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The post Nuclear Expert Predicts How Launching a Single Nuke Could Wipe Out All of Humanity appeared first on LewRockwell.

There is one ever-pervasive and dangerous downside to the idea of the “big political tent” – The idea that all groups in the tent are equally entitled to dictate the terms within the tent. This is rarely the case.

In its weakest form, the big tent is an all encompassing movement reliant on temporary alliances between largely disconnected groups. It’s a gentleman’s agreement to stop the backbiting for a time so that a greater threat can be defeated. The problem is, some members of the big tent are more dedicated to the cause than others, and some simply don’t have the stomach to do what is necessary.

The reasons for their apprehension vary. Some people worry incessantly about optics, because true national reform is not as elegant and pure as they imagine it will be.  Preserving the heritage of a nation requires everyone to be on the same page to a point, and when a large contingent of people prefer total chaos it’s naive to think that a solution can be achieved without force.

For example, when around 25% of the country is rabidly obsessed with the Marxist deconstruction of the west, is a peaceful solution possible? So far, any action we take to reverse the efforts of leftist zealots has been met with widespread lies, instigation, sabotage, mob violence, political corruption and attempted assassination.

We have seen what happens when leftists are in power. We don’t have to guess anymore what life would be like under their thumb. We know.  Government sponsored mass censorship, vast indoctrination programs through media and entertainment, tyrannical efforts to force behaviors and socially engineer compliance, the ideological grooming of children, threats against people’s jobs, families and freedoms.

The progressive movement is largely single minded – They are a hive that acts solely for the advancement of the group. They have a limited understanding of reality, no moral compass, no guilt, no shame, no sense of principles or honor, no doubts that they are correct in their beliefs and they are completely dedicated to winning no matter the cost. They will blindly follow the demands of their gatekeepers without question.

On the bright side, woke ideology has been crushed when it comes to the battleground of public debate. They can’t win in a fair fight, which is why they assassinated Charlie Kirk and then cheered joyously over his corpse. They had an ecstatic experience because deep down they know they are losing the social discourse.

Kirk’s murder was the moment they had been craving; leftists threw the chessboard into the dirt and screamed like sociopathic children: “We will win because the rules don’t apply to us…”

As I’ve been saying for years, any group that opposes the woke mob will fail in the end if they can’t set aside the delusion that this situation is merely a disagreement between countrymen. It’s not. This is a war between utterly disparate enemies with completely different moral positions.

Diplomacy is a pipe dream and playing nice is a death sentence. It’s time to stop pretending that our national relationship can be mended. It’s over. In fact, it was over many years ago and only now are conservatives actually beginning to fight back. We’re done worrying about political optics. Either we change things dramatically right now, or we’ll never get another chance.

Some centrists, libertarians and moderate liberals are not as thick-skinned, though. When they joined the “big tent” they must have thought that Donald Trump securing the election was the final prize and that everything else would fall into place naturally. The election is a side note to the greater conflict taking place. It delays the inevitable melee but it doesn’t necessarily prevent it.

Trump is a short term stop-gap and if leftists are lucky the worst they will ever see is some ICE agents tackling illegals or the National Guard patrolling the ghetto because Democrat city leaders won’t police or prosecute properly. They have no clue what is coming if average conservatives decide to take matters into their own hands. In other words, Trump is being nice and leftists are oblivious.

The deportation of illegal immigrants is one subject that motivated the majority of Americans to stand against the progressive left and their globalist patrons. Democrat’s were flooding the US with untold millions of illegal migrants on top of the millions that had already accumulated over the course of the past few decades. And guess what?  Nearly half of  Latino voters support deportations, too.

However, some centrists like Joe Rogan are getting cold feet over the situation. He argues that ICE operations are going too far and that arresting non-criminals and illegals present in the country for 20 years is a “horrific look”.

This is where the big tent idea has its drawbacks. Conservative movements often fail to root out radical leftists because they feel the need to appeal to pie-in-the-sky centrist notions of diplomacy and fairness. These are people that worry about negative media response and cracks in the federation of anti-woke groups. They’re always thinking about the next election and not what we need to do right now, thus, nothing ever gets done.

Let’s be honest, conservatives created the tent and we should run it.  We were fighting the far-left PC crowd for years while most everyone else called us “conspiracy theorists”.  People like Rogan jumped on the bandwagon much later.  We’ve allowed the Overton Window to be shifted to the radical left, but it’s not because of leftists.  It’s because of centrists who don’t want to get their hands dirty.  We’re always trying to make them happy.  Centrists fear being accused of authoritarianism more than anything and the political left knows it.

Rogan is right more often than not, but he’s completely wrong on the issue of ICE arrests. An illegal that has been living in the US for 20 years should be at the TOP of the list for deportation. They have been feeding off the US economy, taking jobs that should have gone to Americans, and they’ve been doing it for a painfully long time.

They indirectly help Democrats to rig voting districts and the Electoral College by inflating census numbers. Around 60% of them tap into welfare subsidies and healthcare programs that cost US taxpayers billions. They eat up the housing market, helping to inflate home prices and rental costs. They drive down wages for legal citizens by working for 30% less.

The biggest insult, though, is that the people Rogan is talking about have had 20 years or more to become a naturalized citizen and they chose not to. They were either too lazy or their loyalties remain with their country of origin. Why should we give them special treatment?

In terms of the optics of the arrests, illegals are criminals. All of them. Trump never promised to only arrest migrants that commit crimes after they cross the border. He promised the opposite. This idea was perpetuated by Democrat leaders who were trying to control the debate. No, all illegals need to go. Not only those that leftists and centrists deem to be non-threats at the moment, the law must apply to all of them equally.

If the concern is “brutality”, then I have to say that ICE Is going easy on these criminals. Easier than I would, at any rate.

Don’t forget that deportation raids and aggressive arrests would not be needed if migrants would simply self deport. Around 1.6 million have already done this; they are the smart ones. Furthermore, has Rogan considered the possibility that being harsh with deportations today inspires more self-deportations and less violence in the future? In other words, we get ugly right now so that we don’t have to get ugly tomorrow.

I have no sympathy for illegals who defy deportation after years of exploiting the system, refusing to work for naturalized citizenship, refusing to assimilate and even getting violent when they’re caught.

I also have no sympathy for woke activists who try to interfere with perfectly lawful arrests. If they get their asses kicked in the process of sabotaging deportations, then all the better.

Illegal migrants do NOT have the same due process rights under federal law as native citizens. Due process for an illegal only requires that ICE verify that the person is a foreigner and that they do not have a proper visa or greencard. That’s it. No courts, no jury, no appeals, no playing games. They can be quickly booted, and this is a good thing.

It’s interesting to me that globalist propaganda has been so effective in brainwashing liberals and centrists that they continue to think that basic immigration laws common to most nations around the world are somehow draconian and ugly when applied in the US. Only the US gets this kind of criticism. Only American conservatives are called “monsters” for wanting secure borders and a country free from foreign invasion.

The US is not an “economic zone” open to the rest of the planet. It’s not a perpetual “melting pot”. We are not obligated to welcome the third world into our home. They’re not allowed to kick up their feet on our couch. They were not invited.

And, if they refuse to leave voluntarily, then yes, we get to beat them into submission and toss them back where they came from. Most Americans support this. We don’t care how it looks. We’re no longer concerned about the fears of centrists.

What are they going to do? Vote for the Democrats? Only to suffer through another 4 years of Biden-era cultural Marxism, worrying endlessly about being canceled from their jobs and their social media and their podcasts? Worrying endlessly if their kids are going to go to school only to be groomed by some woke circus freak teacher?

I think not. I think they will realize the stupidity of that kind of endeavor, set aside their pearl clutching and accept that the deportations being enforced today are EXACTLY what the Founding Fathers would have done if they were faced with a similar situation. It’s the centrists that have strayed from the spirit of our Republic, not conservatives.

Reprinted with permission from Alt-Market.us.

The post Joe Rogan Criticizes The Harsh Tactics Of ICE: Here’s Why He’s Wrong appeared first on LewRockwell.

The Trump administration, through its attorney general Pam Bondi, announced on August 7 it has doubled a reward—from $25 million to $50 million—for information leading to the arrest of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. According to the administration, Maduro is in cahoots with drug cartels, specifically Cártel de los Soles (Cartel of the Suns). 

Bondi accused Maduro of heading up one of the world’s most notorious drug trafficking operations. She said his alleged involvement in the drug trade is a threat to the national security of the United States. Trump’s AG said Maduro utilizes “foreign terrorist and criminal organizations,” including the Tren de Aragua gang, the Mexican Sinaloa Cartel, in addition to Cartel of the Suns, to traffic cocaine in the United States.

“He is one of the largest narco-traffickers in the world and a threat to our national security. Therefore, we’ve doubled his reward to $50 million,” Bondi said in a video posted on X. 

While there is little compelling evidence of Maduro’s involvement in the drug trade, it is known that the Venezuelan National Guard and military began to buy, store, transfer and distribute cocaine in the mid-2000s. Prior to direct involvement, the Venezuelan military extorted narcos in the transfer of drug shipments.

“According to InSight Crime, a theory as to what may have motivated this move is that Colombian narcos began to pay the military in drugs rather than cash. This forced the Venezuelans to seek markets of their own,” writes intelligence analyst Javier Sutil Toledano. 

