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No wonder we’re restless, teetering on the edge, frustrated by our addictions to fakery and excess, starved for what cannot be marketed or made profitable, so it no longer exists except in the shadows.

Everything is staged, and therefore fake. Given the near-zero cost of posting content in the digital world, everyone discovered that staging wasn’t limited to high-end political events, parades and Hollywood sets; since all the world’s a stage, everything could be staged, from every selfie on social media to every video on YouTube to every public display.

With staging comes spectacle, with spectacle comes self-serving artifice, and with artifice comes excess. The captivating idea of staging is by mimicking authenticity, we manifest an implicitly self-serving purpose: we stage the film to mimic “real life” to entertain the audience, and by this means reap a fortune.

By staging a political event, we rouse blood lust to serve our ascension to power. By staging a selfie in a swank bar sipping a costly cocktail, while home is a shared room in a squalid, overpriced flat, we serve our desire for a digitally distributed simulacrum of a status we cannot possibly achieve in our real lives.

Now that everything is staged, the competition to get noticed in a sea frothing with endless scrolls of “content” demands excess. Everything is now so sensationalized that we are desensitized to it all. As a result, everything distills down to self-parody, rendering parody impossible, for everything is already a parody of itself.

Mimicking authenticity to make the sale is now so embedded, so ubiquitous, that irony is also lost: we are living in a Philip K. Dick story come to life in which young women fabricating fake lives of glamor and luxury to boost their visibility are now competing with digitized imaginary young women that are idealized versions of the sexually compelling female.

Now that engagement is the coin of the Attention Economy realm, traditional media and social media have merged: everybody’s competing for engagement because that’s everyone’s source of income. Never mind that the Big Tech platforms skim the bulk of the engagement revenues and a handful of influencers reap the majority of what’s left; the mob is furiously dedicated to the task of picking up the pennies scattered in the sand-covered floor of the Coliseum.

In my view, engagement is the polite term for addiction, the core value proposition in Addiction Capitalism. As every dealer knows, there’s no more reliable source of revenue than a junkie with a monkey on his back, and encouraging addiction to screens is astoundingly profitable.

The fevered competition for eyeballs / visibility has generated a self-reinforcing feedback of faking authenticity better than other spectacles. The goal isn’t to present “real life,” what would be the point of such absurdly uncompelling, boring anti-spectacle?

The goal is to stage the mise en scene so cleverly that it really looks real: the rural kitchen in all its handmade glory, the “real food” lovingly prepared with simple tools, or the high-wire emotions of the indignant, filled to the brim with passionate intensity, planning their role when the rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches towards Bethlehem to be born.

But authenticity cannot be profitably milked for long; we caught on long ago. The transformation into sensationalized, self-parodying staging makes a mockery of authenticity, and as everyone crowds onto the world stage seeking visibility and the money the right staging brings, authenticity dissipates into dark energy, present but invisible, undetectable, a fleeting shadow lost in the churning wake of spectacle.

French philosopher Guy Debord’s 1967 book, The Society of the Spectacle, sheds light on this transformation. (This is a PDF of the entire text.) “The vague feeling that there has been a rapid invasion which has forced people to lead their lives in an entirely different way is now widespread; but this is experienced rather like some inexplicable change in the climate, or in some other natural equilibrium, a change faced with which ignorance knows only that it has nothing to say.”

Read the Whole Article

The post All The World’s a Stage: Everything Is Fake appeared first on LewRockwell.

When the Holocaust returned it came denouncing anti-semitism and wearing a Star of David.

It was never going to look how we were expecting. It wasn’t going to show up in its old familiar costume with the bent cross and the tiny mustache, blaming all the problems on the Jews.

It had to look different. If it didn’t look different, we never would have let it in the door.

And that’s still what’s throwing a lot of people off: it looks different. It doesn’t look like what all all the World War II movies and Holocaust novels conditioned us to watch out for. In fact, it looks so different that the victims in the last story have the same religion as the antagonists in the new one.

Pointing to Gaza, an Israeli settler says it is akin to a cut in the body.

“When you have a cut, you have to take out the infection. Then it’ll be clean again…”

That’s how he describes the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. pic.twitter.com/UdVP0Sq0s8

— Hamza Yusuf (@Hamza_a96) October 22, 2024

That old aphorism “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes” is true because people don’t tend to make the exact same mistake in the same way twice, but the conditioning which led them to make the first mistake will often lead them to make a second similar one. We’ve all been made far too familiar with the Nazi extermination program to ever consent to Jews being rounded up and loaded onto trains again, but we also didn’t purge from our civilization all the murderousness, hatred and tyranny which made it possible. That’s why this new Holocaust has been allowed to happen.

We’ve all been conditioned to watch out for the next Hitler, but there’s never going to be another Hitler. We’ve been so focused on looking out for the Hitler who never comes that many of us missed when we started singing verses that rhyme with the ones we were hearing in Germany eight decades ago.

People assume what’s happening in Gaza can’t be an actual genocide, because the news media keep assuring everyone that’s not what we’re looking at, and so do the politicians in both parties.

“This can’t possibly be what it looks like,” people say. “If it was, we would have heard about it in the news.”

The villains in this new story don’t look like the villains in the old story, and, if you are a properly indoctrinated westerner, they might not look like villains at all. They might just look like Jews defending themselves from terrorists and western governments rightly defending their dear ally — which is exactly what they should do if they want to prevent another Holocaust!

But it’s that very misperception which is making today’s Holocaust possible. This mass atrocity is being tolerated by huge parts of the population exactly because we see it as intolerable for large numbers of Jews to be killed by those who hate them, not understanding that the people who were killed on October 7 were killed not because of their religion, but because they were part of a settler-colonialist project which is premised on the perpetual abuse of a preexisting indigenous population.

“I just think we need to kill them. Every last one of them”

Genocidal Israeli on Sky News pic.twitter.com/kHNrYDF4ew

— Stevie McGlinchey (@steviemcglinchy) October 22, 2024

People defend Israel’s actions on the grounds that Israel has reasons for doing things the way it’s doing them. They have to bomb Gaza — they suffered an unprovoked attack from a bunch of evil terrorists. They have to bomb all the hospitals and schools and mosques — that’s where Hamas are hiding. They have to bomb areas that are packed full of children — Hamas are using those children as human shields.

But those who commit mass atrocities always justify their actions. They always have reasons for doing them. They always frame it as a necessary act of self-preservation.

That was always what the next Holocaust was going to look like. It was never going to feature new bad guys who cackle and twist their mustaches saying “Haha, we are evil! Let’s kill a bunch of people because we are evil!” They were always going to frame themselves as the heroes and victims, and the other side as the villains and victimizers. They were always going to offer a bunch of reasons why what they’re doing is actually good and righteous, even though it looks evil on its face.

If we are to prevent genocidal atrocities, we need to be able to recognize what’s happening in real time, and we can’t do that if we’re expecting them to show up in familiar and instantly recognizable packaging. We need to be able to see through the manipulations and justifications in the here and now so we can stop it in its tracks instead of waiting for history to judge it in our rearview mirror after it’s already happened.

This is important to recognize when it comes to saving Gaza, and it’s important to recognize when it comes to preventing the Holocausts of the future as well. They will never look identical to the Holocausts of the past. Their form will be unprecedented, and they will have different justifications for their orchestration. But they will rhyme. And we need to be able to pick up on that as it happens.

______________________

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 When the Holocaust Returned It Came Denouncing Anti-Semitism and Wearing a Star of David appeared first on LewRockwell.

 

 

di Omid Malekan

Il mio coautore, Ulrich Bindseil, e il suo collega della BCE, Jürgen Schaaf, hanno scritto un interessante documento di ricerca sulle conseguenze distributive di Bitcoin qualora dovesse continuare ad aumentare di valore. Non sono d'accordo con la loro argomentazione e voglio chiarire il perché.

In quel documento sostengono una tesi secondo cui se Bitcoin non fosse altro che un asset speculativo senza altre utilità economiche, o sociali, allora un continuo apprezzamento avrebbe conseguenze negative per il resto della società. Non ho alcun problema con la loro conclusione: è un argomento ponderato e solido, ma la loro premessa sull'utilità di Bitcoin è errata, per due motivi.

In primo luogo, si concentrano inutilmente sul fatto che Bitcoin abbia rispettato gli obiettivi del suo creatore e dei suoi primi utilizzatori. Penso che questa osservazione non sia importante, anche se fosse vera. L'attenzione dovrebbe essere rivolta al fatto che Bitcoin abbia utilità per la società odierna. In secondo luogo, cadono nella comune trappola di trattare Bitcoin come un semplice asset, indipendente dalla nuova infrastruttura che lo alimenta.

Messi insieme, questi errori portano Bindseil e Schaaf a non cogliere l'attrattiva di Bitcoin come forma di assicurazione monetaria. Data l'importanza del risparmio e dei pagamenti nella società, sto parlando di utilità, finanziariamente e socialmente, e la giustificazione più semplice per cui Bitcoin ha valore.

Satoshi è irrilevante

Il miglior test per qualsiasi tecnologia è se serve a uno scopo utile per la società oggi, o ha il potenziale per farlo in futuro. Le intenzioni del suo creatore non sono importanti. Una tecnologia che ha utilità oltre a ciò che il suo inventore aveva previsto non è meno utile o preziosa.

Il documento afferma:

La persona sotto lo pseudonimo Satoshi Nakamoto ha pubblicato il white paper su Bitcoin nel 2008, con la visione di una valuta digitale globale tramite la creazione di una struttura per effettuare pagamenti senza una terza parte di fiducia che agisca da intermediario. Ma il design concettuale e la tecnologia di Bitcoin sembrano aver impedito a questa visione di materializzarsi.

Bindseil e Schaaf hanno ragione quando osservano che Bitcoin oggi non è utilizzato come denaro “Peer to Peer” nel modo in cui alcuni speravano quindici anni fa. Raramente viene utilizzato per acquisti online, o semplici pagamenti peer to peer. Ma non dovremmo dare troppo peso al titolo e all'introduzione di un white paper di un autore sconosciuto scomparso più di un decennio fa, e nemmeno ai suoi seguaci.

Chiunque fosse Satoshi Nakamoto, era un attento osservatore delle sfide dei sistemi di pagamento moderni. Il token money (sotto forma di monete e banconote) ha da sempre offerto caratteristiche desiderabili come accesso universale, privacy, pagamenti peer-to-peer, nessuna commissione e liquidazione immediata. Ma il token money non funziona per pagamenti di grandi dimensioni o a lunga distanza, e certamente non è utile online, quindi la società è migrata verso il ledger money, intermediato da terze parti di fiducia come banche e FinTech. Questi intermediari hanno i loro difetti: devono addebitare commissioni per coprire i loro costi, tendono a diventare un monopolio e spesso discriminano determinati utenti, sia per il loro interesse personale sia perché sono costretti a farlo.

Su questo punto Bindseil e Schaaf si concentrano troppo sull'uso che Nakamoto fa della “mediazione delle controversie” come fonte di censura nei sistemi di pagamento.

Il problema che Nakamoto (2008) ritiene di aver individuato sembra tuttavia partire da un equivoco. In linea di principio, le istituzioni finanziarie possono evitare di mediare le controversie. La mediazione è più un servizio opzionale che una necessità. È richiesta dai clienti e addebitata dai fornitori di servizi di pagamento. Ad esempio, PayPal non offre alcuna mediazione delle controversie se i pagamenti vengono effettuati in modalità “amici e familiari”; e questi sono gratuiti. Allo stesso modo i trasferimenti di credito tra conti bancari non sono mediati, ovvero se una consegna di e-commerce viene pagata in anticipo tramite bonifico e il cliente non è soddisfatto del bene ricevuto, la banca non media.

Hanno ragione nel sottolineare che molti sistemi di pagamento non forniscono una mediazione attiva, ma tale argomentazione non coglie il punto più ampio: tutti gli intermediari fidati sono responsabili di ogni pagamento che elaborano. Cosa succede se una parte lesa da un pagamento fraudolento chiede un risarcimento? O uno stato la ritiene responsabile di flussi illeciti?

I sistemi di pagamento tradizionali affrontano questi rischi in tre modi (non esclusivi).

• Alcuni, come le carte di credito, mediano le controversie, quindi scaricano il costo sui loro utenti. Lo fanno perché gli utenti lo vogliono e i commercianti (che pagano l'assicurazione implicita) tollerano il costo.

• Altri, come i pagamenti da banca a banca, censurano attivamente i clienti e le loro attività tramite regimi di conformità costosi KYC e “fonte dei fondi”. Lo fanno a causa di una combinazione di leggi (come il Bank Secrecy Act negli Stati Uniti) e metodi di mitigazione del rischio. Nella migliore delle ipotesi questi regimi impongono costi e attriti aggiuntivi a tutti; nella peggiore delle ipotesi portano a discriminazioni nei confronti di certi tipi di clienti, clienti che non hanno fatto nulla di sbagliato e non dovrebbero essere censurati.

• Altri ancora, come le banche centrali che gestiscono i sistemi RTGS, limitano drasticamente l'accesso a un set esclusivo di fornitori di pagamenti all'ingrosso, quindi chiedono a quei clienti di limitare anche i loro clienti. In ogni caso un intermediario fidato deve proteggersi, il che porta a un'avversione al rischio generalizzata e a una crescente censura.

Le prove dell'intuizione di Nakamoto sugli intermediari di pagamento sono ovunque intorno a noi. Il fenomeno del “de-risking”, in cui le istituzioni finanziarie tagliano i legami con altre istituzioni, categorie specifiche di clienti o persino intere economie, per ridurre il rischio ed evitare problemi di conformità, è così diffuso che il Dipartimento del Tesoro degli Stati Uniti ha ora un programma per combatterlo. I pagamenti transfrontalieri rimangono ostinatamente costosi, in particolare per le rimesse, con la conformità spesso citata come una delle ragioni principali. Ci sono frequenti riferimenti sul debanking e le aziende legali in settori “indesiderati”, come il lavoro sessuale o la cannabis, hanno difficoltà ad accedere a servizi bancari di base, anche nelle nazioni sviluppate. Ironicamente negli ultimi anni l'industria delle criptovalute stessa è diventata vittima di una famigerata campagna di censura da parte del settore bancario.

Bitcoin è la prima forma di denaro contabile non intermediata in assoluto. Offre alcune delle caratteristiche desiderabili del token money, come l'accesso universale, ma non soffre della censura che è parte integrante dei pagamenti intermediati. Lo svantaggio di questo design è che Bitcoin può anche essere utilizzato per attività illecite, cosa che gli scettici amano sottolineare. Nel loro articolo Bindseil e Schaaf fanno riferimento alla critica popolare secondo cui solo i criminali usano Bitcoin come mezzo di scambio.

Ho due problemi con questa argomentazione. Il primo è che i sistemi di pagamento tradizionali sono utilizzati anche per attività illecite, nonostante gli onerosi regimi di conformità imposti loro. Infatti in base a un'analisi costi/benefici considero l'attuale approccio alla prevenzione dell'uso illecito nel settore bancario un regime fallimentare.

Ancora più importante, l'uso illecito è una costruzione politica, non economica. Ad esempio, molti Paesi impongono controlli sui capitali, impedendo ai propri cittadini di diversificare l'esposizione a quella che è probabilmente una valuta in indebolimento. Violare tali controlli è quindi illecito, ma in pratica i cittadini ricchi e influenti hanno quasi sempre accesso a conti bancari esteri e mezzi per prelevare i propri soldi, lasciando che i meno privilegiati soffrano. Simili dilemmi morali esistono per le sanzioni economiche.

È sbagliato per un cittadino venezuelano usare fondi del mercato nero per acquistare medicine, o per un espatriato iraniano violare le sanzioni economiche per sostenere la propria famiglia in patria? La legge dice di sì, la decenza dice assolutamente di no. Non sappiamo se Nakamoto avesse previsto questo tipo di applicazioni, che classificherei come illecite ma morali, per Bitcoin, ma ciò non influisce sulla sua utilità in entrambi i casi, e ci sono prove aneddotiche che l'adozione pro capite è più alta nei tipi di luoghi in cui questi problemi persistono.

