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Antisemitism and its required conspiracy theory
January 27, 2024
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The Fourth Arab-Israeli War has, as CNAV has noted before, brought out the worst in many groups of people. It has divided coalitions on the left and the right. To be specific, antisemitism has reared up as it hasn’t since Kristallnacht. America has seen that especially on university campuses – but it also has appeared off campus. Underpinning all antisemitic pronouncements, is a conspiracy theory of some kind. Lately a new theory found its way in to the comment space of CNAV’s sister channel, Declarations of Truth. CNAV will keep the curtain of charity drawn (with apologies to Samuel L. “Mark Twain” Clemens) and withhold the commenter’s name and Rumble handle. But the comments remain. CNAV understands what the Censorship Industrial Complex does not: that Internet archive services, that include more than just The Wayback Machine, ensure that comments remain forever. Therefore CNAV will answer them – directly.

Antisemitism in and by the Roman Empire

CNAV has covered the history of the Middle East before. The relevant part of that history begins with the Birth, Ministry, Passion and Resurrection of Jesus Christ. At that time, the Jews lived under Roman occupation, which they perceived, correctly, as a brutal form of antisemitism. They anticipated their Messiah, but wanted a political leader. Jesus Christ disappointed them.

My Kingdom is not of this world.

John 18:36, Authorised or “King James” Version

His Passion and Resurrection occurred shortly thereafter. The Jews have assiduously denied that ever since. In fact some Gospel manuscripts suggested that the High Priest bribed Roman guards to say they had slept on watch so that Jesus’ disciples could steal His body out of the Garden Tomb. (That’s probably apocryphal; the penalty for sleeping on watch in the Roman Army was death.)

In 70 A.D., General Titus Flavius, son of Emperor Vespasian, led an army to quell a Jewish revolt. He famously destroyed Herod’s Temple in Jerusalem. He also besieged the last of the Zealots, instigators of the revolt, who had encamped atop Mount Masada. All of them died, except Flavius Josephus and one other man whom Josephus persuaded to go on living with him.

Simon Bar Khokhva’s Revolt, and the Diaspora

But in 135 A.D., Simon Bar Khokhva, pretending to be that political Messiah the Jews wanted, led another revolt. Emperor Hadrian’s forces brutally quelled that – then scatted the Jews throughout the Roman Empire. To put that into perspective, the Roman Empire had achieved its greatest territorial extent by then, under Hadrian’s predecessor Trajan. Furthermore, many Jews fled to lands beyond the Roman world – or perhaps the Romans sentenced them to exile at a distance from the city of Rome beyond Imperial boundaries. This was the Diaspora, which saw the settlement of Jews as far away as India and Medina in Arabia. Hadrian then renamed Judea as Palaestina, which is Latin for Philistia, or Land of the Illegal Immigrants. Jerusalem then took the name Aelia Capitolina.

Centuries later, a group of Jews calling themselves the Interpreters (Masoretes) crafted the Masoretic Text, which dates back to the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries. Key to understanding the relevance is that the Masoretes sought to adjust the chronologies of the most ancient Patriarchs. Their object: to make the dates come out so that Simon bar Khokhva would be recognizable as the Messiah.

From Masoretes to Muslims

The Masoretic Text remains the preferred Jewish translation of their Law, Prophets and Writings – which Christians call the Old Testament. It also formed the primary basis of Christian translations of that Old Testament, although Christian translators also used the Septuagint, or Interpretation According to the Seventy. This last is a Greek version that Ptolemy Philadelphus commissioned from seventy Jewish scribes for his Great Library of Alexandria. This is the version that the Apostles and the Evangelists had available to them, and from which they quoted.

As everyone knows, the Roman Empire split into Greek-speaking (Eastern) and Latin-speaking (Western) halves, beginning with Constantine. The Western half fell in 454 A.D., and eventually the various kingdoms of Western Europe arose from its ashes. The Eastern half continued as the Byzantine Empire. That Empire would eventually fall to the armies of Islam – which Muhammad invented to rally his fellow Arabs to fight against the Byzantines, whom he detested. Muhammad also sought to recruit the Jews of Medina, by carefully modeling his rules for daily living after Jewish Kosher rules. But the Jews rejected him even more thoroughly than they did the Christians. Islam has been the bitterest – and deadliest – enemy of Judaism ever since, with the possible exception of German National Socialism.

Muslim conquest, Crusaders, Mameluks, and Ottomans

Muhammad and his successor generals swept the Byzantines out of the Arabian Peninsula. Then one successor, Abd al-Malik, conquered Jerusalem. He built the Dome of the Rock on the site of Herod’s Temple. That Dome was his equivalent of the Tel-Bethel and Tel-Dan Golden Calves of Jeroboam I, Solomon’s former Royal Chief Architect who rebelled and founded a rival Kingdom (the Northern).

When Abd al-Malik’s successors desecrated the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Pope Urban IX called for the reclamation of Jerusalem. The Crusades were the result. Four such wars took place, beginning in the eleventh century. Then in the 13th century came the Mamelukes, from Muslim Egypt, who expelled the last Crusader Kingdoms from the region. Several Arab-speaking Muslims settled in the land – but so did many Jews from Spain, beginning late in the fourteenth century.

