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Thanks, John Smith.  

The New Arab

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Thanks, John Smith. 

The American Conservative.

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di Jeffrey Tucker

(Versione audio della traduzione disponibile qui: https://open.substack.com/pub/fsimoncelli/p/perche-si-parla-cosi-tanto-di-recessione)

Puntuali come un orologio, ecco che ritornano le discussioni su una recessione. L'annuncio arriverà presto e sarà confermato entro l'estate. La Federal Reserve di Atlanta ha da poco rivisto le sue previsioni di output per il primo trimestre, prevedendo una contrazione del -2,8%. È accaduto tutto all'improvviso. Solo una settimana prima gli stessi strumenti (GDPNow) avevano previsto un aumento del 2% dell'output nel primo trimestre.

A questo punto molte persone probabilmente staranno ignorando tutte queste previsioni e i grandi numeri che provengono dagli esperti pagati dai contribuenti. Hanno toppato molto e per tanto tempo, ciononostante Wall Street è commossa da tali report di dati, anche quando i problemi con essi sono evidenti. Come si dice, i numeri potrebbero essere falsi, ma sono tutto ciò che abbiamo.

La base su cui si fonda questa previsione riguarda la spesa per l'edilizia ed è davvero difficile giustificarla basandosi sui dati del settore che non mostrano nulla del genere.

Il mio pensiero: questo è un gioco di attribuzione delle colpe. Le analisi commissionate dal Brownstone Institute, ma che possono essere state intuite anche da qualsiasi adulto negli ultimi quattro anni, documentano una recessione tecnica sin dal 2022 sulla base di una lettura più chiara dei dati. Non c'è mai stata una chiara ripresa sin da marzo 2020, quando l'economia globale è stata deliberatamente gettata in una depressione forzata.

Da allora i dati macroeconomici raccolti in modo convenzionale hanno avuto ben poco senso.

Ci sono molti problemi. I dati di output convenzionali contano la spesa pubblica, anche quando è basata sul finanziamento tramite debito che è in ultima analisi finanziato dalla stampa di denaro, come contributo positivo al PIL. Proprio in questi anni si è assistito al più grande aumento della spesa pubblica che abbiamo mai registrato.

Ovviamente ha distorto i dati del PIL per anni.

C'è un altro problema: gran parte della “crescita” negli ultimi quattro anni è consistita nella riparazione graduale e iterativa dei danni causati dai lockdown e dai blocchi della supply chain. Rompere le cose e aggiustarle non conta come progresso complessivo, ma nel modo in cui viene raccolto il PIL, lo conta invece.

Questo fattore ha distorto i dati sulla produzione per anni.

Tutti i dati del PIL devono essere aggiustati all'inflazione se davvero devono avere un significato. Questo è risaputo, meno risaputo è che lo stesso deve accadere alla spesa al dettaglio, agli ordini di fabbrica e agli acquisti di beni durevoli. Non ha alcun senso considerare i prezzi più alti come aumenti significativi della spesa.

Ciò che conta è quale misura dell'inflazione si usa rispetto alla quale il PIL viene aggiustato per ottenere poi il PIL reale. Da anni ormai l'indice dei prezzi al consumo è stato notevolmente sottostimato su intere classi di beni e anche sull'intero indice. Arrivati a questo punto, è fuori discussione. Quanto sia stato sottostimato è una questione dibattuta. I dati convenzionali mostrano un calo del 22% del potere d'acquisto in quattro anni, ma potrebbe essere più vicino al 30% o più, raggiungendo in certi punti livelli molto più alti.

Anche utilizzando una misura prudente, sottostimandola e combinandola con il PIL non aggiustato, si genera un contesto macroeconomico in rosso per tre anni: una recessione tecnica.

Quando abbiamo pubblicato il nostro studio, mi aspettavo un tremendo contraccolpo da parte degli economisti del settore e di altri. Quello che abbiamo visto invece è stato il silenzio. Ciò mi ha lasciato sbalordito finché non ho capito che quasi tutti sanno che le cose stavano così.

In altre parole, Trump ha ereditato un ambiente economico che è stato definito meraviglioso per anni, ma che in realtà è stato estremamente debole e profondamente danneggiato. Era una trappola: negare la debolezza economica per quattro anni, quando invece era ovvia, poi una volta che il nuovo presidente sarebbe entrato in carica farla diventare trasparente e dire la verità su quanto le cose siano brutte.

Il problema con la cultura statunitense è che c'è una sovrapposizione mediatica tra le condizioni economiche e chiunque si trovi in ​​carica in quel momento. Non è affatto una coincidenza che la recessione sembri colpire esattamente mentre Trump è entrato in carica. Sarà attribuita alle sue linee di politica: dazi, tagli alla spesa, sconvolgimenti governativi, o semplicemente incertezza in generale.

È come se qualcuno si accorgesse che la casa è in disordine non appena arriva la squadra delle pulizie e desse la colpa a loro di tutti i problemi.

D'altro canto, è decisamente troppo presto per dichiarare che siamo in qualche modo fuori dai guai. C'è ancora molta strada da fare, e Trump ha ragione a esortare alla pazienza e persino a suggerire, come ha fatto nel suo discorso al Congresso, che ci sarà dolore economico lungo il cammino.

La retorica impetuosa sull'alba di una nuova età dell'oro è entusiasmante, ma prematura. Il bilancio deve essere sistemato, le agenzie governative devono essere frenate e tagliate, le normative devono essere abrogate, le agenzie sanitarie devono essere smantellate, tutte le tasse devono essere abbassate o abolite.

Per quanto riguarda i dazi, è facile seguire il ragionamento qui: poiché è più economico produrre la maggior parte delle cose nella maggior parte degli altri Paesi rispetto agli Stati Uniti, principalmente a causa della forza del dollaro, il loro impiego è progettato per pareggiare i conti. È un tentativo di ricreare il vecchio regolamento contabile che avevamo prima della fine del gold standard. La teoria è che questo dimostra un certo margine di competitività per la produzione statunitense, probabilmente attraendo capitale straniero per investimenti nazionali.

Questo mi sembra un metodo tortuoso per aggirare un problema più importante che risale a un sistema monetario internazionale in crisi. Detto questo, non c'è un pulsante da premere per risolvere il problema, almeno non uno che io riesca a vedere. L'effetto più immediato di questi dazi sarà quello di aumentare i costi per gli importatori e i consumatori statunitensi. Nel complesso, questa è una scommessa rischiosa. Non sono certo il solo a temere che questa iper-attenzione sui dazi, molto prima di una riforma delle tasse e della spesa, sia sproporzionata, riflettendo un'idiosincrasia personale della stampa nei confronti di Trump piuttosto che un chiaro pensiero economico.

I dazi diventeranno anche un capro espiatorio. Se all'improvviso verrà annunciata una recessione, se il PIL del primo trimestre dovesse davvero scendere in modo così violento, i dazi e quindi Trump si ritroveranno nel mirino delle critiche. Questa dovrebbe essere una preoccupazione politica primaria per la sua amministrazione.

Detto questo, Trump è sulla strada giusta nel sottolineare che abbiamo appena vissuto la peggiore inflazione degli ultimi 48 anni e forse della storia americana. È stato sottoposto a severi controlli per questa affermazione, ma è del tutto difendibile. Lo stesso vale per tutti questi indicatori economici, dall'inflazione al mercato del lavoro. La realtà è ben peggiore di quanto le agenzie abbiano segnalato per molti anni.

Ricordate: ci sono forti ragioni per credere che siamo in recessione tecnica più alta inflazione da anni ormai. Ammetterlo ora è una questione di tempismo politico. La nebulosità che circonda i dati e i messaggi economici sta diventando sempre più stratificata e complicata, e ci vuole una vera sofisticatezza per vederlo.

Le sofferenze nascoste degli ultimi quattro anni sono state in gran parte taciute e quindi le tribolazioni improvvisamente annunciate adesso sono probabilmente esagerate.

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

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In what way is the Trump presidency and his financial partners involved in the collapse of stock markets Worldwide.

Major financial actors, using the instruments of speculative trade, have the ability to fiddle and rig market movements to their advantage. There is no such thing as a “Free Market”. These tools of manipulation have become an integral part of the financial architecture; they are embedded in the system.

There are several instruments including futures, put options, index funds, derivatives, naked short selling, etc. used to make billions of dollars when the stock market crumbles.  The more it falls, the greater the gains. Those who make it fall are speculating on its decline.”

The stock exchange has been transformed into a multi billion dollar Gambling Casino.

The market is heavily manipulated. The driving force behind the meltdown is speculative trade. The system of  “private regulation” serves the interests of the speculators.

The original source of this article is Global Research.

The post Trump’s Global Economic Warfare appeared first on LewRockwell.

It is no sin to evade the tax collector. We can hold in contempt all arguments claiming the legitimacy of taxation. These claims can only come from ignorant, misled, or evil men. It may be virtuous to tolerate the first two, but standing silent while evil men plunder our livelihood is an evil of its own kind.

