Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Modernity.news,

The BBC has chosen a “racially diverse cast” to play the characters in its upcoming historical drama about the Battle of Hastings, which occurred in 1066, leading one historian to decry the “bizarre notion that there were black earls in Anglo-Saxon England.”

The eight-part series King and Conqueror, which is a CBS Studios co-production, will feature numerous non-white characters, including one taking the role of a real 11th-century leader.

Black actor Jason Forbes will play the fictional character Thane Thomas, “with the “thanes” being a layer of nobility in the ethnically homogeneous society of Anglo-Saxon England,” reports the Telegraph.

“(Elander) Moore, of Trinidadian descent, will play the real historical figure of Morcar, an Earl of Northumbria who fought against Viking and Norman invaders, before being subdued by William after the battle of Hastings.”

Historian Dr Zareer Masani, who has worked with the BBC, lambasted the decision, asserting, “Some of us, including people of colour, grew up thinking actors ought to look like characters they played.”

He warned that the BBC’s approach is “hugely confusing and downright misleading,” adding that it was “absolutely crazy that they’ve applied this colour-blindness to a period when Britain was at its least multicultural, before even the Norman Conquest.”

While it’s acceptable to depict Anglo-Saxons as black or mixed race, apparently it’s no longer politically correct to even acknowledge that white Anglo-Saxons existed, given a recent decision by The Cambridge University Press to change the name of its ‘Anglo-Saxon England’ journal to ‘Early Medieval England and its Neighbours.

Referencing that development along with the new BBC drama, Cambridge historian Prof David Abulafia said, “Since the whole series will undoubtedly bear little relation to historical fact, I think we shall have to put up with the bizarre notion that there were black earls in Anglo-Saxon England.”

“All the more so, since we are no longer supposed to talk about ‘Anglo-Saxons’. If they didn’t exist, we can do what we like.”

CBS Studios executive Lindsey Martin said the show would offer “a bold and fresh take on a story that has endured for nearly 1,000 years.”

So bold and fresh that it will be full of people who simply didn’t exist in 11th century England.

No doubt regime historians will now leap to the defense of the show, insisting that it is historically accurate because there might have been a few swarthy looking people knocking around Europe in 1066, and anyone who complains is racist.

As we document in the video above, apparently Sub-Saharan Africans built Stonehenge, while the BBC is still pushing the Cheddar Man hoax to children, insisting that the UK has been ‘diverse’ for thousands of years.

This of course is all part of a social engineering drive to convince everyone that the deluge of mass migration we are now seeing is perfectly normal and should be accepted without a whimper of dissent.

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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is in Warsaw on Monday, where he signed a new security agreement with Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk.

Given that the sought-after admission into NATO has been on hold, Zelensky has been inking separate defense pacts with individual G7 and NATO countries, including Germany, the US, UK, France, and the EU. But there’s a key and unprecedented provision in this newest pact with Poland, centered on authorization for Polish forces to intercept inbound Russian missiles over Ukrainian territory. 

According to the agreement, Ukraine has formally given its permission for such anti-air intercepts in the scenario where Warsaw believes a Russian rocket is headed toward Polish territory.

According to Ukrainian media:

Ukraine and Poland agreed to further develop political, military, and economic cooperation, and “cooperate closely in the reconstruction of Ukraine as a sovereign and democratic state.”

During the joint press conference with Tusk, Zelensky thanked Poland for the “special agreements” in the document.

The president added that the security agreement includes a provision to develop “a mechanism” for intercepting Russian missiles and drones in Ukraine’s airspace aimed at Poland.

Tusk said in a press conference that the two partners “will work together to work out how we can quickly implement this point” of the deal.

Tusk confirmed that the provision is mentioned as part of the agreement, but still attempted to downplay it, explaining that it “indicates the need for talks on this matter,” as cited in regional reports.

Apparently recognizing the potential that this could trigger Article 5, Tusk continued: “We need clear cooperation within NATO here, because such actions require joint NATO responsibility.”

He stipulated, just ahead of this week’s annual NATO summit in Washington D.C., that “We will include other NATO allies in this conversation. So we treat the matter seriously as open, but not yet finalized.”

The provision appears a desperate attempt of Zelensky to get a NATO country to ink deals premised on commitments to come directly to Ukraine’s military aid. If Poland did so, it would not be merely defending its neighbor Ukraine, but would be intervening against Russia’s military.

While there have been ‘errant’ missiles from the Ukraine war which have fallen on Polish territory, in once instance causing a civilian’s death, neighboring NATO states have thus far not fired directly on Russian forces or assets.

Authored by Rupert Darwall via RealClearPolitics,

“We did it,” Sir Keir Starmer told cheering Labour supporters at a 4 a.m. victory rally. “Change begins now. And it feels good.”

Did what, exactly? is a question Britain’s new prime minister should reflect on as he enters Downing Street with a huge 176-seat majority in the House of Commons – because Labour’s mandate from the country is not what it appears. At 34%, Labour’s share of the national vote is the lowest for any governing party in the last century.

