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Some people might be wondering why a backwater nation like South Africa has become a flash point in the global debate over politics and culture. It’s really not that hard to understand once you recognize the core conflict, which is in part about racial division but also about the fundamental evils of the political left and socialism.

South Africa represents a perfect petri dish, a window into the minds of progressive authoritarians. The country is near the end point of the natural socialist evolution – From “hopeful humanist endeavor” to the communist slave plantation that all socialist adventures inevitably become.

A key pillar of leftist authoritarianism is an obsessive desire to prevent people from walking away. In other words, citizens are seen as property of the collective and property of the greater progressive experiment. When citizens try to leave, this is treated as a crime beyond reckoning.

It’s a concept I’ve been writing about for many years now. Walking away from from the leftist plantation brings the entire edifice into question; it is the worst thing a citizen can do.

Afrikaners that want to immigrate to the US under the refugee program put in place by the Trump Administration are being targeted by a malicious smear campaign. Recently, the SA parliament debated what should be done about these immigrants and also debated how to protect SA’s image in the world stage.

Their narrative was broad, but it basically asserts that Afrikaners that talk openly about racial discrimination and race motivated murders of whites might be investigated under treason laws. By extension, Afrikaner refugees seeking to leave SA could be designated as threats to national security. Anyone warning about the growing movement for racial genocide of Afrikaners is a potential traitor and a threat to the country (Go to 118:00 for the discussion).

The African National Congress has implemented at least 142 race-based laws (similar to DEI policies in the US) designed to redistribute wealth, property and jobs away from the white population into the hands of the black population.

And, the progressive authoritarians believe they have the perfect justification for the continuing oppression of whites – Because Apartheid existed 35 years ago in South Africa, this means that any brutality that happens to Afrikaners today is fair game.

It’s the same argument that leftists use in Europe and the US: “White westerners were colonizers and colonization is evil, therefore, as repentance for their sins against the multicultural gods, whites must allow their societies to be deconstructed and submit to generations of abuse.”

My question is, why would we do that? We can simply organize and tribalize if that’s the intention of the progressive movement. We can easily drop the hammer on them if necessary. The only reason progressives and socialists think they can railroad white citizens in South Africa is because they assume we will sit back and let them.

Just so there’s no misunderstanding, everything happening in South Africa is a consequence of progressive governance. The race targeting of whites, the crumbling infrastructure, the 32% unemployment rate, the ongoing civil instability, etc. They’ve had 30 years to make things better and instead they made things worse.

Conservatives have no political power and white citizens have no political power (their representation in government is next to nil).

One might wonder why the government hasn’t swiped all the farm land from the Afrikaners already? The conundrum for progressive authoritarians is that they want to, but the vast majority of their domestic food production relies on the expertise of white farmers. They remember the starvation crisis that happened when Zimbabwe ethnically cleansed white farmers. They have to get rid of the Afrikaners slowly and replace them with black farmers over a period of years.

Utility and political optics require that the SA government keep Afrikaner farmers trapped within the country so they can continue to produce until the government sees fit to eliminate them completely.

I believe the “treason” narrative is part of this agenda, along with the general smear campaign. If even a handful of Afrikaners are able to come to the US and succeed this will encourage thousands more to leave SA. The country will then lose a large portion of its most productive citizens. The last vestiges of civil stability will disappear. South Africa will collapse.

This is why some officials are begging Afrikaners to stay. This why the government is talking about national security concerns over a mere 59 immigrants leaving for America. Secretly, they know that an eventual mass exodus of white farmers is coming and it will crush their fraudulent system.

Reprinted with permission from Alt-Market.us.

The post Leftist Plantation: It’s Now ‘Treason’ For White Farmers To Leave South Africa? appeared first on LewRockwell.

For all the alarming seriousness of two South Asian nuclear powers coming to the razor’s edge of a lethal exchange, the 2025 India–Pakistan war could not but contain elements of a Bollywood extravaganza.

Frantic dancing indeed, which risked getting out of control pretty fast. Forget dodgy, plodding UN mediation or any serious investigation of the suspicious attack out of the blue on tourists in India-held Kashmir.

Right off the bat, on 7 May, India’s Modi government dramatically launched ‘Operation Sindoor’ against Pakistan, a missile offensive billed as “counter-terrorism.” Pakistan immediately launched a counterpunch codenamed ‘Operation Bunyan al-Marsus’ against the “Indian invasion.”

Culture is key. Sindoor is classic Hindu culture, referring to the vermillion mark applied on the forehead of married women. No wonder the Chinese immediately translated it as ‘Operation Vermillion.’

Yet what the whole planet retained from the alarming escalation, irrespective of any attempt at contextualization, not to mention color-coded cultural practices, was the Top Gun element with a Bollywood twist: the Pakistani Air Force (PAF) and the Indian Air Force (IAF), on the night of 7 May, directly involved in the largest, and most high-tech air battle of the young 21st century, lasting a full hour and featuring scores of 4th and 4.5 generation fighter jets.

Dramatic entertainment value was provided, quirkily enough, not by Indians, but by a Chinese netizen, notorious internet blogger Hao Gege, and his hilarious global blockbuster parody video “The newly bought plane was shot down.” He was, of course, referring to the IAF’s French Rafales decimated by Chinese J-10C fighters, which have fully mastered electronic warfare and are equipped with cheap, precise, and brutally efficient PL-15 air-to-air missiles.

