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Global Research

 

The post Trump’s Proposed Annexation, Déjà Vu appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, David Martin.

The Duke Report

 

The post The Assassination of James Forrestal appeared first on LewRockwell.

The post Shocking Allegations: Epstein, Andrew, Fergie, Philip & Trump appeared first on LewRockwell.

Apart from his starring role in organizing mass murder in the Middle East and elsewhere as defense secretary and vice president, the one thing Cheney will most be remembered for is of course shooting his hunting partner in the face with a 12 gauge shotgun during a pheasant hunt.

He did make a contribution to business culture, however. During the Bush campaign he was appointed chairman of the vice presidential search committee. After a long and arduous search, reportedly leaving no stone unturned, Dick decided that he himself was the best candidate. They’re probably already teaching this tactic in Executive MBA programs.

The post Remembering Bloodthirsty Dick Cheney, the Don Corleone of the Neocon Crime Family appeared first on LewRockwell.

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Zero Hedge

 

The post Senior IDF Official Arrested After Leaking Footage Exposing Israeli Torture Of Palestinian POWs appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, Ginny Garner.

The Grayzone

 

The post Israeli-Linked AI Drones Spy on US Cities appeared first on LewRockwell.

Tributes are pouring in. But why? He was pure neocon evil.

The post The Evil Dick Cheney Is Dead appeared first on LewRockwell.

Defend America First! No New Foreign Wars!

“Do Not Go Abroad In Search of Monsters To Destroy” – John Quincy Adams (Robert Barnes’ Distant Ancestor)

The phrase “do not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy” is a quote from an 1821 speech by Secretary of State John Quincy Adams arguing against intervention in foreign conflicts.

He stated that while the U.S. would be a “well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all,” it should only be the “champion and vindicator of only her own”. This line is often cited by those advocating for a more restrained foreign policy.

Adams believed the U.S. should focus on its own security and interests and be a model of liberty, rather than acting as an international police force. He was specifically addressing the U.S. role in the Latin American wars for independence at the time.

The post Defend America First! No New Foreign Wars! appeared first on LewRockwell.

The Wind and the Lion

Take time out of your monotonous busy day to enjoy this delightful Trumpian fantasy tale on the wonders and glories of U. S. military intervention in faraway exotic places.

Starring Sean Connery and Candice Bergan leading an epic cast. A rousing time will be had by all.

In this case the delusional, wildly popular president seeking attention on the world stage, is the egomaniacal patriarch Teddy Roosevelt and his crafty, Machiavellian Secretary of State John Hay (played impeccably by the great John Huston).

The film is loosely based on the real-life Perdicaris affair of 1904. Connery plays Mulai Ahmed er Raisuli, a Moroccan Berber rebel and anti-imperialist leader, and Bergen plays his American hostage Eden Pedecaris, a fictional character inspired by Ion Hanford Perdicaris.

An action romantic epic of the type that are rarely attempted by modern Hollywood, “The Wind and the Lion” excels on all cinematic levels. Great photography and editing, a memorable Jerry Goldsmith score, charismatic performances from Brian Keith (Teddy Roosevelt) and Sean Connery.

The post The Wind and the Lion appeared first on LewRockwell.

Ricordo a tutti i lettori che su Amazon potete acquistare il mio nuovo libro, “La rivoluzione di Satoshi”: https://www.amazon.it/dp/B0FYH656JK 

La traduzione in italiano dell'opera scritta da Wendy McElroy esplora Bitcoin a 360°, un compendio della sua storia fino ad adesso e la direzione che molto ptobabilmente prenderà la sua evoluzione nel futuro prossimo. Si parte dalla teoria, soprattutto quella libertaria e Austriaca, e si sonda come essa interagisce con la realtà. Niente utopie, solo la logica esposizione di una tecnologia che si sviluppa insieme alle azioni degli esseri umani. Per questo motivo vengono inserite nell'analisi diversi punti di vista: sociologico, economico, giudiziario, filosofico, politico, psicologico e altri. Una visione e trattazione di Bitcoin come non l'avete mai vista finora, per un asset che non solo promette di rinnovare l'ambito monetario ma che, soprattutto, apre alla possibilità concreta di avere, per la prima volta nella storia umana, una società profondamente e completamente modificabile dal basso verso l'alto.

____________________________________________________________________________________

di Mohamed Moutii

(Versione audio della traduzione disponibile qui: https://open.substack.com/pub/fsimoncelli/p/il-principio-di-precauzione-europeo)

Qualche secolo fa l'Europa era il cuore pulsante dell'innovazione mondiale. Dall'adozione della ragione da parte dell'Illuminismo al potere trasformativo della Rivoluzione industriale, è stata un centro di pensatori, inventori e imprenditori audaci che hanno sfidato i propri limiti.

Oggi quello spirito è svanito. L'Europa non è più all'avanguardia nell'innovazione tecnologica, non per mancanza di talenti o di esplorazione scientifica, ma a causa di un problema più profondo: un contesto normativo eccessivamente restrittivo. Mentre gli Stati Uniti progrediscono rapidamente nell'intelligenza artificiale, nelle biotecnologie e nello spazio, e la Cina investe massicciamente nella tecnologia avanzata, l'Europa rimane invischiata nella burocrazia, nell'avversione al rischio e in una rigida applicazione del principio di precauzione, che privilegia il controllo sulla creatività e la cautela sul progresso.

La crisi dell'innovazione in Europa

Negli ultimi due decenni l'Europa ha cambiato il suo carattere, passando da culla di rivoluzioni industriali e scoperte scientifiche a superpotenza normativa mondiale. Il cosiddetto Effetto Bruxelles – la capacità dell'Europa di plasmare gli standard globali attraverso il suo potere normativo – ha conferito all'UE influenza, ma in patria ha soffocato proprio l'innovazione che un tempo promuoveva.

Al centro di questo approccio c'è il principio di precauzione, ovvero l'idea che le nuove tecnologie debbano essere dimostrate completamente sicure prima dell'uso. Sebbene tal principio possa essere mosso da buone intenzioni, spesso blocca il progresso. L'innovazione viene vista come una minaccia e gli imprenditori si trovano ad affrontare l'onere quasi impossibile di dimostrare un rischio zero. Invece di gestire il rischio, le autorità di regolamentazione europee ne chiedono la totale eliminazione, bloccando la sperimentazione prima ancora che inizi.

A differenza degli Stati Uniti, dove prevale una cultura di innovazione senza autorizzazioni, gli innovatori sono generalmente liberi di sperimentare, a meno che non causino danni evidenti. Questa differenza di mentalità spiega perché gli Stati Uniti sono leader nell'intelligenza artificiale, nelle biotecnologie, nell'informatica quantistica e nella tecnologia spaziale, mentre l'Europa sta perdendo terreno (nella migliore delle ipotesi).

Prendiamo ad esempio l'AI Act dell'UE del 2024. Pur elogiato per i suoi obiettivi etici, il provvedimento impone rigide classificazioni dei rischi e costi di conformità elevati che solo le grandi aziende possono gestire. Le startup, prive di team legali e di capitali, vengono lasciate indietro. Di conseguenza l'Europa registra un calo delle startup incentrate sull'intelligenza artificiale, una riduzione dell'innovazione e un esodo di talenti verso Stati Uniti e Cina, dove un terzo degli esperti nelle università americane proviene proprio dall'Europa. E quando si tratta di guidare lo sviluppo dei modelli di intelligenza artificiale, il divario è ancora più ampio. Nel 2022 il 54% dei creatori di importanti modelli di intelligenza artificiale era americano, mentre la Germania, il Paese con le migliori performance in Europa, ne aveva solo il 3%.

Questo non si limita all'intelligenza artificiale. Nel campo delle biotecnologie il processo di approvazione europeo per gli organismi geneticamente modificati è tra i più lenti e restrittivi al mondo. Le tecnologie energetiche sperimentali sono impantanate nella burocrazia. Alle startup in settori ad alto rischio e alto rendimento viene regolarmente negato il capitale, non solo per la cautela degli investitori, ma perché un sistema finanziario iper-regolamentato è condizionato a evitare qualsiasi situazione di incertezza. Le rigide leggi sul lavoro aggiungono ulteriori attriti: le assunzioni sono poco flessibili, i licenziamenti costosi e l'adattamento diventa difficile.

