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On January 6, 2021, nearly five hours passed between the breach of the Capitol perimeter and the arrival of a National Guard contingent ready and waiting to deploy just ten minutes away. Had the National Guard arrived within that first hour, “January 6” would have no more historical resonance than any other day on the calendar.

Any number of people bear the blame for this calamitous security failure, but that list does not include the two most frequently cited scapegoats, the D.C. National Guard or President Donald Trump.

Of the thousands of words of sworn testimony, some of the most revealing came from Colonel Earl Matthews. In rebutting the questions asked by Rep. Norma Torres, a California Democrat, at a congressional hearing on April 17, 2024, the intrepid Matthews shared some inconvenient truths.

“Do you know if ideas like the President seizing ballot boxes was something [Army] Secretary [Ryan] McCarthy was considering when making decisions about deploying the Guard on January 6?” asked Torres.

“I think it was, but I think it was not a rational belief,” said the African-American Matthews, the Chief Legal Advisor for the D.C. National Guard on January 6. Not liking the answer, Torres promptly cut him off.

“Was there widespread fear within the Department of Defense about the President using the military or other levers of the State to impact the election around the time of the 2020 election,” Torres continued, hoping to get an answer more to her liking. This question backfired as well.

“No. It was not a widespread fear,” said Matthews. “It was a fear among a clique of officers led by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who talked about a so-called Reichstag moment.” Not wanting to hear any more of the truth, Torres cut Matthews off again.

In the movies — Seven Days in May, Dr. Strangelove, White House Down — that “clique” of coup-minded generals inevitably emerge from some right-wing fever swamp. In Washington circa 2020, that clique was headed by the proudly woke Gen. Mark Milley, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and a hero on the Left.

January 6, of course, proved to be a Reichstag moment, but in precisely the opposite way Milley suggested. Democratic Party leadership responded to the riot much the way the Nazi leadership responded to the Reichstag fire, namely using an event of ambiguous origin as pretext to suppress speech and imprison its political opponents.

For the Democrats, Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans served the role that Jews and communists did for the Nazis. With the perpetrators identified, all investigations for the next two years would be tailored to defame the accused and exculpate the complicit.

By the evening of January 6, the Reichstag narrative had been set. Said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to her filmmaker daughter Alexandra, “I just feel sick with what he did to the Capitol and to the country today. He’s got to pay a price for that.” The “he,” of course, was Donald Trump.

For the following two years, the left controlled the White House, Congress, the media, and the D.C. courts. That control enabled them to shoehorn all evidence into their pre-set narrative. In her recently released book, The Art of Power: My Story as America’s First Woman Speaker of the House, Pelosi ignored all the facts that have emerged since Republicans won the House and doubled down on her scandalously fake thesis:

Watching the insurrection, which Trump had instigated, begging him to provide the National Guard — as he did and which he refused to send — and taking into account my own worries about the basic security of Vice President Mike Pence, hiding inside the Capitol complex, and the important role he had to play, I knew we had to prevail.

Thanks to the underreported efforts of the House Administration’s Subcommittee on Oversight and its chairman Barry Loudermilk, we are beginning to see just how crudely false was Pelosi’s interpretation of that day’s events.

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The post How the Pentagon Betrayed President Trump on January 6 appeared first on LewRockwell.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. delivered the keynote address at “American Health and Nutrition: A Second Opinion,” hosted by Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI). The event was held on September 23, in the Kennedy Caucus Room in the Senate.

The capacity crowd of 300 guests was joined by an online audience of over 100,000 across multiple streaming platforms. Speakers at the event included Harvard’s Dr. Chris Palmer, Stanford graduate and public health advocate Dr. Casey Means, New York Times best-selling author Calley Means, journalist and health advocate Vani Hari, and Senator Johnson.

In his address, Kennedy outlined major problems with and solutions to America’s health crises.

Kennedy explained that it is wrong to measure the state of the nation’s health with statistics detailing money spent on healthcare and earned by insurance and pharmaceutical companies. Instead, Kennedy said that the state of healthcare should be measured by patient outcomes including life expectancy, chronic disease levels and childhood obesity. In all of these areas, the U.S., he said,  is far behind other countries with smaller economies.

“We spend four times per capita on health care than the Italians,” Kennedy said. But Italians live 7.5 years longer than us on average. Are we? And incidentally, Americans had the highest life expectancy in the world when I was growing up. Today, we are an average of six years behind our European neighbors. Are we lazier and more suicidal than Italians? Or is there a problem with our system? Are there problems with our incentives? Are there problems with our food?”

Kennedy criticized the Affordable Care Act, often referred to as Obamacare. “Obamacare actually incentivizes insurance companies to raise premiums to get 15% of a larger pie,” he said. “This is why premiums have increased 100% since the passage of Obamacare, making health care the largest driver of inflation while American life expectancy plummets.”

Covid Crisis Cannot Be Solved by Pharmaceuticals

Kennedy also told the audience that while the U.S. had one of the worst Covid outcomes in the world in terms of patient mortality, the solution to this problem lies not in pharmaceuticals but in the diet and lifestyle of Americans compared to those elsewhere.

“Our health leaders said that Covid was a pharmaceutical deficiency,” he explained. “This was a lie. We have the highest chronic disease rate on earth.”

He enumerated the problems in the American system, saying that two thirds of adults in the U.S. suffer from chronic health issues. “Years ago, that number was 1%,” he said. “When my uncle was president, about 1% of the children in this country had a chronic disease. That number may be as high as 60% in America [today]. 74% of Americans are now overweight or obese, including 50% of our children. 120 years ago, when somebody was obese, they were sent to the circus.”

Kennedy presented an alarming statistic that 50% of American teens are obese. This compares to a Japanese childhood obesity rate of 3%.

Our Children Are Being Abused 

Kennedy described the chronic disease epidemic among American children as a form of abuse of the country’s most vulnerable. Calling the country’s children the “most precious assets that we have in this country,” he asked, “How can we let this happen to them? How can we call ourselves a moral nation, the most exemplary democracy in the world if we are treating our children like this?”

Kennedy went on to describe how diseases that once only affected the old are now increasingly common among children. “About 18% of American teens now have fatty liver disease,” Kennedy stated. “When I was a boy, this only affected late stage alcoholics who were elderly. Cancer rates are skyrocketing in the young and old. Young adult cancers are up 79% and 1 in 4 American women is on antidepressant medication. 40% of teens have a mental health diagnosis. 15% of high high schoolers are on Adderall…No other country has anything like this.”

Kennedy pointed to ultra-processed foods as the primary culprit in the medical crisis impacting the young. “70% of American children’s diet is now ultra processed,” he said, “which means industrial manufactured in a factory.”

He went on to explain that following tighter regulations of the tobacco industry, many scientists who worked for cigarette manufacturers started working for corporations that manufacture processed foods subsequent to the acquisition of industrial food processors by tobacco firms.

These foods, Kennedy explained, are stuffed with chemicals that did not exist a century ago. Many such chemicals are banned from  human consumption in Europe. However, “They are ubiquitous in American processed foods,” noted Kennedy. “We are literally poisoning our children systematically for profit.”

Kennedy identified a second culprit –   “toxic chemicals in our food, our medicine and our environment. Pesticides, food additives, pharmaceutical drugs and toxic waste permeate every cell in our bodies. This assault on our children’s cells and hormones is unrelenting.”

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The post In Bipartisan Panel, Kennedy Offers Solutions for America’s Chronic Disease Epidemic appeared first on LewRockwell.

First Things editor Mark Bauerlein spoke September 12 at Belmont House, in Washington, D.C., about his latest book, The Dumbest Generation Grows Up, the sequel to his 2008 Dumbest Generation. Both books are about the consequences of letting a generation come of age on screens. The earlier book warned against potential effects; the latest examines what happens when that generation crosses the line into what should be chronological adulthood.

Readers can delve into Bauerlein’s books to digest the full range of problems the screened generation faces. I’ll limit myself to three.

First, screen dependency decimated reading and, consequently, knowledge skills. Screen-based learning was originally touted as a way to tailor education to an individual child’s interests and levels, but—especially after the Covid lockdown—it has become apparent that putting the libraries of the world at the click of a button has not elevated the literacy or cultural levels of young people.

When Pope Francis recently spoke of getting people (especially seminarians) to read literature, in part to get them off screens, I argued that the papal proposal failed to account for how screens change the way people approach reading. They’re not just “different delivery modes.” They fundamentally differ in how each approaches a fixed text as well as how they condition the writing of that text. Let’s just say, James Fenimore Cooper would not have had a career as a Tweet writer.

Second, building on the previous argument, Bauerlein criticizes screens for caging young people in youth culture. Books at least occasionally force young people to engage in what once used to be called “higher culture,” that is, something beyond the interest level of the contemporary teen or young adult. In many ways, it is an “anti-intellectual” culture. Social media reinforces these youth-centric foci by its “friending” mechanisms, which reinforce the predominantly youth world and ethos for its users. Instead of cross-generational fertilization, the youth orientation of social media, argues Bauerlein, boxes young people into a youth ghetto, with all the callowness such confinement would likely entail. Far from being “diverse” or “inclusive,” it frames a world that is generationally (and culturally) monochromatic and exclusive of worldviews other than its own.

Third—and to me the most important of Bauerlein’s arguments—is the immanentizing effect of screens. Bauerlein touched on this argument briefly at the conclusion of his remarks, but it perhaps is the most important of them: the here-and-now, youth-centric, temporal focus of screens leaves no room for the transcendent. How does Transcendence break into social media?

And, if the transcendent does not find a place in social media, where do God or any of the “existential questions” fit in? Do they even become questions? Do they even get considered? Bauerlein does not think it coincidental (neither do I) that, as social media came to dominate generations, those generations also produced the phenomenon of religiously disaffiliated people we call “nones.”

The culture and ethos of the screen is flat and temporal, very immanent, very now, in some sense very ephemeral. None of those characteristics is conducive to openness to transcendence. They in fact foster an indifference to, if not alienation from, more transcendent realities.

The outcome is not, however, merely religious disaffiliation. It arguably also goes hand in hand with other phenomena, such as the greater indices of depression and mental illness among youth, social dysfunctionality, and even suicide. This is especially rampant in the teen years and especially among teenage girls who, struggling to establish their own sense of identity, suffer from being immersed into a peer culture that is often negative, unconfident, and even guilt-ridden. Such are the wages of immanence.

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The post The Ever-Present But Anti-Transcendent Screen appeared first on LewRockwell.

“To be prepared for war,” George Washington said, “is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace.” President Ronald Reagan agreed with his forebear’s words, and peace through strength became a theme of his administration. In the past four decades, the American arsenal helped secure that peace, but political neglect has led to its atrophy as other nations’ war machines have kicked into high gear. Most Americans do not realize the specter of great power conflict has risen again.

It is far past time to rebuild America’s military. We can avoid war by preparing for it.

When America’s senior military leaders testify before my colleagues and me on the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee behind closed doors, they have said that we face some of the most dangerous global threat environments since World War II. Then, they darken that already unsettling picture by explaining that our armed forces are at risk of being underequipped and outgunned. We struggle to build and maintain ships, our fighter jet fleet is dangerously small, and our military infrastructure is outdated. Meanwhile, America’s adversaries are growing their militaries and getting more aggressive.

In China, the country’s leader, Xi Jinping, has orchestrated a historic military modernization intended to exploit the U.S. military’s weaknesses. He has overtaken the U.S. Navy in fleet size, built one of the world’s largest missile stockpiles and made big advances in space. President Vladimir Putin of Russia has thrown Europe into war and mobilized his society for long-term conflict. Iran and its proxy groups have escalated their shadow war against Israel and increased attacks on U.S. ships and soldiers. And North Korea has disregarded efforts toward arms control negotiations and moved toward wartime readiness.

Worse yet, these governments are materially helping one another, cooperating in new ways to prevent an American-led 21st century. Iran has provided Russia with battlefield drones, and China is sending technical and logistical help to aid Mr. Putin’s war. They are also helping one another prepare for future fights by increasing weapons transfers and to evade sanctions. Their unprecedented coordination makes new global conflict increasingly possible.

That theoretical future could come faster than most Americans think. We may find ourselves in a state of extreme vulnerability in a matter of a few years, according to a growing consensus of experts. Our military readiness could be at its lowest point in decades just as China’s military in particular hits its stride. The U.S. Indo-Pacific commander released what I believe to be the largest list of unfunded items ever for services and combatant commands for next year’s budget, amounting to $11 billion. It requested funding for a raft of infrastructure, missile defense and targeting programs that would prove vital in a Pacific fight. China, on the other hand, has no such problems, as it accumulates the world’s leading hypersonic arsenal with a mix of other lethal cruise and attack missiles.

Our military leaders are being forced to make impossible choices. The Navy is struggling to adequately fund new ships, routine maintenance and munition procurement; it is unable to effectively address all three. We recently signed a deal to sell submarines to Australia, but we’ve failed to sufficiently fund our own submarine industrial base, leaving an aging fleet unprepared to respond to threats. Two of the three most important nuclear modernization programs are underfunded and are at risk of delays. The military faces a backlog of at least $180 billion for basic maintenance, from barracks to training ranges. This projects weakness to our adversaries as we send service members abroad with diminished ability to respond to crises.

Fortunately, we can change course. We can avoid that extreme vulnerability and resurrect American military might.

On Wednesday I am publishing a plan that includes a series of detailed proposals to address this reality head-on. We have been living off the Reagan military buildup for too long; it is time for updates and upgrades. My plan outlines why and how the United States should aim to spend an additional $55 billion on the military in the 2025 fiscal year and grow military spending from a projected 2.9 percent of our national gross domestic product this year to 5 percent over the next five to seven years.

It would be a significant investment that would start a reckoning over our nation’s spending priorities. There will be conversations ahead about all manner of budget questions. We do not need to spend this much indefinitely — but we do need a short-term generational investment to help us prevent another world war.

My blueprint would grow the Navy to 357 ships by 2035 and halt our shrinking Air Force fleet by producing at least 340 additional fighters in five years. This will help patch near-term holes and put each fleet on a sustainable trajectory. The plan would also replenish the Air Force tanker and training fleets, accelerate the modernization of the Army and Marine Corps, and invest in joint capabilities that are all too often forgotten, including logistics and munitions.

The proposal would build on the $3.3 billion in submarine industrial base funding included in the national security supplemental passed in April, so we can bolster our defense and that of our allies. It would also rapidly equip service members all over the world with innovative technologies at scale, from the seabed to the stars.

We should pair increased investment with wiser spending. Combining this crucial investment with fiscal responsibility would funnel resources to the most strategic ends. Emerging technology must play an essential role, and we can build and deploy much of it in less than five years. My road map would also help make improvements to the military procurement system and increase accountability for bureaucrats and companies that fail to perform on vital national security projects.

