The post Trump Vows To End Department Of Education. Will He? CAN He? appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, Bruce McLane.

All of MAGA and MAHA should oppose this project to their last breath.

We are the media now. Get loud.

It’s one thing to fund AI innovation- it’s a different thing to give a golden ticket to a CIA stooge and a sociopathic murderer. To give them oversight over what could quite… pic.twitter.com/8BfeHFmd6H

— Ian Carroll (@IanCarrollShow) January 22, 2025

See also Greg Reese.

 

The post 2 wings, same bird, we’re the worm appeared first on LewRockwell.

Click Here:

Eugyppius

 

The post Illegal Afghan migrant kills two and wounds three in the latest knife violence to afflict open-borders Germany appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, John Smith. 

Occupied West Bank News

 

The post Israeli settlers attack West Bank villages under army’s protection appeared first on LewRockwell.

Many of my fellow Substack authors are expressing dismay this morning about President Trump’s announcement of his Stargate deal with Oracle’s Larry Ellison, SoftBank’s CEO Masayoshi Son, and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. Especially alarming are Larry Ellison’s Start Trek geek comments about fusing A.I. and mRNA technologies. Like a lot of tech dorks, Ellison grossly overestimates our understanding of biology, which I believe is vastly more complex than electronics and algorithmic learning.

However, I agree with Jeff Childers that it’s better for President Trump to try to capture the Billionaire Nerds instead of shunning them.

Though I see grounds for extreme vigilance, I’m also inclined to adopt the optimistic view that it’s far better for Trump to have these potentially dangerous men on his side than to shun them. I have read Larry Ellison’s biography, and I believe he is one of the most formidable guys who has ever lived.

If I were president, I would far rather have him very close to me than shun him, leaving him completely untethered to direct A.I. schemes from his island lair on Lanai. Snubbing him would be the equivalent of the Roman Senate telling Julius Caesar to relinquish command of his army and return to Rome, which didn’t work out for the Senate.

These guys are going to run with A.I.—as are the Chinese—whether the U.S. government wants them to or not. Though I reiterate that his development is indeed cause for concern and vigilance, I intuitively sense that President Trump is making the right moves with them.

This originally appeared on Courageous Discourse.

The post Capturing the Billionaire Nerds & Their A.I. appeared first on LewRockwell.

Well, the Donald surely did hit the ground thundering, and some right good noise it was— starting with the 1500 + pardons of the J6 offenders. That promise-kept was crucial because it was one big presidential middle finger rebuke to the Giant Lie that the Washington establishment and MSM have been egregiously peddling for the last four years.

For crying out loud, it wasn’t an “insurrection” and did not threaten American democracy even a teensy tiny bit. Instead, the January 6th brouhaha was a case of piss poor police work at the US Capitol Building. It could have been readily barricaded from the unruly crowd streaming off the Ellipse with a few locked steel doors and some water canons and bear spray canisters unloosed for good measure.

Indeed, we spent 15 years around the place back in the day, and the truth is this: If they don’t want you to get in, you just plain can’t penetrate what is a fortress made of 400,000 sandstone blocks weighing upwards of 75 million pounds in the aggregate. The so-called rioters got in because they were let in, not because they broke in. They had no plan of action whatsoever and for an obvious reason: It was a disorganized, unarmed, leaderless mob of political yokels and yahoos, which like the car-chasing dog who unexpectedly caught its prey, had no idea of what to do once they got inside—except to meander around the building taking selfies and grabbing mementos such as the paperweights on Nancy Pelosi’s desk.

None of them were armed. There was also never a moment of material threat to the Secret Service-protected Vice-President or the Electoral College certification procedure.

And contrary to the flagrant but typical lie on CNN last night by the dopey Dem Senator from New Jersey, Cory Booker, no “police killers” got pardoned at 7:30 PM Monday. The only person “killed” at the Capitol Building that day was an unarmed citizen, Ashli Babbitt, who had been a decorated war hero before coming to Washington to protest an outcome that was decided by 44,000 votes in three states out of 158 million counted in an election in which only 57 million voters actually came to the polls on election day (the other 101 million ballots were absentee ballots or early voting ballots).

Was there reason, therefore, to suspect the validity of this razor thin outcome conducted under untested pandemic voting procedures—even apart from Donald Trump’s self-serving whining? As Sarah Palin would have said, you betcha!

In any event, the event was a non-event. The vast majority of the protesters/rioters should have been fined $100 for trespassing and defacing of government property and sent home. That should have been the end of it—but the Washington establishment had other ideas. To wit, taking the weaponization of the Deep State to the next level by spending $2.7 billion of taxpayer money prosecuting a case against thousands of citizens that was so threadbare as to actually amount to a transparent Democrat campaign ad.

That’s right. These liberal poseurs spent enough money staging their J6 theatrical extravaganza as would have supported food stamps for 770,000 needy people for an entire year. They are just shameless.

