Lew Rockwell Institute

The tariff controversy is being colored in the most scary ways possible, because the Democrats, media, and ruling establishment want rid of Trump. It is also important to understand that tariffs are not the only way to limit imports.  There are other means, such as quotas.  Quotas on imports into the US of Japanese cars were part of the US auto producers bailout negotiated in the final year of the Carter administration.

I will attempt to put the issue in a correct perspective.  It is not Trump’s intention, at least at the present time, to institutionalize a tariff regime.  Trump is using tariffs as a threat to secure agreements that he thinks are in America’s interests.  So far 50 countries have, according to reports, agreed to remove their tariffs on US goods.  The countries responding aggressively seem to be China and our European allies.  I explained yesterday how Trump could better have gone about his task.  Nevertheless, as the Commerce Secretary said, Trump’s tariffs are not expected to extend beyond a few weeks or a few months of negotiation. 

During this time there could be supply disruptions.  Apparently, Trump is aware and has released an 11-page appendix that exempts all sorts of imported items that US producers require to continue their operations.  Whatever disruption does occur, should be small compared to the Covid lockdown supply disruption, the basic cause of the current inflation. The Covid disruption was pointless and counterproductive.  The tariff disruption, if there is one, is the cost of establishing a fair and uniform trading system.

So, Trump is not being arbitrary or on a rampage to destroy international trade. Tariff negotiations, especially with so many countries and products can go on for years.  Trump might think that he only has two years to get anything done before the Democrats steal the midterm elections and bring his renewal of America to a halt.

President Trump has spoken of tariffs in a wider and much more important context.  Over most of American history until the First World War, tariff revenues were the source of government revenues.  An income tax was unconstitutional and a violation of freedom.  The definition of a free person is a person who owns his own labor.  A slave does not own his own labor, and a serf only owns part of his labor.  A person required to pay an income tax does not own that part of his labor that he must provide to government in order to avoid imprisonment.  The difference between a medieval serf and an American taxpayer is the serf paid the tax in kind as hours worked, and the American pays the tax in money as a percentage of his income.

Classical economists, real economists  unlike the faux ones of today, understood that factors of production–labor and capital–should not be taxed, because the supply of both to the economy is reduced by taxation.  Supply-side economics is based on this principle. Thus, its emphasis on lowering the marginal rates of taxation. Reducing the supply of factors of production, reduces the economic growth rate and the national income.  The century that the US economy has labored under income tax has costs us substantially in lost income. The classical economists said that taxation should fall on consumption not on factors of production.  

Traditionally, imported items are finished goods–German cars, French wines and perfumes. High priced goods are for the wealthy, so tariffs fall on the rich. The working class does not indulge in Porsche cars and Clicquot champagne. However, for about 30 years much of our imports have consisted of the offshored production of US firms.  When Apple, for example, brings its products made in China to the US to be marketed, they come in as imports and worsen the US trade deficit.  Instead of beating up on China, Trump should call the US corporations that offshore their production for US markets to a White House conference and point out to them the consequences of their policy:  the shrinkage of the American middle class, the loss of tax base, decaying infrastructure, and loss population of America’s former manufacturing cities, the pressure on city and state pension systems, the pressure of lower ratings on municipal bonds.  Trump should ask the executives if they went too far in maximizing profits that benefitted a relatively few at the expense of the many, and what they think they should do about it.  Capitalism ceases to serve the general interest when it separates Americans from the incomes associated with the production of the goods and services that they consume.

Trump has spoken of returning to tariffs as the source of government revenues and abandoning the income tax. This is consistent with correct economics and with freedom.  Such a change would be possibly the most important reform in American history.

It would be a difficult reform to achieve, because ideological, not economic, considerations intervene.  Taxing the rich became the agenda of mass democracy.  Taxing the rich was not seen as punishing a person for being successful.  A successful person was portrayed as having become rich by exploiting labor.  As fortunes were “stolen” by exploiting labor or resulted from government preference or legal privilege, income taxation was perceived as an instrument of justice. It is certainly perceived that way today by the liberal/left and the Democrat Party.

As an income tax is emotionally satisfying to the liberal/left, we are stuck with slower economic growth an less national income.

It is disturbing that the liberal/left agenda has made American politics so highly partisan.  What we see today is literal hatred of Trump, Republicans, conservatives, and white heterosexuals by the liberal/left.  Hatred makes democracy dysfunctional.  Politics cannot function as each side is intent on destroying any achievement by the other side.  As democracy ceases to function, dictatorship becomes the means of governance.  The liberal/left’s agenda to remake America by destroying its roots and recasting it into a different kind of society means the death of democracy and the rise of dictatorship.  This is our real problem.

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In recent decades, the US government has been doing its best to find a way to limit the ability of its people to bear arms. And, in turn, the people respond vehemently that their Constitution guarantees them the right to bear arms.

Regardless of which side of the argument any particular American is on, I’ve almost never met one who knows what caused this right to be written in the Constitution.

Countless Americans believe that they have the right to bear arms, so that they can protect themselves and their homes from burglars or other miscreants. Others, particularly those who live in rural areas, believe in the right to go hunting if they wish.

Whilst both of these concerns are reasonable, they’re not by any means the reason why the founding fathers were so adamant that the right to bear arms is critical.

The Bill of Rights, including the Second Amendment, was passed by the US Congress in 1791, some eighteen months after the ratification of the Constitution in 1790. The reason why it was considered essential by the framers leads directly back to the Gunpowder Incident in 1776.

In 1774, in Boston, a meeting of the First Continental Congress took place to discuss the introduction of the Intolerable Acts by Britain, including the seizure by the British of gunpowder that was stored in Charlestown. In addition, Lord Dartmouth, Secretary of State for the Colonies, prohibited the importation of further supplies of gunpowder.

