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“War is not healthy for children and other living things,” reads a poster titled “Primer” created by the late artist Lorraine Schneider for an art show at New York’s Pratt Institute in 1965. Printed in childlike lowercase letters, the words interspersed between the leaves of a simply rendered sunflower, it was an early response to America’s war in Vietnam. “She just wanted to make something that nobody could argue with,” recalled Schneider’s youngest daughter, Elisa Kleven, in an article published earlier this year. Six decades later, Schneider’s hypothesis has consistently been borne out.

According to Save the Children, about 468 million children — about one of every six young people on this planet — live in areas affected by armed conflict. Verified attacks on children have tripled since 2010. Last year, global conflicts killed three times as many children as in 2022. “Killings and injuries of civilians have become a daily occurrence,” U.N. human rights chief Volker Türk commented in June when he announced the 2023 figures. “Children shot at. Hospitals bombed. Heavy artillery launched on entire communities.”

It took four decades for the United Nations Security Council to catch up to Schneider. In 2005, that global body identified — and condemned — six grave violations against children in times of war: killing or maiming; recruitment into or use by armed forces and armed groups; attacks on schools or hospitals; rape or other grave acts of sexual violence; abduction; and the denial of humanitarian access to them. Naming and shaming, however, has its limits. Between 2005 and 2023, more than 347,000 grave violations against youngsters were verified across more than 30 conflict zones in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America, according to UNICEF, the U.N. agency for children. The actual number is undoubtedly far higher.

From the extreme damage explosive weapons do to tiny bodies to the lasting effects of acute deprivation on developing brains, children are particularly vulnerable in times of conflict. And once subjected to war, they carry its scars, physical and mental, for a lifetime. A recent study by Italian researchers emphasized what Schneider intuitively knew — that “war inflicts severe violations on the fundamental human rights of children.” The complex trauma of war, they found, “poses a grave threat to the emotional and cognitive development of children, increasing the risk of physical and mental illnesses, disabilities, social problems, and intergenerational consequences.”

Despite such knowledge, the world continues to fail children in times of conflict. The United States was, for instance, one of the members of the U.N. Security Council that condemned those six grave wartime violations against children. Yet the Biden administration has greenlit tens of billions of dollars in weapons sales to Israel, while U.S. munitions have repeatedly been used in attacks on schools, that have become shelters, predominantly for women and children, in the Gaza Strip. “Make no mistake, the United States is fully, fully, fully supportive of Israel,” President Joe Biden said recently, even though his administration acknowledged the likelihood that Israel had used American weaponry in Gaza in violation of international law.

And Gaza is just one conflict zone where, at this very moment, children are suffering mightily. Let TomDispatch offer you a hellscape tour of this planet, a few stops in a world of war to glimpse just what today’s conflicts are doing to the children trapped by them.

Gaza

The Gaza Strip is the most dangerous place on Earth to be a child, according to UNICEF. Israel has killed around 17,000 children there since the current Gaza War began in October 2023, according to local authorities. And almost as horrific, about 26,000 kids have reportedly lost one or both parents. At least 19,000 of them are now orphans or are otherwise without a caregiver. One million children in Gaza have also been displaced from their homes since October 2023.

In addition, Israel is committing “scholasticide,” the deliberate and systematic destruction of the Palestinian education system in Gaza, according to a recent report by the Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, a Palestinian advocacy group. More than 659,000 children there have been out of school since the beginning of the war. The conflict in Gaza will set children’s education back by years and risks creating a generation of permanently traumatized Palestinians, according to a new study by the University of Cambridge, the Centre for Lebanese Studies, and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East.

Even before the current war, an estimated 800,000 children in Gaza — about 75% of the kids there — were in need of mental health and psychosocial support. Now, UNICEF estimates that more than one million of them — in effect, every kid in the Gaza Strip — needs such services. In short, you can no longer be a healthy child there.

Lebanon

Over four days in late September, as Israel ramped up its war in Lebanon, about 140,000 children in that Mediterranean nation were displaced. Many arrived at shelters showing signs of deep distress, according to Save the Children staff. “Children are telling us that it feels like danger is everywhere, and they can never be safe. Every loud sound makes them jump now,” said Jennifer Moorehead, Save the Children’s country director in Lebanon. “Many children’s lives, rights and futures have already been turned upside down and now their capacity to cope with this escalating crisis has been eroded.”

All schools in that country have been closed, adversely affecting every one of its 1.5 million children. More than 890 children have also been injured in Israeli strikes over the last year, the vast majority — more than 690 — since August 20th, according to the Lebanese Ministry of Public Health. Given that Israel has recently extended attacks from the south of the country to the Lebanese capital, Beirut, they will undoubtedly be joined by all too many others.

Sudan

Children have suffered mightily since heavy fighting erupted in Khartoum, Sudan’s capital, in April 2023 between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces. More than 18,000 people have reportedly been killed and close to 10 million have been forced to flee their homes since the civil war there began. Almost half of the displaced Sudanese are — yes! — children, more than 4.6 million of them, making the conflict there the largest child displacement crisis in the world.

More than 16 million Sudanese children are also facing severe food shortages. In the small town of Tawila in that country’s North Darfur state, at least 10 children die of hunger every day, according to a report last month in the Guardian. The population of the town has ballooned as tens of thousands fled El Fasher, North Darfur’s besieged capital. “We anticipate that the exact number of children dying of hunger is much higher,” Aisha Hussien Yagoub, the head of the health authority for the local government in Tawila told the Guardian. “Many of those displaced from El Fasher are living far from our clinic and are unable to reach it.”

More than 10 million Sudanese children, or 50% of that country’s kids, have been within about three miles of the frontlines of the conflict at some point over the past year. According to Save the Children, this marks the highest rate of exposure in the world. In addition, last year, there was a five-fold increase in grave violations of Sudanese children’s rights compared to 2022.

Syria

More than 30,200 children have been killed since the Syrian Civil War began in 2011, according to the Syrian Network for Human Rights. Another 5,200 children were forcibly disappeared or are under arrest.

However little noticed, Syria remains the world’s largest refugee crisis. More than 14 million Syrians have been forced from their homes. More than 7.2 million of them are now estimated to be internally displaced in a country where nine in 10 people exist below the poverty line. An entire generation of children has lived under the constant threat of violence and emotional trauma since 2011. It’s been the only life they’ve ever known.

“Services have already collapsed after 14 years of conflict,” Rasha Muhrez, Save the Children’s Response Director in Syria, said last month. “The humanitarian crisis in Syria is at a record level.” More than two-thirds of the population of Syria, including about 7.5 million children, require humanitarian assistance. Nearly half of the 5.5 million school-aged children — 2.4 million between the ages of five and 17 — remain out of school, according to UNICEF. About 7,000 schools have been destroyed or damaged.

Recently, Human Rights Watch sounded the alarm about the recruitment of children, “apparently for eventual transfer to armed groups,” by a youth organization affiliated with the Kurdish-led Autonomous Administration for North and East Syria and the U.S.-backed Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, its military wing.

Ukraine

Child casualties in Ukraine jumped nearly 40% in the first half of this year, bringing the total number of children killed or injured in nearly 900 days of war there to about 2,200, according to Save the Children. “This year, violence has escalated with a new intensity, with missiles, drones, and bombs causing an alarming rise in children being injured or killed in daylight blasts,” said Stephane Moissaing, Deputy Country Director for Save the Children in Ukraine. “The suffering for families will not stop as long as explosive weapons are sweeping through populated towns and villages across Ukraine.”

There are already 2.9 million Ukrainian children in need of assistance — and the situation is poised to grow worse in the months ahead. Repeated Russian attacks on the country’s infrastructure could result in power outages of up to 18 hours a day this winter, leaving many of Ukraine’s children freezing and without access to critical services. “The lack of power and all its knock-on effects this winter could have a devastating impact not only on children’s physical health but on their mental well-being and education,” said Munir Mammadzade, UNICEF representative to Ukraine. “Children’s lives are consumed by thoughts of survival, not childhood.”

Ukraine also estimates that Russian authorities have forcibly removed almost 20,000 children from occupied territories there since the February 2022 invasion. A Financial Times investigation found that Ukrainian children who were abducted and taken to Russia early in the war were put up for adoption on a Russian government-linked website. One of them was shown with a false Russian identity. Another was listed using a Russian version of their Ukrainian name. There was no mention of the children’s Ukrainian backgrounds.

West and Central Africa

Conflicts have been raging in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) for decades. World Vision has called the long-running violence there “one of the worst child protection crises in the world.” A 2023 U.N. report on children and armed conflict documented 3,377 grave violations against children in the DRC. Of these, 46% involved the recruitment of children — some as young as five — by armed groups.

Violence and intercommunity tensions in the DRC have forced 1,457 schools to close this year alone, affecting more than 500,000 children. And sadly, that country is no anomaly. In May, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, or OCHA, reported that more than 5,700 schools in Burkina Faso had been closed due to insecurity, depriving more than 800,000 children of their educations. And by mid-2024, conflicts had shuttered more than 14,300 schools in 24 African countries, according to the Norwegian Refugee Council. That marks an increase of 1,100 closures compared to 2023. The 2024 closures were clustered in West and Central Africa, mainly in Burkina Faso, the DRC, Cameroon, Chad, Nigeria, and Niger. They have affected an estimated 2.8 million children.

“Education is under siege in West and Central Africa. The deliberate targeting of schools and the systemic denial of education because of conflict is nothing short of a catastrophe. Every day that a child is kept out of school is a day stolen from their future and from the future of their communities,” said Hassane Hamadou, the Norwegian Refugee Council’s Regional Director for West and Central Africa. “We urgently call on all parties to conflict to cease attacks on and occupation of schools and ensure that education is protected and prioritized.”

Feet of Clay

It’s been six decades since Lorraine Schneider unveiled her poster and her common-sense wisdom to the world. She’s been proven right at every turn, in every conflict across the entire planet. Everywhere that children (not to mention other living things) have been exposed to war, they have suffered. Children have been killed and maimed. They have been physically, psychologically, and educationally stunted, as well as emotionally wounded. They have been harmed, assaulted, and deprived. Their bodies have been torn apart. Their minds – the literal architecture of their brains – have been warped by war.

In the conflict zones mentioned above and so many others — from Myanmar to Yemen — the world is failing its children. What they have lost can never be “found” again. Survivors can go on, but there is no going back.

Schneider’s mother, Eva Art, was a self-taught sculptor who escaped pogroms in Ukraine by joining relatives in the United States as a child. She lost touch with her family during World War II, according to her daughter Kleven, and later discovered that her relatives had been killed, their entire shtetl (or small Jewish town) wiped out. To cope with her grief, Art made clay figurines of the dead of her hometown: a boy and his dog, an elderly woman knitting, a mother cradling a baby. And today, the better part of 100 years after the young Art was forced from her home by violence, children continue to suffer in the very same ways — and continue to turn to clay for solace.

Israa Al-Qahwaji, a mental health and psychosocial support coordinator for Save the Children in Gaza, shared the story of a young boy who survived an airstrike that resulted in the amputation of one of his hands, while also killing his father and destroying his home. In shock and emotionally withdrawn, the boy was unable to talk about the trauma. However, various therapeutic techniques allowed him to begin to open up, according to Al-Qahwaji. The child began to talk about games he could no longer play and how losing his hand had changed his relationship with his friends. In one therapy session, he was asked to mold something out of clay to represent a wish. With his remaining hand, he carefully shaped a house. After finishing the exercise, he turned to the counselor with a question that left Al-Qahwaji emotionally overwhelmed. “Now,” the boy asked, “will you bring my dad and give me my hand back?”

The post ‘Will You Bring My Dad and Give Me My Hand Back?’ appeared first on LewRockwell.

What has been revealed in the “Remdesivir Papers” will shock you to the core.

This compilation of documents, released by a military whistleblower, contains damning information on the hundreds of deaths and adverse events related to the clinical trials of a COVID antiviral.

Besides the compromise on the fundamental issue of informed consent, these files reveal concerning truths related to the methodology and processing of the product testing data among servicemembers.

Brad Miller gives viewers an in-depth analysis of this subject matter on “Defender In-Depth.”

The evidence presented in the video is of utmost significance.

Our thoughts are with Service Members, victims of Remdesevir.

“Writing for American Thinker, author Stella Paul once said, “Remdesivir may be the most despised drug in American history, earning the nickname ‘Run Death Is Near’ for its lethal record during COVID.”1

The Remdesivir Papers captures the essence of her statement for service members and veterans across the country.”

***

The fraud was known from the very outset when Remdesevir was launched in the months following the March 2020 Lockdown.

No action was taken to withdraw Remdesevir produced by Gilead Sciences Inc  a Company which was headed Donald Rumsfeld (1997-2001), who became Secretary of Defense (2001-2006) under the GWB administration

Prof. Michel Chossudovsky’s July 5, 2020 was article entitled:

LancetGate: “Scientific Corona Lies” and Big Pharma Corruption. Hydroxychloroquine versus Gilead’s Remdesivir

focussed on the suppression of hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) while promoting Remdesivir

“The studies respectively on Gilead Science’s Remdesivir and hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) were conducted simultaneously by Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH)”. Was there a conflict of interest.

Below is a revised version of the article published in Professor Chossudovsky’s eBook.

Corrupt Science: “There Is No Cure”

Suppression of Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ), A Cheap and Effective Drug 

from the eBook, The Worldwide Corona Crisis. Global Coup d’Etat Against Humanity by Prof. Michel Chossudovsky

The book is available in pdf. You can download it for free, click here (docsend).

ISBN: 978-0-9879389-3-0,  Year: 2022,  PDF Ebook,  Pages: 164, 15 Chapters

There was an ongoing battle to suppress hydroxychloroquine (HCQ), a cheap and effective drug for the treatment of COVID-19. The campaign against HCQ was carried out through slanderous political statements, media smears, not to mention an authoritative peer-reviewed “evaluation” published on May 22 by The Lancet, which was based on fake figures and test trials.

The study was allegedly based on data analysis of 96,032 patients hospitalized with COVID-19 between Dec 20, 2019, and April 14, 2020 from 671 hospitals worldwide. The database had been fabricated. The objective was to kill the hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) cure on behalf of Big Pharma.

