Aggregatore di feed

When in the course of history’s twists and turns dire necessity becomes the mother of invention the hour is usually late. That’s the case with America’s septic fiscal derangement at the present time. There is simply not a snowball’s chance in the hot place that either the Trumpified GOP or the beltway blob-controlled Democrats will lift a finger to deflect America’s fiscal doomsday machine from its appointed rendezvous with disaster.

The latter stems from the UniParty’s bargain with the fiscal devil. It amounts to a coalition of convenience dedicated to the fierce perpetuation of the fiscal status quo at all corners of the budget.

For its part, the Trumpified GOP now says it will no longer be accused by the Dems of planning to throw granny out into the snow. Instead, its very own party platform now says no cuts from Medicare or Social Security. Not even a single thin dime is to be squeezed from what will be the staggering $36 trillion cost of these two programs over the next decade.

That’s right. Neither wing of the UniParty will now even utter the words entitlement reform or spending cuts in the same sentence with Social Security, which alone will cost $20 trillion over the next decade, or Medicare, which will clock in at $16 trillion.

The GOP also reiterates its long standing refrain of no tax increases in any way, shape or form. In fact, it calls for an extension of the expiring Trump tax cut (2025) at a deficit cost of $4.5 trillion over the next decade.

Such an extension, however, would bring down Federal revenues to an average of just 16.5% of GDP—the lowest level since the 1950s. And, no, it won’t even out in the wash of higher “growth” either because CBO’s Rosy Scenario already assumes loads of cumulative real growth owing to no recession or any other economic upset for the next 10-years. Effectively, CBO’s 2.0% real growth with no recession for a decade is the same thing as 3.0% growth interrupted by a normal cyclical downturn and recovery.

In any event, the resulting revenue number of $58 trillion over the 2025-2034 decade would actually give the idea of soaring red ink an altogether new definition. That’s because the baseline spending level during the same period according to CBO’s latest projections is just under $85 trillion or 24% of GDP. So as the Trumpified GOP would have it, Joe Biden’s parting public debt of $36 trillion would reach upwards of $65 trillion by the mid 2030s.

At the same time, the Beltway Blob on the Dem side of the aisle is dug in deeply on the Medicaid/ObamaCare complex and safety net programs like Food Stamps, SSI, unemployment insurance, family tax credits and child nutrition, which would cost about $13 trillion over the decade. And when push comes to shove in the cauldron of legislative battle, the GOP doesn’t have the cojones to dislodge the Dem defenses in this corner of the budget, either, despite rampant abuse and weak to non-existent work requirements for most of these programs.

Finally, we come to the Forever Wars, the Washington global hegemon, the military/industrial/intelligence/security assistance complex and the $15 trillion of baseline spending over the next decade for defense, international relations and veterans.  As it happens, the neocons, war-hawks, the internationalist busy-bodies and the beltway racketeers which infest both parties have locked up this bulging corner of the budget tighter than a drum.

In fact, there is so much loose change seeping through the budgetary cracks of this $15 trillion Warfare State bonanza that the defense think tanks, international NGO’s and multitudinous military contractor lobbying arms are in high clover. The massively swollen national security budget thus funds its own lobbying and self-justification force—a self-licking ice cream cone, as it were.

Therefore, and to summarize: From a slate of $85 trillion of total baseline spending over the next decade we have the following UniParty “No Go”” zones:

• Medicare and Social Security: $36 trillion.
• Medicaid, ObamaCare and the Safety Net: $13 trillion.
• The National Security Budget: $15 trillion;
• Net Interest on the Debt: $13 trillion.
• Total UniParty No-Go Zones: $77 trillion.
• Percent of Baseline Spending: 91%.

In short, the frozen in place UniParty fiscal equation amounts to—

• A revenue take at 17% of GDP at best.
• Politically frozen spending at 24% of GDP—or far worse in the likely event that the weighted average cost of Treasury debt happens to rise above the absurdly low 3.0% level assumed by CBO.
• Annual deficits of 7-8% of GDP or 2X the assumed nominal GDP growth rate as far as the eye can see.
• A runaway public debt that reaches $65 trillion by 2034 and 166% of GDP or $150 trillion by 2050.

Needless to say, long before the public debt reached $150 trillion the financial system would implode because even the Keynesian mad-men, mad-women and mad-theys domiciled in the Eccles Building couldn’t come up with an excuse to monetize even a small share of the tsunami of public debt now coming down the pike. And make no mistake, the only reason we are at $36 trillion today is that the Fed has enabled it politically. That is, by massively monetizing the public debt it has temporarily deferred what would have otherwise been a severe crowding out of private borrowers and escalation of yields in the bond pits.

Still, we don’t think that the public debt will get to the financial implosion point because we do not believe that American democracy is inherently suicidal. In fact, even in the context of today’s tightening fiscal vice we see the emergent shadows of a path to resolution or at least a stick-save not too far down the treacherous road ahead.

To wit, it is now exceedingly likely that Donald Trump will not only win the 2024 election, but it is also possible that his return to the Oval Office could trigger the Great Realignment that might finally shatter the UniParty’s death grip on the fiscal equation.

To be sure, we italicize the “possible” part for good reason: The Donald is one of the most unstable, inconsistent and unpredictable politicians to ever prance upon the stage of presidential politics in America—so anything can happen, even a worse mis-governance disaster than his first time around the barn.

But our impression is that he is bitterly resentful of the manner in which the UniParty and its RINO wing undermined and ruined his first presidency. So this time he may actually allow himself to be guided and re-directed by the fantastic posse of brilliant dissidents—Robert Kennedy, Nicole Shanahan, Tulsi Gabbard, Vivek Ramaswamy, Tucker Carlson, Elon Musk and JD Vance—who have recently joined or rallied to his campaign. Call it the Good Squad.

Indeed, it is this flying wedge of anti-Washington statesmen and intellects that could constructively harness and channel the Donald’s own inchoate instincts to drain the swamp. If their natural leader, RFK, can use his co-chairmanship of the transition organization to keep the neocons, RINOs and anti-abortion howlers out of the key posts in the next administration, it would make all the difference in the world. And if he could manage to parlay that role into Chief of Staff and de facto deputy president after the inauguration it would obviously be all to the better.

That’s because the GOP needs a big purge. It has been hijacked and led astray from is core fiscal mission during recent decades by ideological factions—neocons, tax cons, right to lifers, nativists and militant nationalists. But during a Trump Administration, which is led or strongly influenced by the Good Squad, the Donald’s promise to settle the Ukraine disaster quickly via partition of the artificial country that Lenin, Stalin and Khrushchev built could trigger the very realignment that is sorely needed.

To wit, much of the neocon Never Trumper brigade has already migrated to the Dems and will cement their departure through specious claims of being “Republicans for Kamala” during the balance of the campaign. But where the potential deal of the century with Putin will have its biggest impact on the Realignment will be among the neocon ranks of Republicans on Capitol Hill.

Upon the Kennedy-Trump led rapprochement with Putin, these befuddled souls will either—

• Retire from Congress disconsolately.
• Switch parties to join the rest of the bitter-end Never Trumpers.
• Or, in the main, see that their whole world view was wrong. That is, after a deal to split up Ukraine, Estonia did not fall, Poland remained free, the Brandenburg Gate was still visited by tourists not Russian troops, and that, alas, NATO could be disbanded with no harm done to Homeland Security.

In turn, what amounts to bringing the Empire Home could finally pave the way for breaking the fiscal deadlock. A Trump foreign policy formulated by the Good Squad would enable at least a 50% cut in defense spending and $5 trillion of savings from the baseline National Security budget over the next decade.

Beyond that, we seriously doubt that even the Good Squad could talk the Donald out of his 10% across the board tariff. But if it is applied to all of America’s $3 trillion of annual imports and not used as a club to start an economic war with China, so be it. A VAT (value added tax) would be a better instrument—but a Trumpified stealthy version might function as a second best alternative under the circumstances.

In any event, a stealthy VAT could generate $3-4 trillion of incremental revenue over a decade, without getting into the mischievous and counter-productive business of raising income, payroll or corporate taxes. And with the fiscal ball rolling in this manner, it is conceivable that another $4 trillion in interest savings, corporate boondoggles, green energy waste and the like might also be cobbled together by a realigned government led by the Good Squad.

Needless to say, $13 trillion of savings over the next decade would decisively stifle the current race to fiscal doom.

Finally, what happens if by some off chance Kamala wins? Or if the Good Squad gets squeezed out and shunted aside in a second Trump White House by the same protectionist, nativist and right-wing loonies who screwed the pooch the first time around?

Well, that’s why Bobby Kennedy will remain on the ballot in 40 states and thereby have the electoral base for a Realigned Anti-Washington Party in 2028. Coalesced around the leadership of the Good Squad and after 4 years of dismal partisan warfare between Kamala and the old guard GOP on Capitol Hill the electorate could be fairly begging for a Realignment next time around.

Reprinted with permission from David Stockman’s Contra Corner.

The post Coming US Election and What It Means for America’s Fiscal Future appeared first on LewRockwell.

Schooling is constrained by government requirements to pay, attend, qualify before teaching, not employ children, segregate children by age, teach specific curricula, and administer specific tests.

Free ourselves from these constraints, and the schooling that individuals will ultimately develop and choose will deliver far-better performance, price, and value-added for everybody.

Building general-purpose expertise

People in childhood through early adulthood can learn a great deal, and have abundant time.

This extended time that’s available for learning would best be used to develop general-purpose expertise of three kinds. Reading delivers the best-available understanding from standout tutors in nearly all subject areas, as focused narrative streams, at personally-customized paces. Writing consolidates information and deepens understanding. Problem solving provides analyses that better-support actions.

An individual deepens his expertise the most in any given period of time through deliberate practice learning the hardest knowledge he’s ready to learn.

An individual’s learning time is abundant, but his learning resources are scarce. The challenge in schooling is to put scarce learning resources to their most-valued uses.

Freeing individuals to produce and shop

People who are learning are individuals, and choose their actions deliberately.

Early on, an individual doesn’t know much, so his choices are limited. Even so, he can already communicate what he finds interesting and when he needs breaks.

Soon, an individual learns some basics in reading, writing, and problem solving. From then on, he can tutor others.

Such peer teaching drove the initial great advances in literacy worldwide. Peer teaching lives on now, providing schooling that’s superior and efficient. Some of the world’s poorest parents pass up tuition-free government schools and instead opt for tuition-charging private schools that thrive on peer teaching.

Peer teaching will do even more good once the peer-teaching individuals who produce the learning are freed to sell this product.

Peer teaching is the first product that individuals can produce in volume.

Producing a product adds value. Selling the product yields earnings. The individual who added the value then shops for products (adding more value) and finally buys products. Producing is the action that increases material well-being.

Each individual should peer teach. He should earn at whatever rate that others will pay for his teaching. Empowered with his parents’ support and his earnings, his parents and he should then shop for and buy the schooling products that their deliberations indicate will help him the best.

Supporting individuals and parents

In an individual’s production of tutoring, his parents’ and his shopping for learning products, and his learning, he will be supported by the balance of the inputs of touch labor:

Tutoring is presenting information to groups or individuals, and facilitating investigations into subjects by groups or individuals. Individuals producing tutoring will range from other learners who have learned a little more to experts who practice in specific subject areas and love them.

Consulting will be guidance in selecting among subjects, learning modes, and learning products (particularly books). Consulting will help an individual make wise purchases of learning products.

Caretaking will be helping people get better-prepared to learn. Caretaking will range from ensuring all individuals’ safety to helping an individual prepare for learning by improving his rest, exercise, nutrition, physical health, and mental health.

Operations management will be producing testing infrastructure, analyses of how various options might work for each individual, and other infrastructure. Testing is well-proven to enhance memory and learning. Compiling and analyzing test data and other information will suggest what learning is likely to work best for a given individual. Other infrastructure, including information technology, will support various learning modes that make use of print content, video content, or interactive-learning content, whether online or offline.

In addition to support from touch labor, individuals and parents will also have support from intermediate products and facilities.

Intermediate products can include books, interactive learning aids, recorded lectures, dedicated media, and internet resources. Artificial intelligence is being developed rapidly.

Across all intermediate products, even AI, there will be a great increase in innovation that provides meaningful improvements in learning. Innovation will earn increased rewards, since peer teaching will add resources and will also free up resources. Innovation will also be needed to mitigate producers’ increased risks, as shopping will become maximally decentralized—customized by each individual—and relentless.

Facilities will help an individual learn in various settings. Office-like designs will facilitate learning by working alone, in small groups, in larger meeting groups, and in production teams. Sufficiently-open layouts, or suitable technologies, will provide for safety monitoring.

Embracing inequalities to increase opportunities

The scale and pricing of learning operations will vary. Some individuals will receive homeschooling, which provides intensive tutoring and will incorporate the best learning products developed by others.

In all schooling, wealthier parents and children will buy innovations first. Innovations that prove to add more value in an economical-enough way will soon get mass-produced and sold. Such improvements will ultimately reach the poorest individuals, as others voluntarily provide charitable support.

Because of this, such inequality within a given cohort should be embraced. This inequality brings improvements to succeeding cohorts.

Additional inequality between individuals will result from the massive decentralization, as each individual is freed from age discrimination.

