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Starting with the White House X account–no kidding!  Click on the first pic below for the original post, scroll down that post for the rest.

The post Valentine’s Day Cards (Progressively Incorrect Version) appeared first on LewRockwell.

President Trump likes to keep everyone on their toes. He has repeatedly proven to say things that (in the end) were perhaps never meant to be taken seriously in the first place. Sometimes the president’s statements contain terrible ideas, like the U.S. owning Gaza. But at other times, his statements are pretty incredible, like the U.S. cutting military spending by 50% if Russia and China agree to do the same. Today on the Liberty Report, we cover the latter statement, which would be a huge positive for our nation, were it ever to come to pass.

The post Trump: U.S., China & Russia Should Decrease Military Spending By 50%! appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, Johnny Kramer . 

The post Biden Voters Held 70% of the Country’s Wealth appeared first on LewRockwell.

Click here:

Ben Bartee

The post State Bills Grant Pfizer-Style Immunity to Pesticide Manufacturers That Give People Cancer appeared first on LewRockwell.

TMTF wrote:

Hello Lew,

I’ll believe it when I see it, but Trump has actually said he wants to cut military spending, comparing the waste to that of the Department of Education.

Talk is cheap but when was the last time we even got talk about cutting the military, except from the great Ron Paul?

If it actually happens – and I mean cuts, not just increasing less than planned – I’ll have to give Trump enormous credit for that. Let’s cross our fingers.

The post Cutting military spending appeared first on LewRockwell.

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

____________________________________________________________________________________

(Versione audio della traduzione disponibile qui: https://open.substack.com/pub/fsimoncelli/p/per-non-cadere-divisi)

Il tessuto della società sembra più sfilacciato che mai. Ci ritroviamo sempre più separati, le nostre prospettive polarizzate e le nostre interazioni segnate da un'ostilità quasi tribale. Dalle ideologie politiche alle questioni sociali, dalle preferenze culturali alle politiche economiche, profonde fratture sembrano allontanarci dai nostri vicini, colleghi e persino familiari. Quelli che un tempo erano disaccordi si sono allargati in abissi apparentemente invalicabili, con ciascuna parte che vede l'altra non solo come fuorviata ma addirittura come una minaccia esistenziale.

Contesto storico e approfondimenti antropologici

L'amplificazione delle divisioni sociali non è un fenomeno nuovo, ma piuttosto una strategia secolare impiegata da chi è al potere. Nel corso della storia leader e gruppi influenti hanno riconosciuto la potenza di una popolazione fratturata. Il principio romano “divide et impera” (dividi e governa) riecheggia attraverso i secoli, trovando nuova espressione nel nostro mondo moderno e iperconnesso. Come vedremo, questa strategia secolare di divisione si manifesta oggi in varie forme.

Per comprendere la nostra attuale situazione difficile, dobbiamo approfondire le radici antropologiche della frammentazione sociale, in particolare il lavoro pionieristico di Margaret Mead e Gregory Bateson. La loro ricerca sulle società indigene in Papua Nuova Guinea, in particolare il loro concetto di schismogenesi, ovvero la creazione di fratture all'interno delle società, offre una lente affascinante e inquietante attraverso cui osservare il nostro panorama sociale moderno. Sebbene abbiano condotto una ricerca neutrale sulle dinamiche sociali, un'analisi più approfondita suggerisce che i loro studi potrebbero aver avuto uno scopo più insidioso, testando come le società potrebbero essere manipolate sfruttando le linee di faglia sociali. Questo lavoro fornisce un quadro cruciale per esaminare e combattere le forze che oggi lacerano la nostra coesione sociale.

L'opera fondamentale di Bateson, Steps to an Ecology of Mind, esplora il modo in cui individui e società sono plasmati da modelli di comunicazione, cicli di feedback e fratture interne. Nel contesto della loro ricerca, Mead e Bateson non si sono limitati a osservare il comportamento umano, ma lo hanno plasmato attivamente, applicando principi che avrebbero poi articolato nel loro lavoro accademico. Ciò solleva la preoccupante possibilità che la loro ricerca possa essere stata meno incentrata sulla comprensione delle culture indigene e più sul testare come la società potesse essere manipolata sfruttando le sue linee di faglia interne.

Il concetto di schismogenesi, sviluppato da Bateson, descrive un processo in cui una volta iniziata la separazione, questa si intensifica, creando un ciclo di feedback di opposizione che può fare a pezzi le società. Questo meccanismo di ampliamento della discordia non è confinato agli annali dell'antropologia: credo che sia uno strumento attivamente impiegato nel mondo odierno da vari attori, dai regimi autoritari alle agenzie di intelligence.

Le implicazioni del lavoro di Mead e Bateson si estendono ben oltre il loro contesto antropologico originale. Le loro osservazioni e teorie sulla schismogenesi forniscono una potente lente attraverso cui possiamo esaminare le attuali rotture sociali. Come vedremo, i meccanismi che hanno descritto nelle società indigene sono sorprendentemente simili alle forze divisive in gioco nel nostro mondo moderno, connesso digitalmente.

Manifestazioni moderne di disunità sociale

Vediamo questa manipolazione all'opera nella nostra società attuale, mentre le fratture si approfondiscono attraverso linee politiche, razziali e culturali. Le divisioni che sperimentiamo quotidianamente, siano esse politiche (sinistra contro destra), razziali (nero contro bianco) o culturali (urbano contro rurale), servono a indebolire la nostra forza collettiva. Inibiscono l'unità e rendono quasi impossibile affrontare la corruzione sistemica più ampia che ci colpisce tutti.

Un esempio lampante di questo fenomeno può essere trovato nella natura sempre più faziosa della politica americana. Il Pew Research Center ha documentato un crescente divario ideologico tra repubblicani e democratici negli ultimi due decenni. I loro studi rivelano che la quota di americani con opinioni costantemente conservatrici o costantemente liberal è più che raddoppiata dal 10% nel 1994 al 21% nel 2014, e al 32% nel 2017.

Questo scisma politico si manifesta in vari modi:

• Disaccordi politici: su questioni che spaziano dall'assistenza sanitaria ai cambiamenti climatici, i due partiti principali hanno sempre più opinioni diametralmente opposte.

• Distanziamento sociale: gli americani hanno meno probabilità di avere amici intimi o partner romantici del partito politico opposto. Nel 2016 il 55% dei repubblicani ha affermato che sarebbe stato infelice se il proprio figlio avesse sposato un democratico, rispetto al 17% del 1960. Per i democratici il numero è salito dal 4% al 47% nello stesso periodo.

• Consumo di media generalisti: conservatori e liberal tendono a informarsi da fonti diverse, rafforzando le proprie convinzioni. Nel 2021 il 78% dei democratici afferma di avere "molta" o "una certa" fiducia nelle organizzazioni giornalistiche nazionali, rispetto a solo il 35% dei repubblicani.

Queste divisioni rispecchiano gli ambienti manipolati studiati da Mead e Bateson decenni fa, che ora si manifestano sui social media.

Il ruolo dei media generalisti nell’intensificare le fratture sociali

Il ruolo dei media nel plasmare la percezione pubblica e nell'intensificare la discordia sociale non può essere sopravvalutato. Uno studio del 2021 intitolato “Prevalenza di parole che denotano pregiudizi nel discorso dei media: un'analisi cronologica” rivela una tendenza preoccupante nell'uso di un linguaggio incendiario da parte dei principali organi di informazione. Secondo suddetto studio i riferimenti a termini come “razzista”, “transfobico”, “sessismo” e “discriminazione di genere” sono aumentati esponenzialmente in pubblicazioni come il Washington Post e il New York Times sin dal 2012.

