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Rick Rozoff wrote:

Spokesperson for the Cincinnati police chief said that the middle-age woman savagely beaten is a “Russian, who fled back to her country,” though she was born and raised in Ohio. Echoing the claim of the chief perpetrator’s mother days earlier.

Fox is the only non-local news source reporting on the week-long story at all.

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Thanks, John Frahm.

Reclaim the Net

 

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Eugyppius

 

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Tim McGraw wrote:

Bataan Death March, 

My Mom, who is 93, told me this story years ago. Mom had driven her black Jaguar sports car from Kansas City up to southern Minnesota to visit her relatives. Mom told me the oil light came on somewhere in Iowa, so she pulled into a gas station. The mechanic looked under the hood and told my Mom that he didn’t have a clue how to fix the British car.

My Mom drove on to southern Minnesota with no problems.

Mom stayed in Minneapolis and drove out to the small towns of her relatives. There, she found out that her Uncle Scrubby had died. Mom told me that Uncle Scrubby was a good guy. He was always kind. They called him Scrubby because he was short.

Uncle Scrubby had joined the Army before WWII. He was in the regular Army and stationed in the Philippines when the Japanese invaded. His company surrendered to the Japs and then had to endure the Bataan Death March. 

Uncle Scrubby spent WWII in a Japanese POW camp outside of Manila. I think the fact that he was short and needed fewer calories of food to live kept him alive. 

After the war, Scrubby was shipped home. His widow told my Mom that Uncle Scrubby was a skeleton. He slowly put on weight and went to work in the small town.

Scrubby’s widow told my Mom that every night for over 60 years after the war, Scrubby would scream in his sleep.

The post Grand Uncle Scrubby appeared first on LewRockwell.

Ricordo a tutti i lettori che su Amazon potete acquistare il mio nuovo libro, Il Grande Default : https://www.amazon.it/dp/B0DJK1J4K9 

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

____________________________________________________________________________________

di David Stockman

(Versione audio della traduzione disponibile qui: https://open.substack.com/pub/fsimoncelli/p/fuori-di-testa-per-la-georgia)

La Camera dei Rappresentanti degli Stati Uniti ha approvato il “Mobilizing and Enhancing Georgia's Options for Building Accountability, Resilience, and Independence Act” (MEGOBARI Act) con 349 voti a favore e 42 contrari. Questi ultimi hanno visto la partecipazione di 34 Repubblicani non interventisti, sostenitori di America First, e di soli 8 Democratici dell'ala AOC. Il resto della massa bipartisan dell'Unipartito ha votato a favore della più stupida legge ficcanaso che si intromette in questioni che non riguardano assolutamente l'America.

La Georgia in questione è un piccolo Paese situato in un angolo remoto del Caucaso meridionale. Ciò che la legge fa è mobilitare l'intero governo di Washington – comprese sanzioni, aiuti esteri e persino la potenza militare – per punire il suo principale partito politico, “Sogno Georgiano”, per non essere sufficientemente antirusso e filo-atlantista.

Vediamo. Per quanto ne sappiamo, il piccolo puntino rosso sulla mappa qui sotto non potrebbe essere individuato da uno su cento membri del Congresso senza una freccia colorata. È ovvio che la Georgia sia circondata dall'Orso Russo e, di fatto, è stata una parte integrante dell'Unione delle Repubbliche Socialiste Sovietiche per oltre 70 anni, avendo notoriamente dato i natali persino a Joseph Stalin in persona. E 120 anni prima era stata parte integrante della Russia zarista dopo l'annessione di un regno precedente nel 1801.

Allo stesso tempo la sua capitale, Tbilisi, si trova a 3.500 chilometri in linea d'aria dal punto più vicino all'Atlantico, altrimenti noto come Canale della Manica. Mai, in tutta la storia, prima delle agitazioni neoconservatrici degli ultimi due decenni, nessuno al mondo aveva associato la Georgia al mondo atlantico.

Allora perché diavolo qualcuno può pensare che questo Paese non abbia il diritto – nella sua saggezza o meno – di ignorare le richieste di adesione alla NATO e non debba avere buoni rapporti con il suo grande vicino di casa, e parente storico, che è stata la linea di politica del partito Sogno Georgiano fin dalla sua ascesa al potere nel 2012?

I 3,8 milioni di abitanti della Georgia sono appena quelli di Los Angeles; il suo PIL di $34 miliardi equivale a circa 8 ore di produzione statunitense; il suo anemico reddito nazionale pro capite di $9.150 è all'incirca uguale a quello della Repubblica Dominicana.

Quindi, cosa diavolo c'entra questo con la sicurezza nazionale degli Stati Uniti? E perché mai il Congresso insiste affinché la Georgia entri nella NATO, che a sua volta avrebbe dovuto essere sciolta 34 anni fa, quando l'Impero Sovietico scomparve nel dimenticatoio della storia? Inoltre la minuscola forza armata della Georgia, composta da 20.000 uomini, non è nemmeno la metà dei 53.000 dipendenti del dipartimento di polizia di New York.

Tuttavia il MEGOBARI Act insiste sul fatto che la Georgia è fondamentale per gli interessi nazionali degli Stati Uniti e che deve diventare un alleato nella battaglia contro la presunta aggressione russa:

Il consolidamento della democrazia in Georgia è fondamentale per la stabilità regionale e gli interessi nazionali degli Stati Uniti [...] (quindi) la linea di politica degli Stati Uniti è quella di sostenere le aspirazioni costituzionalmente dichiarate della Georgia di diventare membro dell’Unione Europea e della NATO, di continuare a sostenere la capacità del governo della Georgia di proteggere la propria sovranità e integrità territoriale [...] (e) di combattere l’aggressione russa, anche attraverso sanzioni sul commercio contro di essa e l’attuazione e l’applicazione di sanzioni mondiali contro la Russia.

Ebbene, dopo la calamità di una sequenza infinita delle Guerre Infinite e il catastrofico spreco di $160 miliardi di risparmi americani nella guerra per procura del tutto inutile contro la Russia nella vicina Ucraina, è quasi impossibile immaginare cosa stiano pensando questi idioti di Capitol Hill.

La verità è che alla sicurezza nazionale americana non importa un fico secco di chi governa la Georgia e se la sua politica estera sia filo-russa, anti-russa, o puntigliosamente neutrale come quella della Svizzera. E l'ultima cosa che Washington dovrebbe fare è tentare di mettere un altro cavallo di Troia della NATO alle porte della Russia, quando il fatto è che quest'ultima non rappresenta alcuna minaccia per la sicurezza nazionale americana.

Tanto per ricordarlo: il PIL russo da $2.000 miliardi rappresenta solo il 7% dei $29.000 miliardi dell'economia americana; il suo bilancio ordinario per la difesa, pari a $70 miliardi, rappresenta solo il 7% del mostro da $1.000 miliardi del Pentagono; la sua forza nucleare è orientata alla deterrenza proprio come la nostra, senza nulla che si avvicini minimamente a una capacità di primo attacco; la sua capacità di trasporto aereo e marittimo convenzionale è così scarsa che non riuscirebbe a far arrivare nemmeno un battaglione sulla sua portaerei degli anni '80 prima che venisse relegata a far compagnia allo scrigno di Davy Jones dalle formidabili difese costiere americane.

In altre parole, tutta questa baraonda legislativa per conto di un “alleato” di cui non abbiamo bisogno, e che in ogni caso non desidera esserlo, mira a indebolire ulteriormente la Russia, che non rappresenta in alcun modo una minaccia per la sicurezza nazionale americana. Eppure questi legislatori dell'Unipartito, ossessionati dalla guerra, intendono fare tutto il possibile per spingere l'Impero statunitense nel profondo dell'Eurasia.

Subito dopo aver dichiarato che la linea di politica degli Stati Uniti è quella di imporre la propria volontà alla Georgia e degradare la Russia, il disegno di legge impone la consegna alle commissioni del Congresso di una relazione classificata appositamente preparata “che esamini la penetrazione di elementi dell'intelligence russa e delle loro risorse in Georgia; include un allegato che esamina l'influenza cinese e la potenziale intersezione della cooperazione russo-cinese in Georgia”.

Cosa?! Non sono affari di Washington se il governo eletto di Sogno Georgiano di un remoto micro-Paese irrilevante per la sicurezza nazionale americana sceglie di tollerare, o ignorare, la presenza nel suo Paese di presunti agenti dell'intelligence straniera. Per l'amor del cielo, con questo standard gli Stati Uniti dovrebbero chiudere metà delle loro 200 ambasciate in tutto il mondo perché pullulano di agenti della CIA che operano sotto copertura diplomatica e di agenti di NED, USAID, International Broadcasting Agency e altri il cui compiuto è cambiare i governi.

Infatti l'assoluta arroganza di questa parte del disegno di legge in particolare non può essere negata. L'implicazione nella relativa sezione del MEGOBARI Act sulle sanzioni è che Washington intraprenderebbe una guerra economica contro un Paese che non ha mai fatto alcun male all'America, e non ha la capacità di farlo, nonostante alcuni idioti ideologici e ficcanaso a Washington sostengano il contrario.

Il disegno di legge autorizza inoltre il Presidente a iniziare a usare l'arma interventista per eccellenza, le sanzioni, contro i membri del Parlamento georgiano e i funzionari dei partiti politici che “si sono consapevolmente macchiati di significativi atti di corruzione, violenza, o intimidazione in relazione al blocco dell'integrazione euro-atlantica in Georgia”.