Venezuela might not have become involved in the drug trade if not for the multi-billion-dollar Plan Colombia security program signed with the United States. Billed as an anti-narcotics effort, the real purpose of the plan was to eradicate guerrilla movements aligned against corporate petroleum and mining activities. Colombia Plan maintained a close relationship with death squads and organized paramilitary forces, notes Noam Chomsky. 

Plan Colombia’s war on guerrilla movements forced FARC (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia) to move operations to the border with Venezuela and corrupt officials became involved in the drug trade. The narrative claims FARC is a major distributor of cocaine. This is, however, an exaggeration.

“In standard US terminology, the FARC forces are ‘narcoguerrillas,’ a useful concept as a cover for counterinsurgency,” writes Chomsky. “It is agreed—and FARC leaders say—that they rely for funding on coca production, which they tax, as they tax other businesses.” 

Klaus Nyholm, at the time head of the UN Drug Control Program, believes “the guerrillas are something different from the traffickers,” while Andean drug specialist Ricardo Vargas argues the guerrillas were “primarily focused on taxation of illicit crops,” not trafficking. Moreover, FARC called for “a development plan for the peasants” that would “allow eradication of coca on the basis of alternative crops.” Vargas added that Colombian peasants grow cocoa plants “because of the crisis in the agricultural sector of Latin American countries, escalated by the general economic crisis in the region,” a crisis exacerbated by neoliberal trade policies. 

In 2013, it was reported that FARC, while in the process of demobilization, was taken over piecemeal by the Gaitanistas (Autodefensas Gaitanistas de Colombia, aka Clan del Golfo), described as a rightwing Colombian neo-paramilitary group and the largest drug cartel in Colombia. It is believed the group is comprised of either reservists or retired professional soldiers. Colombian General Leonardo Alfonso Barrero Gordillo worked with Clan del Golfo and its paramilitary groups, according to human rights organizations. 

“Although Maduro was not among the early Venezuelan officials tied to narco-trafficking during the previous Hugo Chávez presidency, a federal indictment filed in New York shows his rise through the ranks of the Cartel of the Suns,” claims the Miami Herald.

The news outlet mentions an indictment that claims Maduro and the cartel aimed “to flood the United States with cocaine and inflict the drug’s harmful and addictive effects on users in this country.”

CIA Runs Cocaine to Fund Black Ops

The Trump administration is less interested in the “harmful and addictive effects” of cocaine on Americans than the ongoing US effort to overthrow the United Socialist Party of Venezuela and destroy  the Bolivarian Revolution initially led by the late  former President Hugo Chávez. If Trump and crew were sincerely interested in stopping the importation of cocaine, they would turn their attention to the Central Intelligence Agency.

Joël van der Reijden, an independent Dutch researcher, believes CIA involvement in the drug trade is one of the most important covered up conspiracies of all time. The CIA inherited the drug business from Service de Documentation Extérieure et de Contre-Espionnage (SDECE), a now defunct French intelligence agency. The operation was “upscaled” with heroin in Vietnam and later a similar template was used in South America with cocaine. It is said US intelligence was involved in drug trafficking with Cosa Nostra (the Sicilian Mafia) before the establishment of the CIA in 1947. The Southeast Asian “Golden Triangle” of heroin production and distribution included early CIA notables, including Frank Wisner, Paul Helliwell, Claire Chennault, William Pawley, and Tommy Corcoran. 

In the 1980s, the CIA oversaw Nicaraguan Contra arms and cocaine trafficking. The operation was revealed when American commercial airline pilot Barry Seal was investigated for working with the Medellin Cartel in Colombia. Seal had a relationship with the CIA.

“Barry Seal was a veteran of both the drug trade and the intelligence business,” write Jeffrey St. Clair and Alexander Cockburn. “Seal’s first contact with the CIA came in the 1960s while he served as a pilot for the US Army’s Special Forces division. He left the army in 1965 to become, at the age of twenty-six, a pilot for TransWorld Airlines, and it’s apparent that Seal continued his relationship with the Agency during his employment with the airline.”

According to van der Reijden,

“it is virtually certain that both [George H.W.] Bush and [Bill] Clinton, the latter as governor of Arkansas, were shielding Seal’s operations from law enforcement… the  [CIA director] Casey-Bush-North alliance destroyed the DEA’s operation aimed at bringing down the entire Medellin Cartel when they decided to leak the Contra sting operation of their asset Barry Seal to the media,” thus allowing Reagan to accuse the Sandinista government of drug trafficking and force Congress to end the ban on US military aid to the Contras. 

CIA cocaine distribution in the United States was exposed in the 1990s by journalist Gary Webb in a three-part series published by the Mercury News. The newspaper series documented how profits from the sale of crack cocaine in Los Angeles in the 1980s was siphoned to the Contras, the CIA mercenary army attempting to overthrow the Sandinista government. 

Additionally, in 1993 the Justice Department investigated “allegations that officers of a special Venezuelan anti-drug unit funded by the CIA smuggled more than 2,000 pounds of cocaine into the United States with the knowledge of CIA officials,” The New York Times reported.

“CIA ties to international drug trafficking date to the Korean War. In 1949, two of Chiang Kai-shek’s defeated generals, Li Wen Huan and Tuan Shi Wen, marched their Third and Fifth Route armies, with families and livestock, across the mountains to northern Burma. Once installed, the peasant soldiers began cultivating the crop they knew best, the opium poppy.”

Panama Invasion Redux?

In December, 1989, President George H.W. Bush ordered the US military to invade Panama City. The invasion was codenamed Operation Just Cause, and the supposed just cause was the arrest of Panamanian leader Manuel Noriega, a long time CIA asset, on drug trafficking charges. Noriega received protection from DEA investigations due to his “special relationship with the CIA” (see Cockburn and St. Clair, Whiteout: the CIA, Drugs, and the Press, 1998). He was instrumental the effort to launder drug money while also receiving financial support from drug dealers. According to Gary Webb (Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion, 1999), Noriega was involved in the CIA effort to smuggle cocaine into the United States. 

After Noriega was exposed in The New York Times as a participant in the Iran-Contra scandal, Reagan tried to have the Panamanian leader step down, but he refused to do so. The notorious Elliot Abrams and the Pentagon agitated for an invasion of Panama. Reagan declined, afraid it would hurt the upcoming Bush presidential campaign. However, after his successor assumed office, the plan to get rid of the exposed CIA asset Manuel Noriega became more urgent, especially after the press called George H.W. Bush a “wimp” for not going after Noriega. The new president was berated after he called for hunting down major drug dealers and then not acting on Noriega. 

27,684 US troops and over 300 aircraft invaded on December 20. Explosions and fire ripped through the heavily populated El Chorrillo neighborhood in downtown Panama City.

“El Chorrillo was invaded, destroyed, burned, and desecrated on that fateful day,” writes Argelis Wesley. “Thousands fled barefoot and terrified, many watched as their homes collapsed under the flames and disappeared in the chaos. Others witnessed point-blank executions and the violation of fundamental rights. Some chose to leave the place they had called home since birth.”

She writes that years later,

“we still do not know how many people died or how many bodies were buried in mass graves. Nor do we fully understand how this brutal incident affected the mental health and well-being of El Chorrillo’s generations, from children to adults.”

On January 3, 1990, Noriega surrendered to US forces. He was convicted of drug trafficking, racketeering, and money laundering, and sentenced to 40 years in prison. He was subsequently extradited to France, and then back to Panama, where he died during surgery to remove a brain tumor. 

The invasion of Panama was sold to the American people as protection of its citizens abroad (Reagan used this as well during the invasion of Grenada), “restoring democracy,” and installing a friendly government in Panama. The objective of taking out an “off the reservation” asset is rarely mentioned. 

On August 8, President Trump ordered the Pentagon to prepare options for attacking drug cartels now designated as terrorist groups.

“President Trump’s top priority is protecting the homeland, which is why he took the bold step to designate several cartels and gangs as foreign terrorist organizations,” White House spokesperson Anna Kelly told ABC News.

This might be considered little more than Trumpian bluster if not for the fact Trump seriously considered attacking Venezuela during his previous term. In August, 2018, during a discussion on imposing sanctions on Venezuela,

“Trump turned to his top aides and asked an unsettling question: With a fast unraveling Venezuela threatening regional security, why can’t the U.S. just simply invade the troubled country?” reported the Associated Press. National security adviser H.R. McMaster dissuaded Trump of the idea. 

During his second term, Trump has become more belligerent and irrational. He violated constitutional and international law when he bombed Iran’s nuclear sites. In his previous term, Trump assassinated the respected commander of Iran’s Quds Force, Qasem Soleimani, while the military officer was on a peace mission. His administration bombed Yemen on several occasions. It has provided a genocidal state with advanced munitions to kill Palestinians, more than the Biden administration sent. 

Considering the level criticism leveled at Trump for his campaign promise reversals, including ending forever war, and the threat of the Epstein scandal refusing to fade into the background, it is a possibility Trump will send troops to Venezuela to abduct Nicolás Maduro as a “terrorist” drug trafficker. Venezuela has long prepared for an invasion by the United States.  The National Bolivarian Militia is a force comprised of civilian volunteers and was founded by Chávez in 2008 to support the country’s armed forces, Newsweek reported. 

