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Democrats Continue to Block All Efforts to Restore Electoral Integrity.

Some Democrat courts rule contrary to the law on the books.

The Democrat Nevada Supreme Court ruled contrary to law that non-postmarked ballots that arrive 3 days after the election can be counted. This permits non-mailed mail-in ballots to be filled in after the vote count and used to reverse the electoral result.  The federal US Appeals Court for the fifth circuit ruled that the US Constitution requires ballots to be counted on election day.  The Democrats have declared the US Constitution to be a racist document that they will not abide by despite their oath of office to uphold the Constitution.

Democrat federal district courts required the state of Virginia to restore non-US citizens to its voter rolls. This allows the Democrats to vote the non-citizens. The Democrat Department of Justice (sic) required the state of Alabama to have non-US citizens on the state’s voter rolls. A federal judge dismissed the Republican attempt to have only US citizens on Michigan’s voter rolls.

The Democrat Pennsylvania supreme court illegally ruled that improperly cast mail-in ballots can be counted.

The Democrat district attorney in Philadelphia is suing Elon Musk in an effort to stop Musk’s support of the US Constitution.

Democrat states legalized street corner drop-in ballot boxes that permit anonymous individuals to stuff with fraudulent votes that the Democrats have ruled must be counted.

O’Keefe Media Group reports that in totally corrupt Maricopa County, Arizona, Democrat election officials instructed poll watchers not to interfere with illegal ballot harvesting or to report any voting irregularities. 

American universities have produced a generation of Woke leftwing business leaders.  The consequence is that the business leaders are no longer Republican, and their money, especially that of billionaires, has gone to the Democrats.  The latest campaign filings  for the first half of October show that Kamala spent  $304.5 million on her election campaign which raised $295.3 million.  Trump came in with less than half of that. Trump raised $117 million and spent $143.7 million.

If these reported figures are correct and representative of the campaign, it means that American money is aligned with the revolutionary Democrat Party which intends to overthrow the Constitution and citizen rule.  Voters are committed differently, but the election is easily stolen from them. 

I agree with Elon Musk. If Trump does not regain office, America will never again experience a free election.  Voting will be used as a ratification for the one-party state.

November 5 is the day the decision is made between freedom and tyranny.  If tyranny wins, there will be no going back.

The post On November 5 the Decision Will Be Made Between Freedom and Tyranny appeared first on LewRockwell.

On Friday, Peter dropped another episode of the Peter Schiff Show. He comments on an IMF conference in Europe, the newsworthy BRICS conference held in Russia, and the latest political proposals made in the presidential race, namely Donald Trump floating the idea of replacing income taxes with tariffs and Kamala Harris taking aim at subscription services.

First, Peter addresses the turbulence in mining stocks. Newmont suffered a major blow after missing earnings, and the sector in general was down this week:

“Even though gold was positive on the week, gold stocks got crushed. The GDX, which is the seniors, the biggest index, was down 5.3% on the week. … But the reason was Newmont Mining, the biggest gold company in the world and the only gold company in the S&P 500, which reported earnings after the bell on Wednesday. Newmont closed the day down 14%.

Despite this, Peter is optimistic that Newmont is still a valuable company. They slightly missed profit forecasts, but are setting new earnings records and matched revenue expectations:

“It was actually the best quarter in five years. And if you compare the quarter to the same quarter a year ago, they earned six times as much money—way more than the prior quarter. They’re still on a path to make the most money in the history of Newmont Mining, and they’re still going to have a record year for earnings. The reason the stock got killed was because they missed. They were supposed to earn 86 cents on the quarter, and they earned 81 cents—less than a 6% miss. The revenues were about in line.”

Turning to the aforementioned IMF conference, Peter lambasts Janet Yellen, who is deluded enough to think the country is in a sound fiscal position:

“[Yellen] is the secretary of the debt, not the secretary of the treasury, because we don’t have any treasury—the treasury is bare. All we got is debt. She’s basically in charge of managing the debt and getting people to buy it. What’s your plan? How are you going to convince people to buy this stuff? Janet Yellen’s response was, ‘We’re just going to make sure that we stay on a sound fiscal path.’ How do we stay on a path that we’re not even on? We left soundness decades ago. We can’t stay on anything.”

Donald Trump recently expressed openness to abolishing the income tax. Peter is likewise open to this policy, but would want Trump to slash spending accordingly:

“I would love nothing more than to go back to that tax system, but we have to do it honestly, which means we have to cancel a lot of government. We have to eliminate agencies and departments. We have to really shrink the government in order to get back to the freedom and prosperity that we had at that time, which we could have again. I think it’s very unlikely, given the politics.”

Finally, Peter turns to the major geopolitical news of the week: the BRICS summit. After adding four new members (Iran, Ethiopia, Egypt, and the UAE), the leaders of BRICS met in Russia to plan a gradual move away from the dollar. When the US continually erodes the value of the dollar and wields it against geopolitical rivals, it does make sense to consider alternative currencies:

“First of all, it makes no sense. Why should two countries that don’t use dollars transact in the dollar? Just pick one of the currencies that’s involved. You’ve got two countries that have currencies. Why involve the United States, a third party, who’s not even involved in the transaction? Why use our dollars? Use the currencies that you’re actually transacting in. And so that is the goal, for the BRICS nations to phase out the use of the US dollar and use their own currencies.” 

This originally appeared on SchiffGold.com.

The post BRICS Countries Should Turn to Gold appeared first on LewRockwell.

 

 

di David Stockman

Buona parte dell'illusione di un'economia “forte” deriva dalla scelta selettiva dei numeri fuorvianti contenuti nel conteggio mensile del BLS sui “posti di lavoro”. L'indice delle ore lavorate nel settore della produzione di beni ad alta produttività e retribuzione elevata si è in realtà contratto del 18% rispetto al picco raggiunto nel lontano 1978, ma ciò è stato più che compensato da un aumento del 128% nell'indice delle ore per il settore ricreativo, di cui il 75% è attribuibile a bar, ristoranti e altre attività di ricreazione.

Ahimè, quella che potrebbe essere definita la tesi della “grande sostituzione di posti di lavoro” non è minimamente un confronto tra mele e mele. Il tipico “lavoro” part-time, con salario quasi minimo nel settore ricreativo, paga l'equivalente di $24.400 all'anno, o solo il 37% dell'equivalente annuo di $66.000 per i lavori nella produzione di beni. Quindi in termini di peso economico, o valore di mercato implicito di produzione e reddito, abbiamo sostituito i principali giocatori nella forza lavoro con ciò che equivale a delle riserve di terz'ordine.

Ma in alcuni casi potrebbe essere anche peggio: né i dati sull'occupazione del BLS, né i numeri del PIL sono privi di pregiudizi sistematici dovuti al fatto che sono progettati e istituzionalizzati principalmente da economisti keynesiani pagati dal governo. Questi ultimi hanno equiparato la produzione economica e i posti di lavoro a ciò che il loro quadro di dati vuole misurare, anche se tali dati macro sono esclusivamente importanti per loro che armeggiano con i quadranti fiscali e monetari nel tentativo di migliorare il benessere economico superiore.

Di conseguenza i dati economici contemporanei non si preoccupano di vaste fasce dell'economia non monetizzata, tra cui il lavoro domestico, le attività self-service (ad esempio guidare, fare la spesa e tagliare l'erba da soli) e la cosiddetta economia sommersa lontana da esattori delle tasse, autorità di regolamentazione e forze dell'ordine.

Il problema, ovviamente, è che quando l'attività economica migra dall'economia informale e sommersa all'economia monetizzata, viene registrata come output, posti di lavoro e reddito aggiuntivi nei nostri conti keynesiani del lavoro e del PIL. In molti di questi casi non viene generato alcun nuovo output, o reddito; viene semplicemente registrato ufficialmente.

Ad esempio, tra il 2014 e il 2023 il numero di tassisti e autisti di limousine negli Stati Uniti è più che raddoppiato, passando da 131.800 a 264.600. Ma non crediate che l'attività e l'occupazione in questo settore siano effettivamente cresciute al tasso implicito dell'8,1% annuo. Ciò che è accaduto è che l'esplosione dei servizi Uber e Lyft ha spinto molti conducenti a lasciare le loro auto in garage e a utilizzare invece conducenti a noleggio, forse anche mentre giocavano ai videogiochi sui loro iPhone sul sedile posteriore.

Né questa illustrazione è una questione banale: il grafico qui sotto traccia un enorme movimento di attività domestiche non misurate che è migrato nell'economia monetizzata e conteggiata dal BLS sin dal picco di occupazione nella produzione di beni nel 1978.

In altre parole, il tasso di occupazione (linea viola) per la popolazione femminile in età lavorativa (25-54 anni) è salito dal 56,5% nel primo trimestre del 1978 al 75,4% nel secondo trimestre del 2024. Di conseguenza il lavoro di quasi un quinto della popolazione femminile in età lavorativa è passato dall'economia domestica non conteggiata all'economia monetizzata durante suddetto periodo di 46 anni. Tuttavia è ovvio che ciò non ha rappresentato una nuova produzione, o nuovi posti di lavoro, ma semplicemente la monetizzazione di ciò che era già presente.

Inoltre, in termini di conteggio dei posti di lavoro, questa migrazione dalla famiglia all'economia monetizzata non è stata irrilevante. Durante il periodo sopraccitato, il numero di donne impiegate in età lavorativa negli Stati Uniti è aumentato da 23,5 milioni nel primo trimestre del 1978 a 48,9 milioni nel secondo trimestre del 2024. Ma quasi la metà di tale aumento di 25,3 milioni è stato dovuto all'ascesa del tasso di occupazione femminile e quindi al conteggio di posti di lavoro che in precedenza non erano registrati.

Nell'ambito dell'economia statunitense nel suo complesso, questi 12,2 milioni di lavoratrici hanno rappresentato quasi il 20% dell'aumento complessivo dell'occupazione negli Stati Uniti, passata da 94,8 milioni nel primo trimestre del 1978 agli attuali 161,2 milioni.

Inutile dire che il monitoraggio di questa migrazione di produzione e posti di lavoro verso l'economia monetizzata non è stato semplice e lineare, come quando le casalinghe sono diventate cuoche nei ristoranti. In alcuni casi quelle donne storicamente impiegate in casa (o anche gli uomini, per quel che conta) sono diventate dottori che, a loro volta, hanno avuto bisogno di asili nido per prendersi cura dei propri figli e governanti per occuparsi delle pulizie e del bucato.

Se, quindi, si considerano le tre categorie occupazionali del BLS, strettamente correlate al lavoro domestico che è diventato monetizzato, la migrazione delle lavoratrici dall'economia domestica all'economia monetizzata è evidente.

Durante i 46 anni tra il 1978 e il secondo trimestre del 2024, l'occupazione totale negli Stati Uniti è cresciuta dell'1,16% all'anno, cosa che utilizziamo come proxy per il tasso di crescita dell'input del lavoro nell'economia complessiva. Tuttavia per le donne impiegate nei tre settori principali che hanno assorbito il lavoro domestico, i tassi di crescita sono stati molto più elevati.

Aumenti in 46 anni:

• Donne impiegate nel settore sanitario e nell'istruzione privata (linea rossa): +15,37 milioni di lavoratrici e crescita annua del 3,13%

• Donne impiegate nel settore ricreativo: +6,08 milioni di lavoratrici e crescita annua del 2,58%

• Donne impiegate in altri servizi: +2,17 milioni di lavoratrici e crescita annua del 2,54%

In breve, l'aumento delle donne impiegate in questi tre soli segmenti del mercato del lavoro è stato pari a 23,62 milioni nel periodo 1978-2024, rappresentando quindi quasi il 36% dell'aumento totale dell'occupazione segnalata dal BLS negli ultimi 46 anni. Tuttavia una parte molto sostanziale del precedente aumento non ha rappresentato né una nuova crescita economica, né nuovi posti di lavoro.

Invece rifletteva il radicale cambiamento nei costumi sociali durante suddetto periodo e nel ruolo delle donne nella vita economica, mentre si spostavano in tutti i segmenti della forza lavoro retribuita. Allo stesso tempo il settore domestico è diventato un nuovo e importante datore di lavoro per la manodopera retribuita presso ristoranti, lavanderie, asili nido, servizi di pulizia, agenzie di assistenza domiciliare, case di cura ecc. ciò che in precedenza era produzione e occupazione domestica non monetizzata.

Tasso di occupazione delle donne di età compresa tra 25 e 54 anni e dipendenti nei settori ricreativo, assistenza sanitaria e istruzione privata e di altri servizi

L'implicazione è semplice: i tanto sbandierati “dati in entrata” non sono tutto oro ciò che luccica. Infatti per visualizzare esattamente lo stato attuale dell'economia statunitense, è necessario notare un semplice set di dati: il confronto tra la crescita del debito federale sin dal quarto trimestre 2019 e il PIL nominale vi dirà tutto ciò che dovete sapere.

Variazione tra il quarto trimestre del 2019 e il secondo trimestre del 2024:

• Debito pubblico: +$11.630 miliardi

• PIL: +$6.750 miliardi

• Crescita del debito in % della crescita del PIL: 172%

Naturalmente gli apologeti ell'accoppiata Biden-Harris lasciano intendere che non c'è niente da vedere qui, o semplicemente l'ennesimo caso in cui Washington è al lavoro per aiutare la macroeconomia a procedere verso l'orizzonte felice.

Le cose non stanno affatto così. Durante il periodo di massimo splendore della prosperità americana tra il 1954 e il 1970, il debito pubblico è cresciuto di un misero 2,2% annuo in un periodo in cui il PIL nominale si espandeva del 6,5% annuo. Di conseguenza il debito pubblico aumentò solo al 16% rispetto all'aumento del PIL nominale, l'esatto opposto degli ultimi quattro anni.

Cambiamento tra il 1954 e il 1970:

• Debito pubblico: +$110,1 miliardi

• PIL: +$689,0 miliardi

• Crescita del debito in % della crescita del PIL: 16%

Né uno stimolo fiscale così tiepido significò che la crescita reale e gli standard di vita vacillavano. Nel periodo 1954-1970 le vendite finali reali crebbero del 3,75% annuo, o di quasi il doppio dell'aumento dell'1,93% annuo registrato nel secondo trimestre del 2020.

