Llewellyn H. Rockwell Jr.'s Blog, page 2418

To Oppose Nuking North Korea

Alexis de Tocqueville, a French aristocrat who achieved fame through his observations about early American democracy, noted that American political rhetoric is so abstract and imprecise that it both “exaggerates and hides any true thought.” He would have loved neocon warhawk Ralph Peters, who, in his many rhetorical screeds published by the New York Post, is calling for a preemptive nuclear attack on North Korea.

After the usual spiel about North Korea being the new Nazi Germany, a meme repea...

Gold Has Broken Out

The coming gold and silver moves in the next few months will really surprise most investors as market volatility increases substantially.

It seems right now that “All (is) quiet on the Western Front” as Erich-Maria Remarque wrote about WWI. Ten years after the Great Financial Crisis started and nine years after the Lehman collapse, it seems that the world is in better shape than ever. Stocks are at historical highs, interest rates at historical lows, house prices are booming again and consume...

Laughing on the Way to Armageddon

The United States shows the world such a ridiculous face that the world laughs at us.

The latest spin on “Russia stole the election” is that Russia used Facebook to influence the election. The NPR women yesterday were breathless about it.

We have been subjected to ten months of propaganda about Trump/Putin election interference and still not a scrap of evidence. It is past time to ask an unasked question: If there were evidence, what is the big deal? All sorts of interest groups try to influe...

Demonitization Was a Catastrophe

New Delhi, Sep 8 (IANS) Demonetisation was a catastrophe which couldn’t achieve the objectives it aimed for, Marc Faber, editor and publisher of economic and financial publication ‘The Gloom, Boom and Doom Report’, said on Friday.

“We all know demonetisation has been a catastrophe. It didn’t achieve its objectives. It could have been done in a benign way, giving a period of six months wherein old notes could be exchanged so that nobody suffered,” Faber told BTVi in an interview.

He said that...

The Case for Loafers

No doubt it is a sign of advancing age, and also of retirement, that these days I always take a siesta. This increases my productivity greatly, for I am energetically clearheaded only for an hour at a time, and always soon after I have fully woken up. After about an hour, it is downhill all the way.

Whenever I emerge from the oneiric state between sleep and full consciousness, however, I do so—now twice a day—with a feeling of deep regret. I love the state, half asleep, half awake, in which y...

Most Americans Don’t Believe the Official Tale

Next Monday afternoon, Matt Campbell will stand outside BBC Broadcasting House in London’s Portland Place, protesting about the killing of his brother, Geoff, and 66 other Britons, in the 9/11 terror attack at the New York World Trade Centre.

After the horror on September 11, 2001, there was no trace of Geoff. The 31-year-old risk analyst had been attending a conference on the 106th floor in the North Tower, a short stroll from the Manhattan apartment where he lived with his American fiancée,...

Don’t Be Evil

I will never forget when I first heard that Google had adopted “Don’t be evil” as its motto.  My first thought was:  Spare me the self-righteousness, please.  My second thought was that such a holier-than-thou statement could only come from a couple of immature kids who were infected with that horrific moral disease known in finer circles as “absolute moralitis.”

Thus, it was easy for me to translate Google’s “Don’t be evil” motto into “We intend to be evil.”  And evil they’ve been, so much s...

Russia’s Strategic Imperative

…circa 1914.

The Russian Origins of the First World War, by Sean McMeekin.

Prologue

In my introductory post on this book, I offered the following regarding the complimentary nature of McMeekin’s book to that of Frankopan’s Silk Roads:

My one disagreement – or maybe better stated, skepticism: McMeekin portrays the Russians as cunning diplomats and the British diplomats as dupes.  If I believe Frankopan’s analysis, British diplomacy knew exactly what it wanted and got it: Russia focused on Euro...

Horrific Massacre in Burma

Few people have ever heard of Myanmar’s Rohingya people.  Not many more could find Myanmar on a map – particularly after its name was changed some years ago from Burma to Myanmar.

The exception is Burma’s sainted lady leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, who became a worldwide celebrity and Nobel Prize winner.  The media loved her, a sort of Burmese Joan of Arc versus its brutal military junta.

But now, tragically, the Rohingya are headline news thanks to Myanmar’s brutal ethnic cleansing of one of the...

Venezuela Is About To Ditch the Dollar

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro said Thursday that Venezuela will be looking to “free” itself from the U.S. dollar next week, Reuters reports. According to the outlet, Maduro will look to use the weakest of two official foreign exchange regimes (essentially the way Venezuela will manage its currency in relation to other currencies and the foreign exchange market), along with a basket of currencies.

According to Reuters, Maduro was referring to Venezuela’s current official exchange rate, k...