In the fifteenth century, Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile made a treaty, sealing it with their marriage. Their combined armies drove the Moors out of Spain in 1492 (the year of the Columbus expedition). In 1517 the Ottoman Empire defeated the Mamelukes – and the Sultan invited more Jews to settle in the land. The Sultan did this, probably to spite the Spanish, who at the time were running The Inquisition. The present population of the Gaza Strip descend largely from the Mamelukes, with perhaps some Ottoman Turkish blood mixed in.

Worse example of antisemitism – the Holocaust

Such is the true history of the Middle East, up until the beginnings of Zionism, the purchase of the present lands of Israel from Turkish absentee landlords, the “renovation” of Hebrew as an everyday language, and eventually Lawrence of Arabia’s War, the British and French Mandatories of Palestine and Lebanon, and the Israeli War for Independence in 1948-9. CNAV can attest to that history, for in 2011 your editor traveled to Israel – and took photographs. The ruins of Crusader and Mameluke fortresses, along with Roman-era ruins and others dating further back in time, are undeniably authentic. No Jewish Potemkin built these fortresses for the benefit of American and other Western tourists. Furthermore, Jews protect the antiquities they discover. Muslims destroy antiquities – or, as Abd al-Malik did, cynically build on top of them.

At this time, the inclusion of insights from the Holocaust would be instructive. Most of the killings one associates with that event happened in Germany proper and Poland. Historian Jason Lantzer recently expounded on the orders and experience of General of the Army Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Forces during the Second World War. “Ike,” almost alone among American generals, did not see Jews as inherently anti-American. Kristallnacht, when it happened, appalled him. So he received the assignment to command Allied troops in Europe with relish.

Ike discovers what the Holocaust was all about

In April 1945, “Ike” got his first glimpse of the Konzentrationlagern system. He visited Ohrdruf, a sub-camp of K.L. Buchenwald. This authenticated excerpt from a letter by him to General George C. Marshall says it all:

On a recent tour of the forward areas in First and Third Armies, I stopped momentarily at the salt mines to take a look at the German treasure. There is a lot of it. But the most interesting – although horrible – sight that I encountered during the trip was a visit to a German internment camp near Gotha. The things I saw beggar description. While I was touring the camp I encountered three men who had been inmates and by one ruse or another had made their escape. I interviewed them through an interpreter. The visual evidence and the verbal testimony of starvation, cruelty and bestiality were so overpowering as to leave me a bit sick. In one room, where they were piled up twenty or thirty naked men, killed by starvation, George Patton would not even enter. He said he would get sick if he did so. I made the visit deliberately, in order to be in position to give first-hand evidence of these things if ever, in the future, there develops a tendency to charge these allegations merely to “propaganda.”

One can read the letter at the Eisenhower Presidential Library. As further authentication, the letter mentions Ike’s personality clashes with Lt. Gen. George S. Patton – and his monumental disgust over the unfavorable coverage of Patton in the newspapers, coverage that took a negative tone Ike found impossible to justify.

That was only his first visit, and it cut him to the quick. His visits to other camps would turn out to shake his equanimity even further. So he gave orders to:

  • Document everything found in the camps, and create a photographic and cinematographic record.

  • Care for – and interview – all survivors.

  • Have every soldier in the Allied Expeditionary Forces visit the camps as they moved forward.

  • Have local, mainly German, civilians assist directly in burying the dead and caring for survivors.

  • Arrange for British Parliamentary and American Congressional junkets, with press (including ranking editors) in attendance, to the camps.

His orders might not include the apocryphal command to “get everything down … [because someday] some [blackguard] will … say this never happened.” The problem is: the blackguards are getting up and saying the Holocaust never happened. The comments at issue in the Declarations of Truth comment space are a booby-prize example.

Antisemitism and conspiracy theory

These comments give a radically different version of Jewish history, at considerable variance with historical fact. According to this theory, the Jews never left Judea/Palestine. With the coming of General Abd al-Malik, they converted to Islam – if they did not die. So from whom do the Jews of Israel descend? According to this particular commenter, they come largely from Russia and Poland. This is a slightly different, and less detailed, version of the Khazar Theory – that the present Jews are all that’s left of the Khazars who once ruled what is now Ukraine.

And what about the Holocaust, and Eisenhower’s attestation of it? Here is one quote that gives a clue to the mendacity of the comments:

You cannot believe anything Eisenhower said, he was one of the lügende Juden.

That German phrase admittedly looks like “Leader’s Youth.” But it translates as “Lying Jews.” That phrase in turn goes back to Martin Luther – who sullied his reputation, in the latter stages of his career, with his overt antisemitism. In fact, an engine search on the phrase produces links to Martin Luther’s unfortunate treatise. It’s name: Von den Juden und ihren Lügen – or, On the Jews and their Lies.

Absolutely no reliable historical record asserts that Dwight D. Eisenhower was Jewish. He and his family were Gentiles, and he himself was a Christian.