Ancora più impressionante è che durante il periodo di massimo splendore 1954-1970, la crescita del reddito familiare mediano reale superò di gran lunga gli ultimi quattro anni, come mostrato di seguito. Il reddito familiare mediano reale salì da $38.730 a $65.050 in dollari del 2023, ovvero del 3,29% annuo. Al contrario, il reddito familiare mediano reale di $101.700 registrato nel 2019 è sceso a $100.800 nel 2023.

Reddito familiare mediano reale, dal 1954 al 2024

La stessa storia vale per quanto riguarda il debito pubblico e privato totale. Il debito totale salì da $558 miliardi nel 1954 a $1.648 miliardi nel 1970. L'aumento risultante di $1.098 miliardi fu solo di poco superiore all'aumento di $700 miliardi del PIL durante tale periodo.

Al contrario, durante i 4 anni e mezzo tra il quarto trimestre 2019 e il secondo trimestre 2024, il debito pubblico e privato totale è salito da $74.900 miliardi a $99.800 miliardi. L'incredibile aumento di quasi $25.000 miliardi ha superato di gran lunga la crescita di $6.800 miliardi del PIL nominale durante suddetto periodo.

In breve, non c'è nulla di organico, naturale, sostenibile o forte nei numeri del PIL attualmente pubblicati, nonostante tutte le vanterie dell'accoppiata Biden-Harris.

In realtà l'economia statunitense è artificialmente gonfiata e sostenuta dal debito a basso costo alimentato dalle banche centrali.

Non è vero e mai lo sarà che si possa spendere, prendere in prestito e stampare per raggiungere la prosperità economica. E la traballante economia dell'accoppiata Biden-Harris lo dimostra.

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

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

I have touched upon quite a few different subjects in my intellectual work, but the central subject around which all of my work ultimately turned has been the subject of private property.

It has been my goal to demonstrate – not just to assert, to propose or to suggest – but to strictly, logically prove, that the institution of private property is (and always and everywhere has been) the foundation, or the necessary, indispensable requirement of peace (peaceful relations) among men (including women, of course, and anyone in-between) and, along with peace, then, of prosperity and, in one word, of human civilization.

Because every action requires the employment of specific physical means – a body, standing room, external objects – a conflict between different actors must arise, whenever two actors try to use the same physical means for the attainment of different purposes. The source of conflicts is always and invariably the same: the scarcity or rivalrous-ness of physical means. Two actors cannot at the same time use the same physical means – the same bodies, spaces and objects – for alternative purposes. If they try to do so, they must clash. Therefore, in order to avoid conflict or resolve it if it occurs, an action-able principle and criterion of justice or law is required, i.e., a principle regulating the just, lawful or “proper” vs. the unjust, unlawful or “improper” use and control (ownership) of scarce physical means.

Logically, what is required to avoid all conflict is clear: It is only necessary that every good be always and at all times owned privately, i.e., controlled exclusively by some specified individual (or individual partnership or association), and that it be always recognizable which good is owned and by whom, and which is not or by someone else. The opinions, plans and purposes of various profit-seeking actor-entrepreneurs may then be as different as can be, and yet no conflict will arise so long as their respective actions involve only and exclusively the use of their own, private property.

Yet how can this state of affairs: the complete and unambiguously clear privatization of all goods, be practically accomplished? How can physical things become private property in the first place; and how can conflict be avoided from the beginning of mankind on?

A single – praxeo-logical – solution to this problem exists and has been essentially known to mankind since its beginnings – even if it has only been slowly and gradually elaborated and logically re-constructed. To avoid conflict from the start, it is necessary that private property be founded through acts of original appropriation. Property must be established through acts (instead of mere words, decrees or declarations), because only through actions, taking place in time and space, can an objective – inter-subjectively ascertainable – link be established between a particular person and a particular thing. And only the first appropriator of a previously un-appropriated thing can acquire this thing as his property without conflict. For, by definition, as the first appropriator he cannot have run into conflict with anyone in appropriating the good in question, as everyone else appeared on the scene only later.

This importantly implies that while every person is the exclusive owner of its own physical body as his primary means of action, no person can ever be the owner of any other person’s body. For we can use another person’s body only indirectly, i.e., in using our directly appropriated and controlled own body first. Thus, direct appropriation temporally and logically precedes indirect appropriation; and accordingly, any non-consensual use of another person’s body is an unjust mis-appropriation of something already directly appropriated by someone else.

All just (lawful) property, then, goes back directly or indirectly, through a chain of mutually beneficial – and thus likewise conflict-free – property-title transfers, to prior and ultimately original appropriators and acts of appropriation. Mutatis mutandis, all claims to and uses made of things by a person who had neither appropriated or previously produced these things, nor acquired them through a conflict-free exchange from some previous owner, are unjust (unlawful).

Let me emphasize, that I consider these elementary insights argumentatively irrefutable and hence, apriori true. If you want to live in peace with other persons – and you demonstrate that you wish to do so by engaging in argumentation with them! -, then only one solution exists: you must have private (exclusive) property in all things scarce and suitable as means (or goods) in the pursuit of human ends (goals); and private property in such things must be founded in acts of original appropriation – the recognizable em-bordering or enclosure of scarce resources – or else in the voluntary transfer of such property from a prior to a later owner.

We can say, then, that these rules express and explicate the “natural law.” “Natural,” given the uniquely human goal of peaceful interaction; and “natural,” because these laws are “given” and merely discovered as such by man. That is, they are emphatically not laws that are made-up, contrived or decreed. In fact, all man-made (rather than discovered or found) law, i.e., all legis-lation, is not law at all, but a perversion of law: orders, commands or prescriptions that do not lead to peace but to conflict and hence are dysfunctional of the very purpose of laws.

This does not mean that with the discovery of the principles of natural law all problems of social order are solved and all frictions are to disappear. Conflicts can and do occur even if everyone knew how to avoid them. And in every case of conflict between two or more contending parties, then, the law must be applied – and for this juris-prudence and judgment and adjudication (in contrast to juris-diction) is required. There can be disputes about whether you or I have misapplied the principles in specific instances regarding particular means. There can be disagreements as to the “true” facts of a case: who was where and when and who had taken possession of this or that at such and such times and places? And it can be tedious and time-consuming to establish and sort out these facts. Various prior-later disputes must be investigated. Contracts may have to be scrutinized. Difficulties may arise in the application of the principles to underground resources, to water and to air, and especially to flows of water and air. Moreover, there is always the question of “fitting” a punishment to a given crime, i.e., of finding the appropriate measure of restitution or retribution that a victimizer owes his victim and of then enforcing the verdicts of law.

Difficult as these problems may occasionally be, however, the guiding principles to be followed in searching for a solution are always clear and beyond dispute.

In every case of conflict brought to trial in search of judgment, the presumption is always in favor of the current owner of the resource in question and, mutatis mutandis, the burden of a “proof to the contrary” is always on the opponent of some current state of affairs and current possessions. The opponent must demonstrate that he, contrary to prima facie appearance, has a claim on some specific good that is older than the current owner’s claim. If, and only if an opponent can successfully demonstrate this must the questionable possession be restored as property to him. On the other hand, if the opponent fails to make his case, then not only does the possession remain as property with its current owner, but the current owner in turn has acquired a lawful claim against his opponent. For the current owner’s body and time was misappropriated by the opponent during his failed and rejected argument. He could have done other, preferred things with his body-time rather than defend himself against his opponent.

And importantly also: the procedure to be selected for dispensing justice along the just indicated lines is clear and implied in the very goal of peaceful, argumentative conflict resolution. Because both contenders in any property dispute – John and Jim – make or maintain opposite truth claims – I, John, am the lawful owner of such and such a resource versus no, I, Jim, am the lawful owner of this very same resource – and hence, because both, John and Jim, are interested, partial or biased in favor of a particular outcome of the trial, only some disinterested or neutral third party can be entrusted with the task of dispensing justice. This procedure does not guarantee that justice will always be done, of course. But it assures that the likelihood of unjust verdicts is minimized and errors of judgment most likely and easily be corrected. In short, then, for each and every property dispute between two (or more) contending parties it must hold: No party may ever sit in judgment and act as final judge in any dispute involving itself. Rather, every appeal to justice must always be made to “outsiders,” i.e., to impartial third-party judges.

We may call the social order emerging from the application of these principles and procedures a “natural order,” a “system of natural justice,” a “private law society” or a “constitution of liberty.”

Interestingly, although the prescriptions and requirements of a natural order appear intuitively plausible and reasonably undemanding on its constituent parts, i.e., on us as individual actors, as a matter of fact, however, we inhabit a world that significantly deviates from such an order. To be sure, everywhere and at all times there are some traces of natural law and justice left and to be found in civil life and the handling of civil disputes. No society rejecting all of natural law, in its entirety, could ever survive. But the extent to which natural law is preserved – or the degree of deviation from natural law – is and has been significantly different from one place and one point in time to another; and accordingly, some societies are or have been more successful: more civilized, more peaceful and prosperous than others.

This brings up the question as to the cause or causes of such distortions or deviations from natural law – or, as we may say: of de-civilization.

The ultimate error or mistake responsible for such deviations – the “original sin,” if you will – is the institution of a monopolist on the use of force or violence. Without such a monopolist, without a State as this monopolist is conventionally called – and this is what we are typically told in school and university and what most people actually and habitually believe – there would and could be no peaceful social cooperation among man but “anarchy” would instead break out, i.e., some never-ending war of everyone against everyone else.

But this belief is not only empirically wrong, just look around, it is a big lie. That is, the belief is not just an innocent error but an error deliberately spread for the promotion of un-lawful purposes (with evil intentions).

The institution of a monopolist on the use of violence implies that the earlier-mentioned natural law procedure and method of conflict-resolution through independent third-party arbitration, i.e., that no party may ever sit in judgment and act as final judge in any dispute involving itself, is abandoned. A monopolist of ultimate decision-making (beyond which no further appeal is permitted) is precisely that: a judge sitting in judgment of conflicts (disputes) involving himself.

However, any such institution cannot and does not help eliminate or minimize conflict – as is the purpose and objective of natural law – but, to the contrary: it will increase and widen the range of conflict. Whoever or whichever institution has a territorial monopoly on the use of violence can and will predictably not only be biased in his own favor in any actual dispute with some other, private party, but a monopolistic agent or agency can and will also provoke, initiate and cause conflict with other people and their properties or possessions – and then declare such interferences with and impositions on other people and their holdings as justified and lawful.

It is easy to see, then, why the role or function of a monopolist of violence might be attractive to some people. It allows an actor or agency to live off and enrich itself at the expense of others. It allows them to improve their own well-being and social standing not by having to go through the trouble of producing or selling something or of acquiring something from others through mutually agreeable exchange, but, seemingly effortless, by mere unilateral decree, verdict or say-so.

And in light of this it is also easy to understand why every prospective founder of a State and every current (principal) State-agent would want to promote the very belief in the State’s necessity for the establishment and maintenance of peace and civilization – even if they were to recognize themselves that this belief is false. Because this belief is a necessary lie, if it is your or your agency’s goal to live off and rule over other people, i.e., to exercise power.

The principal method for the exercise of power, then, is legislation, i.e., the making-up of laws (rather than their discovery). “Natural” law is replaced by man-made “positive” law, i.e., by “laws” made-up to modify, twist, circumvent, pervert or replace “natural” law provisions to its (the State’s) own advantage and favor.

Characteristically, so as to give special affirmation to its status as ultimate judge, then, there is legislation to the effect that State-agents qua State-agents are exempt from any and all liability. Indeed, in declaring itself and its agents exempt from personal liability for any damage or debt caused or incurred by them in the line of duty, any remaining inhibition against the exercise of power vis-à-vis others is soothed. Increasingly and without much hesitation more and more costly, frivolous and risky impositions to the detriment of others and their property – yet to the monopolist’s own advantage in terms of its own possessions (or holdings) and his range of control over the holdings of others – will come to be written into law (be legislated).

In principle, as ultimate judge exempt from all liability one can decree that everything and everyone on a given territory be subject(ed) to legislation. By decree he could tax, burden, prohibit or punish whoever and whatever he wants. Every activity can be regulated – punished or rewarded – by legislated law. Literally nothing remains outside the purview and reach of legislation.

We, here and now in the so-called Western World, have not yet reached this point of total State-control. But in legislating nowadays everywhere even speech and words by means of officially sanctioned speech codes and thought controls, we have obviously already come a long way toward totalitarian rule.

It has taken a long time for the Western State to reach this point  in its pursuit of power (control over others and their property and possessions). And let me note here only in passing the instrumental role that in particular the institution of democracy (popular elections, majority rule, free entry into State-government) has played in the growth of State power. I have written a book on that subject. Suffice it to say here that the expansion of State power has proceeded incrementally, one step after another, and that for a very long time. Every step on this path, from the initial establishment of a territorial monopoly of violence on forward to the present, has met some degree of opposition or resistance. Because, by definition, every expansion of State power implies an increased range of control over other people and their holdings and, in reverse, a correspondingly diminished range of control of others regarding their present holdings. Every State decree, every new piece of legislation, then, generates some victims, some people whose control over something is reduced or stripped away as a consequence, and who are accordingly opposed to such legislation.

The State, then, in order to expand and grow, must learn how to overcome – to break, to reduce, to silence or to eliminate – any such opposition and resistance.

As a look around the present world amply demonstrates, Western States have made enormous strides in this endeavor of stifling any opposition. All presently living people have been brought up and socialized in the environment of a “mature” State and learned how to live with and put up with it. Private property rights have been eroded and curtailed to its mere barebones. Decrees regulate in the minutest detail what you may or may not do with your private property: what and how to produce, what and how to consume, what to sell and buy (or not); how to build, equip, furnish, heat or cool your own house or factory; how and how not to transport and travel by bike, car, train and plane; what to eat and drink, how to regulate your own family and business affairs and how to raise your own children; what to say and what not, how to address another person and, last but not least, what to keep of your own property and what to hand over to the monopolist – and yet, there is little if any opposition or resistance to such increasingly invasive regimes.

And whatever little opposition there is, it is mostly of the verbal kind and only rarely (if at all) rises to the level of active resistance. Most people have made their arrangement with the State. Some work as State-employees, and some are beneficiaries of State favoritism, funds and money. They tend to make no big fuss so as to keep their favors, jobs or subsidies. Others have simply given up (resigned) and, out of habit, more or less quietly submit to State-orders in order to stay out of trouble. And as for the verbal opposition, which certainly exists, it is almost invariably directed at the wrong target, and hence ultimately ineffective and “harmless” from the State’s viewpoint qua monopolist of violence.