Add to it Chinese hardware such as the HQ-9 air defense system and ZDK-03 AWACS. A J-10C, which, incidentally, costs only $40 million, roughly six times less than a Rafale.

Inevitably, the whole thing turned into a public relations nightmare, not only for New Delhi, but mostly for the French military-industrial complex, complete with a cornucopia of spin from all sides. Islamabad claimed it destroyed six Indian fighter jets (including as many as three Rafales, with a collective price tag of $865 million, plus one Russian Su-30, one MiG-29, and one Israeli Heron UAV); paralyzed 70 percent of India’s power grid; and smashed India’s made-in-Russia S-400 defense system. India, for its part, fiercely denied all of the above over and over again.

Then, after so much sound and fury, Pakistan on 10 May announced it had won the war. Two days later, India announced the same.

The sound and fury though continued unabated, ranging from the J-10C basking in Top Gun superstar status and Chinese stocks skyrocketing in a much-vaunted “DeepSeek moment” in modern warfare to the ridiculous sight of US President Donald Trump claiming he was responsible for the India–Pakistan ceasefire, which as it stands, looks more like a pause.

Get a Rafale for the price of six J-10Cs

The fact is both Islamabad and New Delhi deployed a fast and furious arsenal of ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, glide bombs, and suicide drones to attack each other in a series of cross-border strikes, while at the same time confronted with the startling inneffectiveness of a great deal of their own air defense and anti-missile systems. No wonder both needed a ‘ceasefire’ – fast.

The predominant interpretation all across the globe does stand on solid facts. And those facts are profoundly game-changing: For the first time ever, Made-in-China weapons and equipment defeated similar-grade western weapons and hardware, not in a war gaming scenario, but in high-intensity air battle conditions. No amount of spin and glossy ads can compare with this practical demonstration by the Chinese military-industrial complex.

The J-10C, by the way, is not even a latest generation Chinese fighter; those would be the J-20 and J-35 (both 5th generation stealth fighters); the J-16 and J-15 (4.5 generation multirole fighters); and the 6th generation fighters (J-36 and J-50) still being tested.

Arguably, one of the best, concise explanations of the PAF/Chinese accomplishment was written by former PLA Air Force Colonel and strategist Professor Wang Xiangsui. He attributes it to a triad: mastery of systems warfare – as in highly integrated and synchronized Chinese air combat systems, Pakistani pilot competence, and preparedness for war. What PAF did, he reasons, emulates what China has been doing: investing in 6th-generation fighters, DF-17 missiles, and quantum satellites.

Further solid analyses by military expert Zhang Xuefeng and military expert Bai Mengchen complement in detail Wang’s conceptual framework.

When Hindutva meets Zionism 

So what was this lightning war all about? It was not only about the intractable Kashmir problem inherited from the British Raj. As much as there are plenty of repulsive aspects inherent to both the Hindutva fanatics around Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the ghastly Pakistani junta-in-charge who – illegally – imprisoned Pakistan’s sitting Prime Minister Imran Khan, such a war can only profit those usual suspects bent on unleashing various degrees of Hybrid War and Divide and Rule across the Global South.

Both India and Pakistan are permanent members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). Their dispute could have been managed at the SCO table, with Russia, China, and Iran present to mediate and placate. Instead, Moscow and Tehran acted independently and bilaterally, both trying their own way to instill some sense in the belligerents as mediators. Their success is debatable.

India is also – in theory – a top BRICS member, one of the founders of the multipolar powerhouse. It boasts an excellent strategic relationship with Russia and a geoeconomic relationship with the new BRICS+ West Asian power, Iran. To pit India against Pakistan is to pit New Delhi against Beijing, which fully supports Islamabad via the flagship New Silk Roads project, CPEC (China-Pakistan Economic Corridor). So the war can also be viewed as an attack on BRICS from the inside.

It was so easy to have both India and Pakistan’s so-called “elites” fall into the trap. One just needs to manipulate cheap “national pride” emotions – and the usual suspects are masters of that domain.

The Big Picture gets even murkier when we see that New Delhi, always insecure because, unlike the Chinese, it has not buried its own “century of humiliation” vis a vis Anglo power, is still wobbling between deeper geoeconomic integration with Russia – and China – while relying on defense and security from the Washington–Tel Aviv axis.

Hindutva and Zionism meet in more ways than one. India uses Heron and Searcher Israeli drones to patrol its borders, as well as Spike anti-tank missiles. Israeli advisors have trained Indian intel ops. Israeli cybersecurity firms help New Delhi track espionage threats and assorted “insurgencies.”

Junaid S. Ahmad, the director of the Center for the Study of Islam and Decolonization (CSID) in Islamabad, takes it a step further. He directly points to “Gaza in the Himalayas” – with the Modi government embroiled in a “fantasy war” over Kashmir.

With India importing vast swathes of war tech equipment, Ahmad argues, “Zionism and Hindutva do not merely share tactics – they share a cosmology: a belief that supremacy is sacred, and conquest is redemption,” with Muslims in Gaza branded as “Hamas sympathizers” finding the equivalent in Kashmiris branded as “terror-adjacent.”