Ecco fatto: il Congresso degli Stati Uniti afferma di avere giurisdizione sulla politica estera di quasi ogni nazione del pianeta. E se ci fossero dubbi su questa intenzione, un ulteriore testo statutario chiarisce che, se necessario, la Georgia verrebbe arruolata per un servizio militare contro la Russia, come disposto da Washington:

[...] in consultazione con il Segretario alla Difesa [...] per espandere la cooperazione militare con la Georgia, anche fornendo ulteriori equipaggiamenti di sicurezza e difesa ideali per la difesa territoriale contro l’aggressione russa e relativi elementi di addestramento, manutenzione e supporto alle operazioni.

Se il passaggio qui sopra sembra un'altra Ucraina in divenire, la somiglianza è in realtà ancora più sorprendente. Questo perché quello che abbiamo qui è un altro problema di adattamento territoriale ed etnico, scaturito dalla disgregazione dell'Unione Sovietica. E come nel caso dell'Ucraina, i neoconservatori e i mercanti d'armi di Washington l'hanno trasformato in una questione di “Stato di diritto” e di sovranità di confine, che, come nel caso dell'Ucraina, non lo è affatto.

Infatti, come il colpo di stato a Kiev del febbraio 2014 sponsorizzato da Washington, la Rivoluzione delle Rose in Georgia del 2003, che rovesciò il presidente sovietico e filo-russo, Eduard Shevardnadze, ebbe non poco sostegno dai soliti noti di Washington: NED, USAID, Dipartimento di Stato e CIA. Proteste diffuse, guidate da Mikheil Saakashvili, un provocatore addestrato da ONG sponsorizzate da Washington, culminarono con l'assalto dei dimostranti al parlamento con rose rosse, chiedendo le dimissioni di Shevardnadze. Queste ultime si verificarono nel novembre 2003, seguite da nuove elezioni.

Sostenuto dall'appoggio statunitense ed europeo, inclusi milioni di dollari stanziati dall'USAID per la mobilitazione elettorale e dall'Open Society Institute di George Soros, Saakashvili vinse le elezioni presidenziali del gennaio 2004. Questo, a sua volta, diede inizio a un programma filo-occidentale che mirava all'integrazione nella NATO e nell'UE e al ripristino dell'integrità territoriale della Georgia sulle province separatiste dell'Ossezia del Sud e dell'Abkhazia. Di conseguenza il suo governo aumentò massicciamente la spesa militare (dallo 0,8% del PIL nel 2003 all'8% nel 2008) e condusse operazioni per riaffermare il controllo su queste regioni separatiste, che portarono agli scontri del 2004 in Ossezia del Sud e all'operazione delle Gole di Kodori in Abkhazia nel 2006.

Queste regioni separatiste, raffigurate nella mappa qui sotto, erano enclave etniche distinte che parlavano un dialetto iraniano diverso da quello della popolazione principale della Georgia. Durante il periodo sovietico, infatti, queste due province erano state amministrate indipendentemente dalla Repubblica Georgiana, perché persino i comunisti si rendevano conto che le popolazioni non erano compatibili. Così, alla caduta dell'Unione Sovietica, entrambe le province dichiararono la propria indipendenza e da allora in poi operarono su base separatista di fatto.

Tuttavia l'escalation delle tensioni in Ossezia del Sud tra la grande maggioranza osseta e i villaggi georgiani minoritari spinse Saakashvili a lanciare un'offensiva militare nell'agosto 2008, prendendo di mira Tskhinvali, la capitale dell'Ossezia del Sud. Un successivo rapporto dell'UE sul conflitto condannò il “bombardamento indiscriminato con fuoco di artiglieria” della Georgia come causa dello scoppio della guerra.

Infatti nell'Ossezia settentrionale era presente anche una consistente popolazione osseta, rimasta in territorio russo dopo la dissoluzione dell'URSS nel 1991. Di conseguenza la Russia rispose all'offensiva georgiana con un massiccio contrattacco che respinse l'esercito georgiano dall'Ossezia meridionale e portò a una tregua mediata dalla Francia, che lasciò l'Ossezia meridionale e l'Abkhazia occupate dalle forze russe.

Successivamente queste due regioni separatiste furono riconosciute da Mosca come stati indipendenti e da allora sono rimaste fuori dal controllo georgiano. L'errore di calcolo di Saakashvili nello scatenare la guerra contro l'Ossezia del Sud nel 2008 e i continui fallimenti economici in Georgia portarono alla sua caduta nel 2012. Nell'ottobre di quell'anno il partito filorusso Sogno Georgiano, guidato dal miliardario Bidzina Ivanishvili, salì al potere con una vittoria democratica alle elezioni parlamentari, ottenendo il 55% dei voti e sconfiggendo il Movimento Nazionale Unito di Mikheil Saakashvili.

Tuttavia la disputa etnica locale del 2008, in aree così piccole da essere appena paragonabili a un puntino nel riquadro nero che raffigura la Georgia nell'angolo in alto a destra della mappa, è diventata la base per l'affermazione neoconservatrice secondo cui la Russia è una pericolosa potenza espansionista che deve essere fermata a ogni costo.

Ed è semplicemente assurdo. Nel panorama globale della storia recente, il conflitto dell'Ossezia del Sud del 2008, in questo angolo sperduto del pianeta, e che ha causato solo 228 vittime civili e 169 morti tra i militari, è stato un nulla di fatto. L'ennesima frittata tra “nazionalità” frammentate sparse lungo i confini russi quando l'Unione Sovietica è caduta e secoli di espansione territoriale zarista e comunista sono stati improvvisamente, e spesso, violentemente annullati.

In altri termini, non c'erano principi universali in gioco nel modo in cui i frammenti dell'Impero sovietico furono sistemati dopo il 1991. Si è trattato solo di un episodio isolato della storia e che non ha alcuna attinenza con la sicurezza nazionale americana.

Di conseguenza è stata solo l'aggressione ideologica del Partito della Guerra a Washington e dei suoi finanziatori nel complesso militare-industriale a causarne la diffusione. E ciò è avvenuto soprattutto attraverso istituzioni obsolete come la NATO e la cosiddetta Commissione di Helsinki del Congresso degli Stati Uniti – quest'ultima la vera istigatrice di questa assurda legislazione ficcanaso.

Washington non ha smesso di impegnarsi per provocare un atteggiamento anti-russo a Tbilisi, anche quando il suo stesso governo, dal 2012, ha scelto di rimanere amichevole con il vicino russo e di astenersi da qualsiasi tentativo di adesione alla NATO.

Tutto questo è abbastanza chiaro. Il MEGOBARI Act è una sciocchezza sfacciata. Nulla di ciò che è accaduto negli ultimi trent'anni sulla mappa qui sopra riguarda la sicurezza nazionale dell'America, a 10.000 chilometri di distanza, dall'altra parte del fossato atlantico.

Il fatto che una schiacciante maggioranza della Camera dei Rappresentanti degli Stati Uniti abbia ritenuto opportuno promulgare questa follia dimostra che Washington è la capitale mondiale della guerra. Invece di concentrarsi sul vero problema – tamponare l'enorme flusso di deficit di bilancio della nazione attraverso una radicale riforma dei sussidi e tagliare del 50% il bilancio militare americano da $1.000 miliardi – la maggioranza dell'Unipartito si aggrappa alle illusioni di un Impero al collasso.

Inoltre, non c'è mistero sul perché. Dopo decenni di dominio del complesso militare-industriale a Capitol Hill sono rimasti pochi funzionari eletti che abbiano vissuto la vera Guerra Fredda prima del 1991. Quindi si aggrappano a istituzioni ormai del tutto residuali, come la NATO e alleanze globali, quando nel mondo multipolare di oggi non ce n'è più bisogno.

Infatti un esame delle carriere dei quattro principali sostenitori (Steve Cohen, Joe Wilson, Richard Hudson, Marc Veasey) dell'Unipartito di questa legge assolutamente assurda vi dirà tutto ciò che c'è da sapere. Sono politici arrivisti che complessivamente hanno servito al Congresso per 65 anni e hanno trascorso complessivamente 128 anni al servizio della comunità.

Naturalmente i profittatori arrivisti sono sempre alla ricerca di missioni e progetti per giustificare la propria esistenza e per trovare l'occasione di far sentire la propria voce. Ma tentare di arruolare la Georgia, uno stato senza potere decisionale, contro la volontà del suo stesso elettorato, nell'assurda crociata di Washington contro Putin e la Russia si riduce sicuramente a un livello di menzogna a dir poco imbarazzante.

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

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

Whenever I talk about things like tariffs, Trump supporters appear in my comments to tell me that Europe has gotten a free ride for long enough and that it is time we learned to pay our way. I find it a little frustrating to read this, because in Europe it does not feel like we are getting a free ride at all. In fact it seems like the opposite: The most common complaint on the populist German right is that our political class refuses to represent our interests and will not stop carrying water for the Americans.

I recognise that I’ll never be able to put this right, but it’s worth trying, because it is important to understand the world as it is. The truth is that the United States is an imperial power. Generally speaking, it does not give foreign nations free rides and it does not hand out unearned favours. There is however a lot of confusion here, because hardly anybody bothers to describe honestly the geopolitical strategy pursued by the United States or the nature of the American empire. Western liberalism cannot conceptualise imperial politics, and while empire generally benefits political elites on both sides of the Atlantic, it is not necessarily or always in the interests of ordinary Americans or ordinary Europeans, which is yet another reason not to talk about it.