All criticisms are directed at specific people or the operation of some specific department (office) within the larger, overall State-administration and -apparatus, and the suggested solution is always the same: a change of personnel or a change in the organization-structure of State-government. That certain functions or the institution of a State itself may be the source of a problem and accordingly should be abolished (eliminated) rather than “reformed,” appears unthinkable. Even the seemingly fiercest critics of State government, then, ultimately turn out to be State apologists. Indeed, they resemble those critics of socialism (of the old, Soviet style) that explained – and excused – the socialist regime’s apparent failures by pointing to the “wrong” personnel in charge. With Trotsky, Bukharin or X, Y or Z in charge instead of Stalin, socialism would have turned out rosy.

In the same vein, then, critics of the present Western Welfare State model always point to some specific personnel or internal organization as to the reason for any apparent trouble and failing. And indeed, the current crop of politicians in control of a State-apparatus – the ruling class – offers abundant room for criticism. Wherever you look, from the USA, as the premier and most powerful prototype or model of the (democratic) Western State to Great Britain, to continental Europe, and in particular to Germany, as well as the former European colonies of Canada, Australia and New Zealand, everywhere a similar picture of some stupendous, all-around incompetence emerges. Everywhere, the mass of people, millions upon millions, is ruled by a small bunch, of only a few hundreds or thousands, of professional failures and losers, empty suits, megalomaniacs, narcissists, propagandists, sycophants, liars, crooks, clowns, plunderers and murderers. No wonder, then, that there is one scandal after another to be observed, day in and day out, and hence always plenty of crazy “stuff” to report on and complain about and criticize. And no wonder that the ruling class is widely despised by a sizable numbers of people. It is hard to swallow being ruled and commandeered around by a bunch of “know-nothings” and “can-nothings,” of morons and imbeciles. Many people feel simply insulted by (and are annoyed about) the mass of incompetence, of ignorance and arrogance, encountered in their dealings with State-power.

But to believe, as practically all current critics of the Western (democratic) system do, whether knowingly or not, that these endless scandals and annoyances could be avoided if only the current personnel in charge of the State-apparatus were replaced by some other, “better” people is naïve and fundamentally mistaken.

The institution of a State attracts, breeds and promotes certain characters and character traits. From the outset it attracts the power-hungry, those who want to rule over other people and dominate their conduct, and on the other hand, as its psychological complement, it attracts the servile, those who desire to hang-on to, serve and submit to the powerful in exchange for personal security, protection and privilege. And these (less than desirable) character traits of power-lust and servility, then, are systematically bred, strengthened, promoted, stimulated, cultivated, refined and diversified by entering the State apparatus and working within and as part of a State. This is what “power corrupts” actually means. It makes the power-hungry even more hungry, and in tandem with the growth of (State) power ever more room is opened up also for the growth and development of servile hangers-on. The result of this is the mentioned all-around incompetence in all of its unpleasant aspects and variations.

To believe, then, that the substitution of one person or one bunch of people exempt from responsibility and liability by another such person or bunch of people can be a solution to any “social problem” is simply an illusion. Power corrupts and it corrupts everyone and everywhere. And as long, then, as the critics of the present Western State restrict their criticism to the failings of specific State agents or agencies and merely demand their replacement or reorganization by some other such agents or agencies we are doomed and the march toward totalitarian control is bound to continue.

That we are ruled by incompetents, ignoramuses, fools, morons, imbeciles and scum, and that this scandalous and deplorable state of affairs has not improved but gotten worse over time is no accident. It is the predictable, logical consequence of accepting the original myth regarding the necessity of a State – of a monopolist of violence, a final and ultimate judge who, unlike everyone else, cannot be summoned by anyone to be put on trial for his actions – for the maintenance of peace.

In fact and to the contrary, it is scandalous and a moral outrage that anyone should rule (dominate) anyone else. That one person could take another’s “natural property” (lawfully acquired property, per “natural law”) and command him around without requiring his consent and even against his open protestation. And that this one person then should be immune from any and all external accusation, counter-claim or “legal” challenge.

This is a blatant violation and perversion of natural law: and any such person is not a law-abiding actor, but instead a criminal, an outlaw.

Even more mind-boggling, scandalous and outrageous, then, that one man or one small bunch of people (however “good” or well-intentioned) could rule over hundreds, thousands or even millions of people and their property and possessions, none of whom the rulers personally know or have ever met and none of whom has ever consented to any such treatment. These rulers are not just outlaws, they are gangs of outlaws, of habitual liars, rip-off artists, cheats and frauds, hard-core criminals and repeat offenders. Summoned before a court of natural law they all would be confronted with countless accusations and be sentenced to restitution, compensation and punishment, driving them into personal bankruptcy and economic ruin.

The current, seemingly interminable march toward increasingly totalitarian rule by a small ruling class to be observed throughout the Western world can only be stopped and reversed, then, if the institution of the State itself comes under criticism and is recognized as a mighty criminal enterprise, without any legitimacy whatsoever, and run by people that are anything but “honorable” (as they themselves like to be considered), if not outright despicable.

Using Pareto’s famous 20-80 principle as guidance, then, one may predict (speculate) when – if ever – this spook will come to an end and the State will begin to crumble away. Of all current and upcoming public State-critics, i.e., of public intellectuals, journalists, commentators, etc., some 20 percent need come to recognize and be willing to say so and expose the State as a predatory enterprise and a moral monstrosity. To this end, it would be helpful, for instance, if out of the sizable number of current “constitutionalist” or “minimal-Statist” State-critics a substantial portion could finally bring themselves to admit to the logical inconsistency and intellectual bankruptcy of their own doctrine and consequently openly convert to private property anarchism and natural law. Presently, no matter how radical their State-criticism may appear, they ultimately turn out harmless State-apologist. Then (afterwards), as exponents of a private law society without State, they expose and de-legitimize the State as an illegitimate institution and their “enemy” – which, however, requires not only insight but also courage, because such a stance is viewed by the State as “dangerous” and may trigger some repercussion or retaliation.

And this sizable minority of public intellectuals (in the widest sense of this term), then, must in turn bring about 20 percent of the general public of a given (State-) territory to similarly see the State as a mighty criminal enterprise – to fear, but also to expose and ridicule and to scoff and laugh at, owing to the all-pervasive incompetence, arrogance and pretentiousness of its leadership, demonstrated in everything it does and says.

Once this is achieved – but only then, if we are to believe the Pareto principle – has the de-legitimation of the State progressed far and deep enough that it may begin to crumble, or to wither away, in Marxist terminology, and disintegrate or decompose into its smaller, local constituent parts or components.

Needless to say that we are still far away from this goal and much work still lies ahead of us.

The post About Natural Order and Its Destruction appeared first on LewRockwell.

As Kamala Harris declares herself open to paying reparations for slavery in a desperate bid to win more black voters, the debate about redressing historical injustices has been once again reignited. California has passed a raft of new proposals “as part of a reparations legislative package” with policies on education, housing, and criminal justice for the benefit of black people. New York has created a commission to study the harms caused by slavery with a view to paying reparations. In Oklahoma a commission has been set up “to study how reparations can be made.”

Similarly, in the United Kingdom, the Church of England is making plans to fund reparations for slavery.

The Church of England should create a fund of 1 billion pounds ($1.27 billion) to address its historic links to slavery, an advisory panel said Monday. That’s 10 times the amount the church previously set aside.

An independent oversight group established by the church said a 100-million-pound fund announced last year was insufficient compared to the wealth of the church and “the moral sin and crime of African chattel enslavement.”

The arguments in support of paying reparations are based on the principle that slavery is wrong, and therefore someone ought to make restitution and right that historical wrong. But little attention is paid to the question of who should now pay to redress historical wrongs and why that person should be held liable for historical crimes. The applicable principle here is that of individual responsibility—no one is responsible for the crimes of another and, therefore, no innocent person should be forced to pay for historical wrongs. David Gordon, discussing the case of Germany paying reparations for Hitler’s crimes, cites with approval the Welsh philosopher H.D. Lewis who said:

If I were asked to put forward an ethical principle which I considered to be especially certain, it would be that no one can be responsible, in the properly ethical sense, for the conduct of another. Responsibility belongs essentially to the individual.

The government will pay

Proponents of reparations argue that no individual is being asked to pay, as liability falls on the state. The government will pay!

But where does the government get money to make payments? From taxpayers who are wholly innocent of the crimes for which the government is enthusiastically making restitution.

One response that might be given is that the involvement of legislators lends democratic legitimacy to the imposition of this burden on taxpayers. After all, individual taxpayers do not get to pick and choose the projects to which their taxes will be applied and it could be said that the case of reparations is no different from any other tax expenditure.

This argument fails on two grounds. First, as David Gordon frequently reminds us, taxation is theft. It is no answer to say that the majority voted in favor of theft. Second, and more pertinent to the specific case of reparations, even if a majority agrees through the democratic process to violate the rights of any individual by punishing him for crimes of which he is innocent, that does not make the punishment fair or just. It is simply another example of the danger which Hans Hoppe wrote about in Democracy: The God that Failed:

Even the Founding Fathers of the U.S., nowadays considered the model of a democracy, were strictly opposed to it. Without a single exception, they thought of democracy as nothing but mob-rule.

The true meaning of justice

As David Gordon and I have argued in our book Redressing Historical Injustice, the concept of justice that underpins the reparations claims is fatally flawed because it relies on injustice to achieve the justice it seeks. No just outcomes can be achieved through unjust methods. Basic principles of the rule of law such as the presumption of innocence and the burden of proof are founded on this premise—for justice to be done the methods of achieving justice must themselves be just. Mob rule and extortion through taxation are not just methods of achieving justice.

A further danger in the unjust levying of reparations taxes is that it will only give rise to new resentments, reopen dormant hostilities, and break fresh ground for racial animosity. This is no path to justice. For example, in California the reparations legislation provides for “improving job opportunities, education, health care and criminal justice for Black and low-income Californians.” Given that all Californians are paying to fund these programs, the prospect that they will all accept this unjust, race-based distribution of publicly-funded opportunities without demur seems unlikely. The case of “reparations for past housing discrimination” in Evanston, Illinois further illustrates this problem:

A lawsuit filed by a conservative activist group claims a Chicago suburb discriminated against residents who are not Black when it paid nearly $5 million in reparations to some Black residents in recent years as a part of an ongoing program.

Evanston, Illinois, in 2021 became the first city in America to offer reparations to Black Americans, including descendants of Black residents who lived in town between 1919 and 1969 when the city banned housing discrimination. The program has provided 193 residents subjected to discrimination with $25,000 each in housing relief.

Residents who are not black objected on grounds that:

“The Evanston, Illinois’ ‘reparations’ program is nothing more than a ploy to redistribute tax dollars to individuals based on race,” wrote Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, in a news release on the group’s website. “This scheme unconstitutionally discriminates against anyone who does not identify as Black or African American. This class action, civil rights lawsuit will be a historic defense of our color-blind Constitution.”

With the litigation still in progress, it remains to be seen whether the courts will strike down these reparations schemes as unconstitutional. Many think there is hope for such an outcome given the rulings in the university admissions affirmative action cases. What remains clear is that creating new injustices against innocent white people is no way to redress old injustices against black people.

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

The post Reparations Will Not Empower Justice appeared first on LewRockwell.

Here they go again. The Dem-wing of the UniParty is so bereft of reasons to deny the GOP-wing its turn in the Oval Office that it is once again desperately playing the Hitler Card. And it gets richer still. This time it’s on the word of disgruntled ex-employee who was subjected to the “you’re fired!” treatment by the Donald— and in real life for good reason, not just on a TV show for make-pretend entertainment.

General John Kelly now says that the Donald said something positive about Adolph Hitler, but we don’t know whether the General is looking for a book deal or gig as a CNN military consultant to augment his $200,000+ per year military pension. But we do wonder why five years after getting defenestrated in the White House by the Donald that his memory of detailed conversations has suddenly come alive just days before the election—especially when no other insider has confirmed his account on the record or leaked it years ago.

After all, during his first time at the rodeo the Donald had no idea of what he was doing or who the 4,000 appointees were that were foisted upon him by the GOP machine and its beltway and Deep State allies. So 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and the giant block buildings within a few square miles were crawling with people who had minimum low regard for Trump.

And yet and yet. Even our trusty AI-researcher, Copilot, can’t find any record of another named official validating Kelly’s account.

John Kelly, Trump’s former chief of staff, is the most prominent figure to have publicly stated that he heard Trump make such comments123. Other former officials have also expressed concerns about Trump’s remarks and behavior, but specific instances of others hearing him praise Hitler have not been widely documented.

Still, consider the context of this latest 11th hour imbroglio. It wasn’t just the usual effort by the New York Times to sabotage a GOP candidate on election eve by giving a forum to Kelly after he spent several years in the wilderness being ignored. What kicked off the latest firestorm was a screed in the Atlantic Magazine by its detestable editor and Deep State spin doctor, Jeffrey Goldberg.

It’s plain as day that Goldberg has a rancorous grudge against the Donald owing to his irreverent belittling of the late St. John McCain. Yet that surely tells you something. John McCain was among the most belligerent, blood-thirsty neocons to grace the Washington stage since the end of the cold war. At the end of the day, the disaster of Iraq and the utter calamity in Ukraine, among others, were his doing.

So what we have, therefore, is the once and former Peace Party valorizing warmongers like John McCain and a passel of retired generals who collectively have done more to undermine the US constitution than the Donald might think of doing in a month of Sundays. In this context, Kelly saw it all—got his promotions and ribbons—as he participated in Washington’s unnecessary and undeclared (and therefore unconstitutional) wars in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Libya, Ukraine and countless lesser fry.

Did Kelly ever once blow a whistle as he shimmied his way up the ladder to a general’s big fat retirement package? Yet by any rational standard the deeds of his 45-year long career in the midst of every wrong-headed Washington war going back to Vietnam were a far greater offense to constitutional democracy than the alleged back-stage utterances of a loud-mouthed Donald Trump.

Indeed, the first time around Trump actually proved himself “all hat and no cattle” when it comes to the so-called abuse of presidential power. About the only thing we can think on the latter score was the Donald’s hair-trigger approval of bombing Damacus for a couple of hours in April 2018 based on the false flag gas attacks in Douma that his generals apparently lied to him about.

So the question recurs. Donald Trump is admittedly an uncouth blabbermouth who shoots from the hip with virtually reckless abandon. But after 48 months in the Oval Office, where are all the unconstitutional deeds and acts of an incipient dictator?