Ahmad correctly identifies Hindutva as a “supremacist theology,” with a Hindu state “purified of difference – be it Muslims, Christians, or Dalits.” How can that possibly be accepted by the BRICS ethos?

The 2025 India–Pakistan war may go down in history because of the notorious air battle and the Bollywood antics – a messy post-modernist interpolation of tech warfare, psychological operations, information warfare, and cognitive dissonance. It stood casually, for a few days, as a global reality show and entertainment spectacular rather than an actual war. And that’s worrying enough, because it masks deep troubles inside systemically troubled India.

What does the Bharat concept – the new official name for India – really entail? Bharat refers to Emperor Bharata, identified as the first conqueror of the whole Indian subcontinent. Very Israeli-style, a Bharata Empire mural has since 2023 been showcased in the Indian Parliament, directly incorporating territories that belong to Pakistan and Bangladesh.

So what can be realistically interpreted as “terrorism” under a Bharat lens, really? All Kashmiris, Pakistanis, and Bangladeshis may be categorized as such? The actual leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) parent organization, the Rashtrapati Bhagwat, insists that the “Bharata Empire” will inevitably come to fruition. In parallel, Indian media went into a frenzy promoting the independence of Balochistan from Pakistan.

Who wins out of all this strife? Certainly not Indians themselves. Certainly not BRICS. Only the usual Divide and Rule suspects.

The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of The Cradle.

The post India–Pakistan War: The Winners and the Losers appeared first on LewRockwell.

One of the ways that brutal right-wing Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet would terrorize the Chilean people into patriotic submission to his authority was by disappearing people. This was different from simply torturing and executing them. He and his goons certainly did that too. But disappearing people was different. With executions and bodies, families at least had certainty with respect to what had happened to their loved one. With disappearances, they never could be certain that their loved one really was dead. There was always a small part of people that retained some amount of hope that maybe — just maybe — their loved one would show up after being released from years or decades in some prison. It was a brutal way to psychologically torture the family members of the person who had been disappeared and everyone else in society.

In a sense, disappearing people is what the U.S. government has been doing with immigrants that it is sending to El Salvador. Once U.S. officials deliver people into the clutches of El Salvador’s brutal dictatorial regime, the U.S. government ostensibly loses control over them. At that point, people are taken to the country’s infamous terrorism confinement center where they are subjected to torture and indefinite detention and even the possibility of extra-judicial execution.

Equally important, the inmate is denied any contact with the outside world. His family does not know his condition. For all they know, he could be dead. He has been disappeared into the bowels of the terrorist confinement center for as long as El Salvador’s dictatorial regime wants him there.

In an article in the Los Angeles Times, one of the 110,000 people who have been incarcerated in El Salvador is 37-year-old René Mauricio Tadeo Serrano, who was arrested in 2022 while working at a factory. His mother, Maria Serrano, says that she has not heard from him for nearly three years. According to the Times article, “On a recent morning, Serrano stood outside the prosecutor’s office begging for information on her son’s case, alongside dozens of other mothers whose children have disappeared.”

Three years! Imagine sitting in this brutal prison and not receiving visitors, including your very own family. Imagine not knowing whether you’ll ever get out. That’s assuming, of course, that Serrano is still alive.

It’s worth mentioning that the people who the U.S. government is disappearing into the Salvadoran system for an undefined period of time have not been convicted of any crime, either in the United States or in El Salvador.

Unfortunately, El Salvador’s system of disappearing people is now our system too. That’s because of the partnership that the U.S. government has entered into with El Salvador’s brutal dictatorship.

At the risk of belaboring the obvious, that was not the type of system envisioned by our American ancestors who founded our nation. In fact, it was the Allende-Bukele type of system that our ancestors fiercely opposed.

That’s why our American ancestors demanded the enactment of the Bill of Rights immediately after the Constitution was adopted. They wanted to make it clear that the American system would never become an Allende-Bukele system. Their mindset was clearly reflected in the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Eighth Amendments, which guaranteed that what is being done in El Salvador and what was done in Chile under Pinochet would never happen here in the United States.

That’s how we got due process of law, trial by jury, the right to a speedy trial, right to counsel, the presumption of innocence, protection against cruel and unusual punishments, and other protections, along with the writ of habeas corpus, which has been called the linchpin of a free society.

Many people in El Salvador love Bukele and his brutal system. Indeed, many right-wing Americans do too, just as they loved Pinochet and his brutal system. That’s because they don’t care about freedom as much as they care about being kept “safe.” Thus, like people throughout history, they are eager and willing to trade their liberty for the pretense of safety. But as one Salvadoran put it, “We used to be afraid of the gangs. Now we’re afraid of the state.” In other words, the chickens who eagerly and willingly enter into their cages to be kept safe finally start realizing that being guarded by the fox comes with problems.

Appellate Judge Alex Kosinski once pointed out that people who surrender their guns will only make that mistake once. The reason is that once they have surrendered their guns, their regime will never permit them to get them back in order to be able to make the mistake again.