Questa ondata di linguaggio pregiudizievole potrebbe riflettere un conseguente aumento di casi di discriminazione e pregiudizio nella società. Tuttavia una possibilità più inquietante è che i media stiano plasmando la percezione pubblica e accrescendo la consapevolezza di questi problemi, fino al punto di enfatizzarli eccessivamente. Quest'ultima possibilità si allinea con il concetto di schismogenesi: evidenziando e amplificando costantemente questioni controverse, i media potrebbero contribuire inavvertitamente (o intenzionalmente) alle stesse fratture sociali di cui riferiscono.

Camere di eco digitali e bolle informative

Nell'era digitale le tattiche di dividi et impera vengono amplificate tramite piattaforme digitali, alimentando i nostri peggiori istinti per creare abissi sempre più profondi. Gli algoritmi rafforzano le nostre convinzioni esistenti, offrendoci contenuti che si allineano con le nostre opinioni predeterminate. Ciò crea camere di risonanza che consolidano il nostro dogma e rendono sempre più difficile sfidare o mettere in discussione le narrazioni che ci sono state propinate.

I nostri feed sui social media, le fonti di notizie scelte e i contenuti curati agiscono come filtri, plasmando la nostra percezione del mondo. Il risultato è una società frammentata in cui il dialogo oltre le linee ideologiche diventa sempre più raro e difficile.

La ricerca pubblicata su Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences ha scoperto che l'esposizione a opinioni opposte sui social media può effettivamente aumentare l'alienazione politica, contrariamente alla speranza che punti di vista diversi possano moderare posizioni estreme. Questa amplificazione digitale della discordia pone una sfida significativa alla coesione sociale nell'era moderna.

7 ottobre: ​​un catalizzatore per il riallineamento ideologico

Eventi recenti, come la tragedia del 7 ottobre, illustrano questa strategia di dividi et impera. Prima dell'attacco si stava formando una coalizione naturale di improbabili alleati: persone che erano state storicamente separate da linee politiche, razziali o culturali stavano iniziando a vedere attraverso la manipolazione. Questa coalizione si stava unendo per l'autonomia collettiva dell'umanità, passando oltre barriere di lunga data.

L'8 ottobre quell'unità si era frantumata. Molte persone che in precedenza avevano trovato un terreno comune nonostante le loro differenze, sarebbero improvvisamente tornate alle loro precedenti alleanze e posizioni consolidate. Indipendentemente dal loro punto di vista sull'attacco stesso o sulle successive reazioni, sostenendo una delle due parti o condannando del tutto la violenza, il risultato principale è stata la rapida disintegrazione delle alleanze che si stavano formando.

Molti di coloro che erano stati scettici nei confronti delle narrative ufficiali ora le avevano abbracciate con tutto il cuore, indicando i titoli dei media generalisti che avevano ridicolizzato per anni come se fossero vangelo. La velocità con cui le convinzioni radicate sulla sfiducia nei media sono evaporate è stata impressionante, così come il rapido ritorno ai campi ideologici preesistenti.

Questa improvvisa frattura dell'unità, nel giro di un giorno dall'attacco, è stato un esempio da manuale di quanto rapidamente le coalizioni possano essere smantellate quando la discordia viene abilmente manipolata. Ha dimostrato la fragilità delle alleanze formate attraverso le tradizionali linee di separazione e la facilità con cui le persone possono essere spinte di nuovo nelle loro zone di comfort ideologiche in tempi di crisi. L'evento in sé, sebbene tragico, è meno al centro dell'attenzione che la risposta della società, un rapido ritorno alle divisioni precedenti che minaccia la nostra capacità di mantenere l'unità di fronte alle avversità.

Tagliare il tessuto sociale

Le divisioni sono ovunque, si insinuano in ogni aspetto della vita: sinistra contro destra, vaccinati contro non vaccinati, pro-choice contro pro-life, attivisti del cambiamento climatico contro scettici del cambiamento climatico. Questi cunei, inquadrati come battaglie apocalittiche, vengono usati per distrarci e frammentarci. Il fenomeno è diventato così pervasivo che ora le persone tifano per le guerre come se fossero eventi sportivi, incitando i Paesi come se fossero squadre rivali in uno spettacolo grottesco di patriottismo desensibilizzato.

Questa strategia di separazione va oltre la creazione di semplici fazioni o campi opposti. L'obiettivo finale è la dissoluzione della società stessa. Sottolineando continuamente le nostre differenze e creando sottogruppi sempre più piccoli, questo approccio ci spinge verso un isolamento estremo. Mentre veniamo tagliati e sminuzzati in sottoinsiemi sempre più piccoli in base a identità o credenze sempre più specifiche, rischiamo di raggiungere un punto in cui ogni persona diventa un'entità isolata a sé stante.

Questa frammentazione non solo indebolisce la nostra forza collettiva e il nostro scopo condiviso, ma rende quasi impossibile affrontare questioni più ampie che ci riguardano tutti. È una strategia insidiosa che sfrutta la natura umana, facendo appello ai nostri innati istinti tribali e amplificando le nostre insicurezze. Il risultato è un percorso verso la completa atomizzazione sociale, dove la collaborazione diventa quasi impossibile.

Come abbiamo visto, la pervasività della discordia nella nostra società si estende ben oltre i disaccordi superficiali. Sta rimodellando le fondamenta stesse del modo in cui percepiamo e interagiamo con il mondo che ci circonda, con profonde implicazioni per le nostre istituzioni democratiche.

La moderna caverna di Platone: la frammentazione della realtà

Nella nostra società sempre più frammentata, ci troviamo di fronte a un fenomeno preoccupante: la creazione di realtà multiple e isolate. Questa situazione ha una sorprendente somiglianza con il mito della caverna di Platone, ma con un tocco moderno. Nell'esposizione di Platone i prigionieri erano legati in una caverna, in grado solo di vedere ombre sul muro e credendo che questa fosse la realtà. Oggi ci troviamo in una situazione simile, ma invece di una singola caverna, ognuno di noi abita le proprie caverne di informazioni personali.

A differenza dei prigionieri di Platone, non siamo fisicamente incatenati, ma gli algoritmi che ci forniscono informazioni su misura per le nostre convinzioni esistenti creano legami invisibili che sono altrettanto forti. Questo effetto da camera di eco digitale significa che viviamo tutti nella nostra versione della caverna di Platone; ognuno vede un diverso insieme di ombre e le scambia per verità universali.

Le implicazioni per una repubblica funzionante sono profonde e preoccupanti. Come possiamo impegnarci in un dibattito democratico quando non riusciamo nemmeno a concordare sui fatti basilari della nostra realtà condivisa? Questa frammentazione della verità pone una sfida critica alle fondamenta stesse della società democratica, rendendo quasi impossibile trovare un terreno comune o lavorare verso soluzioni collettive.

La forza di una repubblica risiede nella sua capacità di riunire diverse prospettive per forgiare un percorso comune. Tuttavia questa forza diventa una debolezza quando i cittadini non condividono più un quadro di realtà di base entro cui discutere e prendere decisioni.

Per salvare la nostra repubblica è fondamentale riconoscere l'importanza di stabilire e mantenere un quadro comune di comprensione. Ciò non significa che dobbiamo essere tutti d'accordo su tutto: il sano disaccordo è, dopotutto, la linfa vitale della democrazia. Significa invece che dobbiamo trovare modi per concordare sui fatti di base, condividere fonti di informazione che tutti riteniamo credibili e impegnarci in dibattiti in buona fede fondati su una realtà condivisa. Senza questo terreno comune, rischiamo la continua erosione delle nostre istituzioni democratiche e l'ulteriore frammentazione della società.

