unici di come la tokenizzazione degli asset avvantaggi i venditori e gli acquirenti dei token. Prendiamo in considerazione le seguenti possibilità...

Diritti di proprietà cinematografici

Un produttore cinematografico può emettere token per finanziare la produzione di un film. Questo non solo finanzierebbe la relativa creazione, ma potrebbe anche consentire al produttore una maggiore libertà artistica, evitando le grandi case di produzione che spesso dettano i budget e molti aspetti del film.

In cambio del loro finanziamento, i possessori di token potrebbero ricevere una percentuale dei futuri incassi del film e i diritti, anche parziali, sul film stesso. Inoltre potrebbero anche ricevere biglietti omaggio per la première come bonus.

Sviluppo di farmaci

Uno scienziato o un'azienda farmaceutica potrebbero reperire capitali per la ricerca su un nuovo farmaco antitumorale tramite token. In cambio del finanziamento, i proprietari dei token potrebbero ricevere i diritti e i ricavi futuri derivanti dal farmaco. Ciò non solo fornirebbe una nuova fonte di finanziamento per l'industria farmaceutica, ma rappresenterebbe anche un nuovo modo per i cittadini di donare a una causa a cui tengono e da cui potrebbero trarre un beneficio economico.

Arte

Un dipinto potrebbe essere tokenizzato per condividere la proprietà di un'opera o di una collezione d'arte. I possessori di token, da parte loro, potrebbero ricevere entrate se l'opera d'arte viene affittata ai musei. Inoltre i possessori di token sono proprietari di una frazione di un'opera d'arte di valore. Sebbene le entrate possano o meno avvantaggiare il possessore di token, alcuni attribuiscono un notevole valore non finanziario al possesso di tali opere d'arte. 

Guadagni futuri di un atleta

Un atleta sedicenne con un talento eccezionale nel baseball, ma con pochi soldi, potrebbe trasformare in token i suoi futuri guadagni nel baseball. I possessori di tali token che sanno individuare il talento in giovane età possono fornire un reddito al ragazzo nel presente e condividere i suoi guadagni se un giorno dovesse arrivare alle Major League.

Camere d'albergo

Un investitore o un'azienda potrebbe acquistare un hotel e finanziarne l'acquisto con i token delle singole camere. I possessori dei token potrebbero ricevere entrate future ogni volta che la camera viene affittata. Inoltre i token potrebbero garantire all'investitore uno sconto per quella camera o per altre di proprietà del proprietario dell'hotel.

Ecco alcune altre idee per evidenziare quanto sia vasto e distintivo il potenziale di raccolta e investimento di capitali:

• Esplorazione subacquea di relitti

• Diritti sui podcast

• Valori di compensazione sulle emissioni di anidride carbonica

• Vigneti

• Vincite dei giocatori di poker

• Un brevetto o un copyright

• Camion che trasportano cibo

• Macchine arcade/distributori automatici

• Una squadra sportiva

Nelle sezioni seguenti approfondiremo un po' i dettagli della tokenizzazione. Tuttavia, che voi smettiate di leggere qui o meno, speriamo che l'insegnamento che trarrete da questo articolo è che il processo di tokenizzazione apre nuove porte a chi è alla ricerca di finanziamenti. Allo stesso tempo aumenta significativamente il numero di opportunità di investimento uniche e diversificate per gli investitori.

In parole più semplici, rende i mercati dei capitali più efficaci!

Come funziona

Di seguito è riportato un riepilogo passo passo del processo di tokenizzazione:

• Identificazione della risorsa: selezionare una risorsa tangibile o intangibile da tokenizzare.

• Verifica della proprietà e della conformità legale: confermare il legittimo proprietario della risorsa e la conformità legale e normativa con la relativa vendita.

• Definizione della struttura: scegliere le proprietà del token, come il suo valore, la sua divisibilità e il numero da emettere.