The same argument applies to civil liberties. If Americans surrender their civil liberties for the pretense of safety or security, they will likely find that they will only make that mistake once, especially after a few hundred of them have been disappeared into the bowels of the terrorism confinement center of El Salvador or some other brutal dictatorial regime. At that point, many people will immediately go silent or, even worse, suddenly becomes ardent supporters of the system, as they did in Chile and as they have done in El Salvador.

Reprinted with permission from Future of Freedom Foundation.

The post Disappearing People appeared first on LewRockwell.

Note: In my opinion neither Putin nor Trump are engaged in “peace negotiations” for the purpose of ending the military conflict in Ukraine.  Putin’s purpose is to use negotiations to achieve a Great Power Agreement, a New Yalta.  Putin says the purpose of the negotiations is to solve the “root cause of the conflict,” which is the absence of a Great Power Agreement.  For Trump the purpose is to withdraw US focus, money and weapons and to concentrate them on China, which is regarded as Washington’s more dangerous and powerful enemy.

It is amazing how difficult it is for the Western foreign policy community and media to recognize and acknowledge facts.  Generally speaking, analysts who tell you the difference between the truth and the narrative are brushed aside. All sorts of dismissive names are applied to us few, and false narratives serving agendas prevail. Policymakers themselves end up believing the false narratives, and this raises the risks of dangerous miscalculations.

For example, one of the most dangerous of the false narratives is that the slowness of Russia’s military advance against Ukraine is the consequence of Russian military weakness, high Russian battlefield casualties, the vulnerability of the Russian economy to US sanctions, and Putin’s unrealistic expectation to be regarded by Ukrainians as a liberator.  

The truth is entirely different.  Every time Putin endorses negotiations, he emphasizes that they must address the “root cause” of the conflict.  The root cause is the absence of a Great Power Agreement.  Putin is using a long drawn out war that the West tires of to initiate “peace negotiations” that Putin hopes to turn into a Great Power Agreement like the one he and his foreign minister failed to achieve in the winter of 2021-2022.

Washington policymakers have concluded that Russia’s weakness allows the US to withdraw from Ukraine and turn the war over to Europeans, while Washington gears up to deal with the more dangerous enemy–China.  Failed Ukraine peace negotiations are the intended excuse for Trump washing his hands and walking away.  What it signifies is Washington’s refocusing on China as the most dangerous adversary. 

It is my opinion that China is not an adversary any more than Russia and Iran are, but the narrative demands that they are adversaries. The American military/security complex cannot exist without adversaries.  That is the reason America has adversaries. Without adversaries what would the CIA, NSA, Defense Intelligence Agency, think tanks such as the Center for Strategic and International Studies, organizations such as the Council on Foreign Relations, university international studies departments, and publications such as Foreign Affairs do?  The United States has massive vested interests in having adversaries, the more dangerous the better.  

The question has arisen:  How does the US deal with so many adversaries. Formerly, we were assured that we could defeat all adversaries simultaneously.  Today it is recognized that we cannot.  Wess Mitchell in a recent article in Foreign Affairs says it is the policy of the Trump administration to sequence its conflicts. As Washington regards Russia as the weaker of its two main “adversaries,” Washington is turning the Ukraine conflict over to its European puppets while Washington takes on China.

Wess Mitchell, a former Trump  senior defense department official, wipes out the narratives and tells us the policy. And no one other than John Helper and myself have commented on it.  

Here is Secretary of State Marco Rubio telling the US Senate yesterday what I have told you, what John Helmer has told you, and what Wess Mitchell has told you:  The purpose of the Ukraine “peace negotiations” is for the US to exit the conflict and focus on China.  Here are Rubio’s words:

The war against China, Secretary of State Marco Rubio told a Senate committee hearing on Tuesday (May 20) – is now the strategic priority for the US. Implementing it requires sequencing Washington’s wars. “Every minute we spend, every dollar we spend on this conflict in Europe [Ukraine] is distracting both our focus and our resources away from a potential for a much more serious and much more cataclysmic confrontation in the Indo-Pacific…they are related but they’re related both ways — they’re related on the one hand by the precedent that it could set, but they’re also related by the fact that every minute that we spend on this [Ukraine] conflict that cannot be won by military means,  every resource that’s expended into it [Ukraine] is money and time that’s not being spent on preventing a much more serious confrontation from a global perspective in the Indo-Pacific.”  Rubio clearly states that the prime target is China.

You can watch and hear Rubio speak here,  at the 53 minute 51 second mark.

In my judgment based on the knowledge I have at the present time, Putin and the Russian foreign policy commentators do not understand what is afoot.  Putin is lost in hopes that peace negotiations can be turned into a Great Power Agreement, a new Yalta. That would be a greater achievement than merely winning a military conflict with Ukraine and, therefore, is worth the sacrifices of Russian troops in a conflict in which Putin prevents a victory, as a victory would prevent the negotiations that Putin imagines could become a Great Power Agreement. 

If Putin had immediately smashed Ukraine, Russia would be regarded as a Great Power and would have obtained its Great Power Agreement.  Instead, Putin created the image of a weak Russia that can be sidelined to Europe while Washington takes on China.

See this, this, this and this.

The post America’s Real Foreign Policy appeared first on LewRockwell.