This whole endeavor would shake our status quo but be far less disruptive and expensive than the alternative. Should China decide to wage war with the United States, the global economy could immediately fall into a depression. Americans have grown far too comfortable under the decades-old presumption of overwhelming military superiority. And that false sense of security has led us to ignore necessary maintenance and made us vulnerable.

Our ability to deter our adversaries can be regained because we have done it before. At the 50th anniversary of Pearl Harbor, in the twilight of the Soviet Union, George H.W. Bush reflected on the lessons of Pearl Harbor. Though the conflict was long gone, it taught him an enduring lesson: “When it comes to national defense,” he said, “finishing second means finishing last.”

Regaining American strength will be expensive. But fighting a war — and worse, losing one — is far more costly. We need to begin a national conversation today on how we achieve a peaceful, prosperous and American-led 21st century. The first step is a generational investment in the U.S. military.

Reprinted with the author’s permission.

The post Most Americans Do Not Realize the Specter of Great Power Conflict Has Risen Again and Are Not Prepared for Major War appeared first on LewRockwell.

di David Stockman

I dati sui prezzi delle case hanno gridato: “Ma quale raffreddamento dell'inflazione?” L'indice Case-Schiller di giugno ha raggiunto il massimo storico e è salito del +6,5% rispetto all'anno scorso, mentre il salario medio è aumentato di circa la metà, al +3,7% su base annua.

Tuttavia il periodo annuale fino a giugno è stato solo l'ultimo inning di una partita che i lavoratori dipendenti stanno perdendo da diversi decenni. Ciò è dovuto alle linee di politica della banca centrale che gonfiano gli asset a tassi molto più rapidi del prezzo dei salari, dei beni e dei servizi quotidiani.

I burocrati non sanno nemmeno quanto velocemente stiano aumentando i prezzi delle case, perché si rifiutano ostinatamente di dare credito ai dati del settore privato sui prezzi delle case residenziali. Ma come mostrato dalla linea viola nel grafico qui sotto, la quale raffigura l'indice Zillow dei prezzi delle case (che comprende residenze unifamiliari, condomini e cooperative), il prezzo medio negli Stati Uniti è aumentato da $124.000 a gennaio 2000 a $362.500 a luglio 2024.

Si tratta di un aumento del 194%. Durante lo stesso periodo di 24 anni, l'indice dei prezzi al consumo per gli immobili è aumentato solo del 110% e la versione del deflatore PCE dei prezzi degli immobili è aumentata ancora di meno. In breve, i prezzi delle case nel mondo reale sono aumentati di 2 volte il livello rappresentato dai “dati in entrata” per i quali sbavano gli idioti nell'Eccles Building.

Naturalmente a Wall Street diranno che in questo modo si mescolano le mele con le arance: prezzi degli asset contro costi dei servizi di affitto. Ma in un lasso di tempo di 24 anni non così tanto, questo perché a lungo termine gli affitti riflettono il valore attuale scontato dei flussi di reddito da locazione meno i costi operativi.

Di conseguenza il fatto che la linea blu (prezzo degli immobili nell'IPC) sia aumentata di appena la metà del prezzo dell'asset indicizzato da Zillow (linea viola) suggerisce che il BLS è all'opera coi suoi soliti magheggi: sosttostimare i prezzi del mondo reale.

Infatti l'indice OER (owners' equivalent rent) nell'IPC è a dir poco assurdo. Si basa su un sondaggio condotto su alcune migliaia di proprietari di case a cui viene chiesto a quanto affitterebbero il loro castello se, presumibilmente, decidessero di piantare una tenda sul marciapiede e diventare palazzinari.

Esiste un semplice test per dimostrare l'assurdità del bias riguardo allo sgonfiamento dell'inflazione dei prezzi: basta prendere il tasso dei mutui trentennali e l'indice Zillow negli ultimi 24 anni, supponendo un acquisto standard con un saldo immediato del 20% del costo della casa. I costi annuali del mutuo vengono quindi confrontati con il valore annuo del salario medio di un operaio (linea blu).

Poiché quest'ultimo è aumentato solo del 119% negli ultimi 24 anni, è evidente che la linea di politica pro-inflazione della banca centrale è tutt'altro che imparziale. Il salario medio annuo, l'indice Zillow Home e il tasso del mutuo trentennale a gennaio 2000 erano rispettivamente $124.000, $24.600 e 8,23%; a luglio 2024 questi valori erano rispettivamente $52.830, $363.000 e 6,78%.

Se si ipotizza un rapporto prestito/valore dell'80% in entrambi i casi, si ottiene quanto segue:

• Gennaio 2000: costo annuo del mutuo $2.990, pari al 12% dello stipendio medio annuo.

• Luglio 2024: costo annuo del mutuo $19.925, ovvero il 38% dello stipendio medio annuo.

Proprio così. La tanto decantata linea di politica pro-inflazione al 2,00% all'anno era un'illusione. Il proprietario medio si è visto consegnare la sua testa finanziaria in un cesto, poiché il costo degli interessi di un mutuo standard su una casa a prezzo medio è passato da un ottavo del suo stipendio lordo a quasi due quinti.

La presunta frizzantezza dell'economia americana, poi, raggiungerà presto un altro traguardo: $50.000 miliardi per quanto riguarda il valore di mercato degli immobili residenziali occupati dai proprietari. Al momento questa cifra (linea viola nel grafico qui sotto) è di $46.000 miliardi (primo trimestre 2024), quasi il doppio del suo livello pre-crisi ($24.000 miliardi) nel quarto trimestre 2006. È anche 8 volte il suo livello di quando Greenspan prese il timone della FED ($5.600 miliardi) nel secondo trimestre 1987 e un sorprendente 51 volte ($900 miliardi) di quando Nickson fece il suo annuncio a Camp David nell'agosto 1971.

Inutile dire che né i redditi delle famiglie, né l'economia statunitense nel suo complesso sono cresciuti a livelli simili. Ad esempio, il PIL nominale è aumentato di 24 volte dal secondo trimestre del 1971, ovvero meno della metà rispetto all'aumento dei valori immobiliari. Di conseguenza il valore delle abitazioni occupate dai proprietari rispetto al PIL è aumentato costantemente negli ultimi 50 anni.

Valore di mercato degli immobili occupati dai proprietari in % del PIL dal 1971:

• Secondo trimestre 1971: 79%

• Secondo trimestre 1987: 117%

• Quarto trimestre 2006: 172%

• Primo trimestre 2024: 175%

Ecco il punto: l'economia statunitense era decisamente sana nel 1971. Durante i 18 anni tra il 1953 e il 1971 il reddito familiare mediano reale è aumentato da $38.400 a $62.700, o di un robusto 2,8% annuo. Quindi il fatto che l'edilizia residenziale rappresentasse solo il 79% del PIL all'epoca non era indicativo di una grave carenza o di un malfunzionamento strutturale dell'economia statunitense.

Infatti quando si nota che il reddito familiare mediano reale è aumentato solo dello 0,8% annuo durante il più recente periodo di 18 anni, o solo del 29% rispetto al tasso 1953-1971, si potrebbe concludere che sarebbe stato saggio lasciare le cose come stavano. Non solo l'economia di Main Street prosperava, ma lo stava facendo con tassi d'interesse onesti grazie alla linea di politica della FED che era vincolata dal gold exchange standard di Breton Woods e anche dalla filosofia del denaro sano/onesto che prevaleva nell'Eccles Building durante l'era di William McChesney Martin.

Come mostrato di seguito, il tasso di riferimento del decennale statunitense durante il lasso di tempo sopraccitato superava il tasso d'inflazione IPC di oltre 200 punti base, fatta eccezione per i brevi periodi di recessione. Tuttavia l'economia statunitense prosperava, gli standard di vita reali aumentavano costantemente e il mercato immobiliare residenziale era letteralmente in boom.

Il periodo successivo tra il 1971 e il 1987 fu scosso prima dall'inflazione a due cifre degli anni '70 e poi dai tassi d'interesse nominali brutalmente elevati che derivarono dalla Cura Volcker durante la prima metà degli anni '80. Ma nel 1986 l'inflazione al consumo era tornata sotto il 2% e si stava dirigendo ancora più in basso, aprendo così la strada alla normalizzazione dei tassi d'interesse in un'economia a bassa inflazione.

Ma il nuovo presidente della FED, Alan Greenspan, aveva altro in mente: l'idea che la “disinflazione” in contrapposizione alla non inflazione fosse un'opzione migliore per il governo federale e anche che la FED potesse migliorare la performance dell'economia di Main Street tramite quella che lui chiamava la dottrina del cosiddetto “effetto ricchezza”. Se la FED avesse mantenuto Wall Street felice e gli indici azionari in forte crescita, la maggiore ricchezza tra le famiglie avrebbe acceso gli spiriti animali capitalisti, alimentando così una maggiore spesa, investimenti, crescita, posti di lavoro e redditi.

Nonostante il messaggio opaco di Greenspan, quello che stava facendo in realtà equivaleva a una bufala monetaria. Iniziò un'era in cui i tassi d'interesse reali sarebbero stati spinti costantemente e artificialmente più in basso fino allo zero e al di sotto, sulla base della teoria che tassi ben al di sotto di quelli che sarebbero prevalsi in condizioni di domanda e offerta oneste avrebbero suscitato un livello maggiore di crescita economica e prosperità.

Naturalmente non è andata così, perché tassi d'interesse inferiori al mercato causano solo un accumulo di debito superiore alla norma sia nel settore pubblico che in quello privato, insieme a distorsioni economiche e investimenti improduttivi, speculazioni insostenibili a Wall Street e, nella migliore delle ipotesi, lo scambio di una maggiore attività economica oggi con una riduzione della stessa e un maggiore servizio del debito domani.

Il tasso del decennale statunitense aggiustato all'inflazione ha marciato in discesa per i successivi tre decenni, finendo in territorio fortemente negativo all'inizio degli anni 2020. Gli effetti negativi sono stati diffusi in tutta l'economia e in questo caso turbo-alimentati dalle profonde preferenze fiscali per i mutui immobiliari. Quindi l'afflusso di debito a basso costo nel mercato immobiliare residenziale è stato massiccio e sostenuto.

Non c'è mistero sul perché: la legge economica dice che quando si sovvenziona qualcosa in modo consistente, se ne ottiene di più. E i sussidi impliciti della FED raffigurati nel grafico qui sotto erano davvero ingenti.

Inutile dire che la legge economica ha avuto la meglio sul mercato dei mutui residenziali. Il debito ipotecario delle famiglie (linea nera) era pari a $325 miliardi, ovvero appena il 50% del reddito familiare (linea viola) nel 1971. Ma al culmine della corsa ai prestiti subprime nel 2008-2009, il debito ipotecario era aumentato di 33 volte, arrivando a quasi $11.000 miliardi.

Di conseguenza l'onere del debito ipotecario è salito al 170% del reddito familiare prima di diminuire modestamente sin dal 2009. Ma il punto è che la severa repressione dei tassi d'interesse durante suddetto periodo ha causato una corsa agli armamenti finanziari nel mercato immobiliare residenziale, con un debito sempre maggiore che ha spinto i prezzi delle case sempre più in alto.

In breve, non è stato il libero mercato o il PIL in costante crescita a far passare i valori delle abitazioni residenziali dal 79% del PIL nel 1971 al 175% del PIL attuale. Al contrario, è stata un'ondata di inflazione dei prezzi delle case alimentata dal credito fiat, un torrente finanziario che ha regalato grandi guadagni inaspettati agli acquirenti del periodo precedente (es. i baby boomer) mentre ha progressivamente escluso i nuovi arrivati ​​e le famiglie con problemi di reddito e di credito dal cosiddetto sogno americano.

Infatti lo tsunami dell'inflazione immobiliare non è stato affatto un benefattore per la classe media. Uno studio basato sui sondaggi periodici della FED sulle finanze dei consumatori ha mostrato che tra il 2010 e il 2020 le famiglie con redditi elevati, definite come quelle con un reddito medio di $180.000, hanno visto i loro investimenti immobiliari aumentare da $4.500 miliardi a $10.300 miliardi. Si è trattato di un aumento del 130% in appena un decennio!

Al contrario, il valore degli investimenti immobiliari detenuti dalle famiglie a basso reddito, definite come aventi un reddito medio di $29.000, è salito da $4.460 miliardi a $4.790 miliardi. Si tratta di un aumento insignificante di appena il 3,5%, il che equivale a una perdita a due cifre se si considera l'aumento del 19% dell'indice dei prezzi al consumo nello stesso periodo di 10 anni.

Di sicuro i dirigenti della FED non stavano cercando di ridistribuire la ricchezza ai vertici della scala economica, anche se è quello che è successo. La teoria della repressione dei tassi d'interesse era che avrebbe alimentato un livello di spesa e investimento più elevato di quanto non sarebbe altrimenti accaduto, e in particolar modo nel settore dell'edilizia residenziale.

Inutile dire che non è andata così. I completamenti degli alloggi residenziali pro capite e gli investimenti in alloggi residenziali in % del PIL sono andati inesorabilmente verso il basso da quando Nixon ha tirato il tappeto dell'oro da sotto il dollaro e ha scatenato la Federal Reserve per imporre la pianificazione monetaria centrale all'economia di Main Street.

Come raffigurato dalla linea nera nel grafico qui sotto, ad esempio, gli investimenti in edilizia residenziale in percentuale del PIL sono scesi dal 5,7% nel 1972 a solo il 3,9% nel 2023. L'unica deviazione da questa costante tendenza al ribasso si è verificata nel 2003-2006, vale a dire l'intervallo durante il quale è stato alimentato il disastro dei mutui subprime e dell'inflazione dei prezzi delle case.

Infatti il grafico qui sotto abbinato al primo sopra, in relazione a quasi $50.000 miliardi in valore di immobili occupati da proprietari di case, vi dice tutto quello che dovete sapere sulla follia delle banche centrali keynesiane: il denaro artificialmente a buon mercato non stimola livelli più elevati di produzione reale e reddito, gonfia solamente gli asset esistenti nei mercati secondari.

A sua volta l'inflazione sistematica e incessante dei prezzi degli asset esistenti conferisce guadagni e perdite inattese in modo del tutto arbitrario, ma con l'effetto perverso di ridistribuire la ricchezza ai vertici della scala economica. L'intero modello di repressione finanziaria è quindi non solo inutile e inefficace, ma anche profondamente iniquo.