The original source of this article is Global Research.

The post Trump’s Plan To Invade Venezuela and Abduct ‘Narcoterrorist’ Maduro appeared first on LewRockwell.

According to America’s Whore Media, yesterday the No Kings Protests Drew 7 Million Americans at 2,700 separate rallies

The No Kings protest is a form of insurrection.  The aim is to stop the functioning of democracy in the name of democracy by branding the reduction of DEI, closing of borders, and deportation of illegal aliens, for which Americans voted, as King Trump’s personal policy,  The two Jews who organized the No Kings protests, Ezra Levin and Leah Greenberg, said “Today, millions of Americans stood together to reject authoritarianism and remind the world that our democracy belongs to the people, not to one man’s ambition.” What Levin and Greenberg mean is that America belongs to the Democrat far left.

Ask yourselves, who financed this enormous undertaking?  George Soros?  Israel?  The Democrat National Committee?  

If Trump is really against war, he can stop funding wars.  Ukraine is financed by Washington.  The Israeli genocide of Palestine is financed by Washington.  The armed intervention against Venezuela, being prepared under false pretenses just as was the “war on terror,” is a Trump project.  The same for the pressure on Iran that is leading to war.

Trump could easily stop the wars.  So why is he causing wars?

Instead, he should address the war against America that is being unleashed by Ezra Levin and Leah Greenberg and their financiers, by Democrat mayors, city councils, and governors who defy federal law and protect illegal aliens from their crime of illegal entry as if they are American citizens, by the anti-American media that ruthlessly attacks traditional Americans and every politician who attempts to serve Americans’ interest, and by the leftwing ideologues that anti-American Democrats with the complicity of insouciant Republicans have institutionalized in the judiciary, especially at the District Court level.

Dear President Trump:  Our main enemies are at home.  Our only foreign enemy is Israel.  Please defend OUR COUNTRY.  Why are you working so hard to create more foreign enemies for America?

Don Lemon Designates Illegal Aliens “Citizens” and calls on People of Color to Arm Themselves Against Federal Agents

“Take up arms,” urges Lemon.  This is an act of insurrection.  Why isn’t Lemon arrested?

The post The No Kings Protest Is Insurrection appeared first on LewRockwell.

Today the Ukrainian former president Vladimir Zelenski will be in Washington to convince U.S. President Donald Trump to further turn the screws on Russia.

A call yesterday between President Vladimir Putin of Russia and Trump was initiated by the Russians to preempt any concessions from Trump to Ukraine.

A major headache for the Russians was the potential introduction of U.S. Tomahawk cruise missiles onto the battlefield. While these weapons are old, and can easily be defended against, they are, in principle, nuclear capable. They are also complex and can not be fired without the input from U.S. satellites, U.S. intelligence analysis and specialized software.

Tomahawks are naval missiles. There are less than a handful of ground launchers which were only recently introduced to the U.S. military. Any launch of a Tomahawk from Ukrainian ground would thus have to be done by the U.S. military. Any U.S. firing of a potentially nuclear armed missile towards Moscow would have to have serious consequences.

Russia would HAVE to respond to such an attack with a direct attack on major U.S. assets. Otherwise its means of (nuclear) deterrence would lose of all of their values.

Putin wanted to avoid that situation and the decisions that would have followed from it. Thus his call to Donald Trump.

So far that part of the call of seems to have been successful:

In recent days, Mr Trump had shown an openness to selling Ukraine long-range Tomahawk cruise missiles, even as Mr Putin warned that such a move would further strain the US-Russian relationship.

But following Thursday’s call with Mr Putin, Mr Trump appeared to downplay the prospects of Ukraine getting the missiles, which have a range of about 995 miles (1,600km).

“We need Tomahawks for the United States of America too,” Mr Trump said.

“We have a lot of them, but we need them. I mean, we can’t deplete our country.”

After the call Trump announced that there would soon be a new summit between him and President Putin:

President Putin and I will then meet in an agreed upon location, Budapest, Hungary, to see if we can bring this “inglorious” War, between Russia and Ukraine, to an end.

It is notable that The Russian readout was much less committed:

In this context, it is worthy of note that the presidents discussed the possibility of holding another personal meeting. This is indeed a very significant development. It was agreed that representatives of both countries would immediately begin preparations for the summit, which could potentially be organised in Budapest, for instance.

It is doubtful that any new meeting would lead to results.

Trump wants to stop the war in Ukraine because the U.S./NATO proxy force in form the Ukrainian army gets currently beaten to pulp. A multiyear pause is needed to refresh the Ukrainian army, to make and deliver more weapons for it and to prepare for another attempt to defeat Russia.

Russia will not commit to that. It wants to resolve the root cause of the war, the steady NATO march towards Russia’s border, once and for all. Any pause or ceasefire would defeat that purpose.

The difference between those positions is the reason why the August summit in Alaska had ended badly. Despite both sides lauding the outcome it was obvious that the summit had been cut short. It had ended without a common readout or press conference. After the summit President Trump also extended his support for the Ukrainian side of the conflict by allowing U.S. intelligence to be used in attacks on Russian oil infrastructure.

A new Financial Times piece on the previous summit has some background information on this (archived):

With just a handful of advisers present, Putin rejected the US offer of sanctions relief for a ceasefire, insisting the war would end only if Ukraine capitulated and ceded more territory in the Donbas.

The Russian president then delivered a rambling historical discursion spanning medieval princes such as Rurik of Novgorod and Yaroslav the Wise, along with the 17th century Cossack chieftain Bohdan Khmelnytsky — figures he often cites to support his claim Ukraine and Russia are one nation.

Taken aback, Trump raised his voice several times and at one point threatened to walk out, the people said. He ultimately cut the meeting short and cancelled a planned lunch where broader delegations were due to discuss economic ties and co-operation.

Bohdan Khmelnytsky was the Cossack hetman who in 1654 voluntarily subordinate his people to the Russian Tsar:

After a series of negotiations, it was agreed that the Cossacks would accept overlordship by the Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich. To finalize the treaty, a Russian embassy led by boyar Vasily Buturlin came to Pereiaslav, where, on 18 January 1654, the Cossack Rada was called and the treaty concluded. [..] The treaty legitimized Russian claims to the capital of Kievan Rus’ and strengthened the tsar’s influence in the region. Khmelnytsky needed the treaty to gain a legitimate monarch’s protection and support from a friendly Orthodox power.

I see no reason for hope that a new summit would change the positions of the parties or the outcome. Putin’s position towards the U.S. has only hardened:

“Whatever they want, they do. But what they are doing now in Ukraine is not thousands of miles away from our national borders; it is on our doorstep. And they must realize that we simply have nowhere else to retreat to.”

The promise of the new summit is still positive as it stretches the time to an eventual further escalation. More time is of advantage to the Russian side. It allows for the current campaign to de-energize Ukraine to have impact on the mood in the country and on the willingness of its government to agree to serious concessions.

Reprinted with permission from Moon of Alabama.

The post A Preemptive Putin-Trump Call and the Prospects of a New Summit appeared first on LewRockwell.

According to- discoveryalert.com.au: The push for a cashless society represents more than just technological evolution—it’s a coordinated effort occurring at multiple levels of government, financial institutions, and corporations worldwide. This transition is reshaping how we interact with money and raising significant questions about financial freedom and privacy.

The cashless society is a necessary step in preparation for the mark of the beast.

The mark of the beast, btw, is a concept based on a couple of short passages from The Revelation (end of chapter 13 and start of chapter 14), which say that there will eventually be a one world government just before Jesus returns, and the spiritual leader of that government will cause people everywhere to get a mark put in their right hand or in their forehead, without which they will not be able to buy or sell.

What we have used for centuries for buying and selling is cash (or checks). We have also progressed to credit cards.

So all of these would need to be replaced with the mark, in order for the prophecy to come true.

Is cashless society in World a bad step?

Cashless Means Automatic

If money is easy to spend, it is also easy to take. Convenience can easily become tyranny. Automatic payments that come directly from your bank account illustrate the point.)

Below Is First 9 Major Risks of a Cashless Society:

1.Risk of Confiscation

The convenience of digital money that allows you to spend your money more easily, also makes it easier for banks, governments and thieves to take it.The message to depositors is clear- when you put money in a bank you are a creditor of the bank and if it goes bust you are at the bottom of the list of creditors. Your money** will be seized as part of any approved plan, perhaps even before the broke bank files for bankruptcy.

Your bank account can be raided by government authorities, like the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) without notice or reason given. If the IRS believes your bank account deposit and/or withdrawals activity is suspicious and/or may involve a pattern designed to avoid reporting requirements, they may seize your account.

Think your money is safe in the bank? Think again.

2. Risk of Theft

Digital cash a bit of Trap-it can be stolen.Think digital money is safer than cash and can’t be stolen?

3. Crime is Easier

Some actually believe that in a cashless society that crime will go down and drug dealers will go out of business. Think again.