When a stronger man demands of a weaker man, “your money or your life,” there is no dishonor in paying, even though there is special honor in openly defying dishonorable men. The weaker man is under no obligation to respect the thug and thief before him. He is entitled to every form of protection he can muster, be it deceit, escape, subversion, or sabotage. Only one thing is precluded from him: finding one even weaker than himself and enacting the same evil.

This current American “government,” so called by convention, although they are lawless demons controlled by Satan himself, has inherited and perpetuated a system devised by their master, one which I have lived under my entire life: withholding. The very name implies injustice. What can be withheld but that which is entitled?

American employers have enlisted to become tax collectors year after year. In exchange for their robbery, they are given a special privilege: a monopoly on profits from productive labor. Should one of these tax collectors ever question orders, regaining his humanity and the sacred charge of leading free men, he is put down swiftly and without mercy. A crime family can not abide insubordination from its bag men.

Employers must make a choice: who’s side are they on? Much economic analysis discusses how the interests of the employee and the employer are aligned. It is time for the American entrepreneur to put up or shut up. Is he a toady for evil and thieving men, or is he a man in his own right, honorable and true? For those willing to be leaders, openly defy. For the weaker of them, use every form of protection that you can muster, but quit enacting this evil upon your employees.

How shall we protect ourselves from the slave drivers who remain? A man must work. It is a necessary condition of life, like breathing. If a tax were levied on breathing, would we hold our breath out of duty to our country? Would we quibble about the rights of employers to the air they allow us to breathe in their factories? Or would we open our lungs and take what we need?

Every employer is in the process of arbitraging revenues and expenses to make a profit. Since profits are the direct reward for his injustice, profits should be the place where the worker finds his reckoning. Do you get to use the company credit card? Can you use a company vehicle for personal use? Burgers to eat without paying the 50% off, employee “discounted” price? If your employer is not taking care of you, you should take care of yourself.

A man must be devious enough to thrive, but honorable enough to not milk the cow dry. He has his own “going-concern” to worry about. Although the prison may be the proper place for a person like me, it certainly is not a place I ever want to go. If my employer takes me to court, I will find no justice. The judges are on the side of the tax collectors. So it is imperative that we stay out of those houses of injustice.

When a critical mass of people recognize the income tax is unjust, it will go away. No effort will then be necessary to rid ourselves of it. Until then, we must survive and become strong. Otherwise, our rulers and tax collectors will milk us dry, discard us, and reap all the rewards of the crimes they have committed.

The post Tax Collectors appeared first on LewRockwell.

The gold price recently surged to unprecedented levels, surpassing the $3,000 per ounce milestone. This remarkable surge has been attributed to escalating geopolitical tensions, the revival of the trade wars, mounting inflation concerns, and of course, a very uncertain and very worrying outlook for the global economy and for the markets. As they always do, investors have once again flocked to the safe haven that gold unmistakably provides, pushing the price from record high to record high.

However, what is interesting this time is that silver has failed to grab any of the spotlight, which presents a truly rare opportunity for shrewd investors with a long-term vision.

While gold has been dominating international headlines for months already with its record-breaking performance, its “little brother” has remained relatively subdued, currently trading around $29.59 per ounce. This disparity is reflected in the gold-to-silver ratio, which currently stands above 102:1, significantly higher than the historical average of around 50:1. Such an elevated figure suggests that silver is undervalued in relation to gold, pointing to a potential correction as market dynamics evolve.

Of course, as most of my clients and readers know very well by now, my primary focus has never been fixed upon price action or the temporary fluctuations of the precious metals market. This is why I personally don’t find the “$3000/oz” gold price record as exciting as many of my industry peers. Sure, it was psychological barrier and sure, it is meaningful that it was crossed with such ease, but that’s not the most impressive thing about gold’s performance. The bigger picture is far more interesting: the steady rise of the past years and the circumstances under which it occurred are far more telling and offered even more confirmatory evidence to those investors that hold precious metals for the right reasons.

The case for silver is similarly robust. Apart from the potential upside due to market fluctuations, the metal has an iron-clad fundamental case to support a solid outlook. In contrast to gold, silver has a kind of dual identity as both as investment asset and as an industrial metal. It has extensive applications in all kinds of industrial sectors, but especially in so-called “green technologies”, such as solar panels and electric vehicles, that have seen spectacular growth thanks to the “electrification” wave.

Countless governments, especially in the West, have been pushing for years to get rid of fossil fuels in favor of renewables and they have offered extremely attractive incentives, tax cuts and subsidies to anyone promising to do that. And while the demand is certainly there, the supply is not. Decades of underinvestment have led to supply constraints and as the demand steadily rises, likely upcoming shortages.

Even though, as mentioned before, price action is not my primary focus, it is worth noting that there are some interesting dynamics from the speculative side of silver’s demand. One of the reasons we’ve been seeing a weaker performance this time around is that a lot of the speculators that used to flock into silver for quick gains have migrated to crypto, which is why we’re seeing significant fluctuations and volatility there. This, of course, changes nothing about the fundamental investment case – if anything, it strengthens it, as the fact that there are less speculators in the metals market could reduce overall volatility going forward.

Given the current market conditions, and especially the price differential between the two precious metals, investors might consider increasing their silver position. The current price levels are still very attractive and keeping one’s savings in silver is a far superior strategy than sitting on piles of cash that constantly lose value or investing in seriously and artificially overvalued equities.

As silver prices rise and the gold to silver ratio drops, investors can start selling their silver holdings at a profit and reallocating into gold, thereby enhancing the overall value of their precious metals portfolio. This strategy takes advantage of silver’s currently attractive price levels and its anticipated price growth while maintaining a balanced investment in both metals. Most of all, it optimally protects investors and ordinary savers from the extreme risks that lie ahead, from intentional, further currency devaluation and loss of real purchasing power to a severe stock market decline and the possibility of an economic recession, which seems to be getting likelier by the day.

Finally, there’s another argument in favor of silver that many investors often fail to take into account. As governments all over the world keep getting in increasingly dire financial straits due to their ballooning debts, the old fears of gold confiscation are on the rise again in the minds of many physical metal owners. Silver can provide some added protection against extreme scenarios like that, since it has been historically spared from confiscation orders.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Therefore please feel free to share and you can subscribe for my articles by clicking here

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Inoculation with a weak form of disease-causing matter to prevent serious illness is a charming idea that has exerted a powerful hold on the human mind since its first primitive iteration against smallpox, called variolation, was proposed in England and the British American colonies in the early 18th century.

After Edward Jenner published his 1798 pamphlet in which he proposed using cowpox to inoculate humans against smallpox, the idea of inoculation became the central concept of infectious disease medicine and has remained so ever since. A serious student of the history of vaccination will observe that this public health technology has always been more a matter of wishful thinking, faith, and commercial enterprise than unbiased scientific inquiry.

The whiny resignation letter of Peter Marks, Director for the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research at the FDA, is a catechism—that is, “a series of fixed answers or precepts used for instruction in other situations.” Marks is a Defender of the Vaccine Faith, and his resignation letter reminded me of counter-reformation pamphlets of the 16th century that asserted the rectitude of Catholic doctrine and the error of protestant reformation doctrine. Every statement in Marks’s letter is a mere assertion—an Article of Faith.

I rejoice at the news of Marks’s departure, which will have a salubrious and rejuvenating effect on the entire Department.

Health and Human Services will never make a contribution to fostering health if its top positions are filled with ideologues whose primary function is the maintenance of orthodoxy. The agency needs men and women of true intellect and imagination to ask fresh questions and look for answers in places that orthodoxy has made a zone of forbidden knowledge.

Peter Marks, MD, PhD
Director, Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research
U.S. Food and Drug Administration
10903 New Hampshire Avenue
Silver Spring, MD 20903

March 28, 2025

Sara Brenner, MD, MPH
Acting Commissioner of Food and Drugs
U.S. Food and Drug Administration
10903 New Hampshire Avenue
Silver Spring, MD 20903

Dear Dr. Brenner:
It is with a heavy heart that I have decided to resign from FDA and retire from federal service as Director of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research effective April 5, 2025. I leave behind a staff of professionals who are undoubtedly the most devoted to protecting and promoting the public health of any group of people that I have encountered during my four decades working in the public and private sectors. I have always done my best to advocate for their well-being and I would ask that you do the same during this very difficult time during which their critical importance to the safety and security of our nation may be underappreciated.

Over the past years I have been involved in enhancing the safety of our nation’s blood supply, in advancing the field of cell and gene therapy, and in responding to public health emergencies. In the last of these, during the COVID-19 pandemic I had the privilege of watching the vision that I conceived for Operation Warp Speed in March 2020 in collaboration with Dr. Robert Kadlec become a reality under the leadership of HHS Secretary Azar and President Trump due to the unwavering commitment of public servants at FDA and elsewhere across the government.

At FDA, the tireless efforts of staff across the agency resulted in remarkably expediting the development of vaccines against the virus, meeting the standards for quality, safety, and effectiveness expected by the American public. The vaccines undoubtedly markedly reduced morbidity and mortality from COVID-19 in the United States and elsewhere. Many of these same individuals applied learnings from the pandemic during a flawless response helping to facilitate the rapid control of the mpox epidemic in the United States during 2022.