While The Lancet article was retracted, the media casually blamed “a tiny US-based company” named Surgisphere whose employees included “a sci-fi writer and adult content model” for spreading “flawed data” (Guardian). This Chicago-based outfit was accused of having misled both the WHO and national governments, inciting them to ban HCQ. None of those trial tests actually took place.

Screenshot from The Lancet

.

While the blame was placed on Surgisphere, the unspoken truth (which neither the scientific community nor the media has acknowledged) is that the study was coordinated by Harvard professor Mandeep Mehra under the auspices of Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH), which is a partner of the Harvard Medical School.

When the scam was revealed, Dr. Mandeep Mehra, who holds the Harvey Distinguished Chair of Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, apologized:

“I have always performed my research in accordance with the highest ethical and professional guidelines. However, we can never forget the responsibility we have as researchers to scrupulously ensure that we rely on data sources that adhere to our high standards.

It is now clear to me that in my hope to contribute this research during a time of great need, I did not do enough to ensure that the data source was appropriate for this use. For that, and for all the disruptions – both directly and indirectly – I am truly sorry.” (emphasis added)

Mandeep R. Mehra, MD, MSC (official statement on BWH website)1

But that “truly sorry” note was just the tip of the iceberg. Why?

The studies respectively on Gilead Sciences’ remdesivir and on hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) were conducted simultaneously by Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH).

While The Lancet report (May 22, 2020) coordinated by Dr. Mandeep Mehra was intended “to kill” the legitimacy of HCQ as a cure of COVID-19, another important (related) study was being carried out (concurrently) at BWH pertaining to remdesivir on behalf of Gilead Sciences, Inc.

Dr. Francisco Marty, a specialist in Infectious Disease and Associate Professor at Harvard Medical School, was entrusted with coordination of the clinical trial tests of the antiviral medication remdesivir under Brigham’s contract with Gilead Sciences, Inc2:

“Brigham and Women’s Hospital began enrolling patients in two clinical trials for Gilead’s antiviral medication remdesivir. The Brigham is one of multiple clinical trial sites for a Gilead-initiated study of the drug in 600 participants with moderate coronavirus disease (COVID-19) and a Gilead-initiated study of 400 participants with severe COVID-19.

… If the results are promising, this could lead to FDA approval, and if they aren’t, it gives us critical information in the fight against COVID-19 and allows us to move on to other therapies.”

While Dr. Mandeep Mehra was not directly involved in the Gilead Remdesivir BWH study under the supervision of his colleague Dr. Francisco Marty, he nonetheless had contacts with Gilead Sciences, Inc:

“He participated in a conference sponsored by Gilead in early April 2020 as part of the Covid-19 debate” (France Soir, May 23, 2020)3

What was the intent of his (failed) study? To undermine the legitimacy of hydroxychloroquine?

According to France Soir, in a report published after The Lancet retraction:

The often evasive answers produced by Dr Mandeep R. Mehra, … professor at Harvard Medical School, did not produce confidence, fueling doubt instead about the integrity of this retrospective study and its results. (France Soir, June 5, 2020)4

Was Dr. Mandeep Mehra in conflict of interest? (That is a matter for BWH and the Harvard Medical School to decide upon)

Read the Whole Article

The post Remdesivir Papers: Drug Used to Treat Service Members Led to Death appeared first on LewRockwell.

The Duran presented on October 17 an excellent discussion between John Helmer and Gilbert Doctorow moderated by Alexander Mercouris about how Russian military and civilian decisions are made.  The knowledge I gained enables me to update my take on the situation, which I will now do.

The Ukrainian invasion of Kursk, which has been defeated, was a game changer and possibly will result in the termination of Ukraine as an independent country.  The reason is that the invasion convinced the Russian public, the General Staff of the Russian military, and buttressed the case of  Russian politicians that an independent Ukraine is inconsistent with Russian security.

Putin still says he is open to negotiations, but only if the other side acknowledges the reality on the ground, which  Zelensky’s “Victory Plan” does not do.  Zelensky says only nukes or NATO can save Ukraine.  The Russians will not allow either.

If the Russian Army stops at the Dnieper River, that leaves western Ukraine as a US/NATO missile platform.  Stopping at the Dnieper River leaves Putin no way to de-militarize and de-Nazify Ukraine.  It would limit his declared goals only to preventing the Russian populations attached by Soviet leaders to Ukraine from being slaughtered by anti-Russian Ukrainian forces.

It seems that Putin overlooked that dispelling Ukrainian military forces from Donbas does not de-militarize Ukraine or prevent Ukraine from being a member of NATO.  Putin will have reincorporated former Russian territory back into Russia, but western Ukraine would still be there as a platform for US nukes and from which to trade missile strikes with Russia as Israel and Iran are doing.

The question is whether Putin, who wants peace, will be content with liberating eastern and southern Russian territories of Ukraine, and, if so, whether the Russian public and the General Staff will permit him to leave a Ukrainian state in place or will they see a deal as merely kicking the can down the road.

There is also the question who Putin can negotiate with.  Zelensky’s term as president has expired.  On what authority is Zelensky still in charge?  Putin cannot know whether a deal he makes with Zelensky will later be ruled illegitimate.  One would think that Putin has learned from the Minsk Agreement, which was used to deceive him and to leave him unprepared for military action, and all Russian agreements with Washington–such as the promise that NATO will not move one inch to the East –that any agreement with Washington’s signature on it is worthless.  So, how is it that Putin speaks of negotiations?  Is Putin delusional and unable to learn from experience?

I see Putin as a successful leader.  He has rescued Russia from demoralization from the Soviet collapse, which resulted in a once powerful state being dismembered, looted and embarrassed by its Jewish oligarchs and Washington.  

Putin has rebuilt the Russian economy, despite Washington’s sanctions and Putin’s incompetent central bank director.

Putin has restored Russian pride, the Russian family, and civil morality.

He is a rare successful leader.

But as a war leader he has been Putin the Unready, caught off guard by the Georgian invasion of South Ossetia organized by Washington, by Washington’s overthrow of the Ukrainian government, and by the West’s response to his Special Military Operation in Donbas.  Putin has accepted insult after insult, provocation after provocation, thus ever-widening the conflict and inviting more conflicts elsewhere as in the Middle East.

It is unclear to me why Putin accepted Washington’s overthrow of the Ukrainian government.  Did he simply lack the military resources to prevent it, or was he unable to understand what was happening?  The conflict that occurred 8 years later was the consequence of Putin’s failure to read the writing on the wall.

Perhaps he was constrained by the treasonous class, the worshipers of the West, traitors I refer to as “Atlanticist Integrationists.”  These traitors are now referred to in Russia as “the Fifth Column.”  For the most part they are gone, except for the Russian central bank director, who continues to do Russia more harm than the West does.

I think the explanation of Putin’s behavior  is that Putin understands that war between Washington and Russia means end times, and he wants to avoid that at all costs.  Thus, his willingness to accept endless insults and provocations.  But what  Putin does not seem to understand is that Washington is relentless in its efforts to impose its agenda of Washington’s hegemony, and that Russia, China and Iran are obstacles in the way of this agenda and, therefore, are to be eliminated.  Putin might regard such an agenda as preposterous, but it is nevertheless the agenda. Washington is yet to announce the abandonment of the Wolfowitz Doctrine of American hegemony and unilateralism. As long as this is Washington’s agenda, no understanding signed with Washington has any meaning. As long as Putin continues to accept Washington’s aggression, the aggression will continue.

Putin’s acceptance of provocations have gone so far that the West no longer believes his threats.  Both the outgoing and incoming NATO Secretary Generals said that we need pay no attention to whatever Putin says as he never means it.

Did Putin understand that this was the price of endlessly accepting provocations? Did he understand that he was destroying the credibility of his warnings?

Putin, trying to avoid war, has repeated the same mistake in the Middle East.  

I was heartened when suddenly Putin showed proactive capability and quickly moved the Russian Air Force into Syria, thus preventing the American war criminal, Obama, from invading Syria.  I concluded, wrongly, that Russia had decided to bring Washington’s aggression to a halt. But it was only a one time deal.

Putin, trying to avoid war by leaving Syria, Iran, and Hezbollah without air protection, achieved the opposite–the onset of war.  Now, according to reports, Putin is scrambling to get air protection to Iran before Israel blows up Iran’s peaceful nuclear reactors, thus spreading radiation over wide areas of Russia.  

Putin and the Russian General Staff failed to comprehend what happens in the absence of countervailing power.  The result is not a damper put on war but the outbreak of war, with Putin now having to issue hard warnings to Israel, warnings that might have no credibility in light of Putin’s past failure to enforce red lines.

Awareness is descending on Russia that the existence of Ukraine as an independent country is an existential threat to Russia.  The liberation of Donbas does not demilitarize and deNazify Ukraine or replace Ukraine’s puppet government with an independent one.

Will the Russian public and the Russian General Staff permit Putin to agree to end the war simply on the basis of the liberation of Donbas, or will  the Russian public and the General Staff  insist  that Ukraine’s existence is an existential threat to Russia’s existence and insist that the war continue until Ukraine is again a province of Russia?

The Russian Fifth Column is busy at work disputing Zbigniew Brzezinski’s conclusion that Russia cannot be a great power if Ukraine is not part of Russia’s sphere of influence.  Will the General Staff and the Russian population agree with the Fifth Column or with Brzezinski?   If  they agree with Brzezinski, they will object to Putin merely kicking the can down the road with a peace deal. It will be unfortunate if Putin’s insistence on peace destabilizes Russia.

The post Is Russia Finally Acknowledging Reality? appeared first on LewRockwell.

This article was written by Brandon Smith and originally published at Birch Gold Group

Alternative economists have been predicting a long list of instabilities in the US economy and for some time. We’ve been proven right in the last few years on most of those predictions and, as usual, corporate media economists are now scrambling to pretend as if they “saw the danger coming” all along. They now suddenly have their own ideas on how to fix the very problems they used to call “conspiracy theory.” The vital question is, who do you trust?

You can’t trust someone to offer you a valid solution if they’re too dense to understand the source of the crisis. You also can’t trust someone to give you valid solutions on the economy if their job is to lie to you about how great things are.

The alternative media’s accuracy about our nation’s dire circumstances has put us in a position to be right which should at least win us some trust points, but being right is only the first step. There will always be government shills that seek to undermine truth-tellers by claiming we serve no purpose because we aren’t actively fixing the problems that we warn about.

Frankly, that’s not our job. However, it’s true that our movement has a tendency to focus on diagnosis of a problem rather than prevention or treatment.

There are a few reasons why this is the case. I’ve noticed that whenever I write about solutions I get far less article traffic. Is it because people just don’t care? Or, is it because solutions are hard and require vast coordination of people and resources to ever be possible?

National solutions require millions of Americans get off their couches, go outside, and take extensive risks. This is why human beings in general tend to adapt to the worst conditions until things are so bad society snaps. We wait until we can’t stand it any longer, and then finally, we take action.

Another road block is that liberty movements are made up of people who all have their own ideas on what should be done. Most of us agree on the causes of the chaos, very few of us agree on what exactly to do about them. It’s funny because black-pill critics often accuse conservatives and patriots of falling into the echo chamber trap. The reality is quite the opposite; we can’t seem to ever shake hands on anything and it’s holding us back.

The thing is, time is running out and debate is a luxury. I believe Americans today are close to the breaking point economically with stagflation continuing to crush the middle class and those already in poverty. The future is bleak; housing costs have spiked to levels beyond what the vast majority of people can afford. All necessities including food and utilities have seen a 30%-50% minimal price increase since 2020, and inflation continues to rise.

Wages are stagnant and profit margins for employers are shrinking, which means the jobs market will be next to see cuts. By the end of 2025 and under current policies, I suspect we will be witnessing a combination of serious deflationary and inflationary crisis events simultaneously. A crash in employment and GDP combined with incessant price jumps on goods and services.  This crash has been decades in the making and might be unavoidable. That said, I do believe there is a way out, but it requires dramatic changes in the way our government and society operates.

The policy measures I suggest are a kind of fiscal time machine – A way to turn back the clock on collapse. Some might consider them “radical” but they are only policies that America USED TO value and that we have been pressured to forget. Can the modern American brain with its steady exposure to big government and socialist programs handle such a shift? It’s hard to say.

I think if people are desperate enough they’ll accept any solution that they feel works. And for now the elites that created the crisis are the only group offering a way out (a false way out). If I could snap my fingers (or if I was king for year), this is the list of actions I would undertake to save the American economy before the end of 2025 (or at least set it on the the path to resurrection).

End Income Tax For The 99%

My very first step would be to end income taxes for individuals and small business owners outside of the top 1% of earners (those who make more than $800,000 per year). The permanent income tax was never supposed to exist. It started in 1913 as a tiny 1% rate on net personal incomes over $3,000, and a 6% surtax on incomes over $500,000 (the super rich at that time).

In the past century it has ballooned into a 15%-20% monstrosity that is crushing middle class buying power. It also feeds bigger government which wastes money and leads to less and less freedom. There is no reason for the tax to exist for average citizens other than to act as a slave tribute to the Federal Reserve Bank. Shutting it down would immediately alleviate financial pressures on middle class families and getting rid of the IRS would certainly help shrink government spending.

How would the government pay for services and national security? Well, right now they print most of that money from thin air anyway, but tariffs on foreign trade used to be the main source of income for the federal government. Why not go back to that model? Because some biased Keynesian economists claim it can’t work? It already has worked.

End Property Taxes On Single Family Homes

Property taxes are supposed to act as a fiscal buffer for local infrastructure and services. They are also meant to dissuade major buyers from hoarding homes and cornering regional markets. The problem is, the taxes are doing the opposite of that. With high property taxes most US families can’t afford to own even one home, while corporate buyers snatch up distressed mortgages and drive up rents.

This scenarios is going to create mass homelessness, mark my words. It’s already starting in some areas of the country. Inflation in housing is bad enough but the high interest rates on mortgages and the high property taxes on top of that is enough to break most middle class buyers.

Fixing rates and inflation is complicated, but property taxes could be ended tomorrow. By extension, high property taxes on corporate buyers like Blackstone might force them to release some of their holdings back onto the market and help lessen the ongoing housing shortage.