• Creazione di uno smart contract: sviluppare uno smart contract basato su blockchain per governare l'emissione, le regole e i diritti di trasferibilità del token.

• Conio dei token: rendere attivo lo smart contract sulla blockchain e generare i token digitali.

• Vendita dei token: commercializzare e vendere i token. Esistono numerosi modi per farlo, tra cui un'offerta iniziale di coin (ICO), un'offerta di security token (STO), una vendita privata o l'emissione diretta a specifici investitori o stakeholder. Ai token si applicano tutte le norme di accreditamento e qualificazione degli investitori.

• Gestione e trading: consentire ai possessori di token di fare trading ed eventualmente riscattare i token mantenendo la completa trasparenza di tutte le attività sulla blockchain.

Piattaforme e luoghi dove scambiare i token

Piattaforme specializzate e gli exchange trasformano i token digitali da un'idea in un meccanismo di finanziamento fino a un asset negoziabile.

Le piattaforme dei token sono come una fabbrica del proprio prodotto: include avvocati, analisti tecnici e back office responsabili della creazione della sicurezza digitale. Pertanto è qui che i token vengono creati, ospitati e gestiti. Ciò comprende la conformità normativa, l'avvio di smart contract e la creazione di token. Ethereum, Binance Smart Chain, Polygon e Solana sono alcune delle piattaforme più grandi. L'emittente di token è principalmente responsabile della gestione delle attività relative alla piattaforma.

Gli exchange di token, come le borse valori, sono il luogo in cui essi vengono scambiati dopo la loro creazione sulle piattaforme. Alcuni esempi includono Coinbase, Binance e Kraken. Trader, investitori e broker/dealer sono i principali utenti degli exchange.

Alcune aziende, come tZERO, offrono sia servizi di piattaforma che di exchange. Inoltre sono broker-dealer specializzati registrati presso la SEC per token digitali.

L'importanza della tecnologia blockchain risiede nella sua capacità di offrire una trasparenza maggiore rispetto all'attuale sistema finanziario. La proprietà di un token e l'intera cronologia delle transazioni sono accessibili a chiunque. Inoltre le piattaforme e gli exchange garantiscono che i token siano vincolati a un asset e verificati da fonti di dati esterne per garantire il valore e la veridicità degli asset che li supportano. Infine qualsiasi pagamento agli investitori o all'emittente può essere effettuato istantaneamente. Questo evita il processo di liquidazione che richiede diversi giorni o settimane e mesi di pratiche burocratiche, che molte transazioni di asset attualmente comportano.

Riepilogo

Ecco i principali vantaggi della tokenizzazione digitale:

• Migliore liquidità

• Più trasparenza

• Accesso al mercato 24 ore su 24

• Riduzione dei costi

• Frazionalizzazione

• Rende i mercati dei capitali più inclusivi per finanziatori e investitori

• Amplia il bacino delle attività investibili

In base a tali vantaggi, la tokenizzazione digitale rappresenta un significativo miglioramento rispetto all'attuale sistema finanziario. Nonostante le prospettive promettenti, però, il processo di adattamento è lento. Affinché il mercato dei token possa competere con i mercati dei capitali tradizionali, sono necessarie normative più esplicite e una maggiore comprensione e fiducia nella blockchain da parte degli investitori al dettaglio e istituzionali. Spetterà allo stato, al settore finanziario e alle alleanze degli investitori definire linee guida, normative e governance per contribuire a creare una base solida e affidabile.

I benefici economici della tokenizzazione sono enormi. I mercati finanziari per asset liquidi e illiquidi saranno più efficienti, più economici da finanziare e negoziare e meno esclusivi. Se la tokenizzazione decollerà come pensiamo, i benefici potrebbero essere sostanziali per i mercati dei capitali, ma soprattutto per l'economia e la popolazione.

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

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See here.