In a cashless society, theft will occur on line and in far larger amounts than cash heists. An online thief never has to confront his victim, commit violence, crack a safe, get past an alarm system, dog or armed guards and carry away his loot. Rather, in a cashless society, the cyber thief merely has to hack the systems where the ‘money” is. The online heist involves no risk of death or threat to the thief’s personal safety and can be done from anywhere in the world.

4. Risk of System Failure

Without cash, the value of currency would have no independent value outside a functioning banking system to which you have access. Your money wouldn ‘work’ without a functioning banking system. If the banking system is down due to a power outage, solar flare, financial crisis, Internet failure, hack or network crash, your money is unavailable and potentially lost. If back up files are lost how do you prove you had $15,000 in your account?

5. Risk of Being Exiled From the System

Even if the digital banking system was 100% fool proof, you may end up being shut out of the system for wrong doing (actual or alleged), bad credit or failure to pay banking fees. Or you may be the victim of identity theft and as a “precaution” your account may be closed. Without access to the banking system, how will you pay your bills and buy items you need?

6. Results in a Loss of Freedom

While going cashless may be convenient when you choose to buy something, but if a purchase is thrust officiously upon you by government order, your money can be removed from your account to pay for it, conveniently of course. This type of forced convenience results in a removal of freedom of choice of how you may wish to spend your money.

7. Loss of property rights

Property rights are the foundation of a free society. If you don’t have control, ready access or the ability to spend your money when and as you please, you do not really own it.Rather, you are a co-owner with the currency issuer (the bank) who has veto rights over your use of the currency.

8. Loss of Privacy

In a cashless society there is the loss of privacy. Digital money offers the convenience of allowing you to track and budget your money online. Such a system, however, also leaves a permanent digital foot print of where you spent your money, accesible to just about anyone who has access to your account. (crimminal hackers and government agencies). A common objection to this privacy invasion is that “If you have nothing to hide you have nothing to worry about”.

9. Loss of Understanding Value & Responsiblity

Without cash, consumers are no longer market participants that evaluate tangible value based on how much cash they have in their wallets, but mindless spenders without a sense of the value of the items they are purchasing or a sense of understanding of their actual cost after incurring bank and credit card interest fees. (still sky high even after years of zero interest rate policies across the globe).

In a society that uses cash, acts like making change and giving tips provide market participants with a tangible sense of economic value. Children that grow up saving money in piggy banks and counting their pennies, nickels and dimes learn the value of money through the tactil experience of handling money.

A cashless society turns money and value into digital abstractions as defined and controlled by the banks and central planners.

This article was originally published on Preppgroup.

The post First Major Risks of a Cashless Society appeared first on LewRockwell.

“No Kings” may be the first time I can recall clapping for a bunch of entitled, Starbuck’s drinking, middle-aged lefties and global communist money launderers.  Is our national conversation getting closer to real anti-authoritarianism, even anti-statism?

If we rely on the No Kings crowd as an indicator, the answer is no.  They demand more government, modern monetary theory at home and abroad, and the replacement of Trump with a President who won’t challenge the other two branches to do their jobs.  Most are content to ignore the Constitution, not exercise it. The selected color for this “revolution” is yellow for optimism; the “color of democracy.”  There’s a lot of black as well, begging the question of whether they are really just Proud Boys in ladysuits. The expert troll himself jumped in, with his bright yellow tie just a few days before the No Kings rally.

Any protest against authoritarianism and the state must be welcomed, in the mode of Thomas Paine.  Radical, brave, and with only his life to lose, he valued independence of self and mind, always chose reason over the stupid crowd, believed that blind faith in the state could be corrected by facts and logic. He boldly welcomed trouble in his time, so the next generation might have peace.

We all have a little Tom Paine in us, and no doubt we are blessed with a multitude of modern crises in which to nurture that bold seed of sheer contempt for the criminal state. Those of us who quell our Tom Paine urges and sensibilities will indeed lose badly.  Beyond remaining slaves and dying as slaves, we will condemn our children to both slavery and war.  On the other hand, what better time than now to exult and celebrate the man who understood that “…taxes are not raised to carry on wars, but that wars are raised to carry on taxes.”

We might assume, from the Declaration of Independence, and from the fundamentals of the Philadelphia trick, that the supreme cause for which man forms a “government” is liberty, and from liberty, man garners peace and prosperity.  Paine wrote, “Society in every state is a blessing, but Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one: for when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries BY A GOVERNMENT, which we might expect in a country WITHOUT GOVERNMENT, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer.”

I suspect most Americans – far beyond the mostly urban and purely political “No Kings” celebrants – would agree with Tom Paine that it adds insult to injury that we are forced to pay in full, and obey unconditionally, the very criminal and obscene government that oppresses us and much of the world.

This unifying concern is gaining momentum, creating passion, and catching fire.  The humanitarians and justice seekers among us rage that our dollars go to murder unarmed people, individually and en masse, by our gleeful leaders in Congress and the White House.  American nationalists seek decentralization and redirection of federal tax receipts from overseas and the counties around DC into the small towns, roads, bridges, and domestic quality of life, and even – most radically – back into the people’s pockets.

“Small government conservatives” while largely extinct, sought a government so tiny and weak it could be drowned in a bathtub. This sentiment, credited to Americans for Tax Reform Grover Norquist, was perhaps articulated only decades before its time.  The No Kings movement is certainly ready to conduct a small suffocation or two in DC, and who would oppose it?

It is still too much for most Americans to look into the abyss of state evil.  Our lived fairy tales of state assassination of leaders, journalists, and Presidents, of spying and mass surveillance, of mass murder at home and abroad – frighten more than enrage.   The federal war on the very natural rights it was chartered to protect, so acutely observed today, is a cause for only a semblance of revolt, a shadow of discontent.  In too many ways, state actions and its agendas are working as intended – fueling latent fears, promoting a certain kind of self-censorship, encouraging a wide-eyed hunkering down rather than a steely-eyed standing up.

Thomas Paine differentiated between summer soldiers and sunshine patriots, and those who stand fast in a hard fight for liberty, against the odds.  Today, soldiers and patriots alike need to hear the advice of Whitney Webb, where she explains the active state engineering of desperation and the cause it serves.

Perhaps we can learn from the recent resignations of our so-called “warrior” class, like SOUTHCOM’s Admiral Holsey and SOCOM’s General Fenton, and Marine Colonel Doug Krugman who retired with a public letter explaining that the Constitution, the law, is his commander, not politicians.  I think Paine would appreciate the sentiment. Thus far, there is no sign that these retirements, or the many that will follow, are evidence of anything other than the summer soldier and sunshine patriot.  But we shall see.

There was a recent moment in social science where a mental disease was created, mainly for children and teenagers, called “opposition(al) defiant disorder.”  In true Brave New World fashion, it is cured pharmacologically, and its warning signs may be increasingly familiar to many of us long past childhood.

A mass American movement against the state is rising, but it is not yet clear if this rise will be coherent, or incoherent, inchoate or completed and perfected.  Uncertainty is a natural part of the crisis in which we find ourselves, with limited information, despite having the whole of human knowledge and history at our fingertips.  But nothing can stop us today from closely watching our enemy, the state, and noting that it is growing financially precarious, representationally and ethically unbalanced, and increasingly frantic and increasingly evil.

Thomas Paine would see great opportunities today for real liberty to be regained, and as he wrote in Common Sense, he would recognize both the inevitability of change and the danger of waiting by the sidelines.  His 1776 question, “Should we neglect the present favorable and inviting period…?” must be answered by each of us, and increasingly, it is being answered by our actions more than our words.  What a time to be alive!

The post Will We See a New Era of Truly Popular Anti-Statism? appeared first on LewRockwell.

While American businesses and consumers are bearing the burden of higher costs from tariffs and inflation, the United States is providing a $20 billion bailout to Argentina’s Milei regime.  This bailout is separate from the $20 billion bailout given by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to Argentina earlier this year. Argentina is by far the largest debtor to the IMF.

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the US has reached a $20 billion currency swap agreement with Argentina’s central bank, allowing it to exchange Argentine pesos for the US dollar. CNN reported that the US also bought, “an undisclosed amount of Argentine pesos.”

The bailout would greatly benefit Rob Citrone, a billionaire hedge fund manager with substantial investments in Argentina. “Bessent’s personal and professional relationship with Citrone has spanned decades,” according to journalist Judd Legum.

“It’s unclear why the Trump administration is providing a de facto bailout of the Argentinian peso when there is no significant financial or economic relationship between the two economies,” said Joseph Brusuelas, chief economist at the audit and consulting firm, RSM.

Furthermore, we should question whether the US bailout of Argentina is motivated by the Milei regime’s enthusiastic support of the US and Israel’s genocide in Gaza. We should acknowledge that President Trump is a puppet of political donor Miriam Adelson and Israeli Prime Minister (and de-facto US President) Benjamin Netanyahu.

Ordinary people suffer the consequences of the reckless economic policies of their politicians. The Argentinian people should demand the immediate removal of the incompetent Milei regime and the American people should demand the immediate removal of the treasonous Netanyahu-Trump regime.

The post Milei Bailout appeared first on LewRockwell.