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

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di Artis Shepherd

Nella nostra economia pianificata burocraticamente, la prosperità finanziaria dipende sempre di più da quanto ci si può posizionare vicino alla stampante monetaria. Comprendere questo fatto significa identificare il collegamento tra questa “prosperità” e il denaro fiat. Poiché creare denaro dal nulla non alimenta maggiore produzione, e nemmeno fa aumentare la ricchezza reale, non esiste un collegamento diretto con la prosperità; deve essere indiretto e in effetti lo è.

Il deficit pubblico persistente e la politica pro-inflazione del sistema bancario centrale richiedono una continua creazione di denaro. Esso entra nell'economia in modo non uniforme, a vantaggio di coloro che lo ricevono per primi e che possono spenderlo o investirlo ai prezzi correnti. Man mano che fluisce in settori o asset specifici, i prezzi salgono. I primi che lo ricevono guadagnano, mentre gli altri affrontano un calo relativo della ricchezza. Sebbene i salari possano eventualmente aumentare, lo fanno in misura minore e in ritardo rispetto agli aumenti dei prezzi, consolidando lo svantaggio economico per chi lo riceve per ultimo.

Come risultato del processo di cui sopra, che descrive come funziona oggi l'economia, sono molti coloro il cui obiettivo primario è quello di avvicinarsi alla stampante monetaria. Questi cercatori di rendite traggono vantaggio non dal merito e dal raggiungimento di risultati produttivi, ma dalle manovre politiche nelle posizioni giuste, in modo da essere tra i primi che ricevono il denaro creato ex novo.

Quando la banca centrale abbassa i tassi d'interesse crea nuova moneta. Ciò avviene generalmente tramite operazioni di mercato aperto, in cui la banca centrale acquista titoli da un gruppo selezionato di banche commerciali, aumentando così le riserve e di conseguenza il credito nell'economia tramite prestiti e altri meccanismi. Forzare i tassi d'interesse verso il basso è simile alla creazione di nuova moneta dal nulla ed è un meccanismo che viene sfruttato da chi la riceve per primo.

Distorsione finanziaria

I burocrati, compresi quelli nel sistema bancario centrale, sanno bene che esiste una relazione diretta tra i tassi d'interesse e il valore dei beni capitali.

Per questi asset i tassi d'interesse prevalenti e futuri sono input chiave per calcolarne il valore. Si consideri il Dividend Discount Model, un'equazione utilizzata negli investimenti e nella finanza aziendale per ricavare il valore attuale di un'attività che produce reddito. L'equazione è abbastanza semplice: P = D/kg

Dove:

P è il prezzo, o valore, dell'asset

D è il dividendo del primo anno, o flusso di cassa

k è il tasso di sconto, il costo prevalente del capitale

g è il tasso di crescita di D

Se il tasso di sconto è del 10% e il tasso di crescita è del 2%, un flusso di cassa annuale a partire da $100 vale $1.250 oggi. Supponiamo che questo flusso di cassa provenga dagli utili di un'azienda, i cui dettagli non contano.

Supponiamo inoltre che, il giorno dopo il nostro calcolo iniziale, tutto ciò che riguarda quest'attività (il team di gestione, la linea di prodotti, la tecnologia, ecc.) rimanga lo stesso, ma la banca centrale sorprende i mercati tagliando i tassi d'interesse in modo tale che il tasso di sconto scenda dal 10% al 7%. Ricalcolando con queste nuove informazioni, l'attività ora vale $2.000, un aumento del 67% rispetto al giorno precedente.

È importante notare che il ritmo degli aumenti nelle valutazioni degli asset (vale a dire, la seconda derivata dei prezzi degli asset) accelera man mano che i tassi di riferimento si abbassano. Nel nostro esempio il valore dell'asset è aumentato di colpo del 67% quando il tasso di sconto è sceso del 3%.

E se scendesse di nuovo del 3%, dal 7% al 4%? In tal caso, il valore dell'asset aumenterebbe da $2.000 a $5.000, un ulteriore balzo del 150% basato su nessun cambiamento nei fondamentali dell'azienda. È questa dinamica che caratterizza i prezzi parabolici degli asset, compresi i recenti picchi durante l'era ZIRP.

Si noti che i tassi stessi non devono nemmeno cambiare per influenzare i valori degli asset. Gli aumenti dei prezzi degli asset possono derivare dalle aspettative di tassi di interesse più bassi, da qui il continuo clamore delle banche centrali a favore di tassi più bassi in modo da stimolare i prezzi degli asset e il volume delle transazioni. Quest'ultimo punto è centrale quando i burocrati gonfiano le bolle degli asset usando tassi di interesse artificialmente bassi. I mercati finanziari e gli intermediari in situazioni simili guadagnano commissioni ogni volta che si muove denaro e poche cose lo muovono come i tassi bassi.

I tassi artificialmente bassi sono i criteri “DEI” nei mercati dei capitali

In un libero mercato una delle sfide principali per gli imprenditori è l'allocazione del capitale, ovvero dove e come investire. Per utilizzare il capitale in modo efficiente, dev'essere distribuito in aree che forniscono rendimenti maggiori rispetto al suo costo prevalente. Dev'essere fatto ripetutamente, su lunghi periodi di tempo, pertanto un acuto senso degli affari deve combinarsi con una bassa preferenza temporale per avere successo. Come sottoprodotto di questa dinamica, le aree più produttive di un'economia ricevono una quantità appropriata di capitale e quelle meno produttive vengono evitate.

I tassi d'interesse artificialmente bassi, invece, riducono il costo del capitale e la sua allocazione viene distorta: le aree precedentemente non redditizie diventano marginalmente redditizie e ricevono capitale che altrimenti non riceverebbero. Le aree che sono marginalmente redditizie solo a causa dei tassi bassi non sono imprese intrinsecamente produttive e quindi attraggono persone con capacità inferiori piuttosto che imprenditori qualificati. In parole povere, i tassi artificialmente bassi sovvenzionano l'incompetenza.

Per avere una prova di questo fenomeno basta guardare al mercato degli investimenti in appartamenti negli ultimi anni, ma esistono molti casi simili, tra cui veicoli elettrici, tecnologie serialmente non redditizie e varie truffe sulle criptovalute.

“I quattro cavalieri dell'apocalisse del denaro a buon mercato”

I tassi d'interesse artificialmente bassi portano a investimenti improduttivi, bolle, finanziarizzazione e  società zombi, tutte cose che oggi sono molto diffuse. Tuttavia le banche centrali e la nostra classe politica sono intenzionate a continuare così, segnalando a gran voce imminenti tagli dei tassi nonostante i prezzi degli asset siano a livelli record in molte categorie, tra cui azioni, obbligazioni e immobili.

Per coloro che non hanno accesso politico, che non raccolgono i benefici dei tassi artificialmente bassi, sappiate che la distruzione della vostra ricchezza porta direttamente all'aumento della ricchezza per coloro che invece ce l'hanno questo accesso. Per i burocrati e la classe clientelare questa è una caratteristica prediletta quando abbiamo a che fare col denaro fiat. Come ha sottolineato Michael Burry: “La linea di politica dei tassi a zero ha infranto il contratto sociale con quelle generazioni di lavoratori che hanno risparmiato per la pensione, facendo scoprire loro che i propri risparmi non erano minimamente sufficienti”.

Un tempo risparmio, duro lavoro e responsabilità personale erano sufficienti per garantire una vita dignitosa per sé e per la propria famiglia. Ormai non è più così. Abbassare artificialmente i tassi d'interesse, creando denaro dal nulla nel processo, non può produrre ricchezza, può solo ridistribuirla dalle tue tasche a quelle dei clientes.

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

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di David Stockman

Ecco il risultato della linea di politica pro-inflazione da quando è stato adottato ufficialmente l'obiettivo d'inflazione al 2,00%. Secondo il nostro fidato IPC “16% trimmed mean”, il livello dei prezzi è aumentato del +41% sin dal 2012 e stava ancora salendo a un ritmo annuo del 3,31% lo scorso luglio.

Di conseguenza, dato che ogni dollaro guadagnato o risparmiato nel 2012 vale oggi solo 70 centesimi, la domanda ricorrente è: perché mai si dovrebbe anche solo pensare di aprire il rubinetto del denaro, esponendo così i lavoratori dipendenti e i risparmiatori a un ulteriore prolungamento del furto di potere d'acquisto evidente nel grafico qui sotto?

Per non parlare poi di un'altra esplosione come quella recente che, con il suo picco al 7%, ha fatto deprezzare il potere d'acquisto del dollaro del 50% ogni nove anni.

C'è solo una ragione per un nuovo giro di tagli dei tassi, che ora è praticamente garantito: Wall Street ha ripetutamente minacciato di scatenare una crisi isterica se la FED non delizierà presto trader e speculatori con una nuova dose di credito a basso costo e multipli PE ancora più alti nelle valutazioni estreme già incorporate nel mercato azionario.

Quindi Wall Street batte i tamburi per i tagli dei tassi sostenendo che sono a beneficio della famiglia media e sono necessari per impedire che l'economia di Main Street precipiti nel flagello della recessione o peggio.

Ma con l'economia statunitense ora gravata da quasi $100.000 miliardi in debito pubblico e privato, come diavolo potrebbero essere anche lontanamente appropriati dei tassi d'interesse più bassi? Dopo tutto, una loro riduzione indotta dalla banca centrale è progettata per far sì che famiglie, aziende e governo accumulino ancora più debito sui loro bilanci già traballanti.

Si consideri l'aumento della leva finanziaria nel settore non finanziario dal 1994. Allora, quando la dottrina degli effetti ricchezza di Greenspan era appena iniziata, il debito delle imprese non finanziarie era pari al 75% della produzione a valore aggiunto. Oggi quel rapporto è molto più alto, al 105%.

È ovvio che questo grande aumento del rapporto di leva non ha finanziato l'approvvigionamento di asset produttivi, ma è finita per la maggiore in riacquisti di azioni, Fusioni & Acquisizioni sopravvalutati e altri schemi di ingegneria finanziaria che hanno arricchito Wall Street.

Lo stesso vale per i presunti benefici per il settore dell'edilizia abitativa. Il livello di completamento delle unità abitative pro capite (linea viola) nel 2023, anche dopo la stampa di denaro per la pandemia, era ancora inferiore del 37% rispetto al 1987.

Al contrario l'indice dei prezzi delle abitazioni (linea nera) è aumentato di un sorprendente 345% durante lo stesso periodo di 36 anni. Di nuovo, i tassi d'interesse più bassi fanno molto di più per stimolare i prezzi degli asset esistenti rispetto alla produzione reale, ai posti di lavoro e al reddito.

Ciò che è successo dopo 37 anni di repressione finanziaria, costi del debito falsificati e ricorrenti salvataggi del mercato azionario, è che Wall Street si è trasformata in un casinò a tutto campo. Con decine di migliaia di miliardi di capitalizzazione di mercato in gioco, abbondano favole fasulle sui presunti benefici nei confronti di Main Street.

In questo momento storico, con quasi $100.000 miliardi in debito totale che rappresentano un record del 360% del PIL, non dovrebbero esserci letteralmente voci per tassi d'interesse più bassi e ancora più debito. Dopo tutto, la narrativa ufficiale di quest'ultimo è lo stimolo di livelli più elevati di investimento nei settori residenziale e commerciale nell'economia di Main Street.

Ma questo punto è sempre stata un'illusione, fatta eccezione per l'insostenibile e breve boom delle azioni tecnologiche alla fine degli anni '90. Infatti è così evidente, come si evince dal grafico qui sotto, che è possibile solo una conclusione: gli speculatori di Wall Street hanno corrotto così tanto la narrazione del mercato finanziario che, come la Regina di Alice nel Paese delle Meraviglie, i nostri banchieri centrali ora credono a sei cose impossibili prima di colazione o almeno prima dell'apertura del mercato azionario alle 9:30 del mattino.

Investimenti aziendali netti in % del PIL reale, dal 1978 al 2022

Per quanto riguarda il settore delle famiglie, l'idea stessa che i consumatori abbiano bisogno di più debiti è assurda. Durante il periodo di massimo splendore della prosperità di Main Street negli anni '50, il rapporto debito/PIL delle famiglie era pari solo al 28%. Dal 1971, e soprattutto dal 1987, è salito costantemente alle stelle: dopo essere quasi quadruplicato fino a un picco del 97% nel 2008, era ancora al 71% nel 2023.

L'aumento dei mutui delle famiglie, delle carte di credito, dei prestiti per auto e di altri debiti hanno causato, a loro volta, un aumento quasi sincronizzato della quota spesa per consumi personali del PIL. Rispetto alla sua quota del 58,1% del PIL nel 1953, la spesa per consumi personali ha raggiunto il 69,2% del PIL al picco recente nel 2022.

È ovvio che anche una minima conoscenza della storia economica e della logica degli investimenti e della crescita direbbe che, quando si tratta dell'incessante crescita del PIL dovuto alla spesa per consumi personali, non c'è paragone! 

Per l'amor del cielo, il sistema bancario centrale dovrebbe essere neutrale tra debitori e risparmiatori, ma quando si tratta del settore delle famiglie ha letteralmente massacrato i risparmiatori per diversi decenni.

In breve, ciò che manca disperatamente sono tassi di risparmio e di investimento più elevati, il che significa che un'altra tornata di debiti a basso costo per i mutuatari di Main Street e un rinnovo dei tassi di interesse punitivi sui risparmi dei conti bancari sono l'ultima cosa che dovrebbe essere presa in considerazione.

Il grafico qui sotto riflette come la FED abbia generato il peggio di entrambi i mondi. Da un lato ha spinto i tassi di risparmio delle famiglie e i risparmi del settore aziendale (vale a dire gli utili non distribuiti) a livelli minimi, mentre, dall'altro, la spesa pubblica è salita inesorabilmente alle stelle.

Il netto tra i due parametri ciò che resta per l'investimento in produttività e crescita, oltre al reinvestimento delle attuali quote a compensazione del consumo dello stock di capitale (vale a dire deprezzamento e ammortamento). Come è palesemente evidente nel grafico qui sotto, ciò che resta è un drastico calo dal 7% al 12% del PIL dei tassi di risparmio prevalenti durante l'apogeo della prosperità di Main Street.

I tiepidi progressi nella riduzione del tasso dell'IPC sono sostanzialmente irrilevanti. I tassi d'interesse più bassi non stimoleranno più investimenti e sicuramente amplieranno il deficit tra risparmi e investimenti privati ​​che affligge l'economia di Main Street.

Nonostante l'impatto deleterio dei tagli dei tassi e dei rendimenti infimi sui trend di investimento a lungo termine, come da grafici sopra, il mantra di Wall Street continua a sostenere che i tagli dei tassi sono ora necessari per impedire all'economia di precipitare in recessione. Ma anche questa affermazione è fasulla.