The Americans and the British before them expended enormous effort to preempt the emergence of a dominant power on the European Continent that might challenge their successive naval empires. They fought two world wars to stop Germany from becoming just such a power. This great struggle ended in 1945 with Western Europe as a fully subjugated imperial province. Since then, the Americans have coordinated the NATO alliance and guaranteed the security of European countries not out of charity, but because Europe is their provincial possession. As a rule, they have not wanted Europe to assume full responsibility for its own defence, because a world in which America no longer guarantees the security of Europe is a world in which Europe is no longer an American province. It’s that simple.

To fend off the Soviets, the Americans nevertheless rebuilt and rearmed the nations of Western Europe. Everyone involved in this project had to come up with a way to allow the Germans to become a dominant economic power again, without displacing the United States or provoking the hostilities of wary postwar neighbours like France. One solution here was the European Union, which promoted economic interdependency as a counterweight to nationalist concerns. Another solution came at the cultural level, where Germany sought to allay European anxieties over possible Teutonic aggression by developing a national cult of historical guilt for World War II, which steadily blossomed into a full-blown civic religion. This exercise in self-effacement has grown more and not less extreme over time, in part as a response to nervousness about the consequences of German reunification. Many voices on the right like to portray Germans as victims of an externally imposed guilt regime, but the truth is that we did most of this to ourselves. The German left in particular has profited from and encouraged this mindset from the beginning.

German political self-effacement had one unexpected feature, in that it proved to be contagious. Within a generation of 1945, many of the victorious allied powers were striving to develop their own historical guilt cults after the German example, in each case centred around a national original sin like slavery or colonialism. Just as the German political class found it expedient to foreground collective European concerns at the expense of a more narrowly construed German nationalism, so did the broader West develop an overarching obsession with global issues and the plight of the developing world. This has caused the proliferation of a lot of silly people in our political culture, a lot of profoundly stupid organisations, and at least two cancerous ideological systems in the form of climatism and migrationism. We have had a nearly incalculable gift in the form of 80 years of peace, which may yet be offset by the equally incalculable costs of the lunacies this peace has encouraged.

Trump’s greatest geopolitical ambition is to reorient American foreign policy away from Europe and the minor rivalry with Russia, towards East Asia and the far greater rivalry with China. This pivot entails a demotion of provincial Europe in the pecking order of empire. The Americans will want Europeans to pay more for their place in the broader imperial system, and they will be inclined to extend the Europeans fewer benefits. That is what a lot of the low-resolution MAGA rhetoric about free-riding Europeans adds up to, it is the meaning of Trump’s demands that European nations massively increase NATO spending, and it has been an important subtext in the tariff negotiations too. So far, NATO member states and the EU have folded to Trump’s demands with very little resistance, despite their extravagance.

The truth is that we could fund our own defence for less than 5% of our collective GDP, but this is as yet unthinkable, because European independence would spell the end of our present system. Basically, there can be no united Europe without the Americans. If and when the Americans leave, some European nations will pursue closer trade relations with Russia; others will oppose them in this. It has been four generations since any major European nation plotted an independent geopolitical agenda; the very idea is a nightmare for our rulers, and many of the resulting alliances would remind people of unfortunate early 20th-century geopolitical configurations. This is primarily why European leaders have developed such a fanatical obsession with the war in Ukraine. For the moment, the conflict defines Russia as an external threat and suppresses all discussions about the different national interests of EU member states. It is yet another way for Germany’s political class to practice their conventional self-effacement in favour of notional pan-European interests.

As in many other cases, Trump’s policies with respect to Europe represent the culmination of forces and trends that are much bigger than his presidency. The era of unchallenged American global hegemony is over with, and in this environment being a province of the American empire will just become a steadily worse deal for Europe as a whole.

This article was originally published on Eugyppius- A Plague Chronicle.

The post Trump’s Tariffs and Those Damned Freeloading Europeans appeared first on LewRockwell.

Predicting the collapse of a country is like reading between the lines of history, economics, and politics. Some nations, however, are walking on thin ice, where even a small additional burden could lead to their downfall. In this article, we’ll explore 10 countries facing severe risks that could put them on the brink of collapse by 2027. Some of these might surprise you.

1. Lebanon: A country where nothing works anymore
Once hailed as the “Switzerland of the Middle East,” Lebanon is now in absolute economic chaos. Hyperinflation, currency collapse, and political corruption have brought the state to its knees. Ordinary citizens struggle to secure basic needs like food and fuel. Can Lebanon still be saved, or will it follow the fate of nations that fragmented into smaller entities?

2. Afghanistan: Taliban isolation and hunger
Since the Taliban regained power, Afghanistan has plunged into international isolation. Its economy is collapsing, people are starving, and humanitarian organizations cannot meet the overwhelming needs. If the situation doesn’t improve, the state risks fragmentation into territories controlled by armed factions.

3. Haiti: From freedom to a nation ruled by gangs
Haiti has been grappling with a crisis for years. With no functioning government, armed gangs dominate cities. Add to that natural disasters like earthquakes and hurricanes, and you have a recipe for complete collapse. Can Haiti ever rise again?

4. Sudan: A nation in perpetual conflict
Sudan’s civil war between the army and militias is spiraling into catastrophe. Thousands are dead, millions are displaced, and famine looms large. If the conflict continues, Sudan could disintegrate into smaller regions controlled by local warlords.

5. Venezuela: From riches to rags
Home to some of the world’s largest oil reserves, Venezuela has been in freefall for years. Hyperinflation, food shortages, and mass emigration have devastated the nation. Could Nicolás Maduro’s regime fall, or will Venezuela remain stuck in this “frozen collapse” for decades?

6. Myanmar: A coup that crushed hope
The 2021 military coup plunged Myanmar into chaos. Protests, uprisings, and ethnic conflicts have become the norm. If the military junta doesn’t relinquish power, the country risks breaking into warring regions.

7. Yemen: A nation where survival is a battle
Yemen is the epitome of disaster. Its civil war between Houthi rebels and the internationally recognized government has raged for years. Millions suffer from hunger and disease. If the conflict isn’t resolved, Yemen could vanish as a functioning state altogether.

8. North Korea: Behind the curtain of isolation
Kim Jong Un’s regime appears solid, but what if it isn’t? Economic sanctions, famine, and a possible power struggle after his death could lead to an unexpected collapse. If that happens, the chaos could be unimaginable.

9. Pakistan: Battling economic and political storms
Pakistan is grappling with an economic crisis deepened by debts and political instability. Extremism, corruption, and worsening relations with neighbors could weaken the country to the point of losing control over its regions.

10. Somalia: A collapse that never ended
Somalia has been a failed state for decades. The terrorist group Al-Shabaab still controls large swathes of territory, while the central government remains weak. Without minimal international support, total disintegration seems inevitable.

Why Do Countries Most Of Time Collapse?
Normally, the collapse of a state is always the result of a combination of factors:

• Economic instability: Hyperinflation, overwhelming debts, or resource shortages.
• Political corruption: Weak governments unable to address crises.
• Civil conflicts: Wars, ethnic tensions, or regional uprisings.
• Climate change: Worsening conditions, natural disasters, and resource depletion.
• International isolation: Sanctions or loss of foreign support.

Can Any of These Countries Be Saved?
History shows us that even nations on the brink of collapse can change course with the right leadership, international assistance, or societal unity. While rescue is possible, these cases will require far more than just hope.

Which other countries do you think are at risk? Let’s discuss.

Beyond the most vulnerable states, there are also numerous other countries that could face significant challenges if their situations do not improve.

Read the Whole Article

The post First Countries Facing Severe Risks That Could Put Them on the Brink of Collapse by 2027 appeared first on LewRockwell.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This story has been updated with new FBI documents recently discovered, and subsequently is being republished on August 1, 2025. Primary source documents used in the story have been notated and added to the ‘End Notes’

One of the enduring mysteries of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing case is the little-known but well-documented and indisputable fact that Timothy McVeigh and the “others unknown” involved in the attack used two different Ryder trucks in the later stages of the bombing plot.

What happened to this second truck, where it was obtained (FBI documents indicate that the FBI may have believed it was purchased at auction—more on those documents in a moment), and its final purpose remains unknown today.

Dozens of witnesses in Kansas observed two distinctly different Ryder trucks between April 11th and 18th — both parked at both Geary Lake and the Dreamland Motel.

One of the trucks was smaller, described frequently as faded yellow in color, with either no visible Ryder logo or one that was barely visible, and with a cab-overhang on the front part of the truck.

The other of the two trucks was described as much larger—the 20-foot model—and appeared cleaner and newer. This was the truck rented from Elliott’s body shop on the 17th that was ultimately used to deliver the bomb.

The Smaller “Second Truck”

The second truck, with a few exceptions, is generally omitted from most contemporary accounts of the bombing, yet its existence is confirmed within numerous FBI documents.

A half dozen people at the Dreamland Motel—where McVeigh stayed the week before the bombing—place McVeigh parking the smaller Ryder truck at the motel on Easter Sunday and Fri/Sat—days before the larger bomb truck was rented at Elliott’s on Monday the 17th.

