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Saturday, August 02, 2025

2: Trade

‘We are losing the soul of Israel’: Fmr Israeli Prime Minister reacts to extreme famine in Gaza
Donald Trump disapproval rating hits new 2025 high
Trump injects a new dose of uncertainty in tariffs as he pushes start date to Aug. 7
World economies react to Trump's tariffs punch

Senate Republicans Vote To Let Trump Keep Air Force One When He Leaves Office, After Estimated $1 Billion Taxpayer-Funded Retrofit Prior to the Senate Appropriations Committee vote today, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) offered an amendment: “Not to refuse acceptance of the Qatari jet; just to prohibit Trump from taking it with him when he leaves office – after the taxpayers spend $1 billion to retrofit it.” ........ The amendment failed to be included by one vote, 14-15. Murphy reported: “Every single Republican voted to allow Trump to take the jet.” ......... [Less delicately, Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), who supported Murphy’s amendment, called the transaction between Trump with Qatar “a bribe,” and accused the Trump administration of being “the most corrupt in history.”] ........ “after the president left office, the plan called for transferring ownership of the plane to the Trump presidential library foundation.” ........ Murray also noted that the next generation Air Force One is already in the pipeline (there are two in the works) and voiced concern — as others have, including Republicans — about the “huge security vulnerability on this plane.” ........ In May when the aircraft transfer was announced, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) said: “I also think that the plane poses significant espionage and surveillance problems. So we'll see how this issue plays out.” And Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) said: "I do think the jet probably sends the wrong signal to people, and I don't like the look or the appearance, so I would hope [Trump] rejects it." ................. The 15 Republicans who serve on the Senate Appropriations Committee and voted against Murphy’s amendment are: Chair Susan Collins (ME), Mitch McConnell (KY), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), Lindsey Graham (SC), Jerry Moran (KS), John Hoeven (ND), John Boozman (Arkansas), Shelley Moore Capito (WV), John Kennedy (LA), Cindy Hyde-Smith (MS), Bill Hagerty (TN), Katie Britt (LA), Markwayne Mullin (OK), Deb Fischer (NE), and Mike Rounds (SD).

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The Last Age: Lord Kalki, Prophecy, and the Final War for Peace
The Protocol of Greatness (novel)
A Reorganized UN: Built From Ground Up
The Drum Report: Markets, Tariffs, and the Man in the Basement (novel)
World War III Is Unnecessary
Grounded Greatness: The Case For Smart Surface Transit In Future Cities
The Garden Of Last Debates (novel)
Deported (novel)
Empty Country (novel)
Trump’s Default: The Mist Of Empire (novel)

The 20% Growth Revolution: Nepal’s Path to Prosperity Through Kalkiism
Rethinking Trade: A Blueprint for a Just and Thriving Global Economy
The $500 Billion Pivot: How the India-US Alliance Can Reshape Global Trade
Trump’s Trade War
Peace For Taiwan Is Possible
Formula For Peace In Ukraine
A 2T Cut
Are We Frozen in Time?: Tech Progress, Social Stagnation
The Last Age of War, The First Age of Peace: Lord Kalki, Prophecies, and the Path to Global Redemption
AOC 2028: : The Future of American Progressivism