Conclusion

So now you see yet another conspiracy theory of the type that antisemitism absolutely requires. The essence of antisemitism is a belief that the Jews have established a shadow government that rules the West with an iron hand in velvet gloves. Add to it the theory that the Jews of today have nothing in common with the Jews of Roman Judea. Of course that theory leaves a great deal unexplained – chiefly, how could Russian, Polish, or Khazar people gain such a detailed knowledge of Jews and Judaism that they would seek to convert to it, or pretend to convert to it, to further a goal of establishing a shadow government over all the West. And how the Holocaust could have happened – but antisemites repair that deficiency by saying it didn’t happen. Exactly as “Ike” predicted – though not, perhaps, that anyone would seek to slander him in this connection.

That commenter knows who he is. CNAV offers this as a refutation, and a reminder to be better researchers of history than he. Or any other antisemitic conspiracy theorist or hypothesizer.

In closing, this has been a painful exercise for CNAV. An Army Air Forces veteran once told your editor personally of having overflown one of those camps. Your editor has no direct experience with Holocaust denial. But, just as truth is a complete defense against a charge of libel or slander, truth is also a complete antidote to the willful denial of unpleasant, but nevertheless established, historical fact.

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Extinctionism – what is it, and who actively propounds it?

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SpaceX, Starship, and what might have been

Earlier this week, the Space Exploration Company conducted yet another test-to-failure of its current signature development project, Starship. SpaceX expected to lose both stages of this two-stage rocket ship, but not so fast, and not this way. Specifically, the booster blew up, and the “ship” (second stage) burned up. Does that spell doom for Starship? Sorry to disappoint Elon Musk’s detractors, but no. Tests-to-failure are the only way to find out for certain what can go wrong, especially with a new rocket ship. But had SpaceX run its development project differently, they would be in a much better financial position. They would also be further along in overall development than they are today. They could even be helping the official American space program in ways they never gave themselves a chance to imagine.

What is Starship, and what does SpaceX want to accomplish?

Starship is, or SpaceX wants it to be, the heaviest space liner and space freighter ever built. Indeed it would be the first rocket ship to carry passengers or freight on a scale comparable to commercial aviation. Or military airlift, for that matter – because the U.S. military wants to use it to move troops and equipment halfway around the globe, before an enemy would even know what’s happening.

There’s just one catch: Starship isn’t ready, and won’t be ready for years yet. The reason it’s not ready is that SpaceX, under the obsessive-compulsive leadership of founder Elon Musk, is following a single track. That company wants a fully reusable rocket that its shipyards (now incorporated as an independent city!) can turn out orders of magnitude faster than Boeing or Airbus can turn out airliners and air freighters. But first they must make their rocket reusable. The booster they lost in the last test was on its second flight. But they haven’t achieved that with the second stage.

Why is SpaceX so obsessed and compelled with reuse, mass production, and rapid “cadence” (how often they launch their rockets)? Because Elon Musk has one dream above all, and is impatient to realize it. He wants to build a self-sustaining city on the planet Mars – not as a mining colony but as a second home for humanity. That project will require thousands of Starships carrying crew, equipment – and rocket fuel, for he wants to refuel in space.

The problem with the Starship program

SpaceX has a fundamental problem it didn’t always have. When they developed their current “workhorse” rockets – Falcon Nine and Falcon Heavy – they did offer “intermediate” services as soon as they could. Falcon Nine reuses its booster but not its second stage; Falcon Heavy has three boosters and can reuse at least two, if not all three. Falcon Nine especially has taken “market share” from nearly ever other rocket ship built. Its reusable booster lets it launch payloads at less than half the cost of its competitors.

Falcon Heavy was supposed to be retired by now; Musk hoped that Starship would take its place. But Musk knows he cannot even entrust his own payloads – Starlink® satellites – to Starship. In racing to make Starship re-usable, he has left it un-usable for any useful work! The perfect, in short, has become the enemy of the good.

The YouTube influencer “Everyday Astronaut,” in covering Integrated Flight Test Nine (the latest), pointed this out. Why, he asked, didn’t SpaceX develop an intermediate version of Starship that would reuse the booster but not the ship? They could have been putting his new, heavier Starlink® satellites into orbit by now, on a grand scale. They could also be lifting other, more ambitious payloads – modules for the VAST company’s new Haven space station. (Starship is more than twice as wide as a Haven module, even today.)

But even “Everyday Astronaut” didn’t think of everything.

What SpaceX should have done with the concept

SpaceX is, of course, running its own space program. Advantage: the company has its own goals and can pursue them, independently of often fickle government agencies. (Any organization whose headship changes hands once every eight years – or even four – is necessarily fickle.) Disadvantage: SpaceX takes on the onus of making a long-range plan, and making that plan adaptable. This they haven’t done. A vague vision of a city on Mars is not a long-term plan.

They have the bare outlines of a mission profile: lift a ship into orbit, refuel it, and send it to Mars. But even SpaceX admits that refueling a single ship for a Mars transit and landing will require ten launches of orbital “tankers.” They need “tankers” because they never thought to build a refueling station in orbit.