L'esodo dell'innovazione dall'Europa

L'impatto cumulativo dell'eccesso di regolamentazione europea è sempre più difficile da ignorare: talenti, capitali e innovazione stanno costantemente defluendo dal continente. L'Europa è diventata un luogo in cui le idee nascono, ma raramente vengono sviluppate su larga scala. Quasi un terzo delle startup europee che raggiungono la maturazione alla fine si trasferisce all'estero, il più delle volte negli Stati Uniti, alla ricerca di ecosistemi più favorevoli e di un più facile accesso al capitale.

I numeri sottolineano l'entità del problema. Gli Stati Uniti dominano il panorama globale, ospitando oltre il 55% di tutte le startup giunte a maturazione e il 75% della loro valutazione totale. Al contrario l'UE ne ospita meno del 10% e solo il 3% del valore globale. Una delle ragioni principali è la disparità nel capitale di rischio: gli investimenti in venture capital europei sono scesi da $100 miliardi nel 2021 a soli $45 miliardi nel 2023, mentre le startup statunitensi hanno raccolto $170 miliardi. In percentuale del PIL, il capitale di rischio statunitense ha raggiunto lo 0,21% nel 2023, cinque volte superiore allo 0,04% dell'UE.

Nel deep tech il divario è impressionante. Sette delle prime dieci aziende di calcolo quantistico sono americane e nessuna ha sede in Europa. Nell'intelligenza artificiale oltre l'80% degli investimenti globali è destinato ad aziende negli Stati Uniti e in Cina, mentre l'Europa ne riceve solo il 7%. Questo divario di investimenti è aggravato dalla minore spesa in ricerca e sviluppo. L'Europa investe solo il 2,2% del suo PIL in ricerca e sviluppo, rispetto al 3,4% degli Stati Uniti e al 5% della Corea del Sud.

I segnali d'allarme sono belli chiari.

Dal 2015 la crescita della produttività in Europa è stata in media solo dello 0,7% annuo, meno della metà del tasso statunitense e appena un nono di quello cinese. Nel 1995 la produttività di Stati Uniti e UE era pressoché pari; oggi l'Europa è in ritardo di quasi il 20%, un divario che minaccia la sua competitività e la sua crescita economica a lungo termine.

L'Europa sta esaurendo il suo tempo. Con una popolazione che invecchia e una forza lavoro in calo, non può permettersi di adagiarsi sugli allori del passato. Senza una coraggiosa riforma strutturale, il continente rischia di trasformarsi in un museo di glorie passate anziché in una fabbrica di innovazioni future.

Ma il declino non è destino. L'Europa può ancora riconquistare il suo vantaggio innovativo, se è disposta ad abbandonare l'iper-regolamentazione e ad abbracciare una nuova era di libertà economica e dinamismo di mercato. Ciò significa accettare rischi e incertezza, dare libero sfogo all'innovazione senza autorizzazioni, ampliare l'accesso al capitale di rischio e riformare le rigide leggi sul lavoro e sulla bancarotta che soffocano l'ambizione imprenditoriale.

Gli Stati Uniti sono leader perché premiano le idee audaci e tollerano gli insuccessi. La cultura europea, al contrario, penalizza il rischio e allontana i talenti. La soluzione non è un controllo più rigido, ma una maggiore libertà.

Come spiegò il celebre Milton Friedman:

Le grandi conquiste della civiltà non sono venute dagli enti governativi, ma da individui che perseguivano i propri interessi. Ovunque le folle siano sfuggite alla povertà estrema, è stato grazie al capitalismo e, in larga parte, al libero scambio. La storia dimostra chiaramente che non esiste modo migliore per ottimizzare la sorte delle persone comuni dell'energia produttiva sprigionata dal sistema della libera impresa.

Finché l'Europa non imparerà ad avere fiducia nei suoi innovatori e imprenditori, rimarrà ai margini della corsa all'innovazione globale.

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

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

Resuming test nuclear explosions is the futile response of a loser.

Russia’s successful testing this week of two breakthrough nuclear-capable weapons, the Burevestnik and Poseidon, marks an absolute technological besting over the United States, which is why President Trump overreacted with warnings of renewed nuke testing.

The weapons unveiled by Russia shift the strategic nuclear balance decisively. In chess terms, they are tantamount to checkmate.

The United States and its NATO allies have no means of defense against Russia’s new nuclear weapon delivery systems. The Burevestnik is a supersonic cruise missile, while the Poseidon is an unmanned submarine vehicle. The unique feature is that both are powered by onboard miniaturized nuclear reactors, which give them unlimited distance capacity. The weapons can circumnavigate the globe indefinitely and strike at targets from multiple unknown directions.

In terms of engineering achievement, the development is revolutionary. There are endless possibilities for civilian, peaceful applications.

Russia disavows a first-strike option in its nuclear doctrine, maintaining that its arsenal is for defense only. By contrast, the United States asserts a first-strike, or preemptive attack, option. The U.S. doctrine is despicable and is an extension of its historic claim of being the only country to have ever used atomic weapons, as it did without warning against Japan in 1945, killing 200,000 people.

But these new Russian weapons will ensure that the United States’ first-strike threats for decapitation of enemies are now null and void. Some military analysts comment that Russia’s strategic advantage now ensures that World War III is avoided – unless the U.S. wants to obliterate itself along with the planet.

Other analysts point out that the United States must disabuse its delusions of seeking global dominance and enter into negotiations with Russia to end the conflict in Ukraine, as well as get serious about respecting arms control.

An amusing aside is that in recent weeks, Trump has been menacing Moscow with threats of possibly delivering Tomahawk cruise missiles to Ukraine for use against Russia. The Tomahawk, developed four decades ago, flies about 2,000 km at subsonic speeds and can theoretically be shot down with advanced Russian air defense systems. Whereas the Burevestnik can fly around the globe multiple times at supersonic speeds, and the U.S. has no defense against it.

Trump’s posturing with the Tomahawk now looks ridiculous.

His response to the news of Russia’s new weapons was a crude overreaction. Other NATO powers have kept silent, no doubt reflecting their stunned realization of impotence.

Trump announced on Wednesday with his usual bluster: “Because of other countries’ testing programs, I have instructed the Department of War to start testing our nuclear weapons on an equal basis. That process will begin immediately.”

This American president is not known for his ability to comprehend accurate details. And this is a classic case. His “instruction” to start testing nuclear weapons on an equal basis “immediately” is a non-starter because the U.S. has no weapons comparable to Russia’s. So, that suggests Trump is ready to resume testing on existing nuclear weapons. If he does proceed, and it is not certain if the Congress or Pentagon would permit that, it would mean ending a more than 30-year moratorium on nuclear test explosions.

A Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty has been in existence since 1996, after nuclear powers realized the detriment to the planet from thousands of nuclear explosions carried out since the 1940s. Is Trump willing to break the taboo and go back to that bygone era?

Russia pointed out that the Burevestnik and Poseidon tests were non-nuclear. There were no warheads detonated. What was demonstrated was the capability of nuclear delivery systems.

The American side should learn from history that its arrogant unilateral conduct is self-defeating.

The United States under George W Bush unilaterally pulled out of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2002 because it wanted to encircle Russia with offensive missile systems in Europe. Sure enough, the U.S. expanded NATO towards Russia’s border and installed Aegis missiles in Poland and Romania as a means of intimidating Moscow.

In response to the U.S. abandonment of the ABM Treaty, Russia has developed a suite of new weapons that far surpass anything in the American arsenal, and for which there is no U.S. air defense. Russia has hypersonic missiles, Avangard, Zircon, Khinzal, and Oreshnik that can fly at Mach 10, or over 12,000 km/h, in unpredictable trajectories.

The unveiling of the Burevestnik and Poseidon weapons means it’s game over for the American Dream of dominating and terrorizing the world.

The upper hand that Russia has acquired is a result of the U.S. trying to be underhanded.

Trump’s warning of resuming nuclear explosive testing is a crude overreaction that betrays American admission of being bested by Russia.

Resuming test nuclear explosions is the futile response of a loser.

What the American side needs to do is begin treating Russia with respect and get down to the business of negotiating security and arms control treaties on a mutual basis for the sake of global peace.

