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Interoperability issues could make the US think twice about intervening in the EU’s support against Russia.

“Trump Is Unlikely To Pull All US Troops Out Of Central Europe Or Abandon NATO’s Article 5”, but he’s definitely “Pivoting (back) to Asia” in order to more muscularly contain China, which will have consequences for European security. Although Russia has no intent to attack NATO countries, many of these same countries sincerely fear that it does, which leads to them formulating policy appropriately. This (false) threat perception heightens their concerns about the US’ gradual disengagement from NATO.

To make matters worse, Reuters cited five unnamed sources to report that the US chided the EU for its military-industrial plans, particularly those which relate to production and procurement within the bloc. They’re presumably connected to European Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen’s “ReArm Europe Plan” that calls for members to boost defense spending by 1.5% on average for a collective €650 billion more in the next four years and provide €150 billion worth of loans for defense investments.

This bold program will strengthen the EU’s strategic autonomy but will likely come at the cost of accelerating the US’ disengagement from NATO. EU-produced equipment might not be interoperable with American equipment, which could complicate contingency planning. The bloc wants the US to intervene in the event of a military crisis with Russia, yet the US might think twice if its commanders can’t easily take control of European forces in that event.

The US might also be less likely to do so if the EU reduces its reliance on American equipment like the F-35s that are rumored to have “kill-switches”. These could hypothetically be activated if the EU tried provoking a conflict with Russia that the US didn’t approve of for whatever reason. If the EU becomes emboldened to do precisely that and thus becomes a major strategic liability for the US, then the odds of the US intervening in its support would dwindle, thus leading to a self-fulfilling prophecy.

At the same time, some countries like the Baltic States, Poland, and Romania – which occupy NATO’s strategic eastern flank with Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine and are much more pro-American than their Western European counterparts – will likely remain within the US’ military-industrial ecosystem. This could therefore serve to retain American influence along the EU’s periphery, keep those countries out of the bloc’s military-industrial ecosystem, and thus hamstring plans for a “European Army”.

Nevertheless, the US would also do well to share some defense technology with Poland and agree to at least partial domestic production of its large-scale purchases, which could transplant a portion of the American military-industrial ecosystem to Europe for easier export to other countries. That could in turn keep Poland from pivoting to France or at least relying more on it to balance the US like the ruling liberal-globalist coalition might do if its candidate wins the presidency during the next elections in May.

The US could therefore leverage its military-industrial cooperation with Poland by offering preferential terms (i.e. technology-sharing and at least partial domestic production) as a means for retaining American influence along the EU’s periphery amidst the bloc’s own military-industrial plans. That could greatly impede the EU’s strategic autonomy, make any “European Army” more difficult to form due to interoperability issues, and thus pressure Western Europe to relent by purchasing more US equipment.

This originally appeared on Andrew Korybko’s Newsletter.

The post The EU’s Military-Industrial Plans Could Accelerate the US’ Disengagement From NATO appeared first on LewRockwell.

Life seems fast and furious lately. In fact, it has even rendered me wordless—the writer’s version of speechless—as everything from blossoming life to advancing years invades at once. Sometimes it feels a bit scary. With eyes of faith, I find myself riding the waves with some mix of exhilaration and terror, hanging on to the beautiful gift of life, in all its unscripted glory.

Mostly, there are joys: My married daughter will be a young mother in two short weeks, and I will become a grandmother at the relatively young age of 51. A long-awaited home renovation will be underway soon, so I’ll finally have a muscular kitchen and pantry. My husband and I find ourselves five years from an empty nest; and 27 years into this marriage adventure, we’ve not yet lost our minds.

By God’s grace, our children are, for the moment, free of a variety of universally unpleasant brands of youthful drama. The young married girl is plowing ahead into family life. The teens are making good grades, playing baseball, playing soccer, and mastering the long jump. The college kids are thriving yet shrouded in some rose-colored mystery; nonetheless, they are slowly maturing. They’ve fine-tuned their majors but focus their remaining energies on basketball brackets or dating—subjects worthy of a separate article.

However, I would be dishonest if I didn’t admit that the happy cacophany weighs me down sometimes. With six children, growing fatigue and an aging mother, I suddenly feel pulled impossibly between eight different life stages and their unique concerns. The middle schooler is just hitting puberty and its famous moods, while my mother can’t make sense of her TV anymore. I’m awakened by hot flashes, while my daughter prepares to be awakened by a newborn. My younger daughters compare skin products, while I dream of laser surgery. There’s a baby shower, baseball game, elder care discussion, soccer trip, prom party and teacher conference—and don’t forget the colonoscopy!

Above it all hangs the most pressing concern of all: Do my children know and love God? Did we teach them well? Are they living for his glory, or will they be consumed by the noisy darkness?

This morning—amid yet more joyful news, mixed with some resultant fretting—I read this in I Peter 1:24-25:

“For all flesh is like grass
and all its glory like the flower of grass.
The grass withers, and the flower falls,
but the word of the Lord remains forever.”

At midlife, one grows familiar with withering grass and fading flowers. The glories we chased in our twenties had their moment but passed. Someone else broke our record, surpassed our reputation, or attracted bigger applause. Our accumulated earthly treasures disappoint us, too—the boat’s in disrepair, golf clubs collect dust, and nobody wants the old “custom” sofa we’re selling. Even if we’re blessed with vitality and health, the reality is that our trophy days are behind us, in earthly terms.

Willingly or not, we will discover that life is about so much more; it’s not about the now, but about the forever. This is good news for tired parents; more importantly, though, it’s the only lasting treasure we can pass to our children. Like us, they need more than earth’s fading flowers.

When I think of forever, I think of stars. Genesis records their creation, and Hebrews reminds us that God “upholds the universe by the word of his power.” His forever words sustain a cosmos that confounds our puny minds and powerful telescopes yet blankets us in velvety calm. God’s gospel, his promises, his creation, his plan for each of us and our children—all are upheld and guaranteed by his forever words.

On my way to bed the other night, I stopped to stare out a window overlooking the westward sky. The night was sparkling clear, with Mars in view. I was stuck that I’d taken this sky for granted. As a teenager, I’d sit out in my driveway at night, staring up into the mystery. On summer nights at the beach, I’ve taken my kids to sit up in the lifeguard chair and survey constellations hanging over the ocean. Nowadays, I’m surprised to see they’re still there—majestic, quiet, unmoved by my schedule—when I take out the garbage at night.

On this particular night, though—during a moment when I decided to crane my neck and peer further through window pane—I saw a shooting star. Was this phenomenon still happening—and despite elections, doctors’ appointments, countless forms, tiresome chores, endless tuitions, elderly moms, and soccer trips? While I’d been darting around and playing life’s whack-a-mole, a sea of stars still held court in my backyard planetarium.

Just as those stars are upheld by our faithful God, so are our very lives. All his promises are yes and amen, even when life’s inevitable clouds—and even its happy, blinding sunshine—obscure their glory. God is faithful; and when I find myself wordless and weary, the universe still proclaims.

So shall my word be that goes out from my mouth;
it shall not return to me empty,
but it shall accomplish that which I purpose,
and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.
Hebrews 55:11

And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.
Philippians 1:6

This originally appeared on Restoring Truth.

The post The Universe Proclaims appeared first on LewRockwell.

Equity markets continued to sell of Monday morning as Trump economic advisor Peter Navarro told CNBC that even a 0% tariff offer from Vietnam would not be enough for the Trump administration to change its tariff policy toward that country.

“Let’s take Vietnam. When they come to us and say ‘we’ll go to zero tariffs,’ that means nothing to us because it’s the nontariff cheating that matters,” said Navarro.

Non-tariff cheating refers to subsidizing domestic manufacturers, currency manipulation, and other measures designed to give a country’s domestic producers an advantage over potential exporters to that country.

Navarro’s comments seem to indicate the administration is committed to maintaining tariffs not only until trading partners lower or eliminate their own, but rather until no trade deficit at all exists between the U.S. and that country. This means that even countries with a natural comparative advantage in some export – or no need for many potential U.S. imports – may see U.S. importers of their products taxed indefinitely.

Stock market selloffs don’t always mean a recession is imminent, but they usually precede one. And to the extent that the input costs may be artificially higher for not only importers of finished goods but also of components for products manufactured in the U.S., a recession would be natural result.

While recessions are always painful those who go out of business or lose their jobs, they can be healthy for the economy as a whole in terms of liquidating malinvestment. According to the Austrian theory of the business cycle, recessions are the market’s way of redirecting unproductive deployments of capital to product ends. The mistakes are made during the artificial boom caused by monetary inflation by the central bank.

Artificially low interest rates and an overabundance of currency mislead entrepreneurs into expanding production more than real savings will support or investing in ventures that would not be profitable at all under natural market circumstances. The market eventually forces these mistakes to be acknowledged, and entrepreneurs must make the necessary adjustments – cutting production or filing for bankruptcy – so that the misallocated capital can flow to profitable projects.