Bitcoin è molto più che oro digitale

Il resto del documento si concentra su Bitcoin come versione digitale dell'oro. In difesa degli autori, questa narrazione è ora popolare anche tra molti sostenitori delle criptovalute, in particolare ora che gli ETF ne rendono più facile il possesso (anche se indirettamente). Ma Bitcoin è fondamentalmente diverso dall'oro perché quest'ultimo non ha un proprio sistema di pagamento, quello di Bitcoin, invece, preserva sia la sua scarsità che la sua trasferibilità.

La narrazione “oro digitale” deriva dal fatto che sia Bitcoin che l'oro sono rari e, almeno per ora, utilizzati più per il risparmio che per il pagamento. Nessuno dei due è un'unità di conto (alcuni sostenitori di Bitcoin sostengono addirittura che esso sia migliore dell'oro come riserva di valore perché la sua offerta è conoscibile e finita). Nonostante queste somiglianze, i due asset sono più diversi che simili, per tre motivi.

• Innanzitutto l'autenticità dei bitcoin è più economica e facile da verificare. Chiunque può conservare la copia del registro Bitcoin sul proprio computer e verificare continuamente sia la “purezza” delle monete che gli vengono inviate sia l'attuale stock globale, fino alla più piccola frazione di unità. L'oro richiede apparecchiature costose per l'autenticazione e lo stock globale può essere solo stimato.

• I bitcoin possono essere conservati da chiunque, ovunque, a un costo minimo. La proprietà è rappresentata da una chiave crittografica che non è altro che una stringa alfanumerica. In pratica, la natura di portatore dei bitcoin costringe i proprietari a implementare metodi di custodia più sofisticati, ma il punto di partenza è semplice e persino i modi più sofisticati per detenerli sono più economici dei modi più economici per conservare l'oro. Il costo di conservazione dell'oro può aumentare linearmente con la quantità (magazzini più grandi, ecc.), ma il costo di conservazione dei bitcoin no.

• I bitcoin possono essere trasferiti in modo rapido e semplice, spesso a costi minimi per pagamenti di valore medio-alto. Al momento in cui scrivo, il costo medio di un pagamento con Bitcoin è di $6. Da notare che questa commissione è indipendente dall'importo inviato e verrebbe addebitata per un trasferimento da $1 miliardo o uno da $100. L'oro è uno degli asset più difficili e costosi da trasferire. E a differenza dei bitcoin, il costo del trasferimento dell'oro aumenta con l'importo inviato e la distanza. Bitcoin, in virtù del fatto di essere virtuale, non ha questo problema: il costo del pagamento in tutto il mondo è lo stesso che in una stanza.

Alcuni scettici sostengono che i costi di transazione di Bitcoin sono ancora troppo alti se confrontati con altri tipi di pagamenti elettronici che utilizzano denaro fiat. Gli autori condividono questa convinzione come affermato nell'introduzione del documento:

Anche 16 anni dopo la sua nascita, i pagamenti in bitcoin, cioè “on chain”, sono ancora macchinosi, lenti e costosi.

Questa critica richiede più contesto. Lento e costoso rispetto a cosa? I tipi di pagamenti col denaro fiat che sono presumibilmente più economici di Bitcoin (es. carte, pagamenti istantanei, trasferimenti di denaro elettronico, ecc.) hanno una portata molto limitata. Sono quasi sempre nazionali (quindi non transfrontalieri), di solito hanno limiti di trasferimento, possono basarsi su un saldo netto differito (i pagamenti ACH possono richiedere giorni per essere liquidati, le carte anche di più) e hanno costi nascosti come commissioni di scambio (per i commercianti) e mancata remunerazione (per tutti).

Un paragone più equo con Bitcoin sono altri tipi di pagamenti di grande valore, transfrontalieri e lordi, come il tipo di bonifici bancari utilizzati per le attività tra aziende e sul mercato dei capitali. Fatta eccezione per rari periodi di elevata congestione, i pagamenti con Bitcoin sono spesso più economici e rapidi; non sono scalabili in base all'importo inviato, operano 24 ore su 24, 7 giorni su 7 e solitamente vengono regolati entro un'ora, facendo risparmiare agli utenti commissioni, tempo e interessi persi. È improbabile che i pagamenti bancari offrano queste funzionalità: i costi e i ritardi sono fondamentali per la redditività bancaria. I trasferimenti Bitcoin sono inoltre completamente trasparenti dall'inizio alla fine, una funzionalità che le banche non possono offrire fisicamente.

Soprattutto, i pagamenti con Bitcoin sono disponibili a chiunque abbia un dispositivo e accesso a Internet, un insieme di agenti economici molto più ampio di quelli con conti bancari. Il pagamento più costoso è quello che non potrete mai effettuare.

Per essere onesti, l'efficienza di Bitcoin nei pagamenti può essere meglio realizzata per l'attività economica che è anche denominata in bitcoin. Gli autori hanno ragione nel sottolineare che questo non è il caso, fatta eccezione per la piccola nicchia di transazioni di cambio in Bitcoin. È probabile che i pagamenti business-to-business effettivi, o l'attività del mercato dei capitali, avvengano in altre valute, pertanto le controparti che sperano di regolare questi tipi di pagamenti tramite Bitcoin dovrebbero affrontare i costi e i ritardi di un suo acquisto per effettuare il pagamento e poi la vendita per rientrare in denaro fiat. Ciò aggiungerebbe costi e complessità significativi. Per i corridoi in cui i bonifici bancari sono prontamente disponibili, è improbabile che Bitcoin sia un'opzione superiore dall'inizio alla fine.

Detto questo, una maggiore accettazione e adozione di Bitcoin, anche solo come riserva di valore, può stimolare una maggiore attività economica denominata in esso.

Bitcoin è un'assicurazione monetaria

Messe insieme, le caratteristiche menzionate in precedenza conferiscono a Bitcoin un'utilità che Bindseil e Schaaf non colgono. Solo perché qualcosa non viene utilizzato quotidianamente non significa che non sia utile. Bitcoin è un tipo di assicurazione monetaria: offre protezione da diluizione, confisca e censura.

A differenza di qualsiasi moneta fiat, non vi è alcun rischio di stampa eccessiva o di prestiti da parte del sovrano in carica. Questo tipo di moneta forte non è sempre desiderabile per le attività quotidiane, e ci sono valide ragioni per cui la maggior parte dell'economia si è allontanata dal gold standard molto tempo fa, ma la moneta forte è altamente desiderabile come copertura.

Inoltre, a differenza della moneta fiat, che esiste principalmente all'interno dei registri di istituzioni finanziarie regolamentate con stretti legami con lo stato, Bitcoin esiste su un registro decentralizzato che è altamente sicuro e molto difficile da cooptare. Ciò rende i bitcoin difficili da confiscare. Anche l'oro è più difficile da nascondere o trasportare durante una crisi. Si sostiene anche che questa caratteristica incentivi l'uso illecito, ma, ancora una volta, è una semplificazione eccessiva. In caso di una rivoluzione violenta, o di un'invasione da parte di un aggressore straniero, qualcosa come Bitcoin potrebbe essere inestimabile per le parti innocenti colpite.

Questo non è un rischio puramente ipotetico: quando la Russia ha inizialmente invaso l'Ucraina, ha comunicato il desiderio di rovesciare il governo e controllare l'intero Paese. Non è chiaro cosa sarebbe successo ai conti bancari delle persone se ci fosse riuscita.

Infine, Bitcoin è libero da censura. Chiunque può generare la propria chiave crittografica e inviare pagamenti a chiunque altro. Questa caratteristica è sempre più desiderabile data la crescente militarizzazione dell'accesso ai sistemi bancari come strumento geopolitico. Il congelamento da parte dell'America delle riserve in dollari di russi e afghani, insieme alle sanzioni contro Paesi come Corea del Nord, Iran e Venezuela, creano un incentivo a cercare un'alternativa.

Non solo le nazioni summenzionate, ma tutte le nazioni. Stiamo entrando in un periodo di crescente tensione geopolitica, guerre commerciali e polarizzazione. Data l'importanza delle riserve di valuta estera e la capacità di utilizzarle effettivamente, la maggior parte dei Paesi, insieme alle loro più grandi aziende e persino ai cittadini, cercherà di diversificare. Il problema è che non esiste una chiara alternativa all'interno del sistema fiat. C'è invece Bitcoin.

In particolare, non è necessario usare Bitcoin regolarmente affinché l'analogia assicurativa regga. Le persone che stipulano un'assicurazione contro gli incendi non si aspettano che la loro proprietà bruci a breve: se lo facessero, investirebbero i loro soldi in estintori. L'assicurazione è il tipo di prodotto di cui c'è sempre bisogno, ma che raramente viene utilizzato. La protezione che offre attenua la curva di rischio per gli agenti economici, consentendo loro di perseguire altri tipi di attività economica che altrimenti non farebbero.

Con livelli di debito sovrano ai massimi storici in tutto il mondo, gli incidenti di iperinflazione sono sempre più probabili. Oltre un terzo della popolazione mondiale vive sotto una qualche forma di controllo del capitale e la de-dollarizzazione sta lentamente frammentando la liquidità globale. Il costo dell'assicurazione aumenta con la probabilità di eventi negativi, una spiegazione per l'apprezzamento di Bitcoin negli ultimi anni.

Una comune obiezione a questa argomentazione è il fatto che molti investitori in Bitcoin lo detengono tramite un intermediario, come un'app FinTech, un exchange di criptovalute, o un emittente di ETF, e non possono beneficiare delle proprietà discusse sopra. Sebbene valida, questa critica trascura un principio economico di base: coloro che detengono Bitcoin indirettamente stanno semplicemente scommettendo che altri vorranno detenerlo direttamente, ora o in futuro. Questa è una scommessa economica razionale che è comune in molti mercati. Molte persone speculano sui futures del petrolio senza l'intenzione (o persino i mezzi) di consegnare o prendere in consegna un barile di petrolio.

Riepilogo

Bitcoin è una forma di denaro unica , diversa dalla moneta fiat o dall'oro. Le sue proprietà uniche lo rendono attraente come forma di assicurazione. Il fatto che i detentori non la stiano attivamente utilizzando non significa che non ne trovino utilità oltre alla salita del prezzo. Se le attuali tendenze finanziarie, normative e geopolitiche continueranno, allora molte altre nazioni, aziende e individui vorranno detenerne un po' per schermarsi contro il rischio monetario, il rischio d'inflazione, il rischio della confisca e il rischio della censura. Questo risultato probabilmente farà aumentare il prezzo di Bitcoin. Data tutta la sua utilità, un tale apprezzamento andrà a beneficio della società.

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

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

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The post About Natural Order and its Destruction appeared first on LewRockwell.

Prior to the COVID-19, I considered Gardasil (for HPV) to be the most dangerous and unjustifiable vaccine on the market. In turn, it’s truly remarkable how many parallels can be found between it and how the COVID-19 vaccines were handled so I feel it’s critically important for this forgotten story to be unearthed.

Help Pay for Vioxx (HPV)

Before there was Gardasil, there was Vioxx,” said Mr. Kennedy after filing a Gardasil lawsuit with Wisner Baum in 2020. “Merck paid billions to settle civil allegations that it purposely hid Vioxx’s cardiovascular risks. The company also paid $950 million in fines as a result of their criminal conduct. When Gardasil came along, the boardroom at Merck joked that its HPV vaccine could ‘Help Pay for Vioxx.’ Sure enough, some of the same shadowy cast of characters who were involved in the Vioxx scandal worked on Gardasil, and they employed the very same methods of manipulating science and obscuring risks as they did with Vioxx. And just as with Vioxx, Gardasil has left a calamitous health disaster in its wake.

The default strategy in Medicine for any type of pain or injury is to throw NSAIDs at it—making the drugs immensely profitable. Unfortunately, they typically don’t help that much (which actually increases their sales since this marginal efficacy results in people perpetually using large amounts of them), and they are fairly dangerous (e.g., NSAIDS kill tens of thousands of Americans each year and seriously injure far more).

Note: a major reason why I’ve been trying to expose the DMSO story is because DMSO can be used in virtually every situation where an NSAID is, but is significantly more effective at treating the problems and unlike the NSAIDs, is not dangerous.

Since one of the most common reasons NSAIDs lead to hospitalization is the drugs causing (sometimes fatal) gastric bleeds, an attempt was made to make NSAIDs less toxic by having them being more selective in what they targeted—which made them less likely to cause gastric bleeding but simultaneously much more likely to cause heart attacks and strokes (and did not change the rates of kidney injuries—another common and serious complication of NSAIDs).

As a result, from the start, evidence began emerging that the COX-2 selective NSAIDs (Merck’s Vioxx—approved in 1999 and Pfizer’s Celebrex—approved in 1998) had a huge stroke and heart attack risk. Yet, all of that evidence was ignored (e.g., Dr. Mercola warned the public about this risk in 1999 and each year thereafter even more evidence accumulated showing Vioxx had the cardiovascular risk).

However, rather than pull the drug, Merck (with the FDA’s complicity) kept on finding ways to cover that data up, and ultimately only withdrew Vioxx in 2004 once so much data had emerged it become impossible to continue covering it up Vioxx was estimated to have killed 120,000 people, while Celebrex (which was never taken off the market) to have killed 75,000.

This sets an important context. First, consider the congressional testimony of the FDA scientist who was largely responsible for getting Vioxx from the market. In it, he notes that the FDA is incredibly resistant to withdrawing bad drugs it approved to the market, and in the case of Vioxx, repeatedly swept evidence of it’s harm under the table and repeatedly silenced agency scientists who tried to warn of its dangers. The most important aspect of this testimony was his conclusion, where he stated it was inevitable future highly dangerous drugs (e.g., those causing blood clots and heart attacks) would also be kept on the market by the FDA.

The second is that a lot of lawsuits were subsequently levied against Merck (ultimately resulting in a 5 billion dollar settlement) which put them in a bit of a pinch where they needed to find a new source of (liability free) revenue.

Note: the year Vioxx was pulled (2004), Merck’s stock dropped by 28% but its CEO nonetheless received a $37.8 million “performance based” bonus.

That solution after decades of work had at last made a long term goal of vaccinologists possible, a vaccine that could prevent human papilloma virus infections—an incredibly lucrative market since 85% of the population gets HPV and it was linked to cancer—thereby making it possible to sell a vaccine against cancer!

Note: there were also decades of failed attempts to make a SARS (coronavirus) vaccine.

In turn, once Gardasil (Merck’s HPV vaccine) was approved in 2006, it was immediately added to the vaccine schedule, and an advertisement blitz was done across America to convince everyone they needed to be scared to death of HPV and needed the vaccine.

This campaign was incredibly effective (e.g., before long, I started encountering many children and parents who were terrified of HPV) and resulted in 25.1% of adolescent girls getting it in 2007, by 2011, 53.8% and by 2023, 79.3%. This was great for Merck, since beyond requiring 2-3 doses, at the time the vaccine was launched, it was the third most expensive vaccine on the market (with the two more expensive ones also being made by Merck).

Lastly, a lot of money was spent on alternative advertising approaches (e.g., the HSS spent 40 million funding grants to come up with research to give doctors talking points and scripts to push more parents to vaccinate). Similarly, many campaign paid girls to get the HPV vaccine (e.g., one targeted women ages 16-18). This is similar to how the HSS paid major media networks hundreds of millions to advertise the COVID vaccines and how an endless number of absurd gimmicks or cash prizes were offered to get the COVID vaccine (which included a few that were so unbelievable I had to compiled them here).

Note: with a current wholesale cost of $307.61 for each injection, the HPV vaccine is now the second most expensive vaccine (with a newer RSV vaccine being number one). Likewise, Gardasil’s sales continue to grow, and in 2023, at 1.87 billion in total revenue, it was Merck’s second highest selling pharmaceutical (with the number one spot going to a cancer drug). Because of it’s high cost, it frequently required state or federal financial support for doctors to offer it (not unlike what happened with the COVID vaccines).

Read the Whole Article

The post The HPV Vaccine Tragedy Was a Test Run for COVID-19 appeared first on LewRockwell.

International Man: Whether it’s at the grocery store, the mall, restaurants, or airports—anywhere you turn—people are finding inferior goods and services at higher prices.

Living standards have taken a big step backward recently and are trending even worse.

What is really going on?

Doug Casey: There’s an inclination on the part of people to blame the producers of products—the butcher, the baker, and the gasoline maker—but that’s actually very silly, insofar as these people create real wealth.

