Llewellyn H. Rockwell Jr.'s Blog, page 2143

The Syrians

Assad was supposed to be gone already. President Obama thought it would be just another “regime change” operation and perhaps Assad would end up like Saddam Hussein or Yanukovych. Or maybe even Gaddafi. But he was supposed to be gone. The US spent billions to get rid of him and even provided weapons and training to the kinds of radicals that attacked the United States on 9/11.

But with the help of his allies, Assad has nearly defeated this foreign-sponsored insurgency.

The US fought him every...

The Problem With Conservative Purges

A recently posted commentary by Ben Shapiro on National Review Online caught my attention. Contrary to the misleading view that the evolution of the conservative movement has been a generally harmonious development (toward ever greater moderation), Shapiro provides a different perspective. The leaders of his movement have been busily purging dissenters on the Right for decades; and Shapiro presents this example of industrious house cleaning to his friends on the Left as something they might w...

Want To Feed the World?

Mixing ethanol with gasoline is a bad idea – for many reasons.  But there is one reason in particular that should worry you.

A recent AT blog post by S. Fred Singer titled “Trump and the end of the ‘Oil Crisis’” reasoned that it might be time to remove the ethanol mandate:

My hope is that Congress, at some point, will remove the requirements for gasoline additives, especially for the corn-based bio-fuel ethanol.

This is long overdue, and Singer lists some good reasons to remove that mandatory...

Central Banks Enrich a Select Few

The message unanimously churned out by politicians, central bankers, and ‘mainstream’ economists is that central banks are there for the ‘greater good’. They provide the economy with sufficient money and credit, and they fight inflation, thereby supporting output and employment growth. What is more, central banks, are supposedly in a position to effectively fend off or at least mitigate financial and economic crises. However, unfortunately, nothing could be further from the truth.

Throughout...

Castle Proliferation

“The castle, and all it represents, will always be with us. Once it was born, once the stone was made living, the repository of power made real, the idea could never be unmade.”

–        David Day, Castles

Early European Castles: Aristocracy and Authority, AD 800-1200, by Oliver Creighton.

I was made aware of this book via an email from Paul Rosenberg at Freeman’s Perspective.  What piqued my interest was a map (sourced from the book), depicting the castles of various kings, lords, and nobles...

Once the Bubbles Pop

I hate to break it to you, but the everything bubble isn’t permanent.

OK, I get it–the Bull Market in stocks is permanent. Bulls will be chortling in 2030 that skeptics have been wrong for 22 years–an entire generation. Bonds will also be higher, thanks to negative interest rates, and housing will still be climbing higher, too. Household net worth will be measured in the gazillions.

Here’s the Fed’s measure of current household net worth: a cool $100 trillion, about 750% of disposable persona...

Hero Spotting Just Got Easier

There is at least one upside to Ford’s announcement earlier this year that it will be transitioning (like Bruce) away from making cars to making mostly crossovers and trucks. The Mustang will survive, but the Taurus and Fusion sedans are on borrowed time.

Which will mean less confusion about which cars armed government workers drive. Which will make it easier for us to avoid them – which is important for our safety.

Armed government workers are very dangerous – to us. “Terrorists” haven’t kil...

An Online Vigil in Defense of Julian Assange

Joe Lauria, editor-in-chief of Consortium News, on Saturday helped moderate a daylong chain of interviews in defense of WikiLeaks and its publisher Julian Assange, including a discussion with Daniel Ellsberg. 

A #Unity4J online vigil was held on Saturday to defend the WikiLeaks editor-in-chief, whose sanctuary at the Ecuadorian embassy in London has turned into torturous solitary confinement.

Among the participants on Saturday were Craig Murray, a former U.K. ambassador; Nat Parry, son of Con...

China’s Exploitation of Africa

Justin’s note: Is China taking over Africa?

A lot of folks are asking themselves this question, and for good reason.

You see, China’s pulling resources out of the ground in Africa at an alarming rate. Not only that, Chinese people are pouring into the continent by the boatload.

That said, it’s not all “bad news.” China’s also started construction companies across Africa, created jobs, and built schools and hospitals.

In short, the question I posed above is trickier than it may seem. So I got...

Is There a Plan in South Africa To Steal White Farms

President Trump was not wrong about the South African land-grab, according to the South African Institute of Race Relations (SAIRR), a liberal think tank. SAIRR said that the Trump had exposed the “damage” the policy was doing.

He did not, however, expose the extent of the damage. Nor the intent.

The current President of South Africa wrote an article for London’s Financial Times just two weeks ago defending the acquisition of land from white farmers by black South Africans without compensatio...