Yet, even that is not the whole of it. For instance, consider all the talking head bleating about the police officers “injured” on January 6th. Dig as deep as you might, however, and you can’t find a record of even a dozen of them being admitted to any Washington DC hospital. That is to say, the “140 injured officers” canard was either made up out of whole cloth entirely or they counted every scratch, scrap, first aid bandage, nosebleed or slight heart palpitation that occurred among the ranks of the desk jockeys and glorified visitor guides who are pleased to be called the Capitol Hill Police force.

Actually, the US Attorney for the District of Columbia, Matthew Graves, who was in charge of this entire miscarriage of justice and the source of the 140 injuries figure might well be considered an “expert” in illegal assaults. His career prior to joining the Biden DOJ in 2021 was at a Washington “law firm” which lobbied for represented middle eastern nations and banks accused of supporting terrorism!

Specifically, Graves represented the Qatari government, which has faced accusations of supporting terrorist organizations including Hamas, and also a passel of foreign banks including the Bank of Palestine, Arab Bank PLC, and Bank of Beirut—all of which were accused of financing terrorism. In short, we are not inclined to credit Mr. Graves’ claims about police injuries on J6 since it is evident that his field of vision is heavily colored by whoever his paymaster might happen to be at any moment in time.

Worse still, all of this wailing about the alleged desecration of the People’s House is downright nauseating. After all, the Capitol Building is desecrated day-in and day-out by the greatest assemblage of crooks, knaves, hypocrites and bootlickers you can find in any one building in all of America. In fact, they are spending and borrowing the nation into fiscal calamity—with the public debt now rising by more than $10 billion per day.

Of course, as Trump jabbered-away at the Resolute Desk—signing 48 executive orders, repealing 78 Biden executive actions and taking more unscripted, un-preapproved questions from the press in 50 minutes than Sleepy Joe did in 1,460 days—he was just getting warmed-up with the pardons.

In fact, the far more sweeping and consequential “pardon” issued last night was that for fossil fuels and the lowly CO2 molecules that their combustion unleashes to fertilize and green the planet. Quitting the Paris Accord (again), canceling the EV mandates, opening up Alaska and pausing Federal leases for off-shore wind turbine carnage of sea-life wasn’t really the half of it.

Far more crucial was the flat-out utterance from the Bully Pulpit of the White House itself that the whole Climate Crisis campaign is a hoax and a scam. Unlike the normal GOP BS about “balancing” s0-called climate protection measures with economic needs or phasing-in fossil fuel rollbacks more judiciously or putting taxpayer money into smart hideous boondoggles like CO2 capture and “burial”, the Donald pulled no punches. To wit, he flatly said that the predicate is utterly wrong. So be gone you climate fraudsters!

In the same “be gone” vein the 51 ex-intelligence community grifters who signed the petition saying Hunter Biden’s laptop was a Russian plant got their security clearances yanked—led by those belonging to the five most odious dicks in the lot: Brennan, Clapper, Hayden, Morell and Panetta. This action may well relieve the American people from their lies and propaganda as national security “experts” on the cable networks night after night, but also something even more crucial: Namely, it was message from the Oval Office that contrary to Senator Chuckles Schumer’s warning the first time around that no one in their right mind would tangle with the intelligence community, the nation’s re-elected sheriff just plain ain’t afraid of the Deep State. Period.

That is, the folks pictured below and their legions of cohorts and confederates took a proverbial shot at the king and missed. So the Donald’s payback is just starting in these precincts, meaning that the future of constitutional government may be getting one big shot in the arm—including in the next few days when all of the remaining material in the classified archives about the assassination of JFK, RFK and Martin Luther King is released.

This long overdue release amounts to both a defiance of the Deep State and evidence that lessons have been learned on the Donald’s side of the table. Last time, he got talked out of releasing the JFK files by the deplorable neocon troll, Mike Pompeo. But this time he knew enough to send Pompeo, John Bolton, Gina Haskell and the rest of the neocon pack packing before they even packed for another job in his second administration.

The litmus test as to whether the national security Deep State is really on the run, however, will be if the Donald sticks it out with his brilliant choice of Tulsi Gabbard for DNI (Director of National Intelligence). Tulsi knows her brief cold—so give her a few months as DNI and the wailing sounds coming from the 17 intelligence agencies will turn into roaring crescendo of disclosure and exposure of the evil deeds done by many of those pictured below.

Then there was the shit-canning of Washington’s horrid $1.3 billion per year contribution to the WHO (World Health Organization). Indeed, this tool of globalism and crony capitalists capture by the likes of Bill Gates and Big Pharma has received $16 billion from Washington over the last decade. After the WHO’s treachery on the COVID pandemic and vax front, however, the zero funding put in place last night needs to stay zero as far as the eye can see.

Again, the Donald should never be forgiven for unleashing Dr. Fauci, Scarf Lady Birx, Operation Warp Speed and the rest of the Covid mayhem on the American people. But his ridding the US of any and all affiliation with this destructive UN institution would be a decent starting form of penance.

Likewise, the executive order forbidding any Federal agency from indirectly thwarting the absolute constitutional protection of free speech was a veritable clarion call. It unmistakably announced that the Biden era outbreak of Federal-agency thought control is now over and done.