Overall, Labour’s vote share this year is five points lower than in the 2017 election under Jeremy Corbyn, Starmer’s much-derided, hard-left predecessor. Its share of the vote improved on its disastrous 2019 showing thanks only to a large increase in Scotland. In England, Labour’s vote was largely unchanged, and in Wales, it actually fell. Despite Labour’s landslide in terms of the number of its Members of Parliament, at the constituency level, seat majorities are tighter than at any point since 1945. On closer inspection, Starmer’s victory resembles Joe Biden’s in 2020 – a rejection of an incumbent rather than a positive mandate for change, the kind that Tony Blair could boast of in 1997.

Starmer’s challenge is compounded by Britain’s enfeebled economy. “Wealth creation is our number one priority. Growth is our core business,” he declared when he launched Labour’s election manifesto last month. “The only route to improving the prosperity of our country and the living standards of working people. And that’s why we made it our first national mission in government.”

This prioritization makes political as well as economic sense. In an important eve-of-poll article, Chris Giles, Financial Times’s economics editor, shows that only the bottom 20% of the income distribution saw any real gains after inflation since the 2019 election. “Everyone else was hit harder by high inflation.” In prior years marked by fiscal austerity, income gains were higher for poorer than richer households. “The outcomes for working-age household incomes since 2010,” Giles writes, are “exactly what you might expect a left-leaning government to produce. People hate it.” Generating economic growth should be Labour’s first, second, and third instinct, Giles argues.

But this approach would run counter both to Labour’s instinct to redistribute income and to its history. The British Labour party has never successfully turned around an ailing economy. Blair entered Downing Street with a strong economy, his economic adviser admitting that the economy Labour inherited was better than that of any incoming government in living memory. Blair was no Bill Clinton, whom the maestro of supply-side economics Art Laffer praises to the skies. “Big fan of Clinton,” Laffer told Chris Giles two months ago. “I voted for him and campaigned for Clinton because Clinton did cut taxes.” Nonetheless, Blair had a great facility in articulating economic ideas. Hearing Starmer, a human rights lawyer, talk economics is like listening to someone struggle to speak a foreign language.

Despite his manifesto pledge, Starmer knows that wealth creation is not his government’s top priority. As a matter of law, the Climate Change Act 2008 imposes on his government, as on its predecessor, a duty to reach net zero by 2050. If the courts are persuaded that individual policies interfere with that duty, they can overturn those policies. There is no corresponding duty to grow the economy. Neither should there be: Judicializing policy by creating cast-iron legal duties that require ministers to pursue certain policy outcomes replaces democratic accountability with the threat of judicial review. There is no “get-out” clause in the Climate Change Act, which was piloted through Parliament when Labour was last in power by climate and energy secretary Ed Miliband, whom Starmer has just reappointed to his old job. Starmer’s economic policy is a prisoner of net zero.

Apart from Nigel Farage’s Reform party, now Britain’s third-largest party in terms of votes won, politicians of all other parties subscribe to the fiction that net zero is the growth opportunity of the 21st century. In this, they are aided by the economics commentariat that either downplays, covers up, or outright denies the existence of any trade-off between net zero and economic growth. It is another example of what FT columnist Janan Ganesh, writing of Democrats and the media cover-up of President Biden’s mental impairment, calls “liberal denialism.”

In Britain, net zero denialism extends to official advice provided by the Treasury and the Office for Budget Responsibility. In its net zero review, the Treasury asserts that “additional investment will translate into additional GDP growth.” The data falsifies the Treasury’s assertion. Between 2009 and 2020, decarbonization of power generation with large additions of wind and solar has seen a 15.5% increase in nameplate capacity produce 17.1% less electricity – a decline of 28.3% in output per unit of generating capacity. It is why Britain has some of the world’s most expensive electricity, destroying the competitiveness of its manufacturing industry and contributing greatly to Britain’s cost of living crisis, which, as Giles shows, has left 80% of British households either worse off or no better off after inflation since 2019.

Globally, the International Energy Agency’s net zero pathway in 2030 requires the energy sector to have $16.5 trillion more capital, 25 million more workers, and extra land area amounting to the combined size of California, Texas, Mexico, and France – all to produce 7% less energy. More inputs for less output equals de-growth through resource inefficiency, making the planet and its inhabitants worse off. Whatever pro-growth economic policies Starmer enacts, the supra-political commitment to net zero condemns the British economy to low growth or no growth, an historically high tax burden, and prolonged public sector austerity. It is hardly a formula for enduring popularity.

As they go into Opposition, the one upside for the Conservatives is that they are now freed from being tethered to some of the foolish policy positions they had adopted. With a quartet of Reform MPs led by Farage, they also have an additional incentive to oppose the anti-growth economics of net zero. The way votes stacked up in this election demonstrates that British voters are highly adept at heaving out a government they feel has lost its way and deliver a lopsided result. In Thursday’s election, it took on average 23,510 votes to elect one Labour MP and 56,319 votes to elect one Conservative MP. Unfair the system might be, but it does have the merit of being brutal in its effectiveness. The sooner Conservatives start making the case to ditch net zero, the better their prospect of reversing their defeat in 2029.