They’re fighting the effects of government inflation, which doesn’t create anything but fiat currency and fiat credit, which is what actually takes the prices higher. In fact, inflation of the currency, which is to say an increase in the amount of purchasing media above the increase in real wealth. It’s what inflation is all about; it’s the State subtly stealing capital and wealth from individuals.

The big problem with the depreciation of the dollar is that producers are blamed as being the problem. They’re the solution to the problem in that they create real wealth. The real enemy here is the State and its central bank, the Fed.

International Man: How does inflation erode ethical standards, leading people to cut corners, lie, cheat, or even steal as they try to maintain their living standards?

Doug Casey: The prime directive of life is to survive, and entities, whether they be governments, corporations, or individuals. They will basically do whatever they have to do to survive.

Unfortunately, inflation is all about theft, subtle and hard to diagnose as it is, but theft breeds more theft.

Leaders of any organization, whether it be governments or corporations, set the moral tone. The average person may not understand much about economics, which is the study of how men produce and consume in order to survive, but they have an intuitive, even if not a technical, understanding of it.

Inflation, the theft of people’s wealth, eventually leads to revolution and overturning of society itself.

International Man: How does inflation contribute to a more litigious society, with people increasingly looking to take money from others through the legal system?

Doug Casey: Once again, the average person doesn’t understand economics very well, but he does understand that some people in modern society are getting rich without producing anything. And, they’re benefiting from the subtle fiat currency creation.

In any event, they diagnosed that there’s a theft going on. In a society based less and less on production and more and more on the theft of pre-existing wealth, it’s natural enough that it becomes a Hobbesian war of all against all where counter-theft takes place through the legal system as opposed to actual physical violence.

It’s very much like Al Capone said. “One thug can rob a gas station of $100, and if he’s caught, he’ll go to jail for years. But a lawyer with a pen can rob a country of a million and never get caught.” That’s what’s going on.

The system has become entirely corrupt, and the government, which is supposed to protect the individual man, is actually the main culprit in stealing money from him. The fact that the US has over a million practicing lawyers is a symptom of corruption where people are using the legal system to steal.

International Man: What are some historical examples of inflation leading to significant social and cultural degradation, and what lessons can we learn from them?

Doug Casey: The destruction of the currency usually leads to a social upset because people who’ve produced in their lives and saved the difference do so with the national currency. But if the national currency is destroyed, everything they’ve worked for throughout their lives is also destroyed.

Inflation upsets the entire basis of civilized society. It was a major reason why Chiang Kai-shek’s regime collapsed in China after World War II and a major reason why the Communists, whatever else they’ve done to their society in China, have been reasonably competent managers of their own currency.

The Weimar Republic in Germany after World War I completely destroyed the mark, and the social upset that it caused led to rioting in the streets between the Nazis and the Communists, and of course, the Nazis won.

Some countries suffer from perennial inflation, which results in a constant attempt to take over the government.

People find that when real wealth becomes hard to produce, there’s an inclination to go into politics to gain wealth and power as opposed to producing things. It’s why countries with unstable currencies become unstable socially, economically, and politically as well.

International Man: You have frequently discussed how to protect yourself from inflation’s financial and economic effects with gold and other hard assets.

However, aside from the financial effects, how do people protect themselves from inflation’s negative social, cultural, and political effects we’ve discussed today?

Doug Casey: The most important thing that you can do is gain skills, lots of skills, both in breadth and in depth so that no matter how things are sorted out, you’ll always be in a position to produce things that people want.

I’d like to share Robert Heinlein’s quote about what somebody should be able to do.

“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”

I suggest that there’s a practical path to doing that, to qualifying yourself to thrive no matter which way the economy evolves. And for 90% of the people, it’s not sitting at a college desk for four years listening to a woke professor drone on about politically correct topics.

I suggest you subscribe to Matt Smith’s son Maxim’s blog, where he describes, on an ongoing basis, exactly what he’s doing to educate himself instead of going to college.

For many years, I’ve considered college to be a complete misallocation, even worse, a waste of four of the best years of your life and a lot of money to have your head filled with incorrect ideas, which are hard to wash away.

So, the answer to the question is to prepare yourself intellectually, psychologically, and skill-wise.

It’ll put you in a position to produce more than you consume. And what we usually talk about in this newsletter is what you do with the wealth that you save so it’s not inflated away by your government.

Reprinted with permission from International Man.

The post Rising Prices and Falling Values—Inflation and Social Decay appeared first on LewRockwell.

Elon Musk, like many of the superrich knew that he had to be liberal and buy into the Democrat Party in order to be socially acceptable among his peers.  He learned his mistake when it cost him his son’s life.  Here is Musk in his own words.

The radical left came after Elon’s children – and in doing so, they made a determined enemy.

If you have ever wanted to know why Elon went full MAGA, this is the reason:

Elon Musk: “It happened to one of my older boys.  I was essentially tricked into signing documents for one of my older boys.

“This was before I had a full understanding of what was going on.

“I was told that Xavier might commit suicide.

“It wasn’t explained to me that puberty blockers were just sterilization drugs.

“My son Xavier is dead, killed by the woke mind virus.

“So I vowed to destroy the woke mind virus after that.”

In the Western World devoid of a media, it is difficult for a father dealing with multi-billion dollar decisions to know what schools are doing to their children.  For those of you who are less burdened with decisions and are simply insouciant, the schools financed by your tax dollars are destroying your male heterosexual children by implanting into your male kids doubts about their worth and validity and turning your daughters into harlots. As the result of the sexualization of children, the main course in public schools, mothers now have 12-year old girls on birth control pills. Why do parents end kids to public schools?

And you consistently vote for the Democrats who are destroying you and your progeny.  

Do you have enough intelligence to justify your existence?

The post Pray that Elon Musk Rescues All of Us by Destroying the Woke Mind Virus appeared first on LewRockwell.

EU President Ursula von der Leyen just joined the ranks of former Senator John Kerry and other globalist ghouls in declaring war on free speech by perversely proclaiming that the EU citizenry needs to be “vaccinated against disinformation.”

Like every censor in history, she characterizes her censorship program as a means of expunging erroneous information and ideas from public discourse. By using the word “disinformation,” she implies that she and her clique are already the sole possessors of the truth about everything, and that everyone who has and shares heterodox ideas is necessarily in error.

Her entire premise is FALSE for the following reasons:

1). Knowledge about the world is constantly evolving through constant inquiry, discussion, and dissemination. Knowledge is NOT a static thing. This is why countries with stifling censorship regimes have experienced intellectual, scientific, and artistic stagnation. Their rulers try to freeze the human mind in its state at their moment in history.

2). NO state, university, or ecclesiastical committee has ever been in possession of the full truth of any matter. Official orthodoxies have always been challenged by heterodox thinkers. Indeed, virtually every major advance in human insight has been performed by heterodox thinkers.

3). As John Milton observed in his 1644 pamphlet, Areopagitica, contending with error is an intrinsic part of learning and discovery. We literally learn by making mistakes and correcting them. If free speech is suppressed for the objective of preventing the propagation of erroneous thought—or “vaccinating against it”—it will become extremely difficult if not impossible for people to learn and discover.

4). Without a single exception in history, the people who hold power always advocate the orthodoxy that sustains and extends their power and that of their friends and supporters.

Ursula von der Leyen is the quintessence of this principle. As president of the EU, she conducted secret negotiations with Pfizer CEO to purchase a 20 billion Euros of Pfizer’s fraudulent and dangerous vaccine so that it could be inflicted on all the citizens of the European Union. She is currently under criminal investigation for her conduct in this affair that has come to be known as Pfizergate.

It takes a special kind of chutzpah for a powerful state official who is probably guilty of committing a major crime—a crime that has been systematically and ruthlessly concealed—to lecture the public about the need for censorship. The time has come for the citizens of Europe to rid themselves of Ursula von der Leyen and her clique of corrupt tyrants.

To be sure, there is increasing evidence that the Biden Administration has been exerting pressure on Germany—which remains an American vassal state—and the EU to step up its censorship regime. I will cover this strange development in a subsequent post.

Von der Leyen Promises to ‘Vaccinate’ EU Population Against ‘Wrong Thinking’

According to Ursula, who is currently facing a criminal case over the EU government’s strange contracts with pharmaceutical companies , people in society who hold views that contradict the globalist… pic.twitter.com/fK0wKV6tUQ

— “Sudden And Unexpected” (@toobaffled) October 22, 2024

This originally appeared on Courageous Discourse.

The post EU President Likens Free Speech to Infectious Disease appeared first on LewRockwell.

This is it. A date with destiny. All set for the most crucial geopolitical/geoeconomic gathering of the year and arguably the decade: the BRICS Summit under the Russian presidency in Kazan, capital of Tatarstan, where Sunni Tatars coexist in perfect harmony with Orthodox Christians.

All the excruciating work by sherpas and analysts throughout 2024 – supervised by the lead Russian diplomat in charge of BRICS, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov – converged to three final, separate key meetings in Moscow before the summit, grouping BRICS finance ministers and central bank governors, working groups, and the Business Council.

All that in a context that is now familiar for the Global Majority. The combined GDP of the current BRICS nations is over $60 trillion, way ahead of the G7; their average growth rate by the end of this year is projected to be 4%, higher than the 3.2% global average; and the bulk of economic growth for the near future will come from BRICS member-nations.

Even before the meeting of finance ministers and central bank governors, Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov was stressing that BRICS is keen to bypass “politicized” Western platforms – a subtle reference to the sanctions tsunami and the weaponization of the US dollar – as BRICS work to create their own, Global Majority-friendly international payments system.

The context for what will be decided in Kazan this week is no less than incandescent, as the uncontrolled chaos of the Hegemon’s Forever Wars – from Ukraine to West Asia – has even materially affected the heavy work of BRICS and the necessity to build a new international system of geoeconomic relations practically from scratch.

A credible war escalation scenario may have been thwarted by the leak of secret high-level intel to the Five Eyes on the preparations by Israel-US to strike Iran. The strike will eventually happen – with dire consequences – but probably not this week, when it could have been timed to explicitly, and completely, disrupt the summit in Kazan and expel it from global headlines.

The joint statement by the BRICS finance ministers and central bank governors may not sound too adventurous, but the constraints reflect not only caution when facing a dangerous, cornered Hegemon, but internal contradictions among BRICS members.

The statement recognizes “the need for a comprehensive reform of the global financial architecture to enhance the voice of developing countries and their representation.” Yet it remains clear the US has less than zero interest in a profound reform of the IMF, the World Bank and the Bretton Woods system. Russia and China, especially, are fully aware that what is needed is a post-Bretton Woods.

The statement is more forceful on the BRICS Cross-Border Payments Initiative, dubbed BCBPI, welcoming “the use of local currencies in international trade” and “the strengthening of banking networks” to enable them. Yet everything for the moment is only “voluntary and non-binding.” Kazan is expected to give the process some edge.

‘Not an Anti-Western Group, Just a Non-Western Group’

In his speech at the BRICS Business Council last Friday and in a subsequent roundtable with heads of media groups of BRICS members, President Putin in fact summed up all the major dossiers. Here are the highlights.

On the role of the Shanghai-based NDB, the BRICS bank: Russia “will expand the capabilities of the NDB”; the bank should become the main investor in major technological and infrastructure projects for BRICS members and the wider Global South. That makes total sense, with the NDB financing infrastructure development and commercially involved with local, private companies. Incidentally, the next president of the NDB will be Russian; the top candidate is Aleksei Mozhin, who was previously at the IMF.

On creating a single digital infrastructure for BRICS: already on. Russia is working on “the use of digital currencies in investment processes in the interests of other developing economies.” That ties up with BRICS work on their own version of SWIFT for international financial transactions. And also ties up with BRICS Pay – a debit card whose first trial run happened during the Business Council last week, not dissimilar to AliPay in China, and soon to be rolled out across BRICS members.

A BRICS single currency: “Not being considered yet, this issue is not ripe yet.” De-dollarization, Putin stressed, is proceeding step by step: “We’re taking individual steps, one after another. As regards finance, we did not drop the dollar. The dollar is the universal currency. But it wasn’t us – we were banned and barred from [using] it. And now 95% of all the external trade of Russia is denominated in national currencies. They did it themselves with their own hands. They thought we would collapse.”

The challenge for a unified BRICS currency: That “requires thorough economic integration (…) Apart from high level of integration among BRICS members, the introduction of a single BRICS currency would involve comparable monetary quality and volume (…) Otherwise, we will face even bigger issues than those that occurred in the EU.” Putin recalled that when the euro was introduced in the EU, their economies were neither comparable nor equal.

Putin will have at least 17 bilateral meetings in Kazan. He emphasized, once again, that “BRICS is not an anti-Western group, it’s just a non-Western group.”

And he named the key economic drivers in the near future: Southeast Asia and Africa. Development “will objectively take place primarily in BRICS member countries. This is the Global South. This is Southeast Asia. This is Africa. Positive growth will exist in powerful countries such as China, India, Russia, and Saudi Arabia, but the countries of Southeast Asia and Africa will show faster growth for several reasons.”

He also highlighted the top infrastructure development projects among BRICS and the Global South: the Northern Sea Route – which the Chinese define as the Arctic Silk Road – and the International North-South Transportation Corridor (INSTC), with the BRICS triad Russia-Iran-India as the key partners. On the Northern Sea Route, Putin highlighted how “we are building an icebreaker fleet that has no peers in the world. It’s going to be a unique fleet, seven nuclear icebreakers and 34 diesel-propelled, high-class, heavy-duty icebreakers.”

On the Russia-China strategic partnership: it’s one of the key factors of stability in the world; in the relations between the two, “there are no elders or youngers.” On the Great Chessboard, “Russia does not interfere in relations between the USA and China,” even as “Europeans have been dragged into Asia through NATO. Nobody is asking the Europeans whether they want to spoil their relationship with China, whether they want to use NATO entities to enter Asia and to create a situation that would cause concern for the region, for China specifically. Still, they are dragged like puppies.”

Forever Wars Target BRICS

There will be a special session on Palestine in Kazan with BRICS members plus BRICS Outreach – as in partners (Turkiye is included). Putin believes that “dissolving the Middle East Quartet was a mistake.” The Quartet included Russia, US, UN, and EU. In theory, it should have mediated the Israel-Palestine peace process. In practice, it didn’t.

The notorious warmonger Tony Blair was part of the Quartet. Diplomatically, Putin said, “I do not intend to accuse the United States in every aspect here, but unfortunately it was a wrong thing to do to disband the four [the Quartet].”

He re-emphasized that “Russia has consistently maintained the view that the United Nations Security Council’s decision to establish two states – Israel and Palestine – should be implemented.” And, significantly, he added that “Russia is in ongoing contact with both Israel and Palestine.”

REPUBLIC OF SRPSKA PRESIDENT: BRICS IS GROUP OF ‘FREE COUNTRIES WHO RESPECT EACH OTHER’S SOVEREIGNTY’

In an interview with Sputnik ahead of the 2024 BRICS summit in the Russian city of Kazan, President of the Republic of Srpska Milorad Dodik focused on why the Serbian… pic.twitter.com/ikhmNZ4x97

— Sputnik (@SputnikInt) October 20, 2024

That may be interpreted as strategic mediation, and serious back-channel exchanges. Yet he did not venture head on into the fire, just saying he hopes the “endless exchange of blows” between Israel and Iran will stop, while adding that “searching for a compromise in the Arab-Israeli conflict is possible, but this is a very delicate area.”

All of the above is highly significant for the BRICS context because the Forever Wars in West Asia have been seriously interfering with the work within BRICS. And on top of it, the Forever Wars, cold, hybrid, and hot, are in fact essentially directed against three BRICS members, Russia, Iran and China – not by accident described as the Top Three existential threats to the Hegemon.

And that inevitably brings us to Ukraine. Putin emphasized, “the Russian army has become one of the most combat effective and high-tech armies in the world (…) When NATO will get tired of waging this war against us, just ask them. We were ready to continue fighting, to continue the struggle, and we will have the upper hand.”

Confirming what crack military analyst Andrei Martyanov has been studying for years, Putin explained how modern warfare is the war of mathematicians – something that totally escapes NATO armchair warriors: “I have heard from the people that fight on the ground that today’s war is the war of mathematicians. Radio-jamming devices would be effective against certain delivery vehicles and they would suppress them. The other side has, for example, calculated and reckoned what is the counterforce and reprograms the software of its striking assets in a week or three weeks.”