Netanyahu Is Choosing to Starve Gaza For children who survive acute malnutrition, the resulting physical and cognitive damage can last a lifetime. ....... Those of us who have studied famines over many decades recognize the dreadful signs when social collapse is imminent — when the bonds that tie a community together are fraying and order is breaking down. It is a moment at which death rates grow exponentially and beyond which the fabric of society becomes far more difficult to repair. This disintegration portends chaos and conflict, delinquency and a fierce hopelessness that can breed fresh terrorism. Gaza appears to be passing into that zone now. .......... It is a calamity that was foreseeable, and foreseen. Starvation takes time; authorities cannot starve a population by accident. Since March of 2024, international bodies have repeatedly warned that Gaza is on the brink of famine. This week a U.N.-backed group issued yet another alert, saying, “The worst-case scenario of famine is playing out.” ............ Seasoned humanitarian-aid professionals can still bring Gaza back from the brink — if they’re given the chance. For months, Israel has restricted the flow of aid into Gaza ......... Food stockpiles were already desperately low in March, when Israel imposed a blockade on the enclave, citing unverified claims that Hamas had been systematically stealing food from the U.N. .......... When Israel partly eased restrictions in May, it began operating a new Israeli- and U.S.-backed aid distribution system run by a private group called the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, largely displacing traditional aid agencies. This system has so thoroughly ignored conditions on the ground that it raises the question of whether Israel has been intentionally engineering starvation in the strip. ............ The aid provided by the G.H.F. is inadequate by several standards. The group’s ration boxes, according to nutritionists, are unbalanced and lack nutrients that are essential for starving populations, especially children. A malnourished child requires specialized food such as Plumpy’Nut, a peanut-based therapeutic formula — not pasta or lentils, which the G.H.F. offers instead. The most severely malnourished need intensive care in a hospital. To prepare food included in the ration boxes, people also often require fuel and clean water, both of which are in short supply in Gaza. .............. The group replaced the 400 or so aid distribution centers previously run by the U.N. and its affiliates with just four feeding stations that are far from where most people now live and are open only briefly and on short notice. ............ To get access to these ration sites, people had to linger in military zones, ready to rush in as soon as they opened. Crowds ended up funneled past Israeli military posts — and dozens have been killed on days when Israeli soldiers or private military contractors have opened fire or in the crush of a stampede. ........... The Israeli government claims this system is necessary to prevent aid from falling into the hands of Hamas. There are no verified cases of Hamas looting aid from convoys on a large scale. And in May, the U.N. developed a proposal that would have established safeguards on aid distribution, including the use of sealed trucks with QR-coded cargo, U.N. monitors at every crossing point, GPS-tracked trucks on pre-cleared routes and regular audits of aid recipients. ........... What we’re seeing today in Gaza — desperate people being robbed of food by gangsters and Hamas members, with rations being sold on the black market — is a predictable outcome of Israel’s own arrangement. When social order breaks down in a famine, the last to starve are those holding the guns. ............ There are other famines in the world that are comparable in intensity and horror. Mass starvation is unfolding in and around the Sudanese city of El Fasher, where the Sudanese Army and its allies are defending a siege and onslaught by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces. Both sides are fighting a war of starvation, stealing food from civilians and blocking aid. If the warring parties were to agree to a cease-fire this instant, given the perilous roads and the underfunded aid operation, it would be weeks or months before sufficient succor could reach the starving. .......... If Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel decided tonight that every Palestinian child in Gaza should have breakfast tomorrow, it could undoubtedly be done. .......... Israel and the international community have a window of opportunity to deliver lifesaving aid to millions of people. We cannot wait until it’s time to count the graves of the children who have perished, declare it a famine — or indeed, a genocide — and say, simply, “Never again.”

Behind Trump and Vance Is This Man’s Movement You could imagine that guy going on to build a politics of tolerance, a politics to ensure other people don’t feel that way. And yet he goes on to build a politics all around othering. .......... Archived clip of Vance: We are effectively run in this country — via the Democrats, via our corporate oligarchs — by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made, and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too. ........... That’s the problem, Vance thinks: too much diversity. .......... and the modern left seems dedicated to doing this — to saying: You don’t belong in America unless you agree with progressive liberalism in 2025. I think the people whose ancestors fought in the Civil War have a hell of a lot more claim over America than the people who say they don’t belong. ......... But Vance is saying: No, that was wrong. What matters is not what you believe about America. It is how long your family has been in America. ............. There’s a reason so many, including Donald Trump, were so obsessed by the question of where Obama was born. Vance is not inventing the intellectual challenge here. ........... The view on the right is that this vision of patriotism and citizenship is acid for the bonds that hold a country together. Countries are about people, not ideas. They’re about a shared past, not an imagined future. ............ It sought to make a right that would reimagine belonging not around the ideals that won the Civil War but the people who fought it. .............

