Aggregatore di feed

Last week Peter appeared on Fox Business with Liz Claman and co-panelist Scott Sperling to react to last week’s FOMC decision to hold rates steady. Peter, Liz, and Scott discuss Jerome Powell’s remarks from the decision, recent movement in gold and the equity market, and how economic growth may be able to offset some of the Federal Reserve’s inflation.

Reiterating how backwards the Fed’s thinking is, Peter argues the United States is already in recession territory, thanks in large part to the last two decades of monetary policy:

The Federal Reserve created an enormous inflation problem. Current monetary policy is still way too loose. They aborted the hiking prematurely. Rates need to be a lot higher than they are right now. And look, the economy is weak. I think we’re in recession! I think we’ve been in a recession for quite some time. That’s why Donald Trump was elected president, but unfortunately that recession is going to have to get a lot worse to put the inflation genie that the Fed deliberately released back in that bottle.

Scott offers a glimmer of hope; if generative AI and other innovations can boost productivity significantly, the economy may be able to withstand some of the consequences of inflation. Peter agrees, but points out there’s still a long road ahead, and monetary inflation continues to increase:

I think productivity can offset some of the damage that the Fed has created by expanding the money supply to the degree that it did both with their first three rounds of quantitative easing and then during COVID. We still haven’t felt all the consequences on consumer prices from the inflation the Fed created in the past, but they’re continuing to create more inflation. Credit has expanded the entire time that they were supposedly hiking rates. So it was too little too late.

This originally appeared on SchiffGold.com.

The post Real Inflation Isn’t Stopping appeared first on LewRockwell.

There are several curious aspects of this ‘leak’ of internal communication of high ranking members of the Trump administration:

Top national security officials for President Donald Trump, including his defense secretary, texted war plans for upcoming military strikes in Yemen to a group chat in a secure messaging app that included the editor-in-chief for The Atlantic, the magazine reported in a story posted online Monday. The National Security Council said the text chain “appears to be authentic.”
…
The material in the text chain “contained operational details of forthcoming strikes on Iran-backed Houthi-rebels in Yemen, including information about targets, weapons the U.S. would be deploying, and attack sequencing,” editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg reported.

The Atlantic is the worst magazine in America. Its editor in chief, ..

.. Jeffrey Goldberg, dropped out of an Ivy League University to volunteer to be an IDF prison guard during the first Palestinian Intifada. In his memoirs, Goldberg revealed that he helped cover up serious prisoner abuse.

Goldberg is a neo-conservative who has yet to see a U.S. instigated war he dislikes. To trust his reporting is dangerous.

Here is how he tells the story:

On Tuesday, March 11, I received a connection request on Signal from a user identified as Michael Waltz. Signal is an open-source encrypted messaging service popular with journalists and others who seek more privacy than other text-messaging services are capable of delivering. I assumed that the Michael Waltz in question was President Donald Trump’s national security adviser.
…
I accepted the connection request, hoping that this was the actual national security adviser, and that he wanted to chat about Ukraine, or Iran, or some other important matter.

Two days later—Thursday—at 4:28 p.m., I received a notice that I was to be included in a Signal chat group. It was called the “Houthi PC small group.”
…
At 8:05 a.m. on Friday, March 14, “Michael Waltz” texted the group: “Team, you should have a statement of conclusions with taskings per the Presidents guidance this morning in your high side inboxes.” (High side, in government parlance, refers to classified computer and communications systems.)
…
At this point, a fascinating policy discussion commenced. The account labeled “JD Vance” responded at 8:16: “Team, I am out for the day doing an economic event in Michigan. But I think we are making a mistake.” (Vance was indeed in Michigan that day.) The Vance account goes on to state, “3 percent of US trade runs through the suez. 40 percent of European trade does. There is a real risk that the public doesn’t understand this or why it’s necessary. The strongest reason to do this is, as POTUS said, to send a message.”

During the discussion CIA head John Ratcliff, Secretary of Defense Hegseth and the deputy White House chief of staff Stephen Miller join in. Despite the reluctance of Vance the bombing campaign in Yemen is ready to go:

At 11:44 a.m., the account labeled “Pete Hegseth” posted in Signal a “TEAM UPDATE.” I will not quote from this update, or from certain other subsequent texts. The information contained in them, if they had been read by an adversary of the United States, could conceivably have been used to harm American military and intelligence personnel, particularly in the broader Middle East, Central Command’s area of responsibility. What I will say, in order to illustrate the shocking recklessness of this Signal conversation, is that the Hegseth post contained operational details of forthcoming strikes on Yemen, including information about targets, weapons the U.S. would be deploying, and attack sequencing.
…
According to the lengthy Hegseth text, the first detonations in Yemen would be felt two hours hence, at 1:45 p.m. eastern time. So I waited in my car in a supermarket parking lot. If this Signal chat was real, I reasoned, Houthi targets would soon be bombed. At about 1:55, I checked X and searched Yemen. Explosions were then being heard across Sanaa, the capital city.

I went back to the Signal channel. At 1:48, “Michael Waltz” had provided the group an update. Again, I won’t quote from this text, except to note that he described the operation as an “amazing job.” A few minutes later, “John Ratcliffe” wrote, “A good start.” Not long after, Waltz responded with three emoji: a fist, an American flag, and fire. Others soon joined in, including “MAR,” who wrote, “Good Job Pete and your team!!,” and “Susie Wiles,” who texted, “Kudos to all – most particularly those in theater and CENTCOM! Really great. God bless.” “Steve Witkoff” responded with five emoji: two hands-praying, a flexed bicep, and two American flags. “TG” responded, “Great work and effects!” The after-action discussion included assessments of damage done, including the likely death of a specific individual. The Houthi-run Yemeni health ministry reported that at least 53 people were killed in the strikes, a number that has not been independently verified.

The juvenile behavior of the participants all but confirms that the characters are genuine.

It however leaves many questions:

Why did Michael Waltz, a former advisor to Dick Cheney, seek to add war-pimp and anti-Trumper Jeffrey Goldberg to his contact list? What did he plan to leak to him?

Signal is an encrypted chat application which, until recently, was financed by the U.S. government. That is in itself a good reason to not trust it. There have also been reports that several foreign entities are trying to crack it. Why would high administration officials, who have access to more secure communication systems, use Signal to chat with each other?

Why are Vance and others implying that ‘freedom of navigation’ in the Red Sea is for the good of Europe and that it should pay for it? That framing does not fit.

The reason for the Houthi blockade of the Red Sea is the Zionist genocide in Gaza. Israel is the country most hurt by the stop of sea traffic to its harbors. The closure of the Red Sea has increased ocean transport cost for a container from $2,000 to $8,000 for everyone, including the U.S., because the transport around Africa takes longer and has led to a shortage of container ships.

This lambasting of Europe to press it for money is part of Trump’s general program. To ‘leak’ this as part of a chat, which hardly mentions Israel or Gaza, is reinforcing that message. This is the main reason why I find this ‘leak’ suspicious.

The use of Signal and the sending of confidential war plans over it of course a breach of several laws and regulations.

There are rumors that national security advisor Waltz will be punished for this. But I do not expect any firing or other consequences from it.

Reprinted with permission from Moon of Alabama.

The post Was This ‘Leak’ Accidental or Is It Pro-War Psyops? appeared first on LewRockwell.

Charlie Foxtrot is a polite euphemism for a crude military term — Clusterfu*k. That describes the first scandal of the Trump Administration. Somehow, whether deliberate or accidentally, a Zionist journalist by the name of Jeffrey Goldberg was added to a Signal chat by Trump’s National Security Advisor, Michael Waltz, or by someone who worked for Waltz. Goldberg suddenly found himself part of a group chat of Trump’s top defense, diplomatic and intelligence officials. The group included CIA Director Ratcliffe, DNI’s Tulsi Gabbard, and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, among other luminaries.

If you are not familiar with Signal, you create a group chat by naming a group and then adding members from your list of contacts. This tells us that Goldberg was part of Waltz’s list of contacts. Goldberg is a particularly slimy character, not because he published portions of the chat, but because he behaved as a political hack instead of a journalist. A journalist with that unexpected access, would have written an immediate story announcing that the US was going to start bombing Yemen just to make an example of it. What did Goldberg do? He waited till the bombing happened and then hoisted the Trump gang on its own petard. He made the story about Charlie Foxtrot, which he published on Monday in The Atlantic magazine.

This was not a leak. This was a gift to Goldberg. While the contents of the chat are not officially classified, the information being discussed was operationally sensitive. The chat exposed most of the Trump team as shallow and dismissive of the military and diplomatic implications of the decision to start bombing Yemen.

If Waltz and company wanted to discuss the pros and cons of bombing Yemen, he should have convened a Secure Video Conference, aka SVTC (pronounced, CIVITS).