We are all familiar with the wonderful descriptive term, “the welfare-warfare state.” Ron Paul frequently uses it, as does Lew Rockwell, the late Justin Raimondo, Tom Woods, Thomas DiLorenzo, and myself. Murray Rothbard coined it in his brilliant essay, “The Great Society: A Libertarian Critique,” in Marvin E. Gettleman & David Mermelstein, ed., The Great Society Reader: The Failure of American Liberalism, 1967. This is one of three crucial articles by Rothbard which defines and outlines this important concept describing our society today and how it became that way. The other two articles are: “Origins of the Welfare State in America,” and “World War I as Fulfillment: Power and the Intellectuals.” 

The concept has its origin with Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, who united Germany under his doctrine of “Blood and Iron,” at the same time his American counterpart was waging his own war of coercive national unification. Bismarck, in creating the ideological justification for what became “the welfare-warfare state,” gave birth to the paradigm which continues to invigorate and mold the American political landscape of today.

Because of the tremendous number of key American intellectuals who studied in Germany during the time of Bismarck in preparation for their doctorate degrees (or in post-doctoral studies), and who returned emboldened and willing to use the state to transform society, the Progressive Movement was born. Although not household names today, these highly influential men included Richard Ely, Albion Woodbury Small, W. E. B. DuBois, Franz Boas, Walter Weyl, Nicholas Murray Butler, Edmund J. James, Walter Rauschenbusch, E. R. A. Seligman, Henry C. Adams, John W. Burgess, William James, George Santayana, Henry Farnam, George Herbert Mead, Frank Taussig, Simon Patten, John Bates Clark, Herbert Baxter Adams, Arthur T. Hadley. Each of them has had a long lasting impact on American society through their ideas and the subsequent generations these ideas shaped.

Ideas do not exist in a sterile vacuum but are often intertwined and serendipitously related to each other. Such is the case of various statist doctrines that came to fruition in the 19th century, and which still dramatically affect our world today. “Scientific racism,” “social Darwinism,” eugenics, Comtean positivism, imperialism, and “social imperialism,” were pseudoscientific rationales for the expansionary and invasive welfare-warfare state at home and abroad.

As Princeton’s Thomas C. Leonard noted in his seminal article, “Eugenics and Economics in the Progressive Era:”

Progressive opposition to laissez faire was motivated by a set of deep intellectual commitments regarding the relationship between social science, social scientific expertise and right governance. The progressives were committed to 1) the explanatory power of scientific (especially statistical) social inquiry to get at the root causes of social and economic problems; 2) the legitimacy of social control, which derives from a holist conception of society as prior to and greater than the sum of its constituent individuals; 3) the efficacy of social control via expert management of public administration; where 4) expertise is both sufficient and necessary for the task of wise public administration.

The post Roots of the Welfare-Warfare State appeared first on LewRockwell.

Earlier this week my wife Dawn and I had the joyous opportunity to meet up with Drs Sam and Mark Bailey in Salt Lake City, Utah where they’d come to be the Keynote Speakers at the Weston A Price Foundation’s Wise Traditions Conference.

And now you can attend their Live-Stream Presentations, October 18, 19 & 20th, 2025 – along with many other amazing presenters.

Plus, you can get a CD or USB record of the entire conference, HERE.

Here’s the schedule:

Friday, October 18, 7.30-9.30pm (MDT)

Dr Samantha Bailey: SECRETS OF A STAGED PANDEMIC

Saturday, October 19

11.00am-12.15pm (MDT)

Dr Samantha Bailey: THE TRUTH ABOUT LYME DISEASE

6:30–9:30pm (MDT)

Dr Mark Bailey: AWARDS BANQUET AND KEYNOTE: VIROLOGY’S FINAL DAYS

Sunday, October 20

10.45am-12pm Dr Mark Bailey: A LOGICAL END TO VIROLOGY

1:30–2:45pm (MDT)

Drs Mark Bailey, Samantha Bailey, Tom Cowan, Andrew Kaufman “Virus Deniers Unite Panel”

Don’t miss this rare event!

IMPORTANT!

If you miss this event please go to their website where you can watch their MANY videos and read their Paradigm Changing papers, HERE.

Highly Recommended

The post Meet Drs Sam & Mark Bailey appeared first on LewRockwell.

The Yankee Problem in America, by Clyde Wilson

Fanatical Yankee Utopians, by Thomas DiLorenzo

Blame the Beechers and That Fanatic Finney, by Charles Burris

Just War, by Murray N. Rothbard

The Damn Yankees and Their War, by Charles Burris

Causes of the American Civil War, by Charles Burris

In the midst of the vicious and violent assault by willfully ignorant street mobs on American historical memory prior to Year Zero (formerly known as 2009 when Obama took office), here is vital authoritative, factual, historical information you need to know.

There are two seminal issues to consider when examining the War of 1861-1865: They are the defense of revolutionary Southern self-determination or secession, and abolitionism.

Why did the Southern states want to leave the Union?

Why did the Northern states refuse to let them go?

The War was both the culmination and repudiation of the American Revolution.

The War marked the decisive turning point in the inexorable growth of government and coercive authority, and most accurately should be described as the War for Coercive National Unification. The same situation was going on in Europe at the same time under Otto von Bismarck and his wars to unify and create the nation-state of Germany.

Slavery and secession are two separate issues.

Secession was a revolutionary right of free peoples to determine their destiny.

Slavery was a gross violation of inalienable human rights.

Even if slavery explains why the Southern states left the Union, it does not necessarily explain or justify the general government under Lincoln refusal to recognize their independence and launch an unconstitutional invasion of the South.

Slavery still fails to explain why the Northern states resorted to force or coercion; letting the lower South go in peace was a viable, antislavery option refused by Lincoln.

Most militant abolitionists believed there was no contradiction between condemning slavery and advocating secession (in particular, see the essays by the Boston abolitionist Lysander Spooner below).

The War was a tragic, needless conflict. It was all about power and control, the imposition upon or domination of one geographic section of people by another without their consent.

The Real History of Slavery, by Thomas Sowell

Why The War Was Not About Slavery, by Clyde Wilson

Lysander Spooner was a Boston abolitionist who wrote The Unconstitutionality of Slavery (a favorite, much cited book by Robert Barnes). He also authored the three powerful articles below in his No Treason series:

No Treason #1

No Treason #2: The Constitution

No Treason #6: The Constitution of No Authority

Northern Opposition to Mr. Lincoln’s War

“Northern Opposition to Mr. Lincoln’s War” is a book, edited by D. Jonathan White, that challenges the common narrative that Northerners were united against secession from the start. The book argues that there was significant and enduring opposition to the war in the North, which is often overlooked in favor of the story of a unified, righteous effort to suppress the rebellion. Opposition groups, such as the Copperheads, favored immediate peace and resisted the draft, while other opponents argued the war was unnecessary and costly, prompting Lincoln to take measures like suspending habeas corpus.

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LewRockwell.com readers are supporting LRC and shopping at the same time. It’s easy and does not cost you a penny more than it would if you didn’t go through the LRC link. Just click on the Amazon link on LewRockwell.com’s homepage and add your items to your cart. It’s that easy!

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1. Rational Fasting: Official Ehret Society Edition 
2. Forbidden Facts: Government Deceit & Suppression About Brain Damage from Childhood Vaccines
3. Peak Human: What We Can Learn From History’s Greatest Civilizations
4. Understanding Terrain Theory: Rethinking Disease, Uncovering Its True Causes, and Reclaiming Health Naturally 
   
5. A History of Fascism, 1914–1945
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20. The Time of the Signs: A Chronology of Earth’s Final Events

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It all started on March 5, 2014: a US sponsored fascist coalition government under the disguise of democracy was installed in Ukraine.

With historical foresight pertaining to the dangers of a Third World War, this article by Felicity Arbuthnot was first published more than eleven years ago on March 15, 2014 in the immediate wake of the US sponsored EuroMaidan Coup d’état. 

***

On March 5, Ukraine’s Putsch “Prime Minister” Arseniy Yatsenyuk, arbitrarily sacked three senior Defence Ministry politicians, Deputy Defense Minister Alexander Oleynik, with Deputy Defense Ministers Vladimir Mozharovskiy and Arturo Francisco Babenko.

According to Itar-Tass (6th March 2014) they had drawn Yatsenyuk’s ire by expressing:

“sharp criticism over giving the Right Sector militants the status of regular military units.”

A contact of the publication stated that one of the three had also:

“told Yatsenyuk that actions of today’s Kiev authorities in overtures with radical nationalist organizations would destroy national unity” and that it was simply: “harmful to involve the state military agency in such dangerous games.”

Their stand resulted in “management reshuffles” – in the country in which Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland has stated that the US has invested $5 Billion: “in the development of democratic institutions and skills in promoting civil society and a good

So far US multi-billion democracy-building via the man of whom Nuland opined to the US Ambassador to the Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt: “I think Yats is the guy …”(2) has all the hallmarks of becoming a mirror of the historic tragedies in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and being plotted via further humanitarian horrors committed by their proxies in Syria.

Additionally the Nobel Peace Laureate American President appears to have reignited the Cold War, laid to rest with such joy across the world as the Berlin Wall fell just over twenty four years ago, on the 9th November 1989.