As for the battleground, with the “rules-based international order” meeting its humiliating demise in the black soil of Novorossiya, Putin could not be more emphatic on the “Nuclear Ukraine” gambit: “It is a dangerous provocation because any step in this direction will face a response (…) I will say it outright Russia will not allow this to happen no matter what.”

The stakes in Kazan could not be higher. By the end of the week, the Global Majority will know whether Kazan will go down in history as the landmark of a new, emerging system of international relations, or if crass divide and rule tactics will keep postponing the inexorable demise of the Old Order.

This originally appeared on Sputnik News.

The post Date With Destiny – BRICS Offers Hope in a Time of War appeared first on LewRockwell.

The actor who has been playing the President of Ukraine for a while is getting cold feet. Winter is coming and the energy networks of Ukraine are near to the point of total breakdown.

There could have been agreements in place to prevent that. But the Ukrainian side had botched those deals. Now Zelenski is begging to renew them.

In late 2022 the Russian military launched a bombing campaign against electricity switching stations in Ukraine. A lot of transformers got blown up. The Ukrainian military responded by concentrating its air defenses near electricity stations. That was exactly the effect the Russian’s had asked for. The air defense installations, not the electricity stations, had been their real target.

After splitting from the Soviet Union, Ukraine had had the best air defenses money could buy. During the fall and winter of 2022 most of it had been destroyed. The Russian campaign against electricity stations came to a halt.

In 2023/24 the Ukrainian military started its own campaign against infrastructure in Russia. Several refineries were hit by drones and went up into flames. Gasoline production in Russia was falling significantly and export of gasoline had to be stopped for a while.

The Russians retaliated by renewing their campaign against Ukraine’s electricity network. But this time the targets were not just switching stations but the generation facility themselves. The non-nuclear electricity production in Ukraine got decimated.

In its daily briefings the Russian Ministry of Defense called the attacks on Ukrainian electricity stations a direct retaliation for Ukrainian attacks on Russian proper. For example:

This morning, in response to the Kiev regime’s attempts to damage objects of Russian power infrastructure and economy, the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation delivered a group strike by long-range precision weaponry at objects of the Ukrainian military-industrial infrastructure and AFU aviation bases.

With their generation capacity in danger and under the threat of blackouts the Ukrainian government got to its senses – at least for a while. Secret negotiations were arranged in Doha, Qatar, to stop the infrastructure attacks on both sides.

In August 2024, shortly after the Ukrainian army had launched an incursion into the Kursk oblast of Russia, the Washington Post reported:

Ukraine and Russia were set to send delegations to Doha this month to negotiate a landmark agreement halting strikes on energy and power infrastructure on both sides, diplomats and officials familiar with the discussions said, in what would have amounted to a partial cease-fire and offered a reprieve for both countries.

But the indirect talks, with the Qataris serving as mediators and meeting separately with the Ukrainian and Russian delegations, were derailed by Ukraine’s surprise incursion into Russia’s western Kursk region last week, according to the officials.
…
For more than a year, Russia has pounded Ukraine’s power grid with a barrage of cruise missiles and drone strikes, causing irreparable damage to power stations and rolling blackouts across the country. Meanwhile, Ukraine has struck Russia’s oil facilities with long-range drone attacks that have set ablaze refineries, depots and reservoirs, reducing Moscow’s oil refining by an estimated 15 percent and raising gas prices around the world.
…
A diplomat briefed on the talks said Russian officials postponed their meeting with Qatari officials after Ukraine’s incursion into western Russia. Moscow’s delegation described it as “an escalation,” the diplomat said, adding that Kyiv did not warn Doha about its cross-border offensive.

Ukraine had to pay a heavy price for the Kursk incursion. The elite troops it had sent failed to reach their target, a nuclear power station near Kursk, and soon got decimated. The attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure continued with full force.

Three month later, with the Kursk incursion as well as its electricity network near to total failure, the Ukrainian government is again changing course. It is begging to renew the deals it had botched.

As the Financial Times reports (archived):

Russia putting an end to aerial attacks on Ukrainian energy targets and cargo ships could pave the way for negotiations to end the war, the Ukrainian president has said.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy told journalists in Kyiv on Monday that “when it comes to energy and freedom of navigation, getting a result on these points would be a signal that Russia may be ready to end the war”.
…
If Moscow and Kyiv agreed to end strikes on their respective energy infrastructures, it would be a significant step towards de-escalating the conflict, Zelenskyy said in reference to Ukrainian drone attacks on Russian oil refineries.

Well – he could have had that deal three month ago. Now it will be more difficult to achieve it. A total retreat of Ukrainian forces from the Kursk region will be the minimum prerequisite Russia will ask for to renew the talks.

Zelenski also wants to renew the Black Sea agreement.

The August Washington Post report reminded of that:

Ukrainian and Russian officials haven’t met face to face for talks since the first months of the war, when delegations from both sides convened for secret talks in Istanbul. Those negotiations eventually fell apart. Later, the two sides agreed to a grain deal that led to Russia temporarily lifting a naval blockade, allowing Ukraine to transfer grain through the Black Sea. That, too, collapsed months later when Russia pulled out of the deal.

The Black Sea deal included a western promise to not hinder Russian exports through the Black Sea. That hindrance however continued as insurance for freighters continued to be denied. Ukrainian attacks on Russia’s Black Sea fleet also continued. Russia pulled out of the deal and reestablished its rather leaky blockade of Ukrainian ports.

During the last half year Ukraine had started to rebuild its supply line through the Black Sea. Dozens of ships with dry cargo arrived in Odessa and other Ukrainian Black Sea ports. The Russians soon assumed, correctly, that those ships were transporting weapons and ammunition for the Ukrainian military. Iskander missiles were sent to destroy the loads as soon as the ships arrived. Over the last months some 20+ dry good freighters were hit, damaged or sunk. Secondary explosions after the strikes confirmed that explosive freight had been involved.

The Russian naval blockade has been renewed – not by intercepting ships on their way to Ukraine but by hitting them while they unload.

During the war Russia had offered Zelenski at least two small deals which were largely in favor of Ukraine. The Black Sea grain deal failed because Ukraine and its ‘partners’ failed to do fulfill their part of the arrangement. The infrastructure peace deal failed because Ukraine decided to attack towards Kursk.

Now Zelenski is begging to renew both deals.

That may well be possible. But Russia will surely ask for a very steep price.

Reprinted with permission from Moon of Alabama.

The post Ukraine – Zelenski Begs Russia To Renew Deals He Had Botched appeared first on LewRockwell.

U.S. interventionists are undoubtedly uncorking their champagne bottles and celebrating the nationwide power outage that has hit the Cuban people during the past week. According to an article in the Wall Street Journal,

Millions of Cubans have been without electricity for days… The collapse of Cuba’s aging power grid has paralyzed an already-crippled economy, with rolling outages affecting everything from running water to the operation of banks, ATMs or debit-card terminals, sparking severe shortages of cash and halting distribution of basic goods and services such as drinking water, residents say. Millions of Cuban households are seeing their food spoil because of a lack of refrigeration, and people can’t use air conditioning, fans or electric stoves on the tropical island. Cooking gas is also scarce.

Of course, the responses of the Cuban government and U.S. interventionists are the standard ones to which we have become accustomed. Cuba’s communist regime is blaming the outage on the decades-old brutal U.S. economic embargo, while U.S. interventionists are saying that the embargo has nothing to do with it and it’s all because of Cuba’s socialist economic system.

But the fact is that both the embargo and socialism are to blame for Cuba’s economic woes. They both work together as an ever-tightening vise that squeezes the lifeblood out of the Cuban people, who have long suffered by being barely able to survive.

After all, if the embargo has nothing to do with the economic woes of the Cuban people, why have U.S. officials been so insistent on keeping it in existence? Just for show? That’s ludicrous. The fact is that the very purpose of the embargo is to inflict maximum economic harm on the Cuban people in the hope that they will revolt and replace the Cuban communist regime with a pro-U.S. regime, one that will, once again, do the bidding of the U.S. Empire.

Thus, with the power outage making life even worse for the Cuban people, the embargo is doing precisely what it is intended to do. The embargo, just like U.S. sanctions imposed on foreigners around the world, targets the people in foreign lands with economic suffering and even death as a way to bring about regime change.

One of the dark ironies of the embargo and economic sanctions is that by targeting foreign citizens with impoverishment and death, the U.S. government encourages those people to flee their homeland in a desperate attempt to survive. According to an article by the Associated Press, Cuba’s “deep economic crisis … has prompted the exodus of more than half a million Cubans to the U.S., with thousands more heading to Europe.”

Why is that ironic? Because U.S. interventionists are also big proponents of America’s socialist system of immigration controls and the immigration police state that comes with it. Thus, U.S. interventionists do their best to target Cubans and others, such as Venezuelans, with their embargoes and economic sanctions and then have a conniption fit when those who they are targeting escape their plight by coming to the United States and entering our country without official permission. The interventionists scream, “Deport these invaders back to their country of origin so that they can die from our embargo and sanctions! It’s their own fault for not ousting their ruler and replacing him with pro-U.S. puppet.”

It would be difficult to find a more morally repugnant and anti-Christian foreign policy and immigration policy than that of the U.S. government, policies whose “success” is measured by the deaths, misery, and suffering they bring to people, including those who are forcibly returned to their homelands after escaping their plight and reaching the United States.

*****

Note: Tomorrow, Wednesday, October 23, at 11 a.m. Eastern time, I will be on Ernie Hancock’s podcast “Declare Your Independence” to discuss the wrongful conviction of libertarian bitcoin advocate Ian Freeman. Click here to listen in LIVE. We will post a link to the podcast later.

Reminder: Our online Zoom conference on open borders continues on Monday, October 28, with Benjamin Powell,  director of the Free Market Institute at Texas Tech University and professor of economics at Texas Tech University’s Rawls College of Business.  7 p.m.-8 p.m. Eastern Time.  Register here.

Reminder: I’ll be speaking at the JFK Lancer conference and also at the CAPA conference, which are being held on November 22-24 in Dallas. Both of them are fantastic JFK-assassination-related conferences. I highly recommend registering for both and then picking and choosing which sessions you would like to attend at both conferences. I will have some of my JFK books there to autograph and sell at a discounted price. I hope to see you there!

Reprinted with permission from The Future of Freedom Foundation.

The post Celebrating Cuba’s Power Outage appeared first on LewRockwell.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) was founded on April 1st, 1979 under the Jimmy Carter Administration during the height of a nearly decade long stagflationary crisis and the Iranian oil crisis. Under Executive Order 12127, its stated goal was to centralize all disaster related efforts under a single top-down entity. Specifically, FEMA ended the more localized Civil Defense Agency, which was focused on community based emergency response, and it federalized all disaster coordination under a single top-down system controlled by the Oval Office.

FEMA was eventually placed under the purview of the Department of Homeland Security, creating even more centralization. The reason for FEMA according to the government is to aid Americans during and after a national level disaster event; anything from earthquakes to hurricanes to terrorist attacks.

That said, it should also be noted that FEMA was officially created on April Fool’s Day.

The true purpose of FEMA has long been obscured but some disturbing truths have been exposed in the past. The declassification of a program called Rex 84 (tied to Operation Garden Plot) revealed that FEMA was working directly with the Department of Defense on a hypothetical strategy to round up and detain large numbers of civilians considered a “threat to national security.” In other words, FEMA was to act as a tool for helping suppress civil disturbances, it was not necessarily designed to help Americans in times of need.

This was likely always the intent behind the founding of FEMA, but George H.W. Bush and Oliver North are cited as the men that truly militarized FEMA in the early 1980s. The goal to establish a mechanism for controlling domestic political dissent and suspending constitutional freedoms was exposed not long after FEMA’s founding. Oliver North was visibly enraged when the subject was broached in a congressional hearing during the Iran/Contra scandal.

But why? You would think that with an election only weeks away Biden and Harris would be jumping at the chance to look competent and useful. Instead, they did nothing other that offer a $750 relief check to survivors (which might help people survive for a week) and then referred people to federal programs which take many months to benefit from.

I argue that this is all deliberate. FEMA and the federal government at large are still using Operation Garden Plot-like protocols with two goals in mind…

First, they are trying to acclimate the populace to the idea that civilians can’t help themselves and that they should do nothing. They do this by constantly interfering with civilian efforts and disrupting donations. If civilians are working on their own to save US communities from calamity then they might one day realize they don’t need the Federal Government for anything. The establishment NEEDS people to believe that they can’t survive without government aid and protection. Luckily, at least in the aftermath of Helene, it seems that many communities are working on their own to fix the situation.

If civilians start doing things for themselves, the establishment machine becomes obsolete.

Second, I suspect FEMA is testing the waters to see how much they can get away with. Katrina was a clear beta-test for martial law disguised as an emergency response. Katrina was Garden Plot and Rex-84 realized. They want to see what Americans will put up with.  Helene is yet another opportunity for these agencies to apply overt control and see if Americans will conform or rebel.

If FEMA is truly sincere in their efforts to help Americans they certainly don’t act like it. The criticism surrounding Helene is ramping up and FEMA’s indignant attitude towards their own failures in unacceptable. They should be punished for failing in their duties. That is assuming they are actually failing.

Maybe they consider the tragedy of government inaction surrounding Helene a success?  The underlying point is, when disaster comes your way, it’s not enough to merely count FEMA out as a source of aid.  That’s obvious. But you will also have to consider the possibility that the agency will work directly against you and your neighbors should you try to help yourselves.

Reprinted with permission from Alt-Market.us.

The post FEMA’s Real Purpose: Suppressing Americans And Preventing Civilian Organization appeared first on LewRockwell.

Before we begin, let me just establish my impeccable anarchist credentials: I don’t vote. I haven’t voted since I was a young, idealistic greenie and believed voting (for the obviously correct party) to be the sacred duty of all self-respecting citizens. I have an anarchist tattoo on my left thigh. Last time it was election day in the country of my birth — and the only jurisdiction where I’m allowed to vote — I didn’t even know about it until a family member mentioned it.

I’ve written for Mises before about how voters implicitly accept the rules of the game and therefore voting robs them of their (moral) right to complain (“If You Vote, You Have No Right to Complain”). I wrote that “If you really supported democracy, you’d be equally thrilled regardless of which side wins.” You participated in the ritual where choices about property and livelihood are made by majority rule (conditional on the how votes are carved in your country); you implicitly accepted the decision-making process by which the winner is thus the leader.

Ergo: no right to complain.

And I like complaining, and to remain somewhat detached from the partisan clown symphonies that are electoral cycles.

Now, if I could vote in America’s elections this year, I would first look up the polls or history for my state. No point doing violence on one’s morals unless there’s at least a fighting chance for impact.

If I’m not in one of the half-dozen states where the race is closest, the usual statistical-economical calculation sways me: If you like to do good in the world, go do something else: It’s OK not to play, and the real (i.e., non-digital, non-political) world matters more.

Only if you are in some of the states that poll-aggregation models (like those from Nate Silver) say are toss-up level close, would voting be conscionable. As a back-of-the-envelope calculation, I took voter registration numbers from this nice little resource (that unfortunately show voter registration numbers from two and four years ago; Ugh, whatever: these are ballpark figures, anyway) and multiplied them by the polling difference that the Silver Bulletin model showed at the time of writing (early October). I then weighted the implied vote count change with the electoral votes of each of these states as a share of their combined electoral votes (yes, yes, poor method… but again, I wasn’t going to replicate a full Nate Silver model here; bear with me). Out came the following:

Economists usually tell you that voting is irrational behavior. If you, indeed, wish to improve the world in some specific way doing literally anything else—help an old lady over the street, volunteer in soup kitchen, clean your bathroom—is more impactful that participating in a paper charade where one’s chances of influencing the outcomes are astronomical. Worse than lottery tickets.

When the race gets tight enough, or the differences between the candidates substantial enough, voting is less of a stupid activity. If you vote in any of these seven states, however, we’re no longer talking astronomical or lottery-ticket level chances (which are on the magnitudes of tens of millions, depending on the draw and the lottery).

I asked ChatGPT for other events of equally unlikely magnitude and I received answers about lifetime risk of being struck by lightning, dying in plane or train accidents, or from general anaesthetics during emergency operation. On either side of these we have: having your house burn down (something like 1-in-3,000) or being dealt a royal flush in the opening of a five-card poker game (1-in-649,739). If you worry about or take precautions about these sorts of events, feel free to vote as well: These are no longer astronomical, ridiculous chances.