A more troubling question is: Is the United States capable of such reasonable negotiation?

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

The post Trump’s Nuke Testing Is a Crude Overreaction to Russia’s Nuke Besting appeared first on LewRockwell.

According to data collected by the research firm Statista, 29 percent of Americans cannot afford to take a vacation this year. A vacation is not the only thing Americans are struggling to afford. The failure of wages to keep up with price inflation is why household debt hit a record level of 18.4 trillion dollars this year, with the average household owing more than 100,000 dollars.

The Federal Reserve is responsible for the decline in American living standards and the rise in income inequality. The turning point in the people’s economic fortunes was on August 15, 1971. That is when then-President Richard Nixon closed the “gold window,” severing the last link between the dollar and gold. This left America with a purely fiat currency and no restraint on the Federal Reserve’s ability to create money.

When the Federal Reserve pumps money into the economy the new money is not equally distributed. It first goes to wealthy and well-connected individuals. These individuals benefit from having increased purchasing power before the new money has caused price increases.

The Fed also contributes to economic instability and inequality by creating bubbles that distort the signals sent by the market. This causes over-investment in some sectors. When bubbles burst, workers employed in certain sectors lose their jobs, while those at top often suffer at most a modest setback. The government bails out the “too big to fail” corporations, but the government never considers workers and homeowners too big to fail.

The Federal Reserve facilitates the growth of the welfare-warfare state by purchasing Treasury bonds, thus monetizing federal debt. The majority of government spending is on programs benefiting powerful special interests. This includes in large part the military-industrial complex that gobbles up more money from the government each year.

The Federal Reserve’s continued devaluation of the dollar to finance an empire abroad and a welfare state at home is the driving force behind the erosion of the people’s living standards. As the dollar loses purchasing power, demand for government assistance increases, leading to more government spending, more debt monetization, and a further decline in living standards.

The fact that almost a third of Americans cannot afford a vacation illustrates how fiat money harms average Americans. Continued growth of federal debt and Fed-created inflation will lead to a major economic crisis. This will either induce or be caused by a rejection of the dollar’s world reserve currency status. The result will be a rise of demagogic authoritarians of both left and right and increased political violence, leading to an increase in government repression.

Those of us who know the truth must continue to explain that the solution to our problems is a vacation from the welfare-warfare state and the fiat money system that facilitates government growth at the expense of the people’s standards of living and liberty. Limited government, free markets, and peaceful relations and free trade with as many nations as possible are components of the path to lasting peace and prosperity.

The post Can’t Afford a Vacation? Blame the Fed. appeared first on LewRockwell.

The old comfortable world is not coming back. The young – if anything – are much more radical.

U.S. foreign policy, drenched in the hubris that the U.S. won the Cold War militarily (in Afghanistan); won it economically (liberal markets); and culturally too, (Hollywood) — and therefore rightly deserves, as Trump puts it, the “fun” of “running both the country the world”. Well, that policy is now in contention for the first time.

Will this matter?

This month, the RAND Organisation, an institution whose shadow has long lain across U.S. foreign policy matters, has challenged the Cold War hubris in respect to China.

Though the report focuses on America’s preoccupation with the threat of China’s ascendency, the implications of questioning the doctrine — that no challenger to U.S. hegemony, financial or military, can be tolerated — does cut to the absolute heart of U.S. foreign policy practice.

The key finding from RAND is that “China and the U.S. should strive to achieve a modus vivendi” together through “each accepting the political legitimacy of the other, constraining efforts to undermine each other, at least to a reasonable degree”.

To propose that each side should acknowledge and accept the legitimacy of the other, rather than see ‘the other’ as a malignant threat, would in itself represent a small revolution.

Were it to apply to China, then why not to Russia or Iran too?

More telling: RAND prescribes that the U.S. leadership in particular should reject notions of ‘absolute victory’ over China – as well as to accept the One China Policy by stopping provoking China through military-minded visits to Taiwan designed specifically to keep China threatened and on edge.

This comes on the eve of Trump’s scheduled meeting with President Xi Jinping in Kuala Lumpur, in which Trump is seeking a ‘trade deal’ with China that reaffirms his dominance and gives him space for his radical plans to re-structure America’s financial landscape – if he can.

Can the pivot proposed by RAND truly be accepted in DC? RAND does possess real weight in Washington – so does this report reflect a split in the structural architecture of the Dark State? Other signs (in the Middle East/ West Asia) point in the opposite direction.

The U.S. has been running the same foreign policy playbook for decades. So, is the U.S. even capable of such radical cultural transformation, as advocated by RAND?

The West is in decline – yes. But does that make it easier, or harder, for it to accept some RAND servings of common sense? It does seem, in respect to China, that a technical view has formed within U.S. defence circles that ‘no way’ can the U.S. take on China militarily.

Yet any profound change takes time to fully register and can be overturned by unexpected events. There are a number of potential black swans circling us, at this time.

And who would lead such a change in national self-perception? Would real (institutional) change emerge from top-down, or come from bottom up?

By ‘bottom up’, could this emerge as a populist ‘America First’-driven impulse resulting from Trump and the GOP losing the House at the Midterms?

In one sense, RAND is clearly right that beyond hyping a piece of short-term theatre, the U.S. no longer can win an economic or tech war – or a military conflict with China – in the longer-term. An uneasy truce seems, for now, to be in prospect.

But for how long?

The Wall Street Journal has suggested a different perspective to the usual Washington consensus: “During his first term, Trump often frustrated Xi Jinping – with his freewheeling mix of threats and bonhomie”.

“This time the Chinese leader believes he has cracked the code”, the WSJ writes: Xi has thrown out traditional diplomatic practice and tailored a new one specifically for Trump. After long preparation, the WSJ argues, Xi has decided to hit back even harder, in a bid to gain leverage over Trump, whilst projecting strength and unpredictability — qualities he believes the U.S. president admires.

Seemingly, China is intent on asserting itself forcefully. It wants to drive the dynamic, and is confident that this hardline approach will gain a resoundingly positive response within China (— and in the rest of the world, the WSJ neglects to acknowledge).

The question is how might Xi’s riposte play-out in the U.S.? Yet the big question remains unanswered: Who controls U.S. foreign policy anyway?

One obvious answer after the Budapest (no) summit débacle is that Trump has little or no agency in this corner of foreign policy. He is wholly co-opted. And was sent a bunt ‘reminder’ to this effect, from the ‘powers that be’ – ‘No normalisation with Moscow’.

Ceasefire, ‘yes’; because a frozen conflict, unencumbered by restrictions on Ukrainian re-armament, would give the NATO Establishment scope to redefine the conflict – from one of NATO’s strategic defeat to a ‘holding’ victory, through promulgating the narrative of a Russian economy progressively weakening.

This contrived formulation holds out — at least in the minds of Europeans – the promise of some final ceasefire at a later stage, by imposing continuing serial costs on Russia that finally compel that ceasefire.

The ‘fly in soup’ to this scam is that Moscow absolutely will not agree to a frozen conflict — and anyway sees the battlespace working towards Russian victory.

The reality is that the Ukraine final outcome will be whatever ‘it is’. The Europeans know it, but cannot say it because they cannot orient to a world in which their way of seeing it does not prevail. If this Luddism be counted as western ‘leverage’, then it is ephemeral and will fade as economic realities bite in Europe.

What then accounts for Trump’s Russian débacle? On the one hand, it was the veto of pro-Israel mega-donors, for whom a militarily hegemonic U.S. – supporting Israel – must be preserved at all costs. Israel cannot exist without it. Many, if not all Team Trump, have been imposed from the outside – by certain zealot donors and likeminded billionaires. (Trump was surprisingly candid about this reality during his address at the Knesset last month).

Some of these Trump donors are also part of the (separate) Wall Street faction who, besides being pro-Zionist, have wider financial concerns in mind. The U.S. financial system desperately requires reinforcing with collateral (i.e. assets having inherent value: such as oil, natural resources, etc.) as underpinning to an over-leveraged U.S. shadow banking system.

This Wall Street (Frankish) pro-Israel faction still harks after a reprise of ‘Russia in the nineties’ (however unlikely). But they share also, with the main pro-Israeli donor block, Israel’s determination to keep Russia out of the Middle East; and extended by the Ukraine conflict. On 7 October this year, Netanyahu begged Putin not to arm Iran, reportedly threatening retaliation in Ukraine.