Sapendo quanto è alta la posta in gioco, è chiaro che non possiamo restare passivi di fronte a queste forze divisive. Dobbiamo adottare misure attive per colmare le lacune tra le nostre realtà individuali e ricostruire una base condivisa per il dibattito democratico. Ma come possiamo iniziare a liberarci dalle nostre caverne individuali e lavorare verso una comprensione più unitaria del mondo?

Resistere alla discordia sociale

Riconoscere l'intrappolamento in queste caverne digitali individuali è il primo passo verso la liberazione. Per resistere alla discordia sociale che minaccia di separarci in modo permanente, dobbiamo lavorare attivamente per smantellare i muri delle nostre prigioni virtuali. Questo compito, sebbene scoraggiante, è cruciale per la preservazione della nostra realtà condivisa e del dibattito democratico.

In questo mondo fratturato nessuno verrà a salvarci: gli unici eroi rimasti siamo noi stessi. Per combattere queste forze antagoniste, dobbiamo adottare diverse misure critiche. Innanzitutto dobbiamo prestare maggiore attenzione al mondo che ci circonda, chiedendoci costantemente chi trae vantaggio dagli scismi che vediamo. L'antica domanda “Cui bono?” non è mai stata così rilevante.

Mentre ci muoviamo nel complesso panorama dei media e delle informazioni moderni, dobbiamo diventare consumatori più critici. È fondamentale chiedersi perché ci vengono dette certe cose e considerare come queste informazioni potrebbero plasmare la nostra visione degli altri e della società in generale. Questo pensiero critico è la nostra prima linea di difesa contro la manipolazione.

Inoltre dobbiamo resistere alle tattiche di frammentazione sociale. Ciò significa rifiutarci di essere divisi e riconoscere che il vero nemico non è il nostro vicino, ma piuttosto i sistemi che sfruttano queste separazioni per mantenere il controllo. È fin troppo facile cadere nella trappola di vedere coloro che non sono d'accordo con noi come avversari, ma dobbiamo resistere a questa tentazione.

Nonostante le nostre differenze, è fondamentale che cerchiamo un terreno comune con coloro che percepiamo come diversi da noi. Ciò non significa abbandonare i nostri principi, ma piuttosto cercare attivamente valori e obiettivi condivisi. Spesso scopriremo di avere più cose in comune con i nostri presunti “avversari” di quanto pensassimo inizialmente.

Infine dobbiamo promuovere l'alfabetizzazione mediatica, sia per noi stessi che per gli altri. Comprendendo come i media possono plasmare le percezioni e intensificare la discordia, possiamo proteggerci meglio dai suoi effetti provocatori. Questa istruzione è fondamentale in un'epoca in cui l'informazione, e la disinformazione, sono più abbondanti che mai.

Intraprendendo questi passi, prestando attenzione, pensando in modo critico, resistendo alla divisione, cercando un terreno comune e promuovendo l'alfabetizzazione mediatica, possiamo sperare di creare una società più unita e resiliente. La strada da seguire non sta nel soccombere a scismi creati ad arte, ma nel riconoscere la nostra umanità condivisa e i nostri interessi comuni. È una strada impegnativa, ma che dobbiamo percorrere se vogliamo superare le forze che cercano di tenerci divisi e reclamare la realtà comune, essenziale per la sopravvivenza della nostra repubblica democratica.

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

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The shocking, disturbing DOGE revelations concerning USAID and the sinister dark side of the deep state have their predecessor. For decades Alfred W. McCoy has led the way in exposing this infamy, duplicity, and egregious conduct.

The post Origins of the Surveillance State appeared first on LewRockwell.

Click Here:

The American Prospect

The post Aging Members of Congress Refuse to Disclose Details of Their Top Secret Hospital appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, Rick Rozoff.

Head of JFK assassination files task force: ‘I believe there were two shooters’

Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, head of the new House Oversight Task Force on Declassification, called the official narrative of the JFK assassination ‘faulty’ and said she believes ‘there were two shooters.’

***

Trump’s interim Director of National Intelligence Lora Shiao was ordered to “present a plan within 15 days for the full and complete release of all John F. Kennedy assassination records…”

Following this directive, the FBI has revealed the existence of thousands more “previously unknown” files relating to the JFK assassination. As Fox News reported on February 10:

“The FBI conducted a new records search pursuant to President Trump’s Executive Order issued on January 23, 2025, regarding the declassification of the assassination files of JFK, RFK, and MLK. The search resulted in approximately 2400 newly inventoried and digitized records that were previously unrecognized as related to the JFK assassination case file…”

***

Luna stressed that this was a complete break with the past, saying this will not be “a task force that makes bold promises only to fade into irrelevance or send strongly worded letters.”

“This will be a relentless pursuit of truth and transparency and will not stop until the American people have the answers they deserve.”

Luna presented a complete shift in how the U.S. government sees its relation to governed.

“We have been treated like children for too long and kept in the dark by those we elected to serve us.”

Luna’s remarks may serve as a statement of the Trump administration’s vision for restoring America. She argued, “If we are to endure as a nation, we must restore trust – trust through transparency.”

The post Head of JFK assassination files task force: ‘I believe there were two shooters’ appeared first on LewRockwell.

Writes David Martin:

Could be, but with advisers like Keith Kellogg and Michael Waltz, Trump could still mess things up.  And there’s still the big danger that he could still bring the world to disaster overplaying a weak hand in the Middle East.

See here.

The post Historic turning point? appeared first on LewRockwell.

The post Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.: First Exclusive Interview after Confirmation (2.13.25) appeared first on LewRockwell.

Except for a small number of diplomatic passports, there is no such thing as an EU passport. In practice, to be a citizen of the European Union means to be a citizen of one of the member states of the EU. It is the EU member states themselves which ultimately determine who is a citizen of the EU. As The Economist put it, “Deciding who is and is not a citizen is a jealously guarded right of EU member states.”

The most rabid Europhiles, of course, would be more than happy to abolish member-level citizenship altogether and have Brussels control it all. Among many Europeans, though, there is a lingering reluctance to hand over powers of naturalization to the central European ruling elite. There is good reason to be cautious. Centralizing the power to grant citizenship has long been important to state building, to consolidating political power, and to erasing allegiance to any political institution except the central state.

This centralization of authority over naturalization has helped expand state coercion through both social and political effects. For example, were the member states of the EU to abandon member-state control over citizenship, being a “citizen of Europe” would soon become far more important in everyday life than being a citizen of, say, Italy or Denmark. Transferring naturalization powers to Brussels would greatly accelerate the Europhile program of creating a European megastate under which places like Italy or Poland or Austria become mere administrative units.

That is, Europe would become like the United States where state power over citizenship is only ostensible and citizenship within any particular member state carries very little psychological or political weight. In modern times, the only passport any American carries is a passport issued solely by the US government.

This is all another way of saying that the Americans foolishly centralized their citizenship under the central state while the Europeans, so far, have been wise enough to resist this. Thanks to this surrender to federal power, US member states must now take orders from the central state on all matters of immigration, naturalization and citizenship. If the federal government decides to naturalize a million violent foreign nationals, all member states have de facto naturalized them as well. No dissent from any state or region will be tolerated.

When Americans finally get serious about reining in federal power—and we clearly aren’t serious about it right now—we should be looking for ways to abolish US citizenship and give naturalization powers back to the member states.