Civilizations are impermanent, according to optimists. Simple accumulations of wealth and power are bound to fail, according to pessimists. I am somewhere in between, a firm believer that nothing can be sustained over the long term, with human fallibility precipitating the final collapse. The greatest of all early civilization was that of Athens. No society since 450 B.C. has even come close to matching it. What country or state could match philosophers such as Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, playwrights such as Sophocles, Aeschylus, Euripides, and Aristophanes, artist-architects like Phidias, and leaders such as Pericles? Not to mention military geniuses like Themistocles and Miltiades. The Athenians were so wise that at times they elected leaders by drawing lots. They instinctively knew that power corrupts, hence they drew lots and the winners were top bananas for one year only. Yet this perfect society of about 30,000 lasted for a few generations at best. Sparta, and ambition to expand, ended the greatest civic experiment ever.

Sparta, of course, lasted even less. Famous throughout history for its doomed stand at Thermopylae, and immortalized as the epitome of martial prowess, this bravest of all societies simply ran out of men. (My mother, grandmother, and grandfather and their grandparents, and their grandparents, were all pure Spartans, and I’m rather proud of that.) Alexander the Great conquered most of the known world but died too young to leave an Alexandrian culture behind.

“At some point civilizations resemble the human body. Age cannot be denied, nor can death.”

Then came Rome’s time, which lasted close to 1,000 years. It ended due to overstretch, and, as Gibbon said when asked why Rome fell, “We should be asking why did she last as long as she did.” A civilization whose growth has exceeded the limits of what is physically possible and whose development has engendered social, fiscal, and political problems with no feasible solutions is bound to fail. At some point civilizations resemble the human body. Age cannot be denied, nor can death. Byzantium came next and lasted almost as long but never had the imprint of Rome as the Byzantine Empire was always under threat and attack from the east and the west. But it oversaw the spread of Christianity, something no other civilization ever accomplished. Byzantium collapsed in 1453, and the Ottomans came next in line.

Mind you, until now I’ve been writing about empires, easily mixed up with civilizations. The Chinese civilization has been around forever, as has the European one. The French and British empires were just offshoots of the latter. As is—yes, you guessed it—the American one, now in its peak and with the inevitable flatterers predicting it is here to stay.

Both the British and French empires are now seen as an evil, especially by the left, but in my book both empires civilized as well as exploited. And both Brits and Frogs learned about owning and selling slaves from African and Arab slavers. As did the Spanish, whose empire actually covered most of the New World. Hypocrisy about the past is ever present, and history is written by those with an axe to grind, mostly if not completely by those on the left. Which brings me to the American empire or civilization, although the latter naming may raise loud guffaws by ever-envious Europeans.

America is not yet 250 years old but remains the global bastion of personal freedom. American boys have twice gone over to Europe to fight and liberate countries, not for conquest, but for the simple belief that freedom is worth dying for. Freedom, of course, is always under threat, especially freedom of speech, with woke doing its best to control it. Woke was basically antiwhite, and despite Trump’s efforts, only last week right here in these United States, I witnessed an example of the war being waged against the white man.

White Afrikaner farmers, descendants of the Boers, who actually founded South Africa 500 years ago, have been under murderous attack since white apartheid gave up power to the black majority 35 years ago. Their once-upon-a-time profitable farms have been taken away without compensation and run into the ground by the blacks. Because white farmers had their farms taken away, The Donald allowed sixty of them to immigrate to these shores. And guess what? All hell broke loose among media pundits of the left-wing persuasion, angry that sixty poor whites had landed on these shores. “Why these whites after the pausing of other refugee programs?” 12 to 20 million illegal mostly brown and blacks in the country, and the media pundits are screaming about sixty white farmers who are here to work. Nice! No country whose fourth estate works tirelessly against the common good can survive, says the great Greek philosopher Taki. America has allowed millions of Central Americans and millions of Africans to these shores, and one day soon whites will be a minority. That is when the great American experiment in liberty will come to an end. According to the great Greek philosopher, that is.

This article was originally published on Taki’s Magazine.

The post End of an Era appeared first on LewRockwell.

Writes Tim McGraw:

Start the video at the 38:00 mark. The USA is bankrupt. The bond market is demanding higher interest on government bonds. Foreigners and Americans aren’t buying enough of the bonds, so the Fed will just create currency to buy the bonds. This leads to inflation of the money supply and a recession since the government is eating up all the capital (credit) available in the country.

We went through this in the 1970s. They ended with the depression of 1981-82 and interest rates of 21%. Happy Days are Here Again (if you have any savings.) For everyone else, tough times.

The post Representative Thomas Massie Interview on Redacted appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, Johnny Kramer. 

Interesting Times with Ross Douthat

 

The post Robot Plumbers, Robot Armies, and Our Imminent A.I. Future appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, John Frahm.

The American Conservative

 

The post Andalusian Leader Praises Farmers—While Bulldozing Their Fields appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, John Smith. 

Caitlin Johnstone

 

The post The Western Media Brought Gaza To This Point appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, John Smith. 

Antiwar.com Original

 

The post Israeli Hatred for Children in Gaza Is Shocking appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, David Martin.

The Unz Review

 

The post May 22, Forrestal Assassination Day appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, David Martin.