However, if the US Administration’s choice as a democratic Prime Minister is scarily woeful, the man who would be President, Dmitry Yarosh, is nothing short of astonishing. As Julie Levesque has written in a meticulous, jaw dropping article: “Dmitry Yarosh, leader of the Maidan Brown Shirts (is) on an international wanted list and charged with inciting terrorism.

“Under the new government, Yarosh is leader of the Neo-Nazi Right Sector delegation to the Ukraine Parliament. His close friend and political partner Andriy Parubiy co-founder of the Neo-Nazi Social-National Party of Ukraine (subsequently renamed Svoboda) was appointed by the new government to the position of Secretary of the National Security and National Defense Committee (RNBOU), a key position which overseas the Ministry of Defense, the Armed Forces, Law Enforcement, National Security and Intelligence. Right Sektor leaders Yarosh was appointed to the number two position at RNBOU.”

Levesque asks: “Have the Neo-Nazis cornered Ukraine’s National Security agenda?”.

The answer would appear to be a rapidly accelerating affirmative, with Robert Parry stating that Neo-Nazis are now in charge of four Ministries and:

“some ten ‘oligarchs’ mostly run the show in shifting alliances, buying up media outlets and politicians, while the vast majority of the population faces a bleak future, which now includes more European-demanded ‘austerity’ …”(4)

Meanwhile the stand-off over the Crimea continues. Train tickets between Kiev and Crimea have been suspended by the latest government shoehorned in to the latest “new democracy.”

In neighbouring Russia, as the Sochi Paralympics opened with a spectacular ceremony, President Obama, Prime Minister Cameron, Chancellor Angela Merkel and their parties hurled their collective toys from their prams and failed to attend. Another chance to make peace not war in what should be the Olympic spirit, also willfully thrown away.

The opening theme was “Breaking The Ice,” and “the importance of breaking down barriers and stereotypes …” a popular 1990’s Russian song called “Good-bye America” played as the Russian team closed the parade.

However for all the US posturing, Gallop shows President Putin’s popularity rating at a consistent 67.8% an endorsement of which his American counterpart could only dream, fluctuating between 38% to 42%.

As this ends news comes through that the US is to send fighter jets and personnel to Poland and Lithuania by Thursday, the US Navy destroyer, the USS Truxton, one of the largest destroyers ever built for the US Navy, has crossed in to the Black Sea for “exercises” with the Bulgarian and Romanian navies (5) there are mass protests in the south and east of Ukraine about the “self proclaimed” government in Kiev and America has unleashed a possible World War Three.

Somebody in the Nobel Peace Prize Committee, please demand the return of that ill awarded Peace Prize.

Notes

1. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article37599.htm

2. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-26079957

3.http://www.globalresearch.ca/democratization-and-anti-semitism-in-ukraine-neo-nazi-symbols-become-the-new-normal/5371919

4. http://consortiumnews.com/2014/03/09/crimeas-case-for-leaving-ukraine/

5. http://rt.com/news/us-fighter-jets-poland-830/

The original source of this article is Global Research.

The post Ukraine: US Launches a Neo-Nazi Government, and World War Three? appeared first on LewRockwell.

What is going around now is another cover up, another denial of what a lot of people on both sides call “the second Nakba,” the sin atop the original sin.

Headline in the Sunday editions of The New York Times: “A New Test for Israel: Can It Repair Its Ties to Americans?”

What a question. Let us set aside our indignation and think about this.

The piece below this head is by David Halbfinger, whose trade over the years has been to appear balanced when covering the Zionist state while glossing its past, which is wall-to-wall condemnable, and faithfully apologizing for its present, which — need this be said — is also wall-to-wall condemnable.

David Halbfinger, who has just begun his second tour as the Times’ Jerusalem bureau chief, in action:

“The war in Gaza may finally be ending, after two years of bloodshed and destruction. But among the damage that has been done is a series of devastating blows to Israel’s relationship with the citizens of its most important and most stalwart ally, the United States.

Israel’s reputation in the United States is in tatters, and not only on college campuses or among progressives….

The question is whether those younger Americans will be lost to Israel long- term — and what Israel’s advocates will do to try to reverse that.”

Halbfinger proceeds to quote none of “those younger Americans,” or anyone else of any age who stands forthrightly against “the Jewish state” in response to the campaign of terror, murder and starvation it has conducted against the civilian population of Gaza these past two years.

No, his sources are professors, think-tank inhabitants and, of course, Israeli Zionists, American Zionists and in two cases Israeli–American Zionists — the good old divided-loyalties crowd.

Halbfinger quotes Shibley Telhami, an Arab–Israeli scholar with safe harbors at The Brookings Institution and the University of Maryland, to this effect:

“We now have a paradigmatic Gaza generation like we had a Vietnam generation and a Pearl Harbor generation. There’s this growing sense among people that what they’re witnessing is genocide in real time, amplified by new media, which we didn’t have in Vietnam. It’s a new generation where Israel is seen as a villain. And I don’t think that’s likely to go away.”

This is an astute bit of historical context, I find — worthy of further exploration. And I am with Telhami: There is no persuading Americans — a majority, to go by recent polls — that the atrocities of the past two years are to be forgiven and forgotten. The thought is ridiculous.

But Halbfinger takes Telhami’s interesting observation no further. It stands only as what we can call “the problem.” He, Halbfinger, devotes the rest of his report to the thoughts of those trying to figure out how to make the Zionist regime look good again — or rid it of “a bad odor,” as one of these people puts it.

One of Halbfinger’s sources — Halie Soifer, chief exec at the Jewish Democratic Council of America, which supports Democratic political candidates “who share our core values” — is looking for “a bit of a reset in the way Israel is viewed.” Dahlia Scheindlin, an Israeli–American scholar, thinks “there is room for a bounce-back.”

Professor Scheindlin elaborates:

“People tend to overestimate how bad the damage has been. Just stopping the slaughter will allow some people to go back to their comfort zone of being supportive.”

Jeez, if I may invoke one of history’s most famous Jews. Bouncing back to the comfort zone, is it?

You see what is going on here, I trust.

I have anticipated for many months — no great insight in this — that when something like the end of Israel’s terror in Gaza comes there will be no thought among its allies in the West, and certainly none among its Zionist supporters, of any kind of reckoning in the name of justice.

No, a “war” will be over, not a racist campaign of annihilation, and certainly not a genocide. The highly honorable Cost of War Project at Brown University put out a paper on Oct. 7 reckoning total casualties in Gaza (killed and injured) at 236,505, “more than 10% of the pre-war population.” These are responsibly researched facts.

We know these facts. “It doesn’t take rocket science to grasp the picture,” Norman Finkelstein said in a lecture delivered at the University of Massachusetts five days before the Netanyahu–Trump “peace plan” was announced.

He said: “Everyone at this point knows the picture — unless you have a material stake in lying to yourself and lying to others.”

Read the Whole Article

The post Let Us Now Bury the Truth (Again) appeared first on LewRockwell.

When I first got my driver’s license years ago, they asked if I wanted to be an organ donor. Having learned to be skeptical of institutions and having heard some concerning stories, I said no. But I felt conflicted about it—I believe in treating others as you’d want to be treated, and if I needed a transplant someday, I’d desperately want someone willing to help save my life.

Since then, I’ve discovered much more disturbing information about organ transplantation that completely shifted my perspective. Recently, RFK Jr. did something I never expected—he formally announced that there were widespread failures in our organ donation system’s ethical safeguards. This opened the floodgates for others to start discussing the grim reality that organs were being taken from people who were still alive.

The Value of Organs

Over time, medicine transformed our cultural relationship with death—from an accepted, intimate companion to a feared, medicalized enemy to be defeated (e.g., one author traces this shift through six historical stages, arguing that medicalization stripped individuals of autonomy and commodified death itself).

Medicine fueled this transformation by performing modern “miracles,” such as reviving the dead through cardiac resuscitation and transplanting organs—crossing what was once an absolute boundary between life and death. In doing so, it gained immense public trust and the ability to justify exorbitant costs.

This cultivated the myth that medicine can conquer death. Over time, it became seen not just as a means of survival, but as something to be continuously consumed in the name of “health”—transforming it into a highly profitable industry that now accounts for over 17.6% of all U.S. spending.

Because viable donor organs (a central crux of medicine’s dominion over death) are so limited, transplants quickly became incredibly valuable—costs range from $446,800 to $1,918,700 depending on the organ. Given how desperate people are for organs and how much money is involved, it hence seemed reasonable to assume some illegal harvesting would occur.

Over the years, as demand for organs continues to increase, I’ve continually found disturbing evidence that this was happening. This includes:

•Individuals being tricked into selling a kidney (e.g., in 2011, a viral story discussed a Chinese teenager who did so for an iPhone 4—approximately 0.0125% of the black market rate for a kidney, after which he became septic and his other kidney failed leaving him permanently bedridden, and in 2023, a wealthy Nigerian politician being convicted for trying to trick someone into donating a kidney for a transplant at an English hospital).