Even when it comes to the matter of over-reach in the issuance of executive orders, the Donald’s worse excesses, say on the Muslim bans and border security, didn’t hold a candle to the abuses of either Barrack Obama or Sleepy Joe Biden. Obama nearly dismantled the entire electric utility industry of the USA via his Clean Power rules at EPA and also sent the US auto industry on the road to catastrophe with his wild-ass fuel economy standards designed to drive gasoline ignition engines off the roads.

And, as for Biden, the sweeping weaponization of the Justice Department against the J6 participants is in an altogether different league. So far 1,265 citizens have been charged and 460 of them were still incarcerated as of January 2024.

That’s right. Seven years after the fact and with respect to an incident that involved trespassing at worst and minor property damage only, 460 people are still in jail not owing to valid and normal law enforcement but owing to a lawfare exercise designed to loudly and visibly punish and intimidate dissent.

Indeed, the harsh treatment of the J6 participants is so egregiously disproportionate to the crime, nay misdemeanors, committed that day that it pales into insignificance anything that may have randomly escaped from the Donald’s motor mouth during General Kelly’s 24-month stint in the White House. And that’s to say nothing of the dozens of cooked-up cases brought against the opposition candidate of the Republican Party by the Harris-Biden DOJ and their confederates in Georgia and New York City.

In any event, Donald Trump was, and will probably prove to be again, among the very worst US presidents—but that’s owing to his policies that among other offenses added $8 trillion to the public debt or more than the first 43 presidents accomplished during the first 216 years of the Republic.

But as for the Hitler Card and Trump’s alleged wanna be dictator aspirations, they ultimately rests on nothing more substantial than the completely false J6 Insurrection Narrative cooked up by the Washington Dem Machine operatives and their RINO allies like Liz Cheney who have now shown their true colors.

So not to belabor the point, but the J6 lies and propaganda on which the whole Trump-the-Dictator canard is based needs be reviewed once again.

As it happened, Donald Trump’s first presidency effectively ended in the midst of a cockamamie riot in the US Capitol Building. On the evidence, it was essentially a happenstance outbreak of blind mob mayhem enabled by piss poor policing by the amateur cops who are pleased to call themselves the Capitol Police. Nothing that happened during that five-hour melee remotely resembled the violent insurrection against American democracy it’s now cracked up to be.

But like in almost everything else nowadays, this beltway insider’s narrative has supplanted reality. Completely. Absurdly.

As usual, however, RFK has seen through the subterfuge. The entire Congressional investigation, related mainstream media “insurrection” narrative and the vicious prosecution of the pro-Trump protestors who stumbled into the Capitol’s open doors on January 6, 2021, is just another instance of the weaponization of the machinery of justice.

“I have not examined the evidence in detail, but reasonable people, including Trump opponents, tell me there is little evidence of a true insurrection. They observe that the protestors carried no weapons, had no plans or ability to seize the reins of government, and that Trump himself had urged them to protest ‘peacefully.’”

he pointedly ridiculed the idea that the protesters and rioters were in any position to take over the government: “What’s the worst thing that could happen? Right? I mean, we have an entire military, Pentagon, a few blocks away.”

That’s exactly right. The United States government is the most lethally armed organization in the history of mankind. The very idea of an “insurrection” against it that is worthy of the term, therefore, implies extensive pre-planning, preparatory rehearsals, secret communications networks, detailed D-day organizational protocols and maneuvers, publicly announced manifestos and demands and, of course, the marshalling of an extensive array of arms, ammo and armor.

Alas, review all 14,000 hours of camera footage between noon and 8 PM on J6 if you will, but you will find scant evidence—nay, no evidence at all—that any of these rudiments of an “insurrection” were even remotely present at the US Capitol Building that day.

To the contrary, the entire over-hyped and utterly confected Beltway Narrative represents nothing more than the final spasm of the Trump Derangement Syndrome that has engulfed the nation’s ruling elites and their megaphones in the mainstream media. Accordingly, the

J6 Narrative has become the Big Lie of the 21st Century. Yet not a bit of the Day of Infamy narrative is true, plausible or warranted.

In the first place, there was nothing organized about it whatsoever. During the hours, days and weeks preceding the leaderless march of the mob to the Capitol after 1PM on January 6th there was nothing more ominous going on than the expostulations of a tiny smattering of rightwing whackadoos pinging each other on social media.

Even more surely, there was nothing armed about it, either. Among the thousands of yokels and diehard Trumpites who frolicked through the Capitol Building, law reinforcement has not identified a single man, woman or child who was carrying a gun, sword or even a stink bomb when the Capitol Police essentially stepped aside and gave them the run of the building.

And yet, the pro-establishment servitors in the mainstream media insist that somewhere in the massive crowds who came for the inauguration and to protest the election outcome, a handful of participants brought guns to Washington but not the Capitol Building on January 6th. And even this handful of cases involving handguns or other alleged armaments were so obscure as to have been identified by law enforcement only long after the fact.

But really. What kind of “insurrection” is it when nobody actually showed up at the Capitol that day toting even a “North American Arms Mini Short: Single-Action .22 Short Revolver”?

And what is worse, the lie has been repeated so often with such false verisimilitude by the MSM that presumably honest observers have taken the Big Lie for Truth. For instance, the editor of the once august Cleveland Plain Dealer recently averred as follows:

Chris Quinn, editor of the Cleveland Plain Dealer, recently wrote that angry right-wing readers were complaining to him that “Biden, not Trump, is the criminal dictator.” He responded that it is a “false equivalency” to draw political comparisons between Trump and Biden.

“We can debate the success and mindset of our current president, as we have about most presidents,” Quinn said. “But Biden was never a threat to our democracy. Trump is.”

Trump, not Biden, “sparked an insurrection intended to overthrow our government and keep himself in power,” he continued. “No President in our history has done worse. This is not subjective. We all saw it.”

No, Mr. Quinn. You absolutely did not see an armed insurrection to overthrow the American government, and “armed” is the only type of insurrection that could threaten our lethally armed Leviathan on the Potomac. And that’s because no such thing ever happened. Period. Full stop.

Indeed, the only blood that was spilled during this faux “insurrection” and alleged attempt at coup d’ etat was that of Ashli Babbitt, a decorated hero of America’s pointless forever wars and earnest Trump supporter. She was shot point blank without warning by a Capitol Police officer, who had a record of anger management issues that were hardly trivial.

Moreover, what kind of insurrection has no list of demands, no ringing declarations of purpose, no fiery ultimatums? In most of the hours upon hours of video footage available the meandering crowds look as surprised to be in the U.S. Capitol as the proverbial car-chasing dog who finally caught his prey.

Likewise, the audio track of the event resembles nothing so much as the undulating din of a milling crowd. Even the normal menacing chants of a purposeful demonstration were few and far between.

The fact is, American democracy was not under fire that afternoon. It was not imperiled one little bit by the mayhem in the Capitol which briefly ensued after the Donald had dispensed his usual bombast, self-promotion and rhetorical incoherence to the hyped-up crowd on the Mall.

Still, the unfortunate acts of rowdyism, trespassing and property damage which did occur are the fault of first, the Capitol Police for opening the Capitol Building’s doors to an obviously unruly and ill-behaved mob; and, secondly, the Donald himself. Instead of watching the spectacle on his White House TV, he could have cleared the building in less than 30 minutes with a firm call for his misguided supporters to stand down.

As to the Capitol Police, the dirty secret of this age-old patronage operation was on full display that afternoon. For crying out loud, these payrollers are not trained law enforcement officers who could keep the peace even in Podunk Iowa. They mostly sit as desks examining IDs and directing tourists to the Visitor Galleries.

The fact is, what happened that day was the result of pathetically incompetent police work.

Period.

That tens of thousands of agitated pro-Trump demonstrators had come to Washington was plain as day, as was the intelligence indicating that some among the estimated 30,000 horde gathered at the Ellipse for the Donald’s parting speech were planning to descend on the US Capitol Building where the electoral votes were being counted. The “attack”, therefore, was the very opposite of the hoary Pearl Harbor analogy proffered by shameless demagogues like Senator Chuckles Schumer.

Indeed, the “forcible entry” part of the narrative is even more threadbare than the utterly laughable “five deaths” canard. Besides Ashli Babbitt, it has been well established that three pro-Trump demonstrators died of a heart attack, stroke and drug overdose, respectively, and that the stricken police officer, Brian Sicknick, succumbed to a medical ailment, not an assault by a fire extinguisher.

Still, the forcible entry claim should embarrass anyone who has ever had a visitors pass to the US Capitol. The place is a veritable fortress with a few dozen very small entryways that can be readily sealed off by barricades and a decent supply of tear gas, bear spray and water cannons.

If they didn’t want a disorderly and emotional crowd entering the building during the electoral vote counting pageant, then they could have closed the building to all visitors, invited or not, with alacrity. After all, the normal electoral vote counting ceremony in the Senate Chambers barely takes 60 minutes.

Obviously, what happened was the opposite—a veritable afternoon-long Gong Show of confusion and random disorder.

From the law enforcement side, barricades were poorly placed, if at all; little attempt was made at crowd control via nonlethal deterrents like tear gas and water cannons; the Capitol Police was not briefed and drilled for the event or given clear rules of engagement— even though it self-evidently promised to be the biggest, most fraught event in many moons at the US Capitol.

And most crucially, the videos make damn clear that many of the Capitol Police officers sympathized with the demonstrators and were likely Trump voters. So when the crowds surged toward a number of entryways, the officers simply stood aside and let the demonstrators enter the “people’s house” unimpeded.

On the other side, the so-called Trump “insurrectionists” mostly meandered randomly about the interior of the Capitol Building, surprised to find themselves in Nancy Pelosi’s unlocked office or the Senate Chamber which had earlier been vacated.

That is to say, that didn’t come with a plan to “occupy” it, nor did they possess any of the aforementioned hallmarks of insurrectionists trying to seize and hold power. Not only were they bereft of weaponry, but they also brought no communications equipment other than standard cells phones, no food and canteen supplies and no protective gear.

To be sure, these citizens behaved rudely, disgracefully and irresponsibly once they stumbled into the Capitol. They should have been charged with disorderly conduct, trespassing, destruction of public property and fined a meaningful sum to underscore the inadmissibility of their raucous behavior on a day of such important national symbolism.

But, actually, that’s just the point. This was not a coherent political force that threatened anything other than the paperweights on Nancy Pelosi’s desk. It was actually just a disorganized mob of 5,000 to 10,000 mainly yahoos, yokels and societal riffraff, who originated on the margins of the political system and streamed into Washington on whims and wild-ass distaste for their societal bettors.

Overwhelmingly, they were not experienced GOP political operatives, elected officials, leading citizens or people of any means at all. They did not come to the nation’s capital city the way real power-seekers do—in troop transports or corporate jets. They couldn’t have seized and held power if Donald Trump himself had led them into the Situations Room.

In short, the Capitol Building riot was not remotely the Day of Infamy that now forms the core of the January 6th Insurrection Narrative. To the contrary, it was merely an accidental moment of rank police incompetence that enabled a few ruffians and a large, naive crowd of surprised pro-Trump demonstrators to have their proverbial 15-minutes of fame, milling around the Capitol Building with no purposeful intent other than to vent their anger that the Donald was driven from office by a mere 44,000 votes in three states out of 157 million cast around the nation.

Yet the liberal elites and their progressive-left allies have turned this great big nothing-burger in the annals of actual historical putsches, coups and insurrections into a putative assault on American democracy, ranking way above Shay’s Rebellion and nearly at the level of the South Carolina militia’s firing on Fort Sumter. And it all happened from beginning to end largely in the course of a single afternoon during which the beltway establishment and mainstream media confected this blatant fiction from the pointless contretemps unfolding inside the Capitol.

Still, the January 6th Insurrection narrative could never have gained traction absent the Trump Derangement Syndrome. That’s because the everlasting irony of Donald J. Trump’s presidency is that he had all the right enemies, but virtually without exception made all the wrong decisions during his hapless four-year sojourn in the Oval Office.

The list of his enemies is enough to make any right-thinking supporter of peace, prosperity and liberty proud. That starts with the TV networks and print organs of the mainstream stenographer’s club, who peddle the state’s propaganda and call it news. This most especially includes the masters of mendacity at CNN, the New York Times and the Washington Post.

It also includes the bipartisan national security mafia, the climate change howlers, the race card hondlers, the Russophobes, the Neocon War Brigades, the NATO/IMF/UN acolytes, the Washington nomenclatura, the careerist racketeers of K-Street, the beltway shills of the Lincoln Project, the Silicon Valley thought police and the celebrity scolds of entertainment and media, among others.

With so many worthy enemies it is amazing that the Donald managed to do so little good and so very much wrong. But there is really no mystery to it when you cut to the essence of Donald J. Trump, the POTUS Poseur.

That is, the Donald was a principle-free Caesarean nationalist whose over-riding objective was his own personal power and glorification. His route thereto was inflaming a superficial nationalism that allowed him to pose as the defender of the flag, the military, the borders, guns, domestic jobs, policemen, firemen, law and order, religion, middle-class probity (sic!), the right to watch politics-free football games and, above all, to stand tall in the face of foreign malefactors and plunderers of America’s wealth.

Alas, as much merit as might lie among this pastiche of groups, things, purposes and symbols, the Donald’s form of bombastic knee-jerk advocacy added up to nothing that was coherent, urgent or ameliorative of what really ailed the nation, and which had caused the desperate citizens of Flyover America to cast a 63 million-vote Hail Mary during the 2016 election.

So in the end, therefore, the Capitol riot of January 6, 2021, was the pitiful denouement of a world class narcissist and bumbling Cesarean who never should have crossed the Potomac.

Unfortunately, he is back again and this time may chance to accomplish some real damage to American democracy and middle-class prosperity, albeit not by an illegal insurrection, J6 style or otherwise. Trump’s real danger is that his re-election would only further intensify the Trump Derangement Syndrome among a goodly share of the populace and 90% of the ruling elites and media, but also further bury the nation in fiscal calamity and insuperable public debt.

Reprinted with permission from David Stockman’s Contra Corner.

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There’s a new ballot initiative in Colorado that shows what the “progressive” Left wants as the next step in abortion policy. Coloradans are now in the process of voting on Amendment 79 which paves the way for taxpayer-funded abortions and for protecting pro-abortion mandates on private insurance. The amendment would also create a legal right to an abortion in the state constitution.