The post Scott Ritter Takes Trump’s Measure on Gaza, Ukraine appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, John Smith. 

Stars and Stripes

 

The post Truman engaged in ‘largest airstrike in the history of the world’ from an aircraft carrier, top admiral says appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, John Smith.  

Haaretz.com

 

The post Destroying Gaza ‘With Love’: Israel’s New YogiNazis appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, David Krall. 

The post Kash Patel & Dan Bongino Repeat Epstein Suicide LIE! appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, Saleh Abdullah. 

LifeZette

 

The post Feds Caught in Wild $40B Credit Card Spending Spree on Crazy Stuff You Won’t Believe appeared first on LewRockwell.

The post Prosperity Or Poverty? House Hands Trump His ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ appeared first on LewRockwell.

Ricordo a tutti i lettori che su Amazon potete acquistare il mio nuovo libro, “Il Grande Default”: https://www.amazon.it/dp/B0DJK1J4K9 

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.

____________________________________________________________________________________

da Bitcoin Magazine

(Versione audio della traduzione disponibile qui: https://open.substack.com/pub/fsimoncelli/p/il-catalizzatore-che-potrebbe-standardizzare)

Oggi volevo scrivere di una rivelazione sull'adozione, la standardizzazione e la normalizzazione di Bitcoin che ho avuto la scorsa settimana. Mentre riflettevo su cosa sarebbe necessario affinché ricevesse una spinta considerevole all'adozione negli Stati Uniti, mi è venuto in mente uno scenario del genere, che potrebbe non essere molto lontano.

E contrariamente a quanto si pensi, non ha nulla a che fare con la regolamentazione, la tassazione, gli standard contabili, o con qualsiasi altro aspetto di cui si parla erroneamente riguardo tale tema. Come ho imparato in prima persona, mentre facevo qualche ricerca su Bitcoin il mese scorso, nessuna di queste cose conta davvero. La natura decentralizzata della rete implica che non abbia bisogno di nessuno di questi elementi per prosperare. L'ho sottolineato nel mio articolo della scorsa settimana intitolato Io, Bitcoin.

Ma quello che ho anche sottolineato è che esso sopravviverà se le persone lo vorranno. Chi conosce la rete capisce che circa 20.000 nodi globali significano che la rete rimarrà in piedi indipendentemente da quale politico, giurisdizione o ente regolatore in tutto il mondo cerchi di ostacolarla. Fa parte dell'eleganza della rete stessa.

E tuttavia, dopo aver compreso tutto questo, mi chiedo: “Cosa accelererà così tanto questa adozione da farci passare da un punto di quasi non ritorno per Bitcoin a un punto significativo di seria velocità di fuga?” La risposta era proprio sotto il mio naso.

Quando ho scelto il titolo di quell'articolo è stato uno di quelli che ti vengono in mente d'istinto. A volte passo ore a cercare di capire quale titolo sia il più accattivante, mentre altre volte ce l'ho già pronto perché è chiarissimo cosa voglio dire.

Ma durante il fine settimana ero in giro e mi chiedevo dove avessi già sentito quella frase.

All'improvviso, mi è venuto in mente: in uno dei miei sketch comici preferiti, un gruppo di comici improvvisati di Filadelfia si è recato alle proteste di Occupy, scoppiate in seguito alla crisi economica del 2008. In più di un punto c'erano cartelli con su scritto “Why I Occupy”; in realtà era il nome di una parte del movimento Occupy. Ricordo che WhyIOccupy.org era la fonte di informazioni per una buona parte della popolazione arrabbiata dell'epoca; pensavano che qualsiasi ideologia fosse presente su quel sito web, fosse la loro particolare versione di soluzione alla crisi finanziaria.

Solo dopo averlo ricordato, ho pensato che nella prossima crisi finanziaria le persone avrebbero davvero avuto una legittima via d'uscita dal sistema. Bitcoin è quella via d'uscita. È ciò che le persone coinvolte nella frenesia per GameStop cercavano così disperatamente, che lo sapessero o no, ma non sono riuscite a trovare.

Mentre si consumava il fiasco di GameStop, ricordo di aver pensato tra me e me che c'erano troppe persone arrabbiate, ma che non avevano la minima idea del motivo. Nelle chat room e sui social media, a tutto si dava la colpa tranne che alle banche centrali. Queste persone erano furiose perché si sentivano raggirate: stavano reagendo, che ne fossero consapevoli o meno, all'aumento del divario di disuguaglianza, mentre loro faticavano ad arrivare a fine mese.

Ma quello che non sapevano era che la colpa non era di Ken Griffin, di Citadel o degli speculatori, bensì delle banche centrali.

Oggigiorno è diventato chiaro che le banche centrali hanno ulteriormente ampliato questo divario di disuguaglianza. È più chiaro perché l'inflazione è un fenomeno di dominio pubblico e comprensibile per tutti. Anche se non sanno perché si verifichi, la maggior parte delle persone ha una parvenza di comprensione del fatto che sia dovuto alle banche centrali che hanno fatto esplodere la massa monetaria negli ultimi quattro anni e poi, per aggiungere la beffa al danno, hanno mentito sulla transitorietà dell'inflazione.