•A 2009 and 2014 Newsweek investigation and a 2025 paper highlighted the extensive illegal organ trade, estimating that 5% of global organ transplants involve black market purchases (totaling $600 million to $1.7 billion annually), with kidneys comprising 75% of these due to high demand for kidney failure treatments and the possibility of surviving with one kidney (though this greatly reduces your vitality). Approximately 10-20% of kidney transplants from living donors are illegal, with British buyers paying $50,000–$60,000, while desperate impoverished donors (e.g., from refugee camps or countries like Pakistan, India, China, and Africa) receive minimal payment and are abandoned when medical complications arise, despite promises of care. To quote the 2009 article:

Diflo became an outspoken advocate for reform several years ago, when he discovered that, rather than risk dying on the U.S. wait list, many of his wealthier dialysis patients had their transplants done in China. There, they could purchase the kidneys of executed prisoners. In India, Lawrence Cohen, another UC Berkeley anthropologist, found that women were being forced by their husbands to sell organs to foreign buyers to contribute to the family’s income, or to provide for the dowry of a daughter. But while the WHO estimates that organ-trafficking networks are widespread and growing, it says that reliable data are almost impossible to come by.

Note: these reports also highlighted that these surgeries operate on the periphery of the medical system and involve complicit medical professionals who typically claim ignorance of its illegality (e.g., a good case was made that a few US hospitals, like Cedars Sinai were complicit in the trade).

• A 2004 court case where a South African hospital pleaded guilty to illegally transplanting kidneys from poorer recipients (who received $6,000–$20,000) to wealthy recipients (who paid up to $120,000).1 2

• Many reports of organ harvesting by the Chinese government against specific political prisoners.1,2,3,4,5 This evidence is quite compelling, particularly since until 2006, China admitted organs were sourced from death row prisoners (with data suggesting the practice has not stopped).
Note: harvesting organs from death row prisoners represents one of the most reliable ways to get healthy organs immediately at the time of death (which is one of the greatest challenges in transplant medicine).

• I’ve read reports of organ harvesting occurring in Middle East conflict zones, by ISIS and in the Kosovo conflict, and with drug cartels.

Note: many other disturbing cases of illicit organ harvesting are discussed in more detail here. Likewise, many other valuable tissues (e.g., tendons and corneas) can be harvested from dead bodies. Significant controversy also exists with the ethics of how these are collected (e.g., this investigation highlights that the industry is highly profit focused and gives minimal respect to the bodies).

When Consciousness Gets Trapped

Different parts of the brain control various aspects of our being, so people who are still conscious can sometimes completely lose control of their bodies or their ability to communicate—known as Locked-in syndrome.

The most famous case involves Martin, a 12-year-old who fell ill with meningitis and entered a vegetative state. He was sent home to die, but stayed alive. At 16, he began regaining consciousness, became fully aware by 19, and at 26, a caregiver finally realized he was conscious and got him a communication computer. He eventually married.

Jahi McMath, a thirteen-year-old declared brain dead after tonsillectomy complications, was kept on life support by her family despite court orders. Nine months later, she had regained brainwaves and blood flow to the brain, and moved in response to verbal commands.

Similar cases include Lewis Roberts (began breathing hours before organ harvesting), Ryan Marlow (diagnosis reversed after wife’s insistence), Colleen Burns (awoke on the operating table and was later found by HHS to have been repeatedly misdiagnosed), and Trenton McKinley (13-year-old who recovered before scheduled donation). There were also cases like Steven Thorpe (declared brain dead by four doctors, parents refused organ donation, and he awoke two weeks later), and Gloria Cruz (husband refused to allow withdrawal of care, and she recovered).

Note: A recent study found that over 30% of brain-injured patients deemed unrecoverable would have partially or fully recovered had life support not been withdrawn.

Read the Whole Article

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GDP is like collecting data on passenger satisfaction with the dessert cart on the Titanic and declaring everyone is delighted as the great “unsinkable” ship settles into the icy waters of the Atlantic.

That Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is an outdated and misleading metric of the economy is widely accepted. The problem isn’t an abstraction, as we manage what we measure and so policymakers and citizens alike make decisions on what’s being measured. If what’s being measured is misleading, then we’re flying blind.

Economist Joseph Stiglitz has long advocated for an overhaul for what we measure economically, focusing on well-being rather than adding up transactions. A new book The Measure of Progress: Counting What Really Matters, explains the difficulty of the overhaul. A recent article on the topic addressed the urgency of the task (Foreign Affairs, May/June 2025, paywalled):

“For Americans, these are tumultuous times. Inequality in income and wealth is at historically high levels. Artificial intelligence is reshaping society at an unprecedented pace, prompting layoffs and putting entire professions at risk. According to an estimate by the Brookings Institution, up to 85 percent of current workers in the U.S. labor force could see their jobs affected by today’s generative AI technology. In the future, that percentage could climb even higher.

At moments of danger and uncertainty, it is usually the task of governments to protect people and help them navigate change–to step in when markets cannot. Yet Americans seem to have little belief in Washington’s capabilities. Over the past two decades, public trust in the U.S. government has plummeted by 40 percent. Some Americans believe the federal government has been absent. Others believe it has failed to meet pressing challenges, including the rising cost of living, and the potential disruptions of AI. Either way, Washington has its work cut out for it as the government tries to regain Americans’ trust.

So where can it start? The Measure of Progress, meanwhile, takes aim at the economic data that states use. According to Coyle, analysts evaluate the economy using outdated, limited metrics, causing policymakers to misunderstand the challenges citizens face.

Coyle’s book is focused on understanding the economy as it exists today. But her argument–that analysts and governments have failed to properly measure peoples’ well-being–is equally essential. The metrics that economists use, Coyle insists, are inherently flawed and do not sufficiently represent the reality of economic activity and value. That poses an immense problem for policymakers and analysts, distorting their view of the world and potentially leading them to faulty conclusions and ineffective policies.”

The problem is multi-faceted. GDP and other metrics were institutionalized in the industrial age, where agriculture and factory production were easy to measure. As these sectors’ share of the economy has slipped, the “hard-to-measure” parts of the economy are now dominant–81.5% by one estimate.

There are many other critical wrinkles in measuring the economy as it is. The book raises the issue of unpaid work, such as families caring for elderly parents and the unpaid “shadow work” that we’re required to do now to keep all of our technology functioning. All this activity occurs outside the traditional market.

Since our metrics don’t put a price tag on clean air and functional ecosystems, these are left out of the calculations, as if they don’t exist. Not only do they exist, they’re critical to our well-being. The book discusses natural capital accounting as an alternative, but alternative measures like this are inherently more challenging than toting up transactions.

What if we decided to measure the economy by the quality of life of the citizenry? While there are endless possibilities of what goes into quality of life, we can start with these basics:

1. Our physical and mental health.

2. The health of our social order–our social contract, social trust, communities and trust in our key institutions

3. The security and stability of our livelihoods and financial future.

Defining health isn’t that difficult. A healthy person doesn’t need any medications because, well, they’re healthy, so there’s no need for any interventions. A healthy person has an HDL / triglyceride ratio (calculated by dividing your triglyceride level by your HDL cholesterol level) well under 2, can walk a mile without even noticing, can stand on each foot for an extended time, and so on.

As for mental health, numerous studies have found that social connections are critical to our overall health, along with what we might call sufficiency–enough financial resources to secure the basics of life, and enough opportunities to fulfill one’s potential.

Read the Whole Article

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In October 2024 a Lebanese writer named Lina Mounzer wrote, “ask any Arab what the most painful realization of the last year has been and it is this: that we have discovered the extent of our dehumanization to such a degree that it’s impossible to function in the world in the same way.”

I’ve thought about that line a lot over the last year.

I thought about it as Israel hammered Lebanon with at least 20 airstrikes during a supposed “ceasefire”.

I thought about it during the Gaza ceasefire negotiations when the western political/media class kept calling the Israelis held by Hamas “hostages” while calling the innocent Palestinians held captive by Israel “prisoners”.

I think about it as the IDF continues to murder Palestinian civilians every day during the Gaza “ceasefire” when they are deemed to be traveling into forbidden areas, because Palestinians are so dehumanized that Israel sees bullets as a perfectly legitimate means of directing civilian foot traffic.

I think about it as these daily ceasefire violations and acts of military slaughter barely make a blip in the western news media, while any time anything happens that makes western Jews feel anxious or upset it dominates headlines for days.

I thought about it while the western political/media class solemnly commemorated the second anniversary of the October 7 attack, even as the daily death toll from the Gaza holocaust ticked along with its victims unnamed and unacknowledged by those same institutions.

I thought about it when all of western politics and media stopped dead in its tracks and stood transfixed for days on the assassination of Charlie Kirk while ignoring the genocide he had spent the last two years of his life actively manufacturing consent for.

Day after day after day we see glaring, inexcusable discrepancies between the amount of attention that is given to the violent death of an Arab and the attention that is given to the violent death of an Israeli, a western Jew, or any westerner.

These last two years have been a time of unprecedented unmasking in all sorts of ways, but I think that’s the one that’s going to stick with me the most. The way western civilization came right out into the cold harsh light to admit, day after day after day, that they don’t truly view Arabs as human beings.

Ours is a profoundly sick society.

One of the main arguments you’ll hear from rightists about why the west needs to support Israel is that Israel is helping to defend the west from the savage Muslim hoards — a sentiment that Israeli pundits and politicians have been all too happy to feed into of late. It’s revealing because it’s just coming right out and saying that slaughtering Muslims is a virtue in and of itself, so anyone who kills Muslims is an ally of the west.