Ecco cosa è successo durante il periodo della Grande Recessione: la FED ha iniziato a tagliare il suo tasso di riferimento (linea gialla) nel terzo trimestre del 2007 e un anno dopo, nel quarto trimestre del 2008, lo aveva ridotto sostanzialmente a 10 punti base. Ciò equivaleva a un abbassamento del 98% e alla sequenza di tagli dei tassi più radicale e rapida nell'intera storia della FED.

Nel 2008 l'economia statunitense era così satura di distorsioni, squilibri e debito in eccesso che una purga recessiva e un riequilibrio erano inevitabili. Dopo essere leggermente salito per i successivi tre trimestri, il PIL reale (linea rossa) ha invertito la rotta nel terzo trimestre del 2008 e non ha toccato il fondo fino al secondo trimestre del 2009. Nonostante due anni di tagli radicali dei tassi d'interesse mai attuati, alla fine del marzo 20120 il PIL reale era ancora al di sotto del suo livello nel secondo trimestre del 2007.

Nel caso dell'occupazione non agricola (linea viola), l'impatto dei tagli dei tassi è stato ancora più tiepido e ritardato. Il numero di posti di lavoro è calato drasticamente, quasi in sincronia con il crollo del tasso di riferimento nel terzo trimestre del 2009. Dopo 18 mesi di ZIRP, il numero di buste paga non agricole era ancora del 6% al di sotto del suo livello di giugno 2007.

In breve, nel contesto dell'attuale economia statunitense sepolta nel debito, i tagli dei tassi non generano ciò che si dice. Anche se innescano un'impennata ruggente nel casinò del mercato azionario, difficilmente interrompono la contrazione nell'economia di Main Street.

In conclusione, l'attuale rinnovato impulso di Wall Street per l'ennesimo giro di tagli ai tassi d'interesse ci ricorda il famoso sketch del Saturday Night Live in cui un produttore musicale leggendario continuava a interrompere una sessione di registrazione in studio chiedendo alla band di essere “più squillanti”.

Questo è il mantra implacabile di Wall Street oggi: ha la febbre dell'avidità e urla a gran voce “Altri tagli! Altri tagli!”.

Ma questo renderà sicuramente la musica economica ancora più cacofonica.

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

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The recent assassination attempt against President Trump at his golf course in Florida leads most people to think that an organization is out to get him, and people are right to think so. The fact that it was the second assassination attempt in a very short time certainly lends credence to this.

But, we are told by the leftwing mass media, we must not think so. Each assassination attempt was the work of a “lone nut,” and the lone nuts had no connection with each other. To think otherwise would be the product of a “conspiracy theory of history,” and that this is the sign of paranoia. The great Murray Rothbard memorably satirized this attitude, in response to several political assassinations in 1968: “John F. Kennedy; Malcolm X; Martin Luther King; Robert F. Kennedy; and now George Corley Wallace: the litany of political assassinations and attempts in the last decade rolls on. (And we might add: General Edwin Walker, and George Lincoln Rockwell. In each of these atrocities, we are fed with a line of cant from the liberals and from the Establishment media. In the first place, every one of these assassinations is supposed to have been performed, must have been performed, by ‘one lone nut’ – to which we can add the one lone nut who murdered Lee Harvey Oswald in the prison basement. One loner, a twisted psycho, whose motives are therefore of course puzzling and obscure, and who never, never acted in concert with anyone. (The only exception is the murder of Malcolm, where the evident conspiracy was foisted upon a few lowly members of the Black Muslims.) Even in the case of James Earl Ray, who was mysteriously showered with money, false passports, and double identities, and who vainly tried to claim that he was part of a conspiracy before he was shouted down by the judge and his own lawyer – even there the lone nut theory is stubbornly upheld.

Without going into the myriad details of Assassination Revisionism, doesn’t anyone see a pattern in our litany of murdered and wounded, a pattern that should leap out at anyone willing to believe his eyes? For all of the victims have had one thing in common: all were, to a greater or lesser extent, important anti-Establishment figures, and, what is more, were men with the charismatic capacity to mobilize large sections of the populace against our rulers.

The last line of Murray’s statement explains perfectly why the left wants Trump dead. He is a “loose cannon” who might do or say something that would jeopardize their control of the government. True enough, the unholy alliance of the left with neocon warmongers was largely able to keep Trump under control when he was president before, but they cannot take chances. Trump has been skeptical of unlimited American aid to the pro-Nazi Zelensky government, and he opposes sending nuclear weapons to Ukraine. The unholy cabal cannot take a chance that this might happen.

Some people, although my readers won’t be among them, might object; “Can Americans really be so evil that they would use assassination as a political tool? Oddly enough, these same Americans have no difficulty in accepting that political assassinations elsewhere in the world are the products of conspiracies. But somehow America is different. This is the illusion of American exceptionalism. This notion is false. Americans are governed by the same laws of politics as everyone else, and one of these laws is that the state is a criminal gang. American politicians aren’t guided by high-minded idealism.

There is another reason the left wants to get rid of Trump, and this is that Kamala Harris is a pro-Communist, fanatical feminist, and part black, although she could easily pass as white if she wanted to. She combines in her cackling person the total agenda of the pro-Communist and woke left. Trump is unsound on some economic issues, most notably tariffs and deficit spending, but he is no communist.

Harris is. Her father is a leading Marxist theoretician, and she gives every indication that she follows in his footsteps. Here is some information on her father: “Donald Harris was raised in Jamaica, got his undergraduate degree in London, and later obtained his doctorate from UC Berkeley, where he met Kamala Harris’ mother, Shyamala Gopalan.

Trump’s claim stems from an article in a 1976 issue of The Stanford Daily, where he was deemed a ‘Marxist’ scholar from an opposition party after Stanford granted him tenure because he was ‘too charismatic, a pied piper leading students astray from neo-Classical economics.’

In 1976, Donald Harris wrote his most famous book, ‘Capital Accumulation and Income Distribution.’ The book critiques mainstream economic theories and proposes an alternative model by synthesizing the work of David Ricardo, Michael Kalecki, and, most notably, Karl Marx.”

If we wonder which organization is a likely suspect in the Trump assassination attempts, we don’t have far to look, although whether these suspicions prove to be correct must await further investigation. The CIA has been involved in numerous assassination plots since its inception.

One of these plots is especially important in current circumstances. The CIA is implicated in the assassination of President Kennedy in November 1963. Jacob Hornberger has done a great deal of research on this topic and here is what he says. “Why would the CIA snuff out the life of President Kennedy? Because Kennedy was determined to snuff out the life of the CIA, which the CIA, not surprisingly, considered would be a grave threat to ‘national security.’ After Lyndon Johnson withdrew from the presidential race in 1968, Robert Kennedy was the odds-on favorite to become the next president. He blamed the CIA for his brother’s death and was determined to bring the agency to heel. For that reason, the CIA had to kill him. David Talbot, the author of Brothers, a book about President Kennedy and his brother Robert Kennedy, gives a vivid account: ‘As I write in my book Brothers, Robert Kennedy, who served as his brother’s attorney general and knew more about the dark side of American power than any other official of his day, was the first JFK conspiracy theorist. Journalist Jack Newfield, a close friend of RFK, told me: ‘With that amazing computer brain of his, he put it all together on the afternoon of November 22,’ the day in 1963 that President Kennedy was assassinated. Bobby Kennedy figured out that his brother was killed by CIA plotters, using members of the criminal underworld and Cuban exiles. As I reveal in Brothers, RFK planned to reopen the investigation into his brother’s murder if he had been elected president in 1968.” The CIA can’t take the chance that the loose cannon Trump will decide to act against them.

Let’s do everything we can to defeat the efforts of the unholy alliance of leftists and Trotskyite neo-cons who control brain-dead “President” Joe Biden and look forward to controlling Kamela Harris. An excellent first step would be to abolish the CIA and FBI, as the great Dr. Ron Paul has urged us to do.

The post ‘Lone Nuts’ and Political Reality appeared first on LewRockwell.

As Democrats and Republicans both express support for tariffs, the economic implications of protectionist policies are once again at the forefront of public debate. Both parties differ on the size of their proposed tariffs, but the New York Times reports that “both Democrats and Republicans are expressing support for tariffs to protect American industry, reversing decades of trade thinking in Washington.” Proposals to impose tariffs on imports from China seem to be particularly attractive to both red and blue voters:

The tariffs have proved popular with industries that have faced stiff competition from Chinese firms, like makers of kitchen cabinets…the industry realized that Chinese companies had taken over about 40 percent of the market and that their share was continuing to grow.

In “Protectionism and the Destruction of Prosperity,” Rothbard explains why tariffs and protectionism are incompatible with economic prosperity:

As we unravel the tangled web of protectionist argument, we should keep our eye on two essential points: (1) protectionism means force in restraint of trade; and (2) the key is what happens to the consumer. Invariably, we will find that the protectionists are out to cripple, exploit and impose severe losses not only on foreign consumers but especially on Americans.

Rothbard’s point is that free trade is essential to the prosperity of ordinary consumers. Protectionism ultimately hurts domestic consumers when import tariffs cause prices of domestic goods to rise: “And since each and every one of us is a consumer, this means that protectionism is out to mulct all of us for the benefit of a specially privileged, subsidized few.” Moreover, tariffs do not create “fair” trade any more than price controls create “fair” prices. As Rothbard warns,

Whenever someone starts talking about “fair competition” or indeed, about “fairness” in general, it is time to keep a sharp eye on your wallet, for it is about to be picked. For the genuinely “fair” is simply the voluntary terms of exchange, mutually agreed upon by the buyer and seller. As most of the medieval scholastics were able to figure out, there is no “just” (or “fair”) price outside of the market price.

It is clear that no economy can prosper in the long run while the government attempts to fix prices or to control the terms of trade. Supporters of free trade, therefore, oppose all forms of protectionism. However, that is not the end of the story as far as concerns the industries which have lost their market share to China, and in “Nations by Consent: Decomposing the Nation State” Rothbard turns his attention to the deeper underlying concerns of the protectionists.

For opponents of protectionism, it seems to be logical that promoting free trade requires support for open borders, on the assumption that borders inherently impede free trade through border controls and tariffs.

While that may seem logical, it is a grave misstep to leap from free trade to open borders. That unfortunate leap arises from a failure to understand the importance of nations and national borders, and the importance of political boundaries in defending national identity and culture. In “Nations by Consent,” Rothbard observes that, “The genuine nation, or nationality, has made a dramatic reappearance on the world stage.” He addresses the tension between open borders and the risk of eroding a nation’s cultural boundaries, arguing that this is a problem that needs to be borne in mind by classical liberals who support free trade:

The question of open borders, or free immigration, has become an accelerating problem for classical liberals. This is first, because the welfare state increasingly subsidizes immigrants to enter and receive permanent assistance, and second, because cultural boundaries have become increasingly swamped.

The growing pressure on national and cultural boundaries prompted Rothbard to change his views on immigration, as he recognized that the disintegration of national and cultural identity could no longer simply be swept aside as inconsequential by those who, as he did, support free trade:

Previously, it had been easy to dismiss as unrealistic Jean Raspail’s anti-immigration novel The Camp of the Saints, in which virtually the entire population of India decides to move, in small boats, into France, and the French, infected by liberal ideology, cannot summon the will to prevent economic and cultural national destruction. As cultural and welfare-state problems have intensified, it became impossible to dismiss Raspail’s concerns any longer.

Some commentators have assumed that Rothbard simply abandoned his principled support for free trade, so it is important to clarify that maintaining the integrity of national borders does not entail abandoning free trade. On the contrary, Rothbard recognizes that human beings lie at the heart of all human action, including market exchange, and nations are not simply economic zones whose sole purpose is to provide a platform for global trade. Rothbard explains:

Contemporary libertarians often assume, mistakenly, that individuals are bound to each other only by the nexus of market exchange. They forget that everyone is necessarily born into a family, a language, and a culture. Every person is born into one or several overlapping communities, usually including an ethnic group, with specific values, cultures, religious beliefs, and traditions. He is generally born into a “country.” He is always born into a specific historical context of time and place, meaning neighborhood and land area.

Therefore, Rothbard saw no contradiction between the principle of nations by consent—including the right to secede—and his support for free trade. He distinguished between political boundaries and economic boundaries, arguing that political boundaries do not imply the need for economic boundaries represented by destructive customs barriers and protectionist tariffs. He explains:

One goal for libertarians should be to transform existing nation-states into national entities whose boundaries could be called just, in the same sense that private property boundaries are just; that is, to decompose existing coercive nation-states into genuine nations, or nations by consent…even under a minimal state, national boundaries would still make a difference, often a big one to the inhabitants of the area.

Rothbard also recognizes that politicians are often tempted to follow political boundaries with protectionist policies, making overblown promises to put their own citizens in a stronger economic position by protecting them from free trade. The political desire to protect domestic producers who are outcompeted by foreign producers explains why many supporters of free trade are hostile to nationalism—they fear that a devotion to one’s nation will only encourage further protectionist measures of the type now being proposed by both parties. But Rothbard insists that, far from fueling protectionism by erecting more borders and more tariffs, the principle of nations by consent is more conducive to free trade:

A common response to a world of proliferating nations is to worry about the multitude of trade barriers that might be erected. But, other things being equal, the greater the number of new nations, and the smaller the size of each, the better. For it would be far more difficult to sow the illusion of self-sufficiency if the slogan were “Buy North Dakotan” or even “Buy 56th Street” than it now is to convince the public to “Buy American.” Similarly, “Down with South Dakota,” or a fortiori, “Down with 55th Street,” would be a more difficult sell than spreading fear or hatred of the Japanese. Similarly, the absurdities and the unfortunate consequences of fiat paper money would be far more evident if each province or each neighborhood or street block were to print its own currency. A more decentralized world would be far more likely to turn to sound market commodities, such as gold or silver, for its money.

Rothbard’s insights highlight the political interdependence between the open borders debate and the debate about tariffs. In these debates, it is important to reiterate that free trade does not require nations to abolish their borders, nor does it require supporting open immigration. National sentiment is a reality of human nature and the reality is, therefore, that many people would not sacrifice their national identity for the rather abstract notion of the economic prosperity which comes with free trade. They might well decide there is a tradeoff to be made between economic prosperity and their national or cultural integrity.

It must be emphasized that national borders do not impede free trade for the simple reason that free trade is voluntary. Safeguarding a country’s borders would no more impede voluntary free trade than walls and a locked door would prevent the homeowner from participating in voluntary exchange with others.

The post Tariffs, Protectionism, and Why Borders Matter appeared first on LewRockwell.