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I can’t help following the Austin Metcalf-Karmelo Anthony racial saga. This is the big story of the moment, framed dishonestly as always, highlighting the two sides we have to choose from. What the great Huey Long called Tweedledum and Tweedledee. High Papa Lowem and Low Papa Highem. Servers working for the same Wall Street chefs.

A few days ago, former January 6 political prisoner Jake Lang organized a “Whites Fight Back” rally in Frisco, Texas. Or maybe it was “Protect White Americans.” Regardless of the actual name, the protest was notable for having that “White” in there, without the usual qualifiers of guilt, like “End White Supremacy,” or a more America 2.0 name, like “Rally Against Racism.” It looked like at least some Whites were finally fighting back. Finally reaching that long overdue tipping point. Predictably, there was very little media attention, but pictures and videos showed a sparse crowd. Mainstream media always lies about these things, but their estimate of 40 protesters, with half as many counter-protesters, seems pretty accurate. One of the few protesters there was pepper sprayed by a woman who was triggered by his Trump hat. It’s pretty clear that pitifully few Whites want to “fight back.”

Jake Lang was joined by fellow J6er Philip Anderson, who is Black. The rally was held in honor of Austin Metcalf. Austin’s father Jeff Metcalf sent his Black friend Bruce Carter, of Team Black Males, who is apparently associated in some way with Donald Trump, to let Lang know how unhappy he was with the event. He demanded they stop using his son’s image to “fuel their cause.” What does he think their “cause” was, other than to express outrage over his son’s death, and the fact the killer has now been released, after his bond was slashed dramatically by a typically partisan Black female judge? Who is laughably said to be a Republican. Trump probably loves her. By the way, have we heard the great “White Supremacist” Trump even mention this case? I mean, shouldn’t he be outraged? What with him being the country’s foremost “racist” and all, you’d think he’d be talking nonstop about this. By contrast, Lang put up two million as bond and still wasn’t released as a J6 political prisoner.

There is a video out there of Lang arguing with Carter, and then listening on speaker phone as Carter calls Jeff Metcalf. An angry Metcalf- not angry at Karmelo Anthony or his shamelessly grifting family, but at Lang- told the former political prisoner that “You’re part of the fucking problem” and insisted race played no part in the murder. Metcalf was quoted in news accounts as calling Lang and others “race baiters” who “wanna spew their narrative for their own agenda.” “They don’t give a shit about my family….about Karmelo Anthony’s family.” He said he plans to complain to the school board for granting the protesters- who were protesting in his son’s name– access to the school parking lot. He even called Lang a “White piece of trash.” Compare Metcalf’s exceptional magnanimity towards his son’s killer with the way Black families have acted in those extremely rare cases where their family member was killed by Whites.

In fact, the Anthony family has now raised over $500,000 with GiveSendGo, Rumors are they bought a $900,000 home and a new Cadillac. They also claim to have been subjected to racist threats and harassment, and have hired security to protect them. Well, there are endless numbers of “White Supremacists” out there, so that makes sense. It is unknown how much the family of the victim has received through their own fundraising account, but you can bet if it was anywhere near that amount, that both Black “activists” and the lapdog media would be decrying it. The Anthony family gave a surrealistic press conference, led by grifting and inarticulate criminal turned “reverend” Dominique Alexander. Alexander fractured the English language in true Ebonics fashion, and took a swipe at Jeff Metcalf, who showed up at this ridiculous event, but was thrown out. He was almost certainly there to show his support.

Alexander, who is the newest incarnation of former crack dealer turned FBI informant Al Sharpton, has an extensive felony criminal record, including for child abuse. But I suppose it’s even “racist” to point that out. The good reverend introduced Karmelo’s mother, who obviously had him at a very young age, and she droned on about nothing, in her best virtue signaling voice. She and her husband stood behind the good reverend, with her looking as sad as possible while laying her head on her husband’s shoulder. Her son is alive and well, yet it’s the Anthony family that is focused on by our criminal media. Why no heart tugging stories about Austin’s mother, or his twin brother Hunter, who held his brother while he died? Instead, the supporters of the murderer Anthony want Hunter arrested, and Karmelo released. Well, Karmelo has been released. Maybe Hunter will be arrested for “disrespecting” Karmelo.