families join with other families into clans, and clans form with other clans into tribes, and tribes with other tribes into nations, and then there are families of nations

. .......... so a nation is a collection or a group of tribes that are bound together by mutual loyalty and that share certain characteristics. Usually it’s a language, often it’s a religion. In most cases, it’s a common history of joining together against common enemies. So that’s a nation. ........... There were nations in history before anybody had passports or flags. It’s a natural grouping of human beings. .............. There is more and more talk of civil war. There’s more and more talk, on both the left and right, saying that the others are not legitimate, that they need to be driven from the political landscape, driven from the country. .......... My argument is that children grow up giving honor to the things that their parents honor. And then they become teenagers and they rebel, so then they switch over to honoring what their aunt and uncle honor, or maybe the other tribe in the nation. But they almost never invent, out of whole cloth, a completely new set of things to be loyal to. ............. Syria and Iraq have been warring tribes suppressed by overwhelming might, usually by a minority that seizes power in order to defend itself forever. They were never nations before, and they’re not nations now. .............. What really worries me is that the United States is moving in the direction of becoming Syria or Iraq, a country in which only brute force will be able to hold it together. ............. although the 13 colonies were very different from one another, they were still pretty similar. It was 95 percent or something Anglo-Protestant. And even though there are many different kinds of Protestants, that was sufficient to be able to make the argument that it was one nation, as John Jay writes in The Federalist Papers. ............. If you look at any of the presidential debates televised in the ’60s or the ’70s or the ’80s, you’ll see exactly this. I’m sure Nixon and Kennedy must have detested each other, but you don’t see that in the debate. In the debate, it’s all about “my honorable opponent.” It’s not just politeness. ............... — but now you can’t get anywhere being a nice guy, because nobody is going to be a nice guy back to you. ........... And what’s happening now, which is a constant drumbeat, both on the Democratic side and on the Republican side, saying that elections have been stolen. That’s something that didn’t exist 20 years ago. ............ In every democratic country with which I’m familiar, from the United States to India, there is the consolidation of political parties in the last 15, 20 years that are explicitly committed, to one degree or another, to trying to break the particular nation away from and out of the unfolding global system. ......... From the perspective of all these different nationalist parties and movements that are sometimes quite different from one another but which share certain things in common, the first thing they share in common is that they look at supernational institutions — like the European Union or the World Trade Organization or the International Criminal Court — whose purpose is to try to take all the independent nations in the world and put them under a single rule of a single law. ........... The basic argument is: The independence of nations — their freedom to chart their own course — is extremely important to all of these nationalist movements, including the Trump movement and the Brexit movement and so on. .................... a time in which people are saying liberal internationalism has wonderful ideals, but it is destroying our nations and our societies. .......... there is a thing called woke, and most of them agree that it’s a strain of neo-Marxism. ......... First of all, Marxism is a view that — since Marx and before him — sees liberalism as kind of a big sham. It’s a big lie. As far as Marx is concerned, liberal society is based on a lie, because you convince everybody that it’s about freedom of exchange and freedom of expression, all the rest of that. But the truth is that society is built out of competing groups — he calls them classes, we can call them groups — and that the stronger always exploits the weaker. That’s an iron law, a bedrock assumption of Marx. ................ People like me used to be called conservatives. ............. a Republican Party that is less liberal — I completely agree with you. It is moving away from libertarianism, and it’s becoming more conservative and more nationalist. ............... Nick Fuentes, a young Holocaust revisionist, kind of Catholic, made himself famous on the web for his incessant attacks on Jews. And is he comfortable with the Trump administration? No, he is not comfortable with the Trump administration. ............... MAGA is a very broad alliance. I would say, roughly, it’s the alliance of different groups that came together to make it possible for Trump–Vance to win. But those are not all national or nationalist conservatives. ............. the border is: From the beginning, we have said we do not admit, we do not invite, people whose platforms are racialist. .......... “Blood and soil” is literally a Nazi term, meaning the Nazi flag is red and black because it’s blood and soil. The same is true of other quasi-Nazi parties in Europe, that they use those same colors. We are not interested in a nationalism of blood. ........... he is the country’s most prominent ideological national conservative. Trump is an intuitive national conservative, but Vance is more of an ideologist. .......... When Vance gave the NatCon speech, he said that the values of America are important but that Americanism is ultimately about a presence here on this soil — that it is more about being part of the tribe. ............... It’s literally a reaction to what is seen as, at this point, 60 years of abusive immigration, which has spun out of control and is threatening the cohesion. ............ I don’t want people to think it’s a mysterious word. “Cohesion” is just — first of all, it’s a John Stuart Mill word. Lots of liberals have used it in history — ........... Divorce within families is an indication of the weakness of the underlying cohesion. ......... New Hampshire and Massachusetts are part of the original colonies. In terms of having a continuous physical legacy of Anglo-Saxon Protestant Americans there, and just having a continuous connection to the American story, you can’t do much better than Massachusetts and New Hampshire. ................... The Trump administration is built on the idea — Stephen Miller is executing on the idea — that what they’re trying to do is save our national identity by doing some very violent and aggressive things to definitely make America less like California. Stephen Miller is from Santa Monica, and he did not like what Santa Monica was growing up. He was famous for that. ............... — my father is a Brazilian immigrant, my mother is a couple generations back from Eastern European Jews on both sides. I don’t think I am less American than people who can trace themselves back to the Mayflower. ............. The fact that it was a Christian country, that up until the 1930s the Supreme Court still referred to Americans as a Christian people, that it was legally a Christian country, that it was culturally run by Protestants — that didn’t prevent it from being, despite its many flaws, something that was really beautiful and superior to many other countries in the world. ............... the center — the central place of Anglo-Protestantism in America, with a strong Old Testament taste, the English language, the common law — I don’t expect everybody to be common lawyers, but I do expect people to say: Yes, the jury trial is not a universal dictate of reason. It’s an Anglo tradition, and it does what it does because the people here believe in this Anglo tradition — not all of them, but a core. So if you have that, then you can bring in lots of immigrants and you can get them to adopt those ways. ............... It feels like a lot of places that are highly nationalistic are not actually that stable. They become imperialistic. That’s a lot of Europe in the 20th century. The modern, more nationalistic right does not feel to me more tolerant and more interested in making sure the bonds between us are strengthened. ........................ California has less of that American center that you are describing, that Vice President Vance is describing, than New Hampshire does. It has less of that center than a bunch of older states. It’s more diverse. It’s more creedal in that way. And it’s a very successful polity. The people on the right can say what they want, but the reason we debate California is that it matters. It invents the future. It’s a remarkable place............ The success of places like Texas and California speaks to the value of openness and the ability to hold people together at incredible scale. ................ It seems like we’re looking at overwhelmingly the same set of facts, and we have different frameworks. That’s completely legitimate. ............ They are thinking: If you take aggressive actions to halt immigration and decrease the size of the illegal immigrant population; if you take aggressive actions to halt the hemorrhaging of American industry to other countries and reverse it through aggressive trade negotiations; if you take aggressive action to to withdraw primary American responsibility for security arrangements in Europe, the Middle East, South Asia, and put other people who are allies of ours in charge — those three things. ............... “The Demon in Democracy” by Ryszard Legutko. ........... Why is it that when Communism was dismantled in his country, Poland, many of the Communists became liberal internationalists? ............ Colby’s book answers the key question that the media keep asking: Is Trump an isolationist? Or is he an interventionist? Or is he a liberal internationalist? What is he? Is it just random compromises? .............. Josh Hammer, who’s a young Jewish NatCon, called “Israel and Civilization.”

