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Antisocial people run in packs.  They exert concentrated power, but they are decidedly in the minority.

Prosocial people operate individualistically, but in the aggregate, they have much-greater power.  Prosocial people can be defeated only by themselves.

Many familiar practices don’t utilize power effectively.  Some new practices also wouldn’t.

Use power effectively these 6 ways:

1. Worship, love, and save. 

Individual faith in Christ limits the envy that stymies economic growth.  Individual faith also strengthens lesser magistrates to limit greater magistrates, which secures individuals’ rights.

Love is disciplined action that builds healthy relationships.

Stocks provide the greatest long-term returns of any single class of investment.

Choosing stocks in normal times, but choosing gold instead in crisis times, provides even-greater long-term returns.  In normal times that include routine government-money-error cycles, stocks provide the greatest returns.  In crisis times, when money producers have been more greatly inflating the money quantity, and more greatly suppressing profits, gold shelters assets and provides better returns.

Saving builds productivity.

2. Choose assets, and consumer products, whose producers do the least harm.

Shopping for the best added value is the key ingredient that makes voluntary cooperation select for the producers that add the most value.  But this added value can give fund managers and corporate managers the power and control to pursue ends that harm everyone.

Individuals can limit such harms by moving their investments out of funds like those of BlackRock and Vanguard, by supporting government officials who limit government pension investments in such funds, and by considering corporate managers’ harmful actions when choosing products like those of Anheuser-Busch InBev, Target, and Disney.

3. Assess government people by how fully they use their constitutional powers against others in government and cronies. 

Government people are delegated powers through their jurisdictions’ charters.

Government people’s powers are strikingly asymmetric.  Government people have no lawful powers to defy the Constitution but awesome lawful powers and duties to support the Constitution.

If government people use their lawful powers to limit only themselves, we need supermajorities before this will secure our freedoms.  But if any government person also uses his lawful powers to limit others, then each single executive, bloc of legislators, or judge better secures our freedoms.

Many politicians have much to say about what other people should do and are eager to do other people’s jobs, but they don’t do their own jobs.

The only things politicians say or do that are worth supporting are actions to use constitutional powers to limit others in government and cronies.

4. Vote strategically for constitutionalists in Republican primaries and in general elections. 

Keep Republican Progressives from returning in subsequent elections as hard-to-dislodge incumbents.

Register as a Republican if needed to vote, and in primaries vote for the most constitutionalist Republicans.  In general elections, vote for the most constitutionalist candidates from any party.

If you build support, more will follow.

If a Progressive Democrat wins for the time being, others in the various branches and jurisdictions have the power and duty to undo any damage he might do.  Of these others, Republicans are the only people who might limit Progressive Democrats; and Republican Progressives don’t.

Wherever there’s unmitigated damage, Republican Progressives are the people we must hold accountable.

5. Support partial secessions of county regions from legacy state governments and of neighborhood regions from legacy city governments. 

The Constitution has a rule that the national government shall guarantee to each state ¾ really, to each state’s residents ¾ a republican form of government.  A given government can assuredly be republican only if its charter has the same rules and sanctions as the Constitution.

In state, county, and city charters, the ratifiers echo the Constitution’s design features but then layer on incompatible scope and administrative states.  No state constitutions delegate only limited, enumerated powers.

Just as state delegates ratified the Constitution in the USA, county delegates can ratify county-region constitutions within each state, and neighborhood delegates can ratify neighborhood-region constitutions within their cities.

Compared to when the USA seceded from Great Britain, this is simpler.  Now each region’s delegates can copy the Constitution.  Also, now these delegates will be implementing the explicit governing law ¾ the Constitution ¾ whereas the legacy states or cities clearly aren’t.

6. Support a good party. 

Our fundamental political and therefore economic problem in our system of two major parties is that both are majority Progressive.

If the economy is viewed as a process, then governments are impactful controls.  If governments are viewed as processes, then parties are the key controls.

Where the Constitution is designed to limit governments, party rules are designed to empower party organizations.  For a good party, like for a seceding county region or neighborhood region, the Constitution is a model design solution.  It’s ready-built and well examined.

The fundamental solution is to build at least one major party with a party constitution that limits the party’s power.  A good party will use a party constitution and complementary party laws to enact candidate selection processes that favor constitutionalist candidates.

We can build a good party any of multiple ways: elect a president who uses his constitutional powers, partially secede from state governments, start neighborhood voter information meetings, take control of the Republican Party.

Fail to fix at least one party, and no other solution will be sufficient — Not term limits, not other constitutional amendments.  Fix at least one party, and its people will make quick, lasting work of the remaining problems.

The more effectively that prosocial individuals use their powers, the more quickly that all people will live in increased freedom.

This article was originally published on American Thinker and was reprinted with the author’s permission.

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Mike Benz shocked more than a few followers with his instantaneous reaction to the “just in time” B-2 bombing operation in the so-called “12 Day War.”  After each Israeli mass ejection, each sigmoidal burst of unstable energy, every solar flare, the world simply shrugs and moves on.

The squashing function used in machine learning is not dissimilar to the squashing function of our policy leadership, each minute categorizing every state action as all or nothing, this or that, rendering contemplation superfluous.

The current administration simultaneously ignores, and obsesses over, the numbers.  Six, seven (or is it eight?) “wars ended” by Trump, 20 or 28 point peace plans developed in secret, announced by the underboss, with the armed and menacing caporegime on stage, left and right.

Foreign and domestic policy made simple, after Washington first made it obscenely complicated.

We need peace in Gaza, and liberty for Palestine, but without decades of Washington’s seduction by and obedience to the Tel Aviv gang, there would be no grand apartheid nuclear racist state at all, no multigenerational gulags for Palestinians, no ability to call in the B-2s in the wee hours before Israel is pulverized by recurring spasms of regional rage.

We need simple dollar dominance or else, yet the real numbers that should alarm us flash like an urgent interstellar warning from Congressman Thomas Massie’s lapel pin.  We need stablecoin, the rogue state  urges, to ensure you get the dollar you deserve.  What royal bull is this? The recent “peaceful” engagement of the current administration has entailed not just empty promises of “investment” from Japan, Europe, Korea, China, Central Asia, compliant Arab emirates and kingdoms – but actual lies!  The amount of promised investment by these countries, most of them facing declining populations, economic and existential political crises in the near future, is beyond stratospheric, it is purely imaginary.

Unless of course, the expected value of the Queen Dollar, raped into a coma by the Federal Reserve goons since 1913, will alter as quickly as a sigma function can change a 49.9% probability to zero, and a 50.1% to a 1.

We need an end to almost four years of war and for someone – anyone – to put out the trillion dollar bonfire in Ukraine.  Yet it could have ended at any time – in the same negotiated terms as 2022, or 2025, or 2030 – by the US simply ending its fundamental support. Putin is the only current world leader who doesn’t speak in tongues, who says exactly what he is thinking, who tells the world exactly what he is doing, again and again.  Yet Trump “doesn’t understand him” and “can’t figure him out.”

The US, in a calculated short term play to firmly affix the European suckle on the US possum’s tit has encouraged, planned, and funded the US/NATO proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, sacrificing Ukraine like a victim in low budget torture porn.  Having achieved the desired economic latch with a Europe in deep decline, other miscalculations by Washington and European fantasists mean that suddenly, the plot must wind down by Christmas.  We will walk out of the theater arm-in-arm, well satisfied.

Consciously ignoring the realist visionaries, like John Mearsheimer, US foreign policy is a chaotic mix of Mahan’s Rimland, Mackinder’s Heartland, and Brzezinski’s Grand Chessboard – all approaches ginned up in the 20th century, and phenomenally outdated today.  Hence we have a navy “patrolling the seas” by design with only four, and sometimes three, carrier battle groups mission-ready at any given moment; we have an air force that was last century’s logistics juggernaut, and this century’s expensive and unserviceable white elephant; the army is a mismanaged husk of men, women, and contractors, and the American President conducts his “wars” via special forces, expensive contracts, and the CIA. The future is nuclear, it is AI, and it is liberty whether we are ready or not – and the only lesson the state can derive from this reality is that it must increase nuclear weapon capability and creativity, leverage AI in equal measures for global propaganda and warfighting, and fearfully crush real freedom whenever it is noticed, wherever it is found.

The old Hollywood plot-lines, the shaping narratives, the predictive programming are now quickly discovered, and quickly categorized.  Benz’s video, blasted to millions minutes after the B2’s left Iran, bears this out.  Similarly, on September 10th, the widely unbelieved Netanyahu denial that he killed Charlie Kirk, broadcast before most of the world even knew Charlie Kirk was dead, also bears this out.  Americans are increasingly aware that a 20th and 21st century river of state-sponsored false flags leading inevitably to war, contagion, addiction, and poverty – in a word, US-led global statism – is real, true, and verifiable.  Our brains run their own version of the sigmoid calculation, by evolutionary design, and many are figuring it out, faster and faster, exponentially absorbing the information all around us and deciding thumbs up, or thumbs down.