For many years—especially during the 1980s and 1990s— the abortion lobby in America insisted that it only supported abortion as a last resort for low-income mothers who had no other choice. The slogan was “safe, legal, and rare.” In practice, however, the mere legality of abortion was never enough for these people. Even during the “safe, legal, and rare” days, abortion advocates repeatedly lobbied for taxpayers to foot the bill for abortions.

This is why, in 1984, local opponents of taxpayer-funded abortions put Amendment 3 on the Colorado ballot, which banned the use of taxpayer money for abortions in most cases. The push for “public” funds is why Congress adopted the Hyde Amendment in 1977, banning the use of federal funds for abortion. For more than 45 years, abortion advocates have been hard at work trying to loot the taxpayers.

Now comes Amendment 79 which is specifically designed to overturn previous limits on public funding, and to ensure that taxpayer funds will be used to pay for abortions. Moreover, these funds will be used to fund abortions for out-of-state residents who travel to Colorado specifically for an abortion.

By defining abortion as a right in the state constitution, the abortion lobby attempts to ensure that state Medicaid funds and other state funds can be spent on abortions. This is all meant to be stacked on top of Colorado’s existing anti-market and interventionist abortion laws which include state mandates that require private insurance companies to pay for abortions with no out-of-pocket expense for the person seeking the abortion. Or, put another way, existing state law requires that virtually everyone who pays health insurance premiums subsidize abortions.

Abortion lobbyists often try to portray themselves as libertarians who only seek to get the government out of people’s lives. This has long been demonstrably false. It is orthodoxy among many abortion activists that “increasing abortion access” does not mean leaving people alone. “Abortion access” means forcing other people to pay for abortions. We can see this in the policy statements of most major abortion organizations today. The Center for American Progress, The Center for Reproductive Rights, and Planned Parenthood all advocate for taxpayer-subsidized abortion.

Typically, abortion activists favor “universal healthcare” programs which are defined as programs that can only be called “universal”—according to pro-abortion activists—when taxpayer dollars are used to fund contraception and abortion procedures. This is why the lobby is so committed to defining contraception and abortion as “healthcare.” The point to get it all funded by Medicaid and other taxpayer-funded programs.

In other words, the abortion lobby rarely regards the private sector and the private individual as something or someone to be “left alone.” Rather, the private sector exists as little more than something to be taxed and regulated in favor of funding more abortion.

Moreover, Amendment 79 is written in a to way pave the way for new laws excluding parental involvement when children seek abortions. In Colorado, some parental notification laws remain on the books, but if Amendment 79 is adopted, the new constitution will state that “government shall not deny, impede, or discriminate against the exercise of that right [to abortion.]” Experience shows the Colorado courts will then define parental notification laws as an “impediment,” and overturn all statutory parental notification laws on constitutional grounds.

In this way, abortion lobbyists further regulate and insert themselves into the most important private-sector institution of all—the family.

Of course, the abortion lobby can sometimes be accidentally libertarian. For example, abortion activists will often attempt to remove regulatory barriers imposed on businesses by government bureaucrats. These barriers include zoning laws and regulations applied to businesses such as health clinics. This turn to “laissez-faire,” of course, only ever applies to abortion clinics. In the mind of the typical abortion activists, endless red tape and government paternalism is perfectly fine for everything but an abortion clinic.

In this way, today’s abortion activists are like the Slave Power of antebellum America. Often, while arguing that they only wanted to be left alone by the federal government, slavery advocates relentlessly argued in favor of stronger federal fugitive slave laws, and even in favor of federal intervention in the frontier in favor of expanding slavery.

Similarly, abortion activists apply their “libertarianism” selectively depending on whether or not it will increase the number of abortions.

Colorado’s amendment 79 is just more of the same in this vein. Its purpose—as with many similar pro-abortion efforts across the country—is to put taxpayers and health insurance customers permanently and increasingly on the hook for funding more abortions. Even if one believes that abortion is some kind of right, there’s nothing about freedom here. Abortion is already legal in Colorado in every conceivable way, right up until the moment of birth. Nor is this likely to change any time soon. Amendment 79 isn’t about legalizing abortion. It’s about ripping off the taxpayers.

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

The post The Abortion Lobby Wants Taxpayer-Funded Abortions appeared first on LewRockwell.

International Man: Every four years, the US engages in an increasingly contentious process of electing its politicians. Republicans and Democrats both engage in mudslinging—each side taking cheap shots at the other.

Is this the nature of all politics and elections now?

Jeff Thomas: Well, that aspect of election campaigns is nothing new. In the US, perhaps the nastiest election was the 1800 election, between President John Adams and contender Thomas Jefferson, who ultimately won. The Democratic Republicans under Jefferson attacked the Federalists under Adams for creating a central government that usurped states’ rights, for imposing excessive taxes, and for passing the Alien and Sedition Acts, repressing the expression of anti-government opinion.

So, the issues themselves are very similar to those in play today, but back then, the mudslinging was a fair bit worse than today. And, like today, the media were just as involved as the political parties.

But it’s important to remember that the US is not the only country out there. It’s only one of about 200 countries, and elections in those countries not only vary widely but are forever evolving. Some countries, like the US, are headed downward politically, whilst others are on an upward trend.

International Man: Are there better examples?

Jeff Thomas: Examples of countries where the system isn’t becoming more tribal?

Yes, there are quite a few. I remember watching the 2009 presidential debates in Uruguay, where I live part of each year. Luis Lacalle of the National Party would answer a question as to how he would handle a specific issue and, when his opponent, José Mujica of the Broad Front Party, would respond, he would do so respectfully, stating that he agreed with Lacalle and that his own approach would differ only in minor details. A very gentlemanly election by comparison.

But then, this might be misunderstood by people in the US. It doesn’t mean that the candidates are necessarily more civilised than their American counterparts. What it means is that the Uruguayan people expect gentlemanly behaviour.

In every country, politicians seek to mirror the national mood. Since they’re trying to capture the vote, they don’t behave naturally but as a reflection of the national mood. In Cuba, in 1959, the people were thoroughly fed up with the Batista regime, so Fidel Castro shaking his fist and pontificating for hours in the Plaza de la Revolución was a welcomed sight. On the other hand, the US in 1952 was fed up with warfare, and the quiet confidence of Dwight Eisenhower was what people wanted to see, so that’s what was delivered. Political hopefuls try to project the mood that the public is seeking.

What we’re witnessing in the US today is a country that’s entered the another stage of what will be a prolonged crisis – one that will result in the upheaval of the economy, political structure, social behaviour, and even the morals of America. From here on in, we can expect ever-expanding degradation in each of those four areas, and politicians will reflect that. These are actors, after all.

International Man: The polarization between the Left and Right has continued to get worse—and this divide has entered into almost every aspect of life.

Is this as a result of the sheer size of the US and the differences between the States?

Jeff Thomas: The size of the US is definitely a factor, but the existence of the divide is media-created. In good times, states and political parties will try to get along, but in a crisis, they will not. When you see them at each other’s throats, you know that the crisis is underway. And the media can be counted on to capitalise on it and add gasoline to the fire. It won’t end well.

International Man: How does localism in smaller countries impact the political process?

Jeff Thomas: It’s much harder to pull off this sort of divide in a small country. And the smaller, the better. The more the political leaders are a part of the community, the more difficult it is for them to fool the public, even if the public is both unimaginative and ill-informed. If you know the candidate personally, you’re far less likely to be taken in. And, since he probably frequents the same bar as you do, he’s not likely to try to develop into a parasitical overlord whilst in office. He’s going to remain more grounded, because he has no choice.

International Man: You mentioned the situation in Uruguay, but you also live much of the year in the Cayman Islands, where the population is small – about 60,000. How do elections compare to the US?

Jeff Thomas: It’s very different. We have only a three-month election season, which is sometimes passionate, but not at all violent. At the polling station, all the staff is both helpful and friendly. By law, there are two policemen at every station, but they too are friendly. The process is efficient – about five minutes – and voters socialise peacefully outside afterward, regardless of whether they’ve chosen opposing candidates.

This time around, like the US, we had a change in government, but unlike the US, the electorate was confident in the legitimacy of the process and accepted the outcome, even if their candidates were unsuccessful.

But again, our overall election mood is buoyant because the country is stable – more like the US in 1952 than Cuba in 1959.

International Man: Do the media impact the election?

Jeff Thomas: Not a great deal. They mostly report events rather than try to indoctrinate people. The people of Cayman are not very tolerant of an aggressive media any more than they’re tolerant of aggressive politicians. For information, we rely more on what’s called the “marl road” – person-to-person communication – for voter-consciousness. Also, we know our political hopefuls on a first-name basis. We know their families and personal history, so we can ignore the campaign rhetoric and focus on who they really are. We generally end up with a mix of very good, capable people and some ambitious types, plus a few essentially useless people who are essentially deadwood whilst in office.

International Man: Big donors, special interest groups, and lobbyists have a lot of say in the election of American politicians. How does that impact the overall political structure?

Jeff Thomas: In a small jurisdiction, you still get “big donors.” But the dollar numbers are smaller, and the public tends to learn more readily that the donations have occurred, so it’s difficult to get carried away with buying politicians. The electorate finds out soon enough.

International Man: Is there another way?

Jeff Thomas: Well, you can pass laws that prohibit various means of contributions to campaigns, but those who seek to buy influence will simply find a work-around. Even in a small system, there will be those who buy politicians, but as it tends to get found out, they can be voted out again.

International Man: Do you experience the victimization of one party by another?

Jeff Thomas: No, historically, our candidates were mostly independents, with occasional teams that would last for two or three terms then dissolve. For the last twenty years, we’ve had actual parties, but the electorate found that the parliamentarians that they elected would then hide behind the obligation to vote along party lines. People could no longer go to a candidate and expect him to “represent” his constituency.

In a large country, a government made up of independents might not work, but in a small country, in which you can have direct input to your candidates, it makes for actual democracy rather than the pretense of democracy.

Governments should be controlled by the people, not the other way round. The greater your power to ride herd on your government, the greater your ability to retain your liberty.

Reprinted with permission from International Man.

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“This sounds far-fetched, but it isn’t.”

Nothing is farfetched.  There were two assassination attempts on Trump.  The first one is amazing, not just for the facts of the crime but for the facts after.  How can James Copenhaver, one of the people wounded, present a video like that, played on TV like endlessly, and almost nobody notices that the AGR building cannot be right next to the crowd?  It’s in reality 150 meters or at least 120 meters away.  Of course, all else is fake in that background.

So, nothing is farfetched.  All you indicate could happen.  Let’s “take the bull by the horns” by focusing on the assassination attempt(s).

They, or he, tried to kill him in Butler.  Let’s think it in the most obvious way:  The killer(s) did not want him to be President.  They do not want him to be President.  He was saved miraculously or in a way that forces us to think of “Providence”, and people realize that he was saved.  We can all say by “luck” but it sounds incomplete.  When we think of Providence, it explains it satisfactorily for us.

It’s mystical.  Let’s then think about the mystical world we don’t really know.  I can say I don’t at least.  It could be that this assassin enemy is pleased in November and Trump loses.  It could be that once again he (enemy) is stopped and Trump wins the election and is the next president.  It will be one of the two.  Among the many things that we are bound to learn about the so-called Deep State in this election, we are also bound to learn about how this mystical (or supernatural) reality works.

The mystical facts as we know them (the above facts for here) make one think that Trump will win, that the Butler assassin will lose again.  That assassin is certainly going down one way or another.  There is no way that it wins.  One can see in its characteristics that it already lost (and long ago).  We play a part in a drama of good versus evil, finally being the instruments of this confrontation.  My most immediate objective in writing something like “The Video of James Copenhaver” (excuse me, makes me chuckle too) is my concern (proper concern) for the mental and spiritual health of people.  The larger issue was not really the first thing for me.  In this respect (larger results), who wins the election is a matter that a higher power will determine, just like it determined Trump would be saved in Butler, and that everybody should know he was saved (which we know because the bullet grazed him like that), determined the failure, the fall of the enemy (and I have the enemy’s nature in mind)…

Even if Trump loses, it will be all right in the end.  (I don’t think he will lose; and the actual economy is as you described it.)  If it takes days to count the votes, the only country in the world where that happens or is allowed, there might be cheating but it might be neutralized into a stupidity with not enough cheating to win.

Democrats are pushing their luck if they want to win by cheating.  It would go to the Supreme Court, which is very conservative.

The point of this feedback is to think of Butler.  Will that assassin get his wish?  If Trump loses in this election, he got his wish.  Killing him was the means for this objective of not having him become President again.  So, I would think Trump will win.  But there are many other ways to win.

Trump is surrounding himself better this time.  Musk said he thinks he can cut $2.5 trillion out of approximately $6 trillion.  So, he “means business.”  Kennedy has an ambitious health agenda and Trump said he will let him do what he wants to do.

The post How America Was Destroyed appeared first on LewRockwell.

On two previous occasions Israel sent its vaunted army into southern Lebanon only to be driven out by the Arab militia, Hezbollah, operating without tanks, without an air force, without air defense.   It appears that it has now happened again.  Israel has been stopped cold on the ground, causing the Israeli defense minister to announce an end to the ground operations.  The Israeli Army is only good at killing women and children from the air, as in Gaza.

Israel’s war against Hezbollah has been replaced with Israeli air strikes against civilian residential areas in Beirut, which provides more evidence that the only function of the Israeli military is to murder women and children from the air.  The obvious conclusion is that the Israeli military doesn’t fight; it commits war crimes against civilians.

The reason civilian neighborhoods in Beirut, the capital of Lebanon and not Hezbollah territory, are being destroyed from the air is that Iran and Russia permit it by not providing air defense systems to Lebanon.  

Iran and Russia are “maintaining peace” by permitting Israel to slaughter Lebanese women and children and destroy schools and hospitals from the air.  

It is a paradox that Washington, Putin, and Iran are equally indifferent to Israel’s slaughter from the air of civilians in Gaza and civilians in Lebanon. Any one of the three countries could stop the murder of civilians, but not one of them will do anything.

Putin has placed his bets on BRICS, but that is an economic organization that might or might not succeed.  Its success is handicapped by the fact that the Russian and Chinese economists are indoctrinated by the American neoliberals, and, therefore, are not merely worthless to their countries but positively harmful. 

If Washington wanted the Israelis’ murder of Palestinian and Lebanese civilians to stop, Washington would stop providing Israel with the weapons.  Clearly, Israel is doing what Washington wants.  But why do Russia and Iran want Palestinian and Lebanese civilians to be massacred when either country can stop it?  It is beginning to look as if it is not merely Washington and Israel that Satan has in his grasp, but Russia and Iran as well.