The Dreamland Witnesses

Consider the following account from Apache helicopter mechanic Shane Boyd. Boyd stayed in room #28 at the Dreamland Motel for several weeks in April 1995 while he was working at nearby Ft. Riley. Boyd told FBI SA Mark Bouton that around 6:00 AM on Friday, April 14th, he saw a Ryder truck with a steel-framed trailer pulling out of the Dreamland Motel’s parking lot.1 Boyd also told the FBI that he is sure he saw the Ryder truck parked at the Dreamland Motel again on Saturday the 15th and Easter Sunday. 2

Consider also the accounts of Dreamland residents David King and his mother, Herta King. The Kings both saw the smaller Ryder truck the weekend before the bomb truck’s rental. FBI special agents Robert Knox and Leslie Gardner interviewed David King on April 27 regarding activities in and around the motel. King told the FBI that on Easter Sunday, his mother, Herta, visited him at the Dreamland around half past noon. King stated that both he and his mother saw a yellow Ryder truck parked directly in front of his room that Sunday afternoon.3

Herta King later testified at the McVeigh trial that she saw the Ryder truck parked at the Dreamland on Easter. She stated that she was friends with the motel owner, Lea McGown, and that they had even discussed the truck being there on Easter. King testified that Lea McGown told her “it doesn’t make sense that a truck was there on Sunday, if McVeigh rented it on Monday.”4

Indeed, it doesn’t make sense. Consider, then, what does make sense: the truck seen before the 17th was a different truck. This is what the evidence suggests. Supporting this theory is David King’s statement that he saw two different Ryder trucks at the Dreamland. King’s observations are crucial for understanding the multiple Ryder truck sightings that occurred before Monday, April 17th.

On April 16th, Easter, King saw the older “faded yellow” Ryder truck parked at the Dreamland. King then noted a change in the truck from Sunday to Monday: on Monday, McVeigh arrived driving a “brand new” and “more aerodynamic” model Ryder truck.5 This was the bomb truck that was rented from Elliott’s, and its appearance was distinctly different, much larger than the truck King and his mother had seen that weekend.

King also saw McVeigh and two other men attaching a trailer to the new Ryder truck and engaging in some activity with the truck and trailer. King recalls this because the Ryder truck blocked access to his parking spot. He noted that something was inside the trailer wrapped in a dirty white canvas tarp: “It was a squarish shape, and it came to a point on top, about three or four feet high,”6 King told the New York Times.

Witness Connie Hood described a similar scene involving the older Ryder truck that weekend: it had a trailer attached and a group of guys working there. Hood told McCurtain Gazette reporter J.D. Cash, “I saw John Doe No. 2 with McVeigh in the parking lot, and a couple of other guys were helping them. They were working on that old truck they had. There was a trailer hooked to the truck that afternoon, and it had a lot of stuff in it. I couldn’t tell what because a tarp covered the trailer.”7

Witness Shane Boyd also observed a trailer attached to the older model truck that weekend. Whatever its purpose, it seems the trailer was moved from the older truck and then attached to the new one when McVeigh showed up with it on Monday.

In addition to Shane Boyd, Herta King, David King, and Connie Hood, the owners of the Dreamland Motel also noticed the other older model truck. Motel owner Lea McGown and her son, Eric, described the truck to the FBI and reporters, and their accounts were published in the newspaper.

It was shortly after an Easter lunch when the McGowns saw McVeigh trying to park the Ryder truck.8 Lea McGown’s recollection to reporters was vivid, saying, “He backed in jerky, jerky, jerky. Like somebody who doesn’t know how to drive a truck. I thought he was going to smash my roof!”9

Upon watching this, Lea McGown sent her son, Eric, to tell McVeigh to move the truck to the open area in front of the office. Eric McGown got a good look at the truck as he did and described it in detail:

“It was medium-sized. It wasn’t one of the newest models. It was not so rounded. It had a different compartment for the one cab, and it had the trailer portion.”10

Consistent with other sightings of this second truck, it had a trailer attached, looked older, with faded and worn yellow paint, and had no writing on the back.

The Geary Lake Witnesses

Alongside the Dreamland witnesses, a handful of people observed a Ryder truck parked at Geary Lake days before the bomb truck was rented.

According to the official story, McVeigh built the bomb with Terry Nichols at Geary Lake on April 18th. However, witnesses interviewed by the FBI reported seeing a distinct yellow Ryder truck at Geary Lake fishing park for four straight days the week before: on the 11th, 12th, 13th, and 14th.

The FBI roadblock at Geary Lake gathered testimony from multiple credible witnesses who recalled seeing the truck parked there every morning on their way to work, with some also spotting the truck in the evening during their commute home.

Two of these witnesses were Kansas real estate agent Georgia Rucker11 and retiree James Sargeant12, with the latter spending the week from the 11th to the 14th fishing at the lake each morning. Sergeant testified at trial that “it’s pretty hard to forget something you see four days in a row” – much less something so out of place as a yellow moving truck parked at the shoreline. Rucker said much the same, spotting the truck parked at the lake each morning on her commute that week.

Perhaps the most interesting account from the Geary Lake witnesses is that of Robert Nelson. Nelson testified that he drove into Geary Lake on April 17th or 18th—he wasn’t sure which day. It was there that he saw the Ryder truck, surrounded by several vehicles, and a group of four to five men.13

Read the Whole Article

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On Saturday, I received three pennies in change at a store. Looking at the pennies in my hand, one jumped out for its unique color. I was happy to see it — the happy penny.

Sometimes I have to look at the date on a penny to see if it is one of those increasingly rare to receive in change pre-1982 pennies with a different metal composition than the newer pennies. But, sometimes a special hue shines through the surface giving away the relatively rare coin’s presence.

In 1965, silver was replaced with cheaper metal in new dime and quarter coins. A few years later, in 1971, President Richard Nixon closed the gold window, preventing foreign governments from exchanging their United States dollars for gold. Several decades earlier, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt had demanded Americans turn in to the government their gold coins. Roosevelt then devalued the dollar in terms of gold. US gold coins production for public use also ended.

These actions, spanning roughly fifty years from the 1930s to the 1980s, were all taken to facilitate progressively inflating away the value of the dollar. Over this time, metals deemed too valuable were successively removed from US coins. First removed was gold. Then silver. Both are precious metals long valued for their monetary use. Then even the base metal copper was replaced so that new pennies are made nearly entirely of cheaper zinc.

One reason you don’t often see these older pennies, and silver coins especially, in change is that people hold on to them because of their high metal value relative to face value (the value stamped on the coins). This is an example of the behavior described in Gresham’s Law. Gresham’s law is often summed up briefly as “bad money drives out good.” In other words, people will tend to spend the lower metal value coins while saving — or exchanging at a premium over face value as is now commonly done with the old gold and silver coins — the higher metal value coins.

A little over forty years after the penny’s metal content was downgraded, the US government is taking a new sort of action with pennies because of the continuing decrease in the dollar’s value. In May, the United States Mint declared it had made its final order of blanks upon which pennies are pressed. The plan is for these blanks to be turned into the last pennies put into circulation. Fatima Hussein and Alan Suderman, reporting for the Associated Press on the discontinuation of the production of new pennies, noted that making each penny now costs almost four cents — nearly four times the coin’s face value.

Hussein and Suderman also related that a nickel costs almost 14 cents to make — nearly three times its face value. Despite the coin’s name, nickel makes up only about one fourth of the metal content of a new nickel coin. The rest is copper.

The writing seems to be on the wall for nickels. As their metallic value and production costs further and further exceed their face value, there will be more pressure to make changes in nickels’ composition to significantly reduce their cost of production. Alternatively, the government may, as is being done with the penny, just stop making new nickels.

How bad has the inflation been that the coins debasement and discontinuation of production has accompanied? Consider that the one-ounce gold coins Roosevelt demanded people turn in had a face value of twenty dollars but now have a metal content value of roughly 3,400 dollars. And the metal value of those silver dimes and quarters that the US Mint stopped producing 60 years back is now over 25 times the face value.

Why do I think of that penny with the unique color as the happy penny? The reason is because it reminds me of a time when coins, along with the dollar, retained their value instead of having their value continuously eroded by government’s inflation.

This article was originally published on The Ron Paul Institute.

The post The Happy Penny appeared first on LewRockwell.

Escalation with Russia is clearly on the cards (in one form or another), but Trump has also threatened to attack Iran’s nuclear sites – again.

A U.S. President, beset by the Epstein story that refuses to lie down and die, and under pressure from domestic hawks because of a visibly collapsing Ukraine, has been letting off a blunderbuss of geo-political threats across the board: Firstly, and principally, at Russia; but secondly at Iran: 

“Iran is so nasty, they’re so nasty in their statements. They got hit. We cannot allow them to have nuclear weapons. They are still talking about uranium enrichment. Who talks like that? It’s so stupid. We will not allow it.”

Escalation with Russia is clearly on the cards (in one form or another), but Trump has also threatened to attack Iran’s nuclear sites – again. Were he to do so, it would be ‘gesture politics’ entirely removed from the reality of Iran’s present circumstance.

A further strike would be presented as setting back – or finally halting – Iran’s capacity to assemble a nuclear weapon.

And that would be a lie.