Since all this takes time, recessions are painful. But at the end, capital is redirected towards better use instead of continuing to be wasted on unprofitable endeavors.

The problem with the tariff recession, if there is one, is that it is not being driven by natural market forces. As with Covid lockdowns, it is being imposed by government edict and therefore, also like Covid lockdowns, it has the potential to do the opposite of what a market-driven recession would do. Instead of targeting companies which have invested capital unwisely, it will target companies with perfectly sound investments of capital that just happen to be dependent upon imports for some part of their production process.

And if the administration’s policy were successful in the long term – a tenuous proposition at best – it would reward companies that operate inefficiently, unable to compete in international markets without government protection.

The Covid lockdowns did similar damage to the economy. They didn’t punish companies that had invested capital unwisely. They merely punished companies that served the public in person. That punishment was also very selective. Small, family-owned businesses were disproportionately punished while large, multinational corporations were not only exempt but received trillions in newly created money dollars via Federal Reserve monetary inflation.

The effect was to put perfectly good, profitable small companies out of business or severely damage their earnings while rewarding many large corporations dependent upon cheap money and credit for their survival.

There are good cases to be made that the U.S. economy was due for a recession in 2020 after a decade of near-zero interest rates and quantitative easing. There is an equally good case the U.S. economy is similarly positioned right now after an even larger expansion of the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet following the Covid lockdowns. But Trump’s tariffs, like the lockdowns, have the potential to bring all the pain of a deep recession with none of the gain – the liquidation of malinvestment.

Reprinted with the author’s permission.

The post Like Covid Lockdowns, a Tariff Recession Would Punish and Reward the Wrong Companies appeared first on LewRockwell.

When I specialize in the work that others pay me more for, I produce more of what people value.

If one of my customers lives where he is subject to different government people, often those people force him to pay them some money before he can buy my work.

Tariffs Done Right versus Tariffs Done Wrong

President Trump has raised a chance that those government people might get pushed back against by USA national government people.

True reciprocal tariffs could be levied product category by product category. That would target those government people and their cronies very precisely, crony by crony. This targeting would systematically incentivize those government people to eliminate their tariffs. That would help me specialize in the work that my customer pays me more for.

But the tariffs that Trump is calling reciprocal, aren’t. And they aren’t half the tariffs that would be reciprocal. Trump isn’t assessing his tariff rates based on different government people’s tariff rates. He’s assessing his tariff rates based on how much more our people import from a nation’s people than we export to the nation’s people.

So Trump isn’t targeting other nations’ government/crony relationships, crony by crony. Instead, he’s keeping in place and protecting all the harms that governments are currently wreaking as they outlaw sound moneys, borrow and spend, and regulate.

Further, Trump’s tariff rates ratchet up how many decisions our national government takes out of the hands of customers (the people who work out what’s most valuable to them), and takes out of the hands of producers (the people who work out the best ways to produce value).

Trump is issuing overall edicts, both directly on our people and indirectly on other nations’ people. Other nations’ government people are being called on to issue edicts on their people to try to make the USA imports from and exports to each of their nations nation balance in the ways that Trump and the other government people think are best.

When Individuals Are Free to Use Good Money, Individuals Balance Trade

What’s actually best for my customers and me is to be left alone. Then we make our best decisions for ourselves.

To enable the rest of us to add the most value ourselves, government people must limit other government people to within good boundaries.

Governments are justly instituted only to secure individuals’ unalienable rights, among which are individuals’ rights to life, liberty, and secure property. Above all, governments must make these rights secure from the grabbing hands of government people and their cronies. Every other action is out of bounds for government people, if they do their jobs justly.

Left to ourselves, free people would produce and use sound moneys, starting with gold. This would leave it to individuals to balance out the trade among the people of various nations.

The USA people could temporarily buy more imports. But then the USA people would end up with less gold to spend to buy products made by other nations’ people. Also, other nations’ people would end up with more gold to spend to buy our products made by USA people. Individuals would make choices for themselves that would optimally rebalance trade.

Individuals’ choices would balance trade in such a way that the total quantity of gold that the USA people would have on hand would tend to be constant.

Importantly, trade wouldn’t get balanced between the USA people and each individual other nation’s people. Instead, trade would get balanced between the USA people and all other nations’ people combined.

This great flexibility is essential to ensure that each nation’s people can specialize in doing the work that others pay them the most for.

Don Boudreaux illustrates:

Americans buy $1M of wine from France, then the French use these export earnings to buy $1M of bananas from Guatemala, and then Guatemalans spend this same $1M on software imported from America. As a result, each of the three countries has a “trade deficit” with another country, and a “trade surplus” with a different country.

The USA’s overall trade deficit is zero, and each nations’ people specialize in what others pay them more for.

Individuals Are Only Free When Government People Have Good Boundaries

Individuals aren’t able to specialize this way, freely and flexibly, under Trump’s tariff plan. But people are supposed to be free to specialize freely and flexibly, under the Constitution.

Constitutionally, Trump must cease and desist from executing his decreed rules. Constitutionally, Republican congressional majorities must get any such rules debated on and voted on, up or down.

Instead, Republicans are letting Trump make many decisions himself. By doing that, Republicans are also pushing other nations’ government people to make many decisions themselves. Republicans are taking all these decisions out of the hands of customers and producers.

Every choice that the Republicans are muscling their way in and controlling with their tariffs is something that free people would make for themselves, and would make far better. Republicans are ratcheting up their violations of individuals’ freedoms to choose what products to buy and what work to do. Republicans aren’t holding themselves and others to good boundaries.

Republicans are treading all over our boundaries because they refuse to hold themselves and their esteemed colleagues to within the constitutional boundaries, which respect each individual’s freedom.

Current government money is unconstitutional. Government spending is massive and nearly all unconstitutional. Government regulations are all unconstitutional.

The Constitution requires every president to, all by himself, substantially hold governments to within significant good boundaries; including:

• Keep the money quantity constant, which would work much the same as freeing people to use gold money.
• Close every unconstitutional department, agency, and subdivision, ending its unconstitutional spending.
• Stop executing every regulation.

These actions are constitutionally required from Trump. These actions would deliver the benefits that Trump wants from tariffs. Trump’s tariffs won’t.

The Constitution requires every official to use his powers fully to make other officials cease and desist. Nearly all officials simply don’t.

They’re from the government and they’re here to help, alright—to help themselves and their cronies.

We’re stuck with these people for now because both of our current major parties are well-adapted to do the bidding of activist-crony socialists and business-crony socialists. We need to build a major party that’s a real alternative.

Maybe, for starters, today’s ongoing sequel to 1970s stagflation plus 1930s–1940s regime uncertainty will finally be what it takes to get better decisions from the older Iowa Republican caucus voters the next time around.

The post Republicans’ Tariffs Take Away Individuals’ Freedom appeared first on LewRockwell.

After two decades of speculation following Mel Gibson’s groundbreaking The Passion of the Christ, it’s finally official: a sequel will begin shooting this summer in Italy. Like the first film, The Resurrection of the Christ will seek to challenge audiences as a wild work of cinema in a world (and a Church) growing devoid of anything like bold originality in art.

Rome’s Cinecittà Studios confirmed the upcoming shoot of Gibson’s second biblical epic to stoke the fervor achieved by his 2004 runaway hit. With Jim Caviezel as Jesus Christ, The Passion made $612 million worldwide against its $30 million budget (which Gibson largely self-financed).

While The Passion presented the final twelve hours of Jesus’ life in potent and painful detail, The Resurrection will reportedly explore what happened in the three days before Easter Sunday, including the harrowing of Hell, the war of the angels, and other apocalyptic sequences.

Doubting-Thomas moviegoers will have to see it to believe it, as it all sounds pretty controversial. But controversy is the legacy of The Passion, acclaimed as it is by Christians and Catholics and even serving as a Holy Week staple for many. The difficulty of the film lies mostly in its graphic violence, as it does not shy away from the explicit details of Jesus’ torturous suffering and death—while secular audiences questioned and criticized Gibson’s portrayal of the Jews.

“There was a lot of opposition to it,” Gibson recalled, knowing what Hollywood millstones feel like. “I think if you ever hit on this subject matter, you’re going to get people going.” With an artistic reputation for brutal violence and a personal reputation for boorish comments, Gibson may be guilty as charged, but his reverence for the subject matter of The Passion is clear even if his treatment is arguable.

“It’s a big subject matter,” Gibson has said about The Passion,

and my contention was, when I was making it, it was like, you’re making this film, and the idea was that we’re all responsible for this, that His sacrifice was for all mankind, and for all our ills and all the things in our fallen nature. It was a redemption.

Well said by an artist who knows what he is about. A film about Jesus Christ should strive to be sacred art, that is, a work of art that is used in a public or private context for evangelization, contemplation, or education in the Faith. A film can do this if done boldly, as Gibson demonstrates, and many—if not all—have fallen short of the mark he hit.