But consider an intermediate version of Starship with a second stage designed to carry payload but not return to Earth. Why not equip that stage with fuel and thrusters to steer it once it’s in orbit? Then the first such stage enters orbit, drops its payload, and stays in orbit. The next such stage will catch up to it and latch onto it, forming another, larger object. Other second stages do the same – creating a cluster of shells, already in orbit, waiting for the next step.

What next?

If experience with Falcon Nine and Heavy are any guide, SpaceX could launch over 200 of these second stages into orbit within five years. In that time, they would perfect the booster, which is much more valuable, with all its 33 rocket engines. More importantly, among the payloads would be the modules for a first-generation Haven space station. (VAST might even have made it larger, to fit more snugly inside a Starship second stage.)

Now the value of cooperation and collaboration becomes apparent. That new space station – or a second like it – would be the ideal construction shack for turning those 200 second stages into several much larger stations. Shipfitters could unfasten the engines and fit out those massive shells with new, interconnecting interiors. Then, after a few more heavy-lift missions, they could mount a number of ships on a giant wheel, which would spin for gravity. The wheel’s hub would provide docking, loading, and unloading services – or microgravity laboratories or factories.

Now SpaceX would have a complex, or a fleet, of stations providing Earth-normal gravity and workspace. At least one would become a scrapyard to turn millions of “space junk” objects into ballast, counterweights, or reusable metal. The rest would become a shipyard in space, to offer repair of existing satellites, or support further development of a reusable second stage.

Looking further ahead

The best immediate use of Starship with a reusable second stage would be as a suborbital space liner or freighter. Almost as important would be ferrying of passengers and freight – including fuels – into low Earth orbit. A proper space program needs permanent stations in low (or medium) Earth orbit and geostationary or geosynchronous orbit (GEO). Dedicated ships, deriving their design from the Starship second stage, would ferry passengers and freight to and from GEO, and deploy satellites at various orbital levels. Equally dedicated ships would clean up the “space junk” in a big operation to remove an ever-present hazard. An LEO or MEO station would be the perfect base for “orbital traffic control.” This function would protect cargo – and lives – in addition to keeping “space junk” to a minimum.

The next important program would be one for asteroid deflection and capture. Already NASA is tracking an asteroid longer than the Eiffel Tower is tall – Apophis. This rock will pass very close to Earth in 2029. Worse, Apophis will disappear in the Sun’s glare – and might come out of it to hit New York, or London! Had SpaceX followed this proposed program, President Trump’s vaunted Space Force would already have a base ready to divert Apophis.

Obviously the first reusable second stages could bring back those spare engines, removed from the original second stages, for refurbishment and reuse in new “ships.” Thus, out of sheer practicality, almost nothing need be lost.

The real Mars colony wagon

If SpaceX, or NASA, or a NASA/ESA/JAXA coalition, still wants to build a city on Mars, then it needs a better plan than anything anyone has suggested thus far. Sending thousands of Starships on Hohmann minimum-energy orbital transits to Mars will not accomplish the goal. Even as large a heavy lifter as Starship is not and can never be a space-borne Conestoga wagon. True, the late Wernher von Braun proposed a “wagon train to Mars” (and famously couched his proposal as a novel). But the correct metaphor for colonizing Mars is not the settlement of the American West, but the first Voyages of Discovery by Erik the Red, his son Leif, Cristoforo Colombo (Christopher Columbus), Giovanni Caboto (John Cabot), Amerigo Vespucci, and the incomparable Fernão de Magalhães (Ferdinand Magellan).

So SpaceX should be collaborating with NASA to design a space-to-space colony wagon with nuclear thermal engines. Then they should build not only one, but a fleet of three, or preferably five. (Magellan started with five ships, of which one survived to return to Spain.) These ships would carry nuclear power plants, to power not only the new engines but also electromagnetic radiation shields. A space-to-space ship never lands, so those ships would carry Starships to serve as landing craft.

That Martian city would serve the new asteroid mining industry, plus a metallurgy industry to rival Pittsburgh. So Elon Musk’s dream would take shape – but the colonists would be there to work.

What can SpaceX do now?

SpaceX might seem to have wasted a prodigious amount of time, by not developing a heavy-lift capability along these lines. But if it starts now, then better late than never. Apophis is still on its way, and even if it doesn’t hit Earth in 2029, it could set up a collision for 2068. Nor is Apophis the only “near Earth asteroid” on record, by any means.

The Starship second stage is already at a point where it can achieve orbit and stay in orbit. Even if it can’t return to Earth, it could start carrying true payloads any time SpaceX wishes. The development program outlined here probably can’t divert Apophis by 2029 but could almost certainly divert it by 2032. Beyond that, it could lead to replacement space stations far sooner than currently envisioned – and cleaning up the “space junk” before it brings down every satellite in a cascade of collisions called the Kessler Syndrome. Along the way, the project could yield enough revenue to make it self-financing.

But without this kind of project, the perfect remains the enemy of the good. Now that Elon Musk has left his “Department of Government Efficiency” in other hands, and resumed full-time leadership of his companies, he has time to think about improving the image of SpaceX, while enabling it to do many more useful things.

