Llewellyn H. Rockwell Jr.'s Blog, page 270

Understanding Tribalism

The Parthians feared us; we, in turn, held them in dread, and from the mating of our two fears would come war.

—Memoirs of Hadrian, by Marguerite Yourcenar

Hadrian was the Emperor of Rome in the years 117-138 AD, at the Roman Empire’s zenith. During his reign he constantly contended with the practical problem of how to incorporate people with strong tribal identities into a multiethnic polity. He often found it formidably difficult.

This morning I thought of Hadrian’s troubles when I read an inv...

Israel’s Motto Is ‘We Can Have Peace Tomorrow If We Just Kill A Few More People Today’

Israel’s permanent national security doctrine is basically “We can have peace tomorrow if we just kill a few more people today.”

But it’s always today. Tomorrow never comes.

Israel never succeeds in killing its way to peace, because that’s not actually a thing.

You can’t murder, oppress and tyrannize people into obedience. You can kill off the people who oppose you, but in doing so you just create more people who oppose you. You can scorch the earth killing off every member of Hamas and Hezbolla...

Only Idiots, at This Stage, Still Trust Any Mainstream American News-Media.

Leading up to America’s shameful illegal destructive and evil invasion of Iraq on 20 March 2003, all of the U.S. mainstream news-media were uncritically trumpeting the White House’s lies against Iraq and Saddam Hussain, none of these propaganda-organizations were reporting the clearly-established but unpublicized crucial truths. After the falsehood of the White House’s allegations had become no longer credible even to most of the highly deceived American public, the U.S. Government’s excuse beca...

FEMA Still Paying $9,000 for Covid Funerals, Billions on Pandemic Payouts

As the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) carries out widely-criticized responses to Hurricanes Helene and Milton, officials say the agency’s Disaster Recovery Fund is incapable of handling a third major storm.

While some are circulating false accusations that disaster funds have been diverted to immigrants or poured into the proxy war in Ukraine, a review of the agency’s 2024 outlays reveals a different, ongoing drain on FEMA’s coffers: Long after the end of the declared Covid-19 emerge...

Germany Dismisses Ukraine’s Demands for Taurus Missiles and NATO Membership

Berlin has spurned two key demands that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky tried to “sell” during his European tour to promote his so-called Victory Plan: getting the green light for deep strikes into Russian territory (which would require German Taurus missiles, among others) and speeding up Ukraine’s accession to NATO, German media reported.

According to Bild, Zelensky had a packed itinerary that included a whirlwind tour of the UK, France, Italy, and Germany in a bid to garner Western sup...

Can We Rein in the Excesses of Financialization Without Crashing the Economy?

Or we can let the bubble implode under its own weight and have a plan ready to clean house when the dust settles.

Thanks to recency bias, we tend to think the world has always been more or less as it is today. Tectonic shifts beneath the veneer of everyday life escape us unless we make a concerted effort to peel back the veneer of normalcy.

For example, consider the rise of finance as the dominant force in our socio-economic / political status quo. Statistics give us a rough picture of the domin...

How Do We Get Off the Road to Armageddon?

Two days ago on October 14 I posted my column about a new US Department of Defense Directive, 5240.01, that radically alters the relationship between the US military and American citizens.  In the new directive issued one month prior to the election, the US military is authorized to intervene against American citizens and to use deadly force against Americans. 

I asked why such a drastic reformulation of long established policy unless the Democrats were setting up a coup in place of a lost elect...

Brace Yourselves: A Tsunami Approaches

“What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if the people could understand it, it could not be released because of national security… And all the crises and reforms (real reforms, too) so occupied the people that they did n...

Pathetic Europeans Green-Light Israel To Continue War Crimes

The “appeasement” argument is entirely appropriate regarding Israel and genocide in Gaza and Lebanon.

It’s almost hilarious if it wasn’t so damnable. The Israeli regime is attacking United Nations peacekeepers and all the pathetic European governments can muster is a mealy-mouthed plea “that these attacks must stop immediately.”

Some 15 members of the UN’s Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) have been injured so far after the Orwellian-named Israeli Defense Forces attacked their bases. There are c...

Top 3 Predictions for Post-Election America

International Man: In the 2020 Presidential elections, there were allegations of cheating, voter fraud, and all sorts of shenanigans.

What do you expect to happen in the 2024 election in this regard? Do you think the outcome will be disputed?

Doug Casey: Election disputes are not unique to the current era. In the 1960 election, Chicago’s Mayor Daley stuffed ballot boxes, allowing Kennedy to win over Nixon in an extremely close election.

It happened again when the baby Bush ran against Al Gore in...