Join Us at the World Economic Conference in Orlando, Florida! Nov. 17-19, 2023
Join Us at the 2023 World Economic Conference in Orlando, Florida!
? Dates: November 17, 18, and 19 ? Location: Orlando, Florida, USA (or tune in from home with our virtual ticket options)
Are you ready to unlock the future of economics and finance? Prepare for an unforgettable World Economic Conference experience in sunny Orlando, Florida! This premier event is your gateway to insights, networking, and valuable resources that will supercharge your understanding of the global economy.
?️ What’s Included for In-Person Attendees:
- Event Admission: Enjoy reserved seating assigned based on the order of ticket sales, ensuring you have a prime view of every presentation.
- Presentation Slides: Gain access to the presentation slides from all speakers, allowing you to delve deeper into the topics discussed.
- Video Recording: Can’t make it to a session? No worries! You’ll receive access to video recordings of all conference presentations, so you can catch up at your convenience.
- WEC Event App: Connect with the conference on a whole new level. Access presentation slides, bonus reports, recordings, and more via the official WEC Event App.
- Bonus Conference Materials: Get a package of bonus conference-related materials, including exclusive bonus reports and videos (as provided by Martin Armstrong).
- Morning Information Sessions: Don’t miss out on important morning information sessions, screened on-site in the meeting room on Saturday and Sunday.
- Networking Opportunities: Exclusive access to the Event App Networking Feature allows you to connect with fellow attendees, both in-person and virtual, fostering valuable professional relationships.
- Culinary Delights: Savor delicious breakfast and lunch on Saturday and Sunday, prepared to keep you energized throughout the day.
- Cocktail Reception: Kick off the conference in style at our Friday evening cocktail reception. Meet and mingle with fellow attendees while enjoying refreshing drinks.
- Swag Bag: As a token of our appreciation, each in-person attendee will receive a swag bag filled with goodies, including an Armstrong Economics notebook, pen, and an event collector’s mug!
Unable to travel? We also have two different ticket options for those wishing to attend virtually!
Don’t miss this opportunity to be part of a global gathering of economic and financial minds. Secure your spot at the World Economic Conference in Orlando, Florida, and gain the knowledge, connections, and resources you need to thrive in the world of finance and economics.
Space is limited, so act now and reserve your seat! Visit our Events page to register and join us in sunny Orlando this November.
NEW BOOK Now Available : "Mark Antony & Cleopatra"
"THE PLOT TO SEIZE RUSSIA - THE UNTOLD HISTORY"
The second edition of “The Plot to Seize Russia – The Untold History” is now available for purchase in paperback and hardcover on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. The ebook will be available shortly.
Book description:
“Take care of Russia,” Boris Yeltsin said as he departed his presidency in August 1999. These words were directed at current Russian president, Vladimir Putin. Yeltsin specifically picked Putin as his predecessor to prevent the takeover of Russia.
So, who was Yeltsin warning against? Newly declassified documents from the Clinton Administration prove that there was a plot to rig the Russian election of 2000. These never-before-seen documents confirm numerous attempts to implement pro-Western policies using the Russian oligarchy headed by Boris Berezovsky.
On the other side were the communists who desired a return to the glory days of the Soviet Union. As one of the largest international hedge fund managers, author Martin Armstrong found himself in the middle of perhaps the greatest espionage, or attempt at a regime change for Russia, in modern history.
The Plot to Seize Russia pulls back the curtain to expose the most extraordinary attempt to seize power in modern history, but with the pen rather than armies. These declassified documents reveal a plot that has altered our thinking about the relations between the United States and Russia. The thirst for power comes seething through every line of these papers that alter our perception of reality, change the course of history, and now threaten us with World War III.
Interview from Spain
FOLLOW ARMSTRONG ECONOMICS
Putin & Trump
QUESTION: Do you believe that Trump is afraid of Putin because he has dirt on him?
Jake
ANSWER: That is just absurd. This is all to influence the election. The Democrats are always pro-war from Wilson with WWI, Roosevelt with WWII, Truman with Korea and nuked Japan, Johnson with Vietnam, and even Obama tried to invade Syria, while Hillary would never answer WHY the embassy in Bengasi was attacked because it was a Neocon operation funneling arms to rebels in Libya and Syria. That was confirmed to me by the Chief of Staff on one of the committees.
Dick Cheney was really running the Bush White House and he took us into Iraq, but he endorsed Kamala because Trump said he was anti-war.