Link to:

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https://cnav.news/2025/06/01/editorial/talk/spacex-starship-what-might/

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Article on Apophis by NASA:

https://science.nasa.gov/solar-system/asteroids/apophis/



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Tariffs, trade, and hard truth

Last week, a libertarian, constitutionalist, and apparent Christian preterist submitted to CNAV one of the more thoughtful objections to President Donald Trump’s policies on tariffs and trade. Objections from Democrats and their allies don’t count. After all, Democrats favored tariffs back when the Bush Dynasty controlled the Republican Party. That in itself is ironic, because Woodrow Wilson, who began decades of Democratic rule over America, eliminated all tariffs. (His replacement: the graduated income tax.) So anything Democrats have to say on trade policy is self-serving and hypocritical. But libertarians offer consistent and sincere arguments – which does not make them correct. Herewith the rebuttal to that submitted argument, which CNAV promised.

Who is Robert W. Peck?

Robert W. Peck is the chairman of the Constitution Party of Washington State and a member of the Constitution Party National Committee. He also keeps his own web site, Perspectives, and occasionally submits articles to CNAV.

He professes to be a Christian, and in his writings has left no doubt on that score. But the only thing Christians reliably agree upon is the need for, and assurance of, spiritual salvation. On how to interpret the Revelation to St. John of Jerusalem, Christians of good heart have their sharpest divide. Mr. Peck believes that John of Jerusalem was foretelling the Sack of Jerusalem and Destruction of Herod’s Temple in 70 A.D. by Titus, son of, and successor to, Emperor Vespasian. Never mind that John wrote his Revelation on the Island of Patmos in 96 A.D., twenty-six years after the Second Roman-Jerusalem War started. (Pompey the Great fought the First one as part of his campaign against Mithridates of Pontus and Tigranes of Armenia.)

Or perhaps John was prophesying the Third Roman-Jerusalem War of 135 A.D., by order of Emperor Hadrian. That War resulted in the Great Scattering (Diaspora) of the Jews.

All of which to say that Peck is a preterist, who does not accept a time of worsening moral decay. John of Jerusalem predicted this, as did Paul of Tarsus. Peck denies this, and this explains his adherence to the central flawed tenet of libertarianism: universal goodwill.

What is universal goodwill?

Universal goodwill tells us that human beings have no good reason to fight. An individual especially has no enemies but what he makes. People make enemies, says Peck, because they engage (he would say indulge) in zero-sum thinking. A zero-sum game has a winner and a loser. Or in a multi-player game, net victories exactly balance net defeats.

To which he raises two objections. First, men of goodwill should be able to arrive at an equitable distribution of scarce resources between them. Second, no such things as limited or scarce resources need exist. His idealized story of economics (literally, Laws of the Household) features infinite increase. Are we running out of land? Venture off-world and find or create more! Columbus did it, and John Cabot; why can’t we? Is someone foolish (by his lights) to reach out for land to conquer, plunder and pillage? Pull up stakes and get out of his reach! (And never, never, never lend credence to the notion of literal, geographical Promised Land! That explains why he and his friend Darrell L. Castle consistently discount the Biblical territorial claims of something called Israel.)

Libertarian foreign and trade policy assumes universal goodwill, and either infinite resources or ever more dense resource utilization. Sadly, the real world does not conform to these comfortable nostrums. That is why his recommendations on tariffs and trade must necessarily fail.

Primer on tariffs

Peck begins with some definitions, and shows a competent – but incomplete – understanding of the issues behind them. Tariffs, he says, are taxes on imports. Specifically, governments lay and collect tariffs from the importer, who must recoup them, and the costs of goods he imports. But Peck understands only one purpose of tariffs:

The idea is to tax imported goods at a rate calculated to make them as expensive to consumers, or more so, than their domestically produced counterparts. When that happens, American-made products can “compete” with imports. Consumers will then purchase U.S. products, creating a demand for production and thus preserving, or even creating, jobs.

True, but incomplete. Tariffs also are a source of revenue. Before Wilson, tariffs were the source of revenue for the federal government. Every country imposed them; that is how their governments ran. But tariffs never amounted to more than perhaps ten percent of the importer’s purchase prices. The U.S. government understood the Laffer Rule long before Arthur Laffer was born. When tariffs are too high, imports, and the revenue from tariffs, will cease.

Woodrow Wilson destroyed that understanding completely. Ostensibly he said he would build upon universal goodwill of all nations. In fact he laid the trap for the graduated income tax, and gained the confidence of two-thirds of both houses of Congress and three-fourths of the State legislaturres to amend the Constitution to permit this kind of tax. (The confidence trick might have been more profound if someone can invalidate Ohio’s ratification of Amendment XVI.) By no accident, President Trump has proposed to replace income-tax revenues by tariff revenues. Let no one imagine that this would be unprecedented. It has more than a century of precedent behind it, that century being the pre-Wilson century.

Trade barriers other than tariffs

Peck goes on to detail other barriers to international market entry. Subsidies are direct cash payments to domestic manufacturers, or guaranteed purchase agreements. Farm Bills always feature subsidies: the government buys food in quantity, and ostensibly hands this out to needy citizens. These are the food stamps of popular political lore.