The China trade deal calculus – for such donors – is wholly different. Should Trump agree a ‘strong’ trade agreement with China, it would be seen in the White House as undercutting the ability of Canada to assemble cheap component goods derived from China and elsewhere – for transhipment and sale into the U.S. market. A China deal would give Trump additional leverage, heading into the 2026 USMCA (CUSMA) dissolution phase.

The latter is important as Trump seeks to fold the whole western hemisphere – from Argentina to north Antarctic — into the U.S. ‘fold’.

Agreement with China on rare earth export controls however, would be clearly crucial to the entire U.S. tech sector. China’s grip on the rare earth supply chain is not just dominant — it’s nearly unassailable. With 70% of global rare earths (a 100% in a few metals) and with 94% refining capacity, Beijing has prepared and built a fortress around one of the most critical inputs to modern technology.

There is another reason – perhaps even an overriding reason – why the U.S. needs a ‘rescue’ by China, urgently.

The legal basis for Trump’s global tariff onslaught has strayed ever further away from the ‘economic emergency’ exceptionality – to the U.S. Constitution’s clarity that the authority for raising of revenues, in principle, falls to Congress – and is not a prerequisite of the Executive. (Tariffs, it will be argued, are revenues.)

Clearly, Trump has stretched the ‘economic emergency’ justification to the limit. Initial tariff cases will come before the Supreme Court very shortly (1 November). Were the Court to find against Trump, it could order all tariff revenues so far gathered to be repaid.

How would this impact on the foreign policy of the United States, given that tariffs have been instrumentalised to force states to pay huge sums to the U.S. (in respect to inward capital investment)?

It is too early to tell. But in the case of China, Trump and the U.S. badly need a deal. Trump’s economic policy more generally (unless reversed by the Supreme Court) marks a permanent change in the economic and geopolitical landscape. There’s no going back to the ex-ante as it existed before November 2024.

The once-prevailing globally interconnected order of things is being swept away, and a new one of standalone economic blocks with their own internal alliances, supply chains and technologies is taking its place.

In other foreign policy areas such a radical change in direction is less likely – at least for now. The pro-Israeli ruling billionaires behind Trump will stop at nothing in their efforts in support of Israel in its goal of imposing a Greater Israel founded amidst a new Nakba.

But in the longer-term, pro-Israel dominance over foreign policy is less assured. Support amongst young Americans for Israel is bleeding out. The Congress will remain ‘bought’ by AIPAC, and Trump has irreversibly defined himself as an unwavering supporter of Israel. A breach between Trump and his MAGA base has begun. And Israel has begun to panic about the America First, anti-Israeli vibe shift taking place amongst young Americans.

In spite of possible re-districting of constituencies in America’s South prompted by challenges to the 1965 Voter Registration Act (that may give the GOP an extra 12 House seats), Trump could still lose the Midterms. This means that effectively Trump’s agenda would have but one year to run – until overwhelmed by Democratic obstruction, investigations or even impeachment efforts begin.

The reason for Trump’s rush is plain. Of course, none of this may occur, and the U.S. (and European) ruling strata may sink back into their cushions, with a sigh of relief that the old agenda can be revived. But complacency would be misplaced. The old comfortable world is not coming back. The young – if anything – are much more radical.

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

The post U.S. Foreign Policy in Contention: Is Trump Allowed To Agree a Deal With China (But Not Russia or Iran)? appeared first on LewRockwell.

I was raised a Catholic. I still consider myself a Catholic, although it’s been a few years since I’ve been to Mass. I have many problems with the Church, as I do with organized religion in general. I have no problems with God. Or Jesus Christ. Who am I, with my poor intellectual capacity, to question the Creator of everything?

In the mid-1970s, what we used to call “Jesus Freaks” started popping up. I knew a few of them. They were actually pretty cool. I never argued about our foreign policy with them. I even briefly flirted with the “Born Again” thing myself. One of my catchier songs was They Took my Bible Away. One day, I’ll get the courage to play the tapes I have of my songs on YouTube or something. At any rate, at that time “born againers” seemed to me to just be extremely enthusiastic believers. To be more concerned with Jesus Christ than most Catholics or conventional Protestants. It wasn’t until I started meeting more of them, in the workforce, or while coaching youth sports, that I realized there really was a distinct difference between what they believed, and the religious instructions I’d received as a Catholic. I started to understand that “born again” Protestants rely almost exclusively on faith, and seem to harbor a thinly concealed antipathy towards Catholics and their “good works.”

As a child, it was drummed home to me, both at Mass and at home, to “be good.” Catholic “guilt” is a very real but unfairly named thing. It is instead a Catholic conscience. I feel guilt, even when it’s irrational, because my conscience insists that I should have done something differently, or not done it. Should have treated someone better. Done more to help those who need it. It gave me a nice, warm feeling to volunteer with the Special Olympics, or coach severely handicapped kids in the Top Soccer program, or teach basic computer skills to mostly African immigrants. But I’ve heard “born againers” scoff at this as “trying to work your way into heaven.” Well, I suppose maybe I am. I learned that Jesus will “come again, to judge the living and the dead.” I still think a lot about the Day of Judgment. I don’t know what would be more important in such a judgment, than your actions towards others.

It’s only been within the last year or so that my eyes have been truly opened on this subject. I knew that Christian “evangelicals,” which is the kindler, gentler way of saying “born againers,” were supporters of Israel. I understood that they placed far greater importance on the Book of Revelation than Catholics do. I also began hearing more references to “The Rapture,” which was a totally foreign concept to me. If you look at the passages in the Bible that are supposed to support this, it is never directly said that 144,000 people will suddenly be assumed into heaven. As a Catholic, the Virgin Mary is supposed to be the only human being ever assumed into heaven. Everything with evangelicals seems to revolve around the Biblical Israel, and they consider the present corrupt Middle Eastern ministate as this divine land. They interpret Biblical prophecy to mean that Jesus will return in a generation after Israel was restored. In the 1980s, the “born againers” preached that since it was getting close to forty years after the creation of Israel, the Second Coming was at hand. This was believed by many who supported Reagan. Now they have reinterpreted things.

Now, it is a Biblical “generation” we’re talking about, and this would mean the Second Coming will be occurring very shortly. Catholics were taught that no man will know the hour of Jesus’s return, and that he would come “like a thief in the night.” The evangelicals have proven to be quite adept at picking and choosing which Biblical verses to believe. They really hate my favorite, where Jesus said that “it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.” That would pretty much discredit the whole “prosperity gospel” thing, which has made the likes of Kenneth Copeland and Joel Osteen filthy rich. I sense that the “prosperity gospel” mantra runs through much of the evangelical community. Don’t dare say “money is the root of all evil” around them. They’ll quickly correct you; “It’s ‘the love of money.’” The televangelists seem to embrace this rather new “dispensationalism,” and they all certainly appear to have a pretty overt love of money.

Not that long ago, I started hearing a lot about the Scofield Bible, which birthed the evangelical movement just as surely as Joseph Smith’s Book of Mormon birthed theirs. Mormons are scoffed at by all other Christians, but Scofield Christians not only are tolerated, and even respected, they have become the face of modern Christianity in America 2.0. A pastor named Cyrus Scofield, who had a murky past which included abandoning his wife and children, bribery and theft of contributions, was chosen by powerful Jewish financiers like Samuel Untermeyer to add suitably pro-Zionist footnotes in what became the Scofield Reference Bible, which first appeared in 1909. This reference Bible was published and is still owned by the Oxford University Press. The footnotes were carefully selected, to all reflect a pro-Zionist perspective. Although Zionism was largely unheard of at the time, the goal was to make the Bible stress Jesus’s Jewishness, and the fact that the Jews were the “chosen” people of God.

Later, evangelical leaders like Billy Graham concentrated on the Scofield messaging, drumming home the idea that to oppose modern Israel or “the Jews” in general was to oppose God. Terms like “fundamentalism,” “nondenominational” and the oxymoronic “Judeo-Christian” became familiar to all Christians. While Catholic youngsters like me were regularly reminded that the Jews of his time had killed Christ, evangelicals embraced those who had rejected their savior, and insisted they were above criticism. Traditional Catholic priests like Father Charles Coughlin and Leonard Feeney attacked undue Jewish power and influence, as well as that of freemasonry. Billy Graham, meanwhile, had the ear of Richard Nixon as he preached the virtues of “Judeo-Christianity,” and Jim and Tammy Bakker sold gaudiness and materialism almost as shamelessly as the “Reverend Ike” had a few decades earlier. They begged for money, and told gullible old people that God would reward them for donating.