In Boston, this generated discussion, but no action. But in Williamsburg, then the capitol of Virginia, the reaction was quite different. There, the colonists, in early 1776, began to form armed militias. Governor Dunmore (the ruling British representative in the colony) decided to repeat the Boston seizure in Virginia. Just down the street from the Governor’s mansion, in the House of Burgesses, Patrick Henry had just delivered an impassioned speech in which he proclaimed, “Give me liberty or give me death.”

Around the corner from the Governor’s mansion was the Magazine (pictured above), where gunpowder and armaments were stored by the Crown for the protection of the colony from Indian attacks or other disturbances.

Governor Dunmore ordered that the gunpowder be removed from the Magazine to limit the colonists’ ability to resist official diktat. As it was being removed to a British ship anchored in the James River, a few colonists discovered the fact and alerted others.

The city council demanded its return, stating that it was the property of the colony and not the Crown. Patrick Henry led the Hanover County Militia – about 150 men – to Williamsburg to reclaim the gunpowder.

A wealthy (and loyalist) plantation owner paid £330 for the powder, to calm Henry, who was then charged with extortion by Lord Dunmore. Dunmore’s popularity quickly waned. He left Williamsburg and attempted to continue his rule from a British ship, offshore.

Virginia’s government was taken over by a Committee of Safety and Henry became the now-independent state’s first governor in July, three months after the seizure.

The Gunpowder incident not only led directly to the creation of the Second Amendment. It led directly to the independence and liberty of the American people.

Think that over for a moment, with regard to the present times.

Now, as I’m British, it would be fair (though possibly incorrect) to suggest that I cannot be trusted to comment on the independence of the American colonies from Britain.

So, let’s ask the American founding fathers for their views. Although very few Americans can actually name them, there were seven, and they all had something to say about what they learned from the Gunpowder Incident.

George Washington – “A free people ought not only to be armed, but disciplined…” — First Annual Address, to Congress, 8th January, 1790

John Adams – “To suppose arms in the hands of citizens, to be used at individual discretion, except in private self-defense, or by partial orders of towns, counties or districts of a state, is to demolish every constitution, and lay the laws prostrate, so that liberty can be enjoyed by no man; it is a dissolution of the government.” – Stated during the drafting of the Second Amendment, 1780.

Thomas Jefferson – “No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms.” – Virginia Constitution, Draft 1, 1776

“The Constitution of most of our states (and of the United States) assert that all power is inherent in the people; that they may exercise it by themselves; that it is their right and duty to be at all times armed.” – Letter from Jefferson to John Cartwright, 5th June, 1824.

James Madison – “The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. A well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained to arms, is the best and most natural defense of a free country.” – Annals of Congress 434, 8th June, 1789.

Benjamin Franklin – “They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” – Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759

Alexander Hamilton – “[I]f circumstances should at any time oblige the government to form an army of any magnitude that army can never be formidable to the liberties of the people while there is a large body of citizens, little, if at all, inferior to them in discipline and the use of arms, who stand ready to defend their own rights and those of their fellow-citizens.” – Federalist #28, 10th January, 1788.

John Jay – “Government that wants away citizens right to bear arms is unworthy of trust.” – Date unknown

And a final one from Thomas Jefferson, from a letter to James Madison in 1787:

“What country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance. Let them take arms.”

But perhaps the most succinct quote from that time is from George Mason, stating in the Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution, 14th June, 1788,

“To disarm the people… [i]s the most effectual way to enslave them.”

These are indeed words to be remembered. Just as all governments will do their utmost to prevent their citizens from being armed, so too should those citizens do their utmost to be armed.

Reprinted with permission from International Man.

The post The Right To Bear Arms appeared first on LewRockwell.

The Trump administration is demanding that Iran give up its strategic missile program as part of any nuclear deal. But Iran’s ballistic missiles do not violate international law nor is there any global treaty under which they are banned. Article 51 of the UN Charter clearly states that countries have the sovereign right to develop conventional weapons for self-defense which means that Iran’s missile program is perfectly legal. Iran has every right to build as many missiles as it wants, and it is not required to get Washington’s approval to do so. More importantly, Iran needs these missiles to defend itself against any potential attack by the United States and Israel. This is not simply a matter of Iran’s sovereign right to self-defense, but an issue of regional security that has been greatly undermined by persistent US-Israel hostilities across the Middle East. A strong, well-armed Iran serves as a deterrent to US-Israel intervention which increases the prospects for peace in the region.

Trump has also ordered Iran to end its relations with regional allies Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis. If we link this demand with Trump’s order that Iran abandon its ballistic missile program, we can better understand his overall strategic goal which is to weaken and isolate Iran to the point where it is unable to defend itself against American aggression. That is the clear objective of this latest political kabuki; to goad Iran into laying the groundwork for its own destruction.

When we mull-over these new demands, we cannot help but wonder, “Does any of this have anything to do with Iran’s nuclear enrichment program or is it all just a ruse aimed at concealing Trump’s real motive, the disarming of Iran? Indeed, if we consider the facts as I have presented them here, it does not appear that Trump seeks negotiations at all, but is simply putting a gun to Iran’s head and saying, “Drop the weapon and no one gets hurt.” Isn’t that a more accurate description of what’s going on? Check out this excerpt from an article at Iran International:

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei on Saturday ruled out the possibility of negotiation with the United States, in his first public speech after President Donald Trump said he sent a letter to him.

“The insistence of some bullying governments on negotiations is not aimed at resolving issues but rather at asserting dominance and imposing their demands,” Khamenei said in a meeting with Iranian officials in Tehran. “The Islamic Republic of Iran will certainly not accept their demands,” he added….