The Last Supper, in theaters now, doesn’t make anything new as any true creative act does, and as such it fails in a central artistic purpose, with a Messiah played by Jamie Ward that is too straightforward to be stirring. It doesn’t take the risk of Gibson’s quivering Christ in shredded skin. There’s Jonathan Roumie’s surfer-bro Messiah in The Chosen, also in theaters, which borders on the tacky in its desire to appeal and doesn’t go far enough with the conundrums of the God Man. Then there are those that go too far, with heretical blasphemies like Willem Dafoe’s Jesus being tempted by Mary Magdalene in Martin Scorsese’s 1988 drama The Last Temptation of Christ.

These treatments aren’t as successful as Gibson’s feature because they are not as artistically meaningful—they don’t take on as much as the subject demands. Meaningfulness comes with calculated risk, as all worthy things do, and that risk lies in an honesty which is often dangerous, especially when it comes to depicting the mysteries of faith.

So many “Jesus movies” fall prey to a tepid trend of sentimentalism, being too safe to be significant. It is not so much dangerous as it is damaging, and this schmaltziness poses a central problem in sacred art today. Despite decent production values and pure intentions, films like The Last Supper may not be egregiously offensive against the Catholic call to produce high artistic representations of the highest artistic material, but they never reach the height of what has already been produced by Gibson.

It may not be fair to compare shows like The Chosen or films like The Last Supper so directly with the record-shattering triumph and ongoing legacy of The Passion, but it is a natural critical inclination. Considering films on their own merits is possible, but it is impossible to avoid acknowledging that the bar is high. The Passion is a powerful film, and it’s good that this story of stories has been given strong treatment, demanding that artists rise to new occasions in taking on this narrative which deserves and demands retelling.

Read the Whole Article

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It is not a full quarter as his inauguration was 20 days into it, but it is the first quarter of 2025.  How does it look?

Perhaps I can put it this way:  a lot of good initiatives undertaken in a haphazard way that could limit their effectiveness or even result in failure. I will use a few of Trump’s initiatives to illustrate my concern.  I will begin with Trump’s approach to ending the conflict in Ukraine.  Next I will examine Trump’s use of DOGE’s revelations about waste, fraud, and grift in the federal budget.  Then I will examine Trump’s approach to tariffs.

President Trump has no stake in the conflict with Russia.  He is on record as stating that the conflict would not have occurred if his 2020 reelection had not been stolen by the Democrats, RINO Republicans such as Mitch McConnell, and the whore American media. Trump’s ability to extract the US from the conflict is greatly helped by the NY Times very long article, in my view written by the CIA as a confession, that from day one the conflict was one initiated by the United States against Russia with Russian defeat as its goal, with Ukrainian military action decided by Washington, including targets, weapons to be used, and targeting guidance of missile and drone attacks.  In other words, the conflict has been Washington’s attack on Russia, not Russia’s attack on Ukraine. The CIA’s confession in the NY Times is a statement that the CIA has admitted a failure and has withdrawn from the conflict.

This paves the way for Trump to withdraw.  The conflict will end the minute that Trump tells Putin that he hasn’t a dog in the fight and is withdrawing the US from participation.  No more US weapons, money, US targeting information.  Total military and diplomatic withdrawal and removal of all sanctions, as they are conflict related and Washington is responsible for the conflict.

This will leave the conflict where it belongs, not with Washington and NATO, but with Putin and whoever the Ukrainians elect to the office now in the hands of a person whose term has expired and who has no negotiating authority under the Ukrainian constitution.

But Trump has not taken advantage this obvious way of ending the conflict. Instead, he has introduced extraneous elements into the negotiations such as Washington’s claim to Ukrainian rare earths as payment for the war aid given by the Biden regime.  Trump has also complicated the negotiations by denouncing Putin, who has kept the agreement, while defending Zelensky who has violated it 12 times according to news reports.  But according to the NY Times, as the war is conducted by Washington and NATO, not by Zelensky, how is Zelensky sending missiles into Russia without US or UK targeting services? Is the Pentagon and NATO carrying on a war that the US president opposes? If so, who is in charge?

The Kremlin is also an obstacle to ending the conflict.  I have come to the conclusion, perhaps mistakenly, that Putin had no intention of winning the conflict, only of continuing it while expressing willingness to negotiate.  With who?  With the West.  What Putin and the Russian Establishment want is a new Yalta agreement. I learned this some years ago when I was invited to speak at a conference at the Russian Academy of Sciences about a Yalta agreement for our time.  I pointed out that the Zionist neoconservative policy as presented by Undersecretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz was a policy of American hegemony, which is clearly prohibitive of a new Yalta agreement.  This was unwelcome information to the conference, and I was cut off. The conference monitor protected the Russian Academy of Sciences from reality.  Today as I read it, Russian analysis is largely self-deception.  Russian intellectuals are writing articles  promoting a new Yalta agreement. They are entertaining these hopes despite Britain and Europe preparing for war with Russia.

DOGE was a great Trump/Musk invention. But its contribution to Trump’s program of American renewal has been largely squandered.  Trump should have held his horses and let DOGE provide more and more detailed evidence of the US budget used to promote ideological agendas and enrichment of insiders and favored people and groups.  With accumulated evidence, Trump should have addressed on national television the House and Senate  and presented the evidence that Democrats and Democrat-sponsored NGOs created fake entities to which grants were given by USAID, National Endowment for Democracy and other federal budgetary entities. The fake foundations then passed on the grants to legitimate foundations such as Rockefeller, Ford, Pew, et. al., and were then passed to the intended receivers, such as “news oganizations” that enforce the official narratives, NGOs that work to overthrow democratically elected governments, and into the personal accounts of Democrats, such as allegedly Chelsea Clinton to the tune of $84 million. 

In his address Trump should have asked Congress what are we to do about this?  Shall we ignore and perpetuate the exploitation of the American taxpayer and their trust in their government, or shall we cease to use the budget in this way?  

This would have given Trump the high ground. Instead, his piecemeal attacks have given the high ground to the “victims” of his budget cuts.

If Trump had proceeded in a thoughtful organized way, the corrupt Democrat judges, not Trump, would be on the defensive.

Trump’s position on tariffs is problematical for many reasons.  First, let me say that historically tariffs were a legislative issue.  The Morrill Tariff was voted by Congress. The Smith-Hawley Tariff was voted by Congress.  How is it that the executive is imposing tariffs?

Assuming the president has this authority and assuming that we don’t have tariffs on others but others have tariffs on the US, the way to success is for Trump to sit down with the offenders and explain that the situation is not working for us. How do they propose to rectify the inequality?  This would have given Trump the upper hand.  Instead, he is portrayed as issuing threats not only to China but also to American allies. Retaliation has become the game, and this itself raises another serious consideration.

With Wall Street predicting a recession caused by Trump’s tariffs, not by the tariffs of other countries, the Federal Reserve has cover to cause the predicted recession, and thereby, to restore Democrat majorities in the House and Senate in the midterm elections and terminate Trump’s renewal of America.

The first time the American people tried to put Trump into the presidency, the chosen one did not know what he was doing and appointed his enemies to his government.  The second time, his election was stolen. The third time he behaves instinctively without thought and design and undermines his opportunity to succeed.

Possibly the higher courts will overrule the lower courts which seem to be populated with an assembly of non-Americans recruited by Democrat DEI.   America now has federal district judges who are Japanese, Chinese, Arab, African, Hispanic, and LBGT+.  Once a country becomes a tower of babel, the country is lost.

Can a lost country really be renewed?  Perhaps, but not by a haphazard approach to the task.

For the Morrill Tariff see this. 

The post Trump: An Assessment After the First Quarter appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, John Smith. 

CNN News

 

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Thanks Gail Appel.

See here.

 

 

The post Why was the Romanian presidential election frozen? appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, John Smith. 

BBC News

 

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Dave Braatz wrote:

Re: Terri Wu’s article (and others) on tariffs

Complaining about the US trade deficit assumes that the US Dollar is an honest unit of account; it is NOT. Please consider what exactly is trading hands, and what the “deficit” is.

As long as the US continues to operate on make-believe funny money, we have no right to bitch about a trade deficit – or anything. A US trade rep says the US has “suffered” decades of “wealth loss”.  NONSENSE.  Please define wealth.  A $1.3 trillion annual trade deficit means that we got other countries’ labor, products, and resources (i.e., real wealth) and we “paid” them with fiat debt money that corrupt politicians and bankers create out of thin air by the trillions (and then have the guts to charge “interest” on it). Yes, it is dishonest (a form of economic slavery), but undoubtedly a good deal for the US Gov’t (as long as it lasts).

Paper IOU’s are not wealth.  We got the real goods while “trade surplus” countries got stuck with constantly devaluing fiat garbage or UST’s. Unbacked paper money is always destroyed by inflation, as the dollar debts or deficits become progressively worthless in real terms.