Individuals who participated in these responses remain at the ready to address the infectious threats that undoubtedly will confront us in the coming years, including H5N1, which is now on our threshold. Efforts currently being advanced by some on the adverse health effects of vaccination are concerning.

The history of the potential individual and societal benefits of vaccination is as old as our great nation. George Washington considered protecting his troops in Cambridge, Massachusetts against smallpox early in the revolutionary war so that they would not be susceptible to infection by British troops infiltrating the ranks, and later in the war in February 1777 while encamped in Morristown, NJ, he went on to have the courage and foresight to sign an order requiring inoculation of his troops against smallpox.

Subsequently, refinement of the smallpox vaccine combined with a widespread vaccination campaign resulted in the eradication of smallpox from the globe. The application of the remarkable scientific advances of Drs. Salk and Sabin’s vaccines led to the elimination of polio in the United States. And these are just effects of two of the vaccines that have been associated with saving millions of lives.

The ongoing multistate measles outbreak that is particularly severe in Texas reminds us of what happens when confidence in well-established science underlying public health and well-being is undermined. Measles, which killed more than 100,000 unvaccinated children last year in Africa and Asia owing to pneumonitis and encephalitis caused by the virus, had been eliminated from our shores. The two-dose measles, mumps, rubella vaccine regimen (MMR) using over the past decades has a remarkably favorable benefit-risk profile.

The MMR vaccine is 97% or more effective in preventing measles following
the two-dose series, and its safety has been remarkably well studied. Though rarely followed by a single fever-related seizure, or very rarely by allergic reactions or blood clotting disorders, the vaccine very simply does not cause autism, nor is it associated with encephalitis or death. It does, however, protect against a potential devasting consequence of prior measles infection, subacute sclerosing panencephalitis (SSPE), which is an untreatable, relentlessly progressive neurologic disorder leading to death in about 1 in 10,000 individuals infected with measles.

Undermining confidence in well-established vaccines that have met the high standards for quality, safety, and effectiveness that have been in place for decades at FDA is irresponsible, detrimental to public health, and a clear danger to our nation’s health, safety. and security.

In the years following the pandemic, at the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research we have applied the same unwavering commitment to public health priorities to the development of cell and gene therapies to address both hereditary and acquired rare diseases. During my tenure as Center Director we have approved 22 gene therapies, including the first gene therapy ever to be approved in the United States. However, we know that we must do better to expedite the development of treatments for those individual suffering from any one of the thousands of diseases potentially addressable by the advances in molecular medicine over the past decades.

Drawing from learnings of the pandemic, the staff at the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research are implementing best practices learned during the pandemic such as increased communication with product developers to further expedite bringing needed treatments to those in need. They have also been exploring the dramatic transformation of our regulatory approach to expedite the delivery of directly administered genome editing products.

If thoughtfully approached and further developed and refined, these
treatments have the potential to transform human health over the coming years.
Over the past 13 years I have done my best to ensure that we efficiently and effectively applied the best available science to benefit public health. As you are aware, I was willing to work to address the Secretary’s concerns regarding vaccine safety and transparency by hearing from the public and implementing a variety of different public meetings and engagements with the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

However, it has become clear that truth and transparency are not desired by the Secretary, but rather he wishes subservient confirmation of his misinformation and lies. My hope is that during the coming years, the unprecedented assault on scientific truth that has adversely impacted public health in our nation comes to an end so that the citizens of our country can fully benefit from the breadth of advances in medical science. Though I will regret not being able to be part of future work at the FDA, I am truly grateful to have had the opportunity to work with such a remarkable group of individuals as the staff at FDA and will do my best to continue to advance public health in the future.
Sincerely,
Peter Marks, MD, PhD

This originally appeared on Courageous Discourse.

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An invasion can be the cause of a war, be a part of a larger strategy to end a war, or it can constitute an entire war in itself. Due to the large scale of the operations associated with invasions, they are usually strategic in planning and execution.

When I hear the word invasion, what immediately comes to mind is one country invading another. We have ultimately learned that the reasons we are given for the invasion are rarely the whole story. There is more often than not a hidden agenda, some element of self-serving and ulterior motives which are never meant to see the light of day. That is the nature of invasion – it is insidious and used for the benefit of the invader and not the invaded. It makes sense – if what we are offering is beneficial to both parties, then an invasion wouldn’t be necessary – an invitation would be extended and the other party given a choice.

We can justify invasion as much as we want – that we are saving and/or improving people’s lives etc. but invasion is still invasion. Some people will always want to be ‘saved’, rather than expending the effort to save themselves, and will welcome the intervention, but there are many who will consider it just a matter of exchanging one form of slavery over another.

If we have invited someone along to a party and they become intrusive, then we can ask them to leave. However, it doesn’t often work that way with invasion. The invader is perceived as the more dominant and powerful, sometimes even as a saviour. However, over a period of time, even if our lives have been saved by the initial invasion, resentment starts to fester and rise to the surface. People start muttering and mumbling, they start asking questions about exactly what benefits the invader received when they ‘saved’ them. These are weighed and measured and often, in hindsight, the cost is agreed to have been much too high. Invasion is never transparent – there is always the danger of exposure.

This guide below can help you in a survival situation

It is difficult to separate invasion into different categories, because each one tends to bleed into the other. Below are the five types invasion.

Physical invasion

Physical invasion is the most obvious and visible one. It comes in the form of sexual assault, torture, beatings and imprisonment of one form or another.

These are all used as acts of war in order to quell the opposition so victory is assured. It begs the question – can we therefore go one step further and say that invasion is in fact an act of war – in whatever form it comes? Invasion of a country, sexual harassment of a co-worker or bullying of someone at school – isn’t it just a matter of degree?

Some hurt and angry children learn to become bullies. If they aren’t healed or made accountable, they become adult bullies. These adult bullies might then have children of their own, who learn their behaviour and continue it into the next generation. Some adult bullies end up as heads of corporations and powerful public figures. This is where global acts of war are likely to begin. It becomes a self-perpetuating cycle of fear driven behaviour.

Mental Invasion

Bullying doesn’t have to be physical. In these days of social media it has become a violent and cruel form of torture of another human being. Most of these bullies are able to remain anonymous, which makes it more sinister in some ways because there is no-one to be held accountable. The person smiling at you from across the room could actually be the person who is sending the vile messages.

The news is full of stories of people being bullied due to their physical appearance, their sexual orientation, religious beliefs etc. This breaks down the person’s self-worth and self-confidence, to the extent that sometimes even a loving family can’t repair the damage done. This form of invasion can culminate in people taking their own lives, when their feeling of isolation becomes too much to bear.

Forcing our opinions onto others is also a form of invasion. Have you ever had a conversation with someone who is very intense and stares into your eyes while waiting for your response, virtually willing you to agree with them? I have and I know that I have felt very uncomfortable, under pressure and desperately looking for the nearest exit! Invasion has that effect!

Any planting of our own beliefs, or educated guesses, into someone else’s mind as the ultimate truth is a form of invasion. Some years ago I came across the stories of two ladies who had both been diagnosed with the same ‘terminal’ disease, and had both been given 3 months to live by their respective doctors. One of these ladies I met but the other I didn’t because she had taken the doctor’s words to heart, lost hope and passed on a few days before the 3 months was up. The other lady however, though obviously frightened, rejected the doctor’s diagnosis. She had 3 young children and was determined not to leave them. She went on an emotional journey to discover the cause of her illness and went on to heal herself. Fourteen years later and I am told she is still alive and kicking.

It brings to mind a man I met who helped me a lot when I started my own conscious spiritual journey at the age of 19. His name was Joseph Benjamin, and he told the story that 15 years previously his doctor had given him 6 months to live – he was still alive and the doctor was dead. He used to relay that story with gusto.

Spiritual Invasion

I am of the belief that we are spiritual beings having a material experience. Therefore, spiritual invasion strikes at the very core of who we are – it trumps physical and mental invasion every time.

This is where people’s actions come from on a subconscious level – whether they are religious fanatics or atheists, to everything in between those extremes. The physical and mental functions are driven from this core belief.

There are places in the world where people don’t want their photos taken because they believe that their spirit will be captured. There are other places where people believe in being cursed, and that if they don’t behave in certain ways their souls will be condemned to eternal damnation.

I have personally been told about people who cast spells in order to bring someone’s loved one back to them. Maybe a lock of hair, or some belonging, is handed over and a spell is cast. The power of belief is such that often the loved one does return (unless they are strong minded enough to resist), but usually only for a limited period and often it’s not a happy experience. The reason being is that their personal choice has been compromised, they have been manipulated and drawn back against their will – they would never have returned if by invitation alone. Relationships of any kind have to be mutual and not driven by one person, with the other along for the ride.

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, and to worship or not according to their own inclination. Religious beliefs, like any other, should come from personal experience and not just adopted because it is expected, or because the beliefs have been handed down through generations. What was good enough for your father is not necessarily good enough for you.