Responding to Khamenei’s rejection of Trump’s call to negotiate a nuclear agreement, the White House on Saturday reiterated the US president’s assertion that Tehran can be dealt with either militarily or by making a deal.

“We hope the Iran regime puts its people and best interests ahead of terror,” White House National Security Council spokesman Brian Hughes said in a statement.

Lebanese pro-Iranian TV channel Al Mayadeen reported Saturday Tehran had refused to enter nuclear negotiations with the United States under the conditions set by the current US administration.

No talks on missile capabilities, regional influence

Khamenei said the West’s issue is not just Tehran’s nuclear program. “Rather, for them, negotiations are a means to raise new demands, including restrictions on defense capabilities and international influence.”…

While Tehran maintains that its ballistic missile program is purely defensive, the West considers it a destabilizing factor in a volatile, conflict-ridden Middle East. Khamenei rejects negotiation with US in first speech after Trump’s letter, Iran International.

As you can see, Iranian media confirms what we said earlier, that Trump’s demands are not aimed at denuclearization, but disarmament and isolation. We will provide more evidence for this later on.

The western media has done an excellent job of obfuscating the facts on this matter and have patched together a makeshift narrative that blames Iran for a crisis which is entirely Trump’s fault. Fortunately, (as the article states) Iran is refusing to be bullied by Trump, which is not just admirable, but smart, too. Some readers might recall what happened to Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi who was toppled by US-backed forces more than a decade ago. Gaddafi was tricked into giving up his WMD programs—including his nuclear, chemical, and ballistic missile capabilities—after which he was overthrown and savagely killed by NATO-led forces in 2011. His willingness to disarm led to his untimely death and the subsequent annihilation of his country. Iran must not follow that same course of action. It must enlarge its arsenal and prepare for war.

Readers may also remember that Trump pulled a similar maneuver with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un. In February 2019, Trump’s negotiating team—led by National Security Advisor John Bolton—met in Hanoi to conduct denuclearization talks. During the negotiations (in which Kim showed genuine interest to commit to “complete, verifiable, and irreversible denuclearization”), Bolton added a poison pill provision at the 11th-hour that made an agreement impossible. He demanded that Kim give up not only his nuclear weapons program but also his ballistic missile capabilities. This demand was a key sticking point that reflected the Trump administration’s broader goal of the complete disarmament (and eventual destruction) of the DPRK. In short, Trump moved the goalposts at the last possible minute and sabotaged the deal, thus, eliminating the possibility of a North-South reconciliation and a denuclearized Korean Peninsula. This is the untold history of the Trump-Kim negotiations that never appeared in the media. The “peace candidate” deliberately scuppered his own initiative.

A similar storyline is unfolding as we speak, only the stakes are much higher. We are literally on the brink of a war that could kill millions of civilians and plunge large parts of the world into chaos.

It’s worth noting, that there is no legal basis for Trump’s demands. No country, however powerful, has the right to dictate whether another country can have ballistic missiles, or who they can have as allies, or whether they can develop nuclear energy or not. Under Article IV of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT):

All parties to the treaty have “the inalienable right” to develop research, production, and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes without discrimination. This includes the right to participate in the fullest possible exchange of equipment, materials, and scientific and technological information for peaceful purposes.

Iran not only signed the NPT, it has also repeatedly shown its willingness to allay the suspicions of its critics by agreeing to additional protocols and “confidence-building” measures that no other member has ever been required to make. In other words, they have allowed themselves to be treated like second-class citizens who must follow specially designed restrictions just to placate their perennial antagonists in Washington and Tel Aviv. Is that fair?

The international community, including the UN and IAEA, has consistently affirmed that Iran, like any NPT signatory, has a legitimate right to peaceful nuclear energy. This was a key premise of the JCPOA, which allowed Iran to maintain a limited enrichment program (up to 3.67%) under strict monitoring in exchange for sanctions relief.

In other words, Iran agreed to the onerous inspection regime imposed by the United States and acted in good faith expecting that Washington would ‘keep its word’ and hold up its end of the bargain. But the US broke its word when Trump impulsively shrugged off his obligations and walked away.

But, why? Why did Trump abandon the JCPOA when the treaty employed a hyper-vigilant inspections regime that ensured that Iran was not diverting enriched uranium to a secret nuclear weapons program?

Why?

Because of Israel, that’s why. Because it was never about “secret nuclear weapons programs”. That was always the fake pretext for hectoring, harassing and demonizing Iran. The real objective is on full display in Trump’s list of demands. What he wants is the complete dismantling of Iran’s defensive weapons systems accompanied by Iran’s forced isolation and military encirclement. The United States and Israel want a vulnerable Iran that will collapse into anarchy following the massive (nuclear) air-strikes and decapitation operations that are coming in the near future. The goal is to make sure that Israel emerges as the dominant power in the region.

By the way, Elon Musk’s AI progeny, Grok, agrees with our basic analysis on this matter. Check it out:

As of April 3, 2025, during his second term as U.S. President, Donald Trump is demanding a comprehensive set of concessions from Iran to reach a new nuclear deal or any broader agreement. His approach, dubbed “maximum pressure 2.0,” builds on his first-term policies but is more aggressive, aiming not only to curb Iran’s nuclear program but also to dismantle its regional influence and military capabilities…

Here’s a detailed breakdown of what Trump is demanding, based on public statements, policy documents, and reports:

1. Complete Halt and Rollback of Nuclear Program
No Enrichment.… Dismantle Infrastructure… the destruction or international control of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, including centrifuges and heavy water reactors. … “verifiable dismantlement” of all nuclear-related facilities, per a White House fact sheet.… Permanent Inspections: “24/7 access” to all sites, including military ones. (Grok)

(Note—None of the above conditions are required under the terms of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT). Trump is simply concocting whatever restrictions come-to-mind so he can claim “noncompliance” and launch air-strikes.) Here’s more from Grok:

2. Abandonment of Ballistic Missile Program—Full Dismantlement: Trump demands Iran give up its entire ballistic missile program, including short-, medium-, and long-range missiles like the Shahab, Emad, and Khorramshahr series….