Since 2019 the US M2 money supply increased (inflated) by 43%. That means that the REAL VALUE (constant purchasing power) of our $36 trillion nominal national debt was inflated away (i.e., destroyed or stolen) to the tune of $15.5 Trillion Dollars. That is a massive theft from the poor “trade surplus” idiots who believed in paper money or were forced to accept the PetroDollar.

That is how the US Government and corrupt banks control and rob the world, why many nations continue to sell US Treasuries and repatriate their gold, and why the BRICS nations continue to grow and abandon the Dollar to seek a more honest and level playing field.  More power to them! 

The US needs to return to honest, Constitutional money (gold & silver).

 

The post Tariffs and the US Trade Deficit appeared first on LewRockwell.

USAID Exposed: The Secret War You Never Saw Coming reveals how the U.S. Agency for International Development became a global tool of influence, deception, and control. From Cold War origins to billion-dollar scandals under Elon Musk’s investigation, this documentary uncovers how USAID operations blurred the lines between humanitarian aid and covert power plays. Was it ever really about development—or always about dominance? With shocking revelations about DEI spending, digital regime change, and propaganda back home, this is more than a history lesson—it’s a wake-up call. If you think foreign aid is harmless, think again. Watch the full story and decide: reform, replace, or bury USAID?

The post USAID Exposed: The Secret War You Never Saw Coming appeared first on LewRockwell.

Queste due (1, 2) notizie, se lette in successione, sono messaggi eloquenti tra secondino e carcerato. Il piano faraonico di spesa militare ha come obiettivo quello della crisi dei titoli sovrani. Non può essere altrimenti data la natura della spesa pubblica, soprattutto se pompata all'ennesima potenza. Gli stati non possono emettere tutto il debito di cui hanno bisogno per finanziare la loro spesa in deficit. C'è innanzitutto il limite economico: deficit e debito cessano di funzionare come presunti strumenti per stimolare la crescita economica, diventando invece un ostacolo alla produttività e allo sviluppo economico. A tal proposito la sponsorizzazione della MMT altro non è stato che un modo per vendere al pubblico il piano diabolico dell'UE e al contempo giustificare la sua scalata ostile nei confronti degli Stati Uniti affinché questi utlimi spendessero irresponsabilmente tenendo vivo il mercato degli eurodollari. C'è poi il limite fiscale: l'aumento delle tasse genera entrate inferiori rispetto alle attese e il debito continua ad aumentare. Infine c'è il limite inflazionistico: una maggiore stampa di valuta e una maggiore spesa pubblica creano un'inflazione annua persistente, rendendo i cittadini più poveri e l'economia reale più debole. Paesi come Brasile e India stanno assistendo al crollo delle loro valute a causa delle preoccupazioni sulla sostenibilità delle finanze pubbliche e del rischio di indebitarsi di più mentre l'inflazione rimane elevata. L'euro è crollato a causa della combinazione tra difficoltà fiscali della Francia e delle richieste dei burocrati alla Germania di aumentare la sua spesa in deficit. Il crollo del prezzo dell'asset presumibilmente più sicuro, i titoli di stato, si verifica quando gli investitori devono vendere i loro titoli e non riescono ad acquistare la nuova offerta emessa dagli stati. L'inflazione persistente consuma i rendimenti reali dei titoli acquistati in precedenza, portando all'emergere di evidenti problemi di solvibilità. In sintesi, una crisi finanziaria funge da prova dell'insolvenza dello stato. Quando l'asset a più basso rischio perde improvvisamente valore, l'intera base patrimoniale delle banche commerciali si dissolve e diminuisce più velocemente della capacità di emettere azioni o obbligazioni bancarie. Ecco perchè si stanno tirando indietro e cercano di lasciare agli invetitori retail l'onere di sostenere le nuove emissioni. Sanno benissimo qual è il piano. Le banche non causano crisi finanziarie, bensì è la regolamentazione, la quale considera sempre i prestiti agli stati un investimento “senza rischi”, anche quando i coefficienti di solvibilità sono bassi. Poiché la valuta e il debito pubblico sono inestricabilmente legati, la crisi finanziaria si manifesta prima nella valuta, che perde il suo potere d'acquisto e porta a un'inflazione elevata, e poi nelle obbligazioni sovrane.

____________________________________________________________________________________

di Ulrich Fromy

(Versione audio della traduzione disponibile qui: https://open.substack.com/pub/fsimoncelli/p/la-francia-sprofonda-sempre-piu-nello)

Éric Lombard, ministro dell'Economia e delle Finanze francese, propone un'impressione di sé sempre più negativa con le sue dichiarazioni sull'economia e sul ruolo dello stato nella società. Queste posizioni sono un perfetto riflesso del divario tra la classe politica francese, i difensori dello statalismo e un mondo che sta seguendo una strada completamente opposta: una strada di libertà, liberalizzazione economica, desideroso di ridurre il peso dello stato nella vita degli individui... In breve, stiamo assistendo a una rinascita delle idee liberali in Occidente mentre Paesi come la Francia sprofondano sempre più nello statalismo. Questo dogmatismo teologico nel socialismo e nello statalismo potrebbe rivelarsi poco saggio in un mondo in cui leader politici come Milei, Orban e Trump tendono a concordare sul fatto che la presenza eccessiva dello stato sia esattamente il pericolo.

Lo statalismo contro il buon senso economico

In un'intervista sul canale televisivo BFMTV del 17 gennaio 2025, il ministro dell'Economia francese Éric Lombard ha discusso la strategia economica del governo per il 2025. Durante questa intervista ha affermato che:

Gli investimenti sul clima richiederanno molti sforzi che non saranno sempre redditizi, e questo probabilmente porterà a un calo della redditività delle aziende, ed esse dovranno accettarlo [...]. Questi investimenti sono necessari perché altrimenti il riscaldamento globale ucciderà l'economia.

Questo breve passaggio illustra perfettamente fino a che punto il Ministro dell'Economia non sappia nulla di economia. Questi “investimenti non redditizi” sono aberrazioni economiche che non dovrebbero esistere in circostanze normali. Infatti mobiliteranno risorse, capitale, lavoro e tempo in progetti che gli imprenditori in un libero mercato non avrebbero mai intrapreso.

In un libero mercato l'azione imprenditoriale è sempre guidata dalla ricerca del profitto. È questo il modo sbagliato di procedere? Ovviamente no. Questa ricerca del profitto consente la migliore allocazione possibile delle risorse scarse nel sistema produttivo. L'imprenditore avrà tutto l'interesse a utilizzare risorse limitate (terra, lavoro, capitale, tempo) in modo efficiente per raggiungere il suo obiettivo, che è quello di soddisfare i consumatori, e quindi tutti noi. Il calcolo economico e i segnali di prezzo guidano l'imprenditore in questa ricerca di redditività. Se le risorse vengono utilizzate in modo efficiente e i consumatori sono soddisfatti, l'imprenditore viene ricompensato con profitti. Al contrario, se non riesce a soddisfare i consumatori, viene punito con perdite. Mises scrisse:

Il progresso economico [...] è opera dei risparmiatori, che accumulano capitale, e degli imprenditori, che lo trasformano in nuovi usi. Gli altri membri della società godono dei vantaggi del progresso, ma non solo non vi contribuiscono in alcun modo anzi pongono ostacoli sul suo cammino.

Nel caso degli investimenti non redditizi assunti da Éric Lombard, comprendiamo che lo stato non intende conformarsi agli imperativi della realtà. Ci vuole il monopolio dello stato sul denaro, sulla spesa e sugli investimenti per giustificare tali progetti che vanno contro il buon senso economico. Ad esempio, l'impossibilità di posticipare l'uso dell'energia prodotta nel tempo senza un'adeguata capacità di stoccaggio, costi di manutenzione proibitivi, intermittenza e incertezza della produzione, ecc. Alla fine la realtà raggiungerà sempre questi progetti puramente ideologici, i quali possono solo portare a sprechi irrecuperabili di risorse e tempo.

Per adattarsi al meglio alla transizione ecologica e all'urgenza che può rappresentare, c'è una sola soluzione: lasciare che il libero mercato risponda a queste sfide da solo, senza alcun “aiuto” da parte dello stato. Un calcolo economico sano e libero promuoverà l'allocazione ottimale delle risorse scarse. Questo vale anche per il tempo umano, che è la risorsa ultima e più scarsa nell'economia. Solo il libero mercato è in grado di massimizzare il suo utilizzo per affrontare nel miglior modo possibile questa “emergenza climatica”.

“Siamo un Paese fatto di stato”

Pochi giorni dopo il ministro dell'Economia francese ha ribadito sul canale televisivo LCI che “la Francia non è un Paese liberale, siamo un paese fatto di stato, di protezioni” e dovrebbero “essere guardinghi nei confronti delle persone che sono riluttanti a pagare le tasse poiché mettono a repentaglio il futuro dei nostri figli”. “Trump” — ritirandosi dall'accordo di Parigi — “ci sta mettendo tutti in pericolo”. Ancora una volta la sua dichiarazione è abbastanza chiara: il ministro dell'Economia francese non sa nulla di economia. Infatti il liberalismo non è sinonimo di insicurezza, così come “protezione da parte dello stato” non è sinonimo di sicurezza. In realtà è esattamente il contrario.