But any time I come across this argument all I can think is, why would anyone want to defend the west if this is what the west has become?

Even if we pretend these delusions that Arabs and Islam pose some kind of threat to western civilization are valid, why would it even matter? This civilization does not deserve to be saved. Not if we’re going to be living like this.

If we’ve become so detached from our own humanity that we can’t even see innocent children as fully human just because they live somewhere else and have a different religion, then we are the monsters. We are the villains. We are everything the craziest Zionist pretends the Arabs are.

These last two years have shown us that western civilization doesn’t need protection, it needs redemption. It needs to save its soul.

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U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin appear to be back on good terms — at least for now.

Trump announced Thursday afternoon that he had a very “productive” call with the Russian head of state, who congratulated him for the “great accomplishment” of “peace in the Middle East.” The Russian leader also passed on niceties to the First Lady for her involvement with children.

The two leaders discussed potential business between the United States and Russia after “the War with Ukraine is over,” according to Trump’s version of the call.  The Russians confirmed the call, which they announced as it was happening.

Before hanging up, they agreed to a meeting of high-level advisors next week, to be followed up by an in-person meeting in Budapest, Hungary, where they’ll discuss ending the “inglorious” war between Russia and Ukraine.

The president ended his Truth Social announcement on a high note. “I believe great progress was made with today’s telephone conversation,” he said.

Good News

The news was undoubtedly welcomed by sensible Americans who realize there is nothing to gain and too much at risk by egging on a war between two very corrupt nations on the other side of the planet, neither of which pose a serious threat to the U.S. homeland so long as we stay out of their business. Former Trump National Security Adviser General Michael Flynn was among them. “This is what we voted for,” he announced on social media. Flynn previously alleged that a group of warmongers were exerting undue influence on the president.

Those who’ve been keeping up with the TMZ-style drama between these two strongheaded world leaders and are cheering for de-escalation are, like Flynn, happy to hear this news — but there is also some trepidation. This is about the fifth rerun of this episode. The script goes something like this: The two talk, Putin flatters and reassures, and Trump emerges smitten, only to become disillusioned just weeks later. Nevertheless, this is better than how the saga had been tracking as of late.

Escalatory Rhetoric

Just Wednesday, U.S. War Secretary Pete Hegseth implied he would wage war against Russia if it did not wind down its war against Ukraine. “If there is no path to peace in the short term then the United States, along with our allies, will take steps necessary to impose costs on Russia for its continued aggression,” Hegseth said Wednesday. “If we must take this step, the U.S. War Department stands ready to do our part in ways that only the United States can do.”

Hegseth said this during a meeting focused on Ukraine at the NATO headquarters. He apparently did not elaborate on whether he meant to say what it sounded like he said.

Before that, Trump was publicly mulling over the idea of sending the Ukrainians Tomahawks, long-range missiles with the capability to strike any major Russian city. The big idea was that doing this would cripple the Kremlin’s major source of revenue, its energy sector. On Sunday, Trump told reporters he was thinking of speaking to Russia to ask them if “they want to have Tomahawks going in their direction?” Maybe he did.

Russia had previously responded to the threat with its own warning, pointing out that sending that kind of power would directly implicate the United States. Somewhere in that melee of threats and bluster, Trump even called Russia a “paper tiger.”

Just Bluffing?

All of that talk, however, may have been nothing more than bluffing designed to keep the Russians off balance and convince them to get serious about winding down the war. And maybe it worked.

Or maybe Hegseth’s rhetoric was the result of Trump waking up in an especially crabby mood on account of being edged out of the Nobel Peace Prize and ordering his War Sec to throw caution to the wind since they won’t award him with the accolade he badly wants, anyway. It’s hard to tell. As we’ve said before, there’s a good chance that when it comes to dealing with the mess in Eastern Europe, Trump’s so good at keeping everyone guessing that even he doesn’t know what he’ll do.

That’s probably why some European leaders, as much as they want Trump to get and stay tough with Putin, were reluctant to celebrate Hegseth’s comments. German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius told reporters, “I would read into that a kind of change of perspective and approach, but not more for the moment. I can’t interpret, really, what he did mean.”

Unleash the Tomahawks

It’s telling that the folks at the Defense and Security Department at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) were ecstatic about the possibility that the United States would give the Ukrainians Tomahawks. “As with Hamas and the fighting in Gaza, bringing the Ukraine war to an end requires speaking the only language that Moscow understands: force,” wrote Seth G. Jones and Tom Karako in a Wall Street Journal op-ed. More from Jones and Karako:

Without Tomahawks or a system with a similar payload and range, Ukraine can’t put real pressure on Russian supply lines, military production or long-range launchers into Ukrainian territory. Ukraine can use Tomahawks to target rear support areas sustaining Russian front-line operations, including weapons and fuel depots, tank-production facilities, and air bases used by Russian fighters and bombers.

It’s true that Putin might interpret America’s friendly negotiation approach as weak and naïve. But it’s also true that the CSIS is a profoundly hawkish outfit funded by defense contractors and staffed by people with strong ties to defense and intelligence agencies. They’re the hand guiding the only tool the know of, the hammer, to the nail. Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, and Boeing are among the CISIS’s financial backers. But that’s three of many more. As the Quincy Institute noted in 2023, when CSIS was complaining that the Pentagon wasn’t spending enough, 20 different defense contractors were funding the CISIS. Moreover, Jones, the president of CSIS, is a former Department of Defense senior official and has worked with the CIA in advisory roles.

Uncertain Outcome

Trump has been trying to mediate peace between these two sibling nations before he even moved back in the Oval Office. And despite what some think, it’s hard to interpret his behavior, words, and efforts as a façade covering a hidden motive to start World War III. A more likely explanation is that Trump’s erratic personality and allergy to details is what’s prompting the vacillating, chaotic foreign policy of the U.S. government.

Putin and Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky have more in common than they may care to admit. Both are accused of being dictators. Both lead governments believed to have persecuted, even killed, dissident journalists. And both have an alleged track record of silencing government critics.

On Friday, Zelensky will be back in the White House, hat in hand. He’ll likely have a bigger hat than the one he passes out in Europe because he’ll be asking for Tomahawks. He’ll likely try to convince Trump that, just like all the previous times, Putin’s reassurances will come to naught and that the right thing to do is give Ukraine more firepower.

The question is, what will Trump do?

This article was originally published on The New American.

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Yesterday I saw in report in the Telegraph headlined Britain and France are at the end stage of ‘centrist dad’ collapse and found the following paragraph about Starmer and Macron especially memorable.

Wrong on almost everything, hated by voters, incapable of truth-telling, driven by a messianic belief in environmentalism and global technocracy, unable to confront reality, gripped by suicidal empathy and addicted to virtue-signalling, Starmer and Macron have ended up as unlikely brothers in arms, despite their seemingly incompatible styles.

The report resonated with me, as I had, just the day before, had a long telephone conversation with former British MP, Andrew Bridgen, about the current state of affairs in England. He perceives them to be very grim.

In the summer of 2014, on the 100th anniversary of the First World War, I found myself visiting Leipzig, Germany, where I wandered into a book store near the St. Thomas Church, where J.S. Bach had served as the music director from 1723 to 1750. The store was stocked with books by authors all trying to answer the question: Why did the great nations of Europe essentially commit suicide in 1914-18?

The answer, it seems to me, is the marked tendency of any society’s political class to be captured by interests and ideologies that have little to do with the interests of the people they govern. Apart from bankers and arms manufacturers, the Great War of 1914-18 served no one who lived in the warring countries. On the contrary, it sent millions of their young men—including their most educated young men—to be machine gunned and gassed in the trenches.

While some elements of the state are necessary for providing basic security, maintaining critical infrastructure, and adjudicating conflict, the state invariably becomes way too big and parasitic, and ultimately cancerous.

I fear that Britain, France, and Germany are currently suffering from Stage 4 Cancer that originated in the bosom of their bizarre governments run by total weirdos who in no way represent the interests of the people they govern.

This article was originally published on Courageous Discourse.

The post The End of Britain, France, and Germany appeared first on LewRockwell.

Gilbert Doctorow and I share the belief that unless Putin responds more firmly than he has been inclined to do to the West’s provocations, war is inevitable.

Hungary, led by the only intelligent leader in Europe, has arranged a meeting in Budapest between Trump and Putin.  I suspect that this is the last chance to avoid war.  Its success turns on whether Trump can abandon his bully role, understand that the solution requires a NATO pullback from Russia’s borders and a mutual security agreement between Russia and the West, and declare in a press conference that Washington’s support (incitement really) of Ukraine is at an end.

For Putin, I suspect the meeting in Hungary is Putin’s last test of Trump.  If Trump fails the test, chances are high that delivery of Tomahawks to Ukraine will result in a Russian declaration of war against Ukraine and quick destruction by conventional means of Ukraine’s ability to continue the conflict.  Putin will have reversed his strategy of non-response to provocations and put the West on notice, something he should have done years ago.  The likelihood is the Russian Foreign Ministry’s effort to dismiss the Tomahawk threat as terrorism rather than an act of war will fail.

Unless Trump comes to his senses, a brutal demonstration of Russian force is all that can stop the momentum toward a real war.  See this and this.

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