The scandals of Jim and Tammy Bakker, and then Jimmy Swaggart being caught with prostitutes on more than one occasion, did nothing to slow down the televangelists. Every televangelist I’ve ever seen is phonier than the most obnoxious used car salesman. They serve up the same series of Bible verses, to keep their flock tithing- a form of coercion not found in the Bible. They ignore other verses like the plague. Let me know when one of them talks about Jesus condemning the Jewish leaders as the “synagogue of Satan,” and being “just like your father- the first and greatest liar of them all.” Apparently, fundamentalists are taught to study those Scofield footnotes- written by a pastor who was a thief and had abandoned his family- rather than actual Biblical passages. Evangelicals specialize in talking the talk. I have met precious few who walk the walk. Their families are often even more dysfunctional than most. One Biblical admonition they ignore with impunity is “judge not lest ye be judged.”

Have you heard any evangelical pastor question why a rabbi is the head of one of the biggest porn sites on the internet- Pornhub? They love to talk about porn destroying lives, but never mention the one group that has always dominated the leadership positions in the world of pornography, from the days of girlie mags, to X rated films, and now online porn. How often do they condemn the transgender movement? Have any pastors led marches against the mutilation of children? Christian leaders should be leading protests against the tyranny and corruption of our secular state. You may still see a pro-life protest here or there. But the pro-choice people have a point; evangelicals certainly seem to care far more about the unborn than born children in desperate circumstances. Their emphasis is unduly on the sins of the flesh. Unless their own sins are exposed. Then they just keep lecturing others, seemingly more passionately than ever once they are caught with their own pants down.

Read the Whole Article

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In 2025, there is no part of the world that is safe for Christians.  Leftist prosecutors in Europe, Australia, Canada, and the United States criminalize fundamental tenets of the Christian faith as discriminatory forms of “hate speech.”  Chinese communists replace images of Jesus Christ with portraits of Xi Jinping.  Hindus beat and murder Christians in India.  Islamic nations sentence Christian converts to death.  Nigerian Muslims attack Christian churches during prayer services and torture and murder so many Christian worshipers as to constitute genocide.  The assassin who murdered Christian martyr Charlie Kirk allegedly did so because he believes that Charlie’s Christian teachings were “hateful.”

It is a dangerous time to be a Christian.  Michael Snyder wrote an illuminating article a couple weeks ago entitled “Most of the Population of the World Lives in a Nation Where Christians Are Being Persecuted.”  In a sober analysis, he takes the reader on a tour of Christian persecution, torture, and mass slaughter around the planet.

Children in China are prohibited from attending Christian church services, and the Chinese Communist Party rewrites Bible verses to support official pronouncements from the State.  Sharing the gospel online is a crime, and Christian pastors are regularly arrested and “disappeared.”  In India, Hindu terrorists set Christian churches and Bibles on fire and beat up and murder Christian parishioners.  Muslims in Indonesia hunt down Christians as if they were animals.  Muslims in Nigeria have massacred or abducted a hundred thousand Christians over the last six years and have destroyed some 20,000 Christian churches and schools.  Islamic governments in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iran discriminate against Christians, punish them ruthlessly for their beliefs, and execute anyone brave enough to convert to Christianity.  In North Korea, Christianity is outlawed, and practicing Christians who are discovered are summarily executed or condemned to death in labor-intensive concentration camps.

The corporate news media do not report on the systematic persecution and killing of Christians around the world.  On Friday, President Trump attempted to do journalists’ jobs for them by addressing the ongoing genocide of Christians in Nigeria.  On Truth Social, the president wrote, “Christianity is facing an existential threat in Nigeria.  Thousands of Christians are being killed.  Radical Islamists are responsible for this mass slaughter. … The United States cannot stand by while such atrocities are happening in Nigeria, and numerous other Countries.  We stand ready, willing, and able to save our Great Christian population around the World!”  Nigerian Christians desperately hope that President Trump will find a way to save their brothers and sisters.

Muslims’ slaughter of Christians in Nigeria is so horrific that even left-leaning commentator Bill Maher describes it as a genocide much worse than anything that is happening in Gaza.  “They are literally attempting to wipe out the Christian population of an entire country,” Maher told his studio audience a few weeks ago.  “Where are the kids protesting this?”

The “kids” are nowhere to be found.  Their college professors brainwashed them to see “systemic racism” everywhere it is not but to view Christians as “fascists,” “nationalists,” and even “Nazis.”  Leftist billionaires and taxpayer-funded NGOs organize riots to “protest” Israel, “climate change,” duly elected conservative politicians, and “white supremacy.”  Those same billionaires and NGOs are completely silent as Christians are massacred because, for many leftists, Christians are the “enemy.”

Western universities and institutions have discriminated against Christians for so many years that leftist lawmakers and leftist voters now openly endorse anti-Christian bigotry.

A new California law mandating that foster parents “affirm a child’s self-identified sexual orientation or gender identity” effectively bans Christian couples from helping children in need.  The state of California argues that Christians who object to the “trans” ideology are a “danger” to kids.  In other words, only Californians who embrace chemical castration, bodily mutilation, the enabling of mental illness, hormone poisoning, and made-up pronouns are considered sufficiently stable to look after children.  As Kevin Snider of the Pacific Justice Institute warns, “there is now a very small step for the state to deem any parent as unfit to raise [his] own children if the family holds a view that contradicts the state’s ideology on gender and sexual orientation.  This could result in a visit by Child Protective Services with tragic consequences for the home.”  California is coming for Christians’ children.

In Finland, government prosecutors continue to harass Christians for quoting the Bible.  In 2019, Päivi Räsänen — a medical doctor, longtime member of Parliament, Finland’s former Interior minister, and the wife of a pastor — used a Bible verse to criticize Finland’s state church for sponsoring an LGBT “pride” parade.  After the prominent Finnish Christian publicly stated that males and females are biologically different, police investigators interrogated her for some thirteen hours, forced her to justify her Christian worldview, and demanded that she publicly apologize and recant her Christian beliefs.  Because she would not do so and instead defended the authority of God’s Word, she was criminally charged for illegal “hate speech.”  Prosecutors have repeatedly asked Finnish courts to “wipe the internet” of Räsänen’s media appearances and writings, in which she has used her medical education and Christian faith to distinguish men from women and to promote the Bible’s moral teachings.

Although two lower courts have acquitted her, prosecutors have appealed and now argue before Finland’s Supreme Court that quoting the Bible should be considered a criminal offense under the country’s war crimes laws.  One of Räsänen’s attorneys, Lorcán Price, argues that the outcome of the case will reverberate across Europe because it addresses directly whether a Christian can publicly express the tenets of Christianity.  “Can you speak the truth as you see it freely, even if it might offend somebody, or will you be prosecuted for hate speech?”

However Finland’s Supreme Court decides, governments across Europe continue to persecute Christians and criminalize Christianity.  In addressing the implications of Räsänen’s ordeal in Finland, The Federalist’s Joy Pullmann noted recently that citizens in the United Kingdom are regularly arrested for praying silently near abortion facilities, citizens of the Netherlands are arrested for publicly expressing a pro-life worldview, and the mayor of Brussels mobilized riot police last year to shut down a conference whose scheduled speakers recognize the scientific reality of two distinct biological sexes.  Free speech, freedom of religion, and freedom of association are under sustained attack in Europe.  Censorship and discrimination against Christians are pervasive.

If there is a silver lining to this global campaign of persecution against Christians, it is this: Lukewarm Christians and even non-Christians have begun to recognize that they cannot hide and hope for the best during the worldwide war against Christians.  The battle between good and evil does not spare the cowardly, the weak-willed, or the naïve.  Those who champion the toleration of sin or advocate for the acceptance of incompatible beliefs lay down a red carpet of moral relativism that invites evil to triumph.