“He who binds to himself a joy
Does the winged life destroy;
But he who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in eternity’s sun rise.”      – William Blake, Eternity

“But dreamin’ was as easy as believin’ it was never gonna end
And lovin’ her was easier than anything I’ll ever do again”
– Kris Kristofferson, “Loving Her Was Easier (Than Anything I’ll Ever Do Again)”

Kris Kristofferson, a man of deep soul and poetic genius, is eighty-eight years-old, an elderly man who has come a long way down life’s road, now “Looking at a looking glass/ Running out of time/ On a face you used to know.”

His songs keep echoing in my mind, and I am sure in the minds of millions of others.

Great songwriter-singers, like great poets, are possessed by a passionate melancholic sensibility that gives them joy in the telling.  They seem always to be homesick for a home they can’t define or find.  At the heart of their songs is a presence of an absence that is unnamable. That is what draws listeners in.

While great songs usually take but a few minutes to travel from the singer’s mouth to the listener’s ears, they keep echoing for a long time, as if they had taken both singer and listener on a circular journey out and back, and then, in true Odyssean fashion, replay the cyclic song of the shared poetic mystery that is life and death, love and loss, the going up and coming down, the abiding nostalgia for a future home and a past that was a fleeting moment in time.

Time is the core theme of all great writers.  Its mystery, its intimacy, how it holds us as we try to tell it, as if we could, knowing that we can’t as it mocks all our pretensions.

My 100 year-old  mother, as she neared death, would often plead with me, “Don’t let me go, Eddy.”  I would tell her I was trying, knowing my efforts were a temporary stay and that through our conversations we were building what D. H. Lawrence called her “ship of death”:

Build then the ship of death, for you must take
the longest journey, to oblivion.
And die the death, the long and painful death
that lies between the old self and the new.
***
We are dying, we are dying, so all we can do
is now to be willing to die, and to build the ship
of death to carry the soul on the longest journey.
***
And the little ship wings home, faltering and lapsing
on the pink flood,
and the frail soul steps out, into her house again
filling the heart with peace.

In those days she also used to ask me: “Now that you have lived more of your life in Massachusetts than in New York City, where do you say you are from and which do you consider your home?”  I didn’t know what to say but would wonder where I would like to be buried, as if it mattered.  I would be dead.  Home.  I don’t think so.  Not underground, so why does it matter where.

Home isn’t a place for permanently sleeping.  It’s the place from which we launch our ships out into the world.  And the place that we discover when all our sailing is done and we enter the harbor of the ultimate unknown.

Where was the lightning before it flashed?

Kris Kristofferson is an astonishing songwriter and bard, a man of faith and conscience, and a humorously devilish performer with an on-stage persona of a spiritual satyr.  Although he retired from performing a few years ago, he wrote and performed some of the finest songs in the American songbook.  A man’s and a woman’s man, he wrote songs of exquisite passion and sensitivity and rough rollicking freedom that only an emotionless zombie would fail to be moved by.  And in the last 15 or so  years, he has fearlessly confronted his mortality, writing many brave tunes that bookend his earliest hits, such as Help Me Make It Through the Night.

I have loved and listened to his music for a long time and wish to honor him.

This is my small tribute to a great artist, a poetic genius whose songs manifest the fact that he studied the Romantic poets.

Counterpose what is perhaps his most well-known song, Me and Bobby McGee, first made famous by the rocking swirling twirling wild dervish Janis Joplin, a former lover so I’ve heard, confirming William Blake’s dictum that “Exuberance is Beauty” with his lilting poem that is little known but whose gorgeous melody confirms in turn the saying of that other Romantic poet, John Keats, that “Beauty is truth, truth beauty”: Shadows of Her Mind.  Two meditations in very different song styles on love, loneliness, searching, loss, and the secrets of one’s soul – a magician at work. Whether partly truth or partly fiction doesn’t matter. Secrets are secrets, sung or spun like memories in the mind, webs of wonder.

Kristofferson broke barriers when he found success in Nashville’s country and western scene in the early 1970s.  He made explicit the sexuality and the yearning for love that underlay traditional country music. The endless yearning that never ends.  Its secret.  Not just sex in the back room of a honky-tonk, but the “Achin’ with the feelin’ of the freedom of an eagle when she flies,” as he sings in Loving Her Was Easier.  Something intangible.  True passion for love and life.

He was an oddball.  Here was a man whose inspiration for Me and Bobby McGee was a foreign film, La Strada (The Road), made by the extraordinary Italian filmmaker Federico Fellini.  Not the stuff of movie theaters in small Texas towns.  In the film Anthony Quinn is driving around on a motorcycle with a feeble-minded girl whose playing of a trombone gets on his nerves, so while she is sleeping, he abandons her by the side of the road.  He later hears a woman singing the melody the girl was always playing and learns the girl has died.  Kris explains:

To me, that was the feeling at the end of ‘Bobby McGee.’ The two-edged sword that freedom is. He was free when he left the girl, but it destroyed him. That’s where the line ‘Freedom’s just another name for nothing left to lose’ came from.

Not exactly country, yet a traditional storyteller, a Rhodes scholar and a former Army Captain, an Oxford “egghead” in love with romantic poetry, a sensitive athlete, a risk-taker who gave up a teaching position at West Point for a janitor’s job in Nashville to try his hand at songwriting, a patriot with a dissenter’s heart, he is an unusual man, to put it mildly.  A gambler.  A man who knows that heaven and hell are born together and that the body and soul cannot be divorced, that all art is incarnational and meant to be about ecstasy and misery, not the middle normal ground where people measure out their lives in coffee spoons.  He always wanted to tell what he knew, come what may, as he sings in To Beat the Devil:

I was born a lonely singer, and I’m bound to die the same,
But I’ve got to feed the hunger in my soul.
And if I never have a nickel, I won’t ever die ashamed.
‘Cos I don’t believe that no-one wants to know.

What do people want to know?  A bit here and there, I guess, but not too much, not the secrets of our souls. Not the truth about their government’s killers, the lies that drive a Billy Dee to drugs and death, and the hypocritical fears of cops and people who wish to squelch the truths of the desperate ones for fear that they might reveal secrets best buried with the bodies.  Secrets not about the dead but the living – or more appropriately put, the living dead.  Kris has always had that wild man’s frenzy to never let the living dead eat him up, as D. H. Lawrence put it.

There are only a handful of songwriters with the artistic gift of soul-sympathy to write verses like the following, and Kris did it again and again over fifty years:

Billy Dee was seventeen when he turned twenty-one
Fooling with some foolish things he could’ve left alone
But he had to try to satisfy a thirst he couldn’t name
Driven toward the darkness by the devils in his veins

All around the honky-tonks, searching for a sign
Gettin’ by on gettin’ high on women, words and wine
Some folks called him crazy, Lord, and others called him free
But we just called us lucky for the love of Billy Dee

Like William Blake – “Can I see another’s woe/And not be in sorrow too?/Can I see another’s grief/And not seek for kind relief?” – Billy Dee captures in rollicking sound more truth about addiction than a thousand self-important editorials about drugs.

Kristofferson joins with Dylan Thomas, the Welsh bard, another wild man with an exquisite sense for the music of language and the married themes of youth and age, sex and death, love and loss, home and the search, always the search:

The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees
Is my destroyer.
And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose
My youth is bent by the same wintry fever.

Although most of his songs lack overt political content, such concerns are scattered throughout his massive oeuvre (nearly 400 songs) where his passion for the victims of America’s war machine and his respect for great spiritual heroes like Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and John and Robert Kennedy ring out in very powerful songs that are not well known.  Note his use of the word they in They Killed Him, surely not a mistake for such a careful songwriter.  Sounds like Dylan about the assassination of President Kennedy in Murder Most Foul: “They killed him once and they killed him twice/Killed him like a human sacrifice.”

And in The Circle, a song about Bill  Clinton killing with a missile an Iraqi artist and her husband and the wounding of her children, his condemnation is powerful as he links it to the disappeared of Argentina in a circle of sorrow.  Of course, no one is responsible.

“Not I” said the soldier
“I just follow orders and it was my duty to do my job well”
“Not I” said the leader who ordered the slaughter
“I’m saddened it happened, but then, war is hell”
“Not us” said the others who heard of the horror
Turned a cold shoulder on all that was done
In all the confusion a single conclusion
The circle of sorrow has only begun

As everyone knows, songs have a powerful hold on our memories, and sometimes we learn ironic truths about them only years later.

When I was young, my large family, consisting of my parents and seven sisters and me – Bronx kids – would go on vacation for a week in the late summer to a farm called Edgewater.  We would pack our clothes in cartons weeks in advance and would load into the car like sardines layered in a can.  On the trip north to the Catskill mountains, in our wild excitement, we would sing all sorts of happy songs, many from Broadway shows.  As we approached the farm, we would go crazy with excitement and sing over and over the repetitive song we had learned somewhere: We’re Here Because We’re Here Because We’re Here.  To us it was a song of joy; we had arrived at our Shangri-La, our ideal home, paradise regained.  To this day, the name Edgewater is like Proust’s madeleine dipped in tea for many of us.

What we didn’t know was that the song we were singing was the sardonic song that WWI soldiers sang as they awaited absurd and senseless death in the mud and rat-filled trenches of the war to end all wars.  Sardonic words to them and joy to us. They were there because they were there and it was meaningless.  We sang it out of joy.  So Blakean:

Man was made for joy and woe
Then when this we rightly know
Through the world we safely go.
Joy and woe are woven fine
A clothing for the soul to bind.

To listen to Kris Kristofferson’s vast oeuvre is a confirmation of that Blakean truth.  It is to realize that all those songs he has written and sung have been his way of fulfilling the words of another Romantic poet who was Blake’s contemporary, John Keats.  Keats called life “a vale of soul-making,” meaning that people are not souls until they make themselves by developing an individual identity by doing what they were meant to do, by listening to the voice within, not the cacophony without.  Kris did exactly that to the consternation of his family.  He answered the hero’s spiritual call that asked him to follow his true self.  The call that Joseph Campbell, in The Hero with a Thousand Faces, says, when refused, results in sterility:

Often in actual life, and not infrequently in the myths and popular tales, we encounter the dull case of the call unanswered; for it is always possible to turn the ear to other interests. Refusal of the summons converts the adventure into its negative. Walled in boredom, hard work, or “culture,” the subject loses the power of significant affirmative action and becomes a victim to be saved. His flowering life becomes a wasteland of dry stones and his life feels meaningless. . . . Whatever house he builds, it will be a house of death: a labyrinth of cyclopean walls to hide him from his Minotaur. All he can do is create new problems for himself and await the gradual approach of his disintegration.

By answering the call, Kris blossomed into his sacred calling with all its unremitting deaths and births, unlike his character, Saul Darby, whose life’s obsessive labor was to build Darby’s Castle as a monument to his ego, even as he failed to hear his young wife weeping in the next room.  Yet befitting the artist that he is who can grasp two tragic truths at once, perhaps Kris was singing of himself as well.

In Ken Burns’ fascinating documentary series, Country Music, Kris answers the question of why he took such a radical turn early on and gave up his military road to success for a lowly job as a janitor in Nashville where he hoped to write songs.  He said:

I love William Blake…. William Blake said, ‘If he who is organized by the divine for spiritual communion, refuse and bury his talent in the earth, even though he should want natural bread, shame and confusion of face will pursue him throughout life to eternity.’

When he answered this call of the spirit and took such a dramatic turn away from the conventional road to success, his mother wrote him a letter essentially disowning him (“dis-owning” – an interesting word!).  When Johnny Cash read it, he sardonically said, “Isn’t it nice to get a letter from home?”

Not devoid of humor, Kristofferson wrote Jessie Younger, a catchy tune that no doubt concealed his pain while sharing it, an example of his extraordinary ability to use words in paradoxical ways:

Jesse Younger’s parents wonder where it all went wrong
that Jesse’s name has turned to ashes on their tongues
But he chose to starve and try to carve a future of his own
And he got his druthers because now his younger brother
Is his father’s and his mother’s only son

A close examination of so many of his lyrics leaves me aghast at his talent.

There are just a handful of songwriter/performers who can match the art of Kris Kristofferson.  Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, and Paul Simon particularly come to mind, for their work also contains that deep spiritual questing for “home,” the enigmatic word we use to try to capture life’s deepest yearnings.

Kris has an attribute that is very beautiful and emanates from a very deep place. Heart.  Spirit.  Soul.  His songs are permeated with the quality Keats called “soul-making.”  Life as a vale of soul-making.  One can hear it throughout Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down, that plaintiff cry from the bottom of a despairing bottle that gripped the great Johnny Cash as well.  Like Dylan so often, the tintinnabulation of the bells conjures someone calling a lost soul to return home.  “Then I headed back for home/And somewhere far away a lonely bell was ringin’/And it echoed through the canyons/Like the disappearing dreams of yesterday”

Whatever word we give it, this quality shines through in a beautifully poignant way, especially in a concert he gave in the Plaza de la Trinidad, an intimate venue, when he was seventy-four years old.  Age has etched its marks on his rueful countenance but has added pathos to his performance.  His song selection, while including many of his famous hits, also contains lesser-known songs that add an even greater humanness to his deeply moving performance.  I am reminded of something the English writer John Berger said of Rembrandt: “The late Rembrandt self-portraits contain or embody a paradox: they are clearly about old age, yet they address the future. They assume something coming towards them apart from Death.”

Kris Kristofferson may have been “out of sight and out of mind” in recent years, so I would like to bring him back to your attention and salute him as we remember him.

Thank you, Kris.  You are an inspiration.  Blessings as you fall into grace, as you reminded us with Why Me Lord.

And here is his encore, “The Last Thing to Go”:

Reprinted with the author’s permission.

The post The Free Soul of a Genius: Kris Kristofferson appeared first on LewRockwell.

On August 27 the former president of Ukraine Vladimir Zelenski announced that he would soon present a plan for ending the war with Russia:

Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Tuesday that the war with Russia would eventually end in dialogue, but that Kyiv had to be in a strong position and that he would present a plan to U.S. President Joe Biden and his two potential successors.

The Ukrainian leader, addressing a news conference, said Kyiv’s three-week-old incursion into Russia’s Kursk region was part of that plan, but that it also comprised other steps on the economic and diplomatic fronts.

“The main point of this plan is to force Russia to end the war. And I want that very much – (that it would be) fair for Ukraine,” he told reporters in Kyiv of the war launched by Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.
…
Zelenskiy said he hoped to go to the United States in September to attend the U.N. General Assembly in New York and that he was preparing to meet Biden.

The plan will also be presented to the presidential candidates Kamala Harris and Donald Trump.

It is believed that this announcement came in response to a silent request by Ukraine’s supporters for a longer term perspective.