Yet to make sure this order will stand forevermore, the Trump people need to follow up with a deep and sweeping investigation of these unconstitutional misadventures and assaults on free speech. The purpose would be to identify, expose and prosecute, if warranted, every single one of the Bidenite malefactors by name, rank and serial number so as to discourage any future political appointee from even thinking about weaponizing an agency of the state against domestic political rivals or dissidents from the prevailing orthodoxy.

In this regard, the 75 day reprieve for TikTok is a big stride in the same direction—with the added feature that it calls out the “national security” ruse for state-driven thought control and censorship. The fact that the Chinese owners allegedly capture user information is a pitifully weak excuse for banning free speech. After all, the very modus operandi of free social media is that they capture and monetize your viewing habits otherwise known as your “information”.

Besides that, even though the Donald’s eagerness to “make a deal” with the Chinese has its own problems, his delay of the TikTok ban at least clarified one thing. To wit, it gave occasion for the great Senator Rand Paul to school a typical Fox News China-basher about who owns the joint. And it turns out that the parent company, ByteDance, is owned 60% by global investors, 20% by the two founders, 20% by employees including thousands of Americans and zero percent by the Chicom government in Beijing.

As to the latter, the only thing the Chinese government actually owns is a 1% golden share in a China-only subsidiary of ByteDance because, well, TikTok itself is illegal in China!

You can’t make this stuff up. Both the House and Senate chambers are crawling with UniParty demagogues who based the ban on the hideous grounds that Beijing might find out, what? Whether 13 year-old American girls like videos of puppies or kittens better?

According to The Wall Street Journal, ByteDance agreed in 2021 to allow the Chinese government to take a 1% ownership stake known as a “golden share” at one of its China-based subsidiaries, Beijing Douyin Information Service Co., which runs Douyin, an app available in China that’s similar to TikTok. (TikTok is not available in mainland China.).

It goes without saying, of course, that DEI took it firmly on the chin last night, as well. And appropriately so. There has not been any statist operation more inimical to personal liberty and free enterprise prosperity in recent decades than the DEI campaign that infected much of the Fortune 500. That is, until Bud Light was stupid enough to hired a creepy transgender TikTok influencer named Dylan Mulvaney, which triggered Trump buddy Kid Rock to post a video on Twitter blasting cases of Bud Light to smithereens with a machine gun.

Alas, it all came together over the weekend when Kid Rock serenaded the Trump rally Sunday evening while the Donald went on yesterday to literally deliver the DEI death knell. His ringing endorsement of meritocracy and the plainly evident truth that Mother Nature invented just two genders may have finally awakened the corporate, university and government HR departments from their destructive sojourns in the deranged world where men have babies and women have a pair.

At the end of the night, of course, there was one real big, nay huuuge, thing missing. The Donald didn’t say a word about the fiscal time bomb that has been deposited on his door step by the UniParty. But the fact is, the $624 billion deficit posted during the two first two months of FY 2025 was a shocking 64% bigger than the prior year and even exceeded the 2020 COVID year deficit by a large measure.

Moreover, it’s just the tip of the iceberg coming down the pike. The built-in spending momentum will generate $85 trillion of outlays over the next decade versus barely $60 trillion of revenue, and that’s according to a CBO baseline forecast that assumes uninterrupted full employment for the next decade and a level of total GDP and employment by 2035 that even supply-side gurus like Art Laffer have barely projected.

That is to say, the public debt is heading to $70 trillion by the mid-2030s and $150 trillion (yes, with a “T”) by the middle of the century—a level which would crush main street prosperity and constitutional liberty as we have known it.

And yet and yet. The Donald had absolutely nothing to say on the very topic that is at the heart of everything.

Nor did he say a word about how he will extricate the US from the catastrophe in Ukraine or rein in a $1.6 trillion national security budget that is at least $500 billion greater than what an America First homeland security policy actually requires. Instead, he went off on a tangent about planting the stars and stripes on Mars.

And that’s to say nothing about how the 8 million illegals now on US payrolls will be replaced if they are deported by ICE or self-deported by fears of a knock on the door in the middle of the night.

Finally, Trump was yapping yet again about Chicom control of the Panama Canal. To be sure, someone apparently told the Donald that the Panama Canal Authority is gouging American shippers and China may have something to do with it. Of course, neither is remotely true.

But there is a larger issue here. The matter of Panama is so utterly irrelevant that the Donald’s preoccupation with it is still another reminder that his good thunder on issues where he feels he has been personally wronged can readily give way to immense blunders on important matters on which he is wholly misinformed or completely misguided.

In the case of Panama, for instance, the Chinese government has absolutely no role in the operations of the Panama Canal Authority. Nor did they fund the recent $5 billion expansion to accommodate more and larger ships. In all, the canal authority collects just $3.38 billion per year in tolls, which doesn’t amount to a hill of beans in the scheme of things.

Actually, the tolls averaged just $16 per ton against the 210 million long tons of cargo handled by the canal in FY 2024. So perhaps the Donald’s opinion is what—that the toll should be much lower at say $13.50, $9.25 or $5 per ton?