Spiritual invasion occurs when people are victimised according to their beliefs, and threatened if they don’t conform. Some years ago I travelled to an island where some of the residents were organising a festival which I participated in. I found some very interesting things there – the ruling family had outlawed any form of medium-ship, tarot reading etc. These were considered as breaking the law, as dictated by a book which had been written in the sixteenth century. There had been a dispensation that for the 3 day festival it was allowed, but after that it was a crime. In fact, one reader who continued doing readings from her hotel room actually had the police knock on the door and tell her to stop. The most interesting, and tragic, thing for me was shown in the handwriting of the youth there – so many young people exhibiting stress, anxiety, depression and sometimes even suicidal tendencies. The future generation were being severely impacted through this enforced lack of freedom to make their own choices.

Acts of love which are actually invasive behaviours

Parents, teachers and mentors who don’t want their charges to ‘grow up’ can become invasive if they aren’t careful. This is usually seen and generally accepted as loving protection. It comes in the form of speaking for their charges long after they should be speaking for themselves, and/or monitoring and over-seeing them so that they never get a feeling of being trusted, or being seen as responsible human beings.

We need to look at our motivation very closely. Are we acting out of love for the other person, or out of fear that we are going to be abandoned, that we won’t be needed any more? Whatever the intention, a feeling of resentment and wanting to escape will inevitably occur, and what could have been a loving and supportive relationship breaks down, and sometimes becomes damaged beyond repair. We all need to know when to let go, and let others make their own decisions without our interference, unless we are invited to comment of course.

Read the Whole Article

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The pundits are having a difficult time understanding how President Trump would fulfill his expressed desire to serve a third term as president. Some of them have fallen back on the possibility that he is joking and just trolling his critics. Others have come up with unlikely scenarios for achieving a third term. For example, one commentator asked Trump whether he planned to have J.D. Vance run as president, with Trump as his vice-presidential running mate. Under this scenario, Vance would resign immediately after the election, thereby elevating Trump to the presidency.

However, there are two problems with that scenario:

One, Trump couldn’t trust Vance to fulfill his part of the bargain. What if Vance changed his mind and decided to remain as president? That would leave Trump as vice-president for the next four years. He wouldn’t be very happy as vice-president. That’s the position that Vice President Garner said “is not worth a bucket of warm spit.”

Two, the 12th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution prohibits someone from being a vice-presidential candidate if he is ineligible to serve as president. The 22nd Amendment, which prohibits someone from being elected president more than twice, renders Trump ineligible to run as president.

Trumpsters have raised the possibility of a constitutional amendment that would enable Trump to seek a third term. The problem there is that such an amendment would have to be passed by a two-thirds vote in both houses of Congress and then ratified by three-fourths of the states. That simply is not going to happen and certainly not within the next three years.

So, does all this mean that Trump is simply joshing about a third term as president in an effort to provoke and upset his detractors?

Not necessarily. There is another path to a third term for Trump, a very viable path, one that he might well be pondering.

Ever since the Constitution called the federal government into existence, there has been a big potential flaw in the system. Under our system of government, the judicial branch of the federal government is the final arbiter of what is legal and constitutional. The potential flaw has always been the assumption that the president would defer to the judicial branch and would comply with adverse rulings of the judicial branch.

This mindset of executive deference to judicial authority even extended to President Franklin Roosevelt, who was president during the “national emergency” of the Great Depression. Even though FDR was furious over Supreme Court rulings declaring his socialist and fascist economic programs unconstitutional, and even though he proposed an infamous “court-packing” scheme to circumvent those rulings, he nonetheless complied with judicial rulings.

But what if a president decided to no longer comply with judicial rulings? In that case, as a practical matter, there is absolutely nothing the judicial branch could do about it, especially given the fact that America now has a national-security state form of governmental structure rather than the limited-government structure on which the nation was founded.

Let’s assume that the judicial branch issues an injunction against the executive branch that the president and his subordinates simply ignore. The court sends a team of U.S. Marshals with a contempt order to serve on one of the president’s subordinates. What happens when that team of U.S. Marshals encounters an infantry battallion of the 82nd Airborne Division, as well as a team of well-placed CIA assassins, that prevents that order from being served and enforced? We all know what happens. The judicial branch is rendered impotent. That team of U.S. Marshals returns to the court with its contempt order in hand.

That’s where the national-security establishment — i.e., the military, the CIA, and the NSA — comes into play. It becomes the means by which the president is able to ignore both the judicial branch and the legislative branch. Thus, the wild card in all this is the vast, omnipotent military-intelligence establishment, whose powers over American “terrorists” include military arrest, torture, indefinite detention, military tribunals, renditions to El Salvador, and even state-sponsored assassinations.

That’s precisely why our Founding Fathers hated big standing armies. They knew that big standing armies enable a ruler to exercise omnipotent, dictatorial, unchecked powers over the citizenry. That’s because it is extremely difficult to oppose the overwhelming power of a big, powerful standing army, especially one that loyally serves its commander-in-chief. As James Madison put it so eloquently, “A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty. The means of defence agst. foreign danger, have been always the instruments of tyranny at home. Among the Romans it was a standing maxim to excite a war, whenever a revolt was apprehended. Throughout all Europe, the armies kept up under the pretext of defending, have enslaved the people.” (See my 2013 article “The Dangers of a Standing Army.”)

Thus, let’s assume that for whatever reason — a war with Iran or China in 2027 — or an enormous economic crisis — or both — Trump declares a “national emergency,” much like the “national emergencies” he has already been declaring. Let’s assume that he issues an executive order stating that “national security” dictates that the presidential election will have to be suspended temporarily and that he is willing to remain as president in service to the country.

People file lawsuits and secure injunctions that nullify Trump’s executive decree. He could simply ignore them. What then? How would the judiciary enforce those injunctions and rulings, especially if Trump has succeeded in consolidating his power over the military, the CIA, and the NSA?

Let’s say that Congress votes to impeach Trump and convicts him. So what? On grounds of “national security,” he could ignore that process just as much as he could ignore rulings of the federal courts. How would Congress enforce its impeachment ruling against a president that is backed by the Pentagon, the vast military establishment, the CIA, and the NSA?

Soon after the January 6 protests at the Capitol in the 2020 elections, the Pentagon issued a remarkable statement declaring Joe Biden to be the president. (See my 2021 article “The Pentagon Speaks.”) In my opinion, that was the day that Trump realized that he was no longer going to be president. It might also have been the day when Trump realized how important it is for a ruler to have the deep, unwavering loyalty of a national-security establishment.

Can Trump replace enough generals with generals that are 100 percent loyal to him by 2027? Will he push the boundaries of violating court orders to see what he can get away with? Will he use executive orders to intimidate scared lawyers into silence and even support? Will he and his minions in Congress threaten recalcitrant judges with impeachment in an effort to cow them into submission?

Time will tell. But if Trump, backed by his national-security establishment, comes to the realization that nothing can or will happen to him if he crosses the line and begins openly ignoring and violating adverse rulings of the judicial branch, the road to serving a third term and beyond will be fully open to him.

Reprinted with permission from Future of Freedom Foundation.

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It would seem so, if some of the higher prelates have anything to do with it. More than a few of them, at the beginning of Lent, urged us to imitate our “Muslim brothers” as they undergo their Ramadan fasts.

Us imitate them? The Catholic Church had been exercising the rigorous disciplines of Lent for 500 years before Muhammad arose from the sands of Arabia. Have these good prelates forgotten the fasts of the apostles? Or the emergence of Christian men and women braving the wildernesses of Arabia and Egypt to give birth to the great eremitical and coenobitic Orders? Have St. Anthony, the Desert Fathers, or St. Simeon Stylites slipped their minds? Monasticism as it is known emerged from those centuries with the great stress upon taming the beast in man so that he becomes even more than angel.

Perhaps their lapse in memory is due to their predecessors’ devaluation of the whole apparatus of atonement for sin, reparation for past offenses, and the singular value of mortification and fast? Pope Montini, after all, was driven by the need to soften the signature self-abnegations of the Church’s millennial tradition as empty exercises of a benighted past. Thus, the obligatory Friday abstinence, the three-hour fast before the reception of Holy Communion, and many other worthy disciplines that had been emblematic of a robust Catholic existence were cast aside.

Whether Pope Paul VI intended it or not, the “approved” theological cognoscenti of the time were allowed to spin all kinds of romanticized tales to buttress this fatal mistake. One of them touted a Promethean trope, “man come of age.” Recognize that these ranks of “enlightened” thinkers were willing avatars of the decadent ’60s, drinking deeply at the poisoned springs of that antinomian age. Ringing in their callow ears was that ubiquitous refrain, the “age of Aquarius,” so beloved by that deluded generation. For those blessed not to live through those chimerical times, it was that zodiac figure, Aquarius, who embodied a trancelike abandonment to a fanciful life of wanton self-absorption and unchecked sybaritic pursuit.