On any given subject, an individual will start out learning much the same information that others his age are learning. Soon, though, his unique interests, potential, and effort will lead him to learn different information than others his age are learning. He will lead in some subject areas and trail in others. Freed to learn at his own pace, he will learn more of the hardest knowledge that’s valuable to him and that he’s ready to learn.

This inequality of development should also be embraced. This inequality brings improvements to each individual.

Early in life, each individual will develop expertise and independence. Each will then add more value, generation upon generation.

When people are free, people innovate. Government-free schooling will be world-changing freedom.

The post Government-Free Schooling appeared first on LewRockwell.

More Money for Israel

Fuel beneath a cauldron of hate
At the heart of the Middle East mess;
Protecting an ethnic-supremacist state,
Defending its right to oppress.

With the current wanton slaughter of Palestinians in which the state of Israel is currently engaged, it’s almost enough to give outlaws a bad name.  Even NBC News puts the current death toll in the war in the small area of Gaza at 30,000, and anyone can see from the nature of the destruction of housing complexes, hospitals, schools, churches, and refugee camps, that most of the victims are Palestinian civilians, mostly women and children.

The fact of the matter, though, is that Israel is, indeed, an outlaw state and it has been so for quite a long time.  Dr. A. C. Forrest was the longtime editor of the United Church Observer of Canada (called Broadview since 2019).  His book, The unHoly Land, based upon his experience in Palestine was published in 1971.  Since that time, things have gotten immeasurably worse for the centuries-long non-Jewish residents of the region.  Our two previous articles, “Genocidal Israelis Napalmed Civilian Refugees” and  “Deep Roots of the Current Gaza Slaughter” are drawn from that book.  His short chapter 23 is entitled “Israel and International Law,” and here we reproduce it in its entirety.  We need to be reminded as we read it that since it was written the Sinai Peninsula, which had been captured by Israel in the June 1967 Six Day War was returned to Egypt by the Camp David Accords of 1978.   It looks now like things are about to get a lot worse for the Palestinians in that area, as well.

It is often said with some pride that Israel was the creation of the United Nations.  It was the UN decision to partition Palestine of November 29th, 1947, that made the State of Israel possible.  Thirty-three UN states voted for the partition; thirteen were opposed, and ten, including the United Kingdom, abstained.  The majority was secured after remarkable lobbying and last minute pressure on doubtful states.  This UN decision is referred to by many supporters of Israeli policies as the ultimate authority for Israel to proceed to declare itself a State.

It seems ironic that later unanimous decisions by the UN have been ignored.  The General Assembly vote of 99-0 condemning the annexation of East Jerusalem and calling on Israel to “rescind all measures taken, and to desist forthwith from taking any action that would alter the state of Jerusalem,” on July 4th, 1967, was flouted.  In late 1970 Israel is continuing to erect high rise apartments on Mount Scopus in East Jerusalem.

Ambassador Michael Cromay and other Israeli officials told me that there was no way by which Israel would give up any portion of Jerusalem.  Israel has repeatedly declared she would not withdraw from Jerusalem.  But the November 22nd, 1967, Security Council resolution includes as a condition of settlement the withdrawal of Israel from occupied territories.  This was adopted 15-0.

In some ways Israel’s violations of the Fourth Geneva Convention for the protection of civilian persons are even more serious.  It seems a strange paradox that Israel would refuse to abide by the conventions of international laws which were written as a direct result of the Nazi treatment of the Jews and other innocent people during World War II.

Following the war the Geneva Convention “relative to the protection of civilian persons in time of war” was drawn up, and signed by most civilized nations, including Israel.  The world vividly remembered the awful abuses carried out by both the Nazis in Germany and the Japanese in Asia.  They were determined that such abuses would never occur again.

Four Conventions were approved: the first three concerned the protection of sick and wounded armed forces in the field, armed and shipwrecked naval forces, and the treatment of prisoners of war.  Each of the Conventions was consistent with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948.  Israel signed the Conventions and has observed the first three.  Whenever it has been to Israel’s interest to invoke the charter of the United Nations, or seek the security of international law, she has done so.  When it has been in her interest to ignore the UN or flout the Charter, she has also done so—without hesitation and, so far, with impunity.

The blowing up of houses, the destruction of property, the individual or mass transfer of populations from occupied territory, are all expressly forbidden.  Collective punishments and reprisals are forbidden.  Yet books could be filled—in fact books are being filled—with accounts of incidents and records of Israeli breaches of the Convention.

For example, Article thirty-three states: “No protected person may be punished for an offense he or she has not personally committed.  Collective penalties and likewise all measures of intimidation or of terrorism are prohibited.  Reprisals against protected persons and their property are prohibited.”

I do not like to refer in any way to Israeli treatment of the Arabs as “Nazi,” but the parallels are so numerous and so similar that Arabs speak of Nazi tactics and practices frequently.  The Israelis have relied upon a systematic destruction of homes and villages to suppress resistance.

Article fifty-three of the Fourth Convention says: “Any destruction by the occupying power of real or personal property belonging individually or collectively to private persons or to the State or to other public authorities or to social or co-operative organizations is prohibited except where such destruction is rendered absolutely necessary for military purposes.”

On a main street in Gaza eight houses were blown up after a Jewish merchant was killed. There was no apparent attempt to apprehend the murderer.  Reprisals were simply taken against the owners of the nearest homes.  One of the owners was in Kuwait, another was an elderly woman.  One can go down the list of the eight and the indications are that the victims were all innocent.  This is typical.  By mid-1970 something in excess of eight hundred homes had been individually destroyed and another seven thousand Arab homes had been brought down by the Israelis in one way or another.  Red Cross observers told me that the Israelis have followed six different methods of destroying Arab homes, four of which blatantly contravene Article fifty-three.  Two of the methods might be interpreted as militarily excusable.

The first contravention is the classical destruction of an Arab home as a punishment or reprisal.  Israeli authorities acting on information or suspicion known only to themselves, move in, order the householders out, dynamite the home, and leave, forbidding the owner to rebuild.

Then there are collective reprisals, such as the destruction of the eight homes in Gaza.  In the village of Hebron eighty such homes were destroyed.  Ten Arab villages were razed and all homes destroyed—some, apparently as reprisals, some, according to the Israelis, for security reasons.  One village, from which apparently Fateh could not be driven, was sprayed with liquid fuel and destroyed.  This, according to the Red Cross and international observers, might be exempted from the general condemnation for military reasons under Article fifty-three.

When East Jerusalem was taken, the Israeli authorities destroyed about one hundred Arab homes near the Wailing Wall to provide easy access for Jewish worshippers and a parking lot for tourists.  In the Golan Heights and in some other areas unoccupied Arab homes have been crumbling down and indications are the crumbling has had considerable assistance from Israeli troops.  This, too, may not contravene the Geneva Convention.

There are numerous types of punishment, which have been imposed by the Israelis on the civilian population, which are considered to be both collective punishments and reprisals.  The Commissioner-General of UNRWA, in reference to Gaza, wrote: “The succession of incidents and security measures such as curfews, interrogations, detentions and, on some occasions, the demolition of houses which followed” were used to suppress, intimidate, and punish.

On November 2nd, 1968, many of the Arab shopkeepers in Occupied Jerusalem did not open their shops.  The Israeli authorities regarded this as a strike and promptly confiscated fifteen shops owned by prominent Arabs.  The New York Times described the matter: “Israeli officials confiscated fifteen Arab-owned shops in East Jerusalem today for what they described as security reasons.

“The seizures were said by the Israelis to have been necessary for billeting Israeli policemen who needed the strategic locations to maintain public order.  The action was announced a few hours after the start of a strike by East Jerusalem shopkeepers and is regarded by many as an Israeli response.”

Mr. W.T. Mallison, Jr., Professor of Law at George Washington University and an expert in international law commented on this: “The action taken was clearly a reprisal directed at civilians and their property and therefore a violation of Article thirty-three.”

One of the most blatant abuses has been the transfer and deportation of civilian population.  Article forty-nine forbids this: “Individual or mass forcible transfers as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory to the territory of the occupying power or to that of any other country occupied or not are prohibited, regardless of their motive.  The occupying power shall not deport or transfer a part of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.”

These prohibitions were most definitely designed to make illegal the well-known Nazi practices of removing the “inferior” civilian population of an occupied territory to make room for the “superior” German population.

Mallison points out, “it should be noticed that the quoted provisions of Article forty-nine are flat prohibitions which are subject to no exception of any kind.”  He goes on to say, “the individuals who are deported by the government of Israel in violation of the Convention are frequently leaders and notables.  For example, a large number of the leading citizens of Jerusalem, Jordan, including its mayor, have been deported.  The apparent purpose is to eliminate Arab leadership in the occupied territories and to make it more difficult for the remaining civilian population to protest against the oppressive and illegal measures to which they are subjected.  Among the individual deportees are substantial numbers of school teachers.  In Gaza, for example, the Commissioner-General of UNRWA has reported that forty-eight teachers have been deported.”

After getting rid of the civilian population, Israel has brought in its own settlers to the areas from which the Arabs have been expelled.  In order to provide a technicality for justifying such movements, Israel has called the new settlements military settlements.  They have established about fifteen settlements in the Golan Heights, and even one on the bank of the Dead Sea at Qumran.

Israel has established kibbutzim in Egypt’s Sinai, where their technicians are drilling for and pumping oil, and where an important tourist business is being developed.  But the most flagrant breach of all is in East Jerusalem itself.  By annexing instead of occupying East Jerusalem, Israel sought to provide a technicality for justifying its movement there and its treatment of Arab citizens.  To the International Red Cross and, for that matter, to the whole world, this was completely unacceptable.

Article four states that: “Those who at a given moment and in any manner whatsoever find themselves in case of a conflict or occupying power of which they are not nationals are among the protected persons.”

In April 1970, the Israelis cordoned off a seven hundred and forty acre area at Hebron “for security reasons.”  The Arabs protested—so did some Israelis—predicting that this would be another movement of Zionists into occupied territory.  The Israeli military claimed it was for military purposes.

On May 21st 1970, the Jerusalem Post carried the following news item:

“JEWISH HOMES IN HEBRON TO GO UP IN 3 MONTHS”

“Israeli Deputy Premier Yigal Allon has said the first homes for Jewish families in Hebron on the occupied Jordan West Bank will go up in three months.

“Allon told members of the ruling labor alignment Tuesday that 250 housing units would be ready in Hebron—where the question of Jewish settlement has created considerable tension—before the end of 1911.

“He said the Israeli cabinet also had plans for the building of new homes for the present group of 140 Jewish settlers already established in the town.

“Plans to build an additional large Jewish urban quarter in the town, which has a population of some 40,000 Arabs, were still open, he added.

“Last month, Israeli military authorities cordoned off a 740-acre area near the town’s military government for security reasons amid Arab charges that the area would be used to settle Jewish families.”

Within Israel itself there is considerable embarrassment and protest against such flagrant violation of the Geneva Convention.  Mr. Arie Eliav, secretary-general of Israel’s ruling labour party, Simha Flapan, and Meir Yaari, Mapam’s general secretary, all protest the reprisals, the proposed annexations, and destruction of Arab homes.  And in an article in Le Monde, February 11th, 1970, Yaari outlined an eight point peace plan that began with this:

“Israel should put an immediate and unconditional end to the establishment of kibbutzim and civilian Jewish villages in the occupied territory.”

Arabs add up these things and cannot help but be impressed more with what Deputy Premier Allon says he is going to do and then does, than by what more flexible labour leaders say should be done.

Articles seventy-nine to one hundred and thirty-five provide a detailed code of conduct for the occupying power in its treatment of civilians who are interned.  These articles were drawn up against the background of the infamous Nazi concentration camps, but often in Israel the treatment accorded internees seems more like what happened in some of the concentration camps than like what the Geneva diplomats hoped.

The Israeli government denies many of the charges made by both impartial observers and by the Arabs.  However, the Tel Aviv government has refused to permit an impartial enquiry.

On March 3rd, 1969, the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva adopted a resolution denouncing the Israeli rule in the Occupied Territories and established a special working group to investigate the alleged Israeli violations of the Civilians Convention.  The government of Israel immediately announced that it would not co-operate with the UN group and their action was sufficient to frustrate any attempt at such an investigation.  The numerous reports have been studied, of course, and the documentation is piling up.

It seems to me that if any other nation in the civilized world treated its occupants in this way, the whole world would be informed.  Mr. Mallison says: “To the extent that the government of Israel fails to co-operate with authorized UN fact-finding agencies, its refusal justifies the invocation of further sanctions.”  He say it is essential that the world public opinion be completely informed of the facts of the situation and the need for particular sanctions.

There is one big reason why Israel can get by with its lawlessness, and it goes back to the very founding of the country.  It holds the levers of power in the United States, controlling its politicians and the national opinion-molding apparatus (NOMA), primarily its press.  The situation has been brought into vivid relief in recent weeks with the United States, virtually alone, continuing to enable the ongoing slaughter in Gaza.

Recently, at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) at The Hague, Netherlands, on behalf of the Arab League, Dr. Ralph Wilde of the University of London, addressed the question of the legality of Israel’s continued occupation of the territories that it grabbed through military force in 1967.  “The Palestinian people have been denied their legal right to self-determination,” he began, “through the more than century-long violent, colonial, racist effort to establish a nation state exclusively for the Jewish people in the land of mandated Palestine.”