In fact, if the tolls were actually exploitive, the containers coming from the Far East and heading for the US Atlantic coast would divert to the Long Beach/Los Angeles Port and then go by train and truck to the east coast. Alas, they don’t at today’s $16 per ton average charge because after the Teamsters, rail unions and Warren Buffet’s Union Pacific railroad eats their fill, it’s still cheaper to take the canal route and pay the tolls—the Donald’s new found monopolistic assessment or not.

More importantly, about 70% of the Panama Canal traffic is accounted for by US port originated or destined traffic. So call the annual charge to the US economy $2.4 billion, which amounts to the rounding error sum of $7.0 million per day.

As for the Chicoms, their footprint apparently stems from the fact that the venerable Chinese investment titan, Li Ka-shing, owns and operates two Panama Canal ports through CK Hutchinson Holdings. In turn, these two ports–one on the Atlantic (Cristobal) and the other on the Pacific (Balboa)—move about 4.5 million TEUs (Twenty-Foot Equivalent Units) per year. That’s nothing to sneeze at, but even then it amounts to barely half of the annual 8.0 million TEUs moved by the two largest Panama operations at the Port of Colon and the Port of Manzanillo. These are not Chinese owned or influenced, nor are several more smaller ports that also operate in Panama.

That is to say, why in the big wide world of national problems and crises is the Donald blundering around threatening to seize the Panama Canal—which is a 20th century relic, at best?

Moreover, we don’t know whether the legendary Li Ka-shing is a commie agent or not, but if so he has been pretty adept at playing the role of empire-building capitalist. After all, he has accumulated a current net worth of $36 billion.

More pertinently, we don’t see much reason to sweat Li Ka-shing’s ownership of two of the seven Panama ports—especially when the American economy already has been living quite comfortably with the CK Hutchinson empire of ports all around the world.

Actually, the company is the world’s leading port investor, developer and operator. The Group’s ports division holds interests in 52 ports comprising 291 operational berths in 27 countries, including container terminals operating in six of the 10 busiest container ports in the world, such as the premier US port at Long Beach.

In 2021, the division handled a total throughput of 88 million TEUs, meaning that its Panama operation accounts for barely 4% of its global volume. So if CK Hutchinson is a dangerous tool of Xi Jinping, its Panama holdings are the least of our worries.

Of course, there is actually nothing to worry about down there in the Panama Canal Zone when it comes to global commerce and the purported machinations of Chiiina.

It turns out that the current volume through the Long Beach/Los Angeles Ports is 20 million TEUs per year or five times more than the traffic through the so-called China ports in Panama. At an average value of about $75,000 per TEU, the annual volume into these leading US ports is worth about $1.5 trillion. That is to say, if you put the Donald’s “big beautiful” 25% tariff on the incoming goods at Long Beach/Los Angeles, you get $375 billion per year drained out of the pockets of American consumers. Now, that’s actually some kind of harm.

In short, the $7 million per day of tolls paid by US bound shipments through the canal are utterly irrelevant to anything that matters when it comes to restoring non-inflationary growth in an American economy now freighted down under $101 trillion of public and private debt and a central bank that has painted itself into an inflationary corner.

Stated differently, the Donald’s day one thunder was superb but his blunder in totally ignoring the big issues—taming the Warfare State, reining in the explosion of Federal spending and debt and throttling the madcap money-printers at the Fed—needs to be corrected real soon.

We don’t have much hope for that, however. At the end of the day Donald Trump is a statist Cesarean who thinks governance is a principle-free transactional “art of the deal” to be performed on a global stage.

It is not. Not in the slightest. What America actually needs is not a bully boy CEO, but a Federal government that sobers up, balances its books, brings the Empire home and gets out of the way.

Then again, we just don’t see the Donald signing up for Jeffersonian quiescence and modesty now that he is back in the Oval Office. He has spent a whole lifetime pursuing the opposite, and is not about to execute a volte-face now.

Reprinted with permission from David Stockman’s Contra Corner.

The post Thunder and Blunder on Day One appeared first on LewRockwell.

During her Senate confirmation hearing for UN ambassador, Trump nominee Elise Stefanik was asked by Senator Chris Van Hollen if she agreed with Israeli Nazis Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotritch that Israel has a “Biblical right” to the West Bank. Stefanik said yes.

It’s so wild how bat shit insane religious delusions are almost a prerequisite for acceptance in the highest echelons of Official Washington. These confirmation hearings are like,

“Are you mentally ill enough to do US foreign policy?”

“Yes, I have the requisite mental illnesses to do US foreign policy.”

“Your brain is a festering stew of psychosis and you have trouble distinguishing fantasy from reality?”

“Yes, I promise that is the case.”

The world is ruled by religious fanatics with nukes. If a normal person says they’re the second coming of Jesus Christ they get medicated and institutionalized. If you make equally insane religious claims on the Senate floor, they let you run an empire.

❖

The Anti-Defamation League has published a statement defending Elon Musk’s use of blatant Nazi salutes at Donald Trump’s inauguration rally, saying he “made an awkward gesture in a moment of enthusiasm, not a Nazi salute,” and saying that everyone should “take a breath” over the controversy and give Musk “the benefit of the doubt”.