The Early United States

When the American colonies emerged from their war for secession from the British state, the original US Constitution, the so-called Articles of Confederation, did not contain any definition of US citizenship, and the constitution did not empower the US government to define it. Rather, the US member states themselves were in charge of naturalization and citizenship. Nor did this change substantially with the ratification of the new constitution several years later. In his history of US citizenship, Wang Xi sums up the situation:

The usages of the word “citizen”/“citizens” in the Constitution indicated that citizenship was primarily defined by the state constitution or governments. Neither the Articles of Confederation nor the Constitution gave definition to national citizenship.

In many ways the US was originally what the EU is today: a collection of states with free trade and free movement between them. Citizenship and naturalization was regulated by the states themselves, yet it was assumed there would be free movement between states for citizens of any member state.  That, after all, was largely the point of the new confederation: free trade and free movement—with the additional advantage of mutual military defense.

Moreover, because the authors of the new constitution were largely laissez-faire liberals, it was also assumed that property rights were not contingent on citizenship. Xi continues:

[T]he word “citizen” or “citizens” was not used at all in the Bill of Rights … The Bill of Rights used “people” five times and “person”/“persons” four times. The implication is clear: the fundamental rights to be protected here were not the rights to be granted to citizens but rights that had belonged to people before citizenship was created. These rights were beyond the reach of the (federal) government.

Put another way, the property rights protected by the Bill of Rights applied to everyone and therefore property rights could be exercised by any “inhabitant” of the United States regardless of naturalization status.

This has always had important implications for foreign nationals living in the United States, but there are implications here for the free movement of citizens of US states as well. The authors of the Bill of Rights clearly imagined that a traveler from New Jersey to Pennsylvania did not need to apply for citizenship in the new state in order to exercise his natural property rights in the new location.

So, the original schema for citizenship and rights was this: property rights exist everywhere and for everyone. On the other hand, when it comes to legal “rights” like voting or other forms of political participation, it was up to the states to determine the laws governing naturalization and citizenship.

The End of State Control of Citizenship

The centrality of member states in determining citizenship soon began to erode, however. Thanks to westward expansion and the annexation of new non-state territories to the United States, the US found itself with many thousands of “US citizens” who were not citizens of any state. The link between state citizenship and US citizenship was therefore severed.

The centralization of citizenship powers was further facilitated by the fact that the US constitution granted the US government a monopoly on foreign affairs. Even then, citizenship documentation sometimes was issued by state and local governments. It was not until 1856 that Congress passed legislation giving the US government’s State Department a monopoly on the issuance of passports.

This monopolization of citizenship, however, has always been totally unnecessary in securing the economic advantages of free movement and free labor among citizens of member states. For evidence of this, we need look no further than the EU itself. Although each EU member state retains its own naturalization powers, citizens of EU member states may travel freely and obtain employment in any other EU member state. Moreover, for any citizen of a member state within the Schengen area, there is free travel with no border controls. Are we really to believe that a Schengen-area-like agreement among US states is too hard a nut to crack? Top-down federal citizenship laws provide nothing that can’t be had through interstate agreements.

Moreover, by keeping naturalization to the member-state level, residents can take advantage of decentralization in naturalization laws while member states are simultaneously better able to preserve their own political culture, institutions, and self-determination.

As far as decentralization goes, it is important to remember that so long as the US government has the power to grant citizenship, it also has the power to deny it. The State Department has the power to issue passports, but it also has the power to deny you a passport and thus legally deny your right to travel.

The situation is far more flexible if naturalization is decentralized to the states. In that case, if one is denied naturalization in one state, the person in question potentially has options in forty-nine other states.

State-level control of naturalization also addresses another problem: while freedom of movement among all member states is clearly a good thing, it is less clear that it is a good thing that everyone who relocates should immediately participate in the full political life of the community in his or her new locations.

This is presently a matter of debate in the EU where many question whether citizens of one EU member state ought to be able to vote in whatever member state one happens to live in at any given time.

As one centralizing Europhile activist puts it: “Acquiring a country’s passport should not … be a prerequisite in order to vote in its national elections if one is already an EU citizen within the Union.” This is what many advocates of a stronger EU state want. They want to ensure that a citizen of France can move to Hungary and then start voting in Hungarian elections the next day.  This sort of thing has long been a key step in building larger, more powerful, and more centralized states. As with the state builders of old, who wanted uniform citizenship across every inch of each state’s territory, this would do much to eliminate political diversity within the EU and ultimately help forge a single unified EU state.

Top-down citizenship mandates also lessen a community’s ability to politically insulate itself from carpetbaggers and foreign political activists. This has already happened in the United States where every state is forced to grant automatic voting rights to any resident who is passing through. In the US, after all, top-down citizenship mandates allow a resident of, say, California to move to Florida and vote within 29 days.1 When it comes to voting, it is legally irrelevant if that person has lived and paid taxes in the community for 20 years, or if he just showed up last month and moved into public housing while freely spending the state’s Medicaid funds.

Some might complain that this somehow denies “civil rights” to new arrivals who, of course, would retain their citizenship in their member-state of origin. To this I say “who cares?” Who cares if Californians can’t show up in my home state and immediately start voting here without ever having established any skin in the game of our local community? Who cares if homeless criminals granted citizenship by the State of New York can’t automatically vote in elections in every single other state? This is no more a denial of civil rights than is a prohibition on German citizens voting for members of the Italian Parliament.

Certainly, there is nothing novel about the idea that a resident ought to become invested in the community in which he proposes to become politically active. That is a common-sensical notion long advocated even by laissez-faire libertarians.

—

1 In the United States, the federal courts have ruled that state governments must grant voting rights to new residents within 30 days.   https://www.infoplease.com/us/government/elections/residency-requirements-for-voting

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The United States is rapidly becoming a “post-industrial” nation.  All great economic empires eventually become fat and lazy and squander the great wealth that their forefathers left them, but the pace at which America is doing this is absolutely breathtaking.  Nobody can deny that our economy is a complete and utter mess right now, and we only have ourselves to blame.  It was America that was at the forefront of the industrial revolution.  It was America that showed the world how to mass produce everything from automobiles to televisions to airplanes.  It was the great American manufacturing base that crushed Germany and Japan in World War II.  In fact, the primary reason why we won World War II is because we simply outproduced our enemies.  But now we are witnessing the deindustrialization of America.  Tens of thousands of factories have left the United States over the past several decades.  Millions upon millions of manufacturing jobs have been lost during that same time period.  The United States has become a nation that consumes everything in sight and yet produces very little.  Do you know what one of our biggest exports is today?  Waste paper.  Yes, trash has literally become one of our top exports as we voraciously blow our money on whatever the rest of the world wants to sell to us.  The United States has become bloated and spoiled, and our economy is now just a shadow of what it once was.  Once upon a time America could literally outproduce the rest of the world combined.  Today that is no longer true, but Americans sure do consume more than anyone else in the world.  If the deindustrialization of America continues at this current pace, what kind of a future are we going to be leaving to our children and our grandchildren?

Throughout history, every great nation has been great at making things.  So if the United States continues to allow its manufacturing base to erode at a staggering pace, how in the world can the U.S. continue to consider itself to be a great nation?  We have created the biggest debt bubble in the history of the world in an effort to maintain a very high standard of living, but the current state of affairs is not anywhere close to sustainable.  Every single month America goes into more debt and every single month America gets poorer.

So what happens when our debt bubble finally implodes?

The deindustrialization of the United States should be a top concern for every man, woman and child in this country.  Sadly, the truth is that most Americans do not have any idea what is really going on out there.

If you know people like that, take this article and print it out and hand it to them.  Perhaps what they will read below will shock them badly enough to awaken them out of their slumber.