This was all to overthrow 7 countries in the Middle East as General Wesley Clark reported. Over 50% of Democrats want sanctions on Russia and endless war funding for Ukraine no matter what it does to the National Debt and then they will demand higher taxes and wealth taxes. Elizabeth Warren wants to fleece the rich now because Social Security is going broke claiming they should pay their fair share when you are supposed to get back what you paid in. All propaganda. The more wars, the higher the debt, the higher the debt, the higher the taxes. It is a endless cycle that leads to bankruptcy. I guess America will reap what it has sown for not stopping endless wars.
Look, this nonsense that Putin has dirt on Trump is the same thing they use with Epstein, but will never connect the dots. I was summoned to what I was told would be a briefing on Russia. I was surprised, because they obviously knew my position right down to who and how the war started. I took my assistant with me, then she had to step out of the room. I was then told they agreed. We would NOT be at war with Russia. Then they asked me to write the peace proposal and to use my back channels to get it to Putin.
Since I was in the middle of the attempted regime change that the bankers & Neocons were conducting and I refused to put in the $10 billion to fund Hermitage Capital Management that Putin eventually confiscated, he knew I was not part of that operation. The letter from the Japanese government asked to confirm I deposited $10 billion. Republic assumed I took the $10 billion, told them it was not with them. So, they ran to the DOJ and told them they had no idea with te money was and then pocketed the $1 billion that was there. I believe it was the Federal Reserve that went back and asked to confirm $10 billion. That use to be a lot of money back then.
That is when 13 days later the revision took place – sorry $1 billion. The bank could not then put the money back and tried to pocket the money blaming me. But you cannot get $1 billion out of a bank and nobody knows where is went. That can only be by wire. That’s when the bank had the DOJ impose a gag order on me to stop me from helping my clients who sued the bank. My clients were the top companies in Japan, not moms and pops or retail investors so they had the deep pockets to take down the bank. This was the ONLY reason the DOJ could not cover it up to support the bank stealing $1 billion. The bank finally pled guilty and returned the money, yet not a single banker was criminally charged that was the deal. Who can steal $1 billion and agree to return it but nobody go to jail? Only a banker in NYC. They also stole $400 million in profit my firm had on those transactions. A staff member at HSBC told one of our staff in London, the deal was “too good to pass up.”
They finally had to release me only because I got to the Supreme Court and they ordered the government to respond. I was the longest person ever held in civil contempt when Congress passed a law saying the maximum was 18 months (28 USC §1826), not 7 years. The government released me and said the case was moot and dis not respond to the Supreme Court otherwise.
It is interesting how mainstream media prefers to cover everything up rather than ever report the truth on so many levels. What’s in it for them to constantly report fake news? A slice of the pie or just political manipulation?
I guess I was called in and was told sorry what happened, but it gave me more credibility with Putin. Not the American press. I asked if this was sanctioned, and I was told YES. So, I wrote the plan, laid out the truth how the war began, and got it to Putin’s desk using my back channels. A few weeks later, I got a letter from President Trump thanking me.
This whole thing about Putin has something on Trump is absurd. These people have ZERO idea of what is taking place behind the curtain and God help us if they ever reported the truth. Their heads would probably spin around like in the old movie the OMEN.
I had another briefing, I was asked about Epstein and who he was working for. I said Mossad. They said you are correct, that’s what they concluded. What they did not know is that Robert Maxwell had funded the coup against Gorbachev and when that failed, he wanted Israel to cover his losses so he would not have to testify regarding THE CLUB and his few hundred million in pounds he lost trading employee pension fund money. He suddenly fell off his yacht and forgot how to swim.
Even Epstein’s emails confirm Maxwell was killed by Mossad because he tried to blackmail them. There was NO WAY Epstein would get a trial. It was not the girls or even the guys in his honey entrap who he was blackmailing. The real question the media will NEVER even address is who was he working for. That leads to the coup against Mikhail Gorbachev, which brought Yeltsin to power, so they then blackmailed Yeltsin with the $7 billion money laundering they got him to do through Bank of New York.
When they tried to blackmail Yeltsin with the Bank of New York, Yeltsin turned to Putin and his last words were “Protect Mother Russia.” That is just scratching the surface that NO main stream media will ever touch. This would lead to a host of other things including The Club where Epstein got much of his mysterious money, but to report the truth means the bankers are exposed on their manipulations. OF MY GOD – that can’t happen!