In his presentation, Dr. Wilde explains how the Zionists from the time the British were given the mandate over Palestine in the wake of World War I have used one illegality after another to gain oppressive domination over the region’s ancestral residents.

In 2022, addressing specifically the question of the legality of Israel’s continued occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, Dr. Wilde in a formal legal opinion wrote, “Any purported annexations are…without legal effect, because in international law Israel is not and cannot be sovereign over any part of the West Bank or Gaza, including East Jerusalem, through the assertion of a claim to this effect based on the exercise of effective control enabled through the use of force, and in the absence of consent to such annexation freely given by the Palestinian people.”

This originally appeared on Heresy Central.

The post Illegal Israel appeared first on LewRockwell.

“Wir schaffen das”—we’ll manage—will go down in history as true a prediction as the one by the Führer of a 1,000-year Reich. For any of you unaware of “Mutti’s” prediction, Angela Merkel said it back in 2015 when she took in one million Middle Eastern refugees. Adding insult to injury, Germany then went ahead and took in another cool million Africans in 2022. As a result of all this, I now read that Germany is about to rethink its borders, or at least try to stem the flood of refugees rushing to cash in, but that’s a bit like that old cliché of locking the barn after the horse has bolted.

Never mind. Immigration is the European topic most likely to inspire a circular firing squad of E.U. big shots. They’re the ones who insisted on open borders some thirty years ago, and instead of hanging their heads in shame, they’re now putting out cautious bulletins about ever-closer union being put on a waiting list for a while. These Brussels clowns should be forced to clean latrines of immigrant hostels for at least ten years. Hammered by illegal immigration and facing social meltdown, the Brussels dream is revealed as the nightmare it always was and is. In an age of global migration, doing away with national borders is the equivalent of leaving a bottle of whiskey in the bedroom of a recovering alcoholic.

“Doing away with national borders is the equivalent of leaving a bottle of whiskey in the bedroom of a recovering alcoholic.”

Take it from Taki, open borders will be the end of Europe as we know it. There is no way that the old continent of 745 million souls can survive if 400 million Africans land on our shores. Surely you must think I’m joking, but actually, I’m not. Mind you, it is happening as I write this and will probably take a century, but if things remain as they are, I cannot see white Europeans being in the majority fifty years down the line. Corrupt African leaders, draught, and climate change will drive African hordes north, no ifs or buts about it. I just read an item about the Nigerian president purchasing a multimillion-dollar jet that swells his fleet of private jets to twelve. President Bola Tinubu’s latest toy is a customized Airbus A330, on which he flew to France recently. The new plane has been described as spacious and furnished with state-of-the-art avionics, a customized interior, and a communications system. Now you tell me, dear readers, how out of touch can a man be to ask citizens to endure hardship and austerity while spending $100 million for an airplane to supplant eleven other flying machines?

This is Africa, and the very few have a hell of a lot while the very many have nothing. That the many want to come over to Europe and America is natural, where they think the streets are paved with gold. Well, ending up in settlements on the outskirts of Paris and in the Bronx might be disappointing, but at least they’re safer than back home. The problem is there’s no room—we’re already packed like sardines, at least here in Europe. Human trafficking gangs continue to thrive, bringing over desperate people. Italy has for years been paying Libya and Tunis to clamp down on migrants with some success. But Libya is a failed state and Tunisia is slipping back to autocracy and is therefore unreliable as to how long they will keep migrants on their side of the Mediterranean. In the meantime, people smugglers are busy cramming more people into dinghies and bringing them over.

Read the Whole Article

The post Minority Report appeared first on LewRockwell.

A prominent libertarian is calling Trump’s tax proposals to eliminate taxes on tips and Social Security benefits “goofy.” What’s so goofy about eliminating these taxes and letting Americans keep more of their money?

Said Trump about tip taxation: “For those hotel workers and people that get tips, you’re going to be very happy, because when I get to office, we are going to not charge taxes on tips. You do a great job of service. You take care of people, and I think it’s going to be something that really is deserved.”

According to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS): “All cash and non-cash tips an received by an employee are income and are subject to Federal income taxes. All cash tips received by an employee in any calendar month are subject to social security and Medicare taxes and must be reported to the employer.” Tips include:

• Cash tips received directly from customers.
• Tips from customers who leave a tip through electronic settlement or payment. This includes a credit card, debit card, gift card or any other electronic payment method.
• The value of any noncash tips, such as tickets or other items of value.
• Tip amounts received from other employees paid out through tip pools, tip splitting, or other formal/informal tip sharing arrangement.

Said Trump about Social Security taxation: “Seniors should not pay taxes on Social Security and they won’t.”

According to the Social Security Administration (SSA):

Fifty percent of a taxpayer’s benefits may be taxable if they are:

• Filing single, head of household or qualifying widow or widower with $25,000 to $34,000 income.
• Married filing separately and lived apart from their spouse for all of 2020 with $25,000 to $34,000 income.
• Married filing jointly with $32,000 to $44,000 income.

Up to 85% of a taxpayer’s benefits may be taxable if they are:

• Filing single, head of household or qualifying widow or widower with more than $34,000 income.
• Married filing jointly with more than $44,000 income.
• Married filing separately and lived apart from their spouse for all of 2021 with more than $34,000 income.
• Married filing separately and lived with their spouse at any time during 2021.

(Income here is “provisional income” — adjusted gross income + nontaxable interest income + half of Social Security benefits.) Congress has never adjusted the income thresholds that subject Social Security benefits to taxation. They have never even been indexed for inflation.

Would eliminating taxes on tips and Social Security give the federal government less money to spend and increase the deficit? It certainly would. But consider this: according to the IRS Data Book:

• During Fiscal Year (FY) 2023, the IRS collected nearly $4.7 trillion in gross taxes, processed almost 271.5 million tax returns and other forms, and issued about $659.1 billion in tax refunds.
• In FY 2023, the IRS closed 582,944 tax return audits, resulting in $31.9 billion in recommended additional tax.

The federal government takes an obscene amount of money from American taxpayers. And it spends even more money than it takes in. In fiscal year 2023, the federal government spent $6.13 trillion, resulting in a deficit of over $1 trillion. And of course, more taxes will be collected and more money will be spent this year.

Any elimination of taxes or reduction in taxes collected should be welcomed, no matter how “goofy” it is.

As usual, Ron Paul gets it right:

It is common to describe tax cuts as “costing” the government. Saying tax cuts cost the government assumes that the government has a moral claim over an individual’s earnings, so anytime those running the government allow individuals to keep more of their money the rulers are being generous. The truth is that income belongs to the people who earn it and that saying tax cuts cost the government is like saying burglar alarms cost thieves. Therefore, any legislation that cuts taxes is a victory for liberty.

What’s so goofy about eliminating certain taxes and letting Americans keep more of their money in their wallets, purses, and bank accounts instead of handing it over to the profligate Congress to spend on unconstitutional government programs, government boondoggles, and U.S. military adventures around the world? I don’t see anything goofy about it at all.

The post What’s So Goofy About Eliminating Taxes? appeared first on LewRockwell.

United Sates President Joe Biden has spent most of his presidency refusing to talk with Russia President Vladimir Putin. This is despite — or maybe because of — the fact that such discourse could have led to an agreement ending the US government’s proxy war against Russia.

Instead of talking out a resolution to the fighting, Biden has kept pumping dollars, weapons, and intelligence to the Ukraine government, resulting in a rising death toll and expanding war. Also advanced has been the risk of drawing the US and Russia directly into a war against each other that could go nuclear.

Still, Biden will not pick up the phone or fly on a plane to talk things over with the president of Russia. “I have no good reason to talk to Putin right now,” said Biden on July 11, 2024 in response to a reporter’s question at one of Biden’s rare press conferences. We know Biden loves his vacation time, but, really, isn’t ending the Ukraine War and preventing its further escalation a good enough reason to start chatting with Putin? How about putting in a little effort to give peace a chance?

Long, long ago, during the presidency of George W. Bush, a US president not only regularly talked with Putin, including in in-person meetings, he even had an affectionate nickname for the Russia president. For Bush, Putin was Pootie-Poot. How things have changed.

Not every American president before Biden had a cute nickname for counterparts among the long line of Russia leaders, and Soviet leaders during the decades when Russia was subsumed in the Soviet Union. Yet, they all were willing to talk. This includes Ronald Reagan who called the Soviet Union an “evil empire” and pushed for increased US military spending to counter what he presented as a Soviet threat. Reagan met with and kept in regular contact with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, succeeding in putting in place arms control deals between the nations. Other US presidents, while directly and by proxy militarily countering the “red spread” and “Soviet expansion,” kept in communication with Soviet leaders. They wanted to be dedicated cold warriors while minimizing the risk of outright war between the US and Soviet Union.

Biden should give Putin a call. And when Biden makes that call, why not give Putin a nice nickname too? Doing this may run counter to Biden’s nature, but it could be the first step down the path to peace.

Unfortunately, there is little indication that seeking peace is even a small component of the Biden administration’s agenda.

Reprinted with permission from The Ron Paul Institute.

The post When Vladimir Putin Was Pootie-Poot appeared first on LewRockwell.

Last week Peter appeared on Impact Theory with Tom Bilyeu to discuss inflation, Federal Reserve policy, wealth taxes, and a whole host of other economic subjects. This is the latest in a string of recent interviews Peter has appeared in. If you missed them, check out his appearance on Bankless and a David Lin debate with Jack Mallers.

Peter argues that it is absolutely critical that Americans see inflation as a deliberate, albeit subtle, tax:

“The best way to look at inflation is a tax. Inflation is what we pay for the government that we don’t pay for with the income tax or the Social Security tax or a sales tax. Basically, the deficits, the Federal budget deficits– we end up funding them by inflation. And those deficits are about to skyrocket. They’ve been skyrocketing. And so the inflation tax is going to be much bigger in 2025 than it was this year regardless of what the Fed is trying to tell us.”

Technical economic jargon like “quantitative easing (QE)” is used to obscure intentional inflationary policy:

“QE is just another word for inflation, just that it’s a euphemism. But that’s really what it is. But the Fed has to pretend that it’s finished the job on inflation. It can’t, you know, be honest and say, ‘Look, we still have high inflation and it’s going to go up. But, we don’t care.’ So they have to pretend that the 3% inflation that we have now is going to go down to 2%.”

From the jargon to the statistics, the entire monetary system is biased to facilitate and hide (both intentionally and unintentionally) inflation:

“If you are trying to track inflation yourself, if you’re trying to understand how prices are going up, there is a lot of manipulation that’s happening behind the scenes to control the public’s perception of the CPI number. … The government is doing sleight of hand. They’re manipulating the numbers, they’re doing sleight of hand so that they can basically– I’ll be aggressive here and use the word–  steal money from the people, not have to get people to vote so that they can keep doing just absolutely outrageous amounts of spending because they can get your dollars from you without having to ask for them.”

Even if there was honest political will to stop inflation, it would be political suicide:

“We are stuck with inflation because the alternative is a political non-starter, because if the Fed actually got rid of inflation, you would have a financial crisis that would make 2008 look like a Sunday school picnic.”

This policy can’t last forever, since it’s propped up by other countries’ willingness to participate and hold dollars:

“The problem is now, yes, they’re earning interest, but the Fed is also losing a fortune on its bond portfolio right now. So, the Fed is not making money anymore to pay the U.S. Treasury like they used to, but they do get the interest back. … But the real problem though, is going to be the dollar’s status as the reserve currency, because as the rest of the world wakes up to the reality of endless inflation and endless money printing … there is no justification for the dollar to be the reserve currency, and it won’t be.”

Understanding the inflation machine is key to understanding current sentiment around the economy. Most people sense the system is rigged, but they can’t necessarily articulate why:

“The public already knows that things are wrong. That’s why they just know something feels wrong, but they don’t know what it is. The politicians and a lot of the people in the financial media who still don’t get it, you know, they look at these phony statistics and accept them on face value. And then they look at the public and the public is so pessimistic. You know, Biden’s approval rating is so low. People are pessimistic. And they don’t understand why.”

This is a big week for monetary policy, as the Fed prepares to announce a likely rate cut. Stay tuned for Peter’s analysis later in the week.

This originally appeared on SchiffGold.com.

The post Inflation Is an Intentional Tax appeared first on LewRockwell.

I’ve been an observer of national politics since I was eleven years old. I cried when they killed Robert F. Kennedy. I was a die hard Democrat. I thought they were the good guys. Then I became an independent, and have grown more radical as I age. I know the process is rigged, and yet I continue to follow it, like a heroin addict.

Donald Trump was recently the victim of yet another assassination attempt. Apparently. The same people who believe the first attempt, in Butler Pennsylvania two months ago, was staged, naturally believe this one was fake, too. And they both might very well have been. After all, everything they do is seemingly scripted. No improvisation allowed. But the response is what really grabs my attention. As I’ve noted, those on the Left who are skeptical of the Trump assassination attempts aren’t skeptical about anything else. They believe in Russian collusion. They think “Climate Change” is a tremendous threat to us all. They accept the transgender lunacy. And despite the vast majority being White themselves, they are fully on board with the anti-White agenda. So they’re certainly predisposed to accept things at face value.