Top Gun Maverick is how Washington wants its agenda and performance to be seen, accepted, and cheered.  Any number of Hollywood productions provide the same pro-state picture, blessing those who serve the state, or through the state serve their “communities” or enforce the “law.” Naturally, we get a good dose of villains within the state who are miraculously rooted out and face “justice” at the end of the episode.

Notwithstanding the strange predictive power of South Park, Hollywood is most honest and true with its investment in gore, torture porn, and zombies. No doubt what Americans watch on screen – the normalization of pointless violence – has been played out 100% in US foreign policy during the same era.  Horror and insanity drives the fundamentals of the US Department of War, as well as the fundamentals of the Federal Reserve.  The capos of the American government hold out Trump’s various “peace” agreements like a Hollywood franchise, counting the sequels, audiences briefly – if at all – reflecting on the fear, the expense, the gore, the nihilism.

The relief at the end of the movie – where the sympathetic nervous system had been fight or flight for an exciting hour – is the parasympathetic reward of passivity, relaxation, satisfaction.  Just what the State ordered, as it conducts real murder, torture, unimaginable destruction of life and liberty, generation of creative ways to survive or die, new ways to be alienated.

The superficial declarations of peace plans, devised by avaricious and evil states, are little more than this month’s required upgrade in an engineered and long-term protection racket.  For Gaza and the West Bank, the plot is accept the torture and genocide, the rape of your land, the erasure of your people – because it will continue unabated. For Ukraine, it is a similar message:  You were America’s fool, and its fool you will remain. Enjoy the show!

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According to the most recent data, the birth rate in the United States hit a new low in 2024. Many pundits and economists across the political spectrum have framed this as a big problem, not least of all because regime supporters want more young taxpayers to prop up social-benefit programs like Medicare and Social Security.

Among both leftists and conservatives, it has become popular to insist that a few tweaks to economic policy will reverse the downward trend in fertility.

For example, conservatives in recent years have pushed for a new federal program providing paid parental leave. On the Left, activists have repeatedly claimed that more healthcare spending on children and families will increase fertility rates. Both sides have claimed that new policies designed to reduce housing costs will increase the fertility rate. The idea here is that net spending power will lead to more children.

On the surface, it makes a lot of sense to assume that more net income makes child rearing cheaper—and consequently more people will have children. Unfortunately for this idea, experience in recent decades suggests there is actually a relatively weak connection between rising incomes and birth rates. That is, it is increasingly clear that the phenomenon of falling birth rates is due to factors that are apparently far beyond the mere cost of living. Moreover, deliberate efforts to create state-funded benefits for childrearing activities have failed to increase fertility rates.

Can More Family-Targeted Welfare Increase the Fertility Rate? 

It has become popular among pro-fertility activists to say that government policies favoring increased benefits for parental leave, childcare, and childrearing will increase fertility. But where has this been demonstrated? It certainly has not been demonstrated in modern European welfare states.

For example, advocates for parental leave like to point to the proliferation of paid family-leave programs in Europe. Some advocates even claim that these policies make family life more affordable, and therefore good for fertility rates. Even if that’s true, it is apparent that paid family leave programs can’t be shown to increase fertility rates on their own. After all, most of the countries boasting of paid family leave programs have fertility rates below that of the United States, and all these countries have followed similar downward trajectories in fertility over more than fifty years.

A specific case that we might point to is Sweden where we have long been told that the welfare state favors generous spending on child care and early-childhood education. This, we are told, reduces the cost of childrearing. Again, the policy does not appear to work, and the Swedish fertility rate continues to fall:

The fact that it is easy to combine children with employment thanks to generous systems for parental leave and childcare is assumed to make more people inclined to actually have children. … But as there have been no significant changes in family policy, this does not explain the downturn we now see.

 But how about in eastern Europe? Conservatives like to quote family-friendly statements from Hungarian politicians who state that they’d like to support more childrearing with government policy. Since 2010, social conservative Viktor Orbán has overseen the implementation of a variety of ostensible pro-child policies such as tax credits for families with children. Women who have more than two children never pay income tax. This appeared to work for several years after 2010, but since 2021, the birth rate has fallen again from 1.61 in  2021 to 1.38 in 2024.

The overall trend in down across many countries. Source: Our World in Data.

Meanwhile, in Poland, the state has recently implemented similar tax bonuses designed to increase fertility. Overall economic trends suggest this won’t turn the tide. After all, since the end of the Cold War, Poland has been one of the world’s great economic success stories, and since 1990 “GDP per capita in Poland has risen eightfold, even adjusting for the cost of living. Since 2002, unemployment has fallen from 20% to 2.8%.”

Yet, in Poland, the fertility rate has now fallen to 1.1, making Poland one of the least fertile countries in the world.

Are we really to believe that some tax credits will succeed at doing what an eight-fold increase in income could not do?

A similar trend exists in Hungary, by the way, where real GDP per capita has risen by 40 percent since 2012, yet the fertility rate is still below where it was during the bad old days of the Cold War.

Further evidence of a weak link between fertility and economic prosperity is found in a new NBER working paper released by Claudia Goldin.1

Goldin notes that fertility in the United States fell throughout most of the nineteenth century, just as standards of living were increasing substantially. Moreover, the decline continued into the first forty years of the twentieth century, with a trend solidly in place well before the Great Depression.

Nearly 200 years of falling fertility. Source: Statista. 

When most Americans comment on fertility rates, however, they tend to look only to post-1945 rates, and to look at falling fertility since the 1950s. Yet, as Goldin correctly points out, the “Baby Boom was an astonishing turnaround from the low birthrates of the 1920s and the Great Depression.” That is, the rising fertility of the early 1950s was very much a departure from the long-term trend.

Source: Our World in Data.

The US is not alone in this trend, the so-called “fertility transition.” In France, according to some research, the transition occurred “at the latest in 1827 (other data suggests the transition happened at least two decades earlier).”2

Life was hard in the nineteenth century, of course, and the indisputable fruits of industrialization were felt only gradually, even if solid gains in income and standards of living were being made almost constantly. Nonetheless, we find that as income increased, fertility actually went down.

Moreover, we find there is little connection between fertility and anything we might call “objective” living standards. For example, the standard of living is objectively much higher today than it was during the 1920s, or even the 1970s. Cars are safer, homes are larger, food requires a smaller share of income, and clothing is much, much less expensive. Virtually no one’s great-grand parents would look at modern life and think that the standard of living was higher 50 years ago or 90 years ago. Yet, many potential parents state that they can’t have children now because it’s too difficult to maintain an acceptable standard of living. Obviously, subjective standards of what constitutes an acceptable standard of living has changed substantially from what our grandparents thought.

We find here a similar trend to what we see in Poland. Although the standard of living in Poland is clearly far above what it was in Cold War times, fertility rates continue to fall.

This clear trend then, has led one economist to recently note:

There’s lots of explanations that people have put forward in terms of why the birth rate is falling in the United States. For the most part, a lot of them aren’t particularly successful … So people talk about things like higher costs of having a family—of raising children, housing, and child care. It turns out those don’t work very well as explanations.

So, if mere income levels and economic trends don’t provide definitive explanations of fertility, what does?

Researchers offer a wide variety of explanations from ideology to education levels. These are all debated, but the whole discussion is a helpful reminder that human action is not a product of a mechanical relationship between income levels and the cost of some good or activity. What human beings value can change substantially over time for reasons far more complex than “the price of thing X went down, so I will therefore buy more of thing X.” If having children is “thing X” in this equation, it is clear that there is much more to the matter than the cost of feeding and clothing and housing children.

—

1 Claudia Goldin, “The Downside of Fertility,” in NBER Working Paper Series, Working Paper 34268, http://www.nber.org/papers/w34268.

2 See Blanc, G., & Wacziarg, R. (2018). Change and persistence in the age of modernization: Saint-Germain-d’Anxure, 1730–1895.; Spolaore, E., & Wacziarg, R. (2014). Fertility and modernity.; Spolaore, E., & Wacziarg, R. (2009). The diffusion of development. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 124(2), 469–529.

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Did LBJ Kill JFK? The Shocking Plot They Tried to Hide

Did Lyndon B. Johnson have John F. Kennedy assassinated? In this explosive episode of America’s Untold Stories, Mark Groubert and Eric Hunley dig deep into the controversial theory that JFK’s own Vice President — the man who became President the moment Kennedy died — was at the center of the Dallas conspiracy.

Most political figures are killed by their successors. And only one man had the means, motive, and opportunity to remove Kennedy: Lyndon B. Johnson.

We’ll explore LBJ’s Texas political machine, his ties to defense contractors and Big Oil, and the historical clues that have convinced some researchers that Dallas was a coup, not a tragedy.