The main stream media version of the free press is to call everything a conspiracy theory they want to cover up so they do not have to get into the facts, and de-platform anyone they do not like. Welcome to the American version of Pravda (Truth).
People have no idea about the truth of what has been taking place behind the curtain. Magnitsky was NOT a lawyer, he was the accountant for Hermitage Capital Management that they wanted me to put in $10 billion run by Bill Browder and Edmond Safra. He was NOT killed by Putin. That was all a lie. Magnitsky would have been the star witness to the whole regime change attempt by the Neocon & Bankers.
In July 2018, Putin offered to allow US Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team to question Russian intelligence officers indicted for election interference, in exchange for Russia being allowed to question Americans, specifically naming Bill Browder and associates. I was told what they were doing. Buying shares from Russian workers under a Russian company which was prohibited to foreigners exploiting the different in price.
At least the New York Magazine published the planes of cash going all the time to Russia to buy the government. I was shown pallets of $100 bills freshly printed. They at least ran the story and called it the Money Plane.
Alex Nekrasov was a anti-Putin film maker. They used him thinking he would create the propaganda film they wanted to cover everything up. The more Alex investigated, the lies began to surface that he could not ignore. He was then told he should meet me. We met in the Frankfurt Airport. I was the only survivor besides Browder. He found everyone who could have told the truth mysteriously died. Everyone around me was also killed. They tried to kill me, but I was in a coma for 3 days and survived to their dismay. The one who was never touched was Bill Browder. People ask me why I do not hide in a corner fearing they will try again? The answer may seem strange, but you actually lose all fear of death after such experience.
Because Alex’s film told the truth, they did everything to ban it just like the Forecaster. They even broke into the studio in Germany to take the footage to stop the film on me, but they had backups. Of course, main stream media would never report that. They lie to you about everything and the end goal has always been to get their hands on the $75 trillion in natural resources Russia has – the richest country in the world by that measure.
NOTE: If you want to keep America out of WWIII, share this to everyone you can.
Market Talk – September 25, 2026
AMERICAS:
US Markets:
- DJIA declined by 161.61 points (0.31%) to 51,349.98
- S&P 500 declined by 1.9 points (0.02%) to 7,704.13
- NASDAQ advanced by 3.34 points (0.01%) to 26,939.373
- Russell 2000 declined by 3.09 points (0.11%) to 2,835.574
Canada:
- TSX Composite declined by 44.97 points (0.13%) to 35,706.46
- TSX 60 advanced by -0.03 points (UNCH) to 2,096.9
Brazil:
- Bovespa declined by 1,848.18 points (0.99%) to 183,965.91
AI the Real Danger?
A lot of emails have come in about the AI will destroy humanity. The difference between Socrates and Neural Nets is that Socrates has only a economic related database and we have more than anything out there on the internet. That’s why back in 1999, the government freaked out and shut down the IPO we were going to do for $3 billion back then. Socrates is what people call classic AI. That was discussed even in open court.
Neural networks are not “rule-free.” They are trained on data with defined objectives, architectures, and constraints set by their developers. That’s the problem. Giving it free access to the internet, they cannot possibly understand all the ways this can function so they cannot create an iron-clad rule to government what they create. The AI models don’t have moral reasoning, but they also don’t operate in a vacuum—they’re tools built and deployed by humans. They have failed to properly control some agents.
They are intending to introduce in a few months the recursive ability to allow AI to rewrite its own code and in essence to design the next generation. This is the danger for there are no rules and they are creating a synthetic electronic lifeform that they have no idea of what will be the result. Giving this access to the internet would be a huge risk that nobody would be able to speculate on what comes next. It would still not be self-aware with morals. A robot just follows orders, it does not make judgements based on morality.
That may be what Zelensky is praying for with their claims to have humanoid soldiers. I guess when he runs out a human soldiers this is his backup. He would love it if they engaged in a Russian genocide – Ukrainian history of ethnic cleansing. This hatred between Ukraine and Russia is ethnically interesting for they are like twin brothers who were separated at birth and grew up in to different houses. This is the same as the Arabs and the Jews claiming to be both the children of Abraham. I guess family feuds are the worst.