In primo luogo, manipolando i prezzi e intervenendo costantemente nel processo economico, lo stato non fa che indebolire e destabilizzare il libero mercato. Le risorse sono allocate male, i segnali dei prezzi sono distorti, gli individui non trovano più il loro vero posto nell'economia e le crisi sono inevitabili. Ad esempio, una società che consente alla sua banca centrale di manipolare il prezzo intertemporale del capitale in modo completamente discrezionale invierà costantemente segnali sbagliati agli imprenditori sulla reale disponibilità di capitale e sulla volontà dei consumatori di spendere il loro reddito oggi o domani.

Sebbene i loro effetti non siano immediatamente evidenti, sono comunque disastrosi a lungo termine, poiché portano agli inevitabili cicli di boom/bust. Questi cicli sono caratterizzati da falsi boom economici che portano inevitabilmente alla recessione, un severo e necessario riadattamento del mercato alla realtà dell'economia e alla reale disponibilità di fattori di produzione scarsi. Alla fine l'interventismo è sempre una fonte di incertezza e instabilità, anche se i burocrati francesi credono fermamente che non sia così.

Al contrario il liberalismo rende gli individui più sicuri e resilienti. Il libero mercato consente a ogni individuo di perseguire le proprie ambizioni integrando un complesso sistema di cooperazione basato sulla divisione del lavoro e sulla specializzazione delle competenze. Una società in cui tutti trovano il loro posto per servire al meglio gli altri è una società prospera e, quindi, più sicura. È ovvio per chiunque sia interessato agli studi dell'azione umana e dell'economia che il progresso non può essere pianificato a tavolino. È un processo spontaneo, il risultato delle azioni soggettive di tutti gli individui nell'ambiente di mercato, ognuno guidato dal proprio interesse personale.

Innumerevoli ostacoli al progresso

Il progresso non può essere organizzato [...]. La società non può fare nulla per aiutare il progresso. Se carica l'individuo di catene indistruttibili, se circonda la prigione in cui lo rinchiude con muri insormontabili, ha fatto tutto ciò che ci si può aspettare da essa. Altrimenti il genio troverà presto un modo per conquistare la propria libertà uscendo dalla lampada.

Ciò che Éric Lombard dimostra con le sue recenti dichiarazioni è la sua incomprensione del fallimento delle linee di politica interventiste nel processo economico, cosa che può solo produrre risultati mediocri perché non segue le realtà del mercato. I risultati saranno sempre mediocri perché l'imperativo dei risultati reali, i profitti derivanti dalla soddisfazione del consumatore, è assente. Di conseguenza non ha senso per lo stato investire in un settore in cui il settore privato è già coinvolto, dato che quest'ultimo sarà sempre più veloce ed efficiente, come impone la concorrenza.

La tragedia di queste avventure inutili risiede soprattutto nella perdita definitiva di risorse e tempo per l'economia francese. La tragedia è che l'alternativa, ovvero gli usi veramente produttivi del capitale, non verrà mai presa in considerazione, tutto a causa dell'interventismo statale. Esso non è altro che un sabotaggio permanente del progresso reale, che può venire solo dal libero mercato. Purtroppo con un tale ministro dell'economia, il futuro della Francia non sembra affatto luminoso. Questa è una vergogna per il luogo di nascita di rinomati pensatori liberali come Turgot, Say e Bastiat.

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

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Here’s what to know,” insisted the New York Times Adam Nagourney in a lead editorial the day the JFK files dropped. “Oswald still did it.” If there was such a thing as a Confirmation Bias Olympics, Nagourney would have earned the right to represent the U.S. Reviewing and dismissing 64,000 pages of National Archives material in fewer than 24 hours is no small accomplishment even by the standards of the New York Times.

As opinion writer David Wallace-Wells reminded his readers a week later, the Times decides what is a valid conspiracy theory and what is not. Apparently, JFK theories are not. Wrote the supercilious Wallace-Wells, the JFK files “turned out to be, by the standards of conspiracy hype, a total dud.”

Although Wikipedia describes me as “an American author, blogger and conspiracy theorist,” I remain agnostic on the JFK assassination. If the files turn out to be a “total dud,” so be it. Similarly, if they indict LBJ and a rogue crew of CIA contractors, I would not be surprised.

In either case, what is eerily true is that Wallace-Wells used the same Alinskyite strategy to ridicule conservative investigators that the Times used nearly 30 years ago to defame JFK’s legendary press secretary Pierre Salinger. Salinger’s sin was to reveal the truth behind the 1996 shootdown of TWA Flight 800, a genuine conspiracy in which the Times played a critical role.

According to Wallace-Wells, “we are living in a golden age for conspiracy theory.” In the way of example, for instance, he wrote, “It is now perfectly reasonable, for instance, to believe that a novel virus that killed more than 20 million people worldwide and upended for years the daily life of billions was engineered by scientists and then released by accident, with a global cover-up improvised in the months that followed.”

Coy with his language, Wallace-Wells refused to acknowledge that this “conspiracy theory” proved to be true, and that the Times played a critical role in suppressing the truth, a truth he has a hard time swallowing.

Last month Wallace-Wells headlined an opinion piece, “The Covid Alarmists Were Closer to the Truth Than Anyone Else.” If there were an Olympics for Jesuitical reasoning, Wallace-Wells would be a gold medalist. To make this argument, he ignored all contrary evidence and elevated a few floating, unverifiable numbers to the “gotcha” level.

The people he mocked, the “Covid minimizers and vaccine skeptics,” were the ones paying attention in 2020, the ones least susceptible to the hysteria ginned up by the Times. As tangible proof of the same, I would refer Wallace-Wells to a survey done by Franklin Templeton-Gallup during the last six months of 2020.

In the survey, some 35,000 Americans were asked a series of questions, the most revealing: “What percentage of people who have been infected by the coronavirus needed to be hospitalized?” Democrats proved particularly vulnerable to major media propaganda. Some 41 percent believed that 50 percent or more of those who contracted COVID would end up in the hospital. Another 28 percent answered 20-50 percent.

The correct answer was 1-5 percent. In sum, 69 percent of Democrats were deeply misinformed, and they translated their unfounded alarm into public policy. These policies often bordered on tyranny and ruined more lives, especially young lives, than COVID did.

Making the age of conspiracies so golden is the one technology that the major media still resent, what Wallace-Wells described as “a network of infinite wormholes, some opening up into full-on alternate realities like QAnon and sudden vaccine death.” Ah, yes, the internet, forever condemned for costing the major media their monopoly on information.

Reading Wallace-Wells’s internet bash recalled the Times treatment of Salinger. In the way of background, TWA Flight 800, a Boeing 747, en route from New York to Paris on July 17, 1996, crashed off the coast of Long Island, killing all 230 people on board. At the time, Salinger was working in Paris where the interest in TWA 800 was understandably high. Some 36 French citizens were killed in the crash.

With a likely assist from French intelligence, Salinger was put in touch with retired United Airline pilot and accident investigator Dick Russell. Having gathered information through his own network of aviation insiders, Russell sent a summary e-mail to his associates with the message, “TWA Flight 800 was shot down by a U.S. Navy guided missile ship which was in area W-105. It has been a cover-up from the word go.”

Salinger remained a loyal enough Democrat to sit on his information until it lost its political punch. He broke his silence at an aviation conference in the French resort city of Cannes two days after Bill Clinton’s reelection on November 4, 1996.

Read the Whole Article

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You would think it is impossible to call Ludwig von Mises a fascist. He was of course an old fashioned classical liberal, what we would call today a libertarian. Some extreme leftists have even ben stupid enough to claim that Mises was sympathetic to the Nazis. They don’t deny that Mises was a refugee from  Nazism, but they say, when it comes down to it, Mises would take fascism, even Nazism, over a Marxist socialist revolution.

Of course, this is nonsensical. Mises wrote the classical analysis of Nazism, identifying it as a form of socialism in which the ostensible forms of the market, such as private ownership and private business, were preserved, but in fact Nazi officials told the businessmen what prices to charge. They were totally subject to the will of the state.

Despite all this, some historians have answered our question in the affirmative, and foremost among them is Perry Anderson, a formidable Marxist scholar. In an essay ”The Intransigent right and the Sources of Fascism,” which appeared in the London Review of Books in September 1992 and has been often referenced since then, Anderson says of Mises that “there was no more uncompromising champion of classical liberalism in the German-speaking world of the Twenties … [but] looking across the border, he could see the virtues of Mussolini. The blackshirts had for the moment saved European civilization for the principle of private property; ‘the merit that Fascism has thereby won will live on eternally in history.’”