All too willing, theologians readily surrendered to this siren call, more sophomoric than theological. They traveled hither and yon preaching the message of a liberated self, pursuing the spirit of satiety. All past codes, traditions, and ordered disciplines of the Church’s tradition were mocked, then proscribed as shackling the movements of the “spirit.” Convents emptied, seminaries were drained (or transformed), and priests abandoned their sacred vocation pleading obedience to a higher call of fidelity to self.

Most bishops of that time surrendered; others, who recognized The Lie, surrendered, mistakenly concluding that resistance was futile, rather like a flea struggling to halt a hurricane. And the sacred walls of Mother Church suffered fatal cracks.

Then there was the conceit “man come of age.” This emerged from the decomposing carcass of modern philosophy. The Modern Man of the ’60s had long outgrown the strictures and moral code that were the narcotic of past ages. A New Illumination had arrived, and the Catholic bien pensant treated it like catnip.

Montini had opened the door, and it was now the obligation of these New Catholic Thinkers to remove the hinges. They screeched that the Church before 1965 (hmmm, what infallible marker could that be?), treated its members like children, with imperatives like obedience to moral law, ancient penances, and even time-honored forms of piety.

Abandoning them all was the law of the day. Beneath that mushroom cloud was Old Lent. With the firm hand of their newly won position, they displayed an unrelenting exercise of embarrasing masochism.

Pondering the wounds of the Savior? Nothing more than an unhealthy fixation.

Read the Whole Article

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The tariff controversy is being colored in the most scary ways possible, because the Democrats, media, and ruling establishment want rid of Trump. It is also important to understand that tariffs are not the only way to limit imports.  There are other means, such as quotas.  Quotas on imports into the US of Japanese cars were part of the US auto producers bailout negotiated in the final year of the Carter administration.

I will attempt to put the issue in a correct perspective.  It is not Trump’s intention, at least at the present time, to institutionalize a tariff regime.  Trump is using tariffs as a threat to secure agreements that he thinks are in America’s interests.  So far 50 countries have, according to reports, agreed to remove their tariffs on US goods.  The countries responding aggressively seem to be China and our European allies.  I explained yesterday how Trump could better have gone about his task.  Nevertheless, as the Commerce Secretary said, Trump’s tariffs are not expected to extend beyond a few weeks or a few months of negotiation. 

During this time there could be supply disruptions.  Apparently, Trump is aware and has released an 11-page appendix that exempts all sorts of imported items that US producers require to continue their operations.  Whatever disruption does occur, should be small compared to the Covid lockdown supply disruption, the basic cause of the current inflation. The Covid disruption was pointless and counterproductive.  The tariff disruption, if there is one, is the cost of establishing a fair and uniform trading system.

So, Trump is not being arbitrary or on a rampage to destroy international trade. Tariff negotiations, especially with so many countries and products can go on for years.  Trump might think that he only has two years to get anything done before the Democrats steal the midterm elections and bring his renewal of America to a halt.

President Trump has spoken of tariffs in a wider and much more important context.  Over most of American history until the First World War, tariff revenues were the source of government revenues.  An income tax was unconstitutional and a violation of freedom.  The definition of a free person is a person who owns his own labor.  A slave does not own his own labor, and a serf only owns part of his labor.  A person required to pay an income tax does not own that part of his labor that he must provide to government in order to avoid imprisonment.  The difference between a medieval serf and an American taxpayer is the serf paid the tax in kind as hours worked, and the American pays the tax in money as a percentage of his income.

Classical economists, real economists  unlike the faux ones of today, understood that factors of production–labor and capital–should not be taxed, because the supply of both to the economy is reduced by taxation.  Supply-side economics is based on this principle. Thus, its emphasis on lowering the marginal rates of taxation. Reducing the supply of factors of production, reduces the economic growth rate and the national income.  The century that the US economy has labored under income tax has costs us substantially in lost income. The classical economists said that taxation should fall on consumption not on factors of production.  

Traditionally, imported items are finished goods–German cars, French wines and perfumes. High priced goods are for the wealthy, so tariffs fall on the rich. The working class does not indulge in Porsche cars and Clicquot champagne. However, for about 30 years much of our imports have consisted of the offshored production of US firms.  When Apple, for example, brings its products made in China to the US to be marketed, they come in as imports and worsen the US trade deficit.  Instead of beating up on China, Trump should call the US corporations that offshore their production for US markets to a White House conference and point out to them the consequences of their policy:  the shrinkage of the American middle class, the loss of tax base, decaying infrastructure, and loss population of America’s former manufacturing cities, the pressure on city and state pension systems, the pressure of lower ratings on municipal bonds.  Trump should ask the executives if they went too far in maximizing profits that benefitted a relatively few at the expense of the many, and what they think they should do about it.  Capitalism ceases to serve the general interest when it separates Americans from the incomes associated with the production of the goods and services that they consume.

Trump has spoken of returning to tariffs as the source of government revenues and abandoning the income tax. This is consistent with correct economics and with freedom.  Such a change would be possibly the most important reform in American history.

It would be a difficult reform to achieve, because ideological, not economic, considerations intervene.  Taxing the rich became the agenda of mass democracy.  Taxing the rich was not seen as punishing a person for being successful.  A successful person was portrayed as having become rich by exploiting labor.  As fortunes were “stolen” by exploiting labor or resulted from government preference or legal privilege, income taxation was perceived as an instrument of justice. It is certainly perceived that way today by the liberal/left and the Democrat Party.

As an income tax is emotionally satisfying to the liberal/left, we are stuck with slower economic growth an less national income.

It is disturbing that the liberal/left agenda has made American politics so highly partisan.  What we see today is literal hatred of Trump, Republicans, conservatives, and white heterosexuals by the liberal/left.  Hatred makes democracy dysfunctional.  Politics cannot function as each side is intent on destroying any achievement by the other side.  As democracy ceases to function, dictatorship becomes the means of governance.  The liberal/left’s agenda to remake America by destroying its roots and recasting it into a different kind of society means the death of democracy and the rise of dictatorship.  This is our real problem.

The post The Tariff Issue appeared first on LewRockwell.

In recent decades, the US government has been doing its best to find a way to limit the ability of its people to bear arms. And, in turn, the people respond vehemently that their Constitution guarantees them the right to bear arms.

Regardless of which side of the argument any particular American is on, I’ve almost never met one who knows what caused this right to be written in the Constitution.

Countless Americans believe that they have the right to bear arms, so that they can protect themselves and their homes from burglars or other miscreants. Others, particularly those who live in rural areas, believe in the right to go hunting if they wish.

Whilst both of these concerns are reasonable, they’re not by any means the reason why the founding fathers were so adamant that the right to bear arms is critical.

The Bill of Rights, including the Second Amendment, was passed by the US Congress in 1791, some eighteen months after the ratification of the Constitution in 1790. The reason why it was considered essential by the framers leads directly back to the Gunpowder Incident in 1776.

In 1774, in Boston, a meeting of the First Continental Congress took place to discuss the introduction of the Intolerable Acts by Britain, including the seizure by the British of gunpowder that was stored in Charlestown. In addition, Lord Dartmouth, Secretary of State for the Colonies, prohibited the importation of further supplies of gunpowder.

In Boston, this generated discussion, but no action. But in Williamsburg, then the capitol of Virginia, the reaction was quite different. There, the colonists, in early 1776, began to form armed militias. Governor Dunmore (the ruling British representative in the colony) decided to repeat the Boston seizure in Virginia. Just down the street from the Governor’s mansion, in the House of Burgesses, Patrick Henry had just delivered an impassioned speech in which he proclaimed, “Give me liberty or give me death.”

Around the corner from the Governor’s mansion was the Magazine (pictured above), where gunpowder and armaments were stored by the Crown for the protection of the colony from Indian attacks or other disturbances.

Governor Dunmore ordered that the gunpowder be removed from the Magazine to limit the colonists’ ability to resist official diktat. As it was being removed to a British ship anchored in the James River, a few colonists discovered the fact and alerted others.

The city council demanded its return, stating that it was the property of the colony and not the Crown. Patrick Henry led the Hanover County Militia – about 150 men – to Williamsburg to reclaim the gunpowder.

A wealthy (and loyalist) plantation owner paid £330 for the powder, to calm Henry, who was then charged with extortion by Lord Dunmore. Dunmore’s popularity quickly waned. He left Williamsburg and attempted to continue his rule from a British ship, offshore.

Virginia’s government was taken over by a Committee of Safety and Henry became the now-independent state’s first governor in July, three months after the seizure.

The Gunpowder incident not only led directly to the creation of the Second Amendment. It led directly to the independence and liberty of the American people.

Think that over for a moment, with regard to the present times.

Now, as I’m British, it would be fair (though possibly incorrect) to suggest that I cannot be trusted to comment on the independence of the American colonies from Britain.

So, let’s ask the American founding fathers for their views. Although very few Americans can actually name them, there were seven, and they all had something to say about what they learned from the Gunpowder Incident.

George Washington – “A free people ought not only to be armed, but disciplined…” — First Annual Address, to Congress, 8th January, 1790

John Adams – “To suppose arms in the hands of citizens, to be used at individual discretion, except in private self-defense, or by partial orders of towns, counties or districts of a state, is to demolish every constitution, and lay the laws prostrate, so that liberty can be enjoyed by no man; it is a dissolution of the government.” – Stated during the drafting of the Second Amendment, 1780.