Milei Takes on “Arrogant Parasites” at United Nations
Argentina’s Javier Milei walked into the United Nations and told the bureaucrats sitting before him exactly what he thought of them. He said the organization had become “useless” and existed to support what he called a caste of “fatally arrogant parasites” masquerading as well-intentioned bureaucrats. Whether one agrees with Milei’s rhetoric or not, this was not the normal diplomatic garbage where politicians congratulate one another, read speeches written by committees, and then fly home while accomplishing absolutely nothing. He attacked the fundamental question nobody inside these institutions ever wants to discuss: who gave unelected international bureaucracies the authority to dictate how people should live?
Milei went directly after the COVID lockdowns, and this is where his speech will certainly infuriate the establishment. He accused organizations operating under the UN system of placing themselves above scientific evidence and national sovereignty while promoting forced lockdowns around the world. His description was brutal: “a global experiment in social control disguised as science.” He pointed to the destruction of employment, children’s education, access to medical care, and the ability of families even to say goodbye to dying relatives. Milei went further and characterized the resulting avoidable deaths as “genocide.”
The lockdown era demonstrated just how quickly governments will surrender individual liberty when bureaucrats declare an emergency. Businesses that people spent their entire lives building were ordered closed. Children were removed from classrooms. People were prevented from visiting dying parents and grandparents. Governments decided which businesses were “essential,” which jobs mattered, where people could travel, whether they could leave their homes, and in some countries even how far they could walk. Politicians who had never created a business in their lives suddenly possessed the authority to destroy one with the stroke of a pen.
Governments shut down productive capacity and then tried to replace lost income by creating money and borrowing on a scale previously reserved for war. They disrupted supply chains while simultaneously flooding economies with liquidity and then acted astonished when inflation exploded afterward. You cannot order people not to produce, manufacture, travel, or work normally while creating trillions in new purchasing power and expect the economic system to remain unchanged. The bill was merely postponed, and the public paid it through inflation, higher government debt, lost education, damaged businesses, and years of economic distortion.
This is the part Milei understands because Argentina knows better than almost any nation what happens when government believes there is no limit to its authority over the economy. Bureaucrats always insist that this time is different. They never surrender authority voluntarily when the emergency ends because bureaucracy behaves exactly like every other organism where the first objective becomes its own survival.
Milei broadened that criticism beyond COVID. He attacked Agenda 2030, environmental extremism, migration policy, economic regulation, and international institutions attempting to impose political objectives upon sovereign nations. His argument was that when these policies fail, the bureaucracy does not disappear or apologize. It expands. Another conference is organized, another commission is created, another target is established twenty years into the future so that nobody currently responsible will ever be held accountable when it fails.
That is the fundamental problem with supranational government. You can throw your mayor out of office. You can vote against a governor, president, parliament, or congressman. Who exactly do you vote against at the United Nations? Who elected the bureaucrats designing global regulatory frameworks? They influence national governments while remaining several layers removed from the people who must actually live under the policies they promote. Accountability becomes so diluted that nobody is ever responsible for anything.
Milei also attacked efforts to impose global regulation on artificial intelligence, and this may ultimately prove more important than his remarks about COVID. AI represents one of the greatest productivity revolutions of our lifetime. Every government bureaucrat already sees something entirely different. They see something to license, regulate, tax, restrict, and control. Milei pledged that Argentina would instead attempt to place itself at the forefront of AI development. Whether his government succeeds remains to be seen, but the competition itself is unavoidable. Nations that strangle AI development because bureaucrats fear technological change risk watching investment, engineers, companies, and intellectual capital migrate elsewhere.
Milei walked into the United Nations and said out loud what plenty have wanted to say directly to its face. He did not bow or pretend that another room full of bureaucrats somehow possesses the wisdom to manage eight billion human beings. He called them “fatally arrogant parasites” and accused the institution of becoming absolutely useless. Stop trying to regulate how people work, travel, produce energy, use technology, run their businesses, and live their lives from glass castles where nobody ever seems personally accountable when the grand experiment fails. COVID demonstrated how quickly emergency powers can swallow individual liberty, and Milei’s warning is that the same mentality is now migrating into climate policy, economic regulation, migration, and artificial intelligence.
Whatever one thinks of his language or politics, there was something unmistakably different about watching a head of state stand inside the institution itself and tell its leadership that the world does not belong to them. Nations are not laboratory experiments, citizens are not livestock to be managed, and freedom does not exist at the pleasure of some international bureaucracy. Milei did not go there asking these institutions to control the world a little more efficiently. He went there telling them to get their hands off it.
When Did a Military Coup Become Acceptable in America?