E coloro che speravano di ripetere il successo di GameStop con nomi come AMC, ora sanno che una gestione tossica e un asset in perdita possono facilmente indebolire qualsiasi slancio in qualsiasi tipo di short squeeze, o FOMO, su qualsiasi azione. E sanno anche che broker e autorità di regolamentazione possono impedirgli di effettuare transazioni in qualsiasi momento lo ritengano opportuno.

Durante la prossima crisi finanziaria, che, a mio parere, non è poi così lontana, lo stesso gruppo di “poveri” arrabbiati, si spera, attribuirà la colpa a chi ce l'ha davvero: alla politica monetaria. Dopotutto, l'inflazione è una tassa brutale per chi non se la può permettere ed è praticamente ininfluente per i super-ricchi. E questi ultimi diventano ancora più ricchi grazie al quantitative easing e alla stampa di moneta, che indirizzano una quantità sproporzionata di aiuti al mercato azionario, obbligazionario e immobiliare: asset che i ricchi possiedono e che le persone a basso reddito no.

Durante la stampa di denaro nel periodo della “pandemia”, mi chiedevo spesso: se le banche centrali avessero voluto stampare $5.000 miliardi, perché non dividerli equamente tra tutti gli abitanti e staccare un assegno per tutti? Dopotutto $5.000 miliardi divisi per 300 milioni di americani equivalgono a circa $16.500 a persona. Tralasciando il ragionamento sistemico, questa è una domanda piuttosto semplice e diretta. Se si vuole stimolare l'economia distribuendo denaro ovunque, perché non farlo equamente tra tutti i cittadini, invece di fare favoritismi?

Ma non è questo che è successo nel 2008 e non sarà questo che accadrà durante la prossima crisi finanziaria.

Quello che penso accadrà è che un nuovo gruppo di “poveri” sarà più informato sul funzionamento della politica monetaria, non solo a seguito del fiasco di GameStop, ma anche man mano che una nuova generazione più giovane avrà familiarizzato con le argomentazioni ideologiche a favore di Bitcoin. Prima ancora di iniziare a usarlo, una delle cose che mi piaceva era l'idea che stesse costringendo una generazione più giovane a comprendere l'economia Austriaca in un mondo in cui abbiamo praticamente abusato e sfruttato a morte i privilegi della MMT. Armata di questa nuova conoscenza, un'intera generazione di persone arrabbiate dovrà ancora una volta pagare il prezzo delle perdite socializzate di aziende nefaste e tossiche che hanno privatizzato i loro profitti. E questo avverrà in un contesto di crisi inflazionistica ancora vivida nelle loro menti. Questa volta non ci saranno dubbi su chi stia erodendo, attraverso tassazione e inflazione, il potere d'acquisto e la ricchezza per cui hanno lavorato.

Il che mi porta al punto: Bitcoin potrebbe benissimo rappresentare la rampa d'uscita verso cui milioni di persone arrabbiate guarderanno a una situazione del genere.

A differenza di GameStop, Bitcoin ha la possibilità di incidere su un cambiamento radicale, perché il successo della rete è legato alla sua crescita. Questo significa che ogni singola persona che decide di possedere Bitcoin, o di informarsi su di esso, diventa parte di una profezia che si autoavvera sul successo della rete. E, naturalmente, l'ideologia alla base del successo della rete è saldamente radicata nel dare potere a persone proprio come loro: persone stanche di vedere quel poco che guadagnano portato via silenziosamente dall'oscura macchina finanziaria inflazionistica.

Molte persone che hanno partecipato alla frenesia di GameStop, comprese le “scimmie” di Wall Street Bets su Reddit e milioni di altri trader al dettaglio, saranno costrette a rendersi conto che Bitcoin ha tutti gli aspetti positivi di ciò che hanno cercato di ottenere in passato, ma senza gli aspetti negativi. Non c'è un management che possa rovinarlo, non c'è una controparte che possa diluirli, non c'è nessuno che possa disattivare il pulsante di acquisto e non c'è sostanzialmente alcun organo di governo o di regolamentazione che impedisca alla rete di avere successo se le persone lo desiderano. Diventa la libertà digitale che tutte queste persone hanno cercato durante l'ultima crisi finanziaria, ma che non hanno trovato un modo efficace per manifestare.

Il 2008 è stato l'esempio di quella che è ormai la norma a Wall Street: ogni volta che la situazione precipita, la popolazione ne paga le conseguenze, si infuria e brandisce le torce. Ma poi, alla fine, la situazione si placa e la gente torna a badare ai fatti propri.

“Sto iniziando a sentirmi un po' meglio riguardo a tutta questa faccenda”, dice John Tuld alla fine del film Margin Call, a significare che più le cose cambiano, più restano le stesse.

Banchieri e politici hanno fatto affidamento su questo schema e l'hanno perpetuato per decenni. È, in sostanza, ciò che permette l'errore di giudizio da parte di cittadini americani comuni che pagano il prezzo dei fallimenti degli ultra-ricchi.