Pete Hegseth’s remarks to the press, responding to the Goldberg article, makes a solid case that he is not qualified to serve as Secretary of Defense. Instead of admitting that this was a fu*kup on the part of Waltz, he decided to attack Goldberg. Moreover, he pretends that the US was hitting hardened, military targets. That is a lie:

While I agree with Hegseth that Goldberg is a partisan hack, Goldberg did not insinuate himself into the chat or steal the material. Waltz, or one of his staff, did that. We will have to wait and see if the Trump team has learned anything from this debacle. I suspect Signal will no longer be used for sensitive topics.

The portion of the chat that Goldberg published shows that JD Vance is not a Zionist crazy. He at least had reservations about the plan to bomb Yemen. The same cannot be said for the others — Pete Hegseth in particular. The following snippets from Goldberg’s article makes it clear that the decision to bomb was not based on some actual provocation or attack by Yemen. Nope, it was a malevolent symbolic gesture:

The account labeled “JD Vance” responded at 8:16: “Team, I am out for the day doing an economic event in Michigan. But I think we are making a mistake.” (Vance was indeed in Michigan that day.) The Vance account goes on to state, “3 percent of US trade runs through the suez. 40 percent of European trade does. There is a real risk that the public doesn’t understand this or why it’s necessary. The strongest reason to do this is, as POTUS said, to send a message.”

The Vance account then goes on to make a noteworthy statement, considering that the vice president has not deviated publicly from Trump’s position on virtually any issue. “I am not sure the president is aware how inconsistent this is with his message on Europe right now. There’s a further risk that we see a moderate to severe spike in oil prices. I am willing to support the consensus of the team and keep these concerns to myself. But there is a strong argument for delaying this a month, doing the messaging work on why this matters, seeing where the economy is, etc.”

The account identified as “JD Vance” addressed a message at 8:45 to @Pete Hegseth: “if you think we should do it let’s go. I just hate bailing Europe out again.”

“I will say a prayer for victory,” Vance wrote. . . .

Hegseth’s counter to Vance’s concern that the American public won’t understand why were bombing the shit out of another faraway country is this:

“Nobody [in America] knows who the Houthis are, so [we can just say] Biden failed and Iran funded them.”

Well, guess what, boys and girls? Trump failed, just like Biden. The bombings over the last nine days have not deterred the Houthis from renewing their attacks on ships and Israel. And it has put US naval vessels in harm’s way without a good reason. Hegseth gives the game away… this is about blaming Iran.

It is incumbent on Goldberg to release the entire electronic conversation. Maybe I am being too harsh. Maybe Tulsi Gabbard or John Ratcliffe or the Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency raised some objections. But it appears that everyone was supportive of the proposed operation. Shameful.

This originally appeared on Sonar21.

The post It Wasn’t a Leak, It was a Devious “Charlie Foxtrot” appeared first on LewRockwell.

“If Trump can disappear them, he can disappear you. The Trump regime is already targeting immigrants who are here legally simply because they expressed opinions that Trump disagreed with. What makes you think he’ll stop there? With no court to verify anything the Trump regime alleges, you could be arrested and sent to a prison in El Salvador for having views the regime dislikes.”—Robert Reich

Imagine this: you’re rounded up in the dead of night by government agents, arrested and sent to a detention center. The arresting agents don’t identify themselves, nor do they provide any documentation indicating why you are being detained. Nevertheless, without your family or friends knowing that you have been taken hostage, without anyone knowing where you are being transported or why, and without any opportunity to defend yourself or proclaim your innocence, you are flown out of the country to a foreign prison in a police state where you will have no rights whatsoever.

There can be no understating the danger.

The war on due process is here.

No trials. No hearings. No rights. Just indefinite detention and secret deportations.

This is the fate that awaits every one of us, not just immigrants (legal or otherwise), if the government’s war on the Constitution remains unchecked.

As historian Timothy Snyder warns, “If you accept that non-citizens have no right to due process, you are accepting that citizens have no right to due process. All the government has to do is claim that you are not a citizen; without due process you have no chance to prove the contrary.”

More than two decades after the U.S. government in its post-9/11 frenzy transported individuals, some of whom had not been charged let alone convicted of a crime, to CIA black sites (secret detention centers located outside the U.S. authorized to torture detainees) as a means of sidestepping legal protocols, the Trump Administration is using extraordinary rendition to make those on its so-called “enemies list” disappear.

The first round of arrests and deportations to a mega-prison in El Salvador supposedly targeted members of the infamous Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua.

“Nazis got better treatment under the Alien Enemies Act than has happened here,” declared U.S. Circuit Judge Patricia Millett. “Y’all could have put me up on Saturday and thrown me on a plane, thinking I’m a member of Tren de Aragua and giving me no chance to protest it and say somehow it’s a violation of presidential war powers.”

Carried out with little evidence and without court hearings or due process, these roundups reportedly may also have swept up individuals with no apparent connection to gang activity apart from common tattoos (firearms, trains, dice, roses, tigers and jaguars) and other circumstantial evidence.

In a particularly Kafkaesque explanation for why some of the Venezuelan migrants who have no criminal records were targeted for arrest and deportation, government lawyers argued in court that their lack of a criminal record is in itself cause for concern.

In other words, the government is prepared to preemptively arrest and make people disappear, without any regard for legal protocols or due process, based solely on the president’s claim that they could at some point in the future pose a threat to national security.

This takes pre-crime and preemptive arrests to a whole new sinister level of potential abuses.

Are you starting to sense how quickly this could go off the rails?

This is how democracies collapse. This is how rights disappear overnight.

As lawyers challenging the government’s overreach warned, “If the President can designate any group as enemy aliens under the Act, and that designation is unreviewable, then there is no limit on who can be sent to a Salvadoran prison, or any limit on how long they will remain there. At present, the Salvadoran President is saying these men will be there at least a year and that this imprisonment is ‘renewable.’”

Also among those in danger of being made to disappear without any legal record or due process are individuals who have not been charged with or convicted of any crimes.

The most egregious of these incidents involve college students, scientists and doctors, all of them legal permanent residents of the U.S. who, while never having been charged with a crime, are accused of threatening national security by taking part in anti-war protests over the growing death toll in Gaza as a result of the Israeli-Hamas war, or sympathizing with the Palestinians, or being associated with someone who might sympathize with the Palestinians.

When merely exercising one’s right to criticize the government in word, deed or thought is equated to an act of domestic terrorism, we are all in trouble.

Whether those being rounded up and deported have done anything criminally wrong is not the point. That’s what the courts and the Constitution are for: to ensure that justice is served through due process and the right of the accused to have their day in court.

It’s not always a perfect system, but it is better than the alternative, which is outright tyranny.

The mass arrests and roundups thus far have been so haphazard that there is a very real likelihood that innocent individuals have also been swept up and deported.

American citizens could very well be next in line for this kind of treatment.

Native Americans, who are also American citizens, have reported being subjected to racial profiling by ICE agents and targeted because of their race or skin color.

Another American citizen detained and questioned by ICE during an immigration raid of a workplace in New Jersey is a military veteran who “suffered the indignity of having the legitimacy of his military documentation questioned.”

As Foreign Policy magazine warns, “The American people must be clear-eyed about the prison system to which their government is sending deported migrants—which, in the worst-case scenario, could one day hold U.S. citizens, too. Although U.S. law prohibits the deportation of U.S. citizens, the Trump administration has shown a repeated proclivity to flout the rules and ignore judicial orders.”

Indeed, it appears that President Trump is borrowing heavily from the lockdown script used by Nayib Bukele, president of El Salvadora, another police state characterized by arbitrary detentions, systemic violations, brutality, and censorship, which has been under a permanent state of emergency since 2022.

Yet as Amnesty International warns, “‘Security’ at the expense of human rights,” increased militarization, and armed repression coupled with “efforts by state agents to stigmatise human rights organisations and the free press and to thwart their efforts, has fostered a climate of fear and intimidation that stifles civil society and spurs self-censorship.”

Under Bukele, who used a war on gang violence as the pretext for seizing power, constitutional rights have been suspended, with attorneys general fired, judges replaced by loyalists, the legislative and judicial branches coalesced under one party, presidential term limits set aside, innocent individuals swept up in mass arrests, Bitcoin declared legal currency, and friendly overtures made to Russia and China.

Sounds unnervingly familiar, doesn’t it?

This is the danger of allowing any president to use expansive wartime powers to bypass the Constitution’s prohibitions against government overreach and abuse: suddenly, everything that challenges the government’s authority becomes a national security threat and every dispute a national emergency.

Through his use of executive orders, proclamations and so-called national emergencies, President Trump has essentially declared war on the rule of law.

Make no mistake: while immigrants, illegal and legal alike, have largely been the first victims of the Trump administration’s efforts to circumvent the Constitution in order to make them disappear, it’s our very freedoms that are being made to disappear.