South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol has announced that he plans to discuss a security topic which is somewhat unusual for NATO when he travels to the NATO annual summit in Washington D.C. this week. 

He plans to present info on the ‘distinct threat’ North Korea poses to Europe at a moment leaders Kim Jong Un and Vladimir Putin are deepening their ties, including on the defense cooperation front.

“Military co-operation between Russia and North Korea poses a distinct threat and grave challenge to the peace and security on the Korean peninsula and in Europe,” Yoon told Reuters. Last month Putin in a rare visit to Pyongyang signed a pact with Kim wherein the two agreed on mutual military assistance.

Of course, South Korea is not in NATO and the question of Pyongyang’s threat to the Western military alliance is typically not a front and center topic.

President Yoon had become the first South Korean leader to ever attend a NATO summit in 2022. Four Asia-Pacific allies of NATO will join this week’s summit, also including Australia, Japan, and New Zealand.

Yoon described in his comments that possible new military support to Ukraine “depends entirely” on the future health of Russia-South Korea ties. South Korea has been mulling whether to send weapons to Ukraine, and Yoon stressed that decision would be made based on how the recent military pact between Moscow and Pyongyang plays out.

“North Korea is clearly a menace to the international society,” Yoon continued. “I hope that Russia will sensibly decide which side – the South or the North – is more important and necessary for its own interests.”

Already there have been widespread reports of the north sending hundreds of thousands of artillery shells to Russian forces. Analysts say that while the outright sending of troops is unlikely, it remains a possibility: 

As of now, the prospect of North Korean soldiers being deployed to Ukraine is speculative and unlikely, experts told Business Insider.

But if it did happen, the main advantage Russia would take from it would be North Korea’s sheer number of soldiers — not their effectiveness, they said.

“North Korea has a large military of 1.3 million,” Edward Howell, Korea Foundation Fellow with Chatham House’s Asia-Pacific Programme, told BI.

“Yet, the quality of North Korean conventional weapons, arms, and the soldiers themselves is far weaker,” he said.

Yoon has been seeking to bolster ties with Europe in order to further put pressure on Kim and isolate North Korea, and is now focused on the question of the Ukraine war in making its case.

When asked in the Reuters interview about relations with Washington going forward during a possible Trump administration, he responded: “The alliance will stay strong going forward.”

Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Modernity.news

Football star Toni Kroos told a ZDF podcast that Germany is no longer the country it was 10 years ago due to mass migration and that he is staying in Spain because he is afraid to let his daughter go out at night in German cities.

Kroos, who won 114 caps before retiring from professional football on Friday night after his country’s defeat to Spain at Euro 2024, made the comments during an appearance on the ‘Lanz & Precht’ podcast.

The man dubbed Germany’s most successful ever player has been living in Spain for the last decade while playing for Real Madrid.

Kroos said he will be staying in Spain with his family despite his football career there coming to an end because Germany is no longer the same country that “it was ten years ago when we left.”

Compared to Spain, Kroos said he felt more uneasy about letting his daughter go out “at 11pm in a big German city.”

The former World Cup winner said the issue of mass migration was “constantly present” in Germany and that it had become too “uncontrolled”.

Kroos said that some immigrants were good people but that, “If you cannot distinguish them from those who are not good for us, it will be difficult in the end. Then the attitude of the Germans will become more and more divided.”

Podcast host Markus Lanz agreed with Kroos that, “There are problems everywhere. It’s too crowded, there’s too much,” and that people shouldn’t be vilified as racists for talking about it.

As we previously highlighted, foreign migrant suspects are responsible for nearly 6 in 10 violent crimes in Germany according to new figures released by the federal government.

Despite comprising roughly 14.6 per cent of the population, foreign migrants were responsible for 58.5 per cent of all violent crimes.

High profile figures, including politicians, have been prosecuted by German authorities for comments drawing attention to the problem, while the political establishment is continuing in its efforts to ban the anti-migration right-wing AfD party in the name of ‘saving democracy’.

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Authored by Alastair Crooke,

The Editor at Large for the Wall Street Journal, Gerry Baker, says: ‘We’ve been “gaslit’ and deceived” – for years – “all in the name of ‘democracy’”. That deceit “collapsed” with the Presidential debate, Thursday’.

“Until the world saw the truth … [against] the ‘misinformation’ … the fiction of Mr. Biden’s competence … suggests they [the Democrats] evidently thought they could get away with promoting it. [Yet] by perpetuating that fiction they were also revealing their contempt for the voters and for democracy itself”.

Baker continues:

“Biden succeeded because he made toeing the party line his life’s work. Like all politicians whose egos dwarf their talents, he ascended the greasy pole by slavishly following his party wherever it led … Finally—in the ultimate act of partisan servility, he became Barack Obama’s vice president, the summit of achievement for those incapable, yet loyal: the apex position for the consummate ‘yes man’”.