3. (Iran must) Sever Ties with Regional Proxies and Allies….
Hezbollah, Houthis, Hamas: Trump insists Iran cut all financial, military, and political support for groups like Hezbollah (Lebanon), the Houthis (Yemen), and Hamas (Gaza), which he labels “terrorist proxies.” (Grok)

As you can see, none of this has anything to do with nuclear enrichment, secret weapons programs or nonproliferation. What we’re seeing is the predictable behavior of a politician who was shoehorned into the Oval Office on the back of more than $100 million in campaign contributions from wealthy Zionist donors. IMHO, those donations were made with a clear understanding that Trump would launch a war on Israel’s most formidable enemy, Iran.

The United States is being dragged into another Middle East bloodbath as payback to the Israeli donor class.

Reprinted with permission from The Unz Review.

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I see that I am writing to you about more and less ruined, formerly free societies, these days.

I am seeing a new map of the world, that bears little relation to the tendentious, propagandistic Freedom. House’s famous ranking of free and closed societies. The map of the globe as written in liberty, is wholly shifting.

I am seeing this via travel. Traveling abroad is new again for me. I had not left the US for all the five years since “lockdown”, for security reasons; When I first began to be a “lockdown dissident” and then a “mandates” and “mrna injection” dissident, my husband, security expert Brian O’Shea, felt that I would be safer staying within the US. (He used to work with a security firm that, among other jobs, negotiated the release of hostages; believe it or not, if you are an American citizen/dissident, you still have more protections from security forces, or just from bad actors, doing dangerous things to you physically, if you are within the US, than if you are traveling beyond its borders.)

So I had a pent-up hunger to see the rest of the world, and to report firsthand on the state of liberty globally, especially in countries I had so loved, such as Canada, Britain, India, and the Netherlands. (I had wanted to accept an invitation to go back to Australia, which is among the beloved nations on my short list, but I was too scared I would be kept in a quarantine camp. This had really happened, for two weeks, to the dissident member of Parliament who was inviting me, so I regretfully declined to visit. Australia had arrested three internees who had tried to escape from a quarantine facility, so I feared any engagement with that system).

So far I have seen ruined nations, nations whose liberty and rule of law we thought would last for centuries if not millennia, and I’ve also seen newly booming nations, in terms of their hope, confidence and above all, their defense of their freedoms. There is a third category — that of nations in states of active struggle between these poles.

I count the Netherlands, from which I reported back to you already, as being in that state of active conflict: it is being repressed, and is fighting back. I am excited to visit Germany, at MEP Christine Anderson’s invitation, in September, as Germany is also in that category now — that is, sustaining a live resistance to active suppression of rights;— and I must see France too, for this same reason.

We have entered a new “world order”, much as people mystify or misuse this term, and I would argue that this new metric defines it.

It seems as if “lockdown”, and the global bid by the evildoers of 2020-2025 to enslave us all (they really need an historic name, a bit more descriptive than The Cabal), have had the effect either of sharpening citizens’ national will and honing people’s intentions to lead their nations, protect their rights, and defend their cultures, or else, in other nations, a tipping point has been reached: repressions went so far that the citizens were broken, in effect, and most lost the will or understanding even to fight.

In this regard — the world having been sorted anew into the categories of vigilantly, aggressively free nations, recently broken nations, and nations in states of vivid, dangerous, nail-biting struggle for liberty — we are definitely not in the pre-2020 world order.

The countries at the bottom of the freedom lists, if they were being properly revised, have shifted. We see Britain and Canada hurtling down the ranks, gathering momentum as they fall. We see that India moves rapidly upwards, to showcase its press freedoms and its robust democracy to the rest of the world; Hungary shows its mettle in defending its own culture and language. With the election of President Trump, America claws its way back up to the top, defending its borders and sovereignty and asserting at least in principle, a rejection of state censorship.

Many nations these days do better in terms of freedom than does the 16th century birthplace of free speech, England. Many indeed do better than the birthplace of 18th century liberty, France; Marine le Pen, the leader of the French nationalist/populist National Party, and frontrunner for the 2027 Presidential election, was found guilty — critics such as President Trump say, via courts “using Lawfare to silence free speech” — of embezzlement of funds, and she is being prevented from running for office, conveniently enough, for five years.

Russia scolds the West these days, with good evidence. The spokesperson for the Kremlin, Dmitry Peskov, representing a nation held up by the West for decades as an autocratic state, spoke out against the collapse of Democratic norms in France, and widened the Kremlin’s critique to Europe as a whole: “More and more European capitals are going down the path of violating democratic norms,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters when asked to comment on the ruling.

“We do not interfere in France’s internal affairs and never have,” Peskov added. “But our observation of European capitals shows that they do not shy away from stepping outside the bounds of democracy in the political process.”

The reversals of fortune and fate continue. The nations that we always thought would uphold liberty, the old alliances, the post-1919, post-Paris Peace Conference world order, the world order that created allies out of Western nations in a proto-League of Nations format that sought to impose civilized transparency and open diplomacy on nation-states that had previously maintaining a precarious “balance of power” through threats of suppression and force — a world order that led in turn to the adoption by Europe of the 1950 European Convention on Human Rights — or the “Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms” — have mostly caved.