For further reading on LBJ (Affiliate Links):

LBJ: The Mastermind of the JFK Assassination → https://amzn.to/3JjbSqR

The Path to Power (The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Vol. 1) → https://amzn.to/3rFvZtg Means of Ascent (Vol. 2) → https://amzn.to/3rPGGKd

Master of the Senate (Vol. 3) → https://amzn.to/3svx46m

The Passage of Power (Vol. 4) → https://amzn.to/3JdtPXQ

️‍️ Watch now and judge for yourself: coincidence… or conspiracy?

The post America’s Untold Stories: Did LBJ Kill JFK? Part One – The Lead up appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, John Smith.

AP News

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Click here:

John Leake

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Thanks, Brian Dunaway.

Ben Bartee

The post The ‘But Aluminum in Tea’ Vaxx Industry Lie, Debunked appeared first on LewRockwell.

The AI Bubble is a perfect example of why The Fed should not exist. Give human beings the ability to counterfeit money and their delusions of grandeur are going to follow. Economic laws become a relic of the past. The free will of every single person on earth is ignored as if it doesn’t exist. The receivers of The Fed’s counterfeit money believe that they will overcome it all, and reality will conform to their imaginations. End the Fed.

The post AI Spending: The Biggest Bubble Yet? appeared first on LewRockwell.

Bill Madden wrote:

Worth reading and thinking about.  Once they control our fiat currency and our spending, there’s no way to change back to a constitutional monetary system without a revolution.

Dave Ramsey repost:

HERE’S WHAT NO CASH ACTUALLY MEANS:

A cashless society means no cash. Zero. It doesn’t mean mostly cashless and you can still use a ‘wee bit of cash here & there’. Cashless means fully digital, fully traceable, fully controlled. I think those who support a cashless society aren’t fully aware of what they are asking for. A cashless society means:

* If you are struggling with your mortgage on a particular month, you can’t do an odd job to get you through.

* Your child can’t go & help the local farmer to earn a bit of summer cash.

* No more cash slipped into the hands of a child as a good luck charm or from their grandparent when going on holidays.

* No more money in birthday cards.

* No more piggy banks for your child to collect pocket money & to learn about the value of earning.

* No more cash for a rainy-day fund or for that something special you have been putting $20 a week away for.

* No more little jobs on the side because your wages barely cover the bills or put food on the table.

* No more charity collections.

* No more selling bits & pieces from your home that you no longer want/need for a bit of cash in return.

* No more cash gifts from relatives or loved ones.

What a cashless society does guarantee:

* Banks have full control of every single penny you own.

* Every transaction you make is recorded.

* All your movements & actions are traceable.

* Access to your money can be blocked at the click of a button when/if banks need ‘clarification’ from you which will take about 3 weeks, a thousand questions answered & five thousand passwords.

* You will have no choice but to declare & be taxed on every dollar in your possession.

* The government WILL decide what you can & cannot purchase.

* If your transactions are deemed in any way questionable, by those who create the questions, your money will be frozen, ‘for your own good’.

Forget about cash being dirty. Stop being so easily led. Cash has been around for a very, very, very long time & it gives you control over how you trade with the world. It gives you independence. I heard a story where a man supposedly contracted Covid because of a $20 bill he had handled. There is the same chance of Covid being on a card as being on cash. If you cannot see how utterly ridiculous this assumption is then there is little hope.

If you are a customer, pay with cash. If you are a shop owner, remove those ridiculous signs that ask people to pay by card. Cash is a legal tender, it is our right to pay with cash. Banks are making it increasingly difficult to lodge cash & that has nothing to do with a virus, nor has this ‘dirty money’ trend.

Please open your eyes. Please stop believing everything you are being told. Almost every single topic in today’s world is tainted with corruption & hidden agendas. Please stop telling me & others like me that we are what’s wrong with the world when you hail the most corrupt members of society as your heroes. Politics & greed is what is wrong with the world; not those who are trying to alert you to the reality in which you are blindly floating along whilst being immobilized by irrational fear. Fear created to keep you doing & believing in exactly what you are complacently doing.

Pay with cash & please say no to a cashless society while you still have the choice.

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Bill Madden wrote:

Like most printed and video communication, this discussion of our international oppression contains about five minutes of important information spread over a much longer time period.  My desire for more efficient utilization of the audience’s time is strictly from a marketing perspective.  The longer and/or more complex the communication, the fewer the number of people who will absorb it.  If you communicate to impress the other communicators, the less effective it will be with the people who need the information.

In essence, we ruled the world after WW II and Corporate America prospered.  But, prospering soon leads to exploitation and, like Iran in 1953, we were invited to leave Venezuela when Hugo Chavez became president.  We launched at least one coup against Chavez and, it is alleged, we provided the cancer that killed him.  We have attempted to starve the Venezuelans into revolution and regime change but that is not working so we are planning to invade Venezuela because of “drug trafficking” and/or “socialism”.  We tolerate drug trafficking from other countries like Mexico and socialism from countries without an abundance of natural resources but not from Venezuela.

We are a ship without a rudder.

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di Francesco Simoncelli

(Versione audio della traduzione disponibile qui: https://open.substack.com/pub/fsimoncelli/p/la-rivoluzione-di-satoshi-e-la-possibilita)

Quando ho contattato l'autrice del libro, La rivoluzione di Satoshi, e abbiamo iniziato una corrispondenza per email, è stato come fare il bagno in una vasca gelata: d'improvviso molte sfaccettature dell'ecosistema Bitcoin hanno preso una diversa forma. Ero interessato alla traduzione del libro proprio perché molte nuove consapevolezze erano esplose in me man mano che proseguivo nella lettura. Inutile dire che la volontà di condividere qualcosa con altri deriva sostanzialmente da ciò: la comprensione e l'inquadramento di un determinato fenomeno sotto un nuovo punto di vista, avvalorato e arricchito di una nuova dimensione di conoscenza. Infatti Bitcoin appare diverso a chiunque lo osservi, potremmo definirlo una moderna parabola dei ciechi e dell'elefante.

Agli economisti sembra una moneta di qualità inferiore, poiché non ha una risposta elastica dal lato dell'offerta. Agli occhi degli enti regolatori si tratta di un tentativo subdolo di riciclare denaro ed evadere le tasse. Per il grande pubblico sembra un'orribile creatura costituita da speculatori finanziari e tecno-chiacchieroni, e per questo motivo la maggior parte delle persone lo ignora.

Con La rivoluzione di Satoshi di Wendy McElroy le cose cambiano radicalmente. “Questo è stato uno dei miei progetti intellettuali più difficili e importanti che abbia completato”, mi ha detto l'autrice. È un libro calmo e serio, accessibile ai principianti curiosi e a coloro che non sono ancora convinti che Bitcoin sia una soluzione rapida a ogni problema sociale. Come direbbe qualcuno, tanto per aggiungere un po' di ironia al fenomeno, Bitcoin è “tutto ciò che non capite del denaro, combinato con tutto ciò che non capite dei computer”. Alcune spiegazioni tecniche sono inevitabili, ma il lettore non è soggetto a una valanga di tecnicismi incomprensibili, né a grida di protesta semplicistiche inserite solo per attirare l'attenzione, vendere una copia in più e non lasciare niente di costruttivo al lettore.

L'autrice lo ritiene apertamente un vantaggio per il mondo e questa confessione “partigiana” non dovrebbe sminuire le sue numerose argomentazioni. L'approccio di prendere in considerazione solo gli incentivi personali e scartare di conseguenza le idee è, nell migliore delle ipotesi, miope e, nella peggiore, stupido: “La critica di una presa di parte a priori è un errore di valutazione. Sostengo Bitcoin perché ci credo dopo anni di studio, pertanto le mie tesi reggono, o cadono, in base ai loro meriti”.

E di meriti ce ne sono in abbondanza. La McElroy non esagera, come molti bitcoiner sono soliti fare, ma contestualizza la sua argomentazione fin da subito: “Nonostante le speranze di molti irriducibili sostenitori del Bitcoin, esso non porrà fine alla guerra, non ripristinerà la famiglia tradizionale, né risanerà il mercato immobiliare. Non migliorerà la nutrizione, non ispirerà un ritorno all'arte rinascimentale, né farà rivivere l'architettura del XIX secolo. Bitcoin non risolve tutto; risolve alcuni problemi e ne distrugge persino altri”.