“But then, just as he was ready to drift into a comfortable and well-deserved obscurity, his party needed a front man … They sought a loyal and reliable figurehead, a flag of convenience, under which they could sail the progressive vessel into the deepest reaches of American life — on a mission to advance statism, climate extremism and self-lacerating wokery. There was no more loyal and convenient vehicle than Joe”.

If so, then who actually has been ‘pulling America’s strings’ these past years?

“You [the Democratic machine] don’t get to deceive, dissemble and gaslight us for years about how this man was both brilliantly competent at the job and a healing force for national unity – and now tell us, when your deception is uncovered, that it’s ‘bedtime for Bonzo’ – thanks for your service, and let’s move on”, Baker warns.

“[Now] it is going horribly wrong. Much of his party has no use for him anymore … in a remarkably cynical act of bait-and-switch, [they are trying to] swap him out for someone more useful to their cause. Part of me thinks they shouldn’t be allowed to get away with it. I find myself in the odd position of wanting to root for poor mumbling Joe … It’s tempting to say to the Democratic machine frantically mobilizing against him: You don’t get to do this. You don’t get to deceive, dissemble and gaslight us for years”.

Something significant has snapped within ‘the system’. It is always tempting to situate such events in ‘immediate time’, but even Baker seems to allude to a longer cycle of gaslighting and deception – one that only now has suddenly burst into open view.

Such events – though seemingly ephemeral and of the moment – can be portents to deeper structural contradictions moving.

When Baker writes of Biden being the latest ‘flag of convenience’ under which the ruling strata could sail the progressive vessel into the deepest reaches of American life – “on a mission to advance statism, climate extremism and self-lacerating wokery” – it seems probable that he is referring to the 1970s era of the Trilateral Commission and the Club of Rome.

The 1970s and 1980s were the point at which the long arc of traditional liberalism gave place to an avowedly illiberal, mechanical ‘control system’ (managerial technocracy) that today fraudulently poses as liberal democracy.

Emmanuel Todd, the French anthropological historian, examines the longer dynamics to events unfolding in the present: The prime agent of change leading to the Decline of the West (La Défaite de l’Occident), he argues, was the implosion of ‘Anglo’ Protestantism in the U.S. (and England), with its entailed habits of work, individualism and industry – a creed whose qualities were held then to reflect God’s grace through material success, and, above all, to confirm membership of the divine ‘Elect’.

Whereas traditional liberalism had its mores, the decline of traditional values triggered the slide towards managerial technocracy, and to nihilism. Religion lingers on in the West, though in a ‘zombie’ state, Todd avers. Such societies, he argues, flounder – absent some guiding metaphysical sphere that provides people with non-material sustenance.

However, the incoming doctrine that only a wealthy financial élite, tech experts, leaders of multinational corporations and banks possess the required foresight and technological understanding to manipulate a complex and increasingly controlled system changed politics completely.

Mores were gone – and so was empathy. Many experienced the disconnect and the disregard of cold technocracy.

So when a senior WSJ editor tells us that the ‘deception and ‘gaslighting’ collapsed with the CNN Biden-Trump debate, we should surely pay attention; He is saying the scales finally fell from peoples’ eyes.

What was being gaslighted was the fiction of democracy and also that of America declaring itself – in its own scripture – to be the trailblazer and pathfinder of humanity: America as the exceptional nation: the singular, the pure-of-heart, the baptizer, and redeemer of all peoples despised and downtrodden; the “last, best hope of earth”.

The reality was very different. Of course, states can ‘live a lie’ for a long period. The underlying problem – the point Todd makes so compellingly – is that you can be successful in deceiving and manipulating public perceptions, but only up to a point.

The reality was, it simply was not working.

The same is true of ‘Europe’.

The EU’s aspiration to become a global geo-political actor too, was contingent on gaslighting the public that France, Italy and Germany et al could continue to be real national entities – even as the EU scooped up all national decision-making prerogatives, by deceit. The mutiny at the recent European elections reflected this discontent.

Of course, Biden’s condition has been long known. So who then has been running affairs; making critical daily decisions about war, peace, the composition of the judiciary and the boundaries of state authority? The WSJ piece gives one answer: “Unelected advisers, party hacks, scheming family members and random hangers-on make the critical daily decisions” on these issues.

Maybe we have to reconcile to the fact that Biden is an angry, senile man who yells at his staff: “During meetings with aides who are putting together formal briefings, some senior officials have at times gone to great lengths to curate the information in an effort to avoid provoking a negative reaction”.

“It’s like, ‘You can’t include that, that will set him off’ or ‘Put that in, he likes that,’” said one senior administration official. “It’s very difficult and people are scared sh*tless of him.” The official added, “He doesn’t take advice from anyone other than those few top aides, and it becomes a perfect storm because he just gets more and more isolated from their efforts to control it”.

Seymour Hersh, the well-known investigative journalist reports:

“Biden’s drift into blankness has been ongoing for months, as he and his foreign policy aides have been urging a ceasefire that will not happen in Gaza whilst continuing to supply the weapons that make a ceasefire less likely. There’s a similar paradox in Ukraine, where Biden has been financing a war that cannot be won – yet refusing to participate in negotiations that could end the slaughter”.