That treaty guaranteed everything we would think of as “the West” for the next seventy years, ranging from free and fair elections to freedom from discrimination under law, to freedom of speech. (Incidentally, it is quite difficult to locate and share a digital text of the 1950 Convention on Human Rights. Even on the ECHR website, you have to click around quite a bit finally to find a weirdly xeroxed PFD version, from which quotes can’t be shared. Odd, or not these days, for a text that should be framed in every classroom in Europe. If its language of “Fundamental Freedoms” were indeed in every classroom, newsroom and university lecture hall in Europe, instead of buried in a weird PDF in a dry website, we could not even see the ridiculous debates, let alone the metastasizing of claims against speech and the encroachments on absolute rights, that Europe is sustaining, as everyone on that continent and in Britain would know that they are illegal.) But now, leaders of great Western nations are simply ignoring it.

Rolling out the harassment of UK critics of tyranny in 2025, and the targeting of the speech of British populations to petrify them, of course was the 2020-2025 plan.

Britain is now a showcase of collapsing democracy. New initiatives are killing British liberties on all sides, starting with speech; it’s clear that the path for the population to accept this, was paved by the 2020-2022 “lockdowns” that were so Draconian that at one point Britons were allowed outside for one hour a day. More than six people at another time, during UK’s “lockdowns”, were forbidden to meet together, in one of the more nonsensical iteration of magical thinking, designed not to make any epidemiological sense but to habituate the British public to arbitrary, restrictive State decisions.

I believe that this extended psychological torture so traumatized the British population in general that they had little will or presence of mind to fight the new restrictions rolled out now, without the excuse of a “pandemic”.

Britain is collapsing so fast now that the few voices remaining, seeking to defend journalism, free speech and other liberties, are stunned. (I’ll share some of the stories of the bravest and most noble of these remaining fighters for a free Britain, tomorrow.)

Vice President Vance warned Prime Minister Kier Starmer, leader of our traditional ally Great Britain, from the Oval Office, in front of the world, that without Britain restoring free speech, there will be no free trade: “Vance] said: “We also know that there have been infringements on free speech that actually affect not just the British — of course what the British do in their own country is up to them — but also affect American technology companies and, by extension, American citizens.”‘ (This prompted the lamest “fact-check” I’ve seen for a while — the headline, “Fact Check: Yes, the UK Does Have Free Speech”, on the site Euronews.com. The article reiterated correctly that free speech is enshrined in Britain’s laws, but avoids addressing the fact that the nation is violating its own free speech laws.)

The Times — where I was a columnist, but a paper which, as far as I know, to this day still “cancels” me — reports that “Police Make 30 Arrests a Day for Offensive Speech” and fails, in what would be a serious editorial lapse in a sane journalistic context, to put the world “offensive” in quotation marks. Offensive to whom? Reporters and publishers in the UK are overwhelmingly not resisting wholesale chilling of speech, wholesale censorship; and these arrests for their part seek to create new pariahs, and to inject new forms of abject fear into the act of the simple use of the English language, in public.

Allison Pearson of The Telegraph just wrote a piece, seen by two million people since she published it yesterday, about a British woman named Lucy Connolly, who was denied bail, and is, as Pearson posted, “jailed for two years for a tweet.”

Pearson one of the last remaining UK opinion writers and reporters to speak up for historic British freedoms of speech and thought. She explained to me recently that in 2022 a new category of “offense” was essentially proposed by the British police, with the Orwellian name “Non-Crime Hate Incidents.” In 2023 Parliament approved the “code of practice.”

The Gov.uk website explains further:

“7. Non-crime hate incidents (NCHIs) are recorded by the police to collect information on ‘hate incidents’ that could escalate into more serious harm or indicate heightened community tensions, but which do not constitute a criminal offence […]”. In other words, this is Orwell’s “pre-Crime”: a crime need not be committed for police to take action. Also the offense can be totally subjective — in the eyes of the observer:

“11. A non-crime hate incident (NCHI) means an incident or alleged incident which involves or is alleged to involve an act by a person (‘the subject’) which is perceived by a person other than the subject to be motivated – wholly or partly – by hostility or prejudice towards persons with a particular characteristic.” Also, you don’t have to cause measurable damages or harm to the person who complains, in order to have committed this non-crime offense: you need onluy to be the cause of an “incident” that “disturbs” someone’s “quality of life” — which could mean, something that hurts his or her feelings — or even results in something as mild as “caus[ing] them concern”:

“14. An “incident” is defined in the National Standard for Incident Recording (NSIR) as “a single distinct event or occurrence which disturbs an individual, group or community’s quality of life or causes them concern”. The NSIR covers all crime and non-crime incidents.”

So UK police have essentially invented their own “code of practice” — not a law — that allows them to round up and charge people whose views on social media “cause[s]…concern”.

But this “code of practice” contradicts and essentially guts the free speech provisions in the European Convention on Human Rights, as well as a fundamental British law: Article 10 of the Human Rights Act of 1998: “Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers.”

Commonwealth nation Canada is further down along this timeline, and the new low of Canada (matched only by Australia) is clearly where “our evil overlords”, as some of my wittier friends like to call “Mr Global”, wish to drive Britain.

I flew, as I described to you in my last essay, to Toronto, in a planeload of illegal immigrants fleeing President Trump’s enforcement of basic immigration laws in the US. The mostly illegal immigrants, judging from my time waiting my own turn to enter the country, walked unhesitatingly through Customs and Border Patrol, barely explaining to the officials seeking to interview them, who was waiting for them or what possible means, other than Canadian benefits, they had of support. The officials looked frustrated and irate. There was nothing they could really do, to accomplish their jobs.