How else can communities pay for local infrastructure and services?  A fair sales tax should be more than sufficient to fill the gap, or, a tourism tax.

Remove All Illegal Immigrants From The US

The illegals need to go, there’s no way around it. All the data shows they are a drain on national resources and welfare programs, but worst of all, they receive subsidies from the government that allow them to snap up housing and eat into welfare programs. In some cases, landlords are enticed to rent to illegals over native born citizens because they get more money (or tax breaks) for renting to migrants instead.

Estimates from 2023 indicate there are at least 16.8 million illegal immigrants in the US today with a net fiscal drain of over $150 billion per year. That’s also millions of homes taken off the market by people who should not be in this country. US housing availability is currently in the negative by 5 million to 7 million homes (officially). Removing most illegals could be accomplished in a single year and would immediately solve housing shortages while bringing prices down by adding more supply.

Beyond housing, the money that goes to welfare spending on migrants could be better utilized for American citizens, including  a better emergency response for those that lose their homes during natural disasters.

Incentives For Married Couples With Children

The western world has a population decline problem that is likely to hit us hard in the next decade. The elites claim that’s why we need mass immigration, but fixing our population problem with cultural replacement from the third-world is not the answer.

A major factor is the decline in stable relationships and nuclear families (marriage between men and women). This same lack of family stability is causing unprecedented social issues. Single mother homes are statistically more likely to produce children with criminal behavior and mental health problems. Children from fatherless homes are 20 times more likely to end up incarcerated. This is an insidious drain on our culture and our nation’s wealth.

Many men point out that marriage is a huge financial risk under current divorce laws and this has made the practice untenable. But even removing unfair divorce laws would probably not solve the greater conundrum. Eliminating feminism from our society would be a good start, but that’s an elusive goal requiring many years of social healing.

One thing that could be done in a single year is to create incentives for married couples that want to have children. Easy access to home loan programs would be a start, along with educational subsidies for viable careers in STEM or technical fields so they can get higher paying jobs that actually serve national needs. Eventually, a return to financially stable single income families could be possible.

Business And Technical Apprenticeships

America’s economy used to thrive due to the old standards of apprenticeship. This was a way for those that could not afford a higher education to still learn and obtain a valuable trade. George Washington, Benjamin Franklin and Paul Revere were ALL apprentices at one point in their lives. We need to bring this tradition back.

Specifically, we need apprenticeships in business operations, medical, manufacturing, engineering, the sciences, technical (repair and fabrication), construction, as well as computer and software fields. The US has a self sufficiency problem when it comes to production that needs to be solved immediately.

Revitalizing America’s worker base and small business base is the key to stopping our exponential slide into oblivion. We need to show people there’s a light at the end of the tunnel or they might give up completely. In particular, the trend of young western men dropping out of the workforce is worrying. Most of them want assurances that they’ll be able to one day do a job that actually means something.

Yes, some of them are spoiled overgrown children that have delusions of becoming YouTube stars and there’s no way to help those people. But, many others are good men that are willing to work hard as long as they’ll get a fair chance for something better in return. They have no direction because all the doors have been shut. Men make the world go around, and when a society abandons their young men the way the west recently has, only disaster can follow.

The above measures are all items that can be adopted in a very short period of time. In a single year every one of them could be instituted by a proper government, federal or state.  And yes, I’m aware that government officials with the balls to enact these policies are likely few.  That’s not a revelation, but that doesn’t mean we abandon the effort.  Even with a Harris presidency, individual states could save themselves with these solutions without federal assistance.

Other actions would have to be long term. Reversing inflation, shrinking the size of government, ending the central bank and reverting money creation back to the Treasury, shifting the dollar to a commodity backed system, rebuilding America’s manufacturing base, etc. – All of these efforts will take many years to succeed.

Getting off to the right start is essential. I argue that the above list could be implemented quickly and create a resurgence in economic optimism. This is the launch point by which all other solutions will unfold. It’s not enough to declare our high-minded ideals and goals, there has to be a plan.

Reprinted with permission from Alt-Market.us.

The post A Radical Plan To Save America’s Economy in One Year appeared first on LewRockwell.

Of course, there’s no “pandemic” this time to cover for the trip that the Party of Chaos wants to lay on the country, no excuse for gross and glaring ballot fuckery, for the days of anxious uncertainty following an election. Everybody and his uncle expect a gigantic tantrum to follow November 6 if Mr. Trump somehow overcomes the tide of bogus harvested votes, illegal alien votes, phantom overseas votes, voting machine swapped votes, lost-and-found votes, last-minute rafts of votes, and other products of the Marc Elias election sabotage machine.

I am not so sure that the tantrum will materialize. Despite the orgy of Orwellian language inversions you have been subjected to in recent years, and the bending of reality it induced, you will know a real insurrection if you see it. You already know the real reason the Democratic Party went insane: its crime spree against the citizens of this land was so obvious and outrageous that a thousand Beltway bureaucrats are now going crazy in fear of prosecution. The tantrum everyone expects them to provoke would be a real insurrection and they are liable to find themselves in even deeper trouble for resorting to it.

Crime is the whole reason for the Democrats’ desperation. There was no “policy” the past four years, only crime. The Covid operation was a mass murder. The open border was not something that just happened, like a spell of bad weather. It was a colossal racketeering operation. They worked it hard. “Joe Biden” paid dozens of NGO cut-outs to systematically jam more than ten million sketchy interlopers into the country, and then support them lavishly with cash payments when they got here.

The political prosecutions of AG Merrick Garland are gauche and lawless. The pervasive censorship by DHS and other agencies is an affront to our constitution. The transgender campaign is a malicious prank against American children (and their parents). Our CIA may be a party to the fentanyl crisis. The war in Ukraine is a failed resource-grab, unbelievably stupid in inception. “Joe Biden’s” empty treasury is writing trillions in IOUs to stealthily bail out the banks and jack-up the stock market. Everything about our government has become criminal and those responsible for it know they are bound for a reckoning now.

Will the Democrats’ Antifa street-army be allowed to terrorize the cities? I expect the remaining cops not de-funded in DC, New York, Chicago, and LA won’t hold back this time, no matter what mayors Muriel Bowser, Eric Adams, Brandon Johnson, and Karen Bass tell them to do. You will instead see the return of something that has been missing for years: a sense of duty to public safety and the common good. Won’t that be a surprise? And there will be nothing that the FBI can do about. It’s one thing to incite a riot among a mob of ordinary middle-aged folks moiling around the US Capitol. It’s another thing to try to subvert the police in carrying out their duties. New heroes will emerge and there will be no ambiguity about what happens.

Black Lives Matter had already been outed as a lowlife money-grubbing hustle. But the Democratic Party may no longer depend on its old “plantation” field-hands to stage mostly peaceful anarchy and arson if the election goes the wrong way for the masters. Forty years of pretending to be an oppositional culture hasn’t worked. It was just minstrelsy updated, when all was said and done. Too many black men are rising up to speak out in support of Donald Trump, and of one America, and of acting like men. They appear to be tired of self-stigmatizing as designated victims in the Woke-Jacobin DEI psychodrama. A new generation of black male leaders is emerging to replace embarrassing con artists like Al Sharpton, Michael Eric Dyson, and Ibram X. Kendi. It’s been a long time coming.

Will we ever know how Kamala Harris was put over on the Democratic Convention like the sale of a used car? How the rank-and-file delegates got swindled into nominating her by acclamation without any debate, without anyone else rising to object, anyone else offering up themselves for a vote? There wasn’t even a smoke-filled room this time where the bosses actually haggled over who would front for them, not a minute of suspense, no process whatsoever. Kamala Harris was just pulled out of a hat, like a rabbit. And everybody involved knew she was a dud, a slow learner, inattentive, not well-educated, lazy, possibly high a lot of the time, self-medicating due to anxiety, insecurity, purposelessness.

It took four years for slightly more than half of America to see that our country’s fate was in the hands of villains wrecking the joint. It looks like their depredations are nearly over. The USA really does not want to gurgle down the drain of history. We’re not ready to roll over and die. We’re waking up from an induced coma, starting to remember who we are. That has been the weird lesson of 2024. Surprise, surprise!

Reprinted with permission from JamesHowardKunstler.com.

The post Surprise, Surprise! appeared first on LewRockwell.

The smart money is selling, of course, for the clanging indicators are the dinner bell announcing the banquet of consequences has been served, and Nemesis doesn’t want the meal to get cold.

Correspondent Wilson R. Logan kindly shared his list of 17 indicators of globally synchronized recession. In my view, each is an alarm bell clanging loudly. As Wilson put it, “recessions have vey clear indicators. We’ve all known it was coming and we’ve all had a long time to think about it.”

For context, recall that the global economy is a tightly bound, highly integrated system, which means disruptions in one subsystem quickly ripple though the entire system. Disruptions tend to amplify one another, creating a cascading effect much like an avalanche: everything looks perfectly stable until the entire mountainside gives way.

This isn’t presented as a complete list of indicators; there are a multitude of others. But this is certainly a comprehensive start.

Here are Logan’s 17 indicators of global recession:

1) Tighter credit conditions. Banks see the recession coming and start to build a cash cushion, hoard liquidity, de-risk portfolios (the lessons of Bear Sterns).

2) Increasing REPO fails.

3) Volatility in the Japanese Bills market.

4) Near Term Forward Spread inversion.

5) Swap Spread Compression.

6) Term SOFR & EURIBOR calendar spread inversion.

7) 2-10 yield curve inversion.

8) Hours worked, total compensation falling.

9) Falling oil prices.

10) Factory gate prices falling.

11) ISM survey negative sentiment.

12) UofM consumer sentiment survey negative.

13) Increasing credit card debt.

14) Contango in the WTI Futures curve.

15) Falling value of loans to non-financial corporations (NFCs) (see 1).

16) Diverging GDP & GNI.

17) Labor hoarding.

(CHS note: for example, in Japan, if you want to quit your wretched, low-pay, abusive-boss job, you have to find a replacement first: ‘They refused to let me go’: Japanese workers turn to resignation agencies to quit jobs.)

Thank you, Wilson, for sharing your comprehensive list of global recession indicators. For additional context, let’s turn to two charts.

The first is my inverted pyramid of debt and disposable earnings. This relationship between the cost of servicing debt and how much money is left after paying essential expenses (food, utilities, shelter, etc. or the costs of production) is scale-invariant, meaning it works the same for individuals, households, small businesses, global corporations and nation-states.

If the earnings left after paying essential expenses declines while the debt and cost of servicing the debt rise, the entity goes bust and collapses in a heap. For households, as inflation stripmines the purchasing power of their earnings, they increasingly turn to debt to fill the gap between the cash that’s available to spend and what they desire to spend.

Read the Whole Article

The post 17 Indicators of Global Recession Are Clanging appeared first on LewRockwell.

It has been said that every great nation has its rise and fall; that its rise occurs as a result of the population (in general) becoming determined to work hard to create a better life, and that its fall occurs when the population becomes spoiled, then complacent and then finally, apathetic.

Much of the First World has reached this latter stage, all (to varying degrees) at the same time. Unfortunately, from a historical standpoint, the period of apathy is almost invariably followed by a period of bondage – a marked social and economic decline in which the people of the nation become little more than serfs of the state that rules them.

While most readers would agree that this describes the First World in its present state, they would likely argue that this time around, bondage will not be the end result. While reason might tell them that this is exactly the predictable (and historical) outcome, the idea of bondage is too frightful to consider as being a possibility. While a few seem to be railing against this eventuality, the great majority simply open a beer and turn on the TV. A very comfortable form of apathy, but apathy just the same.

Feudalism, Past and Present

So, are there any differences this time around? I would say that there is one major difference, and that is that the packaging is more sophisticated.

In days of yore, the Sheriff of Nottingham and his men rode into your village and demanded what few silver pennies you may have earned recently. This was clearly a dictatorial government – one which was ruled by force, so that the people were clearly serfs and had no real say. Punishment was simple: If you did not pay, your hut was burned, your possessions confiscated, and you were thrown in prison to remain until the debt had been paid. (Nobles fared a bit better: In the 15th century an ancestor of mine, Lord James of Dartmouth, spent several months in the Tower of London until he could pay King Henry IV a sum of 2000 pounds, literally a “King’s ransom” – in spite of the fact that Lord James was said to have been a favourite of the King.)

Now, of course, things are entirely different. Today, the Sheriff does not ride into your village demanding your money. You are required to send it in yourself. If you fail to pay, your house is not burned. It is confiscated, along with your other possessions, and you face prison. Increasingly, people are ruled by force just as in the 15th century. But in spite of this, citizens of many First World countries still claim to have free elections – the last bastion of the democratic system.

The Democratic Process

The idea of the democratic process is that the people may elect their leaders and thus control their destiny. However, running for office is quite expensive, and this means finding donors. Understandably, anyone who provides a donation does not regard it as a gift. He seeks something in return. In national elections, this means very large donations, translating into very large compensations. Those who contribute the most (Big Oil, Big Pharma, Big Banks, the Military Industry, etc.) can demand quite a bit in return.

In any “democracy” that has been in existence for a long enough time, the relationship between donors and candidates has become circular; that is, after the candidate is elected, he repays the donor, by providing either tax dollars or rights to operate that others do not enjoy. Once the circular relationship is fully cemented for a period of time, the returns to the donor grow to far exceed the donations. As a result, voters are, unwittingly, actually paying the donors and the government to dominate their lives.

Not surprisingly, donors come to regard these tax dollar infusions as a regular source of revenue and seek to have them grow regularly. (If voters could understand this circular relationship, they would be less surprised when their legislators – whether they be conservative or liberal – consistently fail to diminish the government need for tax.)

So we are left with the remaining advantage of democracy: the ability to vote for those who will protect our freedoms, as we see them.

The Two Party System

In the majority of First World countries, there are a host of political parties (America is a notable exception), each claiming to represent a specific point of view. Most of the parties are fringe parties, and voting generally comes down to the two main parties: liberal and conservative. Liberals claim to champion the social freedoms (gay rights, abortion, etc.) whilst trying to limit economic freedom. Conservatives claim to champion the precise opposite.