Theodore Postol, Professor Emeritus of Science, Technology, and International Security at MIT, regarded as the U.S.’ leading expert on nuclear weapons and their delivery systems, however makes some counter-intuitive technical points which, when translated politically (the aim of this piece), plainly indicate that a further attack on the three nuclear sites struck by the U.S. on 22 June would be pointless.

It would be pointless in terms of Trump’s ostensible objective – yet a strike may happen anyway albeit as a piece of theatre designed to facilitate other different objectives such an attempt at “regime change” and furthering Israel’s hegemonic ambitions in the region.

Simply put, Professor Postol’s compelling argument is that Iran does not need to rebuild its previous nuclear program in order to build a bomb. That era is over. Both the U.S. and Israel believe, with good reason, Postol says, that most of Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium (HEU) survived the attack and is accessible:

“The tunnels at Esfahan are deep – so deep that the United States did not even try to collapse them with the bunker busters. Assuming the material wasn’t moved, it is now sitting unsquashed in intact tunnels. Iran unblocked the entrance to one tunnel at Esfahan within a week of the strike”.

In short, the U.S. strike did not set back the Iranian programme by years. It is highly likely that most of Iran’s HEU survived the strikes, Postol estimates.

The IAEA says that Iran had, at the time of the strike, 408kg of 60% HEU. It likely was removed by Iran before the Trump strike, which Postol has said could be readily transferred on the back of a pick-up (“or even a donkey cart!”). But the point is that no one knows where that HEU is. And it almost certainly is accessible.

Professor Postol’s key argument (– he eschews drawing political implications –) is the paradox that the more highly enriched the uranium is, the easier further enrichment becomes. As a result, Iran could make do with a centrifuge facility much smaller – yes, much, much smaller than the industrial-scale plants at Fordow or Natanz (which were designed to accommodate thousands and tens of thousands of centrifuges, respectively).

Postol has drawn up the technical outline for a 174 centrifuge cascade that would require a mere 4 to 5 weeks for Iran to obtain enough weapons-grade uranium (as enriched hexafluoride gas) for one bomb. In 2023, the IAEA found uranium particles enriched to 83.7% (weapons grade). This likely was an experimental exercise to prove to themselves that they could do it when, and as, they wanted, Professor Postol suggests.

Postol’s cascade demonstration was intended to underline the point – ‘the secret story of enrichment’ – that with 60% HEU, it takes almost no enrichment effort to reach 83.7%.

What may be even more shocking to the non-technical observer, is that Postol has further demonstrated that a 174 centrifuge cascade could be fitted within a space of a mere 60 square metres – the floor space of any modest city apartment, and would require, as power input, just a few tens of kilowatts.

In short, a few such small enrichment facilities could be hidden anywhere in a vast country – needles in a big haystack. Even the conversion of the uranium to uranium metal 235 would be a ‘small size operation’ that could be done in a facility of 120 to 150 sq. m.

In another culling of the shibboleths surrounding the Iranian reality, building a spherical atomic bomb requires no more than 14 kg uranium metal 235, surrounded by a reflector. ‘It is not high tech; it’s garden shed stuff’. Just assemble the pieces; no test needed. Postol says: ‘Little Boy’ was dropped on Hiroshima. Without a lot of testing; wrong to think it needs testing.

There goes another Shibboleth! ‘We would know if Iran moved to weapons capability, because we could detect seismically any test of a weapon’.

A small Atomic bomb of this nature would weigh just 150 kg. (The warheads on some Iranian missiles launched on Israel in the course of the 12 day war, by comparison, weighed between 460 and 500 kg).

Ted Postol is careful not to spell out the political implications. Yet they are absolutely clear: There is no point to another round of bombing Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan. The bird has gone. The coops are empty.

Professor Postol, as the foremost technical expert in nuclear matters, briefs the Pentagon and Congress. He knows Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, and reportedly briefed her before the Trump strike on Fordow on 22 June to argue that the U.S. likely would not be able to destroy the deeply buried centrifuge hall at Fordow. (Other Pentagon reportedly officials disagreed).

We know that the U.S. did not even try to collapse the tunnels under Isfahan with the bunker busters, but contented themselves with trying to block the several tunnel entrances to Isfahan by using conventional weapons (such the aging Tomahawk missiles, launched from submarines).

To repeat the 22 June exercise would be pure Kabuki theatre devoid of any solid objective based in reality. So why might Trump still contemplate it? He told reporters during his recent Scottish visit that Iran has been sending out “nasty signals” and any effort to restart its nuclear program would be immediately quashed:

“We wiped out their nuclear possibilities. They can start again. If they do, we’ll wipe it out faster than you can wave your finger at it”.

There are several possibilities: Trump may hope that a further attack might finally – in his and others’ estimation – prompt the Iranian government to fall. He may too instinctively shy away from kinetic escalation against Russia, fearing the conflict might spin out of control. And subsequently might conclude that he could, the more easily, spin an attack on Iran as showcasing U.S. ‘strength’ – i.e. spin it, irrespective of truth, as another “obliterated” claim.

Finally, he might think to do it, believing Israel desperately wants and needs it.

The last seems the more likely motivation. However, the biggest game-changer of the present geo-strategic era has been the revolution in terms of accuracy of Russian and Iranian ballistics and hypersonics, that precisely destroy a target with negligible collateral damage – and which the West basically can’t stop.

This changes the entire geo-strategic calculus – especially for Israel. A further attack on Iran, far from benefitting Israel, might unleash a devastating Iranian missile riposte on Israel.

The rest – Trump’s narratives – are Kabuki theatre: A Potemkin simulacrum of supporting Israel, whilst the true underlying objective is to collapse and Balkanise Iran – and weaken Russia.

An Israeli Colonel told Netanyahu (Postol relates) that by attacking Iran ‘we’ll likely have a weapons state on our hands’. Tulsi Gabbard likely told Trump the same.

Professor Postol concurs. Iran must be viewed as an undeclared nuclear weapons State, albeit one with its exact status carefully obfuscated.

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

The post A Further U.S. Attack on Iran Would Be Pointless Kabuki appeared first on LewRockwell.

A few weeks ago I published an article noting that the State of Israel and the Zionist movement that gave rise to it have probably employed assassination as a tool of statecraft more heavily than any other political entity in recorded history. Indeed, their deadly activities had easily eclipsed those of the notorious Muslim sect that had terrorized the Middle East a thousand years ago and gave rise to that term.

The piece had been prompted by Israel’s sudden strike against Iran, capping its reputation as the greatest band of assassins known to history. Even as the Iranian government was intensely focused on the negotiations with America over its nuclear program, a sudden Israeli surprise attack successfully assassinated most of Iran’s highest military commanders, some of its political leaders, and nearly all of its most prominent nuclear scientists. I cannot recall any previous case in which a major country had ever had so large a fraction of its top military, political, and scientific leadership eliminated in that sort of illegal sneak attack.

Less than one year earlier, a series of missile exchanges between Israel and Iran had soon been followed by the death of hardline Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi and his foreign minister in a highly-suspicious and never explained helicopter crash. Given subsequent events, I think we can safely assume that he, too, had died at the hands of the Israelis.

• Zionist Israel as the Assassination Nation
  Ron Unz • The Unz Review • June 23, 2025 • 11,800 Words

Earlier this year, the declassification of a large batch of JFK Assassination files had prompted me to recapitulate and summarize many of my articles of the last half-dozen years on that landmark twentieth century event. I gathered together some of the very considerable evidence that the Israeli Mossad played the central role in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963 as well as the death of his younger brother Robert a few years later, probably the highest-profile political assassinations of the last one hundred years or more.

• How Israel Killed the Kennedys
  Ron Unz and Mike Whitney • The Unz Review • March 24, 2025 • 11,500 Words

The most weighty and authoritative work on the long history of Israeli assassinations is surely Ronen Bergman’s 2018 volume Rise and Kill First, running 750 pages and including a thousand-odd source references, with many of the latter citing official documents never previously made available to journalists. By some estimates, this book documented nearly 3,000 such foreign political killings, a remarkable total for a small country then less than three generations old.

Although the Bergman book was certainly very comprehensive, it was produced under strict Israeli censorship, so the text quite understandably omitted almost any coverage of some of the highest-profile Zionist attacks on Western targets. For example, there was no mention of the unsuccessful but well-documented attempts to kill President Harry Truman, nor the assassination efforts aimed at British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and the top members of his Cabinet.

Some of this latter coverage may be found in Thomas Suarez’s 2016 book State of Terror which I would recommend as a very useful supplementary work, though its focus is almost entirely limited to the activities of Zionist groups just prior to the establishment of Israel.

For a broader discussion of the history of Israeli assassinations and closely-related terrorist attacks, especially those targeting Westerners, one of the most useful compilations might be my own very long January 2020 article, providing extensive references to the underlying primary and secondary sources.

• American Pravda: Mossad Assassinations
  Ron Unz • The Unz Review • January 27, 2020 • 27,300 Words

That 2020 article had actually been prompted by America’s own sudden assassination of Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani, a shocking development that drew a great deal of media coverage at the time.

I had opened my long discussion by noting that over the last several centuries Western governments had almost totally abandoned the use of political assassinations against the leadership of major rival nations, regarding such actions as immoral and illegal.

For example, historian David Irving revealed that when one of Adolf Hitler’s aides suggested to him that an attempt be made to assassinate the Soviet military leadership during the bitter combat on the Eastern Front of World War II, the German Fuhrer immediately forbade any such practices as obvious violations of the laws of civilized warfare.