The alleged would-be assassin is supposedly one Ryan Wesley Routh. Another three namer- who could have predicted that? As you can see from the photo above, when Routh was apprehended, his shirt was oddly pulled up, revealing his A-cup man boobs, and his pants were pulled down lewdly, in big hair, rock star fashion. Did he do this himself? I don’t know, maybe that’s the latest fashion trend for potential patsies? It certainly is an attention grabber. Or did law enforcement pull his shirt up, and his pants down? That takes us into more bizarre territory. Perhaps their resistance got weak, and they absolutely had to see if this fifty eight year old had six pack abs. It’s a suppressed homosexuality thing, you wouldn’t understand. However you look at it, I don’t believe we’ve seen another arrest photo like it.

But Ryan Wesley Routh is far more than man boobs and almost exposed crotch. We are told that the FBI and Interpol were “warned” about him. We are told this, after the fact, about most of the accused perpetrators of high profile crimes. We understand how corrupt and incompetent the FBI has always been, so it makes sense that they would ignore “warnings” about any potentially dangerous individual. I suppose Interpol is no better. Maybe they can hire more people, with better lone nut detectors. The brave Secret Service detail was evidently denied the opportunity to stand down at Trump’s own golf course in Palm Beach, Florida. I feel confident they would have been exemplary once again, in not doing their job, if the patsy wearing the makeshift tank top had been able to get close enough to fire at Trump.

Routh is also an author. Just like me, and many others who have never fired shots at any politician. Or pulled our shirts up and pants down so provocatively in public. Routh’s self-published book Ukraine’s Unwinnable War: The Fatal Flaw of Democracy, World Abandonment and the Global Citizen-Taiwan, Afghanistan, North Korea and the end of Humanity, is an impassioned plea for World War III. Wow- nobody ever tell me that the subtitles for my books are too wordy. He is documented as a fervent leftist, having formerly supported Bernie Sanders, and having contributed financially many times to ActBlue. He tried to recruit foreign soldiers to help Ukraine defeat Russia. You’d think that, with all this information, it would be obvious that Routh was motivated by the same kind of irrational hatred for Donald Trump that has infected millions of formerly rational Americans with TDS.

But instead of acknowledging this, and perhaps issuing one of their standard lectures to the insane “Woke” Left, the mainstream media, and high profile Democrats themselves, are telling Trump to “tone down” his rhetoric. If you just stop saying “hateful” things, no one will try to assassinate you! What is most remarkable about Routh is the fact that he was inexplicably interviewed by Newsweek in 2022. His only claim to fame was his self-published book, touting the official state controlled media line on Ukraine. People who write self-published books don’t usually get to be interviewed by huge media outlets like that. I have legitimate publishers, and I couldn’t get Newsweek to notice me, even if I walked into their headquarters with a “9/11 Wasn’t an Inside Job” tee shirt pulled up past my nipples. So the FBI not only knew about Routh, but Newsweek thought he was worth an interview, two years ago?

Now I am fully aware that many are dubious about this attempt, just as they are about the incident in Pennsylvania. I am, too. Why would we believe anything that is reported, by a media that is simply regurgitating talking points from “authorities” that lie to us about everything? How did Routh know Trump was going to be at the golf course, the skeptics are asking. Good question. Initially, the New York Post went with a story that claimed two men had fired shots at each other, and it was all totally unrelated to Trump. Well, that sounds plausible. I used to golf regularly, very badly, back in the misty days of America 1.0. I guess I was lucky not to have encountered two men shooting at each other on any of the courses I played. Where else would you hold a gun battle, other than a golf course? Regardless, as in the Steve Scalise shooting, the victim’s motives are never political if he’s a leftist, only if he’s a right-wing extremist.

However real either or both Trump assassination attempts were, the response to them is even more telling. Trump has to be the only politician that survived at attempt on his life, and actually went down in the fake public opinion polls afterwards. You’d imagine that the second attempt would ensure his victory. But I think we can predict that he’ll plunge even further after the failed efforts of Ryan Wesley Routh. I’m sure the Republicuck leaders will leave no stone unturned in finding out the truth here. Sure, they haven’t managed to call a single one of the Secret Service agents who stood down completely in Butler, but these things take time. They’re still searching for photos of Thomas Matthew Crooks taken after he graduated from the eighth grade. That makes sense; few of us have our pictures taken after middle school. It’s all downhill from there.

And their task won’t be made easier by the fact that the Secret Service is unwilling to cooperate in any investigation. Well, to be fair, any real investigation would make the Secret Service look really bad. The Biden administration, Homeland Security, all of them, are urging the Secret Service not to comply with Congress. What is Congress going to do if they don’t? Remember Hunter Biden’s taunting press conference? Maybe if Peter Navarro was one of the Secret Service agents in question. And, in keeping with their appearance of upright honesty, the Secret Service is also rejecting Freedom of Information Act requests about the Butler incident. Nothing evokes innocence better than that. So we’ll never find anything out. If it was real, who was actually behind it? Or if it was staged, as millions believe, why it was staged, and by who? Was Trump in on it? Why stage a shooting, and then stop reporting on it?

Melania Trump, one of the least visible of modern political wives, recently put out a heartfelt video where she talked about the first assassination attempt, and supported the “conspiracy theorists” who feel there is more to it than a loner walking around for thirty minutes carrying a rifle, and then scaling the wall of a building, while witnesses tried in vain to get the attention of law enforcement. If only Crooks would have committed an illegal U-Turn; those cops would have apprehended him before he could U-Turn again. At any rate, Don Lemon, the gay White hater who is married to a White man, played Melania’s emotional video and ridiculed it. Made fun of it like a sixth grade bully. A gay, racist bully. Lemon can freely mock Mrs. Trumpenstein, and millions of Americans believe the Giant Orange Man is orchestrating the whole thing. I think it is all orchestrated, but Trump isn’t doing the orchestrating.

Read the Whole Article

The post It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad Fake Presidential Race appeared first on LewRockwell.

As an illegal immigrant, if you enter the US under one of the countries deemed to be hostile, you may apply for Temporary Protected Status (TPS).  This status allows an illegal immigrant from specific countries to file for TPS as a safety precaution given their own country is in turmoil.  It is a temporary status. It does not confer on them a green card, or a legal status, in essence they are in limbo.   The status must be updated regularly as circumstances in their country change.   

This is what the Haitians coming across the border illegally are directed to do by immigration.  They are NOT legal.  They are ‘temporary’ illegals living under a protected status.

During this temporary stay, the US Government provides:  Supplemental Security Income, Supplemental Nutritional Assistance, the women, infants and children program, free school lunches, subsidized housing, and Medicaid.

The government estimates of the number of persons in the US not legal but protected ranges between 850,000 to 1.2 million.   The fact that the Agency has no idea how many – SHOULD be a bit worrisome.  There is currently an additional 450,000+ applicants awaiting the approval of their TPS applications.

When the ‘government’ doles these freebies and charity out – they don’t ask permission from The People – they make a unilateral decision and voila your money is Gone Baby Gone.

This is the argument being levied by democrats regarding Springfield Ohio.  The Haitians are there legally via the TPS, but they are NOT legal residents – they can’t buy homes, cars, or anything else that would benefit the economy.  When immigration finds them employment they are paid minimum wage, not union wages, and the government subsidizes the EMPLOYER to hire them.  More associated taxpayer costs.   More US unemployment.

This status was added to the Immigration Act in 1990 within the Department of Homeland Security under Big Daddy Bush.   In 2021, the courts reiterated that if the person came into the country illegally but was given TPS status, they could not apply for permanent residency.

Currently there are numerous lawsuits in US Courts regarding HHS determination that some country’s should be removed from the designation particularly in California.   Given the requirement for continued renewal, California is arguing the renewal should be automatic.

When arguing the illegal immigration status, the typical democrat response is to assert the tax revenue that is generated.    According to Reuters, the cost of illegal immigration is $151 billion annually.  According to a study from IDEP, illegals contribute $11.7 billion in tax revenue.  Roughly 50% of them pay no taxes.  Of course, these numbers are statistical estimates/guesses because the government doesn’t actually account for people or money in real time.

Stats: 

• Of the foreign born legal Haitians in the US 69% have become naturalized citizens. 36% of Haitian immigrants and their children live in poverty.
• 7% are on some source of welfare.
• 48% lived in owner occupied homes.
• The Trump administration attempted to end many existing designations while the Biden regime expanded protections to include – Venezuelans among others.
• The crime rate in Springfield, Ohio is 34.51 per 1000; the crime rate in Ohio is 2.78 per 1000.

Immigration confused with illegal immigration has splintered America.   Crime, gangs, safety, particularly in urban environments is spectacularly high.  No amount of falsified FBI crime reports can hold up to the eyes, ears, and attacks levied on American citizens daily.   No manner of falsified statistics can allay the vast number of businesses physically destroyed.  Lying has become a national crisis with pathological overtones.  

A disease perpetrated by OUR GOVERNMENT. 

Reprinted with permission from HelenaGlass.net.

The post Temporary Protected Status For Illegal Immigrants appeared first on LewRockwell.

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

“We adore Thee, O Christ, and we praise Thee, because by Thy Holy Cross, Thou hast redeemed the world.” This familiar prayer offered as part of the Stations of the Cross is familiar to Catholics, and well it should be. It succinctly expresses our faith, and the unique reality of Jesus Christ – God’s Divine Son – as the one Savior of all humanity.

We are obliged to adore and praise Jesus Christ because He is God’s Son, and because He has brought salvation to our fallen state. We must cling tenaciously to the truth that only Jesus Christ is Savior, and that He lived, suffered, died, and rose for all humanity for all time. His loving sacrifice of His Own life in order to redeem us is the greatest gift that humanity has ever received.

This simple prayer expresses the core of our faith that we are obliged to proclaim to the world if we wish to live as His disciples. The Church exists to proclaim this Truth in order to point the human family, from every nation and race, to the means of our salvation. There is no other name by which we can be saved, and no other movement, religion, or human endeavor will save us. Christ alone is our Savior. We truly can gain the whole world and still find ourselves lost if we do not embrace Jesus Christ and His Cross.

As you read this, I can imagine that your reaction might be that I am merely stating the obvious by expressing the basic kerygma of our glorious faith in Jesus Christ, our loving Lord and Redeemer, and you are correct. But we must open our eyes to the reality that too many within the Church, the Mystical Body of Christ, are rejecting this most basic expression of our faith and, in fact, rejecting Jesus Christ Himself. We must also acknowledge that leaders in the Church of the highest rank are leading the world, not towards but away from Jesus Christ.

Pope Francis, recently speaking to a group of young people in Singapore, made this statement:

“One of the things that struck me about all of you here is your ability to engage in interreligious dialogue, and this is very important. If you, in the beginnings of your conversations and debates, start to say things like, ‘My religion is more important than yours,’ ‘No, mine is more important than yours,’ that sort of thing, where will this lead us? Because if we start to fight amongst ourselves and say, ‘My religion is more important than yours,’ ‘My religion is true, yours is not,’ where will that lead us? Someone respond. Where would it lead us? It’s okay to discuss. Every religion is a way to arrive at God. To make an example or a comparison, they are like different languages in order to arrive at God. But God is God for all – and if God is God for all, then we are all sons and daughters of God. ‘But my God is more important than your God.’ Is that true? There is only one God, and each of us is a language, so to speak, in order to arrive at God. Sikh, Muslim, Hindu, Christian – they are different paths.”

This statement is theological heresy – it is called indifferentism. Indifferentism makes the claim that all religions are of equal value and all lead to the same divine truth. This directly contradicts the Church’s doctrine that there is one true faith and that the Catholic Church is the only path to salvation.

Although tolerance and religious freedom are important, we in the Church must defend our faith with conviction and share the truth with certainty. As Jesus said, “I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life. No man cometh to the Father, but by Me.” (John 14:6)

In 1928, Pope Pius XI discussed indifferentism in his papal encyclical Mortalium Animos. He stated:

“For since they hold it for certain that men destitute of all religious sense are very rarely to be found, they seem to have founded on that belief a hope that the nations, although they differ among themselves in certain religious matters, will without much difficulty come to agree as brethren in professing certain doctrines, which form as it were a common basis of the spiritual life. For which reason conventions, meetings and addresses are frequently arranged by these persons, at which a large number of listeners are present, and at which all without distinction are invited to join in the discussion, both infidels of every kind, and Christians, even those who have unhappily fallen away from Christ or who with obstinacy and pertinacity deny His divine nature and mission. Certainly, such attempts can nowise be approved by Catholics, founded as they are on that false opinion which considers all religions to be more or less good and praiseworthy, since they all in different ways manifest and signify that sense, which is inborn in us all, and by which we are led to God and to the obedient acknowledgement of His rule. Not only are those who hold this opinion in error and deceived, but also in distorting the idea of true religion they reject it, and little by little, turn aside to naturalism and atheism, as it is called; from which it clearly follows that one who support those who hold these theories and attempt to realize them, is altogether abandoning the divinely revealed religion.”

Pope Gregory XVI in his papal encyclical Mirari Vos (1832) condemned the idea that one could attain salvation in any religion. Pope Pius IX in the Syllabus of Errors (1864) condemned the proposition that “every man is free to embrace and profess that religion which, guided by the light of reason, he shall consider true.”

I have often, at various times, expressed my deep concern regarding the occurrence of heresy and the atmosphere of apostasy as it emanates from the Vatican in Rome, but I must now ask this question: “Where is the outcry of the shepherds? Where is the courage and conviction to defend our faith?”