Something is going seriously wrong with American politics when people who constantly speak about defending democracy can contemplate throwing democracy aside when they despise the person who won an election. A new Center for Strategic Politics poll conducted with Liberal Currents surveyed 683 Democratic voters and found that 59% would feel either “very positive” or “somewhat positive” if Donald Trump were removed from office through a military coup supposedly intended to safeguard the Constitution. Another 13% were neutral. Even more disturbing, 29% expressed a positive reaction to the hypothetical assassination of Trump.
Read those numbers again. We are talking about a MILITARY COUP in the United States of America. This is the same country that has spent decades lecturing the rest of the world about democratic institutions and peaceful transfers of power. The entire purpose of constitutional government is that you do not get to overthrow the government simply because you hate the person occupying the White House. Elections have consequences, and when your side loses, you organize, argue your case, go back to the voters, and try again. Once political opponents become enemies who must be removed by force, democracy has already begun to rot from within.
The willingness to view a military overthrow positively is nevertheless astonishing because it shows how easily democratic principles can become conditional. Democracy apparently becomes sacred only when it produces the desired result.
The assassination response is even darker. Why should ANY meaningful portion of the population respond positively to the murder of a political opponent? We have crossed into dangerous territory when political disagreement becomes so emotional that the death of the person on the other side begins to look like an acceptable political outcome. Many are willing to simply turn to violence rather than go through the standard democratic procedure.
There is broader evidence that left-wing political violence has increased, although the facts are considerably more complicated than partisan rhetoric suggests. The Center for Strategic and International Studies found that left-wing terrorist attacks and plots increased over the preceding decade and that 2025 became the first year in more than three decades when attacks attributed to the violent left outnumbered those attributed to the violent far right.
The moment you start explaining why violence against your opponent is somehow understandable, you have abandoned the rule of law. It does not matter whether the victim is Donald Trump, Charlie Kirk, a Democratic politician, an ICE agent, a Republican congressman, or some anonymous citizen attending a political rally. If you excuse political violence when your opponents are attacked, you surrender the moral authority to complain when the violence eventually comes for you.
America has been down this road before. Political violence erupted throughout the late 1960s and 1970s from revolutionary organizations across the ideological spectrum. Bombings, assassinations, riots, and attacks on government institutions did not produce some enlightened political paradise. They produced fear, repression, greater government surveillance, and an expansion of state power. Violence ALWAYS becomes the excuse government needs to take more power because frightened populations willingly surrender freedoms politicians could never take from them during peaceful times.
This is what both sides should understand before cheering the destruction of their opponents. You may despise Trump. You may despise Democrats. You may believe the government is corrupt beyond redemption. None of that changes the basic equation. Once military coups and assassination become acceptable tools of politics, elections become meaningless because political power ultimately belongs to whoever controls the guns.
The Constitution was designed precisely to prevent that outcome. Presidents leave through elections, constitutional succession, impeachment, resignation, incapacity procedures, or the expiration of their terms. The military does not decide who governs the United States. Assassins do not decide. Mobs do not decide. If those principles become negotiable whenever people convince themselves that the other side represents some existential evil, then eventually every election becomes an existential struggle in which almost anything can be justified.
That is how republics destroy themselves. They rarely collapse because everybody suddenly wakes up and announces that democracy has ended. They decay when each faction gradually decides that constitutional restraints apply only when convenient and that violating those restraints is justified because the other side is supposedly worse. Once enough people embrace that mentality, there is no longer a constitutional system to defend. There are merely competing tribes fighting over who gets to control the state.
Americans had better reject political violence regardless of which flag the person committing it happens to wave. Otherwise, the greatest threat to the republic will not come from Russia, China, Iran, or any foreign enemy. It will come from Americans who have become so consumed by political hatred that they would rather destroy the constitutional system than accept that sometimes their side loses an election.
Kamala Insists Cleaning the Voter Rolls Is Cheating
Kamala Harris has now accused Republicans of “cheating by purging voter rolls.” Stop and think about how insane American politics has become when maintaining an accurate voter-registration database can be casually described as cheating. The controversy concerns efforts to remove people who are no longer eligible or properly registered, including noncitizens, deceased voters, duplicates, and people who have moved. Federal elections are already restricted to American citizens. That is not some new Trump invention.
What I cannot comprehend is why this has become partisan at all. Only citizens may vote in federal elections. Why should anyone care whether that citizen votes Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, or writes Donald Duck on the ballot? Verify that the person is eligible, protect the legitimate voter from being wrongly removed, count the legal vote, and move on. Instead, Washington has managed to transform even the basic question of WHO IS ELIGIBLE TO VOTE into another tribal political war.
