I think Richard Gere is ignorant (and stupid) rather than spouting propaganda here...

USAID is not some charitable organization; it is the US Agency for International Development, set up to coordinate foreign meddling and soft power projection by CIA, DoD &State Dept so they… pic.twitter.com/e0B8Q8npqI

— David Razin (@DhRazin) July 19, 2026

There's even a song about working for the CIA.

THE OLD WORLD SHOW: We are all Rhodesians now, for our enemies wish to do to us what they did to create Zimbabwe: erase every form of natural distinction, excellence, or greatness to replace it with the stultifying muck of equality.

They built a unique sort of man as they did so. One who, like the Virginians of earlier centuries, was remarkable for his "habit of command". --The Old World Show

Rhodesia remains a relevant tale because its history and destruction show the rot at the root of our world

It was founded by private enterprise, and settled by a remarkable group of men--Cecil Rhodes's Pioneer Column was no collection of rogues, but a cross-class selection of… https://t.co/K2WfcJAB3d pic.twitter.com/RmNMmtcUO4

— The Old World Show (@theoldworldshow) July 19, 2026

Rhodesia remains a relevant tale because its history and destruction show the rot at the root of our world. It was founded by private enterprise, and settled by a remarkable group of men--Cecil Rhodes's Pioneer Column was no collection of rogues, but a cross-class selection of particularly educated and talented men led by some of the greatest men of their era, such as Courtney Selous. They marched north and built civilization where before nothing but the Stone Age had existed. They and their descendants built modern towns, prosperous farms, and a resplendent civilization that was both "more British than the British"--particularly as Labour regimes destroyed Britain--and well suited to its African environment. They built a unique sort of man as they did so. One who, like the Virginians of earlier centuries, was remarkable for his "habit of command". He could assume the mantle of leadership and authority without breaking a sweat, and lead men well because he had been trained essentially from birth in their leadership on his farm. The Rhodesians fought with valor in both world conflagrations, and were noted in those wars for being remarkably adept officers, as nearly all of them were; they could command men with excellence, as they themselves were excellent. Restrictive immigration policy kept this attitude and the immense spirit and competence that undergirded it intact as the years wore on. They built a civilization that flourished. That small nation between the Limpopo and the Zambezi was free, prosperous, and a shining light of Old World-style life in a world gone mad with equality. For that reason, it was destroyed. The enemies of civilization who did so much to destroy Britain with Levelling and America with the Civil Rights Act turned their fire on it, demanding it give in to what everyone knew would be "one man, one vote, one time" mass democracy. The Rhodesians refused. They chose to resist. They chose to fight for their nation. For their "Responsible Government". For the last flickering flame of what Western Civilization had always been--the cultivation of excellence directed towards human flourishing, and against the Levelling egalitarianism of the race communist menace they faced. For 15 years they fought, winning battles with casualty ratios so lopsided their enemies could invent propaganda claiming (falsely) that they had slain non-combatants. But it wasn't enough. They were overwhelmed, engulfed by forces backed by the entire world and stabbed in the back by their South African allies when the critical moment came in 1975. Betrayed, surrounded, and cut off, they fought on from 1975 to 1980 anyway, but in the end the odds told and the last little flame of excellence was snuffed by Mugabe and his equity. And so now there is Zimbabwe instead of Rhodesia, a land characterized by tyranny rather than ordered liberty, famine rather than prosperity, expropriation rather than well-tended property, and anarchy rather than order. Such is the threat we face to what remains of our civilization as well.

We are all Rhodesians now, for our enemies wish to do to us what they did to create Zimbabwe: erase every form of natural distinction, excellence, or greatness to replace it with the stultifying muck of equality.

pic.twitter.com/p2xGrAtOhg

— MJ Murphy (@hothingsgirlsay) July 18, 2026

HANDRE: Factories padded reports, hoarded inputs, and lied up the chain, because when the penalty for honesty is a gulag, you get fiction dressed as statistics.

Imagine running an economy of 150 million people from a Moscow office with no prices, no profit signals, and a dictator who shoots you for missing quotas. That was Gosplan's job when Stalin launched the first Five Year Plan in 1928. You already know how it ended. What matters is… pic.twitter.com/Y5yd3NQtDh

— Handre (@Handre) July 19, 2026

Imagine running an economy of 150 million people from a Moscow office with no prices, no profit signals, and a dictator who shoots you for missing quotas. That was Gosplan's job when Stalin launched the first Five Year Plan in 1928. You already know how it ended. What matters is why it had to end that way. Ludwig von Mises laid out the problem in 1920, eight years before Stalin picked up his pencil. Without private ownership of capital goods, there are no markets for capital goods. Without markets, no prices. Without prices, no way to calculate whether a ton of steel serves people better as tractors, rails, or rifles. The planner isn't merely uninformed. He is blind, arithmetic without units, groping through millions of production decisions with nothing to guide him but political fear. The results followed with grim precision. Stalin collectivized agriculture to squeeze grain out of the countryside and feed his steel cities. Peasants slaughtered their own livestock rather than surrender it: roughly half the Soviet horse population gone by 1933. Then came the famine. Somewhere between five and seven million people starved in Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and the Volga region while Stalin exported grain to buy Western machinery. They paid for Magnitogorsk in corpses. Meanwhile the plan itself became theater. Managers judged by tonnage produced nails so heavy nobody could use them. Judged by quantity, they produced nails so tiny they bent in your hand. Factories padded reports, hoarded inputs, and lied up the chain, because when the penalty for honesty is a gulag, you get fiction dressed as statistics. The claimed output figures for 1932 were fabrications, and everyone from the shop floor to the Politburo knew it. Western intellectuals swooned anyway. The New York Times ran Walter Duranty's dispatches denying the famine while it happened. He kept his Pulitzer.

The Five Year Plans didn't fail from bad luck or sabotage or kulak wrecking. Central planning cannot do the one thing an economy exists to do: tell you what anything is worth. 

NEW WORLD RECORD HOLDER IN 1-MILE: Scottish athlete Josh Kerr breaks the 1-mile world record with a time of 3:42.66, the previous world record having stood for 27 years.

Omens and portents. https://t.co/7IfjZU59Af

— EM Burlingame - 蒲 奕 言 (@EMBurlingame) July 19, 2026

Josh Kerr.  But unmatched is the current world record-holder, Hichame El Guerrouj, who clocked a mile at 3:43:13 on July 7, 1999, a record that has stood for 27 years. 

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 🇬🇧 INCREDIBLE: WATCH Scotland's Josh Kerr finish like Secretariat as he buries the competition & shatters the 27-year old world record in the mile. I can't stop watching this! pic.twitter.com/SqXjVyAu3V

— Sam Parker 🇺🇸🧯 (@BasedSamParker) July 19, 2026