When Pope Pius X was worried that Modernism would wed the Church to the world with its emphasis on humanism, he mandated that every bishop must hunt down this heresy and crush it, and he required an oath as a prerequisite of receiving Holy Orders, which was in effect until 1978. Once, when Pope Pius X was asked whether he should perhaps adopt a more conciliatory tone and perhaps seek more dialogue, he stated: “You want them to be treated with oil, soap, and caresses. But they should be beaten with fists. In a duel, you don’t count or measure the blows, you strike as you can.” Pope Pius X saw the extreme danger in allowing heresy to stand unchallenged and uncorrected, as unchecked heresy will surely lead a great many souls away from Christ, and away from the fullness of the true and authentic faith, which is found and safeguarded in its entirety in the Catholic Church alone. And so, I ask again: “Where is the outcry of the shepherds?”

Read the Whole Article

The post Pope Francis’ Comments on All Religions Being Paths to God Are ‘Heresy’ appeared first on LewRockwell.

The death toll has risen to 12 from Israel’s terror attack in Lebanon on Tuesday which detonated explosive materials hidden in thousands of pagers. Another 20 people were then killed in another attack on Wednesday with a second wave of explosions, this time using walkie talkies and home solar energy systems.

The total death toll now sits at 32. Two children and four healthcare workers are among the dead. Thousands have been injured.

As you would expect, western empire managers are getting really squirmy about this. White House spokesman John Kirby adamantly refused to answer any questions involving Israel’s responsibility for the attacks during a press conference on Wednesday, despite Israel being widely reported as the responsible party, with outlets like The New York Times citing US officials as their source.

“I’m not gonna speak to the details of these incidents,” Kirby said repeatedly when questioned about Israel’s role and what the US response will be.

Hypocrisy and contradiction are not great moral evils in and of themselves, but they often run cover for great moral evils. The fact that we are trained to think about the world by people who facilitate great evils perpetrated by their own side when they’d condemn identical evils committed by their enemies shows that they do not stand against evil, and are deeply evil themselves.

Recognizing the problems in our world is the first step to solving them. That’s what the propagandists and empire managers work to prevent us from doing, and that’s what we try to do by pointing out the glaring plot holes and inconsistencies in their narratives over and over again.

The correct thing to do when western leaders talk about human rights or denounce abuses by enemy governments is to mock them and dismiss them. They’re not saying anything true about their actual values and beliefs; if they were there wouldn’t be so much hypocrisy in the way they denounce governments they don’t like for offenses they ignore and make excuses for in governments they do like. They’re never saying what they’re saying to stop human rights abuses or make the world a better place, they’re only saying what they’re saying to undermine their enemies so that the western empire can rule the world and be the only one administering abuse.

Western media are primarily responsible for the ability of Western politicians to commit war crimes and acts of terrorism unchecked pic.twitter.com/wA7E8dwJxy

— Tiberius (@ecomarxi) September 18, 2024

And the same is true of the mainstream western press. You’ll see them completely ignore the abuses of US-aligned governments while showing immense interest in alleged abuses by empire-targeted groups, often on very flimsy evidence. Mock them and dismiss them when they act like they care about human rights abuses. They don’t care. They just want to make sure the abusive power structure they conduct propaganda for is the one in charge.

__________________

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 On War Crimes and Western Hypocrisy appeared first on LewRockwell.

di Francesco Simoncelli

Nell'annuncio della BCE della scorsa settimana sono stati a malapena notati un paio di dettagli contraddittori. La BCE è impegnata, a prescindere da tutto, ad avere un obiettivo per l'inflazione al 2%. Raggiungibile come? Dal basso verso l'alto. Invece adesso, magicamente, è un obiettivo da raggiungere dall'alto verso il basso senza che nessun pianificatore centrale abbia addotto alcuna spiegazione a riguardo. Bernanke, nel suo libro The Courage to Act, ha praticamente creato l'impalcatura accademica per la ZIRP e la NIRP, adesso, però, non c'è nessuno che ha il “coraggio” di farsi avanti per spiegarci com'è possibile che si debba fare il contrario quando era la “deflazione” la fonte di tutti i guai economici. Ma questo, cari lettori, è solo teatro. Le sciocchezze sui dati della scorsa settimana includevano le previsioni di una maggiore crescita del PIL e di un ammorbidimento ulteriore dell'inflazione l'anno prossimo. Non ha senso promettere adesso tassi di prestito più bassi, poiché l''inflazione è ancora al di sopra dell'obiettivo ufficiale. Senza scomodare la percezione comune di quando “si va a fare la spesa”, o la cavalcata dell'indice IPC, o la semplice cumulazione dell'effetto dell'inflazione dei prezzi che sebbene rallenti nel tempo non indietreggia (o per meglio dire sale più lentamente), basta dare un'occhiata alla misura che fino al 2020 era la più sbandierata dai banchieri centrali per giustificare la loro linea di politica anti-deflazione: la misura di base dell'inflazione dei prezzi, quella che esclude dal computo cibo ed energia. L'ultima misurazione la pone al 2,8%.

La cosa importante, quindi, è continuare a far fluire il denaro; tutto il resto è una recita. I tassi d'inflazione annui sono stati in media del 6% negli ultimi tre anni e del 3% negli ultimi dieci anni. Non c'è traccia di un'inflazione del 2% che la BCE afferma di cercare; tale obiettivo è solo una finzione.

RAGGIRATI DAI NUMERI

I numeri dell'inflazione e del PIL sono semplicemente “inventati”. “Aggiustato all'inflazione” è una di quelle espressioni come “stavamo solo eseguendo degli ordini”; può nascondere una montagna di menzogne. Negli ultimi due anni abbiamo spesso confrontato l'inflazione del periodo '22-'23 con quella degli anni '70. Ci è stato detto che il tasso d'inflazione odierno ha raggiunto il picco del 10% nel 2022 e poi è sceso rapidamente, ma se misurassimo gli aumenti dei prezzi odierni come facevano negli anni '70, vedreste che la nostra inflazione è peggiore di quanto non fosse allora. State pensando quello che sto pensando anche io? Se la lettura dell'inflazione è fasulla, lo è anche quella del PIL, e lo è anche l'intero quadro finanziario.

Cominciamo con la misura dell'inflazione stessa. Secondo l'ISTAT, ad esempio, il cibo è aumentato (a un ritmo annuo) del 4,8% nell'ultimo anno; i servizi sono aumentati del 3,3% e gli affitti sono aumentati del 3%. Tra rate di mutui più elevate e prezzi delle case più alti, poi, questi numeri sembrano quasi sconfessare le difficoltà generali e percepite da chi deve far quadrare i conti a fine mese, il che è solo la prova che, sebbene i numeri possano non mentire intenzionalmente, se li torturate abbastanza diranno tutto ciò che volete che dicano. E se si usasse il metodo di calcolo degli anni '80, l'intero quadro economico diventerebbe improvvisamente cupo: aggiustare all'inflazione il PIL nominale, quindi, risulterebbe in una crescita negativa spaventosa. E che dire del mercato azionario? Quando si ottiene un “guadagno”, o un “profitto”, dalle azioni, si pensa di stare meglio e ora tutti pensano che il mercato azionario si sia “ripreso” dopo i ribassi nel 2022. Ma è così? Una stima ragionevole è che i prezzi al consumo siano più alti (come minimo) del 25% rispetto al picco del Dow Jones nel 2021. Se così fosse il Dow dovrebbe arrivare a 45.000 solo per andare in pareggio.

Conviene guardare all'oro per cercare di mettere ordine in tutta questa storia. Dal suo picco alla fine del 2021 a oggi il Dow è salito di quasi 4.000 punti, ma aggiustato al prezzo dell'oro è ancora in calo di quasi il 10%. Indietro? Avanti? In che direzione stiamo andando?

Un'altra curiosità della storia della crescita del PIL è il ruolo dei deficit fiscali. Se lo stato spende soldi, anche se sprecati in armi, l'ammontare è incluso come avanzamento nel PIL. Quindi più si spende, più alto è il PIL... almeno nel breve periodo. I deficit sono particolarmente importanti: se lo stato incassa 100 in entrate fiscali e li spende, rimuove quei soldi dall'economia. Nessun aumento netto del PIL. Ma se prende in prestito i soldi, la spesa extra viene conteggiata come se “uscisse dal nulla” e viene aggiunta al totale. Non c'è alcun prelievo compensativo nell'economia dei consumatori, quindi il PIL sale.

L'anno scorso il deficit pubblico italiano è stato del 7% del PIL. Erano soldi che sono stati spesi, ma non raccolti dalle tasse. Devono essere andati da qualche parte, quindi ecco una semplice domanda: come si è potuto pompare un ulteriore 7% (del PIL) nell'economia, con quasi €100 miliardi aggiunti al debito pubblico, ma ottenere solo un aumento dell'1% del PIL?

Cosa è successo all'altro 6%? Dove sono finiti i €135 miliardi mancanti? Dove sono andati a finire i soldi?

Ciò significa che l'economia reale, non statale, si sta contraendo a un ritmo così allarmante da spazzare via gran parte delle nuove immissioni di denaro? Oppure questi numeri sono così “falsati” da essere privi di significato?

INSOSTENIBILE A OGNI LIVELLO

Spendere per il semplice scopo di spendere, sostanzialmente era questo lo scopo dietro i vari programmi di QE attivati dalla BCE e dal resto del caravanserraglio delle banche centrali. L'azzardo morale derivante è stato dirottato nel mercato finanziario, andando a gonfiare gli asset finanziari delle varie industrie che in questo modo hanno potuto aprire a giri sempre più rischiosi di ingegneria finanziaria. Questo ha fatto in modo che i numeri finanziari salissero, permettendo di conseguenza a suddette aziende di assumere personale. Ma tutto questo processo non era basato su una situazione sostenibile di allocazione di capitale, bensì sull'imputazione che questa manna sarebbe durata per sempre. Peccato che fosse una tantum, peccato che abbia causato supply shock a ripetizione, peccato che abbia saturato i bilanci delle aziende... peccato, in conclusione, che fosse tutta una illusione. La considerazione dell'economia “nominale” è diventata il nuovo dio da pregare.

Ora, però, la cruda realtà di quella “reale” sta facendo pagare lo scotto di tutte quelle distorsioni e deformazioni che si sono moltiplicate nel tempo. Il settore automobilistico è solo la punta dell'iceberg di un doloroso processo di normalizzazione che, diversamente dal presunto “effetto ricchezza” alimentato dalle politiche delle banche centrali, parte dal basso e va verso l'alto.

The defining feature of the apparent endless decline in Germany's industrial production is how broad-based it is across industry groups. During the pandemic and its aftermath, it was mostly intermediates and capital goods (cars missing chips). Now the malaise is much wider. https://t.co/t0hJCocXVX pic.twitter.com/102Dluuwem

Le aziende, soprattutto quelle automobilistiche, hanno poche vendite e molte perdite. Meriterebbero un valore di mercato di circa... zero. Eppure gli investitori ci vedono valore, puntando le loro scommesse su quel poco di illiquidità che riescono a racimolare grazie al rinnovato lassismo della BCE. Nel frattempo il ritmo di crescita del PIL dipende interamente dal calcolo dell'inflazione, che è incostante come l'impasto della pasta: gli statistici stendono la sfoglia e lo cuociono in forno, finché non ottengono il sapore e la consistenza desiderati. Se misurassero l'inflazione come si faceva durante gli anni ottanta, ad esempio, il PIL reale non sarebbe cresciuto affatto bensì risulterebbe sgonfiato come una torta fatta male. E, se misurate in oro, le azioni sono ancora in calo del 13,6% rispetto ai massimi del 2021. C'è qualcosa di reale, indiscutibile, di cui vale la pena preoccuparsi? Ahimè, sì: il debito. Non se ne va, anzi sta crescendo.

Ci sono molte incognite note nelle cifre del debito, ma quasi tutte portano allo stesso punto: si possono eseguire un milione di simulazioni per vedere cosa potrebbe accadere, ma in quasi tutte il “rapporto debito/PIL” si rivela instradato lungo un “percorso insostenibile”. Cosa succede quando il percorso insostenibile giunge al termine? Man mano che diventa sempre più grande (rispetto all'economia che lo sostiene) e diventa “insostenibile”, deve succedere qualcos'altro... ma cosa?

La vera domanda è se il cambiamento avviene intenzionalmente o involontariamente. La soluzione “intenzionale” è ovvia, ma irraggiungibile. Richiederebbe una chiarezza politica e una volontà che non esistono: la spesa dovrebbe essere tagliata, ma poiché chi decide è anche chi spende, e poiché i loro amici e sostenitori sono coloro che prendono i soldi, è molto improbabile che si arrivi a una soluzione volontaria. È la risoluzione “non intenzionale” che causerà il vero danno.

CONCLUSIONE

I tassi d'interesse artificialmente bassi sono un problema di per sé: distorcono il costo reale del capitale, inducendo le persone a prendere in prestito troppi soldi. Il debito aumenta portando a una crisi di qualche tipo. In parole povere, man mano che il debito cresce, aumenta anche la spesa per gli interessi. A nessuno importa davvero quanto diventerà grande, ma il costo del suo servizio dev'essere dedotto dalle entrate fiscali e ogni centesimo che bisogna pagare per gli errori di ieri è un centesimo in meno di cui possiamo godere oggi. A un certo punto ci rimarranno pochi centesimi... Da qualche parte lungo questo percorso il mercato obbligazionario si romperà, i tassi d'interesse saliranno alle stelle e il costo del debito, o dell'aggiunta di nuovo debito, sarà troppo da sopportare. Usando come proxy il differenziale di rendimento tra il decennale tedesco e quello statunitense, possiamo vedere che le criticità dell'Eurosistema sono di gran lunga peggiori di quelle statunitensi.