Most voters seem to see the system as alternating between the two parties. For example, first the liberals win and increase the social freedoms of the country. Then after awhile they are voted out and the conservatives have their turn, increasing the economic freedoms. Described in this way, it would seem that the “two-party system” provides an ideal balance, moving ever-forward with increased freedoms for all.

However, if this attractive image were the case, liberal voters would not be filled with disappointment at the end of a liberal term in which their social freedoms somehow had not increased. (Their party somehow “needed to compromise” with the evil conservatives.) However, if the liberal party was successful in diminishing economic freedoms, this distraction would serve to keep these voters loyal to the party.

At the end of a conservative term, it is the reverse. While their stated objectives for regained economic freedoms somehow failed to come to pass (again, “compromise” was somehow necessary), the leaders still managed to limit social freedoms in some way. (The Patriot Act in America is perhaps the most extraordinary example.)

What voters seem to miss is that, along the way, far from increasing one type of freedom under one party, then increasing the alternate type of freedom under the other, the net effect is the exact opposite. Under a liberal government, economic freedom is diminished, and under a conservative government, social freedom is diminished. Freedom, in general, therefore, ratchets downward with each term.

It does seem that voters throughout the First World are beginning to recognize that they are getting short shrift no matter which party is in power, and that their country is headed inexorably downward (while the leaders seem to be doing rather well.)

Will the voters ultimately rebel?

Will the minor demonstrations of discontent evident now in the First World escalate into something more organized and more violent?

What do the politicians think is likely to happen? Whilst they are not commenting on the subject, we should be able to guess their predictions based upon their actions. If they plan to increase freedoms in the future, they would be providing a calming effect to the present frustrations. However, if their true goal is a return to a kind of modern serfdom, they would be preparing for it by increasing their controls, both economic and social. In much of the First World, the latter seems to be the intended direction. Nowhere is this more evident than in America, with the renewal of the Patriot Act, and with the passing of the National Defense Authorization Act.

Modern Day Feudalism

As stated above, the main difference between the feudal system of five hundred years ago and the feudal system that is developing in the First World today is that the packaging is more sophisticated. Instead of having identifiable kings whom we may all hate, we have the distraction of two political teams that we may “choose” between. While we praise the good guys (our preferred political party) and hope that they will vanquish the bad guys (the opposing political party), they are in fact one and the same, and they both work for the kings.

Reprinted with permission from International Man.

The post The Political Party Illusion appeared first on LewRockwell.

A few days ago, some important Twitter personalities noticed that Germans vastly overestimate Kamala Harris’s chances of winning the U.S. presidency:

“Who will win the US presidential election?” ask ZDF’s Politbarometer

According to that very same poll, 83% of Germans believe that a Trump victory would be “rather bad” for Germany:

Pollsters periodically ask Germans which American presidential candidate they would support, were they in a position to vote. Last July, 79% said they would vote for Kamala Harris; only 13% would vote for Donald Trump. The numbers are typical: Barack Obama claimed 71% support in a similar poll from 2008 and Hillary Clinton enjoyed 82% support in 2016. Right now, Green voters split 99% for Harris, Social Democrat voters 92%, nominally centre-right CDU/CSU voters 89%, market-liberal FDP voters 85%, and voters for the old-school leftist Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht party 52%. Across the entire German political landscape, only Alternative für Deutschland voters would support Trump by a thin majority of 51%. Even here, one-in-four are undecided, and the remaining one-in-four would vote for Harris.

You might be tempted to argue that differing national interests explain this, but I don’t think that argument works. It’s far from obvious that a Harris administration would further the interests of the German people. The war in Ukraine and the associated bombing of Nord Stream, for example, were both enthusiastically supported by Joe Biden specifically, and they proved catastrophic for the Federal Republic. What is really going on here is much subtler: Many Germans know English, but consuming foreign-language material is a pain and relatively few have any direct contact with Trump’s debates, his speeches or sympathetic English-language reporting. We learn about American presidential campaigns primarily through our media, and Germany has a vast state-adjacent media industrial complex in much the same way that the United States has a vast state-adjacent military industrial complex.

And: The German media industrial complex is truly fanatical when it comes to hating Trump. We are basically conducting a real-world experiment to determine how much media manipulation can achieve when deployed en masse against a low-information, credulous population. My American readers will say that their own media is heavily biased, but German media is vastly, vastly more extreme.

NiUS sums up the tenor of German political coverage well: The German press have openly favoured Democratic Party presidential candidates for decades; they are invariably portrayed as wise, forward-looking beacons (if not bacons) of hope for the future. Republican candidates since Ronald Reagan, meanwhile, are ridiculed as dangerous, incompetent and stupid. Trump merely added new hysteria and urgency to these old, long-standing tropes. A 2017 paper by Thomas Patterson at Harvard University looked at European coverage of Trump’s first 100 days in office in the BBC, the Financial Times and the ARD – Germany’s oldest public media broadcaster. The BBC covered Trump negatively 75% of the time and the Financial Times covered him negatively 86% of the time, but the ARD were by far the most extreme, directing fully 98% of their Trump stories against the forty-fifth president. In their absolute anti-Trumpism, ARD outpaced even American media like CNN and NBC (92% negative), to say nothing of more “serious” press like the New York Times and the Washington Post (87% and 83% negative, respectively).

Even that is only a partial picture, because you have to remember that there is no major opposition media in Germany at all. The newsweekly Junge Freiheit, for example – which covers Trump about as sympathetically as Fox News – has a circulation of less than 30,000. It is all wall-to-wall anti-Trump screeching all the time here in the Federal Republic.

Read the Whole Article

The post On the Constant, Unrelenting and Unhinged Anti-Trump Propaganda of the German Media appeared first on LewRockwell.

di Peter St. Onge

La Cina è sull'orlo della recessione, escludendo la crisi sanitaria, per la prima volta sin dal 2008, poiché i nuovi dati hanno mostrato che il settore manifatturiero ha subito una contrazione per il quarto mese consecutivo, con una particolare debolezza nei nuovi ordini.

In altre parole, si tratta di un arresto e poi c'è un crollo.

La produzione manifatturiera costituisce un terzo dell'economia cinese, molto più degli Stati Uniti. Il crollo del mercato immobiliare cinese, un altro terzo dell'economia cinese, sta gettando ulteriore benzina sul fuoco.

Uffici più vuoti rispetto al periodo della crisi sanitaria

Il Financial Times riporta che gli edifici per uffici in Cina sono più vuoti di quanto non fossero durante i lockdown. Il FT ci fa notare che il lavoro da casa non è decollato in Cina, il che implica che il principale fattore che determina gli uffici vuoti siano i licenziamenti.

A Shanghai i posti vacanti negli uffici sono al 21%. A Shenzhen, il principale polo di esportazione della Cina, i posti vacanti sono al 27%. Entrambe le cifre sono peggiori dei posti vacanti durante i lockdown.

Per darvi un'idea, gli affitti a Shenzhen sono crollati del 15% su base annua.

Naturalmente i dati ufficiali del PIL cinese sono immuni alle tempeste, ma d'altronde nessuno ci crede, nemmeno in Cina.

È interessante notare che non tutti i licenziamenti riguardano aziende nazionali: gli investimenti esteri in Cina sono crollati di un terzo nell'ultimo anno, poiché l'autoritarismo del presidente Xi sta allontanando le aziende estere.

Stanno abbandonando i loro uffici in Cina e si stanno trasferendo in posti più sicuri, come il Vietnam o il Messico, e presto apriranno anche le fabbriche.

La crisi dei giovani in Cina

La contrazione colpisce più duramente i giovani cinesi, con la disoccupazione giovanile che sfiora quasi un quarto di tale popolazione.

Con un numero record di 12 milioni di studenti universitari cinesi in procinto di laurearsi e di entrare nel mercato del lavoro, non apprezzeranno ciò che troveranno.

Tutto questo è, ovviamente, un disastro sociale al rallentatore. Ora in Cina si stanno moltiplicando le proteste pubbliche, con striscioni sui cavalcavia che chiedono elezioni libere ed ex-soldati che accusano il governo di “strangolare” i funzionari pubblici.

Gli scioperi dei lavoratori sono aumentati, compresi quelli di 1.000 lavoratori in una fabbrica Nike che, ironicamente, si sono ribellati dopo che la produzione è stata spostata in Indonesia; poi ci sono le centinaia di scioperi di lavoratori edili non pagati, mentre gli sviluppatori immobiliari crollano come birilli.

Il contesto è questo: centinaia di milioni di cinesi lavorano in modo informale e per trasferirsi in una grande città dove gli stipendi sono dignitosi è necessario un passaporto nazionale, mentre la maggior parte dei cinesi che vivono in zone rurali non ne ha uno.

Ma servono anche quindici anni di lavoro formale per ottenere le pensioni governative. Ciò significa che per i lavoratori più anziani, in particolare quelli senza figli a causa del controllo delle nascite, i licenziamenti potrebbero significare morire di fame in vecchiaia. Sono disperati.

Cos'è andato storto nel miracolo cinese?

La crescita sotto la presidenza di Xi è crollata alla metà del suo vecchio tasso: la Cina ora cresce come un Paese normale a medio reddito.

Questo perché Xi, adoratore di Mao, ha represso il mondo degli affari, arrivando persino a far “scomparire” importanti uomini d'affari come Jack Ma quando si sono opposti a lui.

Nel frattempo Xi ha investito migliaia di miliardi in settori privilegiati dallo stato, soprattutto energia verde ed edilizia abitativa. Entrambi sono crollati tra eccessi di capacità e sotto-domanda.

Per fare un esempio, a un certo punto la Cina aveva quasi 1.500 produttori di auto elettriche; quasi tutti sono falliti o sono in procinto di fallire.

Nel frattempo il settore immobiliare registra almeno cinquemilacinquecento miliardi di dollari di prestiti inesigibili, con milioni di cinesi che stanno perdendo gli appartamenti a metà costruzione in cui avevano parcheggiato i risparmi di una vita, mentre gli imprenditori edili falliscono.

Tra il crollo del mercato immobiliare e le azioni ferme sin dal 2008, i cinesi non hanno più i soldi per continuare a spendere, il che sta trascinando ulteriormente in basso l'economia.

Cosa c'è dopo?

L'ultima volta che la Cina è entrata in recessione, nel 2008, Pechino ha riversato massicci stimoli nell'economia. Questa volta il debito della Cina, oltre $50.000 miliardi, è cresciuto al punto che non può più permetterselo.

E se la Cina fallisce? Il contratto sociale in Cina si basa sull'obbedienza in cambio di crescita economica. Se il governo cinese non riesce a sostenere la crescita, i cinesi diventano molto irrequieti. C'è una ragione per cui Xi ha insediato uno stato di polizia, ma se l'opposizione è abbastanza diffusa, anche la polizia cambia lato.

La Cina si trova su una strada dissestata e se diventa disperata, e avrà bisogno di una distrazione, potrebbe trascinare Taiwan (e l'America) nella tempesta.

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

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di Jeffrey Tucker

Quando Hunger Games è uscito nelle sale più di un decennio fa, la distopia che presentava era intrigante, ma anche inverosimile. Di recente mi sono chiesto come avesse retto alla prova del tempo e ho riguardato i tre film della serie.

È più lungimirante di quanto sembrasse all'epoca, inclusa la stratificazione della ricchezza, la decadenza del privilegio, l'abuso di potere e le complicazioni della resistenza. Questa serie affronta diversi temi, ma è una delle storie di fantasia più rivelatrici per quanto riguarda la sovrapposizione di decadenza materiale, povertà diffusa e l'uso della paura come strumento di propaganda.

In quanto ad allegoria politica, calca lo stesso terreno intellettuale della “Politica” di Aristotele, del “Principe” di Machiavelli e del “Dei poteri” di de Jouvenel, ma in un modo più penetrante per lettori e spettatori, e particolarmente rilevante per i nostri tempi.

L'intera serie affronta il più grande conflitto della storia, quello tra libertà e potere. Coloro che sono abbastanza fortunati vivono nel Distretto Uno, il centro dell'impero, e socializzano con i migliori, mangiano bene, si vestono in modi sempre più assurdi (capelli tinti con colori innaturali), seguono tutte le tendenze, vanno alle feste giuste e cercano di stare al passo con la scena sociale.

Ciascuno degli altri Distretti svolge la funzione economica assegnata, il tutto per mantenere il centro in condizioni di lusso. I confini tra di essi sono rigorosamente rispettati. Il posto nell'ordine sociopolitico è determinato da dove si nasce, senza mobilità economica.

Per mantenere l'ordine e tenere a bada la ribellione, i leader del Distretto Uno organizzano una stravaganza annuale che unisce moda, giochi violenti e messaggi politici sui pericoli della ribellione. Ogni Distretto è tenuto a inviare due tributi ai giochi, i quali si affrontano in una battaglia all'ultimo sangue mentre le persone in cima guardano con intensa fascinazione.

Il potere di essere spettatori dell'evento è ciò che lega psicologicamente le élite alla struttura sociale e politica, mentre la paura di essere chiamati come tributo per i giochi è ciò che imprime nella popolazione la necessità di obbedienza. Lo scenario è coerente con il principio di Carl Schmitt della distinzione amico/nemico nel suo Concept of the Political, concetto reso reale dallo spargimento di sangue.

Chi ha seguito la storia fino all'ultimo film potrebbe aver pensato che il problema fosse chiaro: un uomo crudele, il presidente Snow, deteneva tutto il potere e usava ogni mezzo per mantenerlo. Sedeva al centro di una capitale che saccheggiava i distretti dalle sue risorse e deteneva il potere attraverso la paura.

Se fosse stato solo questo il problema, la soluzione sarebbe stata chiara: il presidente Snow poteva essere spodestato. Una volta tolto di mezzo, tutto sarebbe andato bene. Questo era inizialmente il pensiero dell'eroina del Distretto 12, Katniss Everdeen. E si può capire perché: Snow era una figura orribile ed era personalmente responsabile di crimini enormi. Meritava di essere rovesciato e che la giustizia prevalesse.

Inoltre lei supponeva che tutti coloro che conosceva condividessero la sua visione dell'obiettivo finale: una vita normale senza oppressione, senza violenza, senza saccheggi, senza rigide classificazioni geografiche e di casta, e senza scontri mortali trasmessi in televisione e orchestrati per incutere paura nella popolazione.