For most of American history, a similar attitude had prevailed, but I explained that this began to change over the last couple of decades, mostly in the wake of the 9/11 Attacks.

The 1914 terrorist assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, was certainly organized by fanatical elements of Serbian Intelligence, but the Serbian government fiercely denied its own complicity, and no major European power was ever directly implicated in the plot. The aftermath of the killing soon led to the outbreak of World War I, and although many millions died in the trenches over the next few years, it would have been completely unthinkable for one of the major belligerents to consider assassinating the leadership of another.

A century earlier, the Napoleonic Wars had raged across the entire continent of Europe for most of a generation, but I don’t recall reading of any governmental assassination plots during that era, let alone in the quite gentlemanly wars of the preceding 18th century when Frederick the Great and Maria Theresa disputed ownership of the wealthy province of Silesia by military means. I am hardly a specialist in modern European history, but after the 1648 Peace of Westphalia ended the Thirty Years War and regularized the rules of warfare, no assassination as high-profile as that of Gen. Soleimani comes to mind…

During our Revolutionary War, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and our other Founding Fathers fully recognized that if their effort failed, they would all be hanged as rebels by the British. However, I have never heard that they feared falling to an assassin’s blade, nor that King George III ever considered using such an underhanded means of attack. During the first century and more of our nation’s history, nearly all our presidents and other top political leaders traced their ancestry back to the British Isles, and political assassinations were exceptionally rare, with Abraham Lincoln’s death being one of the very few that comes to mind.

At the height of the Cold War, our CIA did involve itself in various secret assassination plots against Cuba’s Communist dictator Fidel Castro and other foreign leaders considered hostile to US interests. But when these facts later came out in the 1970s, they evoked such enormous outrage from the public and the media, that three consecutive American presidents—Gerald R. Ford, Jimmy Carter, and Ronald Reagan—all issued successive Executive Orders absolutely prohibiting assassinations by the CIA or any other agent of the US government.

Although some cynics might claim that these public declarations represented mere window-dressing, a March 2018 book review in the New York Times strongly suggests otherwise. Kenneth M. Pollack spent years as a CIA analyst and National Security Council staffer, then went on to publish a number of influential books on foreign policy and military strategy over the last two decades. He had originally joined the CIA in 1988, and opens his review by declaring:

One of the very first things I was taught when I joined the CIA was that we do not conduct assassinations. It was drilled into new recruits over and over again.

Yet Pollack notes with dismay that over the last quarter-century, these once solid prohibitions have been steadily eaten away, with the process rapidly accelerating after the 9/11 attacks of 2001. The laws on our books may not have changed, but

Today, it seems that all that is left of this policy is a euphemism.

We don’t call them assassinations anymore. Now, they are “targeted killings,” most often performed by drone strike, and they have become America’s go-to weapon in the war on terror.

The Bush Administration had conducted 47 of these assassinations-by-another-name, while his successor Barack Obama, a constitutional scholar and Nobel Peace Prize winner, had raised his own total to 542. Not without justification, Pollack wonders whether assassination has become “a very effective drug, but [one that] treats only the symptom and so offers no cure.”

Thus over the last couple of decades the American government has followed a disturbing trajectory in its use of assassination as a tool of foreign policy, first restricting its application only to the most extreme circumstances, next targeting small numbers of high-profile “terrorists” hiding in rough terrain, then escalating those same killings to the many hundreds. And now under President Trump, the fateful step has been taken of America claiming the right to assassinate any world leader not to our liking whom we unilaterally declare worthy of death.

Pollack had made his career as a Clinton Democrat, and is best known for his 2002 book The Threatening Storm that strongly endorsed President Bush’s proposed invasion of Iraq and was enormously influential in producing bipartisan support for that ill-fated policy. I have no doubt that he is a committed supporter of Israel, and he probably falls into a category that I would loosely describe as “Left Neocon.”

But while reviewing a history of Israel’s own long use of assassination as a mainstay of its national security policy, he seems deeply disturbed that America might now be following along that same terrible path.

Pollock’s discussion of these facts came in his lengthy 2018 New York Times review of the Bergman book entitled “Learning From Israel’s Political Assassination Program,” and he greatly decried what many have called the “Israelization” of the American government and its military doctrine. President Donald Trump’s sudden public assassination of so high-profile a foreign leader as Gen. Soleimani came less than two years later and demonstrated that Pollock’s concerns were fully warranted and indeed even understated.

As my January 2020 article explained, nothing like this had ever previously happened in peacetime American history, and only very rarely even during wars.

The January 2nd American assassination of Gen. Qassem Soleimani of Iran was an event of enormous moment.

Gen. Soleimani had been the highest-ranking military figure in his nation of 80 million, and with a storied career of 30 years, one of the most universally popular and highly regarded. Most analysts ranked him second in influence only to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s elderly Supreme Leader, and there were widespread reports that he was being urged to run for the presidency in the 2021 elections.

The circumstances of his peacetime death were also quite remarkable. His vehicle was incinerated by the missile of an American Reaper drone near Iraq’s Baghdad international airport just after he had arrived there on a regular commercial flight for peace negotiations originally suggested by the American government.

Our major media hardly ignored the gravity of this sudden, unexpected killing of so high-ranking a political and military figure, and gave it enormous attention. A day or so later, the front page of my morning New York Times was almost entirely filled with coverage of the event and its implications, along with several inside pages devoted to the same topic. Later that same week, America’s national newspaper of record allocated more than one-third of all the pages of its front section to the same shocking story.

But even such copious coverage by teams of veteran journalists failed to provide the incident with its proper context and implications. Last year, the Trump Administration had declared the Iranian Revolutionary Guard “a terrorist organization,” drawing widespread criticism and even ridicule from national security experts appalled at the notion of classifying a major branch of Iran’s armed forces as “terrorists.” Gen. Soleimani was a top commander in that body, and this apparently provided the legal fig-leaf for his assassination in broad daylight while on a diplomatic peace mission.

• American Pravda: Mossad Assassinations
  From the Peace of Westphalia to the Law of the Jungle
  Ron Unz • The Unz Review • January 27, 2020 • 27,300 Words

Although Pollock provided some explanations for this shocking transformation in American doctrine, he failed to note what was arguably the most obvious factor. Over the last generation or two, the American government and American political life have been almost entirely captured by what scholars John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt called “The Israel Lobby” in their best-selling 2008 book of that title, and this political and ideological transformation has only further accelerated in the last couple of years, most recently reaching ridiculous, almost cartoonishly extreme levels.

Read the Whole Article

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I need to be more empathetic with Putin’s hopes.  Sometimes I, too, let hopes run away with me.  

Yes, I was wrong to hope President Trump would normalize relations with Russia.  Perhaps Trump intended to do so, until the men in black knocked on his door and told him that he was not allowed to takeaway the enemy that justified the power and profit of the military/security complex.

In the era of nuclear weapons it makes perfect sense to be on good terms with other nuclear powers.  Mutual suspicions and high tensions can result in catastrophic consequences.  Russia has not threatened us and clearly has no territorial ambitions.  Putin’s ambition is a mutual security agreement with the West.

For some reason Trump won’t consider it.  Perhaps the situation is one of armament profits taking precedence over life. 

Trump doesn’t negotiate.  He delivers ultimatums with punishments attached for non-compliance.  Never during the Cold War did an American president issue an ultimatum to the Soviet leader.  

What is Putin supposed to comply with?  Trump hasn’t told us or Putin.  It seems that Trump intends for Putin to make a deal with Zelensky to end the conflict.  But how can Putin do this when Zelensky has said that his terms are for Russia to give back Donbas, Crimea, and pay war reparations, when Zelensky is no longer officially the president and has no authority to negotiate for Ukraine, and when Zelensky is merely the proxy that Washington is using in its war with Russia?

Trump says it is not his war. Perhaps, but it is Washington’s war, and Trump is the president in Washington.  So it is Trump’s war.

Trump can stop the war by ending weapons delivery, financing, and diplomatic cover, but Trump has not done so.

Trump can stop the conflict by sitting down with Putin, understanding what Putin means by “the root causes of the war,” and addressing these issues, but Trump has not done so.

Instead, Trump issues meaningless ultimatums that show that Trump is not sincere about ending tensions with Russia.  Clearly, ultimatums are not the way to normalize relations. 

As far as I can tell, the media have not asked Trump what the agreement is or what parts of the agreement are unacceptable to the Russians.

It is reckless to issue threats to Russia in an atmosphere so tense.  Putin’s efforts to avoid real war have been misinterpreted as irresolution, thus resulting in more provocations.  Putin’s avoidance of war is leading to a larger war.  At some point the provocation will go too far.  Maybe it will be the missiles that Trump and the Germans are talking about firing at Moscow.

This is the dangerous situation that urgently needs to be resolved, not the conflict in Ukraine.  If the root causes are addressed, the war goes away.

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For much of his life, John Henry Newman was a towering figure in the Church of England. A brilliant theologian, preacher, and professor at Oxford, he was widely respected for his intellect and piety. As a longtime Anglican priest, Newman devoted himself to defending the Church of England against both secularism and the perceived errors of Catholicism. Yet, in a dramatic twist of providence, the very work he undertook to defend Anglicanism ultimately led him to embrace the Catholic Church he had long opposed.