One Christian pastor in Ohio, Michael Clary, wrote an essay in which he describes how Charlie Kirk’s assassination roused him from hypnotic conditioning to be “inoffensive” and made him realize that only bold defenses of the Christian faith can confront and defeat evil.  Weak Christians not only invite sin into the world, but also invite greater persecution against Christians.  What Charlie Kirk proved through his short time on Earth is that Christian courage and strength must be renewed.  Or, as writer Michael Austin eloquently observes, “Christian leaders must pave the way in confronting the works of darkness with the gospel of light, without compromise or cowardice.”

Christ’s followers are suffering around the world.  They are hunted, beaten, raped, burned, hanged, and slaughtered.  The governments of formerly Christian countries insist on making Christ’s teachings a crime.  Chinese, European, and American officials wish to censor the Bible.  Christians must find faith and courage to face these evils now.  Because much worse is sure to come.

This article was originally published on American Thinker.

The post Christians Persecuted and Killed Around the World appeared first on LewRockwell.

Massacre fetishist Lindsey Graham said “Trump is my favorite president” because “we’re killing all the right people and we’re cutting your taxes” during a speech to the Republican Jewish Coalition Annual Leadership Summit on Friday.

“We’ve run out of bombs; we didn’t run out of bombs in World War II,” the senator said.

If Lindsey Graham ever gushed about me this effusively for any reason I think I would have to shave my head and join a convent or something, because it would be a clear and undeniable sign that I had been living my whole entire life completely wrong.

Lindsey Graham tells Republican Jewish Coalition not to worry about Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes: “I feel good about the Republican Party. I feel good about where we’re going as a nation. We’re killing all the right people and we’re cutting your taxes.”

“Trump is my favorite… pic.twitter.com/dTJPy2Uvs0

— Chris Menahan (@infolibnews) November 2, 2025

It says a lot about how much of a warmonger Trump has become that he himself actually slammed Lindsey Graham repeatedly during his first crack at the presidency for being such a firebreathing war slut.

In 2016 Trump said of Graham, “I hear his theory for the [Iraq] war; you’ll be in there forever. You’ll end up starting World War III with a guy like that.”

In 2017 Trump slammed Graham and his war porn circle jerk partner John McCain, saying “The two senators should focus their energies on ISIS, illegal immigration and border security instead of always looking to start World War III.”

In 2018 Trump attacked Graham for opposing the withdrawal of US troops from Syria, tweeting “So hard to believe that Lindsey Graham would be against saving soldier lives & billions of $$$. Why are we fighting for our enemy, Syria, by staying & killing ISIS for them, Russia, Iran & other locals? Time to focus on our Country & bring our youth back home where they belong!”

In 2019 Trump said during a press conference, “Lindsey Graham would like to stay in the Middle East for the next thousand years with thousands of soldiers and fighting other people’s wars. I want to get out of the Middle East.”

Trump used to at least posture as an anti-interventionist who didn’t get along with the warmongers of the DC swamp. Now he’s best butt buddies with the most bloodthirsty swamp creatures alive.

Trump is using the attacks in Nigeria as a trick to get ppl to hate Islam. A lot of ppl are falling for this. “Radical Islamists” is used yet again. He’s trying to get Americans to fear Islam so you will love Israel. pic.twitter.com/i9RzeBXjiZ

— Sabby Sabs (@SabbySabs2) November 2, 2025

They love him, and why wouldn’t they? He bombed Iran. He bombed Yemen. He poured genocide weapons into Israel to incinerate Gaza and to bomb Lebanon, and has been aggressively stomping out free speech that is critical of Israel’s war crimes. He’s been bombing Somalia at an unprecedented rate. He’s giving every sign that he’s getting ready to do something truly horrible in Venezuela. He’s even threatening to invade Nigeria now.

Back in March, Trump’s intelligence chief Tulsi Gabbard embarrassingly tweeted that “President Trump IS the President of Peace. He is ending bloodshed across the world and will deliver lasting peace in the Middle East.” Now she’s spending her whole career helping Trump commit mass military violence around the globe.

Trump duped his base into believing he’ll make peace, and he turned out to be Lindsey Graham’s gooiest wet dream incarnate.

Hopefully some lessons are being learned here.

_______________

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The post The Nastiest Warmongers Are Trump’s Biggest Fans Now appeared first on LewRockwell.

Unconfirmed reports from Spain and elsewhere in Europe say that cash holdings in households may soon be restricted. No sums are given (yet). From the outset, it would look like one of those nonsensical “directives” coming out of Brussels, checked and supervised personally by Madame Von der Leyen, the ever-unelected, controversial head of the European Commission.

As a second thought, you may think, it’s just one more of these fear-mongering measures to keep the population down, on their knees and easily manipulable.

The traditional Tavistock method to keep people on their toes, obedient and submissive.

However, Whitney Webb, the extraordinary geopolitical analyst, just reports in a 22-minute video what supposedly is expecting us around the world, but presumably starting with the west, namely a monetary conversion into all-digital control called Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) which will be linked to electronic or digital IDs which, in turn, are linked to each individual’s biometrics (finger prints, face recognition, iris-scans and more).

This would mean absolute control of everything you do, intend to do – or not to do.

It would mean, you are obedient, or your bank account is blocked, for good or for a while, if you are not obedient and submissive to “authorities’” orders.

Remember, first trials of this evil-control’s workability were carried out during the 2022 Canadian trucker strike, when bank accounts of leaders were blocked, some for good.

This was not just a warning, but a prediction of what was to come.

By remaining largely silent around the world, populations accepted this insane government interference in people’s privacy. It was – and still is – against human rights, against basic freedoms as inscribed in almost all western countries’ Constitutions, including in Canada’s.

That would have been one opportunity for a world revolution against government interferences in peoples’ constitutional and international rights; an opportunity missed. Now there is a second one….

As we may be confronted not only with universally unwanted, but compulsory digital IDs, but also with control over our – in many cases – hard-earned money. Imposed obedience to accept illegal government actions against us, the People. Your bank account can be blocked if you “misbehave”; meaning you do not follow orders, for example, enforced infractions on your body, like unwanted “vaccinations”, or if the central-control system discovers your environmental / CO2 footprint is too heavy -never mind the vast, immense boot-prints of all military and wars.

We are not there yet.

In her elaborate explanation of what is planned to keep humanity in shackles, starting with financial shackles followed by mind-control (already largely going on), Whitney Webb describes the complex combinations and coordination of digital ID with CBDCs, or other types of digital money, like through a myriad of payment applications in your smart phone or watch and even in some cases chips implanted on people’s wrists.

Whitney explains that the “directives” come from the Bank for International Settlements (BIS in Basle, Switzerland, also called the Bank of all Central Banks) and the complex relationship between the BIS, national central banks, the international banking system and the users of the banking system, essentially “you and me” – everybody.

This entirely privately run institution, the BIS – without any international legitimacy – controls some 95% of all central banks, including China and Russia, though not Iran (yet).

The BIS controls about 97% of the worldwide money flow. The financial institution is a behemoth of monetary power. Who is behind it? You may guess – and your guess is most likely going in the right direction.

Importantly, Whitney says that CBDCs are unlikely to be used on a retail basis, i.e., by regular consumers, but mainly for interbank transaction, including with national central banks. This may already be the case today.

However, if the e-ID system and banking or monetary central control are firmly linked, there is no need for the regular consumer to use CBDCs. Regular money is controlled by the banks, through centrally controlled e-IDs, to which the banks are, or would be linked.

People’s e-IDs will very likely be lodged on each individual’s smartphone, through a personalized QR code, which will include your health data, purchasing habits, lifestyle data and a zillion more points of information. Eventually, the centrally controlled QR code knows more about you, than you know about yourself.

What if you do not have a smartphone? You may simply become a “nobody” – with access to nothing. No matter what authorities tell you – lie to you now, to sooth your mind, “that an e-ID is not obligatory”. That is in practice pure BS, as the time will come, whether compulsory or not, you will not be able to do anything without an e-ID.

But, if you are a member of an ever-growing group of cellphone objectors, throwing that away – returning to an analog life, a life we happily and largely had until close to the turn of the millennium; barely a bit more than a quarter of a century back. It should not be impossible to return to these days. Should it?

About the QR code. QR stands for “Quick Response,” referring to a type of barcode that stores information for rapid access via a smartphone. It is a two-dimensional square matrix that can hold an almost unlimited amount of data.