The ADL telling everyone to cool their jets about Elon Musk throwing up textbook Nazi salutes at a political event should be the final nail in the coffin for the “antisemitism” narrative. It won’t be, but it should be.

This makes it so transparently obvious that groups like the ADL do not exist to curb discrimination against Jews, they exist to promote the geopolitical and military interests of an apartheid state in the middle east. This is why you see them spending 99 percent of their energy shrieking about high-profile supporters of Palestinian human rights like Jeremy Corbyn and Greta Thunberg and almost no energy focusing on actual antisemitic white supremacists who want to hurt Jews.

Imagine if someone like Corbyn or Thunberg had repeatedly thrown up a Nazi salute at a political event after denouncing the abuses of the state of Israel. Just imagine how aggressively groups like the ADL would work to ensure they never appeared in public again. The entire western political-media class would unify to stomp their reputation through the floorboards forever. But because it came from someone who’s been falling all over himself to support the information interests of Israel, we get “This is a delicate moment, it was just an awkward hand gesture.”

There is no antisemitism crisis in our society. There isn’t. It’s a lie. A lie that has been cynically promoted by institutions like the ADL to shut down criticism of genocidal atrocities by a tyrannical apartheid state. That’s all we’ve ever been looking at here.

This is a delicate moment. It’s a new day and yet so many are on edge. Our politics are inflamed, and social media only adds to the anxiety.

It seems that @elonmusk made an awkward gesture in a moment of enthusiasm, not a Nazi salute, but again, we appreciate that people are on…

— ADL (@ADL) January 20, 2025

To be clear, I don’t particularly care that Elon Musk very clearly made Nazi salutes. We’ve just spent 15 months watching the US empire carry out a live-streamed genocide, and Elon Musk is one of the managers of that empire. Doing Nazi salutes just puts an accurate wrapper on the product.

❖

My favorite genre of tweet right now is liberals going “Haha, those Chinese people on RedNote would have you believe they know more about China than I, a westerner who has watched television.”

❖

Trump doesn’t deserve accolades for not continuing a genocide, Biden deserves to be thrown into a wood chipper for DOING the genocide.

Don’t get it backwards: you don’t get credit for NOT doing genocide. We’re not supposed to feel grateful and elated that a president might perhaps have decided not to do the single worst thing a person can possibly do. Not doing genocide is the most basic, bare-minimum expectation you could possibly have of someone; it’s so baseline it normally doesn’t even need to be said.

Don’t get tricked into thinking Trump pulled off some kind of diplomatic magic trick here. He just did the normal thing. Don’t let them dupe you into being grateful for it. It was always this easy. All that needed to happen to push the ceasefire through was for the president to say “Yeah we’re not going to keep supporting that genocide.” For 15 months Joe Biden and his handlers actively chose to keep doing genocide, and they deserve the highest order of punishment for doing so.

Don’t let them ratchet the Overton window further into the direction of murder and tyranny by thinking a president NOT doing genocide is some special thing you need to be appreciative of. Don’t let them force you to beg for crumbs. The only appropriate response to those 15 months of genocidal atrocities is the severe punishment of everyone responsible.

❖

If “international law” was a real thing that actually existed, every nation which facilitated the destruction of Gaza would be forced to rebuild it immediately and war crimes tribunals would already be underway.

But international law does not exist in any meaningful way. Domestic laws exist because states have the power to enforce them, but there is no international body which has the power to force the US-centralized empire to stop committing mass atrocities. The reality is that we still live in an ultimately lawless world where tyrants do as they please, and the only rules of any real consequence are the ones which benefit the tyrants.

Domestic laws exist because it would never do for the masses to start killing the rich and powerful and taking back what’s been stolen from them. The ruling tyrants pretend international laws exist in order to justify “humanitarian interventions” and economic sanctions against disobedient governments. In all cases what we’re really seeing is the people with the guns and the bombs dictating how everyone else is allowed to act. That’s not the rule of law, it’s just garden variety totalitarianism with some narrative spin painted overtop it.

We will never live in a world where true justice is allowed to flourish as long as we are dominated by a tyrannical globe-spanning empire. Until then we remain in this wild west environment where the biggest band of thugs with the biggest guns make the rules.

__________________

My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you want to. Go here to find video versions of my articles. If you’d prefer to listen to audio of these articles, you can subscribe to them on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud or YouTube. Go here to buy paperback editions of my writings from month to month. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.

The post Insane Religious Fanaticism Is a Requirement for US Empire Managers appeared first on LewRockwell.

People rightly complain about the federal government regulating – which is to say, controlling – practically everything. Well, how about California – as regards the cars you’re allowed to buy?

There is this thing called the California Air Resources  Board (CARB) which operates as a de facto Congress – for the entire country – as regards the cars we’re allowed to buy (and the electric care we’re being forced to buy) because the regulations it emits regarding which cars may (and may not be) be sold in the state effectively apply to every other state.

Because a majority of state governments (and their own regulatory apparats) decided to adopt and apply CARB’s regulatory emissions as their own. Thereby ceding the legislative function to a California bureaucracy that – in the very best light – emits regulations premised on conditions in California that are not warranted in Oregon, to cite one of the states that mirrors whatever CARB emits.