Regulation works the opposite way. Peck regards most regulations as facilitating entry of foreign goods into the U.S. market. Farmers or manufacturers in other countries don’t need to comply with American environmental, labor, or other regulations. Their goods, therefore, cost less. Correct as far as it goes – but surprisingly, Peck doesn’t carry his research any further. Robert C. O’Brien of American Global Strategies recommends the obvious adjustment: a specific tariff to recoup the costs of pollution. Or, call it a compensation for the regulations with which Americans must comply. CNAV would carry O’Brien’s idea further. Why not a tariff to cover compliance costs for all other forms of regulation?

When Peck discusses trade deficits, he blames them entirely on the removal of the gold standard. But he ignores what prompted President Richard M. Nixon to move off that standard. This is not to excuse Nixon; he should have re-instituted the pre-Wilson tariff regime. It is to remind people that trade deficits remain, even with a gold standard.

The sum of the game

Peck’s worst failing is his assumption that the sum of the Game of Life is not zero – and is never zero. For some games, the sum is zero. Land is finite. Minerals are finite. Even air and water are finite, though at least they each have a cycle of renewal. But the water cycle has a few choke points – limits on sources of water humans can tap for their use.

Must war, then, be the lot of humankind forever? Not necessarily. A civilizational state strives to acquire and defend enough land and resources for its people. But of necessarily, the aggregate of territory is finite. The Age of Discovery and Exploration is over. That of competition for scarce livable land has succeeded. (The only unsettled land now available for any kind of human settlement is Antarctica. Apart from its limited size, no one is going to try to scratch out a living on that cold, snow-blown, wind-swept continent any time soon.)

Under the circumstances, universal goodwill fails. Contrary to his glowing summation, humanity does live in a closed system of limited land, water (or at least fresh water), and minerals. And when he chastises his fellow human beings for consuming more than they produce, he contradicts himself. In an open system of unlimited resources, over-consumption would be impossible, would it not?

What the tariffs debate is not about

Finally, the debate on tariffs is not about Presidential versus Congressional power. Anything a President does, that might extend further than the law, Congress can easily codify. Peck doesn’t much want the tariff code that prevailed before Wilson, anyway. So anything he says about “not following procedure” becomes incompetent, irrelevant and immaterial.

To reply also to one other canard:

The continuation of what has been the economic status quo for decades does not constitute an emergency (“a sudden, urgent, usually unexpected occurrence”).

Oh, yes, it does. It certainly does when “the economic status quo,” for however long, is the equivalent of starvation or slow poisoning. Re-feeding and/or detoxifying a patient in that condition, on an exigent basis, is not only appropriate but imperative. That applies with greater force to a society that has suffered from a thoroughly wrongheaded fiscal policy.

The tariffs debate is about an America that is squandering its wealth, while pretending, ironically enough, to exploit other’s labor! Indeed, Democrats consistently made the same complaints Trump is now making about “free” trade. Republicans ignored them, to their detriment. But now Democrats have thrown those arguments away – and did it even before Donald Trump ran for President. Hint: Barack H. Obama is Woodrow Wilson 2.0.

A proper America first trade policy

So Donald Trump should continue his policy of aiming at tariffs that will replace income-tax revenues. Only recently he scored victories in the other purposes of tariffs: to force renegotiations of a lopsided trade regime. And apparently these tariffs have yielded significant revenues – and without a moment to lose, either.

At the same time, he must continue his campaign of territorial acquisition – where it makes sense. Greenland would serve a dual purpose: rare-earth mineral deposits, and shoreline to establish a Naval base or two, to supplement the present Space Force base. (Even Mr. Peck shouldn’t want Citizen Putin to start renaming the Arctic Nash Okean or Russkiy Okean. Arguably, Trump inadvertently tempted the Russian leader with a comparable precedent.) Trump shouldn’t try to acquire all of Canada. But Alberta Province would provide mineral resources, and the former Northwest Territories would secure the Northwest Passage.

More to the point, tariffs are a legitimate part of any civilizational, as opposed to a globalistic, policy. Globalism – even the soft globalism which libertarianism inevitably advocates – has worked against America and Americans. High time, therefore, that America abandon such policy.

Link to:

The article:

https://cnav.news/2025/05/17/foundation/constitution/tariffs-trade-hard-truth/

Video:

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Declarations of Truth:

https://x.com/DecTruth



Declarations of Truth Locals Community:

https://declarationsoftruth.locals.com/



Conservative News and Views:

https://cnav.news/



Clixnet Media

https://clixnet.com/

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Courts exceeding jurisdiction?

Yesterday a federal appellate court handed down an extraordinary order – extraordinary for two reasons. First, the court acted on a Saturday, not normally a working day. Second, the court said the lower, or trial, court made an elementary, indeed a rookie, mistake. The appeals court held that the trial judge exceeded his jurisdiction in the matter before him – yet another matter involving the Trump administration. The reasoning behind their ruling could well apply to many more cases involving President Donald Trump’s authority to act.

The matter at hand in the jurisdiction dispute

Actually the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled on four appeals before it. All these cases arise out of decisions by the U.S. Agency for Global Media, in response to an executive order by President Trump. That order called for eliminating, “to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law,” any non-statutory components and functions of certain agencies. It also called for reducing the statutory functions to “the minimum presence and function required by law.” Executive Order 14238, “Continuing the Reduction of the Federal Bureaucracy.” This order affected seven named agencies, among them: the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM). Kari Lake, former gubernatorial candidate in Arizona, serves as Senior Adviser to the Acting CEO of USAGM.