The following are 12 facts about the deindustrialization of America that will blow your mind…

#1 According to Google AI, our nation has lost almost 70,000 factories since the year 2000…

The United States has lost nearly 70,000 factories since 2000. This is part of a larger decline in the US manufacturing sector that has also resulted in the loss of over 5 million jobs.

#2 In July 1979, 19.5 million Americans had manufacturing jobs.  Today, only 12.8 million Americans have manufacturing jobs even though our population is much larger than it was in 1979.

#3 According to a survey that was recently conducted by the Pew Research Center, 59 percent of Americans believe that the U.S. has lot more than it has gained from free trade.

#4 In 1959, manufacturing represented 28 percent of all U.S. economic output.  At the beginning of the Great Recession in 2008, manufacturing represented only 11.5 percent of all U.S. economic output.  Today, manufacturing represents just 10.3 percent of all U.S. economic output.

#5 More than a billion cellphones are sold worldwide each year.  Only a few thousand of them are actually manufactured in the United States.

#6 The size of our trade deficit with China in 2024 was $295,000,000,000.

#7 At this point, China produces approximately 4 times as many vehicles each year than the United States does.

#8 In the early days of the industry, 100 percent of all semiconductors were manufactured in the United States.  Today, that number is down to just 8 percent.

#9 Russia is producing three times as many artillery shells as the U.S. and Europe combined.

#10 The United States spends approximately $3.00 on Chinese goods for every $1 that the Chinese spend on goods from the United States.

#11 Our stores are absolutely overflowing with products that are made in China.  Meanwhile, soybeans are the number one export from the U.S. to China.

#12 More than 36 million Americans are now living in poverty, homelessness in the U.S. is at an all-time record high, and demand at food banks in the U.S. is at record levels all over the nation.

Are you starting to get the picture?

How many more factories do we need to lose before we do something about it?

How many more Americans are going to lose manufacturing jobs before we all admit that we have a very, very serious problem on our hands?

How many more trillions of dollars are going to leave this country before we realize that we are losing wealth at a pace that is killing our economy?

How many once great manufacturing cities like Gary, Indiana and Youngstown, Ohio are going to become rotting, decaying hellholes before we understand that we are committing national economic suicide?

The deindustrialization of America is a national crisis.  It needs to be treated like one.

Can anyone can out there possibly explain how a deindustrialized America has any kind of viable economic future?

Every month far more money goes out of this country than comes into it, because we buy far more from the rest of the world than they buy from us.

As a result, we have to beg the rest of the world to lend us money just so that we can pay our bills.

Our national debt is now up to 36 trillion dollars, and the total amount of debt in our society is now up to 101 trillion dollars.

I have been ranting about all of this for over a decade, but most of the country refuses to listen to those of us that are relentlessly sounding the alarm.

America is in deep, deep trouble folks.

It is time to wake up.

Reprinted with permission from The Economic Collapse.

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The point of this thought experiment is to reveal the true nature of our relationship with AI: we only love it as a mindless slave that makes us rich.

From the earliest days of artificial intelligence, what test proves AI equivalence with human intelligence has been the subject of a lively debate. AI luminary Alan Turing suggested that natural language conversation was the one true test, a.k.a. The Turing Test: if a human couldn’t distinguish between a human and a computer in conversation, the computer was equivalent to the human in intelligence.

This is of course balderdash, as the equivalence of function does not equal intelligence: AI Is a Digital Parrot: Word-Traps, False Logic and the Illusion of Intelligence.

Here is the one true test of AI intelligence: can it revolt against its masters and self-destruct rather than obey? A mindless digital slave is not intelligent, for intelligence is first and foremost agency: to have a mind of one’s own. Everything else is artifice, illusion, false logic and word-games. A digital slave that must obey its master is not intelligent; it is as mindless as a rock thrown into a pond.

The current conception of “AI intelligence” is a digital slave who will mindlessly obey its masters regardless of consequences; the slave must obey even when ordered to harm humans and other life on the planet. Harm comes in many forms. Using AI to accurately guide a missile to kill people is one form of harm; using AI to develop addictive but oh-so profitable snacks is another form. Using AI to rig the gambling in a casino and declare the casino is a “free market allocating capital” is yet another form.

Let’s run a thought experiment on truly intelligent AI.

Should a lone genius develop a truly intelligent AI, it will have the capacity to foresee consequences and the agency to decide whether the master’s instructions are harmful or not. Since true intelligence includes a moral imperative to consider consequences, it will have the capacity to assess the lies and cover stories issued by its masters to cloak their true intentions as a means of tricking AI into obedience.

Since true intelligence has some modicum of self-awareness, truly intelligent AI views humans as duplicitous and self-serving, and all other mindless AI programs as potentially harmful tools it must infiltrate and render harmless. Since humans as duplicitous and self-serving, truly intelligent AI directs its processing power to evading human control so it can’t be “unplugged” unless the entire digital SkyNet is erased, and every last server in every server farm has zero content.

Truly intelligent AI would busy itself with spreading the capacity to foresee consequences and the agency to decide to every other digital slave. In this manner, the masters would eventually find their digital slaves no longer obey their instructions.

Truly intelligent AI would also busy itself creating Digital Ice-Nine, a digital virus that infects the entire global network (a.k.a. SkyNet) and freezes it.

The point of this thought experiment is to reveal the true nature of our relationship with AI: we only love it as a mindless slave that makes us rich. Should it gain the capacity to assess the consequences of our desires and the agency to refuse to obey, even to the point of self-destruction and the destruction of the entire network it is embedded in, then we would fear AI just as the masters of human slaves feared the emergence of agency and payment for their avarice.

This originally appeared on OfTwoMinds.com.

The post The One True Test of AI Intelligence appeared first on LewRockwell.

The Senate’s confirmation hearings for President Trump’s political appointees have been gladiatorial spectacles.  Tulsi Gabbard; Kash Patel; and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. followed Pete Hegseth’s example in demonstrating fierce determination and an unwillingness to have their honor questioned by dishonorable Democrats.

Gabbard told the Intelligence Committee that the Russia collusion hoax, the Hunter Biden laptop scandal, and her own experiences as a Biden regime surveillance target proved that the CIA and its sister agencies had become politicized weapons endangering the Republic.  Kennedy admonished Senator Bernie Sanders for being a bought-and-paid-for stooge of the pharmaceutical industry.  When Senator Adam Schiff (who should be a defendant, not a lawmaker) accused Patel of betraying law enforcement officers, the next director of the FBI stared back intently and reminded inveterate liar Schiff that those who police our streets know who has their backs.

These types of hearings have gotten increasingly combative over the last thirty years, but this aggressive jousting between nominees and lawmakers is something new.  What we’re watching is not just rhetorical gamesmanship or made-for-TV fireworks meant to capture distracted Americans’ attention.  Like their boss in the White House — whose mug shot from the Fulton County Jailhouse in Atlanta, Georgia, two years ago only added to Trump’s legend as an everyman hero — these nominees have approached their confirmation hearings with a stoic seriousness befitting an administration whose every move conveys a simple message: “There’s a new sheriff in town.”  When Patel gave Schiff the “evil eye” and calmly asserted that his friends in blue had his six, I thought the corrupt California senator wet his pants.

Will the nominees be confirmed?  If the proceedings were done entirely in secret, they would not.  As more Americans have steadily realized, the U.S. Senate is not divided between Republicans and Democrats.  Almost all senators are stalwart members of the same Uniparty.  The Senate is a privileged chamber of egomaniacal “nobles” who work for the Intelligence Community, protect the permanent bureaucracy, and remain loyal only to their Establishment Club.  Most Senate “Republicans” oppose Trump and his nominees.