The Last Age: Lord Kalki, Prophecy, and the Final War for Peace
The Protocol of Greatness (novel)
A Reorganized UN: Built From Ground Up
The Drum Report: Markets, Tariffs, and the Man in the Basement (novel)
World War III Is Unnecessary
Grounded Greatness: The Case For Smart Surface Transit In Future Cities
The Garden Of Last Debates (novel)
Deported (novel)
Empty Country (novel)
Trump’s Default: The Mist Of Empire (novel)

The 20% Growth Revolution: Nepal’s Path to Prosperity Through Kalkiism
Rethinking Trade: A Blueprint for a Just and Thriving Global Economy
The $500 Billion Pivot: How the India-US Alliance Can Reshape Global Trade
Trump’s Trade War
Peace For Taiwan Is Possible
Formula For Peace In Ukraine
A 2T Cut
Are We Frozen in Time?: Tech Progress, Social Stagnation
The Last Age of War, The First Age of Peace: Lord Kalki, Prophecies, and the Path to Global Redemption
AOC 2028: : The Future of American Progressivism

Donald Trump suffers double legal blow over migrant arrests within hours The Trump administration suffered two legal defeats on Friday when the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sustained a court imposed ban on immigration enforcement being conducted on the basis of language or occupation. And a district judge banned the Department of Homeland Security from using a controversial tactic against those with immigration parole. ......... Courts have struck down punitive measures introduced by the president against legal firms involved in cases against him; removed sanctions targeted at International Criminal Court employees; and blocked a bid to strip thousands of Haitian migrants of legal protections. ......... On Friday, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a temporary restraining order preventing immigration enforcement agents from detaining people on the basis of their occupation or language was legally valid and can remain in force......... It said part of U.S. District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong's order had been vague, but added that "defendants, however, are not likely to succeed on their remaining arguments." ........ Separately, Friday also saw U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb ban the Department of Homeland Security from using a controversial tactic against migrants who had been granted immigration parole, allowing them to live and work in the U.S. legally. ......... In a number of cases in recent months, the pending cases against such migrants were dismissed after which they were detained outside the courthouse and put through an expedited removal deportation process. ......... Cobb said that her decision will impact "hundreds of thousands" of migrants. It effectively overrules a Trump administration directive issued on January 23 instructing that "expedited removal," a swifter deportation process, should be used widely. .............. Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass welcomed Friday's appeals court ruling, saying: "Today is a victory for the rule of law and for the City of Los Angeles. ............. "The Temporary Restraining Order that has been protecting our communities from immigration agents using racial profiling and other illegal tactics when conducting their cruel and aggressive enforcement raids and sweeps will remain in place for now." .......... Referring to migrants granted immigration parole in her judgment, Judge Cobb said: "In a world of bad options, they played by the rules. Now, the Government has not only closed off those pathways for new arrivals but changed the game for parolees already here." ........... Speaking to Politico, Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said: "Judge Cobb is flagrantly ignoring the United States Supreme Court which upheld expedited removals of illegal immigrants by a 7-2 majority. This ruling is lawless and won't stand." ............. District Judge Frimpong's restraining order only temporarily restricted the use of employment and language as the sole factor in detaining suspected illegal migrants, and the full case has yet to be heard......... The Trump administration could seek to escalate either case all the way to the Supreme Court, which has a conservative-leaning majority.

‘Grow up’: Republican Senators slam Trump for firing labor statistics chief over weak jobs report

The Last Age: Lord Kalki, Prophecy, and the Final War for Peace
The Protocol of Greatness (novel)
A Reorganized UN: Built From Ground Up
The Drum Report: Markets, Tariffs, and the Man in the Basement (novel)
World War III Is Unnecessary
Grounded Greatness: The Case For Smart Surface Transit In Future Cities
The Garden Of Last Debates (novel)
Deported (novel)
Empty Country (novel)
Trump’s Default: The Mist Of Empire (novel)

The 20% Growth Revolution: Nepal’s Path to Prosperity Through Kalkiism
Rethinking Trade: A Blueprint for a Just and Thriving Global Economy
The $500 Billion Pivot: How the India-US Alliance Can Reshape Global Trade
Trump’s Trade War
Peace For Taiwan Is Possible
Formula For Peace In Ukraine
A 2T Cut
Are We Frozen in Time?: Tech Progress, Social Stagnation
The Last Age of War, The First Age of Peace: Lord Kalki, Prophecies, and the Path to Global Redemption
AOC 2028: : The Future of American Progressivism

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