At the heart of these freedoms is the right of habeas corpus.

Translated as “you should have the body,” habeas corpus is a legal action by which those imprisoned unlawfully can seek relief from their imprisonment.

Derived from English common law, habeas corpus first appeared in the Magna Carta of 1215 and is the oldest human right in the history of English-speaking civilization. The doctrine of habeas corpus stems from the requirement that a government must either charge a person or let him go free.

Without habeas corpus, other rights become vulnerable to executive overreach.

The Framers of the Constitution, having experienced first-hand what it was like to be labeled enemy combatants, imprisoned indefinitely and not given the opportunity to appear before an impartial judge, were acutely aware of the potential for government tyranny. Thus, they enshrined the writ in Article I, Section IX, of the Constitution, rather than the Bill of Rights, underscoring its fundamental importance as a safeguard against arbitrary detention and ensuring its protection at the federal level.

It has all been downhill since then.

History has shown us the dangers of unchecked executive power. Lincoln’s suspension of habeas corpus during the Civil War led to mass arrests without trial, setting a dangerous precedent.

Decades later, the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II demonstrated how easily fear can be weaponized to justify the imprisonment of innocent people.

Each time habeas corpus has been weakened, it has taken years—sometimes generations—for justice to be restored, if ever.

We cannot afford to repeat these mistakes.

While the Constitution allows the writ of habeas corpus to be suspended in cases of rebellion or invasion when public safety is imperiled, the Trump Administration’s efforts to keep the nation in a permanent state of emergency in order to justify its power grabs leaves “we the people” subject to the kinds of arbitrary mass round-ups, arrests and deportations that have been favored by despots and dictators.

This is usually where the self-righteous defenders of Trump’s blatantly unconstitutional tactics insist that the protections of the Constitution only apply to U.S. citizens.

They are wrong.

At a minimum, as the U.S. Supreme Court has affirmed, the rights enshrined in the first ten amendments to the Constitution apply to all people in the United States, regardless of their citizenship or immigration status. Those rights include free speech, peaceful protest and criticism of the government, assembly, religious freedom, equal protection under the law, due process, legal representation, privacy, among others.

Then again, what good are rights if the government doesn’t respect them?

What good are rights if the president is empowered to nullify them whenever he wants?

For that matter, what good is a government that betrays its own citizens?

When not even citizenship is protection against the abuses of an authoritarian regime, it’s time to do what our forefathers did when they finally got fed up with being silenced, censored, searched, frisked, threatened, and arrested: revolt against the tyrant’s fetters.

History has shown us that when governments operate without checks and balances, tyranny follows. The question is not whether mass arrests and indefinite detentions could be expanded to American citizens—it’s how long before they are.

If we allow the erosion of due process, if we accept that a president can unilaterally decide who is a threat without oversight, then we have already lost the freedoms that define us as a nation.

This is not just about immigrants.

It’s about every American who values liberty over unchecked power.

We must demand accountability. We must challenge policies that violate constitutional protections. We must support organizations fighting for civil liberties, educate ourselves on our rights, and refuse to be silenced by fear. Because when the government starts making people disappear, the only way to stop it is by making our voices impossible to ignore.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, freedom does not die in a single act of repression—it dies when the people surrender their rights in exchange for false security.

History will judge how we respond. We must act before it’s too late.

The Constitution can’t protect us if we don’t protect it.

The time to resist is now. Otherwise, if we don’t stand up for freedom while we still can, we may not get another chance.

This originally appeared on The Rutherford Institute.

The post Making Our Rights Disappear: The Authoritarian War on Due Process appeared first on LewRockwell.

When I was a senior in college, one of my professors told me, “If you want to find a good translation of the Bible in English, you can find it in one that contains the word ‘verily.’”  Of course, that was back in 1982, when it would have taken a fair bit of legwork on my part to even identify the various biblical translations that contain the word “verily.” It would have taken even more effort to ascertain whether, individually or collectively, those translations were superior to others.

Jump ahead a few decades, and, thanks to the miracle of search engines, it would be a trifle to pull together a list of Bible translations containing the word “verily.” Nonetheless, I would still have to put in the effort to ascertain the merits of such translations, assuming that I was capable of making such judgments. Nowadays, however, thanks to the emergence of artificial intelligence, I can make a request for both the list and the evaluation of translations with and without “verily” and have all the work done for me in almost no time at all. What progress!

I mention these things to make a point—namely, that not even artificial intelligence can find what is not there. Let me offer an illustration. Our Lord concludes the parable of the wicked tenants with these words: “Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that produces the fruits of the kingdom” (Matthew 21:44 NRSVCE)

What happens to those who do not produce fruit in due season? Nothing good. Not even artificial intelligence, scouring all of Sacred Scripture in all translations in all languages, can find a psalm or canticle that praises the fruitless. Nowhere in Scripture, not even with the aid of artificial intelligence, will we find anything like this:

All ye barren branches, praise and exalt Him forever.
All ye orchards without fruit, praise and exalt Him forever.
All ye vines lacking grapes, praise and exalt Him forever.
All ye fig trees bearing no figs, praise and exalt Him forever.
All ye wheat fields producing no harvest, praise and exalt Him forever.
All ye nets with no fish, praise and exalt Him forever.
All ye bridesmaids with lamps but no oil, praise and exalt Him forever.
All ye salt without savor, praise and exalt Him forever.
All ye lights placed beneath a bushel basket, praise and exalt Him forever.
All ye talents buried in the earth, praise and exalt Him forever. 
All ye fruitless, feckless, and witless, to them be highest glory and praise forever.

Instead, such a scriptural search will show that the fruitless are gathered up to be burned (John 15:6). And there are related references to darkness, as well as wailing and gnashing of teeth (Matthew 8:12). What is not fruitful according to the divine mandate does not end well (Matthew 21:18-19).

Such images are on my mind because of recently released data illustrating the demographic collapse of the Catholic Church in the United States. From 1999-2022, the yearly number of adult Catholics coming into the Church in the United States has declined 58 percent. A recent Pew study indicates that for every 100 adults coming into the Church in the United States, 800 people leave.

Now, before we ask, “What can be done about this?” we may have to ask, “Can we even talk about this at all?” After all, denial is deeply rooted in bureaucracies. And let’s not forget McTeigue’s Axiom: “Most institutions would rather die than admit to having made a mistake.” After “the New Springtime” to “the Second Pentecost” to “Renew!” to “the New Evangelization” to “Eucharistic Revival,” and now, most recently, to “Synodality” and the newly mandated “Synodality Forever!” this is where we are. Somewhere out there, at least two Catholic members of the People Who Should Really Know Better Club are looking at these numbers and saying to each other, “I don’t know why this is happening. We had all those meetings!”

Read the Whole Article

The post Not Even AI Can Save Us Now appeared first on LewRockwell.

The failure to think clearly about government is one of the greatest sources of tyranny. The history of liberties lost is the history of patterns of abuses ignored and inductions not made.

People talk about the importance of ideas in politics. Often, it is merely the impact of a pretense of ideas. In Washington, fashionable ideas are the intellectual equivalent of lapel pins of the American flag. As long as politicians recite the latest phrase, they are credited with incarnating some grand idea or lofty principle.

Washingtonians become vested in Leviathan the same way that residents of other big cities become vested in their local NFL franchise. Washington logic begins and ends with deference. People genuflect to power and then rationalize their kowtowing by screening out evidence of abuses. The District of Columbia is the land of tautological reasoning by people smarter than the rest of America. Their rules of the intellectual game all favor big government.

Forbidden generalizations 

Why do people trust dishonest politicians to control their own lives? People often soundly judge the character of individual politicians, yet when it comes to judging politicians as a class, the fog banks roll in.

“Political reasoning” is often an oxymoron. Many people’s “political thinking” is little more than Pavlov buttons that rulers masterfully push. This is political thinking akin to a horse eternally balking at leaping over a very low hedge. The person sees the evidence, the trends, and then shudders at making even a little jump. It is as if people fear being lost forever in limbo if their feet leave the ground of safe surmises. Government schools and the mainstream media train citizens not to reach conclusions that condemn the existing political system.

If profound political errors were limited to people who have received little or no higher education, the problem would not be so perilous to democracy. But the errors of average citizens often pale in comparison to the follies of the educated elite. As legendary political scientist E. E. Schattschneider observed in 1960, “It is an outrage to attribute the failures of American democracy to the ignorance and stupidity of the masses. The most disastrous shortcomings of the system have been those of the intellectuals whose concepts of democracy have been amazingly rigid and uninventive.” It was the experts and intellectuals who systematically slanted political thinking and pronouncements in ways that unleashed government.

Faustian intellectuals

The longer intellectuals reside in Washington, the more credence they give to official buncombe. Instead of being revolted by b.s., they use it to fertilize their careers. Intellectuals are exploited to validate Leviathan and the political class, not for any wisdom they might confer.