If I were eligible to vote in say, North Carolina, I’d march my sorry, reluctant behinds to the voting booths… and then I’d vote Trump.

Three reasons.

First, nothing matters more than Bitcoin. It’s the financial and monetary correction, the most tangible freedom-now vehicle there is; it fixes basically everything. One side of this election has spent years legally going after the Bitcoin industry, with fake hyperboles about environmental destruction and money laundering, and the other has actively approached it. Fair, Mr. Trump panders to whichever crowd he’s in front of and some in-the-know speechwriter just helped him, but Trump is at least saying the correct words; his policy team is reading the correct briefs. Bitcoin lives better under Republican than Democrat rulers. Like Nik Bhatia, influential Bitcoiner and finance professor at the University of Southern California, said in a recent newsletter:

“it would be disingenuous to say there isn’t a bias—Harris is part of an administration that engaged in lawless attacks on the crypto industry, and Trump has indicated potential support for an enormous bitcoin mining boom in the US.”

Second, Dan Klein and Zach Yost convinced me in a long-read for Fusion this summer that classical liberals should favor Republicans. (Pour yourself a coffee and go read it. Right now.) Not because we like them, not because they’re even remotely good, but because they’re less bad. That’s a common argument that has never swayed me before; what made the difference in their piece is situating political power alongside the other powerful pillars of society—media, entertainment, academia, deep state administration. Nowadays, those are squarely left-wing institutions, which, coupled with left-wing governments, becomes too dangerous of an echo chamber for any freedom-loving person. Reversely, a Republican presidency faces much harder criticism, skepticism, and scrutiny from those camps. That’s better.

Third, the culture war is more important than most people realize: demographic declines, cultural values, taking a stance for reality, etc. Last month, The Economist showed statistically that wokeness has peaked but that we still have a long way back to the levels of ten years ago. The work isn’t done: The pendulum swing back hasn’t gone far enough yet. (Plus, by the trope that my enemy’s enemy is my friend, it’s also intrinsically satisfying to spit a little in a corrupt, incompetent establishment’s face: A Trump presidency annoys the right people.)

There was a point in the recent past where libertarians could reasonably look at the incumbent parties and throw up their hands: Republicans were better on fiscal and regulatory matters, Democrats better on social freedoms and warfare. That’s no longer true: Republicans like social security, and Democrats are actively bombing foreigners and going after wrong-thinkers, Inquisition-style.

But there are notable differences. And for chances in the hundreds of thousands, I would take a gamble.

For all else, I urge you to ignore the noise: Go outside, touch grass, do hard things.

The post Who Will I Vote for in 2024? appeared first on LewRockwell.

Merrick Garland of the Tzar Biden Regime is warning Americans that the DOJ will station their own ‘police force’ to monitor anyone who dares to call out an election monitor while they are fraudulently packing the votes.   The unidentified ‘federal police’ will be backed up by the FBI.  The same FBI that fraudulently incited the riots at the Capitol and thus arrested over 1100 peaceful protesters who remain imprisoned illegally.

Essentially, Garland is saying that they are rigging the election and anyone who interferes will be a target.  Simultaneously, Garland cites Russia  as an election sphere of influence, while warning that Iran has also joined forces in manipulating the free and fair US Election Process…  Dominion’s CEO has jumped into the fray threatening anyone who dares even speak negatively of the company will find themselves sued, destroyed and begging.

There is one man that is repeatedly mentioned as having made death threats against government officials and election personnel dating from 2021, a convicted felon, Brockbank, who is currently in detention.

The claim is that election workers have received death threats.  It appears that election workers will get better security than President Trump.  Garland;  “We seek to ensure public confidence in the electoral process by providing local points of contact within the Department for the public to report possible federal election law violations.”   Is he referring to the ‘democrat public’ or the American public’ – because those two groups do not seem to be the same.

The election is definitely looking as though it will be ‘messy’.  It is advisable to steer clear of the potential riots given your mere presence means you are guilty by association in this new world of guilty until proven innocent.  No Trial.

Yesterday was a critical end to the BC elections with ‘record turnout’ despite Vancouver being completely flooded and roads impassable.  ODD.  The extent of Western nations representing the topsy turvydom of everything we were taught is so vast and so abominable forget 1984, we are living in Lewis Carroll’s Rabbit Hole.  Lewis Carroll was also a great mathematician whose paradoxal parody between the Tortoise and Achilles challenged the idea that ‘inference’ was logical truth.

I was reading the Mike Whitney Interview with Ron Unz, “Why everything you know about WWII is wrong”, and it delves into the why General Patton’s famous comment was point on – “I fought on the wrong side”.   And how the entire narrative we have been ingrained to accept is in fact ‘topsy turvy’ – Alice in Wonderland!   Always justifying a war, or an assault, based on a false ‘enemy’.  The common enemy.

But it goes beyond that to Vietnam, Korea, WWI, the Civil War, and even our supposed Fore Fathers who we are taught to revere – The Committee Of Five.  Many of whom were wealthy Free Masons whose scandals, censorship, smuggling operations and other misdeeds including Sherman presiding over the Supreme Court having no education to speak of, were ignored in rewriting their glorious historical deifying biographies.  But such is our History.

In this world of make-believe history, there is the make-believe present:

The Pentagon has issued their ‘cyber-security’ initiative in AI:  “The unclassified wishlist for acquisitions expresses need for enhanced production of fake imagery, including humans with different facial expressions, virtual environments, and “selfie videos” that can withstand scrutiny by social media algorithms and real humans. The solutions should also provide audio layers specific for locations of simulated footage.”

All presumably before the election in 2 weeks.  WHY?

The Pentagon claims North Korean troops are fighting in Russia against the Ukrainians.   This claim was further mediatized by the CIA’s puppet, South Korea’s spy agency, which has called on the UN to call this a war crime…and threatened a ‘response’.  Thus providing the backdrop for a full blown NATO invasion with no evidence and no wrong doing.

This sort of propaganda is what led to the US intervening in WWII. Fictional reports with no basis.   Enter AI.  AI ordered by the Pentagon for fake imagery that would be so real the world would believe what was shown…and lay the foundation for justification of something so heinous the election would be delayed – aligning with Obama’s recent  encouragement  to Biden – “Don’t worry we have lots of time”….

And like FDR’s concern over the debt and economy he couldn’t control – America’s Democrats are once again facing the failures of their policies and need a quick fix to move the focus.

Reprinted with permission from HelenaGlass.net.

The post The Election. The Regime. The Pentagon’s AI Wishlist appeared first on LewRockwell.

Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò has thrown his full support behind Donald Trump as the next president of the U.S. and called upon American Catholics to vote for Trump on November 5 as a moral imperative.

In an open letter addressed to Catholics in America, Viganò, the former apostolic nuncio to the United States, urged the faithful to vote for Trump as the “only possible choice” for president to oppose the “deep state” and protect “future generations,” echoing his previous claims that only Trump stands in the way of a “globalist coup.” The archbishop suggested that “voting for Kamala Harris,” on the other hand, “is morally inadmissible and constitutes a very grave sin,” adding that to abstain from voting would not be “morally possible,” since “in this war declaring oneself neutral means allying oneself with the enemy.”

Viganò, who is a long-time supporter of Trump’s political candidacy, argued in his Tuesday letter that a vote for Trump “means firmly distancing ourselves from an anti-Catholic, anti-Christian, and anti-human vision of society” while at the same time noting “serious problems” with the former president’s declared positions on both abortion and “assisted procreation [IVF],” which he said “a Catholic cannot agree with.”

Indeed, Trump has stated that he would oppose a federal ban on abortion and would mandate insurance coverage for in-vitro fertilization (IVF), both of which practices violate natural law and the explicit doctrine of the Catholic Church.

Viganò wrote that Trump, whom he said “is paying with his very life for his fight against the deep state” in refence to recent assassination attempts, represents “the only possible choice to counter the globalist coup that the woke Left is about to implement definitively, irreparably, and with incalculable damage for future generations.” The prelate added that if Catholics were to assist in placing Trump back in the White House, it must become for him “the premise for a more incisive commitment to the defense of life from conception to natural death, the traditional family, the right of parents to educate their children, and to the defense of the Christian faith and the cultural identity of the nation.”

In contrast, the archbishop stated that Kamala Harris, whose party supports abortion through all nine months and aggressively pushes the LGBT agenda, is “an infernal monster who obeys Satan” and argued that a potential Harris presidency would usher in an era of “slavery” which would promote “everything that directly opposes the faith and morals of the Catholic Church.” Describing such a scenario as “the most ferocious dictatorship,” Viganò said America under Harris would suffer “moral, social, and economic destruction.”

Harris recently declined to show at the annual Al Smith Memorial dinner, a Catholic fundraising event which typically sees the Republican and Democrat presidential candidates put aside partisanship to attend the charitable event. Critics roundly condemned Harris as “anti-Catholic” for the no-show and criticized her pre-recorded speech as “purposely” offensive.

During his speech at the dinner, Trump blasted Harris’ snub as “very disrespectful” to Catholics and used the opportunity to call upon Catholics to vote for him this election cycle. Trump also told Raymond Arroyo ahead of the event that he likes the Catholic Church “a lot.”

In concluding his Tuesday letter, Viganò emphasized that “Our Lord must return to reign, and the first way to make Him reign is by obeying His holy law and living in His grace.”

“Let Christ reign in your hearts, in your families, in your communities, and throughout the entire United States of America: this is the only way to peace, harmony, and prosperity for your nation,” the prelate added.

American Cardinal Raymond Burke also weighed in on the upcoming election, publishing advice to the faithful to “pray and fast” ahead of casting their vote.

Offering counsel on “how to vote in good conscience” this November 5, Burke said – alongside prioritizing prayer and fasting that America “will once again serve the good of all its citizens” – Catholics should “study carefully the agenda of each candidate” to see whether they “will limit” evils, “even though he or she espouses morally objectionable programs and policies.”

While lamenting the “desperate situation” of U.S. politics, owing to “the agenda of both major political parties” being “so fundamentally objectionable,” Burke said that Catholics should vote where they find “even the smallest ray of hope” that their vote could positively impact the common good.

Read the Whole Article

The post Archbishop Viganò Endorses Trump, Tells Catholics Abstaining ‘Means Allying Oneself With the Enemy’ appeared first on LewRockwell.

 

 

di Barry Brownstein

Solo il quattro percento “degli adulti americani afferma che il sistema politico funziona molto bene”. Il sessantacinque percento afferma che “ci sentiamo sempre o spesso esausti quando pensiamo alla politica”. Eppure continuiamo a votare, pensando che una maggiore attenzione alla politica risolverà in qualche modo i problemi della società.

Nel 2020 i candidati hanno speso oltre $14 miliardi per le rispettive campagne elettorali, il doppio della cifra spesa nel 2016. La campagna presidenziale del 2024 è tutt'altro che finita. Quanto spenderanno i candidati in questo periodo per catturare la nostra attenzione?

Se siete uno di quelli che trovano la politica deprimente, C. S. Lewis capirebbe. Nel suo saggio “Membership”, contenuto nella raccolta The Weight of Glory, C. S. Lewis scrisse: “Una società malata deve pensare molto alla politica, come un uomo malato deve pensare molto alla sua digestione: ignorare l'argomento può essere una codardia fatale per l'uno come per l'altro”. La politica, spiegò Lewis, non è “il cibo naturale della mente”, ma un “male necessario”. Tuttavia troppa enfasi su di essa è diventata “una malattia nuova e mortale”.

Lewis mise a confronto la frutta fresca a quella in scatola. Quest'ultima può essere attraente per via della conservazione, ma egli disse di aver incontrato persone che la preferivano a quella fresca.

Allo stesso modo tra noi ci sono coloro che preferiscono valutare le promesse dei candidati come un percorso verso il progresso sociale piuttosto che consolidare le fondamenta di una società libera.

Se i candidati vi fissano ancora sulle loro vuote promesse, Ralph Waldo Emerson ha una cura immediata. Nel suo saggio, “Experience”, scrisse: “Un oratore politico paragonò le promesse dei nostri partiti alle strade, aperte e maestose, con alberi piantati su entrambi i lati; presto, però, diventavano sempre più strette e le persone sarebbero finite schiantate contro uno di quegli alberi”.

Milton Friedman, in Capitalism and Freedom, scrisse: “L'uso di canali politici, sebbene inevitabile, tende a mettere a dura prova la coesione sociale, essenziale per una società stabile. [...] Ogni estensione delle questioni per cui si cerca un accordo esplicito mette ulteriormente a dura prova i delicati fili che tengono unita la società”.

E poi, come se Friedman avesse potuto vedere avanti fino al 2024, aggiunse: “Le differenze nei valori di base raramente, se non mai, possono essere risolte alle urne; in ultima analisi possono essere decise, anche se non risolte, solo tramite il conflitto. Le guerre religiose e civili della storia sono una sanguinosa testimonianza di questo giudizio”.

Friedman articolò chiaramente l’antidoto alla politica:

L'uso diffuso del mercato riduce la tensione sul tessuto sociale rendendo non necessaria la conformità rispetto a qualsiasi altra attività che la richiede. Più ampia è la gamma di attività coperte dal mercato, minori sono le questioni su cui sono richieste decisioni esplicitamente politiche e quindi su cui è necessario raggiungere un accordo. A sua volta minori sono le questioni su cui è necessario un accordo, maggiore è la probabilità di ottenerlo mantenendo una società libera.

Quando qualcuno dice che ha una lealtà incrollabile nei confronti del detersivo Tide o della Coca-Cola, la sua decisione riguarda solo lui e la sua famiglia; il resto di noi continua a farsi i fatti suoi.

Eppure sono in molti ad affermare con grande convinzione: sono un democratico leale per tutta la vita, o un repubblicano leale per tutta la vita.

Dopo le elezioni fraudolente in Venezuela, alcuni affermano di essere incondizionatamente fedeli al corrotto presidente Maduro.

Nell'Unione Sovietica di Stalin, alcuni accusati ingiustamente di crimini politici accettarono volontariamente la morte come ultimo servizio al Partito.

Lealtà come questa sono le più adatte alle società totalitarie.

Non è questa la lealtà che ha costruito l'America, è stata invece quella verso i principi.

Poche sono le dichiarazioni di lealtà di fronte ai principi come quella del primo discorso inaugurale di Thomas Jefferson nel 1801. Jefferson rifletteva sul dovere che lo attendeva. Invece di esporre rozzamente la sua visione parlò della grandezza dei principi fondanti del Paese; erano richiesti grandi principi, non grandi individui.

Jefferson disse: “Mi avvicino [al mio dovere] con quegli ansiosi e terribili presentimenti che la grandezza dell'incarico e la debolezza dei miei poteri ispirano giustamente”. Un “terribile presentimento” è uno di disastro. Jefferson riconobbe umilmente i limiti del suo potere personale e non si lamentò dei limiti costituzionali al potere del governo.

Fu chiaro sul fatto che solo il suo affidamento ai principi avrebbe superato la propria disperazione per le scoraggianti responsabilità della presidenza. Nella Costituzione avrebbe “trovato saggezza, virtù e zelo su cui fare affidamento”.

Tra i principi americani, affermò, c'erano “giustizia uguale ed esatta verso tutti gli uomini, di qualsiasi stato o convinzione, religiosa o politica; pace, commercio e onesta amicizia con tutte le nazioni, senza stringere alleanze con nessuna; il sostegno dei governi statali in tutti i loro diritti”. Poi Jefferson aggiunse:

I principi formano la luminosa costellazione che ci ha preceduto e ha guidato i nostri passi attraverso un'epoca di rivoluzione e riforma. La saggezza dei nostri avi e il sangue dei nostri eroi sono stati dedicati al loro conseguimento. Dovrebbero essere il credo della nostra fede politica, il testo dell'istruzione civica, la pietra di paragone con cui proviamo i servizi di coloro di cui ci fidiamo; e se dovessimo allontanarci da loro in momenti di errore o di allarme, affrettiamoci a tornare sui nostri passi e a riguadagnare la strada che da sola conduce alla pace, alla libertà e alla sicurezza.