Per tutto questo tempo, infatti, l'obiettivo della BOE e della BCE era l'affossamento del mercato obbligazionario statunitense tramite l'eurodollaro e la trasmissione del malessere economico risultante sulle spalle dei contribuenti statunitensi. Una sorta di socializzazione delle perdite causate dall'overleveraging nel sistema bancario ombra. Con la fine del LIBOR, l'entrata in scena del SOFR e il prosciugamento della liquidità ombra dettato dal cambio di passo della FED, i nodi stanno venendo al pettine. E il sopraccitato differenziale ci spiega chi davvero è nei guai.

Il secondo taglio dei tassi da parte della BCE è un bluff, un finto tentativo di progressione rispetto alle altre banche centrali. I mercati dei cambi non vedono il bluff, ma gli obbligazionisti sì. Il piano dell'UE è sempre stato quello di evitare di tagliare qualsiasi pasto gratis che aveva precedentemente stabilito attraverso finanziamenti presumibilmente illimitati tramite l'eurodollaro. La lotta a livello di megapolitica verte tutta su questo duplice scenario: ridimensionamento, o salvezza attraverso la morte di qualcun altro. O si tagliano drasticamente i presunti pasti gratis e si sconfessa l'illusione di monopsonio dell'Europa (con la conseguente rottura dell'Unione) ragionando con freddo criterio logico su quanto sbagliato in passato, oppure si cede al panico, si stampa e si scaraventa l'intera economia mondiale in una vera e propria catastrofe inflazionistica.

Tutte le emergenze finora sperimentate, sin dalla crisi del debito greco, sono state usate come arma per forzare un mercato obbligazionario comune in Europa. L'insostenibilità della tragedia dei beni comuni richiede un nuovo livello di ridistribuzione, soprattutto adesso che i rubinetti dell'eurodollaro sono chiusi. A tal proposito, infatti, la spinta verso l'unione fiscale si è fatta sempre più pressante sin da quando le obbligazioni SURE hanno fatto capolino e i salvataggi straordinari (es. PNRR) avevano come postilla la tassazione diretta dell'UE su parte dei prestiti erogati. Anche la guerra nell'Europa orientale è stata fomentata per tale scopo: far pagare il proprio default agli altri. Ma non basta, perché un default significa sempre sfiducia, soprattutto nel mercato obbligazionario, e se tutti non remano all'unisono il bluff viene scoperto.

La Germania ha vissuto sulla sua pelle cosa significa questo processo e non vuole ripeterlo, in particolare la Bundesbank. La demolizione controllata dell'economia tedesca serve sostanzialmente a fiaccare la volontà dei banchieri centrali tedeschi affinché accettino questa “nuova normalità”. Il recente piano Draghi è solamente l'ennesimo avvertimento mafioso per integrazione fiscale e obbligazionaria.

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

The Media Firestorm Over Holocaust Denial

For years, Tucker Carlson had been the highest-rated host on television, courageously covering the important, controversial topics that few others dared to touch. After his forced departure from FoxNews in April 2023, he soon launched an even bolder interview show on Elon Musk’s Twitter platform, now completely free of the timorous corporate oversight and time constraints that have always crippled network TV.

His most remarkable achievement came in February of this year, when he traveled to Moscow and conducted a two hour sit down interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin, allowing many tens of millions worldwide to watch the unfiltered responses of one of the top global figures of our young twenty-first century. A media coup of such historic significance might have left Walter Cronkite green with envy during the heyday of network television, and with today’s cable news ratings in free fall, Carlson’s former TV colleagues could only sputter with envious rage and denounce their hugely successful competitor as “a Russian stooge.”

Carlson’s September 2nd interview with Darryl Cooper was hardly in the same category, given the relative obscurity of his guest, an amateur historian and podcaster. I’d never heard of Cooper nor had most others, but the explosive subject matter of the discussion partly made up for that lack. The lead item was the Jonestown Cult that had perished in a notorious 1978 mass suicide, and perhaps a half-hour of the 140 minute session was devoted to that. But much of the remainder dealt with World War II, Adolf Hitler, and Winston Churchill, and the candid and controversial treatment of those momentous topics soon set off fireworks all across the Internet.

I don’t use Twitter myself, but within 24 hours that platform was apparently ablaze about the interview, with former Rep. Liz Cheney among many others Tweeting out her outrage, and ADL President Jonathan Greenblatt endorsing and amplifying her attack. Twitter owner Elon Musk, the world’s wealthiest man, promoted the interview as “Very interesting. Worth watching” to his nearly 200 million followers but a blizzard of attacks soon forced him to delete that Tweet. By the 5th, the Washington Post had broken its own rules to publish an editorial denouncing both Carlson and his guest, as did a conservative columnist in the same publication, along with various other prominent commentators.

On September 6th, the New York Times heavily weighed in, publishing two very negative news stories as well as an opinion column on the swirling controversy, which was how I first learned about what had transpired. Although the history of World War II has been a topic of great interest to me, I was busy with my own work, so I merely glanced at the headlines and completely missed the dozen or two dozen other articles that soon appeared in a variety of different publications.

Most of those headlines were certainly explosive and easily explained the vast outpouring of heated words that soon blazed across social media and the rest of the Internet. The ones appearing in the Times were fairly typical of the rest:

• Tucker Carlson Welcomes a Hitler Apologist to His Show
• Tucker Carlson Criticized for Hosting Holocaust Revisionist
• Vance Declines to Denounce Carlson After Interview With Holocaust Revisionist

The term “Holocaust Revisionist” is usually little more than a euphemistic version of the much harsher term “Holocaust Denier,” and a large majority of the other articles adopted that latter formulation, both in their titles and in their text. Based upon all this news media coverage, the White House issued a statement fiercely attacking both Carlson and Cooper:

…[G]iving a microphone to a Holocaust denier who spreads Nazi propaganda is a disgusting and sadistic insult to all Americans, to the memory of the over 6 million Jews who were genocidally murdered by Adolf Hitler, to the service of the millions of Americans who fought to defeat Nazism, and to every subsequent victim of antisemitism…. Hitler was one of the most evil figures in human history and the ‘chief villain’ of World War II, full stop…. The Biden-Harris administration believes that trafficking in this moral rot is unacceptable at any time, let alone less than one year after the deadliest massacre perpetrated against the Jewish people since the Holocaust and at a time when the cancer of antisemitism is growing all over the world.

Just over six years ago, I had published a very lengthy article analyzing the origins and history of that extremely controversial ideological movement, and towards the beginning I’d described the role it played in today’s world:

For decades, Hollywood has sanctified the Holocaust, and in our deeply secular society accusations of Holocaust Denial are a bit like shouting “Witch!” in Old Salem or leveling accusations of Trotskyism in the Court of the Red Czar.

Such sentiments remain just as strong, and according to the huge wave of media stories a real, live Holocaust Denier—something almost as rare as the fabled unicorn—had not only been featured on Carlson’s enormously popular podcast show, but had even been favorably highlighted by Elon Musk. Under these circumstances, the vast media furor that resulted was hardly unwarranted.

A few days later I finally had some time to watch the long interview, which has now attracted more than a million views on YouTube, while the Tweet separately providing the same video has been viewed nearly 35 million times.

Video Link

Just as I had half-expected, what I actually saw was quite different than what most of the news coverage had suggested, once again completely affirming my belief in the total incompetence of our mainstream media.

Most of the writers had fiercely attacked Carlson for giving an admiring interview to a Holocaust Denier, yet when I carefully listened to the more than two hours of discussion, I heard not a single mention of that topic, nor any denial of the Nazi slaughter of Jews during World War II. It seemed that nearly all the journalists denouncing the show had just been too lazy to bother listening to what Cooper actually said, or perhaps too emotionally agitated to understand the plain meaning of his words.

A few of Cooper’s angry critics seemed to have avoided such a gigantic blunder and were properly circumspect. But anyone reading the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal or the Washington Post, listening to CNN, or crediting the public statements issued by the White House would have been absolutely convinced that a fervent Holocaust Denier had been given a huge global media platform to promote his diabolical views.

As far as I could tell, virtually all the published reactions to the Carlson-Cooper discussion were intensely hostile, and this was true across every website and publication, whether written by liberals or by conservatives, running as news stories or as opinion columns.

However, the mission statement of our own publication is to provide “Interesting, Important, and Controversial Perspectives Largely Excluded from the American Mainstream Media,” and this unbalanced situation provided a perfect opportunity for us to fulfill that mandate. So within a few days we had published or republished three pieces providing a very different perspective on the controversy, each of them considerably more substantial than nearly all the heated but rather vacuous denunciations on the other side. The author of the first of these was actually a prominent Holocaust Denier, while the other two largely avoided that particular issue while expressing their strong support for Cooper’s views and being very encouraged by the enormous attention he had now received.

• Tucker Carlson’s Non-Denial Denialism of the Holocaust
  Thomas Dalton • The Unz Review • September 6, 2024 • 2,100 Words
• The Carlson-Cooper Podcast: A Major Step Forward
  Kevin MacDonald • The Occidental Observer • September 7, 2024 • 3,900 Words
• Blaming Churchill
  Jim Goad • Counter-Currents • September 9, 2024 • 2,200 Words

Although the central focus of almost all the attacks on Cooper had been the belief that he was a Holocaust Denier, there seemed no evidence of this, or at least my cursory examination of his previous body of work found nothing. For example, in 2022 he had hosted an “Ask Me Anything” session on his Substack which provoked more than 600 Q&A comments, and when I did a CTRL-F for the word “Holocaust” nothing appeared. His English-language Wikipedia page seems to have disappeared and reading the German one in automatic translation merely provided a laundry-list of the media accusations but without any evidence that they were accurate.

Indeed, after receiving the first wave of those angry denunciations and attacks, he almost immediately released a half-hour podcast entitled “My response to the mob” in which he recounted with considerable emotion some of the horrors of the Jewish Holocaust. He heavily cited the very mainstream scholarship of Prof. Timothy Snyder and also told the story of the notorious Babi Yar massacre of some 30,000 Jewish civilians near Kiev by the fiendish Nazis. Cooper’s actual World War II podcast series will not be released until next year, but given all of this material and his actual statements in the Carlson interview, there seems no particular reason to believe that his coverage of the Holocaust will differ significantly from the standard orthodox narrative.

The likely trigger for the apparently erroneous and almost deranged attacks against Cooper by so many journalists is not hard to understand. In his interview, he discussed the historical reality that the Germans had initially captured some three million Soviet POWs during the enormously successful initial stages of their Barbarossa invasion and lacking the necessary resources to feed them, a majority soon starved to death in the huge camps to which they were confined. Although Cooper severely blamed Hitler for not having properly prepared for such a situation, he also emphasized that their deaths were entirely unintentional.

I suspect that few of those agitated media pundits were aware of this unfortunate but solidly-established history of the Soviet POWs, and they instead automatically assumed that any mention of “millions of deaths” during World War II must necessarily refer to Jews, so the claim that those deaths were unintentional was seen as blatant Holocaust Denial. Combine that with Cooper’s argument that Churchill rather than Hitler was the main villain responsible for the war, and that mistaken conclusion appeared obvious. When most journalists are total ignoramuses, with hair-trigger reactions to any deviation from the usual narrative of the “Good War,” this sort of error can only be expected.

Read the Whole Article

The post Tucker Carlson, Darryl Cooper, and Holocaust Denial appeared first on LewRockwell.

Decades ago I stumbled across a passage from the biography of Rudolf Höss in which he wrote about the idyllic life of his family at the villa near the Krakow, Poland. “Every wish that my wife or children expressed was granted to them. My wife’s garden was a paradise of flowers.” Over the years, many have wondered if Höss’s wife and kids were aware of just precisely he was overseeing as the director of the nearby Auschwitz Concentration Camp.

I sometimes think of this terrifying moment in history when examining the horror of so-called “gender-affirming care” for teenagers. For decades our society has generally believed that adolescents are lacking sufficient awareness and judgement to make major decisions that will have serious consequences for themselves and others. In the State of Texas, humans cannot consent to sexual intercourse or be tried as an adult until the age of 17. They cannot vote until the age of 18 and they cannot drink an alcoholic beverage until the age of 21.

And yet, by some stupendous miracle of mass psychosis, much of our society has, in recent years, accepted the proposition that children may decide to receive puberty blocking hormones and even radical surgical procedures in a Frankensteinian fantasy of “transitioning” to the opposite sex. Most people, it seems to me, have no idea of the horror suffered by countless kids as they become fully aware of the irrevocable damage that has been done to them with the approval of their idiot parents.

Here I am fully aware that I am using very harsh language. I do so not to insult, but out of my conviction that nothing shy of a verbal slap in the face could possibly awaken people from their deranged trance.

Thank God Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton opposed this atrocity and the Texas state legislature finally mustered the decency to ban it—a ban that was recently upheld by the Texas Supreme Court.

