Llewellyn H. Rockwell Jr.'s Blog, page 113

Lenin’s Question Is the Question of Our Time

Now that some total idiot in the Trump regime has green-lighted an attack on Russian strategic forces, John Helmer raises for Putin Lenin’s question, “What is to be done?” See this.

As I understand it, Washington’s attack on Russian strategic forces is grounds under current Russian war doctrine for Putin to push the button.  But Putin, unlike Lenin, is a balancer, not a person who acts.  Is Putin so desperate to avoid war that he is bringing war upon us?

There seems to be more awareness among Ru...

30 Trillion Dollars in 30 Years

When you spend 30 trillion dollars that you do not have, it is easy to create an illusion of prosperity. In 1995, the nation was obsessed with the O.J. Simpson trial, “Toy Story” was the biggest movie of the year, the Sony Playstation made its debut in the United States, and Bill Clinton was in the White House. At that time, the U.S. national debt was right on the verge of crossing the 5 trillion dollar mark. Today, the U.S. national debt is sitting at 36.2 trillion dollars. That means that we h...

Silver: Money, Markets, and the Metal’s Role in the Coming Chaos

International Man: What is it about silver that makes it viable as a monetary metal—that is, something people actually use to store and exchange value?

Doug Casey: Let’s look at the definition of what makes a good money. There are basically six characteristics. A good money has to be durable, divisible, convenient, consistent, have use value, and some limit on supply. Using those six key characteristics, gold ranks first, silver second, and copper third. That’s why those three metals have been p...

The Failure To Stop Thomas Paine

The United States, formerly these united colonies, is preparing for its 250th anniversary of its break-up from that era’s Great Satan by reminding us of what brought it about, such as the Battle of Lexington and Concord and subsequent battles of 1775, along with issues that preceded them.  In spite of all the bloodshed and fiery tavern rhetoric, most members of the Continental Congress wanted reconciliation from Britain, not independence, even after the publication of Thomas Paine’s Common Sense...

How Well Does Russia Understand the West?

I raise the question in the title because the Russian media looks askance at what it labels “a rise in the popularity of right-wing forces” in “recent elections in three EU countries.”  The Russian media describes as “right-wing” the awakened ethnic nationalities–the French of France, the Germans of Germany–as “right-wing.”  But President Putin of Russia describes Russia as Russian, even though the Federation is comprised of different nationalities.  Putin stresses that whatever the ethnicities ...

Was the U.S. Government Involved in Ukraine’s Drone Attack on Russia?

As the media is reporting, Ukraine just launched a massive drone attack that wreaked major destruction deep inside Russia. Ukrainian officials smuggled the drones in trucks into Russia and launched them from inside the country. U.S. officials and the U.S. mainstream press are praising the attack as a brilliant maneuver. They are hoping that the attack will force Russia to the negotiating table with the aim of bringing an end to the war.

One thing is clear: the attack now escalates the conflict i...

The Defeat of the West and Its Dislocation

In 1976 the French anthropologist Emmanuel Todd predicted the down fall of the Soviet Union. In After The Empire, first published in French in 2001, he predicted the (relative) decline of the United States.

In his latest (and last) book, La Défaite de l’Occident (The Defeat of the West), he laments the West’s inability to distinguish facts from wishes, as seen in its behavior during the war in Ukraine. Nihilism, a lack of values and of acceptance of reality, has infested western thinking:

Trans ...

Today’s Franz Ferdinand

More than 100 years ago, the world went to war over a squabble in the Balkans and the assassination of a Balkan politico – the Archduke Franz Ferdinand – in Serbia. What followed was both ridiculous and tragic –  and it looks like it may happen again.

This time, over a ridiculous little comedian who plays the role of “president” of Ukraine, a piece of the old Soviet Union that is being used as a front for a proxy war on Russia, which has so far shown almost unbelievable restraint in the face of ...

This Is Israel

This is Israel. This is what the Zionist project looks like. The dead kids. The blown-out hospitals. The desperate, starving civilians. This is it.

There is no alternate version of Israel where these things are not happening. The liberal Zionist vision of a two-state solution and a just and peaceful Israel exists solely in the imaginations of the people who envision it. Nothing like it has ever existed. Everything about the modern state of Israel is unyieldingly hostile to that vision.

You eithe...

Trump’s Palantir-Powered Surveillance Is Turning America Into a Digital Prison

“We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission.” — Ayn Rand

Call it what it is: a panopticon presidency.

President Trump’s plan to fuse government power with private surveillance tech to build a centralized, national citizen database is the final step in transforming America from a constitutional republic into a digital dictatorship armed with algorithms and powered by u...