Ciò che molti credono di Bitcoin è vero: è per i criminali, ma è anche per chi combatte per la libertà, per coloro che sono tagliati fuori dal sistema monetario mondiale, per coloro che sono tenuti finanziariamente ostracizzati dalle leggi o dalle usanze dei loro Paesi, per i dissidenti russi o nigeriani che cercano di ricevere e spendere fondi, per le donne afghane sotto il regime patriarcale, per i rifugiati che cercano di attraversare un confine con i loro beni (finanziari) intatti, per gli occidentali che cercano di sfuggire alle peggiori conseguenze dell'inflazione, per i dispensari di marijuana negli Stati Uniti la cui attività è legale negli stati in cui operano ma illegale a livello federale (e quindi incapaci di utilizzare il sistema bancario che è sotto un pesante controllo centralizzato). In realtà tutti questi usi sono la stessa cosa: molte parti dello stesso elefante. La natura del denaro è quella di poter essere utilizzato tra nemici che altrimenti non potrebbero fidarsi, o costringersi a vicenda, a comportarsi bene (gli amici possono usare credito e favori, invece). È uno strumento al portatore che non richiede identificazione, un conto bancario, o il permesso di un sovrano.

“Bitcoin”, scrive l'autrice in modo efficace e conciso, “è capacità di dire di no”: un modo monetario per sottrarsi, per evitare ostacoli. Non c'è da stupirsi che piaccia anche ai criminali. Questo non è un libro ideologico che sostiene aprioristicamente Bitcoin o riflette sul “crollo” del dollaro; libri del genere esistono già, mentre invece la McElroy di creare qualcosa di più grande: non indaga se le cose che Bitcoin rompe valgano la pena di essere rotte, ma “se dovremmo preferire un mondo con Bitcoin a un mondo senza Bitcoin”. Lo fa con prudenza e scrupolosità, usando lo strumento filosofico del velo dell'ignoranza di John Rawls.

Supponendo che non sappiate chi siate, in quale Paese siate nati e quali siano le vostre competenze, i vostri interessi e le vostre opportunità (ovvero, se cercaste di privare i lettori dei loro privilegi monetari e finanziari), sosterreste ancora l'esistenza di Bitcoin?

Nell'ambito di questo velo, La rivoluzione di Satoshi, cerca di presentare argomentazioni il più possibile ineccepibili a favore di Bitcoin. Un tale esercizio oltre a essere ammirevole è anche prezioso. Non vedere un problema nella censura e nell'oppressione finanziaria equivale a credere che solo le Persone Cattive™ abbiano problemi con le autorità (benevolenti). In realtà “anche i buoni vengono spesso censurati”.

La rivoluzione di Satoshi vi invita a guardare più lontano nel tempo e più in generale in tutto il mondo: “Se poteste immaginare di trovarvi nella posizione di aver bisogno di una forma di denaro resistente alla censura, o di dover insegnare a qualcun altro come usarlo, sarebbe saggio studiare Bitcoin”. Questa è la realtà per circa quattro miliardi di persone che vivono sotto il tacco di governanti autoritari che limitano, catturano, opprimono, o puniscono in altro modo i dissidenti per aver fatto, o detto, cose sbagliate. Bitcoin, come qualsiasi altra rivoluzione nella storia, non dissipa le leggi ingiuste, né fa sparire i governanti malvagi, ma niente può farlo; queste “ingiustizie” vivranno finché vivrà l'essere umano. L'uso di Bitcoin rende la spesa e il trasferimento di denaro molto più difficili da censurare per tali governanti.

Si tratta di un miglioramento evidente, un vantaggio per l'umanità. Bitcoin è denaro della libertà, una via di fuga dal pesante stivale di un tiranno. Dietro il velo, abbiamo alte probabilità di essere una di quelle persone. Questo libro alimenta le aspettative e di conseguenza stimola la creatività. La sola speranza di avere per le mani uno strumento di difesa efficace per qualsiasi situazione tirannica o di censura è di per sé uno strumento che permetterà a una pletora crescente di individui di organizzarsi diversamente. La sola esistenza, concreta, di questa possibilità è quanto basta per proiettare le persone nel futuro e, dapprima, far immaginare loro alternative, poi realizzarle. Ecco perché Bitcoin è speranza.

Gli economisti, tuttavia, ridurrebbero il tutto al seguente quadro di riferimento: ampliare il set decisionale e le opportunità disponibili non fa altro che avvantaggiare gli utenti (indipendenza da alternative irrilevanti). Più opzioni ci sono, meglio è. Date le diverse preferenze e circostanze individuali, la situazione mondiale con Bitcoin rappresenta un miglioramento per alcuni ed è quindi piuttosto banale concludere che per queste persone sia meglio avere accesso a Bitcoin piuttosto che non avercelo.

Un mondo con Bitcoin ha i suoi costi, però: ci sono casi di riciclaggio di denaro, ransomware e mancato pagamento delle tasse se qualcosa come Bitcoin non fosse mai stato inventato (beh, scoperto...). L'autrice ammette che tali fenomeni, nella misura in cui sono resi possibili da Bitcoin, sono negativi, ma che non rappresentano “una seria minaccia al beneficio netto complessivo di Bitcoin per il mondo”. In un certo senso, La rivoluzione di Satoshi, fa anche eco a Money and the Rule of Law di Pete Boettke: “Per quanto riguarda le istituzioni monetarie, Bitcoin porta lo stato di diritto nel mondo del denaro ed è un'alternativa attraente, perché apre alla possibilità di creare un consenso con cui dire ‘No’ soprattutto per i miliardi di persone che soffrono sotto pessimi governanti e con le tecnologie analogiche sono intrappolati in un loop terrificante da cui non ci sarebbe uscita”.

Inoltre la McElroy è piuttosto fiduciosa riguardo alle implicazioni di questa istituzione monetaria: “Bitcoin è un'istituzione monetaria che punta alla prevedibilità e alla disintermediazione sistematiche. Esiste non per perseguire la stabilità dei prezzi, o la piena occupazione, ma per eliminare del tutto la necessità di creatori di denaro centrali, mediatori e gestori”.

Abbiamo bisogno di libri seri su Bitcoin e sull'ecosistema che lo circonda, soprattutto dal punto di vista intellettuale, e La rivoluzione di Satoshi è proprio uno di questi.

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

The fall general assembly of the USCCB lumbered into session last week at the Marriott Waterfront in Baltimore, as they do each November. The ponderous livestream of bishops, all doing their best to be flavorless, was, to say the least, somnolent. There were approximately two minutes of interest on day two, when Bishop Strickland stood up to make an intervention. He was widely ignored, after which the porridge of officialdom moved on like a slow-moving river around a midstream boulder. It felt like they all found something of interest on the ceiling.

It is finally becoming apparent, even to the most hopeful, that no amount of begging, pleading, or shaming will cause the bishops to care about the laity and those things that are most important to us. If they’re confused as to what those things are, a good start would be to ask priests what they hear most in Confession. I guarantee it’s not offenses against climate change or synodality.

Our children are lost to virtue at an early age and misled by the hyper-sexualized agenda in their schools. The culture of death and depravity takes more trouble over them than the Church does. Where is the stout teaching of the theology of the body in schools and parishes? Where are the Christian heroes able to credibly witness to purity?

They’re not to be found in the Baltimore Marriott, and wouldn’t you think bishops might be a little ashamed of that?

Young adults are turning away from marriage and family. Contraception, abortion, sterile lifestyles, pornography, and misplaced priorities are seductively proposed to them, guaranteeing that they will never have the joy intended by God through the family. Might that be of some interest to the bishops?

So many people who left the Mass under the Reign of Fear in 2020 never returned. We still have a crisis of catechesis, with adults in the pews who have no idea what their Catholicism teaches. The obsessive persecution of the Traditional Latin Mass has driven some of our most committed and hard-working parishioners out of diocesan parishes. Tens of thousands of our African brothers have been kidnapped, tortured, and executed for the Faith.

Could the bishops be troubled to address any of that?

No, they spend themselves on immigration, climate change, and synodality. They waste their time and our money to address things that have no bearing on the lives of the laity or the health of our beloved Church.

When the bishops coyly use the term “immigrant” without specifying legal or illegal, they’re not talking about legal; otherwise, why obfuscate? According to a Harvard-Harris poll from June of this year, 80 percent of all Americans are in favor of the deportation of illegal aliens who commit crimes. As of this fall, about 1.6 million have self-deported, provided with free airfare, a cash bonus, and a chance to apply for legal reentry. Around another half million have been forcibly deported, many of whom are the worst of violent criminals and gang members. Some do not have U.S. criminal records (and the media and bishops will focus on that), but they have long records in their home countries.

No multiplication of pious words from the bishops can change the civil laws. The bishops pulling on the illegal side of the tug-of-war rope sends the message to young people that they need not follow laws they don’t like. That is no preparation for adulthood, but the bishops don’t have to try to raise children to be responsible citizens.

In a March Gallup poll of 16 key issues of concern to Americans, climate change didn’t make the worry list. Even Bill Gates has distanced himself from the climate melodrama. But the bishops will keep milking it until the udder shrivels up. Laudato Si’, you see.

And synodality? Please. You couldn’t find two people in the whole world who agree on what it is.