USAGM controls six different media organs, including

  • Voice of America (VOA),

  • Middle East Broadcasting Networks (MEBN),

  • Reporters Without Borders (abbreviated RSF for the French form Rapporteurs sans frontières),

  • Radio Free Asia (RFA),

  • Open Technology Fund (OTF), and

  • Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), two networks in tandem addressing former members of the Warsaw Pact.

VOA is strictly a government agency, but the other five are private agencies that operate on grants from USAGM.

In response to EO 14238, USAGM:

  1. Placed over 1000 employees on administrative leave,

  2. Terminated 600 “personal service” contracts,

  3. Terminated the grant agreements for MEBN and RFA, and

  4. Shut down VOA completely.

USAGM took similar action against RFE/RL and OTF, but their lawsuits are at different stages.

What the various courts have done

On March 21, Reporter Patsy Widakuswara, six other reporters, RSF, and four unions sued to get their jobs back. Widakuswara v. Lake, case 1:25-cv-01015-RCL. They at first filed in the Southern District of New York. On April 4, on the government’s motion, the case was transferred to the District of Columbia court. On April 22, Judge Royce C. Lamberth of that court issued a preliminary injunction ordering the government to:

  1. Re-hire all employees on administrative leave and reinstate all personal-service contracts,

  2. Restore the RFA and MEBN grants, and

  3. Switch VOA back on.

In his Memorandum Opinion, Judge Lamberth asserted that he had jurisdiction and that the plaintiffs had standing. Specifically Judge Lamberth rejected an argument that the Trump administration advanced, that the court lacked jurisdiction according to an “intervening” case on point. Department of Education v. California, 145 S. Ct. 966 (2025).

The government appealed the injunction almost immediately to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. Patsy Widakuswara v. Kari Lake, 25-5144. Specifically they appealed the first two parts of the injunction, disputing Judge Lamberth’s assertion of jurisdiction.

As is almost routine, the appellate court issued an administrative stay on Thursday (May 1). Two days later they followed that up with a stay pending appeal – meaning a stay until further notice. The panel, consisting of Judges Gregory Katsas, Neomi Rao, and Cornelia Pillard, voted 2-1 to issue the stay. Judges Katsas and Rao are Trump appointees; Judge Pillard is an Obama appointee.

Lack of subject matter jurisdiction

The panel issued their order per curiam, meaning without signatures, and attached a statement under that same condition. Judge Cornelia Pillard dissented from the unsigned statement in nearly every particular.

In their statement, Judges Katsas and Rao thumped Judge Lamberth for asserting a jurisdiction that, they say, he lacks. Article III District Courts have no jurisdiction over:

  1. Personnel actions – hiring, firing, and entering into or terminating contracts, nor:

  2. Grants and grant revocations.

Judge Lamberth asserted jurisdiction over the personnel actions because he accepted plaintiffs’ arguments that the Trump administration was engaging in “wholesale dismantling” of VOA and USAGM, and that such dismantling was in violation of statute. The panel reminded him that the Administrative Procedure Act does not grant jurisdiction in such cases. As to the grants, the Tucker Act provides that the Court of Federal Claims is the only forum for handling of grant disputes.

Furthermore, contrary to Judge Lamberth’s assertions, the panel found that Department of Education v. California does indeed apply.

Judge Padilla bases her entire dissent on the avowal by Lake that VOA is “irretrievably broken” and produces “radical propaganda.” Apparently the judge feels that VOA has an absolute right to produce whatever content it wishes, and that Presidents may not gainsay it. Given that VOA is a direct agency of the government itself, that assertion strains credulity.

An outside expert

Margot Cleveland, senior legal correspondent for The Federalist and counsel for the New Civil Liberties Alliance, also weighed in. She dropped a fourteen-post thread on X in full support of the appellate court’s stay and supporting statement.

🚨🚨🚨BREAKING: HUGE win from Trump Administration and D.C. Circuit enters stay of lower court injunction. Lower court barred Trump Administration from managing Voice of America. D.C. Circuit stayed decision allowing Trump to move forward w/ firings/grant terminations.
Full order. Thoughts follow.

https://x.com/ProfMJCleveland/status/1918726388271423522

https://x.com/ProfMJCleveland/status/1918726517896425725

Court of Appeals decision is based on fundamental issue of "jurisdiction." This conclusion should have wide-spread ramifications because many of challenges to Trump Administration are about employment decisions which CONGRESS said are NOT for district courts to decide.

https://x.com/ProfMJCleveland/status/1918726946822803638

https://x.com/ProfMJCleveland/status/1918727511464104404

The Court of Appeals decision is also significant because it addresses the "wholesale" "dismantling" argument being presented in several cases (such as USAID cases). The Administrative Procedures Act is NOT for such claims either & Congress did not waive such immunity! Additionally, Court of Appeals held that district court lacked jurisdiction to restore grants because Congress gave that authority to Court of Claims.