Riding in the car that picked me up from the airport, gave me a vertiginous experience of a post-freedom, formerly free Western nation. The dashboard let out a debilitating shriek, as we drive away from the airport. The driver explained that the shriek is emitted by “the system” when he drives out of the “sector” of the airport. I thought, of course, of fifteen-minute cities.

He explained further, as we slowed to a stop before a red light, that “the system” fines him automatically if he does not stop – if he dares to drive through on a yellow light. He also explained that it records us “for safety.” He seemed to catch himself as I was asking if all of this surveillance was intrusive. He had started to agree but then, remembering, it seemed to me, that he too was being recorded, the driver said slowly and clearly that it’s a really good system, because it “keeps insurance costs down.”

I thought of the fact that the major media in Canada is state-funded, and I could imagine the introduction of this kind of continual surveillance as being rolled out with the justification that it is designed to “keep insurance costs down.”

I could not tell if this was a private company bugging his car to keep their drivers in line, or a government/insurance obligation.

Either way, in in March of 2025, the Canadian government added ten additional “internet of things” forms of tracking or surveillance to citizens’ automobiles, including smartphone- based biometrics, in a pilot program “to deter theft”; these are a set of technologies which will also track citizens’ vehicles. The new forms of trackers include:

“Smartphone-based security using biometrics and proximity detection;

• Locking devices using artificial intelligence (AI) monitoring;
• A system to replace a vehicle’s starter relay;
• Fingerprint authentication;
• AI-powered steering wheel locks;
• Sensors with gesture recognition;
• A smart key fob protector; and
• Miniaturized devices that could disable vehicle components should theft be detected.”

You understand what this means; if these new modalities come to market, let alone are “mandated” by the Canadian government, it means the state, which in February of 2022 debanked the “freedom truckers” who protested against vaccine mandates, can simply remotely switch off your car; they can, for instance, make your fingerprints “unrecognizable” by the system, and thus make it impossible for you to open, let alone start, your own vehicle.

We drove into Toronto through outskirts that I remembered, having visited from time to time since 1993, for the publication of my first book The Beauty Myth, as having been open fields by Lake Ontario, dotted with residential apartment blocks. Toronto itself I remembered as having been human-scaled, architecturally and culturally friendly, and beautifully composed of streets of 19th century grey stone townhouses, interspersed with three or four-story residential buildings from the same era. Even downtown, I recalled, there had been Victorian townhouses, in spite of the building in between them of massive modern skyscrapers. I recalled side streets in which yogurt shops, restaurants featuring a range of ethnic cuisines, and mom and pop businesses such as hardware stores and shoe stores, tempted passers-by. Leafy, shade-dappled sidewalks had surrounded the University of Toronto, where I had spoken in the 1990s. The old-fashioned hotel where my publisher had housed me had had a faded elegance. I had been amazed that a 26-year-old first-time author was being accommodated in a place with heavy white linen tablecloths in the dining room, with brocaded red bolsters on the beds, with a pool in the basement, and with room service. I had barely experienced anything like it. I still remember my publicist, a lovely, kind young woman with short blond hair in a pixie cut, and the same huge ideals that I had myself at that time, and the impressive way she switched from English to French to English, as she shepherded me from radio station to TV show to radio station; the Francophone/Anglophone wars were in full swing.

Mostly I remember with deep fondness, the Canadians in my audiences: sensible, decent, reasonable people, curious and civil, thoughtfully engaged in ideas. They were liberal, in the best, old-fashioned sense of that word: they believed in open dialogue, and in the betterment of society. They were accommodating immigrants in large numbers in what was still a mostly-born-in-Canada society, and it was with a sense of generosity and a belief that anyone who came to those shores, could become part of that well-defined, proud and entrenched Canadian culture, with its distinctive, admirable values. They had no idea that immigration would devour that lovely culture.

I used to joke from the stage in those days that Canada was a sane version of America. I felt that Canada had many of our same values of democracy and liberty and free speech, but without the frenzy and distraction and division and extremism, that could mar civil relations in the US.

The open, grassy outskirts of the city that I recalled, were gone. In their place now loomed massive modern residential developments, towering dozens of stories high. One after the other after the other, they filled the space from the airport to the edge of downtown, in immense volumes, suggesting little effort to plan an aesthetic or even a human-scaled cityscape.

The lights were off in many of the apartments. My driver explained that foreign investors built those structures in order to launder money, essentially, but that many of the apartments were empty as it was more profitable for the investors to keep them so — some tax loophole – than to fill them with tenants. This was just one man’s explanation, but I did get an eerie sense of a lack of life in those buildings.

We arrived at downtown Toronto. I was unable to recognize most of where I was. Immense overdevelopment had afflicted even those charming streets downtown. Almost completely vanished were the stone townhouses with their mansard roofs; nondescript steep monstrosities now loomed. Everything now, I sighed internally, was Houston.

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The post A New Map of the World appeared first on LewRockwell.

In this episode of America’s Untold Stories, Mark Groubert and Eric Hunley delve into the escalating trade tensions ignited by President Trump’s recent tariff announcements. The administration’s move to impose an additional 50% tariff on Chinese imports has prompted a stern response from Beijing, with officials declaring they will “fight to the end” to protect their national interests.

The ripple effects of this trade war are being felt across various sectors. Reports indicate that China is contemplating a ban on U.S. films, potentially leading to a Hollywood blackout as a form of retaliation against the tariffs.

Amidst these developments, tech mogul Elon Musk has publicly criticized White House trade adviser Peter Navarro, labeling him a “moron” and challenging the administration’s tariff strategies.

On the international front, Zimbabwe appears to be the first nation to acquiesce to the U.S.’s tariff demands, with its leadership expressing a desire to foster positive relations by suspending certain taxes on American goods.