I don’t know anyone who thinks the bishops, as a body, are doing a great job. Or even a job. There are a few good ones who could actually be a force for Christ in their dioceses if they didn’t have to flap around like synchronized fan dancers for the bishops’ conference and the pope. Heaven forbid any apostle of Christ the King fail to blindly follow orders.

So the Coffee Circle took a whole lot of money to rent space at the Waterfront Marriott—with, no doubt, a strong security force because the princes are afraid of their subjects—and wasted three days performing on subjects that are of little to no importance to those of us who (used to) throw our tithes into the basket.

Do I sound disrespectful? I’ll reserve my genuine respect for the one man who spoke up for a few of the things that are really troubling the faithful. The conversion of the ancient Church of Jesus Christ to the homosexual gospel concerns us. The deceptive portrayal of the illegal immigration crisis concerns us. The fearful and mechanical obedience of bishops to the episcopal tribe—rather than to Jesus and His Mystical Body—concerns us.

I refer you to Bishop Strickland’s intervention on day two, which was ignored by the Coffee Circle but not by the faithful. Thank you, Bishop Strickland, for knowing and caring about the real world in which we, the laity, live and work and try to raise our families for God. Note the disregard of the other bishops when Strickland exhorts them to take the homosexual revision of the Faith seriously.

Then see the postscript that Bishop Strickland posted Friday morning, beginning “Dear Faithful Catholics.” These are some of the most powerful words our lone shepherd has ever spoken:

“How long will you halt between two masters? If you believe Christ is Lord, then follow Him! If the world is your master, then go to it! But no longer profane His sanctuary while you betray the Cross!”

Bishops, STOP with the games! STOP with the lies. STOP turning a blind eye to the little ones! A massive stockpile of millstones is ready to be distributed among you. One for Pope Leo, a truckload for the Curia in the Vatican, and cargo ships full for the vast majority of today’s successors of the Apostles.

How dare I speak these words, how dare I judge these princes of the Church? No, brothers, HOW DARE YOU inflict harm on the little ones, over and over again??

… and then he gets fiery. Read the whole post here.

The discontent of the laity with their bishops continues, but the self-satisfied prelates either don’t notice or don’t care. This cannot continue indefinitely. If the bishops are determined to lead the Church down a path the laity can’t, in good conscience, follow, what will be the outcome? I pray the Lord defends His sheep.

Jesus, we trust in You. Maranatha!

This article was originally published on Crisis Magazine.

The post US Coffee Circle of Bishops Meets in Baltimore appeared first on LewRockwell.

I’ve long thought that Lincoln’s “Gettysburg Address,” which he delivered on November 19, 1863, may be the most succinct and elegant speech ever written. I invariably think about it whenever I’m at a wedding or some other formal occasion and hear a windbag droning on for over five minutes with no structure, theme, or resolution.

Lincoln’s speech is a 272-word masterpiece that he delivered in less than two minutes. It reminds me of Churchill’s remark (if I remember it correctly): “If you want me to give a five-minute speech, I need a week to prepare. If you want me to give a two-hour speech, I can start right now.”

The occasion was the formal dedication of the Soldiers’ National Cemetery, now known as Gettysburg National Cemetery, on the field where the Battle of Gettysburg was fought four months earlier, between July 1 and July 3, 1863, in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. It was considered a Union victory because Union soldiers repelled the Confederate army and sent it packing, thereby ending General Lee’s northern offensive.

The battle was the Civil War’s bloodiest, resulting in more than 50,000 Confederate and Union army casualties. 3,155 Union soldiers were killed; 3,903 Confederate soldiers died. Tens of thousands of others suffered horrible injuries that required limb amputations.

My great, great grandfather, William Reid Wilson, was a surgeon in the Confederate army, and he kept a diary in which he described performing amputations for hours on end after big battles. It was a gruesome and harrowing job, and in one memorable passage he described a field tent filled with horribly wounded and shrieking men as resembling “one of the lower circles of hell depicted in Dante’s Inferno.”

Dedicating the cemetery was as weighty as it gets, and President Lincoln came prepared.

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

The opening paragraph emphasizes the idea of birth with the words “brought forth” and “conceived,” with this birth being dedicated to an ideal.

The second paragraph emphasizes that the life that was brought forth is imperiled by civil war and may not survive.

The third paragraph exhorts the living to dedicate themselves to the great task of preserving our government of the people, by the people, for the people so that it shall not perish.

During the last five years, I’ve often thought about Lincoln’s speech and wondered to what our U.S. government is now dedicated.

If President Lincoln and Generals Grant and Lee were transported in time to Washington D.C. today, what would they think about the proceedings of our government?

I dare say they wouldn’t believe their eyes, but would think that what they are seeing is an impossibly vulgar and appalling joke.

Lincoln and Grant would doubtless wonder if what they’d fought for had indeed survived. Lee would feel vindicated for his decision to fight on the side of Secessionists.

With the exception of Thomas Massie and a few other brave souls, our U.S. government now seems entirely dedicated to enriching, aggrandizing, and protecting its rich and corrupt friends.

The Roman lawyer and statesman Cicero is said to have joked that “Rome is made of marble but built on a sewer.” I dare say the U.S. government is a sewer.

This article was originally published on Courageous Discourse.

The post To What is the U.S. Government Dedicated? appeared first on LewRockwell.

If you haven’t read it, go online and check out the late, great Dave McGowan’s expose of international child sex trafficking, “The Pedophocracy.” It’s shocking, and exposes our corrupt elite as being the worst kind of sexual deviants. There has been a tragic but undeniable market for children as sex objects, since at least Victorian England.

When we talk about the enigmatic sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, however, it’s not really pedophilia that’s involved. Attraction to teenagers is clinically referred to as Ephebophilia. But ‘Murricans have never been noted for getting their terms right, so to the world Epstein is a pedophile. To begin to unravel this mystery, we need to look at Jeffrey Epstein himself. We are told that Epstein was born into a blue-collar family. His father was allegedly a groundskeeper. If you’ve ever heard of another Epstein who was a groundskeeper, let me know who that was. Epstein dropped out of college, just like me. Unlike me, and anyone else in the free world without a college degree, he nevertheless was allowed to teach math at an elite New York City private school, run by the father of future Bush crime family loyalist and Trump Attorney General William Barr. From there, he entered the world of finance. High finance. Well, don’t all college dropouts do that? Do we sense some missing connections there?

We are told that this son of perhaps one of the world’s only Jewish groundskeepers, after getting a teaching job which requires a college degree for mere mortals, went on to become a “financial advisor to billionaires.” Well, if you were a billionaire, wouldn’t you be looking to entrust your fortune in the hands of a college dropout? Does this make any sense at all? So the official narrative here, like all official narratives, is completely illogical. I think it far more likely that Epstein began his blackmailing career on behalf of the Mossad, perhaps before he even became a math teacher, hired by his fellow non-Irishman Donald Barr. But how did he get into a position to blackmail famous politicians and celebrities? There are a lot of unscrupulous, struggling Americans that would like to figure out how to get into the blackmailing the famous business. Who provided Epstein with all those underage girls, without whom no blackmailing could have taken place?

It seems obvious that it must have been powerful Israelis who took an interest in their shockingly unsuccessful fellow non-Irishman. First and foremost among these was former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, who is known to have visited and slept over at Epstein’s home many times. Talk about an odd couple! Do prime ministers normally consort with the sons of groundskeepers? College dropouts? What did they have in common? Epstein was close to Peter Thiel, of Palantier infamy. Thiel, as yet another non-Irish success story, was a former director of Israeli signals intelligence, whatever that is. As a member in good standing of the Uniparty, Epstein was friends with both Steve Bannon and Noam Chomsky, who called him his “highly valued friend.” Keep in mind, Epstein had already been arrested for sex crimes, and then partnered with Barak to start a security tech business. Leaders of nations are well known for partnering with college dropouts who’ve been charged with sex crimes.

It is against this background with all the inexplicable pieces missing, that we should consider the Epstein story. Once Donald Trump, and his oldest son, were adamant about releasing all of the Epstein information. Then suddenly the wildly off kilter president was dead set against it, pressuring all the RINOs in the Stupid Party to vote against making them public. Attorney General Pam Bondi went from having the files on her desk to proclaiming that the files didn’t exist. Bondi may be traumatized herself. There’s a photo out there, of an alluring, very young blonde, dancing with Donald Trump, who does look like she could have been the underage future attorney general. One rumor has it that Bondi told Trump his name was “all over the files.” Well, if she was perhaps one of the Lolitas involved in the blackmail scheme, wouldn’t she know that already? Do we really have any confidence in a near senior citizen still playing a bimbo, and wide-eyed FBI director Kash Patel? Patel and his aide Dan Bongino both made asses of themselves by declaring that Epstein killed himself.