“The reality behind all of this, as I’ve been told for months, is that Biden is simply ‘no longer there’ – in terms of understanding the contradictions of the policies he and his foreign policy advisers have been carrying out”.

On the one hand, Politico tells us: “Biden’s insular senior team are well acquainted with the longtime aides who continue to have the president’s ear: Mike Donilon, Steve Ricchetti and Bruce Reed, as well as Ted Kaufman and Klain on the outside”.

“It’s the same people — he has not changed those people for 40 years … The number of people who have access to the president has gotten smaller and smaller and smaller. They’ve been digging deeper into the bunker for months now.” And, the strategist said, “the more you get into the bunker, the less you listen to anyone”.

In Todd’s words then, decisions are made by a small ‘Washington village’.

Of course, Jake Sullivan and Blinken sit at the centre of what is called the ‘inter-agency’ view. This where policy mostly is discussed. It is not coherent – with its locus in the National Security Committee – but rather is spread through a matrix of interlocking ‘clusters’ that includes the Military Industrial Complex, Congressional leaders, Big Donors, Wall Street, the Treasury, the CIA, the FBI, a few cosmopolitan oligarchs and the princelings of the security-intelligence world.

All these ‘princes’ pretend to have a foreign policy view, and fight like cats to protect their fiefdom’s autonomy. Sometimes they channel their ‘take’ via the NSC, but if they can, they will ‘stovepipe’ it directly to one or other ‘key actor’ with the ear of one, or other, Washington ‘village’.

Nonetheless, at bottom, the 1992 Wolfowitz doctrine which underscored American supremacy at all costs, in a post-Soviet world – together with “stamping out rivals, wherever they may emerge” – still today remains the ‘current doctrine’ framing the ‘inter-agency’ baseline.

Dysfunction at the heart of a seemingly functioning organization may persist for years without any real public awareness or appreciation of the descent into dysfunctionality. But then suddenly – when a crisis hits, or Presidential debate misfires – ‘poof’ and we see clearly the collapse of the manipulation that has confined discourse to within the various Washington villages.

In this light, some of the structural contradictions that Todd noted as contributory factors to western decline become unexpectedly ‘illuminated’ by events: Baker highlighted one: The key Faustian bargain: the pretence of a liberal democracy operating in tandem with a ‘classic’ liberal economy versus the reality of an illiberal oligarchic leadership sitting atop a hyper-financialised corporate economy that has both sucked the life from the classic organic economy, and created toxic inequalities too.

The second agent of western decline is Todd’s observation that the implosion of the Soviet Union rendered the U.S. so cock-a-hoop that the latter triggered a paradoxical unleashing of global ‘Rules-Based Order’ expansion of empire versus the reality that the West was already being consumed from its roots upwards.

The third agent to decline lay, Todd argues, with America declaring itself to be the greatest military nation on earth – versus the reality of an America that has long rid itself of much of its manufacturing capacity (particularly the military capacity), yet elects to clash with a stabilized Russia, a great power returned, and with China which has instantiated itself as the world’s manufacturing Behemoth (including militarily).

These unresolved paradoxes became the agents of western decline, Todd maintained. He has a point.

Authored by Philip Hamburger via RealClearPolitics,

Last week, in Murthy v. Missouri, the Supreme Court hammered home the distressing conclusion that, under the court’s doctrines, the First Amendment is, for all practical purposes, unenforceable against large-scale government censorship. The decision is a strong contender to be the worst speech decision in the court’s history.

(I must confess a personal interest in all of this: My civil rights organization, the New Civil Liberties Alliance, represented individual plaintiffs in Murthy.)

All along, there were some risks. As I pointed out in an article called “Courting Censorship,” Supreme Court doctrine has permitted and thereby invited the federal government to orchestrate massive censorship through the social media platforms. The Murthy case, unfortunately, confirms the perils of the court’s doctrines.

One danger was that the court would try to weasel out of reaching a substantive decision. Months before Murthy was argued, there was reason to fear that the court would try to duck the speech issue by disposing of the case on standing.

Indeed, in its opinion, the court denied that that the plaintiffs had standing by inventing what Justice Alito calls “a new and heightened standard” of traceability – a standard so onerous that, if the court adheres to it in other cases, almost no one will be able to sue. It is sufficiently unrealistic that the court won’t stick to it in future cases.

The “evidence was more than sufficient to establish” at least one plaintiff’s “standing to sue,” and consequently, as Alito’s dissent pointed out, “we are obligated to tackle the free speech issue.” Regrettably, the court, however, again in Alito’s words, “shirks that duty and thus permits … this case to stand as an attractive model for future officials who want to control what the people say, hear, and think.” The case gives a greenlight for the government to engage in further censorship.

A second problem was doctrinal. The Supreme Court has developed doctrine that encourages government to think it “can censor Americans through private entities as long as it is not too coercive.” Accordingly, with painful predictability, the oral argument in Murthy focused on whether or not there had been government coercion.