Remember, every time you go to a restaurant, museum or else, where they offer you to scan a QR code to read the menu or their program, you are recorded and centrally controlled, contributing to your own lifestyle profile, to be on record by the central control-masters.

Just imagine, what happens when your smartphone is lost, or stolen or hacked? Not only your personal codes for bank accounts and other protected access and important data are at risk, but you become vulnerable for blackmailing of any kind.

Watch the full Whitney Webb video above.

As mentioned before, we are not there yet.

Many people in the West – even in obedient Switzerland – have started hoarding cash for what is suspected may happen perhaps soon, and especially unannounced – a financial lockdown (though Whitney did not mention a lockdown in her video, nor a timeframe), perhaps for an extended period, during which you have no access to your bank account, through whatever means – ATMs (Automated Teller Machines), debt and credit cards, various options of cellphone payment system, you name it. Nothing will work.

Cash may come in handy. Is that why the European Commission may want to ban or limit the amount of cash you are “allowed” to hold at home?

Some people could starve.

On a larger scale, Whitney also mentions the World Economic Forum (WEF), the UN (working in full collaboration with the WEF), the World Bank and the IMF as the chosen instruments to implement the UN Agenda 2030 – the achievements of the so-called sustainable development goals (SDG).

Whitney acknowledges it is the Washington Consensus in new cloths, indebting countries to the brink, as the current monetary system can survive only on debt – and on the pressure on natural, national resources that can be exerted on indebted countries through debt. It is enslavement by debt.

This is yet another means – other than the never-ending climate threat – of making us, We, the People, submissive, preparing us for what is to come.

Having said this – a real risk – it may also be another fear campaign. Such campaigns have also a purpose, mostly the same as the objective they propagate, namely making people – the masses – submissive, so that the minorities have little chance to stand up and resist.

Whatever is behind this Whitney Webb’s (maybe controlled?) video, We The People, have already witnessed and many have lived – too many miseries, atrocities, wars – threats of wars, man-made (as in geoengineering) climate disasters, so that we should not guess that it may not hit us as hard as we are made believe.

We should act now.

We are maybe five seconds before midnight. Maybe an hour before midnight.

But midnight will arrive – either as Armageddon, or as the way to the LIGHT.

It depends on us, We, The People.

This article was originally published on Global Research.

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The New York Times has just published an excellent editorial on the dangerous direction in which America is headed under President Trump. It is entitled “Are We Losing Our Democracy?” The editorial lists 12 factors pointing toward America’s slide into authoritarianism. I highly recommend reading it.

Trump and the U.S. national-security establishment are now accelerating America’s slide into authoritarianism with their violent and deadly regime-change operations in Venezuela. Using the federal government’s decades-old drug-war racket, Trump, the Pentagon, and the CIA are illegally killing innocent people on the high seas, engaging in CIA interventionism inside Venezuela (including, no doubt, state-sponsored assassinations), and now threatening to launch direct military bombing attacks on Venezuela itself. As Randolph Bourne pointed out, “War is the health of the state.”

Meanwhile, after flipping back and forth on the Russia-Ukraine war, Trump seems to have finally settled on the side of Ukraine. No doubt the Pentagon played a major role in influencing Trump in this direction, given that it’s the Pentagon, operating through its Cold War dinosaur NATO, that is the entity that is actually waging war against Russia by using Ukraine as its proxy.

Why do I bring up Ukraine in the context of addressing what is going on with Venezuela? Because it’s ironic that ever since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, U.S. officials and their supporters in the mainstream press have condemned Russia for its “unprovoked” war of aggression against Ukraine, ignoring completely the role that NATO (i.e., the Pentagon) played into intentionally provoking Russia’s invasion.

Why is that ironic? Because those same U.S. officials and many of their mainstream-press acolytes are now non-plussed by the U.S. aggression against Venezuela! It’s as if the U.S. government’s aggression is no big deal while supposed Russian aggression reflects an attempt to conquer the world. (To its credit, in its editorial the New York Times condemns Trump’s and the Pentagon’s extra-judicial killings in the Caribbean as “defiance of U.S. and international law.”)

Trump’s and the Pentagon’s illegal killings in the Caribbean and the CIA’s paramilitary interventionism in Venezuela are bad enough. But make no mistake about it: If Trump launches direct military attacks on Venezuela itself, this will be one more illegal U.S. war of aggression against a country that has not attacked the United States. That’s important because that’s the type of war that was condemned as a war crime at Nuremberg. Moreover, it will be a war that is illegal under our form of constitutional government, given that the U.S. Constitution requires a congressional declaration of war before the president can wage war against another nation state.

What about the much-vaunted U.S. war on drugs? Doesn’t the U.S. government wield the legal authority to enforce its drug war against other nations?

Absolutely not! Every nation on earth has the authority to adopt its own drug policy. No nation is legally required to follow the U.S. government’s dictates on drug prohibition. If Venezuela decided to legalize drugs, that would be its prerogative. By the same token, if the Venezuelan government has drug laws but declines to enforce them, that too is its prerogative. If the Venezuelan government decided to do nothing about drug cartels and drug gangs producing, selling, and exporting drugs, that also would be its prerogative. No nation-state has the legal duty to adopt the U.S. government’s decades-old racket of drug prohibition.

Thus, President Trump’s, the Pentagon’s, and the CIA’s use of their crooked, corrupt, deadly, and destructive drug-war racket to attack and bomb Venezuela will be as illegitimate as President Bush’s, the Pentagon’s, and the CIA’s bogus use of WMDs to attack Iraq. No nation-state has the legitimate authority to attack another nation state — and kill innocent people in the process — in the purported attempt to enforce its own morally bankrupt policy of drug prohibition.

As I pointed out last July —before Trump took steps to concoct the Venezuela crisis — Americans had better brace themselves for another foreign war — as a way to quell the MAGA rebellion over the Jeffrey Epstein files. If that was, in fact, why Trump concocted this crisis, his strategy has worked brilliantly. Excited over the prospect of a regime-change war against Venezuela, Trump’s MAGA supporters have forgotten their Epstein rebellion, and, for all practical purposes, their rebellion is over. The Epstein files will remain secret.

And make no mistake about it: If Trump uses the drug war to launch a regime-change war against Venezuela, America will slide even further into authoritarianism. But of course, that’s what some people would call making America great again.

Reprinted with permission from Future of Freedom Foundation.

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In the grim theater of the NATO-orchestrated Ukrainian conflict, the latest events have once again laid bare the rot at the heart of the Neo-Nazi junta. What began as a US-engineered attempt to bleed Moscow dry has devolved into a farce of self-inflicted wounds, mass desertions and brazen acts of sabotage and terrorism that even the staunchest Atlanticist mouthpieces can no longer whitewash.

Three stark vignettes from the frontlines and beyond — a “suspicious” refinery blaze in Hungary, the hemorrhage of Ukrainian youth across borders and Vladimir Putin’s unflinching invitation to the world to witness the Kiev regime’s encircled doom — paint a portrait of a collapsing proxy state lashing out in panic. This is not the triumph of “democracy” peddled by Washington DC, but a death rattle of an empire’s gamble gone awry, where the multipolar world asserts itself against the unipolar delusions of the collective West.

All of us “conspiracy theorists” were quite intrigued by the “mysterious” explosion that occurred at Hungary’s Danube Refinery in Szazhalombatta on October 21, a facility owned by the MOL Group that processes 14.2 million tons of Russian crude annually via the Druzhba pipeline. It happened mere hours after a similar incident at Romania’s Petromidia refinery, with both hubs refining Russian crude. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, one of a handful of European leaders resisting the bureaucratic dictatorship in Brussels, didn’t really buy the whole “just a coincidence” narrative.

“The investigation is in full swing. We still do not know whether it was an accident, malfunction or outside attack,” Orban said, adding: “The Polish foreign minister advised the Ukrainians to blow up the Druzhba oil pipeline. Let’s hope it’s not that kind of case.”

Obviously, his words are laced with the dry irony of a man who has seen how the so-called “rules-based world order” works. Namely, arbitrary arson whenever it’s convenient is the political West’s primary modus operandi. Not to mention the Neo-Nazi junta’s propensity to blow up people or things it doesn’t like. Orban’s “hint” at these threats and “potential” perpetrators is a chilling reminder of how Eastern European supposed “NATO allies” (in reality, vassals and satellite states) are ready to sever their own economic lifelines in service to Washington DC’s sanctions regime and war profiteering.