Un mandato dichiarato alle urne non deve essere usato per giustificare la coercizione degli altri. Al contrario, Jefferson chiese al suo pubblico di “tenere a mente questo sacro principio, che sebbene la volontà della maggioranza debba in ogni caso prevalere, tale volontà per essere legittima deve essere ragionevole; la minoranza possiede i propri uguali diritti, che la legge per l'uguaglianza deve proteggere, e violarli sarebbe oppressione”.

Jefferson capì che coloro che non riescono nemmeno a controllare sé stessi non dovrebbero cercare di controllare gli altri: “A volte si dice che non ci si può fidare di quell’uomo che non sa governare sé stesso. Ci si può fidare di lui, allora, per il governo degli altri?”

Se le persone non devono controllare gli altri, cosa dovrebbe fare un “buon governo”? Jefferson diede una risposta chiara: “Un governo saggio e frugale, che impedisca agli uomini di farsi del male a vicenda, li lascerà liberi di regolare le proprie attività di industria e miglioramento, e non toglierà dalla loro bocca il pane che hanno guadagnato”.

Jefferson sosteneva quei valori necessari per mantenere un buon governo, tra cui “l'onestà, la verità, la temperanza, la gratitudine e l'amore per l'umanità”.

Alcune persone credono che il governo sia la fonte di una società solidale, Jefferson trovò le radici di una tale società in ognuno dei nostri incontri quotidiani: “Ripristiniamo nei rapporti sociali quell'armonia e quell'affetto senza i quali la libertà e perfino la vita stessa non sono altro che cose tristi”.

Nel suo saggio più famoso, “Self-Reliance”, Emerson lanciò un avvertimento per la sua generazione e la nostra: “Una vittoria politica [...] o qualche altro evento favorevole, che solleva il vostro spirito e pensate che vi stiano preparando giorni buoni, non credeteci”.

Tenendo fede allo spirito di Jefferson, Emerson concluse il suo saggio con la sua frase immortale: “Niente può darvi pace se non voi stessi. Niente può darvi pace se non il trionfo dei principi”.

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

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As fast as a snake’s thrust, Israel has taken the methods of mass murder used against Gaza’s civilians to the West Bank, to Lebanon and Syria, to Yemen and beyond. It is now launching about for the next country to attack, Iran.

This is the bloodiest in Israeli criminal annals. Still, it is the consensus among the best of people, pure-hearted and valiant all, that the only way to stop the Israeli State’s serial killers is passively and pacifistically—“for the U.S. to end all weapons shipments to Israel.” And, that “the only way that this will take place is if enough Americans make clear they have no intention of supporting any presidential ticket or any political party that fuels this genocide.”

So spoke Chris Lynn Hedges, veteran war correspondent and journalist. Another man of first quality is Professor Jeffrey Sachs. To put an end to Israel’s hourly slaying in Palestine and across the Levant, Professor Sachs, for one, recommends “stopping Israel’s ideology of genocide.”

By this he might mean a reeducation or denazification program of sorts. It is unclear, however, how “stopping” Israel’s “ideology of genocide” will end Israel’s actual, multi-fronted, high-tech, industrial-scale murder campaigns against Palestinians and their defending neighbors.

September-October Carnage

Life in the Israel-occupied Levant

At an astonishing clip, the Israeli criminal enterprise sped off to Lebanon. Israel’s lobbies and Western enablers have now extended tacit permission for Israel’s bombing campaign in Lebanon—visiting death and displacement on the villages of Southern Lebanon, and on the southern suburbs of Beirut, where, entire city blocks have been demolished with ground-penetrating, bunker-busting American bombs.

Within the span of two-three weeks, in 10,000 strikes, 93 percent of which originated with Israel, some 2500 individuals had been murdered in Lebanon. A quarter of the population has been displaced, under eviction notice from their Israeli overlords. Israel’s bombing of civilians has extended from the Beqaa Valley, and the city of Baalbek, into Beirut, beyond the Dahiyeh, to the ancient Phoenician cities of Tripoli and Tyre, in northern Lebanon. Did I mention a strike on Lebanon’s only airport? Forgive: No sooner do the news chyrons of death and destruction by Demon State scroll across my screens than these are out of date.

Before the strafing of Lebanon now in progress—Israel had infiltrated that sovereign country’s supply chain of electronic devices to carry out one of “the biggest acts of mass terrorism” to date. Thousands were maimed by detonating pagers, dozens were murdered. Need I add that boobytraps contravene the laws of armed conflict? I don’t. You already knew that Israel relies for its existence on criminality.

As free marketeers, we harbor hope that Israel’s repulsive tampering with humanity’s personal devices will spur local Lebanese industries. The free market will, in future, ensure that Israel’s remote activation of sleeper devices will lend an edge to the kind of competition that advertises thus to consumers of electronic goods:

“Our products are Israel proof; they cannot kill their users.”

Long-term hopes and predictions are no panacea for unhindered carnage in progress. Israel is bleeding the region like a leech. Its high-tech murder sprees across the Middle East must be viewed, then, as actionable, S.O.S., life-and-death emergencies.

At the time of this writing hundreds are dying daily by Demon State. In Gaza’s dilapidated, destroyed hospital structures, in its schools-turned-shelters (28 desiccated on October 10), in its refugee camps, where the displaced huddle (dozens dead in Deir el-Balah); on the central-city streets of Beirut, where 22 martyrs had been offered up for the October 12 Sabbath; in mosques (19 souls taken on October 6), in municipalities, markets, en route to fetch food and water.

In dank nylon tents set ablaze, Al-Aqsa hospital patients incinerated in their beds.

A funerial rap way better than mine is the raw throb of BBOBBYY, the mysterious activist-artist who has superimposed his lachrymose lyrics on images of the crushed, dismembered and burned alive, rapped out in lamentation of “1 Year of Genocide”:

“A bomb descends and detonates, disembowels eviscerates, torsos torn, shredded bodies, no heads, girls with no legs on their deathbeds, heads without skulls, hollowed out holes, where there once were souls, dreams and goals, a father’s last cuddle in a blood-soaked puddle, a ghostly gray child hangs plucked from the rubble.”

No one is spared: children, women, their men; reporters, rescuers, healthcare workers. And peacekeepers in Lebanon. Peacekeepers, according to Professor Sachs, are one of the bedrocks on which to erect the future superstructure of peace between Israelis and Palestinians. The Blue Helmets, however, are present in Lebanon. Israel has begun picking off the United Nations’ peacekeepers, for it respects no international symbol.

In its unceasing carnage, Israel has now knocked out at least four major hospitals and 32 medical centers in Beirut, in what the Hasbara bills as “precision strikes,” in the course of “a limited incursion.”

For their part, Palestinians keep trying to nest, to return to the Sisyphean piles of rubble that are their ruined homes. But Israel will have none of that. It wants to empty Gaza north of the Wadi Gaza and is currently revisiting Northern Gaza, subjecting its dazed and confused survivors “to one of the most violent campaigns of its genocide.” So warns Euro-med Monitor. In Northern Gaza the IDF is now killing whoever remains by “saturation bombing” or by eviction—as in the renewed seize on the skeletal Kamal Adwan Hospital.

Sneers “the most moral army in the world”: The innocents murdered are mostly legitimate targets on account that third parties—Hamas, Hizballah, and Houthi fighters—are either lurking or lobbing projectiles nearby. Trust us, the Israelis smugly snarl: If a smorgasbord of humanity is killed by us—men, women, their children, their ancestors, their livestock, their land, their defenders, their storytellers—it is because the dead were either terrorists who needed killing, or were in the vicinity of terrorists who needed killing. The kills were good; the killers righteous. Besides, the killers’ lives are worth more.

An hour in the life of Israel-occupied Levant (links via Antiwar.com) looks like this:

North Gaza Attack Signals Restart of Ethnic Cleansing.
Israeli Attacks in Gaza Kill 82 Palestinians Over Three Days.
Journalist [aged 19] Killed in Israeli Bombing After Being Warned to End his Gaza Reportage.
Israel Kills 100 Children in Lebanon in 11 Days.
Israeli Strikes Target Aid Trucks in Syria.
Israeli Strike on West Bank Cafe Wipes Out Family.

Unflagging zeal for generational genocide in Gaza has meant that, so far, Israel has wiped out 900 bloodlines in the enclave. The very definition of genocide.

Hasbara Media

Israeli state terrorism is framed as self-defense.

And the West acquiesces. The malodorous cauldron of lies that is corporate media have been conditioned by Israel and its Hasbara handmaidens. Day after day, the word from the media is the same. “Locked into the two-sides paradigm,” western media still pedal hard the “possibility” that Israel’s strafing of Lebanon is legal, righteous. They still equate the bombing of the civilian structures of Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon—municipal buildings, medical clinics and hospitals, media offices and officers, first responders mid-rescue, firefighters—with “self-defense.”

“State terrorism redefined as self-defense,” in the words of commentator Mouin Rabbani.

A media to whom the “punitive slaughter” of tens of thousands of civilians, the hacking of the private mobile devices of sovereign citizens (Palestinian, then Lebanese), so as to deliver sadistic, illegal marching orders—psychological warfare—to millions, scattering them hither and thither (Northen Gaza is being evicted anew); such a media’s very mission is to elide the truth for Israel. Corporate media has lost the right to write news.

A more reliable reporter from the ruins of a Beirut southern suburb is the prototypical elderly Arab gentleman, interviewed 13 minutes into a Middle East Eye segment about Israel’s Dahiyeh Doctrine: “They’re criminals. They are not fighting men with guns; they are killing women and children.”

Indeed, Israel’s perverted, purely “punitive slaughter” is made manifest in the latest documentary from acclaimed British journalist Richard Sanders, to mark one year of genocide. Israelis are on display in Gaza for the last year burning with white-hot hatred and contempt for all Palestinians (nay all Arabs), whom they clearly consider Untermensch, subhuman. Nowhere in evidence among the horribly brutalized bodies of Ghazzawi men, women and babies is combat. Nowhere in evidence are bodies of boys carrying firearms or men kitted for combat.

Even so, the only resistance to Israel’s depredations in Gaza and beyond has come from Hizballah, the Houthis and Hamas (as well as from popular militia in Iraq and Syria). These fighters are the only forces resisting the mad dog medinah (מְדִינָה is country in Hebrew), which has murdered one in every 55 Palestinians residing in Gaza.

The Responsibility To Protect

Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah saw his Good Samaritan duty as an obligation, not an option.

Resistance fighters are heeding the highest calling: The “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P). Make no mistake; Israel ought to have been resisted; its victims protected. In international humanitarian and customary human rights law there is a “responsibility to protect” a community that is being evicted and eradicated. While libertarians would regard the “Responsibility To Protect” as largely voluntary; we naturally attach great moral virtue to the Good Samaritan.

As did the late Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah. Nasrallah, secretary general of Hizballah, saw his Good Samaritan duty as an obligation, not an option. His people agreed. Acting in the spirit of R2P, the “Responsibility to Protect,” Nasrallah did the honorable and principled thing: The legendary Shia leader stood foursquare with his Suni brethren in Gaza, against their Israeli mass murderers.

The world stood by during the Holocaust, even though the Final Solution and the facts of the death camps were known to the Allied powers late in the war. Mouin Rabbani, aforementioned, has thus drawn a parallel: Unlike the Allies during the Nazi extermination of Jews and other minorities; Nasrallah, a man with moxie and morals, refused to sit idle as Israel slaughtered Palestinians in Gaza. Likewise has Max Blumenthal likened Nasrallah’s disruptions on Israel’s northern border as the bombing of the railway tracks to Auschwitz. This, too, the Allied powers had failed to do.

For coming to the defense of Gaza, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah—Professor Norman Finkelstein had called him “The frankest most impressive leader on the world stage”—was martyred with American imprimatur and munitions: The payload consisted of eighty five 2000-pound, ground-penetrating bombs, “daisy chained together.” It was dropped by Israel on six apartment blocks in a residential suburb of the Dahiyeh, in four separate rounds. Hundreds of Lebanese died with Hassan Nasrallah.

In its unalloyed depravity, Israel is ever scheming on or murdering potential future adversaries. In accordance with its Killing-Just-In-Case jurisprudence, Israel has since also slain Nasrallah’s presumed successor, Hashem Safieddine, in his family home. These Prior Restraint statist doctrines are reprehensible to libertarians and liberty lovers. Yet Israel has no qualms about them. Why? Because Arabs are not allowed to entertain resistance to Israel’s crimes. (Incidentally, guess where the Kirya, Israel’s central military compound, is located? In the heart of the city of Tel Aviv. By Israel’s “morals and logic,” the Kirya and its surrounds are legitimate targets for the Resistance.)

“Mowing The Lawn” is just another Israeli prior-restraint criminal tactic. In Israeli military bafflegab it’s called deterrence.

The West Bank & East Jerusalem Stolen

All that remain for the Palestinians are isolated outposts, surrounded by blockades, barrier walls, checkpoints and…state-supported terrorists.

Secure in the warm bath of Super Power support; the Israelis, already uninhibited by normal standards of behavior, have gone into overdrive. Defense Minister Yoav Gallant now comfortably and brazenly speaks of “mowing the lawn” in the occupied West Bank, between Jenin and Hebron.

Before brutalizing Lebanon’s civilians, Gallant had announced, early in September, to his largely depraved populace that,

“[T]he military has been ‘mowing the lawn’ during an ongoing major operation against terror groups in the West Bank, but will eventually need to ‘pull out the roots.’”

The current Israeli quest is to openly visit a Gaza-like annihilation on the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Genocide proper has come to the West Bank and East Jerusalem, which had only recently been invaded by columns of IDF Einsatzgruppen. The water torture has commenced. Taps have been turned off “in Jerusalem’s largest Palestinian neighborhood,” according to the reporters of the +972 magazine. Posses of settlers range across the West Bank in rampages of arson and plunder and with hubristic insolence.

Begun on August 28, the operation in the West Bank and East Jerusalem had been sadistically dubbed “Summer Camps” by IDF de Sade (by IDF standards, the eponymous Marqui de Sade was an amateur sexual sadist). The allusion is to hitting where resistance is fiercest, in the refugee camps. While the offensive against civilians is much less intense than in Gaza—no “saturation bombing” as yet—it is echoing it. “Summer Camps” is thus part of an accelerated and “concerted campaign to depopulate Palestine.”

“Under cover of war,” seconds the +972 investigative magazine, “Israel is demolishing home after home in Silwan, an East Jerusalem neighborhood, having “displac[ed] dozens of Palestinian residents this year.” The magazine, which manages somehow to sneak its reporters past Israeli snipers and into the occupied territories, confirms that “the Israeli army is destroying West Bank civilian infrastructure, blocking medical access, and conducting mass arrests in its largest West Bank operation in years.” Such arrests, 401 that we know of, mostly for offenses of speech, by the admission of The Times of Israel, are being conducted in Israel proper, too. The implicit aim, again, is to purge Palestine of Palestinians by making life relentlessly risky.

Between October 7 and September 30, of this year, there have been 895 Palestinian fatalities in the West Bank, including 201 children, reports OCHA. Again, while some strafing of civilians and their businesses from above has been carried out by the Israeli Air Force, the IDF’s grotesquely destructive efforts have focused on bulldozing roads, gutting water works and sewage mains, surrounding, destroying or just menacing mosques, markets, schools, universities, hospitals and clinics.

A desperate Bashir Matahen, director of public relations and media at the Jenin municipality, tells that, “The occupying (Israeli) forces have demolished more than 70 percent of [his] city’s streets completely (…) to a depth of approximately one to one-and-half meters, which has led to the destruction of water and sewage networks, as well as communication and electricity cables, in the areas that were demolished, initially estimated to cover 20 kilometers.”

All of which Francesca Albanese confirms. Via Ms. Albanese, UN special rapporteur to the occupied territories, comes confirmation of the reports of a full military assault on the West Bank, further damaging infrastructure already damaged in prior raids, and all the while instructing Palestinian occupants to abandon the coveted properties, and evacuate en mass. The genocidal impetus is indeed underway in the West Bank.

Palestinian dispossession in the West Bank is systemic, not sporadic. Sodomizing, strafing and stealing from occupied Palestinians—these are all in a day’s work for Israel’s finest. News, then, that Israeli hands are deep in Palestinian tills comes as no surprise: “Israel confiscated $265,000 from a money exchange shop in Hebron,” reports the Middle East Monitor.