Every time Putin gets off-focused from Russia’s only threat–Washington–he finds himself with a mess on this hands.  With Putin focused on the Olympics in China, Washington sent the Georgian army into South Ossetia. With Putin focused on the Sochi Olympics, Washington overthrew the Ukrainian government and brought war to Russia.  Now Putin is focused on BRICS and Washington is stirring up a color revolution in Georgia to regain the former Russian province as another beached against Russia. The opposition parties and the President of Georgia do not accept the election results, which are favorable to Russia. See here.

I think that Putin by refusing to use power is losing credibility. I don’t think Putin understands the ideological character of the Democrat Party and the ideological woke liberal-left that controls it. If the Democrats manage to retain control over the government, I don’t think Putin is prepared for the consequences.  

Humankind, said T.S. Eliot, “cannot bear very much reality.”  That is as true of Russians as of Americans. Reality conflicts with hopes, aspirations, and plans, and when ignored upsets all of them.  Putin’s Ukraine conflict which has greatly widened, the brewing color revolution in Georgia supported by Washington, and Iran’s demonization and isolation are all self-inflicted  disasters caused by ignoring reality.

When powerful countries such as Russia, China, and Iran stand aside from genocide, they destroy their own reputations. The world is crying out for someone with the means to stand up for humanity, for justice, for truth, and there are no takers.

In Gaza children undergo amputations without anesthesia. The little water available is polluted. Everyone is sick. Washington keeps sending the weapons used from the air against purely civilian populations. Disease and starvation will finish the job for the Americans and the Israelis.  It is America that has enabled this genocide.

And Americans, in their insouciant existence, think they are the salt of the earth.

The post When Evil Is Allowed in, Evil Stays appeared first on LewRockwell.

The French abbot and mystic, Bernard of Clairvaux, famously remarked that “A wise man is one who savors all things as they really are.”

I was reminded of this remark a few days ago in a conversation with my younger brother, who lamented how hard it is to find young skilled labor for his general contracting business on Maui.

“All of my skilled guys are now old,” he said. “My electrician is a Vietnam veteran. He loves his job and is very good at at it, but I can’t find anyone to replace him.”

“What do the youngsters on Maui do for a living?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he replied.

“How do cover their cost of living?”

“I think a lot parents of our generation still support their grown children.”

“What does the younger set do with their time?” I asked.

“Look at their phones.”

To be sure, my brother’s sample size on Maui is very small. However, his personal perception seems to find confirmation in the remarkable fact that, out of a total population of 340 million, only 161 million are employed, or less than half.

Of the 179 million who are not employed, 50 million are retired and receiving Social Security benefits, 11 million are stay-at-home moms, 74 million are minors, and 44 million are apparently none of the above.

I wonder about the social and political outcome for a society when less that half of it does remunerative work and pays taxes. Could this be a major factor in the rapid and steady proliferation of debt to finance America’s high standard of living?

Click to enlarge

I mention employment and debt because it seems to me that these play major roles in shaping awareness and attachment to reality. Other factors include technological innovations that insulate humans from the natural elements and a large and powerful state that frequently intervenes in human affairs.

I wonder if the above factors could explain why I am frequently perplexed by the current state of American culture and public discourse. So often I hear people saying things that suggest they have little understanding or appreciation of reality. We Americans seems to have so many fervent attachments apart from the pursuit of ascertaining what is real and living in accordance with it.

My philosophy professor, Roger Scruton, was an expert on the philosophy of Immanuel Kant, who dedicated his entire life to trying to ascertain reality. Kant never left his native city of Königsberg and never married. He apparently spent every day in study and reflection, breaking only for his daily walk and for his lectures at the University of Königsberg. I sometimes wonder what Kant would think if he were dropped into American society today. Would he perceive us to be insane?

While it’s possible that my perceptions are simply those of an old curmudgeon, I believe that much of American society has lost touch with reality. How long can this state of affairs last? In my brother’s estimation, if the American dollar loses its immensely powerful status as the world’s reserve currency, the American debt-sustained standard of living party—with all of its concomitant delusions—will end in an extremely unhappy way.

Author’s Note: If you enjoy reading my investigative and philosophical work, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. For just $5 per month, you can support Dr. McCullough and me in our daily efforts to ascertain and report the reality of our whacky world.

This originally appeared on Courageous Discourse.

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24 October 2024, by Eric Zuesse. (All of my recent articles can be seen here.)

When a soldier willingly risks one’s life for one’s country — for example: “Give me liberty, or give me death”, said Patrick Henry on 23 March 1776, advocating for Britain’s Virginia colony to go to war against the British Empire — it’s because this person believes a life in slavery to be worse than no life at all. It is to choose serving one’s country (or else country-to-become), over serving an evil foreign master. When those are the only two options that are left, a person whose conscience is even larger than the person’s fear is, will revolt, and serve one’s conscience.

A person of conscience does what that person thinks to be right, even when one knows that this will probably lead to one’s death. A person of expediency does not. This is an important difference in human motivation, and so persons who are on opposite sides of that divide might have difficulty in understanding each other.

During the third U.S. Presidential debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, on 20 October 2016, Clinton said, “There is about four minutes between the order being given and the people responsible for launching nuclear weapons to do so.” Vladimir Putin too knows this, and he behaves accordingly, as will here be explained.

The country that has by far the border that is the closest of all to Russia’s central command in The Kremlin in Moscow is Ukraine, which is less than 317 miles — a mere five minutes of missile-flight-time away from him. This means that if Ukraine joins NATO, America’s anti-Russian military alliance, then, just as happened when Finland, which is the second-nearest to Moscow at a mere 507 miles or 7 minutes of missile-flying-time, joined NATO and was required by the U.S. Government to allow it to place American nukes there, Ukraine would also be required by the U.S. Government to allow it to position its nukes anywhere it wants to in Ukraine — and Russia, which is a Patrick Henry type of country — fiercely independent — would then do a Patrick Henry type of thing against the UK/U.S. empire: it would be for Russia then to initiate World War Three (WW3) against the ever-expanding UK/U.S. empire, because 317 miles is way too close “for comfort,” for any Russian, and Russia would then respond preemptively in order to avoid becoming beheaded before the major exchange of nukes starts between the two sides.

After all: in addition to there being that 4-minute time-window in which to launch the retaliatory missiles against U.S. missiles that are only a 5-minute flight-time away from Russia’s central command — leaving only 1 minute to spare — Russia’s Commander-in-Chief would have to be alerted, perhaps from his sleep, after Russia’s national-security system has already observed and verified the U.S. launch; and to do that could require considerably longer than merely 1 minute. (Russia, therefore, really should relocate its capital 1,500 miles to the east to its 3rd-largest city, Novosibirsk.) This is the predicament that Russia’s Government faces from today’s “Plain Evil” U.S. Government; and it’s the main reason why Mr. Putin, who has been leading Russia ever since 1 January 2000, has averaged around a 75% job-approval rating from the Russian people throughout these nearly 25 years: they trust him to do the right thing in a circumstance such as that, and no one else in the country would come anywhere even near to 75% approval. (Furthermore, the 2016 U.S. Government-funded study “Is Putin’s Popularity Real?” reluctantly concluded that it is — and, since the U.S. Government’s main interest in knowing this is to learn how likely to succeed would be an operation to turn the Russian public against him, the authors stated explicily, at the very end of their Conclusion, “that the main obstacle at present to the emergence of a widespread opposition movement to Putin is not that Russians are afraid to voice their disapproval of Putin, but that Putin is in fact quite popular.”)

Consequently, if Russia will be taking enough of Ukraine to push its border an additional 700 miles away from The Kremlin, to becoming 1,000 miles from it, that 1 minute would still be too near, only around 15 minutes; and, so, Russia will have to take all of Ukraine (unless Russia will instead move its capital to or near Novosibirsk). However, if Russia does that (takes all of Ukraine), then it will need to say explicitly, which it never yet has clearly stated (Putin is incompetent at PR), that the U.S. coup in 2014 that grabbed Ukraine, which had been a neutral country on Russia’s border, started this war, and constituted America’s aggression against Russia, to which Russia’s “Special Operation” necessarily is finally responding, for Russia’s own essential self-defense.

PS: If you like this article, please email it to all your friends or otherwise let others know about it. None of the U.S.-and-allied ‘news’-media will likely publish it (nor link to it, since doing that might also hurt them with Google or etc.). I am not asking for money, but I am asking my readers to spread my articles far and wide, because I specialize in documenting what the Deep State is constantly hiding. This is, in fact, today’s samizdat.

This originally appeared on Eric’s Substack.

The post Why Russia Will Likely Take All of Ukraine appeared first on LewRockwell.

Many people are convinced that civilization as we know it will collapse or, at best, experience a prolonged interruption. Very few of those people are actually planning for it and even less are preparing for it in advance. For those of us actually preparing we have forums, books, videos, and meetings to help us get ready for SHTF.

A few are even likely hoping for it for various reasons. What if this collapse occurs in a matter of minutes as well it might in various SHTF scenarios; nuclear war, terrorism, EMP, pandemic, conventional war, civil unrest becoming civil war? I am sure you can add a few to this list. Using the Golden Hour concept from trauma medicine I am proposing a few unusual ways of handling the first hour of SHTF.

In this Golden Hour things you do and do not do will have a profound effect on your chances of a decent survival outcome. The Golden Hour is getting a major trauma victim to a trauma center within an hour. Survival rates plummet by minute 61. What will you do in the first 60 minutes of a sudden SHTF? I expect disagreement and hope the comments will give me some good ideas.

SHTF Happens and you are at Home

Reacting rather than data gathering is the key to all of these situations. As humans used to experiencing normal conditions the sudden ending of the normal is a shock and many react to it by standing still and trying to find out what is going on. The lights go out, you check your phone, you look out the window, and you try to find your battery radio and the flashlights. You are in bed and the loud bang shakes the house violently and the power goes out. You use your phone, you turn on the TV, and you go outside to find out what is going on. You might even go through these actions several times!

I am not saying these responses are always wrong. Geography, etc. has an input into your plan which is a pre-written plan. If you are hundreds of miles from cities then your response might be different especially if you have large volumes of water stored. What I am saying is get moving early and start using the Water Bob, the clean rain barrels from storage within minutes of any alert that normal no longer might exist. Finding out what has happened is a secondary concern to preparing to survive. Who cares if Russia has attacked the USA or if it was a terrorist bomb? Listen to your gut not to CNN.

Even worse is leaving the home to collect wife (or husband) and kids. During the opening hour you have to prepare the home for a possible prolonged end of normal life. The wife (or husband) and kids have a plan and they will use it. It might be to hunker down and wait for you knowing it might be a day or two or come home immediately but they know it and you know it. Fight the very human desire to gather the loved ones immediately at the time of crisis unless is your plan and they know it. If you (or they) are at home then the preparing of the home is the best thing you can do for them in the opening hour. You have no idea how long the water or electricity will last.

Obviously if your children are young you need a plan to collect them but do you need to go immediately? If yes, then go. But the decision is a logical one not an emotional one. Emotional reactions to sudden shocks often lead to faulty decision-making. It might be best to protect your food and water supplies while the electricity and water remain on before heading out to collect your child from school. An hour or two’s delay in setting out means they get to eat and drink for sure.

If it is a temporary thing you have at worst wasted the water bob and will have to buy a new one (people say you can reuse it but I am not sure water safety is worth the risk). Other things you may consider doing during the first hour is nailing tarps over your raised garden beds and moving supplies into the house or bug out vehicle. What you do not want to be doing is chatting to neighbors or wasting time trying to get information. Something bad seems to have happened so deal with it. How much you know about it is a human desire but preparing is the essential thing in the first hour.

SHTF Happens and you are on the Road

This is the hardest of all situations to experience sudden SHTF yet it is the most common one in society. Motor Vehicle Collisions (they are not ‘accidents’) kill and maim many people each and every day.

However in a sudden SHTF of major local, national, or international scope what is your plan if you are in the vehicle? If the vehicle works get fuel as soon as possible and buy food and water in the first gas station you see using cash but only if it is safe and uncrowded. Then get home or to the preplanned bug out location using the vehicle. Do not delay at all. In sudden SHTF people literally drive miles in one direction, usually to collect family, and then end up being directed the opposite way by Police. When they finally get home it is burned down or looted. As ever everyone in your family know to stay in place or come home in an SHTF and when to do so. You are not their savior. Your role is to trust them and the written and discussed plan.

Some SHTF scenarios will see the vehicle fail or be blocked in its progress. Abandon the vehicle immediately gathering all useful supplies and get moving away from people and towards home or the bug out location. Drive alternative routes if possible but a vehicle is not going to last long in a major SHTF so try not to be attached to it! Again chatting to people, trying their phones, and wondering what is going on is pointless. It is bad and that is all you need to know. Use the sides of highways to move away from the groups of scared, annoyed, and confused people on the road. No need to walk up the exit ramps as you have the physical ability to use less usual routes. You always have a paper map however basic and a get home bag in the car.

Transit by boat, plane, or train in a sudden SHTF is problematic. In your Golden Hour gather supplies, learn exits, and start thinking how best to get out and home. Water in train, boat, and plane washrooms is not drinkable but empty a recycling bin and fill up those bottles with it. You should have a few water purification tablets on you at all times. Do not bother washing out those bottles. People are not really that infectious (this advice is NOT to be followed in a pandemic) and you can easily get 10 liters or more of okay water stored up in the first few minutes of the SHTF while everyone else is shouting into dead phones. By Day Two you will be very happy you did this in those first few minutes.

As a rule I never travel by boat other than short ferry rides and I cannot see a good outcome in SHTF on a cruise ship but if you cruise at least carry your own flotation vests and survival kit.

Experiencing a sudden and dreadful SHTF on a plane might be interesting. If it falls out of the sky then all the prepping you have done will hopefully be used by your loved ones. However diversion and being kept in an airport is more likely in a sudden SHTF. Carry cash in large amounts and try to carry some cash that can be used in the countries you are flying over or near. If the power is on and you can use credit cards to immediately start an alternative route home. In 9-11 people were stuck in Canada for up to four days when they could have got home via train and bus if they had started immediately. A few hours later and there were no seats available! If a small nuclear war is the cause of air travel suspension imagine how long you might be stuck somewhere and how likely is it you will be well treated?

If a SHTF is likely I’d advise you to call sick and stay at home even if you have a cruise booked but SHTF can happen with almost no warning and what you do immediately can make or break your survival chances.