This case exemplifies the state of present-day America. And illustrates the futility of the token resistance being offered to this overbearing tyranny and injustice. The Anthony family complains about….well, I guess being Black in America. Jeff Metcalf, who lost his son to this immoral ghetto culture, is apparently siding with them. Metcalf was recently “swatted,” a new perk enjoyed by various enemies of the state, where a fake 9/11 call is placed, for purposes of harassment. Owen Shroyer of Infowars was another recent high profile victim of “swatting.” Maybe Jeff Metcalf wants Karmelo to be released, too. Free Karmelo! Perhaps he’s gone full cuck and is anxious for his other son to be charged with… something. Anything. Just claim he said the Word That Cannot Be Said by White People. That’s a far more serious offense than murder in the cockeyed authoritarian mess once advertised as the land of the free.

It’s ironic that Jeff Metcalf is turning to the school board for help. Help in stopping anyone from protesting the fact his White son was killed by a Black male, a crime that happens far too often. Remember how angry parents were confronting the petty tyrants running school boards across the country, in the misty, long ago days of 2021? They were mad as hell and they weren’t going to take Critical Race Theory and Transgender propaganda being doled out to their small children any longer. So what happened? My own Fairfax County school board, near the epicenter of the angry parent protests, recently voted 16-0 to ignore Donald Trump’s executive order banning DEI from schools, and continue “gender studies” for elementary students. I get the sense that “angry” voters weren’t any more successful anywhere else, in removing these penny ante despots. Assuming they count those votes, that is.

The average American is obviously far better off than the average Palestinian. We don’t have to fear bombs raining from the sky, or bullets from the IDF. We don’t have to search for shelter- well, except for our growing homeless population crapping in the streets- and our military hasn’t bulldozed our homes, or killed children throwing rocks at their armored tanks. Paid for, of course, with your tax dollars. At this point, the lonely whistleblower is in effect throwing rocks at tanks. If the mass of people can’t understand who the bad guy is in a fatal stabbing, or come together to oust well paid school board dictators, then what exactly can we come together for? Those of us who are “awake” are fighting two enemies; the thoroughly corrupt government, business world, and state sponsored media, and the mindless rabble who support them unquestioningly and would turn on us if ordered to. A father objects to the lack of punishment for a transgender who raped his daughter at school and they arrest him?

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One of my favorite sections of Ludwig von Mises’s majestic treatise Human Action (1949) is a rather short one titled “The Fight Against Error.” Its main theme is to show how mankind’s problems come down to errors arising from flawed economic ideologies. He writes: “The main objective of…economics is to substitute consistent correct ideologies for the contradictory tenets of popular eclecticism.”

In some ways, civilization can be seen as a sort of bridge which must be engineered and understood using the proper materials and methods if it is to last and lay a foundation for a more prosperous future. A faulty understanding which just patches things only delays a future calamity. Mises writes:

Logical thinking and real life are not two separate orbits. Logic is for man the only means to master the problems of reality. What is contradictory in theory, is no less contradictory in reality. No ideological inconsistency can provide a satisfactory, i.e., working, solution for the problems offered by the facts of the world. The only effect of contradictory ideologies is to conceal the real problems and thus to prevent people from finding in time an appropriate policy for solving them. Inconsistent ideologies may sometimes postpone the emergence of a manifest conflict. But they certainly aggravate the evils which they mask and render a final solution more difficult. They multiply the agonies, they intensify the hatreds, and make peaceful settlement impossible. It is a serious blunder to consider ideological contradictions harmless or even beneficial.

Thus Mises had a laser-like focus on ideas and education. Elsewhere Mises stresses what should be obvious:

It is ideas that group men into fighting factions, that press the weapons into their hands, and that determine against whom and for whom the weapons shall be used. It is they alone, and not arms, that, in the last analysis, turn the scales.

