Llewellyn H. Rockwell Jr.'s Blog, page 2443

North Korea?

While senior U.S. officials led by President Trump and media pundits sound the alarm over North Korea’s nuclear ambitions, America has been dealing with a series of nuclear leaks domestically that are already exposing the public to radioactive material.

The most recent case is in Washington State, where a radioactive leak at the Hanford Site nuclear facility that began on June 8 was kept secret for two months while contaminating the surrounding area.

Plutonium particles detected as far as thr...

8 Lessons From a Bad Case of Poison Ivy

Earlier this summer, my kids developed poison ivy. Upon investigation, we found a healthy patch of the stuff in the back corner of the yard, right next to the swing-set. As my husband is highly allergic to poison ivy, it was my job to pull up and discard the patch before the kids got into it again. Precautions were taken by wearing long pants and gloves. Afterwards, my clothing was immediately removed and washed. During my shower, I scrubbed down with Dawn dish soap, but it didn’t matter. Wit...

Statist Monetary Cranks

I have been writing refutations of monetary cranks for over half a century.

I wrote my first essay on a monetary crank, Gertrude Coogan, in 1965. Her book was Money Creators. It came out in the 1930’s in the Great Depression. That was the golden era of anti-gold standard fiat monetary cranks.

I wrote the essay because R. J. Rushdoony had been taken in by the cranks in the late 1950’s. Specifically, he read the greenbackers. He also read Mises, but he did not understand Mises’ monetary theory....

A Sharp, Funny Assessment

This book is extremely informative and a snarky assessment of the Washington establishment which is quite entertaining. As a libertarian, Stockman is not always a Trump supporter but he despises Washington and thinks Trump is what it deserves. While this book is mainly economic it makes a lot of political points which are quite insightful once you think about them.

The first is that we basically have a planned economy run by the unelected governors of the Federal Reserve which he describes as...

Only Morons Believe the US Empire

Usually foreign analysts of the American political scene are either sycophantic or just annoying, but no one would dare say that about Aussie observer Caitlin Johnstone, whose punk rock style of cutting to the chase is as refreshing as it can be shocking (I am not a fan of the strong language, but I get it). Since President Trump’s “fire and fury” explosion yesterday Americans have to an unsettling degree once again rallied ’round the (false) flag of war propaganda. Today Ms. Johnstone provid...

Harry Truman’s Atomic Bombs

[Excerpted from “Harry S. Truman: Advancing the Revolution,” in Reassessing the Presidency: The Rise of the Executive State and the Decline of Freedom, John Denson, ed.]

The most spectacular episode of Harry Truman’s presidency will never be forgotten but will be forever linked to his name: the atomic bombings of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, and of Nagasaki three days later. Probably around two hundred thousand persons were killed in the attacks and through radiation poisoning; the vast major...

What the Mainstream Doesn’t Get

The real demand for bitcoin will not be known until a global financial crisis guts confidence in central banks and politicized capital controls.

I’ve been writing about cryptocurrencies and bitcoin for many years. For example: Could Bitcoin Become a Global Reserve Currency? (November 7, 2013)

I am an interested observer, not an expert. As an observer, it seems to me that the mainstream–media, financial punditry, etc.–as a generality don’t really grasp the dynamics driving bitcoin and t...

I’ve Had Enough

I’m 50, unemployed, and poor. Okay? I don’t give a damn about whether or not Bashar al-Assad runs Syria, about Russia, or any of these other so-called political concerns I’m told to have by the Democratic Party who has learned the sum total of absolutely nothing in the 2016 election. When it was revealed the election of 2016 was more about economic concerns than anything else, the Democrats vowed to work on that—the promptly forgot it and blamed the loss on Russia. Despite the fact that Russi...

The Fire and Fury of Nuclear War

The latest terroristic bombast out of Donald Trump about unleashing “fire and fury like the world has never seen” on North Korea is very dangerous stuff and is leading the United States in the completely wrong direction.

Agreed that North Korea is making foolhardy moves to prove that it has nuclear weapons capable of reaching Guam and will use them if the U.S. continues its threatening posture toward the tinpot dictatorship of the unstable and slightly ridiculous Kim Jong Un.  Agreed that it...

Rotten Tomatoes for Algore

The Rotten Tomatoes (RT) reviews are in for Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power movie. According to RT, the movie is listed as a “Documentary” but as reviewers pointed out;

Truth to Power doesn’t want to drown viewers in data, but more fact-finding would have helped the movie’s purported message of progress and hope” – Gary ThompsonPhiladelphia Daily News

The movie is a piece of advocacy, and it succeeds at that: The conclusive science presented is powerful evidence that there is...