Details of the plan have since leaked bit by bit:

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has revealed a new detail about the victory plan he plans to present to US President Joe Biden next week.
…
“Decisions regarding the plan mostly depend on him [Biden – ed.]. They depend on other allies too, but there are points that depend on positive will and support from the United States. I really hope he will back this plan,” Zelenskyy said.
…
“This plan is based on decisions which would need to be adopted within the period from October to December… Then the plan will work, we think,” he said.

Earlier, Zelenskyy revealed that the plan consists of four points to increase Ukraine’s defence capability, “plus another one that we’ll need after the war”.

The ‘victory plan’ is not about a real plan for Ukraine’s action but a list of demands towards the ‘western’ supporters of Ukraine.

The theory in Kiev is that a fulfillment of these demands will allow Ukraine to win the war and to press Russian into accepting Ukraine’s 10 point ‘peace plan‘.

As explained by a Zelinski advisor:

A source close to Zelensky told the Kyiv Independent that the “victory plan” aims “to create such conditions and such an atmosphere that Russia will no longer be able to ignore the peace formula and the peace summit.”
…
“The problem is, to get to that point where we have any sort of peace negotiations, Russia must feel like they’re going to lose, and we are not there yet,” Rep. Jimmy Panetta, a Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee in Congress, told the Kyiv Independent.

“I hope part of this victory plan is how we can shape battlefield conditions to reach that point,” said Panetta, who met Zelensky and other Ukrainian officials in Kyiv last weekend.

From other reporting we know that Zelenski’s ‘victory plan’ demands include:

• to allow unrestricted long range missile strikes into Russia
• to invite Ukraine in the borders of 1991 to join NATO at a nearby date
• to immediately negotiate and accept Ukraine’s membership in the the European Union
• to permanently supply advanced heavy weapons to Ukraine
• to provide additional hundreds of billions of dollars for ‘reconstruction’ without any restrictions attached to it

The ‘victory plan’ requests are of course outrageous and delusional and have little to no chance to be fulfilled.

Zelenski’s opposition in Ukraine is therefore convinced that the plan was formulated to get rejected. The refusal of the plan would be used by Zelenski to then justify peace negotiations with Russia (machine translation):

President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky will pass on his “victory plan” to the United States in order to get a refusal and then start negotiations with Russia.

This opinion was expressed by former Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko.

According to Lutsenko, that is why the Ukrainian government constantly blames the allies for the situation at the front.

“The entire propaganda machine of the President’s Office constantly hammers into the heads of Ukrainians that we have problems only because the United States does not want to give us permission for long – range missiles Jassm, Atacms, Storm shadow / Scalp,” the ex-prosecutor general wrote.

Zelenski’s, not Ukraine’s, real victory plan would thus go like this:

According to Lutsenko, Zelensky act according to this plan:

1. 1. We are submitting a new mega-list of requirements for weapons and money to the United States.
   2. We have polite doubts that this will change the course of the war and lead us to the borders of 1991.
   3. We declare that we have been abandoned and have no other choice but to return to the World Forums with the participation of Russia.
   4. During the negotiations, we receive demands from Putin in the style of Istanbul.
   5. We declare that this is the subject of a referendum and that a ceasefire is necessary for this.
   6. We sign a cease-fire.
   7. We pose as the president of the world and hold presidential elections. Preferably – without lifting martial law, so that democracy does not interfere, and the military recruitment offices can manage the polling stations.

Lutsenko called it a “cynical show” that ” is easily read by both ukrpolitikum and our allies.”

Zelenski’s real plan, as listed by Lutsenko, sounds nifty and would probably work in a normal state. But Ukraine is a state in which a small minority of well armed and ruthless fascists have control over all major political decisions. They are adamant against any negotiations with, or concessions to Russia and have threatened to overthrow any government that would try to go that way.

It is hard to see how Zelenski can get convince those men to agree with his plans.

Reprinted with permission from Moon of Alabama.

The post Ukraine – Zelinski’s ‘Victory Plan’ Charade appeared first on LewRockwell.

If anything like civil war ignites in this country, the sides will not be the political Red and the Blue but the sane and the insane. Now it happens, unfortunately, that the insane are driving the engine of government. They have been at war with the people of this land for years, depriving them of livelihoods, stuffing them into prison, breaking the social contract, wrecking the country’s relations with the rest of the world, and belaboring the peoples’ minds with one insulting absurdity after another.

They comprise a bizarre coalition of the permanent bureaucracy, the Democratic Party, and the news media. The permanent bureaucracy includes its own machine for making war on citizens: the intel blob, whose tentacles reach into other agencies: Homeland Security, the State Department, the so-called Justice Department, the Pentagon, the myriad Public Health offices, and the shadowy clique that stands-in for a disabled president in the White House.

You can tell they are insane because they are driven by a single motivation: to remain in power for no other purpose than to escape responsibility for their many crimes against the people. This is insane behavior because it depends on the proposition that reality does not matter, that reality is optional, that there is no such thing as truth, and if it happened to exist, to be a thing, it would have no greater value to the human project than its opposite, untruth.

The greatest absurdity of the moment, is the idea that Americans might desire to continue under the rule of this evil coalition devoted to unreality and untruth, that is, to vote for candidates of the Democratic Party. Its greatest crimes, of course, are the lawless measures taken to pervert the very elections that might allow them to retain power in office.

Some of it is well-hidden and abstruse, such as the machinations of election lawfare manager-in-chief, Marc Elias, who for many years has used the courts and the state legislatures to fiddle election rules that make it impossible to account for who is actually casting the votes. This, you understand, is insane. What sovereign people would seek to institutionalize election fraud?

Some election crime is just in your face. The open border policy may have many nefarious angles, but an obvious one is stuffing the voter rolls with live bodies that have names attached, which can be bundled and harvested in ballot form like so many sheaves of oats. No one is fooled by this. Yet the Democratic Party has its heavy hand on the lever of power that controls entry to the country. Alejandro Mayorkas, the Secretary of Homeland Security allows this to happen and bullshits Congress in open committee hearings. Congress has impeached him for this affront and the Democratic majority Senate has declined to hold the attendant trial — because stuffing the voter rolls with illegal immigrants allows them to remain in power.

The remedies for this dastardly mess are pretty simple and straightforward: return to paper ballots cast on one election day, requiring voter ID that amounts to proof of citizenship. Everything else — computerized (hackable) ballot-counting machines, mail-in ballots, early voting, automatic voter registration by means of other government transactions that have nothing to do with elections (motor-voter acts) — only insures election fraud. Sane people do not seek to defraud themselves.

It is widely suspected by the not-insane that even the attempt at massive voter fraud may not avail to put over the paramount candidate of the insane: Veep Kamala Harris. Nobody believes that she is capable of being president. But the insane don’t seek a capable president — in fact, the opposite. They want a president who can only function with direction and management of the blob, by the blob, and for the blob. The blob’s motives, besides seeking to avoid responsibility for its prior crimes, are a license to commit new crimes, especially crimes that expand the many perquisites and privileges of being in power. These include the fortunes to be made in control of the nation’s wealth, and the sadistic pleasure derived from punishing and humiliating their not-insane opponents. For instance, running the insane Ukraine war, with its fabulous kickbacks for the military contractors and office-holders. . . and making you witness more drag queen story hours.

Due to the possibility that sane citizens, despite calculated election fraud, might elect Mr. Trump, who opposes all that psychotic, criminal nonsense, the coalition of the permanent bureaucracy, the Democratic Party, and the news media appears to have few options left besides murdering Mr. Trump. The first two would-be assassins show a train of association with the intel blob. Thomas Crooks (or, at least one of his many cell phones) traveled repeatedly to a downtown DC building adjacent to the FBI HQ; Ryan Wesley Routh has alleged links to the Arlington, Va., Maximus Company, a CIA cut-out — perhaps explaining how the otherwise indigent Routh funded his global travels. Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla) disclosed yesterday that the DHS knows of five assassination teams targeting President Trump, three connected with foreign governments, two domestic.

The most mystifying element in the coalition of the insane is the news media — that is, the cable news networks plus The New York Times / WashPost axis —who have tirelessly broadcast the mantras that Mr. Trump seeks to quash our democracy and that he is a new Hitler who must be stopped at all costs. The inflammatory barrage has had an obvious effect. But the mystery is: what’s in it for these news companies to go along with their insane and desperate partners: the blob and the Dems?

What’s in it for Joe Khan, Executive Editor of The Times? His paper lies and spins unreality incessantly. He surely makes a comfortable salary, but he can’t be getting rich. . . that is, really rich. . . millions. Apparently, he publishes unreal stories because he’s insane. He believes things that are not true. Nor are his reporters getting really rich. They just appear to be blinded by sheer hatred — rising to insanity — and perhaps also by the lurking fear that their many published lies, dating back to RussiaGate, will eventually disgrace them professionally if allowed to be pursued and revealed by the sane.

The temperature is rising in this political crucible. Something is going to melt down. It’s looking pretty clear now who can take the heat, and who can’t.

Reprinted with permission from JamesHowardKunstler.com.

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The Soviet Union collapsed when Soviet President Gorbachev was placed under house arrest by hardline elements in the Politburo who were alarmed by the rapidity with which Gorbachev was establishing friendly and open relations with the West.

For the hardline American neoconservatives, the Soviet Collapse removed the constraint on American unilateralism. The neoconservatives quickly seized the initiative and with the Wolfowitz Doctrine declared US hegemony and stated that the principal goal of US foreign policy was to prevent the rise of any power that could serve as a constraint on Washington’s hegemony. This policy resulted in the hopes of Reagan and Gorbachev and the trust Gorbachev had placed in Washington being frustrated. Washington’s pledge not to move NATO one inch to the East was disavowed, and more hostile steps followed.

By 2007 it was clear to Russia’s President Putin that the promise of a multi-polar world was being over-ridden by a policy of Washington’s hegemony. At the Munich Security Conference, Putin threw down the gauntlet and said that Russia did not accept Washington’s rules based uni-polar world. At that moment the US/NATO went to war against Russia.

The first attack on Russia was a year later in 2008 when Washington sent a US supplied and trained Georgian army into disputed South Ossetia, resulting in the deaths of Russian peace-keepers and many civilians. Putin, caught off guard, returned from the Beijing Olympics, and the Russian army quickly defeated the US trained Georgian forces. Putin is often accused of intending to rebuild the Soviet Empire, but he had in his hands Georgia, historically a part of the Soviet Union and previously of Russia. Instead of reincorporating Georgia back into Russia, he turned them loose to be again subjected to Washington’s plots against Russia.

Having failed in Georgia, Washington turned its attention to Ukraine, another former province of the Soviet Union and previously of Russia for centuries. As Victoria Nuland boasted at a televised conference, Washington spent $5 billion organizing NGOs, students, and purchasing Ukrainian politicians in support of a coup to overthrow the democratically elected Ukrainian government and install a neo-nazi regime hostile to Russia.

For unknown reasons except perhaps surprise–Putin was at the Sochi Olympics–Putin did nothing to prevent Washington’s coup. For eight years Putin relied on the Minsk Agreement, which the West used to deceive him, while Washington built up a Ukrainian army capable of overthrowing the Donbas republics that broke away and resisted Ukraine’s persecution and murder of the Russian population.

When Putin and Lavrov’s efforts during December 2021 and February 2022 to achieve a mutual defense agreement with the US and NATO were cold-shouldered by Washington, NATO, and the EU, Putin had no choice but to intervene in order to protect the Donbas, a former Russian province attached to Ukraine by Soviet leaders, from massacre, as the Israelis are doing in Gaza and the West Bank.

The West disingenuously called Putin’s “limited military operation” confined to Donbas an “invasion of Ukraine.” It was no such thing. The fact that it was not an invasion and conquest of Ukraine was Putin’s mistake.

It is the limited nature of Putin’s intervention that is the cause of the possible explosion of the conflict into a nuclear war.

Putin, being a mid-20th century American liberal, had trusted diplomatic relations and good will between nations and did not understand that the West was at war with Russia. He and his Foreign Minister kept stressing their “American partners” and belief in negotiations, while the West organized its attacks on Russia.

These attacks now include attacks deep into Russia far removed from the battle front. Russia has suffered many attacks from low-flying drones that evade air defense systems. As I write, Nato Secretary Stoltenberg and the UK prime minister are urging the Biden regime to give approval to US/NATO firing long range missiles into Russia. Putin has said that this is the final red line that will force him to acknowledge that Russia is at war with the West.

NATO General Secretary Stoltenberg says the West does not need to pay attention to Putin’s threat, because “There have been many red lines declared by Putin before, and he has not escalated.”

We have reached the point that I said we would each. Putin by his failure to act in response to aggression now has his back to the wall. He has three choices: He can surrender. He can end the Ukraine conflict with force, which puts the West on notice that the West is at risk if the conflict continues, or he can continue to ignore reality, thereby leaving the initiative in the West’s hands where it has been throughout the conflict.

We are faced with Putin’s mettle. Is he a warrior or an out-of-date American liberal?

I agree that this question is unfair. Putin is the only statesman the world has at this crucial time when the world’s continued existence is in question. Putin has accepted insult after insult, provocation on top of provocation in order to avoid a war that means death for humanity.

No one gives Putin credit for this.

Stoltenberg, a nonentity, mocks Putin. Biden, a nonentity, insults him. Zelensky, a nonentity, vows to defeat him.

We can see Satan’s hold on the West when the only leader determined to preserve human existence is demonized.

Despite his honorable characteristics, Putin is failing because he cannot recognize the extreme evil that confronts him and the country he represents.

As England’s ambassador Craig Murray has reported, the Western world is criminalizing free speech. Washington’s investigations of Scott Ritter, Dimitri Simes, and others indicate that those who talk with Russians are being criminalized for aiding and abetting Russian disinformation, which is being equated with espionage. How can the dangerous situation be resolved when talk is prevented?

The post Everything You Need To Know About the Conflict in Ukraine appeared first on LewRockwell.

My closest friend Mike and I have known each other since 1st Grade. Until we graduated high school, we were pretty much inseparable. Mike was an only child, and I was the oldest of six, so he had a lot more leeway than I did. I was expected to be the responsible third parent, while Mike was free to do a lot more exploring — and his dad was much cooler than mine. As far as my dad was concerned, Mike led me to the person, place and occasion of sin.

Anyway, Mike was always getting me into “situations”. One of those situations was in 8th Grade, when he talked me into getting a fake ID that said we were 18 years old. Did we want to buy booze and cigarettes, or vote? Nope. We wanted to see R-rated movies without a parent or guardian.