Keep in mind that no one in any of the states outside of CA had an opportunity to vote for – or against – CARB’s emissions. Their state overlords simply decided to mirror and impose them. So much for “our democracy.”

It began a long time ago – back in the ’70s – when CARB was created to deal with CA’s  air pollution problems, especially souther CA’s air pollution problems. In short order, CARB emitted regulations that effectively forced the car manufacturers to build vehicles specifically for California. These were called “California” cars at the time. They were fitted with different (more complex) emissions equipment than what were called “49 state” cars had to have at the time. Some “California” cars could not be sold with engines that were available in “49 state” cars because they could not comply with California’s standards.

One example being the “California” Chevy Corvette of this time, which was the only Corvette ever sold with a 5.0 (305 cubic inch) V8 rather than the 5.7 liter (350 cubic inch) V8 that was standard in “49 state” Corvettes. There were also deletions – equipment you could not get in “California” cars, such as the manual transmission that was available in 1979 Trans-Ams sold in the other 49 states but not in CA.

It was of course burdensome – and expensive – for the car manufacturers to make “California” cars and “49 state” cars. Eventually, the car manufacturers decided to make all their cars California compliant – and so now everyone pays more for CARB’s regulatory emissions when they buy a car.

And that is how CARB operates as a de facto legislature for the entire country with regard to cars.

It raises interesting constitutional questions – as regards interstate commerce, specifically. Which – per the Constitution – is a federal rather than a state power. Bad enough that the federal regulatory apparat operates as a de facto legislature, having somehow acquired what amounts to the power to legislate. For what are regulations? Are they suggestions? Or do they have the force and effect of laws? The federal EPA has the power to enforce the regulations it emits – and has armed enforcers who do exactly that.

This is power to emit – and enforce – regulations is what might you might fairly call tyrannical since the regulatory apparats that emit them are not elected by anyone and so cannot be held accountable to the people who are under duress to comply with the regulations emitted. There is no way to directly vote a bureaucrat out of his office. Especially one emitting de facto laws in California that residents of other states are effectively forced to comply with (and pay for).

It is at the very least arguably unconstitutional – because California is a state and no state has the constitutional power to dictate the terms and conditions of commerce nationally.

Read the Whole Article

The post Our CARB Overlords appeared first on LewRockwell.

Last year Congress passed a law requiring the Chinese government to divest from TikTok, alleging that the social media company collects sensitive data and information on Americans. But so does the US government, and Trump’s nominee Tulsi Gabbard has been forced by the US Senate to back off her opposition to the US government’s police state surveillance of American citizens in violation of the US Constitution.  

It is OK with the US Congress for Americans be be subjected to surveillance as long as it is not the Chinese doing it.

We don’t know if the Chinese are using TikTok for surveillance.  It is an accusation, the purpose of which seems to be to force China to fork over to US investors an interest in half of their company. The Speaker of the House is our bad cop saying he is going to shut down the company.  Trump is the good cop issuing an executive order to keep it open while he performs the art of the deal.

In America where the Sherman Anti-Trust Act is a dead letter law and monopolization has stifled productive investment, looting of foreign assets and foreign countries is America’s access to profits.  American corporations fire their American employees and replace them with foreign labor abroad or with foreigners on H-1B and L-1 visas paying them less than the American wage.  The saved labor cost goes to profits, higher stock prices, and executive “performance” bonuses.

But this is only the beginning of the story of American profits’ reliance on looting. For the past quarter century Americans deceived by blatant lies have poured hundreds of billions of their incomes taken by Washington to bomb women and children and bring destroyed countries to “democracy.”

Ukraine is an example.  The corrupt Biden regime has shipped hundreds of billions of dollars of hard-pressed Americans’ incomes in the form of weapons to Ukraine.  These weapons are not a gift. They have to be paid for, but it not the American taxpayers whose money was sent who get paid. It is Blackrock and US agri-businesses to whom Ukraine has to sell its productive farmland in order to pay for the weapons.  According to reports  one-third of Ukraine’s farmland have been sold to American interests. In reality, the war in Ukraine is a mechanism for transferring  Americans’ incomes to Blackrock. 

Conservatives rant and rave about welfare, financed by transferring income from hard-working Americans to those who live off of them. But the worst transfers are those that enable Washington’s exploitation of foreign countries.

Just consider the energy situation in Europe, especially in Germany. A Russian gas pipeline delivered low cost energy to Europe. Washington blew it up.  The replacement is high cost American liquified natural gas, the expense of which is forcing industrial companies such as German car companies out of Germany. Germany, Washington’s puppet, pays for American profits with  German unemployment and falling GDP. Yesterday European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said that Washington’s sanctions on Russian energy has caused “sky-high” energy prices throughout Europe. Washington is looting its own allies, the true cost to them of NATO.

John Perkins’ book, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, explains in detail the extent to which the United States rests on the exploitation of foreign countries than on its productive capacity.  The NY Banks, perhaps with the participation of the World Bank, an American exploitative institution, sell a development package to a third world government. For example, here is a development plan . Borrow money from us to electrify your country. This will produce economic developments that will provide the resources to repay the loans.