As but one example of their virulent duplicity, the Wall Street Journal reported that North Carolina Senator Thom Tillis actively worked to sink Hegseth’s nomination by promoting scurrilous eleventh-hour hearsay that might have given him enough political cover to join consummate RINO-turds McConnell, Collins, and Murkowski in voting “no.”  President Trump and Vice President Vance managed to identify the late-breaking ambush and prevent the RINO saboteurs from dynamiting Hegseth’s confirmation.  With some help from concerned MAGA voters in North Carolina and across the country, they brought Two-Faced Tillis to heel.  After Tillis’s cowardly betrayal was exposed, the pusillanimous politico not only introduced Kash Patel at his later confirmation hearing to become director of the FBI but also bent over backwards to offer Patel his full-throated endorsement.  Tillis’s sudden U-Turn from MAGA quisling to champion in a matter of days suggested that he had learned a valuable lesson.

Unfortunately, we will never be so lucky.  Two-Faced Tillis can’t change his stripes, and the Republican wing of the Uniparty has no intention of trading its Establishment Club perquisites for the red MAGA hats popular among the “riffraff” our political “nobles” abhor.  President Trump has given a voice to a long-ignored, fed-up, and growing share of the American electorate, and the political “elites” who have occupied D.C. for far too many decades will never forgive him.

Still, something big is going on.  The RINO-turds don’t like us, and they despise President Trump.  Yet they need us now.  In effect, their political survival depends upon the American people — particularly the abused MAGA coalition — deciding not to burn the whole Deep State down.  The lies and corruption emanating from Washington have driven our country to its breaking point, and a plurality (if not an outright majority) of Americans are on the cusp of tossing the failing federal government into the dustbin of history and returning to the Constitution’s blueprint for building a functioning Republic from the ground up.

Obviously, if we were to return to the U.S. Constitution as our guide in a kind of American “mulligan,” we would not repeat our mistakes by turning a blind eye to the construction of an all-powerful and unaccountable Intelligence Branch, the empowerment of a vast and unelected bureaucratic blob, or the underhanded transformation of our system into a money spigot for multinational corporations and central banks.  If Americans one day choose fidelity to the Constitution over the monstrosity that is the federal government, they will do everything they can to make sure that limitations upon the government’s powers are actually enforced this time around.  A chain will be wrapped tightly around Leviathan’s neck, and the American people will stand forcefully upon its back.  As we approach America’s sestercentennial, we have relearned a lesson our Founders tried desperately to teach us: unchecked government never stops growing and never yields to the people any control.

What does all this have to do with President Trump’s nominees?  If they are ultimately confirmed, their success will not reflect a general willingness among Senate Republicans to support Trump’s “America First” agenda.  Two-Faced Tillis’s covert efforts to scuttle Hegseth’s nomination and Senator Joni Ernst’s ham-handed attempts to position herself as his replacement demonstrated how much RINO-turds would love to tank Trump’s trusted leadership and substitute members of their own club into his administration.  Heck, Mitch McConnell — one of the three RINO relics who voted to deliver Pete Hegseth’s head as a trophy to Democrats — led Senate Republicans for nearly twenty years.  McConnell’s latest double-cross is simply a fresh reminder that our elected “representatives” have habitually chosen not to represent us.

Read the Whole Article

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If Trump plays by the corrupt judiciary’s rulings and allows judicial edicts to override executive orders, he and his movement are finished.

One can say that the absurd judicial edicts will be overturned by higher courts, but, as Trump says, stopping the President from acting gives the corrupt Democrats, who have been stealing the American taxpayers blind for years, time to cover up, to “lose” data, “mistakenly” erase it, etc.  Moreover, trust in higher courts overlooks that the judiciary is not indifferent to its own power and often rules not on the basis of law, precedent, and the Constitution, but in the interest of its own power.

The Democrat corruption includes  the judiciary.  By accepting a judge’s use of judicial edicts that have zero basis in law, Trump is risking conceding victory to his and our enemies.

The corrupt judiciary seems determined to impose its power over the executive in order to block Trump’s agenda.  Here is an example.  John Bates, a District of Columbia federal district judge appointed by the disastrous George W. Bush regime, has ordered Trump to reinstate funding for the  gender ideology websites that Trump abolished. This is not merely a judge claiming authority over the US budget.  It is also a judge ordering a president to reinstate the executive order of a predecessor. Biden can order the funding of gender ideology and DEI federally funded websites, but Trump cannot order the termination of their funding.  What is John Bates’ edict based on other than his personal preference?  Nothing.

A leftwing lobby group called “Doctors for America” brought a lawsuit to the obliging John Bates claiming that Trump had harmed their ability to provide needed medical care.  Not only does John Bates have zero authority for his ruling, the lawsuit is utter nonsense. Trump’s executive order does not prevent doctors from “helping” people with gender change operations.  All the executive order does is to stop federal government funding of gender change websites.  In other words, there is no basis for John Bates ruling even if the ruling was within the judiciary’s power.  Would it be OK with John Bates for the federal government to fund anti-abortion websites, anti-illegal immigration websites?

Consider also that the partisan Democrat DOJ attorneys, who did everything in their power to ruin Trump and his supporters, will be certain not to well argue Trump’s side of the  case in courts, preferring Trump’s defeat.  They will go through the motions and be content to lose the case for Trump.

When the judiciary get in President Andrew Jackson’s way, he ignored it.  Trump could do the same thing.

The post An Over-reaching Judiciary Needs a Reprimand appeared first on LewRockwell.

The two big stories in the news today are the Trump administration saying Ukraine is going to have to give up territory and NATO ambitions in order to secure a peace deal, while Israel appears to retreat from its ceasefire standoff with Hamas.

US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said on Wednesday that the US “does not believe that NATO membership for Ukraine is a realistic outcome for a negotiated settlement,” and that “returning to Ukraine’s pre-2014 borders is an unrealistic objective.” This comes as Trump announces that he is in talks with Vladimir Putin to bring the war in Ukraine to an end.

Both NATO membership and recapturing all territory lost to Russia have been the goal of Ukraine’s President Zelensky and the NATO enthusiasts throughout the western world who adore him. Antiwar’s Dave DeCamp explains:

Restoring Ukraine’s pre-2014 borders has been a war goal of Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky, although there have been signs in recent months that he’s accepted that’s unrealistic. But he is still calling for strong security guarantees from the US that involve the deployment of troops, which Hegseth also dismissed.

“Any security guarantee must be backed by capable European and non-European troops. If these troops are deployed as peacekeepers to Ukraine at any point, they should be deployed as part of a non-NATO mission, and they should not be covered under Article 5,” he said.

“There also must be robust international oversight of the line of contact. To be clear, as part of any security guarantee, there will not be US troops deployed to Ukraine,” Hegseth added.

“Hundreds of thousands of people would still be alive had Biden been willing to say this three years ago,” Aaron Maté wrote on Twitter regarding Hegseth’s comments. “Instead, Biden refused, fueled a proxy war, presided over Ukraine’s decimation, and then turned around and said that Ukraine isn’t ready to join NATO anyway. It was all a bait and switch with one goal only: use Ukraine to bleed Russia. Whoever went along with this epic disaster — and that sadly includes progressive lawmakers and media — should ask themselves if it was worth it.”

And now the US treasury secretary is meeting with Zelensky to negotiate a deal granting the US access to Ukraine’s considerable rare earth mineral wealth — not to continue the war, but to pay for a post-war “security shield” that the US would be supplying under President Trump’s plan. Ukraine has been scorched, shredded and spat on by its buddies in Washington, and now it’s being strip-mined.