We went up the street to an old house, where a woman who looked and sounded exactly like Selma Diamond ran a notary service and made ID cards to order, all laminated and everything. Mike, who’s now an attorney, walked in like John Wayne and ordered his card. Meanwhile, I was nearly defiling myself and shaking like Jell-O in an earthquake. I can’t imagine I looked anywhere near 18. Neither of us were even shaving then, but Mike had nerves of steel, while mine where made of over-cooked noodles. I wasn’t then the outlaw I have become.

I think we paid $5 each, which was a fortune for a couple of grade schoolers in 1974, even though I had a job pulling down $25/week at the time, selling motorcycle tires for my uncle, and pumping gas at my cousin’s Sinclair station.

The cards weren’t even cooled yet when we hit the Alabama cinema, one of those old fading movie palaces. It had a balcony and deco interior, and a pretty decent snack bar. Years later in high school, Mike and I hung out there on Saturday nights to see the midnight showing of The Rocky Horror Picture Show (he had permission, I had to sneak out). The place was a neighborhood institution.

The first R-rated movie we saw was The Longest Yard, with Burt Reynolds. That was the first time I had ever heard adults using cuss words in casual conversation. Oh sure, I learned most of them when my cousin Peter ran over Dad’s foot with a tractor, but that was just a long string of obscenities without syntax. Now I was hearing them used discreetly as nouns, verbs, adverbs, and adjectives.

The next movie we saw changed my life.

At the time, I knew almost nothing about the writer/director, but the star I knew as Willie Wonka, from a much tamer, more kid-friendly flick. The movie exploded my horizons. It steered me to the likes of George Carlin, Richard Pryor and Lenny Bruce. It launched me on a creative odyssey that I am still living out.

That afternoon, I sat in the audience, transfixed by comedy I had never imagined. It lampooned everyone and everything. It fricasseed every racial and ethnic stereotype. It lambasted the Western genre. It grilled Hollywood. It stripped politicians naked and ate lunch off their bellies. It took every cultural sacred cow and poked it, prodded it, tweaked it, spanked it, and sent it away laughing.

It is hard to believe it’s been 50 years since Mel Brooks created the greatest comedy of all time: Blazing Saddles.

These days, I can’t even quote most of the best lines without someone getting their feathers ruffled. I think every racial and ethnic epithet in the English language, and a few in German, are in there. Every Hollywood trope and cultural meme are in there. Every form of comedy, from sight gags and slap stick, to malaprops and double entendre are piled neck deep. I can’t count how many times I’ve watched the film, and yet there’s always something new in it.

The beauty of Blazing Saddles is that at a time when America has forgotten how to laugh at itself, it sits there like a hang nail on Bumbledick ideology. The film is so well crafted that every frame depends on every other frame. One gag can’t be removed, without leaving a yawning hole in the whole. It can’t be dubbed, because the dialogue and the visuals are woven like a fine tapestry, and a dropped stitch would be conspicuous by its absence. It is perhaps more relevant now, than it was in 1974.

Blazing Saddles is such a classic work of comedy that it can’t be vanished, and to banish it would only draw more attention to it. It is subversive in the way Édouard Manet’s Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe poked a finger in the eye of Victorian rigidity. It transcends time and place to speak eternal truths in the most crass of terms.

The film is the quintessential American comedy — irreverent, satirical and just plain loony. From the Old West setting to back lot food fights, from Frankie Laine’s straight rendering of the Western-style theme song to Count Basie’s orchestra playing the outro in the desert, while the hero rides a limo into the sunset, the film encompasses the entire legacy of American comedy and culture. The Vaudeville bloodlines include Mae West, Will Rogers, Laurel and Hardy, and the Three Stooges. No stone is left unmocked, even down to the proliferation of toll roads and hanging horses.

Sitting there with Mike in the Alabama cinema, that 13-year-old kid was shocked, embarrassed, paranoid, and well…tickled to the point of side cramps. There was a entire carnival of possibilities flickering across his eyeballs, even as the corpses of sacred cows piled up at his feet. In an afternoon, that kid understood what Woody Allen so precisely said through the character of Lester, “Comedy is pain plus time.”

These memories came flooding back as I listened to the reviews of Matt Walsh’s new film, Am I Racist? Though it is not yet available in my neck of the woods, it sounds as if this film may be the heir to Blazing Saddles, with a healthy dose of This Is Spinal Tap and Penn & Teller: Bullshit! Judging by Walsh’s last film What Is A Woman?, he makes a fine picador in the cultural bullfight.

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There is a popular school of thought that believes most economic stability is purely psychological; that the health of the economy relies on the population NOT knowing the true state of things. In other words, “ignorance is bliss.” I partially agree with the premise but only under certain conditions. If an economy is built on lies then yes, the exposure of those lies would certainly put that system at risk. My argument is, if an economy is built on lies it’s not really worth saving.

The US public in particular is now struggling with the slow realization that our financial and monetary structures are not secure. Many of us in the alternative media have been warning about this for decades. I warned about the inevitability of a stagflation crisis for many years and was criticized as a “doom monger,” at least until 2021 when the crisis became undeniable. But that’s what happens when you live in an economy of lies and you start talking about reality – Some people will see you as a threat.

Even today with everything that’s happening there are still blind muppets and disinformation shills out there that assure us “all is well”. And, usually they’ll cite manipulated government stats as evidence to support their faulty position.

The Biden Administration has proven to be one of the worst culprits when it comes to data misrepresentation and manipulation. To be sure, Biden has had plenty of help with his “Bidenomics” agenda and he wouldn’t be able to rig the numbers without aid from the Federal Reserve, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the corporate media, etc.  Most presidents get help from these institutions when promoting a sick economy as a healthy economy. Some presidents do not…

With that fact in mind, I’ve been wondering lately what will happen when Biden exits the White House in January 2025? What happens to the numbers after that? Will there be a statistical reset? Will the real data be exposed all at once; an avalanche of reality crashing down on the delusional system?

I’m still not convinced that any outcome is beyond dismissal for elections in November. If someone was to ask me what I predict, I would have to say Trump will be president again. From all the evidence I’ve seen the Harris campaign is an astroturf movement with a limited voter base. She’s obviously not very bright and I don’t think the theatrical “joy” strategy is convincing very many people of her competency. Her economic policies (including price controls) are full bore communist and would be devastating to any form of US recovery. Her fiscal plan will be even worse than Bidenomics has been.

But hey, I was certain Trump was getting a second term in 2020 and I was wrong. Who could have known Biden was going to get that unprecedented mail-in voter boost in the middle of the night after everyone went to bed? Truly, he is the most popular presidential candidate of all time. Why they dropped him for Kamala I’ll never fathom…

But seriously, the point is, we have come to a crossroads in our election process where anything is possible (whether real or engineered). I suspect that if Trump enters office once again there will be a multitude of changes to our economic data and they will happen quickly. Some of the rigging is already being exposed, just not on a level where the majority of the populace is aware of it.

Some examples of this rigging include:

Biden’s steady sale of US strategic oil reserves in order to drive down energy and gas prices, thereby artificially reducing CPI (official monthly inflation numbers). By June of this year Biden had sold off at least 50% of the nation’s emergency oil supply just to keep CPI down a few points. Keep in mind, bringing down the CPI does nothing to cut the real inflation that has already accumulated in necessities (30%-50% higher prices depending on the product or service).

Then there’s the manipulation of BLS unemployment data to show millions of new jobs that don’t actually exist. After it was announced that Biden was no longer the Democratic candidate, suddenly the US Payroll has been revised down by over 818,000, likely with more revisions to come. Meaning, Bidenomics was being fluffed with fake job creation.

An even greater concern is the fact that all new jobs created for the past several years have been going to illegal aliens, not legal citizens. In fact, since October of 2019 native-born US workers have lost over 1.4 million jobs. Over the same period, migrants illegally residing in the US have gained 3 million jobs. The new narrative among leftists is that this is a good thing; they claim that the US needs illegal immigration and open borders in order to support the jobs market and “bring down inflation.”

I’m doubtful that the jobs boost to illegals is real, either. More likely the migrant jobs data is rigged because it’s much harder to track and confirm. But these people don’t seem to understand how inflation works – Greater population means higher resource demand, and that helps drive up prices (as we’ve seen in housing). It doesn’t bring prices down, nor does it reduce the existing money supply.

It should also be noted that full time jobs numbers have plunged while part time low-wage jobs have increased. These are the kinds of issues no one in the Biden Admin is talking about.

Finally, rising GDP is often cited as a key indicator of a vibrant economy, but what the “experts” rarely mention is that GDP is rigged by the inclusion of government spending. The more federal and state governments tax, borrow and spend, the higher GDP goes. Currently, government spending accounts for at least 36% of GDP (officially) in the US.

It makes it look like America is more successful than ever but this is based on the government taking more cash from the public, printing more money and going into greater debt, then throwing that cash away with wild abandon in order to prop up the numbers.

Goldman Sachs recently made a statement that under a Harris regime GDP would go up and under Trump GDP would take a big hit. They are right, in a way, but they don’t explain the real reason why this is the case.

If Trump follows through on his fiscal responsibility policies (Elon Musk has been tapped to head up investigations into government efficiency), then OF COURSE we’ll see a drop in GDP. It would mean government spending will go down and the rigging of GDP will end. With Harris, government spending will skyrocket and so the GDP bubble will continue to grow. In fact, Harris will be incentivized to increase government spending in order to hide greater deflation in GDP.

Trump’s arrival in the Oval Office will result in a hailstorm of bad economic data, and most of this will be due to the sudden end of statistical manipulations that have been in place for the last four years. We are currently in the midst of a tone-shift in which recessionary forces are pressuring markets more than inflation. But don’t be fooled…

As soon as the Federal Reserve cuts rates inflation will spike again, and if Trump is in office a CPI jump will be even more pronounced. Biden’s oil reserve dumps will be over, no longer anchoring CPI. We will continue to see inflation in necessities with deflation in other areas including jobs and GDP. That’s what happens during a stagflation crisis.

With Harris the same problems will occur, they just won’t be reported and the stats will not reflect the truth. With Trump, the stats will be more transparent and the media will howl about how conservatives are destroying the economy. The game plan is obvious.

This article was written by Brandon Smith and originally published at Birch Gold Group

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Ben Wallace’s bizarre op-ed about Russia “coming for us” can be better understood as an admission of Britain’s guilt and not simply another absurd Russophobic rant.

When former British military chief Ben Wallace wrote his bizarre op-ed last month warning that “Putin will soon turn his war machine on Britain”, it may have come across as the usual Russophobic scaremongering.

The ex-minister of defense wrote in the Daily Telegraph that “Britain’s in Putin’s crosshairs… Make no mistake Putin is coming for us.”

He painted the Russian leader and its top generals as unhinged madmen who were driven by revenge for old scores like the Crimean War in the 1850s.

Wallace, who served as a British army captain and was the minister of defense under three Conservative prime ministers between 2019 and 2023, is known for his hawkish anti-Russia views. He previously told the Times newspaper that Britain must be prepared to fight wars alone without the help of the U.S. He has compared Putin to Hitler, and he once claimed that the Scots Guards – the regiment in which he served – “kicked Russian asses” in the Crimean War and could do so again.

But, in hindsight, his Telegraph op-ed was not so much the usual belligerent rant to whip up Russophobia. This was not a mere paranoid warning of Russia’s alleged malign intent, but rather it was more an admission of British guilt in recklessly escalating the proxy war in Ukraine.

Wallace claimed, somewhat curiously, that Britain would be the primary target for any Russian military attack, not the United States. What made him say that? After all, the U.S. is by far the biggest military backer of the Kiev regime.

Pointedly, Wallace emphatically denied in his article published on August 26 that Britain had played any role in Ukraine’s offensive on Russia’s Kursk region. That offensive was launched on August 6. The incursion appears now to have been a military disaster for the Kiev regime with nearly 15,000 of its troops killed and hundreds of NATO-supplied armored vehicles destroyed.

As the offensive in Kursk flounders and Russia pushes on with rapid gains in the Donbass region of formerly eastern Ukraine, it is becoming more clear that Britain took a leading role among the NATO sponsors of the Kiev regime in promoting the Kursk offensive.

Captured Ukrainian troops have told how British marines trained and directed them to take on audacious missions. The military purpose of the missions was not precise or pragmatic. Their main objective was to create propaganda victories by raising Ukrainian flags on Russian territory.

This week, another British military insider, Sean Bell, who was the former air vice marshall of the RAF, urged the NATO-backed Ukrainian regime to “inflict maximum pain” on Russia. The former RAF commander was referring to the Kursk offensive and an expansion of air strikes on Russian territory.

This comes as Britain’s new Labour prime minister Keir Starmer is consulting with U.S. president Joe Biden on granting Ukraine permission to use long-range missiles to hit deep inside Russia. Starmer and his new defense minister John Healey have been keen to demonstrate that their government is every bit as gung-ho as the Conservative predecessors in supporting Ukraine militarily.

It also comes as the Russian state security service, FSB, claims that leaked documents it has obtained show that Britain is taking a leading role among Western adversaries in ramping up military and political tensions with Moscow.

When the Kursk offensive kicked off last month, NATO leaders were adamant that they were not involved in the planning. By contrast, the Kiev regime hinted that NATO was.

Despite the official denials, sections of the British media couldn’t contain their excitement in what appeared in the initial stage to be a lightning punch in the nose for Putin.

It was reported that Ukrainian troops had been trained in Britain prior to the incursion. While the Daily Mail blared that British Challenger tanks were “leading Ukraine’s advance into Russia’s Kursk and Belgorod regions”.

The Times reported smugly that “British equipment, including drones, has played a central role in Ukraine’s new offensive and British personnel have been closely advising the Ukrainian military.”

Since the NATO proxy war against Russia erupted in Ukraine in February 2022, the British have been intensely involved in training commandos to carry out raids on Russian territory, according to Britain’s Royal Navy publicity.

Despite Ben Wallace’s assertion that Britain had no planning involvement in the Kursk offensive, it seems clear that his denial is a lie. Britain was and presumably still is heavily involved. It is known that mercenaries from other NATO states are on the ground in Kursk. But the British role is prominent in leading the charge (from behind, that is).

That charge has now run into a dead-end with heavy losses among Ukrainian troops. For the British planners, however, the military losses are of little importance. The Ukrainians were merely cannon fodder in a PR stunt to embarrass Putin and to whip up another round of military aid.

Britain has a sordid historical role in starting wars in Europe. Ben Wallace in his Telegraph op-ed mocked Putin for blaming Britain for being behind the Crimean War and the rise of Nazi Germany. On both counts, it is accurate to condemn Britain. What was it doing anyway sending troops to Crimea in the 1850s? And the covert role of Britain in financing, arming, and giving Hitler a free hand to attack the Soviet Union during the 1930s was a major contributor to fomenting World War Two, a war in which up to 30 million Soviet people were killed.