In true obeisance to God’s laws, B’Tselem, the internationally renowned Israeli human rights organization, has also tracked the “forcible transfer of isolated Palestinian communities and single-farm families in Area C under cover of the Gaza fighting.” Between October 19, 2023 and August 29, 2024, the people of thirteen such hamlets had been removed from their ancestral lands, a way of life is being extinguished.

In an August 27 report, B’Tselem anatomized the general method by which the Israeli military assists settlers in grabbing land speedily by erecting minute-made “outposts and ‘agricultural farms.’” The trick is to informally establish facts on the ground, and thus skirt any poorly enforced legal process. By way of an example, B’Tselem deconstructs how the military assists settlers of “Meged Ha’aretz” in stealing the West Bank lands of Shufah and Kafa:

“Unlike formal multi-stage processes required to establish settlements, these [settler] outposts can be set up quickly and require relatively few resources and laborers. This method facilitates the state’s ability to shirk responsibility for land seizures as well as for the violent and illegal actions of the settlers who inhabit them, while simultaneously supporting these outposts in various ways.”

‘The settlers disturb the farmers working their land, deliberately provoking them and creating friction. They have also caused damage to hundreds of olive trees, agricultural structures, water containers and property; stolen equipment and livestock; sprayed graffiti; and burned greenhouses. They have instilled constant fear in the farmers and taken control of land by shooting in the air, intimidating Palestinian shepherds and preventing them from grazing their sheep and cattle in the area. Due to the violence and difficulty to access their grazing lands, some farmers have been forced to sell their herds—as feeding their livestock with purchased feed is too costly.’ (https://www.btselem.org/settler_violence/20240827_magged_haaretz_farm_military_assisted_settler_takeover_of_shufa_and_kafa_lands)

Their guns at the ready, the IDF soldiers look on as settlers rampage through West Bank villages, burning, looting and, yes, murdering. These Settler Pogroms  are covered extensively by Oren Ziv of +972. On September 2, B’Tselem documented how “undercover Border Police extrajudicially executed a military wing operative in front of bystanders in the Jenin industrial zone.” Arrests? What for? Nothing to see here. Move along. “If you try to defend yourself, you’re dead,’” attest the Palestinian victims. Resist the IDF and you die sans due process of the law.

Heroically have the Palestinian farmers and sheepherders of the South Hebron Hills struggled to uphold their ancestral lifestyle. They live in daily fear for their lives and the lives of family and livestock. How much longer can they linger without urgent and active intervention to uphold their basic rights to life, liberty and property?

Notwithstanding settler land theft en masse, a lot of people are staying with the story of the two-state solution. What about it, then?

The Two-State Solution Killed

The object of any future Palestinian State must be security, first, not amity, and a ‘Never Again’ mindset.

There is slim to no chance of a contiguous Palestinian State alongside Israel, given that Israel’s settlement policy in the West Bank has ensconced near one-million Jews on Palestinian land throughout the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Monomaniacally focused, state-supported outlaw settlers are violently stealing Palestinian land as we speak. Close to a million of them, if we include East Jerusalem. All that remain for the Palestinians are isolated outposts, surrounded by blockades, barrier walls, checkpoints and…state-supported terrorists.

To the extent it was ever sincere, the two-state solution was killed by Israel and “the Israeli state’s auxiliary armed forces,” Dr. Rabbani’s moniker for the settlers. The coming into being of a contiguous Palestinian territory has been made impossible.

Considering that settlers and their ideology have tentacular reach into Israeli institutions, civil and state—the chances for a two-state solution are vanishingly small. Take the judiciary: Punishment for settler land theft and other felony crimes perpetrated against Palestinians in occupied Palestine is almost unheard of, as illustrated in the chapter, “Israel’s Law Of Rule In The West Bank,” in the essay “Defending Gaza (II): Israel Engaged In The Mother Of All Performative Contradictions: Denying Genocide, While Committing Genocide, Effectively Asserting A Right To Genocide.” B’Tselem has published countless research exposés on the marriage between the Israeli State and its settler “auxiliary armed forces.”

Even the idea of “the two peoples, getting along, and actually drawing strength from each other” is Panglossian, at this stage. (Pangloss is the “unfailingly optimistic character” in Candide, Voltaire’s 1759 “satire on philosophical optimism.”)

Palestinians have been martyred en masse by their Jewish supremacist neighbors, who’ve shown themselves to be mired, as a society, in unspeakable debaucheries, and uncommonly capable of exterminating Palestinian survivors.

Who would fall into such a homicidal trap again?

Given the threat to their very existence, Palestinians must not be forced into existential ennui by the West. Given their reality, the object of any future Palestinian State must be security, first, not amity with Israel. That, and a “Never Again” mindset. Any future Palestinian State is useless unless it affords the most imperiled people in the world the ability to defend against the most perilous people in the world.

Living Alongside Serial-Killing Sexual Sadists

The pairing, in Israel, of sexual arousal and violence toward Palestinians makes for a particularly irremediable pathology, the stuff of serial killers.

Israel’s bacchanalia in Gaza and the West Bank includes a Gulag of clandestine rendition torture camp, wherein thousands of Palestinian detainees languish without charges or due process, and are systemically and systematically raped, beaten, starved and left traumatized, twisted and deformed, disabled or dead. (“Something very sick and evil is happening in Israel’s jails. Welcome to hell is not an exaggeration,” reports the legendary Peter Oborne.)

Honed in rendition torture camps, sexual violence has become the coin of the Greater Israel realm. Settler-conquerors now roam the hamlets of the South Hebron Hills, out, loud and proud in threatening rape. Apparently, raping another helpless man is considered manly in Israel, a country that is otherwise more woke than any in the West.

In the one unremarkable vignette, filmed by B’Tselem, an armed settler threatens a Palestinian farmer in the South Hebron Hills with rape. “Rape in the name of God,” a la Sde Teiman, promises settler Shem Tov Luski, to a horrified Palestinian.

In yet another typical settler vignette, Turkish TV captured a uniformed IDF manhandling himself on camera, in a manner not fit to print. Reflexively. Apparently, threatening a helpless group of Palestinian homesteaders has aroused this IDF.

“Holy Redemption: Stealing Palestinian Land,” a TRT World Exclusive documentary, plainly follows and records these settlers in character. There is no editorializing. Twenty-nine minutes and 20 seconds into this TRT settler odyssey we find said IDF soldier, in cahoots with settlers, hissing: “I spit on Palestine. F-ck your mother. I’m the Israeli Army.” He is not done.

Just as I imagined this breed of Cain could not expose itself as more indecent, the hissing, uniformed IDF soldier comes close to indecent exposure. At the said timestamp, the atavistic, low-brow individual shows himself to be lacking the inhibitions to keep his perversion private.

The Palestinian olive growers and shepherds of the austere Hebron Hills are necessarily a Spartan people. For centuries they have made things grow despite arid soil and the scarcity of water. They look like they belong; like authentic outdoor folk. The Settlers, on the other hand, look ridiculous. Out of place. In marked contrast to the dignity of the Palestinians of the Hebron Hills, settler flotsam and jetsam are an epitome of degeneracy.

Why, then, would Palestinians, a traditional, rather regal people, wish to “draw strength” and inspiration, in the future, from their genocidal neighbors, the great Israeli unwashed, who’ve done to them things that make the thickest skin crawl?

This I ask in the context of peacemaking—for also talked up among some is a utopic time when “the two peoples [Jewish-Israeli and Palestinian] will get along, and actually draw strength from each other.”

Daily, the Palestinians’ closest neighbors, the settlers, make manifest their red-hot hatred toward them, stealing land, regularly slaughtering helpless livestock with biblical cruelty, and generally menacing Palestinian property owners. Most disturbing is the overt, perverted sexual sadism of settlers and their soldier helpers.

The Nazis, whose spiritual heirs Israel is shaping up to be, paradoxically, hid their systematic crimes against humanity; Israeli Jews—a majority, at least—either celebrate or are callously nonchalant about felonies, perversions and crimes against Palestinians.

Israeli shamelessness is the quality that has helped the Al Jazeera Investigation Unit (IU) commit to a database thousands of videos, photos and social media posts “posted online by Israeli soldiers themselves during the year-long genocide” in the Gaza Strip.

The exultant whoops of individual IDF soldiers, mid murder, are now part of a dossier, a database. “Where possible, the Investigation Unit has identified the posters and those who appear,” leaving the International Criminal Court (ICC) with little else to do but to verify, and then initiate criminal proceedings. (Small wonder IDF squirrels are frantically deleting their social media accounts pursuant to the airing of “War Crimes in Gaza,” and to the filing, by Belgium’s “Hind Rajab Foundation,” of  a complaint to the ICC against at least 1000 IDF putative war criminals.)

Israel’s soldier sons and daughters are the stars in the country’s genocide constellation. In addition to “a range of illegal activities, from wanton destruction and looting to the demolition of entire neighborhoods and murder,” what emerges most palpably from “War Crimes in Gaza,” and from my own year-long observations, is the sexual undercurrent that accompanies IDF sadism—from pilfering Palestinian women’s panties to raping their men.

The nub and the rub of it: How do you extinguish, for the purpose of peacemaking, pathologically murderous sexual arousal? Do you chemically castrate IDF soldiers and settlers?

What of Israeli society? It, too, is a picture of moral decadence. Israeli sofa tv pundits are as chatty and blasé about “mowing the lawn” as they are about the sexual rupturing of Palestinian anatomy. Israelis themselves have partied on. It’s vodka in the bars, volleyball on the beaches. All the while, a few kilometers south of this Dionysian debauchery is genocide. Watch footage montage from Israel proper. Down south of the coast from these frolicking Israelis, on Gaza’s shores, fishermen are blown out of the waters should they try to fish to feed their families. (“How Israel destroyed Gaza’s ability to feed itself,” Al Jazeera, July 2, 2024.)

And what other country proudly names one of its killer creeds, the “Dahiyeh Doctrine,” “after an area of Beirut” where it had perfected its predation? No other than Israel.

Israel is the proud promulgator of the immoral, illegal “doctrine of inflicting massive harm to civilians,” perversely named for its victims. Imagine a serial killer, Randall Woodfield, for example—he hunted along Highway I-5—calling his killer craft the “Highway I-5 Doctrine.” Imagine Wikipedia describing Woodfield as originator of the “I-5 Doctrine.”

By all accounts, special prestige is attached in Jewish-Israeli society to the perpetrators of the kind of crimes that “knock the cosmos out of kilter.”

Rescue Plan Required, Not A Political Strategy

When a serial killer is loosed in your neighborhood; crime-reduction social programs are not the things you reach for.

Imagine your 911 dispatcher answering your “I am dying, send help” emergency call with, “We are working on community based, crime-reduction strategies.” By extension, boycotts and embargoes relate to Israel mid-murder as crime-reduction policies relate to a crime in progress.

It would seem fair to surmise, then, that stopping an ideology—Israel’s genocidal mindset or America’s sacralization of Israel—is a long-term endeavor, a strategy. A strategy, political or other, does not a rescue plan make. A long-term strategy is not the answer to an S.O.S. life-and-death situation.

When a serial killer is loosed in your neighborhood; crime-reduction social programs or political strategies are not the things you reach for.

Crime-reduction strategies, in the case of Israel, are those long-term incentive-based plans to increase humanity’s safety and security, by disincentivizing an entity that has proven to constitute a danger to the comity and safety of nations.

The private, voluntary, slow-motion Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement “works to end international support for Israel’s oppression of Palestinians and pressure Israel to comply with international law.” Voluntary economic boycotts on Israel and mandatory state embargoes on shipments of weapons to Israel: these are all well and good. But they are long-term strategies, not S.O.S. interventions in regional mass murder ongoing; these are not solutions to the problem of a mass murderer loosed on the Near East.

Israel is a promiscuous and licentious killer. To the mass-murdering medinah, the lives of Arabs are as cheap as the talk we in the West deploy about “stopping Israel.”

We’ve watched all of civilization’s edifices destroyed by Israel—from the sanctity of life, liberty and property to well-meaning legal frameworks designed to uphold these inalienable individual rights.

Israel, moreover, is humanity’s most barbaric instantiation. Not only does it target humanity’s most vulnerable, but also its finest and noblest; the people we most rely on: altruistic aid and rescue workers, healers in their clinics ministering to their patients, peace activists, writers, reporters and intellectuals recording the crimes for posterity.

For the better part of a year, we the people of Rome’s provinces have appealed to Rome on the Potomac. The magnificent, human rights and rescue community has “warned” and cajoled the Axis of Genocide—begged anyone they could buttonhole—while working and dying with their Palestinian charges in the field.

No petition to the United States has worked so far. America is not the solution, it’s the problem. On top of its already strong presence in the region as a standby and backup to its cheerless satellite—the United States is now sending Israel “an advanced anti-missile system and soldiers to operate it,” symbolically, at least, deepening America’s craven commitment to Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, the West Bank and their regional defenders.

Because he considers Israel a rib from the United States’ rib cage, Matthew Miller at Foggy Bottom gives us The Talk: “We’re calling on our Israeli allies to improve their ways in war, to look into this or that massacre having spontaneously materialized in Palestine. These massacres are indeed very disturbing.”

Wryly, Electronic Intifada’s Ali Abunimah, Palestinian activist and thinker, offers up an apt syllogism for this American-Israeli stagecraft, 58 minutes into a conversation with journalist extraordinaire Rania Khalek:

“These reports of young men and women disappearing across America, and showing up brutally murdered are very disturbing. We ask Charles Manson, and John Wayne Gacy and Jeffrey Dahmer to carry out a very serious investigation and to hold those responsible accountable. It is really important that we hold people accountable, so we would really like Jeffrey Dhamer and John Wayne Gacy and Charles Manson to investigate this. And, the United State will work with them to do that.”

We cannot be lulled into the torpor of such talk.

Bullies must be stood up to and stopped. By definition, a bully is a coward. A bully, especially one imbued with a messianic, millenarian sense of supremacy, understands one thing: a united show of force. Israel’s regional serial killing needs to be stopped forthwith, and by force!

The attitude of the Arab countries, the Arab League, has been to let Israel do what it wants just so long as they were not the ones being targeted. But then they were.

The nub and the rub: War on civilians is a war on civilization. The coward’s aggression must be forcefully and righteously countered.

The Israeli State, which continues to operate outside the remits of man-made law and God’s law, must be defanged. You don’t negotiate with Charles Manson, John Wayne Gacy and Jeffrey Dahmer…

The plan to stop Israel will have to involve righteous, regional, counterforce. Details next.

The post Why The Israel-Occupied Levant Must Be Liberated, S.O.S. appeared first on LewRockwell.

Property rights, the division of labor, and voluntary exchange are the foundation of civilization. In Liberalism: The Classical Tradition, Ludwig von Mises explains why these doctrines are essential to civilization, emphasizing that peace is a prerequisite for the division of labor and human cooperation. When the threat of war constantly hangs over a society, people no longer specialize in their most productive skills and abilities. Instead, they devote all their efforts to becoming self-sufficient in everything they need to survive, as they have no expectation of being able to trade with their foes for anything they might need. Mises therefore highlights “the incompatibility between war and the division of labor.”

This does not mean that we must all be pacifists—on the contrary, Mises distinguishes wars of aggression from self-defense, arguing that a nation under attack “must offer resistance and do everything to ward off the onslaught.” He adds that, “Heroic deeds performed in such a war by those fighting for their freedom and their lives are entirely praiseworthy, and one rightly extols the manliness and courage of such fighters.” He gives the example of the Spartan king, Leonidas, who is a hero, not just because he fought valiantly, but because he fought in defense: “Even Leonidas would not be worthy of the esteem in which we hold him if he had fallen, not as the defender of his homeland, but as the leader of an invading army intent on robbing a peaceful people of its freedom and possessions.”

In that light, the important question in evaluating any war is whether it was fought in aggression or in defense. That is not always easy to ascertain in practice. The events surrounding the crisis at Fort Sumter, South Carolina, in 1861 are a compelling illustration of the difficulty in assigning responsibility for the outbreak of war.

Responsibility for starting the war

In his article “Lincoln and Fort Sumter,” published in 1937, Charles Ramsdell explains that the complexities surrounding the outbreak of this war are little understood: “The story of the development of the Fort Sumter crisis has been told many times, but it is so full of complexities that there is little wonder that many of its most significant features have been obscured with a resultant loss of perspective.” This led to many drawing the rough and ready conclusion that whoever fired the first shot should be deemed to have started the war. Ramsdell observes that, “Because the Confederate authorities ordered the attack it is generally held that they were directly responsible for the horrors of the ensuing four years.”