Unfortunately, the public—and even most “intellectuals”—erroneously tend to see mankind, not in “The Fight Against Error” and economic ignorance, per Mises, but in some quixotic fight against “evil”—malicious or dumb people. In just two consecutive paragraphs, like some intellectual Jedi who calmly disarms all opposition with the wave of a hand, Mises brilliantly dismantles the “they are evil” or “mad” fallacies which dominate most discourse regardless of whether the subject matter is the economy, science, history, etc., and can only lead to “irreconcilable conflict.” He writes:

The problems involved are purely intellectual and must be dealt with as such. It is disastrous to shift them to the moral sphere and to dispose of supporters of opposite ideologies by calling them villains. It is vain to insist that what we are aiming at is good and what our adversaries want is bad. The question to be solved is precisely what is to be considered as good and what as bad. The rigid dogmatism peculiar to religious groups and to Marxism results only in irreconcilable conflict. It condemns beforehand all dissenters as evildoers, it calls into question their good faith, it asks them to surrender unconditionally. No social cooperation is possible where such an attitude prevails.

No better is the propensity, very popular nowadays, to brand supporters of other ideologies as lunatics. Psychiatrists are vague in drawing a line between sanity and insanity. It would be preposterous for laymen to interfere with this fundamental issue of psychiatry. However, it is clear that if the mere fact that a man shares erroneous views and acts according to his errors qualifies him as mentally disabled, it would be very hard to discover an individual to which the epithet sane or normal could be attributed. Then we are bound to call the past generations lunatic because their ideas about the problems of the natural sciences and concomitantly their techniques differed from ours. Coming generations will call us lunatics for the same reason. Man is liable to error. If to err were the characteristic feature of mental disability, then everybody should be called mentally disabled.

If you tell “supporters of opposite ideologies,” whether they’d be socialists or capitalists, Zionists or anti-Zionists, pro- or anti-vax, etc., that—with the best of intentions—they are simply following erroneous ideas, you avoid the potential mistake of implying malice, conspiracy, or stupidity, and put the onus on them to then explain the validity of their ideas.

Mises—being a Jewish intellectual and arguably Nazism-Socialism’s greatest intellectual opponent—was almost apprehended by the Nazis as he cautiously escaped Europe in 1940 when the Nazis quickly overran France and tried to get the Swiss government to hand him over. But regardless of Nazi tyranny, Mises’s profound understanding of the world had him blaming, not Hitler, or “evil” or “antisemitism” or “madness,” but the errors and economic ignorance that inevitably led to such tyranny given Germany’s unique historical circumstances. Mises concludes:

There are psychiatrists who call the Germans who espoused the principles of Nazism lunatics and want to cure them by therapeutic procedures. Here again we are faced with the same problem. The doctrines of Nazism are vicious, but they do not essentially disagree with the ideologies of socialism and nationalism as approved by other peoples’ public opinion. What characterized the Nazis was only the consistent application of these ideologies to the special conditions of Germany….

Now, whoever accepts the ideology of nationalism and socialism as true and as the standard of his own nation’s policy, is not in a position to refute the conclusions drawn from them by the Nazis…. There is no hope of eradicating the aggression mentality if one does not explode entirely the ideological fallacies from which it stems. This is not a task for psychiatrists, but for economists….

Man has only one tool to fight error: reason.

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Americans watch more television than anyone else in the world, and as we watch television we are constantly being bombarded by commercials from pharmaceutical companies.  As I discussed in a previous article, pharmaceutical companies spend more than 15 billion dollars on television advertising each year.  The reason they do this is because it works.  We are the most drugged nation in the history of the world, and the pharmaceutical companies are absolutely swimming in cash.

According to polling that was conducted by KFF, a whopping 61 percent of all U.S. adults admit that they are currently taking at least one pharmaceutical drug.