The implications were not lost on the government. Although it had slowed down its censorship machine during litigation, it revved it up after the court’s hearing emphasized coercion. As put by Matt Taibbi, “the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security reportedly resumed contact with Internet platforms after oral arguments in this case in March led them to expect a favorable ruling.”

The First Amendment, however, says nothing about coercion. On the contrary, it distinguishes between “abridging” the freedom of speech and “prohibiting” the free exercise of religion. As I have explained in great detail, the amendment thereby makes clear that the Constitution’s standard for a speech violation is abridging, that is, reducing, the freedom of speech, not coercion. A mere reduction of the freedom violates the First Amendment.

The court in Murthy, however, didn’t recognize the significance of the word “abridging.” This matters in part for the standing question. It’s much more difficult to show that the plaintiffs’ injuries are traceable to government coercion than to show that they are traceable to government abridging of the freedom of speech. More substantively, if the court had recognized the First Amendment’s word “abridging,” it would have clarified to the government that it can’t use evasions to get away with censorship.

Other doctrinal disasters included the court’s casual indifference to listeners’ or readers’ rights – the right of speakers to hear the speech of others. The court treated such rights as if they were independent of the rights of speakers and therefore concluded that they would broadly invite everyone to sue the government.

But listeners’ rights are most clearly based in the First Amendment when they are understood as the right of speakers to hear the speech of others, as this is essential for speakers to formulate and refine their own speech. The right of speakers to hear what others say is, therefore, the core of listeners’ rights. From this modest understanding of listeners’ rights, the plaintiffs’ rights as listeners should have been understood as part of their rights as speakers – an analysis that would’ve avoided hyperbolical judicial fears of permitting everyone to sue.

The court’s concern that a recognition of listeners’ rights would open up the courts to too many claimants is especially disturbing when the government has censored millions upon millions of posts with the primary goal of suppressing what the American people can hear or read. When the most massive censorship in American history prevents Americans from learning often true opinion on matters of crucial public interest, it should be no surprise that there are many claimants. The court’s disgraceful reasoning suggests that when the government censors a vast number of Americans, we lose our right of redress.

The greatest danger comes from the court’s tolerance of the sub-administrative power that the government uses to corral private parties into becoming instruments of control. Administrative regulation ideally runs through notice-and-comment rulemaking. In contrast, sub-administrative regulation works through informal persuasion, including subtle threats, regulatory hassle, and illicit inducements. By such means, the government can get the private platforms to carry out government orchestrated censorship of their users.

The federal government once had no such sub-administrative power, and it therefore had little control over speech. It could punish speakers only through criminal prosecutions – that is, by going to court and showing that the defendants’ speech violated the criminal law. Now, however, federal officials can subtly get the platforms to suppress speech – often covertly, so an individual won’t even know he is being suppressed. Thus, whereas the government traditionally could only punish the individual, it now can make his speech disappear.

Even worse, the court’s tolerance of this sub-administrative privatization of censorship reverses the burden of proof. Government once had to prove to a judge and jury that a speaker’s words were illegal. Now, instead, the speaker must prove that the government censored him.

What’s more, there’s no effective remedy. The court’s qualified immunity doctrine makes it nearly impossible for censored individuals to get damages for past censorship. And the obstacles to getting an injunction mean that it’s nearly impossible to stop future censorship. For example, the government can claim, as it did in Murthy, that it’s no longer censoring the affected individual. Then, poof! The possibility of an injunction disappears. Moreover, because of the court’s indifference to listeners’ rights – even to the right of speakers to hear the speech of others, an injunction can protect only a handful of individuals; it can’t stop the government’s massive censorship of vast numbers of Americans.

The court thus puts Americans affected by censorship in an unenviable position. It reverses the burden of proof and denies Americans any effective remedy.

So, for multiple reasons, Murthy is probably the worst speech decision in American history. In the face of the most sweeping censorship in American history, the decision fails to recognize either the realities of the censorship or the constitutional barriers to it. In practical terms, the decision invites continuing federal censorship on social media platforms. It thereby nearly guarantees that yet another election cycle will be compromised by government censorship and condemns a hitherto free society to the specter of mental servitude.

Philip Hamburger teaches at Columbia Law School and is CEO of the New Civil Liberties Alliance.

Some early adopters of electric vehicle trucks who bought on secondary markets during the EV mania in recent years have been hammered by price collapses. 

Using Bring A Trailer data, we analyzed auctions of four EV trucks: a GMC Hummer EV, a Ford F-150 Lightning EV, a Rivian R1T, and a Tesla Cybertruck. All of these trucks have seen sizeable price declines on the auction website. 

Let’s start with the GMC Hummer EV, which was heavily hyped and initially sold for a staggering $275k on the auction website in April 2022. Fast forward to today, and used Hummer EVs are now selling on the same site for around $100k, aligning near GMC’s listed MSRP.