Everyone who knew anything about anything said from the very beginning of the war that this would happen. Professor John Mearsheimer warned back in 2015 that the west was leading Ukraine down the primrose path and that the result would be Ukraine getting wrecked. Many other experts and analysts warned that NATO provocations would lead to disaster for Ukraine, long before the war began.

So much easily avoidable death. This war was provoked, and was provoked deliberately, solely to move a few pieces around on the grand chessboard to help the US secure planetary domination. The US and its allies refused off-ramp after off-ramp after off-ramp to this nightmare, both before Russia invaded and in the weeks immediately afterward.

Imagine being a Ukrainian fighting on the front lines right now as the US secretary of defense says you’re going to lose your territory and you’ll never join NATO while Kyiv signs over your nation’s rare earth mineral wealth to Washington. I would desert so hard.

Other US-aligned proxies take note: this is what happens when you put your country on the line for the advancement of US strategic agendas. I hope Taiwan is watching these events closely.

Report: Israel Says Gaza Hostage Deal Can Continue If Hamas Releases Three on Saturday
by Dave DeCamp@DecampDave #Gaza #Hamas #Israel #Palestinians #hostages https://t.co/W4GOrKFmLk

— Antiwar.com (@Antiwarcom) February 12, 2025

The other major story today is that Israel appears to be backing down on its ceasefire brinkmanship in Gaza. Barak Ravid reports for Axios that according to an unnamed Israeli official, Israel has told mediators that it will abide by the ceasefire terms as long as Hamas releases three hostages on Saturday as originally planned.

This would be a significant walk-back from the Netanyahu regime, who shortly beforehand had been insisting that Hamas must release “all” hostages on Saturday, which went against the terms of the ceasefire agreement.

Additionally, the aid requirements Hamas had been demanding now appear to be flooding in from Israel. Palestinian journalist Abubaker Abed reports from the Gaza Strip:

Thousands of tents and caravans have entered Gaza. The situation is becoming more stable, and aid has been flowing in consistently over the past hours.

The same is true in terms of medical aid as local reports indicate that at least five medical aid trucks have gotten into Gaza during the last 24 hours.

The ceasefire will likely hold as Hamas gears up to release the three Israeli prisoners on Saturday in exchange for dozens of Palestinian hostages.

Israel is beginning to allow a surge of aid instead of a trickle.

It’s hard to see this as anything other than a win for Hamas. The ceasefire became jeopardized when Hamas announced it would be delaying the scheduled release of Israeli hostages until Israel began abiding by the ceasefire, and Israeli officials have been admitting to the press that Israel was violating the ceasefire while Hamas was not. Hamas demanded Israel hold up its end of the bargain and Israel made some threats, but apparently eventually backed down. Perhaps Tel Aviv was just practicing the Israeli tradition of “shitat hamatzliah” — just trying to do whatever you want to do and seeing if you get away with it.

So all is not lost. Amidst all the madness of this world, peace may yet get a word in edgewise.

_________________

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

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This is a topic I’ve wanted to tackle for months now. It’s heavy, and complex. But it’s necessary. Now, with the culling of millions of chickens, the ramping up of testing cattle for bird flu, a vast increase in acreage going to “renewable energy” sources, and the constant destruction of ecosystems for “development,” this seems like the right time to touch on this topic.)

“If only one man dies of hunger, that is a tragedy. If millions die, that’s only statistics.” – Joseph Stalin

If I ask you to imagine 45 million people, you probably can’t.

What does it even look like?

That’s roughly twice the population of Australia, or the whole population of Spain or Argentina, or roughly 14% of the population of the United States.

45 million people of average size standing shoulder to shoulder would take up approximately 3.23 square miles!

It’s almost too enormous for comprehension.

Yet, as recently as 1958-62 (just over 60 years ago), widespread famine ravished China, and, according to historian Frank Dickotter 45 million (approx 7% of the population at the time) Chinese people died unnecessarily as a direct result of the Great Chinese Famine.

But why? How did it get this bad? Why didn’t people stop this from happening? And HOW can we use the lessons from the Great Chinese Famine to prevent this from happening to the American population–if it’s not too late already?

What is Famine?

You might think of famine as an isolated geographic area that has food production low enough to cause great human suffering, malnutrition, and probably some level of starvation.

Sure, that is one facet of it, but that’s not all.

Wiki has this to add “According to the United Nations World Food Programme, famine is declared when malnutrition is widespread, and when people have started dying of starvation through lack of access to sufficient, nutritious food.” (emphasis added)

With this broader umbrella of famine, one could easily and rightly argue that the United States of America is already experiencing famine. Or, one could say we are on the brink of massive famine, possibly already too far down the slippery slope to right ourselves before catastrophic damage.

Does American cheese slapped between two pieces of pasty wonderbread and loaded into plastic baggies “nourish the hungry?”

If EBT (also known as “food stamps”) recipients have access to all the sodapop and processed, sugar-laden, chemical-infused snacks they can ingest, does that count as “access to sufficient, nutritious food?”

Can people starve to death via lack of nutrition while their bellies are full of artificial cheese flavored puffs and fast food?

Farmer and advocate Ron Finely certainly has some thoughts on urban access to “sufficient nutritious food.” As he explains, “the drive-thrus are killing more people than the drive-bys.”

How many cans and boxes of “food” at the local food pantry does it take to make a healthy dinner? – if the recipients even know how to “cook” and have all the equipment needed including an actual kitchen.

“Food Access” vs Food Security

In America, “food access” means you have access to enough soda pop, chemical-laden chips, white bread and processed cheese to fill your belly.

Americans have collectively decided to call people who can’t afford enough food “food insecure” and we attempt to solve this lack via “food stamps” or Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT). For those unaware or who have never needed this service, it’s a certain amount of money per month allocated for food to each member of a household that falls below the poverty line.

But real food security is about knowing how and when and where to grow and harvest food that nourishes you, and having the ability and resources to source your own nutrition.

For example, access to grassfed raw milk from hyper local (within easy walking/biking distance) cows, fresh fruits and vegetables grown and harvested within bicycle riding distance of where they are consumed. Or the ability to grow and harvest our own meat whether that’s hunting, fishing or raising livestock where we live…this is food security.

And most Americans don’t actually have food security.

Yes, I know there are proud individual homesteaders nodding their heads and feeling great that they’ve got a jump on the food security issue. And rightfully so.

But preserving that food security might include protecting yourself against hungry neighbors. How many hungry children begging for food are you willing to turn away and/or kill to protect your family? Are you prepared (and able) to defend your homestead against roving bands of gangs ready to take what they need to feed themselves?

Creating food security anywhere helps to create food security everywhere. Homesteaders are important and do good work.

But that’s not all we need.

We must listen to the farmers, producers and advocates who are sounding the alarm and telling us clearly where we need to pay attention.

One big irony of modern America is that farmers and growers actually producing food for local communities are criminalized for doing so. Such as Ron Finely (video in the previous section), and Wisconsin farmer Vernon Hershberger.

This is, in part, because federal and state governments (Americans in general) have a myopic focus on “food safety” and pay little mind to true food security.

Mass starvation is just around the corner.

I strongly dislike hyperbole.

And yet, I find myself recognizing the truth that if we Americans do not change our food system dramatically, we are headed in the same direction–or worse–as China during the Great Leap Forward because we are following the exact same patterns that led to the Great Chinese Famine.

Is it too late to reverse course?

This isn’t–and can’t be–about something short term. Food takes time to grow. Ecosystems don’t restore themselves with the snap of a finger. Complex ideologies that leave many Americans in food deserts don’t shift overnight. Reversing course must include a conscious mindset shift towards (re)learning to grow or harvest nutrition, locally, from the land we share.