Anderson accurately quotes from Mises’s Liberalism but nevertheless utterly distorts Mises’s view. Mises offers in that book a penetrating criticism of Italian fascism, and only by extracting the quoted sentence from its context, and distorting its meaning, has Anderson been able to portray Mises as a supporter of Mussolini. In what follows, I  will try to explain Mises’s view of fascism, as he expounds this in Liberalism. In doing so, I will  follow the great libertarian  historian and student of Mises Ralph Raico, who addressed the topic in an essay of characteristic brilliance, “Mises on Fascism, Democracy, and Other Questions.”

Mises’s discussion is contained in “The Argument of Fascism,” a section in the first chapter of Liberalism, “The Foundations of Liberal Policy.” Mises maintains that the coming to power of the “parties of the Third International”—i.e., the Communist parties controlled by Soviet Russia—has changed the nature of European politics for the worse, in a way that even World War I did not. Before the Communists came to power, the influence of liberal ideas imposed patterns of restraint on authoritarian forces.

Before 1914, even the most dogged and bitter enemies of liberalism had to resign themselves to allowing many liberal principles to pass unchallenged. Even in Russia, where only a few feeble rays of liberalism had penetrated, the supporters of the Czarist despotism, in persecuting their opponents, still had to take into consideration the liberal opinions of Europe; and during the World War, the war parties in the belligerent nations, with all their zeal, still had to practice a certain moderation in their struggle against internal opposition. (All subsequent quotations are from Liberalism)

Things changed when the Communists came to power.

The parties of the Third International consider any means as permissible if it seems to give promise of helping them in their struggle to achieve their ends. Whoever does not unconditionally acknowledge all their teachings as the only correct ones and stand by them through thick and thin has, in their opinion, incurred the penalty of death; and they do not hesitate to exterminate him and his whole family, infants included, whenever and wherever it is physically possible.

We now come to a part of Mises’s argument that is crucial to understanding his opinion of fascism. He says that some opponents of revolutionary socialism thought they had made a mistake. If only they had been willing to kill their revolutionary opponents, disregarding the restraints of the rule of law, they would have succeeded in preventing a Bolshevik takeover. Mises clearly associates the Fascists with these “nationalists and militarists” and says they were mistaken. Revolutionary socialism is an idea, and only the better idea of classical liberalism can defeat it.

What distinguishes liberal from Fascist political tactics is not a difference of opinion in regard to the necessity of using armed force to resist armed attackers, but a difference in the fundamental estimation of the role of violence in a struggle for power. The great danger threatening domestic policy from the side of Fascism lies in its complete faith in the decisive power of violence. In order to assure success, one must be imbued with the will to victory and always proceed violently. This is its highest principle. What happens, however, when one’s opponent, similarly animated by the will to be victorious, acts just as violently? The result must be a battle, a civil war. The ultimate victor to emerge from such conflicts will be the faction strongest in number. In the long run, a minority—even if it is composed of the most capable and energetic—cannot succeed in resisting the majority. The decisive question, therefore, always remains: How does one obtain a majority for one’s own party? This, however, is a purely intellectual matter. It is a victory that can be won only with the weapons of the intellect, never by force. The suppression of all opposition by sheer violence is a most unsuitable way to win adherents to one’s cause. Resort to naked force—that is, without justification in terms of intellectual arguments accepted by public opinion—merely gains new friends for those whom one is thereby trying to combat. In a battle between force and an idea, the latter always prevails.

Mises has no use for Fascist domestic policy, and its foreign policy is no better.

That its foreign policy, based as it is on the avowed principle of force in international relations, cannot fail to give rise to an endless series of wars that must destroy all of modern civilization requires no further discussion. To maintain and further raise our present level of economic development, peace among nations must be assured. But they cannot live together in peace if the basic tenet of the ideology by which they are governed is the belief that one’s own nation can secure its place in the community of nations by force alone.

But what about the sentence quoted by Perry Anderson? The merit that Mises ascribes to Italian fascism is that it has saved Italy from a Communist takeover, which would have resulted in the application of Bolshevik methods of extermination. It is in that respect, Mises holds, that it has “saved European civilization” and won for itself merit that will “live on eternally in history.” Mises does not claim that only the Fascists could have stopped the Communists; his claim is rather that the Fascists in fact did so. By wrenching a sentence from its context, Anderson has converted a condemnation of fascism into a defense of it. It is as if someone were called a communist sympathizer because he wrote that “Soviet communism has earned eternal glory by saving Europe from Nazi barbarism,” even though the writer was a strong critic of communism. In fact, that is exactly Mises’s view, as readers of Omnipotent Government will recollect.

Mises explicitly says in that book that Soviet Russia should be allowed to expand in Eastern Europe after World War II ends, in order to prevent the rebirth of a strong Germany. Whether he was right or wrong about this is a topic for another day. But it certainly shows that Mises did not prefer Nazism to a Marxist revolution.

Let’s do everything we can to encourage the study of the great Ludwig von Mises! That is our aim at the Mises Institute, which it was my great privilege to found in 1982 and is now headed by our great President, Tom DiLorenzo.

The post The Truth About Mises and Fascism appeared first on LewRockwell.

On March 28, Utah became the first state to ban fluoride from drinking water after Governor Spencer Cox (R) signed legislation to remove the potentially damaging substance from the state’s water supply.

transformative health bills that are quietly making their way through court rooms across the country.

In Utah, the move comes after HHS Secretary Kennedy said that removing fluoride from water is one of his administration’s top priorities. Studies show that fluoride can have dangerous neurotoxic effects that are particularly pronounced in babies, children and expecting mothers.

One day earlier, Iowa’s state House of Representatives passed a bill to restrict using subsidies from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), a food stamp program aimed at helping unemployed and low-income Americans. The bill forbids SNAP recipients from using their government aid to purchase ultra-processed ‘junk food.’

The Iowa bill, which passed with a 56-40 vote, mirrors proposals reportedly in the works at a federal level.

But passing the bill in Iowa was not smooth sailing. The American Beverage Association (ABA), among other groups, have been lobbying against any SNAP restrictions.

More Dyes Banned

West Virginia Governor Patrick Morrisey signed legislation banning seven toxic food dyes from food served in the state’s schools. Beginning in 2026, these dyes will be banned on all food sold in the state.

According to media reports, over half of the nation’s states are considering similar bans.

Prior to the current administration, it was difficult for states to take steps to provide healthier food options to K-12 students. One reason: the National School Lunch Program (NSLP), a federally funded meal program that provides low-cost lunches to students in public and nonprofit schools, administered by the USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service (FNS), has strict grounds for school eligibility.

In order to receive federal meal subsidies on a per-student basis, states and local school districts cannot deviate from the NSLP’s nutritional guidelines, unless a waiver is granted by federal agencies.

This is the case, even when states and school districts offer higher quality nutritional standards built around fresh, locally sourced ingredients.

However, both the HHS and USDA Secretaries have indicated an eagerness to grant waivers to states and school districts that are pursuing initiatives to provide better nutrition to students. This marks a major departure from the approach of the previous administration.

Speaking with Governor Morrisey, Secretary Kennedy confirmed that West Virginia will receive a federal waiver to provide healthier food in K-12 schools. Kennedy also said that the federal government will give the state a waiver that allows it to restrict SNAP dollars going to junk food purchases.

Earlier in March, the Texas State Senate unanimously passed Senator Lois Kolkhorst’s SB 25. The bill requires labels on all food sold in Texas to list all ingredients that are legal in the U.S. but banned in Canada and the EU. The deadline for the new labeling will take effect in 2027.

The bill also mandates 30 minutes of physical education in all Texas schools in addition to special courses on nutritional education. Finally, the bill calls for nutrition education for Texas physicians and medical students, to enhance their understanding of diet-related health issues.

The Texas Senate also recently passed SB 314, which restricts over a dozen ingredients in the ultra-processed foods served to students at Texas schools.

MAHA’s chief aim is to make America Healthy again while rolling back the nation’s chronic disease epidemic. What has started as a federal push, encouraged by President Trump and HHS Secretary Kennedy, is now sweeping the country, one state at a time.

This originally appeared on The Kennedy Beacon.

The post MAHA Spreads Its Wings Across America appeared first on LewRockwell.

George Orwell wrote, “During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.” Our present era is certainly full of deceit, along with corruption, incompetence, and insanity. When you’re lied to often enough, you lose perspective on what the truth really is. We are lied to continuously.

The recent, all too brief congressional hearing chaired by the lovely Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, on the JFK assassination, brought home this point once again. Only a handful of representatives even bothered to attend the hearing, let alone ask questions. And none of their questions demonstrated a cursory knowledge of the case. Jasmine Crockett, who seems to be front and center of everything now in Congress, basically insinuated that Americans should be happy that the CIA didn’t destroy all the evidence. Another Democrat kept trying to get Jefferson Morley to admit that Oswald was firing shots that day. And Loren Bobert, bless her cute little empty head, confused Oliver Stone with Roger Stone. She must have quite the conscientious staff. Rep. Luna did a commendable job, but is very young and not informed enough to confidently debate anyone on the subject.

