Category: Aggregated

In recent weeks, I kept meaning to write up a stylized history of the evolution of political ideology over recent centuries. But my examples—why Andrew Jackson rather than Alexander Hamilton will get booted off the currency, how Spike Lee learned painfully to start denouncing Hollywood for being run by whites and stop denouncing it for being run by Jews, and why democracy in Poland is undemocratic—grew into entire columns. So now it’s time to get past the illustrations to the big picture. Here’s a simple outline of four eras, each when a different political ideology seemed inarguable: (1) hereditary right … Continue reading →

The post When a Majority Becomes a Minority appeared first on LewRockwell.

KINGSTON, NY, 10 February 2016 — As evidenced in our Trends in the News broadcast, we forecast that the Panic of 2016 would usher in the new year. It did. Despite Deutsche Bank’s shares, spiking today on the hype of a bond buy-back, the banking sector and fundamentals of the world economy remain at high risk. Global stock indexes have plunged into bear territory, currencies are crashing – and as commodity prices tumble, resource-rich nations going broke are begging the World Bank and International Monetary Fund to bail them out. Neither “The Panic” nor the Global Recession, one of our Top Trends … Continue reading →

The post No Bank Bounce-Back appeared first on LewRockwell.

The critic of anything—food, wine, art, film, music—must develop ways to describe an experience that go beyond the usual vocabulary lists. Good, bad, beautiful, ugly and a few hundred other words related to the way things look, sound, and taste, and smell might be sufficient for ordinary description, but the professional opinion-giver has to keep things vivid and fresh. To do this, they might come up with new or unusual words, or uncommon metaphors, but sometimes what’s called for is a new syntactic structure. At least that seems to be the idea behind a linguistic trend making its noticeable way … Continue reading →

The post ‘It Eats Salty’ appeared first on LewRockwell.

The US Central Intelligence Agency has, according to multiple investigative reports from both mainstream media outlets and human rights organizations, operated numerous “black sites” across the world. These locations, according to the reports, are secret prisons used to house “ghost prisoners.” Those sent to these places are held captive without being charged with any crime and are not allowed any form of legal defense. Ghost prisoners are subject to what the CIA calls “enhanced interrogation tactics”; most others call it torture. The CIA and their operatives’ methods allegedly include waterboarding, sleep deprivation, humiliation, physical beatings, electric shocks, and worse. These … Continue reading →

The post 10 CIA Concentration Camps appeared first on LewRockwell.

What if all the remaining presidential candidates really want the same things? What if they all offer essentially the same ideas couched in different words? What if these primary races have become beauty pageants largely based on personality and advertising? What if our system of governance is so deep into the fabric of big government in the second decade of the 21st century that all the presidential candidates really believe that most voters actually want the government to care for them? What if all major candidates in both major political parties promise a federal government that can right any wrong, … Continue reading →

The post Not a Dime’s Worth of Difference appeared first on LewRockwell.

It all started in mid/late 2014, when the first whispers of a Fed rate hike emerged, which in turn led to relentless increase in the value of the US dollar and the plunge in the price of oil and all commodities, unleashing the worst commodity bear market in history. The immediate implication of these two concurrent events was missed by most, although we wrote about it and previewed the implications in November of that year in “How The Petrodollar Quietly Died, And Nobody Noticed.” The conclusion was simple: Fed tightening and the resulting plunge in commodity prices, would lead (as … Continue reading →

The post Deutsche Bank Is Scared appeared first on LewRockwell.

Inspired by a recent interview of Stephen F. Cohen by John Batchelor…. All around that dull grey world From Moscow to Berlin People storm the barricades Walls go tumbling in . All around this great big world All the crap we had to take Bombs and basement fallout shelters All our lives at stake . The bloody revolution All the warheads in its wake All the fear and suffering All a big mistake All those wasted years All those precious wasted years Who will pay? –        Neil Peart . The Cold War seems so long ago.  Twenty-five years ago the … Continue reading →

The post The Top Dog’s Self-Destruction appeared first on LewRockwell.

The morning of the New Hampshire primary, Donald Trump, being interviewed on “Morning Joe,” said that he would welcome his “friend” Michael Bloomberg into the presidential race. Which is probably the understatement of 2016. The three-term mayor of New York and media mogul whose fortune is estimated at $39 billion, making him one of the richest men on earth, told the Financial Times on Monday he is considering a run. Bloomberg had earlier confided he was worried about Hillary Clinton’s ability to turn back the challenge of Bernie Sanders, regards Trump’s rise with trepidation, and is appalled by the pedestrian … Continue reading →

The post Bloomberg vs. Trump? appeared first on LewRockwell.

This pithy little maxim was first coined by the British politician and prime minister Benjamin Disraeli, and adopted as a motto by many other high-ranking Brits — from members of royalty to navy admirals, to fellow prime minsters Stanley Baldwin and Winston Churchill. The maxim well encapsulates the stiff-upper lipped-ness of the Victorian age, but the timeless wisdom it contains has made it a guiding mantra of powerful, confident, accountability-prizing men up through the modern day. The “nevers” of course aren’t ironclad and don’t apply to every situation, and even when they should apply, they can be hard to follow through on! … Continue reading →

The post Never Complain, Never Explain appeared first on LewRockwell.

Needless to say, none of that stink was detected by Steve Liesman and his band of Jobs Friday half-wits who bloviate on bubble vision after each release. This time the BLS report actually showed the US economy lost 2.989 million jobs between December and January. Yet Moody’s Keynesian pitchman, Mark Zandi described it as “perfect”Yes, the BLS always uses a big seasonal adjustment (SA) in January——so that’s how they got the positive headline number. But the point is that the seasonal adjustment factor for the month is so huge that the resulting month-over-month delta is inherently just plain noise.To wit, the seasonal adjustment factor for the month was 2.165 million. That means the headline jobs gain of 151k reported on Friday amounted to only7% of the adjustment amount!Any … Continue reading →

The post The Bulls Will Be Slaughtered appeared first on LewRockwell.

It’s Extra-terrestrial Culture Day, haven’t you heard? The event takes place annually on the second Tuesday in February and was created to “celebrate and honour all past, present and future alien visitors”. It began in 2003 when Daniel Foley, a Republican from Roswell, saw his proposal approved in the House of Representatives. It said aliens have contributed to the recognition of New Mexico, with the state associated with little green men since the purported UFO crash in 1947. We take a look back at the infamous Roswell incident. What happened On July 8 1947, an object crashed near a rancher’s … Continue reading →

The post Extraterrestrial Culture Day appeared first on LewRockwell.

A staggering 25 per cent of wrongful convictions in the US are said to have been made using false confessions. Law enforcement officers have been known to deprive suspects of sleep while they carry out their investigations, and now a study has found a link between tiredness and fake statements. Researchers have found that people are more likely to own up to something they haven’t done if they’re lacking in sleep, than those who are fully rested. The study was carried out by Elizabeth Loftus and her team at the University of California, Irvine. They examined whether the likelihood of a … Continue reading →

The post Why Spies and Cops Don’t Want You To Sleep appeared first on LewRockwell.