The SAVE America Act would go considerably further by requiring documentary proof of citizenship when registering for federal elections and photo identification when voting. Supporters argue that citizenship should actually be verified rather than merely attested to. Critics point out that millions of legitimate American citizens may not readily possess the required documents and warn that poorly designed verification systems can prevent eligible citizens from registering. Both issues can exist simultaneously. Noncitizens should not vote, and citizens should not be stripped from voter rolls because an incompetent government database cannot recognize that someone became a naturalized American.
The National Conference of State Legislatures says audits generally find extremely small numbers of noncitizens registered or voting. That does not mean the law should simply be ignored because violations are uncommon. Bank fraud is relatively uncommon compared with legitimate transactions, but nobody argues that banks should therefore stop verifying who owns an account. The objective should be a system where every eligible citizen can vote and nobody who is legally ineligible can cast a ballot.
What should outrage people is that politicians have turned confidence in elections into another weapon against one another. Democrats warn that Republicans are suppressing legitimate voters. Republicans warn that Democrats are protecting ineligible registrations. Then both sides scream “cheating” before an election has even taken place. That is how confidence in the entire system is destroyed because whichever side loses has already been handed an excuse to claim that the rules themselves were illegitimate.
The United States has Social Security records, passport records, immigration records, naturalization records, state driver’s license databases, death records, tax records, and more. Washington can track your income to make sure you paid every penny of tax, yet somehow verifying that an individual is an eligible American voter has become an impossible philosophical question. Government knows when you owe it $600, but suddenly becomes helpless when asked to maintain an accurate voter-registration database.
When politicians start calling ordinary election administration “cheating,” while the other side casually implies enormous fraud without evidence, they are playing with something far more important than the next election. A republic survives only as long as the public believes that political power can change hands through legitimate elections. Destroy that confidence long enough and people eventually stop believing that elections settle anything at all. That is the path politicians on BOTH sides should be terrified of creating.
Britain’s New Ministry of Truth – Free Speech Dies
Britain is institution their version of the Ministry of Truth to shut down all dissent where democracy is now one sided. There will be no anti-war commentary in the UK permitted. They are intent on going to war with Russia.
Of course, he blames Russia for the division in the UK which is all over their migration policies to flood the country with people who will always vote LABOUR so they can dominate the country.
This Ministry of Truth is what governments ALWAYS do through out history when they are afraid that they are losing a grip on power. This is NOT something unique. It is a standard political practice that has been around for thousands of years. People have been imprisoned for both what they may say and what they may write. This is just a sign of the times.
History offers many examples where governments, feeling their power or authority threatened or in decline, begin their tyranny with suppressing free speech. The pattern is consistent: when the state perceives an existential threat, whether from war, internal dissent, or political rivalry, the space for open criticism tends to shrink.

Under the Roman Principate, free speech became a delicate and dangerous matter. The Emperor Augustus systematically reorganized the calendar and public life, placing “ever tighter curbs on free speech.” Augustus restricted free speech in Rome primarily by expanding the “Law of Treason” (maiestas) to cover spoken and written words, suppressing writings that praised his political enemies or criticized his family, and using informers to monitor and punish dissent.
Augustus used the treason law (maiestas) primarily to suppress republican nostalgia and the glorification of his former enemies, rather than out of a direct fear of an imminent armed revolt to restore the Republic. The evidence suggests his motivations were a mix of protecting his personal dignity, suppressing speech that could undermine the new regime’s legitimacy, and responding to specific political conspiracies.
The most telling prosecutions under Augustus targeted the glorification of Brutus and Cassius, the assassins of Julius Caesar and symbols of the Republican cause. The historian Cremutius Cordus was prosecuted for calling them “the last of the Romans” in his writings. Similarly, a descendant of Cassius was charged simply for keeping a portrait of his ancestor. These were not acts of active revolt, but expressions of respect for the propagand of the old oligarchs who controlled the Republic. By criminalizing such speech, Augustus aimed to erase the memory of the Republic and the legitimacy of resistance to one-man rule.
The poet Ovid was banished to Tomis on the Black Sea for a “transgression” he described as twofold: a poem (carmen) and a mistake (error). The poem was likely his Ars Amatoria, which conflicted with Augustus’s moral reforms. Ovid’s exile became a famous example of how Augustus attempted to silence voices perceived as threatening or subversive to his regime.