Read the Whole Article

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di Siamak Etefagh

Il Digital Markets Act (DMA) dell'Unione Europea rappresenta un tentativo maldestro di regolamentare i mercati digitali, resuscitando il paradigma obsoleto e profondamente imperfetto denominato Structure-Conduct-Performance (SCP). Questo saggio sostiene che l'approccio strutturale del DMA non è semplicemente inadatto alla natura dinamica dei mercati digitali, ma attivamente dannoso, minacciando di soffocare l'innovazione, impedire il progresso del mercato e, in ultima analisi, danneggiare gli stessi consumatori che pretende di proteggere.

Il paradigma SCP, che costituisce il fondamento del DMA, è una reliquia dell'economia industriale di metà XX secolo, tristemente inadeguata per comprendere gli ecosistemi digitali moderni. Questo framework postula ingenuamente che la struttura del mercato determina la condotta aziendale cosa che, a sua volta, influenza le prestazioni del mercato. Aggrappandosi a questo modello obsoleto, i regolatori dell'UE dimostrano una profonda incomprensione delle dinamiche dell'economia digitale.

La metodologia di base del DMA tradisce la sua profonda dipendenza dal paradigma SCP, in particolare nella sua ossessione per la struttura del mercato. Ciò è evidente nei suoi criteri per la designazione dei “gatekeeper”, i quali si basano principalmente su metriche strutturali quantitative come fatturato annuo, capitalizzazione di mercato e dimensione della base di utenti. Concentrandosi su questi elementi strutturali statici, il DMA fraintende la natura della concorrenza nei mercati digitali. Presuppone erroneamente che la relativa struttura del mercato sia il principale determinante del comportamento competitivo e dei risultati di mercato, ignorando i processi dinamici che guidano realmente l'innovazione e la concorrenza digitale.

Questa fissazione porta a un approccio normativo che è sia riduttivo che potenzialmente dannoso. Prendendo di mira le aziende in base alle loro dimensioni e alla loro posizione di mercato piuttosto che alla loro condotta effettiva, o ai risultati che producono, il DMA rischia di penalizzare il successo e l'efficienza. Crea una struttura di incentivi perversa in cui le aziende possono deliberatamente limitare la loro crescita, o innovazione, per evitare il controllo normativo. Inoltre questo approccio non riesce a tenere conto dei rapidi e spesso imprevedibili cambiamenti nei mercati digitali, dove l'attore dominante di oggi può rapidamente diventare la piattaforma obsoleta di domani. Le rigide soglie strutturali e le normative ex ante del DMA sono quindi destinate a essere perpetuamente disallineate con le realtà di mercato, ostacolando potenzialmente le dinamiche competitive che mirano a proteggere.

I mercati digitali sono caratterizzati da rapida innovazione, confini fluidi e costante interruzione. L'attenzione del DMA sugli elementi strutturali, come la designazione di “gatekeeper” in base a soglie quantitative arbitrarie, è simile all'uso di una meridiana per misurare i nanosecondi. Non è solo impreciso, ma assurdo. È davvero importante comprendere la concorrenza così com'è. Come disse Hayek: “Vorrei ora parlare della concorrenza come una procedura per scoprire fatti che, se tale procedura non esistesse, rimarrebbero sconosciuti o come minimo non verrebbero utilizzati”. Non un tipo di posizione o struttura statica.

Il DMA rappresenta un monumento all'eccesso normativo, costruito sulle fondamenta instabili del paradigma SCP. Le sue conseguenze saranno probabilmente gravi e di vasta portata:

1. Strangolamento dell'innovazione: imponendo regole draconiane alle grandi piattaforme, il DMA soffocherà inevitabilmente l'innovazione. Le risorse che potrebbero alimentare le tecnologie di prossima generazione saranno invece sprecate in conformità normativa.
2. Sabbie mobili normative: la natura ampia e prescrittiva del DMA crea un pantano di incertezza per le aziende. In questo contesto la stagnazione prudente diventa una strategia più sicura dell'innovazione audace.
3. Disallineamento con la realtà: i criteri utilizzati per designare i gatekeeper sono strumenti rudimentali che non riescono a catturare le dinamiche competitive e sfumate dei mercati digitali. Questo disallineamento minaccia di distorcere gli incentivi di mercato e la concorrenza.
4. Privazione del potere dei consumatori: nel loro zelo paternalistico, i regolatori dell'UE hanno trascurato il potere della scelta dei consumatori nel plasmare i mercati digitali. Il DMA presuppone implicitamente che i consumatori siano pedine indifese piuttosto che partecipanti attivi al mercato.

L'approccio strutturale del DMA tradisce un'arroganza tra i regolatori dell'UE: la convinzione di poter gestire in modo efficace il complesso ecosistema digitale in rapida evoluzione. Questa è una pericolosa illusione. Gli enti regolatori non hanno l'agilità, la competenza e la lungimiranza per supervisionare efficacemente tali ambienti dinamici.

L'implementazione del DMA sarà probabilmente un incubo burocratico, con i regolatori che saranno perennemente in ritardo rispetto alle realtà del mercato. È come se l'UE avesse deciso di regolamentare Internet tramite una commissione di operatori telegrafici.

I difetti dell'approccio strutturale del DMA diventano ancora più evidenti se visti attraverso la lente della Scuola Austriaca. Quest'ultima offre una prospettiva radicalmente diversa sui mercati e sulla concorrenza, la quale sfida il paradigma SCP alla base del DMA. Mentre il modello SCP vede la struttura del mercato come il principale determinante del comportamento aziendale e dei risultati di mercato, gli economisti Austriaci vedono il mercato come un ordine spontaneo che nasce naturalmente da azioni individuali senza controllo centrale. Questa prospettiva suggerisce che i tentativi di regolamentare i mercati attraverso leggi antitrust, come il DMA, fraintendono profondamente la natura organica e autoregolante dei sistemi economici, interrompendo quei processi di mercato benefici anziché migliorarli. Come scrisse Murray Rothbard in Man, Economy, and State:

Le leggi e le azioni penali antitrust, sebbene concepite per combattere il monopolio e promuovere la concorrenza, in realtà hanno l'effetto opposto, poiché penalizzano e reprimono coercitivamente forme efficienti di struttura e attività di mercato.

Al centro della critica Austriaca c'è il concetto di concorrenza come procedura di scoperta dinamica piuttosto che come processo statico o concorrenza perfetta come implicato dal paradigma SCP. Questo processo consente agli attori di mercato di scoprire nuove informazioni, innovare e migliorare continuamente, il che è essenziale per un sano funzionamento dei mercati. Concentrandosi sulla conservazione di determinate strutture o sulla limitazione delle dimensioni delle aziende, gli interventi del DMA potrebbero soffocare questo processo di scoperta, danneggiando l'innovazione e il benessere dei consumatori. Inoltre l'enfasi Austriaca sulla natura soggettiva dei prezzi è in netto contrasto con le metriche oggettive utilizzate nell'analisi strutturale del DMA. Questa soggettività del valore suggerisce che le soglie quantitative e gli indicatori strutturali impiegati dal DMA potrebbero non riuscire a catturare le vere complessità e dinamiche dei mercati digitali, portando a interventi fuorvianti che faranno più male che bene. Come scrisse Ludwig von Mises in Human Action: “Il mercato non è un luogo, una cosa o un’entità collettiva [...]. Le forze che determinano lo stato in continuo cambiamento del mercato sono i giudizi di valore degli individui e le loro azioni, dirette da questi giudizi di valore”.

Il Digital Markets Act rappresenta una pericolosa rinascita dei difetti del paradigma SCP. È un tentativo maldestro di forzare il mondo dinamico e innovativo dei mercati digitali in un quadro normativo statico e obsoleto. Il DMA minaccia di sostituire la saggezza dei mercati con l'arroganza dei regolatori, soffocando potenzialmente l'innovazione e la competizione che afferma di promuovere.

Ciò di cui c'è bisogno non è una messa a punto di questo approccio imperfetto, ma un completo cambio di paradigma: un CTRL+ALT+CANC normativo. I policymaker devono riavviare la loro comprensione dei mercati digitali, abbandonando la comoda ma fuorviante semplicità del paradigma SCP. Devono abbracciare la natura complessa, incerta e dinamica della concorrenza digitale.

Il futuro dell'economia digitale è troppo importante per essere lasciato in balia di regolamentazioni fuorvianti basate su obsolete teorie economiche. È tempo di un riavvio del nostro approccio alla regolamentazione del mercato digitale. Altrimenti l'UE rischia di trasformare la sua economia digitale in una landa desolata, dove l'innovazione appassisce e i consumatori alla fine subiscono le conseguenze di interventi presumibilmente ben intenzionati ma profondamente dannosi.

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

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di Thorsten Polleit

Chi non li conosce i vampiri succhiasangue, gli inquietanti non morti immortalati in innumerevoli film e ispirati principalmente dal romanzo Dracula (1897) di Bram Stoker. Basti pensare a film iconici come Nosferatu - Una sinfonia di orrori (1922), Dracula (1958) con Christopher Lee, la parodia di Roman Polanski The Fearless Vampire Killers (1967), o Nosferatu - Il fantasma della notte (1979), con Klaus Kinski nel ruolo del conte Dracula.

I vampiri sono demoni che si risvegliano dalle loro tombe di notte, cercando di drenare il sangue di vittime innocenti. Non solo rubano la forza vitale altrui, ma diffondono anche la loro maledizione: molte vittime, morse dai vampiri, vengono “trasformate” e diventano esse stesse non-morte.

I nemici e i cacciatori di vampiri affrontano una sfida formidabile: questi demoni possono travestirsi, trasformandosi in creature come lupi o pipistrelli, e spesso mostrano una forza immensa e sovrumana. Possono essere respinti solo dalle difese tradizionali: spicchi d'aglio, rosari, acqua santa, o la croce cristiana. Ma distruggere veramente un vampiro richiede la decapitazione, conficcare un paletto di legno nel suo cuore, o la luce solare che li trasforma in polvere.

Il vampiro è un mito antico. L'immagine di una creatura non morta succhiasangue, o concetti simili, è esistita in molte culture. Questo demone incarna la superstizione, agendo come proiezione di paure primordiali, dell'inspiegabile e del male come controparte del bene. L'idea di una creatura che emerge di notte, prosciuga il sangue delle sue vittime e le trascina dalla luce all'oscurità è senza dubbio profondamente minacciosa.

Se si riflette un po' più a fondo sulla storia del demone vampiro, si comincerà inevitabilmente a vedere dei parallelismi (o almeno dei punti di contatto) con l'attuale sistema monetario fiat.

Sotto la copertura dell'oscurità

Esiste sotto la copertura dell'oscurità: è giusto dire che la stragrande maggioranza delle persone non è a conoscenza di come è strutturato l'attuale sistema monetario fiat, di come funziona, o di quali sono i suoi effetti. Gli studenti nelle scuole e nelle università sono, per la maggior parte, lasciati all'oscuro a riguardo e le conseguenze del sistema monetario fiat colgono la maggior parte delle persone di sorpresa. Infatti quante persone sanno che il nostro attuale sistema monetario fiat è un sistema in cui la banca centrale detiene un monopolio coercitivo sulla creazione di denaro, mentre le banche commerciali emettono la propria moneta fiat?

Chi sa che la moneta fiat è letteralmente creata dal nulla, rappresentando una forma di creazione di denaro che non ha alcuna connessione col “risparmio reale”? E chi spiega alla gente che, da una prospettiva economica, espandere l'offerta di moneta fiat è inflazionistico, portando a prezzi più alti e irregolari per beni e servizi rispetto a una situazione in cui l'offerta di moneta viene aumentata arbitrariamente? È anche sconosciuto a molti che l'emissione di moneta fiat tramite il mercato del credito provoca un'allocazione errata del capitale, innescando inizialmente un boom, solo per trasformarsi poi in bust; cosa che spinge le economie verso un debito eccessivo e che consente allo stato di crescere sempre di più a spese delle libertà dei cittadini e degli imprenditori.

In breve, per la maggior parte delle persone, i danni causati dalla moneta fiat sono sconosciuti; si insinuano sotto la copertura dell'oscurità, come un vampiro.

Vittime vulnerabili e vita risucchiata

Le vittime sono spesso indifese e inconsapevoli, con i frutti del loro lavoro che vengono silenziosamente sottratti. Il denaro fiat ha qualcosa di vampiresco: consente a un gruppo (quelli autorizzati a crearlo) di vivere a spese di altri (quelli costretti a usarlo). I primi destinatari del denaro fiat sono i beneficiari: possono usarlo per acquistare beni e servizi i cui prezzi non sono ancora aumentati, diventando più ricchi.

Man mano che il denaro passa di mano, aumenta la domanda e i prezzi dei beni aumentano di conseguenza. I destinatari tardivi del nuovo denaro possono acquistare beni solo a prezzi più alti, il che li pone in una posizione di svantaggio. I primi destinatari migliorano la loro posizione a spese dei destinatari tardivi. Gravemente colpiti sono coloro che non lo ricevono affatto: sono, di fatto, quelli cui viene “risucchiata” la vita.

L'effetto ridistributivo della moneta fiat, che opera nell'ombra, avvantaggia in particolar modo le banche commerciali e lo stato, dato che è in grado di contrarre nuovi prestiti.

Lo stato finanzia una parte significativa delle sue spese con moneta fiat di nuova creazione, usandola per pagare i suoi rappresentanti, i suoi dipendenti e le loro pensioni, così come le aziende da cui acquista beni e servizi. Lo stato e i suoi beneficiari sono tra i primi destinatari della moneta fiat di nuova creazione, il che li rende i principali beneficiari a spese dei molti che non sono strettamente collegati alla sfera pubblica.

Si potrebbe sostenere che una ridistribuzione del reddito e della ricchezza, provocata dall'aumento della moneta fiat, si verificherebbe anche in un sistema monetario basato su merci o metalli preziosi. Ciò è vero in linea di principio, ma l'aumento, ad esempio, in un sistema monetario basato sull'oro, sarebbe meno pronunciato rispetto a un sistema monetario fiat. Il fatto è che quest'ultimo è stato scelto deliberatamente per la sua natura da vampiro. Ne traggono vantaggio lo Stato, le banche e le grandi aziende a spese della popolazione generale, mantenendola al di sotto del suo potenziale economico.