https://x.com/ProfMJCleveland/status/1918728045579391038

https://x.com/ProfMJCleveland/status/1918728443170115984

Court of Appeals also notes how SCOTUS decision compels that result...which it DOES and yet district court ignored SCOTUS. Decision stressed why claims about grants must got to Court of Claims.

https://x.com/ProfMJCleveland/status/1918728737392038258

https://x.com/ProfMJCleveland/status/1918729207523193043

Court of Appeals adds that Plaintiffs can't avoid Court of Claims by framing as non-APA claims. Court of Appeals again highlights that with no bond the harm to government is irreparable. Also noted that Voice of America isn't being shuttered.

https://x.com/ProfMJCleveland/status/1918729730225824112

https://x.com/ProfMJCleveland/status/1918730062452433101

Court of Appeals also notes Judiciary Branch must follow the law too!
In sum, this opinion is a HUGE win for Trump because it establishes 3 key principles that apply to many of the other cases being brought against Trump Administration: a) no jurisdiction over firings; b) no jurisdiction over grant terminations;…

https://x.com/ProfMJCleveland/status/1918730276907155522

https://x.com/ProfMJCleveland/status/1918730625579622660

… and c) you can't get around Congress limiting district court jurisdiction by creative pleading of claims under other theories; d) with no bond harm to government will outweigh other harm; e) public has interest in Article III obey Article I.
Final thought: It is next to impossible to reconcile opinion here with same panels refusal to clarify stay in other case involving USAID and grants from legal perspective. Practically: Judge Katsas in other case figured decision on merits would be soon enough so no harm.

https://x.com/ProfMJCleveland/status/1918730900256240038

https://x.com/ProfMJCleveland/status/1918731234437394472

With regard to that last thought: part of winning an injunction, or a stay, is a showing of irreparable harm absent either injunction or stay. In the USAID case, Judge Katsas thought a decision on the merits would be forthcoming soon enough to avoid harm.

Kari Lake was understandably pleased with the appeals court decision.

BIG WIN in our legal cases at USAGM & Voice of America. Huge victory for President Trump and Article II. Turns out the District Court judge will not be able to manage the agency as he seemed to want to.

https://x.com/KariLake/status/1918745448640057454

Specifically, USAGM need not rehire the same people Kari Lake fired from VOA, nor restore the RFA and MEBN grants. If VOA must continue, then it will continue with a different cadre running it.

In general, this is the first time in history that courts have tried to tell a President with what voice he and his subordinates must speak. It is also the first time that trial courts have made such elementary reversible errors. “Lack of subject matter jurisdiction” is the quickest way to get a court to throw out a case. The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure make that abundantly clear. Any judge who tries to set that aside is not fit to sit as a judge. Whether by reason of incompetence or bias, the conclusion is the same.

Prof. Cleveland is right about another thing: this case will affect other such cases. After all, Article III gives Congress full authority to decide jurisdiction.

Link to:

The article:

https://cnav.news/2025/05/04/news/jurisdiction-courts-exceeding/

Video:

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EO 14238:

https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2025/03/20/2025-04868/continuing-the-reduction-of-the-federal-bureaucracy



Court dockets and documents:

Trial level:

Docket:

https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/69846584/widakuswara-v-lake/

Complaint:

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.279211/gov.uscourts.dcd.279211.1.0.pdf

Memorandum Opinion:

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.279211/gov.uscourts.dcd.279211.98.0_1.pdf

Preliminary Injunction:

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.279211/gov.uscourts.dcd.279211.99.0.pdf

Dept. of Ed. v. California order:

https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/24a910_f2bh.pdf

Appellate level:

Docket:

https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/69940505/patsy-widakuswara-v-kari-lake/

Administrative Stay:

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.279211/gov.uscourts.dcd.279211.107.0.pdf

Stay pending appeal:

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cadc.41991/gov.uscourts.cadc.41991.01208736131.0.pdf



Margot Cleveland’s thread:

https://x.com/ProfMJCleveland/status/1918726388271423522

https://x.com/ProfMJCleveland/status/1918726517896425725

https://x.com/ProfMJCleveland/status/1918726946822803638

https://x.com/ProfMJCleveland/status/1918727511464104404

https://x.com/ProfMJCleveland/status/1918728045579391038

https://x.com/ProfMJCleveland/status/1918728443170115984

https://x.com/ProfMJCleveland/status/1918728737392038258

https://x.com/ProfMJCleveland/status/1918729207523193043

https://x.com/ProfMJCleveland/status/1918729730225824112

https://x.com/ProfMJCleveland/status/1918730062452433101

https://x.com/ProfMJCleveland/status/1918730276907155522

https://x.com/ProfMJCleveland/status/1918730625579622660

https://x.com/ProfMJCleveland/status/1918730900256240038



Kari Lake’s reaction:

https://x.com/KariLake/status/1918745448640057454



Declarations of Truth:

https://x.com/DecTruth



Declarations of Truth Locals Community:

https://declarationsoftruth.locals.com/



Conservative News and Views:

https://cnav.news/



Clixnet Media

https://clixnet.com/

Read full Article
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