Domestically, a recent survey has unveiled alarming sentiments, revealing that 55% of left-leaning individuals believe that the assassination of President Trump would be justified.

Additionally, President Trump made headlines during the Los Angeles Dodgers’ visit to the White House, where he took a jab at the Red Sox and referred to Dodgers’ star Shohei Ohtani as a “movie star.”

Join us as we unpack these stories and explore their broader implications on both domestic and international fronts.

The post America’s Untold Stories – Trump Tariffs Ignite Global Trade War: China Vows to ‘Fight to the End’ appeared first on LewRockwell.

Vicki Marzullo writes:

UK guy describes why the U.K. is collapsing since the 2000s  He has now left the U.K.

The post The inevitable collapse of the UK appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, Johnny Kramer. 

Gateway Pundit

The post Majority of Left-of-Center Americans Now Justify a Trump Assassination appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, John Smith.

Antiwar.com

The post Trump and Netanyahu Reaffirm Their Vision for the Ethnic Cleansing of Gaza appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, John Smith.

Middle East Eye

The post Daughter of Ottoman princess: How I rejected CIA attempt to make me a spy appeared first on LewRockwell.

Click Here:

Ken Klippenstein

The post Unprecedented number of B-2 bombers amassed for Iran Ms mass murder. appeared first on LewRockwell.

Click Here:

New York Post

The post Trans Nashville school shooter… appeared first on LewRockwell.

Tim McGraw wrote:

Start the video at the 52:12:00 mark for the Kiriakou interview. Netanyahu has never won more than 27% of the vote in Israel. He is a murderer. Trump should lock Bibi up in the White House basement.

The post John Kiriakou on Redacted Discusses Netanyahu Visit to White House appeared first on LewRockwell.

President Trump casually mentioned that the U.S. will have its first TRILLION dollar military budget. This does not, in any sense, sound like a government looking to cut waste, fraud and abuse. We have been bankrupted (economically, and more importantly, morally) by a century of endless wars. The federal debt continues to rise, even with total Republican control. This is all bad news for our nation.

The post $1 Trillion Military Budget Coming? Watch The Demise of the Fake Economic System appeared first on LewRockwell.

Patrick Foy wrote:

Late in his second term, Reagan gave a radio address about tariffs. It is worth listening to. Reagan was a reader, a thinker and did his own research. He wrote his own material. You might even call him an intellectual. He was able to think outside the box, like when he proposed an agreement with Gorbachev to do away with all nuclear weapons. I forget why that did not happen. Reagan was serious.

In any event, it looks to me like Trump’s bombshell proclamation on tariffs delivered last week was a head fake. The idea is to open negotiations to achieve what he calls a fair trade deal. Maybe he can do it. In the meantime, he seems obsessed with raising military spending sky high and continuing his carte blanche support of Bibi Netanyahoo and the slaughter in Gaza. It is madness.

The post Ronald Reagan vs. Tariffs: 1987 speech gains new life in 2025 appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, John Smith. 

Haaretz.com

The post 30 Years Ago, the Kafr Qana Massacre Shook Israel; Today, It Would Be Another Drop in the Ocean appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, John Smith. 

One IDF officer said that not only are Israeli troops killing military-age males, “we’re killing their wives, their children, their cats, their dogs. We’re destroying their houses and pissing on their graves.”

See this.

The post Israeli Troops Blow Whistle on War Crimes in Gaza ‘Kill Zone’ appeared first on LewRockwell.

A Farewell to Virology by Dr Mark Bailey was first published in 2022.

The 28,000-word treatise exposed not only the lack of evidence for SARS-CoV-2, but also the entire virus model itself.

The essay has been since downloaded over 250,000 times, translated into 5 languages and continues to be studied by a growing number of medical researchers around the World.

This timeless work was, and remains, one of the most important bulwarks against virology’s pseudoscience and the tyranny it fuels.

It is now available in book form for the first time.

Please watch Dr Sam Bailey’s brief introduction (11min) which includes the links to Amazon and Lulu HERE.

Highly Recommended 

The post A Farewell To Virology – The Book is Now Available appeared first on LewRockwell.

Ginny Garner wrote:

Lew,

The Duke was a holdout almost to be end as a convert to Catholicism. The Oscar winning actor and patriotic symbol of Americana was baptized into the Catholic faith two days before his passing.

See here.

The post John Wayne, Convert to Catholicism appeared first on LewRockwell.

Gail Appel wrote:

The Dancing Queens. My blood pressure just shot up to impending stroke level.

The post This is what we’ve given more than 300 billion to fight a war ! appeared first on LewRockwell.

Unless you’ve worked a lot in logistics and cross-border trade, you may not be aware of the global tariff system. Most countries have a base tariff rate, with variations based on protected products and industrial sectors, or socio-cultural mores that levy a “sin tax” on consumers who enjoy certain luxuries—alcohol and tobacco being the most common.

As of April 3, 2025, Indonesia imposes import tariffs on goods from the United States in accordance with its Most-Favored-Nation (MFN) tariff schedule, as both countries are members of the World Trade Organization (WTO). These tariffs are generally consistent across all trading partners without preferential trade agreements with Indonesia.

General Tariff Structure:

• Non-Agricultural Products: Most tariffs are bound at 35.5%, with certain sectors such as automobiles, iron, steel, and specific chemical products having higher rates or remaining unbound.
• Agricultural Products: Over 1,300 products have tariff bindings at or above 35.5%

Recent Tariff Adjustments:

In October 2023, Indonesia implemented new tariffs on various imported goods under Finance Ministry Regulation No. 96/2023:

• Perfumes: 10-15%
• Hair Products: 15%
• Iron and Steel: 0-20%
• Bicycles(!): 25-40%
• Wristwatches: 10%

Import Licensing and Restrictions:

Beyond tariffs, Indonesia has implemented import licensing procedures and permit requirements that can affect U.S. exports. These measures have been subjects of discussion between the U.S. and Indonesia regarding their alignment with WTO obligations.