Ma c'era di più sotto la superficie. La capitale Panem era un'autocrazia, ma anche il centro di uno stato-nazione, il che significa che la burocrazia, l'apparato amministrativo, un esercito permanente, una lobby mediatica e i suoi metodi di governo potevano sopravvivere alla morte del leader. Questa è la differenza tra uno stato-persona e uno stato-nazione. L'apparato di potere dello stato-nazione cerca l'immortalità, una vita indipendentemente da chi ne sia a capo.

Il presidente Snow era l'autocrate paranoico che, come Katniss avrebbe scoperto, era lui stesso intrappolato in un sistema che doveva mantenere mentre cercava un successore. C'erano masse nella capitale da tenere intrattenute, potenziali traditori da scovare e ribellioni in continua preparazione da sedare. Sapeva per certo che il suo governo era fragile e che il pugno di ferro era l'unico modo per tenere in piedi tale sistema instabile.

Un altro problema era che il sistema stesso era attraente per i concorrenti che non desideravano la libertà in quanto tale, ma piuttosto abitare le vette della società. Un mondo senza potere, quindi, era più complicato del semplice rovesciamento dell'autocrate esistente.

In ogni situazione rivoluzionaria coloro che sono più motivati ​​a raggiungere l'obiettivo sono quelli che cercano di raggiungere il potere. Finché esisterà il meccanismo della violenza a norma di legge, ci saranno coloro che cercheranno di controllarla e, come disse Friedrich Hayek, di solito sono i peggiori ad arrivare in cima e a trascorrere la vita cercando di arrivarci. Non sono solo coloro che governano, ma anche coloro che cercano di governare a costituire una minaccia per la libertà. Ecco come l'esistenza di potenti stati-nazione finisce per creare molteplici livelli di pericoli.

Questa è la storia di come Rousseau divenne Robespierre, di come il liberalismo russo divenne bolscevismo e di come tanti movimenti contro il colonialismo e il corporativismo si siano conclusi con dittatura, tirannia e carestia.

Chiunque voglia porre fine all'oppressione deve tenere gli occhi aperti per coloro che vorrebbero usare il caos e la confusione degli stravolgimenti politici per prendere ed esercitare il potere in futuro. Questo è ciò che Katniss ha imparato quando ha gradualmente scoperto che i suoi ex-alleati erano diventati abili nella condotta della guerra, apprezzavano lo status che deriva dalla leadership e desideravano ardentemente esercitare il potere loro stessi.

Avrebbe scoperto questa oscura verità sugli eserciti ribelli quando il loro leader avrebbe ammesso di avere intenzione di mantenere gli Hunger Games come meccanismo di controllo dopo il colpo di stato.

Attraverso questa sconvolgente rivelazione, Katniss avrebbe imparato la grande lezione della storia: non sono solo i despoti a dover essere tenuti a bada, ma anche coloro che cercano di rovesciarli. Per realizzare la libertà, c'è bisogno di più del semplice odio per chi è al comando; c'è bisogno dell'amore per la libertà stessa e di un sistema che la protegga da ogni tentativo di rovesciarla.

Una volta che Katniss avrebbe capito cosa stava succedendo intorno a lei, avrebbe dovuto prendere una decisione: rispettare i dettami delle forze rivoluzionarie, o fare di testa sua? L'urgenza di questa decisione è ciò che ha trasformato il film da una semplice lotta manichea tra bene e male in una versione della realtà.

Ci sono molte applicazioni di questo principio nella storia, ma una potrebbe riguardare la politica estera degli Stati Uniti. Negli anni '80 cercarono di cacciare i sovietici dall'Afghanistan sostenendo i fondamentalisti islamici, che allora venivano chiamati “combattenti per la libertà”, e ricevettero armi e supporto logistico. Dopo che i sovietici se ne andarono, la ribellione si metastatizzò gradualmente nei talebani, i quali avrebbero governato col pugno di ferro e sarebbero stati i protagonisti dell'11 settembre, portando poi a 20 anni di occupazione statunitense e risentimento tra la popolazione. I talebani sono rimasti al comando e hanno rafforzato il loro dominio con le armi che gli Stati Uniti si sono lasciati dietro quando hanno fatto marcia indietro con la coda tra le gambe.

E non dimentichiamo l'Iraq dopo il 2003, in seguito a un decennio di embarghi, bombardamenti a intermittenza e dure sanzioni. Il rovesciamento del dittatore, un tempo alleato, Saddam Hussein portò al potere costituzionalisti tutt'altro che amanti della libertà, una maggioranza sciita che avrebbe oppresso la minoranza sunnita che Hussein aveva rappresentato. L'insurrezione sunnita contro lo stato iracheno, poi, causò una sanguinosa guerra civile in Iraq che alla fine sfociò nella ribellione contro il dittatore siriano Bashar al-Assad e si trasformò nello “Stato islamico”. In 25 anni l'Iraq è passato dall'essere uno stato sconfitto e relativamente quiescente a un focolaio ribollente di povertà, violenza e odio.

Facciamo un salto in avanti fino al caso libico in cui il rovesciamento di un altro dittatore, Muammar Gheddafi, ha scatenato quella che sembrava una reazione populista, ma in realtà faceva parte di una serie di “rivoluzioni colorate” che hanno manipolato i social media e i media tradizionali per fargli seguire le priorità della politica estera degli Stati Uniti. In combinazione con tutti gli altri interventi e insieme a un tentativo surrettizio di cacciare il dittatore siriano, la fase successiva ha visto l'ascesa dell'ISIS che intendeva governare la regione attraverso lo spargimento di sangue, represso infine dall'amministrazione Trump.

Il punto è che i tentativi di ripulire il mondo da un male esistente sollevano la rischiosissima prospettiva di crearne uno peggiore. E non riguarda solo i regimi stranieri. Un tratto famoso della democrazia è che l'impulso a cacciare un gruppo di leader è necessariamente legato all'arrivo al potere di un altro gruppo. Questi ultimi spesso non sono migliori, anzi a volte sono peggiori dei primi. Questo è uno dei motivi di tanta nostalgia nei confronti della politica statunitense: uno sguardo al passato fornisce quasi sempre un quadro migliore di uno sguardo al presente.

La lezione di Hunger Games è che le persone potenti possono fare cose terribili; dobbiamo resistere per fermarle. La lezione più complicata è che le istituzioni potenti sono corrotte e che ci saranno sempre coloro privi di scrupoli morali disposti a indossare il mantello del potere.

È proprio per questo che i Padri Fondatori si sono impegnati per creare un quadro di governo che garantisse, come prima priorità, i diritti e le libertà del popolo: una repubblica se il popolo riesce a mantenerla.

Oggi c'è un consenso generale sul fatto che gli Stati Uniti siano sull'orlo di un cambiamento epocale, perché lo squilibrio esistente non è sostenibile su più livelli. La domanda chiave è: in che tipo di società vogliamo vivere? Oggi tutti hanno bisogno di una risposta chiara e convincente a questa domanda. Non c'è più spazio per stare in disparte a guardare l'azione dall'esterno, come gli spettatori degli Hunger Games.

Alla fine del film vediamo Katniss senza equipaggiamento da battaglia, seduta sull'erba, a casa sua, immersa nella luce del sole, intenta a vivere la propria vita, coltivando la visione personale di libertà, lontana dai riflettori. Governando sé stessa, non gli altri, e avendo riacquistato una vita normale. Forse quella scena offre la lezione migliore di tutte.

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

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1. The End of Woman: How Smashing the Patriarchy Has Destroyed Us 
2. Science Delusion 
   
3. The Longevity Paradox: How to Die Young at a Ripe Old Age
   
4. Follow the Science: How Big Pharma Misleads, Obscures, and Prevails 
   
5. Present Perfect: Finding God in the Now 
   
6. Globalization and Its Discontents Revisited: Anti-Globalization in the Era of Trump
7. Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise
   
8. The Heart Speaks: A Cardiologist Reveals the Secret Language of Healing
   
9. The Paleo Answer: 7 Days to Lose Weight, Feel Great, Stay Young
   
10. Surrounded by Idiots
    
11. What Every Christian Ought to Know: Solid Grounding for a Growing Faith
    
12. Dream Yoga: Illuminating Your Life Through Lucid Dreaming and the Tibetan Yogas of Sleep
13. Illuminati Agenda 21: The Luciferian Plan To Destroy Creation
14. May I Quote You, General Lee
    
15. The DMSO Handbook: A New Paradigm in Healthcare 
16. Healing Back Pain: The Mind-Body Connection
17. Old School Grit: Times May Change, But the Rules for Success Never Do
18. God with Us: 365 Devotions on the Person and Work of Christ
19. The Assassination of James Forrestal
    
20. Land Navigation From Start to Finish 

The post Books of the Week appeared first on LewRockwell.

At the recent Mises Institute Supporters Summit in Hilton Head, South Carolina Tom Woods made some flattering comments about Yours Truly regarding my 2000 book coauthored with James T. Bennett entitled
From Pathology to Politics: Public Health in America (Transaction Publishers).  That’s the year 2000, not 2020.  Tom’s comment was the result of his discovery that my coauthor and I had smoked out the dishonesty and left-wing political gimmickry of the “public health establishment” nearly a quarter of a century ago.

The “public health” movement was created shortly after the Civil War with the creation of state and local government “health departments” that concentrated on sanitation issues, disease research, enforcing quarantines, inoculations, controlling mosquitoes, waste disposal, swamp drainage, immunizations, and attempting to control communicable diseases in general.  The American Public Health Association (APHA) was founded in 1872 as a trade association for public health professionals.  It is almost shocking today to read about how post Civil War cities in America were full of such things as pig pens, cesspools, privy vaults, and manure piles!

For the first several decades of its existence the presidents of the APHA were all people with scientific training – surgeons, medical statisticians, chemists, sanitarians, experts in bacteriology, hygiene, anatomy, and even botany.  Great progress was made in controlling diseases and eradicating some of them, like Yellow Fever, and improving mortality rates.  Economic growth surely played an important role as well, enabling Americans to attain better nutrition and living standards in general.

By the 1950s the dire problems that existed in the post-war years had pretty much disappeared, confronting the public health establishment with a major dilemma: With its mission essentially accomplished, how would it continue to justify its existence and its tax-funded support?

Lyndon Johnson’s “great society” explosion of welfare state spending during the 1960s provided the answer.  The federal government’s “Kerner Report” of 1968 on the “root causes” of poverty was fully embraced by the APHA.  In doing so the public health establishment changed its focus entirely from controlling disease to creating a healthy society through welfare statism.  The goal was no longer enhancing individual health but “curing” society’s ills.  That’s where the big tax money was.  Fewer and fewer medical and health professionals were among “public health” professionals, with more and more lobbyists, political activists, sociologists, anthropologists, and other social scientists.  The public health establishment began crusading for increased welfare payments, a guaranteed annual income “for all Americans,” government housing subsidies, racial hiring quotas, and school busing.

Keynote speakers at APHA conventions were no longer likely to be medical and health professionals but such figures as former AFL-CIO president John Sweeney.  The annual conference began to have themes like “Social Justice in Public Health.”  The conferences began calling for a “radical redistribution of wealth,” and declaring that illness is supposedly caused by a “power imbalance” that is “inherent in a capitalist society.”  Just like that, the public health establishment was captured by radical socialist political activists.

The notion that individuals are responsible for their own health was abandoned and the APHA declared that “Government holds ultimate accountability for the nation’s health.”  The implication of this is that you do not own your own body and are therefore not responsible for your own health.  You are now owned by government and government, not you, is the responsible party.

“Social programs” were now what was supposedly needed to cure “society.”  Every left-wing political fad and platitude imaginable became part of the public health mantra during the 1960s and ‘70s.  The APHA endorsed nationalized medical care, the pursuit of zero population growth through sterilization of men and women, government central planning of the energy industries, a condemnation of the automobile as “an immediate health and safety hazard,” more government make-work “jobs” programs, general praise for the communist Sandinista regime in Nicaragua and especially communist Cuba, a super minimum wage law, subsidized abortions, nationalized child care, and the notion that gun ownership is a disease.  “Guns are a disease that must be eradicated,” announced one Dr. Katherine Christoffel of the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control.

No longer did the public health establishment maintain that health comes from individual choices regarding lifestyle, diet, exercise, etc. but from “participation in the political process” as two card-carrying members of “the new public health” establishment wrote in a 1996 article in Health Education Quarterly.

More and more medical school graduates chose the Anthony Fauci career path. Instead of practicing medicine they used their medical degrees to land jobs in the federal bureaucracy.  Fauci himself was never a practicing physician but an NIH bureaucrat straight out of medical school who, for many years, directed billions of dollars of government-funded research, so much of which, we now know, was useless or ridiculous and did nothing to improve public health.  In fact, it created great harm.  As the most successful of all such public health bureaucrats, he engineered fake health scam after fake health scam all throughout his government career ( Ebola! Swine Flu! Hong Kong Swine Flu! Bird Flu!  Zika Virus! Monkeypox!!) as a means of boosting his agency’s budget year after year after year.  In his book The Real Anthony Fauci Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. showed that every one of these was a scam and a fraud.  They were used as excuses to rush to market “vaccines” that proved to be useless or harmful, but made billions for Big Pharma, which is joined at the hip with the National Institutes of Health bureaucrats who profit handsomely themselves by owning patents on some of these dangerous drugs.  Sound familiar?

Governmental powers and tax revenues always balloon whenever there is a crisis or the perception of a crisis.  This is the business the public health bureaucracies are now in.  They are a permanent Halloween show, constantly coming up with one “health scare” after another, forever crying wolf to dupe American taxpayers into acquiescing in an exponential increase in their budgets and perks.  They are the political whores of the pharmaceutical corporations in a system that can only be described as fascism.  And of course it was Anthony Fauci who orchestrated the Sovietization of American society in 2020/2021 with his Hitlerian declarations that HE was science.  Science is not science, he said; HE was science.

All the powers of the central government were used to censor criticism of the covid “vaccine” scam; to prohibit life-saving medicines like ivermectin; and to destroy the careers and lives of medical professionals who dared to speak up.  All so that Big Pharma could continue to rake in billions while throwing a few crumbs to pathetic political whores like Anthony Fauci and his public health fiefdom.