Few things are rarer in Washington than thinking that goes beyond wrangling about how to best achieve goals decreed by politicians. Such “thinking” is usually little more than asking, “How can we best fulfill our master’s wishes?”

But in reality,  few intellectuals bother thinking. Instead, they strike the poses fashionable in their class that season. Nobel Laureate economist Friedrich Hayek defined intellectuals as “professional secondhand dealers in ideas.” A person is accepted as an intellectual not as a result of a Renaissance-like grasp of many subjects but because of recognized expertise in one subject.  Hayek stressed that intellectuals “judge all issues not by their specific merits but … solely in the light of certain fashionable general ideas.”

Politicians perennially defer to existing laws and policies as if they were the codification of all previous wisdom on a subject. Government agencies defer to their previous rulings, the laws, and to their political masters. Judges defer to the bureaucrats, the politicians, and to shelves of court decisions that previously deferred to bureaucrats and politicians. The fact that the U.S. government occasionally loses in its own courts does as little to curb its power as the occasional peasant uprising trammeled the Czar of Russia. The larger the government becomes, the greater the presumption in favor of perpetuating its own power.

Intellectual deference to Leviathan is also cumulative. The more power government amasses, the more homage it receives. There is no need to pay cash on the barrel-head for praise. A single genuflection by politicians is often sufficient to win undying devotion.

Throughout history, intellectuals have tended to understate the danger of political power. There have been brief periods in which they bluntly or accurately reckoned the likelihood that rulers would ravish or repress subjects. As long as court intellectuals were treated royally, they indemnified rulers for any and all abuses of the peasantry. As French philosopher Bertrand Jouvenal noted in 1945, “Authority can never be too despotic for the speculative man, so long as he deludes himself that its arbitrary force will further his plans.”

“Respectable political thought” by definition is incapable of admitting the danger of power. Respectable thought begins by respecting politics — and ends up ignoring government crimes and lies. President George W. Bush could not have so easily suspended habeas corpus if the intellectual elite had not previously convinced Americans that there is no danger of tyranny at home.

The high price of self-evident truths

Right-thinking Washingtonians quickly learn to avoid outlaw inferences. An “outlaw inference” is any induction which would contradict a self-evident truth.

And who determines the self-evident truths? The political establishment.

Outlaw inferences can result in instant banishment from respectable society — and from the jobs and contacts which assure a steady cash flow and plenty of invitations to social events. Washington’s self-evident truths function like an intellectual antivirus program — automatically deleting facts that contradict the verities upon which the political system rests.

At the time of the American Revolution, people recognized that the government’s authority to abuse one citizen put all citizens in peril. Blackstone, the British legal philosopher revered by many of the Founding Fathers, warned in the 1770s that for the government to kill a man or seize his property “without accusation or trial, would be so gross and notorious an act of despotism, as must at once convey the alarm of tyranny throughout the whole nation.”

The Founding Fathers fought the revolution based on early warning signals. They studied the words of British rulers and recognized the coming perils. But fewer people can hear the political alarm bells with each passing decade. Americans have been trained to view each government abuse in isolation. As long as liberties are snuffed piecemeal, no respectable person can say that there is a trend. Only alarmists worry about government abuses. Lessons drawn from political abuses are almost always isolated: that this particular politician should not have been trusted last time — or that particular policy was not optimal at that specific time.

Leviathan logic 101

The first principle of D.C. logic is that there is never enough evidence to condemn  Leviathan. Conversely, almost any dubious assertion is sufficient to sanctify or expand government power.

The prevailing D.C. rules of evidence rest upon trust in the current regime. According to Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Col.), the key question regarding the 2002 congressional resolution to permit the president to attack Iraq was: “Do you believe in the veracity of the President of the United States?”

The Bush team sneered down any arguments against a rush to war. When Defense Secretary Rumsfeld was asked in February 2002 about evidence that Iraq supplied weapons of mass destruction to terrorists, he replied that “the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.” This was Leviathan logic at its best, but Rumsfeld was applauded for his retort. Childlike wordplay sufficed for a justification to commence bombing foreigners. The fact that Rumsfeld’s standard would permit the United States to attack almost anywhere was irrelevant.

Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz commented on the eve of the Iraqi government’s release of a twelve-thousand-page report on its weapons: “If [Saddam] flatly denies that he has weapons of mass destruction, that’s good evidence [of his guilt]. If he comes forth with new programs that we didn’t know about, that’s good evidence.” Wolfowitz asserted that Saddam was guilty “until proven otherwise.” In another forum, Wolfowitz explained the “standard” which Saddam must satisfy: “It’s like the judge said about pornography. I can’t define it, but I will know it when I see it.” When the news media continued requesting evidence, Rumsfeld groused to the press corps on February 4, 2003: “The fixation on a smoking gun is fascinating to me. You all … have been watching ‘L.A. Law’ or something too much.” Rumsfeld earlier declared that there was almost nothing worse than a smoking gun: “The last thing we want to see is a smoking gun. A gun smokes after it has been fired. The goal must be to stop such an action before it happens.”

No dearth of evidence could negate the U.S. right to attack Iraq. Charles Hanley, a 30-year veteran Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter for the Associated  Press, traveled from suspected weapons site to suspected weapons site with U.N. and U.S. inspectors in Iraq in early 2003. He reported, “No smoking guns  in … almost 400 inspections.”  Hanley said such lines “would be stricken from my copy because it would strike some editors as tendentious, as … some sort of allegation rather than a fact.” The “fact” that Bush administration assertions were groundless was inconceivable — or at least unprintable — to editors.

In July 2003, Americans learned that the Bush team relied on blatantly forged documents on Niger uranium to justify the war. White House press spokesman Ari Fleischer responded to the controversy: “I think the burden is on those people who think [Saddam] didn’t have weapons of mass destruction to tell the world where they are.” This was the most creative absolution for the Iraq war.

In November 2005, at a time when more critics were asserting that the Bush administration deceived the United States into war, Vice President Cheney declared it was “not legitimate — and what I will again say is dishonest and reprehensible” to suggest “that the President of the United States or any member of his administration purposely misled the American people on pre-war intelligence.  The burden of proof was entirely on the dictator of Iraq — not on the U.N. or the United States or anyone else.”

In other words,  the burden of proof rests on anyone the U.S. government wants to attack. And U.S. government officials have the prerogative to dismiss any evidence foreign governments offer in their defense.

Exoneration via groupthink

There is a dearth of honest thinking about government in Washington in part because the conclusions are largely preordained. Anyone who reaches the wrong conclusions is likely to be ignored.

In the summer of 2004, the Senate Intelligence Committee issued its first report on the Iraq war. Committee chairman Sen. Pat Roberts (R-KS) announced that “the intelligence community was suffering from what we call a collective  groupthink” and that the groupthink “also extended to our allies and to the United Nations.” The “groupthink” verdict allowed the political herd to absolve its own stampede and helped defuse Bush’s biggest liability in his reelection campaign. The Senate committee postponed the release of a separate report on the administration’s deceitful use of the classified intelligence until after Bush was reelected.

“Groupthink” is not a problem: it is a career path for aspiring Washingtonians. An erroneous opinion is exonerated if it is shared by more than 80 percent of the experts. “Herd-certified” is the ultimate intellectual safety net.

The flip side of “groupthink” is the reflexive derision toward people foolish enough not to follow their betters. “Guilt by association” has a starring role in D.C. debates. The only grounds needed to make evidence inadmissible is that wackos believe such things.

In 2007, Fox News talk show host Bill O’Reilly declared that at the beginning of the war in Iraq,  “everybody in the country [was] behind it, except the kooks.” Thus, O’Reilly was justified in disregarding all opposition of the invasion. The fact that war opponents were kooks made irrelevant the bothersome fact that they were right. The “kooks” included U.N. weapons inspectors, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, many foreign governments, and journalists whose articles were too controversial for print.

Though the evidence for attacking Iraq was empirically flawed, the logic remained politically impeccable. The New Yorker reported in late 2006 that some White House officials had concluded, regarding Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program, that “the lack of evidence means they must have it.” President Bush declared in August 2007 that “it’s up to Iran to prove to the world that they’re a stabilizing force as opposed to a destabilizing force.” Regardless of his own paltry record as a “stabilizing force,” Bush’s assertion failed to generate ridicule.

The fact that ideas often appear to drive public policy is no evidence that sound reasoning propels  the ideas. Politicians use ideas to consecrate their pursuit of power. Logic often has no more sway in political disputes than it does in fraternity drinking contests. As long as the ruling class has vast benefits to distribute, intellectual servility will continue to be lavishly rewarded.

This article was originally published in the March 2025 issue of Future of Freedom.

The post Leviathan Logic Versus Individual Liberty appeared first on LewRockwell.