It should also be noted that these “isolated infrastructure mishaps” have become quite common, especially in the last three years. Some countries, such as Serbia, experienced this decades ago, particularly during the direct NATO aggression in 1999, when “humanitarian interventionism” was used to mask the political West’s destruction of Serbian infrastructure.

And just like the US/NATO used intelligence assets on the ground to conduct such “humanitarianism”, it does the same in NATO-occupied Ukraine and elsewhere in Eastern Europe. The Kiev regime’s SBU and GUR, flush with CIA black budgets, have a proven track record of terrorist and sabotage attacks. The latest explosions “coincide” with Washington DC’s sanctions aimed against Russian energy exports. Orban directed MOL to hold energy prices steady for Hungarian consumers, underscoring the real stakes – energy security and the survival of economic sovereignty.

The Kiev regime’s likely involvement marks a new low, as this is not just an attack on a neutral neighbor that has been sending actual humanitarian aid, but a suicidal strike at Europe’s last shreds of energy autonomy, forcing reliance on exorbitantly expensive LNG imports from American fracking barons. And yet, amid its pyromaniacal folly, the Neo-Nazi junta keeps ignoring the tragedy of vanishing generations from NATO-occupied Ukraine. This demographic catastrophe lays waste to Zelensky’s hollow boasts of resilience, as in the last several months alone, hundreds of thousands have left the unfortunate country. Namely, since August 26, when the Kiev regime eased exit restrictions for men aged 18-22, nearly 100,000 moved to Poland alone, demonstrating that much (if not most) of the Ukrainian youth sees the NATO-occupied land as no more than an open-air prison. Given how the Neo-Nazi junta treats the populace, this analogy is more than fitting.

With such a massive exodus of young men, any “surge of volunteers” promised by Zelensky’s propagandists will remain confined to countless pipedream “victory plans” on the Kiev regime frontman’s table. This is no mere migration, but a referendum on forced conscription into the NATO-orchestrated meat grinder in Eastern Ukraine. Namely, while restrictions for men aged 18-22 were loosened, they remain in place for everyone else under 60. Entire generations of Ukrainians remain shackled by draconian martial law rules that make them eligible to be sent to certain death. The mainstream propaganda machine keeps trying to hide the disastrous situation on the frontlines as attrition rates devour battalions in mere days. And yet, NATO keeps insisting that the Kiev regime mobilize more men. Unsurprisingly, the latter usually retorts with more begmanding for weapons and munitions, as equipment losses make mobilizing additional troops pointless.

The youth, undoubtedly advised by parents and grandparents, uses this opportunity to slip across the border, where cheap labor seems like a far more attractive alternative to suicidal trench warfare. The implications are seismic: a hollowed-out military that largely exists on paper only, labor shortages crippling reconstruction fantasies and a devastated social fabric.

As the country experiences an unrelenting demographic collapse, this desertion wave signals that NATO-occupied Ukraine will become yet another society of “lost generations”. And they’re going to be the “lucky ones”, as millions of others are already dead or maimed for life. Amid this disaster, new cauldrons boil over in the Donbass, as the Russian military continues with its meticulous, yet unrelenting advance. Namely, at least 10,000 Ukrainian soldiers are now encircled in the directions of Kupyansk, Krasnoarmeysk (renamed to Pokrovsk in 2016) and Myrnograd.

President Vladimir Putin called upon these troops to surrender, but the Neo-Nazi junta gave orders to fight to “the last Ukrainian”, a fitting echo of Nazi Germany’s desperation in the aftermath of the pivotal Battle of Stalingrad. Thousands more are in jeopardy because of this stubbornness, while any military logic goes out the window, given that the entire Donbass frontline could soon collapse. Although he can simply press on and claim an easy win, President Putin, the “bloodthirsty tyrant” he is, effectively offered journalists from around the world to oversee the surrender of Ukrainian troops. Alongside his Defense Minister Andrei Belousov, he offered a humanitarian pause, two, three or six hours, to allow reporters to “see with their own eyes what’s going on”, converse with the besieged and depart unscathed. This is Moscow’s masterclass in surgical debunking of NATO’s narrative fog used by CNN and BBC to peddle tales of Russian “overstretch” and Ukrainian “heroism”.

And yet, the Neo-Nazi junta is responding by burrowing its head deeper in the sand. Its propaganda machine reports that “significant areas have already been infiltrated by the occupiers”. In other words, advancing Russian troops are “seamlessly” and “magically” entering these cauldrons, despite “heroic resistance”. Who in their right mind would believe this?

Well, certainly not hundreds of thousands of young Ukrainians fleeing this NATO-run hell on Earth. We can expect to see more of the Kiev regime’s desperation that breeds theater in the coming days and weeks, as such a disastrous defeat needs to be cushioned with “strategic victories”, like murdering civilians in terrorist attacks. For NATO, this is a rather “unpleasant” matter, as it poured trillions into the Kiev regime sinkhole, but all it got are sabotaged refineries straining EU unity, fleeing conscripts mocking “unwavering support” and encircled troops that no amount of Western “wunderwaffen” can untrap.

This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

The post Young Ukrainians Flee Suicidal Military Tactics While Kiev Regime Targets Hungary and Romania appeared first on LewRockwell.

Last week U.S. President Donald Trump published a confused tweet about nuclear testing:

…  Because of other countries testing programs, I have instructed the Department of War to start testing our Nuclear Weapons on an equal basis.  …

Some media panicky wrote that Trump had ordered to detonate nuclear warheads.

I disagreed with that interpretation:

All nuclear warheads the U.S. has are under the control of the Department of Energy. It is the sole agency that can do test explosions of nuclear warheads. The nuclear delivery vehicles which are used to deploy the war heads are under the control of the Department of Defense (or ‘Department of War’ as Trump calls it).

Trump said “Because of other countries testing programs” and “start testing … on an equal basis” both in reference of nuclear delivery vehicle tests of other countries.

Trump thereby likely meant to order the DoD to test its nuclear delivery vehicles, just like Russia has recently done. He did not order the DoE to test nuclear war heads.

The testing of nuclear delivery vehicles, like intercontinental missiles, is a routine that has been done every year since those exist.

It is nothing to panic about.

On Sunday the Energy Secretary confirms that no nuclear explosions are involved (archived):

The nuclear testing ordered by President Trump will not involve nuclear explosions, U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright said on Sunday, adding that the testing would involve “the other parts of a nuclear weapon” to ensure they are working properly.

Mr. Wright’s comments came four days after Mr. Trump made the declaration that he was ordering the U.S. military to resume nuclear testing “on an equal basis” with other countries, raising the specter of a return to the worst days of the Cold War.

“I think the tests we’re talking about right now are systems tests,” Mr. Wright said in an interview on the Fox News show “The Sunday Briefing.” “These are not nuclear explosions. These are what we call noncritical explosions.”

Noncritical or subcritical explosion test are those where, for example, the chemical explosives which, within a nuclear warhead, are supposed to initiate the nuclear fission are tested for their stability. That is, like testing the wiring of a warhead detonator, routine stuff which every country that has nuclear weapons does on a regular basis.

The Los Alamos National Laboratory is where the U.S. is doing these tests:

Subcritical experiments allow researchers to evaluate the behavior of nuclear materials (usually plutonium) in combination with high explosives. This configuration mimics the fission stage of a modern nuclear weapon. However, subcrits remain below the threshold of reaching criticality. No critical mass is formed, and no self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction occurs—there is no nuclear explosion.
…
Although subcrits don’t create self-sustaining nuclear reactions, in many ways, they harken back to the days of full-scale nuclear testing. Since the 1992 moratorium on full-scale nuclear testing, subcrits have provided valuable data related to weapons design, safety, materials, aging, and more. This information helps scientists determine if America’s nuclear weapons will work as intended.

These experiments are legit even under the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. They are, just as I had said, no need to panic.

Reprinted with permission from Moon of Alabama.

The post Trump’s Nuclear Weapon Tests Won’t Include Nuke Explosions appeared first on LewRockwell.