Luna said publicly that there were two shooters. Okay, that’s certainly more accurate than saying there was one. Especially when you’re claiming the one was Lee Harvey Oswald, who didn’t fire a weapon that day. Luna, for unknown reasons, highlighted a film being withheld by NBC News, that reveals Oswald “near the vehicle,” in her words. Apparently, she was referring to footage that shows a grainy figure in the corner of the doorway of the Texas School Book Depository building, which some in the research community claim is Oswald. It was an awkward choice of words to say “near the vehicle,” but certainly if the figure was Oswald, that alone exculpates him, because it was taken as shots were being fired, allegedly by Oswald on the sixth floor of the same building. I don’t think one can even determine conclusively if the figure is male or female, but perhaps an enhanced version of the withheld original film would.

Several people told me that Luna should call me to testify. I have been at this for longer than almost anyone still alive, and that includes the three experts who did testify; Oliver Stone, Jim DiEugenio, and Jefferson Morley. I’ve interviewed DiEugenio and we’ve had numerous exchanges on forums over the years. Morley appeared with me on a Travel Channel special about the assassination, and more recently was a panelist alongside me on the Union of the Unwanted podcast. He has become the go-to guy for big platforms, with a resume that includes working for The Washington Post for quite some time. Oliver Stone knows who I am. He has my books, because we have the same publisher, and they send all their books to their big name authors. He even has a signed copy of The Unreals, which I gave to his son Sean Stone, when I appeared on his RT show.

It is frustrating to watch elected officials grapple with the basic facts about such a momentous event, and rely on the absurd disinformation of the court historians. The number of Americans who believe JFK was killed by a conspiracy is still a majority, but has dipped significantly since peaking in the 1970s-1980s at close to 90 percent. This makes sense, since most Americans are now historically illiterate. Now, the ones who are awake obviously know Oswald didn’t do it, but we all know that we’re outnumbered by the “Woke,” the unthinking followers, and the disinterested. Smarmy Ben Shapiro further destroyed whatever audience he had left by questioning why anyone should care who killed JFK at this point. After all, it was over sixty years ago. I wonder if Little Ben thinks we should care about another part of history, something that happened over eighty years ago. I’m guessing he feels a bit differently about that.

Back when I was writing lots of poetry, and immersing myself in the old romantic poets, I came across a fascinating poem written by Sir Walter Raleigh around 1592, while he was imprisoned in the notorious Tower of London. Raleigh was eventually executed, and appears to have been a radical man after my own heart. He refers to telling the truth as a “thankless errand.” With everyone determined to “give the world the lie,” Here are a few salient lines from this remarkable poem:

Say to the court, it glows and shines like rotten wood;

Say to the church, it shows what’s good, and doth no good.

If church and court reply, then give them both the lie.

Tell men of high condition, that manage the estate,

Their purpose is ambition, their practice only hate.

And if they once reply, then give them all the lie.

“The Lie” had a profound impact on me as a youth. I was already seeing how pervasive dishonesty was in our society, even in our families. The Devil’s Dictionary was always at my fingertips, and I could understand why Ambrose Bierce called honest men and faithful women the rarest of rarities. I had, of course, discovered the lie of the JFK assassination official story. I would quickly determine this was not an anomaly, and that in fact we had been lied to about everything. The court historians lie to us about history. The highly paid “journalists” lie to us about current events. Even the sports I loved so much all my life were filled with “the lie,” as I am learning more with each word I write of my new book exposing the corruption in that world. I saw first hand how “the lie” permeated the workplace. Corporations and the government both seem to be fueled by “the lie.” There doesn’t appear to be a meritocracy anywhere.

As I hope I’ve demonstrated in my series of hidden history books, Americans are woefully misinformed about their past. They keep falling for new psyops and false flags, because they don’t know about the ones from the past. Their historical knowledge, at this point, is limited to an image of the Founding Fathers as hopelessly dead White men, who mostly owned slaves. Who thought Blacks were a fraction of a human being. I don’t know how many really think that modern Broadway star Alexander Hamilton, father of debt and favorite of international bankers, really was Black, but I’m sure some do. Maybe some think he’s still alive. They believe Lincoln was about as good as a dead White male can be. After all, he freed the slaves. They really don’t know much about the twentieth century, except that Nazis are bad. And still are, even though they were destroyed eighty years ago. They saved Hitler’s zombie brain or whatever. And Rosa Parks wouldn’t sit in the back of a bus. That’s about it.

Our fractional banking system is counterfeit. They lend money that isn’t backed by anything, and that they don’t actually have. That’s definitely part of “the lie.” The Hollywood fantasy about “White Supremacists” being a threat to humble and lovable Black citizens is repudiated by every crime statistic, and every anecdotal experience. Recently, a White honor roll student and high school football star was senselessly stabbed to death by a Black at a track meet. Apparently, he felt “disrespected.” You can’t let anyone, especially someone White, “disrespect” you. You have to react violently. It’s the code of the ‘hood. The code Hollywood and corporate America reinforce constantly. Shut up- a Black woman is talking! This ignorant ghetto creed now permeates society, and has replaced our culture with a mindless anti-culture. And you better respect it, or the anti-culture will kick your ass.

Could anything be a bigger lie than stating children can “change” their gender? Little boys can become girls? That “transgenders” with penises are legitimate female athletes? Hollywood promotes “the lie” that racial stereotypes can be reversed; where Black characters are kind, polite, brilliant, helpful, and wonderful parents, while Whites, especially White males, are like weak, helpless toddlers, but also can join skinhead and 1930s-style gangs, to rule the mean streets of our biggest cities. They also promote the dangerous idea that any female can beat up any male. Well, any White male. I’m sure this has already resulted in deluded young girls being severely injured. Not that our lying media would ever report that. They don’t report anything that contradicts their twisted narrative. The lie. Modern lies are just updated versions of the old Horatio Alger myths. Any boy can grow up to become president. The lie.

While there was at least some upward mobility in the past, it was limited. As I detailed in Survival of the Richest, if you’re born poor, you tend to stay that way. And if you’re born rich, you tend to stay rich. The middle class lifestyle was once the goal of most Americans. The picket fence surrounding your own yard, with little children frolicking about. But with the middle class being squeezed out of existence, what is the goal now for young Americans? The newest video game? Waiting for a more realistic sex bot? I’m not sure they even bother with lying at most jobs now. They can’t even advertise the starting salary. They’ll say it’s “competitive.” Okay, that sounds honest. You’ll work harder and longer for less. It’s an anti-Huey Long world. We demand loyalty but will not be loyal to you. The lie. Just hope you live long enough to be repaid at least some of the money they extorted from you for Social Security.

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See you the windy levels spread
About the gates of Rye?
O that was where the Northmen fled,
When Alfred’s ships came by.

-Rudyard Kipling, from “Puck’s Song”

“The high tide!” King Alfred cried.
“The high tide and the turn!“

-G.K. Chesterton, from The Ballad of the White Horse

The praises of Alfred the Great have been sung by hosts of poets and historians even apart from Rudyard Kipling and G.K. Chesterton, the latter of whom wrote an entire book-length epic poem in veneration of the great warrior king of the Anglo-Saxons. As to Anglo-Saxon kings, others might come to mind in addition to Alfred, especially the two who became saints, Edmund the Martyr and Edward the Confessor, both of whom were hallowed as patron saints of England until its patronage passed to St. George at the time of the crusades.

Few, however, will remember Athelstan, Alfred’s grandson, who is neither lionized by the poets nor canonized by the Church. As we shall see, he is a warrior king who is perhaps equal in greatness to Alfred and possibly rivals Edmund and Edward in piety.

Athelstan was born in the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Wessex around A.D. 894. Five years later upon the death of his grandfather, his father, known to history as Edward the Elder, became king. Edward would rule for 25 years, laying solid political foundations for the kingdom his son would inherit in 924.

Edward is himself largely unsung in terms of historical recognition and has been described by contemporary British historian Nick Higham as “perhaps the most neglected of English kings.”  The medieval chronicler William of Malmesbury judged that Edward the Elder was “much inferior to his father in the cultivation of letters” but “incomparably more glorious in the power of his rule.”

If we take William of Malmesbury’s judgment seriously, we might be tempted to proclaim Edward the Elder as an unsung hero of Christendom, but such a temptation would be a little premature. Unsung hero of England he might be, but he showed no great inclination to promote Christian civilization nor to support the presence of the Church. As William of Malmesbury confessed, he was “much inferior” to Alfred in terms of learning and culture, and contemporary British historian Alan Thacker wrote that Edward “gave little to the church indeed…Judging by the dearth of charters for much of his reign he seems to have given away little at all…More than any other, Edward’s kingship seems to epitomise the new hard-nosed monarchy of Wessex, determined to exploit all its resources, lay and ecclesiastical, for its own benefit.” Clearly this “hard-nosed” king was no hero of Christendom.