In just a few years since the covid debacle the public health establishment has thankfully become widely acknowledged as an enemy of the public, a generator of fake health emergencies that only serve to give it even more totalitarian powers and to extract more tax dollars from the public.  It continues to call for more covid shots, but only 4 percent of Americans are reportedly complying.  The rest are giving the public health bureaucrats a big middle finger.

All of this is nothing new: It began in the 1960s when that establishment decided that the Big Money was in pretending to be able to “cure society’s ills” rather than improving individual human health.

The post The Trojan Horse of “Public Health” appeared first on LewRockwell.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly claimed his goal is to completely “eliminate Hamas and Hezbollah, both politically and militarily.” That’s his impossible dream. Further, he claims that the wars — and UN declared genocide — being waged on the men, women and children living in Gaza and Lebanon won’t be over until he accomplishes that aberrant dream.

There’s more to it. The Israelis should have learned from their humiliating defeat in trying to take over Lebanon from Hezbollah in 2006. The spoiler is well memed by Col. Richard Dunn in speaking of “our” Afganistan War blunder like this – – –

“You could kill all the terrorists in Afghanistan, all the terrorists in the world. You could hang Osama bin Laden in sight of the White House. You still wouldn’t have solved the problem because you will have created a whole new generation of terrorists.” –Col. Richard Dunn, October, 2001

But of course, the terrorists are the Israelis not Hamas (or Hezbollah.)

By the Zionist fixation on killing “leaders,” they demonstrate their amazing failure to learn from their own mistakes. They assume their adversaries’ count on hierarchical structures and presumed hierarchical leaders and that these are essential in today’s warfare.

In imagining they can wipe out Palestinian resistance with tanks, and bombs etc, when confronting Fourth Generation adversaries such as Hamas and Hezbollah, the Zionists demonstrate they’re stuck in second and third generation warfare thinking. The result is extremely destructive.

This below gives you an insight as to the actual importance of Hamas and Hezbollah leaders, in fact decentralized leaders in general – – –

“There is a basic fallacy concerning Indian leadership of which nearly all are guilty. For purposes of discussion, we can refer to it as the ‘fallacy of the chief.’ Sometime in the pioneer era, we fell victim to the belief that the prevailing pattern of political organization among all American Indians was hereditary dictatorship; in other words, that a ruler from a particular lineage exercised unlimited power over a group of obedient subjects. … So ingrained is this belief that today the average tourist, when visiting an Indian reservation, is likely to ask ‘which one is the chief?’ … The North American Indians had ‘chiefs’ but often these were mere advisors and virtually never dictators. Except in emergencies, they had no power over the lives and property of their fellows.” JAIE: INFORMAL POWER STRUCTURES WITHIN INDIAN COMMUNITIES

And, from the “other” side – – –

“Before the white man came, we Indians had no chiefs. We had leaders, of course, men and women chosen by consensus for their wisdom and courage. The idea of a pyramidal hierarchy with a single person at the top was European. When whites first demanded to speak to a “chief,” my ancestors didn’t quite know how to respond. They pushed somebody out in front as spokesman–not necessarily the brightest or the bravest guy around, just someone willing to talk to the strangers and find out what they wanted in our country. But as far as the whites were concerned, he was our monarch, a sort of petty king, and therefore entitled to special privileges.”-Russell Means, Where White Men Fear to Tread (Los Angeles, Ca: General Publishing Group December 1996) p. 222

In addition to murdering approximately 42,000+ Palestinian men, women and especially children, the Israelis assassinated many Hamas and Hezbollah leaders with little noticable effect. Just last Wednesday they killed off the latest top Hamas negotiator, Yahya Sinwar. On July 31, the Zionists assassinated top Hamas peacemaker Ismail Haniyeh while he was visiting Iran. Etc.

Despite Israelie propaganda, both were moderates and respected throughout the mid-east. Is there another Hamas peacemaker with the status and respect to speak for the Hamas fighters? If not, then what?

An excellent object lesson as to how things actually operate outside Netanyahu’s aberrant dream is the U.S./Brit experience in Iraq, particularly Basra. Even more relevant is The Battle of Algiers” called “one of the most influential political films in history” which documents the outcome of such a counter-insurgency faux pas committed by the French.

P.S. The October 7 Hamas attack on some Israelies was just another tit-for-tat skirmish that went wrong. Hamas tries to capture Israeli soldiers to trade for the huge numbers of Palestinians kidnapped, imprisoned, and often held without charge for years by Israel.

The Palestinians, despite well-known Israeli propaganda, take good care of their captives else there is no trade value. A classic example is the Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange in 2011. After being held for over 5 years, Shalit was exchanged for 1,027 Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.

On October 7 of last years, things got out of hand, Israel invoked the Hannibal directive and, despite what media says, clearly killed its own on 7 October.

HERE for updates, additions, comments, and corrections.

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The post Netanyahu’s Impossible Dream appeared first on LewRockwell.

Most of our country’s major media, politicians and government employees, as well as the owners and representatives of Big Business, are not only mute on the subject of America’s broken borders and the invasion of illegal aliens—including violent criminals—into America, but they are also capitalizing on this criminal activity.

My wife and I recently purchased a new refrigerator from Lowes, and it was delivered by two Venezuelans, neither of whom could speak a word of English. They then proceeded to take pictures of our house as they left. There could be no GOOD reason for doing that. Needless to say, that was the last appliance we will ever buy from that company. And this is in our little town in Northwest Montana.

The true nature of the increase in criminal activity (the very fact that illegals are here is illegal) associated with the invasion of illegals into America will be hidden by governments and newsmakers for as long as possible. In the meantime, the U.S. is becoming less and less safe—no matter where we live.

Of course, the jeopardous situation that we are forced to live in is the result of the Biden-Harris administration over the last four years that has—for its own political purposes—shown us Americans that they care absolutely NOTHING about our safety, peace and tranquility.

Just five months before Luis Miguel Calzadilla-Rojas — a Venezuelan migrant and alleged Tren de Aragua gangbanger — was arrested after a shooting outside a probation office in Aurora, Colorado, he was welcomed into the US — thanks to a controversial immigration program launched by the Biden-Harris administration.

Calzadilla-Rojas entered the country using CBP One — an app that is designed to allow asylum seekers a legal pathway to entry into America.

He’s just one of 1.3 million migrants who have come into the country through legal routes created by the Biden-Harris admin in less than two years. [Emphasis added]

The programs were created unilaterally, without Congressional approval or input.

Homeland Security sources tell The Post that there’s almost no vetting involved for most migrants, especially if their home countries — including Venezuela, Haiti and Cuba — refuse to cooperate with American law enforcement.

(Source)

I include in this column an array of examples of how serious and dangerous our illegal alien problem is today.

Illegal migrant deported 8 times with 11 arrests now charged with murder in Ohio: ‘Our border is broken.’ 

Fermin Garcia-Gutierrez, 46, has used at least 7 different names and 3 different birthdates.

(Source)

Massive Surge in Migrants in North Dakota Raises Alarms: ‘Worst’ Is Coming. 

Republican North Dakota Attorney General Drew Wrigley warned that illegal immigration flows through the northern U.S. border that accelerated under the Biden administration will continue, with “the worst yet to come.”

“The situation has deteriorated significantly in recent years, and the current situation is untenable with millions of illegal entrants streaming across the America’s southwest border,” Wrigley said. “North Dakota is already experiencing negative law enforcement impacts as a result of the Biden Administration’s refusal to shut down the border, but my concern is that the worst is yet to come, both in the context of street crimes and violence as well as in the arena of America’s national security.”

Wrigley said there were 4,444 migrant encounters in fiscal year 2023, a drastic increase compared to the 2,127 in fiscal year 2022 and 548 in fiscal year 2021.

(Source)

Illegal migrant charged with suffocating, killing young woman on her birthday: report. 

Syracuse Police charged Ecuador native Jhon Moises Chacaguasay-Ilbis with murder. 

A woman was recently suffocated and killed in New York on the same day she turned 21, officials say.

Suspect Jhon Moises Chacaguasay-Ilbis, 21, is accused of murdering Joselyn Jhoana Toaquiza in Syracuse June 18. The Syracuse Police Department told Fox News Digital the suspect has been charged with second-degree murder and concealment of a human corpse.

A source from the Department of Homeland Security recently told the New York Post both Chacaguasay-Ilbis and Toaquiza were in the U.S. illegally. Both are from Ecuador.

(Source)

Texas Chick-fil-A confirms two employees killed in shooting, illegal immigrant suspect in custody. 

The owner of a Texas Chick-fil-A confirmed that two employees were killed Wednesday in a shooting incident in Irving.

Authorities have arrested an illegal immigrant suspected in the deadly Texas shooting that left two dead inside the fast-food restaurant on Wednesday.

Oved Bernardo Mendoza Argueta, a 37-year-old citizen of El Salvador, is charged with capital murder of multiple persons after a shooting at a Chick-fil-A in the 5300 block of North MacArthur Boulevard in Irving, police announced.

(Source)

Be sure to watch this chilling 1-minute video taken in downtown Chicago by a city resident.

Here is another report out of New York:

As if New York isn’t already plagued by rampant crime, the Venezuelan migrant gang Tren de Aragua has now extended its violent reach throughout the city (“Big Apple is a Tren wreck,” Sept. 23).

Their criminality has even affected the safety of schools near Roosevelt Avenue, where a sordid brothel has been operating. The criminal degradation resulting from the influx of illegal immigration worsens by the day, threatening the safety of neighborhoods and residents alike.

When illicit activities occur so close to schools, it is clear that we are approaching societal collapse.

Here is another report out of Texas:

Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang recruiting kids from Texas middle schools. 

Cova was identifiable as Tren de Aragua from a five-point crown tattoo on his arm. 

A confirmed Tren de Aragua (TdA) gang member has been arrested for allegedly recruiting students from two Houston middle schools to become new gang members.

Jorgenys Robertson Cova, an illegal alien from Venezuela, entered the United States two years ago, according to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The 32-year-old was arrested Monday after a string of alleged thefts.

Cova is also alleged to have recruited middle school students from Jane Long Academy and Las Americas, which are part of Houston Independent School District.

And here is a recent report out of Aurora, Colorado:

Aurora officials can no longer deny ugly truth of Tren de Aragua takeover. 

Denial’s not just a river in Egypt: The go-to game plan for leaders who are hell-bent on ignoring the effects of Harris-Biden administration’s border crisis has been to pretend that the gangbangers who are wreaking havoc in their communities have unknown origins.

That strategy fell apart Wednesday in Aurora, Colo., when federal law enforcement sources confirmed to The Post that one of the men in a group of armed thugs caught on video breaking into an apartment is an admitted member of Tren de Aragua.

So much for Aurora Police Chief Todd Chamberlain’s claim to reporters that cops hadn’t found ties to any gangs among the suspects, and city officials’ larger vehement denial that Aurora has a migrant gang problem.

Local authorities don’t want to look overwhelmed by admitting that a gang has taken control of their city.

Democrats are determined to run cover for the Harris-Biden administration, whose border fiasco has enabled Tren’s explosive rise in blue cities.

The media is happy to buy the lie, since their main goal through Election Day is to smooth Kamala Harris’ path to the White House.

But the facts won’t budge: Aurora has been absorbing the unhappy consequences of close proximity to sanctuary city Denver for the past two years.

As migrants poured into Aurora, TDA ‘bangers began setting up shop in dilapidated apartment complexes — forcing staff to flee, collecting “rent” by threatening residents and committing violent robberies, shootings and assaults.

Government leaders in the United States, Western Europe (save Hungary’s Viktor Orban) and Israel are, for the most part, as corrupt as any mafia gangster. In fact, mafia gangsters might have more scruples than these crooked politicians. They are truly people without conscience.

In their ineffective efforts to be Washington’s pathetic pawns in an unwinnable war in Ukraine, NATO leaders have not only almost bankrupted their own countries but have also made their own countries practically defenseless. They have shown their own citizens that they have sold not only their souls but their countries to stay on the smiley side (aka money side) of the warmongers in Washington.

Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu’s government is now one of the most murderously insane governments to ever exist in human history. Netanyahu is willing to take the world into nuclear war to maintain his position as Prime Minister, knowing that when he leaves office, he is facing serious jail time in Israel for a variety of corruption charges. Netanyahu is not fighting for Israel; he is fighting for Netanyahu.

And Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have deliberately and premeditatedly brought millions of criminal aliens into our country in the hopes they will vote (illegally) in November and help Kamala win. As with Netanyahu, these people are maniacal parasites who live off the death and destruction that they inflict upon their own people for the sole purpose of advancing their own self interests.

And there is no need to write and tell me that Donald Trump is a great and safe alternative. He’s not! There is not a man alive who is filled with more pride, egotism and narcissism than Trump. And he will probably be elected on November 5.

Trump might be better than Harris on the immigration issue, but when it comes to nuclear war, we probably have more to fear from Trump.

Harris is fixated with Ukraine. But Ukraine is lost. It’s over! And everyone inside the Beltway knows it. Ukraine will surrender to Russia’s terms probably before Inauguration Day on January 20. It could even happen sooner. The failed U.S. war in Ukraine will join the failed U.S. war in Vietnam (and how many other places around the world?).

When it comes to Israel’s wars of aggression in the Middle East, Trump is far more hawkish than Harris. He has already stated that he wants the United States to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities. Do you understand what Trump is saying?

The only bomb that would be effective against those facilities deep inside the Iranian mountains would be a nuclear bomb. When Trump talks about bombing Iran’s nuclear facilities, he is talking about using nuclear weapons.

Should the United States fire a nuclear weapon on Iran, do you really think that the nuclear powers of the world would sit back in abject apathy? As soon as the U.S. warhead would leave the silo, Russia, China, Pakistan, North Korea and Iran itself would have hundreds of nuclear warheads and hypersonic missiles in the sky. It would be a spontaneous global nuclear war. And the United States would NOT be spared.