California’s decline has grown so stark that even steadfast Democratic allies can no longer deny the truth: the state’s extreme left-wing policies have plunged it into chaos.

Aaron Levie, founder and CEO of Box, has joined the chorus of voices condemning the Democratic Party’s mismanagement of California, asserting that the party’s entire political apparatus demands a complete overhaul. Levie, who endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election, made the pointed remarks during an interview with co-founder and former Lattice CEO, Jack Altman.

“We live in California. It should be like the greatest place on Earth on every dimension. How do you beat this weather? You’ve completely created the atmosphere of every major tech company,” Levie explained. You have Stanford, Berkeley, Caltech. You have institutions and all the venture capital. You’re sitting on this incredible asset and then literally you can’t make it affordable to live here. That’s just insane.”

.@levie to @jaltma: Democrats Are To Blame For California’s ‘Insane’ Affordability Crisis

“We live in California. It should be like the greatest place on Earth on every dimension. How do you beat this weather? You’ve completely created the atmosphere of every major tech… pic.twitter.com/WYPgRAjCVt

— Josh Caplan (@joshdcaplan) March 25, 2025

“That’s totally insane and that is 100% due to the bureaucracy of our state. That’s basically a Democrat problem,” the Box CEO added. “Democrats can’t out message that with their policy views because their policy views are in many cases just the wrong policy views. You actually just have to build and you have to create an environment where you can build things.”

Levie concluded his critique by urging a “reset” for the Democrats.

California’s affordability crisis has reached a critical juncture, with soaring housing costs, stagnant wages, and rising living expenses pushing many residents to the brink.

In major cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco, median home prices have skyrocketed beyond $1 million—Redfin reports $1.35 million in San Francisco and $1.05 million in Los Angeles as of February 2025—far outpacing the national average of $371,200 according to Zillow, while rents consume a disproportionate share of income for working families, with the California Budget and Policy Center noting over 50% of renters spend more than 30% of their income on housing.

Coupled with high taxes (the Tax Foundation pegs California’s tax burden at 11.5% of income in 2025), steep utility rates (CPUC data shows electricity at 30 cents per kWh), and grocery prices outstripping inflation (a USDA report cites a 19% rise since 2020), the state has become a challenging place for all but the wealthiest to thrive.

This economic squeeze has fueled an exodus of middle- and low-income households—the U.S. Census Bureau recorded a net loss of 500,000 residents from 2020–2024—exacerbating labor shortages and straining local economies, as the Public Policy Institute of California highlights in its 2025 labor market analysis.

Levie’s sober talk about the Democrats aligns with growing voter dissatisfaction, as many within the party are unhappy with it’s direction since President Donald Trump’s reelection to the White House.

A plurality of voters (40%) believe the Democratic Party has no clear strategy for countering Trump, according to a survey by the liberal firm Blueprint, first reported by POLITICO. Another 24% said the party does have an ineffective plan.

If only Californians could convince their governor-turned-podcaster Gavin Newsom to do something about it.

Reprinted with permission from Zero Hedge.

The post Pro-Kamala Harris Tech Titan Admits Democrats Destroyed California appeared first on LewRockwell.

America’s military budget is more than just numbers on a page—it’s a reflection of the priorities that shape our society. Right now, that nearly trillion dollar budget is bloated, inefficient, and far removed from the needs of everyday Americans. We’ve identified six simple yet effective ways to cut at least $100 billion from the Pentagon’s budget—without sacrificing even the most hawkish of war hawk’s sense of national security. Ready to take the scissors to that excess spending? Here’s how we can do it.

1. Halt the F-35 Program (Save $12B+ per year)

The F-35 is the poster child for military mismanagement. It’s a fighter jet that was supposed to revolutionize our military—except it’s plagued by cost overruns, delays, and underperformance. Despite a projected lifetime cost of over $2 trillion, this aircraft only meets mission requirements about 30% of the time. If we ended or paused the F-35 program now, we’d free up $12 billion annually. The military-industrial complex can afford a few less fancy jets that destroy land and lives, especially when they don’t even do their job right.

2. Reassess Long-Range Missile Defense (Save $9.3B+ per year)

For over half a century, we’ve sunk an eye-watering $400 billion into long-range missile defense systems that have never delivered. The cold, hard truth is these systems are ineffective against real-world threats. In fact, no missile defense technology has ever proven capable of neutralizing an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) attack. Cutting back on these programs would save us $9.3 billion per year—money that could be better spent on diplomacy initiatives that actually work.

3. Cut the Sentinel ICBM Program (Save $3.7B+ per year)

ICBMs were once the crown jewels of our nuclear deterrence strategy, but they’re outdated in today’s geopolitical climate. With more reliable and flexible platforms like submarines, bombers, and emerging hypersonic technologies, maintaining an expensive, high-risk ICBM arsenal makes little sense. Ending the Sentinel ICBM program would save taxpayers $3.7 billion annually, and even more in the long run, with total savings over its lifespan estimated at $310 billion. It’s time to face facts: we don’t need to keep pouring money into a strategy that no longer aligns with modern defense needs. Especially when the best nuclear deterrence system is ending nuclear weapons programs to begin with.

4. Cease Procurement of Aircraft Carriers (Save $2.3B+ per year)

Aircraft carriers are relics of a bygone era, costing billions to build and maintain, while becoming increasingly vulnerable to modern missile technology. These floating cities are no longer the symbols of naval power they once were. By halting new aircraft carrier procurements, we can save $2.3 billion a year—money that could be better allocated to ways that actually keep us safe in the 21st century like housing, healthcare or climate justice.

5. Cut Redundant Contracts by 15% (Save $26B per year)

The Pentagon’s bureaucracy is a cash cow for contractors—more than 500,000 private sector workers are paid to do redundant and often wasteful work. Many contracts overlap or go toward projects that are, frankly, unnecessary. Cutting back just 15% on these contracts would save $26 billion annually. That’s a massive chunk of change that could be reallocated to more efficient and effective defense projects. Want a starting point? Look no further than SpaceX’s lucrative contracts—it’s time we hold these companies accountable.Maybe DOGE knows a guy there?

6. Prioritize Diplomacy (Save $50B+ per year)

The best way to avoid unnecessary military spending is to prevent conflicts from happening in the first place. By focusing on diplomatic solutions instead of military interventions, we can scale back expensive overseas bases, reduce troop deployments, and use reserves and National Guard units more effectively. This shift could save up to $50 billion a year—and possibly as much as $100 billion in the long term. It’s about time we put our resources into creating peaceful solutions rather than preparing for endless wars.

What Could We Do with the $100 Billion in Savings?

The possibilities are endless when we take a more practical approach to national security spending. What could we do with the $100 billion we save? Here’s a snapshot of just some of the incredible investments we could make in American society:

• 787,255 Registered Nurses: Filling critical healthcare gaps nationwide.

• 10.39 million Public Housing Units: Making affordable housing a reality for families across the country.

• 2.29 million Jobs at $15/hour: Providing good jobs with benefits, boosting the economy.

• 1.03 million Elementary School Teachers: Giving our children the education they deserve.

• 579,999 Clean Energy Jobs: Building a sustainable, green future for the next generation.

• 7.81 million Head Start Slots: Giving young children a foundation for lifelong success.

• 5.88 million Military Veterans receiving VA medical care: Ensuring those who served our country receive the care they earned.

The Bottom Line?

Cutting $100 billion from the Pentagon budget isn’t just a pipe dream—it’s a tangible, achievable plan that could deliver real benefits to everyday Americans. While it’s just a starting point, this reduction would allow us to prioritize what truly matters: healthcare, education, infrastructure, and the well-being of our people. If we’re going to spend taxpayer dollars, let’s make sure they go toward initiatives that directly benefit the lives of the citizens who fund them.

The original source of this article is Global Research.

The post Dear DOGE: Here’s How to Cut the Pentagon Budget by $100 Billion in Six Easy Steps appeared first on LewRockwell.

Over the last week, one of the legacy media’s chief talking points is that the Trump administration is precipitating a “constitutional crisis” by, among other things, criticizing federal judges. It’s ok to criticize judges. Just ask Justice Elena Kagan, who says we should criticize the Supreme Court if we don’t like their decisions. Justices Kagan, Sotomayor, and Jackson have not hesitated to harshly criticize the Court’s conservative majority in speeches and interviews. There is a long history of elected officials criticizing judges, and that shouldn’t surprise us, because judges and elected officials are all part of the unending struggle for political power to bend the state apparatus to the will of the party that won the last round.

Democrats have been lambasting the Supreme Court for years without concern about the separation of powers or fear of fomenting a constitutional crisis. Joe Biden urged sweeping constitutional changes to mandate term limits for Supreme Court Justices, whose decisions he characterized as “extreme opinions,” and a “code of ethics” to give their opponents opportunities to force them off decisions or impeach them. Democrats, now parading as defenders of the separation of powers, have demanded they obtain a such a code to give them leverage over Justices who stray from their preferred interpretations of law. Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer threatened Justices by name in front of the Supreme Court building during oral arguments. When Justices don’t follow the Democratic Party line, Democrats denounce them as “extreme” and “far-right,” forgetting the tender place in their hearts for the separation of powers.