Under his successor Tiberius, the law of treason (maiestas) was widely feared. Historians like Tacitus describe a climate where “words uttered in the street, or across the dinner-table, on any subject whatever, were noted for accusation,” creating an epidemic of delation where even trivial remarks could imply disrespect for the emperor.
Claudius did not formally reform the treason laws of Augustus and Tiberius. What changed was the frequency and focus of prosecutions. The sources record a total of 25 possible nominal accusations of maiestas between January 41 AD and October 54 AD. This was a tiny number compared to the reigns of Tiberius and Caligula. This decline is attributed in part to Claudius’ initial policy of not pursuing crimes related to attacks on the emperor’s personal dignity and family.

Fast forward to early modern England. The Stuart monarchs faced a Whig opposition that used pamphlets and the press to challenge royal authority. The Crown’s response was to suppress what people could print and say in public, using courts that served “at the pleasure of” the king to punish critics . In Jacobean England, press censorship was a deeply political matter, and authors who crossed the line, such as Reynold, whose pamphlet play counseled the king to abandon peace and intervene in the Thirty Years’ War, were promptly arrested upon publication.
Our Fifth Amendment and the Miranda decision, which says you have a right to remain silent, began with the famous trial of John Lilburne (1615-1657).Lilburne stood tall before the English court of the Star Chamber in 1637 where he objected to the king’s torture. They would torture you to plead guilty just to stop the tortune. May would endure the torture and die to save their families. If the person pled guilty, all his assets were confiscated by the king and your wife and children would be cast out into the streets penniless.
John Lilburne was a leader in the Leveller Movement of the 1640s and was a prolific pamphleteer who defended the religious and individual liberty of the people. He was imprisoned many times for his views and was active in the army of the New Parliament leading to the English Revolution, rising to the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel. In October 1649, he was arrested and tried for high treason for printing and circulating books and pamphlets that were critical of the government.
In the young United States, the Federalist administration of John Adams faced fierce Republican criticism amid an undeclared “quasi-war” with France. Fearful that dissent would undermine the government, Congress passed the Sedition Act of 1798, making it a crime to publish “false, scandalous, and malicious” writing against the government or the President. The law was widely understood as a tool for political repression: fifteen Republican editors and politicians were indicted, and a congressman was even jailed while winning re-election, crystallizing the perception that the act targeted Adams’s adversaries of the Federalist Party. It was later repealed after Jefferson’s victory, and similar laws were struck down through judicial review.

It was Woodrow Wilson who sent the Department of Justice to imprison Eugene Victor Debs (1855–1926), a political opponent in the presidential election who was anti-war. Wilson used his speech against the Wilson administration for its support of World War I. Wilson was vicious and called Debs a “traitor to his country.” On June 16th, 1918, Debs made a speech in Canton, Ohio, where he urged resistance to the military draft imposed by Wilson. For that, he was arrested on June 30th and charged with ten counts of sedition. Eugene Victor Debs was sentenced to 10 years in prison to advocating resistance to the draft. The law Wilson used was:
18 USC §2383. Rebellion or Insurrection
Whoever incites, sets on foot, assists, or engages in any rebellion or insurrection against the authority of the United States or the laws thereof, or gives aid or comfort thereto, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.
(June 25, 1948, ch. 645, 62 Stat. 808 ; Pub. L. 103–322, title XXXIII, §330016(1)(L), Sept. 13, 1994, 108 Stat. 2147 .)
The Nazi Seizure of Power
The Reichstag Fire Decree of February 28th, 1933, issued the day after the parliament building burned, is perhaps the most extreme modern example. Invoking the need to defend against “communist acts of violence,” the decree suspended the Weimar Constitution’s guarantees of personal liberty, free expression, press freedom, and assembly. It was widely assume to have been a false flag to gain absolute power. This legal foundation enabled the Nazi regime to arrest tens of thousands of political opponents, ban critical newspapers, and establish the framework for dictatorial rule, all justified as a response to a threat to the state .
Wartime America
Even in the U.S., wartime fear has repeatedly overridden free speech. During World War I, Wilson signed legislation banning speech that cast “contempt, scorn, contumely, or disrepute” on the federal government, and the Supreme Court upheld such suppression, declaring that “things that might be said in time of peace… will not be endured so long as men fight.” During the Cold War, the Smith Act prosecutions targeted Communists for conspiring to advocate overthrow of the government, with the Supreme Court initially upholding convictions based on the perceived danger of “the inflammable nature of world conditions” and “similar uprisings in other countries.” This all in addition to the arrest and imprisonment of even Japanese born in America under the theory they might support Japan.