Newman was a central figure in the Oxford Movement (1833–1845), a group of Anglican scholars and clergy who sought to revive the Church of England’s connection to its ancient Catholic roots. They emphasized the importance of the early Church Fathers, apostolic succession, liturgical beauty, and the sacraments—all while remaining firmly within the Anglican tradition. Newman and his colleagues believed the Church of England represented a via media, or middle way, between the extremes of Protestant reform and Roman Catholic authority.

As opposition to the Oxford Movement grew and theological disputes intensified, Newman felt compelled to defend the integrity of Anglicanism on firmer intellectual ground. In doing so, he set out to write a theological work that would distinguish Anglican teaching from Roman Catholicism while still affirming its legitimacy as the true inheritor of apostolic Christianity. The result was his 1845 masterpiece, An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine.

The irony is inescapable: Newman’s attempt to defend Anglicanism became the very instrument of his conversion.

As Newman studied Church history with increasing depth, he became convinced that many of the teachings he had rejected as Catholic “additions”—like the papacy, Marian devotion, and purgatory—were not corruptions but organic developments growing from the seed of apostolic teaching. In contrast, he found the Anglican claim to possess full continuity with the early Church historically fragile and theologically inconsistent.

It was in this context that Newman wrote his now-famous line: “To be deep in history is to cease to be Protestant.”

By the time he finished writing the Essay, Newman had already made up his mind. His intellectual honesty, coupled with years of spiritual struggle, brought him to the conviction that the Catholic Church was the true continuation of the Church founded by Christ. In October 1845, he was received into the Church by the Italian Passionist missionary Blessed Dominic Barberi.

The conversion stunned English society and scandalized many of his former Anglican colleagues. For them, Newman had not just left a church; he had joined an enemy.

But Newman’s journey was not one of betrayal—it was one of integrity. He had followed the truth wherever it led, even at great personal and professional cost.

In the years that followed, Newman became one of the most celebrated Catholic thinkers in the English-speaking world. He was eventually named a cardinal by Pope Leo XIII in 1879. His influence extended far beyond theology into education, philosophy, and literature. In 2019, Pope Francis canonized him as St. John Henry Newman, recognizing his holiness, brilliance, and enduring impact.

Now, Pope Leo XIV is preparing to name St. John Henry Newman a Doctor of the Church, a title reserved for saints whose theological writings have contributed significantly to the universal understanding of the Faith. Such an honor would affirm what many Catholics have long recognized: Newman’s insights into doctrine, conscience, and the development of faith remain essential for our time.

Newman’s story is especially powerful today, as many sincere Protestants wrestle with questions of authority, doctrine, and historical continuity. His own journey is a reminder that the search for truth must be grounded in both faith and reason. Perhaps our prayer might be that St. John Henry Newman will continue to lead others toward the fullness of truth and the beauty of the Catholic Faith.

His life stands as a witness to the idea that God sometimes works through irony—and that those who seek to defend error in good faith may ultimately become its most effective critics simply by following the truth to its source.

This article was originally published on Crisis Magazine.

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Last week the nuclear rhetoric between the US and Russia made some of us feel like we were transported back to 1962. Back then, Soviet moves to place nuclear-capable missiles 90 miles off our coast in Cuba led to the greatest crisis of the Cold War. The United States and its president, John F. Kennedy, could not tolerate such weapons placed by a hostile power on its doorstep and the world only knew years later how close we were to nuclear war.

Thankfully both Khrushchev and Kennedy backed down – with the Soviet leader removing the missiles from Cuba and the US president agreeing to remove some missiles from Turkey. Both men realized the folly of playing with “mutually assured destruction,” and this compromise likely paved the way to further US/Soviet dialogue from Nixon to President Reagan and finally to the end of the Cold War.

Fast forward more than 60 years later and we have a US president, Donald Trump, who last week stated that he had “ordered two Nuclear Submarines to be positioned in the appropriate regions,” meaning nearer to Russia.

Had Russia attacked the US or an ally? Threatened to do so? No. The supposed re-positioning of US strategic military assets was in response to a sharp series of posts made by former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev on social media that irritated President Trump.

The war of words started earlier, when neocon US Senator Lindsey Graham’s endless threats against Russia received a response – and a warning – from Medvedev. Graham, who seems to love war more than anything else, posted “To those in Russia who believe that President Trump is not serious about ending the bloodbath between Russia and Ukraine… You will also soon see that Joe Biden is no longer president. Get to the peace table.”

Medvedev responded, “It’s not for you or Trump to dictate when to ‘get at the peace table’. Negotiations will end when all the objectives of our military operation have been achieved. Work on America first, gramps!”

That was enough for Trump to join in to defend his ill-chosen ally Graham and ended with Medvedev alluding to Soviet nuclear doctrine which provided for an automatic nuclear response to any first strike on the USSR by US or NATO weapons.

The message from the Russian politician was clear: back off. It was hardly Khruschev banging his shoe at the UN screaming “we will bury you,” but it was enough for Trump to make a rare public pronouncement about the movement of US nuclear submarines.

Trump is understandably frustrated that his promise to end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours has not been fulfilled after six months in office. President Trump doesn’t seem to understand that you cannot arm one side in a war and then demand that the other side – the side that’s winning – stop fighting. That has never happened in history.

What is most tragic is that the war in Ukraine could have likely been ended if not in 24 hours, then surely in six months if Trump simply ended Joe Biden’s policy on Ukraine. It is continued US support for the war that keeps the war going. Even the US mainstream media admits that Ukraine will lose. But Trump seems under the spell of the neocons who can never reverse a failed policy.

Hopefully the return of nuclear rhetoric will awaken some in DC to the danger that the neocons pose to our country. We are no longer in 1962.

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The entire economic order is bankrupt–ideologically, politically and financially.

A friend sent me a clip of Tucker Carlson going off on the Boomer generation, and I get it. Tucker’s takedown was epic and entertaining (at least for me), but his disgust and rage were real. So let’s dig into the sources of those emotions.

If you watch the clip, it’s apparent that what really disgusts Tucker is the sanctimoniousness of the Boomers he references, the glibness of their virtue-signaling and claims to righteousness and significance. This extends to the financial level, where the sanctimony is expressed as a high-minded confidence that “we earned it,” overlooking the trillions of dollars handed to them on a Federal Reserve / bubble-economy / entitlements platter.

I think we all get that, but the problem isn’t the Boomers, it’s the entire economic order. The Boomers were just the hitchhiker who were lucky enough to be picked up by the big-finned Cadillac on the way into Vegas.

Even if everyone were absolute saints, they’d still own most of the wealth. Here’s why.

When Social Security was enacted in the 1930s, the retirement age was 65 and the average lifespan of Americans was 62. In other words, the program was intentionally designed to be self-funded (paid by a very modest tax on wages paid by both employer and employee) and act as a safety net for the fortunate few who lived long enough to collect it but who weren’t lucky enough to be wealthy.

As the economy boomed in the postwar era, the age of retirement (at a lower percentage of full benefits) was lowered to 62 as the average lifespan increased to 70 by 1965, when Medicare and Medicaid were enacted. At their inception, these programs were mere fractions of federal spending, and appeared to be “good things” that were affordable.

The Boomers weren’t born in the 1930s, and in 1965 they were kids. These entitlements were initiated in response to the grim reality that old age for the non-wealthy was generally a ticket to poverty.

Fast-forward to today, and the average lifespan is 80 (with millions of elderly living a decade longer) and 3/4 of adult Americans are at risk of lifestyle diseases / metabolic disorders due to an unhealthy diet and poor fitness. Over half of Americans are diabetic or prediabetic.

The entitlement programs to aid the elderly that were modest decades ago are now almost 50% of the entire federal budget, dwarfing all other spending. Entitlements aiding young families are so modest they aren’t even a blip compared to the soaring budgets of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. (Disability entitlements were added to Social Security, greatly expanding the program’s costs.)

Read the Whole Article

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In the 1950s Leon Festinger, Henry Riecken, and Stanley Schachter published a fascinating book titled When Prophecy Fails. Festinger later published his book, A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance. In When Prophecy Fails is a unique book detailing the events surrounding a UFO end times cult. Researchers and their assistants infiltrated the UFO cult and participated in their events, followed their teachings, and reported on their findings.

Examples of Jewish and Christian end times cults in the 1600s and the 1800s respectively are provided as case studies. In the 1600s Sabbatai Levi proclaimed himself as the Jewish Messiah and was to create his Messianic Kingdom in the Holy Land. Many Jews in the Middle East and Europe followed him. Part of the prophecy required the sultan to be deposed. Sabbatai and a small group of his followers went to Constantinople where the Turkish authorities immediately arrested him. His survival of the arrest only buoyed his support while in prison. It was not until he converted to Islam did his followers accept disconfirmation of their beliefs.

In the 1800s William Miller led what were called the Millerites. This end time cult had a predicted date of the end of the world and the return of Christ to set up his Kingdom on Earth. After the predicted dates for the return of Christ passed support and fervor only grew as new dates were focused on. After a few years of disconfirmation of the prophecies the Millerites disbanded.

In the UFO cult infiltrated by Festinger’s researchers a similar pattern was observed. There was a predicted end of the world date, and the UFO was supposed to save the followers and transport them to space. After the predicted dates of the end of the world passed some of the cult members responded to this disconfirmation with increased fervor and proselytizing.