Presidents criticizing the courts and even questioning their authority is nothing new. In fact, it has happened repeatedly throughout American history. In Marbury v. Madison (1803), the case that established the principle of judicial review, Secretary of State James Madison refused to present his case to the Court, being convinced that the Supreme Court lacked the authority to make him deliver a commission to Petitioner William Marbury to serve as a D.C. Justice of the Peace. Chief Justice John Marshall, Madison’s predecessor as Secretary of State and his political opponent, managed to strengthen the power of the judiciary with the principle of judicial review and avoid ordering Madison to deliver the commission, which Madison and President Thomas Jefferson would certainly have refused to do. In Georgia v. Worcester (1832), President Andrew Jackson refused to enforce a judgment of the Marshall Court that the State of Georgia could not imprison Vermont missionary Samuel Worcester for going onto Cherokee territory, where he had preached and encouraged the Cherokee to seek legal relief from efforts to expel them from Georgia. “John Marshall has made his decision,” Jackson is reputed to have said. “Now let him enforce it.” Abraham Lincoln, in response to Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857), which held in part that the federal government could not regulate slavery in the territories, attacked judicial review as antithetical to republican government and signed into law a statute that banned slavery in the territories, ignoring the Court’s Dred Scott decision. Lincoln also disregarded the Court’s decision in Ex parte Merryman (1861) that only Congress could suspend the writ of habeas corpus, attacking the Court in his 1861 address to a Special Session of Congress, where Merryman’s and Dred Scott’s author Chief Justice Taney was present: “would not the official oath be broken if the Government should be overthrown when it was believed that disregarding the single law would tend to preserve it?” Theodore Roosevelt invoked Lincoln’s rejection of judicial supremacy in attacking Supreme Court decisions that rejected Progressive encroachments on limited government and freedom of contract.  In perhaps the most well-known of these incidents, Franklin Roosevelt presented to the public and Congress a plan to pack the Supreme Court with new Justices who would support his New Deal policies, suggesting that the current Court suffered from a “hardening of the judicial arteries” and was out of touch with the country’s needs. This plan was abandoned after Justice Owen Roberts changed his vote in an important case that opened the way for much of Roosevelt’s New Deal legislation.

Alexander Hamilton famously suggested that the judiciary would be the “least dangerous” branch of government under the Constitution, meaning that courts would not have the policy making role reserved for the elected branches. This is one prediction about the Constitution that has not aged well. The courts have acquired a policy making role, and it is for this reason that we should expect to see conflict between the elected branches and the courts during periods of high political tension. The examples from American political history make clear that this has happened repeatedly, so it is reasonable to hypothesize that we will see it in times of severe political conflict. Furthermore, research has made clear that the ideology and policy preferences of judges exert a powerful influence over their decisions, so it is not an idle claim that judges may have done so in a particular case. The left wants you to believe that President Trump’s criticism of the courts means that a unique and perilous “constitutional crisis” is looming. They are hoping that you have forgotten about their recent attacks on the Supreme Court and historical examples of presidents criticizing the courts and questioning their authority in periods of high political tension.

It is a myth that judges are apolitical arbiters of sacrosanct legal principles. Judges are policymakers who seek to get results they want in cases and to establish legal principles and policies they prefer. They are fully part of the struggle for power that is the essence of politics. Their decisions are fair game for criticism, and they always have been.

The post A Phony Crisis appeared first on LewRockwell.

According to the United Nations, “Climate change is a global emergency that goes beyond national borders.” From the World Economic Forum, “Urgent global action must be taken to reduce emissions and safeguard human health from the multi-pronged negative impacts of climate change globally.”

From every multinational institution in the world, we hear the same message. From the World Bank, “The world is battling a perfect storm of climate, conflict, economic, and nature crises.” From the World Health Organization, “Between 2030 and 2050, climate change is expected to cause approximately 250,000 additional deaths per year from malnutrition, malaria, diarrhea, and heat.”

A major problem with all this unanimity over this “emergency” is the fact that for at least half of all people living in Western nations in 2025, the UN, WEF, WHO, and World Bank have no credibility. We don’t want to “own nothing and be happy” as our middle class is crushed. We don’t want the only politically acceptable way to maintain national economic growth to rely on population replacement. And with only the slightest numeracy, we see apocalyptic proclamations as lacking substance.

For example, while 250,000 “additional deaths per year” is tragic, worldwide estimates of total deaths are not quite 70 million per year. These “additional deaths” constitute a 0.36 percent increase over that baseline, just over one-third of one percent. Not even a rounding error.

Similarly, an alarmist prediction from NASA is that “Antarctica is losing ice mass (melting) at an average rate of about 150 billion tons per year, and Greenland is losing about 270 billion tons per year, adding to sea level rise.” Let’s unpack that a bit. A billion tons is a gigaton, equivalent in volume to one cubic kilometer. So Antarctica is losing 150 cubic kilometers of ice per year. But Antarctica has an estimated total ice mass of 30 million cubic kilometers. Which means Antarctica is losing about one twenty-thousandth of one percent of its total ice mass per year. That is well below the accuracy of measurement. It is an estimate, and the conclusion it suggests is of no significance.

One may wonder about Greenland, with “only” 2.9 million cubic kilometers of ice, melting at an estimated rate of 270 gigatons per year. But that still yields a rate of loss of less than one one-hundredth of one percent per year, which is almost certainly below the ability to actually gauge total ice mass and total annual ice loss.

What about sea level rise? Here again, basic math yields underwhelming conclusions. The total surface area of the world’s oceans is 361 million square kilometers. If you spread 420 gigatons over that surface (Greenland and Antarctica’s melting combined), you get a sea level rise of not quite 1.2 millimeters per year. This is, again, so insignificant that it is below the threshold of our ability to measure.

These fundamental facts will turn anyone willing to do even basic fact-checking into a cynic. What’s really going on? We get at least a glimpse of truth from the above quotation from the World Bank, where they ascribe the challenges of humanity to several causes: “climate, conflict, economic, and nature crises.” There’s value in the distinctions they make. They list “nature crisis” as distinct from “climate,” and at least explicitly, they don’t even cite “climate” as resulting from some anthropogenically generated trend of increasing temperatures and increasingly extreme weather. They just say “climate.”

Which brings us to the point: Conflict and economic crises are far bigger sources of human misery, and we face serious environmental challenges that have little to do with climate change and more to do with how we manage our industry, our wilderness, and our natural resources. And we are face “climate” challenges even when catastrophic climate events have nothing to do with any alleged “climate crisis.”

A perfect example of how the climate “crisis” narrative is falsely applied when, in fact, the climate-related catastrophe would have happened anyway is found in the disastrous floods that devastated Pakistan in 2022. Despite the doomsday spin from PBS (etc.), these floods were not abnormal because of “climate change.” They were an abnormal catastrophe because in just 60 years, the population of that nation has grown from 45 million to 240 million people. They’ve channelized their rivers, built dense new settlements onto what were once floodplains and other marginal land, they’ve denuded their forests, which took away the capacity to absorb runoff, and they’ve paved thousands of square miles, creating impervious surfaces where water can’t percolate. Of course, a big storm made a mess. The weather didn’t change. The nation changed.

The disaster story repeats everywhere. Contrary to the narrative, the primary cause is not “climate change.” Bigger tsunamis? Maybe it’s because coastal aquifers were overdrafted, which caused land subsidence, or because previously uninhabited tidelands were settled because the population quintupled in less than two generations, and because coastal mangrove forests were destroyed, which used to attenuate big waves. What about deforestation? Perhaps because these nations have been denied the ability to develop natural gas and hydroelectric power, they’re stripping away the forests for fuel to cook their food. In some cases, they’re burning their forests to make room for biofuel plantations, in a towering display of irony and corruption.

Read the Whole Article

The post Challenging the Climate Crisis Narrative appeared first on LewRockwell.

Writes Tim McGraw:

Hi Ed,   Do You Think You’ll Ever Know? Ed Curtin

I enjoyed reading your latest article on LRC. Yeah, you got it all right. Well done! It is very frustrating how the media, government, religion, or any other institution never tells us the truth. We only get images, sound bites, half the story, or less. As you say, no conclusions are drawn—well, unless the conclusion is a lie, e.g., CO2 causes global warming or Bin Laden organized the 9/11 attacks (the passport from a hijacker found in the street under the towers proves it.)

You are right about movies, too. Every movie I’ve seen, well, almost every one, since 2002, has a subtle message or ten telling me to believe in the state and not to believe in individuals or the family. In almost every TV show, the father is absent, an idiot, or the killer.