Netanyahu’s criminal insanity is deliberately doing everything it can to draw the United States into an all-out war with Iran, which would include war with Russia, China, Turkey, Egypt, Saudi Arabia—and no telling how many other countries in the world. And given Donald Trump’s extreme Zionist radicalism, he would be the perfect president to oblige Netanyahu’s murderous madness.

This is God’s judgment upon an antichrist, apostate West. And all evangelicals can do is shout, “Hallelujah,” because they think this is their Rapture moment. It’s not! If nuclear war erupts, the Rapturists will suffer the consequences along with the rest of us.

Face it, folks! Biden and Harris (along with our members of Congress in both parties), the leaders of Western Europe and Benjamin Netanyahu are taking the West into the abyss.

On the other hand, the Eastern-led BRICS movement will probably replace the U.S. dollar in the not too distant future as the world’s reserve currency and end America’s debt-based global economic hegemony—which would actually be a GOOD thing. Why? Because it would force Congress to balance its budget and end the limitless supply of fiat money for Israel and our endless foreign wars.

That is, if God mercifully delivers us from nuclear war in the meantime.

Reprinted with permission from Chuck Baldwin Live.

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The Dem candidate brags about 16 million new jobs on the Harris-Biden watch and Trump claims the Greatest Economy Ever—evidenced in part by low inflation that his successor purportedly blew sky high.

Both are lying. Both ignore crucial matters of context—such as stage of the business cycle, Fed policy actions, forces arising from the $105 trillion global economy in which US growth, jobs and inflation are inextricably rooted and the fact of lag times in transmission of Washington policy into economic outcomes.

Among other things, these factors mean that comparing administrations based on the calendar happenstance of four or eight year presidential terms is inherently dubious. There are too many intervening and cross-cutting forces that usually far overpower the meager impact of White House policy pronouncements and implemented actions.

For instance, the Harris-Biden administration brags that they have created 16.6 million jobs since December 2020, but we are hard pressed to understand how Sleepy Joe had anything to do with the reported BLS numbers. Fully 9.8 million or 59% of these “new” jobs were not that at all; they were “born-again” jobs, reflecting the on-going spring-back of the US economy from from the Lockdown-induced 22 million jobs plunge 0f April 2020.

So if you go back to the February 2020 high water mark’s 152.309 million jobs, the gain under Harris-Biden through the 159.105 million figure reported for September 2024 amounts to just 151,000 net new jobs per month. As it happened, the US economy gained 261,000 per month of net new jobs during Obama’s second term and 181,000 per month during the Donald’s term through February 2020.

So Kamala has absolutely nothing to brag about: 40-year high inflation and the weakest rate of net job growth in decades. That’s made even more dramatic when you look at the monthly jobs gains relative to a continually expanding economy.

Annualized Growth of Net New Nonfarm Jobs:

• Obama’s Second Term: 2.36%.
• Trump Thru Feb 2020: 1.49%.
• Harris-Biden to date:1.27%

Harris-Biden Nonfarm Employment Growth—-Three Fifths Were Born-Again Jobs Owing to the Rebound From The Lockdown Plunge

Likewise, when it comes to the fundamental matter of overall economic growth, Trump has absolutely nothing to boast about, either. The growth rate of real final sales of domestic product, which is the best proxy for economic growth because it excludes volatile short-term inventory swings, posted at just 1.5% per annum during his 48 months in the Oval Office. That’s the second lowest of all presidents since Eisenhower and barely half the average economic growth rate between 1954 and 2016.

Indeed, the Donald has never been a stickler for even remote factual accuracy, but surely it does take some chutzpah to claim you ranked at the top of your class, when you actually scrapped the bottom, bested only by Bush the Younger and then by just a hair for last place.

Average Real Growth Per Annum:

• Kennedy-Johnson: 5.0%.
• Clinton: 3.8%.
• Reagan: 3.4%.
• Carter: 3.4%.
• Eisenhower: 2.9%.
• Nixon-Ford: 2.7%.
• Bush the Elder: 2.2%.
• Obama: 1.7%.
• Trump: 1.5%.
• Bush the Younger: 1.1%.
• All presidents, 1954 to 2016: 3.0%.

The above should constitute the proverbial, nuff said!

But the Donald’s partisans whine “because Covid”. And besides, inflation was running at 1.9% when the Donald left office.

Well, take the COVID-impacted quarters out of the calculation and you still get an average of just 2.2% per annum economic growth—right near the bottom.

As a matter of fact, however, Covid didn’t cause the plunge in employment and GDP during Q2 2020. The Lockdowns did, which the Donald ordered. And the contraction was aggravated mightily by Dr. Fauci and the Virus Patrol’s daily scary story briefings that kept Americans hunkered-down in their homes—a destructive messaging campaign that was conducted from the White House bully pulpit with the Donald’s full endorsement and frequent participation.

Indeed, the whole Lockdown/pandemic dislocation amounted to a grotesque violation of the constitutional rights of  speech, assembly, worship and property. So the Donald actually gets a very heavy black mark for their implementation on his watch because these gross constitutional violations never would have happened if he had been opposed them and sent Fauci et. al. packing. And most certainly the Donald doesn’t get a hall pass for the immense economic losses and contractions the Lockdowns caused.

Still, facts such as these are of minor moment in Trumpland. Besides, the claim of a great economy retains some resonance with the public owing to its remembrance that inflation was better behaved back then before the indexes hit 40 year highs in 2021-2022.

Yet here is the path of our trusty 16% trimmed mean CPI from 1992 to the present. For the period up to the pandemic disruptions after February 2020, you truly do need a magnifying glass to detect any differences among the administrations in power during those years.

And that goes for the Donald’s 38 months in the Oval Office up until February 2020, as well. The 2.24% inflation rate per annum during that interval was right in the middle of the pack. There was nothing Greatest Ever about it.

Per Annum Change In the 16% Trimmed Mean CPI:

• Clinton: 2.50%.
• Bush the Younger: 2.41%.
• Obama: 1.75%.
• Trump thru 2/2020: 2.24%

Again, when you take the whole term right through the pandemic quarters, the story is the same. Inflation averaged 2.12% per annum on the Donald’s 48-month watch.

Moreover, Trump’s thoroughly in-line rate of purchasing power loss meant that the saver’s and wage earner’s dollar of January 1993 continued to depreciate, reaching just 45 cents by January 2021. And the Donald did exactly nothing to stop this horrific confiscation of purchasing power and wealth.

In fact, he labored mightily and loudly while in the Oval Office to quash any incipient attempt at the Fed to shut-down the printing presses and aggressively drain the inflationary excess liquidity that had been pumped into the economy year-after-year in response to the so-called Great Financial Crisis. The resulting UniParty policy consensus thus essentially amounted to cheap interest rates and swelling financial asset prices, the better to pleasure its paymasters on Wall Street and to fund the exploding public debt.

Of course, “low interest man” Trump was 100% onboard.

Index Of Consumer Dollar’s Purchasing Power Since January 1993

And this gets us to the inflation acceleration that happened after the economy began to recover from the Q2 2020 crash, which saw real GDP plunge at a 32% annualized rate and nearly 22 million workers put on the streets.

Thereafter, the Y/Y trimmed mean CPI began marching stoutly uphill per the chart below, rising from 1.99% on a Y/Y basis in the Donald last month in office to a peak of 7.22% Y/Y in September 2022.

This 40-year high acceleration, however, did not happen by the economic equivalent of immaculate conception, nor was it owing to some flaw in capitalism that had laid dormant over previous decades. And most certainly it was not due to the policies of Harris-Bidden alone—since measured inflation was soaring long before they had made any real impact on the main street economy.

To the contrary, the Washington UniParty caused this inflationary lift-off owing to a burst of fiscal and monetary excess like had never before been recorded or even imagined. And that double whammy was launched and largely executed on the Donald’s watch, not Biden’s. It is only owing to the lag in policy transmission through the main street economy and into lagging government statistics that Biden has taken the wrap for the disaster shown below.

Y/Y Change In 16% Trimmed Mean CPI, February 2020 to August 2024

The booby prize for the inflation surge should be shared, of course. For want of doubt, here is the Washington spending bacchanalia that triggered the inflationary tsunami shown above. For the quarters before Q2 2020, government spending had been growing steadily at a $400 billion annualized rate.

Then the Donald ordered the Lockdowns in mid-March 2020, and soon was at the White House Bully Pulpit assuring tens of millions of families suddenly locked out of work and quarantined at home that cash help from Uncle Sam was on the way.

It surely was. Government spending in Q2 2020 increased by $3.54 trillion at an annualized rate. That was nearly nine times the Q4 2019 rate of growth.

Needless to say, this amounted to the Mother of All Demand Shocks. And worse still, it came at a time when much of the services sector was shut down, also upon the Donald’s orders. So this flood of demand figuratively flowed into the Amazon delivery vans, causing all working inventories in the domestic distribution system to be quickly depleted and foreign supply chains to be sucked dry shortly thereafter. Prices of merchandise goods consequently soared.

Nor was the $2.3 trillion CARES act which hit in Q2 2020 the end of it. The Y/Y spending growth rate in Q3 2020 was $2.42 trillion, or six times the pre-pandemic trend, and in Q4 the $1.07 trillion rate of government spending gain was still more than double the prior trend.

Moreover, during the 2020 election period, the Donald showed that he was not willing to leave well enough alone by advocating a second $2000 stimmy payment to 90% of US households. Subsequently, this got funded partially in the pre-Christmas Covid relief bill that Trump signed and the balance came in the American Rescue Act signed by Biden in early March 2021.

As it happened, however, both the second Trump bill and the Biden pile-on hit the spending stream in Q1 2021, causing government spending growth to soar once more, to a $3.64 trillion rate of Y/Y gain. Again, that was nine-times the pre-pandemic trend.

Needless to say, the four tall bars in the graph below tell you all you need to know. This crazy eruption of government funded demand at the very time that the Virus Patrol was sharply curtailing the supply of services is the true incubator in which the subsequent burst of 40-year high inflation was fostered. And the Donald’s statutory signatures are scribbled all over the result.

Annualized Rate Of Government Spending Change, Q1 2017 to Q4 2021

To be sure, had the Fed not accommodated the resulting massive US Treasury borrowing, interest rates would have soared to double digit levels and the economy would have shut down forthwith. But again, Trump was right in there midwifing the monetary transmission of the inflationary impulse from the unprecedented eruption of fiscal stimmies. He virtually green-flagged the Fed’s madcap print-a-thon.

To wit, between August 2019 and the April 2022 inflation peak, the Fed’s balance sheet grew by a staggering $5.18 trillion. But again, $3.60 trillion or 70% of that burst of inflationary money-printing occurred on the Donald’s watch.

Nor should the true significance of these “big numbers” be gainsaid. During the Donald’s last 16 months in office, the Fed printed more money than it had during the first 100 years of its existence!

In short, Trump was most evidently the principal policy author of the inflationary wave that has racked main street since 2020 and has become the #1 issue of the current campaign. And the irony is that Trump may ride back into office on the thoroughly spurious claim that Harris-Biden did it, instead.

In fact, the UniParty did it, yet their failed policies are all that is on offer in the abysmal presidential election now under way.

Eruption of the Fed’s Balance Sheet, August 2019 to April 2022

To be sure, the only candidate more clueless than the Donald about where the inflationary surge came from is Kamala Harris. Her claim that all will be well once she implements anti-gouging policies against the grocery store chains and  food companies is so infantile as to be hardly worthy of refutation.

But for want of doubt, here is the change in food prices at the farm gate, wholesale/manufacturing level and retail grocery stores since February 2020. Self-evidently, if any gouging was done it was at the farm gate level, where prices are up by 25.9%. That’s just slightly less than the 27.8% gain in wholesale food prices and actually a tad more than the 25.3% gain at retail.

Needless to say, good luck with making a gouging case out of that data. But then again, if Harris is looking for a scape-goat rather than a solution she might as well blame the farmers. The farm states are already hopelessly red.

In any event, the real culprits are the spenders and money-printers. And not surprisingly, both candidates want more of both.

Index of Food Prices At Farm Gate, Wholesale And Retail Since February 2020.

Reprinted with permission from David Stockman’s Contra Corner.

The post The Battle of The Liars… Trump Versus Harris and The Folly of UniParty Economics appeared first on LewRockwell.

“Disinformation” is a word we hear often today, along with its companion piece, “misinformation.” These are offshoots of “hate speech,” which is also used interchangeably for the same purpose; to censor discouraging words. These Orwellian terms have essentially turned criticism of authority into Thought Crime.

There is a thin line between justifiable criticism and annoying whining. As a Hall of Fame complainer, I know it’s not easy to sense the distinction. But there is virtually nothing or no one with any power in our society today that doesn’t deserve to be criticized. Skewered. Lambasted. And yet, most of the population has been indoctrinated to such an extent that they rise up in defense of the most indefensible individuals and institutions imaginable, whenever a Thought Criminal points out that they aren’t wearing any clothes. In the recent tragedy in North Carolina, where FEMA and law enforcement officials at all levels proved to be such an impediment to relief efforts, sheeple were all over the internet, figuratively yelling, “So you think you could do better?” Well, yes, actually, I do. I think any person not inspired by Satan himself could do better, simply by not stopping rescues and supply deliveries.

We expect the state controlled media to make excuses for the nonstop corruption, incompetence, and now insanity, that rules our crumbling society. After all, they are paid very well be apologists for it. So it was entirely in character for them to dismiss “baseless conspiracy theories” regarding FEMA and Hurricane Helene. The video reports from people on the scene, who’d been personally impacted, didn’t matter to them. It was all just “disinformation.” The victims of the hurricane were simply lying, or imagining, that government officials were blocking relief efforts. They imagined the National Guard helicopter which hovered low enough in the air to blow away supplies. There is video of that, but it’s still “disinformation.” Videos and eyewitness testimony are irrelevant when the “experts” speak. And the “experts” always find that criticism of authority is, in fact, “disinformation.” Dangerous “disinformation.”