Unlike his father, Athelstan was particularly pious, defending the Faith as vigorously as he defended his kingdom. In terms of politics, he would become more powerful than either his father or grandfather, building on the solid foundations they’d laid. Whereas Alfred was the first King of the Anglo-Saxons, having united the various Anglo-Saxon kingdoms in the south of the country, Athelstan would become the first King of the English, following his 927 conquest of York, the last remaining Viking kingdom in England.

It is, therefore, to Athelstan’s reign that we can date the birth of the political entity which we now know as England, prior to which the country had been divided between various Anglo-Saxon regional kingdoms that were Christian and the parts of the country under Viking (pagan) domination.

However, even attributing the foundation of the English nation to Athelstan would not, in itself, make him a hero of Christendom. His heroic status in this respect rests on his piety and his practical efforts to promote Christianity during his reign. One of the most pious of all the Anglo-Saxon kings, he collected relics, founded churches, promoted learning, and laid the foundation for the Benedictine monastic reform that came later in the century.

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Today’s Daily Telegraph reported that there is a movement in Germany to get back its gold amounting to 1,200 tonnes, held earmarked at the NY Fed. The Bundesbank denied it, expressing complete confidence in the Americans.

Well, they would, wouldn’t they.

The article quotes two politicians who had been pushing for this and/or audits/inspections before Trump was even elected. At its face, the article is therefore speculative. But it was unlikely to be published unless there was more to it than at first appears. We should read between the lines.

Politicians and the Bundesbank as custodian for Germany’s gold are bound to be concerned. But the Bundesbank is in a difficult position. It had problems with the Americans over repatriating just 300 tonnes, first announced in 2013 and not completed until 2017. Apparently, the bar numbers didn’t match Bundesbank records, and Bundesbank officials were previously refused access to inspect their earmarked gold.

The problem is that either the gold is not there, or if it is there it is encumbered by being leased out to other parties. In other words, it has at least two owners with further rehypothecation extremely likely.

We don’t know what the Bundesbank committed to in order to get just 300 tonnes returned over a ridiculously long period. But it is likely that they had to agree to leave the rest with the NY Fed. And does the Bundesbank dare to threaten the entire gold market paper system by renewing demands for the return of more of its gold?

The wider point is that within all the EU’s national central banks which store their gold in New York and elsewhere there are bound to be growing concerns over the security of their earmarked gold in New York. The implications are that the Fed cannot be trusted, and any leasing must be stopped. But for now, they are unlikely to create a crisis by demanding the return of their gold.

I have argued recently that when other central banks as a whole are aggressively acquiring bullion as a means of dumping fiat currencies from their reserves, it makes no sense to permit the NY Fed, the Bank of England, or the Bank for International Settlements to use gold leasing of central bank gold to provide the market liquidity necessary for gold derivative markets to function.

The current flow of gold out of the Bank of England’s vaults almost certainly involved leased gold, because commercial entities store their bullion in LBMA vaults. The comfort afforded to the BoE’s central bank customers by the book entry transfer system, which means leased gold doesn’t leave the Bank’s vault has now been blown out of the water.

Put another way, as these leases fall due, vital liquidity for the paper markets will be withdrawn. Systemic risk in gold derivatives is escalating several notches higher.

Possession is all.

This originally appeared on MacleodFinance Substack.

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For many Americans, it is an article of faith that a vast and powerful federal government equals a great and strong nation. Actually, it’s the exact opposite. The more powerful the federal government, the weaker the nation. Contrariwise, the smaller and weaker the federal government, the more powerful the nation.

Part of the problem here is that many Americans have been taught to believe that the federal government and the nation are one and the same thing. They aren’t. They are two completely separate and distinct entities.

A good confirmation of this phenomenon is the Bill of Rights. Many Americans believe that it gives Americans their rights. Actually, the Bill of Rights protects the nation — that is, the American people — from the federal government, which confirms that we are dealing with two separate and distinct entities.

The Constitution called the federal government into existence. The type of government it established was what we call a limited-government republic. It was a very small government whose powers were extremely limited — that is, limited to the few powers that were enumerated in the Constitution itself.

That was how the Framers and our American ancestors wanted it. They wanted a small, weak federal government — one with very few powers.

One of the most important features of this new government was its lack of a vast, permanent military establishment. That was the last thing the Framers and our American ancestors wanted. They knew that a vast-permanent military establishment would convert the federal government into a powerful government. They didn’t want that. They felt that such a powerful government would constitute a grave threat to the freedom and well-being of the nation. Thus, they fiercely opposed what they called “standing armies.” That’s why throughout the 19th century, America had a relatively small, basic army.

This unusual governmental structure brought into existence the most unique economic and political system in the history of man. By the time the 1880s arrived, the United States was a land of no income taxation or IRS, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, farm subsidies, education grants, Federal Reserve, paper money, (minimal) immigration control, gun control, drug war, minimum-wage laws, occupational licensure, (minimal) economic regulations, national-security state, Pentagon, CIA, NSA, torture, indefinite detention, compulsory school-attendance laws, (minimal) public (i.e., government) schooling systems, war on terrorism, foreign wars, foreign aid, foreign interventions, and state-sponsored assassinations.

The result of this unique governmental structure and economic and political system was the most powerful nation in history. The American people were characterized by a strong sense of independence, toughness, self-reliance, and can-do. They put their faith in themselves, in others, in free markets, in voluntary charity, in their families, and in God. They were fearless. No one dared to attack and invade the United States because to do so would be like swallowing a porcupine. The American people were simply too strong, precisely because their government was so small and weak.

It’s worth noting that this one-of-a-kind-system brought into existence the most prosperous and the most charitable nation in the history of mankind. From 1880-1910, real wage rates increased by 50 percent. When people were free to accumulate unlimited amounts of weath, the result was the greatest amount of voluntary charity that mankind had ever seen. One man — John D. Rockefeller — actually gave away $500 million in his lifetime.

In the 20th century, everything changed. The federal government was converted into a welfare state, whose purpose was to provide for people and to take care of them. Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, education grants, farm subsidies, FDIC, and other welfare-state programs ensured that people were taken care of by the federal government.

The money that was used to do this was forcibly extracted from those who were producing wealth. That’s why the income tax and IRS were brought into existence. Moreover, the nation’s monetary system was converted from a gold-coin/silver-coin standard to a paper-money standard managed by the newly created Federal Reserve System, which enabled the federal government to extract more income and wealth from people through monetary debasement (i.e., inflation).

The federal government became the manager, controller, and regulator of the nation’s economy. The best example of this phenomenon was the minimum-wage, whose ostensible purpose was to have the federal government protect the poor working man from the rapaciousness of employers. Another example was the drug war, by which the federal government wielded the power to punish people who ingested, possessed, or sold substances that the federal government hadn’t approved.

The biggest transformation was to a national-security state, which entailed a vast, permanent military-intelligence establishment consisting of the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA. Combined with a new policy of foreign wars, foreign interventions, foreign coups, state-sponsored assassinations, torture, indefinite detention, and war on terrorism, America became a land of perpetual war in the quest for perpetual peace.

Today’s Americans get their sense of toughness vicariously through the vast power of the federal government. Thus, when the federal government threatens or uses military force or economic sanctions or embargoes against other nations, Americans feel like they too are being “tough.” One of their favorite pronouns is “we”— as in “We showed those Iraqis how tough we are when we attacked, invaded, occupied, and ‘liberated’ their country.”

What people failed to notice was that in the process of converting the federal government into an all-powerful, omnipotent government with the power to take care of the citizenry and to keep the citizenry “safe,” the result was a very weak nation — that is, a nation of little serfs who are hopelessly dependent on the federal dole and scared to death of everything, including their own shadows. Imagine the irony: Americans have the most powerful government in history and are the most frightened people in the world.

Look at what the dole has done to people. Huge universities capitulating in the face of possibly having their dole taken away from them. Huge law firms doing the same thing when faced with the possibility of losing market share in the vast federal system.

Look at the seniors. Hopelessly dependent on the Social Security dole, many of them are convinced that they would die in the streets without their dole. That’s what the dole has done. It has weakened people and caused them to place their faith in Caesar, the IRS, and the coercive apparatus of income taxation and the fraudulent apparatus of the Federal Reserve System.

Most Americans are also scared to death that the illegal immigrants, Russians, Reds, Chinese, terrorists, Muslims, Iran, North Korea, Cuba, North Vietnam, and Venezuela are coming to get them. They readily buy into the nonsense that these scary boogeymen are already here “invading” America and ready to take them away. That’s why they have accepted and even supported the brutal treatment of immigrants, no questions asked, even though such treatment involves the further destruction of the rights and liberties of the American people. Liberty no longer matters. What matters is to be kept “safe” from the boogeymen.

Our American ancestors hated and rejected everything today’s Americans stand for. If they were suddenly brought back to life, there is no doubt that there would be a civil war for the future direction of our nation. Today’s Americans wouldn’t stand a chance. They are much too weak.

Reprinted with permission from Future of Freedom Foundation.

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