Even though a Ford F-150 EV has not sold or been listed on Bing A Trailer in about a year, the price collapse from around the $120k mark in the summer of 2022 to about $60k in the summer of 2023 is breathtaking. It’s just a devastating price collapse for early adopters who paid a hefty premium on secondary markets. MSRP for Lightnings ranges from $55k to $93k, depending on trim. 

It is more of the same for the Rivian folks who purchased the R1Ts on the secondary market after the initial launch. Prices have plunged by about 50% from the spring of 2022 to the present day. MSRP for Rivian R1T is around $70k. 

The big question is what happens with used Tesla Cybertruck prices. Since March, one auction has been completed at $160k, with one selling last month for about $100k. Tesla does have a penalty for owners selling their trucks in the first year. MSRP for the Foundation Series of the Cybertruck is around $100k. 

The takeaway here is clear: don’t buy into the hype.

Authored by David Stockman via Contra Corner blog,

This is not the first time that an invalid has occupied the Oval Office. After apparently exhausting himself in behalf of the “War to Make the World Safe for Democracy” and orchestrating the “peace conference” at Versailles that guaranteed the carnage of WWII, Woodrow Wilson succumbed to a nearly fatal stroke in October 1919 while barnstorming the nation in behalf of the League of Nations Treaty.

As it happened, America was than blessed with a perfectly serviceable Vice-President, Thomas R. Marshall, who had been a famous Midwestern lawyer, governor of Indiana, outspoken “progressive” and contender for the Democrat nomination in 1912. Wilson won the nomination on the 46th ballot but only after his advisers secretly promised Marshall the vice presidency in a very smoked-filled room in the wee hours of the Dem convention.

Perhaps that is why Marshall’s most famous quote is known to almost everyone more than 100 years later. Thus, observed America’s #2 leader—

“What this country needs is a really good five-cent cigar.”

Notwithstanding Marshall’s status as a second term almost-president, Edith Wilson was having none of a succession plan. And that’s despite the fact she did not have a degree in “education” nor did she answer to the “Dr. Edith” title.

But she had proven herself around Washington as no mean hostess when she slipped into the First Lady role during and/or after (it’s disputed!) the illness and death of Wilson’s first wife in 1915. Either way, Edith Wilson was not about to disembark from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue solely because her husband was virtually paralyzed on the entire left side of his body.

Indeed, the extent of her intrigues and deceptions designed to hang on to power are now legendary. As medical historian, Howard Markel, has told,

Everything changed on the morning of Oct. 2, 1919. According to some accounts, the president awoke to find his left hand numb to sensation before falling into unconsciousness. In other versions, Wilson had his stroke on the way to the bathroom and fell to the floor with Edith dragging him back into bed. However those events transpired, immediately after the president’s collapse, Mrs. Wilson discretely phoned down to the White House chief usher, Ike Hoover and told him to “please get Dr. Grayson, the president is very sick.”

Grayson quickly arrived. Ten minutes later, he emerged from the presidential bedroom and the doctor’s diagnosis was terrible: “My God, the president is paralyzed,” Grayson declared.

What would surprise most Americans today is how the entire affair, including Wilson’s extended illness and long-term disability, was shrouded in secrecy. In recent years, the discovery of the presidential physicians’ clinical notes at the time of the illness confirm that the president’s stroke left him severely paralyzed on his left side and partially blind in his right eye, along with the emotional maelstroms that accompany any serious, life-threatening illness, but especially one that attacks the brain. Only a few weeks after his stroke, Wilson suffered a urinary tract infection that threatened to kill him. Fortunately, the president’s body was strong enough to fight that infection off but he also experienced another attack of influenza in January of 1920, which further damaged his health.

Protective of both her husband’s reputation and power, Edith shielded Woodrow from interlopers and embarked on a bedside government that essentially excluded Wilson’s staff, the Cabinet and the Congress. During a perfunctory meeting the president held with Sen. Gilbert Hitchcock (D-Neb.) and Albert Fall (R-N.M.) on Dec. 5, Grayson and Edith even tried to hide the extent of Wilson’s paralysis by keeping his left side covered with a blanket.

As it turned out, the immobilization of the presidency during the last 18 months of Wilson’s term was one of history’s great serendipity’s. Absent Wilson’s tireless promotion, the abominable League of Nations Treaty died aborning. America was thus given one more chance to return to its ways as a peaceful Republic untroubled by the petty intrigues of nations beyond the great Atlantic and Pacific Ocean moats.

Needless to say, that reprieve has long since been kicked away. America is now a dangerous Empire and its president is virtually the helmsman of the planet. So the fact that Jill Biden has apparently read and copied the entirety of professor Markel’s account of America’s first Spousal Regency is troubling indeed.

It was evident beyond a shadow of a doubt last Thursday night that a second Spousal Regency is now underway. “Joe Biden” would have received his gold watch from Washington’s grateful ruling apparatchiks long ago, save for the obvious fact that Jill Biden has said that absolutely “nyet means nyet”.