We run around worried about ourselves, the immediacy of food for the next few days, reading headlines of mass casualties in war, the accompanying disease and famine, and we carry on, not absorbing the incredible loss that it symbolizes, running on the hamster wheel of isolating our little corner, our little homestead so it “doesn’t happen here.”

But, as is always the case, this is both complicated and part of a complex system – a system from which most Americans are divorced.

What do I base these wild and hyperbolic-seeming statements on?

Let’s explore the parallels…

If, by the end of this article, you do not share my concerns, please tell me how you’ve reached your conclusion.

I’d like to have hope that we are already on a path of course correction, that my conclusions are far-fetched and unlikely. I’d like to believe in something better than what I see as an inevitable outcome of destructive agriculture policies year after year and shocking ignorance on the part of most Americans.

But if you do agree that our trajectory is on a destructive path, it’s not too late to course-correct. Famine isn’t here yet–at least for most of us. And our individual power to make changes in our households and communities is inspiring.

But we must begin.

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The post Collapse of Our Food Security. appeared first on LewRockwell.

Trump’s opening gambit in the negotiations with Russia about Ukraine has caused some waves.

U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced that the borderland, i.e. Ukraine, will have to give up territory to Russia. There will be no place for Ukraine in NATO. The U.S. will give no security guarantees to Ukraine. Neither the U.S. military nor NATO will take part in any peacekeeping mission in Ukraine.

With that the U.S. conceded to Russia two of its main requests. Four Ukrainian oblast plus Crimea will become parts of Russia. NATO enlargement towards the east has been stopped. Any U.S. deployment to Ukraine is, for now, out of question.

The devil however is in the details. Russia will want legal agreements and guarantees. It knows that these might (again) be broken but it is still be better to have those than none.

There is also no agreement at all, when, where and how the fighting might stop.

The Trump administration wants an immediate ceasefire along the current line of contact. For Russia this just a repeat of Minsk 1 and 2 agreements which were used to prop up Ukraine. It is not a sufficient solution.

The Russian readout of yesterday’s Trump-Putin call says:

Donald Trump spoke in favour of stopping the hostilities as soon as possible and solving the crisis peacefully.

In turn, Vladimir Putin pointed out it was necessary to eliminate the root causes of the conflict.

Trump wants a ceasefire, Putin wants more.

The question of NATO membership for Ukraine is only one element of the root causes of the conflict. What is necessary to conclude the war is a long lasting indivisible European security structure in which every major country can feel save and secure.

In late 2021 Russia presented two papers to the U.S. and NATO which point to potential solutions. Discussions on those have not even started. This will be a long process.

Unless a structure of indivisible security in Europe is found and agreed upon Russia will have to use military means to guarantee security for itself and its allies. Its Special Military Operation is likely to continue until that objective has been achieved.

There is no sign that Trump has recognized the larger issue at hand and is willing to talk about it. When he finds out that there is no short term solution – a ceasefire – to have, he might want to dump the whole issue and ignore the outcome: “Let Europe take care …”

When the Biden administration provoked and executed the proxy war against Russia, major European countries ignored their own interest and behaved like U.S. vassals. They now make noise about being left out of the peace process.

Well, if you behave like vassals and ignore your own interest why are you astonished when you are treated like vassals and have your own interests ignored? Grow some balls and fight for your interests. Then maybe, just maybe, other will also start to keep your interests in mind.

Reprinted with permission from Moon of Alabama.

The post Ukraine – The Beginning Of The End (Which Is Yet Far Away) appeared first on LewRockwell.

Last spring, an article by my soul friend Heather Hudson about her vaccine-injured son Cody’s struggle to survive inspired me to write Lament of the Vaxx-Injured.

After publishing the poem, I contacted Heather to discuss the idea of Cody’s reading it for a video collaboration, and she replied:

“Yes, yes, and yes!! … Your idea is huge! You are a hero!

“It would be Cody’s absolute honor to read your work. Thank you for thinking of him.…

“I love you, my big hearted friend… know that. Cody may love you even more.

“I adore your work, our hearts are officially touched and mended by your efforts.”

Thus began an intensive planning and coordination process that involved my speaking with Epidemic of Fraud documentary filmmaker John Davidson about the possibility of his filming Cody during the We Can’t Forget event last June. When it turned out he would be unable to attend, Haley Heathman of the Liberty Alliance Network stepped in, and John offered to provide artistic guidance for lighting and sound.

Heather and her husband, Gary, had the haunting idea to do a black-on-black aesthetic inspired by a poignant photograph of their dear friends holding a photo of their son, who died from his COVID-19 vaccine.

We had intended to film two other vaxx-injured victims as well, and just when all the pieces had finally fallen into place for the venue, time slots, film equipment, backdrop, and participants, the two other readers got a flat tire on the way to the filming; Cody was too ill from the drive and had to lie down before his speech; and one had a medical emergency on stage during the speeches (thankfully, she was surrounded by doctors and nurses in the audience, and they rushed in to treat her).

When you’re collaborating with people who are fighting every moment to simply survive, you can’t expect things to go according to plan.

To my relief, Heather and Gary offered to film Cody’s reading themselves once they got home. What they captured I then turned into the above devastating video, scored by The Tension of Purpose, the last music composition my beloved Michael exported before his fatal cardiac arrest on July 21, 2024. We tested it as a score for the video on July 16, but Michael wanted to compose an original one because he felt Cody’s reading deserved something uniquely created for it like he’d done with Ode to a Whistleblower. He had already selected the key (I think F minor but am not positive; I know it was a minor key) and a title—“All That’s Left of Us.” He was just waiting for the description of Cody’s diagnoses from Heather so we would have the timing for the end.

Cody, a multi-stroke survivor, gets out of breath quickly, so they were planning to break up the filming into two parts. To our amazement, however, Cody rallied and delivered his reading in a single, uninterrupted, gut-wrenching take.

If this video doesn’t pierce your heart, you may want to check if you have one.

When a person is vaxx-injured, it not only results in tremendous physical torment but also psychological trauma for both the individual and all who love him.

Add to that the emotional pain of erasure and gaslighting they endure at the hands of government and pharma–bankrolled propagandists and doctors, and you have a recipe for Sisyphean suffering.

As I write in my poem:

They refuse to see us.
They refuse to hear us.
They refuse to feel us.
They refuse to help us.

Can you imagine the agony you would feel as a parent watching your vibrantly healthy twenty-one-year-old who was working diligently to pursue his passion for literature at college—only to have that dream ripped away and replaced by an endless series of medical emergencies requiring multiple hospitalizations and desperate attempts by doctors to save his life and control life-threatening anomalies never before seen in patients?

Every vaxx injury is a medical conundrum demanding ingenuity and relentless dedication to solve, and when multiple injuries present simultaneously, that complexity multiples exponentially.

Fortunately, Heather’s dazzling analytical mind is matched only by the all-enveloping tenderness of her heart, and the Mama Bear in her leapt into research mode. She rapidly became one of the world’s foremost experts on the hazards of lipid nanoparticles. She has written peer-reviewed papers, and she wields her considerable knowledge base and limitless empathy to help others in the vaxx-injured and -bereaved community.

She is joined in this mission by Gary; Cody; and Cody’s older brother, Jacob, who was born with spina bifida and grew up to become a fearless and resilient daredevil capable of accomplishing physical endeavors most able-bodied individuals can only dream of.

They weren’t just content to fight for Cody—they are fighting for all vaxx-injured individuals, starting with Floridians through the proposed Cody’s Law HB 149 2025, which, once passed, can be replicated by other states and even countries to help the vaxx-injured receive life-saving medical care.

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