As Perkins admits, it is a shell game, one that often requires payments to the ruling elite to take on the loans.

When the promised development does not occur and there are no revenues to repay the loans, up shows the corrupt International Monetary Fund (IMF).  The IMF tells the country,  ruined by the US loans and the corruption of the leaders who were paid to take them out, that if you don’t pay your credit will be ruined and you will be cut out of the ability to borrow.  

The IMF has a plan how they can retrieve their dangerous situation:  Sell off assets such as energy, minerals, protected timber in national forests, fisheries, and accept an American air base.  By turning your country over to Americans you can pay your bills.

The world has worked this way for many decades. Marine commander Smedley Butler said thathe and his Marines were the enforcers for the New York banks.

The corrupt EU did the same thing to Greece. I covered it as did Michael Hudson and James Galbraith. The northern European countries got Greece in debt by paying bribes to the corrupt  Greek government. The Greeks couldn’t pay, so Greece was forced to sell off their municipal water systems, their ports, their protected islands, to strip the government’s budget of education, medical, and social payments, and to fire government employees in order that Greek tax payments could be rerouted to  German banks. So many Greek women were forced into prostitution that the price of a trick was reduced to the cost of a sandwich.  You can find the articles on my website.

MAGA Americans must be brought to understanding that not only must American be restored, but it must be restored without exploiting others. Washington is responsible for massive crimes in addition to those that Americans have suffered. 

Accountability awaits.  Will Trump acknowledge this accountability and hold those responsible, or will he  continue it as part of the profit dimension of making America great again?

The post America Cannot Loot Its Way To Greatness appeared first on LewRockwell.

Timing is everything in geopolitics. This past Friday in Moscow, only three days before the inauguration of US President Donald Trump in Washington, top BRICS member leaders Russian President Vladimir Putin and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian signed a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership Agreement, detailed in 47 articles, twice as many as in the recent Russian–North Korean deal.  

This strategic partnership is now set in stone just as the – unpayable – humongous debt of the US government reaches an unprecedented $36.1 trillion, equivalent to $106.4k per American, and just as the US share of the global economy falls below 15 percent for the first time, based on World Bank/IMF figures.

In sharp contrast, the Russia–Iran strategic partnership aims to solidify even more the interlocking drive of crucial multilateral organizations driven to organize the new multimodal world: BRICS+, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), and the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU).   

Call it a landmark moment in the long, ongoing Eurasia integration process. Or, as the Global Majority largely interprets it, a direct, sovereign challenge to the dying, western-imposed “rules-based international order.”    

The wide-ranging strategic Tehran–Moscow partnership boosts collaboration in the security and defense realms, and places particular emphasis on the smooth development of the International North-South Transportation Corridor (INSTC), a trans-Eurasia axis uniting Russia, Iran, and India, solidifying Iran as a key transit hub for Russian gas and goods sold to several Afro-Eurasia partners.

Map of the International North South Transportation Corridor (INSTC).

Rewriting the rules of asymmetric warfare

It’s enlightening to highlight Putin’s own interpretation of the partnership, which he calls a “groundbreaking document” that sets “ambitious goals,” focused on “sustainable development.”

He added that Russia and Iran align on “most” foreign policy issues, are independent nations, and that both civilizational nations “resist external pressure and oppose illegitimate sanctions.”   

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi stressed how the partnership replaces “unilateralism with cooperation and respect,” in a deal meant to provide Iran and Russia with the tools to build “a new order in which cooperation will replace hegemony and respect will replace imposition.”

Now, to some of the nitty-gritty. Although the agreement is not constituted as a formal military alliance, the partnership institutionalizes military exchanges at the highest level – from joint drills and weapons development to intelligence-sharing projects. 

Moscow will inevitably sell Sukhoi S-30 fighter jets, Pantsir, Tok, and Buk missiles, and S-400s defense systems (and in the near future, S-500s) for Iranian air defense against possible instances of US–Israel adventurism while buying a vast array of made-in-Iran missiles and drones. Exchanges on Artificial Intelligence research will also be boosted. Both Iran and Russia are on the global frontlines of rewriting the rules of asymmetric warfare.

The partnership stipulates that Russia will provide Iran with “assistance.”  In practice, that means not only weapons but also Moscow defending Tehran at the United Nations and other international forces against diplomatic threats and minimizing the effects of disruptive economic sanctions. 

And were an attack against Iran to happen, Russia, by all means, will not collaborate with the attacker: no intel to no permission to use Russian territory for raids or incursions. 

Energy infrastructure is an essential pillar of the partnership, and will aim to boost Iran’s fortunes amid a worsening domestic economy. Russia will provide state-of-the-art energy technologies to develop the vast – but still to be upgraded – Iranian energy infrastructure, pipeline networks, and ever-expanding Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) trade. 

On the day of the agreement, Russian Energy Minister Sergei Tsivilev provided new details on a new, 30-year Caspian Sea pipeline deal between Gazprom and the National Iranian Gas Company (NIGC), that will include Azerbaijan, and likely seek to entice Baku away from hostile regional stances. Russia will cover the infrastructure costs, and essentially provide gas to Iran and some of its neighbors.   