U.S. Trade Relations:

In 2024, U.S. goods exported to Indonesia totaled $10.2 billion, while imports from Indonesia were $28.1 billion, resulting in a US trade deficit of $17.9 billion.

For precise and up-to-date tariff information on specific products, consulting Indonesia’s official customs tariff publications or the Directorate General of Customs and Excise is recommended.

Until recently, the United States had a relatively liberal trade policy compared to global standards, but it also maintains targeted protectionist measures in key industries. Here’s how the US compares to the global tariff system:

1. Average Tariff Rates

• The US has an average applied tariff rate of about 2.4%, which is lower than the global average of around 7% (according to WTO data).
• Many developed countries, such as the EU (1.8%) and Japan (2.5%), have similarly low tariffs, while developing nations often impose higher average tariffs (e.g., India ~17%, Brazil ~8%).

2. Free Trade Agreements (FTAs)

1. The US has fewer FTAs than the EU or China, but it does have major agreements like:
   • USMCA (formerly NAFTA) – Zero tariffs on most trade with Canada and Mexico.
   • Bilateral FTAs with South Korea, Australia, and several other countries.
2. The EU has more FTAs, covering a larger portion of global trade, making European trade more open overall.

3. Protectionist Measures

• The US imposes higher-than-average tariffs on specific industries:
  • Agriculture: Tariffs of 10–30% on products like dairy, sugar, and peanuts.
  • Steel & Aluminum: Trump-era tariffs (Section 232) of 25% on steel and 10% on aluminum remain in place against many countries.
  • China: High tariffs (up to 25% on $300+ billion of Chinese goods) due to the ongoing US-China trade dispute.
• In contrast, countries like China, India, and Brazil generally have higher across-the-board tariffs, whereas the US mainly targets specific industries or competitors.

4. Non-Tariff Barriers (NTBs)

• The US relies more on NTBs, such as anti-dumping duties, subsidies, and “Buy American” policies, to protect domestic industries.
• The EU and Japan use NTBs extensively, especially in agriculture and regulatory standards.

The US has a lower overall tariff than most countries, but is aggressive in protecting strategic industries. Compared to the EU and Japan, the US is less engaged in global FTAs, meaning it lacks as many duty-free trade partnerships. China, India, and many developing nations have much higher tariffs, making the US look liberal by comparison.

As of January 2025, the United States recorded an overall trade deficit of $131.4 billion, an increase from the revised deficit of $98.1 billion in December 2024. This is due primarily to low tariffs on US imports, and high tariffs on US exports. This is compounded by a strong dollar, raising the cost of US goods overseas, but making imported goods much cheaper in domestic markets.

By comparison, Indonesia with its excessive tariffs, excise taxes, customs fees, and other costs runs a trade surplus. As of February 2025, Indonesia recorded a trade surplus of $3.12 billion, marking the 58th consecutive month of surplus since May 2020.

Despite the screaming, hollering and hand-wringing over Trump’s tariff regime, his policies actually make sense, in that they punish nations that levy excessive tariffs and barriers on US goods, while enjoying nearly unbridled access to US consumers.

Additionally, much of the yelping is coming from corporate sectors where low US tariffs have made it cheaper to produce goods overseas and import them. This leads to lower-paying service jobs in the US, where gradually even the cost of cheap foreign goods exceeds the family income. This pain is compounded when the dollar is weak.

This, simply put, is globalism—outsourcing everything to low labor-cost nations, with final assembly at home. At a more complex level, globalism has spawned such things as the ISO, IMF, WTO, WHO, World Bank, and everyone’s boogyman, the WEF. At the center of it all is the EU, the globalist sandbox where global regulations and enforcement systems are tested and rolled out.

What Trump has done is drive a stake in the heart of globalism. The EU creates the regulations, but the US enforces them, and if the US goes off on another tangent, there really isn’t a need for the EU, nor any of the other parasitic organizations that act as the gendarmes.

It is interesting to note that the Trump tariffs do not apply to Russia or Belarus, which are ironically isolated by the many sanctions against them. However, the tariffs do indirectly apply to Israel, via the global supply chain.

Trump’s tariff regime appears to favors nations producing energy and agricultural products (including fertilizer). He seems to be trying to lower energy and food costs to counteract the inflationary action of the tariffs.

That’s a bold move, Cotton. Let’s see if it works for them.

Article I, Sections 8, 9 and 10 grant Congress the exclusive right to impose import tariffs (Duties), while all levels of government are banned from imposing export tariffs.

However, Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, gives the President the power to unilaterally levy import tariffs if there is a perceived threat to national security. Additionally, Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, grants the President the power to levy tariffs against countries engaging in intellectual property theft and unfair trade practices, the primary justification behind the China dispute.

Trump is doing nothing radical—it is essentially an eye-for-an-eye trade policy. His efforts appear to pass Constitutional and legal muster, using established powers vested in the Presidency.

Trump has thrown a monkey wrench into the globalist gears. For decades, the world has enjoyed nearly free access to US consumers, while profitting off taxes and duties against US products. Furthermore, US consumers have enjoyed low-cost goods from overseas, but at the expense of high-quality jobs that has eroded individual buying power and left the US vulnerable to foreign market manipulation.

It remains to be seen how all this will shake out. An operation this complex has thousands of variables, nearly all of which must align to deliver the desired outcome. Trump certainly has the ego to attempt something like this, but is it enough to claim victory within the next four years?

In the meantime, remember the Four Ds: dodge, dip, duck, dive, and, er…dodge.

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