Thomas Jefferson – “No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms.” – Virginia Constitution, Draft 1, 1776

“The Constitution of most of our states (and of the United States) assert that all power is inherent in the people; that they may exercise it by themselves; that it is their right and duty to be at all times armed.” – Letter from Jefferson to John Cartwright, 5th June, 1824.

James Madison – “The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. A well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained to arms, is the best and most natural defense of a free country.” – Annals of Congress 434, 8th June, 1789.

Benjamin Franklin – “They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” – Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759

Alexander Hamilton – “[I]f circumstances should at any time oblige the government to form an army of any magnitude that army can never be formidable to the liberties of the people while there is a large body of citizens, little, if at all, inferior to them in discipline and the use of arms, who stand ready to defend their own rights and those of their fellow-citizens.” – Federalist #28, 10th January, 1788.

John Jay – “Government that wants away citizens right to bear arms is unworthy of trust.” – Date unknown

And a final one from Thomas Jefferson, from a letter to James Madison in 1787:

“What country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance. Let them take arms.”

But perhaps the most succinct quote from that time is from George Mason, stating in the Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution, 14th June, 1788,

“To disarm the people… [i]s the most effectual way to enslave them.”

These are indeed words to be remembered. Just as all governments will do their utmost to prevent their citizens from being armed, so too should those citizens do their utmost to be armed.

Reprinted with permission from International Man.

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The Trump administration is demanding that Iran give up its strategic missile program as part of any nuclear deal. But Iran’s ballistic missiles do not violate international law nor is there any global treaty under which they are banned. Article 51 of the UN Charter clearly states that countries have the sovereign right to develop conventional weapons for self-defense which means that Iran’s missile program is perfectly legal. Iran has every right to build as many missiles as it wants, and it is not required to get Washington’s approval to do so. More importantly, Iran needs these missiles to defend itself against any potential attack by the United States and Israel. This is not simply a matter of Iran’s sovereign right to self-defense, but an issue of regional security that has been greatly undermined by persistent US-Israel hostilities across the Middle East. A strong, well-armed Iran serves as a deterrent to US-Israel intervention which increases the prospects for peace in the region.

Trump has also ordered Iran to end its relations with regional allies Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis. If we link this demand with Trump’s order that Iran abandon its ballistic missile program, we can better understand his overall strategic goal which is to weaken and isolate Iran to the point where it is unable to defend itself against American aggression. That is the clear objective of this latest political kabuki; to goad Iran into laying the groundwork for its own destruction.

When we mull-over these new demands, we cannot help but wonder, “Does any of this have anything to do with Iran’s nuclear enrichment program or is it all just a ruse aimed at concealing Trump’s real motive, the disarming of Iran? Indeed, if we consider the facts as I have presented them here, it does not appear that Trump seeks negotiations at all, but is simply putting a gun to Iran’s head and saying, “Drop the weapon and no one gets hurt.” Isn’t that a more accurate description of what’s going on? Check out this excerpt from an article at Iran International:

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei on Saturday ruled out the possibility of negotiation with the United States, in his first public speech after President Donald Trump said he sent a letter to him.

“The insistence of some bullying governments on negotiations is not aimed at resolving issues but rather at asserting dominance and imposing their demands,” Khamenei said in a meeting with Iranian officials in Tehran. “The Islamic Republic of Iran will certainly not accept their demands,” he added….

Responding to Khamenei’s rejection of Trump’s call to negotiate a nuclear agreement, the White House on Saturday reiterated the US president’s assertion that Tehran can be dealt with either militarily or by making a deal.

“We hope the Iran regime puts its people and best interests ahead of terror,” White House National Security Council spokesman Brian Hughes said in a statement.

Lebanese pro-Iranian TV channel Al Mayadeen reported Saturday Tehran had refused to enter nuclear negotiations with the United States under the conditions set by the current US administration.

No talks on missile capabilities, regional influence

Khamenei said the West’s issue is not just Tehran’s nuclear program. “Rather, for them, negotiations are a means to raise new demands, including restrictions on defense capabilities and international influence.”…

While Tehran maintains that its ballistic missile program is purely defensive, the West considers it a destabilizing factor in a volatile, conflict-ridden Middle East. Khamenei rejects negotiation with US in first speech after Trump’s letter, Iran International.

As you can see, Iranian media confirms what we said earlier, that Trump’s demands are not aimed at denuclearization, but disarmament and isolation. We will provide more evidence for this later on.

The western media has done an excellent job of obfuscating the facts on this matter and have patched together a makeshift narrative that blames Iran for a crisis which is entirely Trump’s fault. Fortunately, (as the article states) Iran is refusing to be bullied by Trump, which is not just admirable, but smart, too. Some readers might recall what happened to Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi who was toppled by US-backed forces more than a decade ago. Gaddafi was tricked into giving up his WMD programs—including his nuclear, chemical, and ballistic missile capabilities—after which he was overthrown and savagely killed by NATO-led forces in 2011. His willingness to disarm led to his untimely death and the subsequent annihilation of his country. Iran must not follow that same course of action. It must enlarge its arsenal and prepare for war.

Readers may also remember that Trump pulled a similar maneuver with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un. In February 2019, Trump’s negotiating team—led by National Security Advisor John Bolton—met in Hanoi to conduct denuclearization talks. During the negotiations (in which Kim showed genuine interest to commit to “complete, verifiable, and irreversible denuclearization”), Bolton added a poison pill provision at the 11th-hour that made an agreement impossible. He demanded that Kim give up not only his nuclear weapons program but also his ballistic missile capabilities. This demand was a key sticking point that reflected the Trump administration’s broader goal of the complete disarmament (and eventual destruction) of the DPRK. In short, Trump moved the goalposts at the last possible minute and sabotaged the deal, thus, eliminating the possibility of a North-South reconciliation and a denuclearized Korean Peninsula. This is the untold history of the Trump-Kim negotiations that never appeared in the media. The “peace candidate” deliberately scuppered his own initiative.

A similar storyline is unfolding as we speak, only the stakes are much higher. We are literally on the brink of a war that could kill millions of civilians and plunge large parts of the world into chaos.

It’s worth noting, that there is no legal basis for Trump’s demands. No country, however powerful, has the right to dictate whether another country can have ballistic missiles, or who they can have as allies, or whether they can develop nuclear energy or not. Under Article IV of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT):

All parties to the treaty have “the inalienable right” to develop research, production, and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes without discrimination. This includes the right to participate in the fullest possible exchange of equipment, materials, and scientific and technological information for peaceful purposes.

Iran not only signed the NPT, it has also repeatedly shown its willingness to allay the suspicions of its critics by agreeing to additional protocols and “confidence-building” measures that no other member has ever been required to make. In other words, they have allowed themselves to be treated like second-class citizens who must follow specially designed restrictions just to placate their perennial antagonists in Washington and Tel Aviv. Is that fair?

The international community, including the UN and IAEA, has consistently affirmed that Iran, like any NPT signatory, has a legitimate right to peaceful nuclear energy. This was a key premise of the JCPOA, which allowed Iran to maintain a limited enrichment program (up to 3.67%) under strict monitoring in exchange for sanctions relief.

In other words, Iran agreed to the onerous inspection regime imposed by the United States and acted in good faith expecting that Washington would ‘keep its word’ and hold up its end of the bargain. But the US broke its word when Trump impulsively shrugged off his obligations and walked away.

But, why? Why did Trump abandon the JCPOA when the treaty employed a hyper-vigilant inspections regime that ensured that Iran was not diverting enriched uranium to a secret nuclear weapons program?

Why?

Because of Israel, that’s why. Because it was never about “secret nuclear weapons programs”. That was always the fake pretext for hectoring, harassing and demonizing Iran. The real objective is on full display in Trump’s list of demands. What he wants is the complete dismantling of Iran’s defensive weapons systems accompanied by Iran’s forced isolation and military encirclement. The United States and Israel want a vulnerable Iran that will collapse into anarchy following the massive (nuclear) air-strikes and decapitation operations that are coming in the near future. The goal is to make sure that Israel emerges as the dominant power in the region.

By the way, Elon Musk’s AI progeny, Grok, agrees with our basic analysis on this matter. Check it out:

As of April 3, 2025, during his second term as U.S. President, Donald Trump is demanding a comprehensive set of concessions from Iran to reach a new nuclear deal or any broader agreement. His approach, dubbed “maximum pressure 2.0,” builds on his first-term policies but is more aggressive, aiming not only to curb Iran’s nuclear program but also to dismantle its regional influence and military capabilities…

Here’s a detailed breakdown of what Trump is demanding, based on public statements, policy documents, and reports:

1. Complete Halt and Rollback of Nuclear Program
No Enrichment.… Dismantle Infrastructure… the destruction or international control of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, including centrifuges and heavy water reactors. … “verifiable dismantlement” of all nuclear-related facilities, per a White House fact sheet.… Permanent Inspections: “24/7 access” to all sites, including military ones. (Grok)

(Note—None of the above conditions are required under the terms of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT). Trump is simply concocting whatever restrictions come-to-mind so he can claim “noncompliance” and launch air-strikes.) Here’s more from Grok:

2. Abandonment of Ballistic Missile Program—Full Dismantlement: Trump demands Iran give up its entire ballistic missile program, including short-, medium-, and long-range missiles like the Shahab, Emad, and Khorramshahr series….