I rarely read articles on the internet anymore. Yours are always an exception. I enjoy your observations and writings. I still read books, if slowly. I am currently reading “Love & Terror on the Howling Plains of Nowhere” by Poe Ballantine. It’s a good non-fiction book set in Chadron, Nebraska of all places. The characters are interesting, and there is a murder on the prairie. I haven’t finished the book, but I don’t think the murder has ever been solved.

The bad guys do get away with murder. I see it in the news every day. That’s a fact.

The post Do You Think You’ll Ever Know? appeared first on LewRockwell.

Obituary for my father.

Richard Warner Carlson died at 84 on March 24, 2025 at home in Boca Grande, Florida after six weeks of illness. He refused all painkillers to the end and left this world with dignity and clarity, holding the hands of his children with his dogs at his… pic.twitter.com/4lMygMkSIT

— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) March 26, 2025

The post Tucker Carlson’s Obit for His Father appeared first on LewRockwell.

Ginny Garner wrote:

Lew,

It is difficult for some people to understand why so many others, even family members and friends, do not understand the seriousness of the circumstances we find ourselves in in America and throughout the world. Archbishop Fulton Sheen had very prescient, indeed timeless, words that explain why this is so.

pic.twitter.com/J0UEgJMOVZ

— Sanoj Thomas (@Sanothomas) March 26, 2025

The post Why Are So Many Blind to Reality? Archbishop Fulton Sheen Explains appeared first on LewRockwell.

David Martin wrote:

“The Kennedys tried to fix the problem.”  –  Alice Irby

The post The JFK Israel Connection by Candace Owens appeared first on LewRockwell.

Click Here:

Adam Garrie

The post Dr. Jay Bhattacharya and Dr. Marty Makary Confirmed to Lead NIH and FDA, Respectively appeared first on LewRockwell.

The post US Intel: Iran Is NOT Building A Nuclear Weapon (So Why Are We Threatening Them?) appeared first on LewRockwell.

Dom Armentano writes:

Despite the Trump Administration’s nonsense claim that the alleged “drone” activity in New Jersey and elsewhere was “FAA authorized”, the actual UFO mystery continues and becomes even more mysterious. 

See this latest summary of events.

The post The “Drone” Mystery Continues appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, John Smith. 

Gold Coast Bulletin

The post Dutch Christian groups fund illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank appeared first on LewRockwell.

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

____________________________________________________________________________________

(Versione audio della traduzione disponibile qui: https://open.substack.com/pub/fsimoncelli/p/il-nostro-incubo-quinquennale-e-finalmente)

La conferma di Robert F. Kennedy Jr. come Segretario della Salute e dei Servizi Umani negli Stati Uniti è la condanna definitiva della risposta politica al Covid.

Il piano di lockdown fino alla vaccinazione obbligatoria è stato il più grande sforzo di governo e industria su scala globale nella storia. Era tutto progettato per trasferire ricchezza alle industrie vincenti (farmaceutica, vendita al dettaglio online, servizi di streaming, istruzione online), dividere e conquistare la popolazione e consolidare il potere nello stato amministrativo.

Nel 2021 Robert F. Kennedy Jr. era emerso come il critico più esplicito, erudito e informato di quel piano. In due libri brillanti, The Real Anthony Fauci e The Wuhan Cover-Up, ha documentato l'intera sua impresa e ha datato l'evoluzione dell'industria pandemica dal suo inizio nel dopoguerra fino a oggi. Non c'era modo di leggere questi libri e pensare alla cabala corporativa allo stesso modo.

Le circostanze che hanno portato alla sua nomina al Dipartimento della salute sono di per sé improbabili e notevoli. Considerando il presidente Biden un candidato debole, uno che aveva imposto mascherine e iniezioni alla popolazione e censurato brutalmente tecnologia e stampa, ha deciso di candidarsi alla presidenza, presumendo che ci sarebbero state delle primarie aperte. Non ce n'è stata alcuna, quindi è stato costretto a una corsa da indipendente.

Il suo sforzo è stato reso vano dalla solita dinamica politica che capita a ogni candidato indipendente, troppe barriere all'accesso alle schede elettorali più la solita logica della Legge di Duverger. Ciò ha messo la sua campagna in una situazione difficile. Allo stesso tempo due enormi cambiamenti politici erano diventati chiari: il Partito Democratico era diventato un veicolo e una facciata principalmente per lo stato amministrativo, mentre il Partito Repubblicano veniva preso in consegna dai rifugiati dei Democratici, creando di fatto un nuovo partito Trump dai resti degli altri due.

Tutto il resto è storia. Trump si è unito a Elon Musk per fare al governo federale quello che quest'ultimo aveva fatto quando aveva preso il controllo di Twitter: privatizzare l'azienda, svuotare il posto dalle ingerenze federali e licenziare 4 dipendenti su 5. Nel mezzo di tutto questo, e di fronte a una terrificante raffica di attacchi legali, Trump ha schivato il proiettile di un assassino. Ciò ha scatenato terribili ricordi del padre e dello zio di Robert F. Kennedy Jr. e ha quindi deciso di unire gli sforzi con lui.

Nel giro di poche settimane abbiamo avuto una nuova coalizione che ha riunito vecchi antagonisti, poiché molte persone e gruppi hanno realizzato nello stesso istante di avere interessi congiunti: ripulire il cartello corporativo. Con la piattaforma X appena liberata per raggiungere il pubblico, è nato lo slogan MAGA/MAHA/DOGE.

Trump ha vinto e ha scelto Robert F. Kennedy Jr. per guidare il Dipartimento della salute più potente al mondo. L'ostacolo era la conferma al Senato, ma ciò è stato superato attraverso un'incredibile triangolazione che ha reso estremamente difficile votare no.

Nel quadro generale potete misurare la portata di questo titanico cambiamento nella politica americana dal modo in cui si sono allineati i voti al Senato. Tutti i repubblicani tranne uno hanno votato per il rampollo più importante del Partito Democratico affinché guidasse l'impero sanitario, mentre tutti i democratici hanno votato no. Questo da solo è sorprendente e una testimonianza del potere della lobby farmaceutica che, durante le udienze, è stata smascherata come la mano nascosta dietro i più accaniti oppositori della sua conferma.

Il nostro incubo è finito? Non ancora. Non è ancora trascorso nemmeno un mese dall'inizio del secondo mandato di Donald Trump, e non è ancora chiaro quanta autorità eserciti realmente sul tentacolare ramo esecutivo. A dire il vero nessuno riesce nemmeno a mettersi d'accordo su quanto sia grande questa branca: tra i 2,2 e i 3 milioni di dipendenti e tra le 400 e le 450 agenzie governative. Il dissesto finanziario in questo ambito è impensabile e ben peggiore di quanto persino il più grande cinico possa immaginare.

Cinque ex-segretari del Tesoro hanno pubblicato sulle pagine del New York Times un'affermazione scioccante: “Il sistema di pagamento della nazione è stato gestito da un gruppo molto ristretto di dipendenti pubblici apartitici”. Tra questi c'era un dipendente chiamato “assistente segretario fiscale, un incarico che per gli otto decenni precedenti era stato riservato esclusivamente ai dipendenti pubblici per garantire l'imparzialità e la fiducia del pubblico nella gestione e nel pagamento dei fondi federali”.

Non c'è nemmeno bisogno di leggere tra le righe. Ciò significa che nessuna persona eletta dal popolo e nessuno nominato da tale persona ha accesso ai libri contabili federali dal 1946. Ciò va oltre ogni immaginazione. Nessun proprietario di alcuna azienda tollererebbe mai di essere escluso dagli uffici contabili e dai sistemi di pagamento. E nessuna azienda può offrire azioni pubbliche senza verifiche indipendenti e libri contabili aperti.

Eppure sono passati quasi 80 anni, durante i quali nessuna delle due cose è stata vera per questa gigantesca impresa chiamata governo federale. Ciò significa che $193.000 miliardi sono stati spesi da un'istituzione che non ha mai dovuto affrontare una supervisione granulare da parte del popolo e non ha mai soddisfatto le normali richieste che ogni impresa affronta ogni giorno.

L'abitudine a Washington è stata quella di trattare ogni leader eletto e le sue nomine come marionette temporanee e transitorie, persone che vanno e vengono e disturbano poco o nulla le normali operazioni di governo. Questa nuova amministrazione sembra avere ogni intenzione di cambiare le cose, ma il lavoro è incredibilmente impegnativo. Per quanto sostegno pubblico il MAGA/MAHA/DOGE godano per ora, e per quanto molte persone di questi gruppi si stiano inserendo nella struttura di potere, sono in inferiorità numerica e superati in astuzia da milioni di agenti del vecchio ordine.

Questa transizione non sarà facile semmai accadrà.