That is a solid majority of the population.

And once they have you on one drug, they are much more likely to be able to get you on another.

The KFF survey found that 13 percent of U.S. adults are taking one pharmaceutical drug.

The KFF survey found that 11 percent of U.S. adults are taking two pharmaceutical drugs.

The KFF survey found that 10 percent of U.S. adults are taking three pharmaceutical drugs.

And most shocking of all, the KFF survey found that 27 percent of U.S. adults are taking at least four pharmaceutical drugs.

That means that more than a quarter of the adult population is currently on at least four  prescription medications.

That is insane!

But this is where we are at as a society.

Elderly Americans are the biggest victims.  One study found “that an estimated 89 percent of older adults” took at least one  prescription medication within the past 12 months.

Even if you aren’t sick, the system is designed to find a reason why you should become a customer of the big pharmaceutical companies.

For example, the percentage of Americans that have been diagnosed with depression has more than tripled since 2005…

Today, new CDC data showed that nearly 18 percent of Americans had depression in 2023, an all-time high. In 2005, when Cruise’s controversial interview aired, that figure was about 5.4 percent.

At this stage, it is so easy to be diagnosed with depression.

Just act a little bit sad, and they will gladly start giving you pills.

This is particularly true for women.  According to Google AI, women in the United States are using antidepressants at a rate that is more than twice as high as men…

According to the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) conducted in 2015-2018, approximately 17.7% of women aged 18 and older reported using antidepressants in the past 30 days. This is significantly higher than the rate for men, which was 8.4%.

If you have been on antidepressants, you already know how they can mess with your head.

I have seen it happen to people that I know personally.

So what is going to happen to the millions of Americans that are highly dependent on these drugs if they suddenly can’t get them anymore?

Today, we import approximately 75 percent of our essential medicines, and most of those essential medicines come from either China or India…

According to Exiger, the U.S. currently imports 75% of its essential medicines, with most of them coming from China and India. While India produces about half of the generic drugs the U.S. imports, it relies heavily on China for 80% of its active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs). More than 500 generic drugs rely on one country’s APIs, including treatments for diabetes and heart conditions as well as antibiotics.

Another factor putting Americans at risk is the use of forced labor in the production of pharmaceuticals. Exiger found that multiple suppliers, including Sinopharm, Zhejiang Shindai Chemical Group and Zhejiang Chemicals Export Corp., relied on Uyghur forced labor in Xinjiang. Customs and Border Patrol is supposed to block goods made with forced labor; however, some still get through.

We have got a real mess on our hands.

Many pharmaceutical drugs will soon become much more expensive, and in other cases we could witness extreme shortages.

Millions of U.S. adults are about to experience a very rude awakening.

Of course it isn’t just adults that are being drugged into oblivion.

Today, millions of American boys are being given drugs for ADHD…

More than 21% of 14-year-old boys in this country now supposedly suffer from this condition. The number goes up to 23% for 17-year-old boys. As a result, prescriptions for drugs like Ritalin and Adderall have skyrocketed. From 2012 to 2022, the total number of prescriptions for stimulants to treat ADHD increased dramatically by nearly 60%. Boys between the ages of 10 to 14 were the demographic that saw the highest increase in these prescriptions.

What we are witnessing is a national tragedy.

Most of the boys that are taking these drugs simply do not need them.

As Glenn Back has accurately pointed out, our “feminized education system” tends to punish normal male behavior…

“The truth is we’ve been told not that a feminized education system has increasingly punished normal male behavior it doesn’t understand; it’s not that schools have lost their capacity to educate male students; it’s not that smartphone use and electronics in general have become distractions teachers have been unable to control. Instead, we’re led to believe that boys have suddenly become afflicted with a severe psychological disorder,” Glenn reads from the Daily Wire piece.

He agrees that what’s being done to boys in education is a travesty.