Cognitive dissonance is the tension created when one’s beliefs are confronted with information that is inconsistent with those beliefs. It is the antecedent prompting actions designed to reduce dissonance and or increase consonance i.e. constancy with preexisting beliefs. This can sometimes manifest as ignoring information that contradicts the preexisting belief and seeking to cling more rigidly to those beliefs, or in buying into false narratives to support the original belief.

Cognitive dissonance is more likely to occur if the attachment is to beliefs that have a higher degree of emotional investment. Politics, with a plethora of emotionalized beliefs, is ripe with cognitive dissonance, as can easily be imagined.

The man made climate change hoax is a secular end times cult that is a prime example. This end times cult has absconded with billions of dollars, infringed on human liberty, and happiness. Senseless regulations and restrictions have been employed causing economic hardship. Literally people have altered their lives because of an irrational fear that the world is going to end because of human activity. Even agriculture is under attack because it is allegedly unsustainable.

Even as the climate change cult’s prophet’s predictions routinely are disconfirmed, this data is ignored, and the beliefs are clung to more rigidly. For instance, Al Gore had predicted that the oceans would rise and destroy cities and so on if civilization did not come to a grinding halt decades ago. Undeterred cult members just cling to their emotionalized beliefs. Even the fact that it first was a fear of the ice age, then global warming, and then climate change itself was to be feared, is a clear sign of the scam. This continuous bait and switch was ignored.

The Q Anon phenomena was a psychological operation that played to peoples’ cognitive dissonance, and many believed that Trump was rounding up the pedophiles in government while they started the lockdowns and were told to trust the plan as the white hats would go get the big bad black hats.

It was easier to buy these alternative reality theories than accept the fact that the government was becoming completely authoritarian and carrying out a global attack on humanity.

After the 2020 election many Democrats suffered from cognitive dissonance and discounted all evidence pointing to the likelihood that the 2020 election was stolen. The information was simply discarded as conspiracy theory.

On the flip side, many Trump supporters engaged in cognitive dissonance and started buying into narratives that while Biden was in office Trump was really running our government with the help of the white hats in the military. When confronted with the fact that Biden stole the 2020 election they sought out fantasy land to reduce the dissonance.

Unfortunately, in Trump’s second term there is quite a bit of cognitive dissonance. The Trump administration has signed onto the same exact policies that Kamala Harris and the Democrats would have promoted on several major issues. The Big Bad Bill that was passed adds trillions to the deficit. True, Democrats may have spent more, but MAGA did not vote to further bankrupt America. Trump has also adopted an interventionist foreign policy and jumped onto two foreign wars. One in Yemen that was negotiated to an end. The second was supporting and then joining a war with Iran that ended in a face saving bombing of an empty facility and then a token response by Iran. The Trump administration appears to be ramping up the war effort against Russia as well now.

There is also the promotion of technocratic slavery through a stable coin, with the Genius Act. This may become a centralized digital bank currency that will allow control over every aspect of our lives. The smart contracts will be able to freeze or remove money from accounts and apply a social credit score to determine allowed usage of funds and who to interact with. If this longer term plan comes to fruition, then it will not be your money, it will be your allowance based on good behavior. There will no longer be any private property.

On day two of the Trump administration, he announced Stargate and pretended that the new AI database facilities were a new idea when in fact they were in the works for years. Tasking Palantir with creating a digital database on every American is about as Orwellian as we can get.

Needless to say, the Trump administration has not stopped the mRNA biological and technological weapons of mass destruction. Instead, they keep approving new ones and are investing in self amplifying mRNA.

There is definitely cognitive dissonance. When the opposing party is in power there is a strong resistance to endless war, police state initiatives, and so on. Yet when the teams are switched and your team is in power. Well, then you shouldn’t say anything about these issues.

It is easier to ignore these issues and buy into than confront the tension and discomfort caused by facing the inconsistency of the cognitive dissonance. It is easier to buy into the new narrative designed to make you feel better by reducing your dissonance.

After all, we did get cane sugar in Coca Cola….

This article was originally published on Mind Matters and Everything Else.

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At least 100,000 Australians, including WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, marched for Gaza across the Sydney Harbour Bridge in the pouring rain at a demonstration on Sunday.

It wasn’t that long ago when I sincerely wondered if we’d ever see Assange’s face again, let alone in public, let alone in Sydney, let alone heading up what had to be one of the largest pro-Palestine rallies ever held in Australia. Dare to be encouraged. The light is breaking through.

❖

The western political/media class is fuming with outrage about images of Israeli hostages who are severely emaciated, which just says so much about how dehumanized Palestinians are in western society. Everyone stop caring about hundreds of thousands of starving Palestinians, it turns out two Israeli hostages are starving in the same way for the same reason.

❖

Israel’s Foreign Ministry has announced that in order to improve “public diplomacy” efforts the term “hasbara” will no longer be used, because people have come to associate it with lies and propaganda.

The Times of Israel reports:

“Long referred to as hasbara, a term used to denote both public relations and propaganda that has been freighted with negative baggage in recent years, the ministry now brands its approach as toda’a — which translates to ‘awareness’ or ‘consciousness’ — an apparent shift toward broader, more proactive messaging.

That “negative baggage” would of course be public disgust at the nonstop deluge of lies that Israel and its apologists have been spouting for two years to justify an act of genocide. Westerners have grown increasingly aware that Israel and its defenders have a special word for their practice of manipulating public narratives about their beloved apartheid state, so they’re changing the word.

Simply stopping the genocide is not considered as an option. Simply ceasing to lie is not considered as an option. They’re just changing the word they use for their lies about their genocide.

❖

This position only makes sense if you believe Israel just spontaneously became bat shit crazy and genocidally evil on October 7 2023. That’s the only way you can see Israel’s depravity as a response to October 7 instead of seeing October 7 as a response to Israeli depravity. https://t.co/yv5FpEAeAJ

— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) August 2, 2025

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One of the reasons Israel’s supporters love to hurl antisemitism accusations at its critics is because it’s a claim that can be made without any evidence whatsoever. It’s not an accusation based on facts, it’s an assertion about someone’s private thoughts and feelings, which are invisible. Support for Israel doesn’t lend itself to arguments based on facts, logic and morality, so they rely heavily on aggressive claims about what’s happening inside other people’s heads which cannot be proved or disproved.

It’s entirely unfalsifiable. I cannot prove that my opposition to an active genocide is not in fact due to an obsessive hatred of a small Abrahamic religion. I cannot unscrew the top of my head and show everyone that I actually just think it’s bad to rain military explosives on top of a giant concentration camp full of children, and am not in fact motivated by a strange medieval urge to persecute Jewish people. So an Israel supporter can freely hurl accusations about what’s going on in my head that I am powerless to disprove.

It’s been a fairly effective weapon over the years. Campus protests have been stomped out, freedom of expression has been crushed, entire political campaigns have been killed dead, all because it’s been normalized to make evidence-free claims about someone’s private thoughts and feelings toward Jews if they suggest that Palestinians deserve human rights.

❖

A Harvard professor of Jewish studies named Shaul Magid recently shared the following anecdote:

“I once asked someone I casually know, an ardent Zionist, ‘what could Israel do that would cause you not to support it?’. He was silent for a moment before looking at me and said, ‘Nothing.’”

This is horrifying, but facts in evidence indicate that it’s also a very common position among Zionists. If you’re still supporting Israel at this point, there’s probably nothing it could do to lose your support.

__________________

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Writes David Martin:

Why, one might ask, is Trump acting so guilty?

The post The Epstein Cover-up, Trump’s Watergate, or His Waterloo? appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, John Frahm. 

Blaze Media

 

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Today is the 61st anniversary of the Gulf of Tonkin incident. The Johnson administration and the NSA alleged that North Vietnam attacked the USS Maddox ship that was deployed off the coast of North Vietnam. However, they knew that the alleged attack did not occur, yet they waged a brutal war of aggression against the Vietnamese people.

Unfortunately, less than a year before the Gulf of Tonkin incident, the US national-security state probably murdered President Kennedy, who wanted to get the United States out of Vietnam after the 1964 presidential election. In October 1963, Kennedy signed National Security Action Memorandum (NSAM) 263, which called for an immediate reduction of 1000 troops from Vietnam.

Kennedy planned on implementing a full withdrawal in his 2nd term as President. On October 20, 1963, Kennedy told his neighbor, “This war in Vietnam – it’s never off my mind, it haunts me day and night. The first thing I’ll do when I’m re-elected, I’m going to get the Americans out of Vietnam.”

Just days after the November 1963 assassination or coup d’état, Johnson signed NSAM 273 which reversed Kennedy’s Vietnam policy. NSAM 273 called for full victory over North Vietnam. In 1964, the US carried out a series of attacks and provocations against North Vietnam with the probable goal of inducing North Vietnam to retaliate against US forces.

On August 2, 1964, the USS Maddox, which was carrying out signals intelligence for the United States against North Vietnam, fired at North Vietnamese patrol boats. North Vietnamese patrol boats struck back at the USS Maddox which sustained minor damage.

The US government lied when they asserted that North Vietnam attacked the USS Maddox on August 4th and used the fictitious August 4th attack as justification for enacting the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which authorized the war on Vietnam.

For years, the United States government and military killed millions of Vietnamese civilians and wantonly used chemical weapons in the process. Thankfully, the Vietnamese people overcame the empire and prevailed against the US national-security state and its puppet South Vietnamese regime.

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