They’ve been at this game for a long time. In the 1950s, they thoroughly demonized Senator Joe McCarthy. His attempt to investigate Soviet infiltration into our government, particularly the Army, was mocked as a “witch hunt.” They hadn’t invented the term “disinformation” yet, and wouldn’t have dared to call it “hate speech.” The American public was still too gullible in that era, but they were rocket scientists compared to the dumbed down sheeple today. As I detail in my new book American Memory Hole, McCarthy had nothing to do with blacklisting, in Hollywood or anywhere else. Hollywood figures were questioned by the House Unamerican Activities Committee. McCarthy served in the Senate. But that doesn’t matter to the court historians, who are the gatekeepers of the past. Everything ever promulgated by the establishment about Joe McCarthy is 100 percent, USDA choice disinformation.

As I’m sure you know, I got started down these rabbit holes by researching the JFK assassination. And quickly discovering that everything said and written by the state controlled media and court historians about the event was 100 percent, USDA choice disinformation. Literally, the only thing they got right was the date and location. Dan Rather, one of my journalistic heroes as a teenager for his tough questioning of Richard Nixon, first burst into prominence as a local CBS reporter in Dallas. “Covering” the assassination in his trademark, “fake news” style. At a time when no one had seen the home movie taken of the assassination by Abraham Zapruder, Rather came on the air and excitedly disclosed that he had, and that the president’s head moved forward dramatically after shots were fired. As anyone who has ever seen the Zapruder film knows, this is a huge lie. JFK’s head in fact moved violently backwards. Violating the laws of physics, as Oswald was supposedly firing from behind.

It isn’t fun being a Thought Criminal. That was especially the case in the late 1970s, when so few of us existed. Fortunately, my wit enabled me to still be a popular party guest, but I knew where to draw the line. As has become painfully apparent to me over the years, I influenced almost no one. One old girlfriend did become a lesbian, as I may have mentioned before. So if I played a hand in that, I guess that’s something. I have stopped discussing Truth in social gatherings. I stopped after my rant about 9/11 really angered some good writer friends. I realized that it was impossible to enlighten them. I recognized this as well while teaching a course on the JFK assassination for my county adult education program. There was always a lone nutter in the bunch, and my impressive Power Point presentation failed to impress them. The old Thomas Gray chestnut comes to mind- where ignorance is bliss, ‘tis folly to be wise.

I discovered governmental disinformation everywhere. The RFK and MLK assassinations. The Ruby Ridge tragedy, where the government set up Randy Weaver, a racial separatist- not a “supremacist”- who merely wanted to be left alone with his family in the wilderness. Waco, where government tanks murdered American citizens- in their own home- using a poisonous gas banned by the Geneva Convention for use in warfare. The state controlled media were unanimous in support of serial conspirator Bill Clinton, and smeared any truth about Waco as “conspiracy theory.” It was the 1990s, and we had yet to see the widespread use of the terms “racist,” and certainly not “disinformation.” When the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City blew up, General Ben Partin and others who stated the obvious- that the magic fertilizer bomb couldn’t have done all that damage- were ignored. Timothy McVeigh received a monstrously unfair trial and was executed faster than anyone in Death Row history.

If some of us mention the U.S. Secret Service official memorandum, which describes Clinton White House counsel Vince Foster’s body being found inside his car, that would now be labeled “disinformation.” Foster’s body was officially discovered in Fort Marcy Park, on the ground. Not in his car. So it’s a government memo saying this, not a “conspiracy theory.” Just like the passport of one of the supposed 9/11 hijackers, being found on top of all the pulverized steel and debris, somehow unscathed. They admit that- even bragged about it, so it’s not a “conspiracy theory.” Just like the fact they tell you that the temperature from the magical jet fuel cocktail got up to a certain temperature, which was not nearly as high as their science tells us is necessary for steel to melt. And yet, in the next breath, they’ll insist that it has been “proven” that the fuel melted the beams. That’s 100%, USDA choice disinformation.

Read the Whole Article

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“Climate instability” is a soft term, for climate geoengineering, weather modification, extended into weather weaponizing. In other words, a crime on humanity.

Professor Michel Chossudovsky provides the historic and technical details concerning weather warfare that has been emerging slowly since WW II, and probably before.

For certain, whenever you hear “fake news” to comments and reports about geoengineering and weather weaponizing, you can be sure the so-called fake news are actually the truth. And this is the case for most everything else called “fake news”.

However, what tops it all, is the recent discovery through a former employee at the South Pole Station in Antarctica. He says, what he saw at the South Pole Station is “HAARP on steroids”. He became a whistleblower, who testified before the United States Senate.

HAARP stands for High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program. Since 2015, it is officially a University of Alaska Fairbanks project which researches the ionosphere – the highest, ionized part of Earth’s atmosphere. In reality, it has a long history of weather modification and climate geoengineering.

The researcher and whistleblower, Eric Hecker, used to work for Raytheon Technologies Corporation, an American multinational aerospace and defense conglomerate, at the South Pole Station. In a 15-minute interview by Redacted, he reveals the existence of a MASSIVE weather machine at the South Pole Station. The interview, which details what Mr. Hecker experienced at the South Pole Station, is mind-blowing. It “makes the HAARP project look like a baby project.”

The weather machines at the South Poles Station can control earthquakes and the weather, alias climate. They can fabricate and direct earthquakes, hurricanes, typhoons, cyclones just about anywhere in the world. In addition, there is a giant UFO control tower, also called a neutrino control tower.

Neutrinos are tiny subatomic particles, often called ‘ghost particles’ because they barely interact with anything else. Neutrinos can be used as high-frequency energy transmitters. Earthquake or storm forming energy can be beamed literally anywhere in the world.

Mr. Hecker talks about precisely targeted earthquakes and storms.

See and listen to this earth-shaking interview by Redacted of 11 October 2024.

Concluding, weaponizing weather and climate, makes nuclear war superfluous. “Weather” and earthquakes can be targeted to specific areas as in war.

Also, avoiding nuclear wars avoids nuclear radiation and nuclear fallouts that can last from a few decades to thousands of years, and may affect the commandeering elite, as much as the common plebs.

What We, the People, want to avoid is nuclear war and weaponized weather and / or climate.

We do not want wars of any kind.

We seek Peace and the Light that will bring Peace. 

Weather Warfare

The original source of this article is Global Research.

The post The Monster Behind Weather Engineering? appeared first on LewRockwell.

The Great Fright among the elite of the party ruling our country steals across the land chillingly now from sea to shining sea — as if all those ghouls, werewolves, zombies, and tormented wraiths assembled in the front yard Halloween displays send up one mighty wail of despair: Donald Trump will seek revenge against his enemies if you elect him! they scream into the pale moonlight.

Well, he ought to, of course, and remember: they are your enemies, too — the FBI thugs battering down your doors at five in the morning, the malicious US attorneys manufacturing phony felonies, the Soros-owned DAs and party-owned judges, and the thousands of spooks from agencies both known and unheard-of surveilling your every move, every purchase, every journey, every thought. Consider that it is not whether Mr. Trump might seek revenge but whether justice, and the mental health of the nation, require an accounting for the real crimes of actual persons against the people of America lo these years of the Woke Jacobin Inquisition.

Finally, as the days dwindle down to November 5, you understand exactly what motivates the three layers of evil heaping America with malice and punishment. Layer one: the officers of the political establishment, a.k.a., “the blob” or Deep State, both current and emeritus. You know now that they are motivated to stay out of courts-of-law (and, ultimately, prison). Figures such as John Brennan, Merrick Garland, Lisa Monaco, Chris Wray, Anthony Fauci, Alejandro Mayorkas, Barack Obama, and many more, exude culpability for doing real harm to US citizens. They do not want to do time. As Dr. Johnson famously said: “When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.” They see Donald Trump’s poll number go hockey stick and they tremble in their Beltway mansions. On the Kubler-Ross transect of grief, they are just now wavering between the stages of anger and bargaining.

Second layer: the lawfare lawyer gang deployed to keep the blob safe from investigation and prosecution: Marc Elias (the mail-in ballot fraud genius), Norm Eisen, Andrew Weissmann, Mary McCord (authors of every get-Trump legal brief), and many others who work with them, are motivated by the gigantic fees they command from the Democratic National Committee and other cut-out orgs that funnel payments to them. The Elias Law Group alone is rumored to have raked-in millions from one client, the Kamala Harris campaign. This is apart from whatever lawyerly zeal they exercise so enjoyably in their blood-lust for Mr. Trump and his associates. Remember: Jacobins are sadists who derive pleasure from cruelly punishing their adversaries. It probably motivates them more than the money involved, since ambitious Beltway lawyers can always and easily make bundles of money from the most mundane services to the blob.

Third Layer: the news media. The motives of these birds are the flimsiest: social status and professional stature. They operate within a self-referential reward bubble that provides psychological nourishment as long as they go along with the mumurations of their flock. They will be easiest to turn around as the national mood turns (and is now turning, sharply). A year from now, don’t be surprised if they treat Mr. Trump as a revered hero who saved the country from the malignant blob — and pretend that they never thought otherwise. By then, it will be too late for some, of course, and actual figures such as Lawrence O’Donnell and Rachel Maddow of MSNBC, Maggie Haberman of The New York Times, NBC’s Nicolle Wallace, will be drowning in their own slime trails.

Now, whether Mr. Trump would actively seek revenge is a thing apart from the paranoia of his adversaries. On the one hand, he seems aware that his own place in history will rest not on looking backward to the harms inflicted on him as the sacrificial goat for the sins of “the deplorables” — the many Lawfare cases against him will likely be reversed in higher courts, or just dropped — but on attending to and fixing the many obvious, reality-based problems afflicting the nation: inflation, the horrendous debt, the libido for war induced by military contractors and neocons, the return of productive industry and jobs that pay living wages, sealing the border and expelling dangerous aliens, and stopping the race-and-gender hustles, to name a few things.

In 2016, Mr. Trump floated the idea of defaulting on US debt, or negotiating its terms. Sounded outrageous to some at the time. Now, with the BRICs org meeting to de-dollarize their trade arrangements, might be a ripe time to make such a move. He can reverse “Joe Biden’s” 2021 reversal of his border policies by executive order on day one, put a stop to the “sanctuary city” idiocy, and end all cash incentives to illegals currently inside the USA. He can negotiate a reasonable end to the Ukraine conflict that leaves that country neutral, as everyone knows it should be. He can incentivize the return of factory production with US companies. He knows (and you know) that there is a huge agenda of practical problems to face. Mr. Trump does not need the aggravation of stirring up further grievance and resentment among the defeated Wokesters. He needs them to get aboard a national reclamation project, get their minds right, and lend a hand.

Speaking of hands, on the other hand, remember that the signal weakness of Julius Caesar was pardoning his enemies. Since Mr. Trump is best known as a deal-maker, I believe he will seek to make a deal with the blob. The deal will be for them to cooperate in the prosecution of certain key figures in exchange for not demolishing their agencies altogether. Some of these people — Garland, Mayorkas, Fauci, Brennan, and Wray, for examples — really do need to do some ‘splainin’ in front of juries. That may be sufficient to clarify for history some of the damage the Woke insanity did to our country. We can’t pretend that nothing happened. Most of all, Mr. Trump has to defeat the sick belief that anything goes and nothing matters.

Reprinted with permission from JamesHowardKunstler.com.

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We have to talk about Kamala Harris.

After I wrote about why Tim Walz is weird, many asked me to analyse Harris in the same way. This turns out to be a tall order. To begin with, Harris is a much more credible performer than Walz. She is merely an actor playing the part of a politician and not – like Walz – some kind of confused AI automaton aping the mannerisms and rhetoric of other actors playing the parts of politicians. To that comes the fact that most of Harris’s appearances have been highly scripted. She’s benefited from sympathetic interviewers, and in the last presidential debate, the moderators and even Donald Trump mostly failed to knock her off script. It’s no good merely to study lines that other people have written.

Recently, though, the clouds have parted. The Harris campaign, worried about narrowing polls, have scheduled various conversational interviews, including one with a “television personality and comedian” who goes by the name of the first Frankish emperor and who also calls himself God. Amazingly, there is some worthwhile material in that appearance, but it’s sparse. Our god almost never follows up on his challenges and the informal setting allows Harris to just talk and talk and talk. Harris, you’ve surely noticed, really likes to talk; she is one of those people for whom speaking is primarily about expressing emotion and mood, and only secondarily about communicating anything.

Anyway, I was afraid I’d have to analyse that interview; you can imagine my trepidation and reluctance. On Wednesday, though, the heavens took pity on me, finally granting my wish in the form of the Fox interview with Bret Baier. This has everything I’ve been asking for: An aggressive and confrontational interviewer who presses his points, a format that denies Harris the opportunity to rehearse predigested scripts and fight her way out of corners with tides of tiresome verbiage, and questions that go beyond what our candidate is prepared to talk about.

Harris has a lot of trouble in this appearance. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that it lays bare the central enigma of her candidacy. This is that Harris does not seem to be in charge of her own messaging. It is as if the American political establishment, in its zeal to defeat Trump, has produced via some benighted lab process his exact opposite, namely somebody who lacks all capacity for extemporaneous discourse. The Baier interview was indeed hostile, and even laden with some clever traps; the idea was clearly to give Harris the same kind of treatment that Trump usually receives. At the same time, Baier’s questions all addressed eminently predictable topics. None of them would’ve been remotely hard for a Hillary Clinton or a Barack Obama to deal with. Harris, however, just can’t say anything that hasn’t been approved by her campaign. The words literally won’t leave her mouth, which leaves her completely defenceless in the face of spontaneous challenges. It’s a quietly bizarre spectacle.

Equally bizarre are all the things Harris just isn’t prepared to discuss, even in a short interview of highly limited range. Her immigration talking points are so sparse that it’s comical. She wants to distance herself from the Biden administration but she can’t describe any concrete political differences between herself and the current president. And at the end, when Baier brings up Iran, she has almost nothing definite to say at all, although (as Baier himself notes) she claimed that Iran was America’s greatest adversary in her 60 Minutes interview just a few weeks ago. Beyond some standardised words about her wonderful plans to help young people with small businesses buy houses, all Harris has in her quiver is a great bundle of anti-Trump talking points. These crowd out literally everything else, and they also intrude on almost everything else Harris does talk about. To hear Harris speak, you’d think the forty-fifth president never left office, that he remains the dominant force in American politics, and that aside from the odd plans, being against Trump is the only thing Harris really stands far. She is a strange, hollow, low-resolution crayon candidate, and what is more, she may well win the election.

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