3. (Iran must) Sever Ties with Regional Proxies and Allies….
Hezbollah, Houthis, Hamas: Trump insists Iran cut all financial, military, and political support for groups like Hezbollah (Lebanon), the Houthis (Yemen), and Hamas (Gaza), which he labels “terrorist proxies.” (Grok)

As you can see, none of this has anything to do with nuclear enrichment, secret weapons programs or nonproliferation. What we’re seeing is the predictable behavior of a politician who was shoehorned into the Oval Office on the back of more than $100 million in campaign contributions from wealthy Zionist donors. IMHO, those donations were made with a clear understanding that Trump would launch a war on Israel’s most formidable enemy, Iran.

The United States is being dragged into another Middle East bloodbath as payback to the Israeli donor class.

Reprinted with permission from The Unz Review.

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I see that I am writing to you about more and less ruined, formerly free societies, these days.

I am seeing a new map of the world, that bears little relation to the tendentious, propagandistic Freedom. House’s famous ranking of free and closed societies. The map of the globe as written in liberty, is wholly shifting.

I am seeing this via travel. Traveling abroad is new again for me. I had not left the US for all the five years since “lockdown”, for security reasons; When I first began to be a “lockdown dissident” and then a “mandates” and “mrna injection” dissident, my husband, security expert Brian O’Shea, felt that I would be safer staying within the US. (He used to work with a security firm that, among other jobs, negotiated the release of hostages; believe it or not, if you are an American citizen/dissident, you still have more protections from security forces, or just from bad actors, doing dangerous things to you physically, if you are within the US, than if you are traveling beyond its borders.)

So I had a pent-up hunger to see the rest of the world, and to report firsthand on the state of liberty globally, especially in countries I had so loved, such as Canada, Britain, India, and the Netherlands. (I had wanted to accept an invitation to go back to Australia, which is among the beloved nations on my short list, but I was too scared I would be kept in a quarantine camp. This had really happened, for two weeks, to the dissident member of Parliament who was inviting me, so I regretfully declined to visit. Australia had arrested three internees who had tried to escape from a quarantine facility, so I feared any engagement with that system).

So far I have seen ruined nations, nations whose liberty and rule of law we thought would last for centuries if not millennia, and I’ve also seen newly booming nations, in terms of their hope, confidence and above all, their defense of their freedoms. There is a third category — that of nations in states of active struggle between these poles.

I count the Netherlands, from which I reported back to you already, as being in that state of active conflict: it is being repressed, and is fighting back. I am excited to visit Germany, at MEP Christine Anderson’s invitation, in September, as Germany is also in that category now — that is, sustaining a live resistance to active suppression of rights;— and I must see France too, for this same reason.

We have entered a new “world order”, much as people mystify or misuse this term, and I would argue that this new metric defines it.

It seems as if “lockdown”, and the global bid by the evildoers of 2020-2025 to enslave us all (they really need an historic name, a bit more descriptive than The Cabal), have had the effect either of sharpening citizens’ national will and honing people’s intentions to lead their nations, protect their rights, and defend their cultures, or else, in other nations, a tipping point has been reached: repressions went so far that the citizens were broken, in effect, and most lost the will or understanding even to fight.

In this regard — the world having been sorted anew into the categories of vigilantly, aggressively free nations, recently broken nations, and nations in states of vivid, dangerous, nail-biting struggle for liberty — we are definitely not in the pre-2020 world order.

The countries at the bottom of the freedom lists, if they were being properly revised, have shifted. We see Britain and Canada hurtling down the ranks, gathering momentum as they fall. We see that India moves rapidly upwards, to showcase its press freedoms and its robust democracy to the rest of the world; Hungary shows its mettle in defending its own culture and language. With the election of President Trump, America claws its way back up to the top, defending its borders and sovereignty and asserting at least in principle, a rejection of state censorship.

Many nations these days do better in terms of freedom than does the 16th century birthplace of free speech, England. Many indeed do better than the birthplace of 18th century liberty, France; Marine le Pen, the leader of the French nationalist/populist National Party, and frontrunner for the 2027 Presidential election, was found guilty — critics such as President Trump say, via courts “using Lawfare to silence free speech” — of embezzlement of funds, and she is being prevented from running for office, conveniently enough, for five years.

Russia scolds the West these days, with good evidence. The spokesperson for the Kremlin, Dmitry Peskov, representing a nation held up by the West for decades as an autocratic state, spoke out against the collapse of Democratic norms in France, and widened the Kremlin’s critique to Europe as a whole: “More and more European capitals are going down the path of violating democratic norms,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters when asked to comment on the ruling.

“We do not interfere in France’s internal affairs and never have,” Peskov added. “But our observation of European capitals shows that they do not shy away from stepping outside the bounds of democracy in the political process.”

The reversals of fortune and fate continue. The nations that we always thought would uphold liberty, the old alliances, the post-1919, post-Paris Peace Conference world order, the world order that created allies out of Western nations in a proto-League of Nations format that sought to impose civilized transparency and open diplomacy on nation-states that had previously maintaining a precarious “balance of power” through threats of suppression and force — a world order that led in turn to the adoption by Europe of the 1950 European Convention on Human Rights — or the “Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms” — have mostly caved.

That treaty guaranteed everything we would think of as “the West” for the next seventy years, ranging from free and fair elections to freedom from discrimination under law, to freedom of speech. (Incidentally, it is quite difficult to locate and share a digital text of the 1950 Convention on Human Rights. Even on the ECHR website, you have to click around quite a bit finally to find a weirdly xeroxed PFD version, from which quotes can’t be shared. Odd, or not these days, for a text that should be framed in every classroom in Europe. If its language of “Fundamental Freedoms” were indeed in every classroom, newsroom and university lecture hall in Europe, instead of buried in a weird PDF in a dry website, we could not even see the ridiculous debates, let alone the metastasizing of claims against speech and the encroachments on absolute rights, that Europe is sustaining, as everyone on that continent and in Britain would know that they are illegal.) But now, leaders of great Western nations are simply ignoring it.

Rolling out the harassment of UK critics of tyranny in 2025, and the targeting of the speech of British populations to petrify them, of course was the 2020-2025 plan.

Britain is now a showcase of collapsing democracy. New initiatives are killing British liberties on all sides, starting with speech; it’s clear that the path for the population to accept this, was paved by the 2020-2022 “lockdowns” that were so Draconian that at one point Britons were allowed outside for one hour a day. More than six people at another time, during UK’s “lockdowns”, were forbidden to meet together, in one of the more nonsensical iteration of magical thinking, designed not to make any epidemiological sense but to habituate the British public to arbitrary, restrictive State decisions.

I believe that this extended psychological torture so traumatized the British population in general that they had little will or presence of mind to fight the new restrictions rolled out now, without the excuse of a “pandemic”.

Britain is collapsing so fast now that the few voices remaining, seeking to defend journalism, free speech and other liberties, are stunned. (I’ll share some of the stories of the bravest and most noble of these remaining fighters for a free Britain, tomorrow.)

Vice President Vance warned Prime Minister Kier Starmer, leader of our traditional ally Great Britain, from the Oval Office, in front of the world, that without Britain restoring free speech, there will be no free trade: “Vance] said: “We also know that there have been infringements on free speech that actually affect not just the British — of course what the British do in their own country is up to them — but also affect American technology companies and, by extension, American citizens.”‘ (This prompted the lamest “fact-check” I’ve seen for a while — the headline, “Fact Check: Yes, the UK Does Have Free Speech”, on the site Euronews.com. The article reiterated correctly that free speech is enshrined in Britain’s laws, but avoids addressing the fact that the nation is violating its own free speech laws.)

The Times — where I was a columnist, but a paper which, as far as I know, to this day still “cancels” me — reports that “Police Make 30 Arrests a Day for Offensive Speech” and fails, in what would be a serious editorial lapse in a sane journalistic context, to put the world “offensive” in quotation marks. Offensive to whom? Reporters and publishers in the UK are overwhelmingly not resisting wholesale chilling of speech, wholesale censorship; and these arrests for their part seek to create new pariahs, and to inject new forms of abject fear into the act of the simple use of the English language, in public.

Allison Pearson of The Telegraph just wrote a piece, seen by two million people since she published it yesterday, about a British woman named Lucy Connolly, who was denied bail, and is, as Pearson posted, “jailed for two years for a tweet.”

Pearson one of the last remaining UK opinion writers and reporters to speak up for historic British freedoms of speech and thought. She explained to me recently that in 2022 a new category of “offense” was essentially proposed by the British police, with the Orwellian name “Non-Crime Hate Incidents.” In 2023 Parliament approved the “code of practice.”