Amid growing scrutiny of the practice of mutilating children, I saw the news that Texas Children’s Hospital CEO Mark Wallace will soon retire. Like Dr. Peter Hotez, who also holds a senior position at Texas Children’s, Wallace’s actions indicate a strong preference for ideology and profit over serious and prudent consideration of what is best for children and adolescents. We can only hope that Texas Children’s will, in Wallace’s replacement, find a CEO who is animated decency, common sense, and prudence.

As the conservative Texas Values organization characterized Wallace’s retirement in a recent press release:

Texas Children’s Hospital (TCH) announced last Friday, that its current President & CEO Mark Wallace, will retire on October 4th, 2024. This announcement comes as Texas Children’s Hospital continues to receive public and private scrutiny by Texas parents and Texas lawmakers, related to the scandal from allegations that it secretly and wrongfully performed sex-change surgeries and hormone treatments on children and engaged in medicaid fraud. Rep. Tom Oliverson made mention of the TCH leadership change while speaking at the Texas Values “Texas Faith Fest” event this weekend in Austin.

Jonathan Covey, Director of Policy, Texas Values released the following statement:

“It’s clear that CEO Mark Wallace’s commitment to radical gender ideology and liberal causes have been a constant source of trouble and distraction for the core mission of Texas Children’s Hospital. New leadership would be well advised to get back on task by helping the most vulnerable – not pushing unscientific and unlawful gender interventions that give false hope to children.”

TCH has undergone scrutiny for running covert gender intervention procedures and surgeries since Dr. Eithan Haim, former TCH Resident, blew the whistle on TCH in 2023 for continuing to perform these operations on children after they claimed to have shut down the clinic. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office has an ongoing investigation of these claims.

Texas Values was the leading statewide organization who worked tirelessly this past legislative session to pass SB 14, the Ban on Child Gender Modification Bill, a new law protecting children from harmful gender modification procedures and surgeries. Learn more about SB 14 on our website: Stop Child Gender Modification Law

Texas Values law and policy team are available for comment.
Email Ashley or call/text 737-314-2450 to schedule an interview.

This originally appeared on Courageous Discourse.

The post CEO of Texas Children’s Hospital To Retire Amid Growing Scrutiny of Child Mutilation appeared first on LewRockwell.

From the Tom Woods Letter:

Well, Steven Crowder is out with another video that embarrasses a public official, and this one is so over the top you almost can’t believe it’s real.

Dr. Jay Varma, who ran the New York City Covid response for then-Mayor Bill de Blasio for a year and a half, told an undercover reporter that during that time he and others engaged in drug-fueled sex parties — as other people watched their relatives die alone.

Every morning at 10:00am, for a year and a half, Dr. Varma sat next to the mayor for a daily press conference.

In fact, Dr. Varma reports that he “was the one who convinced the mayor to make [the Covid shots] a mandate.”

“It’s so funny, because I did like all this deviant sexual stuff while I was on TV,” he recalls.

Had New Yorkers found out he was having “sex parties during Covid,” he admitted it would have been a “big deal” and “a real embarrassment.”

Yeah, you could say that.

“My wife and I had one with our friends in August of that first summer. It wasn’t so much sex as like, ‘I need to get this energy out of me’ and stuff like that….

“So we rented a hotel. We had to be kind of sneaky about it because hotels didn’t want people gathering there.”

(You will be relieved to know that everyone had had a Covid test.)

“And it was fun! We all took like, you know, molly [Ecstasy/MDMA]… and everybody had a blast.”

Then he gives details of a wild 200-person party in the first half of 2021 that was “not Covid-friendly” where everyone was high — at a time when the proles were allowed to participate in gatherings of no more than 50.

The whole thing is bizarre. He takes glee in, and is excited about, telling the undercover reporter that the Wall Street Journal wrote a whole article about him being the one person responsible for why Kyrie Irving, who declined the shots, had not been allowed to play basketball.

He is very open: people are too stupid to make decisions, so we have to make them for them. Education is not going to persuade them. The education is so that after they finally give in and get the shots, they can comfort themselves with, “Well, I’ve heard it’s safe and I guess it was the right thing after all.”

“The way we do it in public health,” he said, “is we make it very uncomfortable to be unvaccinated…. They didn’t get vaccinated because they heard it was safe; they gave in because it was really hard.”

Now Crowder’s point in releasing this video isn’t so much to say this man is a hypocrite.

His point instead is to say: these people manifestly did not fear the thing they energetically urged you to fear.

Nobody wants to hear about creepy Jay Varma and his sex parties. But for obvious reasons, they are a very telling and important part of the history of New York City in 2020-2021, and when the court historians tell the story of those years they will be (as usual) willfully deceiving people by leaving them out.

Now, it’s true: Diary of a Psychosis, my book smashing the Covid madness, doesn’t discuss sex parties, but that just means anyone of any age can read it without scandal.

Some people say: I can’t bear to read it because the subject is so depressing.

I get that. But by that measure we would never read about totalitarianism or genocide — and yet we must.

If it makes you feel better, you can listen to the audiobook version, with Woods’s soothing broadcasting voice and his unique blend of sarcasm and contempt:

https://www.tomwoods.com/diaryaudiobook

The post Covid Enforcer Just Got Exposed appeared first on LewRockwell.

Last week, I was talking with three people about the Scamdemic. One said that, given government’s and media’s plainly dishonest and strategic orchestration of an extreme viral overreaction over the past 54 months, nearly any conspiracy—past, present or future—seemed at least remotely possible.

None of us disagreed with that dark notion. For those who apprehended the Covid Scam, any prior faith they had in the government and media has been broken.

This now-permanent scam alert derives both from the top/down and the bottom/up. Not only have governments and the media brazenly revealed their willingness to deceive and manipulate the populace, the masses have reciprocally shown their gullibility and passivity. If, five years ago, you had told me that hundreds of millions of Americans would freak out over a respiratory virus that threatened only a tiny fraction of the very sick and old and would not only accept, but aggressively support, lockdowns, school closures, masks, testing/tracing, shots and mandated experimental shots, I would have waved my hand and derisively dismissed your prediction.

I would have been wrong.

Post-Scamdemic, the plainly visible, unholy alliance of Democrat politicians and media, combined with popular credulity and passivity during an extreme disruption of everyday life, potentiates and portends a wide array of additional, government-driven scams. Though a minority have seen and admitted they’ve been had, I doubt there are enough Covid-forged skeptics to successfully oppose the next, “novel” crisis. Hearing recent news snippets and people I know continue to justify the NPIs and shots, it feels as if the American government and media are Lucy and the public is Charlie Brown, ready to kick a disappearing football again. And again.

—

The 9/11 incidents occurred 23 years ago last week. For weeks, months and years thereafter, news watchers heard ceaselessly about a cadre of shadowy Saudi Al Qaeda operatives who conducted mass killings at the behest of some furtive, evil mastermind named Osama bin Laden. Labels like “Ground Zero” and “heroes” and slogans such as “If you stay home, the terrorists win” were repeated ad nauseam.

Analogously, during the Scamdemic, news consumers heard non-stop about a “novel virus,” “Doctor Anthony Fauci,” “spiking cases,” an “heroes,” but this go-round with the opposite exhortation to “Stay home, save lives!” Every publicized crisis has its formulaic buzzwords, slogans, villains and heroes; though the 9/11 firemen seemed more heroic than were the TikTok-dancing Covid nurses.

Just as some people say viruses don’t exist, some 9/11 skeptics questioned if jet-piloting terrorists killed office workers. I watch very little TV and consume very little legacy print/screen news. I question the small amount of news that I see or read; the content is plainly designed to mislead. Sometimes, the media lies outright. More often, they withhold the truth and refuse to ask obvious questions.

I still believe viruses exist. Seeing normally healthy family members fall ill consecutively, and only briefly, on several occasions has been persuasive. I suspect that the vast majority of those said to have been killed by the latest virus really died from other causes. I never thought a respiratory virus was so dangerous that it justified locking down a society. Not even for two weeks, nor even one day. We had never locked down before.

In comparison, I believe that, on 9/11, many vital people had decades stolen from them and that these victims’ families and friends suffered profound losses. But after the government and media’s Scamdemic conduct, I’m not sure who caused the 9/11 deaths. I’m now willing to consider the possibility that 9/11 was some kind of inside job with an ulterior motive.

—

Aside from the above-noted differences between 9/11 and the Covid responses, I see at least three common themes.

To illustrate the first, here’s an excerpt of my 9/11 memory:

That morning, I walked, in perfect weather, twelve minutes from the train station to my Trenton office. Shortly after 9:00, I tried to call someone but found my phone line dead. I asked a co-worker what was up. She said some small plane—a Cessna type—had crashed into one of the buildings and the antenna on top had been damaged.

The news soon sharply worsened and created an office stir.

One of my colleagues, a Harvard grad, declared he was going home because our nine-story building was the tallest structure between New York City and Philadelphia and, in his mind, a potential target for a weaponized plane. I was sure he was overthinking the situation. Aside from Trenton seeming very unlike a strategic target, there were two residential towers twice as high as our building right across the street. I said so.

Nonetheless, my colleague embraced the illusion of Life During Wartime. Whether discussing terrorism or a virus, people like to consider themselves victims, or potential victims. Victimhood has become engrained in our culture via news coverage and book, TV and movie plots, and institutionalized in intersectionalism studies and DEI programs that afford preferences based on demographic characteristics, even when those classified as victims have been comparatively privileged. It feels good to perceive oneself as an underdog, surviving against the odds.

Hypochondria and exaggerated personal risk, as during Covid, are forms of appropriated victimhood. If you can’t be an actual victim, you can at least see yourself as a potential victim. Feeling like a potential victim is much easier than being an actual victim; potential victims don’t actually have to suffer.

These numbers were the only statistics one needed to confirm that the one-size-fits-all Covid reaction was a scam. These figures comported with what I and every one of the many people I asked were directly observing: no remotely healthy person under 90 was dying from The Virus. Only a tiny fraction were dying with it.

Nonetheless, during Coronamania, many people eagerly characterized themselves as at grave viral risk. A PhD/jogger/medical researcher I know asserted that he would certainly die if he got Covid because he had some seemingly mild form of asthma. I heard others at very low risk express similar, overstated fears.

Those healthy and under 65—i.e., the vast majority of the population—faced functionally zero risk. They shouldn’t have been restricted, or restricted themselves, in any way.

Those over 65 were repeatedly told, and most believed, that they had crossed some distinctly perilous threshold and were at greatly elevated risk of dying from a respiratory virus. This was false. Even between 65 and 75, 99.88% of reasonably healthy people survived the virus. Only about .12% of the population should rationally see themselves in the bottom .12% of any demographic.

Those declaring potential victimhood didn’t know that the official death tolls were greatly exaggerated. Of the legions whose 2020 deaths were falsely, opportunistically attributed to Covid, many were really caused by medical mistreatment: ventilators, powerful sedatives and kidney-impairing antivirals.

The Covid fearful failed to take basic biology into account: with each passing year, the bodies of those over 60 wear down and develop health problems that incrementally raise their risks of dying from a variety of causes. At advanced ages, death becomes slightly more likely, virus or no virus. Actuarially, it makes incrementally less sense each year to restrict one’s movements, simply to avoid infection. Seize the day. Go as hard as you can for as long as you can.

Moreover, peoples’ baseline health at any given age often varies compared to their same-aged peers. Many healthy people lumped their risk in with same-age people who were in markedly worse baseline health, i.e., those with multiple comorbidities. Laying claim to peril allowed many to self-identify as potential victims and thereby added desired drama to their lives and provided an excuse to “work from home” or avoid contact with unpreferred others.

Read the Whole Article

The post 9/11 and the Scamdemic appeared first on LewRockwell.

And Russia is fighting an existential war for the survival of the Motherland – what it has done repeatedly over centuries.

This ain’t no party
This ain’t no disco
This ain’t no fooling around
No time for dancin’
Or lovey-dovey
I ain’t got time for that now

Talking Heads, Life During Wartime

First we had action: President Putin – cool, calm, collected – warns that any attack on Russia with long-range NATO missiles will be an act of war.

Then we had reaction: NATO rats scurrying back to the gutter – in haste. For now.

All that was a direct consequence of the Kursk debacle. A desperate gamble. But the state of things in the proxy war in Ukraine was desperate for NATO. Until it became crystal clear it’s all basically non-recoverable.

So there are two options left.

Ukraine’s unconditional surrender, on Russia’s terms, tantamount to NATO’s complete humiliation.

Or escalation to all-out war (italics mine) with Russia.

The U.S. – but not the UK – ruling classes seem to have registered the essence of Putin’s message: if NATO is at war with Russia, “then, bearing in mind the change in the essence of the conflict, we will make appropriate decisions in response to the threats that will be posed to us.”

Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov was ominously more precise: “The decision has been made, the carte blanche and all indulgences have been given [to Kiev), so we [Russia] are ready for everything. And we will react in a way that will not be pretty.”

NATO de facto at war with Russia

For all practical purposes, NATO is already at war with Russia: non-stop reconnaissance flights, high-precision strikes on airfields in Crimea, forcing the Black Sea Fleet to relocate out of Sevastopol, these are only some instances. With “permission” to strike as far as 500 km deep into Russia, and a list of several targets already submitted by Kiev for “approval”, Putin has clearly stated the obvious.

Russia is fighting an existential war for the survival of the Motherland – what it has done repeatedly over centuries.