At this point, of course, it would be helpful if Jill did speak a bit of Russian because the minions helping her conduct this unauthorized, unlawful and constitutionally- repugnant Regency have gotten her marooned in what amounts to an helacious Moscow Winter. Alas, however, it appears that her second language lies elsewhere.

That is to say, Jill Jacobs Giacoppo’s tribal ferocity did not originate from the bucolic hills of Willow Grove Pennsylvania or the classrooms of Upper Moreland High School or even the instructors at Brandywine Junior College. Her father’s family had emigrated from the Sicilian village of Gesso, losing the “Giacoppo” part within days of passing Lady Liberty, but hanging on to the blood loyalty part even unto the present fraught hour.

That is to say, Edith Wilson Biden is a clear and present danger to the American Republic. She has spent the last 47 years marinating in the self-righteous hypocrisies, follies and evil-doings of the Washington ruling class—without ever once have been called to accountability by any kind of electorate at all.

Like Edith Wilson, she was apparently an able spouse and hostess – who taught classes at Northern Virginia Community College on the side and was pleased to call herself “doctor” owing to a quasi-honorary degree from the Biden family’s political sinecure at the University of Delaware.

And yet and yet. Jill Giacoppo is an utterly unqualified usurper, who has even less excuse for her blatant power grab than did Edith Wilson back in the day. At least in Edith’s time there was no 25th Amendment to regularize, organize and legitimize the transfer of power to the constitutionally prescribed role of Vice President.

To be specific, section 4 of the 25th Amendment addresses the precise case of a President unable to fulfill his constitutional role but who cannot or will not step aside.

In that event, it provides both a decision-maker and a procedure. The deciding group is the Vice President and a majority of the Cabinet. If this group declares a President “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office,” the Vice President immediately becomes Acting President; and he remains so unless a two-thirds majority of both chamber reinstate the former president.

So why was “Joe Biden” still in the Oval Office last Thursday night making a spectacle of his very disabled self before a global audience of 51 million?

It’s plain as day that there is one reason and one reason alone as to why Kamala Harris and the timorous men and woman of the Biden cabinet have not activated the 25th Amendment: They are scared to death of Jill Giacoppo!

Then again, this election is allegedly about saving constitutional democracy from the prospect of an illegal coup.

And while the DNC and its megaphones in the MSM may resolutely deny it, that’s exactly what is now dangerously underway in their own backyard.

Actor Kevin Spacey, known for his lead role as Frank Underwood in the Netflix series “House of Cards,” is facing numerous sexual assault accusations, all of which he denies. Recently featured on “Piers Morgan Uncensored,” Spacey revealed he is on the brink of bankruptcy and is set to lose his Inner Harbor mansion in Baltimore City after amassing millions of dollars in legal bills.

Sixty-four-year-old Spacey told Morgan during the June interview that his five-story mansion at Pier Homes at Harborview “is being foreclosed on.” He continued, “My house is being sold at auction. So I have to go back to Baltimore and put all my things in storage. So… I’m not quite sure where I’m gonna live now.”

“I can’t pay the bills [legal bills] that I owe,” Spacey said, adding he has been able to “dodge” bankruptcy for now. 

NEW: Actor Kevin Spacey starts crying during an interview with Piers Morgan, says he owes millions of dollars in legal fees.

Morgan: Are you facing bankruptcy?

Spacey: We’ve managed to sort of dodge it, at least as of today.

Morgan: How much money do you have?

Spacey:… pic.twitter.com/E9ZQB7B9Xn

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) June 11, 2024

We doubt Spacey will be homeless, but his Harborview home is certainly slated for the auction block later this month. 

Local auctioneer Alex Cooper is preparing to auction off Spacey’s 9,069-square-foot condo built by the late developer Leroy Merritt on July 25 at the Circuit Court for Baltimore City. 

A $100,000 initial deposit is required to bid, and there will be no bidding online. The opening bid starts at $1.5 million. 

Here are more details on Spacey’s home from the auctioneers:

***SUGGESTED OPENING BID $1,500,000***

Description from previous listing: Expansive 9,069+ square foot waterfront mansion. Property features 5 levels, 6 bedrooms, 7 full baths and 3 half-baths.  Upgrades include an elevator, sauna, home theatre, rooftop terrace, multiple verandas and a four-car garage. (The above description and pictures are from a Realtor’s listing on Multiple List when the property previously was sold and transferred for $5.65 million in 2017.  There are no warranties or representations as to its accuracy. 

Under a power of sale contained in a certain Deed of Trust from Clear Toaster, LLC, dated September 5, 2017 and recorded in Liber 19497, folio 56 and re-recorded in Liber 26452, Folio 181 among the Land Records of Baltimore City, MD, default having occurred under the terms thereof and at the request of the parties secured thereby, the undersigned Substitute Trustees will offer for sale at public auction at the Circuit Court for Baltimore City, at the Clarence M. Mitchell Court House, 100 North Calvert Street, Court House Door, Calvert Street entrance, Baltimore, MD 21202, on JULY 25, 2024 AT 9:15 AM.

The new owner of Spacey’s home should really consider hiring a cleaning service equipped with blacklights before moving in.