E così, la prossima volta che ciò accadrà, gli investitori potrebbero legittimamente avere la possibilità di interrompere questo ciclo per la prima volta in mezzo secolo adottando Bitcoin. Avrebbero la possibilità di escluderli dal sistema contro cui si sono scagliati. I flussi di capitale verso Bitcoin e in uscita dagli asset finanziari tradizionali invieranno un messaggio ai principali istituti finanziari che reagiscono solo all'opportunità di applicare commissioni (si veda la loro nuova ossessione per Bitcoin ora che ci sono gli ETF). Allo stesso tempo questi flussi potrebbero contribuire alla profezia autoavverante del successo della rete, grazie alla sua ridondanza che funge essenzialmente da barometro per la salute della rete stessa.

Non è affatto garantito, ma se il sistema dovesse fallire di nuovo e la persona media cercasse una vera arma per combatterlo (e una che sia letteralmente programmata per essere il Braille tecnologico delle frasi “l'unione fa la forza” e “il potere al popolo”), Bitcoin potrebbe emergere e inaugurare un'epoca che in futuro potrebbe essere considerata il Rinascimento della sua adozione.

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

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

Thanks, David Martin.

The Left’s Racism on Full Display

 

The post The Left’s Racism on Full Display appeared first on LewRockwell.

Even some of our brightest scientific minds are projecting that there is absolutely no positive future for our civilization if we stay on our current course.  Perhaps one of the reasons why our society has become so obsessed with short-term results is because most of us can’t bear to think about the long-term consequences of our actions.  I have a website that focuses on “economic collapse”, but it isn’t just the economy that is headed for catastrophe.  Virtually every aspect of our society is coming apart at the seams all around us, and the era that we are moving into will be more nightmarish than most people would dare to imagine.  But our political leaders continue to insist that everything is going to work out just fine somehow, and most people choose to believe them.

This week, an old MIT study from 1972 that projected that our civilization will collapse at some point during the 21st century made headlines on several major news sites…

In 1972, a team of MIT scientists got together to study the risks of civilizational collapse. Their system dynamics model published by the Club of Rome identified impending ‘limits to growth’ (LtG) that meant industrial civilization was on track to collapse sometime within the 21st century, due to overexploitation of planetary resources.

In particular, the study identified a period of time “around 2040” when societal collapse would be very likely…

The study was published in the Yale Journal of Industrial Ecology in November 2020 and is available on the KPMG website. It concludes that the current business-as-usual trajectory of global civilization is heading toward the terminal decline of economic growth within the coming decade—and at worst, could trigger societal collapse by around 2040.

Of course events are not going to transpire exactly as they foresaw, but as far as the big picture is concerned they were right on the money.

Our society is now in the process of collapsing all around us, and you can see evidence of this everywhere that you look.

This week, civil unrest is causing widespread chaos in the streets in Cuba, South Africa, Beirut and Paris.  We have entered a period of time when it seems like people are perpetually angry, and the wild scenes that are playing out around the globe are absolutely shocking.

Here in the United States, we are in the midst of a crazy crime wave.  Murder rates in our major cities rose by an average of 30 percent in 2020, and they are up another 24 percent so far in 2024.  Extreme violence has become a way of life in many of our largest metropolitan areas, and this is particularly true in the city of Chicago…

A Chicago rapper died after suffering as many as 64 bullet wounds to his head and other parts of his body in what police are calling an ambush shooting just as he was released from jail.

Londre Sylvester, 31, who is known by his stage name KTS Dre, was one of three people who were shot just outside Cook County Jail in the Little Village section of Chicago on Saturday.

Chicago police seem powerless to stop the endless violence, but of course the same could be said about many other police departments around the country.

The streets of our biggest cities are becoming war zones, and what we have experienced so far is just the beginning.

Meanwhile, we are dealing with the worst epidemic of illegal drugs in our history.  If you can believe it, drug overdose deaths were up nearly 30 percent last year…

Drug-overdose deaths in the U.S. surged nearly 30% in 2020, the tragic result of a deadlier supply and the destabilizing effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, according to preliminary federal data and public health officials.

The estimated 93,331 deaths from drug overdoses last year, a record high, represent the sharpest annual increase in at least three decades, and compare with an estimated toll of 72,151 deaths in 2019, according to provisional overdose-drug data released Wednesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Drug overdose deaths were already at an all-time high coming into 2020.

So for the number of deaths to rise 30 percent above that level in just one year is really, really tragic.

At the same time, our system of public education continues to rapidly deteriorate.

Earlier today, I was shocked to learn that 41 percent of all high school students in Baltimore have a grade point average that is below 1.0…

Project Baltimore obtained a chart assembled by Baltimore City Schools. The chart shows the average GPA for every high school grade in the city – freshman through senior. In the first three quarters of this past school year, according to the chart, 41% of all Baltimore City high school students, earned below a 1.0 grade point average. In other words, nearly half of the 20,500 public high school students in Baltimore earned less than a D average.

“It’s heartbreaking,” said Patterson. “If almost half of our kids are failing, what options do they have after high school? This is really disheartening. It’s sad to see this.”

I don’t just want to single out Baltimore, because that isn’t fair.

All across this once great country of ours, public schools are completely and utterly failing our kids.  The vast majority of our high school graduates cannot read, write or speak coherently, and that simply should not be happening in the wealthiest nation on the entire planet.

Read the Whole Article

The post All Warnings Have Come True! appeared first on LewRockwell.