In each of these cases, the government’s claim was the same: the threat to its authority justified the silencing of dissent. The historical record suggests that when power feels insecure, speech is often the first casualty. These are just a handful of examples. Power will ALWAYS overrule human rights.
Many people have said this is the real meaning of Harry Styles – Sign of the Times. They have often said the words apply that its the “the final show,” “you can’t bribe the door on your way to the sky,” and “we never learn, we been here before / why are we always stuck and running from the bullets” fits this reading of a final, urgent message. Human Nature responds the same way no matter what century. A Thrasymachus warned over 2000 years ago, there is no such thing as justice. It is simply the will of those is power. The real question is: Can humanity ever learn from its mistakes like an individual and progress just once collectively?
The Duma Landslide for Putin
COMMENT: Well, Socrates does it again. It was a landslide in Russia for the pro-war camp, as you said; Zelensky was trying to achieve this result in hopes of bringing on World War III. You also said that if the dollar closes above 3.09 against Israel’s currency, that war can lead to a full-blown Middle East War. I don’t know how Socrates does it. What you discovered is like penicillin for geopolitics.
PH
ANSWER: Sometimes I wish I was one of those people with a mask on driving by myself with the windows up thinking the government really cares. Netanyahu is obsessed with destroying Iran. Zelensky is obsessed with creating World War III to destroy Russians and cares nothing about all the death and carnage he will cause. The real danger here is that they will merge these two wars.
Russia held its State Duma elections from September 18 to 20, 2026. The pro-Kremlin United Russia party won a record-breaking landslide, but the election was widely criticized internationally as neither free nor fair because they want to believe their own propaganda that Russia is losing and the people will surrender to whatever terms they demand. The election was spot on because the Russians realize that the West will NEVER accept them whatsoever and that they are the most hated ethnically by Europeans in general. You have military and political people saying Russia needs to be broken up. They want it destroyed. Why would any sound person in Russia vote otherwise and no longer defend their country? That would never happen in the West.
According to the Central Election Commission, with over 95% of votes counted, United Russia won 57.83% of the vote, securing 355 out of 450 seats. This was in line with our computer establishing a historic high and a constitutional supermajority where we saw resistance at 60%.
The Communist Party (KPRF) came second with 13.81% of the vote, gaining 40 seats. The younger generation does NOT want a resturn to communism. This was the older generation that wants a free lunch and to be just taken care of as they face the nursing home in their life.
LDPR: Received 8.98% of the vote, winning 25 seats and the New People came in at 7.96% of the vote and 20 seats. The Just Russia barely missed the 5% threshold, but appeared to have secured a few seats.
Official turnout was reported at a record 59.3%.
EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas who would advocate genocide of all Russians stated that the vote was a “severe setback for democracy” and that “only the veneer of democracy remains in Russia.” She accused the Kremlin of silencing dissent, excluding the only registered anti-war party (Yabloko), and barring international observers. Lets look at the facts. This vicious woman has publicly called for the breakup of Russia. The people know that the EU is preparing for war. I think if Putin said the EU should be broken up or the United States, you would see the same result – not surrender.
The result solidifies President Putin’s control over the parliament, allowing United Russia to pass laws and even initiate constitutional amendments without support from other parties. With many war veterans elected as deputies, the new Duma is expected to be a continuation of the war effort.
These European Leaders are stupid along with the Neocons in US and EU want another endless war and they will get it next year. I have warned, but nobody listens despite the fact that this is NOT my personal opinion. The computer shows the West will lose, China, North Korea among others will join Russia because they know they would be next. How ignorant do you have to be not to see the future right before your eyes?
Zelensky will destroy Ukraine. It will not survive.
Europe negotiated in bad faith and NEVER wanted peace. All they had to do was honor the Minsk Agreement that they and Ukraine signed with Russia, allow the Russians in the Donbas vote when they claim they are defending democracy, another lie!
Germany and France were there. They played Putin for a fool. There would never have been this war had they just honor the agreement that they signed. There are just people who think how much money they will make from war. Just like the 1934 book on those who profited from World War I – the Merchants of Death. Nothing has changed.











