Today, Perfidious Albion is stoking the proxy war against Russia, which could lead to a nuclear Third World War. Its sinister fingerprints are all over the Kursk provocation. The has-been empire is trying to inflate its geopolitical importance among Western partners through machinations and manipulation. Even at the risk of inciting an all-out world war.

Ben Wallace’s bizarre op-ed about Russia “coming for us” can be better understood as an admission of Britain’s guilt and not simply another absurd Russophobic rant. The old Tory warmonger was projecting the reality of Britain’s nefarious role in escalating the proxy war. The British establishment knows that if Russia goes on to take reprisal, it has it coming. Its pretense of innocence is classic British dissembling.

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

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Every public broadcaster in the world has one client, the government. As such it is never independent. Perhaps in a more ethical time, when the plurality was Christian and you had to go to church if you wanted to keep your job and standing in the community. On Sundays you were warned of iniquity, that the wages of sin were an entirely unpleasant death and subsequent condemnation in the afterlife. Even the full-on atheist was cautious, and often that was enough to keep civic peace. Lying, mis-representing, destroying and the imperative to love one’s neighbor, that’s gone now. Now it is winning by any means necessary and truth be damned.

And with that, the media, especially state media became the enemy of the people. Canada’s “polis” if you like, is in full-on rebellion. Covid, the lockdowns, the preposterous carbon taxes, the horrors of vaccine damage which affects almost every family now, the flood of migrants, the disastrous miscalculations about legal street drugs, the skyrocketing price of energy, the shutdown of LNG, the homeless encampments in every city, and the debt ratio – the largest debt-to-GDP in the G7 – all these policies were viciously defended and aggressively promoted by the CBC, which eats up half the media dollars in the country.

The public broadcaster, once loved to excess by every Canadian is now widely hated, and last time I looked, its “news” is watched by fewer than 2% of the population. Admittedly, its morning drive-time radio news might take 10% of the market, but dollar for dollar more than 60% of us want it permanently shuttered.

The following is an analysis of just how that happened: This is an excerpt from Against the Corporate Media, 42 Ways the Media Hates You, published on September 10th.

And when I say the richest country in the world, I mean in this way. We are the second largest in geographic terms, with a small albeit highly educated population, but we sit on the greatest natural riches in the world without parallel. No other country comes close. Per capita, every single Canadian could like like a Saudi prince, creating the most extraordinary culture the world has ever seen. Instead, we get by on 60% of the average American’s income, and we are, generally, depressed and fearful of the future. This is 100% the fault of our media, and to a lesser extent, government “art”.

The CBC: From Crown Jewel to Jacobins

The Beast

Renegade governmental organizations are virtually impossible to rein in, especially if they have careened off the rails into destructive action. Take, for the sake of argument, the FBI or Environmental Protection Agency in the U.S., or the World Health Organization and the United Nations internationally, or the plethora of sovereign and sub-sovereign health ministries that went AWOL during COVID-19. If threatened, a throng of defenders rise, vocal to the point of shrill, defending the original idea, refusing to look at the slavering beast all that public money hath wrought.

“Reform or die,” says prime minister after president after premier. Nodding subservience is followed by…nothing. Commissions are formed, recommendations are made. Cosmetic changes ensue. Like rogue elephants they continue to roam the heights of the culture, braying and stomping and breaking things. Power, once acquired, needs to be wrenched from bleeding hands.

In Canada, that raging elephant is the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Founded in 1936, at last count, the CBC sprawls across the country in twenty-seven over-the-air TV stations, eighty-eight radio stations, a flotilla of websites, podcasts, streaming TV, and multiple satellite radio stations. Its mandate is high-flown, to connect the multiple city-states of the country, its frozen north and isolated rural communities via dozens of offices big and small. It broadcasts in English, French, and eight indigenous languages.

The CBC’s Toronto headquarters, finished in 1993, was a statement of extreme optimism at a time when the corporation was widely loved. Designed by Philip Johnson, its cost $381 million. It is de-constructivist in form, a symbol of the CBC’s purpose, which is to re-conceive Canada’s founding as racist and the country in need of radical reform led by itself. Its orthogonal grid is “interrupted by skewed elements,” its interior dominated by a green elevator shaft set at an angle to the building grid. Outside, a forbidding Soviet box, windows are outlined in CBC red. Inside, it’s confusing, echoing, and replete with empty studios. Despite effulgent funding, the aura of failure wears on those still employed. They don’t understand why they are no longer astride the culture.

A behemoth, it demands $1 billion and $240 million of direct subsidy from the government every year, and rakes in several hundred million more through licensing, advertising, and production subsidy. It eats up, say some analysts, half the media dollars spent in the country, yet is watched on its twenty-seven TV stations by fewer than 5 percent[RK1]  of Canadians. Its news outlets perform worse. Only 1.75 percent watch CBC news on broadcast channels or cable. The National, its star suppertime news show in Toronto, is watched by fewer than half a million people, while private-sector competitors in the same city crest at 1 million or even 2 million.

In June 2023, the editorial board of Canada’s long-time national newspaper, The Globe and Mail, put its rather large bear paw down and suggested shuttering CBC TV entirely, and focusing on digital and radio, which are relatively successful. The editorial board (acting in its own institutional interest), pointed out that digital advertising for CBC should be halted because a subsidized CBC should not eat up ad dollars in a tight market. The editorial board also stated that more than 24 million CBC digital visitors a month is substantial. It is not. The media is undergoing explosive growth in every country; it is only legacy media that is not growing. Routinely in the U.S., popular digital sites host tens of millions of visitors a day, and more than a billion a year. Using that metric, the CBC reaches about 10 percent of the available digital audience.

Most Canadians agree with The Globe and Mail. In fact, in mid-2023, 62 percent of Canadians wanted it shut down, saying they would vote for conservatives if they promised to do so. Not reined in, not given less taxpayer money, not privatized, but shut down, its many buildings, its wealth of equipment sold, and its employees scattered to the winds. Among some 30  to 40 percent, the mother corporation (as it calls itself) is actively hated, loathed. When Pierre Poilievre, the popular conservative candidate leader, promised to shut down the CBC, his audience rose for a prolonged standing ovation.

How did this jewel of Canadian culture which, for sixty years was held in near reverence by every sentient Canadian, come to this?

Public broadcasters, in general, engage in state-building, in national and cultural integration. They “provide social cement,” they build bridges, “witness” and connect. Or are supposed to. They are meant to be free, in order to serve those without the funds for cable or streaming subscriptions. In Ireland, Raidió Teilifís Éireann (RTE) provides an alternative to the deluge of British programming, those in Nordic countries promote “equality, solidarity and belonging,” and in Australia, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) sets itself against the dominance of wicked corporatist freebooter Rupert Murdoch.

In Canada, the CBC is meant to provide a Canadian voice in a country where, as the old saw goes, Canadian culture is in a distinct minority. This purpose has been served well in French Canada, where Radio Canada (best said with a French accent) is widely loved and has managed to act as a beacon for Quebecois culture, an impressive amount of it created to flout, humiliate, and laugh at the maudit Anglais to the south, east, and west.

The digital and streaming explosion of the early aughts[RK2]  left the CBC flailing to catch up, and this is typically given as the reason its audience numbers are so poor. However, this is not the case for the CBC’s radio stations which are the only division of the corporation that truly service small-city and rural Canada and can compete in an admitted fever of ever-expanding competition. Their drive-time shows can reach as many as 20 percent of the audience, and are often in first place in the ratings.

There are other rather more convincing arguments for its decline. CBC hosts on radio and TV have historically been beloved figures. Today, few Canadians could name one of them; personalities seemingly are not wanted at the CBC anymore but Canadians still love them. Canadian YouTubers routinely attract hundreds of thousands of viewers and, in Jordan Peterson’s case, tens of millions, trouncing the “mother corporation” by orders of magnitude. Podcasts are popular, but half of those listened to in Canada are[RK3] [EN4]  by rightwing Americans. Which indicates that, even given its radio successes, the corporation has lost touch with Canadians. It simply does not have news or entertainment product strong enough to compete in the new marketplace. And, as the proliferation of new media in Canada proves, its editorial policy is so backward, almost every single digital opportunity has been missed.

In contrast to received opinion—which is that the culprit is the explosion in digital and streaming outlets—the answer to the corporation’s distress is far simpler, and far more reparable. A series of bad political decisions have been made by policy chiefs who craft the corporation’s editorial policy every year. Reputedly that secretive department costs taxpayer $180 million annually, but it is as closeted as the Kremlin and few even admit it exists. But it does, and it is those policy setters who have created the wholesale repudiation of the CBC via a rough-shod political brinksmanship that was meant entirely to remake Canada in a fresh, socialist image. And to destroy the one political party standing in the way.

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On Friday, September 13th Pope Francis delivered a speech to the youthful students at Singapore’s Catholic Junior College, a group which included many non-Christians. In it he fired a shot that has been heard round the world. Putting aside his prepared script, His Holiness began speaking spontaneously, with words that now, more than ever, we can presume to have come straight from his heart. With soft, grandfatherly tones and intently earnest body language, he led his young audience gently and persuasively down a very different path from the straight and narrow one marked out by his predecessors in the chair of Peter.

Those previous popes had repeatedly censured and warned against religious relativism or indifferentism– the tendency to gloss over and deny the importance of the differences between Christ’s Gospel and other religions. After all, Jesus says, “I am the way, the truth and the life; no one comes to the Father except through me”. To the apostles he sends out as missionaries he says, “He who hears you, hears me; whoever rejects you rejects me, and whoever rejects me rejects the one who sent me” (Lk 10: 16). Again, “This is eternal life, that they should know you, the only true God, and the one whom you sent, Jesus Christ” (Jn. 17: 3). Countless other New Testament texts could be cited to the same effect.

But a very different message was sent to those Singapore school students by none other than the earthly leader of Christ’s Church. Eliciting their smiles and applause, he led them down a wide and shining path whose smooth surface seemed to iron out all those troublesome, contentious differences between rival creeds. Comparing the world’s mutually contradictory religions to its different “languages” – none of which, of course, is ‘truer’ or morally better than any other – Francis affirmed bluntly, “Tutte le religioni sono un cammino per arrivare a Dio“. This was immediately rendered accurately by the translator at his side, who said loudly and clearly, “All religions are a pathway to arrive at God”. No hint of any nuance or qualification there.

Magisterial as well as biblical pronouncements against this kind of levelling of religious differences could also be cited in abundance; but two examples, one from two centuries ago and the other from Vatican Council II, will suffice here. Gregory XVI, in his 1831 encyclical Mirari Vos, denounced

indifferentism, . . . that base opinion which has become prevalent everywhere through the deceit of wicked men, that eternal salvation of the soul can be acquired by any profession of faith whatsoever, provided morals are conformed to the standard of justice and honesty.

And no. 846 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, citing Lumen Gentium #14, recalls that Christ

explicitly asserted the necessity of faith and Baptism, and thereby affirmed at the same time the necessity of the Church. . . . Hence they could not be saved who, knowing that the Catholic Church was founded as necessary by God through Christ, would refuse either to enter it or to remain in it” (emphasis added).

If Catholicism is the “necessary” path to salvation – even supposing that to be a necessity of precept rather than of means – it clearly can’t be presented as just one path among others. The blood of countless martyred missionaries down through two millennia has testified to their conviction, based on the Lord’s clear teaching, that all human creatures need to know Christ the Savior. The purpose of preaching the Gospel to every creature is to save souls! (Cf. Mk 16: 16.) Accordingly, the sensus fidelium of Catholic believers down through the centuries has always reacted sharply and intuitively against the siren song of any preacher or teacher who lumps Christianity together with other religions as one among many paths that lead to a common transcendent destiny.

Now, the Italian original of Pope Francis’ assertion, cited above, went up immediately on the Vatican website, as did accurate translations into six other languages. But with the English translation came a little silver lining to this dark cloud hovering over Roman skies: a sanitized version of the Holy Father’s key statement. Some English-language Vatican official was evidently so dismayed by Francis’ heterodox affirmation that he felt a duty to do some damage control. Mindful, perhaps, of Noah’s sons, who in filial piety covered their father’s nakedness after his lapse into drunkenness (cf. Gn. 9: 20-24), this official tapped out a bowdlerized version of the Pope’s words that turned them from an explosive theological statement into a bland empirical observation. He wrote, “Religions are seen as paths trying to reach God.” Note these three changes:  1) the sweeping word “All” is deleted; 2) it is said that these religious paths are only “trying” to reach God (and so don’t necessarily succeed); and 3) we’re told that they are only “seen as” i.e., believed to be, paths of that sort – a sociological statement that prescinds from whether or not said belief is true. One or two other relatively minor ‘improvements’ to the original also polished up the posted English version.

Unfortunately, this silver lining soon vanished. Our anonymous harm-limiting official was apparently rapped over the knuckles for misrepresenting the Holy Father’s statement, and the Vatican website’s English version was promptly amended so as to translate more correctly the words I have placed in bold type in the following citation of the Pope’s key paragraph. It is still not quite accurate because “a path” has become “paths”, and the verb “reach” (equivalent to “arrive at”) is included only in Francis’ second iteration of his novel claim. Nevertheless, the message is now pretty clear:

One of the things that has impressed me most about the young people here is your capacity for interfaith dialogue. This is very important because if you start arguing, ‘My religion is more important than yours…,’ or ‘Mine is the true one, yours is not true….,’ where does this lead? Somebody answer. [A young person answers, ‘Destruction’.] That is correct. All religions are paths to God. I will use an analogy, they are like different languages that express the divine. But God is for everyone, and therefore, we are all God’s children. ‘But my God is more important than yours!’. Is this true? There is only one God, and religions are like languages, paths to reach God. Some Sikh, some Muslim, some Hindu, some Christian. Understood?

The significance of this swift correction should not be underestimated, because it is hard to imagine that Francis could have been unaware of it. English is the most widely spoken language on earth, and if millions of us round the world saw the initial sanitized version and learned of its discrepancy from what the Pope actually said, is it likely that he himself was left in the dark about this? Or that whoever ordered the correction did so without knowing that he (she?) would be supported by Higher Up? There has long been a reported consensus among Vatican insiders that Francis keeps close tabs on everything important that goes on in his curia.

But if the Holy Father approved this amendment to the first English-language version of his speech, this shows that, far from wanting to clarify, correct, or nuance his spontaneous and unscripted assertion to the Singapore highschoolers, he is doubling down on it. He’s telling the world, “That’s exactly what I meant to say, and I still mean it!” And unless some contrary announcement on this matter comes very soon from the Vatican, I think we must draw this troubling conclusion.

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