However, as Ramsdell goes on to show, matters are not that simple. The Confederate government hoped for a peaceful resolution to the crisis, and there was a reasonable expectation that the situation could be resolved without bloodshed:

Though Governor Pickens [of South Carolina] had wished to press demands for surrender and to attack the fort if refused, he had first sought the advice of such men as Governor Joseph E. Brown of Georgia and Jefferson Davis of Mississippi. Both advised against any such action, partly because they still had some hope of peace and partly because they saw the danger of taking the initiative.

Ramsdell explains that “the Confederate government, having taken over from [South Carolina] all negotiations concerning the fort, was moving cautiously with the evident hope of avoiding hostilities.”

President Lincoln unfortunately chose to regard “the secession of the seven cotton states as a nullity,” to continue holding federal forts in the South, and “to collect the duties and imposts” from the Confederate states as if they had never seceded. Ignoring the fact that South Carolina had seceded, he sent “provisions” to Union forces in Fort Sumter despite his own advisers warning him that they “could not see how it would be possible to reinforce Sumter without putting the [Lincoln] administration in the position of the aggressor.”

Ramsdell highlights the conflicting political perspectives even in the North: “There was a strong peace party in the North which was urging the settlement of difficulties without resort to force,” but the “militant Unionists in the North” favored a more aggressive approach. Ramsdell suggests, “At some time, while turning these things over in his mind, this daring thought must have occurred to Lincoln: Could the Southerners be induced to attack Sumter, to assume the aggressive and thus put themselves in the wrong in the eyes of the North and of the world?” Ramsdell details how, from that point, “Events now hurried to the inevitable climax” with the outbreak of war.

Justice by the bully

In evaluating the aftermath of the War for Southern Independence, Charles Adams develops a similar argument to that of Mises by emphasizing that war is always destructive regardless of who started it or who wins it. Adams observes that war, by its very nature, “creates uncivilized chaos and butchery unrestrained by law.”

Like Mises, Adams also rejects the view that might makes right, or that the justice of any war depends on which side was victorious. He argues:

No one has ever suggested that applying the principles of military might—slaughter and devastation—actually means that justice has prevailed. What does prevail is the better army or navy, justice often by the bully. Lawful ideals and principles quickly fade from view as armies take to the field and clash. At that point the combatants start to manufacture reasons for the conflict. And when no good reason can be found, a bad one will do. Facts become distorted, history perverted, and the main reasons for almost all wars—territory, resources, and power—are usually masked over with some sort of moral or social objective. (emphasis added)

Adams emphasizes that the victory of the Union forces yielded an uneasy détente in its immediate aftermath:

The South was overrun by a military occupation and generals with autocratic powers… There never was another hot war between the states, of course, but a cold war of bitterness emanating from the occupation of the South by Northern armies under Reconstruction lingers to this day.

He refers to this as an “ugly peace” because it came only for the Union but not for Southerners, both black and white: “The ugly peace forced on the South was only a victory for Republican and Northern control over the nation.”

Adams recounts the caution of Robert E. Lee after the war, that “an overblown, powerful national government would engage in aggression abroad and despotism at home.” Such threats of aggression are always to be abhorred because an aggressive and despotic government is incompatible with lasting peace.

As Mises argues, there must be “an assurance of lasting peace” for the mutual cooperation on which civilization depends. Mises criticizes those who think war may be an unfortunate but necessary and worthwhile path to achieve a good outcome, as warmongers wrongly reason that there will inevitably be loss and sacrifice but it will all be worth it in the end. Mises argues that “not war, but peace, is the father of all things,” emphasizing that, “War only destroys; it cannot create.”

Nor does it matter whether such wars are won or lost. Might does not make right, therefore, wars of aggression are not redeemed by the mere fact of emerging victorious. In Mises’s view, a defender of liberty must be “convinced that victorious war is an evil even for the victor, that peace is always better than war…peace is for him, the stronger, just as advantageous as it is for the weaker.”

Note: The views expressed on Mises.org are not necessarily those of the Mises Institute.

The post Peace as a Prerequisite for Civilization appeared first on LewRockwell.

Weekend news that “Neocon Nikki” Haley is in talks to hit the campaign trail for Donald Trump should raise red flags to everyone cautiously optimistic that Trump 2.0 will avoid some of the personnel disasters that Trump 1.0 fell into time and time again. Haley was nicknamed “birdbrain” by Trump in the primaries and he swore that anyone supporting her campaign would be “permanently barred” from Trump’s MAGA camp.

For her part, Haley accused Trump of being “unhinged,” “just toxic,” and “lacking moral clarity.”

She even latched on to the left-neocon “Russiagate” narrative that former President Trump was soft on and even beholden to Russian president Vladimir Putin, accusing Trump of “siding with a murderous thug.”

The former US president’s son, Don, Jr. (accurately) quipped that Haley was “created in a laboratory by the neocons.”

Now that Trump looks more likely to re-take 1600 Pennsylvania, however, Nikki’s back and ready to stump for Trump. And she’s not alone. The one thing neocons understand is how to maneuver around the shifting Washington sands of political power to make sure no matter who wins, they remain in charge. That’s why some neocons like Bill Kristol and Liz (and Papa) Cheney rallied around the Kamala train.

Donald Trump has very publicly renounced and denounced many of the very people he had serving under him in his first administration, including John Bolton, Mark Esper, Mike Pence, and many others. For most of his administration it appeared his own staff was actively working against him and as soon as he was out of office most of his former “trusted” appointees lined up to attack their former boss.

That is why it is also curious that Politico – a publication with a pronounced anti-Trump bias – put out a piece today speculating on how a Trump 2.0 Cabinet might be populated. Now Politico is far from the worst, and in fact we consult it fairly often when we are thinking about our daily Liberty Report, but astute people in our era must consume mainstream media as in the Soviet era and look for the кто кого? – “who whom” – of the whole thing.

What is Politico really trying to say in the piece? Are they trying to inform or disrupt? At least they admit that they are “spitballing” in their speculation about who Trump might put into top diplomatic, military, and national security positions in his 2.0 Administration if it comes to that. But apparently they base it on his references to each person and whether he gets a positive or negative comment – which itself is a bit of Kremlinology.

For Secretary of State, Politico suggests that among five choices he may choose either…neocon Ric Grenell, neocon Robert O’Brien, or…drumroll…neocon “l’il” Marco Rubio!

Likewise for Defense Secretary, Politico reads the tea leaves and comes up with, among three possibilities, Sen. Tom Cotton or…drumroll…Mike “Lie, Cheat, Steal” Pompeo!!!

The bottom line is that the neocons are flocking back to the Trump world knowing that it is where the (nominal) seat of power may soon lie. They will flatter him and they will cajole those around them, and a propagandized public will smile and wink that the “experts” are flocking to his administration.

But what have these “experts” achieved? Nothing but failure for the past 25 years, starting with the failed response to 9/11 to the idiotic attack on Iraq to the fake justification for violence embedded in the “Arab Spring” narrative, to our current situation of being on the verge of war with Russia, Iran, China, and even BRICS.

They are fully terrible, but they know how to weasel their way into power. Will Trump 2.0 finally banish these parasites to the hinterlands where they belong? “Nikki…buh bye!”

This originally appeared on The Ron Paul Institute.

The post Neocons Circling a Surging Trump…Will He Bite? appeared first on LewRockwell.

British “counterterrorism” police raided the home of Electronic Intifada editor Asa Winstanley on Thursday morning, seizing multiple electronic devices on suspicion that the journalist violated the UK’s 2006 Terrorism Act with his social media activity.

The Electronic Intifada is an independent outlet which focuses on Palestinian rights and the abuses of apartheid Israel. It has spent the last year publishing critical journalism that has later been vindicated by more mainstream outlets questioning empire propaganda on issues like the “mass rape” hoax and Israel’s implementation of the Hannibal Directive on October 7. Winstanley has been a major contributor to this journalism.

The Electronic Intifada reports:

“British counterterrorism police on Thursday raided the home and seized several electronic devices belonging to The Electronic Intifada’s associate editor Asa Winstanley.

“Approximately 10 officers arrived at Winstanley’s North London home before 6 am and served the journalist with warrants and other papers authorizing them to search his house and vehicle for devices and documents.

“A letter addressed to Winstanley from the ‘Counter Terrorism Command’ of the Metropolitan Police Service indicates that the authorities are ‘aware of your profession’ as a journalist but that ‘notwithstanding, police are investigating possible offenses’ under sections 1 and 2 of the Terrorism Act (2006). These provisions set out the purported offense of ‘encouragement of terrorism.’

“An officer conducting Thursday’s raid informed Winstanley that the investigation was connected with the journalist’s social media posts. Attempts to reach the Metropolitan Police Service for comment for this story have been unsuccessful.

“Although his devices were seized, Winstanley was not arrested and has not been charged with any offense.”

UK “counterterrorism” police raid home, seize devices of EI’s @AsaWinstanley https://t.co/8QWBHMJILM

— Electronic Intifada (@intifada) October 17, 2024

“The amount of authoritarianism and erosion of rights in the West to protect Israel — by censoring criticism of that foreign country and punishing its critics — is almost impossible to overstate,” journalist Glenn Greenwald tweeted on the news of the police raid, adding, “Mass firings in the US and speech-restricting laws. The UK, as always, is worse.”

As soon as the British government gave itself the right to designate targets of British warmongering as “terrorists” and then made it a speech crime to support those “terrorists”, it became inevitable we’d start seeing British journalists persecuted for criticizing their government’s foreign policy.

Basically what we’re seeing with the police raid on Asa Winstanley is the west finally reconciling (A) its need to suppress speech that’s critical of western warmongering with (B) its stated support for free speech. All it has to do is outlaw speech that can be deemed supportive of “terrorism” while designating the targets of western warmongering like Hamas and Hezbollah as “terrorists”.

This maneuver allows the western empire to stomp out critical speech about western foreign policy in a way that can be framed as reasonable, because obviously we can’t have people encouraging terrorism! That would be tantamount to shouting “fire” in a crowded theater — which we seem to have arbitrarily decided is the line where free speech must end.

We’re seeing the UK spearhead this initiative over the past year, with “counterterrorism” police persecuting journalists like Winstanley and Richard Medhurst and activists like Mick Napier, Tony Greenstein, Richard Barnard and Sarah Wilkinson, but we’re seeing similar iterations sprout up throughout the western world. Social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram have been increasingly censoring speech that they deem supportive of “dangerous individuals and organisations” like Hamas and Hezbollah, and here in Australia police are investigating protesters for waving Hezbollah flags at a demonstration in Melbourne under a new law banning the public display of symbols of designated “terrorist” groups.

Israel has lost so much credibility, western govts are enforcing their propaganda matrix by raiding journalists who criticize them. Full solidarity with @AsaWinstanley https://t.co/wwgJNdwPaw

— Abby Martin (@AbbyMartin) October 17, 2024

Ever since 2016 we’ve seen western empire managers publicly wringing their hands and fretting about the disadvantage the western world has in the information age because of its laws supporting free expression which allow the enemies of western governments to spread “propaganda” and “disinformation” to westerners. In its increasing criminalization of any speech which can be interpreted as supportive of designated terrorist organizations, they’ve found a major loophole which allows them to rein in the highly democratized freedoms of expression that westerners have been enjoying with widespread internet access and begin regaining their ability to control how westerners think, speak, act, and vote.

Earlier this year we saw Palantir CEO Alex Karp come right out and say that if western anti-genocide protesters are allowed to win the public debate, the west will lose the ability to wage wars.

“We kind of just think these things that are happening, across college campuses especially, are like a sideshow — no, they are the show,” Karp said during a conference in May. “Because if we lose the intellectual debate, you will not be able to deploy any army in the west, ever.”

For those who don’t know, Palantir is a CIA-backed surveillance and data mining tech company with intimate ties to both the US intelligence cartel and to Israel, playing a crucial role in both the US empire’s sprawling surveillance network and Israeli atrocities against Palestinians. Karp is a billionaire who sits on the Steering Committee of the Bilderberg Group and regularly features at the World Economic Forum and other platforms of plutocratic empire management.

We saw this imperial hand-wringing illustrated again this past May in a conversation between Senator Mitt Romney and Secretary of State Antony Blinken at the McCain Institute, during which both acknowledged some facts that generally go unstated by such empire managers.

After bemoaning Israel’s lack of success at “PR” regarding its Gaza assault, Romney just came right out and said that this was “why there was such overwhelming support for us to shut down potentially TikTok or other entities of that nature” — with “us” meaning himself and his fellow lawmakers on Capitol Hill.

“How this narrative has evolved, yeah, it’s a great question,” Blinken responded, saying that at the beginning of his career in Washington everyone was getting their information from television and physical newspapers like The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post.

“Now, of course, we are on an intravenous feed of information with new impulses, inputs every millisecond,” Blinken continued. “And of course, the way this has played out on social media has dominated the narrative. And you have a social media ecosystem environment in which context, history, facts get lost, and the emotion, the impact of images dominates. And we can’t — we can’t discount that, but I think it also has a very, very, very challenging effect on the narrative.”

Notice how he said the word “narrative” three times? That’s how empire managers talk to each other, because that’s how they think about everything.

This is because empire managers are always acutely aware of something that normal human beings are not: that real power comes from manipulating the stories — narratives — that people tell themselves about their reality.

They understand that humans are storytelling animals whose inner lives are typically dominated by mental narratives about what’s happening, so if you can control those narratives, you can control the humans.

They understand that power is controlling what happens, but true power is controlling what people think about what happens.

They understand that whoever controls the narrative controls the world.

“We think these things that are happening across college campuses are a sideshow. No, they are the show.”

“If we lose the intellectual debate, you will not be able to deploy any army in the West, ever.”#Palantir CEO Alex Karp at #SCSPAIExpo2024 pic.twitter.com/MwQoDlSMFw

— Palantir (@PalantirTech) May 8, 2024

That’s what’s going on with all the mass media propaganda, Silicon Valley algorithm manipulation, plutocrat-funded think tanks, and mainstream culture manufacturing in New York and Hollywood, and it’s what’s going on with the police crackdowns we are seeing on journalists and activists in the UK. A few clever manipulators understand that you can control a society by controlling its dominant narratives, and they are conducting themselves accordingly.

Our rulers don’t think about things like normal people think about them. They don’t think in terms of doing the right thing or acting in a way that benefits everyone. They don’t think in terms of truth and honesty or the lack thereof. They only think in terms of what stories people are telling each other, and how those stories can be changed in a way that advances the interests of the empire they manage.

Empire managers — and highly manipulative people in general — do not use language in the way that normal people use it. Normal human beings use language to connect and communicate, whereas manipulators use it only to extract things they want from people and exert control over them. They do this by working to control the narratives that people have about their material reality.

That’s why when guys like Romney and Blinken talk to each other about why people are so upset at Israel, it never even occurs to them to discuss how Israel’s public image is being hurt by its own actions, or to suggest that it could improve that image by simply ceasing to behave in a monstrous way. All they talk about is “the narrative” of what Israel is doing, and how people having the ability to share ideas and information with each other online makes that narrative harder to control.

Just over a week ago Asa Winstanley published this. Today his home was raided by counter terror police, electronics seized—WITHOUT CHARGE—as part of a police investigation into charges under the Terrorism Act. Every journalist should be shouting from the rooftops about this. https://t.co/TMiJdvXBCo pic.twitter.com/CnGDDxnCuw

— Eyup Lovely (@eyuplovely) October 17, 2024

So while normal people are looking at the bloodshed and horror in Gaza and Lebanon and screaming it needs to stop at the top of our lungs, our rulers are hearing us and thinking, “Oh no, we need to find a way to get them to stop believing that narrative and get them to believe another one.”

That’s what we’re seeing with all the attempts to stomp out free speech both at demonstrations and online. They understand that if they lose control of the narrative, they won’t be able to deploy their armies anymore.

So please don’t make the mistake of thinking your attempts to disrupt their narrative control aren’t working. Don’t let anyone tell you your protests don’t make a difference or your dissident speech poses no threat to the powerful. If what we’re doing wasn’t working, empire managers wouldn’t be going nuts trying to stop us.

_______________

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