The USSR suffered 27 million losses and emerged from WWII stronger than ever. That demonstration of willpower, in itself, scares the collective West to death.

Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov – whose Taoist patience seems to be exhausting – added some color on the Big Picture, drawing from English literature:

“George Orwell had a rich imagination and historical foresight. But even he could not imagine what a totalitarian state would look like. He described some of its contours, but failed to penetrate the depths of the totalitarianism that we now see within the framework of the ‘rules-based order.’ I have nothing to add. The current leaders in Washington, who suppress any dissent, have ‘outdone’ him. This is totalitarianism in its purest form.”

Lavrov concluded that “they are historically doomed.” Yet they don’t really have the guts to provoke WWIII. Trademark cowards can only resort to a War OF Terror.

Here are some instances. The SVR – Russian foreign intel – discovered a Kiev plot to stage a Russian missile attack on a hospital or kindergarten on Kiev-controlled territory.

The objectives include raising the – collapsed – morale of the AFU; justify the complete removal of any restrictions on deep missile strikes inside the Russian Federation; and attract support from the Global South – which overwhelmingly understands what Russia is doing in Ukraine.

In parallel, if this massive false flag works, the Hegemon would use it to “increase pressure” (How? Screaming at the top of their lungs?) on Iran and the DPRK, whose missiles would likely be the perpetrators of the carnage.

As much as this seems far-fetched on a Maximum Stupidistan level, considering the Deep Dementia ranging from Washington and London to Kiev it does remain possible, as NATOstan de facto retains the strategic initiative in this war. Russia for its part remains passive. It is NATO that is choosing the method, the place and the time for its key, choice strikes.

Another classic instance of War OF Terror is jihadi outfit and al-Qaeda spin-off Hayat Tahrir al-Sham in Syria receiving 75 drones from Kiev, in exchange for a promise to send a batch of experienced fighters from the post-Soviet space to Donbass.

Nothing new on the terror front here: Ukrainian spy honcho Kirill Budanov – lionized in the West as some sort of Ukrainian James Bond – is always in close touch with the jihadis in Idlib, as reported by the Syrian newspaper Al-Watan.

Preparing for the Operation Barbarossa remix

In parallel, we had U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell – the Russophobe/Sinophobe who invented the “pivot to China” during the first Obama administration – briefing senior EU and NATO bureaucrats about the military cooperation of the new Empire-coined axis of evil: Russia-China-Iran.

Campbell focused mostly on Moscow assisting Beijing with advanced submarine, missile and stealth know-how, in exchange for Chinese supplies.

It’s obvious that the combo behind the zombie who can’t even figure out a way to lick an ice cream is unaware of the interlocking military collaboration of the Russia-China-Iran strategic partnerships.

Blind as a thousand bats, the combo interprets Russia sharing its so far heavily guarded military know how with China as “a sign of increasing recklessness”.

The real troubling story behind this mix of ignorance and panic is that nothing originates from the zombie who can’t even lick an ice cream. It’s the “Biden combo” that is in fact hard at work to pre-set the trajectory of the proxy war in Ukraine beyond January 2025 – no matter who is elected to the White House.

War OF Terror should be the overall paradigm – while preparations for the real war on Russia continue, with the horizon set for 2030, according to NATO’s own internal deliberations. This is when they believe they will be at peak power to advance a remixed version of 1941’s Operation Barbarossa.

These clowns are congenitally incapable of understanding that Putin does not bluff. If there is no option left, Russia will (italics mine) go nuclear. As it stands, Putin and the Security Council – Medvedev’s incendiary rhetoric notwithstanding – are deep in the difficult business of absorbing blow after blow to prevent Armageddon.

That takes unbounded Taoist patience – shared by Putin, Lavrov, Patrushev – coupled with the fact that Putin plays Japanese go, much more than chess, and is a formidable tactician.

Putin reads NATOstan’s demented playbook as if it was a children’s story book (in fact it is). At the fateful moment of maximum benefit across the spectrum for Russia, Putin will order, for instance, the necessary decapitation of the Kiev snake.

The non-stop, raucous debate on Russia using nuclear weapons essentially hinges on how the Kremlin will consider a NATO missile attack as an existential threat.

Neocons and Zio-cons as well as NATO vassals may desire a nuclear war – theoretically – because in effect this would generate massive depopulation. One should never forget that the WEF/Davos gang wants and preaches a reduction of human population globally at a humongous 85%. The only path for it is of course a nuclear war.

But reality is way more prosaic. Cowardly neo-cons and Zio-cons – mirroring the example of the Talmudic genocidals in Tel Aviv – at best want to use the threat of a nuclear war to bully especially the Russia-China strategic partnership.

In contrast, Putin, Xi and selected Global Majority leaders such as Malaysia’s Anwar continue to display intelligence, integrity, patience, foresight and humanity. For the collective West and its appallingly mediocre political and bankster elites, it’s always about money and profits. Well, that may also be about to change drastically on October 22 in Kazan at the BRICS summit – when major steps towards building a post-unilateral world should be announced.

The talk of the town in Moscow

There is a raging discussion across the board in Moscow on how to end the proxy war in Ukraine.

Putin’s Taoist patience is heavily criticized – not necessarily by informed observers with inside knowledge of hardcore geopolitics. They don’t understand that Washington will never accept key Russian demands. In parallel, when it comes to full denazification of Ukraine, Moscow eventually settling for a mere “friendly” regime in Kiev does not cut it.

There seems to be a consensus that the collective West will not by any means recognize Russia’s sovereignty over Crimea as well as everything conquered in the battlefields of Novorossiya.

In the end, the prime evidence is that all nuances of Russia’s negotiation plan will be decided by Putin. And that changes all the time. What he proposed – quite generously – on the eve of that pathetic peace summit in Switzerland in June is not on the table anymore after Kursk.

Everything hinges, once again, on what happens in the battlefields. If – rather when – the Ukrainian front collapses, the running joke around Moscow will be in effect: “Peter [the Great] and Catherine [the Great] are waiting.” Well, they won’t be waiting anymore, because these were the Greats who happened to de facto incorporate what is eastern and southern Ukraine into Russia.

And that will seal NATO’S cosmic humiliation. Hence the perpetuation of Plan B: no WWIII, but a relentless War OF Terror.

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

The post This Ain’t No WWIII: This Is a War of Terror appeared first on LewRockwell.

Comments open on YouTube

The post JD Vance: The Immigration Crisis, How Polls Are Used to Fool You, and the Left’s Plan to Stop Trump appeared first on LewRockwell.

Remember: illegally appointed special counsel Jack Smith is prosecuting President Trump in D.C. for exercising his constitutional right to free speech after the 2020 election.  Smith’s case essentially claims that Trump was not entitled to question the legitimacy of the mail-in ballot–tainted election and that his refusal to concede to Joe Biden directly led to the breach of the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.  The fact that Biden and his attorney general, Merrick Garland, are using the imprimatur of the criminal justice system as a smokescreen to railroad and possibly imprison the leader of the opposition party is bad enough.  By treating President Trump’s speech as the “proximate cause” of other alleged crimes (consisting mostly of questionable trespass violations reimagined and inflated into felonies) committed by strangers, the Biden-Garland-Smith Triumvirate of Tyranny has turned every American’s opinion into a potential criminal act.

Should this bother all those rabid leftists who desperately want to see President Trump behind bars?  I would say so.  President Trump has now survived two assassination attempts, and although the FBI has done its best to muddy the waters concerning the motivations of the first gunman (trying to kill the Republican nominee for president seems like a pretty good clue, does it not?), the social media history of the second gunman (as well as the Biden-Harris bumper sticker on his truck) clearly exposes him as a Ukraine War–obsessed, anti-MAGA, Kamala Harris–supporting zealot who believes that President Trump is a civilizational threat.

Where would he get that crazy idea?  Oh, I don’t know — maybe from the constant stream of contributors on networks such as MSNBC who call Trump a “dictator,” another “Hitler,” and a “Nazi.”  Maybe the would-be assassin took Democrat politicians seriously whenever they showed up on news shows these last eight years to claim with utmost sincerity that Trump is a “threat to democracy.”  Maybe the man who turned an AK-47 on the president read one of the numerous opinion columns featured in the nation’s factually shoddy but stubbornly prominent publications, all universally libeling President Trump as a “rapist,” a “white supremacist,” a “fascist,” and a “dangerous” leader of the “far right.”  Should fake journalists who regularly claim that America will “literally end” if Trump returns to the White House be surprised when someone stumbles upon their neurotic rantings and subsequently attempts to “save” the country from the specter of their shared delusions?

Have we not also reached our “what’s good for the goose is good for the gander” political moment?  If President Trump must spend millions of dollars defending himself against mercenary prosecutors intent on locking him up for the remainder of his life because of the “dangerous” words that come out of his mouth, then surely those people who use their speech to beg for someone — anyone — to rid the country of the once and future president should be held similarly liable.  How many times can a Democrat politician or credentialed propagandist falsely compare Donald Trump to mass murderers and dictators such as Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini before those inflammatory slanders rise to the same level of “proximate cause” that prompted the Department of (in)Justice to put Trump in its crosshairs over January 6?

Jack Smith is prosecuting President Trump for somehow threatening the peaceful transfer of power from a legitimately elected president to an illegitimately installed stooge.  Even though Trump correctly believed (and still does believe) that the 2020 election was rigged in Biden’s favor (mail-in ballots stuffed into unsecured drop boxes in the dead of night, the use of Zuckerbucks to increase ballot collection in Democrat neighborhoods, and the Intelligence Community’s efforts to defraud the American people with regard to Hunter Biden’s “laptop from Hell” all amply support this conclusion), he left office as legally required on January 20.  Trump never called for violence against Joe Biden or the U.S. government.  He never urged Americans to revolt against their country.  Even on January 6 — the half-day of protest that leftist pundits and politicians say was worse than 9/11 and the Civil War combined — President Trump calmly urged his supporters “to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.”  In other words, he defended his First Amendment right to speak his mind and the First Amendment right of all Americans to speak theirs — but he never, ever called for violence against his political enemies.

For the crime of speaking truthfully about the tremendous deficiencies and suspicious vote-counting activities surrounding the 2020 election, Jack Smith and the rest of the Triumvirate of Tyranny have thrown President Trump in the dock to defend his life.  And as atrocious as the Triumvirate’s political persecution of an American president has been, it pales in comparison to the way it has harassed, hunted, imprisoned, and even tortured thousands of ordinary Americans for showing up at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021 to protest for free and fair elections.

Read the Whole Article

The post Leftists Deserve the J6 Treatment appeared first on LewRockwell.

This is another chapter in the Before Time series of articles (here’s the last one) written by those who experienced those times for the sake of the edification of those who are too young to have experienced them and so have no knowledge of how things were, once.

My parents bought their first house in 1969 – in Stamford, CT. It was a split level in a nice suburban neighborhood, sitting on about a half-acre of land. They paid about $33,000 for it, equivalent in today’s devalued currency to about $300,000. I decided to check what the old house would cost today.

First, though, how about what it costs to not be evicted from it, today.

According to the latest public records data I could find, the annual property tax on the old house is currently $10,530. In other words, three years of property taxes on the old house in our time amounts to as much as my parents paid for the house back in the Before Time of 1969. In inflated-equivalent currency, it would come to about $2k per year, if my parents had been obliged to pay this rent (on top of their mortgage) with 1969 money. In five years’ time, they’d have had to pay a third again in rent – which is what “property taxes’ amount to – than they paid for the house.

As in the whole thing.

But they didn’t have to pay that much because it was 1969 – the Before Time – and both the taxes on the house and the house were affordable in those times.

Neither are today.

You have just read about the taxes on the house. How about the cost of house, itself? In these times, that is.

According to the latest Redfin estimate, the old house would list for $1.3 million if it were put on the market today. If that’s how much the house cost in 1969, my parents would have had to come up with about $150,000 in 1969 dollars, a or somewhere in between four and fives time as much as they had to come up with when they actually bought the house in ’69.

Which they were able to do because the house didn’t cost 4-5 times as much then as it does now.

Fast forward about 27 years to the time when I bought my first house, in the suburbs of Washington, DC.

It was possible for me to buy a house because it was still possible at the time – the 1990s – to buy a small house in the DC suburbs for around $170,000 or so. More finely, because it was possible for a young person to save up the 10 percent down payment that’s generally necessary to qualify for a home loan. In my case, this amounted to about $17,000. Not a small sum but also not an impossible sum. Save about $2,500 per year for about six years and you had enough to put down on the $170k house and that’s exactly what I did.

Because I could.

I looked up my first house on Redfin and discovered that if it were to be put on the market today, the asking price would be in the vicinity of $630k. That is an increase (unadjusted for devaluation) of $460k – nearly half a milion dollars – over about 28 years. Adjusted, it is a real-money (well, buying power of money) difference of about $300k, now vs. then.

Ten percent down today would mean $63,000 – an all-but-impossible sum for anyone who isn’t already the owner of a home (who can tap the inflated equity of their home to swing the down payment on a new home) to come up with on their own. It would take saving $10k for six years or $5k for 20, by which time a person in their 20s would be well into their 40s.

And then you’d have to pay the mortgage on a $630k first house. Plus the rent styled “property taxes.”

Read the Whole Article

The post Before Time Home Costs appeared first on LewRockwell.