The Democrats, to a man/woman/they/them, are all in favor of releasing the Epstein information. This is decidedly out of character for today’s “Woke” Democrats, whose every impulse has historically been to conceal information from the public. And now Trump orders his aging blonde attorney general to look into the connections between Bill Clinton and other prominent Democrats. But no Republicans. The Democrats, meanwhile, only care about Trump’s connection to Epstein. Something tells me that Oprah, and celebrities from Woody Allen to Jimmy Kimmel, will never be prosecuted. If, indeed, they are really on the “list.” If there is a list. Can you imagine both Clinton and Trump, striding alongside each other in matching orange jumpsuits? The Giant Orange Man would look especially fetching. Or all those Hollywood figures being grilled on the stand, confronted with the presumed evidence of flying on the Lolita Express, and visiting Lolita Island? That alone could bring down the Deep State.

Of course, before any of you exclaim, “There you go again, Mr. Fancy Pants populist, with your ridiculous faith in the People.” Yeah, I realize they would never let this kind of disclosure be made public. All of the favorite celebrities of the proud eligible voters, caught with their hands in an underage cookie jar. But I can dream, can’t I? They’re making an issue of Epstein for some reason. Will they be able to convince the public that Donald Trump was the only name on Epstein’s list? That he was actually partners with Epstein, just like Ehud Barak? Trump probably knew a lot of rich perverts. Will this then be the end of Trumpenstein? To wind up this political project by having him led, kicking and screaming, from the White House? Maybe they’ll pull down his pants, and let those with TDS become orgasmic at the sight of his micro-penis. After all, it just has to be tiny. South Park wouldn’t lie to us.

We are told that this college dropout, arrested twice for sex crimes, became involved in setting up negotiations between Barak and Vladimir Putin, which included a CIA- style proposal to remove Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. I’m guessing he brought along lots of pretty nymphets to assist him. No son of a Jewish groundskeeper is complete without them. And then, finally we’re asked to believe that Epstein killed himself, while the guards were sleeping and/or surfing the internet. No one accepts this nonsense, outside of high ranking officials in the U.S. government. Now, juicy emails from Epstein are being released. Good timing. In one, it is suggested the Trump got down on his knees and serviced Bill Clinton. Just like Monica Lewinsky. Now, do we really think that the story would have ever been reported otherwise- Clinton and Trump with their roles reversed? Trump just couldn’t have been the top there. Bill Clinton wasn’t about to go to town on that micro-penis.

I don’t believe Trump and Clinton ever had a sexual encounter with each other. Although, there is that bizarre painting of Slick Willie in a dress. Epstein is supposed to have been so fond of it that law enforcement found it hanging in his townhouse. Why are the Epstein victims suddenly being respected by the odious state controlled media? This includes the late Virginia Giuffre, who was almost certainly murdered, and was universally ignored outside of the conspiracy world. Until now. The congressional hearings should be interesting. Assuming they ever happen. Phony partisan politics at its worst. Democrats desperately trying to implicate Trump and Trump only. Republicans desperately trying to implicate anyone other than Trump. I hope someone speaks up for all those young guys sitting in prison for statutory rape. She looked older. Had a fake ID. Doesn’t matter. I don’t think any of them conspired to traffic anyone. Just had sex with their underage girlfriend.

There was the June 29, 1989 Washington Times front page which read: “Homosexual prostitution inquiry ensnares VIPs with Reagan Bush.” Underneath it was announced, “‘Call boys’ took midnight tour of White House.” That all sounds pretty normal, right? After a few unnatural deaths, the story went quickly away. Rep. Barney Frank, who literally ran a gay brothel out of his D.C. home, went on to be reelected many more times. I covered this, and other sordid scandals like it, in my book Hidden History. These diabolical One Percenters like the little boys as much as the little girls. Pizzagate has been “debunked,” right? Actually, no it hasn’t. I don’t care if Alex Jones issued a forced apology. Those Instagram photos were really disturbing. Who duct tapes a four year old girl to a table and takes a picture? Who captions a frightening empty room with metal walls “kill room?” Why did Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager John Podesta have a painting depicting cannibalism in his office? Why did his brother Tony have drawings of naked kids with red bottoms hanging in his home?

All those Podesta emails, which were leaked by the exiled Julian Assange, with far too many references to “pizza” and “pasta.” What’s the innocent explanation for saying, “I think you left a pizza-related map here?” Or talking about having pizza for “a couple of hours?” Supposedly, “pizza” and “pasta” are codewords in the sexual underground for girls and boys. Barack Obama had an email where he talked a bit too enthusiastically about “hot dogs” as well. We can guess what that’s code for, and Larry Sinclair probably wouldn’t be surprised. This is the darkest part of the corruption that I have investigated. But it’s unfortunately true. Our leaders do seem to choose, when they have the option, children as sexual partners. Now, this may not be entirely for sexual gratification. Apparently, something called adrenochrome is released from children when they are absolutely terrified. This perhaps explains snuff films. And it allegedly has the side effect that produces the very crowded “black eye” club.

This is dangerous territory. The private investigator working with state senator John DeCamp on exposing the Franklin Credit scandal in Nebraska, Gary Caradori, was killed along with his eight year old son in a small plane crash. His papers, including incriminating photos of famous figures in compromising positions, were never found. One of the young boys who was victimized by the abuse would die in a hospital waiting room of unknown causes, with a copy of DeCamp’s book in hand. Now that’s staging. Nancy Schaefer, one of the most vocal critics of the putrid Child Protective Services, which has been linked to child sex trafficking itself, was murdered along with her husband. Cathy O’Brien was an outspoken survivor of child sex trafficking, who once appeared on my podcast. She told a horrifying story of being hunted like animals by elitists including the recently departed, beloved Dick Cheney, in a demented version of “The Most Dangerous Game.”

So how likely, given this kind of hidden history that I’ve barely scratched the surface of, are we to get the truth about what happened to Virginia Giuffre and others on Lolita Island, which allegedly included guests like Bill Gates, Prince Andrew, and so many others who have lifelong “stay out of jail free” cards? I am perplexed that this story has received the mainstream coverage it has. There is no non-conspiratorial way to cover it, is there? We know that Epstein had cameras and surveillance video everyone on the island. This footage was probably part of what was discovered during an FBI search of the safe at his New York estate, which subsequently “disappeared.” Will either Clinton or Trump go down? Bill Gates? Any of those Hollywood figures? Maybe they’ll find a secret cabal of “White Supremacists” who were actually controlling poor college dropout Epstein. No way is Israel’s Mossad going to be reported as paying Epstein to blackmail all these public figures.

Read the Whole Article

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“The Soviet Union and something called communism per se had not been the object of Washington’s global attacks. There had never been an International Communist Conspiracy. The enemy was, and remains, any government or movement, or even individual, that stands in the way of the expansion of the American Empire; by whatever name the US gives to the enemy – communist, rogue state, drug trafficker, terrorist.”

~ William Blum

The real enemy of every American citizen (and all others) is the ruling master class (often referred to as the “Deep State”) and all its political pawns and enforcers in the U.S. government. The planted (selected) head pawn at this time is the evil narcissist Trump, but the next puppet will likely be even worse, if one can imagine that, because that is what history tells us. The U.S. is currently the most brutal empire that has ever existed, if one considers all those hundreds of millions harmed, slaughtered, and murdered in war, through regime change, through military aggression, due to economic interference and tariffs, due to sanctions, due to fully funded proxy wars and genocide, and due to attempted control of most every country on earth.

As far as American citizens are concerned, they are horribly abused at the hands of government in multiple ways, not the least of which is the fact that there are more arbitrary laws, regulations, restrictions, debt, theft, and incarceration for victimless ‘crimes’ than anywhere else on earth. For some time now, this country’s residents have been in a physical and psychological hell. In addition to all this, the intense tyranny these past 6 years has been beyond insane.

Regardless of how bad it gets before this empire implodes and fails, which will likely be sooner rather than later, the blame for the downfall of this heinous empirical experiment will be levied against some claimed ‘enemy’ state, and that will be a lie. It is not China, Russia, North Korea, or Iran that should be feared, it is this State and its government, the same State that most voluntarily accept and worship. This means that fault also rests with all in this country who support this governing monster, and who stand by without resistance to this totalitarian system of evil.

Many will think this assessment harsh, because many will never seek the truth, nor will they take responsibility for their failure to secure their own freedom. You see, as far as I can tell, this is the nature of the humanoid creature called man. While it seems that this could be a learned behavior, based on gullibility, indoctrination, and propaganda, I do not accept that excuse. I consider this to be weakness, cowardice, indifference, or dependency, or whatever other term can be used to describe it, but it is a pathetic flaw and therefore not a legitimate excuse for failure. In the end, it is not the fault of any master willingly allowed to rule, but falls on the shoulders of those voluntarily accepting their own enslavement.

I should mention once again that government actually does not control anything, as the politicians in government are but pawns of the real power. However, government is the most vital connection to the people, and without that middleman position, the real ruling class could not achieve power at all. Therefore, by eliminating government and making impotent the political class, actual progress toward a free society would become possible, albeit that the plebiscites did not demand just another government with different people, which is what has been the case since the beginning.