The projected volume of 55 billion cubic meters a year upon the project’s completion happens to compare with the capacity of the twin Nord Stream to the European Union, stealthily sabotaged by the Americans, as veteran investigative journalist Seymour Hersh revealed in 2022.

This energy deal is essential for Tehran because even if it holds the second-largest gas reserves on the planet – 34 trillion cubic meters, only behind Russia – it suffers from domestic shortages, especially in winter. Most of the country’s vast gas reserves are not explored because of decades-old US sanctions. 

Improving the “laboratory of the future” 

On the geoeconomic front, Russia and Iran are at the center of one of the key connectivity corridors of the 21st century: the INSTC, uniting three BRICS (the other one is India), immune to sanctions, and a seriously faster and cheaper alternative to the once-indispensable Suez Canal.

The other corridor is the Northern Sea Route (NSR) across the Arctic, which the Chinese call the Ice Silk Road, or Polar Silk Road. China defines itself as a “near-Arctic state.”

Map of major global shipping routes and alternative Arctic passages including Northwest and Northeast routes.

The INSTC is Eurasia integration at its finest, doubling down as a prime BRICS connectivity project. The geoeconomic repercussions are staggering, as the INSTC will be accelerating the process inside BRICS+ of bypassing the US dollar-dominated international financial system. 

Russia and Iran are already trading heavily in their own currencies and cryptos while working to perfect a confidential mechanism to totally bypass the Belgium-based global banking messaging system SWIFT. The next step is to configure a Eurasia-wide payment network, which will be tied to an evolving BRICS mechanism, with several options already being discussed and tested at what can only be described as “a laboratory of the future.”     

Proverbial imperial hysteria defining the partnership as the new chapter of the new “axis of evil” – with North Korea and China added for good measure – is irrelevant. The geopolitical timing, once again, is priceless – coupled with the blowback against the sanctions dementia. 

Dementia, incidentally, will remain intrinsic to the US-led western axis. National Insecurity honcho Jack Sullivan, before his pathetic exit, did suggest to the White House an attack on Iran’s nuclear sites before the start of Trump 2.0 – something that would have immediately plunged the incoming Republican president right into the eye of the hurricane: a massive West Asian war. 

The problem is the Zionist ring of fire surrounding Trump is, in fact, inheriting these attack plans from the exiting Biden administration, and they are far from being opposed across the US Deep State; thus, the dementia never stops. Considering the hubris permeating the Empire of Chaos, there will be no gaggle of realists actually understanding the ramifications of the Russia–Iran strategic entente.   

The Forever Wars mindset that devastated large swathes of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Gaza, Ukraine, and elsewhere is now being slightly tweaked. Yet, the permanently-employed neocons and neoliberals who have controlled US foreign policy for decades will not vanish. The difference is that now Russia–Iran, in close cooperation, are directly challenging the Empire of Chaos, reloaded. 

The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of The Cradle.

The post On the Eve of Trump, Iran and Russia Launch Historical Deal appeared first on LewRockwell.

Trump’s second presidency has a strong start. On his first day in office he has issued some 200 executive actions including some 42 executive orders (EO) undoing many of Biden’s attempts of socially engineering a new society.

(Unfortunately I have yet to find a complete list of those EOs. Why haven’t even the agencies, AP, AFP or Reuters, compiled one?)

I do dislike many of the EOs Trump issued. Leaving the World Health Organization and the Paris Agreements, and thereby de-legitimizing them, is not good for mankind. Further supporting the Zionst entity is a disgrace.

Others I do like. Trump pardoned participants of the Jan 6 (2021) ‘riots’ which had never amounted to much more than a hustle.

He rescinded many of EOs the Biden administration had issued around its diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies. Attempts of social engineering against merit deserve to fail.

I am also very happy that Trump has ended the official Trans craze. The wording herein is remarkable:

DEFENDING WOMEN FROM GENDER IDEOLOGY EXTREMISM AND RESTORING BIOLOGICAL TRUTH TO THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT

Across the country, ideologues who deny the biological reality of sex have increasingly used legal and other socially coercive means to permit men to self-identify as women and gain access to intimate single-sex spaces and activities designed for women, from women’s domestic abuse shelters to women’s workplace showers. This is wrong. Efforts to eradicate the biological reality of sex fundamentally attack women by depriving them of their dignity, safety, and well-being.
…
This unhealthy road is paved by an ongoing and purposeful attack against the ordinary and longstanding use and understanding of biological and scientific terms, replacing the immutable biological reality of sex with an internal, fluid, and subjective sense of self unmoored from biological facts. Invalidating the true and biological category of “woman” improperly transforms laws and policies designed to protect sex-based opportunities into laws and policies that undermine them, replacing longstanding, cherished legal rights and values with an identity-based, inchoate social concept.

There are and will be many more Trump policies which (will) deserve to be condemned and criticized.

That should not hinder us to admit that he got some things right.

Reprinted with permission from Moon of Alabama.

The post Trump Abolishes Democrats’ DEI And Trans-Craze Policies appeared first on LewRockwell.