L'inerzia del vecchio ordine è potente. Anche sulla questione della salute e delle pandemie, c'è già confusione. La CBS News ha riferito che il lealista di Fauci e promotore dell'mRNA, Gerald Parker, dirigerà l'Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response della Casa Bianca. L'articolo cita “funzionari sanitari” non identificati e la nomina è stata celebrata da Scott Gottlieb, il membro del consiglio di amministrazione di Pfizer che ha spinto Trump a sostenere i lockdown nel 2020.

Questa nomina non è stata confermata dalla Casa Bianca. Non sappiamo se l'OPPR, creato dallo statuto del Congresso, verrà finanziato. Il giornalista non rivelerà le sue fonti, sollevando la questione del perché qualsiasi nomina che abbia a che fare con la salute debba essere circondata da tali macchinazioni degne di un film di spionaggio.

Se Parker si trincera in questa posizione e viene dichiarata un'altra emergenza sanitaria, questa volta per l'influenza aviaria, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. non sarà affatto in una posizione decisionale.

I problemi più grandi hanno a che fare con una domanda: il presidente è davvero responsabile del ramo esecutivo? Può assumere e licenziare? Può spendere soldi o rifiutarsi di spenderli? Può stabilire le linee di politica delle agenzie?

Si potrebbe supporre che la risposta a queste domande si trovi nell'articolo 2, sezione 1: “Il potere esecutivo sarà conferito al presidente degli Stati Uniti d'America”. Eppure quella frase è stata scritta quasi 100 anni prima che il Congresso creasse questa cosa chiamata “civil service” che non compare da nessuna parte nella Costituzione. Questo quarto ramo è cresciuto in dimensioni e potere fino a travolgere sia la presidenza che la legislatura.

I tribunali dovranno risolvere la questione e una valanga di cause legali ha già colpito la nuova amministrazione per aver osato presumere il controllo sulle agenzie governative e sulle loro attività di cui il presidente è e deve necessariamente essere ritenuto responsabile. Le corti federali inferiori sembrano chiedere che il presidente lo sia solo di facciata, mentre la Corte Suprema potrebbe avere un'opinione diversa.

La tanto sbandierata “crisi costituzionale” non è altro che un tentativo di riaffermare il disegno costituzionale originale del governo federale.

Questo è il modello di base in cui Robert F. Kennedy Jr. prende il potere e supervisiona tutte le sotto-agenzie. Queste agenzie governative hanno svolto un ruolo enorme nel coprire l'attacco alla libertà e ai diritti per cinque anni. La sua conferma è un simbolico ripudio delle più eclatanti linee di politica pubbliche mai registrate. E tuttavia il ripudio è del tutto implicito: non c'è stata alcuna commissione, nessuna ammissione di errore, nessuno è stato ritenuto veramente responsabile.

La traiettoria in cui ci troviamo offre molte ragioni per festeggiare, ma tornate sobri in fretta. C'è ancora molta strada da fare ed enormi barriere da superare per arrivare al punto in cui saremo di nuovo davvero al sicuro dal complesso corporativo/statalista e dai loro complotti per derubare la popolazione dei diritti e delle libertà.

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

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

One of the dumbest narratives we’re asked to swallow about Palestinians is that they are guilty of anti-Jewish prejudice which makes them comparable to Nazis. Palestinians didn’t choose the religion of their oppressors; any hatred they have toward Israelis is because Israelis are the ones oppressing and murdering them, not because of their religion. Expecting Palestinians not to hate the oppressors who hate them just because those oppressors happen to be Jewish is shitbrained thinking.

Every so often you’ll see the IDF plant a copy of Mein Kampf in a building in Gaza and then wave it around as though it would somehow justify what Israel is doing to the Palestinians, and it’s just so stupid. The reason we’ve come to abhor hatred toward Jews in the west is because we know the west has an extensive history of committing atrocities against Jewish people because of their religion.

Palestinians harbor no such prejudice and are guilty of no such crimes. Any violence they’ve inflicted upon Israelis has been in an effort to keep their land and resist tyrannical oppression, not because they have some weird European Hitlerite hatred toward Jews. Anytime you hear Palestinians talk about “the Jews” they’re always talking solely and exclusively about their oppressors in the context of the occupation; they’re not talking about some Jewish guy in Canada.

Palestinians would hate their oppressors whether the oppression was being inflicted by Hindus, Buddhists or Catholics. That’s normal. That’s how people’s minds and emotions work; we hate people who hate us, and we hate people who abuse us. Any failure to understand this is a failure to put yourself in someone else’s shoes and imagine what it would be like to live in their situation. It’s a sign that you lack normal human empathy.

❖

The world needs Israel. Without Israel where would sexual predators go for safety and protection? Where would we get our surveillance technology? Who would use human targets to field test new kinds of murder robots, military explosives and AI systems used to kill entire families?

❖

One of the most evil things happening in the world today is the way human beings in Gaza are being used as laboratory guinea pigs to field test new technology for the military industrial complex. https://t.co/yF3wY4WbV0

— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) March 22, 2025

❖

Critics of Israel should familiarize themselves with Hitchens’s razor: “What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence.”

Whether it’s beheaded babies, mass rapes, Hamas bases in hospitals, or Hamas killing the Bibas kids with their bare hands, if it’s being asserted without evidence, it can be immediately dismissed.

❖

It is a well-documented fact that Israel and its supporters use lobbying, campaign funding and blackmail to exert influence over western nations. It is also a fact that the US empire has the power to stop Israel from doing this at any time, but chooses not to. The empire managers in the official elected government don’t do anything to stop these influence operations, nor do the empire managers in the far more powerful unelected national security state. Does anyone really believe Israel would still be exerting such massive influence over the US government if the CIA determined that this was impeding their agendas of global domination?

It follows that the Zionist influence operations exist because the empire wants them to. The artificially manufactured support for Israel has been deemed a necessary evil to help ensure constant violence, division and instability in the middle east and justify endless military presence in a crucial geostrategic region which, if left to its own devices, might unite and conduct its affairs in a way that is disadvantageous to western interests.

There are many other nations in the middle east who are aligned with the US and are used to advance its interests in the region, but none of them are fully dependent on support from the US government for their continued existence. It’s a completely artificial construct that was inserted into the middle east like a glass shard into a foot, and its continued existence benefits both the settler colonialists who live there and the long-term hegemonic interests of the US-centralized empire.

I say all this to point out that the west isn’t some passive innocent victim of manipulations by the big mean tyrant Israel. It is just as guilty of Israel’s crimes as Israel itself, because those crimes are inseparable from the western empire as a whole. You see some on the right trying to argue that the west would be this wonderful virtuous place if not for the malign influence of those nasty Jews, but this narrative is refuted by the entire historical existence of the western world. The west has always been a warmongering, genocidal civilization driven by conquest and domination, and the western settler-colonialist project of Israel is just one more manifestation of the dystopia we are living in.

❖

The only reason they keep framing this naked ethnic cleansing operation as a “war” is so that they can later say “Of course Palestinians lost that land, they fought a war and they lost” again, like they’ve been doing ever since Israel was founded. https://t.co/VrZCNMl6jL

— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) March 21, 2025

❖

Defending Trump’s warmongering in the middle east by babbling about his peacemaking efforts in Ukraine is the same as saying it’s okay for him to torch Gaza because he’s not bombing Argentina. It’s nonsensical. You don’t negate your crimes by being less criminal somewhere else.

❖

Whenever I criticize Trump’s actions in the middle east I’ll get some Democrat going “I BET YOU WISH YOU’D SUPPORTED KAMALA NOW, HUH?”

That’s not what this is, idiots. I did this exact same commentary throughout the Biden administration, because Biden is also evil. I am simply criticizing the world’s most murderous and destructive power structure and whatever empire managers happen to be sitting at the front desk while it happens. This is just what it looks like when you apply scrutiny to the empire without being a partisan hack.

❖

Bernie Sanders has been such a worthless empire simp I sometimes wonder why the Democratic Party establishment even bothered sabotaging his primary campaigns. They would have gotten another Obama, selling people false hope while advancing the interests of oligarchy and empire.

❖

Our species evolved these brains of unprecedented sophistication only to use them to destroy our biosphere, invent new ways to blow each other up, and make ourselves miserable with our own thoughts.

❖

It’s not about hostages. It’s not about Hamas. It’s not about terrorism. Those aren’t the reasons, they’re the excuses. The excuses to expel Palestinians and turn more Palestinian land into Israeli land. That’s all this has ever been about. Anyone who says otherwise is lying.

__________________

My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you want to. Go here to find video versions of my articles. If you’d prefer to listen to audio of these articles, you can subscribe to them on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud or YouTube. Go here to buy paperback editions of my writings from month to month. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.

The post Palestinians Didn’t Choose the Religion of Their Oppressors appeared first on LewRockwell.