Creazione di sottoposti

Come un vampiro, la moneta fiat infetta le sue vittime, trasformandole in complici del sistema. La moneta fiat schiavizza letteralmente chi la usa. Ad esempio, la moneta fiat incentiva le aziende e le famiglie a contrarre debiti e a vivere al di sopra delle proprie possibilità, cosa resa possibile da tassi d'interesse artificialmente bassi. Le persone sono anche incoraggiate a investire in asset (come case e aziende) perché la natura inflazionistica cronica della moneta fiat assicura un continuo aumento dei prezzi dei suddetti. Una volta che le persone sono attirate dall'esposizione alla moneta fiat, il loro benessere economico e finanziario diventa dipendente dalla continuazione di tale sistema e dal fatto che venga “salvato” dallo stato e dalla sua banca centrale durante i periodi di crisi, anche a spese di coloro che non ne beneficiano, o ne beneficiano molto meno.

Politici, burocrati, impiegati di banca e aziende che ricevono contratti governativi sviluppano tutti un interesse personale nel garantire che il sistema monetario fiat sopravviva. In questo senso diventano schiavi del denaro fiat vampirico, nutrendosi della linfa vitale di coloro che sono impegnati in un lavoro produttivo e reclamandone una quota del reddito.

Inoltre i risparmiatori sono quelli che ci rimettono, poiché la moneta fiat perde continuamente il suo potere d'acquisto. La banca centrale si assicura che i tassi d'interesse siano mantenuti artificialmente bassi, spesso negativi dopo aver tenuto conto dell'inflazione, in modo che i risparmi in depositi a termine, conti di risparmio e obbligazioni siano effettivamente erosi.

Avversione alla luce

Il vampiro e il sistema monetario fiat non possono resistere alla luce del giorno; entrambi si sbriciolerebbero se esposti al sole. Se le persone comprendessero veramente gli effetti negativi del denaro fiat e il danno che causa al mondo, probabilmente lo rifiuterebbero, insieme alle strutture di produzione e occupazione che crea. Questo è probabilmente il motivo per cui si insegna poco sul denaro fiat nelle scuole e nelle università. I ​​suoi aspetti più oscuri sono nascosti, con il sistema educativo statalista come particeps criminis che si assicura che la luce della conoscenza non brilli sul sistema monetario fiat.

Ricordate che i consigli delle banche centrali sono solitamente definiti “i guardiani della valuta” e si dice che “combattano” l'inflazione. Niente potrebbe essere più lontano dalla verità, proprio come un vampiro che accoglie i suoi ospiti e si impegna in una conversazione spiritosa senza rivelare la sua vera natura. Proprio come la luce del sole uccide un vampiro, una solida conoscenza economica distruggerebbe il sistema monetario fiat, specialmente se abbinata a un'etica “fai agli altri ciò che vorresti che fosse fatto a te”.

Fino a quel giorno gli investitori dovrebbero essere consapevoli dei gravi difetti economici ed etici della moneta fiat. La scomoda verità è che la prosperità e la pace a lungo termine non possono essere sostenute in un sistema a moneta fiat, pertanto è nell'interesse di tutti che la luce della verità ponga fine al sistema monetario fiat. Ma come si può ottenere questo risultato?

Informando in modo proattivo e onesto le persone sui mali della moneta fiat; consigliando loro di ridurre la loro dipendenza da essa, sia nelle loro vite che nei loro risparmi; promuovendo un libero mercato per la moneta, incoraggiando al contempo innovazioni tecnologiche nella sfera monetaria che vanno oltre il controllo dello stato. Insieme, questi sforzi, agiranno come un raggio di sole che colpisce il sistema monetario fiat, riducendolo infine in polvere come accadrebbe con un vampiro.

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

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After a few cat and mouse days of Defense Secretary Lloyd “Raytheon” Austin’s denials, the Pentagon finally yesterday affirmed that there was evidence of a North Korean military presence in Russia. Asked what they were doing in Russia, Austin replied, “What exactly they are doing? Left to be seen. These are things that we need to sort out.”

For days, South Korea (no conflict of interest there) and Ukraine (nor there) had been claiming that thousands of North Korean soldiers had swooped in to rescue a beaten and bloodied Russian army from certain defeat at the hands of Ukraine (which has lost nearly a million men at arms in the nearly three year war). As the Russian army accelerates its pace, burning through the last fortified towns in eastern Ukraine, the mainstream media continues – with a few reluctant but panicked exceptions – to push the “Russia is losing” narrative.

The added twist of thousands of “evil communists” from North Korea screaming across the Russian tundra (on horseback, no doubt) promises to add new plot lines to the drama concocted by the mainstream media and most of Washington, and indeed the usual suspects are biting furiously at the bait.

Take US House Intelligence Committee Chairman Michael Turner. He is so outraged that there might be members of the North Korean military in Russia that he actually sent a letter to President Biden calling for war. “If North Korean military forces join Russia’s war against Ukraine,” Fox News reported him to say, “the US should consider the possibility of direct military action.”

Against whom? We are already involved in a proxy war with Russia through Ukraine. We are already directly involved in Israel’s seven-front war against its neighbors and Iran. Who does Chairman Turner think we should attack if North Korean troops are present in Russia? Russia? North Korea? China? All of them?

North Korea and Russia have just signed a treaty whereby their two militaries will more closely collaborate and even come to each other’s aid if one is threatened. While such an agreement may give Turner and the other neocons the vapors, it is nothing different than the mutual defense treaty the US has with its NATO partners and with many others on a bipartisan basis.

Treaties for me but not for thee? Is that the name of the “rules-based international order” game?

The hypocrisy runs even deeper. It is well-known and widely reported that NATO countries are training Ukrainian troops not only in NATO countries but inside Ukraine itself. So it’s absolutely fine for the US and its NATO partners to insert troops inside Ukraine to train its military to kill more Russians and to even operate sophisticated weapons systems inside Ukraine that the Ukrainian military could never operate on its own, but if Russia strikes up a deal with North Korea where the two armies can train together inside Russia, it’s a “red line” (as Chairman Turner wrote) that demands that we start WWIII.

It seems we are not sending our best and brightest to Congress.

What we are witnessing is the birth of a new narrative after some 500 Ukraine narratives have already collapsed under the weight of their own contradictions. Remember the two years of “Russia is losing” narrative? Well just this week NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, General Christopher Cavoli, said in an interview with the German Spiegel magazine that Russia would emerge from this conflict actually STRONGER than when it entered!

But of course they are losing…

So what to do? Just as the Hollywood writers do once a sit-com has run too many seasons and is playing itself out, plot-wise, insert a new character. Insert a new twist, to bamboozle the viewers and give them a new reason to keep watching the program. It’s funny but not funny, because the future of the world hangs in the balance. Just like the film “Idiocracy” has become a documentary in our absurd times, so has “Wag the Dog.” The military industrial complex with its Hollywood-like allies producing endless narratives to keep the gravy train rolling…

P.S. if anyone believes this whole insane and hysterical anti-North Korea narrative is not political…well I have a bridge in Brazoria, TX, to sell you…

This originally appeared on The Ron Paul Institute.

The post The Kims Are Coming! appeared first on LewRockwell.

Leaky Gut Breakthrough: Dr. William Davis, MD, 36-Hour Cultured L-Reuteri Home Made Yogurt

NOT MEDICAL ADVICE, LAYMEN’S OPINION

Dr. William Davis, MD, is a former cardiologist who left the profession.  He is also the author of the famous book Wheat Belly, which explains how the gliadin protein in wheat damages the small intestine resulting in a leaky gut and autoimmune reactions.   Davis is an unusual person; has a dry wit and is not just another snake oil salesman or alternative medicine detox guru.  Dr. Davis is the kind of person who might ask: “Would you like a side of poop to go with your favorite gut destroying wheat bran cereal and antibiotic-laced sausage for breakfast?” He reminds me in appearance of the TV comedian of the 1960’s Red Skelton. But Davis is no medical TV guru or impersonator but a serious medical practitioner. Davis warns people not to rely for their health on pharmaceuticals or procedures based only on observations or bogus testing based on relative probability.

Davis has recently been interviewed by several internet podcasters in mind blowing discussions about his breakthrough findings and home remedy treatment for Small Intestinal Bowel Overgrowth or SIBO (aka endotoxemia, leaky gut sepsis).  According to Davis “just about every modern chronic condition must be reexamined in light of the contribution of the gut microbiome via endotoxemia” (endotoxemia means internal toxicity without an external germ). Davis’s major insight on health is that fecal microbes are climbing back up from the bowel some 24 feet into the small intestinal chamber where food transfers into the bloodstream for nourishment and that a probiotic called L. Reuteri is an antidote with no side effects.  All humans once had the L. Reuteri bacteria but around half of us lost it presumably due to antibiotics, GMO wheat and sugar.

Davis says what changed his mind about the significance of bacterial and fungal overgrowth in the small intestine is a hand held device called AIRE that came out in 2018 that can map where in the GI tract microbes are located.  Previously, neither colonoscopies nor intestinal scoping could detect and identify what was going on in the over 20 feet of the lower small intestine.  Davis says it is uncommon for anyone to test negative with the AIRE device to having endotoxemia. The device works by testing for the timing of the release of hydrogen gas (hydrogen functions to keep the human body hydrated and a balance between acid and alkaline). The AIRE device reveals that Small Intestinal Bowel Overgrowth (SIBO) and Fungal Intestinal Bowel Overgrowth (FIBO) are everywhere in modern society due to the modern diet and drugs. Loss of stomach acid can also contribute to ascending fecal microbes says Davis.

But the probiotic Lactobacillus Reuteri does not sequester itself in a part of the human body but can take up residence in the entire length of the small intestine and the large bowel and thus can deter ascending fecal microbes. It produces antimicrobial Bacteriocins to push SIBO back into the bowel where it belongs.  L. Reuteri acts like a backflow valve on your home plumbing that prevents sewer waste from back flowing into your drinking and cooking water line (ergo the medical term “sepsis”).  Additionally, L. Reuteri produces the hormone Oxytocin that produces positive mood, sexual arousal, and increases contractions during labor at birth.  It doesn’t take much deductive logic to understand that fewer birth contractions may lead to a greater revenue stream for doctors from more cesarian-sections, although Davis doesn’t mention this.

Davis says it was from cancer research that the probiotic L. Reuteri was initially found to be a game changer.  L. Reuteri made experimental rats stay young until death even if fed a bad diet.  Rats fed a bad diet of GMO grain and sugar without L. Reuteri got sick, emaciated and died prematurely.  L. Reuteri is found only in the guts of mammals not in soil or plants.  It was initially harvested from a woman in Peru who never ate a western diet of GMO grain or sugar nor was administered antibiotics.

Davis found that the only commercial strain of pure L. Reuteri was in a product called Bio-Gaia Gastrus that deals with abdominal bloating and discomfort in babies.  However, the dosage was too low for adults.  So, Davis fermented it 1000-fold in a yogurt maker for 36-hours to create an adult dosage of 250 to 300 billion colony forming units or CFU’s.  Remarkably, the beneficial effects of L. Reuteri for experimental rats were the same for humans.  In 90 percent of a group of 40 women monitored by Davis, it eliminated emotional depression, shrank waist size, smoothed out facial wrinkles, thickened hair, boosted libido, replaced lost muscle tone, and reduced inflammation.

Davis asks:

“Rather than taking an antibiotic or a detox herb for this (leaky gut) condition, what if the solution is a form of yogurt that restores a bacterial species you were supposed to have anyway but lost due to taking antibiotics, GMO grains and sugar?  Micro-biotic medicine to treat disease and chronic conditions is evolving.  Things are changing at breakneck speed. I don’t have all the solutions and maybe my answers will change in three months. We’re not quite there, but we’re getting close. Even now:

If you want a healthier, normally developed and higher IQ baby (without chronic conditions like asthma or allergies) try Bacillus Infantis

If you want to reduce joint pain, take Bacillus Coagulans

If you want smoother facial skin, smaller waist, revived libido and renewed strength take L. Reuteri

If you want to vastly reduce the likelihood of potentially deadly intestinal sepsis, take L. Reuteri

If you want to be faster and smarter at what you do, take Bacillus Brevis

If you want to control diabetes, get a unique non-drug probiotic product called Sugar Shift which performs equal to Metformin (Davis has no interest in this product)

Davis has a new high dosage L. Reuteri commercial product labeled “My Reuteri” (https://www.oxiceutics.com/products/myreuteri).   But his website and podcasts detail how to cook it in a yogurt maker at home.  According to Davis, a dosage of at least 50,000 CFU’s is needed if one takes another L. Reuteri product. He also advises to avoid unfermented plant-based foods and instead eat at least one fermented vegetable with every meal (e. g., sauerkraut).  Davis reminds us that what halted fermenting food was the invention of the modern refrigerator.

Davis warns that the probiotic industry is highly competitive and the heightened interest in probiotics has resulted in a lot of marketing gimmickry.  Two marketing claims are a probiotic should be soil-based and spore forming (such as Bacillus Subtilis) and should be double encapsulated to get through the acid in the stomach.  But Davis says it is “really dumb” to want a probiotic not to release in the small bowel because it needs to control fecal microbe penetration.  And soil- based probiotics such as spore-based B. Subtilis are a marketing gimmick and derive from septic cesspools (as also pointed out by polymath Pat Jordan at Vaccine Fraud @ Substack).

Back in 2017, Davis wrote the book Undoctored: How Health Care Has Failed You and How You Can Be Smarter Than Your Doctor.  In his online interview Davis says:

“I don’t think it’s a stretch to say it is a new age in health.  It is not health care because health care is corrupt. Health care is in the business of generating revenues to profit insiders through products and procedures.  Health does not come through stinking pharmaceuticals and procedures”.

Davis’s approach offers a new paradigm of self-managed health as opposed to coercive pharmaceutical medicine. Davis never claims to treat or cure any disease, instead only offering to deal with preconditions.  This approach debunks both conventional drug-based medicine and herb-based alternative detoxification medicine, both of which only address symptoms, despite that their respective advocates pointing fingers of blame at each other about COVID.  Davis points out that dental decay can come from grain acidification of the oral cavity (Davis, Super Gut, page 44).  Moreover, Davis blows up the conventional medical model when he says colon cancer is now suspected to come from a microbe in the mouth that ends up in the colon where it is not supposed to be due to a leaky gut.

Dr. Davis says microbiome strategies outperform antibiotics, are vastly cheaper and have spectacular effects with no real downside.

The post Home Made Yogurt to Replace Antibiotics and Herbal Detoxes For Slow Gut Sepsis appeared first on LewRockwell.