The Gov.uk website explains further:

“7. Non-crime hate incidents (NCHIs) are recorded by the police to collect information on ‘hate incidents’ that could escalate into more serious harm or indicate heightened community tensions, but which do not constitute a criminal offence […]”. In other words, this is Orwell’s “pre-Crime”: a crime need not be committed for police to take action. Also the offense can be totally subjective — in the eyes of the observer:

“11. A non-crime hate incident (NCHI) means an incident or alleged incident which involves or is alleged to involve an act by a person (‘the subject’) which is perceived by a person other than the subject to be motivated – wholly or partly – by hostility or prejudice towards persons with a particular characteristic.” Also, you don’t have to cause measurable damages or harm to the person who complains, in order to have committed this non-crime offense: you need onluy to be the cause of an “incident” that “disturbs” someone’s “quality of life” — which could mean, something that hurts his or her feelings — or even results in something as mild as “caus[ing] them concern”:

“14. An “incident” is defined in the National Standard for Incident Recording (NSIR) as “a single distinct event or occurrence which disturbs an individual, group or community’s quality of life or causes them concern”. The NSIR covers all crime and non-crime incidents.”

So UK police have essentially invented their own “code of practice” — not a law — that allows them to round up and charge people whose views on social media “cause[s]…concern”.

But this “code of practice” contradicts and essentially guts the free speech provisions in the European Convention on Human Rights, as well as a fundamental British law: Article 10 of the Human Rights Act of 1998: “Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers.”

Commonwealth nation Canada is further down along this timeline, and the new low of Canada (matched only by Australia) is clearly where “our evil overlords”, as some of my wittier friends like to call “Mr Global”, wish to drive Britain.

I flew, as I described to you in my last essay, to Toronto, in a planeload of illegal immigrants fleeing President Trump’s enforcement of basic immigration laws in the US. The mostly illegal immigrants, judging from my time waiting my own turn to enter the country, walked unhesitatingly through Customs and Border Patrol, barely explaining to the officials seeking to interview them, who was waiting for them or what possible means, other than Canadian benefits, they had of support. The officials looked frustrated and irate. There was nothing they could really do, to accomplish their jobs.

Riding in the car that picked me up from the airport, gave me a vertiginous experience of a post-freedom, formerly free Western nation. The dashboard let out a debilitating shriek, as we drive away from the airport. The driver explained that the shriek is emitted by “the system” when he drives out of the “sector” of the airport. I thought, of course, of fifteen-minute cities.

He explained further, as we slowed to a stop before a red light, that “the system” fines him automatically if he does not stop – if he dares to drive through on a yellow light. He also explained that it records us “for safety.” He seemed to catch himself as I was asking if all of this surveillance was intrusive. He had started to agree but then, remembering, it seemed to me, that he too was being recorded, the driver said slowly and clearly that it’s a really good system, because it “keeps insurance costs down.”

I thought of the fact that the major media in Canada is state-funded, and I could imagine the introduction of this kind of continual surveillance as being rolled out with the justification that it is designed to “keep insurance costs down.”

I could not tell if this was a private company bugging his car to keep their drivers in line, or a government/insurance obligation.

Either way, in in March of 2025, the Canadian government added ten additional “internet of things” forms of tracking or surveillance to citizens’ automobiles, including smartphone- based biometrics, in a pilot program “to deter theft”; these are a set of technologies which will also track citizens’ vehicles. The new forms of trackers include:

“Smartphone-based security using biometrics and proximity detection;

• Locking devices using artificial intelligence (AI) monitoring;
• A system to replace a vehicle’s starter relay;
• Fingerprint authentication;
• AI-powered steering wheel locks;
• Sensors with gesture recognition;
• A smart key fob protector; and
• Miniaturized devices that could disable vehicle components should theft be detected.”

You understand what this means; if these new modalities come to market, let alone are “mandated” by the Canadian government, it means the state, which in February of 2022 debanked the “freedom truckers” who protested against vaccine mandates, can simply remotely switch off your car; they can, for instance, make your fingerprints “unrecognizable” by the system, and thus make it impossible for you to open, let alone start, your own vehicle.

We drove into Toronto through outskirts that I remembered, having visited from time to time since 1993, for the publication of my first book The Beauty Myth, as having been open fields by Lake Ontario, dotted with residential apartment blocks. Toronto itself I remembered as having been human-scaled, architecturally and culturally friendly, and beautifully composed of streets of 19th century grey stone townhouses, interspersed with three or four-story residential buildings from the same era. Even downtown, I recalled, there had been Victorian townhouses, in spite of the building in between them of massive modern skyscrapers. I recalled side streets in which yogurt shops, restaurants featuring a range of ethnic cuisines, and mom and pop businesses such as hardware stores and shoe stores, tempted passers-by. Leafy, shade-dappled sidewalks had surrounded the University of Toronto, where I had spoken in the 1990s. The old-fashioned hotel where my publisher had housed me had had a faded elegance. I had been amazed that a 26-year-old first-time author was being accommodated in a place with heavy white linen tablecloths in the dining room, with brocaded red bolsters on the beds, with a pool in the basement, and with room service. I had barely experienced anything like it. I still remember my publicist, a lovely, kind young woman with short blond hair in a pixie cut, and the same huge ideals that I had myself at that time, and the impressive way she switched from English to French to English, as she shepherded me from radio station to TV show to radio station; the Francophone/Anglophone wars were in full swing.

Mostly I remember with deep fondness, the Canadians in my audiences: sensible, decent, reasonable people, curious and civil, thoughtfully engaged in ideas. They were liberal, in the best, old-fashioned sense of that word: they believed in open dialogue, and in the betterment of society. They were accommodating immigrants in large numbers in what was still a mostly-born-in-Canada society, and it was with a sense of generosity and a belief that anyone who came to those shores, could become part of that well-defined, proud and entrenched Canadian culture, with its distinctive, admirable values. They had no idea that immigration would devour that lovely culture.

I used to joke from the stage in those days that Canada was a sane version of America. I felt that Canada had many of our same values of democracy and liberty and free speech, but without the frenzy and distraction and division and extremism, that could mar civil relations in the US.

The open, grassy outskirts of the city that I recalled, were gone. In their place now loomed massive modern residential developments, towering dozens of stories high. One after the other after the other, they filled the space from the airport to the edge of downtown, in immense volumes, suggesting little effort to plan an aesthetic or even a human-scaled cityscape.

The lights were off in many of the apartments. My driver explained that foreign investors built those structures in order to launder money, essentially, but that many of the apartments were empty as it was more profitable for the investors to keep them so — some tax loophole – than to fill them with tenants. This was just one man’s explanation, but I did get an eerie sense of a lack of life in those buildings.

We arrived at downtown Toronto. I was unable to recognize most of where I was. Immense overdevelopment had afflicted even those charming streets downtown. Almost completely vanished were the stone townhouses with their mansard roofs; nondescript steep monstrosities now loomed. Everything now, I sighed internally, was Houston.

Read the Whole Article

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In this episode of America’s Untold Stories, Mark Groubert and Eric Hunley delve into the escalating trade tensions ignited by President Trump’s recent tariff announcements. The administration’s move to impose an additional 50% tariff on Chinese imports has prompted a stern response from Beijing, with officials declaring they will “fight to the end” to protect their national interests.

The ripple effects of this trade war are being felt across various sectors. Reports indicate that China is contemplating a ban on U.S. films, potentially leading to a Hollywood blackout as a form of retaliation against the tariffs.

Amidst these developments, tech mogul Elon Musk has publicly criticized White House trade adviser Peter Navarro, labeling him a “moron” and challenging the administration’s tariff strategies.

On the international front, Zimbabwe appears to be the first nation to acquiesce to the U.S.’s tariff demands, with its leadership expressing a desire to foster positive relations by suspending certain taxes on American goods.

Domestically, a recent survey has unveiled alarming sentiments, revealing that 55% of left-leaning individuals believe that the assassination of President Trump would be justified.

Additionally, President Trump made headlines during the Los Angeles Dodgers’ visit to the White House, where he took a jab at the Red Sox and referred to Dodgers’ star Shohei Ohtani as a “movie star.”

Join us as we unpack these stories and explore their broader implications on both domestic and international fronts.

The post America’s Untold Stories – Trump Tariffs Ignite Global Trade War: China Vows to ‘Fight to the End’ appeared first on LewRockwell.

Vicki Marzullo writes:

UK guy describes why the U.K. is collapsing since the 2000s  He has now left the U.K.

The post The inevitable collapse of the UK appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, Johnny Kramer. 

Gateway Pundit

The post Majority of Left-of-Center Americans Now Justify a Trump Assassination appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, John Smith.

Antiwar.com

The post Trump and Netanyahu Reaffirm Their Vision for the Ethnic Cleansing of Gaza appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, John Smith.

Middle East Eye

The post Daughter of Ottoman princess: How I rejected CIA attempt to make me a spy appeared first on LewRockwell.

Click Here:

Ken Klippenstein

The post Unprecedented number of B-2 bombers amassed for Iran Ms mass murder. appeared first on LewRockwell.