“Everything is just push the girls, push the girls, push the girls — ‘you can be anything.’ ‘Shut up, sit down, have some Ritalin’ to the boys,” he condemns.

The boys who are being written off as distractible and out of control are really just being typical boys.

He is right.

We have been trained to think that typical male behavior is abnormal when it most certainly is not.

Sadly, an increasing percentage of U.S. adults now believe that children are such a “burden” that they don’t want to be parents at all…

A new study shows the number of U.S. adults who do not want to have children has doubled in 20 years.

“We found that the percentage of non-parents who don’t want any children rose from 14% in 2002 to 29% in 2023,” Jennifer Watling Neal, co-author of the study and professor of psychology at Michigan State University (MSU), said.

“During the same period, the percentage of non-parents who plan to have children in the future fell from 79% to 59%,” she added.

The relentless propaganda that they have been feeding us is working.

More U.S. adults than ever before are completely rejecting parenthood.

Needless to say, this is a recipe for societal suicide.

If we do not reproduce ourselves, we can’t expect to have any sort of a positive future.

Sadly, millions of Americans simply do not care about the future at this point because they have already been drugged into oblivion.

Reprinted with permission from The Economic Collapse.

The post Drugged Into Oblivion: More Than 60 Percent of U.S. Adults Admit That They Are Taking Pharmaceutical Drugs appeared first on LewRockwell.

Now that the entire economy depends on these hyper-normalized speculative bubbles for its “growth” and “wealth,” there is a profound fear of a future based not on artifice but on the real world.

Humans are quick to habituate to current conditions, i.e. consider them normal. This rapid normalization has advantages and disadvantages.

Normalization is an adaptive strategy, enabling humans to adapt readily to conditions that are considerably different from their previous “normal” state of affairs. So those ripped out of their “normal” lives and thrown into the Gulag soon consider the wretched conditions of the prison camp “normal.”

The downside of normalization is that it erects a defensive barrier between the real world and the perceived i.e. normalized world. In systems that have failed but are incapable of real reform, normalization phase-shifts into Hyper-normalization (generally one word, Hypernormalization), a peculiar adaptative state described by Alexei Yurchak, a Russian anthropologist who used the term in his 2005 book Everything was Forever, Until it was No More: The Last Soviet Generation.

Documentary filmmaker Adam Curtis described Hypernormalization in this way:

“‘HyperNormalization’ is a word that was coined by a brilliant Russian historian who was writing about what it was like to live in the last years of the Soviet Union. What he said, which I thought was absolutely fascinating, was that in the 80s everyone from the top to the bottom of Soviet society knew that it wasn’t working, knew that it was corrupt, knew that the bosses were looting the system, know that the politicians had no alternative vision. And they knew that the bosses knew that they knew that. Everyone knew it was fake, but because no one had any alternative vision for a different kind of society, they just accepted this sense of total fakeness as normal. And this historian, Alexei Yurchak, coined the phrase ‘HyperNormalisation’ to describe that feeling.”

I submit that the U.S. economy and stock market have been hypernormalized to the degree that what is now viewed as “normal” is completely detached from the real world. What we inhabit is a system that has lost all authenticity and survives entirely on the ceaseless marketing of artifice, a.k.a. narrative control that benefits the few at the expense of the many.

In effect, “normal life” is stripped of authenticity in favor of a simulacrum “normal” that supports those at the top of the status quo. This “new normal” reaches extremes of artifice, hence hyper-normalization.

As long as everyone thinks there are no alternatives to this hyper-normalized simulacrum, this artificial construct appears to be immutable–everything is forever.

But once the power structure admits, however minimally, that it no longer has the answers to the decay of the social-economic order, then the entire artificial construct collapses in a heap. This is the sociology of collapse: people accept a facade of artifice and propaganda without actually believing any of it, though they do have a limbic loyalty to the founding ideals of the nation.

What’s real is denial, repression of non-conforming realities, group-think, virtue-signaling and a profound loss of competence.

Read the Whole Article

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