Over the past 100 years or so, the masses have accepted tax on income, a huge controlling central banking system, WWI, the State-created depression, WWII, Korean War, Vietnam War, complete economic chaos, the Gulf war, the 9/11 inside job hoax and false flag, the War of Terror, torture, the Patriot Act, blanket surveillance, the housing crash and bank bailouts, the fake ‘covid pandemic,’ poisonous injections called ‘vaccines, lockdowns, the American taxpayer funded Zionist Israeli genocide, globalism, and now digital ID and the digital takeover of all. This of course, is a very short list, but apparently “the people” never learn anything from being the cattle herded by their chosen masters into the cages of tyranny to await slaughter.

All empires fail, but with that fall will come much pain and suffering. All of us are now in the position of awaiting a digital prison, where some will be allowed to participate at times, and others not at all. Tracked, traced, and fully programmed, so that all activity, movement, finance, personal information, and life itself will be controlled by the coming technocratic State. This will require that all property and assets be confiscated, tokenized, and used to enrich the rich even more, as the great taking comes to fruition. The control grid once this digitization takes place, will be all consuming and completely inescapable by the lowly masses. That means all of you.

In today’s world, the mass majority, which is a super majority, do not care whatsoever about their own freedom and liberty. They go along to get along, never understanding that they are committing financial and personal suicide. But fear not, as many will be forcibly suicided soon enough, when the depopulation agenda goes into high gear. It has already begun and few understand this paradigm, but with time, it will accelerate greatly, and without apology. Open culling will be deemed necessary by the State; which could then lead to a land similar to that of Soylent Green.

Remember, once you are inside of and consumed by Digital ID and the digitally-controlled State, it will be too late to escape. Any remedy has to occur before that time, but the only viable solution is for a large minority to completely abandon the State. that means ignoring it, mass disobedience, and dissent, especially concerning digitized currency, which will be programmable and financially crippling to all, making total control a reality. At this point, this is without question in my mind. Honestly, I do not see large numbers of people deciding as individuals to abandon this heinous system of rule, and there is very little time left for that to be an option.

Why not destroy this empire now, and in fact, destroy any and every empirical system that ever again rears its gruesome head?

“Why do you accept being treated like an inmate?” “Power cannot survive when its subjects free themselves from fear.”

~ Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt — “Empire”

This article was originally published on GaryDBarnett.com.

The post The Real Enemy of the U.S. and the World Is the U.S. Empire: Not Russia, China, North Korea, or Iran appeared first on LewRockwell.

Like a bad Italian opera, the fat lady is singing from a balcony overlooking a city that is ablaze. Zaporhyzhia, Dneipropetrovsk, Donetsk, Kherson, Kharkiv, Sumy… The Russian ground forces are attacking in all of these locations, which represents about 1,000 miles of territory stretching from Sumy in the north to Zaporhyzhia in the south. Russia is inflicting an average of 1,335 casualties a day on the Ukrainian forces, which translates into 456,695 losses in 2025 as of November 17. That is almost 40,000 per month. Add to that an estimated 20,000 to 40,000 desertions each month… That means Ukraine must recruit a minimum of 60,000 new conscripts each month just to maintain its current troop strength. That ain’t happening (see chart above).

The recruitment figures cited by the Atlantic Council and the Institute for the Study of War, which represent partisan pro-Ukrainian sites, reinforce the dire state of the Ukrainian forces. When your very best friends are telling you that you are 50% short, you know things are grim.

Meanwhile, back in Kiev, Zelensky ain’t home. He’s scampering about Europe pleading for more money, but the Europeans are focused intently on the brewing corruption scandals haunting the Z-man. There is not a lot of enthusiasm for sending billions of dollars more to Ukraine as key officials in Zelensky’s government seek sanctuary in Israel (i.e., you don’t get extradited from Israel if you’re Jewish, even if major criminal charges hand over your head).

There are rumors in Moscow that the diplomatic dance with Washington is heating up, but I think that is just wishful thinking on the part of some in Washington. Trump’s failure to deliver on peace, coupled with his bombastic, threatening rhetoric towards Venezuela, Iran and Russia, is losing him support and fracturing his MAGA base.

This article was originally published on Sonar21.

The post Ukraine’s Days Are Numbered appeared first on LewRockwell.

International Man: Doug, you recently visited Azerbaijan—a country most people have never heard of, let alone could find on a map.

You’ve spent decades exploring some of the world’s least understood regions. What brought you to Azerbaijan, and how does it compare with other obscure countries you’ve visited for potential opportunity?

Doug Casey: I gave up sport traveling years ago. That’s because the world has become quite homogenized. Tons of bucket-listing tourists everywhere, wearing the same clothing, maintained by the same ubiquitous food and hospitality franchises. There’s not much point in pretending to be Richard Burton anymore.

That said, some friends—mostly Germans—who belong to ETIC, the Extreme Travelers International Congress, still enjoy travel camaraderie, and retro-rocking off the beaten path. I don’t know what the future holds for my friends at ETIC, since there are fewer and fewer extreme places in the world. But on the other hand, I expect over the next five or 10 years we’re going to have lots more war zones.

They decided to revisit Azerbaijan and Nagorno-Karabakh, inviting Matt Smith and I along.

ETIC was founded by my friend Kolja Spöri, an ex-Formula One exec. There were ten of us, and everyone had been to over a hundred countries as a bare minimum. To give you a better flavor of the company, one of them had run a marathon on each of the seven continents on seven consecutive days, an unusual world record. No cubicle dwellers here.

The long war between Azerbaijan and Armenia, mostly over a disputed enclave called Nagorno-Karabakh, had been ongoing since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. It finally ended about eighteen months ago. The Extreme Travelers are fairly familiar with desolation, and usually it’s hard to beat a recent war zone in that department. But, as I’ll explain, the place was a huge surprise.

We spent a few days in Baku, the capital. Incidentally, the first commercial production of oil in the world was here, not in Pennsylvania, as most Americans think. You’ve probably seen this famous picture of Baku 150 years ago, with several hundred primitive oil wells spraying oil everywhere. No longer. Azerbaijan is still a big producer of petroleum, providing 70% of the national income. But things are now neat, clean, and modern.

After a few days there, we drove hundreds of miles all around Nagorno-Karabakh, which has recently been reclaimed by the Azerbaijanis. About 100,000 Armenians left everything but what they could carry and exited en masse. There are some hard feelings. Not to mention some tens of thousands of war dead. The Azeri army detonated an Armenian anti-tank mine for us in a field they were clearing.

International Man: Azerbaijan sits on a geopolitical fault line at the crossroads of Russia, Iran, and Turkey—and recently played a crucial role for Israel during its 12-day war with Iran.

From your visit, what insights did you gain about where this region is headed and what may lie ahead on this volatile frontier?

Doug Casey: Azerbaijan has ten million people. Like the Iranians, they’re Shia Muslims, but religion doesn’t seem prominent here. No muezzins on loudspeaker, no burqas or hijabs. Oddly—I’d say opportunistically—they’re aligned with Israel, and allowed themselves to be used as a flyover for the recent US–Israeli attack on the Iranians. Strange, in that there are about twenty million Azeris across the border in Iran. Incidentally, Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei, is half Azeri.

Central Asia, like the Near East, is chronically unstable—a crossroads of every religious, ethnic, and linguistic group, with periodic bloody conquests. Old resentments seem to linger forever.

I got an email from a subscriber—an American of Armenian descent—who urged me not to go. He said I’d be propagandized and assured me that the Azeris were very, very bad people. And after getting to know a number of Azerbaijanis, I was assured by several that the Armenians were very, very bad people. That doesn’t augur well for the peace treaty that Trump claims to have brokered in the area. The Azeris are basically Turks, and the well-known holocaust of the Armenians and Greeks by the Turks is well remembered.

The chances of naïve busybody Americans creating peace on the other side of the world are less than zero. They’ll find they’ve just made more enemies while bankrupting themselves. They never learn. Fuhgedaboudit.

International Man: The US recently brokered a peace deal between historical enemies Armenia and Azerbaijan. As part of the deal, Armenia will lease the so-called ‘Trump Corridor’ (officially the Zangezur Corridor)—effectively inserting the US into the strategic space between Iran and Russia.

How do you interpret this move in the broader geopolitical chessboard?

Doug Casey: Further proof that, after hydrogen, stupidity is the most common thing in the universe. Wherever the US inserts itself anywhere in the world, it inevitably makes things worse—picking sides, shipping weapons and money around, enabling more warfare. Trump may have put a Band-Aid on the unpleasantness between Armenia and Azerbaijan, but rest assured it’s at great cost in dollars and threats from the US government.

This got me thinking more about Trump. He thinks he’s America’s answer to Louis XIV, who said “L’etat c’est moi” (I am the State). But I’ll lay odds he won’t finish his term; he’ll turn out to be Louis XVI.

International Man: You noted how pervasive the propaganda in Azerbaijan was—yet how familiar it felt compared to what we experience in the West.

What did you mean by that?

Doug Casey: It’s a huge mistake to believe almost anything that you hear or read in the media. A lot of the news is pure propaganda. It’s devoid of any critical thinking or historical background. Media types create “factoids”—an idiotic CNN-created neologism that most people think means something like “a fun little fact”. It doesn’t. A “factoid” relates to a “fact” the way an “android” does to a human, or an “asteroid” does to a star—deceptively similar, but quite different. The subtle manipulation of words is the best way to lie to intelligent people. Sorry for the tangent… but I mostly listen to the news not to find out what’s supposedly happening, but to see what other people are supposed to be thinking.

International Man: Given what you witnessed firsthand in Azerbaijan, what do you see as the broader investment implications?

Doug Casey: Since the 15 Soviet republics broke up in 1991, Azerbaijan has been run by the Aliyev family, first the father, now the son. Hereditary dynasties normally augur badly. But, then again, they may be better than so-called democracies, which are the current fashion.

The Aliyev government rates very low in the assessment by places like Freedom House and the Heritage Institute for things like personal freedom and economic opportunity. It’s not Switzerland or Cayman, but it’s stable, prosperous, and improving. I think it’s an underrated place.

Amazingly, Baku has Ferrari, Bugatti, and Lamborghini dealerships. It also has some of the heaviest traffic jams you’re likely to see this side of Bangkok. It seems like none of the cars are more than five years old, and they’re all in good condition. So the money is being widely distributed, and I saw no signs of unrest or unhappiness. The place is hard to tell from Denver, except that it’s safer.

And while the US sinks into bankruptcy, degeneracy, and corruption, Azerbaijan is providing a counter-example. At least when it comes to public works, like roads. We drove hundreds of miles, all around the country, at high speed.

The US spends $250 billion per year repairing its roads. It takes forever, and we mainly get crews standing around forever just to fix potholes. It seems like a giant grift. Matt Smith’s description is quite accurate:

“By far, the most impressive thing I saw during our visit was the level of construction occurring in the country… the scale of which is almost beyond imagination. … occasionally I could glimpse below in the valley a brand-new highway system which included dozens of tunnels. Now this is probably the most difficult terrain possible to do major construction.

“And yet what I glimpsed from above was shocking in scale. … along the roads that we traveled, there were endless streams of heavy equipment, hard at work, reshaping the landscape to expand the highway system we were on. There were cement factories everywhere built bespoke to support this ambitious effort.

“The scale was so massive, so inorganic, and so out of place, we had a hard time making sense of it. To do something like this in America would be utterly impossible. It would cost trillions of dollars. The thinking required, too big, the manpower, unavailable, the will, long gone. … seeing this scale of construction, the costs I imagined seemed utterly impossible. And so, at my earliest opportunity, I did some research. What I found was shocking.

Azerbaijan has built 4,000 kilometers of highway, 45 tunnels, including the second longest in the world, 447 bridges, 16 viaducts. Much of this over very, very difficult terrain. The project is mostly complete. And the total project time was less than five years. All this they’re doing for approximately $5 billion.

To put that in perspective, on March 26, 2024, the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore was damaged when a container ship collided into it. As of today, the bridge stands unusable. No repair work has yet started. The estimated cost for reconstruction of that bridge is between $1.7 billion and $1.9 billion. And when will it be done? It hasn’t even started yet. The current target completion date is October 2028.

So, in four and a half years, and for about $2 billion, we get an old and important bridge replaced in one of America’s cities. And in Azerbaijan, for $5 billion, they get 447 bridges, 4,000 kilometers of highways, dozens of tunnels including the second longest tunnel in the world. All in less than five years.”

On the long trip back to Buenos Aires (3 hours Baku to Istanbul, and 13.5 more to BA via Sao Paulo), we stopped off in Istanbul for a couple of days. It’s one of the world’s great cities, and one of my favorites. I think you’ll like the video podcast Matt and I did from there (link).

Reprinted with permission from International Man.

The post ‘Trump Corridor’ and the Future of Global Power appeared first on LewRockwell.

No no everything’s fine. It’s perfectly normal for people to have 80 hour work weeks while billionaires transform into trillionaires and tech plutocrats feed all our drinking water to AI servers as the planet dies. This is the only system that could possibly work.

No no it’s great. If you can’t afford a house it’s because you’re lazy and entitled. Stop eating fancy fruits and vegetables and sleep in your cubicle. One time I saw a homeless person with a phone. Sell your phone and use the money buy a house, you idiot.

What do you mean you want taxes to go toward infrastructure and basic social safety nets? That money is for the arms industry, and for Israel. If you want a high-speed rail system, build it yourself.

If you’re sad about being poor, ask your parents to loan you a few million dollars so you can invest it and become wealthy. There’s a veritable smorgasbord of exciting new opportunities on the horizon.

There’s still time to get in on the ground floor of the upcoming sexbot industry, for example, or the militarized police robot industry.

Create a line of children’s toys with functions you can activate through a small monthly fee with flexible tiered payment options.

See if you can design a highly addictive social media platform that feeds people’s information directly to CIA headquarters.

Invent an AI system that automatically freezes people’s digital money if they try to start a union.

Make a new gig economy app that helps poor people sell and deliver their organs to rich people.

Or what about a boat that sinks if you let your Remain Buoyant subscription lapse?

They say there are giant continents of plastic forming in the Pacific Ocean. You could rent out apartments on those.

Cult leaders are generally good at extracting wealth from their followers. You could probably make a chatbot that does that.

Elon Musk is working on those Neuralink implants to connect human brains to computers. You could set up a company that beams advertisements directly into people’s heads.

Speaking of advertisements, how has nobody thought of drones with megaphones blaring commercials at pedestrians yet? That’s a multibillion-dollar industry right there. They should fill the air in every major city on earth.

Capitalism is the best it’s ever been, is my point. There has never been a more exciting time to be an industrious young mind with a dream in your heart and a roll of nickels in your pocket.

So quit your whining, commie.

_________________

Check out my new book, Faces Of The Empire: The Battle For Humanity’s Soul.

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The post Capitalism Is the Best It’s Ever Been! appeared first on LewRockwell.

President Trump’s alliance with Israel is giving us Rabbi Yehuda Kaploun as  Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism.  The Special Envoy’s job is to suppress free speech if it involves criticism of any Israeli policy, including the ongoing genocide of Palestine and its remaining people.  Probably it will be considered anti-semitism to criticize the Trump regime for enabling with money, weapons, and diplomatic protection the genocide.

A Special Envoy is said to be needed because of rising anti-semitism in America provoked by the Israeli genocide of Palestine.  The genocide caused Charlie Kirk to break from Israel, and it is this break that likely resulted in Kirk’s assassination.

Rabbi Kaploun dressed it all up as a defense of free speech.  He says he is going to combat growing anti-semitism not by cancelling the First Amendment but by teaching history, by which he means history concocted by Zionists.  It is this “history” such as the holocaust and God’s gift of Palestine to Jews that it will be an offense to challenge.

As we experience Israel’s growing power over America, a question arises:  Is the Camp of the Saints so bad after all?  Would Americans prefer to be dominated by Israel or by Muslim refugees from America’s 21st century wars for Israel against Muslims.  Allegedly, Muslims are terrorists, but we have seen the Zionist terrorism in Gaza and the West Bank and in the Israeli assassinations of Iranians and Lebanese.  Zionist hatred of even the gentiles who are Israel’s protectors is a suspected cause of attacks on Christianity and of the use of pornography to destroy sexual morality. 

The Special Envoy problem now before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, owned by Israel, is unrecognized by Republicans but is causing heartburn for Democrats.  The Democrats’ constituency includes the Muslim immigrant-invaders, some of whom now serve in Congress, as federal judges, and as mayors and city council members.  America’s transition to a Tower of Babel has gone so far that Israel’s ability to control what the Japanese call a “mongrel population” is questionable.  People of Color are a rival privileged ethnicity to Jews, and they are more numerous.  The likely consequence of the Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism will be more and worsening conflict between Democrats and Republicans.  It will be the Republican Jewish constituency against the Democrats People of Color constituency. 

The creation of a special envoy to protect Jewish ethnicity from criticism should raise the question why among all ethnicities it is Israelis that the US government elects to give special legal privileges that prevent anything to which Israel objects from being said?  This legal privilege contradicts the Constitution’s requirement of equal protection under law.  Why are Trump and the Senate Foreign Policy Committee violating the US Constitution for Israel?

Here is the Jerusalem Post’s take on the matter.

The post Why Are Americans Being Placed Under a Speech Tsar? appeared first on LewRockwell.